Bow or spear for Christo?

[Your Mom's Oshi]

I'm starting over on Switch and now that I know to focus on Christo I'm pondering some different builds and considering what secondary weapon to give him. He starts with bows but I'm considering giving him spears because of his passives(plus I will eventually give him the angel uniques). Does it make more sense to have him use spears or should I just go with bows secondary to staves?

[KarmaTheAlligator]

I'd go with bow, but really, staff is all he needs. Not sure what his evilities have to do with spear (or bow, for that matter). If anything they cement him as being purely support, so a staff is better.

[ninakoru]

Christo is at his best with Bow + Staff. You could also get Cleric for the profession learning.

You have main and sub-weapon, in this game using two different weapons is not an issue.

The game is flexible enough, you could go with spear if you really want to. But Christo is great a support specially for other ranged chracters.

[Pickleton]

Personally, I think Christo's unique evility is great in the post game, but kind of sucks during the main story unless you plan it well, since he's too squishy to stand in the front line.

In my last playthrough, I actually swapped Seraphina and the starting maid's weapons, and made Seraphina my archer (maid became my gunner and then pirate). Gave her heal from a scroll, an orb and the RES Arrows evility and was cruising. Christo I went for an omni-mage build, using First Time Bonus and quest rewards to teach him the basic element spells, and his passive learning of support spells. That way, he could stand next to Seraphina so they would buff each other with their unique evilities without going too close to the front line.
Playing this way gave me 2 back row dps (or healing) powerhouses (RES Arrows is RIDICULOUSLY overpowered if you're making good use of the hospital early on).

[Your Mom's Oshi]

Originally posted by Martin Lockheed:

Christo has a lot of versatility. I like using him as a combat cleric. Give him Staff Rebellion and let him smack fools around with a staff I've transmogrified to look like a mace.

Yeah he does. That's why I am considering a melee support build with spears and adjacent ally evilities.

[No' Name]

Sadly, I'm the type of person who asks "Why", as in "Why use him?"

He's kind of useless, as can be said with any character, the more you devote yourself to the generic classes, and special ones, much like Dark Knight, who can completely overwhelm Christo.

Just my take on it anyways, none of the main Heroes in any of the disgaea games are that good t begin with.

[ninakoru]

That's partially right until end-endgame.

Then the only real difference is unique evilities. Happens that many unique characters have decent unique evilities, and you cannot pass them to other characters, unlike unique evilities from generics. Also happens that Christo is vital to all endgame strategies for the item world, not to mention the unique overloads from every overlord-type unique character.

[Your Mom's Oshi]

Yeah he's just a great supporter. My first playthrough I ended up using him more than any other story character and I restarted on switch as I was preparing for carnage Baal. That's why I focused on him first this playthrough. I had a ton of builds for him so this time I was trying to think a little out of the box thus the topic. Dude's just so overall good and I'm finding that he works just as well as a front line support as in the rear. Good secondary build for when I feel like playing that way.

[No' Name]

Originally posted by GunFinX:

Originally posted by Humor:

Sadly, I'm the type of person who asks "Why", as in "Why use him?"

Because of his unique evility... 100% accuracy of adjacent units which prevents glancing blows. A glancing blow by definition will never crit and crits are a BIG damage multiplier.

While early game there really is very little reason for using christo as enemy stats aren't that high, end game in the item world enemies will start to evade, or partially avoid(glancing blow) spells/attacks.

TLDR If you aren't using Christo in the endgame you ain't playing the game optimally!

I mean I still disagree. My Dark Knight still one shots almost everything, granted I kinda power leveled him.

Even sp, I could simply use a bunch of lady knights that absorb damage, and just use one specific character to destroy everything.

[KarmaTheAlligator]

Originally posted by Humor:

Originally posted by GunFinX:

Because of his unique evility... 100% accuracy of adjacent units which prevents glancing blows. A glancing blow by definition will never crit and crits are a BIG damage multiplier.

While early game there really is very little reason for using christo as enemy stats aren't that high, end game in the item world enemies will start to evade, or partially avoid(glancing blow) spells/attacks.

TLDR If you aren't using Christo in the endgame you ain't playing the game optimally!

I mean I still disagree. My Dark Knight still one shots almost everything, granted I kinda power leveled him.

Even sp, I could simply use a bunch of lady knights that absorb damage, and just use one specific character to destroy everything.

I don't think you guys are talking about the same situations.

[Your Mom's Oshi]

Originally posted by GunFinX:

Ya, I'm talking about Carnage Dimension. Sorry for any confusion lol :p.

Yeah his strat only works up through the early Carnage stages. I'd love to see him try that on Gorgeous Carnage Stage or even normal Baal which is much easier.

[Pickleton]

I thought about it more, and I can see the merits of having Christo as a spear user in the early game. If you put him at the center of a + formation, his passive evility will apply to the frontliners he's standing next to, giving them both accuracy and dodge.
Additionally, if you can teach him a few buff spells (and upgrade them to hit 5 characters), you could basically 5-man anything with your little impenetrable plus-shaped island.

