The Problem With Support Characters in Honkai: Star Rail

RPGs are known for having when many like to call the Holy Trinity of classes a dynamic used to underline the necessary foundations for a successful team regardless of what situation they'll be taking on this Trio goes as follows tank healer use interchangeably with support and DPS said convention has been implicitly stressed in almost any game in the class based system and is often used as a benchmark for understanding a proper balance of classes in order for your party to withstand enemy fire you need a tank in order for your party to survive long stretches of combat you need a Healer and finally in order for your party to actually defeat the enemy you need damage while some game theorists have disputed whether such Dynamic is actually necessary for a well-designed combat structure it's wiely agreed upon to be at the very least A good rule of thumb to follow as a turn-based RPG hon Kai staro adheres to this practice rather Faithfully just in its own language the game's custom characters is divided into three categories damage support and sustain where in any unit who deals the bulk of the team's DPS falls into damage whatever form that takes units who amplify their party strength end or diminish the enemies fall into support and units who can heal or withstand enemy pressure on behalf of their team fall into sustain ideally the class Trinity stresses that all three aspects of a carry equal importance but empirically at least in my eyes the support category tends to have the most influence on a party's success having made videos on damage dealers and sustain units continuing on with this little miniseries I have cooked up we'll be talking about support characters next and how I feel like there's a pretty concerning issue with the direction of this archetype especially in recent versions elaborating more on why support takes precedence over damage and sustain since I just made lunch let's use cooking as an analogy think of Tanks as the cook slash table wear you use from your plates to your Cutlery to your cutting boards pots pens utensils obviously without these you'll never be able to prepare the dish just like how you'll never complete the game's content if your team can't last 5 Seconds that being said while cookwar can definitely vary in quality at the end of the day it's the as a question do you have it or do you not have it think of damage dealers as the food and ingredients itself the meat of the party if you will all the cookware in the world doesn't matter if there's no ingredients to cook with right just like how all sustain in the world does doesn't matter if you can't actually damage the boss your party and the enemies will reach an impass if you don't have damage on your team now think of supports as the seasoning the condiments and spices your salt pepper sugar onions garlic turmeric oil chili Sesame whatever without these it doesn't matter how good the raw ingredients are they will never taste good without proper seasoning okay that's a hard statement sometimes I love playing rice or a slice of toast but just play along you know where I'm going with this you can make a wonderfully delicious meal with average ingredients and average cookware so long as you know how to season more than that seasoning is extremely versatile not every dish needs beef or pork but you can bet your ass every dish needs at least some kind of seasoning or condiment I can find 100 things that will taste better with some onions added to it my point is supports complete the team especially in staro sustain units do vary in efficiency But ultimately if they can keep your team alive they can keep your team alive with the japar aventurine fushen laa huu cager the difference is negligible damage dealers yes there's importance on what kind of DPS you bring to the fight some bosses are vegetarian some bosses want steak others star with dessert why the hell hell am I going so deep into this cooking analogy having said that though if your unit can deal damage that's all that matters whether acon lunai danhong Jingo Rio jinguan arti if they can kill enemies they can kill enemies what makes them able to do so of course are the supports it's not who you have but how you use them how you use them is determined by what supports are brought alongside them using the wrong support for a team will result in a significantly less efficient run as opposed to using the right one a major facet of stars experience is team building with there being a multitude of game modes each with their distinct wind conditions and scenarios enemies having specific mechanics that incentivize One play style while discouraging others and of course each opponent's Elemental vulnerabilities combat can become pretty complex crushing you to have a diverse array of units who can ENC count for many scenarios this can be intimidating for players who might feel overwhelmed by the need for so many characters given they can only account for so many situations supports can circumvent this by enhancing A team's combat pressure to either allow them to Pro Force their way through any gimmick or obstacle using Shar power or artificially enable them to adhere to just said ging or obstacle by supplementing them with a supportive faculty for instance you might be facing a Boss week to imaginary Fire and Ice but the only DPS units on your account are blade CA and genu however you do also happen to have a silver wolf on your account who can implant an additional Elemental weakness to that Target enabling you to comfortably take on that boss despite lacking the original requirements that demands of you supports can augment A party's existing capabilities or compensate for their deficiencies with enough extra juice even yaning can become endgame viable an example of enhancing one's strength this br's famous Synergy with Sila every additional turn afforded to the ladder can actually be two turns courtesy of a reset mechanic an example of compensation would be lunai Dan hung who struggles with up time due to XP exhaust to be can be Sparkle alleviates that by supplementing him with the ammo he needs with that supports there's only so much a damage dealer