Honkai: Star RailAshveilBest build, teams and other guides

Ashveil is a typical Hunt unit, specialising in extremely high single-target damage. He provides impressive support to Follow-up teams, acting as a potent debuffing sub-DPS who's quite SP efficient. He provides impressive DEF reduction for all enemies on the field, and also gives a good amount of CRIT DMG to the team, tripling its effect for Follow-up DMG. Highly capable, he's even usable as a main DPS in the team, and combining with his aforementioned tools, he has some of the most varied team options in the game.

[Intro]

He sleeps in a fridge. With his hat on. Pack it in lads, we've reached peak character design.

Ashveil's got some interesting quirks to him to liven up the Follow-up archetype. By 'interesting quirks' I mean he looked at the Nihility support roster and said 'Pff, I can do that!', and so you have a Hunt character with massive AoE DEF Reduction. Slight spoilers but I feel like 'character made to be exclusively a sub-DPS' is just increasingly becoming a myth, because this is now the third or fourth unit who's arguably stronger as a solo act.

Regardless, he's still a very sizeable upgrade for the Follow-up archetype, given they've not gotten anything substantial and targeted since... Well it's been a while, to say the least.

Also I hope you like biting and chomping imagery, because this guy's got a whole lot of that going on.

[Abilities]

Ashveil's got quite the overloaded kit for a Follow-up Hunt unit.

His Skill will target one enemy, dealing 200% ATK and making it the 'Bait'. If the enemy targeted is already the Bait, Ashveil deals an additional 100% ATK and restores 1 Skill Point. As his main action on his turn, this is pretty impressive already; being able to deal 300% ATK for essentially no SP consumption is extremely good, especially since it means he's not going to be stealing SP from his allies. Do note that this is an SP refund, not a free Skill, so you still need at least 1 SP in order to use it.

While there's 'Bait' on the field, all enemies will have their DEF reduced by 40%, and if there's no 'Bait', then Ashveil automatically makes the enemy with the lowest HP become the Bait.

This functionally makes Ashveil a walking permanent 40% DEF Reduction to everything you see. It's particularly rare that this affects all enemies instead of just the marked enemy, and it means that you can much more easily switch targets on a whim without losing out on damage. This also applies to any other damaging supports or allies that hit multiple enemies when they attack.

It's an extremely impressive Skill overall.

His Talent is his Follow-up. He has an initial Charge of 2, and can hold up to 3. When the Bait is attacked by allies other than Ashveil, he will consume 1 Charge to launch his Follow-up ATK against the 'Bait', a very devastating Om Nom dealing 200% ATK. He will also restore 8 fixed Energy whenever allies attack the target with 'Bait', and after the attack is over, Ashveil will gain 2 stacks of 'Gluttony', up to a max of 12.

As far as conditionals to activate a Follow-up ATK, Ashveil's are extremely easy to pull off, being quite literally 'play the game'. Not requiring any special setup for his primary source of DMG is very appreciated, and it makes him a lot easier to pilot compared to other Follow-up characters from the past. Even more importantly, the target who's getting hit is always consistently the 'Bait', meaning that AoE attacks from allies won't result in Ashveil sending his Follow-up ATK into the one enemy you currently do not care about.

Getting an extra 8 fixed Energy per ally attack is also quite appreciated. Considering the 3 Charge that Ashveil can have, this results in 600% ATK over the three Follow-up ATKs, and the fixed Energy recovery has no limit, meaning with appropriately fast-acting or high ATK frequency allies, Ashveil's Energy is going to be zooming.

The 'Gluttony' mechanic is tied to his Ultimate. This applies 'Bait' to the targeted enemy if it's not already on them, then deals 400% ATK to them, while also restoring 3 Charge for Ashveil. Immediately afterwards, Ashveil will automatically use his Follow-up ATK on this enemy, only this one is Enhanced and does not consume any Charge.

