ANOTHER EDEN – Basic Guide (Roles, Equipment and Strats)

Guide to Basics

Foreword

This is a guide intended to help newer or uninformed Another Eden (AE) players get up to speed regarding several gameplay tenets that define how experienced players view things such as characters and their skill sets. It helps to bridge the gap from “just starting” to knowing what to look out for when putting teams together, fighting new bosses, or seeing new characters release, and so on. Be aware that a lot of these concepts don’t matter immediately, you’re fine doing basically whatever till you at least complete the Part 1 story, then you might have questions about knowing what you’re doing that this guide hopefully answers.

The sequence starts off basic with explaining fundamental roles characters can have and then builds on top of it with examples and savvy tips for things that might not be immediately obvious.

Characters in this game wouldn’t be what they are without the equipment, and so the role they play in terms of character strength are also generally explained afterwards.

Finally, putting everything together, strategy examples are shown that make use of these concepts at a high level of play and showcase some practical use for all of the roles put forward.

Roles

As with any RPG, characters are generally going to be classifiable into specific roles that define their use/value. For AE, I’m going to define the important roles broadly as Damage Dealer/DPS, Offense Support, Defense Support, Healer. Now, at first glance the expectation might be to have characters fully dedicated to each one, but in reality there is frequently overlap across them on characters. A lot of notable DPS characters also provide useful support of some kind. Early on, the more exclusive role was Healer, but at this point even that overlaps with some DPS characters.

In the following subsections, what serves to define someone as belonging to a particular role for practical consideration will be explained.

Damage Dealer/DPS

DPS characters, as is obvious from the name, are the ones expected to deal high damage from your team to be able to kill bosses in reasonable time. As a baseline for understanding, it’s helpful to understand how damage skill multipliers are defined by default in AE:

In the early days, there was practically no deviation from standard multipliers, so as long as you had a single target (ST) XL skill of the desired element/attack type, you were basically DPS. What served to differentiate characters to a degree in this respect was how many buffs or debuffs they brought to the table for themselves and potential teammates to allow more optimal damage. The ability to deal multiple hits with said single target XL skill would also be one criteria for putting you ahead, as it would charge Another Force (AF) faster, leading to even more damage. The actual damage from multi-hits is about the same since damage from standard multipliers would be divided across each hit.

It wasn’t until the release of Suzette (Another Style), that the game dipped its toes towards redefining this with the first of many instances of powercreep. I won’t actually go through every era’s spike, but for introductory purposes it’s good to show where it all started to paint the picture of what’s happening right now. Suzette AS brought to the table a kit that allowed her to receive a periodically insane damage spike. It would be the first of many stacking mechanics to be seen–both of her new skills had the standard single target XL multipliers, but when you used a certain one she would gain stacks up to a maximum of 3.

When you then used the other skill, it would perform additional attacks each equal to standard ST XL multiplier per each stack and then consume them. This was basically the equivalent of her being allowed to take 4 turns at once, which was crazy. The result was a skill with a potential 800% multiplier, 4 times the standard. When comparing averaged DPS with standard to account for the stacking though, she effectively had a 350% multiplier ((2+2+2+8)÷4) over the course of 4 turns, which is still near double of standard, and does not factor in that if she dealt a crit with the stacking skill, it would gain 2 stacks instead of 1, and said stacks also have a passive effect to increase her crit rate.

Fast forward to present day and the likes of that occasional 800% have become a repeatedly usable multiplier for current DPS characters with minimal setup required. Now anyone incapable of spamming at least 600% is hard to call DPS, and 600% itself is on the lower end for making the cut in a world where newer characters are pushing to make 1600% spam the new norm.

Still, 1600%+ is fairly top end and I’d generally say characters with ~800%+ spam are a nice baseline to look at when scouting DPS options. To build on the initial example and possibly make some of this clearer: Suzette AS has now received buffs that allow her to generate stacks at a quickened rate of 2 per use (3 if crit), and to not consume her stacks (but still get the additional attacks per each) while in Another Force.

