History GameBreaker / HonkaiImpact3rd

* In 5.5, Palatinus Equinox was released as the first Imaginary-type DPS and remained the only one for a long time, which makes her de facto indispensable against IMG bosses and enemies, as her ultimate allows her to damage those enemies’ cores directly without breaking their shells first. Not only that, but her StanceSystem ("Knight" where she’s riding a giant horse and "Guardian" where she fights on the ground with a [[ShieldBash shield]]) give a variety of very powerful charged attacks, time fracture triggers, impenetrable defense and an insane amount of invincibility frames, which makes her a powerhouse even against non-IMG enemies.

* In 5.5, Palatinus Equinox was released as the first Imaginary-type DPS and remained the only one for a long time, which makes her de facto indispensable against IMG bosses and enemies, as her ultimate allows her to damage those enemies’ cores directly without breaking their shells first. Not only that, but her StanceSystem ("Knight" where she’s riding a giant horse and "Guardian" where she fights on the ground with a [[ShieldBashing shield]]) give a variety of very powerful charged attacks, time fracture triggers, impenetrable defense and an insane amount of invincibility frames, which makes her a powerhouse even against non-IMG enemies.

* The '''Oath of Judah''' is the most famous example, a Cross weapon so powerful that [[ICallItVera it's regarded as its own character by the fanbase]]. Usable by any Theresa, the weapon restricts enemies to a limited area in which they are pelted by heavy lightning damage. By building a team around this one weapon, it's possible to do ridiculous amounts of lightning damage in record time--enough to utterly destroy the vast majority of the game's enemies in seconds, ''including'' high-level bosses. It did fall off considerably in later versions though, especially after the introduction of the "exalted" tier in Memorial Arena and of powerful lightning DPS characters like Hawk of the Fog and Herrscher of Thunder that relegated Judah to a support weapon at best (as noted below).
* While it doesn't have as much memetic reputation, '''Blood Dance''' is also this, with its ability to give a huge debuff to elemental resistance on enemies; it's a big support to most elemental teams and usable on any greatsword wielding characters.
* ''Every'' '''PRI-ARM'''. Each PRI-ARM is an upgraded version of an older gacha weapon; specifically, the signature weapons of older S-Rank Valkyries. These weapons possess incredibly high attack values and new abilities which are tailor-made to cover the weaknesses of the suits intended to use them while enhancing their strengths. The ones initially made available are "MAG-Typhoon" [[note]] Upgraded form of Magstorm. It turns Lighting Empress into a top-tier lightning-elemental DPS by allowing her to inflict incredible amounts of damage in short time, ''for no SP cost'', while also debuffing enemies so they take more damage and are safer to attack.[[/note]], "Frozen Naraka" [[note]] Upgraded form of Ice Epiphyllum. It ''significantly'' increases Goushinsou Memento's ice burst damage and also makes it safer for her to unleash said burst, which together with the improvements afforded to the suit, sent this once-famous suit right back into prominence.[[/note]], "11th Leitourgia" [[note]] Upgraded form of 11th Sacred Relic. A weapon which greatly enhances Celestial Hymn's SP recovery (necessary to make use of her Ultimate more frequently) and gives attack and support buffs for her teammates.[[/note]] and "Positron Blasters" [[note]] Upgraded form of Hyper Railguns. ''Greatly'' increases Knight Moonbeam's damage output and SP recovery and grants her the ability to buff her team's damage upon evasion.[[/note]] However, the weapons ''do'' have restrictions. They require an entirely separate set of upgrade materials which take extensive amounts of time ([[BribingYourWayToVictory or money]]) to farm, and the ability to upgrade the weapons into [=PRI-ARMs=] as well as open most forms of farming for the materials is locked until the player reaches Captain Level 80 (which takes several ''months'' of dedicated playing to achieve) and chooses to breakthrough to the Exalted tier. As a result, only players in the very endgame can obtain them. However these weapons are so powerful that each one redefines the metagame ''upon introduction,'' with the endgame being charitably described by those concerned as "a [=PRI-ARMs=] Race."
** Of these PRI-ARM weapons, the single most ridiculous one on its own is MAG-Typhoon for the reasons described, but just to drive the point home: the usual Judah Team composition included Lighting Empress only to afford SP for Judah and debuff the enemy so Judah could deal more damage. Add MAG-Typhoon to the equation, however, and the tables were turned: Lighting Empress became the main damage dealer, while Judah existed to tide the damage curve over while MAG-Typhoon's active was restocking uses as well as to buff Lighting Empress's damage. Even after LE lost her status of top DPS, Typhoon’s support abilities remained invaluable for lightning teams. And push comes to shove, Darkbolt Jonin (Sakura) or Herrscher of Thunder can still use it for heavy damage − although Domain of Sanction, a later PRI-ARM, is even better for that.

