Honkai Star Rail Tier List – Offensive Supports
May. 18, 2023Honkai Star Rail Tier List – Offensive Supports
In this Honkai: Star Rail Tier List – Offensive Supports article, we’ll discuss the wide roster of Honkai: Star Rail characters, and how they measure up compared to each other. With 23 playable characters at launch, it’s important to rank them in Character Tier lists of sorts. Resources are finite in this game, and players can’t fully build every single character. In this Honkai: Star Rail Tier List for Offensive Supports, we try to help players figure out where to invest these resources.
In order to ensure that every character is given a fair opportunity for representation, I’ve decided to divide characters by the roles they can play in a team. Typically characters in Honkai: Star Rail can be categorized as follows: Single Target DPS, AOE DPS, Offensive Support, and Defensive Support. These are the main roles, with some characters embodying two roles, while others may only excel in one sub-role within their category.
In this Honkai Star Rail Tier List – Offensive Supports article, I’ll be ranking both buffers from the Harmony Path, and debuffers from the Nihility Path. These two Paths cover the offensive side in teams, which helps increase a team’s damage. For Defensive supports, check out ourHonkai Star Rail Tier List – Defensive Supports.
I will consider different factors when evaluating the characters, including the damage they can deal, the skill points they consume or generate, their survivability, and the utility they bring to the team. When it comes to Five Star characters, I assess their base kit independently, without considering any Eidolons. I rank characters who have a complete kit at E0 over those who rely heavily on Eidolons to function. As for the four-star characters, I rank them based on their potential at E1, E2, E4, or even their impressive performance at E6. As they have a chance to show as rate up in several banners, and getting high Eidolons is easier.
Defensive: AUtility: SS+Damage: ASkill Point: SS+Energy Gen: S
Bronya is the premium five-star support in our Honkai Star Rail Offensive Support Tier list. This is due to her very well-designed kit that synergizes with the top DPS character in the game. Bronya is a flexible character with a cleanse and three buffs that attack, damage, as well as provide crit damage. She can also advance the turn for herself and her allies. Thus, she provides the highest value for increasing the team’s damage.
Regardless of who’s your chosen damage dealer, Bronya has a way to increase their damage. However, she’s more of a prominent support to Seele. That’s because Seele can perform several actions in one turn, and doesn’t consume the buffs in one go.
The cleanse alone holds significant value in the utility category as enemies have the ability to disable your characters completely, and Bronya possesses the power to reverse this disabling effect. While both March and Natasha also have a cleanse, they are unable to cleanse themselves. Therefore, Bronya can step in and cleanse them when they are disabled. That not only enhances their survivability but also boosts their DPS.
Besides that, Bronya can cut the entire line and instantly advance an ally’s turn to act immediately. This costs extra SP but allows for two turns back-to-back, with the ally’s turn remaining advanced for subsequent rounds. That’s why the ability to advance turns with Bronya holds more value than the speed buff provided by other supports, such as Asta.
Finally, she has all the buffs that impact dps of the entire team. Which is a ridiculous amount of buffs that multiply with each other. These buffs are very impactful, assuming you ensure the survivability of the team bydefensive supports. Occasionally, survivability takes several team slots, leaving no room for offensive supports. This is the only scenario where Bronya may not find a place on the team. However, in all other cases, she stands as the best character to slot in.
Bronya has a 100% critical rate on her normal attack and advances her own turn. This allows her to deliver substantial single-target damage while also providing SP to the team. She naturally builds full Crit Damage and speed to enhance the strength and uptime of her buffs. Additionally, these two stats contribute to increasing her personal DPS in the process.
Similar to Gepard, Bronya can rely solely on her normal attack and ultimate to buff the team. Her normal attack advances her turn, granting her more turns than any damage dealer in the team. This allows her to generate skill points faster than the DPS consumes them. Consequently, Bronya can find opportunities to use her own skills when needed, obtaining even more turns for the damage dealer.
You can’t find a better SP generator than Bronya, and that’s why she’s able to support even the most SP hungry damage dealers, such asSeele, andYanqing.
Bronya has an ultimate that costs 120 energy, and she can refund energy in various ways. If played as a pure normal attack spammer, she gets more turns faster and charges her ultimate quickly enough. If used as a natural unit, alternating between normal attacks and skills, she generates more energy from her skills.
That way, she remains flexible, and has consistent uptime on ultimates. Especially with the “Energy Generation Rate” as a main stat on a five star Rope, and Speed on Boots.
Any team that has enough defensive capabilities and one damage dealer usually has Bronya as the best pick in the fourth slot. Some teams can utilize a single defensive support, allowing for Bronya to be paired with another offensive support, such as Tingyun.
