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Honkai: Star Rail (HSR) has been out for a while now, and with new characters added to the game in the past few months, we’ve been able to get a better look at what each of the HSR Paths and elements has to offer. 5-star banners and DPS characters understandably have the spotlight, but they can’t do their damage alone. When it comes to setting up your DPS, you need more than good light cones, and Relic set gacha. You need a good team with support characters that synergize well with your DPS.
Right now, HSR doesn’t have characters that are locked into supporting only one character or playstyle, unlike its sister game Genshin Impact. Most supports work well with most teams and characters. Still, not every support is made the same. Some are a little better than others.
Our standards for this ranking are value, role compression, and degree of control. A good support has to have good value at minimal investments, whether that’s in in-game resources or gacha money. The support also needs to do more than one thing, a.k.a role compression — a valuable lesson that Genshin‘s Bennett and most trading card games have taught us. Lastly, the support also needs to give you a high degree of control over outcomes, meaning there should be little to no RNG in their kit nor reliance on enemy interactions to trigger abilities.
1. Bronya
Rarity: 5-star
Element: Wind
Path: The Harmony
Bronya is currently the only character in-game that lets you choose which character in your party takes their turn first. This differs from other Speed-increasing characters because the game’s mechanics still compute who takes their turn based on Speed calculations. Bronya lets you ignore this and push allies ahead, letting you string together a strategy more consistently. This is especially evident with Seele, a character that’s able to take what is essentially an extra turn with the Resurgence skill.
Bronya also provides a damage increase in her skill, not an ATK increase, making her buffs much stronger than most supports in the game. Not to mention, her kit also includes a debuff cleanse with her skill. And none of these have a condition outside of having a single skill point for her to use. If your team happens to die while Bronya is on duty, she’s strong enough to clutch on her own.
One might argue that Bronya should be lower down the list, or at least at #2, but considering the control she gives you over who takes their turn in a turn-based game, she cannot be substituted.
2. Luocha
Rarity: 5-star
Element: Imaginary
Path: The Abundance
The first thing that makes Luocha good is that, like Bronya, he cleanses allies with his skill — that also happens to heal your team. Luocha’s skill also doesn’t have any complicated conditions for triggering outside of his turn. If a team member falls below 50% of their health, he automatically heals them. Once you have energy for his ult, activating it deals damage to enemies and removes one buff from them. A lot of enemies also have Imaginary as a weakness, and well, Luocha is an Imaginary character.
But Luocha probably brings one question to mind: How does he stack up against Bailu? While Bailu’s revive can come in handy, Luocha makes it so that there are hardly any scenarios where your team has to be revived. He heals too fast, too well for that. A point of comparison: Luocha’s auto-heal is available every two turns, and Bailu will only revive once per battle. HoYoVerse fans have already seen how a Barbara stacks up against a Bennett.
Before you get too far into this list, we’ll say it now: Bailu didn’t make the cut. As a 5-star with very few additional benefits outside of her healing and with a healing skill that has RNG in it, she doesn’t meet the criteria for value, role compression, and degree of control that, in our opinion, HSR‘s best supports should have.
3. Silver Wolf
Rarity: 5-star
Element: Quantum
Path: The Nihility
If you’re tired of not being able to inflict Break on an enemy, Silver Wolf is your best friend. This 5-star hacker can add a Weakness to an enemy. There’s a bit of RNG in her kit as the pool of Weaknesses comes from the elements represented in your team. That said, you can simply choose to have two or more characters from the same element to increase your chances of Silver Wolf adding that to an enemy as a Weakness. And if you’re wondering, no, Silver Wolf won’t give your enemy a Weakness it already has, even if the element is in your team.
Why does she make the cut if she has RNG? Again, the RNG is minimal and controlled in a way that it’s never useless to you (unlike, say, healing a character that’s still full health. Plus, her basic attack features a condition-less debuff that you can stack on an enemy.
4. Gepard
Rarity: 5-star
Element: Ice
Path: The Preservation
Gepard makes it so that you don’t take damage in the first place. He isn’t entirely irreplaceable. Characters like March 7th and Preservation Trailblazer do a good job of protecting your team. The big difference is that no other character currently provides a team-wide shield that can keep your entire team on the field. After all, even if you can shield your DPS with a single-target shield, you can still end up losing the rest of your team of supports.
