Honkai Star Rail Character Tier List: Bronya, Seele, More

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Cody has been in the video game business as part of media and content creation for more than 10 years. During that time, he has contributed and even led some of the largest sites in the world dedicated to gaming and entertainment. He has also dabbled some in PR and was a tester for Activision in the past working on the Call of Duty series. When not playing games or writing about them, he enjoys cooking, sharpening his Japanese skills, and watching the latest anime shows.

Selection Criteria

When it came to creating this tier list, I will admit that it wasn’t the easy job in the world. To be clear, there are no bad characters in this game; just some that are much more valuable and useful than others.

With more than 20 characters in this free game and it only being out for a short time, I had to use the following selection criteria to come up with the best possible list:

Strength: Each of the characters in this game has unique skills and utility in this game. While two characters might be healers, one will be the winner. The same goes for tanks, DPS, support, etc.
Skills: The variety of skills and flexibility that a character has plays a massive role in how vital it is.
Role: While I didn’t favor one role over the other, I tried to have some variation with the different tiers. You’ll generally see characters with different roles in each one.
F2P: Many of these characters are available for free within the main story of the game. If they are useful for completing the story without requiring you to spend money, that is a nice bonus.
Rarity: That said, the overall rarity of a character plays a bit of a role, too. Some of these characters have no 5-Star variants, so that diminishes their overall potential and power to an extent.
Visuals: Finally, the overall character’s design and appearance played a tiny role in determining their tier. Thankfully, most of the Honkai Star Rail characters look fantastic.

SS Tier Honkai Star Rail Characters: The Best of the Bunch

Starting this tier list is the best of the entire cast of Honkai Star Rail: the SS Tier. This is the tier that is dedicated to the characters who rise above the rest. They are generally the best in their specific element, role, and Path, leading the charge. If you can add even one or two of these characters to your party, you’ll be better off in the end.

Bailu

Role: Healer
Rarity: 5-Star
Element: Lightning
Path: Abundance

Bailu is the single best healer character in all of Honkai Star Rail. This is the one situation where I don’t even recommend anyone else as your healer if you can get her. She can heal more than one party member in a single turn, her Ultimate skill is absolutely killer for recovery, and she is fantastic at even protecting some party members.

But the best part about her is that she is one of the only characters who can revive a teammate. Given that you can’t use items and the like to revive fallen allies in the middle of battle, Bailu’s utility can’t be understated.

Bronya

Role: Support
Rarity: 5-Star
Element: Wind
Path: Harmony

If you are looking for someone who can buff your team and make them much stronger in battle, look no further than Bronya. All of her skills are based around boosting your team, including speeding up their turns, boosting their attack, and even buffing your critical damage. She is essential for pairing with the best DPS characters around.

Gepard

Role: Tank (with light DPS)
Rarity: 5-Star
Element: Ice
Path: Preservation

When it comes to the tank characters in Honkai Star Rail, Gepard is your best bet. He can keep attention, put a shield across the entire party, and even freeze foes to stop them in their tracks. When it comes to the endgame, Gepard is a necessary part of your team if you wish to do well in the hardest content in this game.

Jing Yuan

Role: DPS
Rarity: 5-Star
Element: Lightning
Path: Erudition

Jing Yuan is one of the best damage dealers you’ll find in this game. This is largely due to his skills, which are all about using the power of lightning to create continuous damage. He can follow up his attacks with even more force and even stack attacks for chains of hits in a row on multiple enemies.

Seele

Role: DPS
Rarity: 5-Star
Element: Quantum
Path: The Hunt

Seele is by far the best overall DPS when it comes to single-target damage. She is the ultimate boss killer and a must for endgame content when you are going to be taking on bosses quite a lot. She is extremely fast, too, letting her move often and gain more turns when she defeats enemies. Team her up with Bronya to gain even more turns and she’ll become unstoppable.

S Tier Characters

This is the tier that falls just short of the SS Tier. These characters are utterly fantastic and well worth using. While they may not necessarily be the best in their roles, they are close enough. In addition, there are many 4-Star characters in this group that you can get for free in the main story, so they will certainly treat you well if you don’t want to do a ton of character pulls or resets.

Clara

Role: DPS
Rarity: 5-Star
Element: Physical
Path: Destruction

This is far more to Clara than meets the eye. Initially, it seems like she is a rather general DPS character, but as a Destruction class, she has a few more tricks up her sleeve. These are courtesy of her robot companion, Svarog, who lets her follow up moves with more attacks and even boost her damage. In addition, Svarog has a counter ability that is fantastic, turning her almost into a two-in-one character.

