Game Breaker / Xenoblade Chronicles 2

NOTE: because of the number of Blades available in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, there may be some unmarked spoilers regarding their acquisitions and mandatory appearance down the line. You have been warned.

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Blades (Main game only)

With more than 35+ Blades available in the game, many range from either being incredibly strong or performing poorly. These are the best in the Damager, Healer, Tank categories.

• While Pyra is generally overshadowed by Mythra as a general-purpose Blade, her mere existence means she can serve as a free stat boost for Rex if he has Mythra equipped, such as with an Amethyst Core Chip to boost his agility and a free slot for Hunter's Chemistry to boost your Blades' Affinity. But Pyra also has one specialty in which she outperforms her sister: Fusion Combos. When maxed out, her "Resplendence" Battle Skill boosts her Blade Combo damage by 72%, while her "Flaming Edge" Skill increases her critical damage by 50%. And on top of that, her Lv. III Blade Special, Blazing End, boasts an additional boost of 85% to its own critical damage. Equip her with Fusion Combo Up and Specials Lv. 3 Aux Cores, and she can hit the damage cap very easily with a well-timed Blazing End during a Driver Combo, whether as a first-stage or second-stage option (such as Volcano). But the best part is role compression; because Pyra and Mythra share a party slot, there's no need to make space for another Blade such as Crossette if the player is already using Mythra, and Pyra and Mythra can also switch between each other freely and instantly. Although Pyra is decent but not spectacular in regular combat, she adds yet another tool to Rex's Aegis toolbox and provides Mythra with more options, whether they're Fusion Combos or simply as a stat-boosting reserve.
• Mythra is, bar none, one of the best Blades in the entire game, befitting the Aegis's "first" form and a mandatory one at that. On top of her semi-unique element of light (since KOS-MOS and several Downloadable Content Blades also have it, while Poppi can be customized to have it), her Blade Art and Battle Skills make her ridiculously powerful: the ever-useful "Recharge Boost" allows Driver Arts to recharge faster, "Critical Up" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, "Glint" further boosts Mythra's Critical Hit ratio, "Lightspeed Flurry" means that upon landing a Critical Hit, a portion of the recharge for Rex's Driver Arts or Blade Specials is shortened from 20% at level 1 of her Affinity Chart to 100% at level 5. Combined with a Core Chip boosting Critical Hits (the "Moon Matter Chip" being the best choice, but basically any that increases the chance of scoring a Critical Hit will work) and Aux Cores with similar effects, players will endlessly spam Rex's Driver Arts and Blade Specials whenever Mythra is in play, making her not only capable of dealing the most damage-per-second, she'll be out-damaging the rest of the party's Blade Specials just with Driver Arts alone and most notably allows her to spam her level 3 special "Lightning Buster" that pierces enemy defence with extremely high damage output. However it's "Foresight" that really takes the cake of being strong, due to increasing accuracy and evasion at 50% to the entire party at Max Affinity, as it virtually allows Mythra and the entire party to be almost entirely unhittable with some Common Blades that increase agility each by 25%, especially when used with Shulk's "Monado Speed". It also means allies don't have to run Night Vision to hit red level enemies like in the first game. She's also the only Blade in the game who can reliably pull off a solo Blade Combo in the early-mid game^note Technically, so can Pyra, and later Brighid, by mid-game, but their Blade Arts and Battle Skills are inferior to Mythra's; in the Post-End Game Content, with the right load-out (such as a few accessories that heal or charge the Party Gauge upon a Critical Hit), it's possible to solo Superbosses with her and Rex. While Power Creep has introduced some Blades that are even more broken than Mythra, such as Corvin and Fiora, she remains a staple on most teams throughout the postgame (let alone the story) due to her ease of access,^note being a story Blade obtained early on and the deuteragonist along with Pyra, ease of use, and general popularity.
