Why NO ONE Plays: Arlan | Honkai: Star Rail 

As pointed out by many comments I wasn’t aware that you could manually adjust the healing amount for teleport anchors. Thank you for letting me know! In my defense though outside of Arlan there’s legit zero reason to not heal everyone to full lol.

Ngl, maybe I’m just a boring person, but Asta and Arlan are still two of my favorite personalities in the game just because they both act like relatively normal people, and I think that’s a breath of fresh air in a game where so many of the personalities are so extreme. Not that that’s a bad thing or they’re the only ones who are kind of normal though

The saddest thing is that he used to be quite decent, but they nerfed him into the ground just before HSR released :(

Arlan is great because he holds my pre-farmed artifacts before a new unit comes out, since he will never need any of his own.

I think that Arlan also struggled because of how prominent other lighting dps characters were. Serval is given for free plus features heavily in the Jarilo6 story, then you have Jing Yuan whose the most important guy on the loufu and final Kafka who is well... Kafka. Its like he stood no chance :( love the video as as always vars!

Arlan is a character that I feel would do much better in Genshin, as not only can you dodge attacks and use shields to compensate for being constantly low on health, but characters like Furina motivate the constant flow of HP.

Arlan actually has a lot of side quests he’s involved in but almost no one does all the side quests. I highly recommend ppl do them. There some of the best quests in all of gaming especially the pinaconi side quests

“You can’t kill me of if I kill myself first” - Box2

Its crazy what they did to my goat arlan after the beta. He was so fun there.

So some fun facts: You can (as far as I remember) set how much HP you want to get back per character at the space anchor, so you can make sure he doesnt recover HP. And you can lower his HP with items before hand when doing bosses, so you can help him to his higher damage faster.

The only time I ever remember using Arlan was that one event in the Luofu where you ended up spamming his ULT so many times that the words “I will pay you back TEN FOLDS!” is just embroidered in my mind even till now.

It genuinely upsets me that they nerfed him after the beta. He was really fun to play as, and he still remains one of my favorites to this day.

Arlan is one of my absolute favorite characters in the game. I hate that the odds are so stacked against him. I'm hoping the new preservation unit helps him. Arlan is fun to play.

My idea from Arlan, given his position as security officer, would be that he takes a percentage of damage dealt to others in the team upon enemy hits, essentially keeping his team safe which would fit with is re in the game and manage his HP threshold. This would make his low heath/high damage easier to attain and give him a utility outside that (team dmg reduction) which would instantly make him a great sub-DPS.

I don’t care how bad he is, he is still my little man and I will keep on using him

Arlan not about content speedrun. Arlan for fun, arlan for love

as an Arlan main, yeah. im just coping cuz hes actually my favorite despite his forgetability 😢

Gonna be honest when I first saw Arlan during the tutorial I thought he was just some random NPC we had to protect. Not the head of security...

I was an Arlan main until I got Acheron and built her a few days ago, I'll never forget my boy😤 It's sad he doesn't get nearly enough attention, similar to Razor (also my oldest and longest main until Xiao's third banner, I don't play him as much now)

ty for having me on as background footage

I've actually built and used Yanqing and Arlan. Arlan was such a cutie when I started on day one, and I don't really care too much about dmg output as odd as that is? I just dont do the MoC or Fiction thing often, so I just work on building characters and doing story stuff. However, since you said Aventurine is possibly gonna be good with him, I might try him out with Aventurine!

Even the story neglected him. I felt like he was either going to be an NPC or would die early to add shock factor to the prologue.

Xinyan, Dehya, Candace and Cyno: First time?

as someone who loves the boy I will use him no matter how it cripples me when I need lightning damage.

