Accurate Take on Combat?

[AtlasBanana]

Recently stumbled across this guide:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/204985-the-legend-of-heroes-trails-of-cold-steel-iii/faqs/78073/5th-period-combat-coaching

Which, among other things, goes pretty in-depth on party building/composition. It also in its walkthrough section basically explains that most of the tutorials are incorrect and explains how to correct the misconceptions implied by them.

My questions are twofold:

1) Is he right about the tutorials? Some of them seem like his explanations make sense (such as Juna's gunner mode being pretty lackluster early on even in AoE) but others not so much.

2) How important is it to consider the "combat roles" the guide talks about (Advanced Strategy section)? Again parts of it make sense like wanting to have a dedicated healer on hand, but when going in-depth he really starts to stretch I feel

This is also ignoring parts which I'm not sure I even want to look at, like the Arts casting section that puts Laura as a high-tier caster with Emma as bottom-tier (I mean I could be wrong, but it feels... wrong)

[Stabbey]

I played through the game on hard difficulty using what were - according to that guide - largely all the wrong builds. I didn't have much trouble past Einhel Keep in Chapter 1. It seems to me that guide is focusing on certain highly specific things as the most important while ignoring other important context.

For instance, it recommends putting Counter Damage ++ quartz on Juna because of her high range compared to Kurt, ignoring the context of Juna's guns dealing substantially decreased damage compared to her melee.

The guide is also seemingly judging casting tiers based entirely -100%- on the colors of locked orbment slots, and what the most useful quartz are for those locked slots. Actual character stats don't seem to come into play at all.

I'd disregard that section of the guide as being unnecessary. The guide is using a standard of min-maxing in a game which doesn't require anywhere close to that amount of min-maxing. Just use it for the walkthrough.

***

I've gotten similar strange advice from a different forum, also based on some highly specific criteria and ignoring other context. For instance, because Alisa's weapons all come with +10% critical chance, it was suggested to me that instead of using Alisa as a speedy caster, to instead build her focused around critical hits. That ignored the context of her having quite low STR. I did try that out and was unimpressed. She did crit a lot more - not nearly as much as I would have expected for a 70% critical chance - but the overall damage per turn didn't seem worthwhile.

That person said Alisa would be better than Fie for that because of the extra 10% Critical Hit chance, but in practice, Fie did a lot more damage because she has higher STR and more orbment lines to allow more placement of +40 STR quartz than Alisa can accommodate.

[DeathHydra]

I've skimmed a bit of the guide (obviously not all of them as it's a huuuuuuuge wall of texts).

Most of the maths are likely to be correct, as they are accompanied with real examples. The problem with the guide is that they try to min-max every single thing. This game, however, is easily beatable without min-maxing to that extent. You could probably use the auto-quartz setup to beat the game.

Also, I've never seen anyone claiming that Emma is the worst caster in the game. I literally use Emma as a caster anytime possible and beat the game on Nightmare without too much difficulties.

I'd say the combat guide is only for hardcore players who want to play the game as efficiently and effective as possible. It's not really a general guide for casual players.

[Histidine]

Minmax guide sounds about right, yeah.

I think my single most important takeaway from the guide was that arts have way higher damage over time than you might think.

[Evil Gambio]

Originally posted by Stabbey:

I played through the game on hard difficulty using what were - according to that guide - largely all the wrong builds. I didn't have much trouble past Einhel Keep in Chapter 1. It seems to me that guide is focusing on certain highly specific things as the most important while ignoring other important context.

For instance, it recommends putting Counter Damage ++ quartz on Juna because of her high range compared to Kurt, ignoring the context of Juna's guns dealing substantially decreased damage compared to her melee.

The guide is also seemingly judging casting tiers based entirely -100%- on the colors of locked orbment slots, and what the most useful quartz are for those locked slots. Actual character stats don't seem to come into play at all.

I'd disregard that section of the guide as being unnecessary. The guide is using a standard of min-maxing in a game which doesn't require anywhere close to that amount of min-maxing. Just use it for the walkthrough.

***

I've gotten similar strange advice from a different forum, also based on some highly specific criteria and ignoring other context. For instance, because Alisa's weapons all come with +10% critical chance, it was suggested to me that instead of using Alisa as a speedy caster, to instead build her focused around critical hits. That ignored the context of her having quite low STR. I did try that out and was unimpressed. She did crit a lot more - not nearly as much as I would have expected for a 70% critical chance - but the overall damage per turn didn't seem worthwhile.

That person said Alisa would be better than Fie for that because of the extra 10% Critical Hit chance, but in practice, Fie did a lot more damage because she has higher STR and more orbment lines to allow more placement of +40 STR quartz than Alisa can accommodate.

Juna's damage on gunner is lower by like... 40 STR which is pretty low in practice. Overall since STR buffs and Sirius do most of the work, Juna is definitely the better evade tank of the two.
The guide also isn't wrong for judging casters based on their slot restrictions... But it also cites space as the best element which is a huge meme since arts overlap isn't a problem and if you want space support spells you'd give the character a master quartz.
Fie also litterally gains guaranteed crits from stealth. Though crits in CS3 are also useless w/o Gungnir and the 200-CP s-craft bonus of +150% also means that you can't really spend CP and s-craft instantly since the bonus is so huge.

Though a lot of the math in the guide is wrong.
The damage ranks are wrong for instance and he uses an also incorrect damage variance to justify the inconsistent results with his oddly enough correct calculations (aside from the damage ranks anyhow)

Frankly, I'd ignore most of the guide and bother taking a look at Period 4 on MQ builds since that part is actually pretty solid with a lot of fun builds to play around with and shows how good and diverse CS3 character building is.

This really isn't a min-max guide at all in practice though since the guide does not talk about s-craft rushes in any significant capacity or for some reason has not figured out the Calvary Edge glitch (it deals way more damage than it should)

[Dragon]

I feel like using "combat guides" for games like this is a waste, since it ruins the fun of the game which comes from making your characters strong based on your own good decisions.

And based on the things said in the OP, that "combat guide" he is citing seem to be inaccurate trash anyway.

[Bobucles]

In terms of combat roles, there's only 2 to really worry about:
- Craft users
- Arts users
Don't try to mix and match. Craft users should have lots of stat boosts, debuffs and +delay are also excellent. Arts users should have tons of time cast time reduction. They don't need to hit too hard but they'll hit over and over very quickly.

Use the master quartz as a main guide for how to build your character. For example Brigid gives a ton of CP, well that guy should be very lethal and use a lot of crafts. Build towards the MQ, not against it.

Spell buffs are extremely powerful and it's worth using them. Tons of enemies are resistant to debuffs and their resistances are largely unpredictable so it's not something to plan around. Crescent Mirror is a fantastic spell, it gives massive defense boost for just one character action.

If you're always waiting for X character to get set things up, they may have too many roles in the group. Reduce their roles and push more tasks on the other party members. For example it's very easy to try building Altina for buffs and healing and spells, but she just can't do all that.

The rest is just play, experiment and have fun.