  • While "Crit-Heal"^note using an Avant-Garde Medal and Massive Melee Mythra to heal through critical hits is the most popular Mythra loadout, it's fallen victim to Power Creep with other Blades such as Fiora doing the same but much better. The DLC, however, gave Mythra some useful niches. Not only can evasion-based Foresight sets be very difficult for monsters to deal with (especially with Shulk on the team), but perhaps Mythra's most powerful set of all comes from using her with Elma's Overdrive, putting both Blades on Rex with an agility booster common Blade in the third slot. The gist of it is to fill up the Party Gauge quickly with Lightspeed Flurry, switch to Elma, activate Overdrive, switch back to Mythra and fill up the Party Gauge again (especially with the multi-hit "Photon Edge"), reactivate Overdrive,^note which doesn't require Elma to be active unless Overdrive has ended, rinse and repeat. Meanwhile the AI is set up to keep the enemy in a Driver Combo lock.^note This example uses Tora with Poppi QTπ (and no other Blades) and Mòrag with Shulk and Corvin, although using Zeke with those two Blades and a Knuckle Claws or Greataxe (such as Adenine or Dagas) can be more reliable due to Tora's dodgy AI. The Overdrive counter will reach 999 in no time and the whole thing can potentially last a very, very long time, making short work of Challenge Mode superbosses even on Bringer of Chaos.
• Upon unlocking Pneuma, the game explicitly details how utterly broken this Blade is: sure, it's only available upon reaching a full Party Gauge, can only be used once per battle and has a duration, this Blade can activate any element on the Blade Combo chain and shatter all elemental orbs during a Chain Attack. Inevitably, this Blade will deal more damage than Mythra can, particularly upon achieving a "Full Burst"; even without triggering a Chain Attack leading to a Full Burst, this Blade has Mythra's Foresight granting 50% evasion and accuracy to the entire party. Also worth noting is throughout this Blade's activation, Rex will survive one otherwise fatal hit with 1 HP and be invulnerable for 5 seconds, perfectly viable against a One-Hit KO from the Final Boss and certain Superbosses. This is before mentioning this Blade's effects on the party, which includes raising Critical Hit rate to 100%, decreasing enemy Break resistance by 50% (the same function as a legendary-tier "Master Scope" accessory); simultaneously, Pneuma has 60% to ether and physical defense, while doubling the chances of enemies dropping items.
• The best Greataxe Blade is undoubtedly Zenobia: while not quite as effective as Mythra when it comes to Critical Hit rate nor possessing Lightspeed Flurry, she also has Recharge Boost and Critical Up as Blade Arts. However, Zenobia can deal more damage than Mythra to make up for her lower Critical Hit ratio because of her Battle Skills "Carnage", "The Indomitable" and "Greatest Warrior", which rely on increasing damage dealt upon fighting bosses/Unique Monsters/Superbosses, higher-level enemies and more than one enemy during combat, respectively and with the two skills combined (Which is often during Post Game) she can reach a 180% increase in damage output with no downsides. Her Affinity Chart is also easy to complete, since it requires simply hunting down Unique Monsters and completing Merc Missions based on her; completing it means Zenobia further offsets the damage difference between Mythra by a wide margin. Zenobia's Level 2 Blade Special "Adamantine Axe" deals more damage to Toppled enemies by 100%, which can be increased to 150% at level 5 on her Affinity Chart, while her Level 3 Blade Special hits 7 times and is one of the strongest specials in the game, while stacking up well with her Battle Skills by doing 100% damage to enemies that are higher leveled then she is. While most Greataxe Blades are really good, Zenobia stands out as the best due to her insane attack power and passive abilities that takes advantage by fighting the toughest enemies in the game. Even with the Power Creep of the Downloadable Content Blades, Zenobia is easily a top-15, if not top-10 Blade. Her main weakness is that her Level 1 and Level 2 Blade Specials aren't effective for Chain Attacks when the aim of the latter is to maximize damage by hitting the opponent as many times as possible.
