Honkai: Star RailDan Heng • Permansor TerraeBest build, teams and other guides

Dan Heng Permansor Terrae is a fantastic shielding sustain that scales off of ATK. He provides strong shields for the entire party and is able to stack the shielding effect on top of itself for larger combined totals. He has a summoned unit, Souldragon, whom he can attach to an ally with his Skill. Souldragon acts independently and also provides teamwide shields on its turn, as well as cleansing allies. Souldragon can also be enhanced to deal damage to all enemies. The chosen ally will also have their ATK buffed, and when Souldragon is enhanced, the ally will get bonus DMG multipliers from the Souldragon attacks. Effortlessly powerful.

[Intro]

Dan Heng, the Third, has risen to the stage. No longer content with just being 'the cooler Daniel', he has aspired to the illustrious position of 'The cooler Cooler Daniel'. It's too soon to say 'coolest', but he gets damn close.

It's been an age since Star Rail has received an actual proper shielding unit, made more amusing by the fact that the completely new Path of Remembrance that showed up actually overtook the Preservation for total number of units with Evernight. Dan Heng III once again equalises the number, but damn we really do not have many shielders right now.

Then again, with how absurd this new form of Dan Heng is, we may never need another one (this is hyperbole, don't come back in a years' time and hit me with the 'but you said—'). At least for right now, Permansor Terrae is an absolute godsend for all players; sustaining is becoming more challenging for the casual player, and the teams not struggling to do so casually either have every HP scaler under the sun, or are banished to the other side of the monitor while mister 'Let Me Solo Them' takes centre stage.

This is probably felt the most by people who skipped Hyacine, and she and her signature have been getting a lot of use and value. Huohuo has also remained quite the staple, but more so for her Energy recharging capabilities than her actual (rapidly faltering) healing values. Not only is Dan Heng coming at an opportune time, he's also being given out for free as of the time of writing. As we'll see in a bit, the man is tearing it up with his kit, and he's got a colossal amount going for him. As the Remembrance Trailblazer initially showed us, and as Evernight confirmed it, 'Main Trio Privilege' is absolutely real.

Seriously, do not miss your opportunity to get him for free.

[Abilities]

The long winding road begins with the abilities. Just like with Evernight, once you're past all the proper terms and disambiguation, the kit itself is actually very simple.

Dan Heng's Skill will shield all allies for 20% of his ATK plus 400 for 3 turns. Using this Skill repeatedly will compound the shield value up to 300% of the current base value. When Dan Heng uses this Skill, it has a primary target. The primary target will receive the status Bondmate, and this lasts until Dan Heng designates a new ally as such with another targeted Skill use.

A 3 turn duration for shields is great because some particularly speedy characters are known for blitzing through shorter shield durations without much effort. In addition, having a compounding effect in the same vein as Aventurine is invaluable for creating a massive HP buffer for allies, and to prevent the 'wasting' of shield value.

Dan Heng's Talent is that he has a summoned entity called Souldragon. Souldragon is summoned upon using his Skill or Technique, and attaches itself to the Bondmate. Souldragon has an initial SPD of 165, and when it acts, it will remove 1 debuff from all allies and provide a shield worth 10% ATK plus 200 for 3 turns, effectively half of the value of the Skill's shield.

This can compound in the exact same way as the shield from the Skill, and similarly has the same maximum value of 300% of the Skill's base value. Souldragon acting independently means that there is a constant influx of shields for the whole party, but more than that, it's a consistent and reliable way to get shields without needing to spend SP. Souldragon follows the Bondmate, and if either Dan Heng or the chosen Bondmate are downed, Souldragon will disappear.

Dan Heng's Ultimate costs 135 Energy. It deals 300% ATK to all enemies on the field, and provides a shield to allies, with the same values as his Skill, as well as the same compounding conditions and benefits.

At the same time, Souldragon will become enhanced, and this enhancement lasts for 2 Souldragon actions. During this enhancement, whenever Souldragon's turn comes around, it will now launch a Follow-up ATK, dealing Physical damage to all enemies on the field equal to 80% of Dan Heng's ATK. This attack will also deal Additional DMG on top, equal to 80% of the Bondmate's ATK. Important to note that this is Additional DMG and is not considered an actual attack. This Follow-up ATK is in addition to its usual passive AoE shielding.

