Character/Party Build Ideas?

[Wolkenritter]

[Wolkenritter]

[isometric]

Alright, finally caved and bought myself a 3ds and copy of EOIV! I'm waiting for them to arrive right now, expecting them by the 19th. Exciting! So while I wait, anybody want to come theorycraft with/around/adjacent to me?

At first I was planning on building a chase party (since I recently did it quite successfully in the second game, where I massively underestimated Landsknechts for so long...) but it looks like they have super heavy skill point requirements before being good. I don't want to carry a crappy damage-dealer for ~20-40 levels before being useful. Maybe I'll retire into it later. I've got a soft-spot for followup attacks...

How resistant are bosses to ailments this time around? My second idea was having a bunch of Nightseekers with a Medic and Fortress. They'd spam blind/paralysis/poison throws while waiting for them to stick, then spam out whatever high-damage move I can grab while taking advantage of the 200% bonus for attacking an enemy with ailments up. I usually HATE relying on ailments or binds against bosses, but my Evil Eye hexer from the Lagaard run has softened me up to that as well.

Assuming neither of my munchkiny tactics work, how does a N-D-F / M-R party sound? Lands just don't look interesting to me outside of chasing, but I dont want to carry them for so long to get that working. Are Dancers good enough through buffing to make up for their lack of any real attack skills, or would a Landsknecht be a clearly better pick? Is the Runemaster continuing the proud tradition of Alchemists and Zodiacs from past games by being increasingly less good the further the game goes? Would a Sniper be a better back row character?

That's about it for now. Here's the short version:


Thanks for reading, anyone!

[isometric]

[isometric]

Items? You mean I have to spend my en on stuff that ISN'T fancy new weapons?! Eww. Okay. I can live with that. I guess.
You reckon a party of Nightseekers don't do that well early on though? Hmmm...

Okay...

How about...

Landsknecht for links. They seem good ENOUGH out of the box, even if they're capped at 1 crappy chase...
Nightseeker because I miss my shiny-leather-armor character.
Dancer for Attack Ord-- I mean Tango and... chase samba? Sword Dance?
Runemaster for general mastery of runes, I guess.
Fortress for taunting and party shield

I'm not sure where I'd put them all though. Runemaster can probably hang out in the back row no problem. Would backrow taunting do well enough til I get party shield?
I can use bows on Dancer from the back, right? But then my L and N miss out on attack samba, which sort of defeats the purpose.

Hm... I've got 5 days to play around with this I guess.

[isometric]

Eh, you've already heard me rant about binds in the Drowned City subs. Then again, it was more because of my general dislike of Wildlings rather than the binds themselves...

Actually, how hard is it to get them to stick on bosses this time around? I might just take the sniper for better backrow damage if they're even somewhat likely to land within the first couple of rounds. They just don't really look all that interesting to me outside of Eagle Eye though. I mean, it looks like half their freaking skills are about boosting Crit Rate, and I hate relying on autoattacks.

[isometric]

[Wolkenritter]

[Sigma]

Pretty much all the bosses in this game can be inflicted with status conditions. The only one that I'm foggy on is one of the super bosses. You will, eventually, get the ability to reset the status/bind resistance rate of bosses later in the game. Personally, for me, the Nightseeker's priority would be: Poison > Blind > Paralysis* == Sleep*. Unfortunately, I really do not rate their Curse Throw due to how Curse works and skill points being limited.

*The priority of these two skills fluctuates with what is allocated for classing, sub-classing, or if I decide to pick up Shadow Bite.


As for the Sniper, they do get a class-specific passive that gives their skills the ability to do critical hits. Hence why they get so many crit boosting skills.

[Fluffernuff]

i can say from testing it out, ~lvl 40, Dancer/Medic only just keeps up with healing. however, thats without medic's class buff to healing OR heal mastery, so i'd assume a M/D could do well, although needing to refresh Regen more often

[Endra]

I personally don't care about the most effective setup (which is one reason why I have a Medic instead of an Arcanist), I just play whatever I like, so I'm not sure how helpful my post is. Medic/Dancer works pretty well. You can just cast Regen Waltz and not worry about healing the back row at all (plus Refresh/Freedom/whatever you need).
Might be my play style though - I gave my medic a runemaster sub for a while, and that was when he seemed useless to me

[isometric]

[Sigma]

This game is pretty lenient in landing status/binds compared to the previous games. Even when it comes to reapplying them... If I had to wager*:

1st Application - 1 to 3 attempts
2nd Application - 1 to 3 attempts
3rd Applicaton - 3 to 5 attempts
*Assuming that the skill is maxed out.

Unfortunately, I do not have any raw data for resistances. However, if you were overly concerned there's always Arcanist as a sub-class for their "Ailment Boost" passive. Also, if you weren't going to be running an Arcanist main or sub on another class, you would then have access to their "Release Spell" ability to reset resistances. However, it is worth noting that both of those skills require the character to be level 40+.


The problems that I think people have with the Sniper class is that when it comes to binds, Arcanists do it better. Then there's the issue with Squall Volley's accuracy basically requiring the user to have the enemies leg bound along with the accuracy buff. I ran a Sniper on my first playthrough, while he worked... I just didn't like how I had built him*. On my current playthrough (on hold though), I'm trying to retool him differently from my first.

*It was more of a synergy issue; he really needed an Arcanist main in the party or that one burst skill the lengthens the duration binds/status ailments.


Lastly, I can not stress this enough... DO NOT go after Speed Boost if you have Fan Dance. There's a bug that nulls the evasion of Fan Dance if you have both passives.

PS: You'll probably love the shenanigans that can come from the last unlocked class.

[Wolkenritter]

[isometric]

Alright! I just booted up the game and got my guild in order. Decided to skip out on the L for now since they seem really dependant on hitting level 20 before they get good, and I'm maybe a little chased out from Lagaard. Maybe I'll switch the party around later.

Party's N/D/N//F/M, and the plan is basically buff up and throw ailments out in round 1, then have the nightseekers deal (hopefully) stupid-high damage while the ailments are up. I'm planning on dropping the M for an A whenever that becomes an option. I could also drop the second N for a Sniper I guess... or drop the D for an L later... hm.

Am I going to be destroyed before I can get the proper passives/subclassing to make this work? It seems to me that people don't find nightseekers too good in the beginning.