• Poppi QTπ has the highest attack power out of all Blades in the game, made possible by maxing out her Poppiswap slots, acquiring Master Mods and reaching S+ ranked Trust with Tora. Neither Zenobia nor any other Blade has anything close to this, let alone Poppi benefitting from all six of the Aux Core slots spread out through her three forms. QTπ's Battle Skill "Overclock" (a weaker version of KOS-MOS' "Hyperclock") increases damage dealt by 100% when Affinity is at maximum during combat at Chart level 5. As the most heavily customizable Blade, Poppi can be of any element, including light. She makes Tora the only party member in the game who has access to the entire Break-Topple-Launch-Smash Driver Combo sequence via Poppi's forms; the Driver Art "Speedy Sword" from QTπ — which hits three times and rolls to apply Break each time — fundamentally changes how the entire game is played. Furthermore, Poppi QTπ's other level 5 Battle Skills of "Nanomachine Repair"^note 1.4% of total Hit Points are restored per second if HP is 30% or less and "Reflection" ^note adds a 15% chance to reflect enemy attacks let Tora easily claw out of severe damage by himself. All of Poppi's blade specials have insane damage output, and most of them completely pierce enemy defences. In particular, her level one special "Poppi Ignition" is both incredibly fast to charge and has a short animation, making it easy to spam. The only difficulty with QTπ is her level 5 Affinity Chart requirements are extremely hard to complete^note including dealing 9,999,999 damage in a Chain Attack and finishing enemies with a Driver Combo 250 times. Put in the effort, though? Poppi QTπ can solo Superbosses, some of whom can be beaten in less than three minutes. It's little wonder she's considered the best damage dealing-Blade in the game. Her closest competitors, "Eye of Shining Justice"-Pandoria, Elma and Fiora both have major flaws. Pandoria needs support due to her low Critical Hit rate and loses out in Challenge Mode trying to reduce the Superbosses' massive health pools since her Super Mode only lasts 90 seconds. Fiora and Elma, meanwhile, just doesn't have the same versatility or defensive capability. Poppi QTπ is so overwhelmingly powerful, especially for Driver Combos, that a few Attack! Attack! Attack! strategies such as the aforementioned Overdrive Mythra recommend removing Poppi's other two forms from an AI Tora so that he doesn't switch to them and ruin combos or loops.
• KOS-MOS has the rare light element by default. While she's slightly Overshadowed by Awesome as Rex's Blade (since he already has Mythra through story-related events)^note If you accidentally pull KOS-MOS on Rex, an "Overdrive Protocol" item will switch her over to another party member, she possesses Hyperclock — one of the strongest Battle Skills in the game. At level 5 on her Affinity Chart, whenever KOS-MOS reaches max Affinity in combat her Driver takes 30% less damage from enemies, simultaneously dealing double the amount. Combined with the "Crit Heal" strategy (see the next section), a Healer Blade becomes almost unnecessary. Her "Encephalon" Battle Skill at level 5 reduces the amount of Aggro build-up from Driver Arts and auto-attacks by 40%, ensuring her Driver won't always be the enemy's target. Sadly it's her weakest ability, making the Driver too bulky to effectively move around on the battlefield. The Battle Skill "Phase Transition Tech" at level 5 nullifies enemy defense and increases the damage of her Blade Specials by 100%. This gives her Pierce against every enemy, who will take full damage no matter what. Including Strategizer Nitro. Her specials hit damage cap very easily, making her amazing in Chain Attacks when combined with her 16 hit Level 3 Special. Despite Ether Cannon Drivers normally having the lowest Critical Hit chance of any weapon, her multi-hit Driver Arts still roll for every hit and she has Critical Up as a Blade Skill. Finally, her Level 2 Blade Special "H-Effect R" is capable of restoring half of the Hit Points of damage she deals to the entire party, almost always a free full heal. KOS-MOS's only flaw is being the rarest Blade to acquire in the game.
• The best defensive tank in the game by far is Poppi α: not only does she draw Aggro easier with certain Poppiswap items, with a "Dilaton Chip" as her Core Chip and "Block Rate V" as an Aux Core, she can reach the highest block rate in the game at 94%! When maxed out with a Master Tank Mod via Poppiswap, she has a 50% physical defense and 45% ether defense, meaning even un-blocked enemy hits will do jack against her. Alongside "Ultimate Shield" (either via Aux Core or through Poppiswap), there's a 50% chance to negate damage entirely. Auto-attacks from Superbosses can only do up to 800 points of damage to Tora; even the most powerful attack in the game, "Falak Buster", often a One-Hit KO on most Drivers, can be blocked and will only do roughly 5000 points of damage, more than enough for Tora to take since he already has a naturally high pool of Hit Points. Finally, Poppi α's Driver Art "Big Boost" for Tora has the Topple effect, which will be advantageous since Poppi QTπ's Driver Art Speedy Sword has Break, starting the Driver Combo sequence for Tora.
