Pruning and topping are basically the opposites.
I don't think classic pruning is going to give better results with small peppers, on the contrary, since every pepper is formed at an intersection. I have not tried topping, I believe there will be diminishing returns for an overly bushy pepper due to light distribution, but I saw that some prune all lower leaves on the pepper quite aggressively so that could be an idea.
On big peppers however, things can change, and pruning tomato style with 2-4 'stems' (you basically cut one branch at every intersection) will yield better quality, thick peppers. Normally unpruned big peppers will abort many flowers, with pruning you can achieve much higher percent of set flowers so you don't lose fruit number but gain quality and weight.
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