Keep in mind that the interactions that play into defining a character’s effective spammable multiplier might not always be obvious. It’s not too uncommon for certain buff effects characters possess to give them a notable edge worth acknowledging in most scenarios, even though it’s generally not advised to factor buffs into comparisons, for reasons which will be explained later in the following section.

Offense Support

As a natural progression from having talked about DPS characters, characters capable of taking the crazy damage possible now and giving it even more multipliers by way of buff or debuff effects is what really allows them to shine.

Much like with DPS, minimal offense support is capable of working in varied general contexts. Your DPS can’t do anything if a boss is immune to their attacks, and likewise your offense support is limited to buffing characters that match the conditions imposed by the effects.

As an example, take Shanie after her manifest buff. With Epic Tale she debuffs both Water Res -30% and Phys Res -20% with a single use. With her other 5* skill, Oasis Wave, she buffs Water damage for all party members +30%. So with a single use of each, you end up with a +95% multiplier boost to Water physical damage: (1+0.3+0.2) * 1.3 = 1.95x. This is because elemental/type and physical resistance effects are added together. Anyway, Shanie serves to turbo boost Water physical DPS on a team and is actually quite low on damage herself. With further stacking of Epic Tale she gets a maximum contribution of +160% or 2.6x to all Water physical characters on your team, which is huge for one party slot, but only  useful if you actually have the right characters to boost.

This design is prevalent across several kinds of offense boost. The game is willing to give you extra damage if you’re willing to build around it, and it’s somewhat rare to find characters with de/buff (buff and/or debuff) effects that are generically splashable for this role in varied compositions. This is further emphasized by Zone effects which serve as the backbone for the majority of strong teams in the game now. Zones give great gains (that will be described later), but only for characters capable of matching their respective type, and as such even if you had generic and potent damage boost effects on certain characters, you would be disinclined to use them on every team if they do not match the Zone property.

All that being said, there aren’t too many effects to forcibly chase when building teams as their value still does depend on the characters bringing them to the table. Almost every de/buff effect is effectively just a multiplier, so being able to hit “enough” damage is possible with mixing and matching those available to the characters you’re using. You’ll find that some of the better DPS characters also double as part of this role since the capability to multiply the whole team’s damage while already being a dominant force for it gives you a ton of worth for one team slot.

There are however some offense boosts which lead into direct interaction with the damage formula rather than just multiplying pre-existing damage: Critical Rate buffs & PWR/INT/SPD (dependent on the formula used for your skill) buffs. Both of these directly interact with enemy defenses creating potentially huge spikes that can make them primary to base other multipliers on if you can get your hands on them.

Critical hits are of course possible naturally, but when you take into account that base critical rate is a character’s LCK divided by 16, you end up with about an average of 10% chance, which is pretty much ignorable. Thankfully, +100% critical rate buffs are as common as ever for most team compositions now. Critical hits in general also give the most boost for one effect type, with an average minimum of about 2x. Effects from most other buffs cap at said 2x, and it is frequently unlikely to see them hitting those individual caps to begin with.  

To give a bird’s-eye view of the skills that define offense support on characters, the following is a list of types they can be categorized into. Of course, self buffs characters possess don’t count to classify them as offense support.

Critical Buffs

Critical Rate is as explained above. Critical Damage gives a varied damage boost dependent on the source, but only ever applies to critical hits, otherwise there is no damage gain from having the buff. Common values are +30%, highest individual value so far is +50%. Critical Damage from different characters stacks additively with no cap.

Critical Rate from multiple characters gets added together as well but there is no effect for having Critical Rate higher than 100%. All critical rate buffs are move-based so they require reapplication in AF if the move amount granted is exceeded. It should be noted that unlike Physical attacks, Magic cannot inherently crit. The game refers to critical rate buffs under this assumption. Therefore, critical rate buffs do not work on Magic damage unless Magic is specified by the skill. Magic Critical Damage buffs do not currently exist from skills.

