Pros
Significant teamwide damage mitigation,
Extremely durable with very high HP,
Provides Max HP and CRIT Rate bonuses passively with her Skill,
Provides Crowd Control immunity with each Skill usage,
Unlikely to be powercrept any time soon.
Cons
Value is substantially lower in the early game since she needs all her skills leveled to reach her peak,
Not fully SP positive like other supports in her slot,
High skill ceiling with SP usage,
Team healing can be insufficient if she is not well invested.
Fu Xuan is a superb defensive support. Boasting the highest base HP value in the game, she provides teamwide damage reduction from her Talent at all times, and 65% damage redirection from her Skill, meaning that 65% of the damage an ally takes will instead be taken by Fu Xuan. She is able to restore HP with her Ultimate and also provides Max HP and CRIT Rate bonuses from her Skill. She even protects the whole team from crowd control debuffs. Altogether this makes Fu Xuan a fantastic and near universally applicable unit.
The head of the Luofu’s Divination Commission and Qingque’s boss, Fu Xuan is a confident and compelling character. Fu Xuan is capable of greatly reducing the team’s total damage taken and can significantly reduce the need for a second defensive unit, potentially eliminating the need altogether due to the strength of her own kit.
Fu Xuan accomplishes this through multiple avenues. Her Talent provides a teamwide buff that grants everyone damage reduction, up to 18% at max Trace level. There is no prerequisite for this to be active beyond ‘have Fu Xuan be alive’. Damage reduction is a very underestimated stat in general—even the small 8% provided by the Guard of Wuthering Snow Relic set is significant after even only a couple of cycles, so to have a permanently active 18% courtesy of Fu Xuan’s Talent is extraordinarily powerful. Her Talent also has an interaction with her Ultimate, but we’ll get to that.
Fu Xuan’s Skill applies a buff called Matrix of Prescience, which we’ll naturally refer to as ‘Matrix’ from now on. The Matrix lasts for 3 turns and redirects 65% of all damage other allies take towards Fu Xuan, and this is before factoring in any shields. This means allies only take 35% of the intended damage, turning previously lethal hits into laughable ones. Factoring in the damage reduction from Fu Xuan’s Talent, this reduces the damage even further still. As an added benefit to this, Matrix will also provide up to a 6% Max HP increase as well as a 12% CRIT Rate increase at max Trace level, further reducing effective damage taken, and even providing some offensive value to the team.
It is important at this point to mention that Fu Xuan’s Basic ATK and Ultimate deal damage based on Fu Xuan’s Max HP, meaning she is a pure HP-scaling unit. Coupled with her having the highest base HP value in the game, it makes it very easy to get to ridiculous HP values that even Blade would be amazed at. The player is further incentivized to go all in on HP due to the damage redirection provided by Matrix, because the unprepared Fu Xuan may find herself suddenly taking a massive AoE hit three times more than she ordinarily would have. Having said that, being able to contribute very meaningful damage in addition to all her other benefits makes Lady Fu an even more powerful addition to your team.
Fu Xuan’s Ultimate deals up to 100% of her Max HP to all enemies, and obtains 1 trigger count for her Talent. As a part of her Talent, she also has a special self-heal that will automatically activate if she falls to or below 50% of her Max HP, and will restore up to 90% of the HP she is missing. This won’t overheal you, and won’t activate if Fu Xuan suffers a killing blow. She has 1 trigger count for this effect by default, and can possess a maximum of 2, and the way to regain these is through the use of her Ultimate. It should be noted that Fu Xuan’s Ultimate has an above average Energy cost of 135, meaning it’s important to manage her abilities in a way where you can get this often enough to ensure both your team’s and Fu Xuan’s combined safety.
