Party member builds?

[Turtle / Eli]

Hello to those that read this, thought I'd ask this considering I don't see alot of forum posts or guides explaining them. Basically I'm trying to figure out what skills I should give my characters throughout the game and I hope I can get suggestions on what skills to give to the party members I use. I sort of have a sense of the skills themselves, but like I mentioned, not really sure which skills to give. Here is my lineup:
Zeke/Phym->follow up, resonance, health, steel body
Lulu-> acrobat, bind, venom, health
Claire-> activation, vampire, ravenous, health
Any skills I should replace based on what I have? I would appreciate the help. Thanks!

[taznkid]

Okay, so here is the thing: when choosing NPC skills, consider their weapons and innate skills that influence AI.

First, survivability. Max health no questions asked. Firm Stand to avoid 1-2 shot KO from Aragami (not necessary for most content), Recovery if you really want to emphasize survivability on top of the previously mentioned two skills above. The OG Post one can be a good filler.

For Hugo, you want skills that boost Devour (skills that give things like Speed Eater). I use Ravenous so Hugo can pump me up with Link Burst.

Claire is a healing gunner. She already has max Oracle, so give her something like OP Economy or Activation to supplement her Oracle supply, along with a Heal Bullet L for better heals. She mostly uses her gun in fights, particularly since she does not have access to Burst Arts.

Zeke and Lulu are both Stamina heavy close combatants. Max out both their Stamina and slap on a Athlete.

Phym does not rely on Stamina, so put w/e on her. She keeps dying on me, so I put extra survivability skills on her.

Ricardo is a ranged combatant due to his AI. Similar to Claire, max out Oracle, and put some sort of Oracle efficiency skill on him. Might even want to put the one that let's the weapon generate more Oracle, since he uses a Variant Scythe.

Link Happy is my go to filler, along with OG Post. YOU are like 95% of the damage, so it is more important for the AI to support you and survive to act as bait. A few example set ups:

Hugo:
Recovery
OG Post
Ravenous
Healing Bullet M

Phym:
Health
Recovery
OG Post
Link Happy

Claire:
Health
Activation
Healing Bullet L
Link Happy

[Turtle / Eli]

Will do. Thanks for the suggestions

[Zorlond]

I typically only ever bring Lulu, Claire, and Phym. Here's my build and logic.

Lulu - Health, Vampire, Acrobat
She's constantly in close and her attack speed is quite high thanks to twin blades. Thus she's constantly recovering health as the fight goes on, and her special attacks have reduced stamina cost and greater attack, so she's can keep using them.

Claire - Recovery, Motionless, Healing Bullet L
She likes hanging around the back ranks firing her gun, so extra health isn't that important, and with better heal bullets she can support better. Recovery just insures she can heal herself as well as others. Motionless is just to make her charging special attacks quicker and a little stronger, for when she does go in.

Phym - Recovery, Health, Empty Belly
Quite basic, but mainly keeps her alive and also makes sure she's popping burst rounds to allies now and then. She's usually around because Healing Light is a handy recovery, plus her Trigger lets her ignore some defense.

You'll notice that's only three skills per person. That's because the fourth skill is always an element attack, whichever one the target is weak towards. They know all four elements to level 2, so I can just swap them out before the fight happens. Having element attacks to the target's weakness is very powerful if the whole team has it. And even if the mission is multiple targets with no element overlap, it's easy enough to split the elements.

With this setup, I seem to be the only one who is ever kissing dirt. : /

[taznkid]

Originally posted by Zorlond:

I typically only ever bring Lulu, Claire, and Phym. Here's my build and logic.

Lulu - Health, Vampire, Acrobat
She's constantly in close and her attack speed is quite high thanks to twin blades. Thus she's constantly recovering health as the fight goes on, and her special attacks have reduced stamina cost and greater attack, so she's can keep using them.

Claire - Recovery, Motionless, Healing Bullet L
She likes hanging around the back ranks firing her gun, so extra health isn't that important, and with better heal bullets she can support better. Recovery just insures she can heal herself as well as others. Motionless is just to make her charging special attacks quicker and a little stronger, for when she does go in.

Phym - Recovery, Health, Empty Belly
Quite basic, but mainly keeps her alive and also makes sure she's popping burst rounds to allies now and then. She's usually around because Healing Light is a handy recovery, plus her Trigger lets her ignore some defense.

You'll notice that's only three skills per person. That's because the fourth skill is always an element attack, whichever one the target is weak towards. They know all four elements to level 2, so I can just swap them out before the fight happens. Having element attacks to the target's weakness is very powerful if the whole team has it. And even if the mission is multiple targets with no element overlap, it's easy enough to split the elements.

