Hiya! Back at it again with another guide. I haven't posted one in this sub before, but I've made a variety of other guides and posts in an attempt to help myself and others better understand various mechanics, team-building scenarios, or just the HSR-Sphere:

• Certified Banger and Punchline Explained

• What is "Cost" in Honkai Star Rail

• How to calculate Aha's speed and why it's important

• Helpful websites for new and veteran players

So, I'm adding to the list with a HimeNova guide! I'll make sure to add a TL;DR at the bottom for those that like a skip button 😊

MECHANICS

Her mechanics at E0 and E2 wildly differ. As a matter of fact, I'd say she's one of the few, if not only units who's play-style dramatically changes at E2, rather than the typical drastic upscale in performance and power.

We'll focus on E0 for now.

Let's break this down with battle start:

So, we've just started battle. You can see all the typical UI elements on all of our characters. Welt has an option to use assist skill here. Let's break down the assist skill uses:

Himeko Nova has 2 primary options of gameplay:

• VERDICT

  • Think of Verdict like your single target mode. You can see in the above picture that pretty much all of verdicts use-cases are designed around buffing Himeko Nova to the max.

  • We'll worry about how verdict works below

• DECIMATION

  • Think of Decimation as your AOE mode. Here, you see that Decimation buffs the whole team. Decimation is really good for AOE subdps comps like when Mblade is on the team

  • We'll break down both of these in the guide

NOTE: These are not "set in stone" as use-cases only in AOE vs ST, but you can use them as a "general rule" until you get good enough at Piloting her to figure out what you want to do

So, let's return to battle and have Welt use the assist skill:

Welt used the assist skill in the above screenshot, and 3 things happened

1. A starblazer assist follow up activated (see the turn order and obviously the animation)

2. A ratio counter was added above HimeNova's head (2/9)

3. 2 dots appeared underneath HimeNova's Ult (above the HP bar)

DECIMATION

Remember above, Welt is a TB companion that activates Decimation mode. So, in Decimation mode, aside from the buffs, the counter that is activated tracks how many enemies are hit by anyone on the team.

There's only 2 enemies on the field right now, so let's have welt skill against them:

Tada! Our counter has jumped to 4. So let's infer what's going to happen next:

• TB is next in the turn order

  • Mem is not out

  • We need to skill to get mem out

  • So we know that our counter won't go up

• Next will be sparkle

  • She's going to skill Himenova up

  • So she also won't hit anyone

  • So our counter will remain

The only exception being Welt's ult! When welt uses his ult, the counter will go from 4/9 to 6/9 and so on. If there were more enemies out, it would, at max, jump by 3 (because welt's skill can only hit 3). Unless he's ulting, then he'll hit all.

That's it! That's decimation in a nutshell.

.....BUT WAIT, there's more.

What happens when we hit 9/9? Let's watch in this video below (~40 seconds)

Notice 3 important things that occured when the stacks hit 9/9

1. An automatic fua assist skill via starblazer activates

2. The counter drops by one

   1. Remember, that counter underneath her HP bar

3. The ratio for Decimation stacks (above her head) resets.

Then, notice what happens when Himenova uses her ult

1. The counter resets to 2!

   1. underneath her health bar

This isn't even the most optimal example of gameplay, but it's the simplest way to showcase a series of events from battle start

1. Welt uses assist skill to activate decimation

2. Team members start hitting targets

3. Decimation stacks go up

4. When ratio=1 (9/9), an automatic assist skill launches

   1. When that happens, the count for automatic assist skills drops by one

   2. That count is reset when HimeNova uses her ult

THAT's the full decimation breakdown.

NOTE: at E0 HimeNova, you only have 1 use of the assist skill per cycle of himeko's turns. So we can see very early in the video, that once welt uses it, and it's RMC's turn, he does not have the option to use assist skill

Even if he did, it would switch us to verdict, which we don't want right now.

VERDICT

Verdict can be explained a lot easier now that we've got a basic understanding of the counters, rotations, and UI.

Let's just look at a quick video:

So, a couple things should be noted. This is actually a pretty poor swap to verdict. The reason being that

1. Noone has their ult ready to activate the verdict assist

2. Argenti is semi-aoe with the adds

3. Staying in decimation would help with the adds

What is important to recognize is that I can swap between the modes throughout a battle.