However, pure Tank teams that use three defensive supports (two shielders and a healer) have no room for an offensive support at all. Certain niche teams might favor a hybrid offensive and defensive support such as Welt over Bronya, as Welt provides additional survivability, which I will elaborate on later.
Defensive: SUtility: SSDamage: SSkill Point: AEnergy Gen: S
Welt is a five-star debuffer with an Imaginary element. He stacks slowing effects upon slowing effect and delays enemy turns in addition to that. Effectively, he prevents enemies from reacting for an extended period of time. Moreover, at A2, he inflicts another debuff that increases the damage taken by enemies from all sources. Additionally, he excels as a damage dealer in both AOE and single target scenarios. When all of these factors are combined, Welt earns a remarkably high rank on our Honkai Star Rail Offensive Supports Tier List.
If you pair Welt with high speed on your characters, you can continuously engage enemies for multiple rounds without giving them a chance to react. Not only that, but the action delay allows other debuffs to stay on enemies longer, as long as their turn doesn’t occur. You can use this with strong disabling debuffs like freeze, to keep enemies frozen for longer.
Delaying actions increases team DPS, and, at the same time, prevents enemies from attacking, thereby enhancing defensive capabilities as well. So Welt functions as a pseudo defensive support, while providing a highly potent offensive buff. The debuff from his A2 inflicts vulnerability to all enemies, resulting in them taking 12% more damage from all sources. As a result, all damage-over-time effects, direct damage, and break damage are multiplied by 12%. This is an immensely powerful effect, with a decent uptime of two turns. It can be further amplified when paired with Pela’s Defense shred, for example.
Welt is the only true sub-DPS character in this Honkai Star Rail Offensive Supports Tier List. His damage is comparable to that of some dedicated AOE damage dealers in the game, and his debuffs allow him to deal even more damage. His skill hits three times, and if enemies are slowed, each hit generates an additional hit from his talent. Therefore, in a single target scenario, Welt hits the enemy a total of six times per skill use.
Then he benefits from his A2 debuff and further buffs himself with his A6 traces. His minor traces consist of damage and attack stats, allowing him to comfortably build damage stats on his relics. All of these elements contribute to his impressive DPS, which seamlessly complements his offensive and defensive support roles.
Here you have the option to play Welt as a full DPS, spamming his skill every turn, or playing more naturally. If you choose to spam his skill, you can continuously deal damage, slow enemies, delay their turns, and recharge his ultimate faster. This does cost SP, but since Welt can effectively replace a secondary DPS, his SP consumption is well worth the investment.
The other option is to use his skill solely for debuffing enemies and alternate it with his normal attack. The slow debuff lasts for two turns, but these turns belong to the enemies, allowing Welt to go through several rounds without these turns expiring. This makes him one of the few characters who can maintain his skill debuffs while still generating SP. As a result, Welt can be SP positive, leaving significant room for DPS characters to consume SP.
Similar to most characters in this Honkai Star Rail Offensive Supports Tier List, Welt has a 120 energy cost, which is on the higher side. However, Welt has a trace that refunds an extra 10 energy upon using his ultimate, effectively reducing his energy cost.
On top of that, he can comfortably utilize the “Thief of Shooting Star” Relic set to increase break effect and generate more energy upon breaking. Additionally, he can benefit from the “Sprightly Vonwacq” accessories set and prioritize Energy regeneration rate as the main stat on Rope. He manages to extract a significant amount of energy from two casts of his skill and one cast of his ultimate, although it may not be enough to fully refund the ultimate. However, his debuffs last for two enemy turns, and he continues to delay enemy turns. This allows you to utilize Welt for a third turn and refund his ultimate without his debuffs expiring. As a result, his energy generation reaches the same level as Bronya’s, or even surpasses it.
Welt is not always the ideal choice for the support slot; however, there are many enemies with an Imaginary weakness. Welt’s strength lies in the fact that all his utility comes from directly hitting enemies, making him a potent shield breaker. This is a unique feature that not many other characters can replicate in this Honkai Star Rail Offensive Supports Tier list.
You can modify the team composition to place Welt in the DPS slot, offensive support slot, or even the second defensive support slot. The ability to effectively lock enemies out of action is incredibly powerful, reducing the team’s need for extensive survivability.
Defensive: AUtility: SS+Damage: ASkill Point: SEnergy Gen: B
I’ve debated extensively whether to place Tingyun one or two ranks below Bronya. In terms of the strength of offensive buffs, Tingyun comes close to Bronya. However, she falls short in every other aspect. She is still a formidable character, and it is likely that you will use both Bronya and Tingyun on different sides in the Forgotten Hall. However, unlike Bronya, Tingyun is more susceptible to power creep and may be replaced by newer supports in the future. That’s why her ranking differs from that of Bronya and Welt.
