Poor Damage

[Fikxion]

I don't seem to be doing a lot of damage in this game. My hits take off 100ish and I'm like 10 levels above the enemies I'm fighting. Other than targeting weaknesses, other tips out there?

[The Grand Mugwump]

Welcome to Tales of HP Balloons. It gets even more fun when you're fighting a guard for several minutes who only has two being hit noises with no timer between how often they play. (ugh argh ugh argh ugh argh ugh argh etc.)

Most basic attacks and melee skills don't seem to deal a lot of damage, so make sure to keep Reigning Slash on Alphen when you get it, because it is a notable exception for dealing a lot of melee damage quickly to bosses and downed enemies. You'll want to take advantage of breaking and combos (especially ground to air combos) so you can do boost strikes often for bigger damage against smaller enemies.

I also advise finding a preferred character and using all of the relevant, permanent, stat boosting items on them for much better performance. My Alphen has around 20% more stats than other characters because I focus them all on him, so he was hitting in the upper 100's and 200's at level 30 while other characters were still hitting in the 80's-120's. It can really help speed combat along.

[Synavix]

Use the relevant Boost Attacks as often as you can to keep an enemy in the "down" state to take advantage of those damage boost skills and negate their defenses. Then try to chain attacks on them to get a Boost Strike. 1 or 2 Boost Strikes is usually enough to clear a whole field of enemies, so you should really only be having to kill a few.

For large or single enemies you want to use the Flaming Edge. A lot of people recommend a Mystic accessory for Alphen with all +15% Fire Damage slots just because one good, fully charged (and not interrupted) Flaming Edge can do an entire bar off a boss, which can be minutes worth of regular combo attacks. But it can be risky, and you'll generally have to time it with using Boost Attacks or Core Breaks to down the enemy first, and hope you have healing coming in too. Later on you can even chain Flaming Edges if you use the right ones. I liked Rising Phoenix early on because it's easy to not be interrupted in the air. Explosive Ring combos off a lot of decent moves and does some of the most damage, but it's a really long charge up with an extremely long animation, so it's easy to be interrupted. And all Flaming Edge moves can combo into a second Incineration Wave if you have enough HP, which is high damage but fast charge up.

[Xengre]

I've seen the HP Balloon complaint on here a few times but in truth the enemies don't have that much HP. It seems like a lot but when you actually fight properly it isn't much at all.

Unfortunately, while the game features a cool combo system and the intent to juggle from ground > air > and back as well as mechanics to downplay spamming and using different skills in your combos... the game isn't properly balanced around this in their first game utilizing this new engine.

Most skills in the game are bad for most characters, by fact of specific skills being so standout it renders the rest of their kits a joke.

For example, if you play Alphen you don't want to use most of his abilities. First, his aerial moves are very bad excluding juggling for Boost Strike fatal hits. For actual damage they're awful, and his flaming moves are outright death traps with low efficiency for high trade off for most of the game (note: this changes when you can make custom accessories later on, they suddenly balloon to the most broken thing in the game). You will want to use his Reigning Slash for DPS and... spam just it most of the time, maybe on occasion using Demon Fang to extend a Boost Strike time for your teammates to continue juggling if you are far away or the multi-hit aerial (that spinning kick one for instance) for Boost Strike buildup. However, for pure damage Reigning Slash not only has around, literally, 200-400%+ damage per cast, but it is also a single hit that comes out fast meaning you can often cast it 2-4x in the same time other abilities can be cast 1x... resulting in reality a 400~1600% DPS lead over alternatives in most cases. For bosses and other powerful enemies that don't get launched this is even more obvious, but even for weaker enemies you can spam it until they die or get launched. If they get launched just run at them (or develop a habit of rolling once after to avoid using it on air and then chase) and use it when close to them by the time they land rinse > repeat being far more efficient despite the brief chase time. Later on things like Incineration Wave (a flaming skill) will literally 1-4 shot (depending on crit luck) even the super bosses in the game.

Note: You can't make custom accessories until realm 5 and, iirc, I think it was just after finishing realm 5. At which point you can make powerful fire + magic attack accessory for flaming Alphen, or Counter Attack accessory for Reigning Slash Alphen and Law/Rinwell (as bosses and other powerful enemies are typically attacking making this especially powerful for those).

