With Honkai: Star Rail version 2.4, the master of swordplay, Yunli, joins the roster of playable characters as a limited five-star. If you’re thinking of pulling her from her banner, or you’re just looking for a little insight, here’s everything you need to know about building her.
Strongest Yunli Build in Honkai: Star Rail
Yunli is a Physical Destruction character whose central focus revolves around using powerful Follow-up attacks through counters to destroy her foes. From a gameplay perspective, Yunli plays incredibly similarly to Clara. She plays so close to her that anywhere you could slot a Clara on a team, you can, instead, replace with Yunli. Effectively, she is a more powerful version of Clara, with a majority of her weaknesses omitted.
Like Clara, Yunli wants enemies to hit constantly to trigger her Follow-up attacks. However, her unique mechanic is her parry-based Ultimate. Most of her damage comes from this Ultimate and it requires you to ‘time’ attacks which essentially boils down to ensuring you only invoke her Ultimate when an enemy is going to attack next in the turn order. The final important aspect you should know about Yunli’s Ult is that it is an AoE taunt, which means she is fantastic at protecting her allies while dishing out incredible damage.
In conclusion, Yunli is a really simple character to pick up and play and she offers a lot despite asking so little of you. Once again, if you’ve played Clara at all, then you’re almost entirely aware of how to play Yunli as well.
Best Relics for Yunli
Seeing as nearly all of Yunli’s damage comes from her Follow-up attacks, she only has two actual Relic options you should consider. Her best-in-slot (BiS) set is The Wind-Soaring Valorous set as it provides her with additional ATK%, boosted Follow-up damage, and increased Ultimate damage. It is a simple set compared to many others in Honkai: Star Rail, but that doesn’t make it any less potent.
Her secondary option is The Ashblazing Grand Duke set, which focuses much more on boosting Follow-up damage. What’s unique about this set for Yunli is that the 4-piece requires a Follow-up to hit multiple times in a single instance to get the maximum benefit from it, which her Ultimate counters can consistently deliver. While this is not the best set for Yunli, it is still an extremely competitive option, especially if you have great sub-stats.
As for Yunli’s Sphere and Rope set, she also has two solid options. Her BiS is easily Duran, Dynasty of Running Wolves, as it provides her with large bonuses to Follow-up attacks. Just make sure you’re running her with another Follow-up attacker (like Topaz or Aventurine), to gain the full benefit from it.
Her secondary recommended set is the ever-competitive Inert Salsotto. This set provides a solid boost to Ultimate and Follow-up attack damage while providing a healthy dose of additional CRIT RATE on top.
Best Team Comp Yunli
As mentioned earlier, Yunli can be slotted anywhere you could or would have used a Clara. Knowing this, there are two team compositions I can recommend to you.
The first is Robin, Topaz, and Aventurine. These three characters make up the primer Follow-up team comp currently in Honkai: Star Rail. In this comp, Yunli would be replacing Dr. Ratio, which is a positive in my book thanks to Ratio’s extreme focus on single-target DPS. She is extremely effective no matter how many enemies are on screen, and she still does comparable (if not greater in most cases) damage.
Robin on this comp gives Yunli and the rest of her team a large, unconditional DMG buff while also providing a constant supply of full-team Advance Fowards through her Ultimate. She is by far Yunli’s best teammate.
Topaz buffs the potency of all of Yunli’s Follow-up attacks, including her Ultimate. Topaz, being a Hunt character, also brings considerable single-target damage to the comp, helping Yunli mop up enemies with ease.
Aventurine helps keep Yunli alive through his incredible shields while also dishing out solid amounts of damage thanks to the frequency of his Follow-up attacks on this comp.
The second team focuses on buffing Yunli as the Hypercarry on the team, ensuring she has everything she needs at all times. This comp involves using Tingyan, Huohuo, and Robin.
Tingyan provides Yunli with a powerful DMG buff and helps her generate energy to keep her Ultimates flowing.
Huohuo also provides Yunli with more damage through her buff, while also generating energy. Additionally, seeing as she Abundance, she is exceptional at keeping Yunli alive and well-cleased.
Robin provides the largest DMG buff between the three, while also providing a consistent full-team Advance Forward through her Ultimate. This means that both Tingyan and Huohuo generate more energy for Yunli.
Should you get Yunli’s Lightcone in Honkai: Star Rail?
If you’re planning to pull Yunli, get her Lightcone. Dance at Sunset does a lot of the standard stuff you’d expect a signature Lightcone to do, but its core benefit is the massively increased Taunt Value it gives Yunli. While it is equipped, she is considerably more likely to be attacked by enemies in normal gameplay, meaning she lands more counterattacks and generates more energy. More energy means more Ultimate counters, which means more overall damage.
While you can get by using something else, Dance at Sunset’s Taunt Value boost is much too valuable for Yunli for me to recommend any others. Oh, and it’s also really strong on Clara because Yunli and Clara play almost the same. Go figure.
Best Eidolons for Yunli in Honkai: Star Rail
Yunli is an extremely strong character at E0 and hardly needs Eidolons to function. Her Lightcone is more important than any of her Eidolons, but if you’re still planning to pull for some, E2 is a good stopping point. Here are all of her Eidolons for your reference.
- Weathered Blade Does Not Sully (E1) – Provides a large DMG boost to Yunli’s Ultimate counter while also allowing it to strike three additional times on a single cast. Very strong, very good.
- First Luster Breaks Dawn (E2) – Yunli’s counters will ignore 20% of a target’s defense at all times. Very simple, but also strong. Best stopping point
- Mastlength Twirls Mountweight (E3) – Yunli’s Ultimate counters will do more damage due to the extra ranks it gets. Solid Eidolon through rather basic.
- Artisans Ironsong (E4) – After using a counter, Yunli gains 50% Effect Resistance. Honestly, this one is pretty worthless as your support should be taking of this anyway. A proper team comp will never see this Eidolon be useful. Bad.
- Blade of Old Outlasts All (E5) – Boosts Talent level which means stronger counters. Good, but not worth investing in unless you’re going to E6.
- Walk in Blade, Talk in Zither (E6) – This Eidolon effectively removes the ‘Parry’ mechanic from Yunli’s gameplay while also boosting the damage of all of her counters considerably. That said, as far as E6’s go, think one is a bit lackluster compared to others.
