Strongest Party?

[No' Name]

So, I've tried swapping around chars in my first playthrough (currently on my second), and I'm just wondering what everyone is using as their "Main" party.

For me it's always been Alphen, Shionne, Rinwell, and Law.

Alphen basically because of his blazing sword, and insane amounts of combo dmg he can deal, not to mention his boost instantly knocks down any monster, so he's pretty much the main value to the team.

Shionne... I guess mainly because of her healing, though she could be swapped out for Dohalim, however, he's a melee character, and his healing is sub-par in comparison to Shionne, which is why I never really used him to begin with.

Rinwell... Because she's basically another OP dps at range given you've leveled her up enough through SP.

And Law, because he basically does that power up thing every 10 seconds, again if you've invested enough SP into "Overcharging easily". Honestly, I don't think I could replace Law with anyone, he's actually probably the most OP party member/character in the game the amount he can generate his "Overcharge".

Just my opinion though. Sadly, Kisara (love her to death), has no real value in this game, other than to be a "Waifu". think on this playthrough imma try "Maining" her though, she seriously can't be "that bad"....

[Ka-mai19]

Substitute Law with Dohalim and you have my A team for boss fights, basically. Shionne and Dohalim both cast and heal to keep Alphen's blazing sword shenanigans going, Rinwell casts like crazy, and Alphen burns everything.

I like playing as Law best, since his comboing is really fluid, but he really can't outdamage Alphen's blazing sword moves.

I also like subbing in Kisara during emergencies, like a mass AoE, since I know she can tank it and give me time for heals. I also enjoy playing as her, though her damage potential isn't as high as the rest of the party's.

[Leylin Cassiel]

I'm going with Alphen (same reasons you've mentioned), Shionne (healing and boost attacking flying enemies), Rinwell (powerful artes, I switch and controll her from time to time) and Dohalim (he's like Shionne, but melee). I equipped Alphen with increased aggro L and the rest with decreased aggro L (other traits are pure preference), switch to a strategy that keeps everybody away from the enemy (admittedly, AI in this game does not work properly, so that does not really work out ;) ) and go to town with Alphen focusing on counters, high combo and frequent boost attacks or a more leisurely playstyle with Rinwell where I charge artes and wreck everything on the battlefield all at once.

I agree that I'm not sure what to do with Kisara, I just don't really like her moveset, same with Law although his perk is pretty fun (AI with Law is pretty good though, dodges a lot and often goes into Overlimit ;)

[Fyk0]

I use Alphen, Shionne, Rinwell and Kisara, while controlling Shionne almost all the time. I play on hard and I feel being in most control when I babysit the team with heals while having long range attacks and good close range attacks in air combat, which makes her very versatile and effective in most situations. If I were to swap someone out it would be Kisara, but I see her value in the team especially with increased aggro while guarding talent unlock. I feel she is taking the most damage, as she should which makes healing easier and quicker.

[Xengre]

Kisara, without proper aggro setup (which has its own negatives) is definitely the weakest character in a typical party line up and can readily eat up Life Bottles/CP reviving and healing. With a proper aggro setup, at the cost of other better configurations on your party, you can reduce CP/item expenditure on others but noticeably increase it on Kisara. When this works right it has a net expenditure decrease. When it does not, or you are fighting particularly powerful enemies it can result in Kisara simply being obliterated at a staggering rate and maintenance upkeep and battle control spiraling out of control. Her lack of mobility and the fact that she is designed to actually TAKE dmg intentionally while not being noticeably tankier than others (at least in most of a NG run, or arguably in general) is the biggest offender.

Dohalim can be good if you disable his skills that have excessively long animations or some of his less desirable casting abilities. Basically, anything that makes him a sitting duck and is counter-intuitive to his entire design principle to begin with. In truth, as a whole Law is arguably a better character for most players and the AI is actually surprisingly decent with him from the start. In addition, Shionne is one of the best healers this series has seen, aside from the godlike late game Tear Grants in ToA, making not only Dohalim redundant but also pulling another DPS for a healing role part of the time cutting into DPS that isn't necessary when Shionne suffices. Also, Dohalim's healing isn't particularly good in general, and while he does have a revive life bottles are far more cost efficient until later on than gels for CP recovery and the only benefit of two revivers is if you have a poor setup to begin with and see multiple people wipe at once. Even worse, Shionne is unlikely to wipe unless you are out of CP 98% of the time while Dohalim is likely to be one of the people who wipes and he can't revive himself lol.

Thus Alphen, Shionne, Rinwell, Law are the best for typical players. Meta-hyper optimization things may change up but that is irrelevant to most players.

[tap and die]

I found late game on higher difficulty, Kisara just keeps dying. AI Kisara cannot tank damage for long. Might have better luck with Dohalim who dodges better and can provide additional healing.

