Best Honkai Star Rail Black Swan Build

UPDATE 11/12/2024: We've added some additional information on alternative Light Cones and why you should use Black Swan in Honkai Star Rail.

The best Black Swan build in Honkai: Star Rail gives your party a strong Nihility character who makes every damage-over-time debuff an important opportunity. Black Swan doesn’t need her signature Light Cone to shine, though it does help, and she doesn’t need a lot of effect hit rate for her most important features to work. That frees you up to focus on one or two more common Relic stats and lessens the grind a little.

Our Honkai Star Rail Black Swan build lays out the best Light Cones and Relics with plenty of alternatives that fit every player style.

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If you're looking for more Black Swan help, check out our Black Swan kit overview which explains how you should prioritise your Traces, our picks for the best Black Swan teams, and a rundown of all the Black Swan materials you need.

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Best Honkai Star Rail Black Swan Build

• Black Swan Light Cone
• Black Swan Relics
• Black Swan Ornaments
• Black Swan Substats
• Is Black Swan good?

Black Swan is a 5-Star character from the Path of Nihility, and she uses the Wind element in battle.

Black Swan’s pretty self-sufficient, so unlike some Nihility characters, you don’t need to stack effect hit rate to ridiculous levels. Instead, focus on buffing her attack so that her arcana stacks deal more damage and, to a lesser extent, speed so she can inflict evenmore arcana stacks.

Honkai Star Rail - Best Black Swan Light Cone

5-Star Black Swan Light Cones

Black Swan’s best Light Cone is, of course, her signature – Reforged Remembrance. This cone raises the wearer’s effect hit rate by 40 percent and has a special effect tied to damage-over-time attacks.

When the wearer attacks an enemy suffering from bleed, burn, wind shear, or shock, they gain a stack of Prophet – one for each DOT on an enemy. Each Prophet stack gives the wearer a five percent attack buff and lets them ignore seven percent of an enemy’s defense.

Since Black Swan’s kit only functions well when you’re attacking foes with DOT, Reforged Remembrance is a big win for her.

If you have Silver Wolf’s Incessant Rain or Kafka’s Patience is All You Need, both are excellent choices as well if you can spare them!

4-Star Black Swan Light Cones

During my time with Star Rail’s 2.0 version, I also had very good results with 4-Star Light Cones, Fermata and Good Night, Sleep Well.

Fermata’s break effect buff is middling on Black Swan, but the cone also buffs damage dealt against enemies suffering from shock and wind shear, which is going to be most enemies Black Swan faces. It’s best at higher Superimposition levels, and since you can get copies of Fermata from the Forgotten Hall’s Light Cone store, that’s an easy goal to reach.

Good Night, Sleep Well increases the user’s damage against foes with debuffs, period, and it stacks up to three times. The downside is that you can only get this one as a random pull from banners.

The 4-star Light Cone It’s Showtime is another solid pick. It raises the wearer’s damage when they debuff foes and buffs their attack by 20 percent once their effect hit rate reaches 80 percent. Black Swan’s traces make that an easy number to reach, especially if you’re lucky with your relics.

Another 4-Star Light Cone you can consider is Eyes of the Prey, which offers Black Swan a huge increase to her effect hit rate while also increasing her damage over time; this is super useful to Black Swan's kit!

3-Star Black Swan Light Cones

On the 3-star side, your best bet is Void, though only until you can get a good 4-star cone. Void just raises effect hit rate.

Honkai Star Rail Black Swan Relics

Prisoner in Deep Confinement is a natural fit for Black Swan in Honkai Star Rail.

• Two-piece effect: Raises wearer’s attack by 12 percent.
• Four-piece effect: Wearer ignores six percent of an enemy’s defense for every DOT effect on the target foe. Can stack three times.

You could tinker with the Pioneer Diver of Dead Waters set, if you wanted to play around with it.

• Two-piece effect: Increases damage dealt to enemies with debuffs by 12 percent.
• Four-piece effect: Increases crit rate by for percent. Wearer deals 8/12 percent more crit damage to enemies with 2 or 3 debuffs. If the wearer inflicts a debuff, the set’s effects increase by 100 percent for one turn.

Honkai Star Rail Black Swan Ornaments

Black Swan’s best-in-slot Ornament set is Pan-Cosmic Commercial Enterprise. It raises the wearer’s effect hit rate by 10 percent, and it also grants an attack buff equal to 25 percent of the wearer’s total effect hit rate. That buff caps at 25 percent.

Honkai Star Rail Black Swan Substats

Here’s what you should aim for with the substats of Black Swan’s Relics and Ornaments.

• Body: Effect hit rate
• Feet: Speed or attack %
• Sphere: Attack %
• Rope: Attack %

Elemental damage is a popular choice for the sphere Ornament, but Black Swan really doesn’t benefit from it. She deals more damage through Arcana stacks, which scale on her attack.

Is Black Swan good in Honkai Star Rail?

Black Swan is a great character from the Path of Nihility in Honkai Star Rail, but she is best paired with Kafka. If you don't have Kafka, then Black Swan is perhaps not really worth pulling for - or building - compared to some of the other 5-Star characters you may own.

That said, Black Swan can still work nicely alongside other Nihility characters that deal damage over time, such as Guinaifen, Sampo, or Jiaoqiu. She just won't shine as much with these characters as she would while teamed up with Kafka.

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If you're wondering who else might work with Black Swan, check out our Honkai Star Rail tier list, and head over to our Honkai Star Rail codes page for some freebies to help with your next pull.

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