Orbment recommendation for Joshua

[andrysoe]

Hey guys, I am so confused about Joshua.
Is he more like a magic user since he has a much higher cp than kevin (buffer)?
Is he more like a black or red mage in a sense that he relies more on magics rather than physical damage?
Any recommendations for Joshua's orbs tho?

Thanks in advance!

[Berahlen]

He's good at all the same things he was in the last two games. Kevin has a more caster-heavy line layout that gives him more EP. Kevin's magic offense mainly suffers because he's so geared toward support that you naturally load him out to specialize in it, but this game pretty much throws Crimson Eyes at you so it's not hard to just make someone a nuker.

Physical damage pretty quickly overtakes magic in general in this game because there's no ATS buff and most enemies you'll ever care about aren't vulnerable to ADF Down. Magic is for blasting down groups, and unless a character's base stats are heavily skewed away from ATK they probably aren't casting much against nontrivial targets.

[Dr. Rudolf von Richten]

Joshua can be given Action and Cast in his Time slots, Attack and EP Cut in his short line, and EP, Mind and Impede in his long line. This will allow him to attack and cast at the highest power he can get, and (when loaded with max-level Quartz) enable all the important spells for him except for Earth Guard/Wall.

[Oguzhan]

Kevin and Joshua, all things considered, can be anything you want them to be in this game. Kevin's crafts are really great (especially the gorgon arrow) and he has a great orbment.
Joshua has flicker, evil eye and dual strike which are all amazing crafts. If I remember correctly, dual strike can poison enemies in this game.

Honestly, it is all up to preference with Joshua. You can make him a red mage who is above average at anything, you can make him a pure mage, or you can make him a pure physical attacker. Personally, I prefer the physical attacker.

[andrysoe]

Thank you guys for the recommendations!!!

[Legendary Mr. Tiddles]

This was years ago for me, but I always geared Joshua toward a slash-and-cast function (what you may call a red mage). He was one of only two that you would reliably have in your party in the first game so I made sure I had at least a basic but rounded set of arts available. Estelle was the same but with different arts. This remained standard, more or less, throughout the Sky arc, because it made sense to me.

[Songbird]

From a Nightmare perspective: make him a mage. Make everyone a mage unless they have 3+ orbment lines or are Mr. 5 Delay Crafts, really. He has delay crafts he can use when enemies are vulnerable, but on Nightmare, physical Joshua is pretty bad in boss fights because you can't afford the delay of offensive S breaks (unless they're going to actually kill), and Dual Strike gets him focused to death (since your main survivability tools in a ton of fights are keeping enemies away from you with Dark Matter EX or relying on attacks being spread between characters.) The more characters you have that can set up your important arts at the start of fights--Earth Wall, Dark Matter EX/Petrosphere, Clock Down/Clock Up EX, possibly a defense buff or Enfeeble if it makes the difference against one-shots--the better. Plus, mages tend to just hit harder than physical on Nightmare outside of the extremely physically min-maxed characters, from what I've seen for the entire game.

But yeah, sending Joshua to go Dual Strike people is a bad idea when the question about enemy offense is often whether they kill him in one hit or two, and S craft spam isn't really viable without CP regen gear that Kevin NEEDS to have late-game. Mage Joshua can still delay people exactly the same when they aren't immune, and physical Joshua still hits for very unimpressive numbers with his delay crafts, so not a ton of difference there. There are situations where Dual Strike is good--getting an enemy to focus one character reliably by being in their face can be useful--but they're generally situations where you have already reached a state where you really can't lose the fight anymore.

On Normal, you can go either way. He's pretty strong in multi-enemy fights if you're able to take CP passive regen gear off of Kevin and put it on him so he can spam his S craft, and his Dual Strike DPS is much better when enemies aren't so stacked on defense.