• There's no denying Zenobia is the best Greataxe Blade in the game, but fellow Greataxe Blade Dagas comes the closest for a different reason: at level 5 on his Affinity Chart, "Kaiser Zone" increases damage dealt and Area of Effect attacks by 120% at max Affinity for the entire party, a perfect combination alongside high damage-dealers such as Fiora, Poppi QTπ, KOS-MOS and Zenobia. This makes Dagas the best offensive support Blade in the game with the single most useful Battle Skill; only Pneuma and Shulk has him beat due to their respective Battle Skill sets. Dagas is no slouch either, having the same Greataxe Driver Arts T-elos and Zenobia have, with three Aux Core slots to further increase his own damage potential, next to his Arts Plus and Critical Up Blade Arts. To put Kaiser Zone into perspective, players must reach 200% with Elma's Overdrive to even match its damage capabilities, no easy feat to do within the latter's 90 second-duration. Dagas' downside is he's the only Blade in the game who has two Affinity Charts - Kaiser Zone's 120% effectiveness and getting three Aux Core slots requires players unlock the second Chart after completing his personal Sidequest, and with his first Affinity Chart, he's incredibly bad.

Downloadable Content Blades

Due to Power Creep, DLC Blades get their own section.

• Not only does T-elos have the same damage multiplier and weapon type as Zenobia, she possesses incredibly powerful Battle Skills that also rely on increasing damage. Like KOS-MOS, she too has Phase Transition Tech, meaning she can hit the damage cap in combat very quickly, and Critical Up and "Arts Plus" (boost the power of the next Driver Art) for Blade Arts, but its her exclusive Battle Skills "Heaven's Tracker" and "Heartbreaker" that take the cake: at level 5 on her Affinity Chart, the former increases damage her Driver deals by 200% each time a party member falls in combat (upwards to 500%), while the latter increases damage dealt for every enemy defeated by 100% (upwards to 300%). With the Crit Heal strategy in use, it's easy for T-elos' Driver to regenerate from damage dealt by enemies other than a One-Hit KO, and unlike KOS-MOS, she's one of the easiest Blades to get in the game by simply finishing the story and continue play via Post-End Game Content, without the need to enter New Game Plus.
• Out of all the new blades unlocked by New Game Plus, Patroka is on a different league. Right out of the gate, she gets over the standard Tornan Blade weakness of not having their weapon be changed by Core Chips, by having a stat spread so good it's practically a combination of the three best ones. Her paper-thin defenses are not even as big of a weakness as they may seem, given that they enable good parts of her skill set and that she sports an evasion art (that also feeds onto her Glass Cannon skills by draining her health by 10%) for survivability. Not only that, she has a whopping three Aux Core slots, giving her a wide variety of options allowing her to be tailored to deal maximum damage. Her Battle Skills support her on this front: "Sanguine Steel" is effectively the same as Perceval's Eater of Men, increasing damage up to 300% for every enemy incapacitated, with the bonus of it staying even after Patroka is switched out, "Fury" gives a 150% damage boost when HP is 30% or less, which, while risky to actively enable, is incredibly potent while also having the same effect on one of her arts and two of her specials, and "Fatal Blow" one-ups the prior two skills in viability and potential strength as another version of Adenine's "Battle Wisdom", giving an increase in elemental-weakness damage up to 100% for the entire party that acts as an independent multiplier, along with being able to stack both skills to boost their effects even further. Naturally, this combines well with other sources of damage increase like Dagas' Kaiser Zone and also Pneuma's ability to hit for elemental weaknesses. Finally, her Level 1,3, and 4 specials combine a high damage ratio and 50% crit rate with solid damage additives on their own, like higher crit damage for her Level 1, and the same effect as Sanguine Steel for the latter two, respectively. Her only flaws are that she's only available in NG+ and her level 2 special is a bit lackluster in damage-dealing, but she's well worth the wait and cost.

• While he's only (initially) available in the game's Challenge Mode, Shulk turns out to be one of the best Blades following Poppi QTπ, Eye of Shining Justice-Pandoria, Mythra/Pneuma and Fiora, possessing the highest auto-attack value at 1974 with S+ ranked Trust, more damage than what normal Pandoria can do. His Battle Skills, at level 5 on his Affinity Chart, include "Monado Speed", a slightly weaker version of Foresight, and "Monado Enchant", which increases damage dealt by the party by 40%; furthermore, he's also of the light element like Mythra and KOS-MOS (and Poppi QTπ upon customized by players). However, it's his "Vision" Battle Skill that makes him broken: if an on-coming enemy attack, one that's likely to be a One-Hit KO occurs, the attack will be negated against the party so long as players successfully complete a button challenge (alongside a 60-second Cooldown); it even works against defensive enemy Arts that can cause "Shackle Blade" or "Doom". Meanwhile, Shulk's Level 1 Blade Special "Monado Purge" at level 5 on his Affinity Chart has a 100% chance of getting rid of the "Awakening" status in Challenge Mode, turning fights into a cakewalk, while Level 2 Blade Special "Monado Cyclone" increases Critical Hit damage by 85%; since the latter Blade Special is an Area of Effect that hits a lot of times, it ensures maximum damage is inflicted as much as possible and his Level 3 Blade Special "Monado Buster" breaks through defenses so it will always do max damage no matter what. On top of everything else, he's also the best Topple and Launch option on his best Drivers Mòrag and Zeke respectively, being their only option for such besides Shield Hammers and Pandoria (who isn't very useful outside of Eye of Shining Justice mode). While Shulk isn't as good at dealing Critical Hits like Mythra, Zenobia or Fiora, nor does he recharge Driver Arts as quickly, his damage passives are so high and the effects of Vision are so powerful, his pros outweigh his cons, making him another character who can solo Superbosses.
