HSR Tier List Apocalyptic Shadow (Version 3.1)

HSR Tier List – Best Characters for Apocalyptic Shadow

Welcome to our HSR Tier List for Apocalyptic Shadow. We’ll be giving every character an overall tier based on their in game performance in AS specifically.

• Updated Version 3.1.
• Characters are not ordered within Tiers.

Apocalyptic Shadow is the latest of the three endgame modes in Honkai Star Rail, with the predecessors being Memory of Chaos and Pure Fiction. Apocalyptic Shadow is a mode that heavily favors units that can quickly break enemies, as the bosses have a significant Damage Reduction when not broken, and take heavily increased Damage when their Toughness Bar is depleted. Furthermore, upon Breaking, powerful effects will immediately be granted to the team, ranging from full action to advance the entire team, refunding all Skill Points, and immediately letting everyone be able to use their Ultimates.

Bosses in Apocalyptic Shadow tend to be a lot more gimmicky and require a lot of attention when tackling it, and thus it is a character’s check more than Memory of Chaos or Pure Fiction. The scoring based on the Action Value remaining also means any effects that can advance the team are particularly potent.

All in all, Apocalyptic Shadow is the most where the gap between units is the most apparent compared to Memory of Chaos or Pure Fiction. Units that are extremely good in Apocalyptic Shadow tend to also do well in Memory of Chaos, but the reverse may not be true. Thus, it is arguable that AS specialists can be more valuable in terms of pull value compared to Pure Fiction specialists.

HSR Tier List by Role (Table Version)

Tier	Damage Dealer	Support / Sustain
EX	Firefly, Boothill, Feixiao, Rappa.	Ruan Mei, Lingsha, Robin.
SS	The Herta, Hunt March 7th, Acheron.	Tribbie, Aventurine, Sunday, Huohuo, Harmony MC, Gallagher, Fugue, Remembrance MC.
S	Argenti, Jing Yuan, Jade, Yunli, Dr. Ratio, Aglaea, Himeko.	Sparkle, Fu Xuan, Tingyun, Luocha, Bronya.
A	Dan Heng IL, Topaz, Moze, Serval, Herta.	Silver Wolf, Bailu, Pela, Gepard, Jiaoqiu.
B	Jingliu, Seele, Xueyi, Sushang, Luka, Xueyi, Mydei, Serval, Herta.	Asta, Hanya, Yukong, Welt.
C	Clara, Qingque, Blade, Kafka, Black Swan, Phys MC, Arlan, Dan Heng, Hook, Yan Qing, Sampo.	Guinaifen, Natasha, March 7th, Fire MC, Lynx.

State of the Meta in Honkai Star Rail

Since the beginning of Rappa’s banner (Patch 2.6), we have seen a notable shift in Apocalyptic Shadow stages, namely the appearance of more and more fights with bosses that would favor characters with AoE attacks and/or high attack frequency. While this change is not as aggressive as it has been in the two other modes, the gradual shift also warrants a few characters getting re-evaluated in terms of their average performances.

3.1 also brings two new characters, Tribbie and Mydei. While Mydei was not designed with Apocalyptic Shadow in mind, Tribbie is a Support unit that seamlessly improves almost every AoE unit, while also packing great AoE attack frequency on her own. She is notably also one of the best Dance Dance Dance users in the game, giving her a high flexibility when it comes to Apocalyptic Shadow.

HSR Tier List Methodology

Assumptions/Baseline

• All 5 Star characters are judged at E0S1 with their Signature Light Cone and in their best possible team.
• All 4 Star characters are judged at E6 with S5 4 Star Gacha Lightcone.
• Characters should be compared within their role, and not with another role.
• Characters will be judged on not only their performances and synergy but also versatility, ease of use, splash-ability onto different teams or archetypes, and ability to benefit from different types of endgame buffs.

Criteria

Performance in their best team – Units Ceiling

How good are they in their possible team at E0S1 level in Memory of Chaos. Units that can clear faster with a similar level of investment and team will be rated higher. Units that can brute force elements with their best team will also score higher as it shows they are resilient to different environments.

