Honkai Star Rail 1.2: The Newest 5-Star Lightning Nihility Unit Is Coming! - Kafka Pre-Release Analysis & Builds

Posted: Aug 07, 2023

Source: IGGM

Kafka is almost out. And I thought I’d put my take on some talking points the community has been discussing, like Crit Kafka and Break Kafka, as well as talk about some important points Kafka mains will be needing to think about for her release and building her and her teams.

We’ll review her kit real quick and check out her revealed traces, and discuss these new off meta builds people are talking about, as well as other topics. Then, I’ll give out a safe build path and teammates you can prepare for even if she’s only a few days away.

Honkai Star Rail 1.2: The Newest 5-Star Lightning Nihility Unit Is Coming! - Kafka Pre-Release Analysis & Builds

Quick Kit Overview

Let’s quickly look at her kit revealed on Hoyolab.

Her basic attack is nothing special. Her skill is a blast skill and will detonate the central target’s DoT effects. That goes for any ally DoTs and break DoTs. Remember that Freeze, Entanglement and Imprisonment are not DoT effects.

Her ultimate is an AOE damaging ultimate that will detonate all enemies’ DoT effects, rather than just the target in the middle. It will also apply Shock. And as a 5-star limited unit with a shock on her ultimate, we can assume this Shock will hurt a whole lot.

Her talent is a follow up when an ally uses a basic attack, and will inflict Shock, too. Just like Serval’s kit shocks, these will not be stacking with each other.

Her technique is an attacking one, and will also apply a shock equal to the ultimate’s one.

Her traces make her ultimate detonate all dots, give her energy on enemies being defeated with shock, and give all of her Shock base chances a buff.

So, Kafka’s main role is a main DPS. And her secondary role is a DoT enabler. Without knowing kit numbers, ultimate and skill will be levelled first, and then talent and then basic. Her first passive is OP, her third is a must get too, and her second is nice.

Kafka’s Scalings

So, with her kit, what will she scale on?

DoTs cannot crit, and she will thus scale primarily on ATK%. She will not need much effect hit rate due to her third trace. And then she will scale heavily on speed because of the nature of her damage. The way her damage will scale on speed is because of the way she double dips in damage.

Taking more turns is, of course, good for any DPS. If you do a little less damage than usual, but take many more turns, you’ll overall be doing a bunch more damage.

Kafka follows the same concept. Every turn she takes, she can skill and do some damage. But then, she will also detonate her DoT effects, and any ally dot effects.

What this means is that speed is even more important for her than usual. Your DoT damage will happen at the start of every enemy turn, but also on your own turns. Getting more instances of those is always good. You also have to, of course, stack ATK%.

Kritka (Crit Kafka) Discussion

So, that’s two lines in your relics’ possible 4. And that is why people are going to Crit and Break Kafka. If I only need attack and speed, why not add crit.

The problem is we don’t have infinite substats or possible substat rolls. We need those attack% rolls, and we need those speed rolls.

If we use my Sampo sheet, and insert 10 crit rate and 10 crit damage subs, and a crit rate chest, his damage naturally comes out ahead versus normal attack%. This is losing effect hit rate, which means a lot less debuffs.

Honkai Star Rail my Sampo sheet

But since we compared with Kafka and Kafka won’t be needing effect hit rate, so we can follow the same concept.

So, in a solo case, the crit will be doing more damage if you’re just considering a DoT effect, and a damage effect. Then comes in the detonations.

The DoT scales on ATK%, the kit damage scales on attack%, and the detonations scale on ATK%. Only one of these scales on crit. The more you remove speed for crit on Kafka, the fewer detonations you’ll get. The more you remove ATK% on her for crit, the less damage her overall kit does, before one third of it being multiplied by crit.

Foregoing speed also means potential allies’ DoTs also suffer, but Crit Kafka would be running stuff like Tingyun and Asta, so that wouldn’t matter.

Of course, just like Serval is primarily a crit DPS, with a nice DoT, Kafka will be a DoT DPS, with a nice amount of crittable damage. So, you can still run the crit, and it will still work and be viable until MOC gets beefier and beefier. Though the nice part about not running crit, is all those pieces without crit can finally be used.

Breakfa (Break Kafka) Discussion

As for break Kafka, her break effect scalings were removed from CBT2, which is a bit sad. But breaking is still a ton of damage when you focus in on it. And since she can detonate, going all in on speed and break effect will do decent damage.

It will need you to be breaking, and/or bringing Serval, and being against Lightning Weak, but it can work. Remember, break shocks stack with normal shocks, and can even stack on other teammates’ break shocks.

If you’re daring, you can stack Serval and Kafka’s 4 shocks all on one poor boss, with Serval’s ultimate infinitely extending these Shocks.

At the end of this though, you can ask why bother, and just run attack% and speed. Of course, you can play how you want, and I’m excited to see all three builds post release. They’re all going to be great and will probably be beating the late game Memory of Chaos.

Teammate Discussion

As for teammates, she is a DoT enabler, as her second role.

Remember, she is foremost a main DPS, and she can therefore run your standard team setups you’ve been building for.

She doesn’t need those dot friends if you don’t want to build them. She can run your Tingyun, your Bronya, your Yukong if you’re going to Critka. She can be the focus of your team. She doesn’t need Sampo or Serval or Luka to perform, like some people are stating.

Just like Serval main DPS is doing excellently, and Sampo solo DoT is working, Kafka will be fine just by herself. You can, of course, use those DoT units you’ve been building up, and they’ll be best with her due to her detonation playstyle.

But if you just want to get her and play her cause you love her, then go ahead. You’ll see plenty of showcases within the first week of her popping off as a solo DPS.