[andrysoe]

Originally posted by Songbird:

From a Nightmare perspective: make him a mage. Make everyone a mage unless they have 3+ orbment lines or are Mr. 5 Delay Crafts, really. He has delay crafts he can use when enemies are vulnerable, but on Nightmare, physical Joshua is pretty bad in boss fights because you can't afford the delay of offensive S breaks (unless they're going to actually kill), and Dual Strike gets him focused to death (since your main survivability tools in a ton of fights are keeping enemies away from you with Dark Matter EX or relying on attacks being spread between characters.) The more characters you have that can set up your important arts at the start of fights--Earth Wall, Dark Matter EX/Petrosphere, Clock Down/Clock Up EX, possibly a defense buff or Enfeeble if it makes the difference against one-shots--the better. Plus, mages tend to just hit harder than physical on Nightmare outside of the extremely physically min-maxed characters, from what I've seen for the entire game.

But yeah, sending Joshua to go Dual Strike people is a bad idea when the question about enemy offense is often whether they kill him in one hit or two, and S craft spam isn't really viable without CP regen gear that Kevin NEEDS to have late-game. Mage Joshua can still delay people exactly the same when they aren't immune, and physical Joshua still hits for very unimpressive numbers with his delay crafts, so not a ton of difference there. There are situations where Dual Strike is good--getting an enemy to focus one character reliably by being in their face can be useful--but they're generally situations where you have already reached a state where you really can't lose the fight anymore.

On Normal, you can go either way. He's pretty strong in multi-enemy fights if you're able to take CP passive regen gear off of Kevin and put it on him so he can spam his S craft, and his Dual Strike DPS is much better when enemies aren't so stacked on defense.

Right so correct me if I'm wrong, but mages do take one turn to set up spell, and is then able to execute it the next turn. What orbs can I give to improve that? His especially high CP confuses me with most people when they say they give Joshua physical attacker properties.

[Stabbey]

Originally posted by andrysoe:

Right so correct me if I'm wrong, but mages do take one turn to set up spell, and is then able to execute it the next turn. What orbs can I give to improve that? His especially high CP confuses me with most people when they say they give Joshua physical attacker properties.

Cast is the kind of quartz which lowers casting time. Action is a general speed-up. Clock Up (EX) is a buff which speeds characters up so their next turn comes sooner.

[andrysoe]

Originally posted by Stabbey:

Originally posted by andrysoe:

Right so correct me if I'm wrong, but mages do take one turn to set up spell, and is then able to execute it the next turn. What orbs can I give to improve that? His especially high CP confuses me with most people when they say they give Joshua physical attacker properties.

Cast is the kind of quartz which lowers casting time. Action is a general speed-up. Clock Up (EX) is a buff which speeds characters up so their next turn comes sooner.

Thank youuuu

[Berahlen]

Originally posted by Songbird:

From a Nightmare perspective: make him a mage. Make everyone a mage unless they have 3+ orbment lines or are Mr. 5 Delay Crafts, really.

Eh. Magic is useful against trash (and trash is nontrivial enough to genuinely care), but phys still overtakes magic pretty hard in boss fights -- not as hard as it did in SC, but still pretty hard.

ATK is buffable and ATS isn't. Orbal Down can debuff ADF, but most things you care about are immune. By endgame you're swinging around roughly the same upper bound of ATK and ATS values from accessories/quartz, but ATK gets another +25% from a stat spell. Remember, damage formula is linear. Every point of ATK turns into 3 flat increase no matter how it happened.

And Chain Crafts are stupid strong because you're effectively taking your turn and donating it to someone else at the same time, and getting a raw damage multiplier for later position in the chain with very little downside. If you have Josh take his turn, chain someone into him, chain someone else into both, and if defenses are healthy chain the 4th person into the whole party, Josh starts quadruple-dipping that higher stat with increasing raw multipliers and will do several times what an S-break would have with the same 100-ish CP.

Mind you, this is the hybrid damage guy. More dedicated phys characters like Agate, Zin, or Anelace (a little less so for a certain other broken phys because his brokenness is just being obscenely fast) see the same thing but are just more ridiculous, and then you gear Joshua for phys anyway because he chains his faster turns into them so they effectively ignore their actual turn speed.