Firefly Is Honkai: Star Rail's BIGGEST Power Creep Yet - An Analysis On Break Characters

Break characters are the newest rising stars among Honkai: Star Rail's meta, presenting a unique way of tearing enemies apart through Weakness Break. With the recent releases of Boothill and Firefly, I wanted to talk about the Break niche and discuss if they're just a gimmick or an insanely overpowered f2p option.

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[bjornnilsson]

7:20 Firefly doesn’t care at all for crit actually. Somewhere around 2-3% of her final damage scales with crit. She is hybrid scaling tho as you say with the ATK conversion. Base ATK is factored in making On the Fall of an Aeon a pretty decent substitute for her signature, most calcs I’ve seen put it on par with or above Indellible Promise. Unfortunately Robin’s ATK boost doesn’t count, unless they change it last minute, but most other forms of ATK buffs do.

[saimfaisal]

Break teams are gonna go on the rise. Trust. Weve seen how powerful Boothill and Firefly are, and considering HSR being prone to powercreep, its very possible we will see the break meta form and overtake

Edit: I think the next hsr vid should be on the 4 horsemen of harmony (Bronya, Ruan Mei, Sparkle and Robin) and how they make the support class super competitive, despite there being more support slots in a team. Could talk about each of their strengths and how they overshadow most other supports.

[sarahposting]

the star rail cycle:
1. hoyo releases a new meta defining unit with niche playstyle
2. hoyo makes moc that caters to niche playstyle
3. new playstyle becomes the meta

wash rinse repeat

[LilGui-kohn]

HSR is now in the stage of diversifying team archetypes. In 1.x HSR was releasing generalist units (Fu Xuan, Huohuo, Ruan Mei, etc). Now the game is introducing new mechanics and building on niches we never knew even existed.

There are currently four main team archetypes in the game:
1. Hypercarry (Seele, DHIL, Jingliu, Acheron) - consists of one DPS, called the hypercarry. Every support is catered to boost the hypercarry’s damage. Examples of hypercarry supports include Bronya, Sparkle, and Tingyun, who are mainly single target Harmony characters.

2. DoT (Kafka, Black Swan) - consists of two or three DoT units, may have one teamwide buffer (usually Ruan Mei). These teams utilize applying status effects on the enemy that cause them to take massive damage on what should have been their turn. Important examples include Kafka who can instantly detonate all DoTs currently on the enemy. Because DoTs are generally Nihility units, they can go hand-in-hand with Acheron to boost the Emanator’s damage output.

3. Follow-Up (Clara, Topaz, Yunli, Dr. Ratio, Jade) - these units incentivize attacking outside of their turns, generally by upgrading their talents. Counterattacks are considered follow-up attacks because they occur outside of that unit’s turn.

4. (Super) Break (Boothill, Firefly, Gallagher, HMC, Xueyi, Ruan Mei) - a new archetype with the introduction of Firefly, this archetype incentivizes breaking the enemy as fast as possible to whale on it while it’s down and can’t do anything. These characters are highly compromised if the enemy is Weakness Protected (can’t be broken).

When we get new units, we can expect them to build on these niches and expand each archetype. The meta often fluctuates along these archetypes, so the dominant team archetype will change after a while. However, generalist supports (Ruan Mei, Fu Xuan, and Huohuo, for example) are likely to NOT be powercrept any time soon, which makes them higher priority pulls than the current “meta” DPS. Who knows? Maybe the DPS you invested in today may become obsolete tomorrow.

[danielferrieri]

They are not Overpowered or Overrated. They’re Overbroken.

[dismochria]

Honestly rolling for break is far less a headache than trying to get crit stats up

[andrewhaydock]

Okay but that same problem occurs with dot teams. We can't go on the theoretical because if dot comes up against a mass cleansing unit the it's just as far up shit creek as the break team.

All units and teams have inherent weaknesses. That's why you have to work around them. And have teams built for other scenarios.

[prestonleebenjamin]

This is actually a smart and calculated game mechanic to shift the meta by making the trailblazer a key component in making what is broken, ‘broken’ - in the next meta whenever trailblazer gets their next form it’ll most likely powercreep harmony trailblazer, making you WANT to use the new form and moving people away from firefly, who is completely dependant on harmony trailblazer and encourage you to pull for new characters with whatever the next trailblazer form synergizes with.