Also Read: Mechanics Explained You Need To Know In Honkai Star Rail! - DOT, Debuff & Break Effect

Safe Relic Build

So for a safe build, 4-piece Band of Sizzling Thunder will, of course, be excellent on Kafka.

Space Sealing Station for the planar ornaments. Pan Galactic will most likely be a DPS loss due to her third trace. You’ll also be able to run 2 piece combos, such as musketeer, messenger, and the lightning set again. There’s also the possibility of Quantum set.

For main stats and substats, you’ll want ATK%, SPD, lightning DMG% and ATK%.

For subs, you’ll be chasing attack% and speed, getting to whatever effect hit rate needs she has, and then plopping the rest into your desired stats.

Light Cone Discussion

For Light Cones, her signature will be incredible for her, due to it being stackable with her base kit shock, just like the Resolution light cone defense shred stacks with Pela’s ultimate, since they are two different sources or named debuffs.

Good Night and Sleep Well is broken and will be amazing for her, too. You’re looking at a permanent 72% damage boost if you have 3 debuffs on the enemy.

Fermata as a free to play option is nice, and Welt’s light cone works because of its high base ATK%, DMG%, and skill damage buff, which will be boosting her DoTs during the detonation.

Best Friends And Teams

Her best sub DPS will be Sampo and Luka, and Serval, and break DPS will also work great with her.

Her best supports will be Asta, Pela and Silver Wolf. But remember, she can use other harmonies, too. Don’t feel restricted.

A standard team comp for her will include one of your desired sub DPS, combined with a buffer or debuffer, and then a solo sustain.

Pick your poison. Triple DoT will be a bit risky to run with lack of survivability, and not best in damage, due to Asta, Pela and Silver Wolf boosting the damage of two DPS a ton.

I hope that helps for any Kafka wanters. It doesn’t matter if you can’t pull her when Kafka is online, you can directly buy a Honkai Star Rail Account with this character. Hope you all become Kafka havers.

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Next: Honkai Star Rail 2.4: Which Characters Are Worth Pulling? - Yunli, Sparkle, Huohuo & Jiaoqiu

Previous: Honkai Star Rail 1.2: 5 Things You Need To Know About Imbibitor Lunae - Stats, Ultimate, Skill, Technique & Gameplay

Recommended Article

Honkai Star Rail 2.4: Which Characters Are Worth Pulling? - Yunli, Sparkle, Huohuo & Jiaoqiu
Here we go, let’s talk about the new characters brought in Honkai Star Rail 2.4 update, Yunli, Sparkle, Huohuo and Jiaoqiu, and who you should pick! All of these characters have a lot of skills, and we’ll discuss everything you need to know about them in detail in this guide to help you decide which character might be the best choice for you to pick.

Yunli Overview

Let’s start with Yunli, as she will be our first new limited character in the 2.4 update. Yunli will be a Physical Destruction character, who focuses on launching frequent counterattack follow-up attacks on enemies and dealing tremendous damage with counterattacks after entering her ultimate.

Recapping Yunli’s kit, her basic attack will deal a small amount of damage to a single enemy, while her skills will deal physical damage to enemies and adjacent enemies, while also restoring 30% of her attack damage + 200 health at level 10. This is a great way to keep Yunli sustainable, since she’ll be getting attacked a lot and will want to get hit as often as possible.

As for Yunli’s counterattack, let’s look at her talent. Yunli’s counterattack deals damage to the enemy and its adjacent ones. And what’s really great is that when she’s hit by an enemy, she’ll recover an additional 15 energy, which helps her use her ultimate more often.

As for Yunli’s ultimate, she’ll cost 120 energy, but she can actually have up to 240 energy. This allows her to use two ultimates in a row after one trigger, or allows you to effectively schedule when to use her ultimate without worrying too much about overflowing on energy.

And Yunli’s ultimate will put her into a Perry state, which will taunt all enemies until the end of the enemy’s turn or the end of the ally’s turn. Once Perry state ends, Yunli will unleash a large amount of damage. In addition, her ultimate will increase her critical damage to this counterattack by 100%.

Yunli can actually unleash two attacks from her ultimate. The first is Intuit: Cull, which occurs when Yunli is attacked by an enemy target. She will launch a counterattack on the enemy and around her and deal 6 extra damage.

When Yunli is not hit, or assuming you use Ultimate during an ally’s turn and the enemy does not hit Yunli, she will instead release Intuit: Slash. This is similar to Cull, however, you will lose the extra damage output since you will not deal an extra 6 damage.

Yunli’s Demon Quell will allow her to ignore all Crowd Control Debuffs in Perry state of her Ultimate and reduce the damage she takes by 20%. This makes her immune to Crowd Control in Perry state and has extra survivability by reducing the damage she will take.

All in all, she is definitely a very strong physical damage dealer and very valuable to those who lack strong physical DPS. Additionally, since Yunli’s Ultimate counter attack is so powerful, it feels good to use in multiple game modes.

Jiaoqiu Overview

As for the second character in Honkai Star Rail 2.4, we have Jiaoqiu.

Jiaoqiu is a Fire Nihility character that focuses on debuffing enemies with Ashen Roast. Jiaoqiu’s skill will hit one enemy and an adjacent enemy with a chance to inflict Ashen Roast, which increases the damage dealt to enemies by allies.

It seems likely that Ashen Roast stacks will be capped at 5 stacks, as the developer livestream showed the maximum number of stacks.

As for Jiaoqiu’s ultimate, he will be able to set the number of Ashen Roast stacks for all enemies to the highest number present on the battlefield. His ultimate will create a field that increases the ultimate damage taken by enemies, and every time an enemy’s turn starts, they have a chance to take damage from Ashen Roast.

