Honkai: Star RailThe HertaBest build, teams and other guides

The real Madam Herta has strong and consistent damage for single-target and AoE alike. She does this while gaining an absurd stacking damage multiplier to her Enhanced Skill leading to some of the highest DMG multipliers ever seen in this game. As an Emanator of Erudition, she gains huge bonuses to damage and ramp-up if she is paired with at least one other Erudition unit, similar to how Acheron's passive works, and she shares the damage bonuses with the entire party. This also means she can act as a powerful support DPS for future Erudition units, and pairing this with her extremely generalist damage profile, Big Herta is an exceptionally compelling character to pick up.

Herta's finally making her true self known and it's as magnificent as expected. The smug mahou shoujo has plenty of reasons to be amused with herself as she's the proud owner of the most ridiculous DMG multiplier in the entire game now — 672% to be exact. Yeah it's... quite something.

Herta's Skill is a three-fold propagating AoE attack; it starts as a single-target hit, then becomes a Blast AoE for the second hit, and then a full AoE for the third hit — the last hit is technically two Blast AoEs overlapped, so keep in mind if you are not targeting the middle foe, you will not hit everyone on the field. The Skill can deal up to 70% ATK per strike, for a total of 210% to the primary target, 140% to adjacent foes, and 70% to the enemies at the edges.

This is already quite impressive numerically, but she also has an Enhanced Skill, functioning the same way as the normal Skill but dealing up to 80% ATK per hit instead, and then landing a fourth fully AoE hit of 40% ATK. This in total becomes 280% ATK for single-target, 200% for adjacent, and 120% against the remaining enemies.

On its own, it seems good but hardly anything to go crazy over. It is Herta's Talent that leads to the truly intriguing numbers. When enemies enter battle, Herta automatically inflicts 1 stack of Interpretation on them, and Interpretation can stack up to 42 times (based Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference). At the start of each wave, 25 stacks of Interpretation are applied to a random enemy, prioritising Elite enemies or above. When enemies with Interpretation leave the field or are defeated, their Interpretation stacks are transferred to another enemy, prioritising Elites or above. These stacks of Interpretation interact with Herta's Enhanced Skill to increase the DMG multiplier of the Enhanced Skill by up to 8% for the primary target, and 4% for other targets. This is calculated based on the number of Interpretation stacks on the primary target ONLY.

This means that attacking an enemy with 42 stacks of Interpretation will cause the Enhanced Skill's DMG multiplier to go up by 336%, for a new total of 616% single, 368% adjacent, and 288% remaining. Regrettably, Herta's Skill counts as 'one hit', so despite having four separate sets of damage numbers show up, they comprise one singular attack, so this increase to multiplier is applied at the end when Herta hits with the final fourth flick of her wrist. Even still, this is already an absurd multiplier to be throwing out.

But wait, there's more! Should your party contain a second Erudition character, the multiplier increase is further boosted by 8% and 4%, for a total of 16% and 8% per stack of Interpretation. If you've been keeping up thus far, this indeed results in a total multiplier increase of 672%. 672%, added on to the Enhanced Skill, now dealing 952% to single, 536% to adjacent, and 456% to remaining. If you are hitting 5 enemies, this means this Enhanced Skill's total damage multiplier is — brace yourselves — 2936%. Yeah. Keep in mind as well that this is an increase to the multiplier, so it does not get diluted by buffs!

Herta's Ultimate rearranges the number of Interpretation stacks on all enemies, prioritising placing more stacks on Elite or higher level enemies. She gains up to 80% ATK increase for 3 turns, and then deals up to 200% ATK to all enemies. After using her Ultimate, Herta fully Action Advances herself, and she gains 1 stack of Inspiration, allowing a single use of her Enhanced Skill. She can hold up to 4 stacks of Inspiration, but this will very rarely apply outside of the Simulated Universe.

Even though the Ultimate itself doesn't deal insanely over the top damage like her Enhanced Skill, it is what grants access to it, and as such is a very important part of Herta's kit. Even more so because it costs a whopping 220 Energy just to use it once. The fact it also fully Advances Herta's turn means you can deal immense damage back to back. Just be wary of external buff durations when using this.

Now the Bonus Ability Traces. A2 allows allies to assist in stacking Interpretation, inflicting 1 stack on enemies hit by their attack. For every 1 enemy hit by the ally attack, 3 fixed Energy is recovered for Herta, counting up to 5 targets for a max Energy restore of 15 fixed Energy. Additionally, if the Enhanced Skill's primary target has 42 stacks of Interpretation, Herta will gain a 50% Ice DMG boost for the duration of the attack.

A4 is very similar to Acheron's A4; if there are 2 or more characters following the Path of Erudition in the party, Herta will increase all allies' CRIT DMG by a whopping 80%. The rest of the effects of A4 actually boost the A2, but it's poorly worded, so let's break it down.

