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In terms of power progression, your primary stats will play a large role now (moreso after item level 200).
Your job levels, smithing your gear, and affinities will be where these stats start coming in.
Where mission level 250~280, your job level might be around 81+ going toward 99.
And if you're battling mission level 400, your job level around 136+.
If looking for a bit more balanced gameplay where you can survive a couple mistakes during the fight, drink a potion, and with skilled gameplay - take down a boss in under 5 minutes, then would suggest:
Stamina and Spirit as defensive stats on master points and gear.
Damage Taken at Max HP on master points so that the fight doesn't end if you get caught with an unblockable attack or grab on the second phase while you're at full HP.
And then your offensive stat, whether you're using melee attacks and physical combo abilities (Strength), magic attacks (Intellect), or focused on critical hits such attacking from behind to break them (Agility). And while there are other ways to build an offensive stat (e.g., using Stamina on greatsword with counter moves and Spinning Smash for example), would generally say physical (Strength), magical (Intellect), or breaking via critical hits (Agility).
On Gilgamesh difficulty, if you head into the rift, your Bahamut gear can mostly serve you all the way to the end of the rift story - albeit, could benefit from some tweaks along the way. The Rift and Lufenia difficulty ignore item level penalties, so if there is something you truly have working and doing it well, you can stick with it. (Where I personally decided to replace my Bahamut gear for one relic in the Rift - then later, relics on Lufenia difficulty for better stats overall.).
Sorry for the late reply. Steam has been showing me
"This comment is awaiting analysis by our automated content check system. It will be temporarily hidden until we verify that it does not contain harmful content (e.g. links to websites that attempt to steal information)."
And I didn't even think about quote replying to see the original message.
I'd say if looking for the balance (to be able to take the extra hit or other survival), then about 1/3 of your stats, affinities, and/or command ability might go toward survival in some way.
Whether that's a ranged attacker or caster using Teleport or Flee on command side. Or reserving the second job for Ninja to use Utsusemi to negate 3 ticks of damage.
Or a greatsword incorporating the enhanced guard or counter moves more where the Strength greatsword might lean into that for survival. And the Stamina greatsword might lean into those counter moves, Raging Slash, and Spinning Smash to break the enemy while being a bit sturdier when they do miss a beat.
If katana and deploying Senshin Stance, Liberator 120% can help a little bit. Even further with Samurai's job action - though using Senshin Stance to parry has not been a popular playstyle among katana users I've observed.
And then for Sentinel or Runic Protection, Monk 400% affinity with extra HP on the activating job has been a nice cushion. Bonus if you have Damage Taken at Max HP and/or other mitigation on top of that.
And axe lends itself really well for a Stamina route where you can trade blows on the physical hits, but will need to be ready to parry or soul shield the magic ones (unless you do Sage 250%, then you can guard in case there is a lot of pressure.)
And then at least for Chaos and Bahamut difficulty, that allocation of Stamina and Spirit master points while being job level appropriate + smithing Stamina and Spirit onto the gear and upgrading it should keep you in the 2 to 5 hit range before death (affinities and commands pending) while also letting you soul shield more (Stamina), taking less break damage when you do get hit to avoid being broken, and getting more MP from the soul shields. Not face tank sturdy, but sturdy enough to learn most fights without having to do a no-hit run.
Gilgamesh difficulty, the gap starts to widen. Up to Rift 21, there are a couple instances where it'll feel like you're falling behind (and you can completely do the Rift story with item level 400 gear even when they hand you up to 500.) But at least two of the Rift bosses up to floor 22 will feel like, "Unholy Hades - what the F?" - but you'll still have more breathing room on the soul shield side of your defenses.
And by Lufenia difficulty, without a fair amount of investment, will feel like everything slays you in one hit (which has been the more common experience for streamers I've lurked on that were not as responsive or had no backseating on in late January and early February.)
Time to farm some items and optimize your build to progress further.
DLCs from my understanding aim at long-time play, not something you're supposed to chew threw in a week.
Not sure if what I said can be read that way. I'm enjoying the DLC, but not the way I thought I would be. I'll give you an example.
