- Lower the HP of most monsters (Almost every monster is a bullet sponge and it's ridiculous. It's okay for some of the larger monsters to be bullet sponge, but for a little monster at my level taking up to 3 minutes just to kill. That's just nonsense.)
Make sure you level up your arts and your skills, at least to rank 3. Rank 3 is dirt cheap, like 10bp total. Cooldown and damage boosts get significantly better, even with just 2 ranks.
All damage bonuses in this game, from all sources, apparently stack, and you want to take advantage of that. I've seen an attack that normally hits for 250 at lvl 15, end up doing 4000 because...
1. Secondary cooldown was charged
2. The enemy is debuffed
3. Use it on a soul voice request
4. Use it when the mob is toppled.
5. You have a bunch of +ranged/melee attack
6. You have a bunch of +crits
7. Your abilities autocombo.
4000 is 16x stronger then something that does 250. Now you won't always get that type of boost, but you want to be doing stuff that magnifies your attacks 4, 6, 8x. Otherwise yea, you are in for 1-2 minute fights with stuff equal to your level.