Resistance Debuffs

Physical and Elemental (or “Type” as the game refers to it) are the 2 types of resistance. These are different from whether an enemy resists or is weak to certain types of attacks and does not vary between enemies, they are simply direct multipliers. Individually they multiply applicable damage by the stated amount on a target with them, but if both Phys and Type are present and applicable, their values are added to each other rather than multiplied, as previously stated.

Physical skills can use both types of resistance by being elemental, while Magic skills can only make use of their specific Type Res debuffs or the general one. Subdivisions of resistance are regarded the same effect as their parent for applicable damage i.e. Slash Res is the same thing as Phys Res to Slash skills, and using both does not result in a multiplied effect but rather a reduced one–this same logic applies to using a Fire magic skill with both Fire Res and general Type Res active, and so on.

A special quirk of non-elemental magic is that it is boosted by any form of Type Res debuff, elemental specific or not, despite not having an element or “type” of its own. Solid values for Res debuffs start from 30%, and a number of characters can stack it up to 60% now. Characters with general Phys Res or Type Res debuffs naturally have potential to be used in more team compositions.

Type Attack Buffs

Fairly straightforward, they buff damage for using skills with the matching element. General Type Attack buffs are rare and are also move-based instead of turn-based unlike the elemental specific ones, and as such require reapplication in AF if you exceed their move count. For inexplicable reasons, the general version of Type Attack buffs activated in combat also boosts non-elemental (or “Non-Type” as the game refers to it) damage.

Non-Type Attack specific buffs do also exist but the only party buff version of it is from Strawboy. Regardless, Non-Type Attack buffs so far only work with Physical damage, as they specify. Type Attack party buffs are actually somewhat rare compared to Resistance debuffs, so not much reason to be too picky about potency since it’s unlikely to have reduced effect relative to having another one.

Weapon Buffs

They buff all damage of characters with the matching weapon type they specify. They don’t actually care about the damage type. Cerrine gets her Piercing skills boosted from Fists buffs even though Fists usually correlate to Blunt, and so on. As far as party buff potency for these are concerned, 50% is a very common value, which is very high end. There are a couple of ways to get these outside of character active skills, but those will be described in other sections.

A little trivia: These buffs are fairly special in that, even though for a long time it was impossible for characters to do damage from another element than their own, the game did not restrict receiving elemental buffs to matching characters, even if they’d be useless on others. However, for weapon buffs a check is performed for which characters actually use that weapon type and only they are granted the buff. Also, even though they say “X equipped characters’ damage”, the buffs also boost INT-based burst heals. 

PWR/INT/SPD Buffs

Direct stat buffs that frequently result in a higher effect than the stated increase due to damage formula quirks. PWR is for physical skills, INT is for magic skills, SPD is for speed-based skills which are currently all physical. Those are the general rules but there are a number of exceptions with certain characters by now. Some characters deal physical damage that’s based on their INT, some deal magic based on their PWR. Skill descriptions will usually tell you about these exceptions, as well as which skills use SPD for damage.

SPD buffs in general are valuable for boosting AF cooldown thresholds to allow you to get more attacks in. I have to point out that the naming of these buffs is somewhat misleading. PWR buffs do not only affect PWR, rather your weapon’s ATK is added to your PWR and the total of that is what gets buffed, this also works the same for M.ATK and INT. SPD is especially different in that even though all SPD damage skills are currently physical damage, PWR is not used in the formula at all, but weapon ATK is still used before buffs. All that being said, it’s rare to find these as high potency (~25%+) party buffs outside of using valor chants, so characters that can grant them without having to switch are usually pretty valuable if the rest of their kit holds up.

Mental Focus

This buffs Magic damage based on maximum MP of the receiving character. The scaling can vary per source but is generally fairly insane, resulting in numbers like instant +150% (2.5x) with 656 MP. I like to think of this as their apology to mages damage-wise, since they were unable to crit for so long and could not make use of physical resistance debuffs, both significantly limiting their damage potential when compared to physical DPS characters, since the game is mostly biased towards physical synergies.

