Mind Over Magic – Combat Builds with Tips

Combat Builds

A build I like is:

1. Water/Nature
2. Dark/Water
3. Lightning/Water

You want some diversity because you want staff that are good in every element. This sadly is only 4 out of a potential 6 elements, BUT…

Water/Nature is really hard to kill, as they regenerate about 7 hp total per turn with a tier II wand, and they heal the group for 3.

Dark/Water is an AoE attack, plus it gives +7 hp to both other students. The downside of /Water is that the character using it doesn’t gain the benefit, and starts with slightly lower hp. However…

Lightning/Water solves that by giving the center character +7hp as well, and synergizes well with the middle character’s Dark attack. Lightning attack chains to further targets if the initial target dies, with each successive chain hit doing more damage.

Since Dark is weakening the entire enemy group, it makes it more likely that whatever the Lightning attack character targets will die, triggering the chain effect.

It can be a bit of a slow group, since there’s no big heavy hitter, but it’s quite reliable.

A full diversity group that works quite well is:

1. Nature/Lightning
2. Dark/Water
3. Air/Earth

This covers everything except Fire, but you can alternate the first position with a Nature/Fire when you want to promote one to staff that has Fire affinity.

This one is vulnerable to losing your middle character, as they won’t get an HP boost and you don’t have a group healer, so it works best when you have Alchemy up and running to provide your group with a bunch of healing potions.

The first and third characters shouldn’t die due to their secondaries providing excellent survivability, and this group has quite potent firepower. Character 2 ensures you’re always doing at least some damage to the entire enemy group, character 1 does more damage each round, and character 3 has the usual advantage of having an Air attacker in the third position, being that since they have Fast, they will attack first even though they’re in the last position. This is a party that’s good at sweeping enemies AND killing the bosses.