Gepard Guide and Build | Honkai: Star Rail | Prydwen (2024)

Gepard is a capable Preservation sustain unit. He is a resilient tank that draws increased aggro from enemies passively and has very strong unconditional Shields from his Ultimate. He uniquely has a self-revive passive that allows him to recover once after being downed and will immediately restore his Energy to its maximum when it procs. Gepard also has some limited single-target Freeze utility with his Skill.

Gepard is a unit whose value has fluctuated a fair bit over time but has landed on 'very decent'. He's got a lot more competition from all the sustain units released after him and this has led some to think he's no longer enough, but this isn't really true. Gepard's Shields are still very strong and funnily enough are starting to once again become more appreciated due to the large increases in damage from newer enemies.

Shields and heals are largely interchangeable as a method of sustain as long as either can be maintained. The difference is that healing has more forgiveness if you make a mistake, while Shields are more forgiving against highly damaging foes; Shields can be thought of simply adding on a temporary health buffer to a character's existing HP bar, resulting in enemies dealing 'trash damage' — that is to say non meaningful damage, at least for as long as the damage doesn't spill over to the character's real health. Healing, however, can only work on whatever's not yet dead. Even lore-accurate Luocha isn't that good.

As such, Gepard is one of very few units who can actually prevent the party from getting straight up one-shot by enemies, which is a highly coveted thing especially against enemies like True Sting or Kafka who can pull out an unreasonable amount of damage even if you are prepared for it. The only other unit who can do this as well is Fu Xuan, an absurdly powerful limited 5-star character, where Gepard is a far more accessible standard 5-star.

Gepard's Ultimate applies these Shields to all allies, absorbing up to 45% DEF plus 600 for 3 turns. This has a meagre Energy cost of only 100 meaning it is quite possible to keep these Shields up indefinitely, assuming they're not being broken. The actual scaling of these Shields is actually slightly lower than March 7th's Skill's Shield but it is applied to all allies instead of just one and doesn't consume a Skill Point, leading to Gepard being a completely SP positive sustain unit unless you have a reason to use his Skill. Due to Gepard's higher base DEF, this difference is actually still usually in favour of Gepard.

His Skill attacks a single enemy and deals up to 200% ATK to them and has a 65% base chance to Freeze the target for 1 turn. Frozen enemies will take 60% ATK upon unfreezing. While not likely to be dealing any significant damage, the option to spend a Skill Point on the chance to Freeze an enemy is actually quite underrated in my experience. Frozen enemies can't deal damage to you, and this is unsurprisingly a good thing.

The counterpoint to this is 'neither can dead enemies' and, honestly, fair and true. Unless you're going for DoT team shenanigans with Freeze tech to squeeze out extra DoT ticks from enemies, it's highly likely that if you're using this Skill as a means of bolstering your team's survivability, you're already way out of your depth; Gepard's Shields are already strong enough to deal with most things in the game, but the few things they struggle with cannot currently be overcome with more investment.

There's just a hard limit on how much DEF Gepard can actually stack and some enemies can still just pierce through them in a single powerful attack. At that point it is far better to fix your damage issue, because as before, a dead enemy cannot hurt you. Survivability is just as much about your damage dealers as it is about your sustain unit. It is no accident that many 0-cycle clears of Memory of Chaos do not even use sustain units, opting instead for a third support character.

It may seem odd for me to mention this on Gepard's review specifically, but Gepard is an archetypal Shielder. He quite literally does not have the ability to heal allies, meaning any 'real' damage you take in a fight is permanent. If you can't keep up, you have entered a battle of attrition that you will inevitably lose, and it is in these situations that the power and investment of your other units will be tested to the extreme. This will remain true for Gepard as well as any future Preservation units who follow in these archetypal footsteps.

There is a way to alleviate this somewhat. Gepard's Talent offers him a 1 time self-revive, restoring 50% of his Max HP. This Talent is also where all of his Bonus Traces congregate, and they need to be talked about together to get a full picture. A2 increases Gepard's likelihood of being attacked by enemies substantially, adding on to the already higher chance that Preservation units have, A6 will convert 35% of Gepard's current DEF to ATK, updating the value at the start of each turn, and A4 will restore 100% Energy to Gepard upon triggering the Talent.

With this, Gepard is likely to be attacked a lot, sometimes enough to down him even through his very high DEF and strong Shields. Often this is accompanied by heavy AoE damage, and this is where the A4 can come in to save the day, allowing him to immediately recast his Ultimate, potentially just in time to save the rest of his team. If the Talent is triggering at all, you're already in a battle of attrition, but the important distinction now is that it may not be inherently doomed.

Gepard's Eidolons are something that you may get over time as he is a standard 5-star unit. He doesn't really need them, but they expand upon his Freezing playstyle without interfering with his capabilities as a sustain unit. E1 in particular increases the base chance of his Skill's Freeze to apply by 35%, for a new total of 100% base chance. A little bit of Effect Hit Rate can make this surprisingly consistent against anything without additional Control RES, and can work wonders in highly specialised DoT teams.

The only other thing Gepard has going against him is that newer sustain units do more than just sustain; Fu Xuan does his job almost to the letter but also increases the whole team's CRIT Rate, and Huohuo gives ATK% and Energy to the rest of the party too. It is not a stretch to say that this is likely going to be the norm moving forward, so Gepard will steadily lose value over time as newer sustain units perform his primary job but offer additional benefits.

Even still, Gepard is a great character to have, and is definitely worth your time if you get him, especially since he's substantially better than your free options.