Zones

Of all the things mentioned so far, Zones are not technically buffs or debuffs, but they do still classify as offense support. How it works is that once a Zone is activated by a character, it permanently boosts a specific element or damage type of damage by 1.5x (elemental) or 1.3x (damage type). Damage type refers to Slash/Piercing/Blunt/Magic. These effects last unless the Zone is overwritten by another one or removed.

The damage boosts from these also apply to enemy actions as well, due to the environmental nature of them. Another inherent offensive property of Zones is the increased AF gain for damage skills matching the Zone–effectively treating them as 5-hit skills (assuming no weakness to it on part of the enemy) when compared to having no Zone active, which is insane when considering the damage AF allows. Using full matching skills for just 2 turns is enough to get a half bar filled that also results in a longer AF. The catch is some penalties are applied to using other damage skills that do not match the Zone property, which is why teams mostly end up homogenous around them to abuse the AF gain increase. You would also naturally want homogenous characters for how other buffs tend to work anyway.

A Fire buff doesn’t do much if you only have 50% Fire characters on your team and then 2 different other elements. The characters that enable Zones usually possess other support capabilities as well that fall under the previous categories or the upcoming defense support/healer sections. These include end-of-turn passives, from them while their zone is active, that are in some cases capable of outstripping usual values of the buffs they grant, but with the requirement of using enough of the matching move type on the previous turn.

That about wraps it up for offense support. You might have caught on to me mentioning a reduced effect with using the same de/buff types for non-crit effects. The summary being that it is generally better to use different types of effects rather than stacking too much of the same types, especially when dealing with ones of lower potency. This is also why DPS that depend on self buffs to shine are at risk of getting outclassed should their type and strength of buff be easily available in party form for other characters to receive.

Defense Support

For as much damage as is allowed by strong teams within AF in modern day, as you might have seen already, some might wonder if there is any value to survivability, but there indeed still is. It’s not necessarily much need depending on the team or strategy you’re using, but even if it’s just living that 1 turn to be able to set up then press the AF button, it’s still something to care about. 

I’ll start by dispelling a common idea some might have coming from other games: AE doesn’t really do tanks. There are a few characters that possess skills that fit them into that archetype, but they are largely relegated to the rare boss with only single target physical attacks to shine, and even then there are always other accessible strategies so it’s not like they’re required for those.

In practice, the tools desirable for survivability consist of PWR/INT debuffs & Phys/Type Res party buffs. PWR/INT debuffs are more commonly impactful due to commonly assigned values between them and Res buffs. A common value for Res buffs is around 30%, and gold standard is looking at 50%+. But if you took a 20% PWR or INT debuff, you would generally mitigate notably more damage than the 30% Res shield due to how the damage formula works. With Res buffs, what you see is what you get–those 30% buffs mean you only take 0.7x damage when the Res matches. 

There are of course elemental specific types of Type Res buffs, and with those it’s a lot more common to see values of 50%. The catch is that sometimes bosses won’t be so kind as to only use the element you’re supposed to be advantaged against, and then it gets a lot harder to guard against, so general Type Res buffs are frequently desirable on top of other things. Specific types of Phys Res (Slash/Piercing/Blunt Res buffs) are very obscure to the point of being ignorable.

So that the nuances between them are clear, I’ll explain what can apply to what: Physical attacks are mitigated by PWR debuffs on enemies and Phys Res buffs on your party, but also by Type Res if the physical attack used is elemental and the Type Res matches or is general. Magic is mitigated by INT debuffs and Type Res buffs alone, also only if the Type Res matches or is general, but with the quirk that non-type magic is resisted by any form of Type Res despite not having an element.

It is possible to become immune to damage if you get 100% resistance from buff stacking, and as mentioned previously in this guide, values of Phys Res and Type Res are added together when both apply. So say theoretically you had 50% Phys Res and 50% Type Res and the enemy used an elemental physical attack, it’d be 50+50 into 100% for immunity. Values over 100 do not change anything. 

The explanation and example given above is pretty telling towards elemental physical attacks being the easiest to mitigate, since they’re hit by the majority of options you have available. Conversely, non-elemental physical attacks are generally the hardest to mitigate because most characters do not have high values for Phys Res party buffs relative to Type Res, but good PWR debuffs will still be effective at the least.