5:21 honestly why didnt they make his talent identical to blades in thst it drains ur hp at start of battle that would of just made sense and fixed this problem

I think a good way to make him better is giving him an enhanced state, it activates when reaching 70% health or less (2 casts considering the 15% cost) in the state he consumes 25% instead of 15% to do more damage and when he casts his ult he loses health too but gains a shield or some kind of super armor

I use Arlan in my teams and to be honest he sweeps 😭😭 he hard carry’s at times and since I have him E5 he revives himself and heals so I don’t need to heal him that often (which would be detrimental anyways but yk during bosses gotta keep him alive)

I like Arlan. He has good aesthetic design. But, they nerfed him at launch and under utilized him in the story. He was the first character I mained, then I got Gepard's big sister Serval. Then they released Lynx. Now I just use the family with a flex slot. If I play at all. Usually it's Silver Wolf. My biggest problem with HSR is the lack of overworld combined with a story that just doesn't hit for me.

Yall remember in CBT3 when he was cracked out of his mind? 😭

The only way I can see Arlan being indirectly fixed is if they release another character that can safely drain his HP for him, like a vampire support charcter or something.

I would graldly use Arlan since I don't have a single Lightning DPS built. But my resources are all in for fine tuning my supports.

I actually really like Arlan, in every aspect but his gameplay. Even with very little presence i was very excited to get him... and now i have Blade so i dont use him

I think the thing that unironically sucks with how he's so bad, is that I actually think he's one of the better designs in the game, that I'll never see because I have no reason to use him over other Lightning dps characters

It's interesting you think there's more room for mid-tier 4 stars to be played in Star Rail than Genshin, since I've felt the opposite is true since Star Rail launched. Because Genshin is an action game, the overall gameplay "feel" of using a character's abilities is as important to your enjoyment of playing with them as their power level and aesthetics. There's a lot more room for characters that feel fun to play even if they're mid, just as some stronger characters or teams don't get as much use as their power level suggests because they just don't feel good to play. And on the other side, player still can make up for certain numerical deficiencies. In Star Rail, you're just issuing commands, so the "gameplay feel" stuff doesn't have as big an impact and it's more about numbers. There's still room for gameplay preference but a fun to play kit or player skill can't do as much to make mediocre units more viable.

Casually waiting for another character like Harmony or something else where they drain a selected Ally's HP... I feel like that'd help Arlan a lot when he's paired with a preservation unit

Well this is interesting for you to be covering the topic xD

Still early on in my playthrough. Just completed the belobog chapter. But Arlan had been one of my favorites. Pairing him with march is difficult and rewarding; and his character is wholesome, and well voiced on top of that. But I do feel why he wouldn’t be used in high level play. Even with a shield, one wrong attack can bring him down and ruin your strategy. As well as his atk being good, but not crazy. He is still my go to damage source if I don’t have effective attacks. I do wish he had more interaction with the cast aside from Asta

By the by, in normal gameplay and Normal SimUni after obtaining the Consumables ability from the tree, you can use certain items to _drop_ character HP. Self-Vomiting Agent does that from full to 1% in one use. It’s just that… it’s limited to places you wouldn’t bother using those things, let alone use *him.* Hoyo please, give us back the Beta version Arlan…

They did Arlan so dirty man I love playing him why did they nerf him to hell Edit: regarding tp thingies you can have them not fully heal him. Also I just realized why are my favorite characters usually the ones that no one remembers oof

For the healing in teleport points you can set how much a certain character gets healed by it

Regarding needing to use Arlans skill to go to low health; at least you can set anchors to not heal him so you wont need to do it too often. edit_ saw your pinned comment now, sorry for repeating it XD I love Arlan and hope there will be a light cone that will improve him later.

I read the thumbnail of the video as “why no one plays ARAM” and finally felt like I wasn’t the only one who doesn’t enjoy playing it. Plus the beginning of the made it seem like the video was actually talking about the choice of character being random would be the focus xD

In general Arlan just about succumbed to the same sitaution as a good chunk of DPS units in Genshin and HSR. In general you only have 1 (maybe 2 for HSR if you want to) slot for DPS while the rest are supports. WIth the large amount of DPS units being released, units that have high risks will almost always loose out if the pay-off isn't great. And for 5 stars, the high risk is almost always returned with a high reward. So most just don't have a reason to go for him when a good chunk of players' first 5 star would ikely be a 5-star DPS given that nearly every patch has a DPS you can try to get. And as it is now, it's not like there's a Himeko/Herta situation around the corner with something like Pure Fiction being released that would suddenly buff him. It feels like the only way such might happen to Arlan is if they also inadvertently buff Destruction, which isn't a good idea given that the balance now between the three Paths is already good enough.

