Cant figure out what to do with Estelle.

[(1)]

Joshua is focused on magic and damage along with healing
i really like his skills too. While with her Im at that tower to rescue Prof Russell and i dont know she feels kinda useless, maybe an earth guard here or extra healing, i am not even sure what to upgrade for her so shes behind on them. I read to put petrify for hurricane and that rarely works.

Should i just switch him to full melee and focus magic on her with defense?

Heres hers
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=550209827

And Joshuas.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=550211070

[Letari]

Joshua should definitely stick to casting since that's what he's good at, unless you're needing to conserve mp, Estelle might aswell be a caster also. This is mainly because melee is considerably weaker than arts in the first game (it just cannot scale and many fights put melee at a disadvantage). You should keep in mind that the crafts can be useful, the turn delay,all target s-break and evil eye Joshua has is almost always helpful. Estelle has taunt (you can make her a tank of sorts) and art interrupt which are handy in several fights... her s-break is useful for pom killing and getting bonus sepith when the bonus pops up.

[(1)]

I use crafts a lot with joshua they just seem to be more useful for him, double strike when he has a critical, he has that turn delay (you mentioned that, does estelle get one?) and do you naturally gain them multi s break and "evil eye" as you level? because i havent encountered either yet. Currently level 21.

So if i was to make her a tank, evade, defense, hp and healing spells, sound about right?

[Noway]

It's funny how we all use the characters differently, i use all characters as casters, and sometime use crafts (faint !) and rarely attacks.

[Xengre]

Have everyone be a caster primarily, at least until way later in the game. As you progress Estelle may be the only person in your entire group to shift to attacker but should still have solid AoE spells. Estelle has the highest dmg from her limit attack (w/e its called not played in some time) which makes her great in story boss fights. Her skills tend to suck in large part (not entirely worthless but defnitely very bad early on, get better as you get stronger and miss less, etc.). Joshua has great skills from the start, on the other hand, once you get his line-aoe skill which shouldn't take too long (maybe chapter 1/2) and some of his later abilities. Everyone else is AoE magic/support (earth shield invuln/healing/etc.). There is one fight in particular, that is a story event you aren't really intended to win but can if you are prepared and know what you are doing, where Estelle HAS to do powerful melee dmg else you likely can't beat the boss but this is near the very end of the game.

Oh, I forgot... the girl with the rockets is great for ranged attacks... she doesn't have to be a caster but you have her so briefly its kinda... eh.

[myhr2]

I usually like to build Estelle paladin-style : physical attacker with high defense and heaking spells, so focus on Earth+Water quartz. She doesn't benefit from Fire quartz as much as other physical characters, she already has good resilience and a very powerfull S-Craft, but she also has a reasonable amount of EP while not having a very good ATS, so...yeah, paladin-style, attacks physically and drops some healing/guard when needed.

[(1)]

Thanks for all the help guys, ive given her all the good multi healing spells, with defense and area attacks like diamond dust and all the earth spells (earth wall seems like it could be real useful) and impede 3. She is definitely more useful than i first thought, was my fault for not understanding how the lines work. Just wish i could fit cast on her, i like eagle eye too much.

[Letari]

Unfortunately, she doesn't learn a turn delay craft (art interrupt is still useful though) as that type of skill is pretty overpowered and it'd be bad if lots of characters had it. Luckily though, Agate gets a buff and one of his skills becomes a turn delay one in SC. Schera also gets an overpowered buff to the skill that gives allies the speed increase buff...being changed to giving all allies in the range of the craft a priority spot on the turn order.

[Crescens]

The thing with Estelle in general is she is an all around type. She isn't particularly terrible at anything, but she is also not particularly great and anything.
If you look at her orbament, you can use any quartz in any slot, but every other character has at least one slot restricted to one kind of quartz. (Agate = 2 fire, Schera = 2 wind, Kloe = 3 water. Zane = 2 earth, Olivier = 1 mirage, Tita = 2 space, Joshua = 2 time.) If you then also compare her stats with anyone else in your party, she is average.
So you can normally use her to fill almost any role in the party and she won't be too bad at it, she just won't be as good as those who are better in that area.

[Berahlen]

Estelle just unusual in a JRPG in that for once, the jack of all trades isn't the standout best in most of them, so it's not obvious what to do with her. But the story gives you such a wide variety of party builds that you actually need her to easily switch out her role at a moment's notice -- for individual battles if necessary.

At first, she's best off playing support and casting. Morale turns Joshua and Schera into killing machines, and if you load her up with defense, Taunt can save his life. She gets lots of cheap orbment slots with no element restrictions, which makes it easy for her to load up on a diverse casting set or score an early Aerial spell. Hurricane can pick off several monsters near death if AOE didn't quite kill them.

Your new party members up till Agate are all dedicated casters, but Estelle doesn't have much useful offense yet, so she tends to shift more into dedicated support and tanking for the midgame. It's fairly easy by that point to pick up defensive spells to aid her, so she can Taunt freely.

Late game, Estelle has the strongest single-target S-Craft, so you might find it useful to give her CP-boosting equipment to use it often. She also picks up a couple utility crafts that let her pick off an enemy at range or break their casting. Mostly though, I kept using her as a buffbot if I didn't have anyone better.

[UHDNRT]

Depending on how you arrange her orbment, she's the only one other than Kloe that can get all of the healing spells. This makes her insanely useful in the last couple of chapters as a healbot. I've found that rthe best combos with her is to load her up with the ep cost orb, water, and wind. She has an insane mount of utility casting, some good aoe and line abilities, and is crazy hard to kill.