Honkai Star Rail’s entering a new stage of
its meta progression, one that has been in development ever since the beginning but has
gradually become more and more pronounced over time. With Version 2 well underway, mihoyo has
kicked open the floodgates on character design and capabilities. By this point most players
should have a clear grasp on the expectations imposed by Star Rail in regards to content, the
difficulty of each content, as well as what to prioritize when building a team. The pace of this
game’s meta development and progression has been incredibly fast, allowing for more excitement
from patch to patch as the community gets to experiment and try out new options and strategies,
but a possible negative side effect is that it can feel overwhelming for some, particularly those who
lack the wherewithal to acquire that many units. Star Rail’s gameplay is centered around team
building, magnitudes moreso than what most of us are used to in Genshin where frankly, anything
goes. Who you bring and what they’re equipped with can be the single determining factor on
whether you have an easy time clearing the game, or have to reset a billion times because you
qingque addicts believe that 99% of gamblers quit before they win. In light of this I wanted
to make a video discussing the present, and future of Star Rail’s metagame, which can hopefully serve
to help you guys find some semblance of stability, a fallback if you will. Today we’ll be looking
at the rise of Nihility, and how the remainder of version 2 will more likely than not be
predicated on debuffing and damage over time. Just like in Genshin’s first year, Star Rail’s
version 1 oversaw a wild west period of sorts. Though the general playerbase was quicker to
understand the game’s mechanics and create a sort of coherent metagame, with there being a clear
lack of coverage in units and characters, players sort of went about things in their own way, using
basic knowledge to ascertain whether or not Seele was better than Blade, Argenti was better than
Himeko or Huohuo was better than Luocha. The addition of new game modes like swarm disaster
and then later gold and gears, as well as pure fiction, followed with our growing understanding
of memory of chaos, of which the latter stages: 11 and 12 weren’t even made available to
us until 1.4 if I recall, made arriving to any conclusions on the meta too premature.
It was abundantly clear that star rail’s adopting a more straightforward, traditional gacha type
approach to power scaling and meta progression, as evident by new units and content
steadily increasing in strength and difficulty respectively. Again this can be seen as
a good thing in that it gives us something to look forward to, something to work towards and actively
build our team, and is one of the reasons why community excitement for new units becomes almost
obsessive compared to Genshin’s new releases, even the so called meta ones. Players don’t just want
to try out the shiny new toy because it looks fun, they want the shiny new toy because, for better or
worse, that toy might make their star rail life so much easier. On the other hand, trying to
keep up with rapidly changing content and faster advancement of the meta can be exhausting,
both from a gameplay and financial standpoint, and I’ve no doubt in my mind players will be
looking for a team that they can rely on to clear through most of the game’s content, as
sort of a fallback, when in doubt solution. As you’re well aware by now, though elemental
reactions do not exist in this game, elements are still of utmost importance
when deciding who to bring. Enemies in this game come with a set arrangement of no
less than three elemental vulnerabilities, attacking them with abilities corresponding to
those elements lower their toughness gauges, eventually triggering a weakness break. This
should be common knowledge to everyone. But what the game doesn’t explicitly tell you is
that there’s more to type coverage than just that. Take Stellaron hunter Sam for instance.
He possesses vulnerabilities to lightning, quantum and imaginary, implying you
want to bring one or more members of those elements to capitalize on weakness break.
Two other things to make note of is that one: while toughness gauges are active, enemies take
10% less damage from all sources, disincentivizing or even outright preventing players from brute
forcing through a fight with numbers as not triggering weakness break makes the fight that
much more onerous. Two: virtually all enemies in star rail come with of course damage and debuff
resistances. Coincidentally the elements they can tank better happen to be those that they have
no weaknesses to. In the case of sam: he takes 20% less damage from all elemental types except
lightning, quantum, and imaginary, the selfsame ones that lower toughness. The memory zone meme
is weak to fire wind and imaginary, and have 20% res against the rest. In essence, Star rail
makes it exceedingly difficult if not impossible to force your way through a boss or dungeon
without having at least one compatible element, that is unless you have e6s5 but that represents
an infinitesimal portion of the playerbase. This places higher demand for having the right
units, by extension higher demand for having many units. One patch you might need fire, physical
or ice, another patch you’ll need quantum, wind and lightning, beyond just elements, one patch you
might need someone who can follow up attack a lot, another you might need AoE damage, another you
might need high amounts of defense to survive. There are so many boxes you’ll have to check off
if you want to comfortably clear everything this game has to offer, making it very overwhelming
especially for free to plays who have to pick and choose who to go after. That begs the question:
what should they do if they can’t go after every unit and cover every option? Thankfully there
is a team, or rather an archetype that I believe will serve, or at least come damn near close to
serving as that all purpose option: Nihility. The nihility element has received huge expansions
over the past few versions. In the beginning there were only three: Welt, Pela, and some
garbage that we forgot to throw away. But a lot of units began to join the ranks: beginning
with Silver wolf, a niche yet powerful debuffer, followed by Guinaifen and Luka, who contributed
more in the DoT department. Kafka became our first mainstream nihility attacker, possessing
the unique ability to assimilate the DoT effects of her party members and use it as her own,
essentially behaving as the driver of her team. A noteworthy aspect of the two Stellaron hunters
is that because of how they were conceptualized, they had the potential to scale beyond their
current limits, as more units came out. But there’s one other aspect that grants them a huge
advantage in the meta over other characters: bypass. We’ll get more into that later.