How flexible is their team comp and synergy with non-optimal teammates – Units Floor

Units that are capable of synergizing with a wide variety of teammates will score higher. As Honkai Star Rail is a gacha-based game, sometimes one cannot guarantee the best setup for their favorite characters, hence units who have natural synergy with various team comps are more often than not more valuable.

Relative power to their replacement

Some units have significant overlap in the role and the gap between them is considered when placed on the tier list. Conversely, units that are easily replaced in their roles will also score lower.

Ability to benefit from various Blessings

As this endgame mode often features exceptionally powerful blessings that power up different archetypes, units that can take advantage of these blessings often will be rated higher than ones that only benefit from very specific blessings.

HSR Character Roles Explained 

DPS/Sub-DPS/Damage Dealer

These units are focused on dealing damage. As of right now, there is not a clear distinction between characters who are DPS and Sub-DPS just yet. Thus, we decided not to separate DPS and Sub-DPS until we have a wider pool of characters.

Supports

These characters focus on bringing damage amplification for the team as well as utility via buffs and debuffs.

Sustains

These characters focus on protecting their teammates via healing, shielding, dispelling, crowd control protection, damage mitigation.

Notable / Recent Changes

• Tribbie: Placed into SS tier. Tribbie is another powerful Support unit addition to the game, which was already dominated by meta-defining Support units. Despite not being an Apocalyptic Shadow specialist, Tribbie has a lot of good things going for her, namely high AoE Attack Frequency in her best team, cheap and spammable Ultimate to abuse Dance Dance Dance Light Cone, as well as flexibility to fit into most compositions.
• Mydei: Placed into B tier. Apocalyptic Shadow is a mode that puts the biggest emphasis on hitting the right target at the right time, of which Mydei’s auto-targeting on his Enhanced Skill will find very difficult to do. He also has no innate mechanism to shine nor ability to counteract bosses’ gimmick to shine in this mode, making him one of if not the worst Limited unit in Apocalyptic Shadow since its inception.
• Rappa: Moved to EX Tier. Despite all the new changes, Apocalyptic Shadow at its core still revolves around Breaking the bosses as fast as possible. As such, Rappa was only at a disadvantage compared to her fellow Break DPS – Firefly and Boothill before due to the lack of bosses that favor AoE Breaker over Blast / Single Target Breaker. With all these new AoE fights coinciding with the release of Fugue earlier, Rappa has shown she is easily on par with the best DPS for this mode.
• The Herta: Moved to SS Tier. The Herta’s team generally has great Attack frequency and not much trouble dispatching AoE boss fights. Currently, their main problem is lacking a way to tackle bosses that don’t match their weaknesses, mainly older bosses who still appear regularly, thus preventing them from reaching a higher tier.
• Moze: Moved to A Tier. While Moze is not as good as March 7th as Feixiao’s potential teammate, he certainly has a much better Attack Frequency to fuel Feixiao than Topaz and solid Toughness Damage with Energy Regeneration Rope and Eagle set, making him a competent Feixiao’s partner in this mode on the same level as Topaz.
• Serval / Herta: Moved to B Tier. Both units have proved to be competent The Herta / Tribbie partners in AoE battles, but still not amongst the higher tier units in this mode due to their somewhat simplistic kit when it comes to dealing with bosses’ mechanics.

HSR Tier List Character Explanations

EX Tier

The absolute best units of each role. They can be brought to pretty much all endgame modes and will perform great at the minimum.

Firefly

Firefly is one of the strongest breakers in the game. Her ability to implant Fire weakness with her technique let her pull off a consistent performance in Apocalyptic Shadow against most bosses. While her team options may be limited, the team is easy to pilot and has very few weaknesses in this mode.

Boothill

Similar to Firefly, Boothill has a Weakness Implant and extremely strong single-target breaking capacity that lets him brute force a lot of bosses in Apocalyptic Shadow.

Feixiao

Feixiao has a 100% Break Efficiency boost on her Ultimate that lets her break single targets extremely fast if one can provide stacks fast enough for her. Furthermore, Feixiao can benefit from both Ultimate and Follow-up Attack-related blessings which are very common in AS.