I've made my own build through trial and error and random drops. I use command abilities, I've smithed in MP regen and I rely on Swordfighter counter play. I beat all the monsters in the stage easily. Sometimes I get one shotted which is fine. Sometimes I don't. I don't have the late-late game stuff unlocked, like fusing. I can't choose what affinities or buffs my gear has and without 100 of hours of grinding to get them, I make with what I have under the hours I got.
I get to the boss stage and suddenly nothing works. I counter near perfeclty every hit the boss does, but they come at such rapid intervals or the boss spams red attacks that -- well, I die. Over and over again.
This is the Black Knight boss by the way.
I had to give up. Both of my allies die in seconds, but I suppose at this stage of the game that's normal? I don't even know which allies are good since the game doesn't really explain and you can't customize their style. They are at best just few second distractions.
I used Might Strikes, Fencet and Swordfighters R2 and I would counter. I had Summoner affinity so I can get full mana before the fight.
I'm not trying to sell my build, but just to show you that I'm well invested into the mechanics. I'm just trying my own way of playing but after grinding endlessly to try it out, it doesn't work. Reason is the Soul counters from the Swordfighter combo do not count torwards MP regen, so even if I counter every move possible and dodge all red moves, I run out of the buff duration.
tl;dr - sucks bro that something I tried just ain't working because only 5 or so buiilds are viable at this stage of the game and they all are a form of:
- Attack so fast with so many % modifiers the boss dies in seconds (requires super rare optimized gear) with dual blades or knuckles
- Abuse infinite lightbringer damage immunity
I can't do either and I've tried lol. Either this stuff has been patched out or the YouTube guides I've been following missed out a few details.
I'm also enjoying the game, but when I compare this game to others with insane grind, like classics from SquareSoft: Vagrant Story, that game is full of mechanics and grind but at least in that game every class is viable.
I just wish you could BUILD FOR DEFENCE using the smithy, like stacking physical resist for a physical boss and elemental for another. Crafting a holy weapon that actually deals good damage against lich. You can barely do any of that and it's best to just use the SAME command abilities 99% of the players use.
Variety isn't there at this stage of the game. I fear. Might be, but I'm still learning. I just feel like the developers threw a ton of skills and combos and designed the MP system poorly. There should've been a stamina and mana bare separately if you ask me and the Soul Block and Normal Block being the same thing feels so odd. Lots of modifiers and most are hidden to the player the game does a poor job teaching you anything lol
God, I forgot there's a new difficulty after Gilgamesh.
Feels like at those levels it's no longer about fun, but about number crunching. Every video I've seen looks like some crazy meth head is playing and spamming some crazy abilities until the boss melts... and when they go on about what they have equipped they seem to leave out how LONG it took them to get to that gear level. I assume it takes 100's of hours, which is insane for a single player RPG game!
Also I must say that it's sad there's no multiplayer at all. It's there, but there's no players. Feels like a lot of the content was designed around having co-op come into play but sadly due to poor sales and multiple platforms (I actually play on PS5) and there being 100's of missions and already level cap increases, the odds of you playing with someone else are literally 0% if you try.
The Black Knight phase 1 can be fairly rough. Often times if you're nearly on his horse's face or to its right side, the knight may do some downward attacks that may be conducive to Interception. Where if there is just enough distance, the Knight will think about a Stampede or more often than not, a Rush.
The allies tend to fall behind especially once trials are on. They get a little bit of stats as they level and to get some mileage out of them, would have to invest in them as much as one would for Jack. Alternatively for bosses and the Interception playstyle, sometimes taking them out so that the boss is on you can help (and also enemies will have less HP and break gauge when solo than with AI allies or co-op).
In terms of allies, would say that Sophia as a Sage is the closest thing to a healer and support. When she gets enough MP and you use the D-Pad left/right on her, she considers casting a few white magic spells. And then Black Mage, she'll lean toward black magic, even though she also does have mace combo abilities. Rough example - though not all of the characters are as proactive after using the D-Pad on them.
The Swordfighter puzzle can be rough due to that soul shield not restoring MP side of things. And especially rough when you invest the time to get something assembled, but doesn't pan out the way one might think.
For Bahamut difficulty, the players can be in a position to progress without artifacts and I generally don't build around artifacts until the Fuse option becomes available.