!!Former

* The Fu Hua suit, '''Shadow Knight'''. It's loaded with self-applying StatusBuff abilities and carries massive damage multipliers and resistances, together with [[SuperMode a brutally powerful burst mode]] with high-damage high-coverage attacks, making her a character ''designed'' to work as a OneWomanArmy. Shadow Knight did suffer from being an elemental Valkyrie in the later stages of the old Abyss mode [[labelnote:Explanation]]The hardest levels of the Abyss tended to have high temperatures, which gave enemies very high defenses. Physical resistance can be reduced with specific Valkyries and weapons, but no such thing existed for Elemental resistance, which eventually led to Physical-focused Valkyries dominating the Abyss for advanced players.[[/labelnote]], but she's so strong that she remained a good Valkyrie even then for an appreciable portion of an Abyss trek. Shadow Knight was widely regarded as the most broken Valkyrie due to being so powerful you didn't even need to invest into gacha gear to make her crush a large portion of the game's content. Her main weakness is ironically that she's too good on her own; although her Leader skill ''is'' powerful, by design she's not much of a team player. While she has become a pretty niche choise nowadays, her PRI-arm Nuada’s Revenge still makes her a powerful asset.
* Provided you had the pockets to outfit her, one of the greatest ones was Kiana as '''Herrscher of the Void'''. When all the conditions were met[[labelnote:As in...]]SS Rank of either this Valkyrie or its non-Awakened form, Knight Moonbeam (primarily for powering up her leader skill), the full Sirin Ascension Stigmata set, and either the Tranquil Arias or Key of the Void weapons[[/labelnote]], she used to be ''the'' strongest Valkyrie in the game bar none.[[labelnote:The Rundown]]She can deal heavy physical damage at long range while moving, giving her a mobility and safety advantage while also being effective in any setting, including advanced Abyss mode. Her [[SuperMode special powered up mode]] is activated with a powerful AreaOfEffect attack which triggers a ton of StatusBuff effects. Her Ultimate Evasion lets her teleport straight through an enemy (and for a while, this was the only evasion in the whole game which would let you do that), generating [[TimeMaster a bubble of space where all enemies caught suffer Time Slow]], which affects even bosses! Her powerful [=QTE=] has two different and easy triggers, and restores a chunk of her burst mode meter. Finally, her [[LimitBreak Ultimate Skill]] is an obscenely powerful bombardment with a gigantic AreaOfEffect which lifts and Time Slows her victims, which is ''also'' boosted during her burst mode. Unlike Shadow Knight, her ease of triggering [=QTE=] on top of having a very powerful burst-oriented playstyle and powerful Leader skill make her a true team player, which means it's also easy to slot her into a team.[[/labelnote]] In short, [[PurposelyOverpowered this Valkyrie battlesuit was intended to be able to utterly crush anything in her way as long as she was properly geared]] (she is, unfortunately ''much'' less effective without the optimal setup). Due to all this, she often made it to the top of [[CharacterTiers the tier list]] for a long time after her debut. Appropriately, she's [[PowerEqualsRarity an S-rank awakened battlesuit]], meaning that she's only available through the Expansion Supply (which doesn't come up often) and raising an "awakening character" would require more character fragments than a regular one. But the meta eventually caught up with her and she’s rather used as a support nowadays(with her evasion skill notably). The 5.8 update (July 2202) has her as a reward of a new player log-in bonus, meaning she could be a DiscOneNuke, particularly with a weapon well suited for her as a reward from another newbie 'event'.
* Version 3.2 (July 2019-ish for SEA/Global) introduced Seele Vollerei's first battlesuit, the A-rank '''Swallowtail Phantasm'''. It was really neat, being the first Quantum-type battlesuit, and quickly proved to be an absolute master of sweeping out enemy groups (as she ignores the typical Mech/Bio/Psy attributes while being especially strong against other Quantum enemies) while being okay-ish at bosses (foreshadowing what Stygian Nymph would become), and more importantly was capable of rendering the early content of ''[=HI3=]'' something of a joke as those enemies were not designed to fight someone with as much natural [=AoE=] and ability to disjoint and "shuttle" as Seele. So she breaks the game for newbies! Except she was still gacha-locked, and as a result, there was no guarantee a new player would get her when she was extra-powerful. But the 3.8 Second Anniversary update (for Global). [[note]]This update refreshed the Valkyrie Muster program in anticipation of a wave of new players, and one of the changes made was that, after hitting level 15 and doing just ''one'' Valkyrie Muster co-op mission, you get a crate. A crate containing the Swallowtail Phatasm character card, a weapon, and a full Stigmata set for her.[[/note]] In short, second anniversary newbies are given Swallowtail Seele ''completely for free and fully early-game kitted. You get Seele, completely free, and the fragment crates also make it extremely easy to get her to S rank or even higher, which basically unlocks her entire kit. While she’s no longer a favored option against bosses, she’s still very good at swiping the quantum mobs even in lvl 81+.
* '''Stygian Nymph''', Seele's S-Rank suit. This character is actually a "dual Valkyrie"; two characters in one, with the Ultimate being an AreaOfEffect blast that 1) can be activated with ''no SP at all'', 2) if she does have SP when she uses it, will become more powerful, at the cost of depleting it, and that switches depending on which one you're using. "Light Seele" or "Saule" specializes in dealing melee physical damage to groups of enemies, while "Dark Seele" or "Veliona" specializes in dealing massive amounts of single-target melee physical damage and breaking shields. In this manner, Stygian Nymph is ''both'' a dedicated mob killer and a dedicated boss killer, instead of being only one or a less effective hybrid of both. Both halves of Seele also possess the ability to trigger their Ultimate Evasions on demand by dodging ''through'' an enemy, something that only Herrscher of the Void could do previously. Additionally, the suit is [[InfinityPlusOneElement Quantum-type]], meaning it's equally effective against the vast majority of the game's enemies while being especially effective against the rare but dangerous Quantum enemies of QS. Stygian Nymph's ''only'' weakness is [[EliteTweak being very gear and support dependent]], because otherwise she was once so powerful and so simple to use that ''you could obtain a high score on a maximum-difficulty endgame boss by doing nothing but spamming the attack button''. Not so much so nowadays obviously, but she’s still generally considered one of the best options for Quantum bosses.
* Valkyrie Accipiter (Fu Hua)'s augmented version, '''Hawk of the Fog''', quickly rose to a high tier position after she was introduced (in patch 3.5, in the various international versions). She has a CrissCrossAttack that deals multiple hits in a wide radius, makes her invincible for a few seconds, fills SP quickly and plows through shields quickly, and another more spammable attack (her A-B or A-A-B chain that ends with a RoundhouseKick) that tears through bosses' HP like butter. Her Ultimate Skill can only be used after her CrissCrossAttack or her Ultimate Evasion, but it deals potent lightning damage that can be easily boosted with supports' buffs or debuffs. Maximizing her damage output requires quite some practice and good use of supports[[note]]In particular, the craftable Zhang Heng B stigma is hard to use (gain 120% extra lightning damage for 2 seconds after Ultimate Evasion, and only if your combo count is below 20), but synergizes well with Hawk of the Fog's Ultimate Skill[[/note]], but if you can, you have a powerful lightning-elemental character who can take out both mobs and bosses in a breeze with her various attacks. She's also compatible with most lightning damage stigmata that are already in the game (including some that you can acquire without spending crystals), and her strongest weapon is the same as Shadow Knight's, which also has a PRI upgrade. Did we mention that, since she's an augmented version of an A-rank Valkyrie, she's available completely free and isn't even terribly hard to farm? While she’s still an excellent [=f2p=] option, her spot as lightning DPS queen in upper levels was largely stolen by the Herrscher of Thunder (see below).
* '''Celestial Hymn''' (Theresa) was considered the prime physical damage-support character in the game by many tier listings. Many of her skills inflict the "impair" debuff (decreasing the enemies' defense) that lasts for a generous 10 seconds, longer than most other impairing skills in the game. Her Ultimate Skill gathers enemies and repeatedly hits them with flying blades that also impairs them; this also synergizes with Stigmata effects that require her to hit her enemies, so that she can keep applying those effects even after she's switched out, giving her even more edge as a support with the right Stigmata. Her only issue was that said Ultimate Skill costs 125 SP, which her signature weapon - the PRI-ARM 11th Leitourgia - rectifies by allowing her to regenerate SP after using it, even while off-field. Said weapon can hit all enemies in its range (as opposed to just a few at a time) and also support other characters while it's active. Despite being one of the oldest battlesuits in the game, she was still considered indispensable until Herrscher of Sentience was released, and even then she remained a good support for ''her'' if you play [=HoS=] as a DPS.
* Bronya as '''Herrscher of Reason'''. By far the strongest of any battlesuit for her character until Silverwing came out, she is a melee-oriented Ice element character who can output ''absurd'' amounts of damage by rotating her powerful normal combos and her ChargedAttack to lay waste to her surroundings with a massive outpouring of explosive Ice-based ranged damage. Her crazy SP charge speed facilitates usage of her [[LimitBreak Ultimate]], whereupon she boards a CoolBike, nukes the field, and becomes '''literally unkillable''' while building charge meter simply for existing and gains several new attacks, including auto-guns that raze the field when you drive and AreaOfEffect bike spins that steamroll anything in your path. The icing on the cake? Unlike Herrscher of the Void, whose GameBreaker status is extremely gacha gear-dependent, Herrscher of Reason '''isn't'''. You can run her with only Free-to-Play gear and have her still be a powerhouse; gaining her unique weapon and matching Stigmata set just makes her ''even stronger.'' The introduction of her PRI-arm Domain of Revelation and the Ana Schariac stigmata set, which is entirely free (although it takes an extremely long time to farm), have helped to keep her competitive. 5.8 gives her free to new captains that level up enough, making her another potential DiscOneNuke.
* Patch 4.1 introduces the long-awaited S-Rank Awakening of Lightning Empress, the '''Herrscher of Thunder''', who ''immediately'' became the top DPS of the game on release, just like the previous Herrscher suits. She’s [[SuperiorSuccessor essentially Hawk, but stronger and easier to use.]] She dishes out a lot of lightning damage very quickly and her attacks have a fairly wide area of effect, making her effective against mobs and bosses. Of particular note is her ability to gain Herrscher Charge quickly in order to unleash her special Combo Move, which deals ''massive'' damage in an area, applies her Narukami Mark debuff's special effects and grants her bonus SP. Speaking of, she possesses skills to quickly gather SP as well as ''share it'' with her team (including her own Leader Skill which is a tweak of Lightning Empress's; it restricts the starting SP bonus to PSY-type Valks, but the Total DMG multiplier is universal), which leads into her ridiculously overpowered Ultimate Skill: the ability to ''summon a freaking dragon'' and [[DragonRider ride it to devastate the battlefield!]] While riding her Dragon, much like Herrscher of Reason, she cannot be killed, regenerates health per second, can periodically trigger Time Fracture ''on-demand'' and gains access to devastating wide-area attacks, including tornadoes with gathering effects and a turret-like BreathWeapon move. When the timer is almost over, she can perform a FinishingMove for one last nuke on the enemy… OR, she can switch out before the Ultimate Skill ends, have her team set up for the next rotation and then switch-in ''and carry on with the finishing move'' of the Ultimate as if there had been no interruption at all. This ''can'' stack with her easily-triggered [=QTE=] in order to confer special bonuses to the finishing move, whether it's to ensure the move kills or set up the next rotation faster. Have we mentioned that her low gacha-gear performance is actually about as good or ''better'' than Hawk's? And because she does not need Lightning Empress to support her output (they cannot be in the same team to start), she does ''not'' deprive Hawk of the supports she needs for best performance in the Memorial Arena, meaning you can easily deploy both of them on the same week, a pairing that can handle most of the possible boss combinations in the game. Indeed, she is so powerful that she can achieve great scores against any boss that isn't outright immune to lightning damage, including elemental-resistant bosses like Shadow Knight or Jizo Mitama thanks to having a permanent passive that allows her to [[ArmorPiercingAttack ignore a portion of the enemy's elemental resistance.]] Literally and figuratively a LightningBruiser through and through, having Herrscher of Thunder at your side will significantly make your life easier with all the pomp and show [[PhysicalGod a Herrscher]] entails.

