In today’s Honkai: Star Rail guide, Sforum shares with you how to build Rappa, the game’s latest limited 5-star character.
After Firefly and Boothill, Honkai: Star Rail players now have a new limited 5-star DPS breaker: Rappa, the female ninja from the Galaxy Patrol. Can she secure a spot in the breaker teams when players already have two hot DPS characters capable of decimating enemies?
What Can Rappa Do in Honkai: Star Rail?
Rappa’s power relies heavily on her ultimate skill. While her normal attacks and skills deal damage, her ultimate puts her in an Engraved state, allowing her to use three enhanced Blade Spin attacks that hit three targets and reduce their Toughness regardless of weaknesses. This enables Rappa to break multiple enemies’ weaknesses simultaneously, maximizing the damage potential from her talent.
Thus, energy regeneration is vital for Rappa. With an ultimate that requires 140 energy, players need to prioritize energy recharge stats for her to fully charge within three or, at most, four turns. This allows her to effectively use her talent for breaking damage. Additionally, Rappa’s Sea Echo trace allows her to deal Super Breaking Damage when in the Engraved state of her ultimate.
Rappa’s talent grants her 1 Energy Point each time an enemy’s weakness is broken, up to 10 points (though reaching this limit is rare). Each time she uses an enhanced normal attack, its third hit deals breaking damage to all affected enemies and consumes all stored Energy Points for increased damage. Notably, this damage scales with the enemy’s Toughness bar, meaning the longer the bar, the higher the damage.
Rappa’s role as a Breaker DPS alongside Firefly and Boothill makes comparisons among the three unavoidable. When weighed against Firefly and Boothill, Rappa has a significant disadvantage: the inability to apply specific elemental weaknesses to enemies. Although Rappa compensates for this by dealing Toughness damage regardless of weaknesses, this effect is balanced by HoYoverse through a reduced coefficient, resulting in lower damage output compared to Firefly and Boothill.
Additionally, the breaking damage of the Imaginary element itself is quite low. While Boothill’s Physical and Firefly’s Fire have coefficients of 2, Rappa’s Imaginary element has only 0.5, which greatly reduces her breaking damage. The advantage of the Imaginary element lies in delaying enemy actions and prolonging their broken state – whether this compensates for the lower coefficient depends on whether your team can deal enough breaking damage consistently.
To align with the Knowledge Path, HoYoverse has designed Rappa’s skill set to rely heavily on having enough enemies on the field to break their weaknesses. Her damage output drops significantly when facing bosses or elite enemies with long Toughness bars. As a result, Rappa is more suitable for Story Mode and performs decently in Memory of Chaos (where breaker characters are favored) but will face considerable challenges in Simulated Universe.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the Exo-toughness mechanic, or “pseudo-toughness,” could make Rappa even stronger in the future. According to leaks, Fugue (5-star Tingyun) is a character who can apply Exo-toughness to enemies, enabling Rappa to continuously break weaknesses and thereby activate her skills more frequently.
How to Build Rappa in Honkai: Star Rail
Due to the existence of the Withered Leaf trace, players may aim for 3200 ATK to make enemies take an additional 10% breaking damage. However, it’s important to note that breaking damage characters like Rappa don’t benefit as much from high ATK stats, so 3200 ATK should be a secondary goal while focusing on more critical stats such as speed and breaking damage.
For players debating between Eidolon 1 and signature light cone for Rappa, Sforum recommends the light cone. Rappa’s E1 allows 15% DEF ignore and 20 energy recovery, but the “Ninja Art Manual – Dazzling Break” cone offers up to 60% breaking damage, 30 energy at the start of battle, and 50% action priority after using two normal attacks, allowing Rappa to return to a new rotation quickly. Additionally, Rappa has limited light cone options, which will be elaborated on later.
Best Relic Builds for Rappa in Honkai: Star Rail
When selecting main stats for Rappa’s relics, choose ATK on the chest and orb, speed on boots, and energy recharge or breaking damage on the link rope. Prioritize speed, breaking damage, and ATK as sub-stats.
Recommended relic sets for Rappa:
- 4x Steel Cavalry: The top choice for current breaker characters, as its DEF ignore effect synergizes with her cone, providing significant benefits.
- 4x Starlight Thief: Grants 32% breaking damage and 3 energy recovery each time Rappa breaks an enemy’s weakness.
Accessory sets for Rappa:
- Talia: High breaking damage stat (36%), boosting Rappa’s damage significantly. It works under any conditions.
- Forged Flame Lotus Palace: A unique choice with 6% speed boost and 40% breaking damage active only against Fire-weak enemies.
Best Light Cones for Rappa in Honkai: Star Rail
Light cone options for Rappa:
- Ninja Art Manual – Dazzling Break: Provides 60% breaking damage, 30 energy at the start of battle, and 50% action priority after using two normal attacks, allowing Rappa to return to a new cycle quickly.
- Harmony After Silence (S5): Offers breaking damage and speed stats Rappa needs. It is the best 4-star option, surpassing Herta shop offerings.
- Infinite Extrapolation (S5): A free-to-play option that boosts ATK to reach 3200 and grants 16% speed for more frequent turns. However, it’s not highly beneficial for Rappa.
- Don’t Let the World Grow Cold (S5): Allows Rappa to use her ultimate sooner at the start of battle, but her enhanced normal attacks don’t count as ultimate damage, making the second effect irrelevant. Use only if you want to optimize the initial cycle.
Conclusion on Building Rappa
Overall, Rappa is a solid DPS in Honkai: Star Rail, excelling in AOE compared to Firefly and Boothill but at the cost of lower elite and boss damage. She isn’t a must-have character, so Sforum advises players to consider rolling and building Rappa based on whether they already have a breaker DPS. If not, Rappa can be a valuable addition, but if you own one of the other two, there’s little reason to spend Stellar Jade on her unless you like her as a character and don’t care about the meta.
