Do arts get better?

[Comic Sans Frontieres]

Sofar it seems like any art even with elemental weakness is less powerful than a basic attack + being near someone.

[Philosopher]

Are you using all those caster quartz usually found in the higher elements of Space, Time and Mirage such as Cast, EP Cut and Mind (honorable mention to EP quartz in the Earth element)? Those can influence your casting output. Also make sure to equip your casters accordingly, Weapon Sub-modules can give them more EP, or more raw power. Accessories can cover some of their shortcomings as well. Pay attention to Shard Skills on the Arts and Extra lines. Boosts of a certain element will obviously make those elements hit harder early on. Extra line Skills can also help by giving you an ATS start boost and later on can replenish your EP after a fight. You also get rarer quartz that support your casters later on. You'll get access to quartz that can give a small ATS boost and cut the delay you get after casting spells of a certain element. Casters are late bloomers, don't sleep on them.

[小龙马]

If it were to like Daybreak 1, then yeah, it will gets better. As of now, i still in the early level of 20-ish, i myself also felt that it is very weak, prefer to attack + co-op attack.

[DemiLuna]

Casters have definitely fallen from grace compared to cold steel 3, 4 and reverie in daybreak, at the endgame though they perform well enough. Though admittedly a positive flipside of this is that regular attackers are much better than they were in those titles, where the best way to build them was to simply have counter tanks and range was way to important for that. All in all i do prefer this balance for combat, even though casters aren't very good early on.

Having Musse do 150k crits on opening spells was very amusing though, hell, pretty sure by the end of reverie it was closer to 300k.

[Seagal]

I'm sure they'll get "better" like in Daybreak 1, and I vaguely remember by Agnes doing decent enough late, but they weren't very good for most of that game and I doubt it's any different here. The number of times I ever cast arts outside of getting a free cast was extremely low for the majority of that game.

It's like they want you to use arts here more in Daybreak 2, but it's not in a fun way. You'll be doing far more "Quick Arts" casting in field battles than anything else, especially since they tied high count tiered achievements to that dumb system.

There's Dual Arts here now, so maybe they are big later on, but they sure aren't anything special like Lost Arts. I mean, the combat system in Daybreak 1-2 is just a huge downgrade compared to CS3, 4, Rev. Daybreak 2 is for sure better than Daybreak 1 with its additions, so I'm enjoying it more because of that, but that is not saying much.

The characters just feel weak, even though I know it's a different game, arc and different numbers... It's still like a psychological thing when you got Elaine with her SS Power S-Craft when characters like Laura in Reverie had SS Power normal Craft and 5S S-Craft.

[benj]

I find them pretty underwhelming too. Daybreak 1 was the first Trails I played where arts weren't a major source of damage for me, spamming SCLM attacks/crafts was just plain better in every situation. Not impressed with the damage in this one either, but I'm not far enough to have much of a build going yet so we'll see.
At the very least, the quick arts are pretty useful... it's just a real EP hog using them over and over in field battles.

[Rage]

You can build a character in daybreak 2 that has arts cost zero EP permanently. That plus some other boosts make it so you can do some utterly silly damage without worrying about resources.

[Raffi]

In my Opinion Arts were overpowered in every Game since Cold Steel - if you adjust the character right.

I remember Musse back in 3 and 4 hitting like a damn truck. 150k+ Crit per Mob with a single Arts.

Here in daybreak 2 it gets even more ridiculious thanks to the 2-Element-Arts.

One Sidequest (cant remember which one) gives you a Water/Mirage, S+, all cancel arts, hitting the whole battlefield.

With the shard skill that gives you EP based on the damage you dealt you have practically infinite EP.

At the End all it takes in a shard battle was one art and it was finished.

[thomaskuznicki]

Arts were OP in Sky and Crossbell too. In boss battles vs. Arios and Randy's uncle they were the only way to do damage. It feels like they've finally been nerfed in Daybreak; possibly enemy ARES was increased.

[zefyris]

Arts without synergy (so early on) are not really worth it unless you're out of CP ImO, that or if they bring an interesting debuff to the table (special mention to the insta KO Time art that can insta kill big and dangerous trash mob regularly). Even monsters with 200 weakness often seem to tank the damage pretty well. It's worth mentioning that on the field, without entering turn based mode, even earl yspell seem pretty effective so that can be an alternate way to use your casters until you get some synergy running.

It feels like they made sure that you HAVE to go for a caster build in order for your damage art to be useful. That kind of makes sense since they've really opened the possibility of gearing up casters with non caster equipment. But in reverse, it makes Arts feel super weak early on where synergy are very low yet no matter what.

LOTS of boosts/buffs you can gain for art/casters are in % after all.

[Philosopher]

Originally posted by Raffi:

One Sidequest (cant remember which one) gives you a Water/Mirage, S+, all cancel arts, hitting the whole battlefield.

I got the Arts Driver for that one yesterday, it's in Chapter 3. Shortly after, you get a plugin that has it by default. From a lvl 3 Orbal lock chest if memory serves.

[Philosopher]

Originally posted by zefyris:

Arts without synergy (so early on) are not really worth it unless you're out of CP ImO, that or if they bring an interesting debuff to the table (special mention to the insta KO Time art that can insta kill big and dangerous trash mob regularly).

Not sure if the NISA TL covers that, but in the CLE fan TL, deathblow has a higher success % rate the lower the HP of the target is.

[Val]

In the start Arts arent very powerful, yeah. About chapter 3 they get strong af, if you build the character right. (which i probably dont). Agnes as "water-mage" just bombs every boss away, with infinite spam of the "whale", which also steels all buffs from enemy and hits the whole arena.

[Philosopher]

Originally posted by Val:

In the start Arts arent very powerful, yeah. About chapter 3 they get strong af, if you build the character right. (which i probably dont). Agnes as "water-mage" just bombs every boss away, with infinite spam of the "whale", which also steels all buffs from enemy and hits the whole arena.

Think I gave the whale to Renne and Rion, but Agnès is also a pretty good candidate. ^^

[methoxetamine]

My Agnes turned back into a proper arts beast around Fragments/Intermission. Yeah they SUCKED before then though

[zefyris]

Originally posted by Philosopher:

Originally posted by zefyris:

Arts without synergy (so early on) are not really worth it unless you're out of CP ImO, that or if they bring an interesting debuff to the table (special mention to the insta KO Time art that can insta kill big and dangerous trash mob regularly).

Not sure if the NISA TL covers that, but in the CLE fan TL, deathblow has a higher success % rate the lower the HP of the target is.

I play in Japanese so don't know about translation, but yes, that's why I mentionned big and dangerous trash mob. There's little point in casting Time arts on smaller things that you can 2 or 3 shots regardless, unless they have very high vuln to it, that is.