!!Current

* Te augmented version of Bronya's Yamabuki Armor, '''Drive Kometa''', is easily the best defensive support unit in the entire ''game''. To put it simply, she does '''a lot''' of things for a single character[[note]]Even the base form is okay, providing a shield that blocks a set amount of damage and inherits a bit of Bronya's defense; moreover, she can heal people when she punches things in her ultimate mode. Kometa keeps this, but the HP of the shield now scales off of Bronya's Max HP (which means you can actually gear her for HP and it makes a ton of sense), maxing out at 2,000 HP, which makes the shield a ''lot'' bigger, and the shield now inherits her ''entire'' defense stat. The shield also gives your whole team increased melee physical damage and crit rate. It also completely refreshes every time she performs Ultimate Skill or [=QTE=], or (at max upgrade) her Perfect Defense. The debuff on her basic attack now affects all enemies in an AreaOfEffect (meaning that you don't have to repeatedly shoot different enemies to debuff all of them), is lengthened to '''fifteen seconds''' (which for Honkai may as well be an eternity, and in multiplayer may as well be permanent) and forces enemies to take more shield damage. Both her QTE and Ultimate Skill can [[YouWillNotEvadeMe gather enemies]] for easier mob clearing, and as her QTE is triggered by Time Slow/Fracture and she can also inflict them by herself, she has a lot of synergy with other characters, and helps with the "Time Fracture stall" strategy. Her leader skill is also a good one: up to 26% increase in crit rate when your combo reaches 30 or more (and 29% more crit damage for PSY-type characters)[[/note]]. All of this comes solely from her - she can freely equip any weapon and various kinds of support stigmata to support different kinds of characters, in different situations.\\
All together, this means that Bronya barely needs to even take the field to make her allies powerful, and her ultimate gives her the ability to heal damage if it comes to that. All this on a character who is ''not only'' farmable, ''not only'' needs only 66 augment cores to unlock most of the core functionality (so about 20,000 Asterite, which isn't terribly hard to earn at all), but if you begin playing in 2020, the Valkyrie Muster newbie event gives you the option of just outright getting her via the fragment crates you get for completing the event's missions. You have to ''actively'' not select her from the boxes in order to not recruit her (and you will get far, far more boxes than is required to not just recruit her, but get her to S). In 2022, she's on the Starter banner (which has 'Herrscher of Flamescion and Herrscher of Sentience as the S-rank suits), so you're very likely to get her and/or her frags in a couple of 10-pulls. It is not at all difficult to earn Kometa Bronya just through a week's ''reasonably dedicated play'', or a couple weeks of ''very casual'' play.
* '''Azure Empyrea''' (Fu Hua, awakened Phoenix) is intended to be the top support for elemental teams, and it shows: she has a special attack that gathers enemies, immobilizes them, and gives the active character RegeneratingMana afterward; and another special attack that makes her targets take increased elemental damage for a few seconds. 2 of her passive skills make the whole team deal increased fire and ice damage just by hitting the enemy with any of her special attacks, and this buff lasts for a generous 15 seconds. She also can generate SP quickly through alternating her special attacks, which fuels her Ultimate Skill: a much stronger version of her "gathering" special attack that not only activates her fire and ice buff skills, but also gives increased lightning damage and - most importantly - the unique "elemental breach" buff that lets your whole team [[ArmorPiercingAttack ignore a portion of the enemies' elemental resistance]]. All these buffs last for a generous 15 seconds. Her signature weapon, Nebulous Duality, also helps her regenerating her SP more quickly (even while off field) by [[CastFromHitPoints sacrificing health]], and buffing her teammates' total damage by doing her special attacks and then switching out. Her only weakness is that she's not as good at supporting lightning teams - she can't do it as ''quickly'' as Lightning Empress (Mei) can, though even then her Ultimate Skill can still be a big help for lightning teams.
* When the Captain-verse character Zhuge Kongming became playable as '''Starlit Astrologos''', her unique ability to launch support skills from off-field[[note]]if you except Kiana’s battlesuit Divine Prayer, which can inflict an impair debuff automatically[[/note]] rapidly became invaluable. Not only can she buff physical damage with her weapon [[InstrumentOfMurder Zither’s Lament]] and her ultimate just by activating her QTE, allowing her to support physical Valkyries that need to stay on the field a lot − especially Bright Knight: Excelsis (Durandal) and her extremely long burst mode −, said QTE can also trigger the effects of support stigmatas that boost total or elemental damage, such as Gluttony T, Newton B or Jing Shengtan. Which means that she can ''also'' support elemental teams just fine if need be. Her ultimate evasion also creates a circle on the ground that allows the next Valk to trigger a short time fracture just by stepping on it. Add to that the fact that her damage output makes her a pretty decent secondary DPS on top of that, plus the fact that she’s entirely farmable (though her signature weapon and stigmata set are not) and she’s easily up there with Celestial Hymn and Drive Kometa as a support unit.
* Introduced in version 4.3, '''Fervent Tempo Δ''' turned Rozaliya, a hitherto good but not indispensable DPS, into an absolute juggernaut capable of blowing any Mech enemy into smithereens. Her gameplay is simply based around two gauges that fill very quickly and an ultimate technique that costs only 50SP, both letting her enter "fervent mode", where her damage is multiplied to a ridiculous extent. She also has passives that reduce her Psy-type disadvantage against Bio enemies, and also increase her damage during time fractures. Her Pri-arm Sleeper’s Dream incidentally allows her (and by extension Liliya) to activate her ultimate skill’s JustFrameBonus without needing to wait for an enemy attack. All this makes her one of the dedaliest physical DPS in the game. The Kicker? ''She’s entirely farmable'' and can mostly work with f2p gear too.

* Kiana as the '''Herrscher of Flamescion''' qualifies for this as well. First off, she is the ''first'' Valkyrie able to leave the ground and fight in ''mid-air,'' aerial raves included. On top of that, her charged attack is very powerful and has the option to easily ''gather enemies into one spot,'' meaning that enemies being far away isn't really all that much of a problem. Her Ultimate is also very far-reaching, and drops ''two'' DPS nukes, and is enhanced if she's in Herrscher mode, and on top of that, restores HP if it's low. Did we also mention that her Ultimate Evasion is triggered by literally ''just tapping the button?'' Some players have used this to get ''zero-second runs'' on certain activities. Also, despite her abilities consuming HP, she is far from a GlassCannon - she has a barrier seperate from her HP that absorbs 100% of all healing outside of her ultimate - in essence, this barrier is her new health bar, with the regular HP bar being more or less a meter for how much damage you can do. She and gear made for her can be gotten from the trio of Starter banners.
* Version 5.2 introduced the new lightning DPS queen: Möbius’s battlesuit '''Infinite Ouroboros'''. Her sheer damage output aside, her attacks also have a ridiculous area of effect, making her an absolute juggernaut when it comes to wiping out waves of mobs.

