The Problem With Support Characters in Honkai: Star Rail 

TL;DR - Hoyo. Please. STOP GIVING US OP CHARACTERS. MY WALLET IS FILING DIVORCE PAPERS AS WE SPEAK T_T

My philosophy while playing Star Rail. “Always go for the support characters, you never know when you need them.” Which is why my account ended having too many supports and few DPS.

We're reaching a point in the game where characters either do everything or do 1 specific thing so well it overshadows everyone and everything else

as someone said: powercreep isn't bad when 1 character better than 2, powercreep is bad when old characters cannot complete something new even when you spend a lot on this character

The problem is that I DON'T HAVE ANY 5 STAR HARMONY

"Dps will get powercreep eventually while support is always nice to have around" is the way im playing the game rn Update: i lost the 50/50

Ok when you were doing that cooking analogy at the start i expected a factor sponsorship ad to show up

The problem with harmony characters is that I DONT HAVE ENOUGH GOOD HARMONY LIGHT CONES. SRSLY MY YUKONG STILL ON 3 STAR LC!!!

Hanya and Yukong rotting in the grave rn sheesh

Honestly, as a f2p, I think it only becomes a problem if you can't reasonably complete end game content without them. But with the sheer power these supports bring, it wouldn't surprise me if end game content got "buffed" making clearing without the 5* supports a chore and a half.

the nier OST is giving me nostalgia hits

I like to think that from a design standpoint, the goal with characters like Robin when compared to Ruan Mei is to have some character redundancy. Both do essentially the same thing with some specific scenarios where they perform individually better. Since characters have limited runs, this gives players who didn't get Ruan Mei a strong alternative and vise-sersa when Ruan Mei returns. I feel Adventurine and Fu Xuan are a similar case of redundancy where both are busted units at base, so getting either one is good for your account, but each have situations where they perform slightly better.

Watching sparkle and bronya on auto play is like eating only the seasonings

I live and die with Bronya

As a husbando only player: What are supports?

Not getting the newest dps or sustain character doesnt seem like a big deal in hsr, but not getting the newest support makes your account weaker.

As a f2p and with my playstyle of rolling for characters I want, The release of these all-new meta-defining supports that uproots the previous version really irks me. It gives the feeling that the rolls I did for a character were wasted when I could have potentially gotten character x instead who does the same as "A" but 10x better in all fields. That's why I can find myself agreeing with your opinion on specializing supports or at least preventing them from being all-encompassing but as for the op supports already in the game, I think Hoyo would need to make such new supports even stronger than our current ones so they could give a reason as to why we should roll for them for a specific team

I believe the direction they intended for these 5 star Harmony characters to follow was to be generalist, powerful, all purpose supports so f2p's don't feel forced to pull for every single one of them, but with a defined archetype. Sparkle for Crit DPS hyper-carry. Ruan Mei for break orientated characters. Robin for high attack frequency characters (Follow Up) and this wasn't apparent to begin with as Ruan Mei was the first of her kind. But I do agree that these units have stole others market share which isn't healthy for power creep but so far is a natural progression. In 1.0 it was 4 stars and standard characters and this is a gacha company. IMO its still too early doors to definitively say whether this is outright good or bad but your absolutely right to bring this too the forefront of conversation as if Hoyo doesn't tread carefully, this could easily spiral. Good vid 👍.

Funny how in my eyes ''fear of missing out'' turned in to ''fear of pulling too soon'', because the next support is going to do everything better. Bronya got Sparcle to compete, but now we have a whole team advance with Robin that is better than both, and we get new thing in the game of overlapping toughness bar, I wonder what's next...

"The problem with supports--" _me, clutching tightly to my Robin posters:_ sounds like someone needs to 🎶Renew Their Definition 😤

The problem is, there's no going back from Ruan Mei. Sparkle and Robin has to be on par with Ruan Mei, or there's no reason to spend money on them.

