Is it better to play a ranged character?

[Shiona]

Is it better to play a ranged character if I can't tell what is going on during boss fights? with all the spell effects going off its hard to tell what is happening and it's a coin toss on if I dodge in time for an attack. I figured ranged would be boring. Is the AI decent at dodging as melee?

[Xengre]

Melee do the most dmg, typically, until later on excluding Shionne early on with her meteor thing (I forget the name) which has really good dmg early (and stays good all game tbh, but other chars start to catch up).

Alphen gets reigning slash pretty early for most people and it is the defacto OP move in the game, despite you having to get used to chasing launched mobs (boss' don't get launched so even more DPS). The dmg is so high it is absurd. Law is fairly strong as well, though the AI does very well with him in terms of DPS so it is a great opportunity to play someone else and let AI Law go ham (though you might like him enough to take over, possibly).

Rinwell, in terms of raw DPS, is clearly weaker than Alphen, Law, and Shionne (Rinwell beats Dohalim/Kisara tho), but she grants easy access to safe damage, plenty of AoE options, and she can become a powerhouse later on (though she definitely still does less than the others). Her most famous usage is her exploitive air magic. She is cool to play, though, and offers good variety. She also has a number of potent close range abilities, notably the thunder one (forget name) and people like that as well.

Shionne has the Meteor Spell, but she has other good DPS gun artes as well, and the best healing by far. Most of her offensive magic isn't so hot, aside from the meteor spell though. Later on she learns a wind based gun move that is an aerial which is pretty ridiculous. It is a very powerful primarily single target DPS ability. Unfortunately, AI Shionne does not use aerials due to her kit design not putting her in the air... but if you control her the dmg is very powerful, but it is a later in the game ability, typically. Still she is a good overall DPS.

Kisara might seem to bite initially but with the right skills, and later on further enhanced by the right accessories, she becomes pretty solid.

Dohalim = style points and is if you want to play him because you like him. He is known to not really be the best, but you can still wreck face with him and he has a unique playstyle around his counter pole extension mechanic or can be played caster.

So... you can pull off any of them, though I'd argue melee is typically best but Rinwell/Shionne can be fun.

[EbonySeraphim]

The short is this: if you play ranged, you can allow it to be boring. But even Shionne as a gun character is actually more powerful up close with her combo game. A good portion of her kit only hits enemies quite close to her. At a range, you won't really be "comboing" with anyone other than Rinwell's spells.

Every character has solid combo, mechanics, and style if you put in the effort to learn them. Based on what you're saying, taking a back seat with a ranged character in fights may kind of take away from your contribution to the battle as you are letting the A.I. do substantial lifting work during battles (they are quite capable even on moderate difficultly). No matter who you control, the remaining character A.I. probably will be able to finish the battle so you're mostly losing out if you constantly stand back afraid to press a button. I recommend trying to juggle keeping your offense up while recognizing incoming attack patterns and reacting with perfect evades. It'll also open up your awareness to how long the windups are for the artes and spells you're using and make it rewarding when you start to get on top of your game.

[CatPerson]

Is the AI decent at dodging as melee?

The AI is ... AI ... at dodging. They will not be anywhere near as good as you, the human player, would be.

That said, I had Alphen on AI almost all the time after I got Dohalim, and he did/survived just fine. But if you want him to be the big superbad damage dealer, leaving him on AI won't be it.

It is far easier to control healing if you're playing one of those characters yourself tho. I mean Shionne's healing AI is good, don't get me wrong, but AI is still AI, so in some tougher fights some may find it easier to control Shionne or Dohalim (just use his spells) to help out with healing a lot more.

I think Kisara takes a long time (a lot of arte/title gains first) to be particularly useful which is one reason many may get a "bad impression" or she just may not fit one's playstyle (me) regardless..

[Tiasmoon]

Sometimes the ai is way better at dodging then most human players would be. I'd rather argue they arent good at running away.

For Kisara, she has same problem that Dohalim has but worse: you need to learn her cool/fun moves first, which means playing her enough to unlock them. Dohalim starts off with some interesting artes, but they dont work that well. Kisara's first few artes arent very interesting.

As a shield character she gives this impression that she's really immobile or slow and doesnt have aerial or fast attacks, but thats not the case at all.
She has some of the most crazy launch/aerial combos around. (lol, spinning kick launcher)


As a ranged character you do have a much easier time to see what is going on. I hope they fix the camera and add zoom in battle for next game. (or even as update for this one)

[Xengre]

My take since, I somehow missed that part of the original post, to add onto what others said... The AI seems mostly competent at dodging. Shionne is by far the best, but is ranged, and Rinwell is decent (also ranged). However, Law seems fairly decent but is also just a very mobile character in general (and often doing airborn combos) which probably further extends his survivability as he didn't seem to die often when I had him in my party. I cannot comment on Alphen as I played him, primarily, but others seem to support he did okay.