• Crossette may not have the late-game potential of her fellow DLC Rare Blades, but she makes up for it in terms of her ease of use and low-risk, high-reward kit. Her Level 1 and 2 Specials, “Go! Great Star!” and “Go! Shooting Star!, are both very potent Specials with the healing capability of spawning up to two health potions and healing the whole party by half of the damage dealt, respectively, while her remaining two are tailored to demolish bosses with defense-ignoring properties and sizable critical damage. Her Battle Skills reach similarly high heights at level 5, with “Alchemy Adept” boosting Fusion Combo effect by up to 30% and “Pyrotechnics” increasing the whole party’s damage against Launched enemies by 300% (strong though relatively niche in use). However, the real star of the show is “Gathering Sparks”, which increases Crossette’s damage by 60-100% to a cap of 500% upon picking up a health potion, with the caveat of resetting when she’s switched out. Not only does she have an easy time ramping up her damage between her Level 1 special and an Art shared by all Party members, she can reach the 500% damage cap as early as skill level one. That’s not even going into Crossette being able to leverage Zeke’s Bitball arts (specifically “Pulverizing Dunk”, which features a two-second cooldown) with her conditionals to allow her to deal massive damage and with setup, reach the highest DPS in the game, beyond both Fiora, and Shining-Justice Pandoria. This effectively burns a hole in even the tankiest superbosses. Couple the above advantages with her availability, and it’s small wonder how this firecracker of a gal is the lynchpin for the game’s world record speedrun.
• Corvin is the best offensive tank in the game, having incredibly high damage-per-second for a tanking Blade, and possesses incredibly strong Blade Specials much higher than anyone else except for his Level 4, and his Level 2 Special is the only way to purge Rage in the entire game. One of his Battle Skills, "Ensis Lucis" at Level 5 has the ability to give a 150% increase of damage at max affinity, and makes you have an evade rate of 25%. His other Battle Skills are very strong such as "Alae Custodiae" which increases the Party Gauge by 16 every time you deliver a Critical Hit, and he has a max Critical Hit rate of 60% with a Moon Matter Chip, which is higher than Mythra. This means it is easier to revive someone, or make getting the Chain Attack very quickly. His last one is very situational, but can make high Level Mob fights a complete joke with Zeke, as his "Ictus" battle skill boosts the recharge for Driver Arts by 2.5 whenever you evade an attack. On the art "Galactic Strike" for Zeke it has Evasion, AOE and Smash on it, and in Mob Fights with Pouch Item recharge you can spam the art endlessly, making it alongside Screw Edge the easiest art to recharge in the game and makes you unable to be hit while using it. This art by itself makes Mob Fights a complete joke, and puts him into High-Tier Scrappy for being too good by default. Oddly, Corvin's weapon provides Smash for all drivers, which provides Zeke with a faster means of Smash, or a means of Smash at all for Nia, making him all the more versatile. Of course, when it comes to fighting Superbosses or various challenge fights for Nopondemonioum, Mòrag is by far the best choice. Her already incredible agility skyrockets with Corvin, making her hard to hit even on Bringer of Chaos, and all his passive abilities come well together to make Mòrag unstoppable. Combined with other evasion blades like Theory or Aegaeon, Mòrag becomes an unstoppable tank. And even better, among all the 'evasion tank blades,' Corvin actually has pretty spectacular defenses and an adequate block rate, meaning the few times an attack slips through the cracks, Mòrag will be just fine.
