Want to see Raider King content first? Add us as a preferred source.
Ruan Mei is a 5-star Ice Harmony character in Honkai Star Rail. She is considered by many to be one of the best support characters in the game due to her kit revolving around increasing your other units’ weakness break efficiency against enemy toughness and resistance penetration. On top of this, her talent gives a speed bonus to your entire team allowing them to act more often and her ultimate applies a status that extends the weakness break delay of enemies, which even further increases the ability of your allies to act quicker and deal more damage or reapply buffs. This guide will walk through each of Ruan Mei’s abilities as well as how to build her with stat priorities, best relic sets, Eidolons, and examples of optimal team comps.
Ruan Mei Build Guide for Honkai Star Rail
This build guide for Ruan Mei in Honkai Star Rail will delve into each aspect of her kit and how to prioritize traces, stats/substats, relics, and lightcones, for all players ranging from free-to-play to heavy spenders:
- Main Stats and Substats
- Main Traces and Abilities
- Technique and Bonus Traces
- Relics
- Lightcones
- Eidolons
- Team Comps
Main Stats and Substats
The main stats you’re going to want to focus on for Ruan Mei are Break Effect and Speed. To maximize Ruan Mei’s utility, you will want to aim for 180% Break Effect combined through her relics, as well as Break Effect, traces when leveling her kit.
Depending on the time investment, the 180% Break Effect threshold can be difficult for some players as you will need to farm for relics until they roll with Break Effect substats. It would also be very helpful to farm for a Break Effect main stat on her relic rope but if you prefer buff uptime, Energy Regeneration Rate works too.
Speed is a different story, however, since the buffs from her skill last for three of her turns rather than 3 of the enemy’s turns. You want her to have high speed but tune her Speed to at least be close to your DPS characters to have high uptime for her skill and ultimate.
An optimal fully built Ruan Mei will have around 180% Break Effect with high Speed. Besides having a Speed relic boot and a Break Effect/ERR relic rope, the main stats on her chest and sphere relics don’t matter too much so you can focus on survivability with Defense or HP.
Main Traces and Abilities
For Trace leveling priority, you’re going to want to focus on in order: her skill, ultimate, talent, then her basic attack. This is so that you can increase the Speed bonus provided by her skill, and the damage caused as a percentage of Ruan Mei’s Break Effect through her ultimate and her talent.
Basic ATK – Threading Fragrance: Deals 50% of ATK to a single enemy. This will require little to no leveling as most of Ruan Mei’s ATK will be dealt through her ultimate and talent effects and this will mostly be used while her skill is up to recover skill points or allow them to be used by your DPS.
Skill – String Sings Slow Swirls: Ruan Mei will apply Overtone to her and her allies for 3 of her turns. While Overtone is activated, all of her allies’ DMG increases by 16% and all Weakness Break Efficiency increases by 50%. This will have the highest leveling priority to increase the DMG bonus.
Ultimate – Petals to Stream, Repose in Dream: Ruan Mei will deploy a field that will last for 2 of her turns. While the field is active, all allies’ Resistance Penetration (RES PEN) increases by 15%.
Their attacks will also apply Thanatoplum Rebloom, which is a status that will only activate once the enemy’s toughness bar is broken. If the enemy tries to recover from Weakness Break while the status is active, it will activate dealing 30% of Ruan Mei’s Break Effect as Ice Break DMG.
The most important portion is that on top of dealing Ice Break DMG, it will also extend the enemy’s Weakness Break Delay further by 20% of Ruan Mei’s Break Effect plus an additional 20%. Ideally, you’d want to be able to activate her ultimate every 3-4 turns to maximize this effect.
Talent – Somatotypical Helix: Grants a passive 8% Speed buff for Ruan Mei’s allies and whenever an ally breaks an enemy’s toughness, Ruan Mei will also deal Ice Break DMG to the target.
Technique and Bonus Traces
Technique – Silken Serenade: Silken Serenade will allow Ruan Mei to activate her skill at the start of battle without consuming a skill point.
If activated in Simulated Universe, however, attacking with any ally to start the battle will always reduce enemy toughness and proc the Weakness Break Effect of the ally’s element type. Also for each Blessing you have, the damage of this attack will increase by 100%.
Similar to her skill, this attack will also deal Ice Break DMG to the enemy but will deal 100% of Ruan Mei’s Ice Break DMG instead of 60%.
