Honkai: Star RailLingshaBest build, teams and other guides

Lingsha is an exceptionally powerful Abundance sustain unit. Similar to Gallagher, Lingsha consolidates efficient and potent teamwide healing with staggeringly high Toughness damage, both in single-target and AoE scenarios. She has a summoned entity called Fuyuan that acts like Numby, having its own turn in the Action Order and attacking independently of Lingsha. Fuyuan attacks in an AoE and heals the entire party in the same action, and will even provide a teamwide cleanse. When you factor in that she will also debuff enemies to make them take 25% more Break DMG, scales off of Break Effect, and even has an emergency heal that doubles as offence, it's no surprise that Lingsha is one of the best sustain units we've ever seen.

The silently seething new Cauldron Master of the Luofu has graced us with her presence. Lingsha follows in the footsteps of everyone's favourite follower of the Enigmata by being a Break focused sustain. Gallagher sets an extraordinarily high bar, especially given that he's a 4-star, but you may be glad to know that Lingsha meets those standards and even has further synergy with more team archetypes. How much do you personally need the Cauldron Master is up to you, but her power is undeniable.

Lingsha summons a fluffy little bunny called Fuyuan with her Skill. Fuyuan is a summoned unit like Numby, having its own turn in the Action Order and a base SPD of 90 and a base action count of 3. Fuyuan launches a follow-up attack on its turn, hitting all enemies and dealing up to 75% ATK to all foes hit. Interestingly, it also deals an additional instance of DMG to a random single enemy, prioritising foes with Toughness above 0 and who are Fire Weak. This means this follow-up attack deals double the Toughness damage to the unlucky enemy chosen to receive the extra hit. In single-target scenarios this naturally always occurs against the primary foe.

At the same time as this AoE follow-up attack happens, Fuyuan will also restore HP to all allies equal to 12% ATK plus 360. This will also dispel 1 debuff from all allies as well! This means in a single action, Fuyuan is attacking all enemies, with a particular hatred for one of them, and healing and cleansing the party. That's a remarkably strong effect just on its own, made even better by the fact that Fuyuan is capable of acting independently of Lingsha, so not only do you not need to worry about Fuyuan missing out on acting if Lingsha is crowd-controlled, Fuyuan can actively cleanse the crowd control Lingsha is currently affected by outside of your turn.

Lingsha's Skill itself deals up to 80% ATK in an AoE and restores the party's HP by up to 14% ATK plus 420. Yet another example of an offensive defence. Man, the Xianzhou really knows how to pump out Harmacists. Using this Skill will also Advance Fuyuan's next action by 20%, bumping up the next follow-up attack and also increasing the action count of Fuyuan by 3. Fuyuan can have a maximum action count of 5. When Fuyuan's action count reaches 0 or if Lingsha departs this mortal realm, Fuyuan will disappear.

Lingsha's Ultimate will debuff all enemies with Befog for 2 turns, making them take up to 25% increased Break DMG. She then deals Fire DMG to all enemies on the field, up to 150% ATK, and simultaneously restores all allies' HP for up to 12% ATK plus 360. In addition, this will Action Advance Fuyuan by 100%, meaning they will act immediately after. A simple ability, but still following the trend Lingsha has shown thus far, performing both an offensive and defensive function simultaneously.

It is worth noting that this is something the venerable Gallagher and the gambler Aventurine lack in their kits, or rather something they had to give up for their powerful offensive utility. Not having a reliable panic heal or panic shield is absolutely devastating in certain (cough Bossventurine) encounters; even if you're a fan of IX, Gundams, Cowboy Bebop, or Abdominal Muscles, reaching Peak™ takes time, and Lingsha can make sure you have the time to get to it. The 100% Advance for Fuyuan is just the cherry on top, meaning Lingsha can very easily full heal the party in a single action, and since the Energy cost for the Ultimate is a generous 110, it's up quite frequently.

Her Bonus Ability Traces are also quite important, so make sure not to skimp on them. Her A2 increases Lingsha's ATK and Outgoing Healing based on her Break Effect; 25% BE is converted into bonus ATK and 10% BE is converted to Outgoing Healing. The maximum increase she can have of each stat is 50% ATK and 20% Outgoing Healing, which means you need 200% Break Effect to max this out. It's a very nice free boost for building how you would be doing so anyway.

