Honkai Star Rail Tier List 1.6 (Best Characters)

Honkai Star Rail Tier List 

Updated Version 1.6
Xueyi tier TBD, Eidolons also are a big factor

Welcome to our Honkai Star Rail Tier List. We’ll be giving every character an overall tier based on their in game performance in things like Memory of Chaos, Simulated Universe, and other “endgame” content.

In general, characters will be given a grade based on “value.” This will be our way of trying to account for everything, such as their power ceiling, amount of investment needed, single target encounters, AoE abilities, and more.

However, tier lists aren’t everything! You will want to make sure your team synergizes and has a good combination of damage dealers and supports. Additionally, you may have characters you like for their personality, design or playstyle, and you should feel free to include those characters in your teams as well.

Each character has situations where they can excel and matching character elements to enemy weaknesses can also play a big factor in clearing content as well.

Note: Characters are not ordered within Tiers.

The Best Honkai Star Rail Characters (Tier List)

Overall Tier List 

Tier	Character
SS	Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae, Jingliu, Blade, Silver Wolf, Ting Yun, Bronya, Ruan Mei, Fu Xuan, Luocha, Huohuo
S	Seele, Qingque, Pela, Topaz and Numby, Gepard, Bailu
A	Sushang, Yanqing, Jing Yuan, Clara, Himeko, Kafka, Argenti, Asta, Hanya, Lynx
B	Dan Heng, Hook, Serval, Welt, Luka, Yukong, Guinaifen, March 7th, Trailblazer (Fire), Natasha
C	Sampo, Herta, Arlan, Trailblazer (Physical)

Tier List by Role

Tier	Damage Dealer	Offensive Support	Defensive Support
SS	Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae, Jingliu, Blade	Silver Wolf, Ting Yun, Bronya, Ruan Mei	Fu Xuan, Luocha, Huohuo
S	Seele, Qingque	Pela, Topaz and Numby	Gepard, Bailu
A	Sushang, Yanqing, Jing Yuan, Clara, Himeko, Kafka, Argenti	Asta, Hanya	Lynx
B	Dan Heng, Hook, Serval, Welt	Luka, Yukong, Guinaifen	March 7th, Trailblazer (Fire), Natasha
C	Sampo, Herta, Arlan, Trailblazer (Physical)

Honkai Tier List Methodology 

There are many factors to consider when comparing Honkai Star Rail’s characters as they each have a specific role or job they excel at. When evaluating each character, we will consider how valuable their role is, how strong they are in that role and how flexible they are. 

Please remember that character strength depends highly on their investment including levels, light cones, relics and eidolons. This tier list assumes similar levels of investment, E0 for 5-star characters, and potentially e4-6 for 4-star characters. (Except for the Trailblazer who receives eidolons for free)

Power Level within Role 

As the cast of Honkai Star Rail increases over time, more characters will fulfill the same role. While some characters may prefer different teammates or unique teams, there are general characters that excel within their role in a large majority of cases.

Flexibility 

Flexible characters are ones that can fit into multiple teams and pair well with a wide variety of characters. This naturally makes them more universal and desirable than less flexible characters which may require specific teammates to really shine. 

Replaceability

Some character’s kits have significant overlap with the existing cast, while others offer something unique that no other character does. Generally, unique kits are more desirable as they offer more options for how an account can tackle content, assuming the kit is a valuable one to begin with.

Honki Star Rail Roles Explained 

Damage Dealer/DPS (Destruction, Erudition, Hunt, Nihility)

These characters’ primary job is to deal damage. Their kit largely will revolve around dealing damage either to a single enemy or multiple enemies. These characters can still deal damage in a variety of ways, such as through DoT (Damage over Time), Weakness Breaking, Single Target, AoE, and more.

Defensive Support (Abundance, Preservation)

These characters are designed to help the team survive oncoming damage through healing, shielding, damage mitigation and debuff removal. This combines what was previously Tank and Healer roles into one as many invested teams can make do with a single defensive support only.

Offensive Support (Nihility, Harmony)

Offensive supports primarily help improve the damage output of the rest of your team. This includes Harmony supports which offer powerful buffs for your damage dealers as well as Nihility supports which debuff enemies and make them more vulnerable to the team’s attacks.

SS Tier – Best of the Best

These characters are, as it sounds, the best of the best. They contribute to teams with the highest ceiling, while also being good for low investment players to clear content.

Ruan Mei (Current Banner)

Ruan Mei is the first 5-star limited Harmory character, and she is extremely strong. She has a support kit that allows her to support dual DPS teams very well, as her buffs are team wide. Not only that, but if you want to play a Hyper Carry team (1 DPS) she will still be excellent as well.

