In this Genshin Impact 10 Best Talents to Crown Guide, I’m going to discuss the top 10 Talents in the game. Due to the large roster of characters (42 playable characters as of patch 2.2), with each character having three talents; so the list is meant to narrow down which Talents are really worth crowning. If you’ve been looking for the best buffs, DPS and support Talents out there, then this Guide is for you!

Genshin Impact: 10 Best Talents to Crown Guide

Leveling up talents in Genshin Impact takes up many resources, with some gated behind Resin, such as talent books. But that’s not the only limitation when it comes to leveling up Talents. With enough time and patience, you can virtually get most talents for your main team, to level 9. But after level 9, there’s a new resource needed. To get any talent in the game to the maximum level 10, you will need one of the rarest materials in the game, which is the Crown of Insight.

You can’t farm the Crown of Insight from any source in the game and by “farming” I mean you can’t get a steady supply of it. You can obtain some Crowns from offerings to certain trees in Dragonspine, and Inazuma. These trees reward you with six maximum Crowns, and these are the only permanent ones. The rest of the Crowns comes from time-limited events, where you have to complete certain tasks within a certain time frame to obtain them. If you don’t finish the event within the time restriction, or start playing the game after the event has already passed, then there’s no way to obtain these rewards, making them a precious resource.

Over the first year of Genshin Impact’s lifespan, we got received a total of 6 Crowns from time-limited events. So it’s truly a limiting factor on which Talents to maximize. In this guide, I’ll go through my top 10 picks to spend your Crowns on. I will also aim to maintain a balance between support Talents, DPS talents, and lean more on dual-purpose talents. The list goes in no particular order, so without further ado let’s get into our picks!

Pyronade – Xiangliang

Pyronado is the Elemental Burst for Xiangling, a versatile character you get for free by playing the game. She excels as a support or DPS, and she’s a Pyro user who relies on her burst to apply Pyro at a very quick rate. The reason Pyronado applies so much Pyro element on enemies is that it has a very low Internal Cooldown (ICD), so every hit applies a Pyro effect. It enables Reverse Melt teams, where you establish Pyro aura and let Cryo units Melt their attacks. Or it can be used in Reverse Vaporize scenarios with Hydro units, to establish a Hydro aura and then Vaporize Xiangling‘s attacks. You can also use Xiangling in Over-Vaporize teams as a DPS, because Hydro and Electro can be used together, and Xiangling can react with them both.

It has a good range, one of the fastest elemental applications in Genshin and has huge versatility. So overall, Pyronado is a very important talent to maximize if you are playing Xiangling as a main DPS. If you take the support role route with her, she’s can still play as a sub DPS. Though it is not the most important in support roles, it’s still one of the most useful DPS talents to maximize.

Xiangling requires 80 Energy cost to use her burst ability though, and her kit doesn’t generate much energy. This requires a high investment in the ER stat, and makes her dependent on pyro teammates to supply or funnel energy to her. That’s why you will always see Xiangling paired with Bennett , to be able to cast Pyronado on cooldown. If you’re struggling to work out what build is right for you, be sure to read our Genshin Impact: Which Build Is Right For You? (1st Anniversary Edition) guide next.

Nightrider – Fischl

This one is a bit of an unpopular talent choice for crowns, due to the fact that Fischl is an Electro character. Electro can only do transformative reactions, which have a lower DPS ceiling, so Electro characters don’t get a spot in the very top meta usually. That doesn’t change the fact that Fischl is one of the top sub-DPS’s in a single target scenario though. She has turrets with a long duration, she takes minimum field time, and she generates very good energy.

For teams she fits in, she enables Overload, Over-Vaprorize, and Electro Charged teams. But also, she can easily fit into any team with a natural element, such as Physical, Geo, or Anemo comps. Even in Electro DPS teams, with another main DPS such as Beidou, you would most likely pick Fischl as the first support, due to her energy generation.

Nightrider is her Elemental Skill, which is a huge bonus, as it means it can be summoned on cooldown without worrying about Energy. On top of that, Nightrider is also summoned by her Elemental Burst, to extend its duration. The raven summoned from Burst still scales with Elemental Skill damage, so using a crown on it is virtually maximizing two talents, not just one, hitting two ravens with one Crown if you will.

To use Nightrider in a team, you just need to summon it with the Elemental Skill, then switch Fischl out. Then in the next rotation, you can summon it again instead with the Elemental Burst, and then switch out Fischl. It’s a very simple playstyle but remains very effective.