• Even though Fiora is a healing Blade, she focuses on Critical Hit damage-per-second; a Crit-Heal Fiora build is far superior to the same build on Mythra despite the latter having Lightspeed Flurry. With a 15% Strength mod by default, while giving her the "Tachyon Chip" as her Core Chip and "Critical Up VI" as an Aux Core, Fiora can earn a 50% Critical Hit rate (which reaches a whopping 90% when her Affinity Chart is filled out) with a 25% increased Critical Hit damage, with Driver Arts for each party member (sans Tora) that recharges Arts every time a Critical Hit occurs. Her Battle Skills "Warrior Valkyrie" and "Explosion of Energy" respectively increases the party's Critical Hit rate by 40% at max Affinity during combat and damage dealt by 15% each time a Critical Hit lands (upwards to 300%), the latter of which means her damage output keeps going higher the longer she stays in combat. In Challenge Mode's Horde Battles, Explosion of Energy comes in handy as Fiora's Blade Specials are heavy on Area of Effect and restore Hit Points, too. Combined all this with the Crit Heal strategy, her Driver can outlast Challenge Mode for a long time; even if a One-Hit KO is present, it's incredibly hard to knock her Driver out since they'll simply regenerate from all the Critical Hits they're dealing from Fiora's Battle Skills. With Rex there's access to "Screw Edge" which hits 4 times, has a very high damage output and recharges based on a Critical Hit, meaning it becomes the most spammable attack in the game, and Mòrag gets the very similar "Universe Flicker" which has been cited as being even better (and on top of that, putting Fiora on Mòrag also gives her access to a full party heal). Alongside Poppi QT Pi, she is considered the best Blade in the game, with almost no reason to not use her. While Fiora's main flaws are her singular focus on DPS and her being a supreme Glass Cannon with no defensive abilities, with the right setup it barely matters when her Driver shreds through foes before they can even retaliate.
• Elma, the third Crossover Blade via Challenge Mode, is similar to Fiora, but with a lower Critical Hit damage-per-second ratio: at level 5 on her Affinity Chart, her Battle Skill "Crisis Catalyst" increases damage dealt by 150% and Critical Hit rate by 40% upon hitting max affinity during combat. Coupled with her level 5 Blade Special "Sliding Slinger", which increases damage dealt to higher-level enemies by 100%, Elma won't have trouble against Elite Mooks and Superbosses. In addition, most of her Blade Specials hit up to 14 times, making her ironically very good in Chain Attacks. What's different about her compared to any other Blade in the game is she brings the "Overdrive" mechanic from Xenoblade Chronicles X, a Super Mode where additional bonuses (damage dealt, damage resistance, Cooldown effectiveness, reducing enemy resistances) are granted to the entire party the more they attack enemies throughout its duration upon activation at a full Party Gauge. While it lasts 50 seconds by default, reaching level 5 of Elma's same-named Battle Skill increases it to 90 seconds, more than enough time to defeat Superbosses and you can continue to restart it without losing any progress just like in Xenoblade X. Furthermore, Overdrive can be activated even when not playing as Elma's Driver, as her Driver will just switch to her and activate Overdrive when the player requests it. This lets the player use Overdrive more conveniently and with other Blades whose Arts are easier to spam thn Elma's, such as Mythra's "Photon Edge". Just about the only downside to Overdrive's potency is using it negates Chain Attack. Then again, using Overdrive instead of Chain Attack can be very beneficial in some situations, such as when you've sealed a particularly nasty status effect on the opponent such as Affinity Down, Reinforcements or Blowdown, and adding a new orb to the enemy would let them trample all over you again. Even better, if you fill up the Party Gauge while in Overdrive, you can reactivate it without switching to Elma, allowing Overdrive to be extended indefinitely without having to switch Blades and possibly break synergy. To top things off, unlike Shulk and Fiora, Elma can be brought into Alrest before beating the game, and so if the player is crafty enough to beat "Elma: Redux" with an un-optimized main story team, she can be used to breeze through tough spots like Spirit Crucible Elpys.

Others

• So long as players don't mind grinding, the salvage mechanic can make increasing each town's Development Level, as well as obtaining lots of cash, extremely easy. Sure, it'll take a while, but investing into the town as early as possible unlocks more items for every shop players come across in short order. Notably, having enough cash means players can also purchase the ever-expensive "Inherited Core Crystal", which unlocks Rare Blade Sheba, at Torigoth in as early as Chapter 4.