Natasha

Role: Healer
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Physical
Path: Abundance

As the first healer that most players will get in Honkai Star Rail, you might think that she isn’t that great. However, that isn’t the case at all, as she is arguably the second-best pure healer in this title. She is great enough at both healing party members and dealing out the damage that she is certainly one of the best companions for your team through the currently available content.

Pela

Role: Support
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Ice
Path: Nihility

There is a lot of versatility when it comes to Pela in this game, starting with her impressive debuff abilities. She can power down foes and even stop bosses from buffing themselves, which is fantastic. Couple this with her solid damage skills, and she is surprisingly one of the best support characters in the game.

Tingyun

Role: Support
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Lightning
Path: Harmony

Tingyun has some of the best support skills you’ll find in this game. For starters, there is the fact that she can boost the attack of party members where they not only deal their regular damage but some lightning elemental damage at the same time.

This results in an extra bit of damage, which is excellent if the enemy is weak to lightning, too. There are some crazy combinations you can come up with using this power, too, such as boosting March 7th or Clara’s counter skills to make every counter they do deal a bit of extra damage on top of the normal amount.

Trailblazer Main Character (Fire Version)

Role: Tank/DPS
Rarity: 5-Star
Element: Fire
Path: Preservation

This second form for the Trailblazer main character is easily the best of the two options. This turns your character from a straight-up DPS character into a tank and DPS hybrid version, with the fire element to boot. It is a bit complicated to use this version of the character, mainly due to the stacks system.

But the general idea is the more stacks you get will earn the ability to reduce your damage, buff your attacks, and even let you damage more than one enemy at a time. And if that isn’t enough, the Ultimate skill lets you apply a shield to your team to help them withstand some tough attacks.

Welt

Role: Support
Rarity: 5-Star
Element: Imaginary
Path: Nihility

To this day, Welt is the only Imaginary elemental party member you can add to your team. It shows, too, in his skills, which are far more unique to everyone else’s. He is a supporting character through and through, able to do what other characters can’t in hindering foes in unique ways.

His abilities are all about slowing down enemies to stop them from attacking or outright stunning them in place and not letting them do anything. This, coupled with his decent damage capabilities, make him a valuable support character and a prime example of why we need more Imaginary characters.

Yanqing

Role: DPS
Rarity: 5-Star
Element: Ice
Path: Hunt

Yanqing is one of the best damage dealers in this game, and it comes down to his pure critical hit possibilities. Everything that he does boosts his crit attacks, and there is even the chance to get follow-up attacks from him. The only thing that holds him back from rising to the top is his ability to lose these buffs when taking hits, but you can work around this at least.

A Tier Characters

A-Tier characters are still some of the greats in this game. They are absolutely fantastic and well worth using. The only difference between them and the upper two tiers is that these characters may slightly fall short in a single area, such as not comparing to a fellow character’s damage or the like. These characters will get you through nearly all of the content in this game, though, if used right.

Asta

Role: Support
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Fire
Path: Harmony

The main point of using Asta in this game, besides her easy-to-acquire nature, is that she has impressive fire-boosting buffs. For players who run the Trailblazer fire tank version, which you should definitely should once you unlock it, Asta brings the best out of the MC with her skills. The Burning status effect she can add to your team is welcome, making her quite useful until you unlock someone like the far more useful Bronya.

Dan Heng

Role: DPS
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Wind
Path: Hunt

As one of the free characters you receive relatively early on in Honkai Star Rail, Dan Heng is as good as they come for DPS. He is a pretty versatile character with his ability to slow down enemies in battle and even deal a ton of critical damage, but he doesn’t quite do as well with this as some of the others. He is a character you should use for a time but move on from later in the game.

Himeko

Role: DPS
Rarity: 5-Star
Element: Fire
Path: Erudition

When it comes to taking on many foes at once, few can do it quite as well as Himeko. All of her skills open up the doorway for her to counter or get some follow-up attacks, which is nice for ensuring you can use her ultimate skill quite often. This, in turn, lets you deal some of the best AOE damage possible in this game, especially when boosted by a supporting character.

Hook

Role: DPS
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Fire
Path: Destruction

The Hook party member is one of the most generalized fire attackers out there. In a team with Asta, Himeko, and other fire characters like that, she can excel and deal some serious damage to foes. Her ability to capitalize on the Burning status effect and even inflict it herself sometimes is impressive.

March 7th

Role: Tank/Support
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Ice
Path: Preservation

March 7th is one of the best characters you can find in the free pool, and that is due to her overwhelming flexibility. She is a tank in a way, giving shields that let her take some hits. But at the same time, she can hinder foes like a supporting character. She is amazing and a perfect stand-in when you don’t have a healer.