Zones also possess inherent defensive properties. Elemental zones weaken the effects of the element they’re superior to by -50%, and Weapon zones weaken the effects of mismatched damage types by -30%. These apply to both allies and enemies.

Defense support is a role that can be held by a variety of character types. A number of DPS have even defense support built into their damage kits, giving more flexibility to the teams in which you would use them as you will not need to spend a slot primarily for it. In less opportune teams, defense support is something that’s more common to find on the few neutral-biased characters in the game, and so they are frequently employed to guard against attacks a team would otherwise not have good answers for, usually bolstered by the fact that some of them double as healers. 

Now might also be a good time to mention that usually if a skill does damage and also can inflict a debuff, said debuff is usually not guaranteed unless it is a stacking one. Generally the rate on non-guaranteed debuffs is about 80%, but this rule isn’t total and a lot of non stacking debuffs may still be guaranteed depending on the character, and this is frequently also the case for skills buffed by manifest weapons. More so than with offensive debuffs, defensive ones landing or not landing on time can be the difference between a win and a wipe, so it’s something to keep in mind when choosing characters and planning strategies. 

Healer

A long time ago, before fully optimized elemental or Zone teams were able to take shape, specialized healers were a mainstay of any team for boss fights. However once those teams did come into their own, it became possible to blow through a number of things without regard for health. Even more pressing–for the rarer times when healing might be desirable even now, it’s not uncommon to find said healing as part of the utility kit of a Zone enabler character, frequently via end-of-turn passives that allow them to do other things each turn while still keeping the party alive.

Original healing is as straightforward to describe as it gets: based on their INT, weapon M.ATK and heal multipliers, healers would restore HP to the whole party, frequently giving back about 60%+ HP with the one move use. This was a role that was predominantly taken by Staff characters, as they were the ones with healing skills in their kits, and real INT stats to use them. Some Hammer characters actually have a solid amount of INT and healing skills as well, but they were few and far between and never really caught on for it. These healers would also have about what you’d expect with other tools such as status cleanse and a dash of defense support, for the most part.

Why it was possible for Staffs to be usurped was the introduction of % based and fixed value heals that do not use the healing formula that factors INT. The most common % heals are calculated within Zones as passives of some of the enabler characters based on the number of matching moves used for that turn, with maxes ranging from 40% to 60%.

Also, contrary to what you might expect, while it is naturally possible for the original heals to be buffed by things like INT buffs to increase their output, the % calculated heals are also capable of being increased beyond their stated maximums by using heal boost passives from equipment now. At the least, the other form of new healing in Fixed Value heals restore the exact amount they say and cannot be boosted outside of pre-existing skill conditions stating it.

All this is not to say “Don’t use Staff characters to heal” or “Avoid original healers”, it’s to say that a lot of the time now, you might not need to employ the generic specialized healer options as you might have access to more synergistic characters that allow you to do more with the team slot than just healing. Similar to what was stated in the Defense Support section, it actually still isn’t uncommon for teams without a good heal alternative, and in need of it, to employ specialized healers, while also gaining from their support toolboxes as well.

Even with some teams that do have alternatives, the fact that the original heals are more proactive and capable of significantly outhealing fixed heals creates a number of situations they might still be preferred. There are also original-type healers that have more synergy than usual with elemental teams so the slot ends up more valuable than otherwise when in their hands.

Equipment

Equipment plays a pivotal role in the power available to characters in the current state of the game. It’d always been important anyway but now more so than ever. If you could say 50% of powercreep came from new characters, then the other 50% came from farmable equipment pushing the limit on what should be possible for characters to do, constantly. This section serves to explain a core pillar to a lot of high-end strategies in use now and may let newer players know what they should be prioritizing as a result.