From the perspective of a long time (and frankly kinda tryhard) HSR player, hearing Pela be considered a 'specific' support is WILD. Outside of that, everything is basically on point. Pela's value is quite absurd. 40% Def Ignore on AOE, extremely fast ult building (2Turn ults are bonkers), perfect unit for Luka Cone, with really good synergies with Wind 4p and Sprightly Vonwacq's...she's basically the definition of absurd. Pela's existence is single handedly the reason SW was kicked out into the niche zone. I'd like to hear your thoughts on why she's considered more specific, because she's among the first couple of universal units that theory crafters reach for while making a new composition.

If I had to find a problem it would be that a lot of support units focus on basic elements of the game, this essential means that depending on your support you can basically ignore one aspect of the game From skill point management, break effect and weakness, energy management and a few more This also means that if they want to make another support that fills that role they have a direct competitor that if they are just worse than then why get them

I think the real problem is that for a lot of teams you only will want to have one but it’s tricky to figure out which teams they are best for when they are good on most of them

Here is another issue: I took a break right before Ruan Mei released and returned for Acheron. I have neither Ruan Mei nur Sparkle and now the end-game content, which I could clear with relative ease before, is significantly harder, sometimes simply impossible for me to clear. Hoyo balances heavily around these powerful Supports, expecting players to have the extra damage % or just sheer damage numbers provided. This wouldn't be an issue if it was like Genshins Power5, since they are 4-Stars. Instead, balancing around limited 5-Stars essentially means that I am forced to pick up one of these overloaded 5-Stars or right off on endgame content altogether.

Yeah, Ruan mei never leaves my party after i got her. But on the other hand hoyo attempted to fix the problem with Acheron for example. Before E2 she only works with nihility teammates. But i also seen stats that Acheron has one of the higest average eidolons , so whoever pulled her, likely tried to get to E2.

My friend and I always said that instead of there being DPS power creep it has been Harmony power creep

Welcome to Honkai Support Rail - Where you end up just rolling for supports because DPS units gets thrown out and replaced every patch anyway 😂

Yeah the powercreep and fact that we always get 2 new units each patch is unhealthy in the long run.

One thing I have realised about prioritising supports over DPSes, Generally picking every support makes your fights quite boring. As far as I see it, battle variety is mostly facilitated by the DPS, and just gathering meta supports makes it quite stale for me.

My thoughts are there's a large portion of the playerbase (myself included) who find themselves dedicated to using an older non-meta unit for everything, because they love that character too much to pull them out. For me, I use Hook for everything and as a result I don't pull on new DPS units and after getting my first really good sustain I don't go for more sustains either. As a player I only look for units that will make my favorite shine brighter and if what I spend on a support can make my favorite deal as much damage as what I'd spend to get a new DPS I'll make a jump on that. The same goes if your outdated favorite is a support or sustain. If your favorite is Bailu the best way to counteract her comparatively weaker heals is grab a new universal support that clears enemies faster before they can out-damage her healing. If your favorite is Asta you can always run a second support that stacks nicely with her buffs or fills in any gaps she can't cover. Would your team do much better if you cut Hook/Bailu/Asta for someone better? Yes, but what matters to these players is if a new character makes their old character still feel viable on their team and that's something new DPS's and new sustains can't offer to the same extent as new supports. I know some people will complain that if you want to "main" someone play Genshin Impact, but I find that completely discounts the amount of story and appeal factor that goes into to making Star Rail characters. If I'm not supposed to main a Star Rail character, then why did the devs make them such a touching story mission that made me so attached to them in the first place? Hoyoverse knows these kinds of players play this game, and so they also want to cater to them as well by making these supports, I think. The real question is, is there a better way to cater to these players without disrupting the meta?

Robin cute, but we got a whole powerranger next patch

Hey btw the healer picture you used with fire emblem characters that healer is actually THE ONE VERSION OF SAKURA THAT CANT HEAL

I feel like they are doing somewhat the same with dps. I mean the elemental weaknesses based on how acherons ultimate ignores those weaknesses and also (leaks ahead) how firefly just puts fire weakness on enemies. Boothill does the same now that I think about it so, what's the point of elements then?

7:02 Wow, the first limited Harmony character is stronger than the non limited ones. Who could have seen that coming?

