Honkai: Star RailSparkleBest build, teams and other guides

Sparkle has much of the power that Bronya provides while having none of the SP issues. Sparkle actually increases the SP cap of the team while she’s on the team and has no trouble restoring the majority of those reserves with her Ultimate. Her Skill provides a massive CRIT DMG boost to a single character while Action Advancing them, and her Talent will provide a teamwide DMG boost whenever allies consume SP. She’s a force to be reckoned with.

It really seems like every new character really challenges what our perception of ‘acceptable levels of crazy’ is. In this instance, this applies both to the in-universe character as well as their playable counterpart. Sparkle takes your preconceived notions of ‘buff cost’ and tosses them straight out the window while laughing maniacally.

Sparkle is a harmony buffer much like Bronya is, with many of the same sorts of benefits. I’ll get this out of the way quickly so pay attention: no, Bronya is not ‘dead’; no, Sparkle is not a catch-all replacement for Bronya in all scenarios. Both characters have their benefits and drawbacks and some characters will always prefer one over the other. Both are good, both are great. Having said that, I think Sparkle is substantially easier to utilise to her fullest potential. 

Sparkle’s Talent starts this trend quite strong. When Sparkle is on the field, she increases the SP cap by 2, for a new total SP cap of 7. Whenever any ally consumes 1 SP all allies will have their DMG increased by up to 6% for 2 turns, and this can stack up to 3 times for a total DMG boost of 18%. With Sparkle, you can just have more SP than any other team would be able to have, and you also get what is essentially a permanent 18% DMG boost to all characters on your team.

Sparkle’s Ultimate will immediately recover 4 SP for the team, meaning the increased cap is put to good use. This will also grant the Cipher effect to all allies, increasing the per-stack DMG boost of her Talent by up to an additional 10% for 2 turns. This means she essentially grants a 48% DMG boost upon using her Ultimate; you don’t have to reapply her Talent’s effects through more Skill uses to reap the benefits, the extra 30% DMG boost gets added on the second you use her Ultimate, assuming you already had 3 stacks of her Talent.

Instantly gaining back 4 SP is extraordinarily powerful as it pretty much outright fixes certain other DPS characters’ rather lacking SP economy. Even if Sparkle herself only ends up very slightly SP positive, it is also important to factor in when this SP recovery occurs, as proper timing of this will result in someone like Imbibitor Lunae being able to sling out Fulgurant Leaps on his turn without any worry at all about disrupting the rest of the team’s plans. Sparkle’s Ultimate also has the same quirk that Huohuo’s Ultimate has, in that using it at the start of a character’s turn will not see the duration go down at the end of it, meaning you can effectively extend the Cipher duration to 3 turns with careful management, potentially even resulting in a permanently buffed DPS character if all else goes to plan.

Now we’re at the strong part. Sparkle’s Skill will target a single ally and Action Advance them by 50%. In addition to this, she will also buff the ally’s CRIT DMG by up to 24% of Sparkle’s CRIT DMG, plus up to an additional flat 45% for 1 turn. The Action Advance is non-functional on Sparkle herself. This is a very similar ability to Bronya’s Skill, but it differs in that it provides a CRIT DMG buff instead of a general DMG buff, and it’s only half the Action Advance.

‘Half the Action Advance? Doesn’t that make it a lot worse, then?’ Yes and no… Mostly no. The CRIT DMG makes it technically less universally applicable since DoT characters can’t make use of it at all, but the 50% Action Advance actually belies a hidden strength, which is that it is substantially harder to fail to make use of a 50% Action Advance compared to a full Action Advance. Consider that you have up to 50% of the targeted character’s Action Value in which to Advance them forward and lose no value from this Skill, but if you try and do the same with Bronya’s Skill, technically you only ever get 100% effectiveness when they are buffed immediately after their last turn — and even then that’s only true if Bronya is SPD tuned to be -1 SPD compared to them.

