Summary
Among the different elements inHonkai: Star Rail, Quantum is one that has made a limited appearance upon release, with only one 4-star character, Qingque, available in the standard banner, and a popular character, Seele, featured in the first limited-time event banner. Interestingly, Quantum is the only element that currently doesn’t feature a standard 5-star character. However, with the introduction of Silver Wolf in the game’s version 1.1 update, players can anticipate the addition of more Quantum characters in the future. One such character that is already officially announced is Fu Xuan, who is expected to be from the Preservance path.
As an element inHonkai: Star Rail, Quantum is known for having one of the most convenientWeakness Break types, thanks to the Entanglement effect. This effect delays the enemy’s action after their toughness bar is depleted, granting the players an advantage in the battle’s action order priority. Including a Quantum character in a team composition can be beneficial in specific battle content, provided that players have access to these characters. It’s important to note that comparing Quantum characters with each other can be challenging due to their different roles in the battle. However, some characters possess unique abilities that give them an advantage over others.
Updated on 3rd March 2024, by Elara Leclair:Quantum is one of the elements that started with the least number of characters in Honkai: Star Rail. However, interestingly, with each character released from this element, all have been from different paths, allowing players to create a variety of mono-quantum teams if they wish to do so. With the highly anticipated Quantum Harmony character, Sparkle, added to the mix, the playing field has been shifted further, as this character is one of the best support characters as of now, while also significantly boosting certain Quantum characters like Seele and Qingque, showcasing the prowess of this element even more.
Path:Destruction
Rarity:4-star
Xueyi currently stands out as one of the most unique characters inHonkai: Star Rail, with her ability to deplete toughness without needing to rely on attacking with the right element. She achieves this with her Ultimate, which ignores the toughness of enemies. Additionally, she is currently the only DPS character thatscales entirely with Break Effect, making her an excellent candidate as a sub-DPS character. This allows her to fit into many different team compositions, even with different elements. Her ability to deal follow-up attacks, after gaining the needed amount of Karma stacks, adds to her versatility. These stacks are acquired upon Xueyi’s own or her allies' toughness-reducing attacks. This also makes her a great candidate to use with Silver Wolf, ensuring the right Elemental Weaknesses needed for a particular team composition.
Path:Erudition
Being the only existing 4-star Quantum character and obtainable bycompleting Stage 3 of Forgotten Hall, Qingque is likely to be the first, if not the only, Quantum character many players will have access to in the early game. As an Erudition character, Qingque possesses both single target and AoE damage-dealing abilities in a unique form, as her enhanced damage relies on luck.
Qingque’s playstyle revolves around drawing and matching 4-tiles, which increases the damage of her Basic ATK. This grants her significant damage potential, especially when players acquire her later Eidolons. However, if players have bad luck, Qingque can be skill point and turn costly until she gains access to her Enhanced basic attack, which is a drawback that affects her DPS output. However, if players have access to her higher eidolons, she can be as strong as Seele, and even outshine her in AoE focused content such as Pure Fiction. Additionally, if players have access to Sparkle, the skill-point management issue has been essentially resolved, allowing Qingque to deal massive damage each turn.
Path:The Hunt
Rarity:5-star
Seele’s popularity has dropped significantly, especially with new content that has introduced a more AoE priority on challenging content, such as with Pure Fiction Mode. Nevertheless, in the current state of the game, Seele still stands out as one of the strongest single-target damage-focused character. She is highly versatile and can be easily incorporated into various team compositions, as she synergizes well with many support characters and doesn’t rely on a special gimmick in her kit. Seele’s strength lies in her overall high stat values, especially her speed, and her impressive DMG modifiers, particularly on her Ultimate.