This Enhanced Follow-up ATK will consume 'Gluttony' to deal extra instances of DMG equal to 200% ATK; for every 4 stacks of 'Gluttony' this Enhanced Follow-up will deal 1 extra instance, meaning that at 12 stacks, Ashveil will hit the enemy for a total of 800% ATK, immediately after the 400% ATK from the initial Ultimate hit.

That's a lotta damage.

Also, if you're worried about overkill, then good news! This issue is partially circumvented by the dynamically moving 'Bait' after an enemy is killed; if an enemy dies due to the Enhanced Follow-up, the extra instances of DMG will continue to deal said DMG to the new 'Bait', so the Follow-up won't get cancelled just because the first enemy died. It will still end if everything in the wave is already dead though, so maybe don't use it on a guy with 1 HP.

The Ultimate costs 150 Energy, so it is on the high end, but the Energy Ashveil gets from his Follow-ups, as well as the constant influx of fixed Energy from allies hitting the target with 'Bait', Ashveil's gonna be having his Ultimate up incredibly often, meaning it's going to be quite rare to be sitting on zero Follow-up Charges for very long at all.

Honestly quite incredible.

[Bonus Traces]

You may have wondered how you get enough 'Gluttony' to get the strongest effect of the Enhanced Follow-up, and if that's the case, may I introduce to you the A2. Whenever Ashveil uses his Skill and Ultimate, he gets 1 or 2 stacks of 'Gluttony' respectively. During the Follow-up ATK, for every enemy that dies during it, Ashveil gets 1 stack of 'Gluttony'.

This helps quite a bit with making sure you have enough 'Gluttony' to get some crunchy hits off during his Ultimate, and if you're killing off fodder with said Ultimate, you're going to get refunded a good amount of 'Gluttony' anyway.

A4 will grant Ashveil's Follow-up ATK an 80% DMG boost, and every 1 stack of 'Gluttony' that Ashveil currently has will increase the boost by a further 10%. This, uh... This maxes out at a 200% DMG boost. Yeah. It's pretty good as far as self damage boosts go. Obviously, you're not going to be sitting on 12 'Gluttony' indefinitely, it gets consumed by the Ultimate, but good lord is that an impressive boost to have. 

On the note of the Ultimate, the 'Gluttony' consumption is dynamic, so each subsequent hit is going to be dealing slightly less damage than the last due to the fluctuating DMG boost from this Bonus Trace, but it's still pretty damn high all the same, especially since you'll always benefit from at least 4 'Gluttony' stacks in this regard (still a 120% DMG boost).

Lastly, the A6. While Ashveil is on the field (read: 'Alive'), the CRIT DMG of all allies will increase by 40%. For ally Follow-up ATKs, this CRIT DMG boost is further increased by 80%, for a total CRIT DMG boost of 120% (to Follow-ups).

Yet another 'I exist, therefore get f—' passive. Who knew that aura-farming could be so damn effective at increasing team damage output? Combining this with the previous Bonus Trace and Ashveil's general DMG multipliers and DMG output, and you can probably see just why he's such a powerhouse of a character.

Honestly quite incredible.

[Eidolons]

Insert usual disclaimer here: No; they're good to have; you could consider it; I'm making chicken for dinner (it's for winners).

E1 further enhances the aura-farm, making it so that Ashveil's mere existence increases the DMG enemies take by 24%, increasing to 36% if the enemies are at or below 50% HP. Adding in a DMG Vuln to a character who already has DEF Shred and DMG boosts and CRIT DMG is like... This man is raising a middle finger to the Harmony at this point.

E2 increases the stack limit of 'Gluttony' to 18. Every time he launches his Enhanced Follow-up from the Ultimate, 35% of the 'Gluttony' stacks will be refunded after they're used. This one's deceptive, but you must remember that 'Gluttony' affects the number of extra DMG instances during the Enhanced Follow-up, as well as the DMG boost from his A2. Bro's oversaturated on DMG% from just this, it's quite amusing actually.