When allies attack enemies and trigger the effects of Herta's A2, it will always count as hitting at least 3 enemies if you hit 2 or fewer enemies, meaning Herta will always restore at least 9 Energy from each ally attack. Allies will apply an extra stack of Interpretation to the enemy with the highest stack if hitting multiple enemies, and if the attacking ally character is on the Path of Erudition, you will apply a further 2 stacks of Interpretation in all cases.

Lastly, A6 will grant Herta a permanent stacking buff called Answer; for each stack of Interpretation that is applied to enemies, Herta gains a stack of Answer. Each stack of Answer will increase Herta's Ultimate DMG multiplier by 1%. This stacks up to 99, for a total multiplier increase of 99% to Herta's Ultimate, for a new total of 299%.

The game plan is actually not that significantly different to Ultimate reliant DPS characters we've already seen — get your Ultimate, use it to cull the chaff, and then slap the big ones with the Enhanced Skill. You want allies that can either frequently attack enemies without needing it to be their turn, allies that deal AoE damage often, or ideally both. This will greatly improve the Energy economy for Herta and lead to more consistent Ultimates.

With the explicit desire to be paired with at least one other Erudition character to maximise the bonuses from her Talent and activate the effects of her A4, this is not really an issue as Erudition is by nature heavily AoE focused. Obvious pairings are Jade, Himeko, or indeed Puppet Herta. Apparently Geniuses have no issues with multitasking multiple bodies, so definitely take advantage of that particular pairing, especially against Ice-Weak foes.

Increasing CRIT DMG by 80% as well means the trade off of having a second Erudition character is actually rather favourable, especially since this CRIT DMG bonus applies to the entire party — this is particularly relevant for characters like Bronya and Sunday, characters who are able to increase the party's CRIT DMG by a percentage of their own. Herta's A4 will actually allow these benefits to be compounded further with such characters.

The Remembrance Trailblazer also falls under this category due to the benefits that they provide, and they also have the added benefit of multiplying the final damage that Herta deals and also providing even more Action Advance that can massively increase total damage output. The Remembrance Trailblazer is maybe not the absolute best pairing for Big Herta, since their kit seems very tailored towards supporting potential future Remembrance characters, but since they're available to all (and remarkably powerful), this is definitely not a pairing to sleep on.

A good generalised approach to team building is to get yourself an Erudition character that hits enemies as often as possible, get a buffer for Big Herta (bonus points if it's someone who can buff the whole party), and then lastly get a sustain that can also hit enemies frequently without sacrificing team survivability. Skill Point management may become an issue, but this is mitigable.

There are issues that need to be mentioned, however. As mentioned, Herta is rather SP intensive and extremely reliant on her Ultimate. Without a consistent flow of Ultimates, even with the impressive multipliers that Herta has at base, you can expect your damage output to absolutely plummet. Additionally, Herta may start to struggle a little bit if there's a consistently low number of enemies on the field, more so for the hit to Energy regen than directly impacting damage output. Of course, careful party-building can significantly mitigate these issues, but it is something you need to be aware of.

Having said that, Herta doesn't really have truly dedicated teammates for what she wants to be doing. There are many great options already, such as Robin and Sunday, but Herta is unable to make full use of either of those two characters' kits due to lacking the necessary mechanics. The top sustains like Lingsha and Aventurine are also great but hotly contested by Break and follow-up teams respectively. Remembrance Trailblazer is fantastic for her, but may very quickly get stolen by future Remembrance DPS who make better use of what they have to offer.

Yet despite this, Herta is already extraordinarily strong, and there is ample room to grow even stronger as our journey on Amphoreus continues — a truly staggering thought. Should she get her own 'Erudition Jiaqiou', you can expect to be seeing this pompous magical girl dominating everything and everywhere.

Lastly, the Eidolons. It's the usual disclaimer we've all come to know and love; Eidolons are completely unnecessary for the character to be good, but can offer nice bonuses and benefits for those willing to go the distance. E1 will reapply 15 stacks of Interpretation after the Enhanced Skill consumes them. Additionally, the enemy with the highest Interpretation stacks out of your primary target and its adjacent foes will have 50% of their stacks factored in when using the Enhanced Skill. This means using the Enhanced Skill on an enemy with 42 stacks of Interpretation will calculate damage as if they had 63 stacks instead. This results in a huge increase to damage, especially since it's a DMG multiplier increase and is not diluted by buffs.

E2 grants an additional stack of Inspiration when she uses her Ultimate, granting another use of the Enhanced Skill. After using Enhanced Skill, Herta Advances her Action by 35%. This is the really really broken one, in case there was any doubt.

Comparatively less interesting, E4 will increase the SPD of all Erudition characters in the team by 12%, and E6 will grant Herta a permanent 20% Ice RES PEN, and additionally increasing the Ultimate's DMG multiplier inversely proportional to the number of enemies on the field; +140% if there are 3 or more, +250% if there are 2 enemies, and +400% if there is only one enemy.

Herta is pretty amazing, all things considered, and is likely to stick around for quite some time. It would take some (mostly) unprecedented releases to dramatically shift the needle in this regard. She's great fun, and has the wizarding hat to boot.

Thus do I bequeath the name: Big Hat Herta.