* ''Every'' '''PRI-ARM'''. Each PRI-ARM is an upgraded version of an older gacha weapon; specifically, the [[WeaponOfChoice signature weapons]] of older S-Rank Valkyries. These weapons possess incredibly high attack values and new abilities which are [[WeaponOfChoice tailor-made to cover the weaknesses of the suits intended to use them while enhancing their strengths.]] The ones initially made available are "MAG-Typhoon" [[note]] Upgraded form of Magstorm. It turns Lighting Empress into a top-tier lightning-elemental DPS by allowing her to inflict incredible amounts of damage in short time, ''for no SP cost'', while also debuffing enemies so they take more damage and are safer to attack.[[/note]], "Frozen Naraka" [[note]] Upgraded form of Ice Epiphyllum. It ''significantly'' increases Goushinsou Memento's ice burst damage and also makes it safer for her to unleash said burst, which together with the improvements afforded to the suit, sent this once-famous suit right back into prominence.[[/note]], "11th Leitourgia" [[note]] Upgraded form of 11th Sacred Relic. A weapon which greatly enhances Celestial Hymn's SP recovery (necessary to make use of her Ultimate more frequently) and gives attack and support buffs for her teammates.[[/note]] and "Positron Blasters" [[note]] Upgraded form of Hyper Railguns. ''Greatly'' increases Knight Moonbeam's damage output and SP recovery and grants her the ability to buff her team's damage upon evasion.[[/note]] However, the weapons ''do'' have restrictions. They require an entirely separate set of upgrade materials which take extensive amounts of time ([[BribingYourWayToVictory or money]]) to farm, and the ability to upgrade the weapons into [=PRI-ARMs=] as well as open most forms of farming for the materials is locked until the player reaches Captain Level 80 (which takes several ''months'' of dedicated playing to achieve) and chooses to breakthrough to the Exalted tier. As a result, only players in the very endgame can obtain them. However these weapons are so powerful that each one redefines the metagame ''upon introduction,'' with the endgame being charitably described by those concerned as "a [=PRI-ARMs=] Race."

* '''Stygian Nymph''', Seele's S-Rank suit. This character is actually a "dual Valkyrie"; two characters in one, with the Ultimate being an AreaOfEffect blast that 1) can be activated with ''no SP at all'', 2) if she does have SP when she uses it, will become more powerful, at the cost of depleting it, and that switches depending on which one you're using. "Light Seele" or "Saule" specializes in dealing melee physical damage to groups of enemies, while "Dark Seele" or "Veliona" specializes in dealing massive amounts of single-target melee physical damage and breaking shields. In this manner, Stygian Nymph is ''both'' a dedicated mob killer and a dedicated boss killer, instead of being only one or a less effective hybrid of both. Both halves of Seele also possess the ability to trigger their Ultimate Evasions on demand by dodging ''through'' an enemy, something that only Herrscher of the Void could do previously. Additionally, the suit is [[InfinityPlusOneElement Quantum-type]], meaning it's equally effective against the vast majority of the game's enemies while being especially effective against the rare but dangerous Quantum enemies of QS. Stygian Nymph's ''only'' weakness is [[EliteTweak being very gear and support dependent]], because otherwise she was once so powerful and so simple to use that ''[[UpToEleven you could obtain a high score on a maximum-difficulty endgame boss by doing nothing but spamming the attack button]]''. Not so much so nowadays obviously, but she’s still generally considered one of the best options for Quantum bosses.

* Provided you had the pockets to outfit her, one of the greatest ones was Kiana as '''Herrscher of the Void'''. When all the conditions were met[[labelnote:As in...]]SS Rank of either this Valkyrie or its non-Awakened form, Knight Moonbeam (primarily for powering up her leader skill), the full Sirin Ascension Stigmata set, and either the Tranquil Arias or Key of the Void weapons[[/labelnote]], she used to be ''the'' strongest Valkyrie in the game bar none.[[labelnote:The Rundown]]She can deal heavy physical damage at long range while moving, giving her a mobility and safety advantage while also being effective in any setting, including advanced Abyss mode. Her [[SuperMode special powered up mode]] is activated with a powerful AreaOfEffect attack which triggers a ton of StatusBuff effects. Her Ultimate Evasion lets her teleport straight through an enemy (and for a while, this was the only evasion in the whole game which would let you do that), generating [[TimeMaster a bubble of space where all enemies caught suffer Time Slow]], which affects even bosses! Her powerful [=QTE=] has two different and easy triggers, and restores a chunk of her burst mode meter. Finally, her [[LimitBreak Ultimate Skill]] is an obscenely powerful bombardment with a gigantic AreaOfEffect which lifts and Time Slows her victims, which is ''also'' boosted during her burst mode. Unlike Shadow Knight, her ease of triggering [=QTE=] on top of having a very powerful burst-oriented playstyle and powerful Leader skill make her a true team player, which means it's also easy to slot her into a team.[[/labelnote]] In short, [[PurposelyOverpowered this Valkyrie battlesuit was intended to be able to utterly crush anything in her way as long as she was properly geared]] (she is unfortunately ''much'' less effective without the optimal setup). Due to all this, she often made it to the top of [[CharacterTiers the tier list]] for a long time after her debut. Appropriately, she's [[PowerEqualsRarity an S-rank awakened battlesuit]], meaning that she's only available through the Expansion Supply (which doesn't come up often) and raising an "awakening character" would require more character fragments than a regular one. But the meta eventually caught up with her and she’s rather used as a support nowadays(with her evasion skill notably).

* Bronya as '''Herrscher of Reason'''. By far the strongest of any battlesuit for her character until Silverwing came out, she is a melee-oriented Ice element character who can output ''absurd'' amounts of damage by rotating her powerful normal combos and her ChargedAttack to lay waste to her surroundings with a massive outpouring of explosive Ice-based ranged damage. Her crazy SP charge speed facilitates usage of her [[LimitBreak Ultimate]], whereupon she boards a CoolBike, nukes the field, and becomes '''literally unkillable''' while building charge meter simply for existing and gains several new attacks, including auto-guns that raze the field when you drive and AreaOfEffect bike spins that steamroll anything in your path. The icing on the cake? Unlike Herrscher of the Void, whose GameBreaker status is extremely gacha gear-dependent, Herrscher of Reason '''isn't'''. You can run her with only Free-to-Play gear and have her still be a powerhouse; gaining her unique weapon and matching Stigmata set just makes her ''even stronger.'' The introduction of her PRI-arm Domain of Revelation and the Ana Schariac stigmata set, which is entirely free (although it takes an extremely long time to farm), have helped to keep her competitive.

All together, this means that Bronya barely needs to even take the field to make her allies powerful, and her ultimate gives her the ability to heal damage if it comes to that. All this on a character who is ''not only'' farmable, ''not only'' needs only 66 augment cores to unlock most of the core functionality (so about 20,000 Asterite, which isn't terribly hard to earn at all), but if you begin playing in 2020, the Valkyrie Muster newbie event gives you the option of just outright getting her via the fragment crates you get for completing the event's missions. You have to ''actively'' not select her from the boxes in order to not recruit her (and you will get far, far more boxes than is required to not just recruit her, but get her to S). It is not at all difficult to earn Kometa Bronya just through a week's ''reasonably dedicated play'', or a couple weeks of ''very casual'' play.

* In version 4.6, '''Herrscher of Sentience''' joined the club of physical powerhouses. Long story short, she can do ''anything'' − her StanceSystem allows her to switch between three weapons that can attack at short or long range, gather enemies in a large area and briefly stop time − she was the first valk who could freeze the Abyss’ timer, which is unaffected by time fractures −, all while rapidly building up her SP gauge. Her ultimate is a burst mode that massively impairs the enemies' physical resistance and activates a fourth weapon, a huge blunt sword that can crush enemies repeatedly (also called the [[FanNickname "bonk attack"]]). As such, depending on how you equip her she can work either as a deadly DPS ''or'' as an effective support, making her an incredibly flexible unit. While she has somewhat fallen off as a DPS (although she’s still very strong), she remains the undisputed top support for physical teams.
* Kiana as the '''Herrscher of Flamescion''' qualifies for this as well. First off, she is the ''first'' Valkyrie able to leave the ground and fight in ''mid-air,'' aerial raves included. On top of that, her charged attack is very powerful and has the option to easily ''gather enemies into one spot,'' meaning that enemies being far away isn't really all that much of a problem. Her Ultimate is also very far-reaching, and drops ''two'' DPS nukes, and is enhanced if she's in Herrscher mode, and on top of that, restores HP if it's low. Did we also mention that her Ultimate Evasion is triggered by literally ''just tapping the button?'' Some players have used this to get ''zero-second runs'' on certain activities. Also, despite her abilities consuming HP, she is far from a GlassCannon - she has a barrier seperate from her HP that absorbs 100% of all healing outside of her ultimate - in essence, this barrier is her new health bar, with the regular HP bar being more or less a meter for how much damage you can do.

