Honkai Star Rail’s Serval is a butt-kicking, guitar-shredding, four-star lightning character. For a free character, she’s surprisingly solid, and can be a great ally – especially in the early game. So let’s dive into the best Serval build, featuring her skills, best light cones and relics, and more.
If you want to see how Serval sizes up against her brother, Honkai Star Rail’s Gepard, be sure to check out our Honkai Star Rail tier list. We’ve also got guides to all the latest Honkai Star Rail codes and Honkai Star Rail banners, as well as all the current and upcoming Honkai Star Rail events.
Here’s everything in our Honkai Star Rail Serval build:
Best Honkai Star Rail Serval Build
Serval is a four-star lightning character who follows the path of the Erudition. She excels as a sub-DPS, dishing out multi-target damage with her AoE attacks and inflicting enemies with the shock debuff.
Here’s a brief overview of our best HSR Serval build:
| Rarity | Four-star |
| Element | Lightning |
| Path | The Erudition |
| Best light cone | Make the World Clamor |
| Light cone substitute |
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| Best relic set | Pioneer Diver of Dead Waters |
| Best planar ornament set | Firmament Frontline: Glamoth |
| Main stats |
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| Sub-stats |
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The best light cone for Serval is Night on the Milky Way, and her best relic set is Pioneer Diver of Dead Waters. Her best planar ornament set is Firmament Frontline: Glamoth.
While Serval is an Erudition character, her scaling is closer to a traditional DPS – therefore we recommend prioritizing crit and speed, followed by attack%.
When leveling up Serval’s talents, you should prioritize her skill, then her talent, then her ultimate, then her basic attack. In terms of traces, prioritize her A2 (Rock ‘n’ Roll), followed by her A6 (Mania), then her A4 (String Vibration).
How to Use Serval
Serval is a four-star lightning character who treads the path of the Erudition, meaning she’s capable of dishing out powerful multi-target, AoE damage, and can apply lightning damage over time. Therefore, she’s best suited to the role of DPS or sub-DPS, and excels most when facing groups of multiple enemies.
She’s a decent damage dealer who performs well in the early game and manages to hold her own later in the game as long as you’re willing to invest in her, though she struggles to stand up against the strong, five-star DPS in the game. Her kit revolves around applying shock to enemies and dealing increased damage to shocked foes, but she’s still capable of maintaining her peak damage after the initial shock application stage.
As such, your main goal with Serval is to apply shock to as many enemies as you can straight away. You can do this through her skill which is an AoE that has an 80% base chance to shock enemies for two turns. However, 80% is actually pretty low, especially with how her targeting works, making it pretty difficult to shock all enemies simultaneously.
Luckily, her ultimate is better at applying shock – so, if you can get past the initial phase of the fight and charge up her ultimate as frequently as possible, it’s much easier to maintain the shocked debuff on her enemies. So it’s a good thing that her ultimate has a relatively low energy cost, meaning you can use it pretty frequently!
When your enemies are shocked, you can then fall back on Serval’s basic attack, as her talent ensures that she will deal an additional instance of lightning damage to all shocked enemies, even if she only hits one of them.
Best Light Cone for Serval
Serval has her own unique, four-star light cone called Make the World Clamor, which boosts her energy when she enters battle and increases her ultimate damage. This, of course, is a great option for her, as it caters to her specific playstyle.
If you’re looking for a five-star option, we recommend Himeko’s Night on the Milky Way, which boosts her attack based on how many enemies are on the field, and further increases her damage when you inflict a weakness break on an enemy.
For a three-star option, we recommend either Data Bank or Passkey, but you can ultimately try out any light cone you like as long as it aligns with the path of the Erudition, otherwise its skill won’t activate.
| Make the World Clamor | Increases the wearer’s ultimate damage by 24%, and allows them to regenerate 20 energy immediately upon entering battle | Limited and standard banner |
| Night on the Milky Way | For every enemy on the field, the wearer’s attack increases by 9%, for a maximum of five stacks. When you inflict weakness break on an enemy, the wearer’s damage dealt increases by 30% for one turn | Limited and standard banner |
| Data Bank | Increases the wearer’s ultimate damage by 28% | Limited and standard banner |
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