Sushang

Role: DPS
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Physical
Path: Hunt

Sushang in many ways is like Seele but a slightly more complex and situational version of her. She is fantastic when it comes to taking on bosses but she is all about chaining up attacks, using her Ultimate, feeding that into her extra damage, and so on. It is a complicated dance but one that is worth considering fully using when you get her.

B Tier Characters

The B Tier is still quite good and even great at times. These characters simply don’t look quite as impressive as their fellow counterparts. They might have a weakness or two that hold them back from being what they could be. That said, they won’t let you down when it comes to the main story and most content.

Qingque

Role: DPS
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Quantum
Path: Erudition

If only there were some buffs or changes that could be made to make Qingque more viable as she is one of the most unique characters in the entire game. Her skills are all about boosting her attacks to hit more than one enemy, powering up, and using her suit well. It is quite fun to use but she takes up the bulk of the energy skill points.

Sampo

Role: DPS
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Wind
Path: Nihility

Sampo has a solid look at AOE damage early on in the game, in addition to his damage over time capabilities. He is a strong character for setting up your team to do well, but it would be nice if you could start with him, set up foes to take extra damage, and then switch him out for a heavier hitter.

That said, he is still solid for teams, especially when you get him earlier in the game’s main story. This is also mainly because he is pretty great when it comes to breaking the shields of foes, which few other characters are so easily able to do.

Serval

Role: DPS
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Lightning
Path: Erudition

Serval is one of the most basic characters in this game, and it almost puts her in the C Tier, to be honest. Her main goal is to use her lightning attacks to deal massive damage to all of the foes at once. This alone is welcome and she does a solid job of doing that, without a doubt.

The problem comes from her lack of doing anything else. Lightning weaknesses aren’t super common, so she isn’t worth using most of the time.

Trailblazer MC (Physical Default Version)

Role: DPS
Rarity: 5-Star
Element: Physical
Path: Destruction

The original default Trailblazer MC has a focus on dealing basic damage. There is room for AOE skills but your character is far too limited and unimpressive in this state. It will get you through most of the story, but you should certainly switch out once you get the Fire version.

C Tier Characters

There are only two characters who fall into the unfortunate C Tier. To be fair, as I mentioned earlier in the tier list, there is no such thing as a bad Honkai Star Rail character at this time. That said, these two have more weaknesses and flaws than the others or are just far too limited in scope. That said, there is still some enjoyment that can come from using them in the right teams.

Arlan

Role: DPS
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Lightning
Path: Destruction

Something is fascinating about the risk-and-reward nature of Arlan but the result isn’t worth it. You see, the basic idea of his character is to give him immense utility and power once his health is low. His attack is utterly bonkers when his health is low, but his survivability is horrible.

And, sure, you could counter that with someone like Bailu but it’s just too risky in this game for now.

Herta

Role: DPS
Rarity: 4-Star
Element: Ice
Path: Erudition

While Herta is great for the Simulated Universe, there is, sadly, almost no other reason to use her in this game. Her follow-up attacks are fine but it is far too conditional. Sure, she deals some solid single-target damage, but, again, there are better options out there for that. I hope she gets a buff soon.

FAQs

Question: Who is the strongest character in Honkai Star Rail?

Answer: The strongest character in all of Honkai Star Rail, in terms of raw power and DPS, has to be Seele. She is the very best when it comes to single-target damage and there is no other character who can come even close to the damage output that she has. Pick her if you want to have the most damage possible on your team.

Question: Who is the best DPS in Honkai Star Rail?

Answer: The best overall DPS in Honkai Star Rail has to be between Seele, of course, and Jing Yuan. The former is amazing and the best when it comes to taking on a single enemy, such as a boss. But the latter is unstoppable and unmatched when it comes to taking on multiple enemies.

Question: Which MC is better in Honkai Star Rail?

Answer: The MC, or main character, in Honkai Star Rail, lets you pick between the male and female options. Spoiler alert, neither one of these options is better than the other. However, there comes a point in the game where you unlock the option to switch to the fire-elemental version of the MC, which is vastly better than the more limited physical default version.

Find Out the Best Weapons in Another Similar Game

When it comes to the best characters in Genshin Impact, I highly suggest picking up characters like Gepard, Seele, and Bailu. You can mix and match some of the characters, such as the fourth spot for Bronya or even switch out Gepard for some more DPS capabilities.

But if you want to dominate the endgame in Honkai Star Rail and even future content that may release, you’ll want to take a good look at the tier list above. And if there is a single character that is the absolute best in the entire game, it has to be Bailu for being an unprecedented healer role Honkai character that every party could benefit from having on their side.

When you’re done with picking out the best characters in Honkai Star Rail, it might be worth checking out another online game like this one and its best content. I suggest taking a look at the best weapons in Monster Hunter Rise, an action-packed game that I think Honkai fans would love.

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