The reworked Chain Attack mechanics have made the system both far more powerful and consistent than it was in previous Xenoblade titles, especially once the player figures out the slightly arcane formulae for how to make the most of them. With the right Classes, Arts and Skills, it is possible to fully heal and buff your party, inflict punishing debuffs and topple combos on whatever you happen to be fighting, and dish out millions of HP worth of damage, all at the same time. Even an unoptimised setup is capable of utterly shredding most story bosses' HP bars and turning potential routs into crushing victories. Expect to be able to take even superbosses down 75% of their health in one go, with the difficulty in fighting enemies coming from surviving long enough to pull one off in the first place, or in doing a Self-Imposed Challenge to beat them without resorting to a Chain Attack.
Taion and Eunie's Ouroboros Orders are easily the most powerful in already-broken Chain Attacks. While unclear wording obfuscates this, their Chain Order effects can cause enemy defenses to drop into the negatives (especially when stacked in conjunction with Noah's Chain Order setting any enemy defenses to zero), resulting in a flat multiplier to damage across the board. Furthermore, as explained below, their Interlinks can obtain a skill that multiplies their damage even further for every buff/debuff active, so despite a nominally weak effect, you end up with a combination that can do millions of damage per hit. This gets taken even further once Ouroboros Orders are unlocked, as Eunie's Ouroboros has a skill that increases her damage based on how many buffs the party currently has, and this skill can be shared with Taion's Ouroboros. This makes their Ouroboros Orders synergize exceptionally well with Signifer and other buff-stacking classes, and even the usage of a few well-timed AOE buff Arts like Cure Bullet and Leaping Current can get some serious damage going.
The earlier into a Launch that a Smash Art is done, the more damage is done. This is already somewhat of a Game-Breaker by itself in regular gameplay with the right Skills and gear equipped, but Chain Attacks freeze the timer on combos, meaning that if you initiate a Chain Attack on a Launched enemy, are able to Launch it early in the combo, or simply combine Launch and Smash into a master art, you can perform a Smash attack once the combo is nearly over, and it will automatically receive the maximum damage multiplier possible, even before factoring in the typical Chain Attack damage multipliers, making it possible to one-shot superbosses in a single attack.
Topple-locking is back with a vengeance. As discussed above, the Launch-Smash path is an even further gamebreaker in its own right, but Topple alone and the Daze-Burst path are no slouches either. Aside from the Soulhacker's "Royal Charisma" skill, combo reactions cannot be extended indefinitely like in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 by striking an enemy with more Arts of the same type. However, as long as at least one character is successfully able to apply the Break status, all subsequent combo reactions are guaranteed to work as long as the character has enough Dexterity for the Art to land, and the three available Break Master Arts have short enough cooldowns that it's possible to reapply Break the moment the enemy exits its stun state — keeping the enemy functionally paralyzed. The trickiest part is getting Break to land in the first place, but there are many ways to get around even the toughest enemies between Break Brooch, Ogre's Fury Smash skill (in fact the class's reputation as a Game-Breaker comes down almost solely to its effectiveness at Breaking enemies), or just the fact that the game allows for more party members than in the past, meaning one of them will succeed through sheer numbers.
When one understands that when executing a fusion art means that the class' default art occurs before the master art, it's entirely possible to combine two combo arts in the correct sequence, resulting in an instant topple if a Topple art is paired up with the Break art of a Swordfighter, Yumsmith, Incursor, or Noponic Champion, going from Break to Launch/Daze by pairing a Launch art with the Seraph's Topple art, or going from Topple to Burst by pairing a Burst art with the Medic Gunner's Myopic Screen. Pairing up the Lone Exile's Launch art with the Lost Vanguard's Smash art is a deadly combination, resulting in an instant Smash. Such combinations are incredibly effective in chain attacks, provided the target has succumbed to Break.
Towards the end of the game, Noah learns the Unlimited Sword Talent Art: when activated, Noah gains a new set of Arts for 90 seconds that are incredibly powerful and change to complement whichever Role he is in. His Talent Art is also replaced with a new one - Final Lucky Seven - that performs a full Break-Topple-Launch-Smash combo, potentially dealing millions of HP of damage to every single enemy caught in its area of effect. His Ouroboros form gains a new Talent Art too that deals incredible damage and applies a unique "Reduce All" debuff to all enemies. But the thing that makes this mode truly incredible is a hidden skill: for those 90 seconds, any hit (e.g. from auto attacks, or each individual hit from multi-hit Arts like Tachyon Slash) has a small but not unlikely chance of inflicting instant death on any non-boss or non-Unique enemy. The main thing balancing this incredibly powerful Talent Art is the fact it takes a long time to charge up. That's where the Flash Fencer class comes in: advance it to Rank 15 and you get the Master Skill "Capable Hands", which at Rank 20 lets you start every battle with your Talent Art fully charged. This, combined with the instant death effect, is a massive accelerator pedal on late-game grinding, allowing you to shred even Elites like they were made of cheap paper.