Secret Art: Musou Shinsetsu – Raiden Shogun

Derived from the legendary sword technique “Musou no Hitotachi”, the Raiden Shogun will slay all her foes with a mighty slash. The electro Archon uses this Elemental Burst to fight enemies of Eternity or to slash islands into two halves. The Raiden banner was a very popular choice in the 2.0 version, and a good portion of the player base managed to obtain her.

She plays as an amazing support role, or somewhat decent burst DPS. Regardless of her role, she will need to stay on the field from 6 to 10 seconds to do her duty. This duty involves slashing everything with her Elemental Burst for the duration. So you will always need Musou Shinsetsu to deal good damage, and not let this precious field time go to waste. So maximizing this talent is always good.

Similar to Fischl‘s Nightrider, crowning Musou Shinsetsu doubles as two talents in one. The reason for this is using the Elemental Burst converts all of Raiden’s normal attacks into burst attacks. So during the full duration of her burst, every hit she executes, scales on burst damage. On top of that, each level of the talent increases the Energy generation for all parties. As well as Resolve stacks gain, and Resolve damage bonus for Raiden herself. Which is all the more reason to maximize this Burst.

Fantastic Voyage – Bennett

There are not enough words to express how fantastic the Elemental Burst is of Bennett. This skill is the most broken skill and is the single best, uncontested buff in-game. It does so much at the same time and does all of them flawlessly. First it summons a big ground effect in the form of a circle, which applies Pyro to the active character standing on it. This Pyro cleanses any active negative aura applied from domains or Abyss effects. It counters all the super annoying Hydro aura that triples your cooldown times, or Cryo aura that freezes, slow, and drains your stamina.

But cleansing is only the beginning, as Fantastic Voyage heals active characters up to 70% HP. It’s the fastest ticking heal in the game, so it can bring back any character from the brink of death, back to a healthy threshold. Compared to other healers, this talent is basically the best and scales with the talent level.

If your active character has over 70% HP, or you have Bennett at C1, then Fantastic Voyage buffs said character with a portion of Bennett‘s own Base attack. The scaling on this buff is incredible, as it comes from three sources: Bennett‘s character levels, base attack of weapon Bennett uses, and talent level. Then it gets an additional boost from some Constellations. The total sum of the buff could easily go over a 1000 Flat Attack and can go higher with crowning this talent. It enables DPS characters to ignore the %Attack stat on some artifacts, and is an additional way to scale their damage.

Snapshotting

The buff from Fantastic Voyage can also snapshot. For example the Pyronado talent, takes a snapshot from Xiangling stats the moment the talent is cast. Then for the entire duration of Pyronado, it deals buffed damage, even after the duration of the original Fantastic Voyage expires, or your character leaves the buff field. The same goes for several other skills, such as Beidou, or Kaeya‘s Elemental Burst. You can also snapshot several skills at once by casting Fantastic Voyage first. You then switch to each character and cast their respective skill before it ends, and you will have 100% uptime of that buff.

Secret Spear of Wangsheng –  Hu Tao

The spear of Wangsheng is the Talent Skill for Normal, Charged, and Plunging Attacks for Hu Tao. It’s one of the best main DPS Talents in Genshin Impact, especially in single-target situations. The whole kit of Hu Tao revolves around Charged Attacks, with some Normal Attacks in between. She infuses her Attack with Pyro element, so she’s able to proc Massive Vaporize and Melt reactions with Charged Attacks.

Hu Tao is one of the top main DPS’s in Genshin Impact, and if you use her, then crowning her Charged Attacks is a good choice. Leveling up Talents is a guaranteed upgrade, compared to gambling your Resin for Artifacts that have only a chance to give you something good. Hu Tao‘s Charged Attacks also have very high player skill expression, which means the more players that train their mechanical skills, the better their Hu Tao become. She’s less likely to become boring over long period of time as she has a great playstyle in my opinion.

For Hu Tao specifically, one could make an argument in favor of Crowning her Elemental Skill, “Guide to Afterlife”. It adds decent scaling to Normal and Charged Attacks, so if you really love playing Hu Tao, it’s not a bad choice to Crown as well. Though crowning the secret spear of Wangsheng I think is enough.

Kamisato Art: Soumetsu – Ayaka

Ayaka is the queen of burst DPS, with her Elemental Bust, Kamisato Art: Soumetsu. The talent has insane scaling, and hits 20 times within a mere 5 seconds. It has decent AOE, it travels to enemies, and it applies Cryo very fast. Whether you use Ayaka for permanent freeze DPS teams, or a quick swap sub DPS, you will rely on Elemental Burst.

The key to success with Kamisato Art: Soumetsu is positioning, to put all enemies in the talent’s travel path. Positioning goes a long way into maximizing DPS, and if you enjoy playing Ayaka, you can go a long way with it. It rewards player skill, as well as talent leveling. So spending a crown here is one of the easiest choices to make if you’re an Ayaka main.