Rappa

Rappa is extremely good against any fights that require breaking multiple targets fast, like Dominicus. At her release, her main problem is that she does not have a Weakness Implant like her fellow breakers – Firefly and Boothill, but only a 50% Omnibreak, which makes her a lot less effective against non-imaginary weak bosses. However, the release of Fugue has mitigated these issues to a large degree by giving her essentially double the amount of Toughness Bar to trigger her talent, and the appearance of more and more AoE-centric fights have catapulted Rappa to much greater heights than before.

Robin

While in other modes Robin is prized for her high damage amplification, in AS she is extremely valuable for the teamwide advance forward effects which save an immense amount of Action Value while also letting her team break much faster than usual.

Ruan Mei

Her 50% teamwide Break Efficiency is monstrous in a heavily Break-centric mode like AS. Ruan Mei can slot into any team and she will massively boost that team’s performance in AS.

Lingsha

Lingsha is by far the strongest sustain in AS since she functions more as a breaker and damage dealer while also capable of sustaining the team. She has fantastic AoE Breaking capacity which lets her trivialize several tough AS bosses like Sunday or Phantylia. Lingsha’s ability to fit into multiple archetypes (Break, Follow-up, Energy-based Blessing) also makes her quite splashable.

SS Tier

Top tier units that can brute-force the endgame with their best team, but lack a certain edge to reach the highest level.

Acheron

Acheron having omnibreak on her Ultimate lets her brute force a lot of AS bosses. Furthermore, Acheron teams tend to make really good use of Ult refund/team fully action advance bonus upon breaking to burst the boss down immediately upon breaking and carryover momentum into the next HP bar.

The Herta

Similar to Rappa, The Herta excels against any fights that favor AoE characters with high attack frequency such as the Banacademic Officers and True Sting. With the release of Tribbie and more AoE fights in the game, this niche of hers is even further pronounced compared to any other DPS in the game. Still, The Herta right now does not have any Break-related mechanic that allows her to overcome non Ice-weak bosses, which prevent her from becoming a true Apocalyptic Shadow specialist.

Hunt March 7th

Hunt March 7th is extremely flexible as an AS unit thanks to her high attack frequency and excellent Toughness damage. She excels in both the Break team and Follow-up team and is the best breaking partner for many high-profile DPS like Feixiao, Yunli, or even Lingsha / Gallagher.

Sunday

Sunday’s main selling points in Apocalyptic Shadow is his capacity to drag both the Summoner and their Summon, and his Energy charging effect. This is highly effective when paired with Summoners with good Toughness Damage like Jing Yuan or Lingsha, but he also pairs well with almost any hyper-carry DPS or any units that like the extra turns like Boothill or Firefly. His versatility and SP positivity allow him to always find a place in either side as the second best turn advancer in this mode after Robin.

Fugue

Fugue is one of the strongest Break support in the game, and an upgrade on Harmony Trailblazer. While she does not offer Break Efficiency – one of the most potent buff in this mode without her Eidolon 1, base E0S1 Fugue is already exceptional at improving already powerful Break-centric units like Boothill, Firefly or Lingsha, but also make AoE Break units like Rappa and Himeko become much more relevant in the present landscape of Apocalyptic Shadow.

Tribbie

Tribbie is at her core, an AoE Specialist, with amazing synergy to all AoE Damage Dealers while hitting all enemies extremely often in her desired team. While she does not have any Break-related mechanic, Tribbie is a fantastic pick to maximize the amount of actions her allies can take and save Action Value via the Dance Dance Dance Light Cone, while also providing extremely generic buffs that almost all team archetypes can use.

Harmony Trailblazer

Harmony Trailblazer (or HMC) is an exceptional holder of Dance Dance Dance or any Ultimate-related Light Cone in general with their fast Ult cycle. Furthermore, HMC has fantastic breaking capacity thanks to their high Toughness Damage bounce attack and is an amazing F2P option for the Super Break team.

Remembrance Trailblazer

RMC having both Action Advance and AoE damage in her kit makes them a great support pick for this mode, especially in any Ice-weak content.
Aventurine: In terms of capacity to keep everyone alive, Aventurine is possibly the best. Aventurine’s problem is he does not break quickly, so most of the time he is just a passive shielder for the team compared to units like Lingsha or Gallagher.

