Gunfire Reborn Crown Prince Guide: Ascension Tier List and General Tips

Why to play Crown Prince (or why not to play)

+Best secondary grenade of all characters with 100% elemental effect chance.
+Easiest access to damaging elemental fusions (explosion and miasma).
+Good amount of base shields and regeneration.

=A bit more methodical and slower paced than the other characters

-Terrible base movement speed causes him to get hit more often while strafing around enemies.
-Tends to be reliant on smoke grenades to efficiently clear rooms past the earlygame.
-‘Energy Orb’ skill is mediocre without ascensions that improve it.
-No strong defensive passive that can protect him from unforeseen burst damage (his damage reduction ascension requires proactive use).

Elements 101

If you are new and unfamiliar with elements, all elements have a unique status effect they can apply as well as an ‘hp type’ they do 50% additional damage to. However they have a 25% damage penalty to the other two ‘hp types’. The chance to apply an elemental effect is the ‘elemental effect chance’ and varies depending on the weapon.

-Fire element deals bonus damage to ‘red hp’ (enemies without shields or armor) and applies ‘burning’, a small damage over time effect based on your weapon’s damage (deals 20% of the triggering shot’s damage once per second, wears off after 5 ticks if not refreshed).
-Corrosive element deals bonus damage to ‘yellow hp’ (armor) and applies ‘decay’, halving the movement speed of the target,
-Lightning element deals bonus damage to ‘blue hp’ (shields) and applies ‘shock’, dealing 50% of the damage from the hit to nearby enemies, and causes the primary target to take an additional 10% damage for a short duration.

When an elemental effect is applied to an enemy with a different elemental effect on them already, it triggers powerful ‘elemental fusions’ depending on which effects are on the target. These are covered in the next section, they are very important to Crown Prince’s playstyle.

Elemental fusions, which to use?

Crown Prince should generally be using either a Fire or Lightning elemental weapon as his primary weapon. This is because Smoke Grenades can easily apply decay regardless of which weapon you have out, so to take full advantage of elemental fusions your weapon should be applying one of the other elements. Which one you pick depends mostly on what weapons and ascensions you’re offered, since both are powerful.

Fire + Corrosive elements cause Explosion, which causes a small area damage burst based off the damage of the attack that triggered it (specifically, it does double the damage of the hit that triggered it). This works best with weapons with already good damage output; grenades triggering explosion fusions will not result in very good damage without a lot of investment in grenade damage ascensions, so usually you will want to apply decay from the grenade before applying burning from your weapon. Fire weapons are the most plentiful elemental weapons so it’s relatively easy to find a good one. Fire is also the most effective damage type against bosses (not necessarily elites though) because all bosses have plenty of ‘red hp’, which fire deals extra damage to.

Lightning + Corrosive elements cause Miasma, which causes a stackable ‘damage over time’ effect that deals bonus damage to enemies without shield or armor. The damage from this has no relation to damage of the hit that applied it, only the rate of application matters. Multiple stacks of this effect absolutely obliterate standard enemies. If an enemy has been shocked already, following up with a single smoke grenade can apply enough miasma to kill them. This is a very powerful fusion for clearing rooms using grenades along with a good lightning weapon. Especially keep an eye out for the weapon affix that spreads elemental effects to nearby enemies, that benefits this fusion heavily. However, strong lightning weapons tend to be less common than fire weapons.

Fire + Lightning elements cause Manipulation, which causes the enemy to immediately stop attacking you and target other enemies instead. Crown Prince will be using this much less than the other two fusions because smoke grenades don’t help with applying it. It is a strong defensive effect though so you should be aware of what it does.

Ascension Tier List

This list covers Ascensions in a vacuum. Specific ratings will shift as your build progresses in a run. Use your own judgement. (ex. defensive Ascensions may have more value if you have only found offensive occult scrolls)

Some Ascensions are also rated differently depending on how many points you have in them already.
(ex. lv3 rating assumes you already have 2 points invested).

The Tiers are divided as follows:
S: Excellent Ascension. Almost always pick if it doesn’t conflict with your build,
A: Great Ascension. Can’t usually go wrong with these.
B: Good Ascension. Good to have, just not as high priority.
C: Mediocre Ascension. Not necessarily ‘bad’ but you probably shouldn’t pick these over other ones.

Element

Wildfire “After killing an enemy affected by Elemental Effect, +40% .. +50% .. +60% RoF for 6s. At lv3, this is activated by hitting an enemy instead of killing them.”
You get a pretty reasonable rate of fire buff at with one point of investment, though because Crown Prince tends to have a bit of a slower playstyle you might not always be able to reactivate this buff before it expires. I’m not a big fan of RoF buffs in general (increased ammo consumption and time spent reloading can be an issue) though if your weapon can handle it reasonably then feel free to take a point of this. Also the ascension basically doesn’t improve at level 2, so it’s probably better just to leave this at 1 point.

