Every soul is a good soul. But some are better than others at doing their job. This is an attempt at systematically classifying every combat soul, and contains some tips for proper optimization.
Some general Do's and Don'ts for optimization:
- DO take complementary secondary souls.
- DON'T overlap proficiencies when you dual-soul. Since you get half the ability of the secondary soul at a given level, redundant proficiencies are wasted.
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Building souls for Army Magician is very simple: avoid high fire/air magic overlaps and focus on shoring up the extreme weaknesses of this DPS centric soul. Cover makes you take damage for allies--avoid it!
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Strengths |
Weaknesses
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General |
- High raw damage output
- Excellent DoT damage
- High Affinities
- Potent AoE
- Strong Skills
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- Poor HP
- Poor access to armor
- Low Defense
- Low Accuracy
- No medical affinity or heal abilities
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Dual Souls |
- Ninja: hpbuffer passive
- Medic souls: offers medical affinities and/or passives)
- Dark Knight: Heavy armor and Vampiric passive
- Summoner souls: Pets can tank damage
- Windrunner: Allows use of Fine Tuned/Heavy/Guided
Short Bow for attack and accuracy passive boost
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- Tank souls (e.g. Fighter & Crusader): Cause you to take damage for others
- Other fire souls: Redundant affinities
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Equipment |
- Flame of the Creator (Venomous/CI/Heaviest)
= 83 base damage over 4 rounds
- Parrying blade (Fine Tuned/Heavy/Guided/Large)
= Light weapon, provides 20 defense and 10 accuracy buff
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xxxx
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Chakras |
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Dedications |
- Sphinx: Offers Damagebuff + Technical
- Phoenix: Offers Healing + free Revive
- Elementalist: Gives you tank or healing pet
- Elemental Dragon: Offers some resists
- Siren: AoEguard causes party to take less damage
- Cerebrus: Offers DoTattack + some resists
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- Kraken: AoEmod caps damage, neg. damagebuff hurts
- Kirin: causes you to tank
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General |
- Great at fighting one or two enemies
- Variety of combat skills make for a versatile base
- High damage and high defenses stat
- Capable of heavy damage bursts
- Good proficiency selection
- Combat soul with some non-combat proficiencies
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- No inherent AoE attacks
- Defenses may be strong, but are very thin
- Very easy to burst through energy reserves
- Split focus means other souls are better at specializing
- No innate healing capabilities
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Secondaries |
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- Souls that duplicate proficiency or with conflicting styles.
- Crusader and Fighter rely on toughness and durability without complimenting Duelist's strengths like Samurai or Ninja
- Scholar and Dark Magician have AoE debuffs, but Duelist does not have the base capabilities to fully use them
- Windrunner, Rogue, and Shrouded Assassin all have positive benefits, but their heavy overlap limits their utility.
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Equipment |
- Parying Dagger - Thanks to Avoidance 3, the defense bonus from this item is increased by 45% - easily providing 60 or so defense for the Duelist.
- Swift Sword - Instant attack for high damage, although the bonus penetration from Duelist's combat skills doesn't add much.
- Martial Training - Even without Flurry, the Martial Training is an excellent option for a duelist's 'main' attack.
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Dedications |
- Spyguard - Thematically fun and provides a lot of bonuses to RP rolls
- Kraken - Duelist -needs- good equipment, and Kraken's Technical boosts it. Also, AoE Swift Swords.
Ok:
- Phoenix - Fiery Rebirth comes in handy
- 3D Magister - Duelist gets many fast attacks, so can reliably proc the abilities every turn; the energy drain will hurt though.
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- Kirin - Damage shifted by cover uses the source's defense, and not yours. This will kill a duelist quickly
- Gryphon - The Duelist's innate attack powers are weak; it relies heavily on equipment.
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The name 'fighter' is a bit of a misnomer, as this soul excels at providing defense and cover more than inflicting damage. Make sure to add damageresist to better soak up enemy damage.
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The Golem Crafter has two flavors: offensive and defensive.
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Secondaries |
- Machine Priest: Leadership plus 3 loadout-free summons at MP level 15 (i.e., GC level 30)
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Windrunner is a very specialized class. As a light weapons class, it never runs into cooldown issues. As of such, avoid picking classes that have many active skills to deal damage as they will not fit into a strong light weapons rotation. It has a niche role providing defense debuffs with guided longbow and hand crossbow that no other class can provide.
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Positives |
Negatives
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General |
- Decent damage dealer
- Light Weapons (No energy problems or cooldown issues)
- High Athletics (No energy issues)
- Strong at Repeats (2 attack, high accuracy, has 2 flurry. Has access to Guided)
- Fast cooldowns
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- Below average base damage potential (127%)
- Poor access to armor
- Low defenses
- Has no natural healing mechanism
- Weak soul powers
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- Light weapons classes (Large overlap in proficiencies)
- Cover souls (Crusader, Fighter)
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Optimal:
- Sphinx (Damagebuff + Technical on the Answer)
- Phoenix (Healing + free Revive)
- Elementalist (Tank pet or Healing pet)
- Kraken (Free AoE proc chance + technical)
- 3d Magister (Can sustain heavy energy cost on toggle)
- Spyguard (Very potent repeat attack actually worth using)
Ok:
- Elemental Dragon (Some resists)
- Siren (AoEguard in party to take less damage)
- Cerebrus (some resists)
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- Kirin (Cover)
- Basilisk (2 weak actives)
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