A few ideas to address the Swordfighter's MP and/or buff situation. Where most of the below is using around 3 gear slots.
A) Summoner 400% affinity to refresh buff duration on soul shield, including Interception, Mighty Strikes, Lancet, or the third command ability. While Magic Regen command is brief, perhaps the combination of Summoner 400% soul shields and chain canceling on a few Interceptions could keep it going. Bonus if your second job had Void Knight 400% to reduce the MP cost of Magic Regen and/or White Mage 120% and Buff Duration stacked up to help that regen recover more MP.
B) Second job as Knight (Black Knight) to cause soul shields to trigger parry effects such as Parry: MP Recovery master points or on gear. This can be MP expensive and has a shorter duration by itself.
C) Hunter 400% affinity to cause every attack and Interception counter to restore a flat amount of MP. Between the counters and two normal attacks across the duration of the Interception, this can add up.
D) If using a lot of magic attacks like Sacred Blade weapona ability or Knight's Gambit, consideration for more Intellect master points and such. Intellect will boost the normal attack's MP recovery and help out on those magic sword combo abilities, but not so much on your Interception. And then if you are capped out on Intellect and still looking for more MP per swing, could use either the Magic Arts command or start stacking Increase Normal Attack MP Recovery (Red Mage 120%, master points, gear effects - but only after you can't put any more Intellect on.)
E) Samurai (Genji) as the second job. Where each time you chain cancel, you also restore MP. Your normal attacks will generate a little more MP and your parries (timely guard or using Shield Thrust which costs MP). At least until you're staggered. The hope here is that after each Interception, you might chain cancel into and out of Samurai. Granted, this may start to feel like Flux and can get tiresome after many retries.
F) Gambler 120% with an investment in Luck so that your chain cancels restore a random amount of MP. Each Interception could be a chance to chain cancel. And if your sword job happens to be a sword job, you should be able to soul shield, Interception counter attack, and chain cancel back into Swordfighter. While the Luck is also a bit of an off-shoot as well.
G) Evoker 400% to slowly recover MP while at full HP. This one starts to fall apart if you get poisoned, step on something that deals damage, or get hit with an unblockable.
On the building for defense side, would strongly recommend stacking as much Stamina and Spirit as you can get on gear and master points. But then deciding where your offense will come from (e.g., Strength for physical combo abilities and Interception dealing HP damage to go with that Mighty Strikes? With some of the master points toward Damage Taken at Max HP so that if you do get caught with the Interception down, it's that next hit that you shrug off a bit long enough to get a potion going or hopefully reapply Interception.
With enough Stamina, the soul shields should cost less. And bonus if you have either Berserker 120% or Refill Break Gauge on Attack (I forget exact name) on your gear effects so that the Interception's counter attack can refund a little bit of itself. Semi-worse case, even whe Interception is down, between your soul shields and the quick counter attack - you may be able to recover enough MP to reapply Interception. (This tends to work better with more Spirit to recover more MP on soul shield. And if you can't stack anymore Spirit on this route, then Soul Shield: MP Recovery - which will largely go unused on an Interception Swordfighter unfortunately.
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But would say as you get closer to job level 200 on Bahamut difficulty with master point allocation until you can't spend anymore Category 1 points often, should be able to soul shield longer, survive an unblockable if it comes to one, and maybe even take 2 to 4 hits before needing to drink a potion. And then as the gear starts to come in, can decide if you want to play it riskier for faster boss fights or maintain a balance in case things hit the fan.
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On the gear side, it'll depend on what drops - but would generally say with 6 pieces that are around 4-star or 5-star, could reach an affinity allocation that looked like:
400% / 120% / 120%
400% / 250%
Where if you have an artifact, even having one desired affinity can be helpful due to the stat stick the second affinity of that artifact brings. But would say Bahamut difficulty to build around the idea that there won't be artifacts.
You just wrote a hell of a guide there man, thanks. Before I read it, I've managed to get through Bahamut and Gilgamesh difficulty already and am farming 500 unidentified gear in the Rifts. Sadly, I still die.