As for Kisara, it is as was said she needs titles and gear to work right. Basically, she does not have any dodge mechanic, but instead, has a block mechanic. This mechanic is heavily nerfed when you first get her so she takes nearly full damage which has made her notoriously low ranked by others until further in the game where she gets skills that increase the dmg reduction of her block. Once you get far enough in she can get the dmg down to probably around a 90-95% dmg reduction and with up to date armor and the right accessory setup can survive tanking while drawing aggro even in Chaos/Unknown. She has inherent aggro effects but you, again, need to unlock those skills and more importantly she has Aggro L on accessories you can get to further boost her aggro draw to help you and other AI be focused less. If you play as her she does have some pursuit mobility artes and if you get a perfect block she can teleport (think of it as quick invulnerable dash) to whoever she is targeting even if they are across the field so there is some mobility in this. She also has an AoE heal with one of her skills (small range though, but works on herself as well).

Dohalim's AI is, inherently, very very bad at staying alive and dodging. The issue is his staff skills can often be very flashy and excessively long which leaves him vulnerable to enemy attacks, but you can fix this. Disable the ones that are too long and he will do better. Alternatively, he can be built as a caster or support/caster. His healing is slower and inferior to Shionne's but can still be effective as a replacement or secondary healer while casting. As a pure caster/support he will naturally do much better at surviving despite the fact his default nature is melee.

Shionne's healing is very powerful in the game so even if you do die at times, or the AI, she can usually do a good job getting them back up and going so long as you make sure she has CP available. You can toss a life bottle or healing item in an emergency if you want to be safe or need it.

The AI does have trouble with a few oddball attacks, usually some type of AoE that has a weird placement (the oddball boss) but most of the time do okay, or well enough at higher difficulties that as long as you manage them right they are good to go. You can also grant them i-frames from harsh attacks via using their Boost Attack (a mechanic you will learn later in the game) or by using the proper boost attacks to down and interrupt the boss briefly.

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by Xengre:

The issue is his staff skills can often be very flashy and excessively long

Ahaha. Dohalim in a nutshell.

[EbonySeraphim]

Preaching to the choir here: A.I. is decent at dodging as melee. Ranged dodging seems better, but then again Rinwell has such a low HP pool that her rate of death wasn't that much lower. The A.I. doesn't have eyes so visual clutter won't make them "not see" an incoming attack that a human might so in some situations if you're not as skilled, they'll be better.

Shionne's survival A.I. seems fairly boosted comparably which is necessary otherwise many of us would have some broken gaming gear in frustration. Sometimes it really looks like she was hit by an attack but the game is like "nah, I'll give you a break on that one."

[CatPerson]

I once stacked four 15% move/escape speed.

The AI's *frequency* of dodging did not improve, but their success rate when they did try to dodge seemed to. Not that I did any scientific testing methods. That's just what it felt like.

It's actually quite funny to have the AI move/chase and twist around at 60% faster. And I am not recommending doing this for normal play. I was doing it for lulz with lvl100 chrs etc.

[DRUNK_CANADIAN]

Originally posted by Shiona:

Is it better to play a ranged character if I can't tell what is going on during boss fights? with all the spell effects going off its hard to tell what is happening and it's a coin toss on if I dodge in time for an attack. I figured ranged would be boring. Is the AI decent at dodging as melee?

Just play as Rinwell. She is technically the best character and can pretty much solo the entire game with her cheesy spells.
She also scales the best for lategame.

[Xengre]

Originally posted by DRUNK_CANADIAN:

Originally posted by Shiona:

Is it better to play a ranged character if I can't tell what is going on during boss fights? with all the spell effects going off its hard to tell what is happening and it's a coin toss on if I dodge in time for an attack. I figured ranged would be boring. Is the AI decent at dodging as melee?

Just play as Rinwell. She is technically the best character and can pretty much solo the entire game with her cheesy spells.
She also scales the best for lategame.

To be honest Alphen hard outscales Rinwell and it isn't even close. Reigning blade can do over 30k per hit with a non-matching accessory, else over 70k. Incineration Wave can deal 200-400k dmg in one swing depending. Neither of these are with heavily buffed up devil arms. Law has a similar scaling to Reigning Blade, but with his numerous buffs might hit significantly harder, too.