Weapons

Weapons are naturally for augmented attack stats on your characters. Initially they were all about the stats they had, but over time more and more weapons were added with different passive abilities that gave a lot of options for enhancing capabilities. Passives to look out for are things like Type Attack+, Strengthen when Pain/Poison, Damage when X HP, PWR/INT/SPD+; as might fit best for the characters and setups you’re using.

Still, a lot of the time, just using a stat stick and forgoing a passive weapon for any reason will not necessarily yield much difference. Passive effects can be strong but they can be thought of as extra leeway on top of the raw strength of your characters, and sometimes the oomph of passives just isn’t necessary. You don’t necessarily have to feel like you have to get every piece of optimal or recommended equipment before you can tackle bosses. Similarly, farming of materials for weapons requiring them to unlock and upgrade passives is practically skippable for people who aren’t enthused by the prospect.

The exception to this is Manifest weapons, which are weapons with exclusive effects that only activate when equipped by their intended character in the correct style. They are released over time as a way to buff older characters who might have fallen off the power curve and are frequently game changing to the strength a character possesses by the skill changes they implement.

While it might not matter what weapons you’re using on others, chances are if your character has a manifest then they’re not very strong without it at this point. Unfortunately some characters still don’t end up too strong even after their Manifest release, but it’s something you should look out to prioritize getting and leveling for characters you have with them as it takes tons of exp farming before you can awaken their potential for the skill changes.

Armor

Armor are fairly straightforward, the defensive counterpart to weapons for extra stats. For the most part, armor options are less volatile than with weapons passives wise and it’s also really easy to get solid stat sticks to use if you want to ignore or don’t have those.

Something to point out that might take you by surprise at first is that certain pieces of armor possess damage boost passives, and are generally preferable as defensive passives usually do not factor much into survivability anyway. There are also armor with SPD+ passives, which can help with controlling AE’s erratic turn ordering having ±10% variance on SPD stats, and several other uses as well.

Badges

Badges are generally the harder equipment to get a hold of initially, as they require some RNG and a fair amount of time spent running specific dungeons. After a short while though, you’ll end up with a couple of badges with stats around 20ish as a good baseline, and will be wondering what to use on who.

They’re actually pretty straightforward: you generally just want PWR badges on physical dps characters, INT badges on magic dps, SPD on characters that have and focus on SPD based damage or just characters you care about ordering turn sequence for. 

There are also ability badges you can get in a variety of ways that grant effects such as status immunities, or granting passive elemental resistance. Those are more for case-by-case use and to be kept in mind when facing such specific scenarios that encourage them.

Grasta

Grasta are by and large the most game changing of equipment types, and were subsequently added at and after 2.0. They might be harder to visualize initially since they do not show up on the default gear screen and need to be unlocked with deep story progress, but they’re pretty much just gems that characters can hold up to 3 of with powerful passive effects and a few extra stats. There is also a 4th slot that can only be used by Special grasta.

Grasta have categories of Attack/Life/Support and Special. The ones you’ll mostly need to worry about from the first 3 are Attack Grasta, but Life/Support may also have significant situational relevance depending on the strategy used. Notably, Prayer grasta are Support grasta that give the user access to a party Weapon damage buff skill that matches their own weapon type, allowing flexible access to a high damage boost.

An example effect for attack grasta is like Fire damage +20%. Now imagine being able to use 3 of those and getting a passive +60% boost to all your Fire attacks as a Fire DPS without having to lift a finger for it in combat. Needless to say, they changed the landscape of difficulty level for content after their release.

The elemental damage grasta described are generally what you might use early on as they are easier to make use of. But later on, due to the fact that “Strengthen when Pain/Poison” attack grasta stack multiplicatively rather than additively, they become significant upgrades over elemental grasta despite the condition of requiring the enemy to be statused as specified.

In truth, character and manifest releases began to revolve around enabling them and there are several characters now that can inflict guaranteed Pain/Poison on enemies, ignoring their status resistance. This lets the Pain/Poison effects shine as the pinnacle of passive damage boost to players further along, outside of a few instances of gimmick bosses.

