Honkai Star Rail Guinaifen build, kit, and Light Cone

A good Honkai: Star Rail Guinaifen build helps wear down foes with the influencer's unique debuff abilities. Guinaifen is like Sampo with fire at first glance, but her special talent and a unique bonus ability in her ultimate help set her apart and let her deal surprisingly high damage numbers for a 4-star character. Just make sure to give proper attention to Guinaifen's effect hit rate so her skills actually work.

Honkai Star Rail Guinaifen

Honkai Star Rail Guinaifen build overview

Guinaifen’s build is pretty straightforward. Her skill and ultimate scale on Guinaifen’s attack, and like Sampo’s kit, the emphasis is firmly on causing damage over time – not on setups or combos. She also has general utility as a debuffer thanks to her Firekiss ability. It doesn’t scale on attack, but it does increase how much damage enemies take by a small amount that stacks. Attack and fire damage are her most important features, but break effect and effect hit rate are worth building up as well.

Effect hit rate seems unimportant at earlier levels. Guinaifen’s skills have a 100 percent effect hit rate, but enemy effect resistance starts rising significantly after level 50. Most of Guinaifen’s utility comes from her damage over time, so you’ll need to keep up with hit rate.

Honkai Star Rail Guinaifen build – Best Light Cone

Guinaifen’s best cone is actually a 4-star, Good Night and Sleep Well. It raises the wearer’s damage by at least 12 percent for every debuff on an enemy, stacks three times, and applies to damage dealt over time.

Pretty much every 5-star Nihility Light Cone works for Guinaifen, though Solitary Healing and In the Name of the World fit particularly well. Solitary Healing raises the wearer’s break effect, which helps Guinaifen deal more damage during break attacks, and increases the damage over time dealt after the wielder uses their ultimate. In the Name of the World buffs all damage by a high amount, raises the effect hit rate from the user’s skill, and boosts attack after they use their skill.

Elsewhere on the 4-star side is Eyes of the Prey, a straightforward Cone that grants a substantial buff to effect hit rate and damage over time. For 3-stars, the only decent choice is Void, which raises the wearer’s effect hit rate.

Honkai Star Rail Guinaifen build – Best Relics

Guinaifen benefits from a mixed Relic set, Firesmith of Lava Forging and Musketeer of Wild Wheat.

Firesmith of Lava Forging’s two-piece effect raises fire damage by 10 percent and Musketeer of Wild Wheat buffs attack by 12 percent. The four-piece for both sets doesn’t really benefit her, especially Firesmith, which is mostly there for setting up big attacks.

Honkai Star Rail Guinaifen build – Best Ornaments

Guinaifen benefits from Pan-Galactic Commercial Enterprise the most. It increases the user's effect rate and buffs their attack based on their total effect hit rate, up to 25 percent. Space Sealing Station works as well. It buffs the wearer's attack by 12 percent and then by a further 12 percent once their speed reaches a certain level.

Guinaifen Relic stats

You’ve got plenty to choose from for Guinaifen’s Relic stats, but attack and effect hit rate should be your priorities.

• Body: Attack or effect hit rate
• Feet: Attack
• Sphere: Fire damage or attack
• Rope: Energy regeneration or break effect

If you have the patience forit, try to aim for attack percentage stats instead of flat attack buffs. The way Guinaifen’s skills scale means she needs a pretty high attack stat to work really well.

Honkai Star Rail Guinaifen kit overview

Guinaifen’s kit is essentially Sampo with fire and one additional, very useful debuff. Her basic attack does the usual measly amount of damage, and it doesn’t apply burn. Her skill throws a firecracker at one enemy and deals fire damage that scales off Guinaifen’s attack and less damage to adjacent enemies. It also applies burn, and burned enemies take damage each turn that equals 80 percent of Guinaifen’s attack at the default trace level.

Her ultimate damages all enemies and instantly triggers one instance of burn on burned foes. Unburned foes will receive the burn status.

The most important part of Guinaifen’s kit is her talent, which applies the Firekiss effect after enemies take damage from burn. Enemies with the Firekiss effect take at least four percent more damage, and the effect stacks three times. Her technique also applies Firekiss before battle.

You’ll want to start a fight with Guinaifen’s technique as often as possible so your party benefits from the debuff. Use her skill a few times to apply burn stacks and raise her energy level, and then trigger her ultimate to deal extra damage and add another stack of Firekiss. Tingyun is a good partner for Guinaifen to help keep her energy up, though a few uses of Guinaifen’s skill should be enough to fill her energy meter.

Should I pull for Guinaifen in Star Rail?

Guinaifen is one of the few characters who’s worth pulling for, at least until more fire characters show up. Himeko is currently the only character who can apply burn to multiple enemies with ease, though she has no support utility. Hook is a single-target character, and even then, she takes a bit of setting up to use well.

Guinaifen doesn’t only cause burn. She triggers extra instances of it like Kafka and easily applies extra debuffs in the process.

If you're wondering what other top-rank characters to take the field with, head over to our Honkai Star Rail tier list to see who else might be a good fit in your Guinaifen party.