DoT in Honkai: Star Rail explained

What is DoT in Honkai: Star Rail?

HoYoverse’s Honkai: Star Rail is the new star on the free-to-play video games heaven, and it’s the first real foray into the turn-based RPG genre for many of its players. Coming with a deep combat system that offers satisfying strategy and team building options even for experienced players, Honkai: Star Rail is an interesting title for newcomers to dive into.

Naturally, many community members are grizzled veterans of the genre and are used to certain terms when discussing strategies, which newer players may not immediately grasp. One such abbreviation that sees frequent use is DoT, leading to many newbies asking themselves what DoT is in Honkai: Star Rail.

Worry no longer, for we’re explaining what exactly DoT is in Honkai: Star Rail and why it’s a powerful concept you should familiarize yourself with.

What is DoT in Honkai: Star Rail?

DoT is a pretty common abbreviation for “Damage over Time” in many different game genres. It describes status effects that deal damage to characters over a window of time, instead of once and immediately. Poison is the most common example of this in many video games.

In Honkai: Star Rail, damage from DoT effects is applied at the beginning of a character’s turn and can be caused by several different sources.

Of the seven damage types in Honkai: Star Rail, six cause a DoT effect on Weakness Breaks – a Weakness Break is achieved when you deplete the white toughness bar of an opponent by attacking them with a corresponding damage type.

Here are all DoT effects in Honkai: Star Rail:

• Freeze – inflicted by Ice Damage.
• Bleed – inflicted by Physical Damage.
• Burn – inflicted by Fire Damage.
• Shock – inflicted by Lightning Damage.
• Wind Shear – inflicted by Wind Damage.
• Entanglement – inflicted by Quantum Damage.

Entanglement is probably the status effect that’s easiest to stack on an opponent, as more stacks are automatically applied on top of an existing one with any attacks against the affected target, increasing the DoT done to them at the beginning of their next turn.

If you’re into a “death by a thousand cuts” kind of play style, then building a team from characters specialized in dealing DoT is a very entertaining undertaking.

Three such names stand out from the roster of playable Honkai: Star Rail characters at the moment: Hook is great at applying the Burn effects and making additional use of it, Serval is doing the same with the Shock effect, and Sampo is all about applying Wind Shear and boosting the damage of DoT effects in general. If you want to focus on DoT, then Sampo is a very powerful character to have on your team.