Jiaoqiu will be a great addition to Acheron’s team, as he can help Acheron get ultimate stacks faster, which is valuable for those who main Acheron.

Beyond that, I do feel like you could use a character like Pela or Guinaifen as your regular debuffer, who are 4-star options, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Sparkle & Huohuo Overview

As for our replay characters, we have Sparkle and Huohuo. Both are pretty good choices, depending on what your Honkai Star Rail Account is lacking.

Huohuo

Among them, Huohuo excels at purifying allies, providing good healing, as well as providing energy and attack through her ultimate, which can be very useful for your team to use their ultimate more often, especially when you pair Huohuo with Tingyun.

Huohuo is great for characters and teams that highly value the extra attack damage or energy from their ultimate, such as Damage over Time (DoT) teams. Argenti benefits from energy, as does Yunli, as her high energy cap allows her to recover a lot of energy from Huohuo’s ultimate.

If you’re short on premium sustain options, Huohuo is an excellent choice. But keep in mind that we’re also getting Lingsha in the 2.5 update, and she’s a new Abundance Character, so if you’re on the fence about Huohuo, that’ll be something to consider.

Sparkle

As for our second replay, that would be Quantum Harmony character, Sparkle. Sparkle is excellent at making Hypercarry-oriented characters more powerful, as you can easily use Attack Boots on your main DPS, and Sparkle will have them push forward, as she will be the fast character on the team.

Sparkle can provide huge critical damage to her skills and can also allow allies to push forward. Critical damage makes character creation easier, as now you can focus more on getting high critical hits, benefiting from the huge critical damage Sparkle can provide to team characters. What’s more, the buff will last until the start of the ally’s next turn, meaning that subsequent characters can still receive the critical damage buff from Sparkle Kit.

Sparkle can also provide more skill points to the team with her ultimate skill. She can increase the damage dealt by team characters to enemies and enhance the attack power of Quantum character on the team.

Sparkle is a very good support character that can provide great utility to the crit-based DPS characters in your account. I will say, though, that if you already have other high-level sustains like Robin or Ruan Mei and are lacking a damage dealer, then your need for Sparkle isn’t as high as it should be since you have great alternatives to use.

As for which option is best, honestly, it depends a lot on what your account has or lacks. If you don’t have a good physical DPS, I highly recommend Yunli because she feels really good to play and is very powerful. In my opinion, she’s one of the stronger DPS options you could consider, especially if you use her ultimate correctly.

Overall, I think there's a pretty good variety of characters you can choose from, and ultimately it depends on what your account might be lacking. I’d love to hear which character you guys are going to pick, or if you’re planning on skipping Honkai Star Rail 2.4!

Personally, I’m looking forward to Yunli the most because she’s super fun to play and is super powerful once you use her ultimate! See you in-game!
Honkai Star Rail 1.2: 5 Things You Need To Know About Imbibitor Lunae - Stats, Ultimate, Skill, Technique & Gameplay
Here I’m going to share with you 5 things that were revealed about Imbibitor Lunae in the new missions of Honkai Star Rail 1.2. If you are interested in Imbibitor Lunae, then you must not miss this content.

Base Stats

In the excitement of playing in Imbibitor Lunae form with Dan Heng, most players don’t take the time to analyze the information they have at hand. You can pause the game and open up your character’s stats, though most of them are well hidden. But there are still some important details.

First, we can see that Imbibitor Lunae is expanded according to the attack. Because most of his stats are pretty average except for attack. Also, when comparing his base stats to other characters from Path of Destruction, he’s underwhelming.

Especially Imbibitor Lunae’s HP and DEF are at a low level. This makes him quite vulnerable compared to Blade or Clara. However, his attack power is between normal and high. In comparison, Clara’s basic attack power is still high, and her speed is second only to Arlan. Notably, they invested heavily in his Imbibitor Lunae to reach 137.

Ultimate

Throughout the fight, we only had a few minutes to trigger his Ultimate ability. But every time you trigger this Ultimate skill, it will consume 140 Energy. That’s a ridiculous amount! There are only two other characters in Honkai Star Rail with the same Energy cost, namely Qingque and Yanqing.

So we speculate that his traces have the potential to provide some sort of charge. If not, this will be a major problem with his gear.

Skill

His abilities are somewhat similar to Blade’s mechanics. Whenever you use this ability, his basic attack will be strengthened. However, there are still two fundamental differences. One, its basic attack can only be used once. Next, we can use his other skills 3 times in a row.

Every time we use this ability, it will further enhance his basic attack from the first use. It turns his attack into an explosion, hitting the target enemy the second time it’s used and deals with splash damage the third time it’s used for more damage. However, each time it is used, it either consumes skill points or a bunch of stats that have yet to be confirmed.

Also Read: 5 Considerations You Should Not Miss In Honkai Star Rail 1.2 Update

Technique

For the brief moment at the beginning of Scalegorge Waterscape, we took control of Dan Heng. Although failed to use it, now we can see his technique.

We can see that this is an enhanced type technique. This type of technique can improve your Honkai Star Rail Account characters in the next battle. It’s usually one of the main favors we can get before fighting in Memory of Chaos.

Gameplay

Finally, let’s look at the numbers and stats that Imbibitor Lunae has. He doesn’t seem to follow the mold of all the characters on this Path of Destruction. For example, Blade or Clara act as semi-tank and semi-damaged dealers, providing a lot of AOE damage without consuming too many skill points.

But that doesn’t seem to be the case with Imbibitor Lunae. We had a hard time pairing him with other Hunt or Erudition characters since he consumed a lot of skill points. Also, he is not the best sub-tank due to his low HP and defense.

