Honkai Star Rail guide: What is Weakness Break and how to trigger it?

Honkai Star Rail presents a rare combination of dynamic gameplay and tactical decision-making, enabling players to tailor their teams with a vast selection of characters and meticulously strategize. This latest RPG gacha game from HoYoVerse shares certain similarities with Genshin Impact, but it also has distinct features that make it feel unique.

As a fresh addition to the Honkai franchise, Honkai Star Rail delivers thrilling and novel content through Weakness Break. It employs a system that provides greater adaptability in team formation and offers several in-game benefits during battles. Players must pay careful attention to this mechanism in order to increase their likelihood of conquering opponents. To gain a better understanding of this feature, it is necessary to understand how Toughness and elemental weakness work.

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Honkai Star Rail guide: Triggering a Weakness Break in the game

Combat in the game (Image via HoYoVerse)

Honkai Star Rail employs Toughness as a substitute for the shield. Upon initiating combat, two bars will appear above your opponent: a red one indicating their HP and a white one for their Toughness. Above the Toughness bar, you can see elemental icons that signify the enemy's vulnerability.

Despite its resemblance to the shield system, the Toughness meter does not offer full protection against the opponent. You can still cause damage to the enemy's HP bar and defeat them even if their Toughness bar remains unexhausted. However, the only way to diminish the Toughness bar is by attacking the opponent with an element corresponding to their elemental weakness in Honaki Star Rail.

When you drain the opponent's Toughness bar, it triggers the Weakness Break, which can facilitate a speedy depletion of their HP. In Honkai Star Rail, the Weakness Break causes the opponent to become susceptible to attacks and status effects, such as amplified damage and turn delay, contingent on your character's element and proficiency level.

There are seven elements in the game (Image via HoYoVerse)

Here is a summary of the elements and their corresponding Weakness Break effect in Honkai Star Rail:

Physical	Deals additional damage and causes bleed damage over time
Ice	Freezes the target, delaying enemy action and causing ice damage over time
Fire	Deals fire damage and causes additional fire damage over time
Wind	Deals wind damage and causes additional wind damage over time
Lightning	Deals lightning damage and causes lightning damage over time
Quantum	Applies Entanglement, delaying enemy actions, and dealing quantum damage over time
Imaginary	Applies Imprisonment, delaying enemy actions, and reducing enemy speed

Players should keep in mind that each character and their abilities will have a varying degree of Toughness depletion value. Certain characters may be particularly adept at breaking the Toughness bar, so you must pay attention to their skills and organize your team composition accordingly.

Moreover, ultimate skills in Honkai Star Rail are typically more effective in depleting the Toughness bar than regular attacks or skills.

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Overall, the key to defeating enemies lies in obtaining Weakness Breaks. Thus, it is essential to have a diverse range of characters in your team that can target various types of monsters. If you are unable to trigger a Weakness Break against a boss, it can be quite challenging to deplete their health bar and endure their powerful attacks.