A4 is particularly important as it makes Lingsha's Basic ATK restore an additional 10 Energy, making it have parity with her Skill for Energy regeneration. Given that her Ult only costs 110 Energy, this helps out greatly in getting it up more frequently and also assists in SP economy as you won't be incentivised to use her Skill any more than you need to in order to keep Fuyuan active.

Lastly, A6 will allow Fuyuan to perform emergency manoeuvres whenever an ally falls below 60% Max HP, immediately launching the Talent's follow-up attack as an Extra Action and without consuming any action count from Fuyuan. This has the full effects of the regular follow-up; the AoE, the Toughness DMG, and the teamwide healing AND cleansing are all intact. This can only be triggered again after 2 of Lingsha's turns have elapsed. This provides even more emergency healing and Toughness DMG and can quickly remove any pesky crowd control that may be affecting your team.

Even better is that this can actually turn into an offensive utility — if Fuyuan bounces on the enemy during their turn and they have Extra Actions lined up (such as an Elite or a Boss) and Fuyuan Breaks them, you've just interrupted that whole enemy's turn, potentially while you yourself were busy cosplaying an icicle. For the particularly brave and Limbus-pilled who know that health is in fact a resource, you could potentially play into this mechanic and maximise the damage potential while mitigating the pointless overheal, but if you're just a regular player, this is a very welcome safety cushion against powerful enemies.

You should be able to see now that Lingsha just kinda works everywhere. Anything that a team might need as far as survivability goes is understandably not an issue, but these days that's par for the course for limited sustains. What's always more important is what offensive value can they bring to the team, especially since once teams are suitably built and invested in, many times it's more optimal to just not take a sustain unit with you at all. Our top dogs Gallagher and Aventurine justify their spots in Break teams and follow-up teams respectively, and Huohuo has set uses in teams that are highly Ult reliant.

So what about Lingsha then? Well... okay she's not overtaking Huohuo's niche, but Lingsha absolutely fits into both Break and follow-up archetypes without any hassle whatsoever — in fact, she competes with both Gallagher and Aventurine in their best teams as far as damage contribution is concerned. Naturally, she can be slotted into traditional teams as well. She fits everywhere, but I will actually break down the comparisons individually, since this is the absolute toppest of tiers we're comparing, and I want to do my part.

First for Break teams. Break is pretty well established at this point with turbo hitters like Boothill and Firefly making mincemeat of their opposition and dealing with the absolute hardest bosses in the game effortlessly. While Boothill does have more setups than just Super Break, both he and Firefly adore Super Break setups with the Harmony Trailblazer, and Gallagher slots in perfectly for this team, providing a much appreciated 12% Break DMG boost and dealing so much Toughness damage of his own that he can also hit like an absolute truck with the Super Break effect.

This team quite actively wants Gallagher to be present for these reasons, as even if you were to replace him with another unit for Super Break, you'd be getting arguably less damage and losing out on sustain at the same time. That's why he's the greatest in history. Lingsha is the greatest of today, and she means business. Since Lingsha's Ultimate provides a 25% Break DMG increase, it's a little more than double the benefit that Gallagher provides, and with the comparable single-target Toughness damage and equal incentive to build for Break Effect, Lingsha will also wreak havoc in Super Break setups.

It's actually a little more complicated than that. At a glance, you may think 'bigger number better' and this is partially correct. Not only does Lingsha closely match the single-target performance of Gallagher, she vastly outpaces him when it comes to AoE thanks to Fuyuan's follow-up attack covering the entire screen. Having out-of-turn healing and AoE cleansing means her defensive capabilities are also more impressive, especially as she's not having to give up Toughness or Super Break DMG to do it. Since they're both Abundance characters, they both get to use Quid Pro Quo (QPQ) to great effect, helping to grant additional Energy to the rest of the party.

The complicated part is when you look at the specific QPQ interaction and general SP economy. Lingsha is forced to use SP at least once every 3 Fuyuan actions to keep her fluffy bunny out and on the field, and while this can be mitigated by simply having a very fast-acting Lingsha with very high SPD, it is still something that needs to be accounted for and built to mitigate. Gallagher meanwhile has no incentive to use his Skill outside of very niche or dire scenarios, and he can gain additional turns through the use of his Ultimate, as it Advances his action forward by 100%.

