With Honkai: Star Rail’s first anniversary fast approaching, we figured it’s a great time to examine its current 5 Star roster and pick out the best performing characters. Star Rail presently has over 20 unique 5 Star characters, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. While all 5 Stars are capable of succeeding in Star Rail’s endgame, a few stand head and shoulders above the rest.

To determine our picks, we not only looked at a character’s ability to excel in their respective role but also their flexibility and potential longevity. The character should not require a rigid team composition to perform well in Memory of Chaos, Pure Fiction, and Simulated Universe. Additionally, we will also factor in their investment requirements with stats, Light Cones, and Eidolons. Without further ado, here are our picks for the best 5 Star characters in Honkai: Star Rail.

Jingliu

Jingliu is an Ice Destruction character and currently one of the best damage dealers in the game. She possesses incredible single target (ST) damage as well as great Blast (3-target) damage.

Her main gameplay centers around Syzygy stacks, which Jingliu gains a stack of every time she uses her Skill or Ultimate. Upon reaching two stacks of Syzygy, Jingliu enters the Spectral Transmigration state, advancing her Action by 100% and enhancing her Skill. During Spectral Transmigration, Jingliu gains 50% Crit Rate and consumes a portion of her allies HP to boost her damage whenever she attacks. In addition, Jingliu’s enhanced Skill costs a Syzygy stack instead of a Skill Point (SP), greatly lowering her overall SP usage throughout the fight. When Jingliu reaches 0 stacks of Syzygy, her Spectral Transmigration state will end.

Due to Jingliu’s Traces and Spectral Transmigration, she possesses a lot of free Crit Rate, Crit DMG, and SPD. This lowers her initial stat investment requirements to get her up and running. However, Jingliu benefits significantly from high investments as she is one of the few characters that can actually reach the coveted 100% Crit Rate, which can take some time to reach.

Furthermore, because of her Action Advances from Spectral Transmigration and Traces, Jingliu is incredibly efficient at breaking Ice Toughness and causing frequent enemy Freezing. Ironically, this is also one of her greatest weaknesses, as the constant Action Advances may often shorten the duration of buffs provided by her supports.

With Jingliu’s low SP costs, she is incredibly flexible when it comes to team compositions as you can often fit a second damage dealer onto the team or accommodate SP-hungry supports. Keep in mind that Jingliu’s team may often require a healer on the team, or at the very least, Fu Xuan to counteract her HP siphoning.

Jingliu is already extremely strong without any Eidolons, but her E1 provides a significant bonus by offering additional Crit DMG and ST damage. In addition, while Jingliu’s signature Light Cone is by far her best one, she functions perfectly fine with free options like ‘On the Fall of an Aeon’ and 4 Star ‘Under the Blue Sky’.

Ruan Mei

Ruan Mei, an Ice Harmony character, stands out as one of the best support characters in the game. Her skill is a potent three-turn buff that grants up to 32% damage and a unique 50% increase to Weakness Break Efficiency. Currently, Ruan Mei is the only character in the game that can provide a Weakness Break Efficiency buff, allowing for more frequent enemy Breaks and increased damage output. Paired with her signature Light Cone, Ruan Mei’s SP economy is extremely efficient.

Ruan Mei’s Ultimate provides her team with a 25% All-Type RES PEN and allows their attacks to apply Thanatoplum Rebloom, delaying the enemies’ Break recovery. The delay amount scales off Ruan Mei’s Break Effect and deals additional damage based on her Break Effect.

Additionally, her Talent passive boosts allies SPD and allows her to deal Break damage whenever her allies perform a Weakness Break. This passive allows Ruan Mei to capitalize on her high Break Effect stats without needing to initiate Break herself. By stacking Break Effect, she can further increase her Skill’s damage buff through her A6 Trace.

Ruan Mei’s Eidolons are not essential due to her strong base kit, but her E1 provides great value, allowing allies to ignore 20% of their target’s DEF with her Ultimate. On the other hand, Ruan Mei requires a huge amount of Break Effect stat, which can be challenging to reach without her signature Light Cone. This limits her Light Cone options, especially free ones, as the only one that comes remotely close performance-wise is a Superimposition 5 ‘Memories of the Past’.

Despite the investment required, Ruan Mei’s powerful buffs, positive SP economy, and the ability to contribute Break damage make her a valuable addition to any team composition. Her flexibility also allows her to synergize effectively with other Harmony characters.

Fu Xuan

Fu Xuan, a Quantum Preservation character, is the tankiest unit in the game, excelling at protecting and sustaining her team. Her Skill activates Matrix of Prescience, providing HP% and Crit Rate to her allies while redirecting 65% of the damage they take onto herself, for three turns. Additionally, her A6 Trace adds a one-time Crowd Control immunity to allies within the Matrix, which refreshes every time her Skill is cast again.

Her Talent passive offers allies up to 18% damage reduction and heals Fu Xuan when her HP drops below 50%, the latter of which holds two charges and refills with her Ultimate. Speaking of which, her Ultimate, with A4 Trace, also heals allies based on her HP.

Fu Xuan’s utilities and damage scale solely off HP, making her relatively easy to build and allowing her to deal respectable damage without any offensive stats. With high HP investment, Fu Xuan’s team can often forgo the need for an Abundance character.

While Eidolons are absolutely not required on Fu Xuan, her E1 and E2 do provide additional utility through Crit DMG and cheat death respectively. Anything past E2 is considered subpar and not worth going after. In terms of Light Cones, Fu Xuan has plenty of options outside of her signature one, including a very good free option with ‘Texture of Memories’.

With her versatile kit, Fu Xuan essentially embodies Preservation, Harmony, and Abundance roles, making her a valuable addition to any endgame team composition due to her defensive capabilities and utility.

Kafka

Kafka is a Lightning Nihility character and an incredibly strong and consistent damage dealer, excelling in not just ST, but also AoE and Blast. She is relatively straightforward to play, centering around applying DoTs (damage over time) and triggering instant damage through all existing DoTs on the enemy. The more DoTs there are on the enemies, the more damage Kafka dishes out.

Because of this, Kafka’s team composition is slightly less flexible than the prior three units on this list, as she prefers teammates who can apply DoTs, such as Sampo. She also prefers support units that buff ATK and SPD as Crit does not benefit her at all. Fortunately, there are plenty of 4 Star units that complement her very well, including free units such as Asta, Sampo, and Guinaifen. This does not mean Kafka is weak without a proper team, as she is fully capable of dealing strong damage through her own DoTs.

Maximizing Kafka’s potential, however, does require a bit of investment into her DoT allies as the instant DoT damage triggered through Kafka will be based on whoever applied the original DoT. While her Eidolons are not necessary for her to be strong, E1 and E2 both help increase her team’s overall DoT damage. Kafka’s signature Light Cone is her best one by far as it gives her SPD and an extra DoT to work with, but she does have other decent options including the free ‘Fermata’.

Kafka performs superbly in all endgame content and synergizes especially well with Ruan Mei and Black Swan due to damage amplifications and DoT interactions. In fact, you can run a team of Kafka, Ruan Mei, Black Swan, and Fu Xuan to easily shred through the hardest bosses the game has to offer. The only minor downside of that team would be Fu Xuan’s Crit buff going to waste, but that is an insignificant price to pay for such a powerful team.

Black Swan

Black Swan, a Wind Nihility character, boasts perhaps the highest damage potential among all the current units in the game. Her extremely complex kit revolves around intricate DoT interactions, synergizing particularly well with characters like Kafka.

To keep it simple, Black Swan’s core gameplay revolves around applying stacks of a debuff called Arcana to enemies through her attacks and various DoT interactions. At the start of the targets’ turns, Arcana inflicts Wind DoT damage equivalent to 240% of Black Swan’s ATK. This debuff can stack up to 50 times, with each stack increasing Arcana’s damage multiplier by 12%. Notably, once Arcana reaches seven or more stacks, it ignores the targets’ DEF by 20%. Additionally, her Skill also reduces the enemies’ DEF by 20% for three turns.

Realizing Black Swan’s full potential requires significant investment, specifically in Effect Hit Rate to ensure consistent application of Arcana. Furthermore, her A6 Trace converts a portion of her Effect Hit Rate into a damage increase. While her Eidolons, especially E1, are quite strong, they are considered complete overkill due to her base kit’s overwhelming strength. Similarly, while her signature Light Cone is extremely powerful, there are plenty of great budget and free options available.

Although Black Swan performs best in DoT teams, nothing in the game currently can withstand her damage ceiling. This means Black Swan can still function perfectly well in non-DoT teams at endgame level. With how powerful her kit is, it may be a long time before an enemy can actually challenge her.

Conclusion

We believe these five characters currently stand at the top of Honkai: Star Rail and are likely to remain extremely powerful for the foreseeable future. As a bonus note, the upcoming Version 2.1 will be releasing Acheron as a playable character. According to leaks, she may potentially be one of the strongest characters yet, and unsurprisingly, Acheron is also a Nihility character. We have a feeling that Nihility may just be HoYoverse’s favorite child.