* In version 4.6, '''Herrscher of Sentience''' joined the club of physical powerhouses. Long story short, she can do ''anything'' − her StanceSystem allows her to switch between three weapons that can attack at short or long range, gather enemies in a large area and briefly stop time − she was the first valk who could freeze the Abyss’ timer, which is unaffected by time fractures −, all while rapidly building up her SP gauge. Her ultimate is a burst mode that massively impairs the enemies' physical resistance and activates a fourth weapon, a huge blunt sword that can crush enemies repeatedly (also called the [[FanNickname "bonk attack"]]). As such, depending on how you equip her she can work etiher as a deadly DPS ''or'' as an effective support, making her an incredibly flexible unit. While she has somewhat fallen off as a DPS (although she’s still very strong), she remains the undisputed top support for physical teams.

* Bronya as '''Herrscher of Reason'''. By far the strongest of any battlesuit for her character, she is a melee-oriented Ice element character who can output ''absurd'' amounts of damage by rotating her powerful normal combos and her ChargedAttack to lay waste to her surroundings with a massive outpouring of explosive Ice-based ranged damage. Her crazy SP charge speed facilitates usage of her [[LimitBreak Ultimate]], whereupon she boards a CoolBike, nukes the field, and becomes '''literally unkillable''' while building charge meter simply for existing and gains several new attacks, including auto-guns that raze the field when you drive and AreaOfEffect bike spins that steamroll anything in your path. The icing on the cake? Unlike Herrscher of the Void, whose GameBreaker status is extremely gacha gear-dependent, Herrscher of Reason '''isn't'''. You can run her with only Free-to-Play gear and have her still be a powerhouse; gaining her unique weapon and matching Stigmata set just makes her ''even stronger.'' The introduction of her PRI-arm Domain of Revelation and the Ana Schariac stigmata set, which is entirely free (although it takes an extremely long time to farm), have helped to keep her competitive.
* Patch 4.1 introduces the long-awaited S-Rank Awakening of Lightning Empress, the '''Herrscher of Thunder''', who ''immediately'' became the top DPS of the game on release, just like the previous Herrscher suits. She’s [[SuperiorSuccessor essentially Hawk, but stronger and easier to use.]] She dishes out a lot of lightning damage very quickly and her attacks have a fairly wide area of effect, making her effective against mobs and bosses. Of particular note is her ability to gain Herrscher Charge quickly in order to unleash her special Combo Move, which deals ''massive'' damage in an area, applies her Narukami Mark debuff's special effects and grants her bonus SP. Speaking of, she possesses skills to quickly gather SP as well as ''share it'' with her team (including her own Leader Skill which is a tweak of Lightning Empress's; it restricts the starting SP bonus to PSY-type Valks, but the Total DMG multiplier is universal), which leads into her ridiculously overpowered Ultimate Skill: the ability to ''summon a freaking dragon'' and [[DragonRider ride it to devastate the battlefield!]] While riding her Dragon, much like Herrscher of Reason, she cannot be killed, regenerates health per second, can periodically trigger Time Fracture ''on-demand'' and gains access to devastating wide-area attacks, including tornadoes with gathering effects and a turret-like BreathWeapon move. When the timer is almost over, she can perform a FinishingMove for one last nuke on the enemy… OR, she can switch out before the Ultimate Skill ends, have her team set up for the next rotation and then switch-in ''and carry on with the finishing move'' of the Ultimate as if there had been no interruption at all. This ''can'' stack with her easily-triggered [=QTE=] in order to confer special bonuses to the finishing move, whether it's to ensure the move kills or set up the next rotation faster. Have we mentioned that her low gacha-gear performance is actually about as good or ''better'' than Hawk's? And because she does not need Lightning Empress to support her output (they cannot be in the same team to start), she does ''not'' deprive Hawk of the supports she needs for best performance in the Memorial Arena, meaning you can easily deploy both of them on the same week, a pairing that can handle most of the possible boss combinations in the game. Indeed, she is so powerful that she can achieve great scores against any boss that isn't outright immune to lightning damage, including elemental-resistant bosses like Shadow Knight or Jizo Mitama thanks to having a permanent passive that allows her to [[ArmorPiercingAttack ignore a portion of the enemy's elemental resistance.]] Literally and figuratively a LightningBruiser through and through, having Herrscher of Thunder at your side will significantly make your life easier with all the pomp and show [[PhysicalGod a Herrscher]] entails.
* Similarly, the augmented version of Bronya's Yamabuki Armor, '''Drive Kometa''', is easily the best defensive support unit in the entire ''game''. To put it simply, she does '''a lot''' of things for a single character[[note]]Even the base form is okay, providing a shield that blocks a set amount of damage and inherits a bit of Bronya's defense; moreover, she can heal people when she punches things in her ultimate mode. Kometa keeps this, but the HP of the shield now scales off of Bronya's Max HP (which means you can actually gear her for HP and it makes a ton of sense), maxing out at 2,000 HP, which makes the shield a ''lot'' bigger, and the shield now inherits her ''entire'' defense stat. The shield also gives your whole team increased melee physical damage and crit rate. It also completely refreshes every time she performs Ultimate Skill or [=QTE=], or (at max upgrade) her Perfect Defense. The debuff on her basic attack now affects all enemies in an AreaOfEffect (meaning that you don't have to repeatedly shoot different enemies to debuff all of them), is lengthened to '''fifteen seconds''' (which for Honkai may as well be an eternity, and in multiplayer may as well be permanent) and forces enemies to take more shield damage. Both her QTE and Ultimate Skill can [[YouWillNotEvadeMe gather enemies]] for easier mob clearing, and as her QTE is triggered by Time Slow/Fracture and she can also inflict them by herself, she has a lot of synergy with other characters, and helps with the "Time Fracture stall" strategy. Her leader skill is also a good one: up to 26% increase in crit rate when your combo reaches 30 or more (and 29% more crit damage for PSY-type characters)[[/note]]. All of this comes solely from her - she can freely equip any weapon and various kinds of support stigmata to support different kinds of characters, in different situations.\\

* In version 4.6, '''Herrscher of Sentience''' joined the club of physical powerhouses. Long story short, she can do ''anything'' − her StanceSystem allows her to switch between three weapons that can attack at short or long range, gather enemies in a large area and briefly stop time − she’s the only valk who can freeze the Abyss’ timer, which is unaffected by time fractures −, all while rapidly building up her SP gauge. Her ultimate is a burst mode that massively impairs the enemies' physical resistance and activates a fourth weapon, a huge blunt sword that can crush enemies repeatedly (also called the [[FanNickname "bonk attack"]]). As such, depending on how you equip her she can work etiher as a deadly DPS ''or'' as an effective support, making her an incredibly flexible unit.

!Unmarked spoilers ahead!