This means Gallagher is generally more SP positive, and has more opportunities to trigger the absurdly underrated effects of QPQ. However, this is only likely to matter in specific teams with Firefly at E0 where SP is actually likely to be an issue (and indeed is an issue even with Gallagher). If the situation ever does turn dire for the team's safety, Lingsha will have an easier time dealing with that and could indeed end up saving more SP than Gallagher. Gallagher is not about to lose his usefulness or his team spots, but Lingsha had the means to contest the Super Break healer spot. Even if you already have a well invested E6 Gallagher, you still have a second team you could send him or Lingsha to. What's better than one turbo-Breaker? Twoooooo turbo-Breakers.

Next is for follow-up teams. Unless you've been living under a rock, you should be aware that follow-up is getting shilled massively, what with the release of absurdly powerful units like Claran't and 'MY GENERAL!' as well as dedicated supports like local edgy man and Robin. Hunt 7th and Topaz are in there somewhere as well, but the point is that follow-up has gone from a niche archetype to arguably the strongest general setup in the entire game. Understandably then, people are keen to have a sustain unit that can actually contribute. This is where Aventurine really started to pop off. Aside from being just a generally easy to use and popular unit, his ability to throw out a follow-up attack of his own meant he also got to play into the verbs used by Topaz and Robin while simultaneously shielding the party from damage.

Aventurine also has quite sizeable single-target Toughness damage, and his Ultimate providing an increase to CRIT DMG received by 15% is very nice, especially given that The Hunt is a prominent path in this archetype. While his follow-up attacks can sometimes feel infrequent outside of massive sweeping AoE attacks from the enemy, he is still raining chips down very often, meaning he contributes a lot to triggering effects like from Robin's Ultimate, even if it’s not maximised from taking sweeping hits from enemy AoEs. Even still, he's number 1 for a reason, and especially when things do get hectic, he's throwing chips like confetti.

Lingsha by comparison has a more consistent base rate of follow-ups due to Fuyuan appearing in the Action Order, meaning she gets to play into follow-up verbs quite frequently as well. This actually makes up for the lack of a direct damage increasing debuff like what Aventurine has on his Ultimate, and Lingsha also has the benefit of much more consistently dealing AoE DMG and Toughness, something that no doubt many Aventurine players have experienced more than once — the dreaded 'Oh come on that guy has literally a sliver of Toughness left man come on are you serious why are you like this'.

The same performance increase under hectic scenarios occurs for Lingsha as it does for Aventurine; Fuyuan's emergency Extra Action gets used more frequently and this also results in more follow-ups. Frequent Ultimate usage from Lingsha will also immediately cause Fuyuan to act, and you can see how this starts to add up very quickly. The other unspoken benefit is that Lingsha has the AoE cleanse, something Aventurine lacks. Yes, he does give a lot of Effect RES while allies are shielded and so the coveted 'just don't get CC'd??' starts to get thrown around like you're Tingtang Hong Lu where luck correlates with skill, but having a reliable way to get around crowd control is very undervalued in my experience, and many run-ending events happen precisely because 'What do you mean I got frozen again is Effect RES a lie or am I really just this bad at the game?'. You are. You are bad. But that's okay, Lingsha's got you covered.

One thing to always note is that Lingsha can never be fully SP positive because she needs to summon and refresh Fuyuan with her Skill. Aventurine, like Gallagher, has no incentive to use his Skill outside of ‘I messed up’ situations which means it’s generally easier to maintain SP positivity for the teams that like to spit out Skills with reckless abandon — something the follow-up archetype is prone to doing. It’s not a deal-breaker because it’s really quite marginal, but it is something that you have to be aware of when playing Lingsha so that your fluffy bunny friend doesn’t peace out at the worst moment imaginable.

Interestingly enough, Lingsha matches Aventurine in the team damage department as well, and this is all in addition to the other benefits she's giving you. There is just one other thing though, and that's that Aventurine is a Preservation unit and Lingsha is Abundance. '... Is he talking about Quid Pro Quo again?' — I'm talking about Quid Pro Quo again. If there's one thing that follow-up teams absolutely hate, it's having to wait for Robin to regain enough Energy to use her Ultimate again. Oftentimes this is mitigated by just killing enemies so fast that Robin's Ultimate quite literally doesn't get a chance to run out thanks to resetting AV at the start of a new wave, but this is unreliable for the vast majority of players and only really works in Memory of Chaos.

