You can trivialize this game by stacking taunt chips.

[AH-1 Cobra]

FYI, the bonus from taunt stacks with melee damage up items. So if you get +200% from taunt, that becomes 4x more damage if you stack it with melee damage up. I believe that's because taunt is an all damage bonus, and melee damage up is a separate bonus.

The game doesn't explain how taunt works, so I will. You mash the Lstick down (assuming you're using a pad), until the mob/s heads (usually the head) starts glowing red, and steaming. Once you land this, you can stop mashing, and the effect will persist for about 10 seconds until you have to land the effect again. You can also mash the stick down while you're attacking and doing other stuff, so you don't have to stand still and do it. You can be moving around. If you're using a KB+Mouse, you might be able to setup a toggle macro that constantly activates taunt so you can taunt everything, always without having to keep mashing the button.

I think the +8 taunt gives 400-500%, not sure, but it's possible to do 8x-10x more damage by using this trick. Works very well vs those fights vs mobs with enormously high HP bars, and/or are overleveled.

This also works in "very hard". The problem in "very hard" is making it to the point where you can get taunt chips, and other good chips. But assuming someone actually did that, you could still trivialize the game on "very hard" with a taunt-stacked chip loadout, along with a few other things that help you avoid getting hit.

[nevarran]

This is a thing in almost every RPG - you can become a powerhouse (either through gringing levels, or items) if that's what you want.

[AH-1 Cobra]

I hear a lot of people complaining about X fight takes 45 minutes, etc. Guarantee they didn't use taunt + melee damage up items. Those fights can be lowered down to 3-5 minutes by using taunt + items + using a better weapon that allows you to attack more. Like instead of trying to get a few hits in with a large sword, you stack taunt + items, and sit back and spam shockwave attacks with a small sword, from a distance, etc. Suddenly the fight time lowers dramatically.

[nevarran]

The game doesn't do a good job at teaching you some of the mechanics, that's for sure.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Not ignoring ranged attacks either. What if you could do 1k damage per hit with the pod's gatling gun fire? By taunt stacking + ranged attack up? Or just run in circles and spam missile pod?

[Makishima]

My last save (before deletion) had powerhouse character at 63:

- (Light) Ancient Overlord +4 for Crit and anti-projectile
- (Heavy) Virtuous Contract +4 for attack speed and holy blessing (increase damage when on full HP)

add to this chips like:

- Shockwave +6
- Crit +6
- Weapon dmg +6
- Taunt +4
- Offensive heal +4

9S with only weapon atacks was pretty much rekting with Ancient Overlord so you can imagine what 2B / A2 was doing.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Yeah, shockwave is another "must have" chip. And weapon damage gets multiplied by taunt + melee damage up, so the more taunt you got, the better weapon damage % is as well. Especially if you're aiming for some sort of sweet spot like you still want to not be 1hko'd but still want to maximize damage with taunt, etc.

That sweet spot is what I aimed for. If you can use taunt and not be oneshotted, then that means you leech more HP by attacking, and could leech enough to where you can get hit and almost instantly heal it back by attacking, so you never die anyway. This is how someone might use taunt in a main chip setup, rather than simply stacking as much DPS as possible to quickly end a few fights.

Something else that's not very well explained, and a lot of people don't realize is evade distance up extends the Iframes window for a "perfect evade". You can be really early on the evade timing, and still hit the window if you got like +100%. You can purposely use it to dash into attacks. Even in really dangerous spots, like I'm surrounded by Islamic suicide robots, I can spam evade and not get hit by them, ever. Another scenario, big biped robot does that spinning arms attack, and happens to box me into a corner, evade through the attack twice, and I don't get hit. This isn't Dark Souls, no clutch timing involved, I just mash the R2 button....

[Shade Factory]

Originally posted by nevarran:

The game doesn't do a good job at teaching you some of the mechanics, that's for sure.

That's what I love about a lot of jrpgs though. You just gotta figure it out or google away.

[TEAM SALTY]

They should have limited taunt to A2, controllers were not meant for L3 spamming.

[Faint]

you can also turn your pod into a one pod army slayer, honestly I don't think I used a weapon for hours before endgame and file delete.. i just hopped around an switched between pods for fun

[Spindles]

You can make the game as hard or easy as you want to, the developers leave it completely upto you to ruin it for yourself if you want to.

Taunt chips are pretty broken if used properly but you can overlevel the game in a few hours anyway.

[obstructor]

Originally posted by Sini:

They should have limited taunt to A2, controllers were not meant for L3 spamming.

You can move flashflight to the bumpers with the other control strategies.

[.doll]

I personally have specific builds for characters. Though Taunt is pretty OP if you know how to use it. I just don't use "Easy" chips myself. Shockwave on my first playthrough I maxed it out and thought it trivialized things too much, same with taunt. I prefer more thinking done like my B-mode build and using half claw on my gamepad is really helpful for nuking everything but feeling like I have to take more thought process. I love A2's taunts though. hahah

[Visuwyg]

I only use taunt as A2 because its part of her light combo, and I feel it is offset pretty nicely because the enemies get buffed as well? Or is that just a special chip I have equipped? (It gives 280% dmg up to me as well as the enemies) ♥♥♥♥ gets real when engaged.

I only once made the mistake to taunt a boss, getting one-hit as a result and losing nearly an hour of progress :D

[awanderingswordsman]

Couldn't you also stack last stand to double the damage again? So your damage would be base * 2 * 2 * 4 aka base * 16 if it stacks multiplicatively. Thing is, even with base damage and a dozen or so levels above the enemy, bosses still die in like 2-3 seconds from pod fire.

[Play Metaphor]

Originally posted by Spindle:

You can make the game as hard or easy as you want to, the developers leave it completely upto you to ruin it for yourself if you want to.

Taunt chips are pretty broken if used properly but you can overlevel the game in a few hours anyway.

Yep. I recall in an interview they pretty much said the chips are there to customize the difficulty of the game further than the classic choice of easy normal hard.

So, in teality, people brag with how further down they can scale "very hard" into by customization. Which is kinda silly if you think about it.