With over 100 playable characters available in Another Eden, there are definitely some that are significantly stronger than the others. Not helping matters is Power Creep continuously setting new standards for boss-slaying purposes, so some of the older entries may simply meet the new power standard, if not outdated.
Note that one thing that adds power to a character in a very non-obvious way is the ability to inflict the status ailments Pain and Poison while ignoring enemy resistance. Although the ailments themselves do very little damage, a quirk in the damage formula makes the "Power of Pain" and "Power of Poison" grasta, which boost damage against enemies that have those ailments, some of the very best grasta for increasing the amount of damage a character does. Unlike most other damage boosts, the 30% boosts from Power of Pain and Power of Poison stack multiplicatively, not additively. If you have a 20% Type Attack boost from your weapon, a 50% Type Attack boost from a skill used during the fight, and a 30% Type Attack boost from a single grasta, you'll do 100% + 20% + 50% + 30% = 200% of your base damage, but if you had a Power of Pain grasta instead of one that gave a 30% Type Attack boost, you would do (100% + 20% + 50%) * 1.3 = 221% of your base damage, as long as the enemy had Pain applied. The difference gets even bigger when you have three grastas equipped instead of just one, so being able to inflict Pain and/or Poison can become very important when you're trying to do as much damage as possible.
DPS Units and Features
- Suzette's Another Style is the first of its kind, and easily sets the bar for the Power Creep to come. Her Elegant Cavort skill is already a decent enough 2-hit wind skill, but it also stacks Spirit Petals to raise her critical rate, and it's a fantastic skill for spamming in Another Force. Once enough have been accumulated, it ties into her Exquisite Blossom that hits up to 4 times based on the stacks. When equipped with a fully upgraded Ulcanactos, or better yet, her full-power Manifest Weapon, she can shred most bosses off these two skills alone, especially those weak to piercing or wind.
- Speaking of Suzette, her original manifest weapon, Dark Heavenly Tears, greatly powers up her 5-star skills. Dragon Assault now hits for double damage on anything inflicted with Pain or Poison, and Quad Damage if the target is afflicted with both. And Demonic Thrust has been upgraded to inflict both of them to every enemy without fail. This combination greatly amplifies Suzette's DPS, and this is a frequently cited reason to why wind is a very popular element in the game.
By the third Global Anniversary, Suzette received yet another step up in her Manifest's potential — once you unlock her True Manifest, her Demonic Thrust gets Action Initiative and inflicts both ailments guaranteed to last 5 turns, and her Dragon Assault can deal up to 9 times its base damage on top of a guaranteed Critical Hit and a personal Wind damage boost! This level of power then proceeded to become the standard that subsequent True Manifests reach (one way or another) to get previously overshadowed characters up to speed.
And then she received a Stellar Awakening, and not only can her level cap be potentially raised to 100, but her unlockable abilities include inflicting poison and pain on enemies at the start of battle, giving the rest of the party 100% physical and magic crit rate, and a Wind Zone-setting attack that gets even stronger when used in Stellar Burst mode. - Felmina's Manifest Weapon, the Poison Lily, takes Suzette's concept and cranks it even further. The upgraded Licorice Blossom skill now inflicts guaranteed Poison and Pain that will last 3 turns on top of giving her a PWR boost. Tri-Cataclysm has its damage multipliers upgraded to truly inflict Quad Damage on anything afflicted with both Pain and Poison on top of having increased critical damage and inflicting a stacking physical defense debuff. Manifest Felmina greatly outclasses Manifest Suzettenote , though there's nothing stopping a player from running both units together to inflict massive damage.
- Kikyo's main skill line, at its highest forms, spawn an afterimage of her, functioning as a Single-Use Shield that forces the next attack made on her to miss. Time it right and she can easily deflect attacks that would otherwise cause a Total Party Kill — This has been used to cheese several superbosses.
