Should you pull for Lingsha in Honkai: Star Rail?

Lingsha is the newest character available to pull on Honkai: Star Rail, and as one that serves the Abundance role, she has significant competition. With this in mind, is Lingshi still worth your Steller Jades, or should you pass her up for a future character?

Is Lingsha worth pulling in Honkai: Star Rail?

Lingsha is in an interesting place. She’s a Break/Follow-up-centric Fire Abundance character that focuses on offense to do her healing. Thanks to her plethora of buffs for both Break and Follow-up archetypes, she fits like a glove in those teams. Moreover, she is universally strong on every possible team in Honkai: Star Rail thanks to her constant cleansing and emergency healing, and if you factor in Eidolons (specifically her E1), I’d argue she is the strongest Abundance character outright.

While this sounds like a no-brainer pull, I can’t say I agree for one big reason: her competition. What do I mean by this? We’ve had many Abundance and Preservation units that redefined the meta since the game’s release, and those characters remain among the best in meta even now. These characters all work to sustain your team so they aren’t killed the moment something strong comes along. Lingsha also fits in well here, being able to keep your team alive in the direst situations, but if you already have one of these meta supports, I’d argue that Lingsha is pretty unnecessary.

Unlike DPS units, sustain-base supports have a much longer lifespan in the meta of most gacha games, and that remains true for Honkai: Star Rail as well. So, the issue or concern isn’t whether or not Lingsha will be a good addition to your account roster. She absolutely will be. It’s ‘Do you actually need her to replace one of your meta-already supports?‘. If the answer to this question is ‘no,’ then there’s not really a point in pulling her unless you just like her aesthetics or playstyle.

Sustain characters like Aventurine and HuoHuo are meta because they have unique niches that work extraordinarily well on specific teams despite being universally useful if you just need healing support. Lingsha would sit right in the same boat, side-by-side, with these characters, as her niche is the unique power she brings to Break and Follow-up teams. However, to use her in, say, a Follow-up team, she’d have to replace Aventurine, who is widely considered the best Follow-up support thanks to his Skill Point positive playstyle, passive sustain, and great damage. At this impasse, is it worth pulling a new character who will perform similarly to Aventurine in the same team? For me, I don’t think so.

That all said, I’d say Lingsha is a fantastic pull if you don’t already have at least two meta sustainers (Aventurine, HuoHuo, Fu Xuan, Gallagher, Luocha). Otherwise, I recommend skipping Lingsha for future pastures.