Honkai: Star RailClaraBest build, teams and other guides

Clara is a strong retaliation-based DPS character. She has inherent damage reduction and will immediately counterattack enemies that hit her with a follow-up attack. Enemies countered will be marked and will take double damage from her Skill. Her Ultimate increases her damage reduction and greatly increases the likelihood of her getting attacked, as well as temporarily boosting her counters further.

Clara has not changed much since the launch of the game, but opinions surrounding her have. Nowadays it’s not a surprise to hear people say Clara is one of the best standard 5-star characters and is even competitive with some limited 5-stars as well. She’s a straightforward and strong unit.

The biggest source of damage comes from her Talent. Clara has a passive 10% damage reduction and enemies that hit her will get shot by Svarog. This counter deals up to 160% ATK and counts as a follow-up attack. It has no cooldown whatsoever and costs nothing, meaning that Clara gets increasing damage against faster-acting enemies. Each counter also regenerates 5 Energy.

Her Skill deals up to 120% ATK to all enemies on the field. Enemies that are countered get a status called Mark of Counter which doubles the damage they take from Clara’s next Skill. All Marks are removed after the Skill is used. As a true AoE ability, this is a very rare thing for a Destruction character to have, especially because of how strong it actually ends up being. 120% ATK to all enemies is already above average for an AoE Skill among Erudition units, but being able to potentially get 240% ATK out of it against all enemies is exceptional. This makes it good even in single-target scenarios, but it makes it an absolute force to be reckoned with in multi-target situations.

Clara’s Ultimate increases her Talent’s damage reduction by up to an extra 25% and greatly increases the chance of enemies targeting her. Both of these effects have a 2-turn duration. In addition to this, Svarog’s counter is enhanced and has its damage doubled to 320% ATK, as well as converting it into a Blast AoE that splashes 160% ATK to adjacent foes. This can occur for 2 counters before reverting to the usual counter.

These Enhanced counters can end up dealing up to 640% ATK if hitting 3 targets, and entirely outside of Clara’s turn. While you only get 2 Enhanced counters per Ultimate usage, the other effects of the Ultimate last the full 2 turns, meaning it is likely you will get many more normal counters off before the increased aggro wears off. The damage reduction also goes a long way to guaranteeing that Clara doesn’t just fall over while taking all these enemy attacks.

This Ultimate has a below-average cost of 110 Energy, which is important because of the way Clara is played; Clara wants to be hit as often as possible and wants to make maximum use of her Ultimate’s secondary effects, and as such she wants to remain at her default SPD — the absolute lowest base SPD in the game at 90. With the Energy she receives from getting hit and the Energy she gets from her counters, it is not uncommon to maintain a near 100% uptime on her Ultimate’s effects, especially when facing the stronger and faster enemies encountered in the end game.

This does also imply that slow enemies are something of a hurdle for Clara, as well as enemies that do not always attack on their turn. It’s not a huge deal most of the time because the few enemies who fit these descriptions aren’t Physical weak, but it is something you need to keep in mind.

The same note as before still applies; because Clara wishes to be the sole target for enemies, she does not want to be paired with teammates who are likely to steal aggro from her, such as Gepard or Preservation Trailblazer. This is a lot less of an issue these days as there are plenty of fantastic sustain options available that do not interfere with Clara’s pseudo-tanking ability.

The most accessible of these is Lynx, and Lynx’s Skill specifically increases the aggro that Preservation and Destruction units have. Clara fits the description of the latter, and her extremely low base SPD coupled with infinite counters makes for highly efficient use of ally buffs, and so both Clara and Lynx have high synergy with each other. Luocha as well is very efficient and can turn Clara into a sort of teamwide healer thanks to the frequency of her counters coupled with the healing field of Abyss Flower.

However, even more impressive of a pair is Huohuo. Huohuo can give Energy to the whole team and her method of healing makes it very difficult for Clara to ever die. In addition to this, Huohuo has plentiful cleanses meaning that it is also far easier for Clara to shake off pesky crowd control effects that would otherwise prevent any counters from going out. Add all of this on top of Huohuo’s 40% ATK buff that Clara can also make extremely efficient use of, and Huohuo pretty much becomes Clara’s best sustain teammate.

Clara’s Bonus Traces are boring but effective. A2 has a 35% fixed chance to remove a debuff on her whenever she’s attacked, making it possible to circumvent anything from annoying DMG Down debuffs to debilitating crowd control effects, though do keep in mind it will not prevent the application of any of these, it’ll only take effect after the next hit. A4 expounds on this by giving a 35% resistance to crowd control effects. Finally, A6 provides an unconditional 30% DMG bonus to all Svarog counters, significantly improving her damage even more.

As a standard 5-star character it is not unlikely to get Eidolons for Clara over time. None of them are really necessary for Clara to excel but I do want to point out E1 as a very high value pickup. E1 makes Marks of Counter permanent, meaning after the first time an enemy gets countered, they will forever take double damage from Clara’s Skill, which is unsurprisingly, very very powerful, and also helps improve the overall consistency of the Skill’s damage.

There is a slight degree of variance in Clara’s damage output due to her needing to be hit, but even the low end is quite competitive, and the higher end is honestly somewhat frightening. My initial prediction ended up being mostly true — Clara has stayed very useful throughout everything thus far, and I’m willing to wager once more that this will continue to be the case.