- Zones are some of the biggest game-changers in the game's history. It establishes a field effect that dramatically amplifies the strength of the matching element, and greatly depowers the opposing one. Your attacks of that element, regardless of number of hits, will contribute a big boost to Another Force. On top of that, the very character who's used to establish the Zone will gain extra benefits while their Zone is active. The way the Zones tip the battle in your favor allows you to beat superbosses with ease, and sometimes as fast as 2 turns by using Another Force as soon as possible. To match this, most of the later superbosses have their own AF stoppers to keep a player from blindly blitzing them down in one turn, and some others will set Zones of their own to try and counter the player's own.
- Of the first wave of elemental Zone setters, Myunfa was one of the most sought-after units. In addition to setting up a Zone, she dramatically amplifies the strength of the party — her Valor Chant increases the critical damage dealt, and her Glorious Tea Stalk skill grants a guaranteed crit on top of a generous elemental damage buff. Combine her with some of the better Earth units like Cerrine and Deirdre, and you can effortlessly crush a boss who doesn't resist Earth in no time flat. Outside of Another Force blitz strategies, she also can support with an attack combined with a buff and debuff, and possesses passive healing and temporary HP increases. She’s also very good against regular enemies. Kettle Pound does decent damage to all enemies and has a high chance of stunning them at a low MP cost, and she also has a rare MP restoring skill in Bunbuku Shower. She's essentially a Jack of All Trades support unit, only outclassed by Power Creep over time.
- Foran's Another Style was particularly ridiculous for her time as a Zone setter. On switch-in, she establishes the Pierce Zone which synergizes fantastically with units like Suzette, Jade, and Yukino. Foran also gives herself a temporary critical damage boost and four Tiger stacks, which all synergize perfectly with her unique skills — Tiger's Roar Flash, under these conditions, will hit extremely hard and give the whole team 5 guaranteed crits! And to top it off, she's got the highest base speed at a blistering 258, letting her get the jump on almost anything and take actions during AF much, much faster. Though Foran would be outclassed in her niche by other Pierce Zone setters she still offers decent synergy with them and was never really replaced by them.
- The Flash Strike Stance, available on Melissa and Hardy (Another Style), only takes effect if the source unit is in the front line and lasts for only the first turn of battle, but in exchange, all damage you do is increased and you also get significant Another Force boosts per attack. Combine with a damaging Valor Chant and you can crush enemy mobs with ease, and against Horrors or bosses, you can easily defeat them (or deal major damage) off Another Force on the very first turn! Another thing worth noting is that in case the party goes against bosses those set up their own Zone in the beginning of the battle (e.g. the True Spirits' Trials), Flash Strike stance will also override the enemy's Zone for the first turn since it activates after theirs - which is especially helpful against bosses with very high speed or preemptive movements those may make Valor Chant or skill-based Zone override difficult to do otherwise.
- Aisha stands out for being able to establish and adapt to two Zones within a single character. Her attack and singing skills change properties to match the Fire or Water Zone — Fire buffs your team while Water debuffs the enemy. She's a guaranteed 5-star character who is recruited through a sidequest instead of the Dream Encounter system, so even newer players get access to two Zones without worry of lucking out or grinding resources.
- Sesta pushes the bar for Zone setters and then some. If she's in the frontline with three other Wind characters, she automatically deploys an Awakened Wind Zone at the beginning of the fight. For as long as the Awakened Wind Zone lasts, she'll also gain a stack of Divine Wolf at the beginning of each turn. This changes her basic attack to a one-use full-combo that unleashes all of her strongest skills in quick succession, including a strong team buff, a skill that inflicts Wind-specific Break, a Wind attack that decreases the target's Wind resistance, a very powerful personal buff, and then an absurdly strong Armor-Piercing Attack that hits for 7000% damage at base before accounting for every other modifier that the rest of the skill sequence does. Twinblade Wolf does so much damage that it might as well be infinite; almost anything that doesn't nullify or absorb Wind or Slash damage will be taken to its next HP stopper or simply killed outright, including many superbosses.
