There are 7 elements in Honkai: Star Rail. Physical, Fire, Ice, Wind, Lightning, Quantum, and Imaginary. But, it’s not just your casual fire beats ice mechanic. So, what makes Honkai: Star Rail’s element system so brilliant?
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Toughness and Weakness Break
There is no “superior element will deal additional damage bonus” in Honkai: Star Rail. Instead, every enemy got its own elemental weaknesses and if we succeed in breaking their “toughness”, we’ll deal with various kinds of attack and debuff depending on what is the last elemental attack that we used.
If you still don’t know how Honkai: Star Rail turn-based system works, I highly suggest you read this article: Honkai: Star Rail Combat System Guide first, then come back to this later on.
Toughness
First, let me explain what exact Toughness is.
In Honkai: Star Rail, we will see 2 bars from the enemies.
The red one is the HP bar. The white one is the Toughness bar.
The toughness bar will only deplete if we attack them using their elemental weaknesses. Don’t worry, we don’t need to memorize each enemy’s elemental weaknesses because we can see their weaknesses above their HP and toughness bar.
In this example, this enemy’s weakness is lightning and wind. Coincidentally, the character that I’m using right now, Dan Heng, is a wind element. Thus, you can see the wind symbol above that enemy is glowing. That is just a good element indicator to help us know which elemental attack can reduce the enemy’s toughness bar.
Every attack has a different toughness bar depletion. This means that not every character’s skill has the same toughness bar reduction, and most of the time, the ultimate will reduce the toughness bar the most.
Weakness Break
The purpose of depleting the toughness bar to 0 is to trigger “Weakness Break”. In summary, if you trigger a weakness break, you will deliver damage over time (depending on what element you used to trigger that break) and additional debuffs.
Here are the lists of weakness breaks effect for each elements:
- Physical: dealing additional physical damage and applying bleed effect, dealing Physical DoT
- Ice: apply a frozen effect that prevents the enemy from taking action, dealing Ice DoT
- Wind: dealing Wind DMG and applying Wind Shear effect, dealing Wind DoT
- Fire: dealing Fire DMG and applying Burn effect, dealing Fire DoT
- Lightning: deal Lightning DMG and apply Shock effect, dealing Lightning DoT
- Quantum: apply Entanglement effect, delaying enemy actions and dealing Quantum DoT
- Imaginary: apply Imprisonment effect, delaying enemy actions and reducing Enemy SPD
Conclusion
There will be no damage modification if we compare this elemental weakness mechanics to the other games like Genshin Impact. But, in return, if we use Ice break, Quantum break, or Imaginary break, for example, that alone can impact the outcome of the battle, because we will delay the enemy’s turn. For a turn-based game, delaying your enemy’s turn will be very crucial, especially if you delay the boss’ turn, which is also doable in this game.
So, what are your favorite elemental break types in this game?
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