Honkai: Star RailWeltBest build, teams and other guides

[Overview]

Welt is an excellent multi-role character, capable of performing well in almost any team. He is a delay specialist, constantly lowering enemies' AV through numerous ways to prevent them from taking action. In addition to this he can easily apply a large DEF shred to all enemies with his Ultimate, and can then allow himself and allies to start stacking bonus DMG% for every attack the individual characters make. His own personal damage is also quite impressive, and as a standard character, he and his Eidolons are fairly accessible. Extremely versatile character, but has quite a high skill requirement to make the most of him, especially at E0.

[Intro]

ZEPHYRO YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED AHAHAHA!

Newly buffed Welt Yang is kinda smokin' I won't lie. Now, I'm not going to hype him up more than he deserves, purely because he is actually hard to play well. I mean, he was already quite difficult to utilise properly even back when he did get played prior to this Novaflare, but especially nowadays with the type of content we have, from Elites and Bosses to our actual playable units, actually piloting Welt is far from easy.

Because of this some people will underrate him and undervalue him even after this buff, especially at E0. This is, in my opinion, misguided, but I can't fully blame them either since, again, if a character is hard to play then they're going to be rated lower purely off of that.

But oh goodness me, if you actually know what you're doing, and know how to play this game and this character within this game, then Welt is going to be a formidable character for damn near every team you can imagine.

Is he the de facto best-in-slot for any team? No... not until E4 anyway. But he's pretty much a direct second place now for teams that lack that ultra best-in-slot.

He can be run as a main DPS, a sub DPS, a support, or even a sustain thanks to his myriad slows and delays (though you need to be quite confident in your gameplay for that to happen).

I already see the vision, but it is going to take some time for that to become more accepted, and especially with the skill requirement for Welt, nobody should be surprised that he's maybe going to be rated at a lower level than he actually is. But I know that over time, people will come to realise and appreciate the value that this character now has, especially for the newer players who are just starting out, but even for the hardcore endgame fanatics who theorycraft for fun.

He's ballin'.

[Abilities]

Welt was always a generalist but he didn't have the numbers or effects to back it up, so he ended up being kinda bad at everything after his few months of fame at the start of the game wore off.

This is no longer the case, and you'll see very quickly why he can change his roles like one would change their clothes... You do change your clothes, right? I won't go over the old stuff in-depth because it's just not even worth comparing old to new, you can always see the absolute relic of a kit he had for yourself in-game by switching the Novaflare off (but please for the love of god remember to turn it back on).

Welt's Ultimate has always been the most interesting aspect of his kit, being able to Imprison enemies and delay their next action significantly, but it was kinda inconsistent, especially after significant enemies started to get Crowd Control RES specifically for things like Frozen and Imprisonment.

Welt's Ultimate now is much improved. He will deal 150% ATK to all enemies and has a 100% base chance to Imprison enemies for 1 turn. While Imprisoned enemies will have their next action delayed by 12% and their SPD reduced by 10%.

In addition to this, Welt inflicts the 'Weightless' state on all enemies, guaranteed, for 2 turns. Whenever enemies with Weightless are hit, their action is delayed by 4%. This on-hit delay can happen up to 8 times per target PER TURN... Well, enemy turn that is.

This is very significant because you can delay enemies by a lot as long as you can continue to act before their turn comes up. 8 times per turn is a very generous limit because it's a very consistent delay to be applying to the enemies, and quite easy to push them down below your slower allies (there will be no Crowd Control shenanigans here, Aurumaton).

Welt's Talent states that enemies affected by Weightless have their DEF reduced by 40% and their SPD reduced by 5%. A reminder again that Weightless does not have any base chance shenanigans, it simply does the thing when you use the Ult.

But that's not all. When Welt attacks an enemy that is already Slowed, he deals Additional DMG equal to 100% ATK. This means that his Ultimate is actually hitting quite a bit harder than you think on subsequent casts thanks to Weightless, and as long as you're using the delay well and timing the Ultimate properly, this should not be too difficult to loop. 40% DEF shred is nothing to scoff at, it's one of the reasons why Pela has held out for so long, especially in low cost teams, and DEF reduction is one of the few amplifying effects that gets better the more of it that you have.

Welt's Skill is a Bounce, Bouncing 5 times with each hit deal 72% ATK to a random single enemy. On each hit, there is a 75% base chance to reduce the enemy's SPD by 10% for 2 turns.

The unfortunate low base chance is readily offset by the number of Bounces, especially in low-target environments, and it's yet another way to reduce enemy SPD. Combined with the previous SPD decreases and the constant delays from just hitting the enemies, and your foes will be lucky to get even a single other turn before they magnificently explode.