Bonus Trace – Inert Respiration: Increases Break Effect for all allies by 20%.
Bonus Trace – Days Wane, Thoughts Wax: Ruan Mei regenerates a portion (5%) of her energy at the start of her turn.
Bonus Trace – Candle Lights on Still Waters: For every 10% of Ruan Mei’s Break Effect that exceeds 120%, her skill increases all allies’ DMG by an additional 6% with a maximum of 36%.
Relics
For her relics you’re going to of course choose relics with Break Effect substats and go with SPD boots and a Break Effect/ERR rope. The main stats on her chest and sphere don’t matter too much but choose stats like Defense and HP for higher survivability.
Her current best-in-slot relic set is the new Watchmaker, Master of Dream Machinations set from Penacony. The 2-piece bonus grants 16% Break Effect with the 4-piece bonus granting 30% more Break Effect for 2 turns after casting an ultimate on an ally, allowing her to reach that 180% Break Effect threshold a lot easier.
Her previous best in slot set Thief of Shooting Meteor is still really good as the 4-piece bonus will grant her a total of 32% Break Effect along with bonus energy every time she Breaks an enemy’s toughness.
If you already have a high Break Effect on Ruan Mei, you can always run Messenger Traversing Hackerspace if you want more speed and you can always of course run 2-piece Thief and 2-piece Hackerspace to have multiple bonuses.
For her Planar Ornament set, one of her best in-slot sets is Penacony, Land of Dreams as the 2-piece bonus increases her ERR by 5% while increasing the damage dealt by allies by 10% if they match the same element of the character.
Her more universal best-in-slot relic set is Talia, Kingdom of Banditry as it will provide a 16% bonus to Break Effect and another 20% if your character’s SPD stat is 145 or higher.
You can also run the Sprightly Vonwacq set for a 5% ERR bonus just like Penacony but you can also move your Ruan Mei’s action forward by 40% if your SPD is 120 or higher. This will only take effect upon entering battle but it will ensure Ruan Mei goes first and you can conserve skill points later.
Lightcones
Her best in slot lightcone would be her signature lightcone Past Self in Mirror as it increases Break Effect by 60%. After using an ultimate, increases all allies’ DMG by 24% for 3 turns and if Ruan Mei’s Break Effect is 150% or higher, 1 Skill Point will also be recovered.
Additionally, at the start of each wave, all allies will regenerate 10 energy.
Since her signature lightcone is tied to a limited banner, another great option is Memories of the Past as it will increase Break Effect by 28% and regenerate 4 energy each time the wearer attacks.
Her most widely available option is Meshing Cogs since it is a 3-star lightcone and after attacking or getting hit, the wearer regenerates 4 energy. Since it is very common, it is very easy to Superimpose with Superimposition 5 increasing the energy regeneration to 8.
Eidolons
Ruan Mei’s most notable Eidolon is her E1 where while her ultimate is active, all allies, DMG ignores 20% of the enemies DEF. Granting a massive damage buff and a good stopping point if you spend money on banners.
Her E2 is also really great with it granting a 40% ATK bonus to weakness-broken enemies as long a Ruan Mei is on the field. Her E3 and E5 grant levels to her main traces with her E4 giving 100% more Break Effect to Ruan Mei after an enemy’s toughness is broken for 3 turns and her E6 extending her ultimate duration by 1.
Team Comps
Ruan Mei is universally fantastic in all team comps since she enables all DPS characters to deal more damage. You can run her with a sustain such as Luocha or Huo Huo and additionally, Bronya or Tingyun if you choose to run a hyper carry team with a DPS such as Jingliu or Blade.
Ruan Mei also works incredibly well in DoT teams since the enemy can essentially take DoT DMG at a quicker rate due to triggering the weakness break effect after depleting an enemy’s toughness sooner.
Her ultimate can also enable the enemy to take DoT DMG twice, once when they attempt to recover from the weakness break and twice after the weakness break delay from her ultimate.
A prime DoT team comp would be Ruan Mei, Huo Huo, Kafka, and Black Swan but you can swap Black Swan easily with another DoT character such as Sampo, Guinaifen, or Luka, and even Huo Huo for another sustain but Huo Huo provides both ATK and energy from her ultimate.
And that is all you need to know about Ruan Mei’s best build in Honkai Star Rail. Check out other interesting guides and articles:
