Preservation character tier list for Honkai Star Rail 1.4

Honkai Star Rail offers a wide catalog of characters, each designed to fulfill a specific team role, designated mostly by the Path they follow. The Preservation Path, in particular, boasts individuals with high resilience, which makes them the perfect candidate to flourish as a tank across various setups. Hence, they are tasked with protecting other characters from incoming damage during combat.

This article ranks each of them in a tier list based on their pull value in version 1.4. The patch does not introduce any new tanks, allowing the existing characters to flourish in the specified segment.

Keep in mind that this arrangement serves educational purposes without rendering any unit useless.

Note: This list is subjective, and the ranking reflects the author’s opinions.

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Tier list of every Honkai Star Rail 1.4 Preservation character

Preservation character tier list for Honkai Star Rail 1.4. (Image via HoYoverse and Tiermaker)

All the Preservation characters in Honkai Star Rail 1.4 have been arranged under the SS, S, and A tiers. Their combat potential without any Eidolon has been taken into consideration for fair judgment since most players are likely not to have access to multiple copies of them.

Here are the reasons justifying their placement in the tier list.

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SS tier

Fu Xuan is the best Preservation character in version 1.4. (Image via HoYoverse)

The SS tier is reserved for those Preservation characters that have a near-perfect set of abilities. They usually excel at protecting allies in every situation and are flexible enough to be used across various team compositions.

As of Honkai Star Rail 1.4, Fu Xuan is the only tank that deserves to be at the top due to her powerful damage-mitigating ability. She shares a portion of the damage taken from all allies and can heal herself before a fatal blow to get back into the fight.

Besides that, Fu Xuan can also extend her support during combat by increasing allies’ max HP and CRIT Rate. Overall, she is worth using to tackle various end-game activities where the enemy's high damage output can quickly debilitate your team.

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S tier

Gepard is an S-tier Preservation character. (Image via HoYoverse)

Preservation characters in the S tier possess powerful protective abilities; however, they are usually overshadowed by the likes of Fu Xuan in terms of diversity.

Currently, Gepard is the only individual who belongs to this tier, as he can offer durable shields during combat. Although he lacks any other support ability, his team-wide barrier is extremely powerful against elite enemies and bosses that can hit all your characters in a single strike.

In addition, Gepard's Skill has a small chance to apply Freeze, which can be quite useful to tackle regular opponents during combat.

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A tier

Both Fire Trailblazer and March 7th deserve to be in the A tier. (Image via HoYoverse)

The A-tier Preservation character serves as an alternative to the aforementioned individuals, and they usually grow a lot stronger with more Eidolons.

Fortunately, Honkai Star Rail offers powerful picks in the tank segment. Hence, the following units are worth building to keep your team alive in difficult battles:

• Fire Trailblazer
• March 7th

Do not expect a strong shield from the Fire Trailblazer, instead, use their Skill to taunt opponents, diverting their attention from other squishy characters. In contrast, March 7th offers powerful barriers to an ally and cleanses them from any negative effect.