Anyway, we’ll continue to see how his traces and talents will play out. Although currently he only seems suitable as the main damage dealter in your composition. In short, those are 5 things I learned about Imbibitor Lunae. Let us look forward to its arrival.
Honkai Star Rail: I Just Got A New Free 5 Star Light Cone In 1.3!
I'm getting a free 5 star Light Cone in 1.3, and it's a good one so you'll want to save these things up, especially if you want Kafka, let's go straight into it.

As of right now, for a free 5 star Light Cone, you can start one for Destruction characters, another for Hunt characters and another for Preservation characters in Honkai Star Rail. Most people myself included went for Hunt Light Cone, it's the best free to play Hunt Light Cone in the game. Choosing that member whose name was on a buyers could choose a Light Cone of a different path from the battle pass. Of course, if you want to experience more characters, Honkai Star Rail Account can help you.

You've started to save up enough you might be looking at Destruction and Preservation ones, but in 1.3 for adding a nail seal icon to this star. It increases Break Effect, which will increase for Break Damage and Debuff Damage, done by bleed shock windshare or whatever debuff your character applied. It increases Damage Over Time for two turns and if an enemy is defeated, while being inflicted with the character's damage over time.

Your character will Regenerate Energy, I won't pop his status up because that's all subjects to change, but I definitely advise saving your hair to buns for it, because it looks more impressive in the Destruction and Preservation like ones. If you don't want to go on a Light Cone Banner, she can make use of all free of Break Effect damage and energy, which allows you to focus on other stats in a Relics if you want to in Honkai Star Rail.

Assuming you're building the team with her and Sampo you could give Sampo for mata which is another free to play option. Then you have half your team ready without using Jade's outside of Kafka's banner, you could even use a 5 Star icon on Sampo if you want to, and is also an option for Luca, a lot of Luca's kit revolves around stacks and one way to get those stacks is his burst.

Also Read: Honkai Star Rail: Meta Analysis Of Blade Build & Showcase

So having a Light Cone, it gives energies useful, bleeds one of the strongest dots in Honkai Star Rail too. Having something to increase his bleed damage is a bonus, and it means you have the option to focus some of his Relic stars on his raw damage rather than just his damage over time. It's also promising that Adam is to her to stop because it means he could add Light Cones for other paths in the future too. Harmony for example has a lot of Indexs, like Planetary Rendezvous for mono teams, Past and Future when you see him as a hyper carry and memories of the past for burst up time.

Having another option would increase the chance of us having something useful for each of our Harmony characters, without having to rely on Gacha or swiping for the battle pass, as we start adding more characters we'll need more free options anyway. So we can save our Jades for characters, more free to play Light Cones is a great addition to Honkai Star Rail.

To summarize, new Nihility Light Cone in 1.3, great for damage over Time characters, Light Cone 8 bonds, Duplicates will cost two bonds each, so a total of 16 to take it to S5.
Honkai Star Rail: Most Serious Things About Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae - Three Parts
Hoyoverse decided to reveal a lot of things through the story mission about Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae. And while the activity by itself is really interesting, I am gonna take a look at his actual skills and show you just how busted he is going to be for certain teams.

1. Unique Skill

Probably one of the biggest surprises of 1.2 update had to be the small demo showcasing Dan Heng’s Imbibitor Lunae form.

Now, I love these sneak peeks Hoyo throws at us because there were so many little details I haven’t noticed until I reviewed the footage.

First of all, looking at this new Imbibitor Lunae form from a high-level perspective, it seems like he will be a mix between a single target and blast damage dealer. And it also seems like the damage will scale with ATK. Because even though Hoyo made sure to hide all the info that you could otherwise inspect, I was able to look at his stats and it’s pretty clear that when a unit has 3,600 HP at level 80, then the damage scaling will come from ATK.

The other important thing has to be his Ultimate. We couldn’t use it during the fight, but what’s crazy is the energy cost. 140 is a whopping amount to recharge. Only QQ and Yanqing have these costs and it is considered one of the bigger drawbacks for them.

However, we don’t know yet how much energy this new Dan Heng will be able to gain from his kit, although that 140 is something to keep in mind for now.

Also, I noticed that when for a brief period, I could control Dan Heng on the map. I couldn’t use his Technique but it does say it’s of an Enhance type. So, it’s probably going to be important to set aside one skill point for places, like Memory of Chaos, if he wants to start strong when the fight begins.

Still, the biggest thing that I wanna talk about would be his Basic Attack. Or should I say his Enhanced Attack thanks to his unique skill? So, you can use the skill to enhance the basic attack up to 3 times.

The basic attack by default is a single target, so with 1 enhancement, it just gains better damage. But with 2nd enhancement, now it becomes a Blast Attack, meaning it will hit the main and adjacent targets. The 3rd enhancement just gives more damage and a really cool animation.

By the way, you can see that with each enhancement, Dan Heng’s idle animation changes, which is really cool and a nice visual indicator.

Now damage wise, the basic attack enhanced once deals about 10k damage, although one hit wasn’t critical. And then finally, the 3rd last enhancement on 3 targets, he delivers a pretty massive 40k number. And yet again, 5 hits didn’t crit, so it could be around 50k instead.

These numbers are super solid, if not amazing. Because keep in mind, we’re looking at around 3.1k ATK, 50% crit and 82% crit damage. This build is at best average. So, imagine how much stronger he will be with actually insane stats.

And also, he didn’t even have any buffs. Seriously, either the devs are tampering with his stats and he deals unrealistic damage, or he is just that good. But 3 Skill Points to do some damage and then the enhanced attack doesn’t even generate SP?

