Honkai: Star RailYanqingBuild and Guide

Yanqing is a standard 5-star character and a single-target specialist. He has very competent damage against single foes and has impressive CRIT buffs through his Talent and Ultimate. His Talent also allows him to occasionally launch a follow-up attack after attacking with a chance of Freezing the foe. He relies on not taking any damage at all to maintain these strong buffs, losing them immediately if this condition is not met, and requiring an additional turn to regain the benefits.

This poor boy. I’m sure he’s actually one of the strongest people on the Luofu, but he just keeps picking fights with, like, the precious few people stronger than him. Sadly it doesn’t get too much better for him in actual gameplay. I will lead with the statement that Yanqing can do very considerable damage — IF everything goes his way, but I will show you why that may be far more difficult to achieve than you’d expect.

Yanqing’s Talent gives him a buff called Soulsteel Sync and is activated by his Skill. While Soulsteel Sync is active, Yanqing is less likely to be targeted by enemies and gains up to an extra 20% CRIT Rate and 30% CRIT DMG. With Soulsteel Sync active, any attack that Yanqing makes has a 60% fixed chance of launching a follow-up attack on the attacked foe, dealing up to 50% ATK and having a 65% base chance to Freeze the target.

As far as stat boosting Talents go, this is certainly one of the more impressive ones, and can result in a great deal of damage coming out, especially if the follow-up occurs even semi-frequently, and — huh? What’s this last line here… ‘When Yanqing receives DMG, the Soulsteel Sync effect will disappear.’ Oh.

Yeah… This sounds like it’s not something that should be too difficult to maintain but this is quite literally any amount of damage. Even a literal single digit point of damage — even literally 1 damage, and all of the benefits of this Talent vanish into thin air. Worse still is that when Yanqing uses his Skill to activate this Talent, he’ll only start benefiting from its effects after his turn ends, meaning you have an entire turn of downtime if you take any damage at all.

This was far less of an issue in the early moments of the game when enemies were simple and predictable. Nowadays, enemies can quite frequently bust out AoE attacks without much warning, both Blast and full AoE. AoE abilities don’t really care about Yanqing’s reduced likelihood of being targeted because, quite simply, who cares when you can just hit everyone, right? This makes it extremely challenging to maintain this Talent’s effects, making whatever powerful bonuses it does provide completely moot.

Yanqing’s Skill deals up to 220% ATK to a single enemy and will activate Soulsteel Sync for 1 turn. Herein lies the next issue; Soulsteel Sync only has a 1 turn duration, so if Yanqing is ever afflicted by crowd control effects like Concussion or Freeze, and his turn is skipped, this will also result in needing to wait for the next turn over to make use of Soulsteel Sync once more.

Yanqing’s Ultimate first buffs his CRIT Rate by 60%, with up to an additional 50% CRIT DMG if Soulsteel Sync is active. These buffs last for 1 turn and stack additively with his Talent’s CRIT buffs. He then deals up to 350% ATK to a single enemy. Without his Talent’s effects active, Yanqing loses a considerable amount of damage from this Ultimate and on the following turn. It also has a very high Energy cost of 140.

Everything revolves around this Talent for him, and it’s got the harshest penalties for even the slightest thing going awry. Took a single point of damage? No more Talent. Missed your turn because of unavoidable crowd control? Must be a skill issue. Didn’t have the SP to use his Skill without interruption? Okay, that might actually be a skill issue…

Perhaps now you see why it’s difficult to maintain Yanqing’s damage profile. His ability multipliers are also lower than you’d expect for a unit entirely limited to single-target damage and that’s mostly to account for the large amounts of free CRIT stats he gets from his Talent and Ultimate. The issue of course is that if Soulsteel Sync ever drops for whichever of the many reasons it might, Yanqing’s damage vanishes in a flash, and it takes a lot to get back to it.