I went with the Near Death effect stacking. Gear alone now has -80% damage taken and 40% damage done with the dark knight. Combined with the Shell and Protect, I can now tank 2-3 hits. Since I use Gambler and 1H Sword + Shield, I stacked Luck so I can farm for gear faster with a lot of STR enchants in gear. I use Blessed Hits and with Samurai swapping, using Ninja as the support (with Summoner for max MP), I can safely take multiple hits now and not die. Gambler, Utsushii (or whatever it's called) combined with Near Death effects is making me somewhat tanky and I can deal 2000 damage per hit and 14000 damage on charged and ability hits.
However, I still need Runic Protection. I stacked MP Regen on Normal Hits all over my gear, but your guide mentions that INT raises this? How does the game not tell this.
There's so many armor and Master Point effects in the game that I can't even find google guides for. There's so many that are just mysteries in what they actually do. For example abilities are called:
-- Instant Ability
-- Attack Ability
-- Combo Ability
etc. and some armor buffs reduce MP needed, but I have no idea what is what. Not to mention some enchants are just too rare.
With 150 LUCK and 150 STR and using Gambler, I'm killing stuff in the Rift rather easily. Only bosses require some skill and I like that. Sometimes I panic with the new usables and die once my buffs run out and I have no MP. I still haven't even used all the monster summons so I have no idea what most of them even do.
I realize the things I was doing wrong was:
-- Rushing to 500 iLvl gear and using Auto Equip and then tried to farm monsters
This worked but only with a gun and was insanely slow and boring. I eventually just picked a mission with big rewards and a boss and sticked with it, using Gambler. Merilith was my choice. Once I got a good trinket reward from her, I'd do the sub mission vs only her, using all the skills I learned from before.
So basically so far I'm having fun again, but I feel like I HAVE TO USE Mighty Strikes all the time and I feel stuck with 1H sword, since it's too much fun. I also think Runic Protection is too good because 1000 MP is literally 5x times that in HP, because hits that normally would kill me only take like 2 bars of MP. So strange.
In any case as I'm writing this I've yet but to skim your guide. If you know a good website with detailed explanations on ALL ARMOR buffs and effects, do tell. I feel like stuff you mentioned: Stamine making soul shields better etc. just isn't known to must.
Hiya Cel.
Am glad to hear the fun is starting to return.
On the stat description side of things (but not their weight), please see:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ixa7GC6CMrgN6P2jfgXGaZtFtOOp88SZ0CqFOMB2Ncw/edit#gid=130028762
(Wiki kicked my butt on the time:results side, so it's a sheet instead until someone transposes the info to a wiki.)
And then the other sheets such as the View 2 Jobs, the Affinities, or Commands may shed a little bit of light on the values or what they do. Many things are still not known or exact formulae.
As soon as fun returned, it also exited as soon as I couldn't defeat certain bosses like Tiamat. Keeps healing and eventually I can't get enough MP or deal enough Break damage to kill it.
It's just because I have no clue what to build most of the time or I don't have the gear to build it.
If I get a piece of gear I want to use, I lack Crests to put the affinities I need to survive. I also think Near Death is a necessity at this stage of the game and that kind of saddens me, unless you do the Knight route with Lightbringer and I have no idea how that mess works.
Eh I'll keep playing and at the least complete the main story. I believe I have enough wisdom of the mechanics to do that, however the insane side missions and Rift 100 might take a bit longer.
I do enjoy the rift mechanic. I just wish gear wasn't so RNG with the states being all over the place. Also after a while you get a bit bored of running the same dungeons over and over, even if you're doing well, since you repeat the same moveset over and over and over again and there's very little wiggle room.
This is honestly why I miss old school turn based JRPG's.
There you can take down a boss in a multitude of ways during the fight, combine effects and so on. Final Fantasy Tactics is a great example.
Thanks for the help though. Just ranting at this point. The big frustration is that when you aren't an unkillable god yet the movesets of the bosses can be insanely frustrating. Gilgamesh was done perfectly since he has clear tells. Some of the earlier bosses, not so much and you have to do a lot of "die'll and error" till you learn their dumb movesets.
I'm going to give you my EZ MODO guide to Stranger of Paradise.
At the end of the game you unlock Cyclic Warrior.