I'll have to try it on my next playthrough. It would let me create a generic to be my staff-using omni-mage throughout the main story, which would be a nice change. Would be able to get all the elements through reincarnation rather than quest RNG.

Killua - Sword
Christo - Spear
RMagnus - Axe
Zero - Fist
Sera - Bow
Generic (Maid>Gunner>Pirate)- Gun
Generic (Mage>Professor>Sage)- Staff
Usalia - Atk MWeapon
Izuna - Int MWeapon

[Your Mom's Oshi]

Yeah that's similar to what I did though the story. Only difference is that I only used a single generic with fists, Christo and a few monsters including Usalia as weapons. Still using both spears and staves for Christo as I'm preparing to fight the prinny. Just gotta build up a few more characters that can handle carnage difficulty.

Oh. I just realized that the whole idea about giving Christo a spear actually came from a suggestion that you gave me about disgaea 4.

[Pickleton]

Originally posted by Idontexist:

Yeah that's similar to what I did though the story. Only difference is that I only used a single generic with fists, Christo and a few monsters including Usalia as weapons. Still using both spears and staves for Christo as I'm preparing to fight the prinny. Just gotta build up a few more characters that can handle carnage difficulty.

Oh. I just realized that the whole idea about giving Christo a spear actually came from a suggestion that you gave me about disgaea 4.

If it was me and spears, was it me suggesting to give Fenrich or Valv a spear to maximize Fenrich's evility? I always try swapping around weapons in Disgaea games to a degree, since you can often find neat ways to use a character, like giving Etna axes in D1 (because she already gets ranged attacks naturally).

[Your Mom's Oshi]

Originally posted by CU Pickleton:

Originally posted by Idontexist:

Yeah that's similar to what I did though the story. Only difference is that I only used a single generic with fists, Christo and a few monsters including Usalia as weapons. Still using both spears and staves for Christo as I'm preparing to fight the prinny. Just gotta build up a few more characters that can handle carnage difficulty.

Oh. I just realized that the whole idea about giving Christo a spear actually came from a suggestion that you gave me about disgaea 4.

If it was me and spears, was it me suggesting to give Fenrich or Valv a spear to maximize Fenrich's evility? I always try swapping around weapons in Disgaea games to a degree, since you can often find neat ways to use a character, like giving Etna axes in D1 (because she already gets ranged attacks naturally).

Yep. That's exactly what gave me the idea about Christo with a spear.

[Pickleton]

Well, I tried Christo with spears in my latest run, and tbh it didn't work that well.
Until you've reincarnated him a few times, his HP and DEF aptitudes are not that great, and his damage with a spear sucks. By the time he did have those reincarnations, he was somewhat okay with taking a few hits, but his damage was still poor and I had already unlocked 3rd tier of Armor Knights through subclassing (140% DEF).

Since I taught my generic mage Heal, it was nice having a frontline and backline healer, but normally I teach heal to Seraphina (my archer), who has a ton of RES (due to giving her an orb for RES Arrows), so I had more versatile healing but with almost zero punch. Christo has poor DEF aptitude, so I couldn't just slap a single armor, orb and boots like I normally do to my spear-using generic. I had to do armor+armor+boots so he could keep up with Killia and RM without getting blown up. With 2 armors, boots and a spear, he had barely any RES which meant weak heals. Even Mega Heal was barely hitting 300-350, and my characters at that point already had about 600-800hp. My generic mage was healing for about 300 with regular heal because she had more RES but only tier1 heal. Seraphina I hadn't taught heal because I only had the 1 scroll.

If you're going for minimum generics, I still think the best use for Christo is to teach him the basic elemental spells via quest rewards, give him a good staff and turn him into an omnimage. Since the equipment for a pure healer and a pure mage aren't that different, he can still pump out decent damage. The only real downside to this is that you can't have another mage/sage or you'll be overlapping weapon types ....

I'll have to do some play testing, but think I had a bit of an epiphany on another way to handle weapon allocation: instead of giving the maid you start with a gun, and going Maid > Gunner > Pirate, use Zeroken as my gunner and have my maid take swords for Maid > Magic Knight > Sage. This would give some nice elemental variation on attacks (since Magic Knights get elemental versions of the sword skills) and allow you to have another mage in your party. Getting a gunner this late does mean that you can't take advantage of the gun you can get in Ch3 from having Seraphina talk to her maid.

The idea is:
Magic Knight = Sword wielding physical/magic damage.
Christo = Staff-wielding omnimage. Teach him the basic elemental spells through quests. Give Skull subclass ASAP for unlocking magic knight and the 200% skill EXP evility.
Seraphina = Bow-wielding support. Teach her heal from a scroll (quest, etc) and give her the RES Arrows cleric evility.

Which leaves:
Fists = Killia (or Logan???)
Spears = Generic. Lady Fighter > Armor Knight (Or Killia if Logan with fists???)
Axes = Red Magnus
Guns = Zeroken
Phys MWeapon = Usalia
Mag MWeapon = Izuna