Tingyun can provide a strong attack and damage increase buff to a single ally, and her ultimate has the ability to refund energy. If you have a hyper carry damage dealer, such as Seele or Jing Yuan, you can derive a lot of value from Tingyun’s buffs. However, hyper carries require substantial investment to compensate for the lack of sub-DPS characters in the team. Therefore, Tingyun’s style of buffing a single ally restricts the team composition options.
On the other hand, the energy refund for an ally is amazing for immediate rotation manipulation. It provides 50 energy and can be used on any ally, whether they are a damage dealer to increase DPS or a defensive support to aid the team. At E2, Tingyun can refund even more energy to allies if they defeat enemies, and at E6, she gains an additional 10 energy on an ultimate cast.
Tingyun’s buff scales with the Attack stat, so we prioritize building her with almost full Attack, Speed, and Energy. This increases her damage slightly, although not significantly, as there is no room for critical stats in her build.
The other aspect of Tingyun’s kit involves performing joint attacks with an ally and enabling allies to perform joint attacks with her. This provides a slight increase in DPS, although not to the same extent as characters like March 7th, who can counterattack three times per turn.
The buff from Tingyun’s skill lasts for three full turns, giving her ample opportunity to generate SP. She works best when paired with a damage dealer on the team. After buffing them with her skill, she can focus on spamming normal attacks for the remaining two turns. This allows her to generate SP more efficiently compared to characters like Welt, but not as much as Bronya, Gepard, or Trailblazer, for example.
Tingyun has a high cost of 130 energy for her ultimate, which makes it more challenging to refund compared to her skill. Additionally, since she only uses her skill once every three turns, her normal rotation generates less energy overall.
At A6, Tingyun gains an additional 5 energy every turn, which provides some assistance. However, she still requires more than three turns to refund one ultimate, unless there is a significant investment in energy generation. Additionally, the buff from Tingyun’s ultimate only lasts for two turns, limiting its uptime.
While this may not be a significant issue when supporting Seele, who can perform numerous actions in one turn, it becomes a more crucial consideration when choosing Tingyun over other supports for different damage dealers.
Being limited to a certain team archetype is not always a bad thing, as long as the archetype is strong and competitive. Tingyun excels in supporting a single damage dealer alongside another offensive support and only one defensive support. It is within this team composition that Tingyun truly shines and demonstrates her full power.
Defensive: CUtility: SSDamage: ASkill Point: AEnergy Gen: S
Asta is a fantastic character in this Honkai Star Rail Offensive Supports Tier Lists. If it weren’t for the limitation of some of her buffs being exclusive to fire damage only, she could have reached an S tier. Asta excels in breaking shields, providing a team-wide speed buff, and attack buff. Additionally, she adds a fire damage multiplier to fire characters, further enhancing their damage output.
The speed buff is indeed the most determining factor in Asta’s kit because it helps all allies get more turns. It is only outclassed by Bronya’s turn advancement ability, which cuts the line entirely instead of simply speeding up characters. However, Bronya can only advance her own turn and that of one ally, while Asta can speed up the entire team. So, why is Asta nowhere near Bronya on the tier list?
The reason is that Asta’s other buffs are much smaller. Or to be more specific, she requires a lot of investment to become more impactful. Her speed buff requires a lot of levels to give allies more turns in a single round. Her attack buff needs a lot of Eidolons to slow down the loss of stacks. Her ultimate needs a lot of energy recharge to maintain the speed buff. When Asta achieves all of this, she becomes a really potent support, and on par with higher-ranking characters in Honkai Star Rail Offensive Support Tier List.
Asta does average damage on single target and low damage in AOE. She compensates for this by doing a very high shield break, so it’s recommended to build Asta with a shield break effect. That increases her damage, but only against enemies with a fire weakness.
Asta will become much stronger with a character that can enforce fire weakness on enemies, such as Silver Wolf. Silver Wolf will create a mono fire team, enabling Asta to deal more damage, and the team as well. In this type of team, she surely deserves a higher rank.
Sadly, Asta’s shield breaking and damage are both tied to her skill. She cannot generate a lot of SP if she wants to deal damage or break shields. If she uses normal attacks only to generate SP, she loses a lot of her utility., and generates energy far slower. So this leaves players in a dilemma of how to effectively use Asta.
