Honkai: Star RailKafkaBest build, teams and other guides

Kafka has received a pretty substantial improvement to her base functionalities, alongside Blade, Silver Wolf, and Jingliu. Kafka has now been transformed into a damage-over-time (DoT) support character from a pure DPS, vastly increasing the capabilities of fellow DoT characters and giving her more opportunities to Detonate the damage over time effects on enemies.

Now that Kafka has received these changes, she's become a significantly more appealing character to use, and has gained a substantially longer shelf life. Being a DPS means that your usefulness is limited almost entirely by your ability to kill things, and once the moment comes that you can no longer keep up with the damage requirements, you're likely to be shelved.

Naturally, this is not the case for supports, many of whom continue to find use years after they're first unveiled, and indeed this is easily seen as in the case of Bronya, Ruan Mei, and Tingyun. Since Kafka is now much more closely aligned with the idea of a damaging support built specifically for DoT characters, her relevance is much more easily assured. Even with just the existing pairing of Kafka and Black Swan, her performance (and by extension the team's performance) is vastly improved.

Luckily for everyone, Kafka remains quite a simple but effective character, so this review will not reach the lengths as the ones for the Amphoreus characters.

Kafka's Skill deals up to 160% ATK to a target enemy and 60% to adjacent foes. This will also Detonate all the DoT effects on the main target for 75% of the original combined DoT damage. This will now also Detonate the DoT effects on the adjacent targets, equalling 50% of the original combined DoT damage.

This means that Kafka is now much less reliant on her Ultimate in order to perform well against AoE encounters, where previously she could only Detonate DoT effects on the main target of her Skill. Even a 50% Detonation on adjacent targets can result in very impressive amounts of damage, especially since it can happen frequently if Kafka is built for speed.

Kafka's Ultimate deals up to 80% ATK to all enemies on the field, with a 100% base chance for the attacked foes to become Shocked. Shock is a Lightning DoT that deals up to 290% ATK to enemies at the start of their turn and lasts for 2 turns. In addition to this, Kafka will Detonate all DoT effects on the targets hit for 120% of their original DMG.

This used to be only a 100% Detonation, but now that it's been increased, Kafka's Ultimate not only allows for instantaneous large burst from Detonating the DoT effects on enemies, but it can also act as a final DMG multiplier, greatly increasing the total damage your chosen DoT team can effectively output, and is an incredibly potent way of scaling DoT damage.

Her Talent has also received very favourable changes. When an ally uses an attack on an enemy target, Kafka will immediately use a Follow-up attack that deals up to 140% ATK to the target, with a 100% base chance to inflict her Shock DoT, equivalent to the one from her Ultimate, lasting for 2 turns.

This used to be triggered specifically only from Basic ATKs, so now having it work from any attack at all means it's much easier to consistently make use of this and avoid wasting uses of this Talent. This Follow-up attack can be triggered up to 2 times, with 1 use being recovered at the end of Kafka's turn. This also makes it easier to not miss out on uses of the Follow-up attack. In the case of AoE attacks, Kafka will use her Follow-up on the 'main target' (whoever your primary reticle targets).

Already looking quite a bit better with being able to Detonate DoT effects more easily on multiple targets and also multiplying the final damage for DoTs with her Ultimate, but the most substantial changes have come to her Bonus Traces.

Her A2 has been revamped. Since her Ultimate now Detonates all DoT effects by default instead of exclusively Kafka's own Shock, this Trace has been changed; whenever an ally target's Effect Hit Rate is 75% or more, Kafka will increase the ally's ATK by 100%. Yeah you read that right, and naturally it works for Kafka herself.

This means that building for EHR will provide an absolutely gargantuan ATK increase, synergising exceptionally well with fellow Nihility units who are also likely to be building not insignificant amounts of EHR. The funny thing about this is that it's such a huge ATK increase that there may even be scenarios in which non Nihility units may be able to take advantage of this for (EHR Robin is real, I am definitely not cooked).

Her A4 is unchanged, and will continue to provide 5 Energy to Kafka whenever an enemy is defeated while having her personal Shock DoT debuff on them. This maintains her strong position in AoE content where many minor enemies are present, and against summoner type foes as well.

Lastly, Kafka's A6 has also been revamped. You will no longer have a 30% increase to the base chance to apply the Shock DoT. This is perhaps unfortunate as it raises the required EHR for Kafka to around 67%, but thanks to her new A2 Trace, you are incentivised to reach at least 75% anyway for the absurd ATK bonus, so this is actually a good thing.