Energy Echo “Energy Orb has the same element type as the currently held weapon, and its Elemental Effect Chance is 100%.”
A 100% elemental effect of your choice is very powerful for Lightning builds; cast this at a group and throw a grenade and most affected normal enemies will just die to Miasma damage. This is also good for Fire builds that have already invested in grenade damage ascensions; if you haven’t though, the Explosion effects won’t do any significant damage, so this won’t be particularly useful in that case.

Electrodominance “+40% .. +80% .. +120% Lightning DMG. +50% Lucky Shot Chance against enemies in Shock Effect.”
The standard Lightning damage booster. The damage increase is strong, and the level 3 effect is a solid overall damage boost (especially against elites/bosses since Miasma doesn’t kill them as fast as normal enemies). The downside is that you’re restricted to Lightning weapons to use it. This can cause awkward situations if you take this early, but end up switching to Fire weapons just cause you weren’t offered any good Lightning ones. If you have already invested in this ascension, try to avoid taking the ascension ‘Pyrodominance’ if possible, since you can’t use them both at the same time.

Elemental Rage “Against enemies under any Elemental Effect, deal +30% .. +60% .. +120% DMG.”
The only generic damage boost for Crown Prince, requires an elemental effect on the target but with Crown Prince that condition is trivial to fulfill. There is no special level 3 effect and the damage scalling is a little slower than the ‘Dominance’ line of ascensions, but this works with any weapon, so you can take it alongside them. Taking it early on won’t penalize you for switching your weapon elements later either unlike the ‘Dominance’ ascensions. Also has the bonus of boosting Smoke Grenade damage, if your build benefits from that.

Pyrodominance “+40% .. +80% .. +120% Fire DMG. At lv3, doubles Burning and Explosion (fusion effect) damage.”
The standard Fire damage booster. The damage increase is strong, and the level 3 effect is a solid overall damage boost (it makes Explosion fusions deal 4 times the triggered hits damage instead of 2 times). The downside is that you’re restricted to Fire weapons to use it. This can cause awkward situations if you take this early, but end up switching to Lightning weapons just cause you weren’t offered any good Fire ones. If you have already invested in this ascension, try to avoid taking the ascension ‘Electrodominance’ if possible, since you can’t use them both at the same time.

Acidominance “+40% .. +80% .. +120% Corrosion DMG. At lv3, the first Crit Hit on an enemy will spawn an active smoke grenade at their feet.”
This ascension functions quite differently than the other ‘Dominance’ ascensions. Good corrosive weapons tend to be quite limited, and Crown Prince gets much less benefit out of them since they can’t trigger fusion effects in tandem with Smoke Grenades. The damage boost Smoke Grenades get from this is not base damage, so it’s also not as effective as the specialized grenade damage ascensions, or ‘Elemental Rage’ which boosts your weapon damage as well. Despite all these problems, the level 3 effect is so good that it can out-weigh all the drawbacks; Free and immediate grenade activations at any range just makes the rest of the run much easier (and has major synergy with the ascension ‘Hex Smoke’). If you get offered this early on, there is some merit in taking it just to have a chance to get it to level 3. However if you only get offered it later in the run, don’t bother with it.

Smoke

Backpack Expansion “+4 .. +8 .. +12 Smoke Grenade Capacity. At lv3, recover 1 grenade for every 2 grenades thrown.”
Having more Smoke Grenades is never a bad thing with how helpful they are at clearing rooms with fusion effects, and level 3 gives you more grenades than you can reasonably use. However with environmental objects, you usually have plenty of Smoke Grenades, and will get more benefit from damage boosting ascensions (killing the enemies faster makes you use less grenades in the first place). There are also multiple occult scrolls with similar effects to this, and if you get any of those this ends up being redundant.

Elemental Shield “After using the Smoke Grenade, +30 .. +60 .. +90 max shield for 6s .. 6s .. 20s. At lv3, also become immune to elemental effects for the duration.”
A minor increase to maximum shields. The shield increase maintains the percentage of your missing shields, so if you were out of shields and tried to use this, you would still be at 0 shield afterwards. This increase is barely large enough to be worthwhile even if it didn’t have a duration. The level 3 effect isn’t terrible but it’s way too niche to justify spending 3 points in this.

