Experience with different builds?

[Halix]

Any tips / hint / your experiences? on what to expect in order to know what kind of weapons or builds (STR, MAG, Life?) to to use? Or what you did and why? More useful? Easier? More challenging? AOE attacks? Nice animations? Ending battles quickly? Becoming near immortal? Ignoring element resistances? etc.

The game is very easy overal imo (maybe its my current skillset, but doubt it). Still I like to make good use of weapons and it would be a waste if I turn staff A into a MAG staff while maybe the next staff might already be better with MAG without evolving or maybe I want to turn it into a Strength staff to have diversity. Degrading does not give back the ingredients. Not sure what to expect of upcoming battles in and after the Lions Plane. Is magic even required later on? So far everyone gets obliterated with my physical attacks and the battle system seems to favor it.

[Raizel]

End game boss will require you to actually have decent hp and defence to even tank their attack, even with 350+ defence + strongest armor in game+ lightning bell i constantly taking 900 to 1k damage per hit, with my 1.3k Hp and force me to actually defence instead of using critical attacks when the crit bonus appear.

At that time magic staff/ life staff imo is very important as magic staff provide magic shield which can tank the hits more on the expense of your mana
and life staff will grant you heals and overheals which give you excess hp that will get depleted first if you are attacked, granted the amount of hp you get is based on your magic.

If you not grinding stat potion or using money at all like me than you need to use your brain and cant just go unga bunga, some bosses will ♥♥♥♥ you hard.
dont worry tho story related battle is easy for newcomers.

But just like all the witchspring series except w4 because monster scales to your power,
every enemy can easily killed if you grind the stat boost mats or potion non stop.

also the end game weapon from said boss is a sword lol, but with high as hell damage and magic damage, which none of any sword of staff in this game can compare.
but with huge drawbacks of course.

[Korelis]

Strength builds and physical attacks are many times better than magic. Physical has higher damage, more utility, better AoE, no MP cost to worry about, faster animations, just better in every way. For the second half of the game (or as soon as I discovered the benefits of swords, really), the main purpose of magic for me was just to boost the next turn's physical attacks, or towards the end of the game ice magic is also great for delaying bosses (though there were only like two bosses in the game strong enough for that to matter, most bosses went down before they even got a turn). Swords were so overwhelmingly powerful that it was hard to justify ever using a staff again.

I feel like a pure magic build would be more fun, just for the extra challenge. Though the game will be easy regardless.

[jahill007]

Yeah I focused str+agi and I have no regrets. But, you can swap equipment by going to tools and it doesn't cost a turn. So even though you train str, you can swap to a staff once in a while (heals or to apply burn).

[mechaboy]

Just got to the Elysion temple and mostly have been spamming the kick training for hp/str/spd. One thing I've noticed is that it pays to focus on one thing because the more times you score perfectly on the minigame, you unlock higher tiers that grant better rewards.

Also if you're feeling weak, do Ralph's requests and buy his stuff. Also worth re-doing some boss fights as they give upgrade materials.

[Mechanicalfanboy]

There's a mid/late game enemy that you can refight every 20 battles or so that gives 100hp. It reasonably makes any build work imo, even a glass cannon stops being a glass cannon after like 4-5 rounds of farming that enemy.

I did full magic(approx +600 total magic) and even if you're using blessings only on crit turns and such, you're still generally stomping the "immeasurable" stat enemies for around half their health after blowing through most blessings. Still managed to finish the game and hunt everything easily enough with the game's mechanics so it's workable even with like 0 survivability stats(around 1.1k hp and 120 def/agi base). Though if you do this, expect to rely on pets and attack items a fair bit.

Edit: one of your pets can pass full turns onto your character and is probably the most overpowered pet possible because these are full turns and proc everything that comes with that turn, Black Joe cooldown, Turns needed to get a crit turn, Blessings required, recovery if you were defending before. Everything. It gives the player a lot more leeway when it comes to combat as you can use that turn for anything, The only downside is that if you don't use the turn pass, then you have to wait till it recharges again. It's an incredibly fast pet though and will probably get double turns no matter what you do for a build.

[Rai]

I'm using a pure magic build, I just got to elysion temple (currently 1200 mag and evol 4 starter staff) but I've already beaten blast and farmed the zircon dragons which at this point I don't think I'm supposed to be able to.

I'll try out sword and see how it compares to magic.

[Yuuki]

My build is heavily rely on high Mag, Lucca and taking boss down as fast as possible. Lucca will pass you a second turn before any of the side boss can act which allow you to turn on Aimhard blessing immediately, giving you 4 free hit on the boss.
Well i might have over grind a bit because i wanted to do all the side stuff before move on with story. I managed to kill Blast and Ancient Lightning Dragon before doing Elysion temple

[Rai]

~Currently trying a new game focusing on STR

[ButtStorm]

You will be a mix of both anyways.
STR and swords are great at first, but if you do grind a little or play on harder difficulty - MAG and staffs are seemingly way more versatile and mana-preserving, besides being more fun :)

[ButtStorm]

Originally posted by Korelis:

Strength builds and physical attacks are many times better than magic. Physical has higher damage, more utility, better AoE, no MP cost to worry about, faster animations, just better in every way. For the second half of the game (or as soon as I discovered the benefits of swords, really), the main purpose of magic for me was just to boost the next turn's physical attacks, or towards the end of the game ice magic is also great for delaying bosses (though there were only like two bosses in the game strong enough for that to matter, most bosses went down before they even got a turn). Swords were so overwhelmingly powerful that it was hard to justify ever using a staff again.

I feel like a pure magic build would be more fun, just for the extra challenge. Though the game will be easy regardless.

yea.. you should try..
magic is far superior in every way.
higher damage, more utility, better AoE, no MP cost to worry about (mana returned), faster animations
maybe you dropped 0 point in mag, haven't crafted the spells and upgraded the staffs?

[ButtStorm]

Originally posted by mechaboy:

Just got to the Elysion temple and mostly have been spamming the kick training for hp/str/spd. One thing I've noticed is that it pays to focus on one thing because the more times you score perfectly on the minigame, you unlock higher tiers that grant better rewards.

Also if you're feeling weak, do Ralph's requests and buy his stuff. Also worth re-doing some boss fights as they give upgrade materials.

yes, kick training for agi and mag training together is most efficient way to become an unstoppable uber demon :D

[Korelis]

Originally posted by ButtStorm:

yea.. you should try..
magic is far superior in every way.
higher damage, more utility, better AoE, no MP cost to worry about (mana returned), faster animations
maybe you dropped 0 point in mag, haven't crafted the spells and upgraded the staffs?

That post is from September, before the recent updates, when normal was the highest difficulty. With the new rebalancing and higher difficulties, things might be very different now.

[FaillenOtaku]

I just went into a Life fruit/health build and after my hp was to a nice enough level to tank at least enough hits to use life steal I started putting the rest in Mana and Mag usually using the crafting training since it provided a balance for magic build. Had no issue with most bosses and then to be safe I maxed the white branch staff on magic and just used earth orb during the first half of the last boss and used life fruit for the remaining half.

Quite different than my Witch Spring 3 build which for my light run was mostly sword based.