Black Swan is a character Honkai: Star Rail players have been waiting for since she appeared in a video from May 3, but many details about her as an upcoming playable character are still unknown.
She was the common thread of the Myriad Celestia trailer and was revealed as the Memokeeper of the Garden of Recollection, a faction linked to the Aeon named Fuli. The Fuli represents the Path of Remembrance.
According to early leaks, however, Black Swan won’t follow this Path herself as a playable character, but instead opt for the path of Nihility. Looking at her leaked abilities, we think this five-star character could offer a fun playstyle similar to Qingque, with an element of luck around card drawing.
This Path designates characters who have debuff abilities, such as Silver Wolf and Pela, which means she would be able to support her team as well as dish out some damage. Here is everything we know about Black Swan in Honkai: Star Rail.
Does Black Swan’s banner have a release date in Honkai: Star Rail?
While previous leaks hinted at several upcoming banners, many characters don’t feature any clues regarding a release window, and this is also the case for Black Swan.
While we aren’t certain just yet, Black Swan likely won’t release before Patch 1.4, which would release around this winter, according to HoYoverse’s usual update schedule. In addition, there are over a dozen other characters leaked that are planned to be added to Honkai‘s roster in the future, so some of them might not arrive for several years.
Related: Honkai: Star Rail’s all hidden achievements and how to complete them
Black Swan’s abilities in Honkai: Star Rail
It’s still unclear what will be the precise ability kit of Black Swan, but early leaks shared by user Mero showed some hints about her playstyle.
She will feature debuffs reducing the enemies’ defense, as a typical Nihility character, and will deal multi-target damage via the Wind element. Players will have to adjust to maximize their potential with random Card drawings through her Technique.
- Basic attack: Unknown
- Skill: Black Swan deals Wind damage equivalent to 60 percent of her Attack to a target and adjacent ones. She has a 100 percent base chance of reducing the defense of enemies hit by 27 percent for Three turns.
- Ultimate: She deals Wind damage equivalent to 96 percent of her Attack to the entire team and improves Fate Card effect (applied through her Talent).
- The effect reduces the Effect resistance of the target by 17.5 percent to damage over time.
- Talent: When an enemy receives Damage over time, the Fate Card effect has a 60 percent base chance of being triggered (up to four times per unit and action). They will receive Wind damage equal to 15 percent of Black Swan’s Attack when their turn starts. The level of Fate Card effect can go up to Level Six by applying to the same target several times.
- Level One: damage dealt at the start of the turn increased up to 31 percent of Black Swan’s Attack.
- Level Three: additional damage dealt to adjacent targets, which equal to 90 percent of the initial attack.
- Level Six: the damage dealt ignores 22.5 percent of the target’s defense.
- Technique: Draws one Fate Crystal (which can be Physical, Fire, Lightning, or Wind). She can have up to four cards drawn (and only one per element).
What to expect from Black Swan in Honkai: Star Rail
There’s too little known about Black Swan to know what kind of position she’ll take in Honkai‘s meta. Generally, elements of luck are risks considered unpopular for players who are willing to optimize their teams to the maximum.
The random element of Black Swan’s kit is the element of the cards she’ll draw, but it seems to be limited by the fact that she cannot draw several cards of the same element.
Her abilities reveal to me she can have interesting snowball potential with the combination of damage over time and the Fate Card effect, which deals Wind damage to several enemies.
If leaks are correct and she turns out to be a Wind five-star character from the Path of Nihility, she won’t offer a unique combination of element and Path since the four-star character Sampo also belongs to that category.
Still, what a five-star character brings to the table should be unmatched, so she might become the more popular version of Sampo himself upon release.