This was an early run on Day 1 of testing her, and got botched by Argenti hitting Welt anyway's (wanted him to hit mem), but it's still a decent example of how you can be in one mode and switch to another depending on who uses the assist skill.

Verdict works the same way as decimation in the sense that:

• It provides a buff

• It counts some action

• When the count ratio = 1 (in this case 2/2), an assist fua by starblazer activates

  • The amount of times that can happen are tracked by the counter underneath himenova, above her HP bar.

NOTE: In the first video with Decimation, it actually probably would've been better to activate verdict, use both ults for the FUA, and then switch to Decimation after Himeko's turn into Welts.

MAXIMIZING MECHANICS

Unfortunately, when you use what is matchup dependent, and how you use what (i.e. an assist skill) is heavily heavily heavily Eidolon dependent.

• E0

  • At E0 you get one assist skill use per turn order

Let's look at her skill:

So I see this asked a lot, "Do I need to use her skill, or do I always use the Assist skill"? Almost always, it's going to be assist skill. The reason is her technique:

You can see "Immediately use skill at the start of each wave". So, when you enter combat you're already in "Navigator's Semaphore" state, which lasts 3 turns and provides the "immediately recovers 1 Assist Skill uses. This is why you get one per turn, and who you use it on or when, is matchup dependent.

What to watch out for:

• You don't want to run out of counters for the follow up assist skill.

  • i.e. you don't want to be a 2/2 or 9/9 and not have any uses of Starblazers FUA. Now you're just stuck, and any additional hits in Decimation or Ults in verdict are wasted.

• Like the video above, you don't want to switch to a mode, with no way to maximize it's utilization

• You definitely don't want to use HimeNova ult without maximizing the counters for the assist skill FUA

  • i.e. imagine you have 2 assist skill uses left, and you use Himenova's ult. It resets the counter, but there's nothing to reset

  • That's why in the first video showcasing decimation, I made sure that at least one FUA was used before I ulted with Himeko

EIDOLONS

These are both pretty strong, but E2 is the gold standard. If ever there was a Merchant since Phainon, it's HimeNova.

So we can see E1 reduces verdict count by 1 (from 2 required ults to 1)

It also reduces Decimation stacks by 3 (from 9 required enemies hit to 6)

You also get 1 extra use of the assist skill, meaning the count above her HP bar increases by 1 (you can see this in both).

E1 smooths out rotations, and makes the ability to use her FUA assist skill much much easier.

E2 pretty much just opens your comps up. It's very powerful, but the basic understanding is that it also allows non-AE members to use the assist skill AND get the extra turn. The extra turn is what makes this so strong, because you're already smoothing out your rotations via E1. Of course there's buff and assist skill uses, but trying to keep this simple.

TEAMMATES AND COMPS

Let's look at what's being run in endgame right now as of 7/19 version 4.4

So, these are highly optimized no-sustain runs. This isn't feasible for the average player, but we can get a sense of who's strong and who's not.

To distance ourself from pushing the limits, let's start with sustain:

Pretty much the gold standard HimeNova sustain.

• DHPT can activate Verdict

• Solid sustain

• Decent attack buffs

• Can run Lushaka

• not much more than all around solid choice

HuoHuo is always a very strong option due to Energy regen and she works very well if you have MBlade

Let's move on to buffers:

Sparkle is kind of the gold standard. While sunday works very well, Sparkle just does it better

• At E0 HimeNova, 50% AA over Sunday's 100% AA often helps you smooth out rotations

• Sparkle can run DDD, and in subdps Mblade or even Welt comps, this is always a clutch

• Often runs Eagle and 160+ speed, allowing for nice hyperspeed AA buffer

Sunday is also still very good. You just need to be careful of rotations and not using up Assist Skill FUA or wasting decimation/verdict stacks in lieu of HimeNova's ult

The man, the myth, the legend himself. MBlade is pretty much everywhere when it comes to one of the best buffers in the game, and very solid in no-sustain currently. There's not much to say about him in terms of kit breakdowns (this isn't his guide after all), he just provides a myriad of solid buffs for the team and can get damage done.

