Summary
Honkai: Star Railis no stranger to providing its playerbase with many different endgame modes, despite the game being over a year old. Being a turn-based RPG, the game features a number of different mechanics that not only offer a sense of depth in the combat system but also provide the developers with the opportunity to take advantage of the existence of said mechanics to createchallenging endgame modesthrough means of focusing on one mechanic.
One of the most recent endgame modes is the Apocalyptic Shadow, which focuses onbreaking an enemy’s weakness bar. Characters that rely on weakness break to deal damage, have high toughness reduction on their attacks, or provide weakness breaking buffs excel in this mode. It’s worth noting that all the characters featured on this list are all at least S tier (at E0S0 unless mentioned otherwise) in this mode, so the differences between rankings are minuscule but higher ranking characters do have more to offer.
10Huohuo
Lifesaving Energy
Being a 5 star Abundance unit, it’d be a safe assumption to say that her healing capabilities are good enough for players to survive endgame content. Although she isn’t the mostskill point positiveunit, she can comfortably heal a team through an entire fight if used correctly.
While her healing is great, it isn’t what makes her stand out as a sustain unit. Her ultimate can provide the rest of the team with 20% of their max energy, on top of a 40% ATK buff for 2 turns. Essentially meaning players will runa sustain and a buffer as one unit. Providing energy also means more ultimates for the rest of them team, which means more opportunities to lower the enemy’s weakness bar.
9Aventurine
Retaliation
Another character that fills that sustain slot, but provides more in a much different way than Huohuo. The most integral part of his kit is the shield he provides by either using his skill, or meeting the requirements to trigger his follow-up attack. The shield also increases allies' Effect RES by 50%, making it harder for enemies to take them out of combat.
Aventurine is great at keeping his team alive, but his assisting capabilities in breaking enemies' weaknesses shouldn’t be overlooked. Both hisfollow-up attack and ultimate can take a good chunk off the weakness bar.
8Gallagher
Violent Healing
Out of the three sustain units chosen for this list, Gallagher far outperforms the other two in terms of weakness breaking. While his ultimate doesn’t deal much damage at base level, it’s an AOE attack with high toughness reduction and advances his next action by 100%, on top of granting him the ability to use anenhanced basic ATK that can shave even more off a singleenemy’s weakness bar.
Although his healing capabilities don’t quite match Huohuo’s, his overall usefulness is bumped up by quite a lot when paired together with some of the other higher ranking characters.
7March 7th (Hunt)
Diligent Apprentice
One of the newest Characters added as of patch 2.4. March 7th’s kit has many layers to it, but one of the aspects of her skill is the focus when using her in this mode. Using her skill on an ally following the path of Harmony, Nihility, Preservation, or Abundance grants herdouble the toughness reduction on her attacks.Additionally, unlocking her A4 trace allows her to reduce enemies' weakness that correspond to not only her element type, but also the ally the skill was used on.
She performs better when her ally has a high SPD stat or launchesfollow-up attacksas it makes it easier to meet the requirements for her talent, which allows her to launch an enhanced basic ATK. This attack has a higher overall toughness reduction value.
6Silver Wolf
Debuffing Hacker
Considering this mode focuses on breaking enemies' weaknesses, having a character that canimplant elemental weaknessesthat correspond to the elements of allies on the team automatically makes them valuable. That is exactly what her skill does, with an added bonus of applying all sorts of debuffs through any of her attacks.
Like most single target ultimates, her’s also has a high toughness reduction stat which makes her even better in supporting her team.
5Acheron
Ultimate DPS
Acheron’s ultimate is capable of causingmassive amounts of damageon top of it completely ignoring elemental weaknesses. While her other attacks don’t ignore weaknesses (unless she’s E6), she can beused with Silver Wolfwho can implant her element into the enemy anyway.
Her main value in the team is her reliability in killing adds and ensuring the boss dies before being able to recover from being weakness broken.
4Trailblazer (Harmony)
Super Breaker
The release of Harmony Trailblazer introduced the super break mechanic which essentially meansbig damage when the enemy is weakness broken.Their skill has a low toughness reduction stat, but hits 4 times (6 times at E6), effectively making it an overall high toughness reduction stat.
There is a complicated formula to determine how super break damage is calculated, but to simplify, theBreak Effect stat mattersa lot here. This means they’ll shine when paired with a break DPS or a character running a Break Effect build.
3Boothill
Solo Gunslinger
Boothill was the first 5 star break DPS, ultimately introducing the break meta to the game. Withhigh toughness reduction stats, capable of increasing the toughness reduction of his enhanced basic ATK by 150%, and implanting his own elemental type to the enemy’s weakness bar, it’s easy to see why he’s ranked highly.
His only weakness is the fact that he’s a single target DPS, but it really won’t matter considering how high his multipliers are.
2Firefly
Setting The Seas Ablaze
Another break DPS released shortly after Boothill. She plays the same role as Boothill, but arguably offers a more flexible kit. Sheenters an enhanced state upon using her ultimatewhichincreases her SPD statby 60%, enhances all her attacks, and increases break damage taken by enemies. Using her skill while in the enhanced state implants her elemental type to a single enemy while still reducing the weakness bar of adjacent enemies by half of what was dealt to the main enemy.
While she’s a good unit on her own, her weakness is the lack of team options. Harmony Trailblazer and Gallagher are almost essential to make the most out of her kit.
1Ruan Mei
Universal Support
Ruan Mei can excel in almost every team she’s put on, but especially on a break team. Her ultimate allows allies to deal more damage and delays enemies' actions by 20% when trying to recover from being weakness broken. Her skill is the most useful part of her kit in this mode, allowing allies to deal more andincreasing all allies' weakness break efficiency by 50%.Ultimately making her far and away the best character for this mode as it enables any character to reliably weakness break enemies, and even better when utilized by a break DPS with already high weakness breaking capabilities.
Ruan mei is one of the only characters in the game that is S+ tier in every mode, seemingly possessing no weaknesses in her kit.
