Honkai Star Rail banner 2.3 was recently released, and in its first phase players were given the choice between the re-release of scholar Ruan Mei and the release of young hunter Firefly. At that point, most players had already made up their minds when it came to choosing who to spend their accumulated star jades on, whether they were free to play or enjoyed paying in-game. However, they may have had to rethink their choice, since Ruan Mei is also one of the best five-star characters in the game, but why is she held in such high esteem by meta players?
Ruan Mei from Honkai Star Rail is one of the best characters in the entire game.
To better understand Ruan Mei it is necessary to see how he compares to other similar characters. Her passive talent increases the speed (SPD) of the party and her ability increases the Damage (DMG) and Weakness Breaking Efficiency of the team. This weakness breaking efficiency improvement is one of the best parts of Ruan Mei’s skill set, as no other character is able to do it so far. Her Ultimate ability also increases the stamina penetration of all team types and delays their action after a weakness break.
Ruan Mei’s upgrades are so universal that it can work on all teams, including Damage Over Time (DoT) teams. She can also fit into a hypercharge or dual attacker team. While other limited 5-star Harmony characters, such as Sparkle and Robin are fantastic, they are much more focused on Critical Damage (Critical DMG), which can limit their use.
That’s not to say they’re bad, in fact, part of the initial appeal of Miss Icy is that you can use her in conjunction with another Harmony or support character. When she first debuted, one of the best Harmony units was Bronya, but she has an obvious problem with skill points (SP). Other than her and your attacker, your team has to be SP positive or SP neutral.
You can use it with Asta, who only needs his Ultimate ability, but Tingyun and Yukong are out of the question because you need to conserve your SP for Bronya and your attacker. Of course, depending on the battle, you might also want to reserve some for your support character. Ruan Mei’s upgrades last for three of your turns and affect the entire team, which means it can work with Harmony or Nihility characters that consume more SP without affecting your gameplay.
You can probably do without attackers, but you can’t do without support characters. While some important characters like Luocha and Silver Wolf have been left behind in the ever-changing meta (Huohuo and Aventurine made Luocha obsolete if you have them, and Silver Wolf’s niche is no longer as necessary due to most people having more character variety).
Ruan Mei’s universal upgrades make her a mainstay in any team at any time. She came out during the Destruction era, but remained relevant even during the renaissance of Time Damage (Black Swan), the Follow-Up Attack era (IP3, Robin) and the current era of Rupture Effect (Firefly, Boothill). And he will surely remain a top-tier support character no matter what meta changes devolve in the future.
As for his personality, perhaps Ruan Mei is not one of the most likable or sympathetic characters in HoYoverse due to his somewhat distant behavior and his lack of tact or inability to understand love and emotions in others, prioritizing the pursuit of knowledge, even over his own creations. As a character he is quite interesting and adds a lot of nuances to the story, but it is understandable that many people feel somewhat uncomfortable with his humanly unpleasant aspects.
It’s very true that most people are only interested in using characters they like, it’s the nature of the appeal that these types of games offer, as it wouldn’t be fun to play a gacha if you didn’t like the characters. But for those who care about reaching the goal and want to beat the final game content and the higher difficulties of Simulated Universe in a more straightforward manner, Ruan Mei may even be almost unmissable.
For those who don’t know Honkai: Star Rail is a gacha RPG and strategy system game developed by the company HoYoverse that was officially released on April 26, 2023 for PC, PlayStation 5 and mobile devices. It is an installment in which a group of adventurers go on an intense journey aboard the Astral Express through the cosmos and the stars.
