Honkai: Star Rail Tier list

Please keep in mind that Honkai: Star Rail is a game where team building matters most and while our tier list takes the optimal setup into account, a lot of characters can work and do well - even those ranked lower - when you invest into them. Also for story or lower difficulties of Simulated Universe, you don't need to worry about ratings and tiers. You can safely clear that content even with F2P characters as long as you build your team correctly.

These tier lists rate characters based on their average performance in Memory of Chaos, Pure Fiction and Apocalyptic Shadow regardless of turbulence, whimsicality and cacophony (last 3 phases specifically). Characters rated higher will perform well without the need to rely on these and will only benefit more from receiving them. As new mechanics, characters and challenges are introduced each tier list will be updated.

Important! Characters are ordered alphabetically within a tier.

Available tier lists:

  • Memory of Chaos (MoC) - how the character performs in the Memory of Chaos. Blast and single target damage are important here while AoE has niche uses against some bosses.
  • Pure Fiction (PF) - how the character performs in the Pure Fiction. AoE is king here, followed by Blast while single target damage is mostly useless.
  • Apocalyptic Shadow (AS) - how the character performs in the Apocalyptic Shadow. Single target and Break potential are heavily favored here.

About the ratings:

To decide the ratings we use a combination of the data we gather for every mode (the Analytics for every mode you can find in the left menu), our own testing that's done inline with the criteria (check below) and the last element is community feedback we receive - either from Reddit, YouTube or our own Discord.

Categories
  • DPS - Characters that mainly focus on dealing damage and being the main source of it in the team they are placed in,
  • Support DPS - Characters that fall within this category are very rarely played as the primary or sole damage dealer of the team and instead almost always play alongside another character that fills that role instead. Support DPS are still built with the intention to deal damage themselves but also have a kit containing buffs/debuffs to bolster their team's performance and/or have abilities that are directly dependent on others in order to function.
  • Amplifier - Characters that do not focus on dealing damage but instead amplify the damage other teammates deal by granting allies buffs or debuffing enemies,
  • Sustain - Characters who are capable of keeping the team alive with their abilities.
Special tags

Tags are split into 3 categories: Pros, Cons and Archetype which represent the most defining features of a character's kit and the current meta archetypes they fit into. Archetype tags indicate a connection between characters with that tag e.g. Acheron requires debuffs to work and Silver Wolf applies them. Here is a full list of all current tags and what they mean:

  • Break - the character belongs to the Break archetype focusing on Break Effect and Break Efficiency,
  • Debuff - the character belongs to the Debuff archetype applying one or many debuffs or has a kit that directly relies on them to function,
  • DoT - the character belongs to the Damage-over-Time archetype specializing in applying and/or amplifying DoT effects,
  • FuA - the character belongs to the Follow-up Attack archetype benefitting from, buffing or delivering powerful Follow-Up Attacks.,
  • Summon - the character fights alongside summons or other entities,
  • Advance - the character can manipulate the turn order by either action advancing their allies or themselves,
  • Buff - the character can apply various Buffs to help their teammates,
  • Delay - the character can delay enemies and hinder their actions in battle,
  • Energy - the character can recover the teammates energy,
  • SP-Friendly - the character is substantially more skill point friendly than other characters in their role.
  • SP-Unfriendly - the character is substantially more skill point un-friendly than other characters in their role.
  • Partner - character relies on being partnered with a small set of specific characters to demonstrate their full potential at their tier list ranking. When played without these character/s this characters ranking will be 1-2 tiers lower.
  • Partner++ - character is extremely reliant on being partnered with a small set of specific characters to function at their tier list ranking. When played without these character/s this characters ranking will be 2-3 tiers lower.

Meta Lines

Meta Lines categorize each section of the tier list into a power bracket. Here are the four brackets:

  • Apex Characters (T0 & T0.5) - characters in this bracket are the cream of the crop. They can do outrageous amount of damage, provide massive buffs (or debuffs) or keep the team alive no matter what the enemy throws at them. They simply can achieve the best, most consistent and accessible results in their best teams, allowing you to easily clear the content,
  • Meta Characters (T1, T1.5, T2) - characters in this bracket make clearing the content a breeze, but compared to the Apex characters they require more work from your side. Either their team options are more restrictive, they require bigger Relic investment or they possess a notable weakness or downside. Still, they are all great and won't disappoint you if you give them what they need to shine,
  • Off-meta Characters (T3 & T4) - characters in this bracket are lacking in one or many fields of their role. These characters still possess the ability to clear all content with the right build, endgame blessing, team or enemy line-up but have much lower play rates and success rates than Meta and Apex characters,
  • The Forgotten Ones (T5) - characters in this bracket struggle. A lot. Either their kits simply don't work in the mode or they require a ton of investment and love to be able to work. Just avoid them unless your husbando or waifu landed here and you believe in the power of love.
Half tiers

To further define the tier list and correctly represent the power level of each character in relation to each other we have added half tiers to the higher tier brackets. Under our previous system a tier rating jump of 1 tier rating made it difficult to position characters accurately, often leading to multiple characters ending up in the same tier despite a clear power and utility difference.