This Skill deals a total of 360% ATK, which is... respectable, but that's only without accounting for the Talent procs, because oh yes it procs PER HIT, meaning that you're getting an additional 500% ATK from the Talent, for a grand total of 860% ATK. From one Skill. That's more than an Anaxa double Skill, just so we're all on the same page.

It's not quite as smart of a Bounce as Anaxa's though, and you're not guaranteed to hit every enemy at least once if you're against a full wave of 5 foes, but it's still very damn impressive.

This kit I think is pretty self-explanatory as to why it allows Welt to be so multi-faceted and with a high amount of efficiency too.

[Bonus Traces]

A2 is pretty good overall but may be difficult to make full use of all the time. When allies attack enemies with Weightless, the attacking ally gets a 10% DMG boost for 2 turns. This can stack up to 10 times, and each time the ally attacks an enemy in Weightless, the turn duration is also refreshed. Welt also restores 30 Energy at the start of combat, allowing for a quick early Ultimate.

This is pretty ridiculous actually. I mean having all these delays and the DEF shred on their own is already really strong, but being able to grant a slowly incrementing DMG boost up to 100% (!) in addition to those aforementioned benefits is truly special.

Emphasis on *slowly* though. It depends entirely on the individual ally's ability to hit the enemy multiple times to start getting a good benefit, and particularly slow acting or slow attacking teammates will not be able to stack this up very quickly. Even still, getting only a few stacks will already start to provide significant damage returns, and it makes it applicable even in multi DPS teams.

This does place a lot of emphasis on SPD though, for both sides; particularly fast Elites and Bosses do exist, and delaying them by enough to get back Welt's Ultimate before the Weightless state wears off may be challenging. You'll still have a turn or so before the stacked DMG buff wears off, so there is a grace period, but if it does end up dropping for whatever reason, you are going to be very, very sad.

Conversely, if your allies are also SPD demons, then you'll have no trouble getting to very high DMG% values very quickly — even better if Welt himself is fast because it'll mean you'll get more actions faster for better Ultimate uptime, and of course, faster allies means more attacks which means more frequent delays for the enemies as well. It all plays together quite well, but it does mean that SPD is disproportionately important for Welt, specifically.

It's a lot of yap for one trace, but the Space Train ain't slowing down yet.

A4 will buff Welt's Basic and Skill to deal 1 extra instance of Additional DMG when hitting enemies. This is equal to 80% of the Basic multiplier and 120% of the Skill multiplier. An extra hit of 80% ATK for the Basic and an extra hit of 86ish% ATK for the Skill. Rounding can get weird depending on the exact numeric output but it's about 86%.

Free extra damage is free extra damage, and means that Welt's Skill actually crosses the 900% threshold with ease, which is... quite something. Naturally if he's built as a pure support, it's not going to as impressive as it looks, but it will still contribute to team damage quite nicely, and if you DO build him as a main DPS, then you're going to be seeing some very funny numbers.

Lastly the A6 is a converter Trace. You get a converter, you a converter! Everyone and their mum has a converter now, not that I'm complaining, clearly. When Welt's Effect Hit Rate is higher than 40%, for every 10% that exceeds the value, his ATK increases by 20%. This caps at an 80% ATK increase when he reaches 80% Effect Hit Rate.

You're unlikely to cap this through raw substats alone purely because... you don't need that much Effect Hit Rate. You only need about 67% to consistently land things with a 100% base chance, and again because of the 5 hit nature of the Skill its lower base chance is offset quite nicely. This does however give you a nice incentive for building EHR, and the returns are scaled quite nicely too, so you are absolutely incentivised to go for things that pump EHR for you. It's just a lot of substats, even if it's highly efficient.

Oh, and Welt gets back 5 Energy when he uses his Ultimate. It's y'know... It exists, and with his surprisingly low Energy cost of 120, this can marginally speed up the process of getting to the next Ultimate. Very marginally.

A change to the Minor Traces is that his old ATK% one was replaced 1-to-1 with an EHR Trace, which is functionally the exact same but better thanks to his A6.

[Eidolons]

E0 Welt is already plenty formidable and impressive, and has no need of his Eidolons whatsoever to start pumping your team's numbers and wrecking fools, especially if you know what you're doing and can unlock his actual top tier performance.

But since he is a standard character, it is actually not unreasonable to assume you may get Eidolons for Welt over time naturally, either through the many free standard pulls you get passively, or through losing your 50/50 on the rate up banner.

I hope you're sitting. On a chair, preferably... Just remember to wash your hands after.

E1. When using his Skill or Ultimate to hit a target in the Weightless state, he deals an extra instance of Additional DMG equal to 40% of the Ultimate's DMG multiplier. This can be triggered once per target per attack. This is an extra 60% ATK on top of everything else, which, if you've been paying attention like I know you have because you're going to try very hard to play Welt well and do his kit proud, you'll have noticed that his Skill is now in the 4-digit territory for its effective ATK multiplier.

E2 is the same as before the buff, Welt gets an extra 3 Energy whenever his Talent's extra hit of DMG is triggered. This is not fixed Energy, so it is affected by Energy Regeneration Rate, and with the new Skill Bouncing 5 times, you're guaranteed to be getting at least an extra 15 Energy with every Skill use. This pretty much solves whatever Energy woes you may have (as long as you have some SP to spend occasionally), and if Weightless ever drops, I'm going to assume you fell asleep at the wheel and your cat is dancing on your keyboard. Hm, now there's an idea for a video...

E4s are typically underwhelming, mostly the bridge between the powerful E2 and the hilariously broken E6, but apparently Welt's gravitational pull has put the broken stuff at E4 for him.

It's only one line but it's a hell of a line: Enemies in the Weightless state have their All-Type RES reduced by 30%.

Bruh.

Combined with everything else, uhm, I'm pretty sure this makes Welt one the best supports in the game? Maybe? Definitely as a sustain. I mean this is pretty difficult to beat even for limited characters, and it's on a standard character. Actually that's probably why this was even allowed, because if this type of effect was on a limited character, people would probably be upset.

Finally the E6, quite simple and potentially underwhelming what comes immediately before it. When using his Skill or Ultimate to hit enemies that are Slowed, his CRIT Rate is increased by 30% and his CRIT DMG by 60%. While not hugely impactful for main DPS Welt (bro does not need the help), you're unlikely to have a lot of CRIT substats when optimising for max SPD, so it can let you have a slightly more efficient damage build when you reach this point.

[The Rest]

Oh the funny things this man can do now. I won't gush about all the various scenarios you can pull up to and wreck face, since really it's just about the limits of your imagination... and more importantly your skill. Not his Skill, YOUR skill, outside of the game, but about the game — you know what I mean.

I am regrettably obligated to tell you that this is in fact far and away the biggest negative of this character.

Issue 1: 'Oh god how do I play this character'. He's so damn hard to play well that it's actually kinda tear-inducing to think about. All this power at his disposal, at the player's fingertips too, but if you do even one thing wrong, you might actually have just screwed yourself royally.

This isn't hyperbole either, the single most important thing about playing Welt properly is timing his Ultimate. Oh yeah, you can't just autopilot that stuff, you gotta actually use that galaxybrain of yours, the one that distant stars sacrificed their burning lives for countless eons ago.

In order to maximise the benefits of the Ultimate, you need to make sure that you are using it right after the enemy's turn ends, as that is when they're sent back farthest in the Turn Order — further delays from this point will have a compounding effect and can make it possible to prevent an enemy from ever acting again, especially if your team is full of frequent attackers.

You do not need to actually ensure the enemies never act again (mostly because it's not really feasible outside of very specific comps and highly dependent on the exact Elite or Boss you're facing), if you can just delay the important foe from doing their weird and wacky shenanigans then that is often enough.

Which brings me to the next issue. Issue 2: 'Do I actually WANT to delay this enemy'. There are a great many fights in this game that have mechanics that are tied to the Boss getting to act, either to allow for the player to take advantage of specific mechanics, or to spawn adds for allies to ramp up off of, or really anything of that sort.

If you delay the enemy from doing that, you may actually end up dealing less than you expected. This is actually a rare problem that experienced Break team veterans used to see during its grand entrance in Penacony, because Breaking enemies before they do their big thing has a similar effect to what can happen with Welt's Ultimate.

And then Issue 3: 'CAN I even delay this enemy??' Yeah some miscreant Bosses aren't even fully targetable, or have parts that are untargetable (like that fraud Nikador), and therefore those parts can't be affected by Weightless. The other side of this is Bosses that don't actually care for your measly delays and have ways of acting immediately under specific conditions or just because they feel like it (that stupid manta ray that I hate).

And lastly, Issue 4: 'What do you mean I'm missing 1 point of Energy to Ult here?!'. Yeah, turns out that the Energy you get from being hit by enemies is actually pretty significant, which you'd definitely know if you're an avid 0-cycler and chronic limit-tester (you know who you are and you rock btw). Sacrificing that Energy can actually ruin some of your meticulously crafted rotations, and that can be quite devastating.

As it turns out, all but the last issue are rectified by rectifying the first issue, that being the classic of 'Get good, scrub'. By simply understanding WHY you want to use Welt's Ultimate, you'll get a grasp on WHEN to use it, and more importantly when to hold off for a bit. Remember that you get 2 turns of Weightless to work with, so you can afford to let the enemy take an action or two, as long as you reapply Weightless before you go to attack them.