Gepard’s kit also slows down enemies from dealing damage to your team. Not only is he an Ice character, but his kit also favors inflicting Freeze on enemies. Though his taunt isn’t very strong, Gepard self-sustains with the talent of Unyielding Will which revives him when he’s one-shotted and heals him. If the bonus ability Commander is unlocked, Gepard will also have his Ult ready to cover for your team before the next blow comes.
5. Natasha
Rarity: 4-star
Element: Physical
Path: The Abundance
Natasha is the first 4-star on our list because she’s the only available 4-star healer. If you don’t have a Gepard or a healer to spare, you’re going to need a Natasha on the side of your MoC team that doesn’t have March 7th and Preservation Trailblazer. Natasha is also free from playing the game. That’s about as good value as it gets.
While Natasha isn’t going to Break any Physical-weak enemies before the Eternal Freeze consumes Belobog, Natasha’s skill comes with an ally cleanse that removes one debuff. Her first Eidolon, which is easy enough to get, gives her emergency healing so that she can stay on the field long enough to heal the team. If it just so happens that the team is really low on health, she also increases her outgoing healing.
6. Asta
Rarity: 4-star
Element: Fire
Path: The Harmony
This was a tough call because the two are so comparable, but we had to put Asta over Tingyun because, let’s be honest, Asta doesn’t hit like a wet noodle. We love a support that can clutch when the rest of the team dies, and you just need the in-game equivalent of a forehead flick to get the last enemy down. Besides, Asta is an excellent Breaker whose skill brings some serious AoE Fire damage.
Asta’s real winning kit feature, however, is her Ultimate which increases the team’s speed for two turns. As we’ve mentioned in Bronya’s section, having some degree of control over who acts first in a turn-based game is an invaluable resource.
7. Tingyun
Rarity: 4-star
Element: Lightning
Path: The Harmony
Tingyun would be higher up if she could throw a punch and stop taking hits for us. Tingyun’s low health and the high target priority for Harmony characters make it so that some players are lucky to get a few buffs out of her before she’s taken out of the field completely. When she is there, however, Tingyun is amazing. Her Benedictions only provide ATK buffs, but her Ultimate regenerates energy and buffs damage for a single ally for two turns. Since a lot of characters have their Ultimate as the best part of their kit, Tingyun makes it so that they shine more.
8. Pela
Rarity: 4-star
Element: Ice
Path: The Nihility
Pela is a budget Silver Wolf, in a way. The two aren’t really the same, but if you want the benefits of a character that can debuff enemies in more ways than one, Pela’s your gal. Characters like Asta and Natasha automatically deal damage to enemies at the start of their turn or a battle, but Pela’s kit comes with the chance to lower an enemy’s defense for two turns.
Pela’s skill inflicts a debuff which, when paired with her Bonus Ability, increases the damage dealt by the next character. She can also restore her own energy if she debuffs an enemy. Because that’s almost always the case, you can keep spamming Pela’s Ultimates, buffing allies, and debuffing enemies in one blow.
9. Welt
Rarity: 5-star
Element: Imaginary
Path: The Nihility
Welt doesn’t buff your team, but he makes it so that your enemies can barely take their turns. His Skill deals Imaginary damage and has a chance to reduce enemy Speed for two turns, giving you more control over how the game plays out. His Ultimate leaves enemies Imprisoned, delaying their actions and reducing their Speed while also increasing the amount of damage they end up taking from your team.
But wait, isn’t that the same as buffing your team? Not really. The game’s individual mechanics are computed differently. Outgoing healing and incoming damage are different from increased damage, attack, and healing.
However, that’s a topic for another time.
10. Preservation Trailblazer
Rarity: 5-star
Element: Fire
Path: The Preservation
Preservation Trailblazer or Fire MC may not be as popular now as they once were, but regardless of whether you have Caelus or Seele, you have a good shielder on your hands. Preservation Trailblazer is straightforward. They cast a shield on themselves, taunt enemies into hitting them, are given buffs for their single attack based on how many times they take a hit, restore their own HP, decrease incoming damage on a team-wide basis, and deal AoE Pyro damage.
What’s there not to love? Shadows of Preservation, Trailblazer’s Eidolons, are also free in the game. You’re bound to have stronger attacks just from playing through the quests.