* ''Every'' '''PRI-ARM'''. Each PRI-ARM is an upgraded version of an older gacha weapon; specifically, the [[WeaponOfChoice signature weapons]] of older S-Rank Valkyries. These weapons possess incredibly high attack values and new abilities which are [[WeaponOfChoice tailor-made to cover the weaknesses of the suits intended to use them while enhancing their strengths.]] The ones currently available are "MAG-Typhoon" [[note]] Upgraded form of Magstorm. It turns Lighting Empress into a top-tier lightning-elemental DPS by allowing her to inflict incredible amounts of damage in short time, ''for no SP cost'', while also debuffing enemies so they take more damage and are safer to attack.[[/note]], "Frozen Naraka" [[note]] Upgraded form of Ice Epiphyllum. It ''significantly'' increases Goushinsou Memento's ice burst damage and also makes it safer for her to unleash said burst, which together with the improvements afforded to the suit, sent this once-famous suit right back into prominence.[[/note]], "11th Leitourgia" [[note]] Upgraded form of 11th Sacred Relic. A weapon which greatly enhances Celestial Hymn's SP recovery (necessary to make use of her Ultimate more frequently) and gives attack and support buffs for her teammates.[[/note]] and "Positron Blasters" [[note]] Upgraded form of Hyper Railguns. ''Greatly'' increases Knight Moonbeam's damage output and SP recovery and grants her the ability to buff her team's damage upon evasion.[[/note]] However, the weapons ''do'' have restrictions. They require an entirely separate set of upgrade materials which take extensive amounts of time ([[BribingYourWayToVictory or money]]) to farm, and the ability to upgrade the weapons into [=PRI-ARMs=] as well as open most forms of farming for the materials is locked until the player reaches Captain Level 80 (which takes several ''months'' of dedicated playing to achieve) and chooses to breakthrough to the Exalted tier. As a result, only players in the very endgame can obtain them. However these weapons are so powerful that each one redefines the metagame ''upon introduction,'' with the endgame being charitably described by those concerned as "a [=PRI-ARMs=] Race."

* '''Stygian Nymph''', Seele's S-Rank suit. This character is actually a "dual Valkyrie"; two characters in one, with the Ultimate being an AreaOfEffect blast that 1) can be activated with ''no SP at all'', 2) if she does have SP when she uses it, will become more powerful, at the cost of depleting it, and that switches depending on which one you're using. "Light Seele" or "Saule" specializes in dealing melee physical damage to groups of enemies, while "Dark Seele" or "Veliona" specializes in dealing massive amounts of single-target melee physical damage and breaking shields. In this manner, Stygian Nymph is ''both'' a dedicated mob killer and a dedicated boss killer, instead of being only one or a less effective hybrid of both. Both halves of Seele also possess the ability to trigger their Ultimate Evasions on demand by dodging ''through'' an enemy, something that only Herrscher of the Void could do previously. Additionally, the suit is [[InfinityPlusOneElement Quantum-type]], meaning it's equally effective against the vast majority of the game's enemies while being especially effective against the rare but dangerous Quantum enemies of QS. Stygian Nymph's ''only'' weakness is [[EliteTweak being very gear and support dependent]], because otherwise she was once so powerful and so simple to use that ''[[UpToEleven you could obtain a high score on a maximum-difficulty endgame boss by doing nothing but spamming the attack button]]''. Not so much so nowadays obviously, but she’s still generally considered the best option for Quantum bosses.

* '''Celestial Hymn''' (Theresa) is considered the prime physical damage-support character in the game by many tier listings. Many of her skills inflict the "impair" debuff (decreasing the enemies' defense) that lasts for a generous 10 seconds, longer than most other impairing skills in the game. Her Ultimate Skill gathers enemies and repeatedly hits them with flying blades that also impairs them; this also synergizes with Stigmata effects that require her to hit her enemies, so that she can keep applying those effects even after she's switched out, giving her even more edge as a support with the right Stigmata. Her only issue was that said Ultimate Skill costs 125 SP, which her signature weapon - the PRI-ARM 11th Leitourgia - rectifies by allowing her to regenerate SP after using it, even while off-field. Said weapon can hit all enemies in its range (as opposed to just a few at a time) and also support other characters while it's active. Despite being one of the oldest battlesuits in the game, she’s still considered indispensable to this day.

* Bronya as '''Herrscher of Reason'''. By far the strongest of any battlesuit for her character, she is a melee-oriented Ice element character who can output ''absurd'' amounts of damage by rotating her powerful normal combos and her ChargedAttack to lay waste to her surroundings with a massive outpouring of explosive Ice-based ranged damage. Her crazy SP charge speed facilitates usage of her [[LimitBreak Ultimate]], whereupon she boards a CoolBike, nukes the field, and becomes '''literally unkillable''' while building charge meter simply for existing and gains several new attacks, including auto-guns that raze the field when you drive and AreaOfEffect bike spins that steamroll anything in your path. The icing on the cake? Unlike Herrscher of the Void, whose GameBreaker status is extremely gacha gear-dependent, Herrscher of Reason '''isn't'''. You can run her with only Free-to-Play gear and have her still be a powerhouse; gaining her unique weapon and matching Stigmata set just makes her ''even stronger.'' The introduction of her PRI-arm Domain of Reason and the Ana Schariac stigmata set, which is entirely free (although it takes an extremely long time to farm), have helped to keep her competitive.

* In version 4.6, '''Herrscher of Sentience''' joined the club of physical powerhouses. Long story short, she can do ''anything'' − her StanceSystem allows her to switch between three weapons that can attack at short or long range, gather enemies in a large area and briefly stop time, all while rapidly building up her SP gauge. Her ultimate is a burst mode that massively impairs the enemies' physical resistance and activates a fourth weapon, a huge blunt sword that can crush enemies repeatedly (also called the [[FanNickname "bonk attack"]]). As such, depending on how you equip her she can work etiher as a deadly DPS ''or'' as an effective support, making her an incredibly flexible unit.

* Introduced in version 4.3, '''Fervent Tempo Δ''' turned Rozaliya, a hitherto good but not indispensable DPS, into an absolute juggernaut capable of blowing any Mech enemy into smithereens. Her gameplay is simply based around two gauges that fill very quickly and an ultimate technique that costs only 50SP, both letting her enter "fervent mode", where her damage is multiplied to a ridiculous extent. She also has passives that reduce her Psy-type disadvantage against Bio enemies, and also increase her damage during time fractures. Her Pri-arm Sleeper’s Dream incidentally allows her (and by extension Liliya) to activate her ultimate skill’s JustFrameBonus without needing to wait for an enemy attack. All this makes her one of the dedaliest physical DPS in the game. The Kicker? ''She’s entirely farmable''.

* Introduced in version 4.3, '''Fervent Tempo Δ''' turned Rozaliya, a hitherto good but not indispensable DPS, into an absolute juggernaut capable of blowing any Mech enemy into smithereens. Her gameplay is simply based around two gauges that fill very quickly and an ultimate technique that costs only 50SP, both letting her enter "fervent mode", where her damage is multiplied to a ridiculous extent. She also has passives that reduce her Psy-type disadvantage against Bio enemies, and also increase her damage during time fractures. Her Pri-arm Sleeper’s Dream incidentally allows her (and by extension Liliya) to activate her ultimate skill’s JustFrameBonus without needing to wait for an enemy attack. All this makes her one of the dedaliest physical DPS in the game The Kicker ? ''She’s entirely farmable''.

* In version 4.6, '''Herrscher of Sentience''' joined the club of physical juggernauts. Long story short, she can do ''anything'' − her StanceSystem allows her to switch between three weapons that can attack at short or long range, gather enemies in a large area and briefly stop time, all while rapidly building up her SP gauge. Her ultimate is a burst mode that massively impairs the enemies' physical resistance and activates a fourth weapon, a huge blunt sword that can crush enemies repeatedly (also called the [[FanNickname "bonk attack"]]). As such, depending on how you equip her she can work etiher as a deadly DPS ''or'' as an effective support, making her an incredibly flexible unit.

!!Characters

* The Fu Hua suit, '''Shadow Knight'''. It's loaded with self-applying StatusBuff abilities and carries massive damage multipliers and resistances, together with [[SuperMode a brutally powerful burst mode]] with high-damage high-coverage attacks, making her a character ''designed'' to work as a OneWomanArmy. Shadow Knight did suffer from being an elemental Valkyrie in the later stages of the old Abyss mode [[labelnote:Explanation]]The hardest levels of the Abyss tended to have high temperatures, which gave enemies very high defenses. Physical resistance can be reduced with specific Valkyries and weapons, but no such thing existed for Elemental resistance, which eventually led to Physical-focused Valkyries dominating the Abyss for advanced players.[[/labelnote]], but she's so strong that she remained a good Valkyrie even then for an appreciable portion of an Abyss trek. Shadow Knight was widely regarded as the most broken Valkyrie due to being so powerful you didn't even need to invest into gacha gear to make her crush a large portion of the game's content. Her main weakness is ironically that she's too good on her own; although her Leader skill ''is'' powerful, by design she's not much of a team player. While she doesn’t dominate the game as much nowadays, her PRI-arm Nuada’s Revenge still makes her a powerful asset.