And because they weren’t already strong enough, apparently, enhancements were later released for grasta allowing them to get new or strengthened effects from a couple of options. One such option further alleviates any concerns about status enabling as Pain/Poison grasta can now passively attempt to inflict the respective status on enemies whenever you attack.

There are also a host of conditional damage boost enhancements that require special cases to enable, but can yield insane payoff if you can work for them. The advent of grasta sharing on certain high tier grasta also serves to virtually increase the number of grasta slots available to matching characters of the specific grastas on the same team. You should be able to get the picture by now, grastas are about the final word on what is allowed to be high damage at this point.

Returning to talk about Special grasta and the 4th slot, there are a couple of one-time ones that can be picked up and have varied effects for certain characters, that I won’t talk about, but there is also the option to acquire grastas for this slot that are specific to a character and boost the effects of their valor chants while giving them a few extra stats as well. Some of these VC boosts are notable, but for the most part, it can be thought of as just another way to get some more numbers on your screen for your favorite characters if you’re so inclined.

It should be noted that most grasta are a long grind to acquire, so if you care to play with high numbers sooner than later then you want to prioritize clearing the main story above other things so you can get started.

Strategies

The following section serves to show off some popular strategy types, and some may also inform newer players on easier methods to clear a number of fights that they hadn’t thought about. The categories are not meant to be exhaustive and play more the role of putting into visual what happens when you combine the factors mentioned within this guide together effectively.

Balanced

The broadest category and most dependent on the mechanics of the enemy being faced. Features generally slower clears with a need to heal and mitigate fairly frequently. AF is used as a burst tool for damage only when set up properly rather than defining the whole fight. These are the types of strategies most newer players might find themselves capable of using for a number of fights, but due to powercreep also taking place in the free character department, a lot of fights can be cleared much quicker by them as well, even without any grasta, such as numerous manifest bosses.

This example video also shows off the HP stopper mechanic that stops enemy health from dropping below a specific threshold in one AF, or prevents dropping below it from one move if excess damage is dealt by a move outside of AF. 

Turn 2 AF

With the advent of Zones, more available characters, and grasta, it became trivial for teams to have enough firepower to kill a lot of bosses without any HP stoppers as soon as turn 2. The turn delay is caused by the majority of Zones only being activatable outside of AF by requiring valor chants for them or just from skill restrictions. The extra turn also serves to allow setup of buffs and extra AF gain. Sometimes, the first turn needs to be spent on survivability as well, but frequently this is not the case and numerous bosses will effectively not threaten you on their first turn.

Turn 1 AF

Take what you just read in the previous section, but do it faster, basically. The only ways to get a Zone active on turn 1 for AF are Melissa, Fire Zone grasta, and the unreleased Slash Zone grasta. But even without those, it is possible to kill certain bosses in an immediate AF leveraging multihit and possibly speed buffs to get a longer AF and then leveraging powercreep to fit all the damage you need in. This is especially possible if the boss has a weakness to an element or damage type you have good multihit skills for, due to AF gain rules. This one is mostly for showing off, but sometimes bosses do annoying things on their first turn and it may be preferable to not give them a chance to act at all.

The second video also showcases a T1AF but with a followup nuke required due to a HP stopper, the same core idea of denying an annoying boss any actions is still on display.

High Damage

This is where things start to get interesting. Some of the previous videos have shown HP stoppers and how they work. Many would think that with the introduction of bosses with multiples of those that such quick clears would be dead, but by virtue of powercreep, creativity finds a way:

Well, I say creativity, but this really just goes to show the effects of grasta powercreep on the game at its current level. The video shows a fight that usually would take a long winded strategy, but with the extra damage allowed by grasta enhancements, it is possible to deny the bosses from getting any real actions off, and there are several such videos like this which showcase the power of mixing those with good DPS characters and offense support. Fights are only as long as you let them be.

Egor Opleuha
About Egor Opleuha 649 Articles
Egor Opleuha is a professional copywriter with more than 12 years of experience, who eventually became fully immersed in the gaming industry. The legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga was and continues to be his favorite video game franchise. In his free time he likes to fish and play guitar.

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