Huohuo

Huohuo’s primary value in this mode is via her Ultimate, which can speed up some extremely energy-hungry units like Robin or Yunli.

Gallagher

Gallagher is weaker than Lingsha in most aspects but he is still a very capable breaker with great SP generation and the capacity to utilize Quid Pro Quo more effectively compared to other Abundance.

S Tier

Powerful character in a specific niche, can perform on the same level as SS Tier when certain conditions are met, but lacks certain edge to reach SS tier.

Yunli

While Yunli does not have as strong Toughness Damage as higher placed DPS, she is very flexible with teammates and can take advantage of a lot of AS gimmicks: namely full Ultimate refund (which translates into 2 Ultimate uses for her) and constant Follow-up / Ultimate related blessings on rotation. Against bosses that don’t hit as hard, Yunli can even function as a sustain for several teams effectively.

Jing Yuan

Post Sunday-release, Jing Yuan becomes a very respectable unit in Apocalyptic Shadow. This is due to his high Toughness Damage on Lightning Lord, good attack frequency and his damage profile having both AoE and Single Target to deal with various enemies composition, as long as they have Lightning Weakness.

Argenti

Argenti is an effective pick for most AoE-centric Apocalyptic Shadow and even some Single Target stages thanks to his versatile Ultimate with good Toughness Damage.

Dr. Ratio

Ratio is essentially Feixiao-lite, being a potential focal point for follow-up teams. His mechanism makes him a fast breaker and spreads his damage to multiple targets as long as he is supplied with enough energy, debuffs and turns.

Jade

Jade is similar to Topaz but better for AoE encounters. She goes well with units like Feixiao or Lingsha and has a pretty rare Element at the moment.

Aglaea

Aglaea excels against bosses that require to be hit a certain amount of times thanks to her extremely high attack frequency. Other than that, Aglaea does not have any innate Break-related mechanic to excel against non Lightning-weak bosses.

Himeko

Himeko has good Toughness Damage and is fairly good in AoE Fire-weak encounters such as Sunday boss. Himeko can be played as a hyper, a sub-breaker, or a part of the Super Break team. The fact that she shares elements with Firefly and Lingsha means she can be played with them and trigger her follow-up consistently.

Bronya

Bronya’s Action Advance is always an amazing tool to cheat Action Value, giving great breakers more turns to leverage their advantage in AS. She has great synergy with several AS powerhouses like Robin, Feixiao, and Boothill.

Sparkle

Sparkle makes a good secondary support for Apocalyptic Shadow due to the comfort she provides with SP consumption. She is also a fantastic holder of Dance Dance Dance to cheat Action Value.

Tingyun

Tingyun has an amazing technique to kickstart her team and abuse strong Ultimate-related Light Cone like Dance Dance Dance. Many energy-related units highly appreciate an immediate energy injection and teamwide advance at the start of the battle, such as Robin, Argenti, Yunli, Seele, or Dan Heng IL.

Luocha

As a comfy healer, Luocha is very SP-friendly and has decent Toughness damage from his Basic and Ultimate.

Fu Xuan

Fu Xuan is great at keeping teams alive in Single-target-centric encounters. Her basic and Ultimate can both help with Breaking which is an advantage over sustainer with non-damaging Ultimates.

A Tier

Middle-of-the-pack characters who can perform decently with the right circumstances/blessings, but are generally outclassed by S and A Tier.

Dan Heng IL

DHIL Enhanced Basic Attack has very high Toughness Damage, which allows him to stay relevant against Imaginary-weak bosses. He is also fairly support-friendly, and capable of using most hyper-carry supports to great success.

Topaz

Topaz has good Toughness Damage and fills the same role that Hunt March 7th does. However, she is worse in this mode since it favors break over raw damage and Hunt March 7th is significantly better than Topaz at this role.

Moze

Moze is another good alternative Hunt teammate for Feixiao team in Apocalyptic Shadow. His Toughness Damage may not be that potent compared to Hunt March 7th, nor is his damage and support capacity better than Topaz, but Moze strikes a good middle ground between the two, offering solid Toughness Damage and stack generation for Feixiao while covering Lightning-weak bosses.