- Teaming up with Melody's Another Style makes Sesta even more ridiculous. One of Sesta's biggest weaknesses is that an Awakened Wind Zone will normally go away after three turns and leave her unable to use Twinblade Wolf again, but if Melody is one of four Wind characters in the front line and there's no Awakened Wind Zone, she'll set an Awakened Wind Zone at the beginning of the second turn and then every fourth turn thereafter, which gives you three more turns in an Awakened Wind Zone after each time you spend one turn without one. This will let Sesta continue to use Twinblade Wolf for as long as you need her to.
- Chiyo's Another Style has the unusual distinction of being able to set two different Zones with her Valor Chant: if you have four Staff characters in your party (including her), she'll set a Magic Zone, and if you don't, she'll set an Earth Zone. She also has two excellent skills. Horai Jewel will preemptively inflict guaranteed Pain and Poison on all enemies (turning on extra damage from Power of Pain and Power of Poison grasta), give your team guaranteed Magic critical hits, and will also give your team the powerful Mental Focus buff, which increases magic attack damage by a percentage that depends on the character's max MP. (And Chiyo has a very high Max MP.) Her other excellent skill, Reiki Conquest, is an Earth element Magic attack that hits all enemies, gets stronger for each unique debuff on the enemy (up to four), and also gets stronger when the enemy has a status ailment (such as the Pain and Poison that Horai Jewel inflicts). Using Horai Jewel and then Reiki Conquest while in an Earth Zone or Magic Zone usually results in lots of damage.
- Lunatic characters are widely considered to be some of the best units in game. Their major connecting trend is the ability to use the same-named Super Mode which gives them a unique buff once each battle.
- Even among all of them though, Thillelille stands out as having been one of the best DPS units in the game at the mechanic's introduction. Even at low levels and with early game equipment she can still vastly outdamage most other characters due to her absurdly powerful self-buff skills: her main attack skill hits harder when she's at high HP and gives a stacking PWR boost and hits twice as hard on top of a guaranteed Critical Hit under Lunatic — all that before accounting for other buffs she's received, including from Lunatic itself! The only notable downside is that she's a major Glass Cannon whose buffs and Lunatic also debuff her Endurance, but the sheer amount of damage she's able to dish out is more than enough to make up for it.
- Completing the "Song and Sword" Mythos unlocks Clarte's Another Style, whose Lunatic buff gives him a whopping 50% damage boost and an additional 50% damage increase when hitting enemy weaknesses. His unique skills also buff the party's Intelligence and Speed, and he including other "West Continent" characters get the buff at double strength. What this amounts to is his ability to pulverize anything that's weak to Crystal or Earth, and if you're using his unique equipment that grants him extra skills, he can crush anything with weaknesses to Thunder or Shade too! The best part is that he's not obtained from the Dream Encounters system, and that's pretty impressive considering that most of your free characters fall on the wrong side of Power Creep.
- Eva, the second Global-first character debuting during the Global third anniversary, bypasses the usual restrictions to Lunatic by starting the battle already in Lunatic. On top of that, her attacks automatically repeat themselves if the target has more than half 50% max HP after the first shot, which stacks on top of her duplicating Lunatic effect to hit up to 4 times in one go. Also, because her automatic Lunatic doesn't count as a manual Lunatic activation, you can flick it on again in a protracted fight for another large burst of damage!
- Special mention goes to her Lucent Magi skill, a Crystal attack which gets a x20 damage multiplier when it would otherwise get resisted. The resist flag normally cuts damage to 1/4 of a neutral hit, so this skill has a net x5 bonus, offsetting the resistance modifier and then some. This is what allows Eva to effectively solo most Manifest fights — which are one of the few categories of bosses that resist Crystal.
