Today, we will be looking at how damage works in Honkai Star Rail.

So first, an in-depth guide on the damage formula, and then we will go through all the ways we can boost this damage, as well as how effective these boosts are.

For example, we will see how strong DMG% is versus ATK%, including any additional DMG% if you already have a ton. We will also look at how efficient crit ratios are, and how speed substats fare versus crit substats, as well as how well defence shred and resistance shred boost our damage, and much more.

The Damage Formula

First, let’s look at the good old classic damage formula.

It is composed of 7 different elements, but some formulas also show 8. We have 3 elements that we can affect by boosting our characters, and 4 elements that depend on the enemies and how we affect them.

So, for character dependent elements, we have our Base Damage, the Crit Multiplier, and the Damage Boost Multiplier.

Base Damage Explanation

First, we have our Base Damage, which is the skill multiplier multiplied by the scaling stat, plus any additional damage.

Seele’s ultimate at level 10, for example, does 425% of her attack, meaning her ultimate’s base damage will be 4.25 times her total attack, which at 3k attack would be 12750 damage.

If it scales off HP or Defense, or anything else, you use those values instead, multiplied by their respective skill multiplier.

How Do CRITs Work?

We then have the Crit Multiplier.

If you crit, your base damage will be multiplied by the crit multiplier, which is equal to 1 + your crit damage percentage. So, if you have 100% crit damage, your crit multiplier is 2, and your base damage will be doubled upon critting.

To find your average damage, you multiply your base damage by your crit rate and your crit multiplier, and add it to your base damage multiplied by 1 minus your crit rate.

You’re adding the damage of a crit with the damage of a non crit, respectively multiplied by their chances to happen.

At a crit ratio of 80 to 160 with our same ultimate damage from before, we do the following calculation, giving us an average damage of 29070.

How Does DMG% Boost DPS?

We then have the Damage Boost Multiplier.

Any damage% bonuses are totaled up and added to the base multiplier of 1, which will then multiply your damage again.

You have general DMG% bonuses that work on all attacks, like Bronya’s DMG% boost on her skill, then you have specific DMG% bonuses, like Subscribe for More, which are only taken into account on Basic Attacks or Skills. Or, another example is Elemental DMG% bonuses, which only work when said attack is of the corresponding element.

If, for example, we have a Quantum DMG% orb on our Seele, and our talent at level 10, we have a DMG% boost of 118.9%, and we thus multiply our previous damage by 2.189, giving us 63634.23 damage.

Next, we are onto the enemy multipliers: the DEF Multiplier, the RES Multiplier, the Vulnerability Multiplier, and finally the Broken Multiplier (this is part of a Universal DMG Reduction Multiplier that enemies have).

How OP Is DEF Reduction?

The DEF Multiplier is first.

It is calculated by a division. The numerator is your character’s level plus 20. The denominator is the enemy’s level + 20 multiplied by 1, minus any defence reduction or ignore effects. And this is then added onto your character’s level again plus 20.

What this basically means is your DEF multiplier depends on two things: the level difference between you and the enemy, as well as any defence reductions or ignore effects.

At the same level as your enemy, you are dividing your level by your level times two essentially, so your defence multiplier is 0.5, and your damage is halved.

As the enemy’s level increases, the denominator increases and your multiplier drops. This is why we calculate with a defence multiplier of 0.476, because we are level 80 versus level 90 enemies.

As we include defence reduction, the enemy level is multiplied by a smaller and smaller number, increasing our division’s final multiplier, until we hit 100% defence reduction, where we will now be dividing your level by your level, giving us a defence multiplier of 1. And Defence Reduction doesn’t go further than 100%.

Versus a level 90 enemy with a level 80 Seele, equipped with the 4 piece quantum set, we will ignore 20% of their defence and multiply our damage by this long number, dropping our damage to 33848.

Why To Fight Weak Enemies?

The second multiplier is the Resistance Multiplier.

You have the base resistance multiplier of 1, and then you subtract the subtraction of the enemy resistance with your resistance reduction or penetration. So, if the enemy has 20% resistance, you get a resistance multiplier of 0.8. If they have 40%, 0.6, etc.

If you have resistance reduction, you are removing this resistance, and any further reduction still counts towards your resistance multiplier, now boosting your damage. If you have 20% resistance reduction on an enemy with 20% resistance, they now have 0% resistance, and your multiplier is back at 1. If they have 0% resistance, your multiplier is at 1.2, and so your damage is increased.

This is why we generally bring DPS to an enemy with a weakness corresponding to our DPS’ type, since any enemy that is weak to an element has 0% resistance to that element, and so your base resistance multiplier is 1.