She has very many supportive capabilities, such as SPD buff, DMG buff, Weakness Break Efficiency, and All Type RES-PEN. Regardless of what DPS character or characters you have, Ruan Mei will be able to buff them up very well.

Ruan Mei’s buffs also scale with her Break Effect stat, up to 180%. This means that you’ll want to use Relics with Break Effect substats and even the Thief set to reach 180%. Remember that there are other sources of Break Effect also, such as her traces and potentially her Light Cone.

Ruan Mei Build Summary

• Relic Set: 4-Piece Thief of Shooting Meteor
  • Body: HP%/DEF%
  • Boots: SPD
• Planetary: Penacony Land of Dreams/Sprightly Vonwacq/Broken Keel/Fleet of the Ageless
  • Rope: ERR
  • Sphere: HP%/DEF%
• Substats
  • 1 – Break Effect (up to 180%)/SPD
  • 2 – HP/DEF
  • 3 – Effect Res
• Light Cone
  • Past Self in Mirror
  • Memories of the Past S5 (with Penacony/Vonwacq)
  • Cogs S5 (with Penacony/Vonwacq)

Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae

Path of Destruction: Imaginary – [Link to Full Guide]

Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae is a damage character who excels at dealing area of effect damage. Due to his skill point hungry nature, he pretty much is exclusively played as a hyper carry with Skill Point positive supports, but has very strong damage output on the right team. He also deals Imaginary damage which has relatively few good DPS options available.

Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae’s values are far above most of the rest of the cast and he is currently one of the strongest overall damage dealer in the game and works well at any level of investment. Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae is a top tier choice and is well worth his team building restrictions.

Jingliu

Path of Destruction: Ice – [Link to Full Guide]

Jingliu is a damage character who excels at dealing both single target and area of effect damage. Jingliu builds stacks of Syzygy while using her regular skill and ultimate, and at two stacks she enters an enhanced state where she deals extra damage and her skill no longer consumes SP.

As a result, Jingliu consumes about 0.5 skill points per turn on average, making her viable not only as a hyper carry but also as a sub dps. This team flexibility combined with her high damage output makes her a top tier choice for damage dealer.

Blade

Path of Destruction: Wind

Blade is a damage dealer that has a good combination of single target and area of effect abilities. He has very high damage output with the right investment and is one of the strongest damage dealers in the game. Blade’s damage scales with Max HP and he consumes health to use many of his powerful attacks, but also has some built in self-sustain.

Due to him wanting high Max HP to help scale his damage, he is actually quite survivable despite him damaging himself. However, Blade does require additional sustain from a healer. Blade consumes only 1 skill point every 3 turns due to his skill buffing his next 3 normal attacks making him extremely flexible to build teams with.

Silver Wolf

Path of Nihility: Quantum

Silver Wolf is a character specialized in debuffing enemies. She has the unique ability to add an extra weakness to enemies that matches the element of a random teammate (herself included). This makes her extremely valuable as she effectively allows your party to always have access to weakness breaks.

Additionally, she can debuff opponents’ defense, attack and speed with her attacks contributing both damage and defense to the party. Silver Wolf’s kit is unique, applicable to all team compositions and powerful, making her a very desirable support character overall. She will want to have Effect Hit Rate on her relics and light cone to help ensure that her debuffs are applying as consistently as possible.

Tingyun

Path of Harmony – Lightning

Tingyun is a character who is a buff oriented support. She adds attack, damage, and energy to a single character, which makes her great at buffing up your carry and helping them deal large amounts of damage.

Tingyun’s attack buff scales with her own attack, so ATK% stats help increase her damage dealt although she also benefits from HP% and DEF% to help her survivability as she can be quite fragile. Due to the universal nature of her buffs, she is highly flexible and pairs well with any damage dealer making her a top tier choice.

Bronya

Path of Harmony: Wind

Bronya is a support who excels at increasing the output of her teammates. She offers attack and crit damage buffs to the entire team, and is able to use her skill to cleanse an ally, provide them with a damage buff and allow them to immediately take the next action.

The power and universal nature of her buffs make her fantastic at supporting any damage dealer in the game. Note that Bronya’s auto battle logic can often be quite clunky and is best suited to encounters where players plan to manually control their characters.

Fu Xuan

Path of Preservation: Quantum – [Link to Full Guide]

Fu Xuan is a character who specializes in sustaining the entire party by redirecting damage to herself while also providing healing, damage reduction, Max HP, CC Resist and CRIT Rate buffs for the entire party.