I've always pulled for preference over gameplay so I'll probably never get a limited 5 star harmony if they continue putting em on characters I don't care about lmao. Luckily I'm getting harmony Caelus soon.

Supports getting universal is, in my opinion, a good thing, as you can now just rest easy if you have a few of them instead of needing like you should pull all of them. You can get away with pulling for fewer characters, and this saves more for DPS and tanks.

Ayoo I'm here to say I love Robin and all but I'm skipping till firefly, waifu>meta, specially when waifu is also a ducking mecha

Support metas? I've seen this before... *coughs* *Waiver, Merlin, Scathach Skadi, Castoria, Morgan, Oberon*

The problem is that Firefly is coming next patch and I have to skip Robin to E2S1 our best girl :smiling_face_with_tear:

Ruan Mei's Spd Boost is the only reason I'm able to run Blade at 126 (135) Spd and Bronya at 125 (134) without having to hunt down for Spd susbtats, even if that team gets a way better support down the line (outside of Bronya E2) I'm not sure I'll replace them unless they bring something essential. I kinda agree, 5* Harmony units have a bit too many advantages over the other niche ones.

every gacha player can tell you the game is always going to be run by supports, is just a matter of who breaks the game to no return (coff castoria coff) personally i skipped ruan mei cuz i never liked "glorified buff" kind of characters but now with PF, MOC and a nwe endgame i feel like i need to pull robin even if i dont like her much just to support my DoT/Follow up teams

I think this happened because 4* harmony units were already really strong and easy to get, so they had to go crazy with the 5*s to give people a reason to pull for them

They Harmonize their allies and not the enemies

At this point I just gatta stick to vertical investment. This whole patch is going to be hell

i have sparkel and ruan mei, should i pull robin or just save, (btw I have plenty dps, acheron, danIL, jingliu, jingyuan, topaz, dr ratio and sustain like luocha and aventurine)

what is that song right at the start of the video??? i swear i've heard it before but i can't remember its name at all :'(

The cooking analogy was so baffling in concept and confused in execution that I think it actually hindered my understanding of the topic and as a result this entertaining video has made me unlearn things I knew before. 10/10 will watch again

And between the "og niche" supports and the new universal ones, is there some combo or team in which you could use both? Kind of like going Xinqiu and Yelan on the same team in genshin

When I noticed the Nier music *clutching chest* Feeling like they probably want to do basic all rounder supports early on (and need to make limited characters competitive with each other so parts of their kits are similar) but will likely become more niche as time goes on (this happened with genshin characters too). It's like how no new healer will be "worth it" without a cleanse (re people talking about Gallagher sans his eidolon). But making that a base part of his kit just makes him seem like a carbon copy of others. It's definitely something I imagine won't be like this once they get the first few out of the way. But honestly those other characters are still insane so I'm not really sure it matters in the long term. Some people will still use them, and have preferred playstyles, or challenge accounts, etc. Genshin was too afraid of powercreep and people complained. Now their new game has a sense of powercreep and people also are not happy. It's tough to balance but I feel like having more great options to choose from will be better in the long run than fewer, especially when (again, just my assumption) as time goes on they'll likely release more straight up niche supports. When that time comes, videos will be about how this pay to win character is not flexible and can't be used with the top dps units of that time, etc. It's never ending

I think this video makes a lot of sense. My hope is that we get at most 1 new Harmony character in the future with a focus on DoT. That would give us a harmony for each of the main dps setups Hypercary, DoT, FuA, Break. Then we can start focusing more on dps, sustains and debuffers to make more complex team comps.

As someone without any limited 5 star harmony units, is E0S0 Robin a must pull or should I pray Ruan Mei has a rerun in 2.3 and get her E0S1?

Soooooooo since I have Sparkle, her light cone, and Ruan Mei…. I can skip robin?

i agree i like to have to choose and make the right choices and have more viable supports, powercreeping suppports means that enemys will get harder and 4 stars will become useless

So far I’ve pulled most of the major 5* supports. I decided though that after pulling Acheron, I’d only pull for DPS IF they have some type of weakness implant/def ignore built into their E0 kit.

when will you finally open Vars IV for YGO ?