In exchange, Kafka gains new functionality. Using Kafka's Ultimate will return 1 charge of her Talent's Follow-up attack. In addition to this, the Talent's Follow-up attack will now also Detonate all DoT debuffs on the attacked enemy at 80% of the original DMG.

This provides Kafka with even more opportunities to Detonate DoTs on enemy targets, and since this can happen so very often in combination with her Ultimate and Skill, Kafka's potential to heavily increase the burst damage of DoT teams is vastly improved, though it does mean that Kafka is substantially more reliant on SPD and her Ultimate to be at maximum efficacy.

There are also some minor improvements to her E1 and E2; E1 will now have a 100% base chance to apply the 30% DoT Vulnerability on all attacks instead of just the Follow-up ATK, and this still lasts for 2 turns; E2 has had the passive teamwide DoT DMG boost increased from 25% to 33%. The other Eidolons are unchanged.

With this new clear support role, Kafka's priorities have changed somewhat. SPD was always very important to her for the purpose of Detonating more DoTs, but now that the Talent Follow-up ATK also Detonates and mostly relies on her own Turn count to replenish, coupled with the improved functionality of the Ultimate both in terms of DoT Detonation percentage and the replenishment of a Talent charge, SPD is far and away the most important stat for Kafka to be chasing after meeting the 75% EHR threshold.

This also means that everyone's favourite support set is likely the best option for Kafka now, with Eagle of Twilight Line's 4 piece Action Advance on Ult use being incredibly effective, granting many more turns to expedite suffering to all enemies in sight.

The massive ATK bonus from the A2 Bonus Trace also means that once you have reached the 75% EHR threshold, you're gaining more ATK than you would by having full ATK pieces for the Body and the Rope. Given Kafka's newly improved Ultimate, and especially given that she's not sacrificing much ATK at all now, it only makes sense that going for an Energy Regeneration Rate Rope will allow you to get many more Ultimates off.

You'll get to deal more damage, apply DoT more frequently, have the strongest Detonations and increase the frequency of the Talent Detonation, and you'll even get to make use of the Eagle set more often, all leading to a fantastically strong and consistent DoT team setup.

This already works incredibly well with our existing DoT based characters, such as Black Swan and Jiaoqiu, and takes to buffs as well as it used to, so putting in some of our top tier amplifying supports will have great results. The only real issue is that Kafka is a vacuum for Skill Points, especially if she's super speedy.

Tribbie provides good consistent damage and RES PEN, and Cipher allows for a massive amount of Vulnerability as well the storing of team damage dealt for her own Ultimate to then be unleashed as a massive nuclear strike, further increasing the now impressive burst capabilities of the DoT team. Both of these are also SP positive, Cipher especially since she also wants to be absurdly fast and has little reason to use her Skill in this team.

Robin is also an option, whether you give her 75% EHR or not she's still really good, especially since Kafka is sending out a fair few Follow-up ATKs of her own, and the overall attack rate of the team is very high, meaning Robin's going to be doing DAMAGE. This is also a great alternative if you are lacking any of the aforementioned supports.

Of course, Ruan Mei is a classic combination, and that continues to be true. Again, the rate of attacks in this team is likely to be quite high, and the Toughness damage is definitely not negligible, so having the Weakness Break Efficiency is very nice, especially since Breaking with Kafka (or any non Quantum, Imaginary, Ice character) will result in an additional DoT debuff on the enemy that can then be Detonated by Kafka.

Oh, and if you're truly starved for Skill Points in your team, you can always Break the Galla-glass. Gallagher also trends towards high SPD and is still heralded for his good sustain and SP positivity. If somehow you are not struggling with SP, you could also try to get more damage out of the sustain slot by bringing Hyacine (though she is also highly contested for Amphoreus DPS). Huohuo is another great option for the sustain spot if SP aren’t an issue - and she’s even better than Gallagher due to the ATK buff and energy she can provide. 

Lastly, I want to mention an upcoming character, Hysilens. We only know how she looks and that she is a Physical Nihility unit, but if her Divergent Universe Golden Boons are anything to go by, we can anticipate that Hysilens should be a new addition to the DoT archetype.

This has been a most welcome change, and more importantly a showcase that the buffs being given to the older characters are not just for show or to appease the fans clamouring for buffs. This is the real deal, and Kafka's been given not only a new lease on life, but a significantly improved and extended shelf-life due to her new designation as the premium DoT support unit.

The Spirit Whisperer is back, baby. 'Boom?' you ask? Yes, dear reader. Boom.