That's it. That's the whole character. He basically plays himself while also providing remarkably high strength shields. This is also the first shielder who is capable of cleansing allies of their debuffs, and fairly consistently too.

It's a very impressive kit and we've not even talked about the Bonus Traces yet.

[Bonus Traces]

Yet more proof that this is just a support character who happens to provide shields instead of an actual dedicated sustain, though there is some welcome help towards that part as well.

His A2 will grant an ATK increase for the ally Dan Heng designates as the Bondmate with his Skill. This increase is equal to 15% of Dan Heng's ATK stat. Given that Dan Heng wants to be stacking as much ATK as possible for his own benefit, this results in a huge amount of free ATK for the Bondmate. It's not going to be quite as much as, say, Cerydra would give with her equivalent effect, but again, this benefit is coming from the sustain slot, and will actually stack with the aforementioned increase if you have both him and Cerydra in the same team.

The A4 will grant Dan Heng a 40% action advance at the start of combat, making it easier to be the first one to act. Additionally, whenever the Bondmate uses an attack, Dan Heng will regenerate 6 Energy, and Souldragon's action is advanced by 15%. We just keep winning, don't we. A free combat start action advance equivalent to Vonwacq is already great value, but to then also have built-in Energy recharge from just having the Bondmate attack is phenomenal. Advancing Souldragon's action is just the icing on top, and it makes the already incredible shielding of this character reach the illustrious 'effortless' rating.

Lastly, the A6 will allow Souldragon to provide an additional smaller shield to the ally with the current lowest shield effect, equal to 5% ATK plus 100. This, naturally, also compounds with the same rules as before. Additionally, when the enhanced Souldragon attacks, it will deal another instance of Additional DMG of the Bondmate's Type to one enemy with the highest current HP, and this is equal to 40% of the Bondmate's ATK.

Ridiculous; fantastic. This addresses the issue that comes up where if allies are hit unevenly then the shield value may not keep up for certain high-aggro characters, like Foxians, and coupled with the A4 is something that's going to make damn sure that all members of your team are adequately protected.

Minor Traces are also pretty good for the most part. 28% ATK and 5 SPD is excellent, and the 22.5% DEF is good for his own personal survivability (not that he'll have an issue with that since his base DEF is literally top 1).

Akivili must have personally blessed these Bonus Traces, I swear.

[Eidolons]

You already know the drill.

Dan Heng's E1 will recover 1 Skill Point for the team after he uses his Ultimate. In addition to this, the Bondmate's All-Type RES PEN will increase by 18% for 3 turns. This is very nice to have because — and say it with me, now — it's from the sustain slot of the team, yes, very good. It's a nice boost to have, especially in hypercarry setups, but is by no means a make-or-break Eidolon.

His E2 increases the number of attacks the enhanced Souldragon may take by 2, for a new total of 4 per Ultimate. After Dan Heng uses his Ultimate, Souldragon is advanced by 100%, and the Additional DMG dealt by the Bondmate becomes 200% of its original DMG. The shield effect provided in this attack is also 200% of its original amount. Now this is the real juice, offering a substantial damage and uptime increase. This is particularly great for characters who can attack often enough that Dan Heng can get a large amount of Energy back. It's pretty great, honestly, but again is somewhat below the level of more recent DPS focused Eidolons.

This is more of a testament to how great Dan Heng Permansor Terrae is at base, as there's really not that big of a need to pull for these unless you really like him and want to ensure his relevance.

[The Rest]

Souldragon does have some quirks to it. The most important one to note is that when Souldragon is attached to its Bondmate, it counts as the Bondmate's summon. This has some very significant ramifications for certain effects that care whether or not the targeted ally has a summon — I hope you like Sunday, because pairing him with Permansor Terrae can guarantee Sunday's full 80% DMG buff, usually reserved only for summons and memosprites, for any character you choose.

This also means that whenever Sunday uses his Skill to action advance the Bondmate, Souldragon will also get brought up in the turn order as well, meaning even more shields for the whole party. It's a ridiculously potent combination, and yet another win for the Astral Express crew. Any future 'summon character exclusive' effects should theoretically also be easily accessible thanks to this Bondmate interaction.

In addition to this, the Additional DMG that the enhanced Souldragon's Follow-up ATK deals scales fully off of the Bondmate's stats, meaning a significant chunk of the damage isn't even Dan Heng's. This means you have no real reason to focus on building damage stats on Permansor Terrae and can simply focus on pumping the ATK stat as high as it can go.

