All Honkai: Star Rail Paths and Damage Types explained

Everything you need to know about Honkai: Star Rail’s class system

HoYoverse

Each Honkai: Star Rail character follows a certain Path that defines their role in combat. Every figure uses the power of a certain element as well, which specifies their Damage Type. If you’re familiar with HoYoverse’s previous game, Genshin Impact, you could compare the characters’ Damage Types to their Elemental Affinity and the Paths to their weapon classes.

Table of Contents

1. Honkai: Star Rail – all Paths
2. Honkai: Star Rail – all Damage Types

A character’s Path defines their general combat role, which helps with building balanced teams, and is the determining factor as to which Light Cones they are able to use – these are items they can equip to enhance their stats and gain additional effects.

The Damage Type is critical in combat, as certain enemies will have weaknesses to a specific type. Each Damage Type also has a unique effect when breaking an opponent’s Toughness. It’s good to have basic knowledge of each of these effects, as they are important when it comes to making decisions in battle.

Here’s everything you need to know about Paths and Damage Types in Honkai: Star Rail.

Honkai: Star Rail – all Paths

There are eight different Paths a character can belong to, each of which is associated with one specific Aeon – powerful, almost god-like beings. They form a loose class system for the game’s characters and are the basis for many of the factions you’ll encounter on your adventures.

• The Preservation – focuses on creating shields and raising the team’s defense.
• The Destruction – focuses on dealing damage and character survivability.
• The Hunt – focuses on single-target damage.
• The Erudition – focuses on area-of-effect damage.
• The Harmony – focuses on buffing the team.
• The Nihility – focuses on debuffing enemies.
• The Abundance – focuses on healing the team.
• The Remembrance – focuses on summoning additional allies.

Note that a character’s Path in the lore may not always be the one they follow for gameplay purposes. Jing Yuan, for example, is a follower of The Hunt in the game’s story, while being Erudition in terms of gameplay.

Honkai: Star Rail – all Damage Types

Likewise, there are seven different Damage Types characters can use. Unlike in Genshin Impact, there are no elemental reactions that occur from the interaction of these types. Once you break an enemy’s resistance by depleting its white HP bar through applying a Damage Type it's weak against, that Damage Type's Weakness Break effect will get triggered.

• Ice – applies Freeze to the enemy, which stuns them and deals damage once the effect runs out.
• Physical – applies Bleed to the enemy, which deals damage over time.
• Fire – applies Burn to the enemy, which deals damage over time.
• Lightning – applies Shock to the enemy, which deals damage over time.
• Wind – applies Wind Shear to the enemy, which deals damage over time.
• Quantum – applies Entanglement to the enemy, which delays their next action, and damages them on the start of their next turn. This damage increases with each hit the target suffers in the meantime (the Damage Type of those hits doesn't matter).
• Imaginary – applies Imprisonment to the enemy, which delays their next action and reduces their Speed.

Be sure to check out our Honkai: Star Rail character tier list as well.