For single target Dmg Shionne's Tres Ventos is probably going to outscale Rinwell, too, but don't quote me on that as I haven't tested in detail. Rinwell is quite strong, but she doesn't have the type of dmg prior Tales of casters had (especially compared to Rita from Vesperia). Rather, she offers safety more than anything if you use her manually and, especially if you abuse her air based actions. Still, if built properly her dmg isn't going to be bad at all just not as good as Alphen/Law. She is definitely cheesy, though, and enjoy the visual upgrade and not being as restricted to the 1 spell limit of prior Tales of games (not that it has helped her pass up some past casters due to weaker spell scaling nerfs).

[Jeffer'son Airship]

One thing funny about Shionne is she doesn't use a good chunk of strong Artes unless you're controlling her because her AI rarely jumps.

Her poison attack in particular is fairly potent but you'll never see the AI use it.

[soulruim]

test

[DRUNK_CANADIAN]

Originally posted by Xengre:

Originally posted by DRUNK_CANADIAN:

Just play as Rinwell. She is technically the best character and can pretty much solo the entire game with her cheesy spells.
She also scales the best for lategame.

To be honest Alphen hard outscales Rinwell and it isn't even close. Reigning blade can do over 30k per hit with a non-matching accessory, else over 70k. Incineration Wave can deal 200-400k dmg in one swing depending. Neither of these are with heavily buffed up devil arms. Law has a similar scaling to Reigning Blade, but with his numerous buffs might hit significantly harder, too.

For single target Dmg Shionne's Tres Ventos is probably going to outscale Rinwell, too, but don't quote me on that as I haven't tested in detail. Rinwell is quite strong, but she doesn't have the type of dmg prior Tales of casters had (especially compared to Rita from Vesperia). Rather, she offers safety more than anything if you use her manually and, especially if you abuse her air based actions. Still, if built properly her dmg isn't going to be bad at all just not as good as Alphen/Law. She is definitely cheesy, though, and enjoy the visual upgrade and not being as restricted to the 1 spell limit of prior Tales of games (not that it has helped her pass up some past casters due to weaker spell scaling nerfs).

Maybe he does hit the hardest under perfect circumstances for Alvin..... but honestly I feel like its a moot point when he literally kills himself while doing so.

Especially when u you can use him as a support member, with full boost regen, and stagger everything while also hitting like a truck...

...this is probably the first game where I feel like the main character is best suited as a reservist.

[Xengre]

Originally posted by DRUNK_CANADIAN:

Originally posted by Xengre:

To be honest Alphen hard outscales Rinwell and it isn't even close. Reigning blade can do over 30k per hit with a non-matching accessory, else over 70k. Incineration Wave can deal 200-400k dmg in one swing depending. Neither of these are with heavily buffed up devil arms. Law has a similar scaling to Reigning Blade, but with his numerous buffs might hit significantly harder, too.

For single target Dmg Shionne's Tres Ventos is probably going to outscale Rinwell, too, but don't quote me on that as I haven't tested in detail. Rinwell is quite strong, but she doesn't have the type of dmg prior Tales of casters had (especially compared to Rita from Vesperia). Rather, she offers safety more than anything if you use her manually and, especially if you abuse her air based actions. Still, if built properly her dmg isn't going to be bad at all just not as good as Alphen/Law. She is definitely cheesy, though, and enjoy the visual upgrade and not being as restricted to the 1 spell limit of prior Tales of games (not that it has helped her pass up some past casters due to weaker spell scaling nerfs).

Maybe he does hit the hardest under perfect circumstances for Alvin..... but honestly I feel like its a moot point when he literally kills himself while doing so.

Especially when u you can use him as a support member, with full boost regen, and stagger everything while also hitting like a truck...

...this is probably the first game where I feel like the main character is best suited as a reservist.

His flaming attacks can put him at 1 HP if you fully charge them, but reigning slash does not and still hits much harder than Rinwell can.

As for flaming attacks there are a few ways to mitigate it to make it non-issue. You can choose to sacrifice only half your life and still hit significantly harder than Rinwell or you can put cast speed oriented accessory setup on Shionne and the moment you hit 1 HP she will heal you up (if you really want you can immediately manually have her cast Revitalize which will fully heal the entire party no matter where you are at to 100% hp nearly instantly (so fast that even if it killed all enemies her heal will usually complete before the battle actually ends).

Sure, you can stagger everything with Alphen, but why repeatedly stagger them for short duration when you can "permanently" down them once via death? Even the level 95 bosses get shredded in only a few seconds by Alphen.

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by Xengre:

Even the level 95 bosses get shredded in only a few seconds by Alphen.

That only happens if you stack Devil Arms. At that point its not really a question of the Artes you are using anymore.