This essentially acts as a multiplier buff for the Bondmate, an effect that's extremely rare to find at all, let alone on a sustain unit. Even though this enhanced Souldragon state is not going to be up all the time, it's still an excellent effect to be giving out for absolutely free. 80% ATK, especially in AoE situations, is most assuredly not negligible, and this can help out quite a bit in encounters where there are plenty of adds since, again, it's at no additional cost to the Bondmate.

Also worth noting is that this Souldragon attack actually deals some fairly impressive Toughness damage, which is really not something I was expecting at all. It's not going to be the absolute most important thing to factor in all the time, but it's certainly worthy enough to mention it.

The increased effectiveness with Sunday means that the pair pretty much works for any kind of hypercarry team and can skyrocket its power. Giving out an extra 50% DMG simply thanks to the Souldragon interaction is excellent, and that's before even considering the actual buff that Dan Heng himself provides.

Outside of that, since Dan Heng is a sustain, he can go pretty much anywhere he's needed, and he'll have a good time. The only place he may struggle at absolute base investment is Anomaly Arbitration, but that's just...

If you want to make sure he has no issues whatsoever, even in the most egregious circumstances, then going for his signature Light Cone is well-advised. It's really good for him and his team, especially since maybe around half of the Preservation cones kinda don't work on him or are just laughably bad. The signature isn't on the level of Hyacine's signature (thank heavens), but it's good enough that it's worth considering. It should be made very clear, in the rare event that you've made it this far and haven't realised, that Permansor Terrae is designed with ATK scaling hypercarries in mind. He works excellently as a pure sustain for those precious few weirdo hypercarries who don't scale with ATK, but you will be missing out on a large portion of why he's as strong as he is.

To that end... Anaxagoras and Phainon. These two don't really need the help, but Dan Heng is giving it to them. Very much a 'my lobster is too buttery' situation.

For Anaxa, his attack frequency works very well with Dan Heng's kit, and Anaxa very much appreciates the ATK buff he'll be getting. As he's someone who's played alongside Sunday, this naturally also provides an extra 50% DMG just for having Permansor Terrae in the party to give Anaxa the Souldragon.

For Phainon, it kinda depends. Right now, the best damage you'll get with Phainon is to run him without a sustain, as 'intended'. Problem with that is that things are becoming so damn tanky that ending a whole encounter with only one or two Ultimates can be somewhat challenging without meticulous planning beforehand.

In those cases where you're going to have to work towards a third Ultimate, your team may be looking a bit pale by that point, and dying is simply not an option, so you have to bring a sustain after all. Up until now, that's pretty much been the role of Huohuo as she was the previous big shot of providing enough damage from the sustain slot that it's not a complete wash (but still felt pretty bad)

Now you can substitute her out for Dan Heng who'll have no issues with sustaining the team overall, and due to his Technique starting the fight with a free Skill use, Phainon actually gets more Coreflames than you may expect. This coupled with the damage increase he gives by being paired with Sunday (again) as well as Phainon's own personal DMG increase whenever he receives healing or shielding from a teammate means that the damage loss from not having a third dedicated support is actually somewhat mitigated, surprisingly so in fact. Obviously it's still going to be less damage, but it's useless if you had no chance of living long enough to make use of it. Especially for harder fights that last longer, this is the go-to sustain option for Phainon teams as well.

Funnily enough, both of these DPS can guarantee that enemies will have their corresponding Weakness, meaning Souldragon's Toughness DMG is actually always relevant. 'My steak is too juicy, too'.

Other frequent attackers like The Herta and Aglaea can make excellent use of Dan Heng's buffs for the same reasons, with The Herta in particular getting to pop off even more in Pure Fiction than she already can, as it's even more Energy getting funnelled to her from the extra AoE attacks.

[Wrap up]

My Sunday buff can't be this cute...

He's great. I have no notes, really. Fits pretty much everywhere, has good options for teams and builds, and best of all is that he's completely free, so everyone's got a banging sustain option now. Bless this man for his countless years of patience, clearly he was refining his skills to the perfect point to greet us again in the final cycle.

The trio is assembled once again, and the final steps are ahead. Let's all welcome the coming finale, safe in the knowledge that Akivili most assuredly has favourite children, and it's the Express Crew, and by a lot.