Honkai: Star RailJingliuBest build, teams and other guides

Jingliu is a highly competitive damage dealer who has Action Advance in her kit, granting her substantially more actions over time. The mysterious moonlit woman formerly renowned as the Sword Champion of the Luofu, Jingliu repeatedly proves that she is deserving of that title, and her feats in the game are no exception. Well, rather were, not are as things have changed quite a lot since her glory days, but more about this later.

Jingliu’s kit revolves primarily around her Talent. Jingliu can accumulate stacks of Syzygy, up to 3 in total. Whenever she has at least 2 stacks of Syzygy, she enters the Spectral Transmigration state. Entering this Spectral state will immediately advance her action by 100%, meaning it is now her turn. Note that this is different from an Extra Action; any kind of buffs or debuffs will continue to tick down on this advanced action as normal. Under the Spectral state, Jingliu gains up to 50% CRIT Rate at max Trace level, and her Skill is replaced by a special Enhanced version.

Using attacks under Spectral Transmigration will siphon 4% Max HP from all other allies to increase Jingliu’s ATK for the current attack. This part is written confusingly but it takes the total HP it steals from allies and multiplies it by 540% to get the total ATK increase it provides to Jingliu, up to a cap of 180% base ATK at max Trace level. With well-built characters in your team, this cap is pretty much attainable each and every time you attack in the Spectral state, resulting in far greater damage values than you’d otherwise expect.

Ordinarily, Jingliu’s Skill is a single-target attack dealing up to 200% of her ATK. At the same time, it grants her 1 stack of Syzygy. This is her primary way of obtaining stacks of Syzygy for the purposes of her Talent. Under her Spectral state, this Skill becomes Enhanced, becoming a Blast AoE dealing 250% ATK to the primary target and 125% to adjacent foes. Most importantly, this Enhanced Skill does not cost a Skill Point, instead consuming 1 Stack of Syzygy. Her Spectral state will end upon reaching 0 stacks of Syzygy.

Jingliu’s Ultimate deals 300% ATK to a single enemy and 150% to adjacent foes. This will also grant 1 stack of Syzygy after the attack ends. While this can help her more quickly enter her Spectral state from base, it’s far more effective to use it while already within the Spectral Transmigration state, as this will allow her Ultimate to benefit from the ATK increase from the HP syphon, as well as the increased CRIT Rate. This has the additional benefit of extending Spectral Transmigration for an extra turn, meaning you can get a third Enhanced Skill in before you run out of Syzygy.

Usually, I don’t mention characters’ Techniques unless they’re of particular note, and Jingliu’s most definitely is. She creates a dimension around herself for 20s, freezing all enemies around you. Entering combat while the dimension is active will immediately regenerate 15 Energy for Jingliu and grant a stack of Syzygy. This head start is nothing particularly new since a lot of characters have something like this, but it also has a 100% base chance of Freezing all enemies for 1 turn. Because this is a dimension effect, this Freeze will also be reapplied at the start of every new enemy wave, which is exceptionally powerful, especially in Memory of Chaos.

Jingliu’s Bonus Traces are pretty impactful for her. A2 provides Jingliu a 35% increase to Effect RES during Spectral Transmigration, helping combat Crowd Control effects somewhat. A6 provides her Ultimate with 20% extra damage if used during Spectral Transmigration, further incentivizing using it during that state. A4 is potentially quite significant as well, offering a 10% Action Advance upon using her ordinary Skill, reducing the downtime between the end of the previous Spectral Transmigration and the beginning of her next one.

Jingliu also has the first instance of SPD Minor Traces, giving her an additional 9 SPD. Note that like all Minor Traces, this is not added to the base value and is instead additional. She’s also got an absurd 37% CRIT DMG from Traces. Coupled with her 50% CRIT Rate from Spectral Transmigration, she has a lot of free stats to work with.

This can create an interesting dilemma however. These stats encourage going for a CRIT DMG chest piece which is likely to be her best choice, but because of the free CRIT Rate she gets, it’s actually quite possible to reach 100% and reach the fabled realm of guaranteed crits. Attaining this with a CRIT DMG chest piece, so as to retain a high CRIT DMG stat along with the 100% CRIT Rate, can be quite challenging.

Eidolons are not necessary at all, but E1 is potentially quite enticing; it gives Jingliu 24% extra CRIT DMG for 1 turn when using her Ultimate or Enhanced Skill, and if only a single target is attacked, the target will receive additional damage which drastically increases Jingliu's single target damage potential.

Jingliu is very flexible in her team setups - because of Jingliu’s low and infrequent SP usage, she can take advantage of some quite SP-hungry supports like Bronya. Bronya is a very potent pairing due to Jingliu’s kit revolving around total action count, and with both of them having a way to fully Turn Advance Jingliu to the front, Jingliu ends up having a ridiculous amount of turns over the course of a fight, leading to more damage and significantly more Toughness damage. Sunday can also act as a replacement for Bronya and since Jingliu doesn't consume that many Skill Points, he doesn't need his Signature to work well.

Additionally, because of the low SP expenditure, Jingliu is also highly capable of acting as a secondary damage dealer for a team. Similarly, she is also able to have a secondary damage dealer act alongside her, potentially even one that also occasionally enjoys using SP, provided you still generate enough through your other two party members.

While nowadays, Jingliu doesn't sit at the top of the DPS food chain anymore as The Herta, Boothill, Acheron, Firefly and Feixiao are on another level, she's still a competent damage dealer who can be used when Ice-weak enemies appear. Sadly, her multipliers aged badly as what made her great in the past (her self-buffs) now hinders her as her damage ceiling is quite lower compared to other DPS characters. Maybe one day a Support will be released that will bring her back to her glory days, but till then it's hard to justify using her over other, stronger, options.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to look up how to pronounce ‘Syzygy’.