Including Seele’s A4, which gives us 20% RES PEN, versus a Quantum Weak enemy, we now have a resistance multiplier of 1.2 on our damage, increasing our damage to 40617.6.

Vulnerability Modifiers

Next up is a very simple one, the Vulnerability Multiplier, which is indicated by text saying increased damage received or increased damage taken by enemies, like Welt’s A2, or Silver Wolf’s signature Light Cone. By the way, if you haven't pulled Silver Wolf by now or find some of her Light Cones too hard to get, buying a Honkai Star Rail Account would be a good option.

You have a base multiplier of 1, and any vulnerability modifiers will increase it by their respective percentages. Say we have Welt on the team with his 12% vulnerability, we multiply our damage thus far by 1.12, increasing our damage to 45491.7.

Why Breaking Is Important?

Finally, we have the Broken Multiplier, which is part of enemies’ total damage reduction, and is dependent on the toughness bar. The broken multiplier is 0.9 when the enemy has a toughness bar, and 1 when they don’t.

So, you gain a 1.11x damage increase if you hit a broken enemy, meaning if you can save that juicy ultimate for when the enemy is broken, it’ll give a final nice boost.

TLDR On Boosting Damage

Now, onto how we boost our damage.

For an easy summary, we boost our damage by boosting each of these multipliers. So, we increase our trace level or scaling factor for our base damage, then we increase our crit ratio for our crit multiplier, and add DMG% buffs for our damage.

Applying def reduction debuffs or gaining def ignore will boost our def multiplier, the same with resistance reduction for our resistance multiplier. Inflicting vulnerability will boost our damage too. And finally, breaking an enemy’s toughness bar will grant us more damage.

But then come the questions of balancing stats. How much attack% I should have? How much crit should I have? Is DMG% better than ATK%? What if I have 100 DMG% already? And that is what part 2 of this guide will explain.

DMG% VS ATK%

Our first comparison is DMG% versus ATK%. This also works for any other scaling factor, like DMG% vs ATK HP% on Blade. At no buffs DMG% beats ATK%, due to characters and light cones having a base attack, and the gloves relic piece having a flat 352.8 attack.

For example, 10% of damage is worth a lot more than 10% of attack. This only further increases as we add ATK% buffs and main stats to our units. Adding an ATK% main stat skews the difference in favour of damage% even more. If we only add a damage% orb instead, ATK% becomes a bit stronger than damage%.

However, we will naturally be building a lot of attack%, and damage% only comes from the orb, set bonuses, and ally buffs. Attack% can be on the chest, boots, orb, rope, and also comes from a ton of set bonuses and ally buffs.

So, as you can see, two attack main stats make DMG% very favourable even with a DMG% orb. Even with a 66% buff from Bronya’s skill, it still comes out ahead.

DMG% VS CRIT%

DMG% versus CRIT% is similar, except they are both multipliers onto your base damage. CRIT also has the problem of only being valuable if you have enough of it.

For example, from no DMG% or crit buffs or pieces,100% damage is equal to a crit ratio of 55/110 in boosting your damage. Getting a better crit ratio improves the damage boosting capabilities of more crit, but it also doesn’t mean DMG% should be wasted. With a lot of DMG%, crit becomes very valuable, but so does crit with a lot of extra damage%.

ATK% VS CRIT%

Finally, in this three way match up, we have ATK% vs CRIT%, which is compared in increments of 2 substats, so 2 ATK% subs versus 1 crit rate and 1 crit damage sub. This is considering a base crit of 5 to 50.

For example, crit stats without initial crit are useless, and attack% is favoured even after two main stats. Now if we have a favourable crit ratio, any additional crit stats are worth a lot more.

So, don’t go adding some crit to a unit when you won’t hit a high enough ratio for it to be worth it. This also shows that DPS does want crit, as ATK% is pretty saturated, and it’s why we go crit chests on our DPS to avoid any DPS loss.

The Perfect CRIT Ratio

Now, onto Crit Efficiency, this one is a classic from Genshin Impact, and just shows, depending on your crit rate or crit damage, how effective extra crit damage or rate is to the perfect 1 to 2 ratio.

This shows that, for example, 50 crit rate to 100 crit damage is a nice ratio, but having 15 extra crit rate, or 30 extra crit damage, won’t impact your ratio too much, and you shouldn’t get too worked up over the perfect crit ratio.

We can also see this in the average Crit Multiplier, which is how we find our average damage dependent on our crit rate and crit damage. We used this earlier in the Seele calculation to find our average ultimate damage.

At the base 5 to 50 crit ratio characters have, our average damage is not increasing by much at all. But we also see that whilst the perfect ratio will boost our damage by the most amount, not having a 1:2 ratio is still great for damage.