Law has probably the most, overall, balance in his kit but later on has much better moves and his own Rending Slash styled move (higher scaling than even Alphen's but slightly slower to use). Law is so well controlled by the AI, though, that unless you specifically just love playing as him I would not control him as he is one of the most competent AI DPS you can have in your party, even if you leave every ability active and don't hand pick. Also, do not overly stifle his abilities as you might mess up his AI's ability to properly combo. If you see issues here then you might need to re-check which abilities are disabled and consider turning some back on.

Rinwell has various spells but usually there are specific ones that are simply optimal such as spamming low level windblades, or the falling light attack (I forget name) if the enemy is flying or physically large, Lightning Field if manually controlling vs large enemy (hits many body parts), Meteor is good all around but hits once despite how it may appear, and she has another fast light attack that is more reliable to hit with (a flaw many of her attacks suffer from so even tho it is weaker it is more reliable in quite a few cases), etc. There are some occasional cases where her more powerful magic combos might actually be good but they're not as common as they should be, unfortunately.

Kisara has her spammy power moves which afford boosted mobility, she so dearly lacks (even allowing her to dodge, one of them tries to curve around behind the enemy, greaat vs big enemies like golems), as well as her basic healing move.

Dohalim should be a caster, though in rare cases some of his staff moves (you will have to test, I forget all of their names...) are solid when running an extension dodge crit build (dodge reliant obviously not for everyone, so caster is the more general response, and AI can't even utilize it properly anyways so caster again).

Shionne has a large variety of offensive styles. As the AI she is insanely biased towards specific moves so if you want the AI to use her other offensive moves turn off the most frequently used ones (names I forget, but you can ask on here and see if someone can check her most used moves to disable, or just keep an eye on her move usage stats in skill menu but she is still very capable even with those). Her Burning Strike should, honestly, always be enabled for the AI and set for yourself if you control her as it is very powerful despite being gotten near the start of the game. This move will frequently completely outclass almost your entire team, you included, at times early on but the damage output isn't completely obvious unless specifically paying attention to it and depending on how well you are doing holding enemy aggro so she isn't spending all her time healing. This move is fast to cast, and while it does have some travel time (noticeable in arena for instance) it can be used in ways to still catch most enemies (even in the arena, at the expense of some misses at times) and comes down much faster than some others with similar issues (Dohalim/Rinwell's issue with many spells). It also staggers and can be spammed very fast. Her Annihilation is somewhat popular, too, since it is a dodge built in with a sweeping minor AoE for chip damage which can help, especially in the arena. Personally, out of everyone in the game I was most surprised by her when I did the arena stuff as I didn't really play anyone else much until that point and then did all the arena runs possible up until that point and she completely dominated in terms of speed and ease of clearing them compared to everyone else. Her dash on kill pursuit was surprisingly useful, there, at times as well despite her ranged nature. There is also her late game aerial move Tres Ventos which is an absurdly spammable highly powerful strong homing multi-laser attack and easily one of the best moves in the game, to which Shionne players will swear by. Note: Simply disable her ice move Freeze Lancer and never allow the AI to use it, nor use it yourself. The move is total garbage with horrid tracking, heinous cast time, poor damage, and not worth it even if an enemy is weak to the element (rather opt for another attack, entirely, even if it means not exploiting elemental weakness). She actually has many other good moves, too, and I've no opinion on her bombs as I basically forgot they exist and no experience with them (I didn't spec into bomb skills until late game, spending points elsewhere).

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Ryne:

I don't seem to be doing a lot of damage in this game. My hits take off 100ish and I'm like 10 levels above the enemies I'm fighting. Other than targeting weaknesses, other tips out there?

The "killer" moves for the game are the Boost Strikes you get while hitting the enemy with low damage regular moves, so focus everyone's attacks on one target and trigger all those cutscene moves. Another alternative if you can catch a stationary enemy is Rinwell's Divine Streak. If it catches a target when it is immobile, the damage for that beam really racks up fast.

Then there is Alphen.... Mr Burn All Your Problems Away.

[DaylightDemon]

Originally posted by Ryne:

I don't seem to be doing a lot of damage in this game. My hits take off 100ish and I'm like 10 levels above the enemies I'm fighting. Other than targeting weaknesses, other tips out there?

down enemies, especially with alphen and then focus your attacks so you can use boost finishers. alphens strike makes it easier to fill the "combo meter". every boost finisher move does also aoe dmg to the other enemies. at the start of the battle i take control of every character briefly so they all focus the same enemy.

[Fikxion]

Thanks all, I'll try these things.