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Lightning characters in Honkai: Star Rail generally specialize in the Shock effect, which deals Lightning DoT to enemies. This guide will break down all the Lightning characters in the game, as well as which ones you should invest in.
The Benefits of a Lightning Character
In general, Types in Honkai: Star Rail will change what kind of Break Effect a character can inflict after you deplete an enemy’s Toughness bar. Elements aren’t as important as in HoYoVerse’s other game, Genshin Impact, since they don’t affect exploration, nor can you mix-and-match Types for different reactions. As mentioned earlier, a Lightning character can inflict the DoT effect, Shock.
Weakness Break with a Lightning attack will only use a multiplier of 1 when calculating damage. If you want to see high Break DMG numbers, you might want to use another Type, such as Physical, to deplete the Toughness. However, Shock does very well as a DoT. Unlike most other DoTs, which only uses a multiplier of 1, Shock has a base multiplier of 2. As a note, if building a character specifically to utilize Shock, you should make sure they have more ATK than Crit stats since DoT does not take Crit DMG into consideration.
All of the Lightning Characters in Honkai: Star Rail
- Arlan (4-star Destruction)
- Bailu (5-star Abundance)
- Jing Yuan (5-star Erudition)
- Kafka (5-star Nihility)
- Serval (4-star Erudition)
- Tingyun (4-star Harmony)
Best Lightning Characters in Honkai: Star Rail
There are a lot of powerful and useful Lightning characters, but which ones should you invest your resources in if you don’t want to waste too much time or energy farming? I recommend Tingyun, Kafka, and Bailu. Jing Yuan deserves a special shoutout here because he is a really good unit, especially when it comes to depleting an enemy’s Toughness. However, he is not as good when it comes to general use as Tingyun and Bailu.
Let’s start with Kafka, who fills a different niche than the other two. Kafka is worth investing in because she is essentially always going to be on your DoT team if you have her. Her ability to instantly trigger a DoT with her Skill, as well as her personal Shock DoT, means that her damage will really start to rack up as the battle continues. You can also run her with basically any DoT character with the exception of fellow Lightning ones too. This means that Kafka will only become more useful as HoYoVerse continues to release DoT-based attackers.
Tingyun is one of the best support characters in the game. She is fairly SP-positive, which is an important factor especially with SP-hungry DPS characters like Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae or Jingliu. She can also boost ATK and restore 60 points of Energy to a character. This makes her highly valuable in difficult modes such as Memory of Chaos or Pure Fiction.
Finally, Bailu is a healer which means that she’s automatically going to be a good, general unit in Honkai: Star Rail. Bailu is, as of Version 1.6, the only character who can revive someone outside of Simulated Universe. The main negative about Bailu is that she heals random allies after the first one. As well, she does not have the ability to cleanse debuffs. The aforementioned revive and her panic button Ultimate more than make up for her demerits though.
Honkai: Star Rail is readily available on the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices.