This class gives you Chaosbringer . This ability has been nerfed, and people will tell you its not worth building around. But when you're still progressing and earning gear, its actually extremely good especially with this class.
This ability will make it so while its active you have no MP costs while using abilities. This lets you activate Lancet and Mighty Strikes for free, which you should be running so that you can recover MP when its effect ends, since part of the nerfs is you can't earn max MP in this mode outside of Soul Bursts.
However, you will also unlock from Trials of Bahamut the Ultima and Enhanced Classes, and one of them is Primal Warrior, that will make this job's Job Action put you in Lightbringer automatically.
Why does this matter?
The game gives you the WoL set if you got the deluxe edition, which gives you easy access to the 400% Knight affinity bonus Invincible. Invincible makes you not take damage while you're in Lightbringer, and also works for the other mode I described. Instead, if you take damage, you'll take a hit to the ammount of time you can spend in the mode like Nioh's Living Weapon.
Now, the thing is, this Job's job action is incredibly strong. You can use it to cast Earthquake which not only does good damage, does insane ammounts of break gauge damage. Meaning, you can spam it while Chaosbringer is up, since you're at 0 Max MP anyway, and you have no mana costs, which lets you just push it back to back to back.
Where it gets tricky is when this mode ends. However, you can queue up a cast of the Job Action when its about to run out, and select the attack you're going to do after the duration runs out, to go from this mode to Lightbringer, putting you back in a position where you're immune to damage and have a lot more forgiving Soul Shield, which you'll use while you're in Lightbringer, along with Lancet and Mighty Strikes, to build back your MP.
You can use this to keep cycling between Lightbringer and Chaosbringer Nonstop to breeze through content until you have the gear to actually make the builds you want.
Using this tactic, since I hadn't found any good gear with knight affinity (which I want for when I'm doing things outside of the Rift) I beat DLC3 with 2 armor pieces that were level 300 (because I upgraded them with anima crystals). DLC3 is Lufenia difficulty, which to me meant if I got hit outside of Lightbringer I would die in 1 hit.
I don't recommend doing what I did and pushing this strat all the way to endgame, but it should help you at least get started with the midgame.
Edit: To explain further. Mighty strikes lets you pierce a level of resistance with your auto attacks. Meaning if something is neutral to you just hitting it in melee, it becomes Weak. If its resistant, it becomes Normal. Lancet makes you get HP and MP back anytime you target a weakness. Lancet + Mighty Strikes = Max MP Limit generation from auto attacks.
I'm now 100 hours in and beat the final Jack Garland mission on Lufenia difficulty. All that is left is a few extra missiions, reaching 100th floor and so on. I'm probably going to platinum the game, but I'm getting stomped using certain skills.
At the end game you can't really do other builds I feel, without spending another 30 hours farming for it first. Gear is hard to come by and even with 4000 pieces in storage I sometimes just can't find what I need to fuse with.
Some skills feel mandatory to have like Near Death effects. How can you not get like 30% damage reduction on every piece of gear? Nothing is as good. Nothing. Affinity becomes easier to get at the end too and I feel like bosses are designed around this mechanic.
I'm running with 8000 health and using Runic Protection, which seems to scale with your health too. I can't be killed, but when I tried Sentinel with the same health pool, I would get broken in an instant. In fact, I still get broken while under Runic Protection.
I've hit an un-fun wall now. Bosses at Lufenia difficulty and +60 Mission Floor and Dragon Trials on at half way, I can't beat them. The only way I can is to SPAM one attack over and over again and that just isn't fun for me.
I built a Red Mage and I can't even cast a single spell. Bosses hit so hard and so fast that you lose all your buffs before you get a single spell off, which won't even do that much even with 300 INT and a bunch of % damage skills in gear. Doesn't help that Chain Spell %Damage is a RARE enchant to get and I'm getting tired of trying to farm for things that never drop.
It sucks that you can't upgrade an enchant from level III to X. You just have to "wait, grind and get lucky". Most of my time I'm spending on the Smith screen now, seeing if I've gotten anything useful.
Don't get me wrong. Game was a blast. Glad I played it. But I'm looking forward to FF16 now for some FF action style gameplay. This game got me into this whole thing despite being a boomer fan of turn based final fantasy games.
Cheers for reading the thread.