* Not to be bested by any of the above is Bronya as '''Herrscher of Reason'''. By far the strongest of any battlesuit for her character, she is a melee-oriented Ice element character who can output ''absurd'' amounts of damage by rotating her powerful normal combos and her ChargedAttack to lay waste to her surroundings with a massive outpouring of explosive Ice-based ranged damage. Her crazy SP charge speed facilitates usage of her [[LimitBreak Ultimate]], whereupon she boards a CoolBike, nukes the field, and becomes '''literally unkillable''' while building charge meter simply for existing and gains several new attacks, including auto-guns that raze the field when you drive and AreaOfEffect bike spins that steamroll anything in your path. The icing on the cake? Unlike Herrscher of the Void, whose GameBreaker status is extremely gacha gear-dependent, Herrscher of Reason '''isn't'''. You can run her with only Free-to-Play gear and have her still be a powerhouse; gaining her unique weapon and matching Stigmata set just makes her ''even stronger.'' The introduction of her PRI-arm Domain of Reason and the Ana Schariac stigmata set, which is entirely free (although it takes an extremely long time to farm), have helped to keep her competitive.
* Joining these monstrously powerful women is '''Stygian Nymph''', Seele's S-Rank suit. This character is actually a "dual Valkyrie"; two characters in one, with the Ultimate being an AreaOfEffect blast that 1) can be activated with ''no SP at all'', 2) if she does have SP when she uses it, will become more powerful, at the cost of depleting it, and that switches depending on which one you're using. "Light Seele" or "Saule" specializes in dealing melee physical damage to groups of enemies, while "Dark Seele" or "Veliona" specializes in dealing massive amounts of single-target melee physical damage and breaking shields. In this manner, Stygian Nymph is ''both'' a dedicated mob killer and a dedicated boss killer, instead of being only one or a less effective hybrid of both. Both halves of Seele also possess the ability to trigger their Ultimate Evasions on demand by dodging ''through'' an enemy, something that only Herrscher of the Void could do previously. Additionally, the suit is [[InfinityPlusOneElement Quantum-type]], meaning it's equally effective against the vast majority of the game's enemies while being especially effective against the rare but dangerous Quantum enemies of QS. Stygian Nymph's ''only'' weakness is [[EliteTweak being very gear and support dependent]], because otherwise she was once so powerful and so simple to use that ''[[UpToEleven you could obtain a high score on a maximum-difficulty endgame boss by doing nothing but spamming the attack button]]''. Not so much so nowadays obviously, but she’s still generally considered the best option for Quantum bosses.
* '''Celestial Hymn''' (Theresa) is considered the prime physical damage-support character in the game by many tier listings. Many of her skills inflict the "impair" debuff (decreasing the enemies' defense) that lasts for a generous 10 seconds, longer than most other impairing skills in the game. Her Ultimate Skill gathers enemies and repeatedly hits them with flying blades that also impairs them; this also synergizes with Stigmata effects that require her to hit her enemies, so that she can keep applying those effects even after she's switched out, giving her even more edge as a support with the right Stigmata. Her only issue was that said Ultimate Skill costs 125 SP, which her signature weapon - the PRI-ARM 11th Leitourgia - rectifies by allowing her to regenerate SP after using it, even while off-field. Said weapon can hit all enemies in its range (as opposed to just a few at a time) and also support other characters while it's active. It’s worth noting that despite being one of the oldest battlesuits in the game, she’s still considered indispensable to this day.
* Valkyrie Accipiter (Fu Hua)'s augmented version, '''Hawk of the Fog''', quickly rose to a high tier position after she was introduced (in patch 3.5, in the various international versions). She has a CrissCrossAttack that deals multiple hits in a wide radius, makes her invincible for a few seconds, fills SP quickly and plows through shields quickly, and another more spammable attack (her A-B or A-A-B chain that ends with a RoundhouseKick) that tears through bosses' HP like butter. Her Ultimate Skill can only be used after her CrissCrossAttack or her Ultimate Evasion, but it deals potent lightning damage that can be easily boosted with supports' buffs or debuffs. Maximizing her damage output requires quite some practice and good use of supports[[note]]In particular, the craftable Zhang Heng B stigma is hard to use (gain 120% extra lightning damage for 2 seconds after Ultimate Evasion, and only if your combo count is below 20), but synergizes well with Hawk of the Fog's Ultimate Skill[[/note]], but if you can, you have a powerful lightning-elemental character who can take out both mobs and bosses in a breeze with her various attacks. She's also compatible with most lightning damage stigmata that are already in the game (including some that you can acquire without spending crystals), and her strongest weapon is the same as Shadow Knight's, which also has a PRI upgrade. Did we mention that, since she's an augmented version of an A-rank Valkyrie, she's available completely free and isn't even terribly hard to farm?
* Patch 4.1 introduces the long-awaited S-Rank Awakening of Lightning Empress, the '''Herrscher of Thunder''', who ''immediately'' became the top DPS of the game on release, just like the previous Herrscher suits. Yes, she's even stronger than Hawk of the Fog or Stygian Nymph. Herrscher of Thunder is [[SuperiorSuccessor essentially Hawk, but stronger and easier to use.]] She dishes out a lot of lightning damage very quickly and her attacks have a fairly wide area of effect, making her effective against mobs and bosses. Of particular note is her ability to gain Herrscher Charge quickly in order to unleash her special Combo Move, which deals ''massive'' damage in an area, applies her Narukami Mark debuff's special effects and grants her bonus SP. Speaking of, she possesses skills to quickly gather SP as well as ''share it'' with her team (including her own Leader Skill which is a tweak of Lightning Empress's; it restricts the starting SP bonus to PSY-type Valks, but the Total DMG multiplier is universal), which leads into her ridiculously overpowered Ultimate Skill: the ability to ''summon a freaking dragon'' and [[DragonRider ride it to devastate the battlefield!]] While riding her Dragon, much like Herrscher of Reason, she cannot be killed, regenerates health per second, can periodically trigger Time Fracture ''on-demand'' and gains access to devastating wide-area attacks, including tornadoes with gathering effects and a turret-like BreathWeapon move. When the timer is almost over, she can perform a FinishingMove for one last nuke on the enemy… OR, she can switch out before the Ultimate Skill ends, have her team set up for the next rotation and then switch-in ''and carry on with the finishing move'' of the Ultimate as if there had been no interruption at all. This ''can'' stack with her easily-triggered [=QTE=] in order to confer special bonuses to the finishing move, whether it's to ensure the move kills or set up the next rotation faster. Have we mentioned that her low gacha-gear performance is actually about as good or ''better'' than Hawk's? And because she does not need Lightning Empress to support her output (they cannot be in the same team to start), she does ''not'' deprive Hawk of the supports she needs for best performance in the Memorial Arena, meaning you can easily deploy both of them on the same week, a pairing that can handle most of the possible boss combinations in the game. Indeed, she is so powerful that she can achieve great scores against any boss that isn't outright immune to lightning damage, including elemental-resistant bosses like Shadow Knight or Jizo Mitama thanks to having a permanent passive that allows her to [[ArmorPiercingAttack ignore a portion of the enemy's elemental resistance.]] Literally and figuratively a LightningBruiser through and through, having Herrscher of Thunder at your side will significantly make your life easier with all the pomp and show [[PhysicalGod a Herrscher]] entails.

