I'm stuck, no urge too play anymore since I feel so under leveled. Went back to do quests, found some but these collection quests are so damn long, 3 hours running around and not done a single one....
I think this is one of the easiest RPGs in the world to level up in.
Tempest Kick? I never even used that since the effect was terrible (drops an enemy buff?). But that would make it a lot more useful and make me reconsider that single character challenge I was thinking about doing.
Yeah, I read it on GFAQs and tried it out - sure enough, it works. You have to mash Thunder, though, because it technically won't be available until Tempest Kick has just completed.
Critical Up is outclassed by double attack since you can link up to make all of them critical, and it has a higher percentage.
That costs a lot of SP though, and doesn't affect skills. 70 points! Maybe you're beyond that with all your NG+ playthroughs, haha. But for me, 70 points is almost half of what I have available, so I wouldn't go slapping it on characters unless it really fit the bill.
The thing about haste is that it ultimately ends up in an armor slot anyway (Glory Gauntlets for most characters, and you already have the thing for 7th I believe). And assuming you're not using Night Vision, that does give you two slots to play around if you're using Double Attack for one.
True.
I'd go with attack stability over attack plus. It's guaranteed to increase your damage output, while plus just makes it more likely. And double attack is better than attack plus since that only adds 50% damage while double attack actually hits twice 50% of the time, which also effectively adds 50% damage (or more if you have the skill link to make them crits) and fills your talent gauge(/party gauge) faster. I really do think double attack is the single best offensive gem in the game. I guess your point is that you're constantly in chain attacks so you feel that something that directly increases damage there is better, but double attack makes your chain attacks more frequent if you're using it right.
I read a claim on GFAQs that Attack Stability/Plus can glitch. The claim was that the difference in Min/Max damage on a weapon cannot exceed 99, and if it does, the game will treat the maximum as only 99 larger than the minimum. So using only Attack Plus would be useless. Besides, Attack Stability tends to collapse your damage into itself. A 600-800 weapon normally does 700 per hit on average. Attack Stability will bring that to 700 per hit. Attack Plus theoretically brings that to 900 per hit (600-1200). Attack Plus and Attack Stability brings it to 1050 per hit (900-1200), theoretically. Who knows if the GFAQs post is right, though. When I slapped both on Dunban's weapon, Gale Slash went from 3800 damage to 4800, which is a pretty huge increase compared to any other option I've explored.
If Double Attack worked on arts, I'd agree with you. I still feel as though going the Stability/Plus route might be better for Dunban.
What do you think about Reyn? I'm sure you can agree that there's no real benefit to pumping his Talent Art gauge constantly. Do you think the Plus/Stability option is superior for him?
Back Attack is awesome, but really only for the character you're controlling, OR Dunban if someone else is tanking (Dunban always goes behind the enemy when he doesn't have aggro, nifty).
Noted!
Lightning attack is also a good option for 7th, as you've brought up before. Electric Up for Melia, and Blaze/Poison/Etc. for Riki. I used Bleed Plus for Dunban and it worked nicely, Gale Slash late in the chain attack would do a ton of bleed damage. Good for longer battles, not so much for shorter ones.
Bleed Plus seems weak since bleed attacks only do 20% of normal damage as bleed damage, so you'd be doing 40% of normal damage, which is still less than a fire, ice, or poison attack. I definitely want to explore Lightning Attack on 7th. I think I might run it differently based on her position. Lightning Attack when DPSing, Double Attack and friends when tanking, and maybe Agility Down, Defense Down when running her on my theoretical ether build, since she'll have Talent Bonus and her attacks will be crap anyway. Might as well boost the team up.
Is Abassy (sp?) the only boss you absolutely need Night Vision for? I'm already at level 89, so I'm not too worried about getting to a reasonable level to fight the higher level guys aside from him.
Well, the problem with this idea is that Agility Down is a debuff while Night Vision inherently works for your characters as long as it's night. Bullseye does negate the need for Night Vision if you can remain behind the enemy (so what I said for Back Attack previously applies here) AND if you have the coins to use on it - it's relatively expensive at around 50, and this is why I didn't end up using it on Shulk. But Agility down only activates a percentage of the time, and it can be resisted, so it's less reliable.
I'll mess with it as some point and let you know how it goes in practice, but I agree with your thoughts.
And the difference between 25% and 50% could be pretty big as well. Going from ~36% NV gems to 50% made a big difference in my accuracy against Abaasy at level 79 for Shulk and 7th. Not so much for Dunban due to Serene Heart, which is why I never bothered getting him a VI gem.
Well, it depends on the enemy's agility. If the boss has 2000 agility, and I have 1000 agility, then a 25% drop on him is the same as a 50% bonus to me, assuming the accuracy scale is done linearly.
(I assume your idea is that you rely on one character for the Bullseye + Agility Down, since having multiple characters behind the enemy doesn't happen often making Bullseye a waste on 1 or 2 of them).
That was the idea, but I could also try doing Bullseye on one character to land the first Agility Down, and then the others might land Agility Down on their own. A Xenoblade website I read a few nights ago says the debuffs stack. Similarly, it would be interesting to run three Defense Down gems to get a -75% defense debuff running.
You'll have to "warn" Shulk, which lets you choose something for him to do during a vision. So if it's a talent art, you can have him use shield. Warning an AI party member costs one bar of your party gauge (the blue gauge at the top of the screen), so keep that in mind.
I wish I got to warn people for free.