She is a highly universal support that offers excellent survivability and one-shot protection as well as good party utility making her a premier defensive support alongside Luocha.

Luocha

Path of Abundance: Imaginary

Luocha is a character who excels at healing and removing debuffs from teammates, while also being able to dispel buffs from all enemies. Luocha’s healing is highly effective at keeping teammates alive as he automatically heals them after they are hit, helping to mitigate multiple attacks bursting down a single character.

Due to Luocha’s healing scaling with ATK and his ultimate dealing area of effect imaginary damage, he contributes meaningfully to breaking enemy weaknesses. His excellent utility combined with strong healing makes Luocha a premier defensive support.

Huohuo

Path of Abundance: Wind – [Link to Full Guide]

Huohuo is a character who excels at healing, cleansing debuffs and buffing the offensive capabilities of her teammates. She has very powerful support abilities similar to what we often expect from Harmony characters including team wide Energy Regeneration and ATK% buffs.

Due to her high party utility and excellent healing she is a top tier pick for defensive supports. Her only drawback is that her healing is tied to her Skill meaning that she will always demand some amount of skill point usage, but her Talent helps mitigate this nicely.

S Tier – Optimal

These characters are also very powerful at their roles, but are just slightly below SS.

Seele

Path of Hunt: Quantum

Seele is a damage dealer and is one of the strongest in the game. Seele excels at dealing single target damage, but thanks to her talent which gives her an additional turn when she lands a killing blow on an enemy, she is also very adept at dealing with multiple weaker enemies.

Seele’s extremely high personal damaged coupled with her Traces offering 20% Quantum RES Pen while in her buffed state makes her very universal and a strong choice if you are lacking good ways to target enemy weaknesses.

Qingque

Path of Erudition: Quantum

Qingque is a character who focuses on dealing damage to multiple enemies. Qingque at low Eidolons can be largely overshadowed by Seele, however she is far more accessible as a 4* unit for quantum damage to target enemy weaknesses.

Additionally, Qingque more than most characters, scales very well with eidolon levels and gets significantly stronger at eidolon levels 4 and 6 which greatly increases her ability to deal damage. At E6 Qingque is a powerhouse that rivals Seele’s output.

Pela

Path of Nihility: Ice

Pela is a character who focuses on debuffing enemies to reduce their defense. Pela also has the ability to remove beneficial buffs from enemies and can be quite a strong choice for breaking weaknesses against ice type enemies.

Pela is a very solid support character with a unique kit but be sure to build Effect Hit Rate on her to help make sure she can debuff some of the higher level enemies in Memory of Chaos.

Topaz and Numby

Path of Hunt: Fire – [Link to Full Guide]

Topaz and Numby is a damage character who excels at dealing damage and improving the output of follow-up attack based teams. Her kit is less universal than some other offensive supports, but she makes up for it with excellent personal damage and a strong ability to break fire weakness.

Topaz and Numby is often best paired with at least one other character who performs follow-up attacks frequently, but excels greatly in these team compositions, making her a powerful choice in the right situation.

Gepard

Path of Preservation: Ice

Gepard is a character who specializes in providing shields for the entire team as well as freezing enemies. A well-invested Gepard is more than capable of helping a team survive Memory of Chaos all by himself. His ease of use and large amount of shielding make him a great option for defensive supports.

Bailu

Path of Abundance: Lighting

Bailu is a healer that has incredible area of effect healing output thanks to her skill, talent and ultimate. Bailu also automatically revives the first teammate that is downed each combat, giving her some additional reliability when autobattling.

While Bailu offers excellent healing and survivability, she does not have as much utility as some other defensive supports.

A Tier – Strong

These characters are effective and will clear content, just with some more effort and planning needed.

Sushang

Path of the Hunt: Physical

Sushang is a character focused on single target damage. She gets to take extra actions after using her ultimate, making her very effective at dealing burst damage or clearing weaker enemies. She is one of the stronger 4-star options for carries, especially when she or someone else in your party is able to break weaknesses enabling her first eidolon which allows her to use her skill without using skill points.

Yanqing

Path of Hunt: Ice

Yanqing is a character who focuses on single target damage. His damage output is quite respectable, and he is the strongest ice type damage dealer by a good margin. Yanqing has a unique mechanic where he has a buff that increases his damage so long as he doesn’t take damage from enemies, making him pair very well with Gepard who can shield him.

Jing Yuan

Path of Erudition: Lightning

Jing Yuan is a damage dealer who excels at dealing area of effect damage. His output is high enough that he still offers competitive single target damage but falls behind compared to some single target focused carries.