Criteria
  • Manual play,
  • Using optimal team composition/support characters,
  • Character level 80,
  • All Major Traces unlocked and skills upgraded to level 10,
  • Character equipped with level 80 non-limited 4★ or 5★ Light Cone (including the 'standard' Light Cones),
    • Battle Pass Light Cones aren't taken into account because you can't obtain them without spending,
  • Character equipped with 5★ upgraded gear with optimal Main Stats and Sub Stats (with 24 desired sub stats out of a possible 54),
  • Eidolon level 0 for 5★ characters,
  • Eidolon level 0/6 for 4★ characters.
Roles

We compare characters within their role - so DPS are compared to other DPS and the ratings are adjusted based on their performance within the role. Don't try to compare characters between roles (for example an Amplifier with a DPS), because their ratings mean different things.

  • DPS - Rating is heavily influenced based on the characters ability to deal enough damage to achieve the 3-star objective, the easier and more quickly achieved the higher the rating,
  • Support DPS - Rating is heavily influenced based on the damage they provide, the buffs and debuffs or efficiency boost these characters create or the utility they provide against certain encounters,
  • Amplifier - Rating is influenced based on the damage amplification abilities of the character and the utility they provide to the team,
  • Sustain - Rating is influenced based on the characters ability to keep the team alive and the utility they provide. The more utility and higher the safety, the higher the rating.
Other criteria affecting the ratings

Each tier list rates characters based on their average value in the specific game mode it represents. The higher a character is rated on the tier list the greater their power and more widely they can be used effectively in the mode, helping the players in getting all rewards every cycle. We aren't looking at 0-cycle potential. We consider:

  • Flexibility - how the characters kit functions against various enemy types, amounts of enemies and their ability to perform when not fighting against enemies vulnerable to their element,
  • Investment - some characters require specific limited 5★ units, heavy investment in certain relic sets or an abundance of sub-stats in order to function at the highest level. Each of these points impacts the rating in a negative way. - the more the character requires to perform well, the bigger the impact,
  • Utility - recently released characters possess abilities that lie beyond their defined role, for example Amplifiers/Sustains that can deal decent damage. The more a character helps the team outside of their role, the bigger positive impact on their rating it has.

10/09/2025

As usual we’re proceeding with our routine post phase update - this time based on 3.5 Pure Fiction:

2/09/2025

In this update we’re adding

Cerydra to the tier list, introducing a new tag [Partner++], and also making a few other minor changes.

Cerydra is one of the most challenging characters to place within the criteria of our tier list so far. The reason boils down to her design - Cerydra’s kit is incredibly tailored toward a very small subset of characters, but for those characters she’s exceptionally potent. Those characters are
Anaxa
Anaxa
and
Phainon
Phainon
- two of the most highly regarded damage dealers that sit unquestionably at the top of the damage rankings in most modes. Outside of these two powerhouses though, Cerydra is underwhelming - so much so it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say her rank on tier lists may fall 2 or more positions when separated from them.

Cerydra is the first character where we’re sure she’ll perform at the top of the meta, perhaps even being one of, if not the highest scoring amplifier for as long as Anaxa and Phainon dominate. But on the other hand we also want and need to represent the fact that outside of these two she’s underwhelming.

To remedy this as best we can we’re introducing the [Partner++] tag, an upgraded version of our usual [Partner] tag as well as making the original partner tag clearer.

  • [Partner++]: Character is extremely reliant on being partnered with a small set of specific characters to function at their tier list ranking. When played without these character/s this characters ranking will be 2-3 tiers lower.
  • [Partner]: Character relies on being partnered with a small set of specific characters to demonstrate their full potential at their tier list ranking. When played without these character/s this characters ranking will be 1-2 tiers lower.

We’re also upgrading Hysilens’s [Partner] tag to [Partner ++].