Issue 4 is only really solved by crafting rotations that are entirely self-sufficient with their Energy economy, which can actually slow down some rotations quite significantly, even if the overall consistency of the team goes up tremendously by doing so.

This is why it's so hard to pilot this guy. For all the crazy high DMG multipliers he's got and great team support, none of it matters if YOU, the player, the poor schmuck reading this yap, don't know how to make use of it.

And this isn't some yelling from the high tower stuff that only applies to those who want to use Welt to replace their sustain, it's difficult no matter what role you place him in (but it's especially difficult from the sustain slot).

I guess the only other thing worth mentioning in this regard is that Welt at E0 is a good, but not great support for Elation teams specifically (but also kinda Break and Memosprite bombers a bit too); they love his DEF shred, and the delays and slows are always potentially useful too, it's just ironic that a team that could stack the DMG% bonus quickly literally does not care for DMG% in the slightest.

For Elation teammates, it's a completely dead Trace, but the other benefits are still there, so he's a good choice in a pinch, or a potentially fantastic choice if you're running him as the sustain for the team. Obviously at E4 this is a no-contest choice, but y'know, not everyone is gonna have that so it's worth reminding people that Elation units do not care about DMG%. Please remember this, I beg, I've seen so many recommendations for DMG% orbs, my poor eeeyes.

Speaking of relics, the actual last thing to mention is that building Welt is pure freaking hell because he wants literally almost everything. I mean some amount of EHR is converted to ATK% which is great, but man's got no CRIT Minor Traces at all, and his DMG% is potentially quite saturated already, and worst of all he wants SPD, and anyone who wants SPD lives in perpetual fear of that... *thing* that haunts the minds of all theorycrafters. Eagle 4-pc. Auughhh.

Getting a generic set is recommended, but getting specialised sets for main DPS and support/sustain are extremely recommended, you will not get by in those roles running your main DPS setup, regardless of your Eidolon level, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, don't come crying to me later. We're literally getting loadouts, there's no excuse aside from livid agenda-posting, and I do not accept that as valid, even if it's really funny.

Now that you're aware of the intense and acute pain of trying to play this man, actual team recommendations are easy.

Main DPS has the standard array of supports to choose from, but DEF reducing allies in particular are very useful to stack on top of Welt's own DEF shred, and allies with Action Advances are also extremely good to help with stacking his A2 and getting more powered Skills for more Energy. Really any combination will work well, the sky's the limit.

Sub DPS or Dual DPS is the same story, but try to pick allies who will buff the whole team instead of just one ally alone (shoutout to Ashveil for being surprisingly good here). This is also the point you may want to consider tweaking his build slightly to allow for greater Energy gains just to ensure that you have his Ultimate for when you need it since he's not likely to get funnelled in this setup.

As a general support, well... He's a general support, go figure. You're not always going to have the Skill Points to use Welt's Skill in these setups so you should definitely try and accommodate his Energy needs before focusing on anything else, and whatever personal damage you're left with afterwards is a nice bonus, but likely not the primary focus. Same deal as before, stacking DEF shred across multiple allies can result in extremely high damage gains, just be wary of his Energy requirements and you'll be just fine.

Lastly, as a sustain, this is the one setup that truly tests your understanding of the game, SPD and AV, and Welt's delays. I do not recommend this one generally because, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, it's too hard for most players. But that doesn't mean I don't think you shouldn't at least try it, you may be surprised by how exhilarating it is to run a team like this, and honestly, Welt from the sustain slot might just be his de facto strongest role, just with a pretty serious skill curve to it.

Actual final final note: if you're a new player, I highly HIGHLY recommend getting Welt from your 300 standard pull selector if you didn't get him from the 50 beginner pulls, because this is a unit that will last you pretty much forever, and I'm confident in saying that because he's a standard character and you'll likely get his Eidolons over time by just playing the game, and he'll get even better.

You'll always find a way to slot him into your teams if you build him up, and with Relic loadouts being a real thing now as well, you can switch up his build for whatever role you want the cool uncle to fill next.

[Wrap up]

If he wasn't so exceedingly challenging to play well, he'd be in almost every team in my eyes. This Novaflare gives me so much hope for the other standard banner characters because they have been so painfully neglected that it's a marvel people even remember they existed at all.

Obviously I'm not expecting the same level of care as for Welt, since Welt is a named supporting character of the main cast of The Game™, as well as a returning name from Honkai Impact 3rd, but still. Any amount of help to them would be good, and even better is that if I really squint, it looks like they may be hinting at the type of characters that we may be getting in future with the way that buffed Welt's kit works and interacts.

And that gets me very excited.

So go forth, my friends and readers, surpass your skill issues and devastate your foes. Let your enemies witness the shattering of stars, for in the end that is all it comes down to.

Survive, or be destroyed, there is no other choice.