• Depending on the load-out, Chain Attacks: by setting up and breaking four or more elemental orbs acquired during Blade Combos, players can accomplish a Full Burst. Since damage for the latter increases depending on the number of intact orbs not broken during the Chain Attack, the damage ratio can go upwards to 5500%; only the Final Boss and Superbosses can survive a Full Burst. Such a set up can be ridiculously easy if players learn to master Fusion Combos (see below), increasing Blade Combo time between one another, and Battle Skills that take advantage of switching Blades during combat.
• In New Game Plus, every party member gains access to a hidden second Affinity Chart on top of their preexisting one. Zeke's second Affinity Chart features "Unleash Shining Justice", essentially the equivalent of Pneuma for Rex: by having Pandoria as his current Blade and at maximum Affinity during combat, Zeke can enter a Super Mode (the aforementioned Eye of Shining Justice-Pandoria) where he earns multiple Status Buffs, immunity to reactions and de-buffs (for instance, Topple and Breakdown), increased auto-attack and movement speed, and reduced Driver Art and Blade Special Cooldowns, on top of a large damage multiplier. Like Pneuma, this can only be used once during combat, yet it's possible to sweep the floor against Superbosses with little effort. The only thing preventing this from being an instant "I Win" button is it requires a ridiculous 30,000 skill points to unlock, Zeke cannot switch Blades while this is active and it lasts for 90 seconds.
• The "Overclocking Bangle" is a must-have accessory for any player-controlled Driver: it accelerates the Cooldown in relation to the number of Driver Arts ready after switching to another Blade. For instance, since Tora has access to a full Driver Combo via each of Poppi's three forms, this makes his ability to spam it in a matter of seconds very evident. In fact, the "Fast Blade Switch VI" Aux Core received as a reward for completing KOS-MOS "Artificial Intelligence" Sidequest can reach up to similar speeds, reducing the time between switching Blades by 35%. This is generally considered to be the best Aux Core for Ursula, since switching her into combat instantly restores the party's Hit Points via her Battle Skill Beary Healing.
• The "Avant-Garde Medal" has created an infamous strategy known as "Crit Heal": this accessory absorbs 20% of Critical Hit damage as Hit Points; by giving it to Drivers who are using the Critical Hit-based Blades noted on this page, Drivers can soak up a ton of damage, only to regenerate it in an instant. Not only is it better to use Crit Heal for Drivers who are dedicated fighters, the need to have healing Blades becomes unnecessary.
• Common Blades may have a chance at acquiring the exclusive Battle Skill "Orb Master", which Rare Blades do not have. At level 5 on their Affinity Chart, Orb Master grants a 100% chance of placing an elemental orb following a Blade Combo path. Since duplicate orbs of the same element are invalid, that means if a player triggers a Blade Combo using three different elements, all three elemental orbs will appear after a single Blade Combo. This makes earning all eight elemental orbs faster than normal, in as little as three minutes, giving players the chance to destroy high-level enemies much quicker via Chain Attacks and the subsequent Full Burst.
• By combining Driver Combos like Topple with Blade Combos, both can be stacked to create Fusion Combos, which increases the damage of everything dealt, including any damage-over-time mechanic. As an example, by using Nim to achieve a Blade Combo that leads to "Volcano" via a fire element-based Poppi QTπ, it's possible to hit for 300,000 damage over time, increasing every time Tora uses Smash from Poppi QT's Driver Art "Dented Shield"; hitting the damage cap for every second in an attack isn't out of the question. Mastering Fusion Combos and their affects means killing Superbosses and Challenge Mode enemies on "Bringer of Chaos" difficulty in less than four minutes are viable, particularly the latter, given that Chain Attacks and earning the Party Gauge on Challenge Mode has been Nerfed with the mode's release.
• Playing in New Game Plus and bards will appear in every town, who will offer to trade valuable items in exchange for stocked Experience Points: these items include Master Mods and Ether Crystals for Poppi, making the normally onerous task of maxing her out via "Tiger, Tiger" child's play, Legendary Core Crystals, Accessory Expander Kits and Overdrive Protocols. Furthermore, New Game Plus unlocks a new feature at inns where players can reduce Character Levels all the way down to level 1, thereby restocking accumulated Experience Points. Since experience is scaled based on Character Level rather than the enemy's, it becomes incredibly easy to generate enough points to trade for the bards' items, while having enough left over to put the party back to players' desired levels.