Summing it up, we’re rating Cerydra highly on her release as she not only has a place alongside two of the strongest damage dealers but elevates them meaningfully in power. Even though Cerydra is niche, we expect she’ll perform very well for those who can utilize her - we’ll be relying on the [Partner ++] tag to communicate her shortcomings. In addition to adding Cerydra, we’re also renaming the Niche meta line to Off-Meta based on community feedback.

Finally after considerable deliberation, we’ve also decided to follow through on a previous watchlist to adjust

Silver Wolf rating down in AS from T0 to T0.5.

Also, you can expect the Signature tier list split update and rework before the release of Evernight. During this update we’ll also be re-assessing the DPS category based on how much higher Cerydra pushes Anaxa and Phainon up the power scale.

24/08/2025

In this update we’re back to our usual routine updates shortly after each phase's release - this time we’ll be addressing 3.5s Apocalyptic Shadow.

Hysilens
Kafka
Kafka
Black Swan
Black Swan
[Watchlist]: As predicted DoT has had an extremely good showing this Apocalyptic Shadow, thanks to the massive shilling in favor of the recently released Hysilens. As mentioned in our previous update though, the buff this time is so powerful the results of this phase aren’t a true representation of DoTs power in the mode. For this reason we’re keeping all DoT characters in the same position for now with the watchlist tag. If Hysilens and co perform at the same level or even a bit below you can definitely expect all three to make a jump up the list immediately.

Let's move to other characters.

13/08/2025

The Revival of DoT

With the release of

Hysilens DoT once again re-enters the top ranks of the tier list. You can find below our initial rankings for Hysilens, updated rankings for Black Swan and Kafka and additional information based on how we expect them to perform moving forward:

As usual, when we add new units to the tier list we prefer to place them conservatively to avoid having to drop them later, after players have already pulled them. We would much rather raise them once we have data, and they’ve proven themselves. Hysilens and the 'older' DoT characters are no exception to this.

Across all three modes DoT has been given favorable encounters and buffs to work with at the time of Hysilens’s release - something that isn’t uncommon but certainly allows them to perform above what their average performance may be at in the future. For that reason, we’ve assigned watchlists where appropriate with the intent to raise DoT as a whole when we have more information.

With the above in mind we want to specifically call out each of their AS rankings. DoT has always struggled in AS due to their mostly low toughness damage outside of post buff Kafka’s ability to launch frequent FuAs. Hysilens does not change this fact, but does introduce a whole lot more damage. Based on this, the favorable buffs and our testing, we expect DoT to do well initially but are ranking them on the low end for the mode as we don’t expect this performance to last in future phases with less favorable buffs. If DoT continues to perform outside of heavily “shilled” content we’ll re-evaluate their rating at that time.

MoC Update:

PF Update:

18/07/2025

This update to the Apocalyptic Shadow Tier List is larger than usual, thanks to us having proper data on the latest release characters

Phainon
Saber
Saber
and
Archer
Archer
- as well as all four buffed units
Silver Wolf
Silver Wolf
Kafka
Kafka
Blade
Blade
Jingliu
Jingliu
. You’ll notice more 'watchlists' this update than usual, as while the data shows some convincing trends, one AS phase isn’t enough for us to commit all the way on moving some characters up or down a tier - as always we prefer to act conservatively but when things are as clear as possible.

11/07/2025

In this update we’re adding

Saber and
Archer
Archer
to the tier list and making some adjustments to some prior 3.4 placements based on community testing, feedback and an initial round of preliminary data in all three modes.

Phainon:

Saber and
Archer
Archer
:

Other Changes:

MoC:

Tier List (Memory of Chaos)

You're currently viewing the Memory of Chaos tier list. It shows how the character performs in the Memory of Chaos. Blast and single target damage are important here while AoE has niche uses against some bosses. Use the switcher below to view a different tier list.

Show 4★ characters at Eidolon 6 (E0 otherwise)
Memory of Chaos
Pure Fiction
Apocalyptic Shadow

Check our Memory of Chaos Analytics for historical data!

 
DPS
Support DPS
Amplifier
Sustain
Apex characters
T0
DPS
Support DPS
Amplifier
Sustain
T0.5
DPS
Support DPS
Amplifier
Sustain
Meta characters
T1
DPS
Support DPS
Amplifier
Sustain
T1.5
DPS
Support DPS
Amplifier
Sustain
T2
DPS
Support DPS
Amplifier
Sustain
Off-meta characters
T3
DPS
Support DPS
Amplifier
Sustain
T4
DPS
Support DPS
Amplifier
Sustain
The Forgotten Ones
T5
DPS
Support DPS
Amplifier
Sustain