Hoyoverse games are filled with mysterious and beautiful women, one of which is Honkai Star Rail’s Black Swan. As a follower of the path of Nihility, she certainly makes a strong first impression that stays with you for a while. Let’s learn more about who exactly Black Swan is and her best build.
In our trailblazing journey across the stars, we’ve put together a comprehensive Honkai Star Rail tier list to help you with your team building. We also have a handy list of Honkai Star Rail codes if you need some extra Stellar Jade. For more strong and memorable characters, check out our build guides for Honkai Star Rail’s Firefly, Honkai Star Rail’s Yunli, and Honkai Star Rail’s Jade.
Here’s everything in our Honkai Star Rail Black Swan guide:
What is Honkai Star Rail Black Swan best build?
| Best light cone | Reforged Remembrance |
| Light cone alternative | Eyes of the Prey |
| Best relic set | Prisoner in Deep Confinement |
| Best planar ornament set | Pan-Galactic Commercial Enterprise |
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Black Swan’s best light cone is Reforged Remembrance as it majorly buffs her effect hit rate and attack. Her best relics are a full set of Prisoner in Deep Confinement paired with Pan-Galactic Commercial Enterprise, built with plenty of effect hit rate, attack%, and speed.
How should I use Black Swan?
Black Swan is a five-star wind-type character who treads the path of The Nihility. Nihility characters are known for applying debuffs to enemies to reduce their combat effectiveness, such as Honkai Star Rail’s Welt, Honkai Star Rail’s Silver Wolf, and Honkai Star Rail’s Sampo, who is also a wind-type character.
Black Swan is an incredible DoT sub-DPS unit capable of giving your existing DoT teams a significant upgrade. Her utility centers on her talent, which increases her Arcana DoT significantly and synergizes with other debuffing effects.
What are the best light cones for Black Swan?
Unsurprisingly, Black Swan’s signature light cone, Reforged Remembrance, is the best option. Its base stat offers a major boost to her effect hit rate which is essential for successful DoT characters, and grants an attack boost when targeting debuffed enemies. This damage also ignores some of the target’s defense, which is pretty cool.
If you’re looking to conserve some stellar jade, you might want to consider a cheaper light cone option like Eyes of the Prey, a four-star Nihility light cone that offers decent effect hit rate and DoT buffs. If you’re not already using it on Silver Wolf, Before the Tutorial Mission Starts is also a viable four-star option, but unless you played the event mission in version 1.1, you won’t be able to access it.
| Light cone | Effect | How to obtain |
| Reforged Remembrance (five-star) | Increases Black Swan’s effect hit rate by 40%. When she deals damage to an enemy inflicted with Wind Shear, Burn, Shock, or Bleed, each respectively grants one stack of Prophet, stacking up to four times. In a single battle, only one stack of Prophet can be granted for each type of DoT. Every stack of Prophet increases Black Swan’s attack by 5% and enables the DoT dealt to ignore 7.2% of the target’s defense | Limited light cone gacha |
| Eyes of the Prey (four-star) | Increases Black Swan’s effect hit rate by 20% and increases DoT by 24% | Gacha |
| Before the Tutorial Mission Starts (four-star) | Increases Black Swan’s effect hit rate by 20%. When Black Swan attacks defense-reduced enemies, regenerates four energy | Event light cone |
What are the best relics for Black Swan?
As a DoT unit, a Prisoner in Deep Confinementfour-piece set suits Black Swan perfectly. Her skills all scale based on her attack stat and the four-piece set bonus means she can ignore a maximum of 18% of an enemy’s defense if they’re debuffed.
You can lean even more into her attack potential by pairing two pieces of Eagle of Twilight Line with two pieces of Musketeer of Wild Wheat, which makes for a powerful early-game option. The new relic set in Penacony, Pioneer Diver of Dead Waters, also synergizes with either of these sets as Black Swan only benefits from its two-piece bonus.
As for planar ornaments, Pan-Galactic Commercial Enterprise is your best pick as it buffs Black Swan’s effect hit rate. Once again, Space Sealing Station is a great early-game alternative for an attack-based build. To be honest, there are very few DPS characters who don’t