Speed Breakpoints

Now, we are onto speed and their comparisons.

Remember, speed varies a lot, and speed can make tuning buffs better, or worse, and this is just showcasing how effective speed is for DPS turns and damage gain.

We first have the standard speed breakpoints. You have probably already seen this from Grimro. It shows how to get additional actions per cycle in the first 8 cycles.

For example, if we want 10 actions by the 6th cycle, we need 154 speed. This also shows the infamous 134 speed breakpoint. That gives us an additional action every 3 cycles, including the first cycle.

So, we get 2 actions in our first cycle, and then 6 in our 4th, and so on so forth. As for effective damage gain, we compare how many actions we get to the standard 1 action per 1 cycle.

So, getting two actions by the first cycle is a 100% damage gain. But 3 actions by the second cycle is only a 50% damage gain, since you’re already supposed to have 2 actions. This doesn’t mean you should just go for 161 speed breakpoints for damage gain. It just shows the potential.

SPD% VS ATK%

To further showcase that just going for speed is bad for DPS, we now have two comparisons: speed substats versus attack subs, and speed versus crit. These are my favourite comparisons, since they show the breakpoints really well.

SPD versus ATK shows 1 minimum sub of speed versus 1 minimum sub of attack. Obviously, having more attack will win until you hit a speed breakpoint. And having stats is important too.

Going for just speed for more turns won’t give you much gains, unless you have the stats to do damage. This also shows how important speed boots are for DPS gains. But that too much speed is unneeded as well.

With attack% buffs and a mainstat, getting an additional attack main stat does not prove as significant as speed boots, since we get our damage multiplied by more than 8 cycles, and we are closer to a future breakpoint for even more damage.

Also Read: Honkai Star Rail 1.2: 5 Things You Need To Know About Imbibitor Lunae - Stats, Ultimate, Skill, Technique & Gameplay

SPD% VS CRIT%

SPD% versus CRIT% is the same concept, but with the added nuance of crit needing a good ratio to be worth in the first place.

If you hit breakpoints, it’s great, but so is the value of the crit for your damage. You will be needing a good crit ratio in the first place, but getting extra crit is very valuable for damage.

DEF% Reduction

Now let’s look at the defence shred.

As we saw with the formula earlier, and as we can see in this graph, it’s an exponential DPS increase as you stack more and more defence shred.

Pela’s ultimate will give us a 26.5% damage boost, Silver Wolf’s talent and ult 38.4%, but combined they give us a 95% damage boost.

RES Reduction

Resistance shred gives us a linear boost instead. But we can see the value of the resistance shred for our Resistance Multiplier.

The more resistance the enemy has, the more gain we get from the resistance shred. But since we aren’t bringing our DPS to a fully resistant enemy, this doesn’t mean much to us.

We want to be fighting enemies of our elemental weakness for the most damage.

DEF VS RES Reductions

Next, let’s compare defence reduction and resistance reduction in their effect on multiplying our damage.

Versus a weak enemy, defence shred comes out ahead of course, but takes time to ramp up versus resistance shred, which is linear.

Also remember, defence shred can max out, and resistance shred doesn’t. So, having a combination of both will improve our damage a ton.

We can also see, for example, how effective Silver Wolf is in boosting our damage. Versus a non weak enemy, we get a 95.53% damage boost to our damage, which can boost our whole team’s damage.

Combined with Seele’s A4 and the quantum set, our damage goes insane.

Vulnerability

Adding Vulnerability is an additional multiplier, and very simple.

Every % of vulnerability multiplies our total damage by an additional %. It is linear and having it on the enemy is great for damage boosting.

Broken Multiplier

We then have the Broken Multiplier and its effects on our DPS. It’s even smaller than vulnerability in its complexity.

You either gain 11% DPS from attacking a broken enemy, or you lose 10% potential DPS by not attacking a broken enemy.

So again, try to hit them when their toughness bar is broken. But it’s okay if you don’t. It’s just an additional boost of DPS.

Break Damage Boosts

So that’s all the damage multipliers for standard damage, and how they fare versus each other. Let’s also quickly look at break damage and how it scales on our level.

So, Break Damage scales exponentially on our level, and is why it was so slept on in the past. It still won’t beat out standard DPS builds unless you break a lot, which is always tricky to calculate, or unless you are a support like Asta that doesn’t traditionally do a ton of damage.

Level is very important for break damage. Going from level 40 to 50 gives us a 113% damage increase on our break damage at level 40, which is compounded onto future levels.

So, even though from level 70 to 80 we get another 41.66% increase, that’s a 41.66% increase on our break damage from level 70, which is a 62% increase over the break damage from level 60, and so on.

With future break effect supports and buffs, the break effect will be very strong.