Whirlwind Thurst – Xiao

When it comes to ranking selfish carry characters, Xiao resides on top. With his unique playstyle of constant Plunging Attacks, he wants to spend the entirety of Elemental Burst dealing damage. The DPS window is 15 seconds, on a 18 seconds cooldown. That’s a lot of uptime, which means you want to minimize the team field time in favor of Xiao’s own field time. This enforces Xiao to be the sole damage dealer, and encourages investing in him a lot.

Crowning Whirlwind Thrust is preferable over any other talent if you play a Xiao main. Since it provides the highest damage gain. If you have extra crowns you want to spend on Xiao, you could go with his Elemental Burst, Bane of All Evil as well.

Liutian Archery – Ganyu

Ganyu is another popular choice when it comes to DPS. She’s a bow Cryo character, and the best thing about her is a fully Charged aimed shot. Her second phase of Charged Attacks have higher modifiers than some Elemental Bursts of other characters. With access to overpowered bows that give massive modifiers to charged attacks, maximizing Liutian Archery yields the best result.

The playstyle of aiming with a bow is not for everyone though, and some might find it taxing. So make sure you are fully accustomed with Ganyu’s playstyle, and are able to utilize it.

Stellaris Phantasm – Mona

Mona has established her place in most Freeze teams, thanks to her Stellaris Phantasm. Her Elemental Burst has a multi-purpose nature, with a buff and DPS aspect. The Talent was the highest damage per screenshot ceiling at launch. In terms of DPS, it was dethroned by more crazy Talents such as Eula Burst. However, the utility still persists making Mona a desirable support pick in any Freeze team.

The Hydro nature of Mona’s Talent makes good synergy with a Cryo DPS playstyle, so it fits naturally. On top of that, the buff from Omen left by casting Stellaris Phantasm can be extended beyond it’s normal duration on frozen enemies. At talent level 7 and higher, the damage buff duration goes up to 5 seconds before expiring. However, if you apply Cryo before using Mona, Stellaris Phantasm stops the timer from ticking, allowing for a buff extension. That makes freeze the ideal comp to fit Mona into.

The direct damage from Stellaris Phantasm is significant in Vaporize teams, with Pyro companions. However, it’s not easy to pull and requires so much preparation that might affect the following rotation. It goes down further in freeze comps, where Mona has no Pyro source to vaporize her Burst. However, that’s not as important as 60% damage taken as a debuff applied to enemies at talent level 10. The fact that such a debuff applied to enemies, means it doesn’t require snapshotting. It also works on any source of damage, from the entire team, not just the main damage dealer. So overall, if you use Mona, you are free to consider crowning her Stellaris Phantasm.

Abiogenesis: Solar Insotoma – Albedo

Geo support characters will always have their place in top teams, especially if you seek Geo resonance. Usually, the best partner for Zhongli is Albedo. They buff each other’s, buff the whole team’s damage, and Albedo deals AOE, off-field DPS. On top of that, Albedo scales damage with his Abiogenesis: Solar Insotoma by building DEF. DEF scaling is much easier and more effective than standard scaling as it requires less investment, gaining more to deal with, so it becomes very strong.

The elemental Skill, Solar Insotoma, is a very easy to use talent. Albedo places a Geo construct on the ground and then is switched out. Now with any character dealing damage, the construct will pulse with AOE Geo damage at 2-second intervals. So if you have good AOE damage dealer at a faster rate, Albedo‘s damage will proc on all enemies steadily. The Construct has a whole 30-second duration, so it’s one summon you make, then not have to worry about it.

The construct can be destroyed with enemies who deal massive AOE such as Boreas or Signora weekly bosses. So focus on using Albedo in situations where he’s not hard countered.

The crown is not a must here, since all Geo characters do their job well without min-max. However, Def scaling is so good, it’s encouraged to get the best out of it. Albedo has a wider variety of usage in Geo teams, Anemo teams, and some Hu Tao teams. So if you find a use for Albedo, and have an extra crown, you have the choice to spend it here.

So that’s it for the Best Talents to Crown in Genshin Impact 2.2. What did you think of the list? What are your favorite Talents so far? Let us know in the comments below!

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If you enjoyed this Genshin Impact Guide be sure to check out even more info on our Genshin Impact Wiki. You can also keep an eye out for more guides and Tier lists for the upcoming version 2.3. And be sure to not miss our Hu Tao Build Guide. As well as, our index of Which Build Is Right For You? for more ideas to build other Genshin characters.