What is this, QQ gambling with her skill? Are we back to eating up the skill points for big damage? Not really. Because if you look closely, there’s a stack count on Dan Heng’s portrait.

Once you have these stacks active, each time you enhance, instead of using up the skill point, the stack will be consumed. So, if here the basic attack is enhanced 3 times, you will see the stacks are used up instead.

However, one thing that really doesn’t make sense is that I couldn’t determine how he regenerates the stacks. He just starts every turn with all of them refreshed. I think the devs basically just modded his kit so that you don’t have to worry about managing them for now. Because otherwise it would make no sense to even have the stacks if they were always just refresh.

All in all, Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae is shaping up to be one of the most exciting units for me. A destruction imaginary damage dealer that can also attack up 3 targets and has a cool mechanic to boost the damage? Really interesting to say the least, although there’s 1 more unit that we got early access to, so let’s talk about her before I tell you something important about Imbibitor Lunae.

Also Read: Honkai Star Rail: Meta Analysis Of Blade Build & Showcase

2. Jinliu’s Potential

I know I should have talked about Jingliu back in 1.1. But I’ll be honest, I forgot this companion quest exists and was surprised to see you can actually play her.

Well, ok, not play her but observe from a distance. She literally did a total of 4 attacks and then she vanished. Anyway, here’s what I managed to uncover about this 2B wannabe.

First of all, it’s not clear to which path she belongs to. Although looking at her stats and damage output, she could be either Hunt or Destruction. I am leaning towards Destruction a bit more because a bit of giveaway that Hunt units have is their really low base HP.

Now, it does seem like Jingliu is equipped with a Light Cone, since it gets added to Base HP here. But assuming if for some reason, she would be equipped with the highest HP Light Cone, she would still end up with around 1.2k HP, which is around the low end of a Destruction character’s health.

So let’s assume she’s an Ice Destruction character. What could we expect from her?

Honestly, I have no idea right now because there’s not much to her kit. Although one thing’s for sure, she’s gonna want Pela on her team. Well, that is, if you have E4 Pela because this allows her to reduce the enemies’ Ice Res, which is pretty important if you want to improve Jingliu’s damage. But let’s not forget Pela also reduces enemy’s DEF, so that would be the first support that comes to mind.

Now the other things that stand out about her are the 130 Ultimate cost and the assumption she scales with ATK. Because similar to Imbibitor Lunae, her Health isn’t that high that could be scaled off for damage.

So, in short, not much can be deduced about her. She’s an Ice character, maybe from the Destruction path and she has a bit of an expensive Ultimate and potentially. She will be good with Pela due to how she helps increase Ice damage output.

3. New Comps

Now one more thing that I did not talk about regarding Imbibitor Lunae was the potential teams.

I am sure the first one that comes to mind is Mono Imaginary thanks to the craze that’s been ongoing with Silver Wolf, where we’re trying to build so many mono teams with her. And sure, a team like Yukong, Luocha and Silver Wolf for the new Dan Heng could be great, no doubt.

Right now, the best we can do with Mono Imaginary is Welt acting as our main damage dealer. Although that’s pushing it a bit too far, seeing how he is a Nihility character and has a lot of debuffs built into his kit.

But honestly, this team is super obvious and I am sure it will be good but the team that I am more interested in is the newly rising archetype of double damage dealer comp.

You see, back when Jing Yuan got released, I didn’t spend too much time using him with another major damage dealer, like Seele or Hook and instead, I just built teams around him. And I kinda did a similar thing with Blade. I did showcase one team that had the original flavor, Dan Heng and Blade, together with Welt. But I didn’t really consider the fact two damage dealers could be such a big deal and so that’s why I only briefly mentioned a team, like Seele with Blade.

But it turns out, after using a team like this for a few days, where both Seele and Blade are in a team, the results are kinda amazing and don’t even have to be Seele. It can be Hook, Sushang and so on just as long as there’s a good single-target damage dealer in the team. So where am I getting at?

Well, it seems to me Imbibitor Lunae is going to be kinda similar to Blade and by that, I mean he will be good against multiple targets. The blast damage from the 3rd enhancement is pretty scary when used against 3 enemies. So, putting this new Dan in a team with another damage dealer, as well as adding a support like Pela, Silver Wolf, Bronya or Tingyun, could be the next big team.

In fact, I would argue Pela or Silver Wolf would work best here, since unlike Bronya, whose buff can be applied to one character. Once you debuff an enemy with Pela or the Wolf, a new flavor, Dan Heng, and another damage dealer can fully utilize this.

And what’s even better, if it turns out that the stacks which negate skill point consumption are going to be easy to maintain, building a team together with Seele who is extremely skill point hungry is going to be a nice surprise.

I am honestly starting to feel like we’re at a point we’re not just obligated to use hypercarry teams. Double damage dealer comps are fun to use. Because two big hitters get to shine and sure, they won’t deal as much damage if the attention for them isn’t fully dedicated.

But at the same time, someone like Imbibitor Lunae feels like a character that’s going to act as a great sub-damage dealer. I kinda think that right now, the so called meta or at least the comps that we can build are getting a bit stale. I am not sure if it’s because of the limitations thanks to the enemy's weakness types or if the character roles are too rigid.

I know it’s stupid to compare this game to Genshin since they barely have anything similar when it comes to combat, but I feel characters in that game have more roles than just one. Like, Raiden Shogun can be used in a National Comp, a team could be built around her or you could literally use her as a glorified electro applicator thanks to how insanely good her skill is when it comes to triggering the Blooms on the ground.