[Ka-mai19]

Originally posted by Xengre:

Also, Dohalim's healing isn't particularly good in general, and while he does have a revive life bottles are far more cost efficient until later on than gels for CP recovery and the only benefit of two revivers is if you have a poor setup to begin with and see multiple people wipe at once. Even worse, Shionne is unlikely to wipe unless you are out of CP 98% of the time while Dohalim is likely to be one of the people who wipes and he can't revive himself lol.

Dohalim actually becomes a good healer if you have his DLC arte Fairy Circle, which gives him a pretty good AoE heal. It sucks that you need to get the DLC to make him more viable as a healer, but there you go.

As I mentioned above, I also keep him on to have a second healer on Alphen as he Blazing Swords everything to oblivion. That way Shionne can focus more on damaging and Dohalim can focus on keeping the Alphen train going, or the reverse.

It's probably not optimal, but honestly Alphen can take out 1/4th or 1/3rd of any boss's health bar with a fully charged Blazing sword attack. Spamming heals on him so he can keep chugging them out makes a difficult battle relatively easy.

If you do want more of a contest and more sustained DPS rather than burst, then yeah Dohalim isn't a good option. Especially if you don't have his DLC arte.

[Xengre]

Originally posted by caev37:

Originally posted by Xengre:

Also, Dohalim's healing isn't particularly good in general, and while he does have a revive life bottles are far more cost efficient until later on than gels for CP recovery and the only benefit of two revivers is if you have a poor setup to begin with and see multiple people wipe at once. Even worse, Shionne is unlikely to wipe unless you are out of CP 98% of the time while Dohalim is likely to be one of the people who wipes and he can't revive himself lol.

Dohalim actually becomes a good healer if you have his DLC arte Fairy Circle, which gives him a pretty good AoE heal. It sucks that you need to get the DLC to make him more viable as a healer, but there you go.

As I mentioned above, I also keep him on to have a second healer on Alphen as he Blazing Swords everything to oblivion. That way Shionne can focus more on damaging and Dohalim can focus on keeping the Alphen train going, or the reverse.

It's probably not optimal, but honestly Alphen can take out 1/4th or 1/3rd of any boss's health bar with a fully charged Blazing sword attack. Spamming heals on him so he can keep chugging them out makes a difficult battle relatively easy.

If you do want more of a contest and more sustained DPS rather than burst, then yeah Dohalim isn't a good option. Especially if you don't have his DLC arte.

Yeah, he does get the AoE healing. I'm not sure how effective it is since I don't have the DLC, though I would think it runs a high risk of double dipping where Shionne and Dohalim both try to heal but waste extra CP on overkill healing (which is already a problem for normal healing in general and item usage) since Shionne's heals already put you at like 80% HP and have excellent range on her AoE. I don't know if the range on his is better, either, or if the heal is as powerful. Overall, I don't think it is worth sacrificing DPS for additional healing that is mostly wasted when you already have enough healing but I suppose if you are willing to trade efficiency for an extra safety net of healing in case something on rare occasion happens to Shoinne that is a possible route for players struggling to survive and stabilize their play.

Right, if you are going for an extreme blazing niche setup there certainly can be said to be value in double dipping healing as you are basically building around a hyper carry at that point and don't need additional DPS but just recovery so I can see the value there and considering the potency of such a setup it can be said to be one type of ideal non-typical late game/NG+ setup.

[Vexillarius]

Best party is Rinwell, use charged cast of sharpness at start of battle to boost group damage by 30%. Healer i prefer Shionne when you turn her stupid close range attacks that knock people into the air off she gets much better. She has a better set of healing moves as well. Law is easily the strongest ai by far plus hes pretty fun to use and it the only character that can come even close to doing damage on par with Alphen. Seen a lot of people saying they use the flaming sword but honestly u can easily out dps flaming sword with reigning slash. I always leave the ai on focus on healing because they are pretty much retarded and there damage sux anyway. Just down the enemy with what boost strike they are weak to and get your 100% plus down damage bonus and go to town with reigning slash. If they have a core make sure you double dip on damage with reigning slash.

[CatPerson]

Dunno about "strongest" but as to who I personally use/like and fits my playstyle:

Alphen, Shinonne, Dohalim, Law.

The only two I bother to control myself at this point are Alphen and Dohalim.

I personally love Dohalim. I like that he's versatile. He's sorta like a dual-class/'battle-mage', is how I see him, and I've always loved dual-classes. I do have Fairy Circle and it's powerful when he bothers to cast it, but he also learned Heal on his own after a while so far as I'm concerned he's just fine as a healer. Maybe very slightly less reactive. If I want Rinwell's big magic, I swap Shinonne out for her.

Also, while I do not play on a high difficulty - I have too many hand/arthritis issues for top-skillz timing/button presses these days - I refuse to interrupt combat with any inventory menu-ing at all and in this game that means no item use. AI is not allowed to use them either (not once I noticed how uneccesarily fast they used such up) and if I wipe I reload and readjust.