Having an Abundance unit with QPQ equipped means Robin is almost always getting the Energy that Light Cone provides, making it far more likely to have near permanent uptime on Robin's Ultimate. Previously, the optimal holder of this would in fact be... Gallagher! He's undeniably the best user for it because of how many turns he gets, but using him here means you can’t use him on the Break team. That's not ideal. But with Lingsha now in play, you get to make use of all of these benefits and QPQ on the follow-up team, while gigachad Gallagher gets to Break ankles with his regular homies.

So does this mean Aventurine is out of a job? Well... no, not really. He's still amazing at what he does, and he’s easy. Lingsha does not suddenly invalidate him. After all, even just the stuff about Toughness damage only applies if enemies are actually weak to Imaginary or Fire, so you'll have strong options for either case. Aventurine loses points because Preservation Light Cones are largely selfish and do not provide the kind of tangible benefits that Abundance Cones like Multiplication, Fine Fruit, and especially Quid Pro Quo provide. Don't bother bringing Signature Light Cones into the discussion, because Lingsha's is better than Aventurine's in a direct comparison.

Preservation really needs something like QPQ to entice people moving forward, otherwise the onus will fall on base character kits to make up the difference. Aventurine is… Aventurine. However good Lingsha is, Aventurine is just not in any danger of going anywhere any time soon. Like with Gallagher and Lingsha, what's better than one great follow-up sustain? Twooooo follow-up sustains.

Ah, but there's still Huohuo to mention. It's not really something that you can compare to, because you're not using Huohuo for her sustain capabilities most of the time. She's there for the teamwide Energy she gives with her Ultimate, which means she's pretty much a guaranteed slot for the teams she's used in; Argenti, Clara, and Yunli don't really have teams without Huohuo because of just how Ultimate reliant they all are. Lingsha can't replace that, and the argument of QPQ doesn't work because Huohuo is also Abundance and can (and probably should) use it anyway. Outside of those teams, I would say Lingsha has an easier time of actually being a sustain unit, being more SP positive than Huohuo generally, and the Break DMG increase Lingsha provides is literally always appreciated.

It's all about options. Having more is better for you, especially since there's enough characters to make several of a team comp. Two Break teams, two follow-up teams, or a Break and a follow-up. You can just make it work, and Lingsha has the unique benefit of fitting perfectly into either of them, and this actually is what I would argue is her greatest strength of all; she lets you keep the aforementioned sustains in their optimal setups because she herself is also optimal (aside from the Huohuo thing). Do you need her if you have these other sustains already? Most likely no. Is she going to be excellent and beneficial regardless? Almost certainly yes.

Lingsha does not need her Eidolons in any way to be useful and they are, as with all 5-stars, a nice bonus that doesn't get factored into her rating. Her E1 increases her Weakness Break Efficiency by 50% and automatically reduces Weakness Broken enemies' DEF by 20%. I — what in the name of The Elation is this first Eidolon?? This has to be one of the most ridiculous first Eidolons any character has ever gotten, and it's on a sustain unit of all things. Needless to say, if you go for this Eidolon, Lingsha is the de facto best sustain in the game, no question.

E2 increases all allies' Break Effect by 40% for 3 turns after using her Ultimate. E4 Lets Fuyuan restore additional HP equal to 40% ATK to the lowest HP ally when Fuyuan takes action. Lastly, E6 makes Fuyuan's presence on the field reduce all enemies' All-Type RES by 20%. Also, Fuyuan's follow-up attack will deal 4 additional instances of DMG equal to 50% ATK and each dealing half a Basic's worth of Toughness DMG to a random enemy.

Lingsha is just really damn good, and slots perfectly into multiple different team archetypes. Having someone you can use everywhere is a pretty big deal to me, as I mentioned in Jiaoqiu's review, but it may not be as big a deal for you, and that's okay. I’ve done my best to express her strengths and drawbacks, so the rest is up to you to decide.