Bond Skills

[x_equals_speed]

These don't seem particularly well balanced with each other, I find myself taking Pincer Movement, Cover, and Observation on almost every pairing.

The free shots are fantastic, usually it's a 3 point mastery to get a responsive attack and those don't have the advantage of having no AT cost and using advanced attacks.

Observation's +10% to hit +10% dodge is a smaller bonus, but the conditions for getting it are line of sight which is very easy to keep in play for almost all of the mission.

Finding a Way Out requires that one bond member be taking a turn while the other has an enemy adjacent to them. The bonus is pretty swish but you won't get to use it most turns.

Role Delegation is extremely niche. You have to end your turn adjacent to an ally while having an AP left or using standby, it's a pretty marginal gain. In theory some builds could do AT management shenanigans to get this without it costing a turn, but you don't get to have a different bond effect for each build so that's not very helpful.

Street Anchor is basically useless. Mental debuffs and confusion are not very common, but if they do occur the chances are that the most dangerous thing about them is that your character has been driven out of position - having to end next to them in order to use it means you now have two characters in the open instead of one.

Reliable Colleague is a neat idea, the mental buff pool is good and contains hero, trance, and immortality - but the requirement of starting a turn in an adjacent tile is tricky to manage. Of all the ones that are hard to trigger this is the only one I ever pick, since the rewards justify how inconvenient it is to position for it.

The Wrathful Vengeance seems terrible. You'll only get to do it once per mission (maybe a little more if you're using some revive masteries) so this bonus is going to be so rare you want to to be fantastic - but instead it's mostly a liability what with rampage being such a double edged sword that most builds aren't set up to manage.

I'd love to see picking the right bond skill to be a tougher choice, at the moment it feels like there are easy right answers that you'll always pick.

[x_equals_speed]

This is how I'd try to make them more in balance with each other if it were me:

Pincer Movement: Add the requirement that both characters must be closer to the enemy than they are to each other (essentially requiring the player to actually execute a pincer movement)

Cover: Give the shot a (20%?) accuracy penalty if the ally has more hp remaining than the shooter

Observation: Leave as is, the goal is to make all of the bonuses about as good as this

Finding a Way Out: Makes the AT reduction smaller (10?) and apply it when your bonded ally takes an enemy out of action while you have more enemies than friends in your LOS.

Role Delegation: Change "adjacent" to "within 4 spaces"

Street Anchor: Change "adjacent" to "within 4 spaces" and grant a random buff whenever it removes a mental debuff

Reliable Colleague: Change "start your turn" to "start or end your turn" so if you do spend an action to put two characters next to each other they both get a buff rather than just one.

The Wrathful Vengeance: Needs a total rewrite. e.g. When the bond ally is taken out of action and does not revive, gain luck and reactive attack their killer. If you kill them (With this attack or any other) gain hero for ten turns.

[Cornuthaum]

The first step would be to have all of the skills that require you to be adjacent right now to be either a 4 or 6-tile range. Given how hard the difficulty of post season 1 content spikes, you can't really justify having people stand next to each other if it means one of them isn't in cover.

[x_equals_speed]

That's my recommendation for most of em ;)

The only exception I'd make is for Reliable Colleague because getting a random mental buff is such a strong effect (Well on average it's good, some results are exceptional and sometimes you get a single stack of chance to win)

[Cornuthaum]

Originally posted by x_equals_speed:

That's my recommendation for most of em ;)

The only exception I'd make is for Reliable Colleague because getting a random mental buff is such a strong effect (Well on average it's good, some results are exceptional and sometimes you get a single stack of chance to win)

Most mental debuffs aren't that amazing though? Especially since you can't really plan around getting any one of them; and you can't get the really good stuff you get from Any Random Buff effects, like Reaper or Immortality

certainly not worth stacking up adjacent to each other outside the rare opportunities where you have 2-wide full cover with decent loS

[x_equals_speed]

Originally posted by Cornuthaum:

Originally posted by x_equals_speed:

That's my recommendation for most of em ;)

The only exception I'd make is for Reliable Colleague because getting a random mental buff is such a strong effect (Well on average it's good, some results are exceptional and sometimes you get a single stack of chance to win)

Most mental debuffs aren't that amazing though? Especially since you can't really plan around getting any one of them; and you can't get the really good stuff you get from Any Random Buff effects, like Reaper or Immortality

certainly not worth stacking up adjacent to each other outside the rare opportunities where you have 2-wide full cover with decent loS

Immortality is a mental buff :) You're (substantially) more likely to get it from a random mental buff than a random buff.

So is Trance which besides offering a fairly chunky bonus also has the advantage of having a duration of "Until the end of your overdrive" (usually you can't get it while not in overdrive so it lasts much longer than its supposed to)

I've been running 1S1K Alisha with that "gain a random mental buff whenever you put an enemy out of action", they're surprisingly good.

I like the buff duration extending witch so I always consider this for Bianca's bonds. I suppose Bianca and Anne could both do buff witch and stand next to each other to get their infinite immortality going.

