Genshin Impact has already confirmed a new character named Shikanoin Heizou who is rumored to be the first male Catalyst. However, while there is a lot of hype around Heizou, players are yet to get their hands on two popular characters whose arrival is much later than expected.
The game's livestream event has officially announced the five-star character Yelan and the four-star Electro user Kuki Shinobu for the upcoming update. Genshin Impact has officially confirmed that they will be featured on two separate banners.
The official Genshin Impact YouTube channel has revealed the teaser for the upcoming five-star character Yelan. She was been announced even before update 2.6 arrived, but it took over two months for her to finally join the live servers. The official Genshin Impact Version 2.7 livestream has confirmed that Yelan will arrive at the first banner cycle for the update which is expected to drop around May 31. Genshin Impact's teaser trailed perfectly portrays her mysterious and secretive character. As a worker for the Ministry of Civil Affairs, Yelan often finds herself tracking down and capturing members of the Fatui as shown in the video.
While she is one of the government's best workers, Yelan is frequently absent from her workplace. However, she is forgiven most of the time since she always manages to get the job done. Yelan is a Hydro Vision holder which makes her the first bow character that has the option to control this element. Yelan's release date was initially scheduled for May 11 but developer HoYoverse had to delay the new Genshin Impact update due to the complicated COVID-19 situation in Shanghai.
The reveal of Yelan's kit has been a bit controversial, and she's quickly been given the nickname "five-star Xingqiu" due to the similarities between the two characters. The main reason why she's so similar to the four-star Hydro sword user is that Yelan's Elemental Burst works in an almost identical way as it summons a die which follows the active character and deals damage. This effect can be triggered by Normal Attacks or Yelan's Elemental skill. Players will have to wait for her official release to find out Yelan's best role within a team composition.
While one of the livestream events described Yelan as a Hydro DPS character, there is a chance that she can also be a decent sub-DPS or support considering that she has the ability to constantly apply Hydro damage thanks to her elemental burst. Previous Genshin Impact leaks have confirmed that some of her skills will actually scale with HP which is unusual for bow damage dealers.
Genshin Impact is now available on Mobile, PC, PS4, and PS5. A Switch version is in development.