Honkai: Star RailMarch 7thBest build, teams and other guides

March 7th is introduced as a shielder and counter-attacker, and remains competent at this role until the mid game. Beyond this, she finds a unique and potentially powerful niche as an AoE Freeze support, able to afflict enemies with Crowd Control and provide defensive utility by proxy. She has a strong taunt effect on her Skills shield, and has the ability to cleanse allies upon applying said shield.

As the poster-woman of the game, March 7th is introduced to us quite early and fills the role of sustain unit until players are introduced to Natasha a little later on. She was very competent at this role at the beginning, but over time has become less desirable in this specific facet. She is still good, but her team comps are more specialised these days and usually lean into her rather potent Freezing capability.

March’s Skill gives a single ally a shield for 57% of March’s DEF plus 760 for 3 turns. If the ally’s health is above 30% of their max, they will greatly draw enemies’ aggro onto themselves. This is actually a really powerful single target shield, being even more than what Gepard’s Ultimate provides in terms of raw multiplier.

This is more or less where the positives end for this Skill. While the shield is powerful, it costs a Skill Point, and teams are usually centred around the sustain unit being an SP generator for the more powerful damage dealers and supports to use on their important skills. The increased aggro ends up being a double-edged sword quite often, as it will result in the shield getting broken more quickly on average, leading to needing a quicker reapplication of said shield. The fact that it lasts for 3 turns at base is often a non-factor when enemies are capable of dealing many strong targeted hits in a short period.

It’s often more efficient for March to target herself with her Skill and attempt to draw enemies’ attention away from the squishier targets in the party, though how successful this ends up being is entirely at the whim of the random number generator. Tingyun users will know what I’m talking about. This is also more efficient from a shield standpoint, since shields essentially just give a health buffer to allies; shields take damage based on the shielded ally’s DEF, meaning that particularly frail allies will actually get comparatively less value out of shields than high DEF allies, so someone that you are naturally inclined to build DEF on like March herself will have a ‘stronger shield’, technically.

March’s Talent is dependent on shielded allies. When a shielded ally is attacked, March will immediately counter the attacking enemy with a follow-up attack, dealing up to 100% ATK, and this can happen 2 times between March’s turns. How very disappointing that this counter does not have any natural DEF scaling to it. In fact, none of March’s offensive abilities have anything to do with her DEF. Considering later sustain options like Lynx or Fu Xuan have HP scaling and so even their Basic ATK has HP scaling instead of ATK scaling, it makes March look even more like a product of the early landscape of the game. The most positive thing to say about this Talent is that each counter contributes 10 Energy towards March’s Ultimate.

Speaking of which, March’s Ultimate is actually very much worth your attention. She deals 150% ATK to all enemies on the field, and there is a 50% base chance for them to be Frozen for 1 turn. This is invaluable… when the Freeze actually lands. A 50% base chance is nothing short of pitiful, especially since it makes all subsequent Effect Hit Rate scale off of this base value. It is entirely on purpose though, as Freeze is one of the most debilitating Crowd Control effects in the game, and having even somewhat consistent application of it can result in making encounters complete jokes.

The Ultimate also has a fairly average Energy cost of 120, meaning it is not too difficult to have this up quite frequently, especially if March herself is getting attacked, something that is similarly not too challenging to orchestrate thanks to her Skill’s aggro increase. Freeze can completely invalidate certain enemies if you use it tactically, and this utility can help offset the lack of a solid sustain unit’s kit.

Major Traces are rather straightforward. A2 will allow the application of her Shield to also cleanse 1 debuff from allies, allowing March to retain some useful utility in her back pocket should the need arise. A4 will extend the duration of the Shield to 4 turns, something that as mentioned prior will very rarely come up unless you are denying the enemy any turns at all due to Freeze, at which point this loops back around into being largely useless again.

A6 is where the money is. It increases the Ultimate’s base chance to Freeze enemies by 15%, for a new base chance of 65%. This is a small but extremely significant bump to the likelihood of Freezing enemies, as this makes all Effect Hit Rate stats worth substantially more. This does have the consequence of making March’s powerful Freeze focused build inaccessible until much later on into the game, but it acts as a nice transition into said build, as around that point March’s solo sustain capabilities take a nosedive.

March’s Eidolons are not super impactful barring the first one. E1 will regenerate 6 Energy for March every time she Freezes a target with her Ultimate. This greatly improves the uptime on March’s Ultimate and depending on investment level and luck, can result in March keeping enemies near permanently Frozen, often completely eliminating any risk they might have posed. If seeking to actively use March as a Freeze support, this Eidolon should absolutely be on your radar. E4 can also provide more Energy via more counters but is less impactful than E1 for pure Energy gains.

E6 seems tantalising but you have to really think about how much healing 4% of a character’s Max HP per turn is. If you thought ‘that doesn’t really seem like that much’, you’re correct! It’s near meaningless and does not do anywhere near enough to offset March’s weaknesses.

Because of how March’s kit interacts with itself, she is a very SP intensive sustain unit, and even when played as a Freeze support she is quite greedy with SP, wanting to use more to get her Ultimate back faster. As a result of this, March’s team comps are usually highly specialised so as to accommodate the increased SP consumption that she has. This leads to more obvious choices like Jingliu or Blade who do not consume much SP at all, but those characters have far better team setups that do not include March 7th. There’s also the rather glaring question of ‘why inflict enemies with Crowd Control if you can just kill them?’ and to that I say ‘no, you’re right, actually’.

Death is the ultimate Crowd Control. What’s already dead cannot harm you (no, the kamikaze enemies don’t count, don’t be a pedant). As with Preservation Trailblazer, many of the same concerns and criteria arise with March 7th, namely that by including her in your team, you are attempting to lose less; if you’re bringing March along for either reason, sustain or Freeze, your team is likely already in dire straits, and so this is simply a way of buying yourself more time to hopefully kill the enemy before they kill you.

For players concerned with optimisation, it’s a safe bet to say that, at least as of the time of writing this, there is never a situation in which March 7th is a more optimal teammate choice over someone else. Enemies very rarely lose the battle of attrition, and even when they do, you’re unlikely to come out unscathed either. In scenarios like Memory of Chaos where you have both a cycle limit as well as the requirement to have everyone be alive at the end, March may be able to facilitate the latter, but won’t do much of anything about expediting enemy expirations, even if invested very well. 

However if she is well invested, she’s also rarely a terrible choice, so it’s difficult to fault the player whichever way they choose to go. March’s kit makes her quite versatile and depending on the exact level of investment, she can easily pivot from one gameplan to the other; combat going well and don’t need to shield? Enjoy endlessly Freezing the enemy while restoring SP; things getting a bit grim? You have her shield to fall back on.

Otherwise, dedicated Crowd Control doesn’t really have a place at the moment. Until such a time comes about, March 7th is a ‘lose less’ unit who can find surprising use in many scenarios, even if she is ultimately almost always fated to be replaced by stronger and more precisely picked teammates. Still, she is someone you may wish to have ready to go as there are really very few easily accessible Ice units, and she really ruins Ice weak enemies’ days.