- Yakumo, paired with his sidekick Kumos, is built around doing incredible amounts of Shade damage between all his buffs and his Lunatic status. Kumos's Charged Attack helps this by forcibly triggering Lunatic on Yakumo in a way that bypasses the usual Lunatic limitations, allowing for his strongest skill, Deletion, hit for maximum damage and maximum hits without expending a drop of MP. Oh, and this attack ignores the enemy's MDEF stat, so it punches holes in normally tanky targets. When you pair him with Iphi, who's a fantastic support character that establishes Shade Zone and has potent group buffs , he can lay waste to many bosses that aren't immune to Shade!
- When Alma uses Lunatic+ it gives her a 50% boost in damage, which is pretty good on its own. It also puts her in trance state, which give her a 50 point boost to power. This is in addition to Brain Record, which switches her weapon to the enemies weakness for the entire battle and puts a scope on the enemy. The scope and/or the trance state give a gargantuan damage boost toner attack abilities, especially her strongest ability Aether Alchemia, which has a multiplier of 14x. All in all, after two turns of preparation, she can one or two shot most bosses, even those with millions of HP. Oh, and if the boss does survive the three Lunatic turns, Alma can use Elixir Ray, which restores 50% of her HP and MP and allows her to use Lunatic again.
- Alma AS takes it even further, while she is in alchemic high she will take all the damage aimed at other party members and cannot be taken below 1hp making your party invincible for it's duration, if that wasn't enough she has refraction bullet which deals impressive crystal damage to the whole enemy party but more importantly she'll counter attack with it every time she is attacked and it's damage is multiplied by 15x if she is in her alchemic high state and she'll also restore the parties HP and MP while she is doing this, this can trivialise a lot of fights.
- Jade's personal Grasta, Altridge's Resolution, is a lot stronger than most other personal Grasta. His 5-star upgrade already makes him significantly stronger, but the boons from his personal Grasta are immense - a +30 to Power and Speed is unheard of on most other Grastas and makes him a Lightning Bruiser, and he also gets a +30% damage bonus on enemies inflicted with Pain, which synergizes with his Blaze Shoot that now inflicts guaranteed Pain, further amplifies the bonus damage from his Celebros Agni skill, and works perfectly with Power of Pain and Power of Agony Grastas. This makes Jade a very strong non-gacha unit, provided you overcome the bosses that unlock this Grasta.
- Necoco takes Cynthia's gimmick of attacks that adapt to the active elemental Zone and cranks it up to eleven to make her an all-purpose DPS unit. Her mainline attacks already hit plenty hard and match whatever active Zone you have running so that she can fit into any elemental team you have. Her strongest area attack does triple damage on enemies inflicted with Pain (and she can also inflict that ailment herself permanently with one of her own skills) and heals the party for a sizeable amount, while her single-target attack can grant three guaranteed critical hits and increased crit damage under the effects of a Zone. In fact, she passively lets the party start the battle with one guaranteed Critical Hit for easy mob sweeping! And when she's not putting out crazy damage numbers, she still can support with a good defensive buff, MP restoration, or an element damage buff (that also shifts to match the elemental Zone). There's little wonder why people mark her as a character worth saving to pull for!
- Necoco's Another Style extends this elemental adaptation to the whole team with her Scintillant Spirit skill. Now you can straight-up field your strongest characters without needing to match your combatants' elements. Want to run something like Flammelapis, Kikyo, and Myunfa in the same team? Now you can! The only downside is that the *enemies* will also have their attacks changed to match the element of the zone, too.
- Aldo earns his position as protagonist of the game by the end of the Goddess of Time chapters.
- First, events near the end of the arc greatly upgrade his 5-star skills so that they can put out amazing damage provided you've raised his Guiding Light that high, and the arc's Final Boss gives his unique Dragon God's Might grasta that provides him with monstrous boosts to power and speed, bumps up his critical rate and augments his critical damage. And that's not all - following the aforementioned story event, his upgraded Dragon God Slash can reduce an enemy's physical resistance by whopping 70 percentnote , and his upgraded X Slash Mk. II also gives type attack buff for three moves, which means even if he is not the primary damage dealer, he remains valuable for offensive support. By this point he'll be by far your strongest non-gacha character and will be a valuable asset to most teams.
