Team Building in Honkai Star Rail

In Honkai: Star Rail, building a balanced team is the key to surviving tough battles and progressing through the game. It does not matter if you're just starting out or getting used to the different mechanics, this guide will help you understand how to create a balanced team using the characters you have. Here is your complete guide to making a balanced and effective team.

Similar to many other games, Honkai: Star Rail has characters that can all fit in your typical RPG roles. In order to build a good team, you need to understand the different roles first:

• Main DPS: The character who deals the most damage.
• Sub DPS: Provides extra damage or follow-up reactions.
• Support: Buffs allies or debuffs enemies.
• Shielder/Tank: Draws enemy attacks, provides shields or defense. Often grouped under the role of "sustain".
• Healer: Restores HP to keep the team alive. Often grouped under the role of "sustain".
• Breakers: This is a specific role to Honkai: Star Rail. Breakers will essentially focus on enemy weaknesses to inflict Weakness Break, allowing you to deal massive damage afterwards. They can be both a Main DPS or Sub-DPS depending on the character.

Here is an example team Setup:

You will usually aim for a Main DPS, at least one or two Supports, and either one Healer or Shielder. You team is usually built around the character you want to use as your Main DPS. Depending on each character's skills and specificities, you may use more supports, a Sub-DPS, or have no need for any Healer or Shielder.

The position of your party members can also matter! For example the planar ornament set Lushaka, the Sunken Seas which provides an ATK buff to the first character in the party if the holder is not the first person. Additionally, different paths have different Taunt Values or character's can have increased taunt in their kit. This means they are more likely to be hit so you want to keep them on the 4th spot so that enemy attacks which hit multiple enemies will hit less people.

In Honkai: Star Rail, each character also follows a specific Path. This essentially determines their role in combat, similar to a class or a job. As of right now, there are a total of 8 playable Paths with a brief overview of their general role. Not all characters fit their path roles perfectly.

While you usually do not necessarily want to stack too many of the same roles in one team, some characters will have buffs if there are more than one team member in the same Path.

For more information about each different path, and the characters corresponding to them, feel free to check out our in-depth Path Guide bellow:

Alongside Paths, Honkai: Star Rail also has different elements. There are a total of 7 different elements for the time being. Some characters like Silver Wolf or Anaxa can even add weaknesses to the enemies, however, you should always try to build your team depending on the weakness the enemy you're about to face has.

Try to bring variety in your team, in order to make sure you can break faster and win battles faster as well.

The different elements are:

• Physical
• Fire
• Ice
• Lightning
• Wind
• Quantum
• Imaginary

Attacking an enemy with the element he is weak to will deplete his Toughness Bar (the White Bar on top of his health bar. Once fully depleted, the enemy will enter Weakness Break. This is when you can unleash all your power and deal massive damage.

Start with your strongest unit (usually a DPS or 5-star) and build a team that supports them well.

If you are just starting the game, there are a lot of free characters that are given to you when you progress through the story, such as Herta that you can build around and which will carry you through the early game easily until you get your first 5-Star and a few good support characters.

As an example: If you gained Clara in your Standard Banner, you can build a team around her that looks like:

Once you advance in the Story, you will unlock different game modes, and each one will need different strategies. Don't be afraid to switch team members, and build multiple teams for different content.

Most Endgame content has different Phases in one patch, and each phase will have different characteristics, requiring you to adapt your strategies depending on the current Phase.

For example, the Memory of Chaos Phase might boost Memosprites, which means you should focus on teams revolving around Remembrance characters, as they are the only ones able to summon Memosprites. While Pure Fiction heavily favours characters and teams which are good at AoE.

Even the best team won't shine with poor gear. Once you set up some solid teams, you need to equip them with Relics and Light Cones. Focus on one single team first. Once you reach the endgame content that requires you to use two different teams you can start to focus on a second one.

Don't spread yourself on too many characters! There is no use in building everyone, unless you want to have every character at max level for personal reasons.

Pick your Main DPS, build around it, and level your 4 main characters. Each character will require different types of Relics of Light Cones. In order to know how to equip your character, we recommend you visit our specific guides.

Here are some example teams using a collection of characters you can easily obtain for free.

• Don't chase meta when you just start the game. Build around what you have.
• Level your core team first. It is better to have one good team, than multiple poorly geared ones.
• Mix Elements for better flexibility, or focus Elements for specific bosses.
• Test and adapt for each challenge. Each content and Phases require different strategies.

Jaymo

Staff Author

Follow Jaymo

Written by Jaymo, a longtime gamer who spends way too many hours exploring open worlds, grinding in MMOs, and pulling for his favorite gacha characters. He covers news and guides for all kinds of games, and just likes helping people enjoy them more. You can find him hanging out on Twitch or chatting in Discord (jaym0).