Best Honkai Star Rail Blade Build, Light Cone, and Relics
The best Honkai Star Rail Blade build balances HP, attack, and crit. rate to give your party a powerful multi-target Destruction fighter.
UPDATE 10/12/2024: We have updated this Blade build with some additional information about their ascension materials and which traces you should prioritise.
The best Honkai: Star Rail Blade build gives your party a complex and powerful damage dealer who’s unlike any fighter the RPG has seen so far. Using Blade involves a delicate balance of reducing his health without knocking him out and timing his skill use to maximize how much damage he deals.
Thankfully, Blade is easy to build, even if you don’t get his signature Light Cone.
Best Honkai Star Rail Blade Build
Blade is a 5-Star character from the Path of Destruction that harnesses the Wind element when dealing damage.
The best Blade build suits his unique nature as a character who deals higher damage based on his max HP. Blade’s skills scale on attack as well, though to a lesser extent, so those are your two main stats to focus on in any build. Right now, only one Destruction Light Cone gives the wearer an HP buff, so you’ll have to make do with attack if you don’t get Blade’s signature Cone.
Honkai Star Rail Blade – Best Light Cone
5-Star Blade Light Cones
Blade’s signature Light Cone is the 5-star The Unreachable Side, and as you’d expect, it’s a perfect match to his skills. It increases the wearer’s max HP by 18 percent and their critical rate by 18 percent, and if the wearer loses HP, it boosts their damage by 24 percent until their next attack. Crit rate is a nice bonus for Blade, who, like Jing Yuan, can deal an exceptional amount of damage when he lands a critical hit.
The 5-star Something Irreplaceable is another strong fit for Blade. It raises the wearer’s attack by 24 percent outright. When they get hit or lose HP, as Blade pretty much always will, they restore HP equal to eight percent of their attack stat and buffs their attack by a further 24 percent until the end of the following turn.
On the Fall of an Aeon is the easiest 5-star Cone to get, though. You could previously get it in the Forgotten Hall’s Light Cone shop, so there was no need to fool with the gacha system. On the Fall of an Aeon grants the wearer an eight percent attack buff – more, if you Superimpose it – every time they attack, and the buff stacks four times during one battle. They also get a 12 percent damage increase for two turns when they inflict weakness break. If you time it right, that’s nearly a 50 percent attack buff, which is good in itself and even better for ekeing out more damage scaling from Blade’s skills.
4-Star Blade Light Cones
Nowhere to Run is the best 4-star Light Cone for Blade. It offers a 24 percent attack buff outright and then restores HP equal to 12 percent of their attack when they defeat an enemy. Arlan’s A Secret Vow is another solid choice, one that buffs attack by 20 percent and then, if the enemy has more HP than the wearer, gives the wearer another 20 percent damage buff.
3-Star Blade Light Cones
For your 3-star choices, we recommend Mutual Demise. It raises the user’s critical rate by 12 percent to 24 percent if their HP is lower than 80 percent, and Blade’s HP will almost always be lower than 80 percent.
Honkai Star Rail Blade – Best Relics
HoYoverse added a new Relic set just for Blade in version 1.2, Longevous Disciple, and it’s the best choice for him, especially if you get his Light Cone as well.
- Two-piece effect: Raises the wearer’s max HP by 12 percent
- Four-piece effect: When the wearer takes damage or has their HP reduced, they gain an eight percent critical hit rate buff for two turns. The effect stacks twice.
If you don’t want a full set, you can use two pieces of Longevous and two Eagle Line relics. Eagle Line’s two-piece effect raises the user’s wind damage.
Make sure to get a 4-star or 5-star head Relic, so you can level it up more and get the biggest HP increase in return. The ideal body stats are HP or critical hit rate, with critical damage a close third. HP or attack are good choices for the feet.
Honkai Star Rail Blade – Best Ornaments
Blade has two Ornament choices, depending on how you build him. If you managed to get a critical hit rate percentage over 50 percent, use Inert Salsotto. This set raises the user’s critical hit rate by eight percent and, once their crit rate exceeds 50 percent, it boosts the power of their ultimate and follow-up attacks by 15 percent.
If you feel like grinding Relics to get an even higher critical rate, use the new Rutilant Arena set instead. This one raises the wearer’s critical rate by eight percent and, once it reaches 70 percent, the user gets a 20 percent buff to their basic attack and skill damage. Blade’s skill doesn’t deal damage, but it’s still a nice buff to his basic attack.
Wind damage or HP are good picks for your sphere stats, and the Link Rope should ideally have HP or attack for its stat.
Blade Traces Priority
The main damage dealer in Blade's kit is his basic attack. Not only will you use the attack as it is, but you will largely be using enhanced basic attacks after triggering Blade's skill, Hellscape, which buffs these. In the Hellscape stat, Blade's basic attacks can deal additional damage based on his HP and his ATK, so you want to focus on improving this - and his Hellscape skill, of course - before all else.
Blade's Traces and the order in which you should prioritise them, from highest to lowest priority, are as follows:
- Basic Attack
- Skill
- Ultimate
- Talent
Blade Ascension Materials
To get Blade from Level 1 all the way to Level 80 in Honkai Star Rail, you will need the following Ascension Materials for him:
- 15x Immortal Scionette
- 15x Immortal Aeroblossom
- 15x Immortal Lumintwig
- 65x Ascendant Debris
- 308000x Credits
Is Blade good in Honkai Star Rail?
Blade is an excellent single-target DPS character who can, under the right circumstances, even deal decent damage to groups. He’s also one of the only heavy-hitting wind characters who doesn’t rely on damage-over-time and one of the only Destruction characters who can carry an entire party.
So the short version is yes, Blade is very good.
His basic attack normally deals the usual paltry damage to a foe – until you use his skill. Blade’s skill consumes 30 percent of his HP and activates the Hellscape state for a few turns. While this is active, Blade’s basic attack consumes 10 percent of his HP and deals damage that scales based on his HP and attack to the target foe and to adjacent foes.
It’s not all blood and glory, though. Blade’s skill doesn’t regenerate energy, and in the Hellscape state, his basic attack can’t regenerate skill points. Make sure to plan ahead before using these.
Blade’s ultimate sets his HP to 50 percent and deals damage based on the sum of three factors: 24 percent of his attack, 60 percent of his max HP, and 60 percent of the HP he’s lost in this battle. The last factor is cumulative, so if you heal damage, it doesn’t affect the total HP lost. The maximum value of that last stat is 90 percent of his max HP, and it resets after you use his ultimate.
If you play your cards right, you can deal a significant amount of damage to entire groups. You can also save Blade from death, since it restores enough HP to put him at 50 percent of his max health total.
Blade’s talent is equally helpful and destructive. It centers on Charge stacks. Blade gets one stack of Charge when he loses HP either from his own skills or from enemy attacks. Once he has five stacks, he unleashes a powerful wind attack that affects all enemies. With the right timing, you can use Blade’s skill and Hellscape attacks to max out his Charge stacks and deal a lot of damage in a short amount of time.
Should I roll for Blade in Star Rail?
If you need a strong single-target damage dealer, it’s definitely worth throwing some Jade at Blade’s banner - if he appears for a rerun in future. Honkai Star Rail only has a few powerful single-target fighters, including Seele, Jing Yuan and Yanqing. If you don’t have any of them on your team, Blade will make your life a lot easier in Star Rail’s endgame content.
If you are building Blade, check out our guide to the best Blade teams in Honkai Star Rail, as well as our Honkai Star Rail tier list to see who else might be a good fit in your Blade party.