E4 will increase Ashveil's ATK by 40% for 3 turns after using his Ultimate. E4's never really been a stopping point, let's be real, so this isn't too surprising that it's kinda whatever.

Lastly, the E6. When the 'Bait' exists on the field, all enemies have their All-Type RES reduced by 20%. Every stack of 'Gluttony' gained in this encounter will increase Ashveil's DMG dealt by 4%, stacking up to 30 times. This means you can get a permanent 120% DMG boost in the fight.

As far as E6s go, it's kinda underwhelming at a glance since this man already has an absurd amount of DMG%, but the actual raw damage increase is still hilariously massive, and the All-Type RES does stack very nicely with everything else he has.

Personally, I quite like the E1, but you make your own decisions. Honestly quite incredible.

[The Rest]

Ashveil's got the kit to make enemies pop, all while you bop. As mentioned previously, his unique nature makes him surprisingly versatile, and rather easy to build a good team around.

As a sub-DPS, he's got a good amount of characters to choose from depending on how much copium you're on. Most would naturally gravitate towards pairing him with Feixiao, and this is indeed a pretty natural combo to gravitate towards.

Both of them have easy to activate Follow-up ATKs and can daisy-chain off of each other too, though it may be a little awkward against certain Bosses, mostly just because Feixiao likes having a lot of turns, so the loss of a dedicated single-target Action Advancer in the team make things a bit weird for her Ult generation, though this is offset by the increased attack frequency that Ashveil brings to the team.

Regardless, Feixiao is pretty much the only Follow-up carry that really benefits from the type of unit that Ashveil is, so it's naturally going to be working quite well for you. Robin. Robin remains one of the most interesting characters to optimise around due to her full-team Action Advance. While she's pretty good in most places, unsurprisingly she does a lot better with allies who have extremely high attack frequency, which Ashveil is. Having these three together is already pretty good, but I don't necessarily think Ashveil himself benefits as much from Robin as she does from him; Ashveil has the means to deal the damage already, he just needs people smacking the enemy for more Energy for himself.

Enter the rest of the Follow-up crew. It really is just 'take your pick' here, with all of them being strong and useful in their respective situations, or even just 'whichever ones you have access to', and you'll have a pretty decent team.

There is however one problem with this approach.

This is not a sub-DPS character. I mean he is, but he isn't. It's a bit difficult to call yourself a sub-DPS when you're considerably outdamaging the people you're supposed to be supporting right? The frail scholar has set such a high bar and somehow damn near every 'sub-DPS' since Anaxa's release has copied his homework verbatim. Ashveil is just incredibly well tuned, in much the same way as Anaxa and Evernight. It's the risk you run when you give a character like this these supportive capabilities in addition to a really fundamentally strong kit. 

Now, obviously, there are quite significant differences in terms of gameplay and whatnot between these three characters of Anaxa, Evernight, and Ashveil, but there is one common thread linking these alleged 'sub-DPS' characters together: the ones who benefit the most from their kits are... themselves. The solo act is just outright better, and that's exactly what's happening here.

It doesn't help that the last true Follow-up DPS was Feixiao and it's been... quite a while since she came out, so naturally Ashveil would exceed her performance, but I assure you, it's most definitely not a case of 'good by comparison'. Make no mistake that Ashveil really is just cracked. This is particularly pertinent to mention because as a 'revitaliser of older Follow-up units', Ashveil falls short of the necessary supporting abilities for that grandiose of a statement to be true.

Let's look at The Dahlia for a comparison: the insanity that she brought to the Break characters literally revived a near-dead archetype all on its own, and turned it into one of the most consistent and potent teams in the game. It was what could be called revolutionary.

Ashveil, by comparison, doesn't bring anything new to the table, and he doesn't remix or alter the core mechanics of the archetype. He does the exact same stuff that it's always been doing, just like Anaxa and Evernight did for their archetypes.

