Qing Yan is a highly skilled martial artist who is the third playable Hero in Gunfire Reborn. Unlike other Heroes, Qing Yan indulges in close-quarters combat and utilizes Armor instead of Shields like the rest of the Hero roster. Qing Yan is a welcome change of pace to the more ranged-focused characters in Gunfire Reborn.
Qing Yan Summary
His playstyle mainly focuses on close-quarters combat, using melee weapons or Shotguns, and survivability. As we previously mentioned, Qing Yan uses Armor instead of Shields. Armor doesn’t recover naturally and must be recovered from other means, such as Qing Yan’s Leap ability.
Having Armor makes recovering from damage a much more manual task and requires Qing Yan to use his melee abilities to replenish his Armor. However, unlike Shields, Qing Yan’s Armor doesn’t come with a Shield’s recharge delay either, letting him immediately recover from damage.
Also, since Qing Yan uses Armor instead of Shields, Corrosive damage is more dangerous since Corrosion melts through Armor. However, Qing Yan can shrug off Lightning damage since he doesn’t utilize Shields like all of the other great Gunfire Reborn characters on our tier list.
How Qing Yan’s Abilities Work in Gunfire Reborn
Leap
Leap is Qing Yan’s Primary ability. Using it launches him forwards for a small distance, dealing damage and staggering nearby enemies after landing or impacting an enemy directly. Every enemy or breakable object hit restores 20% Armor. While leaping, Qing Yan is immune to damage, but status effects like Freeze or Burning will still be applied.
Leap hits all enemies up to seven meters in front of where Qing Yan lands, but some upgrades allow you to increase this distance. If Leap is used while mid-air, the jump distance is vastly improved. The base cooldown for Leap is also 15 seconds, which is one of the lowest skill cooldowns in Gunfire Reborn.
Cleave
Cleave is Qing Yan’s Secondary Skill. Using it delivers a melee attack to all enemies within seven meters in a fan-shaped ark in front of Qing Yan. Cleaves’s primary function is to deal some quick burst damage to any nearby target but doesn’t help restore Armor without Ascension upgrades. Cleave has no cooldown but still uses ammunition which is replenished with Supplies like any other secondary skill.
Qing Yan Strengths
Qing Yan’s biggest strength is sticking in close range and utilizing Shotguns and melee weapons to their fullest. Many of his Ascension upgrades increase his martial prowess by having many enemies in melee range, unlike Lei Luo. His strengths allow him to stick in the thick of a fight better than most Heros in Gunfire Reborn while continuously replenishing his Armor by cutting down foes.
While there is no disadvantage from using ranged weapons on Quing Yan, his significant downside is almost always needing to be close to enemies to be effective. Snipers or other long-range weapons are less effective on him since there is no direct support for them in his upgrades. On top of his need to be in melee range, he needs to use Leap to recover Armor and has a few other methods to help replenish it.
Tips & Tricks for Playing Qing Yan in Gunfire Reborn
Always get into melee range whenever possible. Stick to primarily using Swords or Shotguns, as they have the advantage of reliably using his Ascension upgrades. If you are looking for a ranged weapon, we do recommend using SMGs if there are no Shotguns available.
Qing Yan also has a significant disadvantage against fighting Sniper enemies or those that don’t even engage in melee. His talent Recharge Shot does allow him to gain small amounts of Armor back whenever shots strike an enemy, but this is still a limited Armor replenishment. Recharge Shot does have an internal cooldown of six Armor gained per second, and SMGs are a great alternative to gaining Armor outside of melee. If you have no teammates to counter snipe targets, that would be difficult for Qing Yan to kill.
Qing Yan’s Best Talents
Every character in Gunfire Reborn has three talent trees that focus on enhancing their guns, ability, or ganting extra utility. Qing Yan’s talent tree enhances his Leap attack, close quarter advantages, and Cleave attacks. While there are many viable builds for focusing on one tree over the rest, Qing Yan has tons of viable builds, and it isn’t easy to choose which is best. We preferred focusing on increasing his Leap’s effectiveness and enhancing his survivability.
Gigantic Explosion
Leap gains extra AOE range and lowers its cooldown. Each rank increases Leap’s radius by +2 meters, +4 meters, up to +6 meters, and reduces the cooldown by 20%, 40%, and up to 60%. Upon gaining rank three of Gigantic Explosion, Leap gains +20% DMG for every enemy hit.
Gigantic Explosion is a must-take on any Qing Yan build and helps elevate his Primary Skills AOE and reliability at gaining Armor. Due to Leap’s low base cooldown, you will be spamming this ability often, and it’s best to upgrade whenever possible.
Fully Equipped
After a Leap, gain extra weapon and skill DMG scaling up from 75%, 100% up to 150%. Regain 20%, 30%, to 50% of your Armor, and lower Leap’s cooldown for each kill by up to two seconds. All of these buffs last for two, up to three seconds.
Taking Fully Equipped allows you to gain a ton of extra burst damage from your weapon or spamming Cleave afterward. You also gain extra Armor, and Leaps cooldown is significantly lowered for each enemy it strikes. Combining this with Gigantic Explosion, you can chain these buffs together to give godly amounts of Armor and damage. The only downside to Fully Equipped is its buff only lasts three seconds, and you always need to hit enemies to activate it fully.
Related Hero Guide: How to Play and Build the Crown Prince in Gunfire Reborn
Steel Armor
After hitting an enemy or breakable object with, Leap lowers your DMG taken by 50%, up to 100% for two or three seconds. At max rank, Steel armor lasts for three seconds and all DMG taken instead recovered Armor during the Duration.