I am hoping that with Imbibitor Lunae we’re gonna shift more towards the same what Genshin has. Maybe we will be able to build a team focused just around the new Dan Heng. And at the same time, we can also put him into a double damage dealer comp or just throw him in whenever you need extra damage.

But yeah, you can probably tell I am really excited about Dan Heng. I think that if you can have such a five-star character in your Honkai Star Rail Account, it will definitely bring you a lot of surprises. It’s great that we got to play him during the story, although not everything was revealed about him but there was enough data to get a strong first impression.

Now, the only thing I have to hope for is that I can use both of his versions in a team just to see if they freak out seeing one another.
Honkai Star Rail 1.2: What Do You Think Of Blade As Your DPS?
I've seen a lot of Doom posts in regarding Blade's numbers. Let's throw water on that fire, we don't Doom poster, we do need to be conscious not to make a common mistake though and that mistake is going into Blade's Banner with the idea in man but he's going to be a DPS carry. At least not with a current lineup of characters, he's not designed to be.

Context

Let's look at these Characters. If you are interested in the following Characters, you can also look them up in Honkai Star Rail Account.

Hunt Characters deal big damage to a single enemy in Honkai Star Rail. Her addition characters deal big damage too, but it's shared across multiple enemies.

Destruction Characters sit in the middle doing a little bit of both, being able to hit multiple enemies at the same time, helps with Mobs and shields in endgame content like memory of chaos. Typically you'll chop and change your team depending what you're up against, you'll pick a main damage dealer a character Tsuki team alive, and then you have two flex slots.

In most cases obser now, we've filled those flex slots with an Air Edition unit, Harmony unit or Nihility unit. Destruction is a flex Class 2 as of right now, that's not to say with high investment, you can't build Destruction units is your main carry. But is not as common, Blade for the majority of free to plays at least, is gonna go into a flag slot, is not going to be a main DPS in Honkai Star Rail.

Theoretical Comparison

Hunt Characters will be a big damaged single Target DPS, who burns through your skill points. Blade deals less damage given the fact he's a flex units, but he has the added value of hitting multiple enemies, and only using one skill point every three turns, because his damage is lower than sealers.

Doom posters have been shutting the bed over how he's a bad unit, because of it so let's look at why the villainevity of Honkai Star Rail. He can't deal as much damage as sealer, if his damage was equal to hers, you'd expect the Quantum Destruction unit, whoever that may be and whenever they might come out.

To be on par with this theoretical Blade, but now let's remove Blade from this table and compare sealer to the theoretical Quantum Destruction unit. Why would your pull sealer when the destruction units has equal damage, and the benefit of AOE application, and uses way less skill points giving you more flexibility to run skill point hungry flexes, or just straight up another DPS carry.

How pissed would you be as a sealer habit, if he just power grabbed her, like that how hesitant would you beautiful for future units, if there's always that danger Lumin that they can introduce another phase of power creep.

I don't know if any of you played Honkai, I did for a year or two broke assume at level 80. Had a lot of fun despite his flaws in the end though, power group is what made me drop the game you pull a strong DPS unit, go for the weapon and mystic Mata, which is like relics but gotcha.

Then you go for the best supports their weapons and their Stigmata, and once you've built them all, you have a strong team for that element, but there are four elements. So you get to work on the others, start pulling more characters, more weapons, more Stigmata, and once you're nearly done building your team via second element, DPS from your first team gets power crap before you can even get started on your third element. You don't want this in Honkai Star Rail, you already know how long it takes to farm for characters. If a new unit comes out and does the same thing, plus mob and your farming was for nothing.

Blade As Your DPS

Blade is not designed to be a main DPS in Honkai Star Rail. That doesn't mean he's bad in his intended role though, I have a video out talking about team C userman. So check that out if you haven't already, and just because he's not designed to be a main DPS, doesn't mean you can't use him as one. We just don't have many characters in the game right now that can support him as one, at least not optimally, you can use Asta for Speed, but you can't make the most out of the attack buff, you could run Yukong but she's designed for teams with more than one damage dealer.

Also if she inflicts weakness breaks, she imprisons the enemy, preventing them from attacking Blade, and in doing so stops him from getting stacks for his follow-up attacks, and makes him more awkward to trigger Longeva's disciple four piece, you could use Bronya, but not everyone has her.

YanQing can help charge his burst up which means you can run a HP rope on Blade for more damage, but you can't make optimal use of her attack buff. If you have Silver Wolf, you can run her with paler but when you're lacking a buffer. So what do we need to make Blade better as our main DPS, well firstly we need someone who can buff HP, people have speculated that the 1.3 healer Lynx might be able to do that, but nothing's confirmed.

Also Read: 5 Considerations You Should Not Miss In Honkai Star Rail 1.2 Update

Summary

If these speculations are true, or characters that do these things get released in the future, there must stunks for Blade viability as a DPS. To summarize he's not a main DPS like sealer, that doesn't mean he's bad in his intended role, but it's important you know what you're pulling for.
Honkai Star Rail: Everything You Need To Know About E0 Blade - Relics, Planar Ornaments, Light Cones & More
Blade is an interesting, and a much needed wind character that consumes his own HP to give himself more damage with enhanced attacks.

This guide will cover his optimal relics and light cones, to general playstyle and best team practices.

Kit Overview

Blade is unlike any other damage dealer we have in our Honkai Star Rail Account so far in the sense that he’s technically dual scaling. What I mean by that is all of his attacks have both an ATK% multiplier and an HP% multiplier.

However, it is crucial to note that the HP% multipliers are the focal point of his damage because it scales much better numerically compared to the ATK multipliers.