And just like Anaxa and Evernight, Ashveil does it all BETTER. The performance increase you'll see by ditching the chaff and just hypercarrying it up with Ashveil is very significant — so much so, that I would say that if you were planning on getting Ashveil specifically to support your older Follow-up units, you should reconsider, because you'd be frankly squandering Ashveil's potential.

To that end, any standard hypercarry setup will work wonderfully for Ashveil, especially because he has so many varied buffs already, he can see extraordinary benefit from supports that would typically be just 'okay' for others. Ashveil has such a distinct lack of ATK% in his kit that even just a little bit of that can push him to frankly absurd heights.

And because we have so many great supports in the game already, you really can just do whatever and have it work well, much like Anaxa. Evernight is a bit more restricted due to her being a HP scaler, but the principle is also similar.

Hell, Ashveil's own buffs are so good that you could even use him as a generic buffer for other teams and rock a sort of dual-DPS setup. It's surprisingly good for what you might otherwise expect, especially given that Ashveil is constantly refunding SP after his Skill, and the nature of his buffs means they're not going to be very saturated at all. Honestly would not surprise me if Ashveil suddenly finds his spot as a dedicated support for teams in general, he's certainly got the kit for it.

Is Ashveil going to be competing with the absolute top teams in the game immediately? Maybe not, but the archetype itself isn't at the same level either, so even getting so close is already very impressive, especially given that this whole saga is Elation shill.

In the event that later down the line there is a main DPS that is just fully tailor made for Ashveil to support, then he can do that. If there's a shift in power that's dramatic, Ashveil can just transition into being an exceptional sub-DPS and continue dunking on enemies. The risks associated with a character like this are just far lower than units that specialise in one thing only and need to excel or else they're dropped and forgotten. Or failing that, he just becomes a great general support in the same vein as Cipher, except he's gonna be dealing way more of his own damage.

It's for this reason that I will not tolerate any downplay of Ashveil. You need to stop focusing on what the character isn't and can't do, and instead focus on what the character IS and CAN do. If you don't, you risk missing the forest for the trees, and you'll fail to see you've been holding onto gold the whole damn time.

Remember the Anaxa downplay? Remember the Evernight downplay? How many more times must we see the same excellent design show up before we realise straight away how excellent it is? I mean damn, even those two don't have the general buffing that Ashveil does — 40% DEF Shred is just barmy for a damage dealer.

We left Penacony long ago, so it's long past time to wake up and smell the ash... Veil... Honestly quite in—

[Wrap up]

He's good and he's funny, and he has the shrillest crunchiest fingersnap I've ever heard, what more could you possibly want.

I think it's probably quite likely that people may get thrown off by him being on the Path of The Hunt, since the Path historically has not had a fantastic track record due to being entirely limited to single-target damage. The only real outliers have been Seele, Feixiao, and Boothill, mostly because they have very specific mechanics that make them stand out and perform in spite of their limitations.

But especially more recently, the damage output has been growing, and it's becoming a lot less of a drawback to be entirely single-target focused, especially if you look at enemies and they evaporate. Take a chance, and you might be pleasantly surprised.

I'm just glad we've gotten a relatively simple character again after so long. Sparxie and Yao Guang weren't exactly complicated either, at least not from their own kits, mostly just the incessant flashbangs from the Elation mechanics. But now we've finally got an honest to god 'press button to do thing' character again. I'd cry if I hadn't lost my tear ducts on Glamoth.

And again, I implore you to give Ashveil a try yourself instead of just falling for the agenda-posting so many people use to farm engagement. I assure you, if you do, you won't be disappointed, and you'll see that Ashveil is indeed, Honestly quite incredible™.

... Just don't play him sustainless unless you enjoy pain; this man is made of wet tissue paper, I mean holy hell look at those base stats, what the fudge is that??