Acidic Explosion “Enemies affected by smoke grenades explode after dying.”
The damage from the explosion is corrosive element, and is based off the total damage of every tick of the grenade (so 600 base damage depending on your account talent progression). This ascension is much more useful for Fire builds rather than Lightning builds. This needs grenade damage ascensions to scale well, and Fire builds also benefit from boosting grenade damage because of Explosion fusions. This has quite high potential damage, especially because if the explosion from this ascension hits a burning enemy, it will trigger an Explosion fusion for additional damage. The caveat to this is that the blast radius is not very big, so enemies need to be pretty close together for you to hit stuff with this, and it requires a lot of ascension support to really shine. There is also a funny interaction with enemies that spawn destructible projectiles (specifically Kappas and the Ichthyosaurus boss) where this triggers off of every projectile destroyed by a smoke grenade, causing massive burst damage.

Hex Smoke “Enemies hit by Smoke Grenades deal -50% .. -60% .. -70% damage and take +20% .. +30% .. +40% damage for 6 .. 6 .. 20 seconds.”
A very strong damage reduction effect, and some bonus damage for good measure. Basically any Crown Prince build can get good use out of this, its way better than his other defensive options. While very good on bosses and elites, it’s not really possible to apply this effect to every threat in a room. Long range enemies especially will usually be able to shoot you unimpaired, so you still need to be careful. 1 level of this ascension is usually all you need, though you can go higher if you find that helps.

Toxic Smoke “Smoke Grenades deal +300% .. +400% .. +500% base DMG. At lv3, grenades gain +100% additional base DMG each second after the explosion.”
This ascension directly increases Smoke Grenade’s base damage, so if you want to make use of the ‘Acidic Explosion’ ascension or take advantage of Explosion fusions with grenade damage, 1 level of this is mandatory. After the first level though, the ‘Smoke Genius’ ascension will start to scale grenade damage better and should always be prioritized afterwards. If you are a Lightning build you shouldn’t take this ascension, they don’t benefit much from grenade damage and have better priorities.

Smoke Genius “Smoke Grenades last for 1 .. 2 .. 3 more seconds, and damage interval -20% .. -30% .. -50%”
This modifier indirectly increase Smoke grenade’s base damage, by improving the ‘tick rate’ and increasing the duration. This effect benefits Lightning builds because the only way to boost Miasma damage is by applying it faster; it improves the potential of the ‘shock’ into grenade combo and lets it more reliably kill targets. This also benefits Fire builds. If they already have the ‘Toxic Smoke’ ascension at level 1, then this starts to scale grenade base damage more than additional levels in ‘Toxic Smoke’.

Orb

Enhancement Lasts “Energy Orb freezes enemies for 2 .. 4 .. 6 additional seconds. At lv3, Energy Orb has -30% cooldown time”
This massively improves the usability of Energy Orb. By default Energy Orb freezes enemies for 2 seconds, but because it has a laggy cast animation you only have around 1 second to actually shoot the frozen enemy before it wears off. Just 1 level of this gives you enough time to kill mostly any dangerous enemy (outside of elites/bosses) safely. At higher levels of this, you have enough time to shave off major chunks of elite/boss healthbars, and enough duration to be able to cast it effectively a second time on the same target (despite the duration penalty for using it multiple times on the same target). Just make sure you have enough damage output to properly leverage this. The level 3 effect is also nice, though pretty self explanatory.

Power Source “Energy Orb has 1 .. 2 .. 5 more charges”
Additional Energy Orb charges are nice, but only if you’ve already invested in other ascensions to improve it (an un-upgraded Energy Orb isn’t really that useful). Specifically, this becomes useful if you have either of the ascensions ‘Energy Echo’ or ‘Enhancement Lasts’. Level 3 gives you more Orbs than you can reasonably cast so it’s kind of overkill though.

Energy Blade “After casting Energy Orb, +300% .. +400% .. +500% weapon DMG on next hit and deal 50% .. 75% .. 100% DMG to enemies adjacent to target.”
An interesting ascension, unfortunately completely at odds with the rest of Crown Prince’s gameplan. Crown Prince benefits most from elemental weapons with good elemental effect application, but those weapons usually have high RoF and low single hit damage, making them unsuitable for ‘Energy Blade’ that can only boost a single hit. The strongest single hit weapons are launchers and snipers. The big hit launchers aren’t naturally elemental so it’s difficult to find a good one (and even if they are, their elemental effect chance is terrible). While elemental snipers tend to have better elemental effect chances, there is another big problem for them. The area damage from this ascension cannot critically hit. Meaning that if you have this ascension at level 3 (with 100% damage to adjacent targets) and land a critical shot for 10,000 damage (with a 4.0 critx value) the damage to adjacent targets will use a 1.0 critx value, so it will only do 2,500 damage, or a quarter of the original shot. There are just too many problems with this ascension for it to be consistently worthwhile.