Im sorry i heard EQ at 5:43 and i subconsciously thought of Ryze

The problem is that I have FOMO only with supports, I know that if I don't have a good support for my favorite dps they will be sub optimal and it sucks. I have Ruan Mei (E0S0) and Sparkle (E0S0) I'm considering E1 on Ruan Mei and to skip Robin but what if Robin is best support for my favorite characters ?

I'm investing in Mono Quantum, I like a team that I can put anywhere regardless the enemy weakness it's very good for me atleast (f2p)

I kind of hope supports be more diverse and niche, instead of 3 of them being attack buff+damage buff+crit damage buff+advancing action

One thing I feel is good about universal supports for endgame is that it can help F2P player or casual players get through harder content without having to whale on certain characters and focus on getting universal supports to make up for not getting the meta DPS’s like Acheron or DanIL

I think I feel something similar but for Sustain rather than Supports. I feel like all the supports are relevant and useful even if some are stronger than others. I don't even really use supports on my dot teams unless I need break coverage from one of their elements. Sustains though are a completely different story. The difference in having a solo sustainer and having to run two sustainers is like night and day.

Agreed. What about dps being able to apply their element weakness as Boot and FF are going to do? How do you feel about that? I’d love to hear you point of view on this matter. My point is: as a veteran player, as a f2p, I’ve been trying to feel the gaps and complete my roaster with dps to cover the elements. If Firefly and Boothill are able to apply their element weakness onto enemies, why the hell would I consider to pull, chase other dps units? Why would I spent my precious jades to get another Hunt or Destruction character? Idk but it seems they’re cooking something

I started playing in january and before we even got a unit that i really want to pull for i've already decided to go 4 star/standard only because of how insane the powercreep is. I want to actually feel like im playing the game, not slotting the pretty girl damagetron 7000 and clicking auto

the real issue is people need to learn what good relics are. what stats you need and what substats you need.

its hard to say "supports are more important than DPS" in HSR because, unlike Genshin where any DPS unit can brute force through everything in the game short of elemental immunities, no amount of Sparkle, Ruan Mei or Robin buffs will help you full star MOC if you don't have a DPS unit that match the enemies' weakness. Thats why when people say "HSR is more f2p friendly than Genshin" it grinds my gears, because its not at all. In Genshin after you get 2 limited DPS units, you're set for life. All you need is, say, 1 Neuvilette and 1 Alhaitham, and you pretty much kill everything in the Abyss forever. Meanwhile in HSR you got Jingliu and Dan Heng IL? Great, thats 2 types of enemy weaknesses you can cover, so... what about the other 5? Oh, and what about Pure Fiction? Jingliu and DHIL are great on MOC, but they're useless on PF, what about it then? You pretty much need 1 DPS for each type of weakness AND each different endgame. Forget power creep, why is no one talking about this??

first of all those characters despite being "universally good" still have their nishes, go outside of that nishe and they get outperformed and start becoming kinda cope, if you want to use sparkle in dot team then have fun i guess but pela is a better choice at that point, robin might end up being horrendous for teams where you have two SP hungry characters or characters with slower builds, same goes for bronya who's not great for teams with followups and is considered SP hungry, SW is nishe by design, ruan mei is the most universal out of all of those but to make the best use of her ideally you want a duo dps comps, when it comes to buffing a single character there are better options like tingyun, bronya or sparkle, every support has a specific use case and falls off tremendously when outside of that robin is not necessairly the ideal choice for speedruning, her ult is very expensive so you either have to beat first wave without it or somehow get it twice, SP might also be an issue in some teams, tingyun is probably the best one for that because of her ability to ult immiedeatly, be SP positive and having no issues ulting twice when going for 0 cycle

Robin should say 'TRAILBLAZER GO' when she joins a team with the trailblazer

The cooking allegories kinda reminded me of old dougdoug like his overwatch video

fortunately after robin,the next support just there to help a niche. jade,although she is an erudition class,she is a support for hp drain dps(just arlan and blade). granting a buff that drain the hp if the buffed character is not herself. so pls hoyo,keep doing things like this. keep making support with niche aplication