The only saving grace for Arlan is for Aventurine to be enough to sustain him. If not, then idk what else will.

While I haven't played a lot of hsr, I still managed to get both Arlan and Yanqing within the first week. since the start they've been my fav units(high risk, high reward gameplay is what keeps me interested) However, until I get Gepard, it'll be a steep cliff to climb.

Arlan was the 4-star I was missing for the longest amount of time. I've been playing since 1.1 and I only got him in 1.6. And now that I have him, I have my sights set on Acheron, so he's gonna be benched for the forseeable future now.

In my early honkai team building days I almost made an Arlan team by could never find perfect synergy with other characters. I understood his mechanic as the lower your hp the stronger you are was in another game i played

DONT WORRY I PLAY YOU ARLAN I LOVE YOU

As an arlan main who has played him since I started last year in May, i've been waiting for this video

its very sad cause i liked him very much as a character when i started playing HSR. and i really wanted to main him. but then i got some good 5* characters, i understood that i literally can't.

That’s wild to hear he’s the worst since he is my most used character he was the first character I got to level 80 with

Adventurine is coming out. He'll have a degree of resurgence then and will actually have a place to call home. Adventurine even provides cc resistance, which will help against dots. He may not be a best in slot solution and with newer boss mechanics hanging at low hp will only become a larger risk. However, in general content having a generalized beat stick like arlan will be great for smaller bosses and most parts of simulated universe. Sure ruan mei, topaz and now acheron will continue to trivialize simulated universe but there's now a actual appeal to the turn key nature of arlan with a fast enough adventurine and one life per fight to throw away if the enemy gets saucy.

I fell in love with Arlan's design and tried SO HARD to make him work. Then Kafka came out.

I didnt even know he was a playable characater until i pulled him on a random standard banner pull 3 months since the game released

Genshin has more viable 4* than HSR bfr rn. It's even worse for them since they're in a turn based game which means damage do matter.

Who’s next? Serval? She was made obsolete the second Jing Yuan entered the picture. Or perhaps Hook, Sushang, or Xueyi.

I've spent more time with Arlan in his text messages than actually in the story😂

The only way I can see arlan being somewhat decent is if there's a 5* harmony that buffs character the lower their HP that also lowers the targets HP to ramp up arlan faster

I really hope he gets some kind of buff in the future i personally think hes a cool character and reminds me alot of characters like 'Killua' Ive still built him but havent used him

In my opinion it would be a good buff too, if the talent maximum capacity would be reached when Arlan's HP reach 35% max HP instead of 1 HP, So in talent lvl 10 he will get that 72% bonus damage at 35% HP instead of 1 HP, if possible make it back to 80% bonus damage because of the high risk This number corresponds to a lot of destruction blessing in the simulated universe, which is 35% HP For the survivability part I totally aggre, A6 35% HP activation, and E4 with no turn limit.. :"( And maybe the skill can be drain 30% HP if his HP still above 50%, and drain 15% if his HP above 50% for the sake of survavability but still speeding up his talent gain.

Not sure if someone called this out, but there are items to reduce character health that are really easy to craft, obviously this doesn't work for alternate sim universe modes but it's something.

Off topic but does anybody else find it weird how the only darkskinned characters are underwhelming and sorta decent at best? I mean candace, xinyan, dehya, kaeya, and maybe cyno dont do that well in terms of damage

FINALLY THE ARLAN VIDEO I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS SINCE LAUNCH...!