Silver Wolf

Silver Wolf has very good single-target Toughness Damage. She has to spam her Skills for good Toughness Damage and to keep her Ultimate cycle fast enough, which is fairly detrimental. Her weakness implant can help enable other teammates to break but it restricts team building due to its RNG.

Pela

Pela has an extremely fast Ult cycle and has decent toughness damage from her Skill. She is a lot more SP-friendly than Silver Wolf with the tradeoff of only good into Ice-weak enemies.

Jiaoqiu

Jiaoqiu has mediocre Toughness Damage but he is the best enabler for Acheron and speeds up her clear speed by a significant amount. He also provides strong AoE Amplification which can help clear out the elites fast, which is relevant against a lot of frequent bosses like Kafka.
Bailu / Gepard: Both characters are fine as solo sustainers but don’t offer anything special in terms of breaking.

B Tier

Lackluster characters who got powercreeped / have been underpowered compared to their peers. Need a lot of help to perform.

Jingliu

Jingliu is quite cumbersome in AS due to her transformation mechanics. Furthermore, her Toughness Damage is rather mediocre. While she can work against Ice-weak encounters, she is often outdone by higher-placed DPS.

Seele

Seele has lackluster Toughness Damage and is quite dependent on getting Resurgence Pro to function, which can be quite tricky in AS as many bosses don’t have easy targets for her to trigger.

Mydei

all Mydei has going for him is high Damage, which is not the primary focus in Apocalyptic Shadow. His auto-targeting is exceptionally annoying to work around in this mode and often is very detrimental in fast clear. Mydei’s at least better than the units in lower tier solely off the fact that his damage lets him burst down boss quite easily once they are broken, which is definitely something not many Damage Dealers can do.

Luka / Sushang

Both are good single-target Physical Breakers with high Toughness Damage, but fare very poorly against multi-targets and do not have the weakness implant to play into many situations.

Xueyi

Despite being a Break DPS, Xueyi’s Toughness Damage isn’t that impressive. She does have omnibreak on her E4 and Ultimate so she can still play into most encounters but she plays more like a DPS who happens to build Break rather than a Breaker.

Welt

Welt has decent Toughness Damage from his skill and Ultimate, but is an SP blackhole if he wants to do it. His technique does make him a viable character for sustain-less clear.

Herta / Serval

With The Herta and Tribbie release, both of these units have found new purpose as their F2P battery of choice thanks to their fast and frequent AoE attacks, Herta from her easy to trigger Follow-up Attacks and Serval from her cheap and spammable Ultimate. On their own, they are still extremely lackluster in Apocalyptic Shadow, but their performance in The Herta team against AoE bosses are definitely noteworthy.

Asta

Asta has decent Toughness Damage on her Skill but requires too much SP to tap into that as well as being RNG due to it being Bounce. Her Ultimate is a good tool to improve AV but her buffing capacity is just too weak beyond that.

Yukong

Yukong’s Talent and Ultimate give her decent Toughness Damage, and in AS she does not need to be using the skill often (only when needed to burst which is usually after breaking).

Hanya

Hanya is essentially the ST version of Asta, but much more SP-friendly.

C Tier

The worst characters of their niche, require significant investment to stay relevant.

Kafka / Black Swan / Guinaifen / Sampo

DoT is the worst archetype in Apocalyptic Shadow by far due to how their damaging mechanism works. Even though some of these units have decent Toughness. Damage like Kafka or Sampo, their inability to do big bursts and the anti-synergy between delay from break and DoT make them much worse than traditional damage dealers.

Clara

Clara is similar to DoT in the sense that her damaging mechanism is not synergistic with Breaking, and she cannot force Counter the same way Yunli can. She also has mediocre Toughness Damage and is very encounter-reliant.

Blade

Blade’s damage and Toughness Damage are both very low. He is a viable partner with Jade but the duo isn’t a particularly powerful combination for AS in general.

Qingque

Qingque is too RNG and consumes too much resources (SP) to be effective

Phys MC / Arlan / Dan Heng / Yan Qing / Misha / Hook

These units are all lackluster in both breaking power and damage distribution to be great in AS.

Lynx / Fire MC / March 7th / Natasha

These sustainers only do the bare minimum in AS which may or may not be able to keep the team alive.

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