There’s an expensive solution for this issue, by using a five-star light cone such as “But the Battle Isn’t Over” from Starlight Exchange. However, acquiring a copy of it requires a significant time investment spanning several weeks, and you may have to consider allocating it to another support character like Bronya.
After a lot of testing, I found out that Asta can get higher than normal energy from the “Meshing Cogs” light cone. Instead of getting the standard 30 energy from skill, and a bonus 8 energy from the light cone; Asta can get 14 extra energy from using skill, for a total of 44 energy per turn. That increases Asta’s uptime of her ultimate, especially if you invest in other energy generation sources, such as the main stat on Rope, and a 4 pieces set bonus of “Thief of Shooting Star”. Her E4 also adds a lot of energy generation.
So if you build Asta properly, her energy becomes less of an issue. This way, her usefulness in the team increases noticeably.
Asta has general buffs but has typically more buffs aimed at fire characters, and against fire weakness. This makes her quite a match as a fourth slot in a lot of teams, but usually, there are some better choices. In mono fire teams, she has a huge advantage, especially if we get more fire damage dealers in the future.
Defensive: AUtility: SDamage: BSkill Point: SSEnergy Gen: S
You can think of Pela as four-star, budget version of Welt. Similar to him, she inflicts debuffs on enemies, allowing the entire team to increase their damage. However, she lacks the insane turn delay and slow Welt inflicts. Pela’s effectiveness improves with higher-tier Eidolons and Traces, and she adds an additional damage buff to the next ally who takes a turn after her.
However, this buff and the main gimmick of Pela are tied to removing a buff from the enemy. Not all enemies have buffs to remove, so Pela is a situational character. But when enemies have potent buffs, Pela is a hard counter to them. She can even remove stacking buffs from bosses, and reduce their damage output. She can also remove the revive buff from Mara-Struck enemies, removing their second life entirely.
At max Eidolons and traces, Pela shreds Ice resistance, shreds Def, buffs the next ally’s damage, and increases the team’s effect hit rate. Of course, she also removes enemy buffs, assuming they have them. This makes for a very good supportive kit, especially in situations where Pela can capitalize on her buff removal.
Pela is also a valuable support for freeze teams, particularly when paired with Welt and an Ice-based main DPS. Together, they can freeze enemies, apply slowing effects, and delay their turns. This effectively locks enemies from acting and makes them much less dangerous. Pela’s Def shred multiplies with Welt’s debuff, amplifying each other’s effects. This combination is especially advantageous in challenging game modes like the Simulated Universe with the Nihility Path.
Pela’s damage starts off not being so great. However, with a Def shred, and ice weakness break, she does elevate some damage. With E4 and E6, Pela’s damage sees a considerable upgrade. But the question remains, should you build her for damage, or more for utility, such as effect hit rate?
Pela can focus on using normal attacks to generate SPas her skill is only necessary when an enemy buffs themselves with potent effects. As a result, her SP generation is similar to that of Fire Trailblazer, which is one of the highest in the game. Pela has a higher base speed than Trailblazer, and her E2 further increases her speed after buff removal. This means that any SP Pela uses is quickly replenished by her faster normal attack rate, allowing her to regenerate more SP.
This high SP generation is a great tool in Pela’s kit, but it is not exclusive to her. If it weren’t for her situational nature, I would rank her higher among the characters.
Pela’s Talent is focused on generating more energy for herself after attacking a debuffed enemy. This can be triggered by enemies with their defense reduced by Pela or having any debuff from any other ally. It is easy to trigger, and the amount of energy she regains per turn is significant.
This is paired with a slightly lower energy cost of 110 for her ultimate, making Pela a comfortable character with consistent debuff uptime.
Pela’s preferred teams are freeze teams and teams with dual debuffers like Welt. However, she can also fit well in many other teams as a general offensive support. In comparison to another four-star support like Tingyun, Pela may have slightly lower offensive capabilities, but she provides buffs to the entire team in an AOE. Therefore, in Forgotten Hall, she is often a good replacement if you don’t have three other offensive supports available to fill both teams.
Stay tuned for more Honkai: Star Rail Character Guides and be sure to drop by ourTwitch Channelif you have questions about the game. For more Honkai: Star Rail content, check ourHonkai Star Rail Tier List – Defensive Supports. As well as,Serval Build Guide,Qingque Build Guide,Dan Heng Build Guide,Arlan Build Buide,Sushang Build Guide,Tingyun Build Guide,Pela Build Guide,Hook Build Guide,Bronya Build Guide,Asta Build Guide,Natasha Build Guide,March 7th Build Guide,Welt Build Guide,Seele Build Guide,Sampo Build Guide,Yanqing Build Guide,Gepard Build Guide.
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