With this setup, I seem to be the only one who is ever kissing dirt. : /

Claire not getting one shot with that set up? 100 Health is probably in range for even regular Ashborn to one shot. For example, a Tyrant Hannibal actually nearly KO'ed my entire AI team even WITH the extra 50 Health, only reason he didn't is because
1. I am not AI, and
2. Phym had Firm Stand

Kinda have mixed feelings about the AI in this one, feel like they fight alot smarter than in GE2, but also Link Burst and heal me much less. Add on the fact they get devoured half the time, and I am not sure I even want them around...honestly only do it for immersion and completion at this point.

[NobakeGaming]

You can at least complete all the Standard and Extra missions by using pretty much whatever. I did while having basically no idea what I was doing.
Also because of that, take the rest of this with a grain of salt.

For most characters I would use something like this:
1 - Health looks like a small bonus if you're like me and compare 5 per level to the hundreds of damage you find yourself dealing. I just found out yesterday that you only have 100 HP baseline, so this is actually pretty substantial. (Like I said, I am noob. But in my defense you don't see damage numbers from enemies, and your HP bar is just a bar with no number either.)
2 - Very few damage boosts are worthwhile. Elemental damage gives +25% damage per circle if the enemy is weak to it, at least according to reddit. I can't find that information anywhere else. Anyway, that is by far the most powerful damage boost you can get, if you can be bothered to change it out every mission. Distant second is probably Follow Up since once you break a part the enemy tends to go 'down' pretty frequently. Alternatively, Vanquisher is about just as good as Follow Up assuming multiple enemies. The rest basically aren't worth looking at.
3 - A skill like Recovery or Vampire is great to keep the allies' HP up between taking damage. Never used Firm Stand - partly because the AI is better at avoiding damage than I am, and partly because true oneshot attacks are quite rare through the story, but that might change in the challenge missions.
4 - Flex slot. I tried using Heel for most of the game trying to keep threat off me, but honestly it really didn't feel like it did anything. Link Happy would probably be better, or double up on damage or defense skills. I would not recommend Healing Bullet on anyone but your dedicated healer. I found that less healing happened when I tried giving it to everyone, like they all looked around expecting somebody else to do the healing.

For your healer, take Activation or OP Economy instead of any damage skills, and that's basically the only change necessary.

[Turtle / Eli]

Understood!

[TheStonedemon109]

Originally posted by taznkid:

Okay, so here is the thing: when choosing NPC skills, consider their weapons and innate skills that influence AI.

First, survivability. Max health no questions asked. Firm Stand to avoid 1-2 shot KO from Aragami (not necessary for most content), Recovery if you really want to emphasize survivability on top of the previously mentioned two skills above. The OG Post one can be a good filler.

For Hugo, you want skills that boost Devour (skills that give things like Speed Eater). I use Ravenous so Hugo can pump me up with Link Burst.

Claire is a healing gunner. She already has max Oracle, so give her something like OP Economy or Activation to supplement her Oracle supply, along with a Heal Bullet L for better heals. She mostly uses her gun in fights, particularly since she does not have access to Burst Arts.

Zeke and Lulu are both Stamina heavy close combatants. Max out both their Stamina and slap on a Athlete.

Phym does not rely on Stamina, so put w/e on her. She keeps dying on me, so I put extra survivability skills on her.

Ricardo is a ranged combatant due to his AI. Similar to Claire, max out Oracle, and put some sort of Oracle efficiency skill on him. Might even want to put the one that let's the weapon generate more Oracle, since he uses a Variant Scythe.

Link Happy is my go to filler, along with OG Post. YOU are like 95% of the damage, so it is more important for the AI to support you and survive to act as bait. A few example set ups:

Hugo:
Recovery
OG Post
Ravenous
Healing Bullet M

Phym:
Health
Recovery
OG Post
Link Happy

Claire:
Health
Activation
Healing Bullet L
Link Happy

Sorry to bug, but what’s OG Post? I haven’t found it at all

[Didaibr]

Originally posted by TheStonedemon109:

Sorry to bug, but what’s OG Post? I haven’t found it at all

same, so I google and found out he means Extra Post skill so the Ai use that healing ground item(OG restore post)

Right now Im using this:
Hugo
Empty belly
Energy Bite
Ravenous
whatever(testing with healing bullet M)

Phym
Steel Body
Extra Post(testing)
Giving(because of her link aid)
Health

Claire
Activation
OP Economy
healing bullet L
Health

Im thinking about change Phym or Claire for Lulu and maybe make Lulu a full on traping with hold/bind or venom but I dont know if its going to work or If I will have the patience to do it...