Steel Armor is one of the strongest Ascensions you can obtain on Qing Yan. Even with rank one Steel Armor, you gain 50% damage reduction from hitting any enemy with Leap. You don’t take any damage with rank two, and then you regenerate Armor at rank three. It’s one of the best abilities to upgrade Qing Yan’s Leap, allowing him to survive situations other Heroes couldn’t.
Close Combat
Close combat gives Qing Yan extra DMg against enemies who are between seven meters up to 12 meters at max rank. The extra DMG scales up from +40%, +80%, up to +150%.
Close combat isn’t a mandatory upgrade you should prioritize, but gaining extra damage to any enemy within melee range is an undeniably great choice. Since Qing Yan’s playstyle mainly focuses on using Swords or Shotguns, you will likely be sticking close to enemies for the majority of your run. Taking Close Combat is essentially picking an upgrade to provide yourself with free DMG buffs, and that’s enough for us to decide on for every run.
Death Mark
Cleave applies a death mark to enemies for a few seconds. Marked enemies take 20%, 40%, up to 60% extra DMG from you, and killing a marked enemy grants you 20%, 25%, up to 30% movement speed for six seconds.
Death Mark is another wonderful way to shred through enemies’ defenses and rewarding you with tons of movement speed to skip around the battlefield after killing a marked target. Combining Death Mark with Close Combat, you can cause enemies to take up to 210% extra DMG if both Ascensions are rank three.
Alternate Talents for Qing Yan in Gunfire Reborn
A few other strong talents to grab are Defensive Cleave, Cleave Carnival, Hail of Bullets, and Last Stand. Defensive Cleave helps recover Armor per enemy hit or killed and decreases Leap’s cooldown by a few seconds per enemy killed. Cleave Carnival adds extra Cleave capacity and restores a few charges upon killing an enemy with Cleave.
Hail of Bullets causes the first few shots after reloading not to consume ammo. Additionally, you deal extra weapon DMG and gain extra Lucky Shot Chance. Last Stand causes you to gain additional weapon and skill DMG, rate of fire, take less DMG, and become immune to slow effects whenever your Armor breaks.
Weapon Builds for Qing Yan in Gunfire Reborn
As for weapons, we strongly recommend grabbing the Fire Tower, Flowing Light, or the Poisonous Ghost for Qing Yan. All three swords operate slightly differently, have different elemental effects, and come equipped with various alt-fires. The Fire Tower is best at single target DPS, the Flowing Light is the best all-around Sword, and the Poisonous Ghost is the best cleaving weapon. We recommend these blades so much that we’ve added them to our list of the best weapons in Gunfire Reborn.
We recommend the Illusion, Pupil, or Wild Hunt for Shotguns. The Illusion is currently the strongest Shotgun in the game and is fully automatic. The Pupil is also an excellent choice for its longer range and tight spread by utilizing its charged shot feature. The Wild Hunt is also a great pick if you want to wield a classic double-barrel Shotgun like in Doom Eternal.
We recommend using the Demonlore or the Scalpel if you want a ranged option. We picked SMGs since they still require being in mid to close range to utilize properly, so you can still use Qing Yan’s Leap and Cleave abilities.
Despite the fact that Qing Yan’s official artwork showcases him using the Golden Bow, we don’t particularly recommend grabbing it when playing as him. The Golden Bow is extremely strong, but it’s challenging to use since Qing Yan loves to be in melee range, and the weapon is in the Sniper category.
Best Occult Scrolls for Qing Yan
There are a lot of Occult Scrolls in Gunfire Reborn. They can shape the outcome of your build by adding some quality of life improvements or drastically impacting your damage output. To round up our Gunfire Reborn Qing Yan build, we recommend the following Occult Scrolls.
- Resolute: +50% movement speed and +35% DMG when your Shield/ Armor is zero. Doubles the time a shield rests before recovering.
- Double Exhilaration: Secondary skill capacity gets doubled
- Field Support: While the holder is moving, +15% weapon damage for yourself and your teammates within 15 meters.
- Tactical Reload: When reloading, -20% damage taken and +30% movement speed.
- Resilient Life: After taking damage, restore 3% Hp per second for five seconds.
- Sucker Punch: +45% Skill DMG when your skill hits an enemy with more than 70% HP.
- Vindictive Nature: +40% weapon and skill DMG for 10 seconds upon being hit or taking DMG.
- Flowing Wind: While moving, the faster you move, the less DMG you take. (Up to -20%.)
- Magic Watch: There’s a 33% chance to reset the cooldown every time you use your Primary skill or Dash.
- Propulsion Device: Dash skill has three charges.
- Copper Miner: All enemies dead within seven meters drop 2x the basic reward.
- Veteran: +1 Max HP for each enemy you kill within seven meters.
- Untold Effort: When casting a Secondary Skill, there is a 50% chance to double the consumption and 50% chance to double the damage.
- Fight for Immortality: Upon taking DMG, gain additional max Shield/ Armor for 12 seconds, equivalent to the DMG received.
- Deadly Counter: After taking damage, all hits will become critical hits for three seconds.
- Penetration Bullet: Crits deal 50% damage directly to the enemy’s Hp rather than Shield or Armor.
- Stone Skin: -30% DMG taken for three seconds upon taking DMG.
Wrapping Up Our Qing Yan, Gunfire Reborn Build Guide
That’s our guide to building and playing Qing Yan in Gunfire Reborn. He is a nice mix-up from the rest of the roster and brings close quarters hack and slash that other Heros struggle to replicate. If you enjoy wading through the thick of a fight and enjoy the thrills of being in the front line, then Qing Yan is the Hero for you.
If you’re looking for an excellent ranged counterpart to Qing Yan or want to play as a Sniper, check out our guide to building and playing with Lei Luo in Gunfire Reborn.
