The best Honkai: Star Rail Asta build

What is the best build for Asta in Honkai: Star Rail? While Asta isn't technically a starter character in Honkai: Star Rail, she's a guaranteed pull from the game's gacha tutorial, which means that you'll almost certainly end up with her in your roster by the end of the prologue. Once temporary party member Himeko leaves your team, Asta is poised to take her place, as a Fire-aligned character who can round out the initial playable quartet alongside the Trailblazer, March 7th, and Dan Heng.

Asta isn't the most outstanding character in the game, but she does round out the starter team nicely, and F2P players in particular will probably find themselves wanting to keep her in play. So read on for our best Honkai: Star Rail Asta build advice, including relics, light cones, and more.

Honkai: Star Rail best Asta build

Asta path and element

Asta follows the path of The Harmony, and her specialist role on a team is to provide offensive buffs to aid DPS characters in combat. In particular, her ultimate skill increases the speed of her teammates for two turns after it's deployed.

Her elemental alignment is with Fire, which allows her to apply the Burn debuff to enemies for continuous damage over time.

Best light cone for Asta: But the Battle Isn't Over

• 4-star alternative: Carve the Moon, Weave the Clouds

If you're out to equip Asta with a top-class 5-star light cone, there literally is only one choice in the game as of launch. But the Battle Isn't Over grants followers of the path of Harmony the ability to recover 10% of their energy and a skill point every other time they use their ultimate on an ally. It also ups the damage of the next attacking ally by 30% in their next combat turn after Asta next uses her skill. In short, it keeps the whole team ticking over nicely while making the most of Asta's support capabilities.

If you're looking to equip Asta with a 4-star light cone instead, there are plenty of good options. Dance! Dance! and Past and Future are both strong choices for a support-focussed build, but to really make Asta shine, I recommend Carve the Moon, Weave the Clouds. At the beginning of combat and whenever Asta takes an action, a random buff will apply to all of her allies on the field, boosting either their attack, crit damage, or energy rate. The effect lasts until Asta is either knocked down or takes action again to apply another buff. It's extremely powerful stuff.

Best relics for Asta: Firesmith of Lava-Forging

Unfortunately, there are no relic sets in the game at launch which improve buffing. On the plus side, this means that your Asta support build doesn't live or die on which relics you pick. Four pieces from the Firesmith of Lava-Forging set are a strong choice, although far from the only one.

With this set equipped, Asta gets a 10% increase to her Fire damage and a 12% increase to her skill damage, providing a bit of balance to a build that's been largely focused on her buffing capabilities up until now. This set also adds another 12% to her Fire damage in the turn after she triggers her ultimate, further feeding into the importance of her ult in this build.

For more build advice — this time centred around Honkai: Star Rail's three actual starter characters — be sure to check out our Trailblazer, March 7th, and Dan Heng build guides. And for our thoughts on the best characters in the game at launch, see our Honkai: Star Rail character tier list.