What a max-roll relic is actually worth in Honkai: Star Rail
A top substat roll is only 25% bigger than the lowest. How many rolls land on a stat decides a relic — and one pair of SPD boots covers the whole roster's speed gap.
On a 5★ relic, the best possible substat roll is only 25% bigger than the worst. That single fact settles most relic arguments: whether a piece is good depends on how many of its rolls landed on the stats you want, far more than on how lucky each roll was.
Every substat roll, top to bottom
Each time a substat is upgraded it gains one of 3 fixed values. Here they are for all 12 substats on a 5★ relic:
11 of the 12 have exactly the same shape — the top roll is 25% above the bottom one. The exception is SPD, at 30%, its rolls running from 2 to 2.6 SPD.
Count beats quality
Take CRIT DMG. The worst roll is 5.18%, the best 6.48%. Three of the worst rolls add up to 15.54%; two of the best add up to 12.96%. An extra roll landing on the stat is worth more than every roll on it coming up perfect.
So when you judge a relic, count first: how many upgrades went into the stats this character wants? A piece whose rolls all went into CRIT Rate and CRIT DMG with mediocre values beats a piece with one perfect CRIT roll and the rest spent on flat DEF. Roll quality is the tie-breaker between two pieces with the same count, not the thing to chase.
Three bad CRIT DMG rolls beat two perfect ones. Count the rolls, then read the values.
The main stat outweighs all of it
The main stat is a different order of magnitude. A 5★ Body with CRIT DMG as its main stat reaches 64.8% at +15 — the same as 10 perfect CRIT DMG substat rolls. That many perfect rolls on a single substat is a line almost no relic ever carries, which is why the right main stat on the right slot is the first filter, and substats decide between pieces that pass it.
It also only pays off once levelled. A 5★ Head's HP main stat is 113 at +0 and 706 at +15, a 6.2× jump; the Body's CRIT DMG goes from 10.4% to 64.8%. A relic with the right main stat is not finished until it is maxed.
Speed: boots beat birth
Base SPD across all 86 characters runs from 90 to 115 (Seele is the fastest), a gap of 25. Most of the roster is bunched far tighter than that: the most common base SPD is 102 (10 characters), and 61 sit within 5 of it.
Now the gear. A 5★ Feet piece with SPD as its main stat gives 25 SPD at +15 — at least the whole gap between the slowest and fastest character in the game, and worth 9.6 perfect SPD substat rolls. By comparison, the 6 sets whose 2-piece bonus is SPD 6% add a percentage of base SPD, which on a 102-SPD character is about 6.1.
The practical reading: for most characters, native speed matters less than whether they are wearing SPD boots. If a unit needs to act first, the boots do most of the work, and SPD substats and a SPD set fine-tune the breakpoint.
Putting it together
- Main stat first. The right main stat on Body, Feet, Sphere and Rope is the first filter; a great substat line does not rescue the wrong one.
- Level it. A +0 main stat is a fraction of its +15 value.
- Then count useful rolls. The number of upgrades that landed on your stats decides the piece; the value of each roll is a 25% tie-breaker.
The full tables are on the relic substats and relic main stats pages, all 59 sets with their bonuses are on relic sets, and the stat calculator shows any character's base stats at any level.