Her Bonus Traces improve upon her Skill and Ultimate in exceptional ways. A2 will provide Fu Xuan with an extra 20 Energy if she uses her Skill while Matrix is still active, resulting in a huge influx of Energy for free by just refreshing Matrix when you would have been doing so anyway, and making it far easier to get more frequent uses of her Ultimate. Her A4 gives her Ultimate a small AoE heal when used, healing 5% of Fu Xuan’s Max HP plus 133 to all other allies besides Fu Xuan herself. This is not a colossal heal by any stretch, but with the damage reduction and redirection Fu Xuan provides, it can potentially be significant enough to sustain the whole team on its own if Fu Xuan’s Max HP is high enough. This also means that Fu Xuan demands a very high level of investment to be able to utilise as the solo defensive option for your team should you wish to do that, though with her offensive utilities and personal damage, using her alongside another defensive unit is still perfectly viable.
Fu Xuan’s A6 is of particular note as it will prevent Crowd Control debuffs from being applied to allies while the Matrix is active. This can happen once per Matrix usage and will be refreshed upon refreshing the Matrix. This means that for the turn that Crowd Control goes out, no ally will be affected by it under any circ*mstances for the current action. Examples include Decaying Shadow’s Imprisoning spikes and Ice Out of Space’s AoE Freezing attack. Since this does not prevent general debuffs such as DoT, this effect will not be erroneously wasted by such minor debuffs, making this a very efficient way of mitigating dangerous AoE Crowd Control effects, or even circumventing them entirely if they’re infrequent enough that Matrix recasts can cover them.
As you can see, Fu Xuan is already extraordinarily powerful on her own at E0. Her Eidolons are entirely unnecessary, and honestly not too noteworthy. E1 is probably the most meaningful upgrade, allowing her Matrix of Prescience to additionally provide 30% CRIT DMG. Fu Xuan is already somewhat consolidating defensive unit with offensive Harmony support, and this Eidolon fully leans into that. E2 essentially provides Fu Xuan’s Matrix with Bailu’s entire revive portion of her Talent; allies killed while Matrix is active will not fall and will regain 70% of their Max HP, and this can happen once per fight. The other Eidolons are not really worth chasing as they do not significantly improve Fu Xuan’s performance beyond this point. E6 is obviously a big damage boost to her Ultimate but it’s really there for flair and will not suddenly make Fu Xuan a damage-dealing menace comparable to dedicated damage options.
There’s not much more to say about Fu Xuan, she’s really powerful and quite self-contained. However, I will mention that Fu Xuan is also extremely flexible with how you utilise her in combat. Ideally, Fu Xuan is SP positive since she only needs to use her Skill every 2 turns to benefit from the extra Energy from her A2, but there’s nothing to stop you from refreshing her Matrix even earlier if you have the SP to spare. Doing so will give even more Energy and allow you to Ultimate more frequently, or maybe you decide you need her Ultimate this very turn. Perhaps you feel you need to refresh the Crowd Control immunity before the enemy’s next turn. There’s a lot of flexibility in terms of her SP usage, and it’s up to the runner to notice if they have the SP to spare. Fu Xuan’s skill ceiling is therefore quite high, and as one gets more comfortable using her, one will notice just how powerful she truly is.
Lady Fu is formidable, and usable on pretty much every team. Her strong defensive utility coupled with her offensive benefits and decent personal damage make her a wonderful pairing with almost every damage dealer in the game. She sees all, and it is up to you to decide what you will do with her information
Honkai: Star Rail is a game where team building matters most and while our tier list takes the optimal setup into account, a lot of characters can work and do well - even those ranked lower - when you invest into them. Also for story or lower difficulties of Simulated Universe, you don't need to worry about ratings and tiers. You can safely clear that content even with F2P characters as long as you build your team correctly.
Character at 5★ are rated at their Eidolon 0 with their best in slot non-limited Light Cone.
Available ratings:
- Memory of Chaos (MoC) - how the character performs in the Memory of Chaos. Blast and single target damage are important here while AoE has niche uses against some bosses.
- Pure Fiction (PF) - how the character performs in the Pure Fiction. AoE is king here, followed by Blast while single target damage is mostly useless.
