Why Follow-Up Attackers Are The Most Future Proof Characters in Honkai: Star Rail

Because They Follow-Up on their attacks

What makes follow up attacks so good? Action Economy.

I love how expensive the team is makes sense because the IPC characters are probably millionaires or billionaires lol, and Robin as a singer probably is quite wealthy as well

FUA is basically a way to sneak in additional attacks or actions in a limited cycle than what you are normally given based on your speed or advance forward. And on top of that it's just pretty funny seeing your FUA units cheesing SU because of Aftertaste. Moving forward it would be interesting how DoT and FUA develop considering the units there look more like they're meant to build on their own playstyles. So now you have 3 general ways of dealing damage: the typical DPS of dealing damage as we do now, DoT that leverages enemy turn taking and action, and FUA with ways for you to deal more instances of damage or mechanics in the same cycle.

There are two specific kind of rewarding feelings that only follow-up and DOT can do, the feeling of "oh no I'm about to loose!? wait no just managed to take the win on the enemies turn."(dot is really good at this one) and "You're already dead, you just don't know it yet." when black swan has ulted and you're about to ult then skill with kafka into the enemy turn, or IPC follow-up when everyone has their ultimate and you're about to watch a 2 minute cutscene of the boss exploding

"There weren't any teammates for Topaz other than Jingyuan" I'm sorry when did Clara stop existing?

They’ve really start to form this “engine” that feels really fun, and still feels like there’s a wide space available. Aventurine and Topaz LC having debuff FUA effects also makes Ratio such a delight. I can see future potential for more “Counter” based FUA, where a new sustain debuffs an enemy’s defenses whenever that enemy attacks for clara / march / aventurine buffs. I also would love to see burst and bounce FUA for some wackiness outside the Hunt and Erudition FUA. Or like a character that charges up FUA from overhealing. Or a character that gains charges based on instances of any ally attacking, including ult and FUA. They’re just straight up fun in a turn based game, and have a lot of open design space Lastly, with the IPC squad synergizing so well together, it’s so cool and fun that it almost retroactively makes the rest of the characters oddly less spicy. Like, it feels like Xueyi and Hanya should synergize, or Gui and Sushang, or the Stellaron Hunters, or Asta and Arlan. These synergies add this feeling of cohesion and relation, flavor-blasting these mechanics the FUA engine.

I also love using Elation path in the various stimulated universe as I am huge fan of follow up attacks!

11:58 March 7th and Xueyi are also 4stars with accessible FUA's, especially with eidolons! They aren't cracked damage dealers, but they are absolutely sufficient for reaping the benefits of Elation blessings in SU.

Another point for non hypercarry teams is flexiblity. We've all had those moments where the hyper carry leaves an enemy on like hp and have to go through another cycle because the supports do no damage and have to waste an important resource like a jingliu charge. With duel dps or team like ipc fua where everyone does their share of damage. The problem with dual hunt is that they are good at deleting enemies 1 by 1 but they have to waste time dealing with trash mobs. Aventurine can thin out or at least weaken the mobs enough and robin ult can add more damage so they can actual kill. Also with these dual carry comps it lets you cover more contents since they cover multiple weakness breaks. Also if something happens to your hyper carry you're likely to lose a cycle but with ipc team the damage is more spread evenly so say if something happens to ratio you still lose a big chunk of damage you don't lose everything. This is a reason why im hyped for break teams and eventually want to make a dot team when the banners rerun or new units come out.

Out of turn actions are very very valuable in turn based games. We've had tastes of this already all the way in the early months of the game with Clara and Luocha (altough his action Is not a FUA)

IPC meeting of the ten stonehearts: Now, we need to follow up on this uncollected Debt. And we need to do a Follow up on...

In the Portuguese localization all follow ups attacks are translated as "extra attacks".

When I went all in on Topaz on release they called me a mad man! Who’s laughing now!?

They laughed at you Topaz, they even doubted you! Stand proud knowing you ARE the future (pls dont tax me)

Secretly? Ive built my entire hsr experience around fua, it all began with clara 😮‍💨

"assuming of course there is no hard once per turn" YGO moment 6:50

Follow-up attacks have been my favorite thing about star rail since version 1. That first combat event that let me trial Himeko and Herta together really sold me on this game.

The "VARS" watermark that appears every so often gave me an idea... reduce the size by half, farther lower the opacity, and then have it bounce around the screen slowly like old DVD players. lol

I only started playing at the very end of 2.1 and I count myself so lucky to have been able to get the entire Follow-up Attack team since. It's extremely fun and getting to use Dr. Ratio, who got me into this game in the first place, is very satisfying