Version 2.0 oversaw the release of black swan, finally allowing us to take out the
trash and give kafka some good food to round out her team. Swan shares the same
bypass theme as the aforementioned two, which once again we’ll talk about in a moment.
Of course everyone knows just a few days ago we entered version 2.1, and with it, arguably
the MOST anticipated character ever since… well… Kafka, is Galaxy Ranger Acheron, much to
the excitement of Honkai Impact 3rd fans. With her in the game, the nihility path cements itself
as one of if not arguably the strongest archetype in the game right now. Not necessarily in terms
of absolute maximum pressure, moreso practical coverage. By this point, given the crazy amount of
videos that were made on her long before she even came out, the majority of you should be aware of
what she does. But for those of you who still have yet to know: the basic gist of acheron is that
her ultimate doesn’t activate based on energy, rather a stacking system, think of it almost
like Jingliu’s talent where she needs a certain amount of points to activate her OP
mode. Her ultimate does incredible damage, some of the highest we’ve seen to date, but more
importantly she deals toughness damage regardless of whether or not the enemies have a lightning
weakness, more importantly her ultimate reduces all elemental resistances by
20%. In other words: bypass. Though it’s been bubbling beneath the surface
for quite a while, the potential of nihility was awakened with Acheron’s release. Bypass, is
the driving force behind the rise of nihility, and why I think they’ll be the cornerstone
of star rail’s meta game for quite some time. Acheron’s ability to shred toughness gauges of all
types with her ultimate is not what makes her so valuable, not entirely anyway, rather it’s that
she can deal effective damage to enemies. The 20% all type res pen cancels out the 20% elemental
resistance that enemies have, making it so her burst damage doesn’t get diminished just for
not being a lightning element. This is an aspect shared with Silver wolf by the way. Silver
wolf’s skill can implant a vulnerable element to a target, enabling damage of said element to
break toughness gauges, but more importantly she also reduces the enemy’s resistance to that
weakness type by 20%, to also account for the innate resistance they have, in addition to 13%
all type res reduction, turning their resistance against that element from +20% to -13%.
Therein lies the focal point of nihility’s power. They can, quite literally, cheat
the game and allow you to brute force through content by artificially bypassing the enemy’s
defenses, all while dealing catastrophic damage themselves. Further incentivizing this is one of
Acheron’s numerous damage amps. One of her traces gives up to 90% bonus damage if you use her
ultimate on someone with a crimson knot, along with supplementary bonus damage from the final
strike. Then her other trace multiplies all of her attacks based on if there are 1 or 2 more nihility
characters on her team, encouraging you to run what is essentially a mono nihility squad. By the
way with her E2 that number goes to 1, meaning just having one other nihility member present
in her party and she gets 1.6x bonus damage. So you have a character who not only has some
of THE highest damage potential in the game, enough to challenge the likes of Lunae Dan Heng
WITH Sparkle, but she can also do this no matter what the enemy’s weaknesses are. Granted,
it would still be good for the enemy to be predisposed to lightning in the first place. But
being able to deal neutral damage against NON lightning weak enemies opens up the possibility
for players to brute force through content when all other options are off the table.
Now in fairness, Acheron’s full power significantly hinges on whether or
not you can obtain her light cone, so she’s definitely more expensive than
the likes of Jingliu who can perform well at base. But if one were to invest in her, she
can definitely go the distance courtesy of her faring much better against incompatible
enemies than just about everyone else. Furthermore, Acheron touches on another gameplay
mechanic that appears to be on the rise lately: debuff stacking. Anytime she or a party
member inflicts a debuff on a target, that target gains a crimson knot stack, and
Acheron gains 1 point of her ultimate. So the idea is to spam debuffs as often as possible
to get acheron’s ultimate up faster. Similarly, Dr. Ratio’s pressure increases against enemies
based on the number of debuffs they have, and everyone has him. The presence of these two
characters has made units like Pela drastically increase in value. In the future there might very
well be more units who can specialize in applying debuffs to enemies, possibly more units like
silver wolf who can force weaknesses onto enemies and all that, which will indirectly augment
Acheron and Ratio’s strengths. Obviously Ratio isn’t a nihility unit but given everyone has one,
that only reinforces my theory of there being a big focus on nihility and debuffing in the current
meta environment and for the upcoming months Beyond Acheron though there’s Kafka,
the other side of the nihility spectrum, aka damage over time. That was the original
niche of nihility units: Units like Luka, Guinaifen, the jerk all have the ability to
apply their element’s dot effect to enemies, which in turn can be weaponized by Kafka to
retrigger on said enemies for big damage. Kafka was a strong unit upon release owing to
her dps not relying on anything except attack and a small amount of effect hit rate just
as an insurance policy against enemies with debuff resistance, making her one of the
easiest and least demanding units to gear up. The only thing really holding her back
was that most of her party members were 4 stars. That is until black swan. Though she has a
comparatively high investment floor she is by far one of the strongest units in the endgame, and
she gets along famously with other dot dealers, and likewise makes her an excellent duo
with kafka. Swan’s damage over time has the unique ability to deal blast damage when at
3 stacks of arcana or higher, and at 7 stacks, that damage over time ignores 20% defense.
