In the world of Honkai Star Rail, there are 3 main factions: the Astral Express, the Interastral Peace Corporation (IPC) and the Stellaron Hunters. Naturally, it would make sense for these factions to work well together in gameplay, as Honkai Star Rail is a turn based game consisting of 4 characters, and in the case of the IPC, that is very much the case. Each current member of the IPC, Dr Ratio, Topaz, Aventurine, and Jade, all follow a similar gameplay style, that being follow up attacks, meaning that they can play off of each other very well.
That being said, I’m a massive fan of the Stellaron Hunters. I enjoy the air of mystery about them, whether or not they can really be trusted by our heroes, and their diverse personalities and gameplay styles. So I thought “hey, if the IPC team works so well, would a Stellaron Hunter team also work as well?”
To preface, Honaki Star Rail’s gameplay is deceptively simple. Simply put, the players goal is to defeat the enemies before them, and breaking their respective toughness bars can help optimize this process. The complexities come in the variety of ways the player can do this. For example, a common status effect in the game is known as DoT, or Damage Over Time, where upon the beginning of a turn, the player or enemy will take a set amount of damage, and there are units and entire teams that focus on utilizing the DoT effect to wither away an enemies health. There’s also follow up attackers, which, under certain conditions, can attack outside of their turn, and most recently break teams, which focus on efficiently breaking enemy toughness to dramatically increase damage dealt.
Unlike the IPC team, who all seem to focus on follow up attacks, each of the four currently released Stellaron Hunters corresponds to one of the above combat styles, with the exception of Silver Wolf, who is more of a supportive character. The second in command Kafka is a galactic femme fatale that focuses on DoT effects, the immortal swordsman Blade is a follow up attacker, Firefly aka SAM is a break unit, and as stated before, Silver Wolf is a support that lowers enemy defenses and can bypass them entirely by implanting a weakness onto them.
In addition, each character in Honkai Star Rail also corresponds to a specific “path”. For example, Kafka and Silver Wolf are part of the Nihility path, which primarily focuses on supportive debuffs. Meanwhile, Firefly and Blade are members of the Destruction path, which strikes a balance between attack power, and its area of effect. Considering the fact that destruction characters tend to draw enemy fire more often, and we can make a functional team comp out of the 4 Stellaron Hunters, with Firefly and Blade drawing enemy attacks away from Kafka and Silver Wolf
With all that being said, I decided to test this team comp in floor 7 of the endgame mode, memory of chaos. Here’s my most successful attempt:
As you can see, I barely survived. And this success took several attempts. So on paper a Stellaron Hunter team seemed decently solid, with 2 supports and 2 attackers, but it’s when we dive deeper into the intricacies of Star Rails combat that we can see why this team failed. For starters, within combat, the amount of times a player can attack with their skills are limited by their skill point reserves. Using a skill will cost a skill point, and using a basic attack will replenish it. The issue with this team is that there are certain characters that have to use their skills to be played optimally, and this is the case with Firefly and Kafka. This in turn prevents Silver Wolf from using her main gimmick, the weakness implant, since there were barely any skill points to go around, and not helping matters is Blade, who only needed to consume a skill point every few turns, but also doesn’t replenish skill points with his enhanced attacks, meaning that he was still draining the skill point reserve. This essentially forced Silver Wolf to only use basic attacks, and it still wasn't enough, and as a result forced Firefly and Kafka into using their far less effective normal attacks
The scarcity of skill points was just a symptom of the broader issue, that unlike the IPC team, the Stellaron Hunter members clashed in their combat styles. Kafka required a steady supply of DoT’s, which Blade, Silver Wolf, and Firefly were ill equipped to provide. Firefly could provide efficient breaks and massive damage on top of that, but she required support to reach the upper limits of her potential, something this team could not provide her. And Blade could self sustain himself, but he still wouldn’t last long without a proper sustain unit, such as a healer from the abundance path. And keep in mind, Firefly and Blade had limited self sustain capabilities, but Kafka and Silver Wolf did not. Silver Wolf was thankfully able to avoid the brunt of the damage due to her team placement far away from Blade and Firefly, but the closer Kafka did not have this luxury, which made the team fragile overall.
In conclusion, it was pretty clear that the Stellaron Hunters weren’t designed to all work together unlike the IPC team, and seeing how they are usually seen working in pairs during the story (a much more effective potential team composition thanks to Silver Wolf being a support), this seemed to be intentional. They each fulfill specific niches, and to be honest, that’s another reason why I like this faction so much. Their specialties were what kept them from becoming the standard crit attackers (with the exception of Blade) which helped them stand out. Just, don’t put them on a team together, because ironically enough, while they’re amazing individually, they do not work well together
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