- Progressing through The Apex of Logic and Cardinal Scales Mythos leads to a mandatory sidequest where you can face off against Ogre Rancorem. Defeat it and you unlock Aldo's strongest personal sword, which grants him +70% crit rate for permanent critical hits with his own Grasta and switches his basic attack to a temporary Super Mode that gives him additional utility.
- In addition to giving readjustments of his skills' utility, v3.3.1 features Stellar Awakening for Aldo that not only boosts his stats and level cap to lv100, but also give additional skill "Starwyrm Slash" that can deal massive Non-Elemental damage depending on his total Guiding Light accumulation... or if activated during Stellar Burst, it can match elemental weakness of enemy alongside further damage boost depending on the total amount of the party's Guiding Light (capping at 500). In addition, he has new passive that will charge the Another Gauge to 100% at battle start if there are three Guiding Light frontliners including himself, allowing the player to launch AF from the get-go barring specific cases. Unlocking this requires the player to pass the Stellar difficulty trial of his Astral Archive tome, but overcome it, and he will become one of the strongest damage dealers that synergizes well with other Game-Breaker units, most notably ES Claude and AS Necoco.
- Serge from the Chrono Cross crossover is another non-gacha character with incredibly valuable kits. He is similarly dependent on his Guiding Light accumulation in order to maximize his damage, but he also sports various other kits to make up for it:
- First, he is capable of deploying Double Strike Stance that boosts damage for Slash and Magic attacks, meaning that Slash-based DPS and casters alike can work better together. Said VC also reduces the enemy's physical resistance up to 45 percent.
- Next, his skills. His "Dash Cut" skills also provide crit damage buff up to 40 percent to amp up the potential damage the party can deal, and he can deal preemptive Pain with his "Shining" skill that ignores enemy resistance that can also last permanently. His "Sky Arrow" is also an attack that hits up to four times and raises AF combo rate, making it ideal to use against bosses those require multi-hit attacks to wear down. In addition, his "Light of Meditation" can heal the party up to 2500 HP when fully charged and raises the party's max HP for better survival. Sure it requires him to be at maximum Power Level to maximize the effect of his skills, but it should be a non-issue with his mainline skills gives 3 of them for each use to quickly bring it to maximum, and unlike most Charged Attack examples in this game, the Power Level stack does not reset until the end of battle - meaning that the player has no need to be concerned about timing his attacks for maximum damage.
- It is also worth noting is that Serge's physical skills also change elemental type depending on the first Element equipped on him, which means he can also be used to make up for understaffed party that requires specific elemental attribute. This also includes the Shade, Thunder, or Crystal elements, which are normally reserved for Lunatic units.
- Following the April 2022 update, completing an additional quest after recruiting Starky will give Serge his personal weapon Grand Dream. Said weapon grants him permanent 100% critical rate, Full Health Bonus damage, and permanent HP regen, making it one of the best personal weapons in the game to date.
- In addition to being Zone deployers, Parallel Time Layer characters released along "The Apex of Logic and Cardinal Scales" Mythos introduced two new mechanics: Another Zone and Another Sense passive. Provided the presently active Zone is a standard attack type or elemental Zone, the Another Zone doubles the effect of any active zone and makes it stick, meaning that the active Zone cannot be overridden by a different Zone and instead will expire on its own after several turns or removed by Zone-removing skills. Meanwhile, the Another Sense passive gives the party various bonus while Another Zone is active. And that's not all, while the applicable Zone is active, if the unit is a Lunatic unit and their mainline skills are used, these characters will automatically activate Lunatic state while awakening Another Zone. With the right setup, this allows the player to completely level the bosses with ease, even bosses those have habit of overriding Zones.