Furthermore, if you have her E1 she gains the ability to shred the elemental res
of whatever dots the enemy has by 25%, essentially serving as all type res penetration
the same way acheron and silver wolf can, allowing Swan and by extension kafka and other dot
characters, most of which happen to be nihility, to deal unmitigated damage to enemies even if they
don’t have elemental vulnerabilities. Once more, this means you can brute force through
content with damage over time much more efficiently than with straightforward carries.
I should also mention that since DoT teams consist of multiple damage dealers, kafka teams
can cover a wider range of elements as she can deal lightning damage, Swan can deal wind damage,
and you can set your third party member to be whatever element you need. So if you have kafka
and black swan, you can cover 2 of the 7 elements in the game (wind/lightning). If you have Kafka,
Black Swan and Guinaifen or Luka that’s 3 of the 7 elements (Wind/Lightning/Fire or Physical).
You’re guaranteed to find at least one of those elements on enemies, compared to alternatives that
have only one damage dealer most of the time. If that doesn’t work then screw it, like I said just
brute force your way through since nihility teams can shred elemental resistance to allow for
neutral damage at the least, and DoT teams do immense dps with all the dot stacking you’re
applying. Worst case scenario just make a team of Kafka Swan and Acheron and then you LITERALLY
cover everything. The only drawback to this team is that acheron is more of a hypercarry, so
you’ll want supports like Pela, Sparkle and such, not really dot supports even though they count as
debuffs, and Swan would enjoy having a third dot dealer so you’re missing out a little bit.
But that’s still an option you can go for. On the subject of options, the homogeneity of
both acheron and kafka swan teams affords you more leniency in character selection. For example on
one team of moc you’ll have acheron, pela, silver wolf and a healing support, Freeing up units like
sparkle, tingyun, bronya and ruan mei for the other team so you don’t have to be torn on which
team to put what support on which team. Kafka and Swan do certainly enjoy making use of ruan mei for
being the only support actually capable of buffing dot teams, but you can also use a third dot
character and reserve all your valuable supports for the other side. They’re fully insular.
It’s almost fitting how coincidental this all is. Back in version 2 the first widely used meta team
in Genshin was Raiden national, a team designed to tackle all situations and serve as the versatile
all covering team. Identically, Acheron came out in version 2 of star rail, and has basically
pioneered the launch of the nihility meta alongside kafka and swan, with both teams behaving
as this game’s national team, even though that naming scheme doesn’t really work in this game.
I’ll remind you that yes, both Acheron and kafka swan teams have an investment floor. For the
former you’re under a lot of pressure to pull for her light cone due to how much power is kept
behind that weapon, and for the latter you’ll need two specific five stars. But under the assumption
you already have them. I think you’ll be seeing a lot more use out of them in the future. Kind
of ironic how kafka was once considered a niche character you can play for fun to now being
meta due to her niche being so all covering. In conclusion, I’m extremely inclined to believe
that no matter what direction star rail takes or how different the moc cycles get, we’re entering
a nihility/debuff oriented meta right now. These three beautiful ladies, or should I say these
three beautiful ladies and this strapping gentleman along with the units that augment their
playstyles will be the benchmark for any player interested in taking on the endgame. That’s not
to say everyone else is bad. Jing Yuan, Dan Heng (IL), jingliu, Seele and… sighhh… yes… Qingque,
are still more than relevant. But for players who want to build a team that they can lean on when
the going gets though, I have full confidence that Acheron and/or Kafka Swan will take good
care of you throughout version 2. They’ll suck your stellar jade reserves dry of course but it
will be more than worth it. And I bet my ass that future characters will follow this direction
as well. Welcome to the dommy mommy meta. Lemme know your thoughts on this
topic in the comments down below, if you agree or disagree with my point of view.
Hope everyone succeeded in pulling for acheron, everyone except brax though because he made me
lose every 50/50 for sparkle. For now though, if you enjoyed the video it would be great
if you could leave a like and subscribe.