can do and while naturally you can't have one without the other most of the time it's the support that makes a damage dealer not the damage dealer that makes a support ging players may remember the notorious power five five fourstar characters with the same value if not more value than five stars due to how many parties they can be slotted into and to great effect coincidentally benett chingcho Suk ficial and Shang Ling are all supports or sub DPSS a potential negative consequence of this is that in light of their dominance they indirectly push other units out of the market logic dictates why bother going for X character when you already have Shino abandon or whoever engage his defense with there being Central combat structures like Elemental reactions or the game being realtime action thus having many variables to account for players May develop a preference for other units perhaps as a result of them feeling better to use or having a more generous margin for error as a turn-based game while starl can conceptualize external scenarios to encourage use of different units it doesn't change the fact that combat is ultimately very simplified there's no play style it's just pressing e q or 1 2 3 4 that's it characters live and die by what they can and can't do that's just how it is in turn base games this brings us to the focal point of the video for most of version one supports have established themselves in their respective niches some niches are more valuable than others asa's a speed booster she can fastly increase the tempo of your party making her invaluable for speedr running especially if you field her in lie of a sustain unit tenun made the name for herself as indisputably the best fourstar character to dat her attack and damage boost couple of their battery properties are critical for many teams Pala is a debuff specialist she can increase the damage of her party by shredding the entire enemy lineup's defects so on and so forth while you could make a case that BR and tenan can fit into many parties thus pushing out the others these two are still Limited in some capacity and it managed to stay like that for quite a while the next high profile to come out with silver wolf a powerful and versatile debuffer with the unique ability to artificially implant vulnerabilities on enemies effectively letting you bring any dpsu want to a fight regardless of element though on paper such talent is applicable in a myriad of situations silver wolf is ultimately a niche character not trespassing on anyone's territory all that much later we had Tass who specialized in supplementing followup attack teams basically up until version 1.6 Star War supports have managed to stay in their Lanes ensuring each one can be very powerful without monopolizing the game this was broken with the release of rodme in 1.6 bringing the furthest leap and supporting capability yet bullet pointing what she can do very quickly rodme gives everyone unconditional bonus damage and weakness break efficiency while BR also has an all damage boost effect on her skill not only does it affect just one party member but it also lasts only a single turn whereas rme is a self-contained three turn buff her team can act five times or 5,000 times and as long as it's within three of her turns they can take advantage of the sweet damage buff for every single action no small amount either ad Max break effected 68% bonus bonus damage vme also gives all Ty res penetration for her entire team as well as speed for the entire team in addition to a plethora of supplemental weakness break related things her Buffs and supportive capabilities are so agnostic that she can literally slot into every single team in the game whether hyper carry double carry damage over time ultimate damage follow up attack damage SP heavy teams every single team imaginable Specialists like silver wolf and BR Cann outperform her in very specific circumstances but what makes runme more valuable overall is that she's a universal support she can work for more team n she can work for every team with B silver wolf Pala and even may not as we'd soon realized this wouldn't be a onetime occurrence the next version after came Sparkle another support with extreme buffing potential that can work for many teams her skills almost identical to br's and what it's attempting to do giving huge bonus crit damage to a single Ally and virtually granting them a full-term resent almost every time on top of that just by being present the max SB stockpile you can have increases to seven and every time you consume SP your entire party gets bonus damage Amplified even further with their ultimate which can also generate 4sp immediately prior to Sparkle s conservation was of utmost importance a character's value could significantly increase if they were sp sp neutral or better yet sp sp positive Sparkles essentially threw all of that upside down by making teams go from heavy sp sp consumption being a negative to heav SP consumption being a positive skill points are Universal mechanic there's not a single relevant unit as of version 2.2 with theam system not based on SP key word relevant par means I apologize I wouldn't say sparkle is necessarily as all encompassing his runme but she comes damn near close the only team she might not support as efficiently would be double carry dot teams kka on to name one and even then if you don't have anyone else Sparkle can still supplement that team by letting you spend skills for days while boosting everyone's damage over time through talent and ultimate albeit not with their skill bottom line Sparkle does qualify as a universal support and a damn good one at that around the Advent of Sparkle is when it began to get concerned over how supports were turning out if you think about it Loosely speaking run May likeu except the former can the entire team instead of just one minus the battery of course Sparkles like B except the former can give extra SP on top of that supports are beginning to one up each other even sustainers are doing the same thing H is little child who can also battery and increase attack eventually is jard except he can do damage and give Buffs to be fair they're not one toone comparisons of