All Honkai Star Rail Combat Type Elements & Paths Explained

Honkai Star Rail has a number of Elemental Combat Types and Paths that determine each character’s strengths and weaknesses in combat. It’s an important part of ‘team comp’ or party composition. You want to make sure you have a good balance of elements and Paths across the characters within your party to ensure you’re always ready to exploit the weaknesses of whatever enemies you encounter. In this guide, we’ve got a complete list of all Honkai Star Rail elements and Paths, so you know what they all mean.

All Elements in Honkai Star Rail & What They Do

Elements shouldn’t be anything new to Genshin Impact players. The way they work in HoYoverse’s latest title is slightly different, though, with each applying a different status effect. We’ve listed all of these below:

• Physical: Using these attacks to trigger Weakness Break will deal Physical DMG and apply the Bleed effect, dealing Physical DoT (damage over time).
• Fire: Using these attacks to trigger Weakness Break will deal Fire DMG and apply the Burn effect, dealing Fire DoT.
• Ice: Using Ice attacks to trigger Weakness Breaks in combat will deal Ice DMG and Freeze the target, immobilizing the enemy, preventing them from taking their move in the turn-based combat and dealing additional Ice DMG.
• Imaginary: When used to trigger Weakness Break, these attacks will deal Imaginary DMG and additional inflicts Imprisonment. Imprisoned enemies suffer from delayed actions and SPD reduction.
• Lightning: Using Lightning attacks to trigger Weakness Break will deal Lightning DMG and apply the Shock effect, dealing Lightning DoT.
• Quantum: When used to trigger Weakness Break, Quantum attacks will deal Quantum DMG and cause Entanglement, delaying the enemy’s action and dealing additional Quantum DMG to the affected enemy at the start of the next turn. When the enemy is hit, this extra DMG will increase.
• Wind: Using Wind attacks to trigger Weakness Break will deal Wind DMG and apply the Wind Shear effect, dealing Wind DoT.

All Honkai Star Rail Paths, Explained

There are seven different ‘Paths’ that a character can have in Honkai Star Rail. These essentially explain what type of character they are. For example, a Destruction character is one of your big DPS dealers, while an Abundance character is going to be your team’s Healer. You can check out the full list below:

• Abundance: Heals allies and restores HP to the team.
• Destruction: Deals huge amounts of damage and possesses great survivability. Suitable for various combat scenarios.
• Erudition: Deals huge amounts of multi-target damage. The main damage dealer against groups of enemies.
• Harmony: Applies Buffs to allies to improve the team’s combat capacities.
• The Hunt: Deals huge amounts of single-target damage. The main damage dealer against Elite Enemies.
• Nihility: Applies debuffs to enemies to reduce their combat capacities.
• Preservation: Possesses powerful defensive abilities to protect allies in various ways.

Because of each Path’s distinct strengths and weaknesses, it’s important to make sure you’ve got a good mix of them within your team comp. If you have all Destruction and Erudition characters, you’re going to have a bad time when they all need healing. Similarly, if you don’t have any damage dealers, battles against powerful enemies are going to take a long time.

One of the most sought-after characters at the moment is Kafka, thanks to her unique composition of Lightning and Nihility. This means she can deal significant damage, while also applying powerful debuffs to enemies to really weaken them. This can really help to turn the tide of battle in your favor.

That’s everything you need to know on Honkai Star Rail Elements and Paths. For more on the game, be sure to check out the links below.