In many of the different playstyles Bronya has to manage the team’s SP reserves, it’s quite likely that you will very rarely be fully utilising the extremely powerful instant action her Skill provides. With Sparkle and her respective Skill providing ‘only’ a 50% Action Advance, you can be sure that you are getting the full value of that every single time you use it, and it can actually create a much easier time actually boosting a chosen DPS. This is even more noticeable with Sparkle’s Ultimate providing a massive influx of Skill Points with which she can continue to use her Skill. Even though in terms of raw vacuum numbers Bronya can hold the edge, in practicality (and for the overwhelming majority of players that are not as tryhard as we are) Sparkle is going to have similar results for a lot less effort.

Sparkle’s Bonus Traces are interesting. A2 makes Sparkle’s Basic ATK restore an additional 10 Energy, meaning she is the first ever character who restores 30 Energy with her completely basic Basic ATK. This allows for a lot more flexible rotations without interfering with Ultimate uptime, as the Energy she restores via her Skill and Basic now have parity. A4 is equally exciting, as it makes the CRIT DMG boost of her Skill last until the start of the target’s next turn. This doesn’t mean it lasts for a full 2 turns, but it does mean that this buff will catch out-of-turn actions such as Ultimates or follow-ups — extremely important for characters like Clara or Jing Yuan who deal a large majority of their damage outside of their own turns.

A6 is probably going to garner a lot of attention. She increases all allies’ ATK by 15% at all times, but if there are 1,2, or 3 Quantum characters in the team, she will additionally increase all Quantum characters’ ATK by 5%, 15%, or 30% respectively for each QUA character. Some people may read this line and immediately think Sparkle is intended exclusively for Quantum DPS, but please, I implore you to re-read the literal entirety of the rest of her kit. She is a universal buffing support who just happens to have some small nice extras for Quantum centric teams. If your only use for her is in mono-Quantum, then more power to you, but you must always remember that you are squandering her potential by limiting yourself to just that.

In terms of Eidolons, they’re all nice bonuses to have but by no means a necessity. Every one of them looks very appealing at a glance, but you have to truly consider what that’s worth to you — both in terms of increase over the base E0 character as well as monetarily in the real world.

Similar to Bronya, Sparkle also has a lot of possible builds and possible SPDs to operate at. It’s easier to optimise compared to Bronya due to Sparkle’s inherently higher SP economy and easier to utilise Skill buffs, so the one you choose to go for will depend entirely on teammates and preference. It’s not something where I can tell you what to go for here. Regardless, there are really very few ways to play Sparkle incorrectly, and it’s very possible to drag a no-SPD DPS character up to match Sparkle’s SPD from her Skill alone. The ceiling for strong performance and especially upfront damage is going up quite considerably with Sparkle’s release, and certain fan-favourite DPS characters are only going to get even better.

Having said that, there most assuredly are ways to build Sparkle incorrectly, and she demands a certain level of investment and attention to detail to benefit maximally from her Skill’s Action Advance; Bronya or Sparkle, the need for SPD tuning is utterly inescapable if you wish to use them to their fullest. Even if it’s easier to utilise Sparkle’s Skill compared to Bronya’s, you still have to commit a base amount of investment to see worthwhile returns.

Again, Bronya is not getting fully replaced or anything of the sort. Some characters will continue to prefer one over the other. Both are extraordinarily potent, and both will continue to be actively used in the top-performing teams until a new character comes out who supersedes them both. I mentioned this in Ruan Mei’s review, and a very similar argument is present here; Sparkle may not be very far ahead of Bronya, if at all, when it comes to raw vacuum performance — Bronya’s ceiling is just absurdly high even with her drawbacks.

Otherwise, get out there and rep the bestest most funnest Aeon, the Elation, and have yourself a grand old time. If I had a nickel for every time we got a completely unhinged Harmony support character, I’d have two nickels. It’s not a lot, but it is odd that it’s happened twice.

Needless to say, if you think you can ‘fix’ Sparkle, your arrogance knows no bounds, and godspeed.