Leaks are a big part of Genshin Impact, and a big portion of upcoming updates is revealed weeks before it officially joins the live servers. Developer Hoyoverse has been bringing back older characters very frequently in the last couple of patches.
It seems as though they have established an interesting pattern of combining a brand-new character with two banner re-runs in one Genshin Impact update. There are some occasions when the new character is displayed on the same banner as a re-run as was the case with Shenhe and Xiao back in update 2.4.
A leak posted around 15 days ago on the popular Genshin Impact Leaks subreddit has revealed a lot of information about the upcoming updates, but these leaks were considered questionable since the leaker, Uncle Chasm, did not have enough credibility at the time. However, a recent official announcement revealed that the leaker has been right about all of his predictions, confirming his credibility. One particular part of his list has caught the eyes of the majority of the game's community. The leak apparently confirms that one of the fan-favorite Genshin Impact characters, Kazuha, will appear in update 2.8, which according to the game's usual update schedule, should arrive at the end of June.
Kazuha was originally rumored to be released alongside another Anemo support, Venti, but it seems like Hoyoverse decided to delay his second arrival. Kazuha is considered to be one of the strongest supports in Genshin Impact, even though he was predicted to be a mediocre character after his first release. However, players need to build him up properly in order to unlock his full potential.
While Venti is better at grouping enemies, Kazuha's main strength lies in his ability to Swirl two base elements at the same time, which leads to a higher enemy debuff, especially when using the Viridescent Veneerer artifact set. The official Genshin Impact 2.6 livestream event has confirmed that Venti will arrive in the upcoming update alongside a new five-star character, the Hydro user Kamisato Ayato. Both of them will be featured on the first banner cycle.
Ayato has been the main topic in the Genshin Impact community for months since the official character trailer for Arataki Itto included a couple of Ayato's voice lines. Ayato is the head of the Kamisato clan, and many NPCs claim that he's a skilled sword and polearm user. He is confirmed to be a sword user, and according to his skills, Ayato will be a very offensive character with strong DPS and sub-DPS capabilities.
Genshin Impact is now available on Mobile, PC, PS4, and PS5. A Switch version is in development with no confirmed release date.