- Dewey Alter's kit is fantastic and changes to match the active elemental Zonenote , so he goes in almost any team and gives incredible DPS buffs to the rest of the frontline. In addition, he has 'Boosted' Another Sense passive that extends Another Zone for extra 2 turns, allowing players to benefit from Another Zone in more drawn-out battles. His only drawback is that his end-of-turn heal is based solely on Fire and Crystal attack count, but this should be no problem if another healer is present.
- Shion Alter possesses a unique and absurd ability to convert an enemy's resistances into weaknesses and vice-versa. This, on top of his kit that increases the bonus damage on striking enemy weaknesses for the team, lets him make mincemeat of otherwise incredibly tanky bosses, especially Manifest boss fights, which are normally neutral to two elements and resist everything else. The only drawback here is that this ability has no effect on immunities, absorptions, or neutral polarity.
- Flammelapis's kit is built around delivering an Alpha Strike, and she is very strong within the first 3 turns of combat. How strong? Her best skill explicitly deals 20x as much damage as your usual XL damage skill! It's offset by stunning her afterwards, but in the first 3 turns of battle, that drawback flat-out does not happen. Her default attack is, for the first 3 turns of battle, replaced by a strong pre-emptive auto-crit area-of-effect magic attack to crush mobs without spending a drop of MP. And she automatically inflicts the damage-doubling Break ailment at the start of the fight. Flammelapis can make short work of a lot of enemies for burst damage strategies, sometimes defeating bosses all by herself, and she's only held back by bosses with damage stoppers that enforce a more drawn-out fight.
- Her Another Style is oriented towards support rather than damage, but that doesn't make her any less lethal: it just means that instead of killing everything herself, the other magic users in the party get buffed to the point where they get to do ridiculous damage, too. (And although she loses access to her Normal Style's two strongest attacks, the third-strongest still packs quite a wallop!)
- Biaka's Another Style grants her the potent Lethal Jammer skill, which applies Pain and Poison to its target, bypassing any resistance. With a turn of setup to place her in Active Camo mode, the damage from those conditions is multiplied 30x. Even further, the skill also stacks Loophole, which grants that damage an additional +190% per stack. Adding on to that all, since this damage doesn't rely on direct attack, she can absolutely shred tankier enemies that employ defense modifiers and damage debuffs.
Support Units and Features
- Look on a tier list, and you'll be certain to find the 5-star healers consistently near the top. The game has no shortage of damage-dealing characters which don't have to be recruited from Dream Encounters, but it's your healers who can bring your party back from the brink of death repeatedly in a tough boss fight.
- Mariel is the first of the 5-star healers, and was the go-to character until other competition arose. She still stands out with some of the best healing numbers, with a dash of Regenerating Health on top so that she doesn't have to spam healing all the time. She also gets Aurora Force, a potent but short-lived elemental defense buff. Her offense is lacking, but it's Non-Elemental so she fits into almost any team. Her Manifest Weapon further enhances Pure Cradle's healing and adds a side of MP restoration, and lets her Holy Burst bestow Critical Hits to your mages to close off the inverted Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards gap.
- Mariel's Another Style expands her healing abilities. She now heals for free when switching to the frontline, her strongest healing spell also affects your backline, and she's the only one who can revive defeated characters. She loses her strong damage skill, but she pairs nicely with another defensive Valor Chant, and can even salvage a situation going awry.
- Thanks to Power Creep, Mariel's Extra Style manages to be an even more impressive support unit than her other two styles. She has two support skills that each apply a laundry list of useful buffs and also apply the "Praying" effect: as long as Mariel hasn't taken any damage, the Praying effect will stay active and refresh all the buffs at the start of each of your turns. (And both of Mariel's Praying skills apply a shield that blocks damage, helping them stay active.) She also has a skill that is a strong Crystal-element attack and also heals your party for a solid 3000 HP (6000 when Lunatic is active), a Copy-effect Lunatic skill, and a skill that restores her MP and turns her basic attack back into Lunatic, letting you use it as many times as you want.