Thus I like redundancy sometimes. It's not a hardcore mindset - I just don't like interrupting visceral combat *flow* with menus/pauses and always minimize such in any game - far as I can tell there is no "use healing item" hotkeys (are there any?), thus ... I don't use items. Maybe I'm just weird, but I hate interrupting combat flow. >.>

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---Kisara's AI is too slow to attack/hardly attacks for my tastes. She's kind of paladin-like, as I see it, and I've never liked Paladins much in any game I've ever played. Not my style.

---Rinwell is fine but once I got Doh, I just liked him so much better. I like majority melee-focus for this game, I guess. I haven't found battles to be significantly longer without her (tho again, not playing on mega-hard, haven't leveled up everyone skills/artes to max for meta-comparing or anything like that etc), so...

[Zombina]

Shionne,Rinwell,Law,Kisara (Support : Alphen and Dohalihm)
I didn't had any issue with Kisara at all she is tanking a lot of damage and shionne focus healing all the time which is great . but I've read somewhere that Increased/Decreased Agro L only work on passive chars,not active ,so playing kisara passive is best for me so I can play Shionne manaully and heal everyone

[Xengre]

Originally posted by Elfaniel:

Shionne,Rinwell,Law,Kisara (Support : Alphen and Dohalihm)
I didn't had any issue with Kisara at all she is tanking a lot of damage and shionne focus healing all the time which is great . but I've read somewhere that Increased/Decreased Agro L only work on passive chars,not active ,so playing kisara passive is best for me so I can play Shionne manaully and heal everyone

Interesting though this makes sense I suppose, or perhaps active characters generate such a staggering amount of aggro that it impedes the value of decreased aggro too much.

[Zombina]

Originally posted by Xengre:

Originally posted by Elfaniel:

Shionne,Rinwell,Law,Kisara (Support : Alphen and Dohalihm)
I didn't had any issue with Kisara at all she is tanking a lot of damage and shionne focus healing all the time which is great . but I've read somewhere that Increased/Decreased Agro L only work on passive chars,not active ,so playing kisara passive is best for me so I can play Shionne manaully and heal everyone

Interesting though this makes sense I suppose, or perhaps active characters generate such a staggering amount of aggro that it impedes the value of decreased aggro too much.

Well the aggro is split between shionne(active) and Kisara(passive) . but they focus Kisara most of the time but for bosses, it's shionne a lot,which is totally weird,it's like Kisara charm doesnt work on them XD , so i just dodge . I got killed twice on last boss fight but thanks to revival ring,shionne self revived herself

[Kai]

Shionne and Dohalim are the two staples in my party, the two combined have ultimate healing power and Do is so versatile he's decent in just about any situation. Alphen is a regular just because I am most familiar with playing him, so if I am wanting survival (eg boss fights) I play as him, but more and more on regular mobs I am playing as Dohalim just because he's so freakin' fun. I switch in between Rinwell and Kisara for my 4th as situations demand, for magey mobs/bosses Rinwell is on the field, for lots of charging mobs Kisara comes in just so I'm not having to constantly press L2 to pull up her boost. Law, unfortunately I rarely use. He's fine but his attack power isn't worth the trade off of how squishy he is for where he likes to be on the field for me.

So end of the day my main party tends to be Dohalim, Shionne, Alphen, Kisara/Rinwell
And Law waits around holding my overstuffed back of items until I need him to punch out some armor.

[Ka-mai19]

Originally posted by Xengre:

Yeah, he does get the AoE healing. I'm not sure how effective it is since I don't have the DLC, though I would think it runs a high risk of double dipping where Shionne and Dohalim both try to heal but waste extra CP on overkill healing (which is already a problem for normal healing in general and item usage) since Shionne's heals already put you at like 80% HP and have excellent range on her AoE. I don't know if the range on his is better, either, or if the heal is as powerful. Overall, I don't think it is worth sacrificing DPS for additional healing that is mostly wasted when you already have enough healing but I suppose if you are willing to trade efficiency for an extra safety net of healing in case something on rare occasion happens to Shoinne that is a possible route for players struggling to survive and stabilize their play.

Right, if you are going for an extreme blazing niche setup there certainly can be said to be value in double dipping healing as you are basically building around a hyper carry at that point and don't need additional DPS but just recovery so I can see the value there and considering the potency of such a setup it can be said to be one type of ideal non-typical late game/NG+ setup.

Well, since Alphen is constantly at 1hp the double heals is nice. You also get more blazing sword power the more health you have before you charge up, so basically you want Alphen to go from 1hp to full health ASAP. Then it’s all about staggering the boss, fully charging the blazing sword, then watching as 1/4-1/3 of the boss’s health bar goes poof.

Also late in the game you can get up to 900CP (or more?) so CP usage isn’t really a problem. And -20%CP usage accessories as well. 1-2 orange gels are usually enough for most boss fights.

[Player Zer01]

i really like Kisara but.... she really is not great. Alphen literally does her job but better. even her burst skill is really only good for TWO mobs in the game. i have the same meta setup as Al, Shionne, Rin, and Law. i will bring Dol if i need a backup healer from time to time. Kisara just grows dust on the bench.