each other in the most literal sense I'm not implying there's no scenario where supposed inferior support can't be used over a superior one but when picturing all circumstances and all combest scenarios you'll find more reasons to want to use the stronger one causing the weak one to lose market share as you're well aware by now Robin's the first unit to come out in 2.2 and she continues the trend of doing quote unquote everything her skills basically a carbon copy of run M skill bonus damage to the entire party that counts down based on her turn he trades a higher ceiling and break efficiency for consistency a flat 50% damage at Rank 10 her T gives 20% bonus crit damage to the entire party again you have free Buffs just by being present on field attributes that aren't present on day one supports then a trademark or should I say copyrighted ultimate is a total party white turn refresh that gives bonus attack to her party and bonus follow-up attack crit damage furthermore she adds bonus physical damage to each attack from her allies the vast majority of units benefit from the bonus attack and obviously everyone benefits from a party wide turn refresh you can use up everyone's turn for the cycle then cast Robin's ultimate and it's as if you just went in the speedrunning department Robin's a direct upgrade to AA and it's not even Up For Debate Robin gives bonus crit damage to everyone bonus regular damage to everyone bonus attack and follow up attack crit damage to everyone and a full party wide refresh the crit damage on follow-up attacks can only be utilized by those of follow-ups but she has enough allpurpose buff to be considered a universal support making her the third consecutive Universal support we've gotten and by far the best facilitator for Speed running for every team in the game for some players this can be seen as a good thing honai star is advancing very quickly in character and power Skilling with the need for a diverse Army of units being more Paramount than ever before players especially R plays might struggle with the pace of progression while with all the new units they have to pull for and Gear Up in that sense having Universal supports is a good thing as that's one less thing they have to worry about but from a balance point of view I don't know how to feel about this direction bume Sparkle and Robin are beginning to remind me of the power five and ginin where they're just so good and so efficient in beg's belief that anyone would prioritize Alternatives now I understand that not everyone has all three of these supports compared to everyone Eng in having the power of five but these kids are Frankly Speaking overloaded there's nothing wrong with having a few allpurpose supports but they're not Jacks of all traits they're Ms of all where they necessary for the sake of taking on Stars rapidly increasing difficulty or not I don't think it's healthy for hoo to be so flippant about giving every new support everything that will cause non- allpurpose supports to immediately fail on arrival unless they push the envelope that much further but doing that however exacerbates power creep even more for example if they want to make a support that behaves like sparkle but is for damage over time they'll have to give massive numbers to justify spending for what is essentially a copy of Sparkle with a slight variation that's actually what they had to do with their they maker stand down over BR give Sparkle a higher ceiling granted if doing this on purpose then more power to them what worries me is if they're not doing this on purpose if star is projected to power creep then by all means they can keep doing what they're doing with supports it's a necessary evil but if this is unintentional then making supports who can do basically everything will come at the detriment of character variety at the risk of sounding like a doomsayer if they keep this up starl will soon have their own powerfly situation where runme Sparkle Robin and two other supports will take over the entire meta pushing everyone out of relevance since you have no reason to use the others over these five even if hoo tries to make specific combat scenarios they cover so much and give so much that the only ones who can compete against them are each other I also personally think it's somewhat lazy I really enjoy supports like silver wolf AA Pala and BR because they're specific challenging the player to figure out who is the best choice for What scenario and weighing the contributions of each support with the new supports it just feels like Co slapping on total damage Alti bre pen SB positive uptime AOE Buffs AOE debuffs and stuff like how they do a Yu-Gi-Oh cards where you can't be targeted or destroyed by battle or card effects can't be Kaiju can't be hand trapped complet the immune to everything that's the impression I get from these units they just do everything it simplifies the game which is convenient but I can imagine players intentionally not wanting these units just to feel some Suess of challenge again the same way genian players stopped using Jung Le because they felt like he made the game too easy what do you guys think do you agree that supports are getting a little too nuts or do you think this does more good than bad for Star Wars medag game you're welcome to share in the comments for now if you enjoyed the video a like And subscribe would be much appreciated don't forget to follow me on Twitter at vars join my Discord server and why not check out my other met discussions if you haven't yet but till next time thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon take care [Music] [Music]

Channel: Vars II

Views: 126,732

Keywords: hsr, honkai star rail, vars honkai star rail, hsr robin, hsr 2.2, honkai star rail robin, honkai star rail 2.2, hsr best supports, hsr best teams, hsr sparkle, hsr ruan mei, honkai star rail supports, hsr supports, honkai star rail the problem with supports, hsr harmony, honkai star rail harmony trailblazer, hsr trailblazer harmony, firefly star rail, jade kit leaks, vars hsr, hsr problems, the problem with honkai star rail, honkai star rail robin teams

Id: w-MYJIe9J-0

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2024