* And then, on the subject of Valkyrie Muster… back in 3.2 (July 2019-ish for SEA/Global), Seele Vollerei's first battlesuit, the A-rank '''Swallowtail Phantasm''', was introduced to the game. It was really neat, being the first Quantum-type battlesuit, and quickly proved to be an absolute master of sweeping out enemy groups (as she ignores the typical Mech/Bio/Psy attributes while being especially strong against other Quantum enemies) while being okay-ish at bosses (foreshadowing what Stygian Nymph would become), and more importantly was capable of rendering the early content of ''[=HI3=]'' something of a joke as those enemies were not designed to fight someone with as much natural [=AoE=] and ability to disjoint and "shuttle" as Seele. So she breaks the game for newbies!... except she was still gacha-locked, and as a result, there was no guarantee a new player would get her when she was extra-powerful; her fragments also require a lot of stamina to farm. This kept her off this particular list... until the 3.8 Second Anniversary update (for Global). [[note]]This update refreshed the Valkyrie Muster program in anticipation of a wave of new players, and one of the changes made was that, after hitting level 15 and doing just ''one'' Valkyrie Muster co-op mission, you get a crate. A crate containing the Seele character card, a weapon, and a full Stigmata set for her.[[/note]] In short, '''second anniversary newbies are given Swallowtail Seele ''completely for free and fully early-game kitted'''''. And it's not even a "collect fragments and maybe miss them" thing like with [[FanNickname YA Bronya]] -- to not "get" Seele, you have to peevishly [[RefusalOfTheCall refuse to open her box]] and just keep it in your inventory. You ''get'' Seele, completely free, and the fragment crates also make it extremely easy to get her to S rank or even higher, which basically unlocks her entire kit.\\
Needless to say, with all of this provided directly to level 15+ players, this results in a Seele who can more or less snap much of the early game in half. Forget the story quests, Seele will be able to carry you quite far in Dirac Sea, co-op (if you get to use her) and whatever limited-time event is currently running, allowing you to clear stages and farm much, much faster than any other option available to new players. While she can make the story a little ''too'' easy (and, thanks to level 15 coming around chapter 2, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation you get Seele quite a lot earlier than you're supposed to]]), she's a godsend for any player looking to get started on getting teams farmed up and assembled, and makes the entire journey to level 70 or so a breeze. While, unlike some of the other people listed here, she ''does'' fall off some eventually [[note]]"fall off" in this context meaning that she goes from being able to effortlessly solo maps to "merely" being very, very good at mob clearing, especially the Quantum packs that infest higher level areas[[/note]] she'll still help any new player who gets her smash the early game flat in a way not even many S-rank characters can.

* In version 4.6, '''Herrscher of Sentience''' joined the club of physical juggernauts. Long story short, she can do ''anything'' − her StanceSystem allows her to switch between three weapons that can attack at short or long range, gather enemies in a large area and briefly stop time, all while rapidly building up her SP gauge. Her ultimate is a burst mode that massively impairs the enemies' physical resistance and activates a fourth weapon, a huge blunt sword that can crush enemies repeatedly (also called the [[FanNickname "bonk attack"]]). As such, depending on how you equip her she can work etiher as a deadly DPS ''or'' or an effective support, making her an incredibly flexible unit.

* When the Captain-verse character Zhuge Kongming became playable as '''Starlit Astrologos''', her unique ability to launch support abilities from off-field[[note]]if you except Kiana’s battlesuit Divine Prayer, which can inflict an impair debuff automatically[[/note]] rapidly became invaluable. Not only can she buff physical damage with her weapon [[InstrumentOfMurder Zither’s Lament]] and her ultimate just by activating her QTE, allowing her to support physical Valkyries that need to stay on the field a lot − especially Bright Knight: Excelsis (Durandal) and her extremely long burst mode −, said QTE can also trigger the effects of support stigmatas that boost total or elemental damage, such as Gluttony T, Newton B or Jing Shengtan. Which means that she can ''also'' support elemental teams just fine if need be. Her ultimate evasion also creates a circle on the ground that allows the next Valk to trigger a short time fracture just by stepping on it. Add to that the fact that her damage output makes her a pretty decent secondary DPS on top of that, plus the fact that she’s entirely farmable (though her signature weapon and stigmata set are not) and she’s easily up there with Celestial Hymn and Drive Kometa as a support unit.

* Joining these monstrously powerful women is '''Stygian Nymph''', Seele's S-Rank suit. This character is actually a "dual Valkyrie"; two characters in one, with the Ultimate being an AreaOfEffect blast that 1) can be activated with ''no SP at all'', 2) if she does have SP when she uses it, will become more powerful, at the cost of depleting it, and that switches depending on which one you're using. "Light Seele" or "Saule" specializes in dealing melee physical damage to groups of enemies, while "Dark Seele" or "Veliona" specializes in dealing massive amounts of single-target melee physical damage and breaking shields. In this manner, Stygian Nymph is ''both'' a dedicated mob killer and a dedicated boss killer, instead of being only one or a less effective hybrid of both. Both halves of Seele also possess the ability to trigger their Ultimate Evasions on demand by dodging ''through'' an enemy, something that only Herrscher of the Void could do previously. Additionally, the suit is [[InfinityPlusOneElement Quantum-type]], meaning it's equally effective against the vast majority of the game's enemies while being especially effective against the rare but dangerous Quantum enemies of QS. Stygian Nymph's ''only'' weakness is [[EliteTweak being very gear and support dependent]], because otherwise she is so powerful and so simple to use that ''[[UpToEleven it's literally possible to obtain a high score on a maximum-difficulty endgame boss by doing nothing but spamming the attack button]]''.

Since its introduction, ''VideoGame/HonkaiImpact3rd'' has seen a handful of characters and weapons absolutely dominate in both its Story mode and the competitive areas.

* '''Dimension Breaker''' (Bronya), one of the very first S-rank Valkyries, was one in the early versions of the game for one reason − her ability to inflict the "time lock" debuff on all enemies just by entering the field or parrying an attack. Since that ability has the side effect of extending other debuffs, inluding freeze, she became the queen of the original Infinite Abyss, whose mobs could one-hit kill your valks in the upper stages. But as the meta evolved, bosses became more resistant to time lock and keeping enemies immobilized was becoming less viable as a strategy (since a lot of newer valkyries ''needed'' to dodge attacks to maximize their damage), DB fell off until she was considered one of the most useless valkyries in the game. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kQbxuO7qE This video]] sums up her (d)evolution.

* '''Dimension Breaker''' (Bronya), one of the very first S-rank Valkyries, was one in the early versions of the game for one reason − her ability to inflict the "time lock" debuff on all enemies just by entering the field or parrying an attack. Since that ability has the side effect of extending other debuffs, inluding freeze, she became the queen of the original Infinite Abyss, whose mobs could one-hit kill your valks in the upper stages. But as the meta evolved, bosses became more resistant to time lock and keeping enemies immobilized was becoming less viable as a strategy (since a lot of newer valkyries ''needed'' to dodge attacks to maximize their damage), DB fell off until she was considered one of the most useless valkyries in the game. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kQbxuO7qE This video]] sums up this evolution.

* '''Dimension Breaker''' (Bronya), one of the very first S-rank Valkyries, was one in the early versions of the game for one reason − her ability to inflict the "time lock" debuff on all enemies just by entering the field or parrying an attack. Since that ability has the side effect of extending other debuffs, inluding freeze, she became the queen of the original Infinite Abyss, whose mobs could one-hit kill your valks in the upper stages. But as the meta evolved, bosses became more resistant to time lock and keeping enemies immobilized was becoming less viable as a strategy (since a lot of ''newer'' valkyries needed to dodge attacks to maximize their damage), DB fell off until she was considered one of the most useless valkyries in the game. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kQbxuO7qE This video]] sums up this evolution.

* '''Dimension Breaker''' (Bronya), one of the very first S-rank Valkyries, was one in the early versions of the game for one reason − her ability to inflict the "time lock" debuff on all enemies just by entering the field or parrying an attack. Since that ability has the side effect of extending other debuffs, inluding freeze, she became the queen of the original Infinite Abyss, whose mobs could one-hit kill your valks in the upper stages. But as the meta evolved, bosses became more resistant to time lock and keeping enemies immobilized was becoming less viable as a strategy (since a lot of new valkyries needed to dodge attacks to maximize their damage), DB fell off until she was considered one of the most useless valkyries in the game. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8kQbxuO7qE This video]] sums up this evolution.