But you're right - it is inconvenient, double cover is never where you want it, and it means moving the pair at the speed of the slower member. I think it needs a small buff to be on a par with the 3 I use on almost every pair, but I was trying to keep it small because it's definitely in 4th place.

[x_equals_speed]

Having looked at it in game I'm wrong, I confused "mental buffs" with "excitement buffs" immortality is not among them.

In which case aye, my suggestion for improving it is too weak, giving it a 4 space range would be best.

[KooLr(Is hit ) ~tfw no kiss~]

Originally posted by x_equals_speed:

*snip*
Street Anchor: Change "adjacent" to "within 4 spaces" and grant a random buff whenever it removes a mental debuff

The Wrathful Vengeance: Needs a total rewrite. e.g. When the bond ally is taken out of action and does not revive, gain luck and reactive attack their killer. If you kill them (With this attack or any other) gain hero for ten turns.

Street Anchor:
I actually like to use Anne to heal my rampage Alisa/Albus and shes usually within 4ish tiles. So how about it actually works like tough spirit, but for that character exclusively it could probably open up a few slots in peoples builds. All while still make using mutant viable if it can still cleanse if they're on adjacent squares.

Wrathful vengeance:
It'd be a waste to not activate on revive skills at all, maybe a random buff that refreshes if the target that put them caused them to revive goes out of action. If they don't revive it could maybe give hero and a random buff (that doesn't have stacks so no chance to win or anything). Alternatively the buff doesn't expire at all until the enemy that killed them, goes out of action or leaves line of sight (although i can easily see Starlight Prison abuse).

[x_equals_speed]

Aye, I'd be up for different upgrades to the ones I'd suggested. Those things would work too and I love the idea of a hero buff that lasts as long as the enemy that took your friend out thematically.

The point is simply that there's no balance between bond abilities at the moment, everyone's using the same ones, it'd be neat to see them re-balanced to reward a little more variety.

[Kaysoky]

Role Delegation + Reliable Colleague are not that niche for me, and I find it very useful on my support/backline characters. Particularly Anne and Ray.

If I lack someone to heal, I sometimes just like to move them adjacent to a bond-mate and standby, thereby getting a double-turn with a buff to boot.

[Y]

I agree, Pincer Movement and Cover are usually autopicks. I tried picking Finding a Way Out, and I literally haven't had it activate once. Whereas Pincer Movement and Cover are constantly activating.

[Starmachine24]

I would kind of like to see bond abilities that also reflect the characters personalities, for example Irene would have more bond skills oriented towards protecting her friends and maybe avenging them if they get taken out. This would probably solve the problem with everyone just using cover and pincer attack. Though Finding a way out is pretty nice if something actually survives your characters attacks so that they can get taken out by your bond mate xD

[melkathi]

I have Anne with Role Delegation, Cover, and Finding A Way Out.
Role Delegation I use a lot, as I run her between Albus, Irene, and Scion, giving them all a free attack, when Anne wouldn't do anything yet anyway having nobody to heal.
Cover I mostly use on my healers to keep them safe. It is great if someone tries to attack Anne or Ray that Scion or Heixing kill them.
Finding A Way Out I keep feeling will come in handy eventually. Not sure it will.

[JJ Black]

Finding A Way Out synergizes extremely well with Fire Support, Cover or Pincer movement when considering bonding with melee units. Imagine Giselle sitting somewhere and Albus doesn't kill the Draki Queen or whatever boss in one hit. Giselle can attack twice now (Fire Support+Pincer) and when she kills it Albus gets massive AT reduction. Same goes for when he gets attacked.

This will happen more often than you'd think (Impulse fields for example) and is more potent than 10% to hit which is generally not the issue. Giselle, Sion, Bianca, Heixing bond slots are extremely strong because of that.

With that in mind I actually think Pincer+Cover+FAWO is the only option

[Echo]

Is the "adjacent" on Finding a Way Out including the diagonal tiles? So not just the 4 directions?

[JJ Black]

No - it only counts the 4 cardinal directions, diagonal tiles won't give the FaWO bonus sadly. However it activates on your own turn so when your melee characters attack a target and pincer attack/fire support triggers or cover activates (through enemy forestallment or counterattack) and gets the kill your melee profits from it immensely.

In addition since you have good amount of bond slots available only 1 should be used for observation since it doesn't stack. Sion or Giselle are prime examples - giving them cover is amazing and will trigger often when your melees run into your enemies and will give them 30 AT reduction very frequently (With FaWO). However your backline could have 1 additional ranged character bonded to Giselle and they could be used to gain the observation buff.

Even across melee characters Pincer, Cover and FaWO is useful. Attack an enemy with Albus but fail to kill him (like a tough boss) and Irene swoops in with Snatch and finishes him off almost resetting Albus' turn in the process. Failing that when one gets attacked by the boss then you get a cover attack which resets the AT.

Point is 1 observation per character is enough so you can use the rest for FaWO. Observation also is better when you bond Backline to Backline since they wont really need FaWO (Heixing+Giselle for example). Bonds without access to those 4 perks should be replaced by ones who have.