Should You Pull on the Honkai: Star Rail 1.5 Huohuo Banner?

The first phase of Honkai: Star Rail Version 1.5 places Huohuo front and center, as she is the 5-star in the “Bloom in Gloom” Character Event Warp banner. With Arlan, Serval, and Dan Heng as the 4-stars on pick-up, this banner is a real mixed bag.

Sometimes in gacha games, there are banners that you can pull on and leave satisfied even if you don’t get the limited character. The Fu Xuan banner from Version 1.3 is a perfect example of this. Fu Xuan herself is great, but her banner also had Lynx and Pela on pick-up. Lynx is a good healer, and Pela is a good debuffer. So even if you didn’t get Fu Xuan, you had a chance of powering up your existing roster. Huohuo’s debut banner is the opposite of that.

This is a shame because Huohuo is a fantastic character. In general, I always recommend pulling on support characters in Honkai: Star Rail. You can replace a good DPS, but you’re hard-pressed to replace a good support. Luckily, because of Huohuo’s hybrid Abundance/Harmony kit, it’s actually possible to replace her if you really need to. Her Healing is good, but it’s not as if existing Abundance characters like Natasha or Bailu fall behind. Her ATK buff and Energy Regeneration from her Ultimate are nice, but Tingyun can do the same.

Is Huohuo worth pulling for in Honkai: Star Rail 1.5?

This is kind of a hard banner to rate because of how good Huohuo is. That goes especially true for players who might have missed Luocha. The unfortunate reality is that this banner is otherwise so terrible, pardon my language, that if you pull on it, you might as well pull all the way until you get Huohuo. I’d honestly still rate it a 7/10 just because of Huohuo and for Dan Heng and Serval if you haven’t gotten them E6-ed already.

As mentioned earlier, Huohuo is, in general, a great unit. She can do many things that’ll free up your party a little bit because she can do them all. For example, you might not need to waste an extra slot in your party on a buffer/debuffer because Huohuo can serve as a makeshift Harmony using her Ultimate. Her healing is also very good, and the passive healing is easy to maintain since all she needs to do is use her Skill before her stacks run out. You can skip her depending on your gacha situation, but I only recommend skipping if you have Luocha. If you don’t have him and need a good Abundance, I recommend just going for Huohuo if you can.

The only reason Dan Heng and Serval aren’t exactly nice to see on this banner is because they were free 4-stars that have been around since launch. That means there’s a high chance that players already got their E6. If you haven’t, though, they’re great units for F2P players. Dan Heng is a good single-target DPS, especially once you unlock his Traces and Eidolons. Serval is also a fairly powerful Lightning attacker who can deal damage off-turn with DoTs. She only gets better if you have Kafka.

Arlan is the weakest link in this banner. Aside from the fact that he was also available at launch (though not free like Dan Heng and Serval were), which means players might have E6-ed him already, Arlan is not that great. He has a very interesting kit in which he deals more damage the lower his HP is. He’s pretty good in the early game, too. However, he suffers badly from power creep. It’s even worse if you compare him as a damage dealer to Serval, who shares the same banner as him.

Honkai: Star Rail is readily available on the PS5, Windows PC, and mobile devices. The “Bloom in Gloom” banner in Version 1.5 will end on December 6, 2023.