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!