In CBT2, Arlan did actually have high damage. The % Ratios in CBT2 were uniform. At Trace level 1, every Basic Attack had 50%, Blast Skills had 75% to Main Target and 50% to adjacent, full AoE Skills had 60% to all, and Single Target Skills had 100% (Which means Single Target Skills always did the least damage unless there was only 1 target). Except for Arlan, who had 150% on his Skill, and I believe the gap was bigger at higher levels. He was the only one who didn't have uniform scaling. Ultimate ratios were also uniform, though I don't remember the exact numbers. In CBT2, almost everyone I spoke to used a setup of 2 DPS (1 AoE, 1 Single Target or Blast), 1 Buffer/Debuffer and 1 Shielder/Healer, and aside from filling those roles, trying to have 3-4 different Elements for Break Coverage, as a general purpose composition that was, while not the BEST at anything, functional for all content without needing to flex teams for different battles, as we had limited time and thus limited resources to level characters for flexing like that (And also limited pulls to get different characters for flexing like that). Of course, some people didn't follow this setup, but it was a general-purpose guideline that a lot of us used to make things easier and maintain versatility across all content.

as a returning play from the launcher i did not realise my main dps is bad appearantly cause i think he's fine does big numbers has a great sword. you can probably tell what weapons i main in souls games and monster hunter

Your videos butter My biscuits thank you

just asking but is there way to find character stats and traces from the beta?

as a dedicated Arlan main....he's actually pretty good once built properly. I perwsonally recommend building his attack and crit and getting e6 and traces so he doesn't need def as once. Set space anchors so he only regains a fraction of health, around half. Invest in a good Natasha, Lynx, any preservation except maybe Fu Xaan (March can work and i used to use Luocha with double destruction), and do NOT worry about HP because he's gonna get almost 3k HP from relics and stats. Mine does fine with no HP relics and no DEF stats since he has crowd res and if you plan it right you can do some good damage with even 30% HP. I've pulled 50k with half health on bosses and rarely do I need to babysit him. Also make sure you have the bonus trait that lets him recover health from enemies. But he does take a lot more work then most casuals will want or have time for compared to say, Blade., I do hope he gets a small buff sometime.....even just a few more percent of damage (even if he hits 100k with attack buffs from supports) Now, Yanqing....now THAT's a character with even less use then Arlan if you want him to do great number when he's powercrept by Jingliu.

They had to do the only black character like that.😂

I used to play Arlan but a while after i got Kafka i got rid of Arlan but he was still very very fun to use :)

He's one of my favorite character and my two friends who play since launch facepalmed when I started maining him as I was starting the game

The only way I could foresee him becoming useful and buffed is if a future character needs a team member to die before reaching max strength. Hard to find someone better at running their HP to 0 and who will be less missed on a team than Arlan, so that's about the best niche I can think for him to regain usage.

I remember thinking he was an npc bc his design was kinda bland and when we met him he was injured AND had to be saved like hell nah, head of security? more like head of fraudulity, it would've been way more badass if he at least joined us in the fight even when injured to show his gimmick

Guess my name is No One 😭

A shame reallyI intend to build Arlan till we have a proper male lightning in the destruction character, but at this point giving Blade's light cone might be good but probably not be enough if you have harmony or nihility or something that can sustain his damage. I still intend to build him but not today. Tis a shame indeed.

False: Arlan main here! I have blade but I just prefer my lil guy. /lh I want to find others that play him but I do it all the time. He’s my sub dps

I wanted to work on Arlan. But that was an uphill battle

Very thorough, but I also think people don't even bother with him because there are so many other electric dps options. Kafka, Jing Yuan, Serval, and now Acheron are all characters more enticing to put resources into.

I feel like he's designed for Simulated Universe or for the main story, where you have a lot of short battles in a row rather than any fights that are designed to be drawn out. Likewise, I hear he's gotten a pretty decent meta in Pure Fiction, where he is great for clearing one or two mooks quickly. It's not as good as the likes of Himeko or Herta, but still great. Especially with his light cone (at S5, it gives nearly a 100% damage boost if you have lower hp perfentage than the target) since he will mostly be attacking enemies that are designed to be 1-2 shot each. I feel like with Star Rail, Hoyo decided to release a bunch of seemingly bad characters early on with intent to make them shine later.

I'm pretty sure Aventurine will make Arlan playable at least. Good is a different question. Possibly viable if they add supports with hp manipulation.