Should i pull for robin when i have ruan mei and bronya but no sparkle? PS i like to play you vids when im doing my assignments cuz ur voice is so calm lol.

tbh it does make sense that the 5* options are better than the 4* options but i'd say all supports are pretty versatile not the 5* ones even if they don't work in all teams you can still slot any 4* into any team to make up for the fact you're missing a support for the team (as long as their buffs/debuffs are helpful to that team which they are for most) really the only teams i wouldn't slot a certain 4* support is asta on teams with skill point heavy dps or tingyun with blade since he scales off hp (unless he's with jingliu bc then i'd be slotting her in for jingliu but i have bronya so that's unneccessary for me) and i don't like to use yukong so i'm not quite sure this applies to her since the reason i don't like using her is i really have no clue what to do with her although having the limited 5* would be nice (i have sparkle who i pulled specifically for dhil and really only use her with him bc no part of her kit getd negated this way) but having another universal support like ruan mei would be amazing when idk who to slot in

I commented but youtube auto-deleted it seems. But I'm re-commenting because that was before I finished the story and got another harmony via the MC. Honestly, it's not even about OP characters, it's just harmony. Hoyo made us wait so long for a harmony after yukong, who doesn't even count because literally nobody thinks she holds a candle to bronya or tingyun. It's hard to compare her to even Asta, so she doesn't even count. They made us wait and wait SEVEN versions until our FIRST legit harmony 5*. Then they give us effing FOUR in 3 patches! The heck hoyo?!

bro, I like your videos, keep up the good work

I need 2nd ruan mei 1 for DoT team & 1 more for boothill break team :(

For the Memory of Chaous the other characters don't matter anymore. I have seen all kinds of DD's in the current two MoC, inculuding 4stars. The only thing that matters is whether the player has enough Harmony waifus for both sides. It's quite boring.

I don't know who to pull, like....every single character is so damn good!! I tried my best on Aventurine, but he never came home, Robin could be a good support, but i don't play much FuA teams, likewise with Topaz...( only built Ratio yet...) Boothill looks fun, but my only preservation character is my E3 Gepard! But if i pull for FuXuan...Firefly, Jade and probably Argenti will all come in 2.3!! 😢 So difficult to choose....

At the end of the day, 5* Harmony always having good value is a design decision (it doesn't even have to be intentional), you might like or dislike depending on your preferences. And as long as the "universal value" between them is balanced it should be fine long term, as what make the best choice the best is the value in circumstances, not the universal one. Of course it naturally means that early 4-star Harmony are less likely to appear, but every other path had a similar thing happen, and expecting Harmony to be different is kinda weird. I personally wish that Harmony characters were weaker overall, so there are more circumstances were using 2nd damage dealer was a better choice, but that is my personal preference, influenced by how I like to play the game (which is why Nihility is my favorite gameplay path). Also I personally tend to use "weaker" characters quite often, because I prefer the playstyle.

The only 5* harmony I have atm have been Bronya - who I lucked out and pulled on the beginner banner. Otherwise, it hasn't been for a lack of trying, but somehow... my pity racks up over time since I only recently started and never had that many pulls. So... somehow, I've never managed to get the harmony characters. LOL (Probably doesn't help that I haven't really planned out the pulls the way I do in Genshin since I'm only just starting out.) I've pulled Adventurine as another sustain (otherwise, I had Gepard, Lynx, an unbuilt Natasha, and a... eh, Gallagher), and because I had no DPS except for Ratio and my physical TB until recently... I've somehow accidentally ended up with Black Swan and Acheron (both of whom, I now love).

I honestly like it this way I've always seen powercreep as more of a good thing then a bad one with the condition that the game evolves accordingly (harder content and what not) cus that reasure the player base that there will always be a next step you can look forward to that will be worth it. for exemple, I missed Ruan mei back in 1.6 (curse you yanqing E2) and now in 2.2 Robin will be available a support equal if not stronger than ruan mei so my account won't stay without a premier AoE buffer waiting for ruan mei and her rerun

My problem is that all Harmony units are female. I mostly roll for guys and I'm very picky with female characters, so far my only limited 5* girls are Fu Xuan and Sparkle (thank god they have good designs and are interesting in the lore). And Robin....she may be the most OP support in the game, but her design just ain't doing it for me, and this song on the ult is gonna get real annoying real fast, so unless the story makes her appealing somehow I'm not pulling.