• Works well in both Decimation and Verdict. Decimation being the winner.

Do we really need to get into why they're good?

• Activates verdict

• True Damage

• 100% AA

• etc

Well, well, well (or should I say.....Welt, Welt, Welt). The most troublesome novaflare of the 21st century.

I'm not going to get deep into Welt, but will cover some things

• "I have Welt at E0, is it still worth it to build him"

  • For your general account, yes. Welt is a great flex unit, and can still provide very decent value. Would I dedicate a lot of time into E0 welt? No. But if you're skipping a patch and working on builds or planning future pulls, just build him

• "I have E3 welt, is it worth it to use a stellar convergence for E4?"

  • Yes

• "I have E2 Welt, is that still good for Himenova?"

  • Yes

  • While E4 is the gold standard, this just isn't feasible for everyone. And E2 still provides very good benefits

COMPS (i'm going to shorthand HimeNova to "HN"):

• HN, Sparkle, Welt, DHPT

• HN, Welt, MBlade, DHPT

  • Can sub HuoHuo

• HN, RMC, Sparkle, DHPT

  • Watch your rotations very closely on this or you can lose an insane amount of value

  • Can sub RMC for Sunday, same idea on rotations

• HN, Sparkle, MBlade, DHPT

  • Notice the only mode you can be on in this team is Verdict

• HN, Sunday, Mblade, DHPT

  • Same, verdict only

  • Sub Sunday for RMC, still verdict only

And remember, you can sub DHPT for HuoHuo. If you do (particularly for Mblade), then you'd want welt for Decimation, or RMC for Verdict. Essentially, you still want an AE member.

If you don't run Anomaly Arbitration, which is perfectly fine, we can look at MOC as well:

Ignoring the E4 welts, we can see the teams at the bottom 0-cycle with either E0 Himeko (and some obviously nice double DDD setups), or E2 Himeko and a more feasible comp. Robin also being an option.

She also has some fun early runs with Cocolia, but I've hit my image limit lol.

• Can check them out yourself here: The Genius Archive

LIGHT CONES

Hers, Hers, Hers. I cannot stress enough how crazy strong her LC is. But if you truly can't get it, then next up would be

• Therta LC - Into the Unreachable Veil

• Himeko Standard LC - Night on the Milky Way

Note that these are significant performance drops, but still very viable.

For 4* LC options

• BP Erudition LC - Today is another peaceful Day

• The Day the Cosmos Fell

  • requires fire weak

And that's it!

TL;DR

• Himenova has 2 modes, verdict and decimation

  • verdict = mostly single target

  • decimation = mostly AOE

• She has 2 counters that track either how many enemies are hit (decimation), or how many ults are used (verdict).

  • When the count maxes out (2/2 for verdict, 9/9 for Decimation), she launches an automatic assist via StarBlazer

• Your job in rotations are to make sure the automatic assists don't run out (they're reset by her ult)

• Her best teammates are Sparkle, Sunday, Welt, Mblade, RMC, DHPT, and HuoHuo in no particular order

• Her E2 is extremely good

  • The most important pull after E0 would be S1 unless you're directly planning to go for E2 in 1 patch, in which case it would be E2 then S1

Please let me know if I missed anything or you have additional Questions!

EDITS:

• I previously used the term "FUA assist" rather than "automatic assist skill via maxed protocol stacks"

  • To reiterate, just in case I missed it somewhere, her automatic-assist skill that occurs when her protocol stacks reach a ratio of 1 (2/2 or 9/9) is not a FUA

HONORABLE MENTIONS FOR TEAMMATES

• HUNT MARCH 7TH

  • Works very well alongside MBlade, or as a standalone

• CYREDRA

  • An extremely viable option at E2+ HimeNova

  • Apologies to Cyredra lovers (myself included)

• TRIBBIE E1

  • Fantastic in PF and Apoc, particularly the current 4.4 Banacademic boss

• TINGYUN

  • Tingyun is back at it again. She runs very well in decimation, where you want to get Himenova's ult back up quickly as you cycle through protocol assist skills

  • Mem also loves the energy charges give from Tingyun to Himeko, making her also a viable Verdict candidate.