A team for Yanqing must contain a Shielder. Only damage done to Yanqing’s actual HP bar will disable Soulsteel Sync, so Shields are outright necessary for him to function in the end game where there is frequent incoming AoE damage. This currently limits you to pretty much just Gepard, as he is the only Shielder who is viable as a solo sustain. This is already a very tall ask because even if Gepard is also a standard 5-star character like Yanqing, it’s still a whole other 5-star that you may not end up getting for quite a while.

If you want to be safe as well, having a way to cleanse Yanqing is also useful because you don’t want to have your turn forcibly skipped, and the only way you can do that without having to run a double sustain comp is to use Bronya for her Skill’s cleanse before the Action Advance. This is yet another standard 5-star character that you may not have access to, and another character who is better spent on other less temperamental DPS characters. 

Finally because of his extremely high cost Ultimate, the last unit will almost certainly be Tingyun, and this takes her away from other Ultimate reliant units who can do far more damage against far more enemies with the Energy Tingyun grants them.

This is the dilemma. Even if your Yanqing is well built and well invested, he has a crippling reliance on his other teammates to actually be able to use the power he has, because again, if everything goes his way he actually deals very considerable damage. Budget versions of the above characters do exist but it’s just sunk-cost at that point; March can provide consistent Shields but they raise Yanqing’s aggro meaning they will take more damage and thus need to be reapplied more often, consuming yet more SP in the process; Asta can increase the SPD of Yanqing thereby mitigating any losses you may sustain from losing Soulsteel Sync; and Yukong can very impressively buff Yanqing for a single massive burst with his Ultimate, stacking even greater CRIT stats.

But actually, what about those CRIT stats? 20% CRIT Rate and 30% CRIT DMG from his Talent is pretty good, this is true, but then an additional 60% CRIT Rate from his Ultimate means that with no further investment, Yanqing naturally sits at 85% during his Ultimate. See, this is an issue because it’s a colossal overcap if you’re trying to build Yanqing with Planar sets like Rutilant Arena in mind.

Rutilant Arena needs 70% CRIT Rate in combat to grant a 20% DMG bonus to a character’s Skill and Basic ATK, but with this much CRIT Rate, Yanqing’s Ultimate will overcap his CRIT Rate by 58%... To literally zero benefit. Well, okay, so you just don’t go for that much CRIT so you don’t overcap, right? Wrong. Without the base CRIT Rate, you won’t activate the set bonus of the Planar, and your consistency in combat will also plummet because the only time you’ll have a consistent nuke is during the effects of his Ultimate — his 140 Energy cost Ultimate.

Yeah, it’s ironic how the best thing about Yanqing at lower levels is also his biggest headache at the end game. It’s pretty much impossible to not waste stats with this guy. My advice is just accept that you’re going to have crazy overcapping of CRIT Rate and just go for the maximum consistency. This is especially true due to his Bonus Traces.

Yanqing’s A2 will deal an additional 30% ATK to Ice-weak foes. His A4 will increase his Effect RES by 20% during Soulsteel Sync, and his A6 grants him a 10% SPD increase for 2 turns upon scoring a CRIT. It’s very easy to maintain this SPD bonus, and it’s also quite appreciated due to Yanqing’s high base SPD of 109. Against specifically Ice-weak foes, Yanqing will definitely destroy them if you can facilitate the rest of his kit.

As a standard 5-star character, it is not unlikely to get Eidolons for Yanqing over time. It is with a heavy heart that I must say I don’t think they really improve much for Yanqing as his issues are not with his damage. Amusingly I think E6 might be the one that makes things a little easier, and even then it’s a bit of a coin toss. The worst part about him is that he can show up to ruin your pity, and depending on who you ask, that makes him far and away the worst character in this game. 

In the original version of this review I said ‘I encourage you to experiment to see where the pitfalls start and end, and adjust your setups accordingly’, and I can safely say we are all now very well aware of where the pitfalls start. What I can’t see is where they end.