The ATK multipliers are nice for adding a little of extra damage when combining your light cone stats, light cone passives, and relic substats. But as you’ll see in the relic section later, HP is a much bigger priority.

As for what exactly Blade’s abilities do, he’s actually a very simple character. Blade’s skill consumes 30% of his max HP to grant him 3 enhanced basic attacks and a 40% DMG bonus at talent level 10.

Using this skill does not grant any energy but doesn’t also doesn’t count as a turn, so he immediately gets to move again after using his skill, similar to the way that Qingque’s skill functions.

Once you get your extra move after using Blade’s skill, you’ll be locked out of using his skill again for 3 turns to consume all of his enhanced basic attacks. So, just slash away at the enemy’s health bars to your content until you can use that skill again.

His enhanced basic attack will not generate any skill points but deals a ton of damage to the target and unlike his normal basic attack. It also deals damage to adjacent targets as well.

Just like his enhanced basic attacks, Blade’s ultimate also deals big damage to a single target and extra damage to adjacent enemies.

This time around, Blade’s ultimate will always reset his HP to exactly 50% of his max HP regardless if he was below or above that threshold, and has an extra damage multiplier based on how much HP Blade has consumed since his last ultimate.

In the case where Blade hasn’t used his ultimate for that battle yet, it’s based on how much HP is consumed since the start of battle.

Last but not least, Blade’s talent stacks up to 5 times with each time he sustains damage, whether that be consuming his HP with his abilities or taking damage from enemies. Once that counter reaches 5 stacks, Blade will launch an attack that hits all enemies and restores 25% of his max HP, which is perfect for keeping him out of death’s dance.

Despite how useful Blade’s talent is for sustain, it’s usually low on the list for trace priority (at E0). That’s no knock to his talent, but the majority of his damage at E0 comes from his skill and enhanced basic attack combo. So, the first thing you want to do is level those two up, and then focus on his ultimate and talent levels afterwards.

As usual, you’ll want to unlock Blade’s extra traces at ascension 2, 4, and 6. Because the first two increase his self healing for better survivability, and his last one straight up grants a 20% DMG bonus to his talent’s AoE attack.

Relics & Planar Ornaments

With the new 1.2 patch, Hoyoverse introduced 2 relic sets and 2 planar ornaments that in my experience, feel strong and impactful.

To no one’s surprise, one of these new relic sets, 4-set Longevous Disciple, is Blade’s best set. Blade is a stat hungry character and this 4-set gives him a much needed crit rate whenever he consumes his HP or gets hit, stacking up to a total of 16% crit rate.

However, since this is a new set that players will have to slowly farm up, you can use the 2-set Eagle of Twilight Line for extra Wind DMG with just the 2-set Longevous Disciple until you are able to get a good enough 4-set with the correct substats.

The 4-set Musketeer of Wild Wheat or the 4-set Eagle of Twilight Line are some of the game’s premiere generalist sets right now that can be used on Blade, but only use it if you have the pieces ready by the time Blade’s banner launches.

There’s literally no reason to farm a full set of Musketeer or Eagle for Blade after the new cavern releases with the additional Xianzhou Luofu areas. So, again, these sets only serve as a placeholder until you get that juicy 4-set Longevous Disciple.

As for planar ornaments, both new 2-sets of Broken Keel and Rutilant Arena are solid options on Blade. The 2-set Broken Keel is a lot easier to manage on Blade because the set only requires 30% total effect res to grant the entire team 10% crit damage, including himself.

With 18% effect res from Blade’s max traces and the 2-set effect’s 10% effect res, Blade only needs 1 substat roll into effect res and he activates this free crit damage buff, making it into a fantastic low maintenance planar ornament to run not just for him but also for his teammates, which you’ll see in a later section.

A higher maintenance, more costly, and more selfish planar ornament to run on Blade is the 2-set Rutilant Arena. Although the 20% damage bonus to basic attacks looks juicy for Blade, it is locked behind a requirement of 70% crit rate which is pretty demanding.

Luckily, both the 8% crit rate from the planar ornament and the stacking 16% crit rate from the 4-set Longevous Disciple can contribute to hitting this threshold, making it feasible to hit even for players not pulling Blade’s signature Light Cone.

Just be wary that you’re going to have to try a lot harder in relic substats compared to using Broken Keel.

If you have yet to farm these 2 new planar ornaments, then the 2-set Inert Salsotto is a fantastic choice for temporary usage on Blade (at E0). Because his talent counts as a follow-up attack and gets benefit from the set bonus.

Relic stats want to focus on HP for the boots, crit for the body, wind damage in the sphere, and HP in the link rope slot.

SPD is a viable substitute in the boots but only if you really know what you’re doing and speed tuning your units for a specific order, such as with a slow Bronya to feed Blade two turns in a row. But, otherwise, HP is the safer option.

Relic substats want to focus as many crit substats as possible, then HP, SPD, and any effect res you may need to meet the requirements of the 2-set Broken Keel.

Light Cones

Moving into Light Cones, unfortunately, Blade doesn’t have many stellar options.

A lot of the Destruction Light Cones focus on ATK% buffs, which Blade cannot utilize as well as other (Destruction) characters due to the majority of his damage scaling stemming from HP.

With that said, his signature Light Cone The Unreachable Side taps perfectly into his desired stats, granting him both HP and crit rate, along with a DMG bonus whenever he consumes his HP or is attacked.

The other standout Light Cone to use on Blade is the gacha 4 star Light Cone A Secret Vow. This is one of the only Destruction Light Cones that offer a DMG bonus passive as opposed to an ATK buff passive, making it the clear choice for Blade.

