In 2026 we are getting three 5* Bears, three 5* Defenders, Chen3? This truly is the year of threes.
What is Crackborne?
Crackborne is a blue bear Primal protector, the 3rd five star in the archetype after Filet and Cairn. Compared to her predecessors, Crackborne is more physically defensive and inflicts Corrosion damage.
Base stats
Stats are calculated at E2, level 80, with full trust, Module and Potentials.
| HP | 3545 |
|---|---|
| ATK | 657 |
| DEF | 669 |
| RES | 10 |
| Attack Interval | 1.6 |
| DP Cost | 23 |
| PRP-X Trait: | Blocks 3 enemies, and can inflict Elemental Injury. When blocking enemies, Elemental Injury dealt increases by 15% |
Crackborne's stat spread is similar to Cairns, but with slightly higher DEF and ATK and lower HP.
Talent and Skills
| Talent 1: Tolerance to Low-Quality Solvents |
|---|
| Receives -15% (+2%) Elemental Injury, Receives an Additional -18% (+2%) from Corrosion Damage |
Similarly to Philae, Crackborne's talent reduces incoming Elemental Injury, but instead of gaining SP when hit with Elemental damage Crackborne becomes particularly resistant to Corrosion damage which is beneficial for a DEF based tank.
| Skill 1: Cleansing |
|---|
| 15 Initial SP / 30 SP cost / 20 second duration |
| Max HP +100%, Restores 120 Elemental Injury per second |
This skill seems to be an overall worse version of Philae's S1. It grants slightly more Max HP for a slightly longer duration of 20 seconds and restores a total of 2400 Elemental injury, and the overtime nature of the Elemental healing can be more useful in niche cases, but the cooldown is much longer at 30 seconds and doesn't provide an Elemental Barrier like Philae S1.
| Skill 2: Breaching |
|---|
| 12 Initial SP / 25 SP cost / instant |
| Immediately gains 5 charges of a stacking +20% DEF buff, whenever a charge is consumed, deal 35% of ATK as Corrosion damage to all surrounding ground enemies (a charge is consumed each time damage is taken and up to 5 charges can be held at a time) |
This skill is like a combination of Cement S2, Cairn S2, and Miksaparato S3. This skill functions differently depending on the situation it is used in, against slow attacking enemies it can be a high-uptime defense buff, but will deal Corrosion damage very slowly. Against enemies that attack quickly the DEF buff won't last very long but the Corrosion damage will be dealt more quickly. 100% at Max stacks isn't very high and it will be depleted very quickly since it only holds 5 stacks, and all 5 stacks are needed to inflict Corrosion burst (4 with module), but since her stacks can be stored you could have up to 10 stacks ready to chain together against stronger enemies.
Where does she go wrong?
Her skills aren't as impactful as Cairn's or Philae's. Her S2 can be chained together more easily since stacks can be held between charges, but other than that it is far weaker and it's effectiveness varies greatly based on how many enemies there are and how quickly they attack. Dealing Corrosion damage also has no synergy with Crackborne's own kit, but being able to resist it does allow her to be useful in stages with enemy Corrosion damage.
Strategy Basics
My initial impression of Crackborne is that she'll be best used for bursting down trash since her S2 has no cooldown between blasts like Philae S2 does, in environments like Chapter 10 where there are lots of slugs weak to true damage Crackborne could frequently and reliably nuke them with her S2. Against other types of trash Crackborne may be less effective if they have more than 5000 HP to survive the initial burst. She could also be to simultaneously stall and build up Corrosion on stronger enemies or a boss when paired with a medic. There is also the obvious use case against enemies that deal Corrosion damage since Crackborne's talent provides great Resistance to Corrosion damage.
Operator Combos?
• Corrosion Cravers would have an obvious synergy with Crackborne, although we currently don't have any Corrosion Primal casters or Primal guards in the game.
• Physical DPS attackers would synergize well with a defender that can simultaneously block enemies and reduce their DEF.
• SP batteries can reduce the downtime of her skill so she can replenish her stacks more quickly.
• Vetochki's Frighten can prevent enemies from attacking Crackborne, this can be used to maintain Crackborne's DEF stacks when you don't want them to be used. For example; let's suppose you have a Crackborne with her skill fully charged, plus an additional 5 stacks from the previous skill activation ready to go, you could wait for her to expend those 5 charges to apply Corrosion burst, wait 3 seconds, then activate Vetochki S2 to Frighten those enemies so you can immediately activate Crackborne S2 again to replenish the stacks. By the time the frighten effect ends and the enemies begin attacking again, the Corrosion cooldown would have elapsed and Crackborne S2 would have a 5 second head start on it's next activation.
How does she compare to other 5 stars?
I like the design of Crackborne but I find her a bit too undertuned to compete with existing defenders. The DEF buff of her S2 is weak and is exhausted too quickly since it is divided between only 5 stacks, as a Defensive tank she is far weaker than a Protector defender and has no defensive advantages against Arts or True damage. As an elemental tank Crackborn S1 is beaten by Philae S1 unless she is being used against Corrosion damage, and even then her longer downtime is a weakness that may force you to bring a wandering medic anyway.
Offensively she is also outclassed by Philae and Cairn since they deal additional arts damage.
That being said, I greatly enjoy operators like Miksaparato and Crackborne who have built in modality in their skills, and Crackborne's artwork and visual effects on her skills are cool.
That it ya'll!
Now you are ready to slip-n-slide with Crackborne. Before you comment here are some things to know about me.
- I am a 5 star player, I don't really care about 4 stars and 6 stars so if you wanted me to compare a unit to their 6 star counterparts I will not be doing that in any of my posts.
- I do not care about gacha gameplay so I will not be comparing operators to their competitors within the context of investment cost, I will talk strictly about theoretical gameplay, and compare them to 5 star competitors, because that is what matters to me. If you want to know if any operator is worth building the answer is probably no, just use a 6 star.
- As Crackborne is not out yet this is all theory based on napkin math, there is no substitute for in-game experimentation.
Thank you for reading my post, I hope you enjoyed it! If there is anything I can do to make these guides better please let me know in the comments!