- Dunarith's healing spell bestows a buff that grants the rest of the party a guaranteed Critical Hit for their next attack. By just spamming this skill alone your physical attackers' DPS is at least doubled throughout the regular turns of a fight. Dunarith also packs some good utility — his Magic Cloak is not as strong a defense buff as Mariel's Aurora Force, but it lasts significantly longer and provides backup healing when they get struck by magic attacks. He became the chase unit as far as healers go until other crit-granting DPS units came along, and then found a new niche for himself with a Manifest that lets him support a greater variety of teams.
- Fully power up Yuna's Manifest Weapon and you get an incredibly powerful support class on par with Mariel. Iridescent Blessing now directly heals the party for a hefty amount on top of cleansing ailments and providing regeneration, making it almost strictly better than Pure Cradle. And unlike Mariel, Yuna still has access to two very powerful debuff skills to weaken the opposition on either the physical or magical front. Divine Utterance is also even stronger, as it gives 3 charges of boosted type attack to further increase your DPS. It's a pretty fitting reward for one of the most difficult Manifest Weapon fights in the game. The only drawbacks here are Limited Move Arsenal restricting what you can use, and the dilemma of using Yuna as an all-round support versus her Another Style for establishing Water Zone.
- Veina's Another Style distills the best of a Combat Medic class into her unique skills. She sets up a Wind Zone, corresponding to some of the best units in the game, and her skills are crazy strong in that environment. Iris Antoss not only has healing numbers comparable to Mariel's, but it cures ailments and gives a max HP buff and builds up her Vlastari charges and, while in a Wind Zone, inflicts guaranteed Poison and a Wind resistance debuff. That's six effects in one! She's also competent as an attacker, since Saint's Gust has reasonable firepower, grows stronger with each use and eventually bestows a critical buff to the rest of the party to further augment your DPS.
- While Minalca is a really strong DPS unit, her Sidekick Tetra is something else. Unlike any of your party members, Tetra occupies the sidekick slot, freeing up your party space for your damage dealers or other supports. Tetra's auto-attack also heals the party by 20% of their max HP and purges them of any ailments, and it passively gives a 25% HP/MP bonus and 30% defense bonus to anyone who falls to 80% HP or lower. In a protracted fight, Tetra's Charge skill fully heals and revives everyone and reinforces the party with a Last Chance Hit Point to bail you out of sticky situations. It's also the only 5-star Sidekick so far with a healing ability. Even if you can't make the most of Minalca's skill set, Tetra can easily fit into and support nearly any party.
- Mana is one of the best support units due to the sheer strength of her buffs and debuffs. There aren't a lot of bosses that mix both physical and magic attacks, so if you know which type they specialize in, you can bring the right debuff to severely defang them - a -35% modifier to the right stat can reduce an attack from "one-shots your party members" territory to "deals a few hundred damage". Throw in her Status-Buff Dispel ability, and she makes many Manifest Weapon fights much easier. The best part is that she doesn't need to be summoned from Dream Encounters, so everyone can access her. It speaks volumes when a Manifest Weapon fight is deemed difficult because it mixes physical and magic attacks so that Mana can't render it a pushover.
- Pizzica introduced the "song" mechanic, which applies lingering buffs for 3 turns and can apply on top of Zones, with the drawback of the singer being unable to act until the song ends unless interrupted by an ailment. Her Rhapsody Aria skill is the most valued, as it gives the party guaranteed critical hits and also gives +100% damage, on top of inflicting the Break ailment on all enemies that doubles the damage of the next hit they take, leading to incredible DPS potential! Her other support skills are not half bad either, ranging between a significant Damage Reduction shield, potent healing, and the ability to inflict up to three ailments at once. The game would go on to introduce more singers down the line, but Pizzica's simplicity and strength of her songs leave a bigger impression on the playerbase.
- Kid's Z-Steal is a very potent buff/debuff tool — at maximum Power Level it reduces enemy Power/Int/Speed by 50% and augments your party by the same amount! Needless to say, it's a big game-changer for free unit runs on superbosses, and some strategies involve using Another Force right off the bat for a max Power Level Z-Steal.
