Comprehensive Guide to Yukong in Honkai: Star Rail
Today, we're diving into an in-depth guide for Yukong, the newest four-star Harmony unit in Honkai: Star Rail 1.1.
Yukong introduces intriguing mechanics and a higher learning curve than usual.
So, let's unravel her mysteries together!
A Comprehensive Guide to Yukong: Best Builds and Team Compositions
Understanding Yukong's Core Mechanics
Yukong's core buffing mechanic is her Roaring Bowstring effect, which gives substantial attack and crit bonuses to her teammates.
Understanding exactly how Yukong's abilities work is the first major step to unleashing her full potential.
The Roaring Bowstring Effect
Casting Yukong's skill grants two stacks of Roaring Bowstrings, with a maximum of two stacks. The entire team gets an attack buff while these stacks are active, but certain actions consume these stacks:
- Yukong's own turn doesn't consume a stack after casting the skill.
- Afterward, each time an ally completes a turn, a stack gets removed.
- Yukong's 130 energy cost ultimate deals imaginary damage to one target and enhances the Roaring Bowstring buff by adding crit rate and crit damage bonuses. However, the Roaring Bowstring must be active first for the crit buffs to apply.
Understanding Turn Actions
Differentiating between actions that count as turns and those that do not is crucial.
Actions triggered outside an actual turn will not consume stacks. For example, ultimates, extra turn effects like Seele's Resurgence, and follow-up attack actions do not consume stacks.
Understanding these mechanics allows for better team rotations and combos, maximizing the uptime of the Roaring Bowstring Buff.
Optimizing Speed and Turn Order
The goal is to position Yukong to take her turn before the units you want to buff, preferably your main DPS and a sub DPS.
The order of turns persists as long as the speed of the units remains constant. However, speed buffs or debuffs can affect this arrangement.
Adjusting for Speed Buffs
In a team where Yukong is the fastest unit, speed buffs to other units can alter the turn order.
If such a shift occurs, it's crucial to adjust accordingly.
Making Yukong the Slowest Unit
An alternative setup is to make Yukong the slowest unit in the team. In this case, she won't be able to buff the DPS in the first cycle but will apply her stacks to the DPS in the next cycle.
However, there's a risk that the DPS unit will eventually overtake Yukong after a certain number of cycles if they hit certain speed breakpoints.
The solution here is to make Yukong's speed lower by one or as close as possible to the second slowest unit.
Yukong's Battle Initiating Technique
Yukong's technique can be used to initiate battles, giving her a movement boost and automatically getting two stacks of Roaring Bowstring at the start of battle.
This solves the issue of her being too slow to buff the target allies in the first turn.
Yukong's Talent Effect and Ascension Abilities
Yukong's Talent effect makes her basic attack deal extra damage and double its usual toughness reduction or break efficiency.
This effect has a one-turn cooldown and can be handy in guaranteeing an imaginary break or expediting a break.
Yukong's Ascension abilities and stat bonuses improve her performance significantly:
- A2 ability: Completely resist a debuff application once every two turns.
- A4 ability: Gives a 12% imaginary damage bonus to your entire team.
- A6 ability: Regenerates two energy every time an ally takes action if the Roaring Bowstrings buff is active.
Yukong's Energy and Rotation Management
Managing Yukong's energy and rotation involves a balance of using her skills and basic attacks per ultimate.
To neutralize the skill point consumption, she could afford a rotation of two skills and two basic attacks per ultimate.
Yukong's Team Synergies and Considerations
Yukong is focused towards providing large attack and crit buffs while having potential to deal decent single-target damage.
Ally ultimates and follow-up actions won't consume Yukong's stacks, so some units can take advantage of this mechanic to maximize it.
Yukong also fits well in teams with two DPS units, and is an amazing teammate in dual or mono imaginary team compositions.
Unlocking Yukong's Potential: Eidolons
Eidolons offer a way to customize and enhance Yukong's capabilities.
Each Eidolon brings unique improvements to Yukong, making her even more potent on the battlefield.
Understanding Yukong's Eidolons
Here's a rundown of Yukong's Eidolons and the benefits they offer:
- E1: Gives your entire team a 10 speed boost for 2 turns at the start of battle.
- E2: Yukong generates 5 energy whenever an ally reaches full energy. This only triggers once per ally until you recast her ultimate, which will reset the trigger count.
- E3: Increases her skill and basic attack levels.
- E4: Yukong receives a 30% damage increase as long as Roaring Bowstrings is active, offering a nice personal damage boost.
- E5: Increases her ultimate and talent levels.
- E6: Enables using her ultimate to instantly gain one stack of Roaring Bowstrings. This is her most impactful Eidolon in terms of rotations, allowing for combos like extending the duration of her stacks to cover three allied turns or instantly applying her crit buffs for one turn even without pre-existing stacks.
Leveraging Eidolons in Your Strategy
Unlocking these Eidolons allows you to adapt Yukong's abilities to your gameplay style.
For instance, the E1 Eidolon is beneficial for hitting speed breakpoints in early cycles, while the E2 Eidolon helps with her energy management.
Remember, Yukong is already functional at E0 if you understand her mechanics, but Eidolons offer quality-of-life improvements that can help manage her better.
How to Build Yukong
When it comes to building Yukong, your relic choices will largely depend on your specific gameplay style and team composition.
That said, here are some general recommendations for relic sets and main stats:
Relic Sets
- Wastelander Set (4 pieces): This set offers the highest damage potential by giving imaginary damage bonus and crit buffs. However, farming this set can be inefficient depending on your current game progression.
- Musketeer Set (4 pieces): This set provides attack speed and basic attack damage bonuses. But remember to consider how its speed bonus affects Yukong's turn order in your team.
- Thief Set (4 pieces): This niche build boosts break damage and provides energy when the user breaks enemies. Bear in mind the conditions under which break effect works if you're going for this set.
Planetary Sets
- Broken Keel: This set offers extra Effect RES and Crit teamwide buffs if she can reach 30% Effect RES.
- Inert Salsotto: Extra Crit Rate and at 50% threshold, her ultimate damage increases by 15%.
- Space Sealing Station: Boosts ATK by 24% if she can reach 120 Speed.
Main Stats
When choosing the main stats for your relics, consider the following:
- Attack: This will directly boost Yukong's damage output.
- Defense and HP: These stats increase Yukong's survivability in battle.
- Crit Attack and Damage Bonus: These stats will increase Yukong's critical hit damage, which can be particularly potent due to her Roaring Bowstrings buff.
- Speed: This stat determines the order of actions in combat. Whether you want Yukong to act before or after your DPS units will influence whether you choose relics with speed as a main stat.
Sub Stats
In terms of sub stats, prioritize crit rate, crit damage, attack, and speed for increasing Yukong's damage output.
If you're looking for more survivability, consider sub stats like defense and HP.
Optimal Late Game Stats for Yukong
HP: 4,000+
DEF: 1,000+
Speed: Lower than your sustain unit
Energy Regen: 20%+
Relics and Yukong's Skills
Finally, remember to always consider how your choice of relics interacts with Yukong's unique skills.
The perfect set of relics should complement and enhance Yukong's abilities, making her a more effective unit in every battle.
By mastering these mechanics and considerations, you can unlock Yukong's full potential and make her a valuable addition to your team.
Remember, practice makes perfect, so keep trying different strategies until you find what works best for you!