Honkai: Star Rail – Version 3.4: The Sun is Set to Die is available now! In addition to a selection of new features and new in-game content to partake in, it brings some exciting additions when it comes to characters, both old and new, like Phainon.
First and foremost, the Novaflare character enhancement system. Four lucky units received impressive buffs: Kafka & Silver Wolf, as well as Blade and Jingliu. Check out the linked articles for our opinion on how those shaped out!
Last but certainly not least is the release of Phainon, the Deliverer, the game’s latest 5-star Physical Destruction unit. Throughout the 3.x Amphoreus cycle, he had been incredibly hyped-up in terms of power, spanning both the narrative and combat performance.
After all, you can’t really be named the Deliverer and repeatedly referred to as the last hope of the entire planet without having the power to back it up!
Did HoYoverse deliver? Incredibly so. Phainon is undoubtedly the pinnacle of the hypercarry playstyle, while also being quite F2P-friendly and dishing out phainillions of damage.
So, where is the catch? There’s always the catch, isn’t there? Yes… and no. Read on to find out! Note that this article is meant for a more or less casual crowd that does not worry about min-maxing, squeezing out enough speed to meet a breakpoint, but rather wants to pull for characters they like and have a good time.
If you are someone who wants to 0-cycle MOC/PF/AS and have done so in the past, you won’t learn anything new from this article.
First things first, what is a hypercarry? It is a type of playstyle focused on maximizing the damage of one character, your main DPS. Opposed to a comp that consists of two damage-dealers, it is usually your hypercarry, a couple of supports (buffers or debuffers), and a sustain (optional, if you are sure of your damage and survivability, you can add another support or a sub-DPS instead).
Phainon is one such hypercarry unit, and he does exactly as he’s advertised to. With the help of a couple of fitting supports, he deals tremendous Physical damage. Single-target, cleave, to a lesser degree AoE, the man can do it all when he is juiced up and slathered in buffs enough.
He also does not shrivel and turn into pumpkin if you do not have that one extremely specific support, sustain, or a signature Light Cone, which makes him quite F2P-friendly. Sure, there would be differences in numbers, but that much is true for any damage dealer out there, especially of the hypercarry variety.
Let’s move on to his personal playstyle, quite unique and unseen in the game so far. Remember how Acheron needs to stack debuffs on enemies to activate her Ultimate, with the enemies-applied debuffs (like the little Stings exploding) also counting towards the total?
Phainon is the complete anti-Acheron in this case. His Ultimate also has a unique charging mechanism, revolving entirely around abilities being used on him: skills and Ultimates of his allies as well as attacks of his enemies all count toward charging his Ultimate. Once he reaches 12 stacks, the allies leave the battlefield while Phainon changes his form and faces enemies all alone.
To make up for being outnumbered, he gets to keep all the buffs provided by his teammates and provides some for himself, including a heavy boost to his survivability and Physical Weakness applied to all enemies.
The top-tier choice then would be units whose skill and ultimate alike can build a stack on Phainon, either by targeting him specifically or having a team-wide ability. Simultaneously providing a buff is also beneficial for the team.
- Harmony: Sunday (at the moment, Best-in-Slot), Bronya, Sparkle, Tingyun, Robin (less stacking, but team Action Advance is invaluable in setting up buffs either for the 1st transformation, or when Phainon returns to base form);
- Nihility: Cipher (keeps recording damage even off-field and can come in a clutch to finish off a wave);
- Remembrance: Remembrance Trailblazer, Hyacine (though kind of a waste);
- Abundance: Huo Huo;
Is it a complete list? Not at all, you can certainly bring along Tribbie or Ruan Mei, or bring the good ol’ Gallagher along, but it will take you a bit longer to charge up Phainon’s ult and bring the pain. Note that Tingyun’s, Huohuo’s and Sunday’s ultimates not only buff but also restore energy, which counts for 2 stacks at once.
To help with setting up the buffs and getting this turn one Ult out of the way, Phainon provides his team with extra technique points and extra energy when the battle starts. Additionally, he has the Acheron 2.0 technique, instantly killing multiple trash mobs at the cost of 2 Technique Points.
Due to the nature of his allies leaving the battlefield and his boss form being extremely tanky, you can also skip bringing a sustain to fit in an extra support. If your characters get their buffs off fast enough, they will receive basically no damage, and Phainon can take care of himself on his own once the buffing juice kicks in.
Is he a perfect character, then? F2P friendly, can use the Herta Store Destruction LC, played with a wide variety of supports and sustainers, including Bronya and Tingyun, and can dish out a lot of damage, that sounds like he’s on his way there, doesn’t it?
Not quite. Due to his gimmick, which is removing the allied characters from the battlefield, his ways of interacting with them are severely limited. That includes characters like Tribbie and Hyacine that need to stay on the battlefield to use their potential to the max. Naturally, that doesn’t make them useless, simply not as useful as they would be for another damage dealer like Castorice or Mydei.
While Phainon does have an extremely high floor that can match many characters’ ceiling, his own ceiling is not far off. He takes eight turns in his boss form that are tied to his base speed – you can’t action-advance him once he’s in his buffed up form, you can’t affect the number of turns he’ll take even if you add in Huohuo’s and Ruan Mei’s speed buffs.
It doesn’t matter as long as you manage to finish the encounter over the course of the single transformation, but if you don’t, it can be a pain to set it up again. Especially if you go sustainless, which almost seems to be his baseline.
At the moment, Phainon’s sheer power is enough to carry him, his team, and your account through any endgame obstacle. However, he is not the first character in such a situation: Dan Heng – Imbibitor Lunae, Jingliu, Acheron and Firefly were once there, too. It was the release of new supports and sustains that kept them afloat or left them behind to sink once the pure damage output was no longer enough.
It remains to be seen how Phainon will deal with it when it will be his turn sometime in V4.x. But at the moment, enjoy feeling like a raid boss yourself, meting out punishment to those who stand in your way.
Additionally, and this is something personal, after using him in a variety of teams across all the available endgame content, I had grown sort of… bored. Despite using different supports or facing different enemies and situations, his gameplay stays rigid and almost exactly the same (very minor differences between 1-2 targets vs 3+), with fewer opportunities for smart plays, action value manipulation, etc. since you are basically solo-ing content.