Jing Yuan has a unique mechanic of summoning an automatically controlled Lightning-Lord to help dispatch his foes. The Lightning-Lord makes up a very large portion of his overall damage and often acts quite slowly making his damage slightly backloaded and a bit harder to time with enemy’s break states than other carries.

Clara

Path of Destruction: Physical

Clara is a character who excels both at being a tank and dealing damage to enemies. Clara is able to taunt enemy attacks onto herself which in turn triggers the counterattacks of her trusty robot helper, Svarog.

Clara is less flexible than most characters, as she really wants to be paired with someone like March 7th who can help focus attacks onto her, but with the right team Clara can be very powerful and fulfill multiple roles for the team.

Himeko

Path of Erudition: Fire

Himeko is a character focused on dealing area of effect damage. She is excellent at clearing multiple enemies, especially when her or a teammate can weakness break them reliably.

Himeko is a character that scales very well with investment and can be a powerful choice for clearing content once she is strong enough. However, at low investments players may find her single target to be a bit lacking compared to other 5-star damage dealers for end game content.

Kafka

Path of Nihility: Lightning

Kafka is a character who excels at dealing damage to multiple targets, but also has quite respectable single target damage. Kafka has good synergy with characters that deal Damage over Time, but also can be played as a hyper carry with more traditional Nihility and Harmony supports.

Just keep in mind that she benefits less from Crit than many other carries. Overall Kafka is a very strong damage dealer and fits into a wide range of teams making her a very strong character.

Argenti

Path of Erudition: Physical

Argenti is a damage character known for his beauty and his ability deal damage to multiple enemies. He has no party utility as his kit is entirely focused on dealing Physical damage to all enemies, stacking Crit buffs and regaining energy as more enemies enter the encounter.

Argenti is a strong choice for any fight with lots of enemies, especially if they are weak to physical damage. However, he also doesn’t have any points that really make him excel or stand out above other 5* carries.

Asta

Path of Harmony: Fire

Asta is a character who focuses on supporting teammates by buffing their attack and speed. Her traces also allow her to passively buff the fire damage of her teammates so long as she is on field, making her particularly valuable when supporting a fire element damage dealers.

However, her stacking attack buff requires her to regularly use her skill to maintain and as a result she can be a bit skill point hungry. Asta is best suited as a support in fire focused teams, or teams with extra skill points to spare while other supports like Tingyun and Bronya are more universal.

Hanya

Path of Harmony: Physical

Hanya is a character that excels at generating skill points and increasing the SPD, ATK%, and DMG dealt of her allies. She is a great support option in team comps that can utilize the extra skill points, and less synergistic with SP light carries like Jingliu and Blade. Despite having a less universal kit than some other Harmony supports, she can shine in the right team comp.

Lynx

Path of Abundance: Quantum

Lynx is a healer who specializes in sustaining and cleansing the party. Lynx fills a similar role to Natasha as a primary defensive support but also has additional synergy with some characters due to her ability to buff Max HP% and taunt allies to attack Destruction or Preservation characters such as Clara who benefit from being hit.

Lynx is a great option as a second free to play healer for accounts looking for more 4* options to improve their party’s survivability.

B Tier – Role Players

These characters have teams and situations where they can be good. But are more situational than S and A tier characters and stronger options in the same role may exist.

Dan Heng

Path of Hunt: Wind

Dan Heng is a character who focuses on single target damage. Currently Dan Heng is the best option for wind damage and is received for free just for playing the story. This makes him quite valuable as a weakness breaker, even if you have access to other higher ranked damage dealers.

Hook

Path of Destruction: Fire

Hook is a damage dealer who deals single target damage. Her damage is serviceable but not especially remarkable either. Currently Hook’s only competition as a fire damage dealer is Himeko and Topaz, making Hook quite valuable as a 4-star fire weakness breaker.

Serval

Path of Erudition: Lightning

Serval is a damage dealer who specializes in area of effect damage, although she is generally weaker in this role than Jing Yuan. However, for any accounts which do not have access to Jing Yuan, Serval is your best free to play option for dealing with lightning weak enemies. It is worth noting that Serval gets a notable power bump at eidolon level 6, for accounts that have access to this.

Welt

Path of Nihility: Imaginary

Welt is a character who deals imaginary type damage and has the ability to slow his enemies, effectively reducing the number of turns they take. Welt is currently the most offensively oriented imaginary type character making him an excellent choice for targeting enemies’ weaknesses.

Like most Nihility characters, Welt does want to build Effect Hit Rate to help boost his chance of debuffing stronger enemies. Welt can be very powerful for the right encounter.