Out of curiosity, will you be covering Wuthering Waves?

i think itd be cool to see more characters with limitations like Acheron's where the ceiling can be raised, but only with certain team member elements or paths

Players didn't stop using Zhongli, content creators did. Players use him constantly because completing content quickly is their goal, content creators stopped using him because nobody wants to watch someone trivialize content, its boring to watch but its fun to do yourself. Anyway good video. And I'm not saying nobody stopped using him, I'm saying most people who have him use him, and his reruns are still wildly popular because people who don't have him want him. Because hes super strong.

but how can they make a suppport good for sales but not compete with others. they can buff follow up only, then dot, the blast, then aoe, then single target. res pen, break effect, break efficiency, speed, debuff speed. debuff enemies stats. half of these are already covered. is robin or topaz better for follow up only team?

The other end of the spectrum i feel was missed out is that, older dps units are pushed forward to be more in line with the newer ones. So it doesn't feel last lacking compared to the new DPS

bronya is ultimately better if you have a single main dps for the small detail of fully advancing a ally forward, ruan mein specializes in duo dps teams, and for sparkle bronya overall dmg increase for standard dps is better(not by much) but sparkle is a lot more comfy with skill points regeneration so it's basically one is easier to use and the other one is more dmg if you can accomodate on your team

I’m just really bugged by how much possibility space Harmony has, and instead is taking a creeping take for a direct “damage goes up” approach. Like why not a harmony that plays with element and enhances an ally for breaking any element toughness? Or that add spice to bounce attacks? Or support that plays with SP or aggro? Or a harmony that enhances EHR or allows new actions beyond basic and skill for allies? There are so many niches to play with and this game releases so quickly, that I worry about longevity and newcomer friendliness. Characters being hot or having amazing stories will have us pulling naturally.

As F2P I don't care about any of that. I just decide which of the next releasing characters I like most and prepare by saving up and skipping the ones I like less. I liked black swan so I pulled for her. I liked Gallagher so I pulled for him and accidentally also got a Welt copy, a Luocha, and an Acheron. Now there are no upcoming characters I like enough to pull for them, so I can wait and build up a lot of warps again

Finally another vid

turn based games have a lower ceiling for power creep since like you were saying, there’s less factors that nescessitate different play styles. Hu tao power crept diluc, but yoimiya and lyney didn’t DIRECTLY power creep hu tao by having their own place in the meta (Normal attack/mono pyro). My main concern for star rail is that we’re gonna see a much greater power creep in a shorter amount of time since the only way to carve out a niche is “make number go higher”

I have a feeling the next harmony characters we’ll get will be a dot harmony and a harmony that either boosts a path/element or gives more energy regen.

ii was away from the game and lost both ruan mei and sparkle AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA im currently saving for firefly, but imma need to get robin to use with firefly if ruan mei rerun is nowhere to be seen

Thats kinda the reason I like our next upcoming Trailblazer version. Can they be used in any and all team? Not really they dont have same universal buffs as all the limited Harmony characters. What they do is make a niche yet comptetetive archetype for themselves

I’m ready for Varrs IV cooking!

THE PROBLEM IS THERE HAS BEEN NO BAD BANNERS MY WALLET HOYO PLEASEEEE

Even so, I think there is still a couple of ways hoyo can go about making harmony characters. I wouldn’t be surprised if they made Sunday a harmony dps! He could work like Acheron but instead of debuffs it’s buffs. They could also start making elemental based supports, or even supports for each path/ character. Wouldn’t be surprised if they made a support for Dr. Ration that allowed splash attack damage every time a follow up attack was done.

Now, we wait for that one 5* Harmony unit who is a direct upgrade of Tingyun. Someone who will break the meta and give teamwide 70%-100% energy replenishment hahahaha.

Wild nier automata ost body slammed me. Now I have to go play it again

First time on the channel and the yugioh analogy caught me off guard! Love it!