Chongyun Guide and Best Builds for Genshin Impact

Strengths

• Unique method of apply Cryo
• Low Energy cost
• Low Cooldowns
• Great Cryo Support

Weaknesses

• Requires heavy investment for DPS
• Limited team compositions

Chongyun has a unique setup for offering a pure Cryo support that requires little to no Energy Recharge requirements and almost zero field time which allows his abilities to apply your on-field Main DPS. This creates the opportunity for some great Elemental Reaction builds.

Due to Chongyun's ability to remain off the field (see next section), we are targeting weapons that will provide the maximum benefit to the rest of the team, not Chongyun. His 5-star weapon choice, Beacon of the Reed Sea, was picked due to the fact that the bonus skill of the weapon can trigger off-field. Similarly, his 4-star weapon choices, these are chosen to benefit the team with more energy production and a possible reset on his skills so you can double trigger them on occasion.

His Artifact choices follow the same principles as his weapon choices, picked specifically to augment the team around him and not necessarily Chongyun himself. Here we focus on team-wide effects, Elemental Mastery increase and Energy Recharge bonuses for our team. As Chongyun has such a short on-field time, basically just enough time to drop his skills and leave, we put the priority on sets that can assist whoever he is supporting with the most benefits.

Chongyun will use his abilities and then be taken off-field. This means that he is one of the simplest characters to play, but challenging to master, as timing his skills on the field is key to finding success with him. For example, his Elemental Skill, Spirit Blade: Chonghua's Layered Frost, is actually applied to whatever character is on the field, allowing them to have Cryo added to their normal attack. His Elemental Burst, Spirit Blade: Cloud-Parting Star, is the opposite, with a short AoE blast of Cryo; best used to produce Elemental Reactions. At C6, it also gains a bonus if Chongyun has higher HP% than the enemies it hits, so keeping him off-field at full health is advantageous.

Overall, Chongyun is a great support with basic mechanics that can assist a variety of teams through his skills and equipment with little investment. He is ideal for F2P players who are starting out and building up towards developing stronger team lines.

As we have previously mentioned, Chongyun is pure support, so his teams will be based on this elemental reactions, particularly Cryo, so we will be looking at Freeze and Shatter teams for the most part. Melt is another option that is open to him as long as you have the necessary members, as it is quite specific to build.

This build uses Chongyun's unique ability to infuse another member of his team with Cryo damage with their normal attacks. This Melt uses a symbiotic relationship between Chongyun and Bennett to trigger Melt by going Pyro against Cryo and then the reverse with Cryo against Pyro. Each instance of this will increase your damage for whatever element is triggered by the effect. This allows us to continue with Pyro attacks from a DPS Bennett, but also Chongyun can infuse Bennett with Cryo to allow him to do the opposite. This build also uses Sucrose for her Elemental Mastery buff and Fischl as a strong off-fielder to include Electro attacks on the battlefield from Oz.

This team follows the same principles as the Melt team above, but subs in Diluc and Xiangling for the Pyro Resonance damage buff. Once again, we can use multiple sources of Pyro/Cryo to perform elemental reactions, adding in Sucrose's Elemental Mastery buff to increase our Melt Damage. Chongyun shines on this team due to low cooldowns and Energy requirements.

This Shatter plays with both Cryo Resonance and Hydro Resonance, taking advantage of double resonance, providing our team some fantastic bonuses. First, we start with any source of Hydro. This can be Xingqui or Barabara's elemental skill, it does not matter. Once we have Hydro on the map, we can bring out Chongyun and use his Burst followed by his Spirit Blade: Chonghua's Layered Frost. This applies Cryo damage to our Main DPS, Eula, whose attacks will Freeze enemies.

Now comes to fun part, Shatter! Claymore attacks are considered blunt attacks in Genshin, which will Shatter a frozen target, causing a ton of physical damage. This is where Eula will shine, as she will be able to not only Shatter enemies and constantly apply Freeze to anyone still affected by Hydro, but also build Grimheart stacks and she can consume them by holding her Elemental Skill Icetide Vortex. When she consumes them, she will perform an AoE Cryo attack that lowers Cryo and Physical RES (Freeze and Shatter damage). This entire build is rounded out with Barbara's healing capabilities making it a devastating combination.