Luka

Path of Nihility: Physical

Luka is a damage character who excels at dealing damage over time to a single target and increases the damage that an enemy receives after hitting them with his ultimate.

Luka fulfills hybrid sub dps and support role and even brings some extra utility by removing enemy buffs with his skill once he gets his Ascension 2 trace. Generally Luka does not contribute as much as other supports for most teams, but he does snyergize very nicely with Kafka in particular.

Yukong

Path of Harmony: Imaginary

Yukong is a character who increases her teammates %Imaginary Damage, ATK%, CRIT Rate and CRIT DMG. In addition to these powerful buffs Yukong’s burst does area of effect Imaginary damage making her a decent option for targeting enemy weaknesses for an element that is otherwise exclusive to 5*s.

While Yukong’s buffs are strong, she suffers a bit from being difficult to fully utilize as her skill only buffs ATK on the next two character’s actions and her Ultimate only provides CRIT buffs so long as her skill is active. This means in order to buff your damage dealers she needs to act just before them. In order to overcome this, players may try to quickly burst down enemies or carefully plan the SPD of all their characters to ensure Yukong remains synced with the carries.

Notably, this problem is solved by her E6 providing her a stack of her ATK buff when she uses her ultimate making the CRIT bonus always live and easy to time before a carry’s burst turn.

Guinaifen

Path of Nihility: Fire

Guinaifen is a damage character who excels at dealing damage over time and increases the Damage taken by enemies affected by her debuff. Due to her respectable damage output and universal debuff she is a solid choice for offensive support.

March 7th

Path of Preservation: Ice

March 7th is a character who offers shields, cleanses and a chance to taunt enemy attacks to her shielded target. Her counterattack and ultimate also provide decent ice damage to enemies and can offer crowd control on weakness breaks.

March 7th is capable of sustaining a team all by herself, however doing so is often very skill point intensive as her shielding capabilities are entirely linked to her skill. March 7th being able to focus enemy attacks on specific characters is a unique ability that pairs very well with characters like Clara which counterattack when they are hit.

Trailblazer (Fire)

Path of Preservation: Fire

The Trailblazer is a character who provides shields for the team and has the unique ability to taunt enemies’ attacks for a turn at 100% base chance.

Combined with great personal survivability, team shields and decent area of effect weakness breaking, the Trailblazer is a strong character, but has more difficulty solo sustaining a team than many other defensive supports. Trailblazer is extremely free to play friendly with eidolons being obtained using in-game currencies.

Natasha

Path of Abundance: Physical

Natasha is the only healer you guaranteed to receive for free. Natasha’s healing output is lower than 5* options like Bailu and Luocha but is still quite respectable.

Additionally she has the ability to cleanse debuffs from allies – something Bailu and Luocha are unable to do. Natasha is definitely capable of solo sustaining a team in Memory of Chaos and is an excellent free to play friendly choice to help ensure your team stays alive.

C Tier – Niche

These characters have situations they can be useful in but are not very universal in application or better options exist within their role.

Sampo

Path of Nihility: Wind

Sampo is a damage dealer who specializes in damage over time and to multiple enemies. Due to his AoE focus, Sampo is often less desirable than Dan Heng who deals more single target damage and players receive for free from the main story.

Due to Sampo applying damage over time, he generally needs to invest in effect hit rate to guarantee his effects stick to tougher opponents which competes with his ability to build other damage dealing stats such as Crit.

Herta

Path of Erudition: Ice

Herta is a damage dealer specializing in area of effect damage. She is particularly effective against weaker enemies due to her extra follow-up attacks triggering whenever an enemy falls below 50% HP. However, her damage against more sturdy enemies is quite low, making her a weaker option for Memory of Chaos. If there is content in the future that has lots of weaker enemies with ice weakness, Herta may have her chance to shine.

Arlan

Path of Destruction: Lightning

Arlan is a damage dealer focused on dealing single target damage. Arlan has the drawback of hurting himself with some of his attacks in exchange for not consuming skill points, making him an unusual character to build a team around.

Currently, Serval fits more naturally into most teams as a lightning weakness breaker, but there may be teams in the future that can utilize Arlan’s unique kit.

Trailblazer (Physical)

Path of destruction: Physical

The physical Trailblazer is a damage dealer who deals physical damage. The Trailblazer has good flexibility in their ability to deal single target and area of effect damage but is generally overshadowed by Sushang as a physical damage dealer.

Additionally, since players can only choose to play one type of trailblazer at a time, the fire trailblazer is generally the more popular option.

Thanks for reading! Be sure to let us know what you think. Honkai Star Rail is still quite a new game, and we’ll be updating this tier list frequently as new characters come or new discoveries are made.