Outside of these two best options, your best bet is to focus on the Herta shop Light Cone On the Fall of an Aeon, or Clara’s 5 star Light Cone Something Irreplaceable. Because they give the best stats and have better passives than any other 4 star light cone for Blade.

The battle pass Light Cone is especially worthy of mention simply because it comes at a cheap price point of 10 dollars. But that doesn’t mean it’s a standout option at all. It’s just that the rest of the 4 star Light Cones also have mediocre passives for Blade outside of A Secret Vow. And unlike gacha Light Cones, the BP Light Cone’s accessibility is guaranteed for anyone with just a tiny bit of disposable income.

For beginners, something like the 3 star Light Cone Mutual Demise can be very synergistic with Blade’s kit since he’s always hovering at lower HP values. But unfortunately, the base stats of the Light Cone do fall off slightly compared to 4 star and 5 stars as you try to break into harder content.

Best Team Practices

Blade’s team compositions are very cookie cutter, but there are a few bits of info to understand that really outline why Blade’s team comps have specific roles.

First things first, players must understand that Blade is almost SP neutral, but technically provides a net negative SP when simulating infinite turns.

As I mentioned in his kit overview, his skill will consume one skill point, while his next three actions with his enhanced basic attacks will neither consume nor regenerate SP for the team.

When invested to have strong healing, the current healers of Natasha, Bailu, and Luocha are all SP positive thanks to their ultimates for the former two, and auto healing in the case of the latter? Because Blade is almost SP neutral and your healer is SP positive (at least most of the time), that opens up the window to run another damage dealer aside from Blade that isn’t over the top with their SP usage.

Therefore, the general roles for a Blade team are Blade in the first slot, a healer in the second slot, a debuffer or buffer in the third slot, and then your other damage dealing character in the final slot.

I mentioned there are a few bits of info to understand, not just one thing. So, the second bit of info Blade players should know is that his talent does not stack if Blade is hit with a shield.

Blade must lose HP to gain a stack of his talent and replacing your healer slot with a shielder introduces some anti-synergy that we want to avoid. So, make sure this second slot only has a healer between Natasha, Luocha, and Bailu.

The third slot is reserved for a buffer that boosts the offensive stats of the team, or a debuffer that provides things like defense reduction.

Blade’s best teammate by far in this slot is Bronya for a multitude of reasons. Attack buffs find a little value on Blade. But Bronya’s ultimate also has a crit damage boost that helps increase Blade’s damage and balances his crit ratio if you’re heavy on the crit rate side for the sake of using the 2-set planar ornament Rutilant Arena.

Additionally, Bronya’s crit damage buff will also apply to the other damage dealer in the 4th slot, allowing you to get value out of two characters using the buffs as opposed to just one with the usual hypercarry team.

And last but not least, Bronya’s action advance is extremely broken for stacking Blade’s talent to get more follow up attacks. A fast Bronya with a lot of speed investment can weave in basic attacks to generate better skill point economy for the team, while a slow Bronya can be speed tuned to move right after Blade to grant him two enhanced basic attacks in a row.

The possibilities are endless with Bronya. But some other notable supports that can be used in this slot are Yukong for a similar buff to crit stats, Pela for defense reduction in AoE content, and Silver Wolf for defense reduction in single target content.

All of these characters have a utility that the entire team can take advantage of as opposed to a character like Tingyun, who is meant to buff a hypercarry and has no capability of buffing two characters at once.

For the damage dealer slot, this slot can be SP negative. But players should be wary and select a character that doesn’t always need to use their skill or is naturally less SP hungry.

Follow-up attack characters like Himeko and Herta are fantastic options for SP economy and also for players who want to feel like they’re playing Blade as a hypercarry. But otherwise standard Hunt characters like Seele, Dan Heng, or Eidolon 1 Sushang are fantastic.

If you’ve been paying attention to this entire guide, you might have connected the dots and realized that using the new Broken Keel planar ornament will also buff the crit damage of this second damage dealer.

Similar to the way that buffers like Bronya and debuffers like Pela are good for dual carry teams, running Broken Keel on Blade is not only easy to manage stat-wise, but it also allows you to double dip in value when using Blade teams with another damage dealer.

Also Read: The Best Way To Build Bronya In Honkai Star Rail 1.2! - Traces, Eidolons, Relics & Light Cones

Eidolons

Everything I’ve talked about up to this point comes through the lens of an Eidolon 0 Blade. And luckily for you, none of what I’ve said up to this point changes with any of his Eidolons.

With each new copy of Blade that you get, he just gets stronger and stronger as a damage dealer through raw stat boosts and better multipliers.

However, that means Blade’s Eidolons are lower priority compared to his Light Cone. Because without his signature Light Cone, he is hard pressed for options if you don’t have the 4 star gacha Light Cone A Secret Vow.

For those who already have his Light Cone and want to push for Eidolons, the hard stopping point is Eidolon 2. His first two Eidolons will grant his ultimate extra damage in single target scenarios and increase his crit rate when in the Hellscape state from his skill, respectively.

Afterwards at E4, he just gets an increase to his max HP after dropping below 50% HP, which is a little underwhelming (uninteresting) for an Eidolon 4 and mainly seen as a stepping stone to E6.

Of course, E6 is the Eidolon that I’d consider the closest to changing his playstyle, since it does put a bigger focal point on his talent as opposed to his enhanced basic attacks. Not only does it give his talent an additional 50% max HP scaling, but it also reduces the amount of stacks to activate from 5 to 4.

It becomes especially potent with the slow Bronya build that I talked about before since you feed so many turns into Blade and get ridiculous value out of the increased scaling that the talent gains.

Overall, his Eidolons are nice to have but never needed, especially if you have yet to pull his signature Light Cone.