• Also on New Game Plus, custom difficulty when used for unlocks/grinding. If the player wants an unlockable Blade or item that's locked behind some Harder Than Hard challenge, they can simply turn down the difficulty for an overpowered, hyper-aggressive party and weak, passive monsters, and while it might take a bit of grinding it can provide some nice early access to unlockables (even if the difficulty is turned back up afterwards). For instance, it's possible to beat "Dino-Drama" at around Lv. 60 to unlock Shulk and Fiora and use their unique strengths during an otherwise normal postgame or New Game Plus playthrough. With some effort, Elma can even be obtained as early as Chapter 6 of a regular New Game playthrough by abusing Corvin and Dark Blade Combos^note to seal reinforcements, allowing each of the Ghost Elmas to be defeated on "Elma: Redux" set to the lowest difficulty.

Torna: The Golden Country

• Lora is a jack-of-all-trades Fragile Speedster meant to be a versatile character in any situation, but what sets her apart is her Talent Art, "Swallow's Flight". At the cost of half her HP, Lora can recharge all of her arts, which is invaluable during the early game when more sophisticated means of Arts recharge are unavailable, and puts her nearly on par with Poppi QTπ in terms of Break and Driver Combo potential, especially since she can follow up her monstrous Break capabilities by switching to Jin for his Topple. Not only that, but given that Jin is a Game-Breaker in his own right and Haze joins him on Bringer of Chaos, she also inherits many of their strengths. The only things holding Lora back is that when put on AI, she will spam Swallow's Flight even when not needed and that the hardest superboss in the game is immune to Driver Combos, nullifying one of her biggest strengths.
• Jin is generally considered the best party member due having very high raw damage output and most of his Battle Skills synergizing to boost it even further. Transmigration increases damage dealt by 50% on every Vanguard Switch; because Lora is intended as the party's main Break inflicter and Jin's switch-in move causes Topple, you'll likely by using Vanguard Switch a lot and reaching the max cap of 250% in short time. Full Resonance boosts Jin's damage output by 100% while having him take 30% less damage at max Affinity, mitigating his Glass Cannon status. Lastly, Mind's Eye boosts his critical damage by a whopping 80%, making the broken Crit-Heal strategy just as viable on him as on Mythra. His Level 3 special Ice Revolution is considered the best Art in the entire game due to doing a whopping 100% extra damage against monsters with a higher level, which makes it extremely useful against Superbosses.
• On Normal or Easy difficulty, Haze is a Low-Tier Letdown, very underwhelming and weak and not worth using over Jin's insane DPS. However, on Bringer of Chaos, Haze's three Battle Skills make her downright invaluable at maxed-out Affinity: Headwind reduces party damage taken by 20%, Tailwind increases damage dealt by 50%, and Summer Breeze gives all party members 40% resistance to all debuffs, which will do much to keep the party alive. What makes her become truly broken is her Talent Art, Winds of Time, which can stop enemies in their tracks for 5 seconds at the cost of consuming all of Haze's own Arts recharge. It's not unheard of for an AI-controlled Haze to stunlock monsters for up to half a minute at a time with Winds of Time, especially when Lora is equipped with Arts recharge pouch items. Overall, Haze falls onto both extremes of the spectrum depending on what difficulty level you're playing on, being a complete joke on lower difficulties but an invaluable Support Party Member on the highest difficulties.
• Addam is made absolutely broken via his Talent Art. Transcendence lets him, for the price of some HP, extend Driver Combos for a very, very long time. This combines well with his Perfect Poise skill, which increases Launch duration by fifteen percent. While Addam can lose a large amount of HP from repeated uses of Transcendence, using the Critical-Heal strategy lets Addam recover any HP he loses as long he keeps attacking the enemy. Outside of the strongest super boss, who is immune to Driver Combos, this lets him stunlock enemies a la Xenoblade Chronicles 1, and, similar to Lora, Addam has a Launch Art that can be followed up by switching to Mythra for a Smash to complete the Driver Combo.
• While Hugo doesn't look like much on paper, what makes him shine is his Talent Art, Imperial Tether. At the cost of half his HP, Hugo can force all aggro on himself for 15 seconds, nullifying the main weakness of Tanks (including Hugo himself) being poor at maintaining aggro due to their lower damage output. On top of that, Hugo's very high Agility as a dodge tank can be supplemented by Haze and Mythra and by using a crit-heal build to ensure he can both quickly recover enough of his lost HP to spam his Talent Art endlessly and also utterly No-Sell almost any enemy attack that does come his way.