- Iphi's unique perk is her application of Blood Contracts — the battle starts with every other party member having one Contract active. Each Blood Contract serves as an Auto-Revive for that party member (provided Iphi herself doesn't die and the boss doesn't ignore the mechanic altogether) so you can avert a Total Party Kill, and offensively Iphi can proc a Blood Contract to grant the ability to pierce barriers for that ally. Her Shade Zone skill also replenishes Blood Contracts to keep everyone alive. Oh, and she also can pre-emptively inflict guaranteed permanent Pain and Poison and an all-round stat debuff on all enemies. She can basically win boss fights through attrition!
- Claude's Extra Style is an excellent support unit that can fit in almost every weapon-based team, thanks to being the first unit with "Flexible" buff that allows him to adapt his weapon type to other units in the party.
- First, he has one-time unique skill called "Empathy", which can be used to fully restore HP and MP of himself and one other ally and combine their HP and MP pool with each other to increase survivability. This skill also allows him to match his Zone and other support kits to match the targeted ally.
- His offensive support kits basically cover nearly every offensive buff to increase your team's firepower, ranging from guaranteed Critical Hit and increased type attack (Charis Drakon), increased weapon and critical damage (Mádis Ares), Break status (Maché Bruktos), and the PWR/INT/SPD boost from his mainline skills provided a standard elemental or weapon Zone is active. The only thing holding him back from utilizing them all is the Limited Move Arsenal.
- He is also a solid Combat Medic; his mainline skills attacks all enemies while also healing the party by 50% HP at maximum and restores status effects, and if Another Zone is active, he will also heal allies' HP and MP at turn end. This means that his recovery kits greatly help during long dungeon runs and against enemies those like to drain your party's HP and/or MP.
- He also has "Mádis Atena" skill that provides decent PWR/INT/SPD debuff on enemies and physical resistance buff on allies for 5 turns, which helps during more drawn-out battle.
- Radias's Another Style is an absurdly effective tank that draws single-target attacks to herself, greatly reduces the damage from enemy attacks, and will "counterattack" by recovering your party's HP and MP. Using her can often trivialize fights by making your party virtually unkillable while making sure you never run out of MP, and, three times during a battle, she can make your party literally unkillable for a turn with her Chivalry skill, which makes her take damage for your other party members for a turn while keeping her own HP from falling below 1. Oh, and she can also apply guaranteed Pain to all enemies, and her Valor Chant sets Slash Zone.
- All the free Chrono Cross crossover units are very good, but Harle can do something powerful and unique. Because she can get up to 12 Power Level stacks instead of 10, she can boost the effect of an equippable Anti-[element] skill higher than the other Chrono Cross characters can, all the way up to a maximum of 70% resistance to a single element, and her personal skill Lunar Protection can grant up to 60% Type Resistance (which applies to attacks of any element). At power level 11 or higher, using these skills one after the other will make the total resistance to that element stack to a value greater than 100%, which will make your characters completely immune to damage from attacks of that element - and as of December 2023, Harle is still the only character that has resistance buffs that can get strong enough to stack to 100%.
Miscellaneous
- In the "Lord of Mana" Game Within a Game:
- Anyone classed as a Sorceror has a basic attack that heals the party at the end of the turn. With a team of four Sorceror units, you can auto-attack a boss to death as long as it doesn't deal enough damage to one-shot any party member. Sorcerors also get very good area attack skills to clean out groups of enemies for power-leveling, and three of the most recommended party members to havenote are of that class.
- Your reward for finding all thirty bugs in Lord of Mana's own Pixel Hunt is the ability to recruit Fukahire, the developer. Fittingly, she has bloated stats and is the only party member with Fukahi-laser, one of the strongest skills available. Having the game's dev on your side can trivialize most of its bosses, and if you raise her Friend Rank she hits so hard that nothing can stand up to her.
