Honkai: Star RailPelaBest build, teams and other guides

Pela is a universally applicable debuffer support that Shreds enemy DEF and can dispel buffs from enemies. Her DEF Shred is AoE and lasts for 2 turns, allowing pretty much every damage dealer character to take advantage of it. As a 4-star unit, Pela is the most accessible source of DEF Shred in the game and is very often found in many teams for this reason.

Definitely not an underage drinker, Pela is a pretty terrifying support character. Because of the way that DEF reduction works, it’s one of the few things in the game where having more of it is actually always beneficial. By virtue of simply existing and occasionally using her Ultimate, Pela can increase your team’s overall damage by a significant amount.

So let’s start there, shall we? Pela’s Ultimate deals up to 100% ATK to all enemies and has a 100% base chance to inflict Exposed onto all enemies. Exposed enemies have their DEF reduced by up to 40% for 2 turns. Big. Huge. Wonderful. I could end the review here to be honest, this is pretty much all anyone cares about when it comes to Pela anyway, but I won’t because there’s still more to say.

Stacking this Ultimate’s effects with other sources of DEF reduction or DEF ignore will compound the effects further, resulting in even greater increases to damage dealt. This can be achieved through quite a few ways, but the big one that comes to mind is the Genius of Brilliant Stars Relic Set. Did you know how good this set is? It’s pretty good, you know. The 4 piece giving a 10% DEF ignore to everything is already pretty good, but increasing to 20% ignore against Quantum-weak foes is astounding. It’s no surprise that Pela often finds her way onto teams with Quantum characters.

Now, just because stacking more DEF reduction is good doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t benefit more from pursuing other methods of increasing damage after a point; it’s all relative to what your chosen damage dealers are after and what enemies you’re going against. A not-so-subtle reminder that the game with team-building elements in it requires team-building.

Pela’s Skill deals up to 210% ATK to a single enemy and will remove 1 buff from them. Extremely underrated ability as it completely ruins the Mara-struck soldiers and Sanctus Medicus Shape Shifters pesky buffs. It also greatly screws over buff reliant enemies like the Searing Prowler, though keep in mind it’ll only work on buffs that don’t have the Unremovable tag next to them.

I know that by looking at the damage multiplier of Pela’s Skill, some of you are going ‘yo, so is DPS pela viable?!’ to which I say, relax, it’s not that deep. Pela is and will always be a support character. If you are finding yourself crutching on the absolutely insignificant damage that Pela is bringing to your team, you have far greater problems to worry about. I am saying this now because Pela’s Eidolons are also hilarious in how hard they bait players into thinking damage Pela is a thing. It isn’t, so desist.

Pela’s Talent will restore up to an additional 10 Energy if the enemy is debuffed after her attack. This only works on a per attack basis, so you don’t get 50 Energy back for debuffing 5 enemies. Even still, 10 Energy back after using her Ultimate is extremely significant, as her Ultimate already has a below average cost of 110. With some Energy Regeneration Rate in your build, Pela’s going to be getting her Ultimate back at blazing speed.

Her Bonus Traces are also largely trolling you. A2 increases her DMG dealt to debuffed enemies by 20%, and A6 increases the DMG of her next attack by 20% after her Skill removes a buff from an enemy. Remember what I said, this does not make her a dps. It does not. This is not some big brain play to get you to think ‘oh maybe it’s actually good’ please just listen to the words I’m saying. A4 is actually tangibly useful for not just Pela but her whole team, increasing everyone’s Effect Hit Rate by 10% while she’s alive and on the field.

There are only two major Eidolons worth considering, and that’s E1 and E4. E1 grants 5 Energy whenever an enemy is defeated, contributing to Pela’s already good Energy economy, and E4 will allow her Skill to reduce a target’s Ice RES by 12% for 2 turns, offering yet another damage increase for her Ice based damage dealers. E5 is actually also very significant since it raises the level of your Ultimate and Talent, increasing the DEF Shred percentage and Energy return respectively.

Pela is quite SP positive due to the complete lack of a need to use her Skill — it’s a choice you can choose to make depending on circumstances, such as having a surplus of SP anyway, needing that little bit of extra Energy for her Ultimate, or to really ruin the day of a buff-happy enemy. Outside of those situations, you can pretty happily Basic ATK indefinitely. Especially with the Before the Tutorial Mission Starts Light Cone, Pela can stay fully SP positive while also managing to get pretty frequent 2-turn Ultimates, leading to full uptime or near enough that on her AoE DEF Shred. Thankfully, in the 2.6 patch, the previously event-exclusive Light Cone has been added to the Herta Store and now everyone can easily get it.

With her abilities the way they are, Pela can quite easily slot into pretty much any team at all, but she works best with Acheron and Dr. Ratio - as both rely on debuffs to work. Without a need to build any specific stats either, it’s well within reason to make Pela both tanky and fast to guarantee great team SP economy as well as consistent Ultimates. This is especially true for a fast Pela, since her debuff only ticks down on enemy turns, so as long as Pela is faster than the enemies, you end up giving yourself more time to regain her Ultimate while still maintaining full uptime on the debuff on enemies.

If you don’t have Pela, get Pela. This is not a request, this is a Belobog order. ‘If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight!’ Sun Tzu said that, and I’d say he knows a little more about fighting than you do, pal, because he invented it—