Blinding Sphere “Energy Orb has +2m .. +4m .. +6m explosion AoE. DMG and control effects bypass barrier. At lv3, Energy Orb deals +50% DMG for each target it hits.”
The weird wording of the second effect of this ascension means that the explosion of the Energy Orb can now hit through physical objects like walls. This ascension is actually not bad for being able to hit a group of enemies at once with an Energy Orb. This is best used with a Lightning build that already has ‘Energy Echo’. You can freeze a group of enemies and apply shock to them at once, then a single Smoke Grenade will trigger enough Miasma to kill them all. You can also get some benefit out of this with the ascension ‘Enhancement Lasts’ just to be able to freeze a larger group at once. The level 3 effect of this ascension is worthless though since Energy Orb barely does damage anyways.

Energy Bolt “Energy Orb deals +200% .. +400% .. +600% damage. 30% chance to explode twice. Also gain a 10% .. 20% chance to explode 3 times at level 2, and a 10% chance to explode 4 times at level 3.”
Energy Orb does an abysmal 600 base damage so this ascension is pretty terrible as a result. The chance to multicast is also terribly inconsistent. The only way to get use out of this is to also have ‘Energy Echo’ to switch Energy Orb to Fire element and have it trigger an Explosion fusion. It’s not the worst idea but it requires way too much investment for the result you get and Fire builds have many other ascensions they would much prefer to invest in instead.

Advanced Shielding “After casting Energy Orb, +30% .. +60% .. +90% Shield Recharge Speed for 6s .. 6s .. 20s. At lv3, Shield Recharge can’t be interrupted once it begins.”
A defensive ascension that doesn’t help protect you from burst damage is not very good. Increasing shield recharge speed doesn’t help you unless you could already get to a safe enough position to trigger a shield recharge (in which case this ascension wasn’t really needed). The saving grace is that the level 3 bonus is actually good. It fixes the uptime on this skill to be basically permanent instead of 6s, and the uninterrupted recharge effect let’s you actually get value out of it in the middle of battle. It’s not really worth the risk of having to take the first two mediocre levels though.

General Tips

About Smoke Grenades
-Don’t be too conservative with your grenades. Crown Prince should use them pretty frequently, being overly conservative will hurt your clearing speed a lot.
-If you need more grenades, look for breakable pots, barrels, and crates. You can get a lot more grenades from these than you might expect.
-You get a free grenade refill after every boss at the save point well. You can also fully restock grenades from the merchant before a boss and randomly in the level. It’s pretty inexpensive so don’t feel bad about spending the money on it if you need to.

About your Weapons
-Your primary weapon should be a Fire or Lightning weapon, preferably with good elemental effect application to combo with Smoke Grenades.
-Your secondary weapon can be basically whatever you want. It could be a corrosive weapon in case you want to conserve smoke grenades, a different elemental type for hitting weaknesses, or just the same elemental type with a different range.
-At early stages, don’t over-focus on elemental weapons when you have low levels of the ‘Dominance’ ascensions. Even a good non-elemental weapon can be more effective in the first stage than a bad elemental one.

About Enemies
-Some enemies have attacks where they become immune to the freezing effect of Energy Orb (ex. charging Dark-Faced Bandits or floating Kappas), try not to waste your Orb if you think they’re about to start their animation.
-Crown Prince usually can’t be too aggressive because of his terrible mobility. When you enter a room spend a moment to identify the current enemy layout and how to safely engage.
-Energy Orb and Smoke Grenades impair enemy movement and make it easier to land critical hits if the enemy is evasive.

Closing Words

Finally done with the Crown Prince guide, now all character guides are finished until the 5th character releases. I was originally going to just do one, but well here we are. Crown Prince is the character I like playing the least and I had to do annoying amount of practice sessions to make sure this guide was up to the standards of the other ones, at least now I can finally stop playing him. He’s not a weak character though, he’s probably a little stronger than Ao-Bai because he doesn’t have a big downtime (Like Dual-Wield) where he’s significantly weaker; his average damage output is just more consistent.

Well now it’s time to take a break from guides (well until the 5th character). Looking forward to see if they do anything interesting with the upcoming Talent 2.0 patch (at least hoping they fix the problem with high RoF weapons getting way more gold than low RoF ones).

Credits to the Wiki contributors for providing the skill icons.

If you have a different perspective on something in this guide, feel free to leave a comment.

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