One of the aspects that makes Seele exceptional is herability to advance forwardupon defeating an enemy, allowing her to unleash multiple attacks in a single turn. This makes her highly effective in both farming scenarios and challenging boss battles. Even against enemies without Quantum weakness, players fortunate enough to obtain Seele will still find her formidable due to her immense damage potential.Equipping her with the 4-piece Genius of Brilliant relic setfurther enhances her capabilities, as it grants her one of the best 4-set bonuses in the game. This bonus allows her attacks to ignore a portion of the enemy’s DEF, providing her with a significant advantage in terms of damage output when compared to other existing Hunt characters.
Path:Abundance
Joining the playable character roster as a free-to-play-friendly 4-star character, Lynx is an excellent healer that can be well-utilized by many teams. This is because, in addition to healing, she has the ability to buff the team members' HP and dispel debuffs on them (similar to Natasha), making her a good option for challenging content. With that being the case, some may argue that she can even surpass the functionality of a 5-star healer like Bailu, despite still falling behind other 5-star gacha-limited healers like Luocha or Huohuo in some aspects.
Path:Preservation
Interestingly, the developers ofHonkai: Star Railhave already officially introduced her, even before the game’s release, hinting that her arrival will not be excessively late. Alongside being a Quantum character, Fu Xuan follows the Preservation path, indicating that her primary focus is on a defensive playstyle.
Fu Xuan’s kit is based on the HP stat, unlike the current Preservation characters who scale with DEF stat, which puts her in a unique situation. Additionally, she does not generate shields but instead focuses on mitigating damage from all allies and redirecting it to herself. Furthermore, she can heal herself upon dropping below 50% HP, while also slightly healing all allies whenever she activates her Ultimate, allowing players to consider not utilizing a healer in team compositions that have Fu Xuan. Lastly, she also has some Harmony aspect in her kit, with being able to increase the Crit Rate of her allies.
Path:Nihility
Silver Wolf joins theHonkai: Star Railroster as a Nihility character, focusing on debuffing enemies. She can apply DEF-reducing debuffs and All Type Res debuffs to enemies. What sets her apart is her ability to implant a weakness on opponents based on the player’s team roster. Adding Silver Wolf to the party can provide significant advantages in main team compositions.
However, it’s important to note that Silver Wolf may not yet reach her full potential given the current state of the game and character availability. She is a character who will likely showcase her true value in the future. Her greatest advantage lies in enabling mono-team compositions regardless of the content and enemy weakness types.Currently, only Lightningand Imaginary types, with the release of Luocha, can typically form a full mono team. Additionally, Silver Wolf may still apply Quantum weakness instead of the desired element unless the enemy already has a Quantum weakness. Thus, her utility is best realized in a full Quantum team, which is currently not effectively possible, although she can still work well alongside a character like Seele. It’s also worth mentioning that her DEF-reducing debuff is onlyslightly higher than Pela,a 4-star character, so she may not be necessary solely for that purpose since it is not a unique ability.
Path:Harmony
Sparkle may appear to be one of the most unconventional characters at first glance, especially in terms of story and character lore. However, when it comes to gameplay, she surprisingly emerges as one of the best support characters in the game, joining the roster as a harmony path character. In her case, she brings a unique ability to increase the skill-point cap and recover skill points, which is excellent for certain characters like Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae, Qingque, or even Jing Yuan. Additionally, she shares some similarities with Bronya, advancing forward characters and boosting the damage and critical damage of allies.
As such, Sparkle is a great enabler for maximizing the potential of many hyper-carry characters. When built for speed, she can eliminate the need for running speed boots on these DPS characters and allow them to focus more on critical rate, as they will receive a significant critical damage buff from Sparkle. Furthermore, she can boost the attack of Quantum characters in the team, providing added benefits to mono-quantum teams, although this does not limit her usefulness to only Quantum characters. For characters that do not particularly benefit from critical damage or have skill point-heavy mechanics like Kafka, players may not find her as useful. However, judging by her own kit, Sparkle is currently the best Quantum character due to her versatility and unique and strong benefits for the team.
Honkai: Star Rail
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