What, in your experience, is the #1 most *universally* useful skill for an Ability Crest slot?

[GabrielFlood]

So I'm well into the mid-game of my flagship run now, and I'm genuinely curious as to what lynchpin-strategy ideas other more experienced players have found to make use of their A-team's Ability Crest-provided extra skill slot(s). But for simplification's sake, I figured a good place to start would be asking the above question: What singular skill (and from what class) have you personally found to provide the most frequent and/or greatest magnitude of utility when put into any crewmember's Crest slot?

My own recently-discovered vote so far, based on my limited personal experience: the "Prayer" skill, from the humble Scholar's repertoire!
- Accessible without significant xp diversion to any build (or ANY; piddly 75xp to learn!)
- Can effectively enable "bottomless MP" all-out combat strategies in prolonged engagements
- Upgrading to levels 2 (+650xp) and 3 (+1750xp) is actually extremely worthwhile, yet without being remotely necessary to make it useful at all

What's your go-to skill to put into a primary team member's unlocked Ability Crest slot?

[Prominence]

Prayer is good, but it scales best on a character that is investing a lot of stat stars into the elemental skills.

Some other useful abilities that don’t depend a ton (or at all) on stat stat scaling would be Now, the Sage’s regen spell, Negate, Dash, and that short range gate teleport spell from the Warpblade. I get a lot of use out of crested Rope as well.

[Gabthelazy]

Scout's "Sidestep".
Moving 5 steps + 30 evasion? That's pretty great. It's also my go to ability for "Rolling Reload".
An other one is Berserker's "Frenzy", especially if you're using a whip to spread nasty debuffs.
The Sailor's "Smellingsalt" is also pretty good. It's cheap and it attempts to make your newly revived unit move earlier.

[lvl 10 mage]

Ranger's Apply Barbs or Apply Toxin, combined with the Instant Aid passive and Multishot, is a devastating combo.

[game-zerox]

I'm mostly a big fan of cresting rogue skill set. From easy status effect to free actions at a low to no mp cost. Any character can use them effectively.

Also enchanter buffs are pretty good on crests since you'll probably ever use one element and the extra damage is always welcome.

[Blank Syndrome]

Negate, 100%, assuming you don't have a dedicated Warden. Dash, in any case, because free movement is very powerful. Rope is great. Prominence's post reflects my experiences, basically. Negate itself is *probably* the best skill in the entire game and it's worth having lying around on multiple characters really, especially if you're playing on high difficulties or in mod content.

"Now!" is the best - and maybe the only truly good - Tactician skill, and it's great on a character who sometimes end up with dump turns, like healers. Enchanter buffs are great.

[frowningmirror]

Prayer is good for mages who have good range and have a job that gives them bonuses to multiple elemental skills. Movement abilities like Dash and ranged control like rope are better for melee characters, especially if they aren't MP heavy. People with guns and bows are best with more buffs, giving them a single enchant for the team is what I like to do.

Aside from those, I picked shockwave on a warden / sage with the volskarver once. It was surprisingly good, as it allowed me to hit diagonally, gave me a ranged option, was cheap, and allowed me to conserve the charge on the weapon.

Theres probably a lot of late game options like shockwave people haven't mentioned yet

[Troll]

So far I haven't found an actually univresal crest ability, as I took a while to decide my final builds and kept going back and forth, trying some things here and there.
For my main (a heavy armor brawler) it was the scout's healing ability, then the berserker's scatter, and now it's both the healing one and the warp blade's onslaught. Very fun to use as the battle begins when still in the approach phase.
For my guardian / krakenslayer I have no idea what to give. Might give the scout's sidestep to rush to the frotn when needed to take a hit.
My bowman as well, I still have no idea what to use definitively, but using sidestep as well right now.
My mage is a bit of damage dealer and healer, kind of doing what needs to be done. I'll most likely choose prayer and stick with it.


As for my last character, this build is a bit super specialized so it's far from the universal idea.
A crossbowman using the blunderbuss. Main class yet undecided (in the processe of increasing jump and elemental resists for everyone) but it will be scout as secondary . Crest abilities are the archer's multistrike and warp blade's warp gate, and the passive that reloads on using a movement skill as well as the archer's shrapnel.
The blunderbuss does a cross area damage and twice the damage in the center tile. Combined with multistrike that's 4 hits on 5 tiles , plus the shrapnel's damage. The reload passive allows for a strike every turn.
It's pretty hilarious.


In the end, I'd say Prayer is the most effective in the sense that it's pretty hard to load on MP otherwise. The other MP recharge passives are pretty limiting in that it's a small amount and requires positioning.
The only other skill being drain. Which seems pretty good actually, but requires to be in melee.