While firefly is completely broken right now, you basically have to count her as TWO characters because she’s borderline awful without harmony mc.. then you probably want ruan mei in there too, leaving only one slot likely for your sustain (unless you’re in zero cycle territory, which means it doesn’t really matter since you’re in whale territory). Firefly is actually pigeon-holed into very limited options and it’s pretty obvious she will fall off if new supports don’t come out that will make her more flexible…

The question from here is will they release another character that will keep firefly relevant without harmony MC, or will they just leave her in the dust as the meta changes?

Leaving firefly in the dust would be “as expected of hoyo/gacha” perception, while keeping firefly relevant in some form in 3.0+ will show more competent/nuanced game developers (hoping for the latter)…

Curious and interested to see how hoyo manages this. I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all that they borderline made shipping mc+firefly canon, it’s likely so when the meta shifts they have more reason let firefly stay where she is in the meta and have players move on with new meta characters.

[fashlimakarim]

I bet in 3.x patch HSR will have every enemy locked their weakness

[GentleIceZ]

I think what I like most about the multiple teams angle Star Rail is going for means while powercreep will happen eventually, it's going to be paced in such a way where you won't feel the need to pull on every banner. So for break characters you can comfortably get Sam and Boothill, and then skip a few banners if you feel like those banners don't do anything for your team. I quite like it, and I hope that's the direction they're going

[HSRFirefly]

While i do agree that break teams can be shut down by toughness locking mechanics, keep in mind, nowadays, we had been seeing those penacony blue dinosaurs that has massive dmg reduction until u break them. So it can go either or imo.

Edit: For firefly, while there are less break LCs out there, due to her trace that converts atk to BE, the atk% Destruction LC (which there are a ton of) are good for her.

[Yummymarshy]

As an Argenti Himeko main I’m really enjoying how hyper focused they make the meta around break cause it is just free moc/ apocalyptic shadows and pure fiction. Because most of them have phys weakness or fire weakness.

[bandi]

the only problem of break teams is that hoyo can shut it down so easily with weakness protecting enemies

[PrismPupsickle]

I super broke my screen just to click this lol.

Anyways from the very beginning ive always been interested in the "Break effect" stat, it was so new and so unique that i made a break dps luka before he was popular and now i gotta refarm his relics to the new one. Yes i love luka that much.

[Somehuy-kprz]

While a lot of weakness bar locks can be circumvented in some way, the only one that can’t is SU gepards shield. It doesn’t have a timer, you can’t kill adds to get rid of it, the only way to get rid of it is to do normal damage to it.

Luckily that shield is only limited to SU gepard right now but hoyo can easily implement it to some other enemy.

[heilamwether]

13:06 did Vars forget about fall of a aeon and how good it is on firefly?

[NeuviletteBR]

Boothill absolutely does not need crit damage, although ir is nice to have, all he really need is as much as break effect as possible. And i think firefly will be exactly the same

[dr.strange]

It's the power of niche units and team comps. The more you invest into those, be it through eidolons or units or LC's the better and long lasting those teams become. Same with dot, same with acheron specifically, same with most other niche playstyles like fua. The only downside I see to this new break stuff is that these characters aren't really good outside of them. So if you're good with playing pretty much the same exact team for the rest of your time with honkai then yeah they're great.

[shadesofblue]

Ngl, I've played this game for over a year and the name of the this game is Power-Creep. I've learned to pull for who I like versus who "does the damage!" I'm not pulling for Firefly cuz I don't like her nearly as much as everyone else seems to. I also am not a fan of the Superbreak Meta that came literally came out of nowhere. I'm sticking with my DoTs and Follow-ups.

[PlatinumKrown]

Now I just need a second or third Fall of an Aeon for all these DPS units. I know I can swap LC's around but not in MOC or PF team modes where you need 2 or 3 dps at the same time. Also, as a Kafka haver, I'm glad that the dot powercreep calmed down after black swan, although I still want an aoe-bleed nihility eventually.