Coincidentally, I was entertaining the idea of building him yesterday. This guide was certainly informative. After watching this, perhaps I'll readjust my Warp plans and pull for Aventurine for Arlan? (I'll probably just entertain the idea, but it's fun to imagine it at least imo.)

Now if they would have made his missing health convert into a shield like with some of the destruction blessings then he could have had his chance in the spotlight again since that would solve one of his many problems.

Cant wait for Acheron!

I can only think of one tiny niche that Arlan can fill right now, and that’s that he’s the only primarily single target Lightning DPS. This is marginally useful in the Penacony calixes where you don’t want to risk hitting the dreamjolt TVs with aoe and trigger their energy drain. It’s not much, but it’s something.

i actually liked him quite a bit as a character and gameplay wise (well ignoring his many flaws that im now aware of), but i still havent built him and have been working on other chars. I think im part of the problem but i'll get to building him eventually.

Slight correction, at any Space Anchor, which are the TP's that heal you, you can set a % value of the amount of HP you would like all your units or specific units to heal up to. I've personally never used it so I don't know the specifics, but I can assume it would assist only in overworld fights, not ever influencing SU/PF/MoC. Also thinking about it, when you're in those missions that make you check your team, see what enemies may come up and walk around the place with barriers in the way of paths you can normally take (think of any companion mission that has you fight at some point.) You don't even get a space anchor there, it's like some green thing that also auto heals you, so if those don't remember your space anchor settings, you would also get screwed over in there. But hey, at least it fixes one issue of his for like 1-5% of your H: SR playing experience 👍

Hiw is he with aventurine now tho? Im guessing with aventurine, 1HP and maximizing his dmg isnt a big issue. I have him on C6 but i havent build him because ppl keep sating he isnt good anymore

Would be neat for a PF rotation where it favors characters that have less than a certain percentage of hp.

I might be just a new player but I love Arlan sm I just need to build him better for him to work

since the weejyo compare arlan to famous 5s, what about compare it to other 4s destruction like newer one, misha or xueyi ? is it gonna be a fair comparison? asking for a friend. i'm not intend to offense anyone

I think the main reason he is not use is simply the reason that are better options if i want someone that drain his own life for damge i got blade with better damge skill point positive and got a follow up If i need lighting there are kafka jingyun even serval and soon acheron as well so there is litteely no point in using the weaker option (u can debate if serval and arlone close in therm of damge and what they bring to the table)

As an Amber Main in Genshin, My pettiness and somewhat sentimenality to "weak characters" is the reason why Arlan is my Main

About time, I expected this to be your first hsr WNP video and was very surprised when it wasn't.

It's so weird that I forgot Arlan existed because he's just..nowhere.

Yeah, i didn't even knew that you can interact with space anchor or whatever the teleports are called, and set the amount of % hp you want to be healed for every singe character individually. And now that we know what Aventurine does, well, if only you had Yanqing or Arlan built, I'm pretty sure they're never getting hit with Aventurine. As for thier dmg output, tbh is very debatable topic. Ppl can't even agree on top tier 5 stars who's better and how much dmg this or that character deals, cuz there's just too many variables.

I love arlan so much, He's my 2nd fully maxed out traced character only behind March, but GOD DAMN is it hard to get a character that can keep him alive.

i didnt even know arlen did more the lower he was, i use him with luacha XD

"Its hard for 4 stars (in Genshin) to find meaningful representation because of the Power 5" Brother, how can you say 4 stars in Genshin don't have meaningful representation when the Power 5 ARE ALL 4 stars with meaningful representation?! HSR doesn't even have a Power 5, because 5 stars powercreeps them all. If anything, its in HSR that 4 stars dont get representation. You could MAYBE say Herta, Qingque and Tingyun are the closest thing to a "Power 5 material", but they're only three, and all other 4 stars barely get close to them. And while the Power 5 in Genshin are still strong in usage rates 3 years into the game, I have no doubt in my mind that 3 years from now nobody will even remember QQ, Herta and Tingyun, with how rampant powercreep is in that game...

Actually he might find a niche with Aventurine coming out because of his renewable and stacking shield

finally! I've been anticipating this video since you announced it