Eunie's Interlink form is uniquely overpowered due to her Shared Blessing Skill, which allows a damage increase for each buff on the party. With her Feather Sanctuary Art giving the party up to 6 random buffs per use (or a Signifier in the party), her damage ramps up much faster than the more damage-oriented Interlinks, with her Talent Art dealing tens of thousands of damage even at low levels. As a bonus, said buffs last longer, she passively deals auto-attack damage to every enemy in range, and if she does get hit, she has a chance to do a massive party heal.
By itself Taion's Interlink seems like nothing to write home about, as it is a debuff-based mirror of Eunie's when debuff-based characters are a Low-Tier Letdown. At the same time, Taion's Eclipse skill makes his Interlink the only debuff-based character who has a reasonable chance of getting said debuffs to land. Better yet, link Eunie's Shared Blessing skill, and this can translate into his Interlink doing as much or even more damage than Eunie's, making it almost as powerful outside of lategame bosses.
Anything that decreases or refreshes Art cooldowns, such as much of Troubadour's toolkit, Frenzied Combo (Martial Artist skill), and especially Protector's Pride (Guardian Commander skill) or the related Friendship/Fraternal Badge accessories can trivialize the game under the right conditions due to allowing hilariously short Arts cooldowns when stacked together. Frenzied Combo in conjunction with Attackers with a high Crit Rate and/or multi-hit attacks allows for Arts to fully recharge by the time their animation completes, while some team compositions that make use of Protector's Pride and Fraternal Badges will actively avoid having Defenders, or only use them in support roles.
On their own, Arts that evade enemy attacks while active are, while extremely useful, not inherently broken, as they tend to be balanced by having animations on the shorter side. However, nearly all of them are inheritable as Master Arts, and can be combined with Arts that have very long animations, such as Stance Arts, essentially allowing for a prolonged window of total invincibility. Combine them with the above cooldown boosts and many of the more powerful-but-risky Attackers with their penchant for drawing unwanted aggro can be converted into effective Dodge Tanks in such a way that most Defender classes are rendered obsolete, especially since aggro management is something Defenders usually struggle with.
For the most broken thing in the entire game, the Signifer class and Troubadour's Glittering Melody can also be combined with Noah's game-breaking Lucky Seven listed above in an exploit that allows Signifer to pass Noah's invincibility to the whole party and keep it active forever, meaning it becomes impossible to take any damage or debuffs for the rest of battle by having Noah activate his Talent Art, sheath and unsheath his weapon to have access to Resonant Flag, then pass his buff to everyone else while using Glittering Melody to keep it from expiring. It says something that Challenge Mode had to deliberately gimp this strategy to avoid having players cheesing it.
Classes
The most overpowered class in the game is Fiona's Signifer class due to its ability to pass its random buffs to the rest of the party combined with the Troubadour's Talent Art of Glittering Melody stalling buff timers, allowing the whole party to stack up every buff in the game and keep it forever which is pretty self explanatory on how hard it snaps the game in half. But on top of this it can be used to do absurd things like continuously pass Power Charge to everyone during a chain attack.
The Lapidarist class, while not quite good damage-wise as Fiora from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, focuses on dealing critical-hits and healing the party while doing so. The crux of its kit is Beaming Edge, increasing crit rate up to 20% and damage by up to 50 percentage points, which synergizes with Frenzied Combo and Eye for Weak Points to enable the broken Critical Recharge Strategy, supplemented by arts which come out very fast, hit multiple times, and come with healing effects on their own. It benefits greatly from being a Kevesian class, being able to set Master Arts from the better healer classes (which tend to be Agnian), and do a better job than most of them due to their Arts charging faster when canceled. With the optimal setup, it supplants Signifer as the best class in the game. Its only weakness is that the AI tends to play it suboptimally.
Although Swordfighter by itself isn’t inherently overpowered, and is often replaced with another physical attacker based class like Flash Fencer or Incursor during the mid-game, its true potential cannot be unlocked until late game where it can easily do some of the strongest Smash damage in the game due to its ability to link the Master Art Mighty Beat to either Air Slash or Ground Beat, which have extremely high damage multipliers. Even without optimization to boost cancel and Critical damage, this can easily take down a massive chunk of unique monster/story boss HP with a single smash combo, and when properly optimized you can easily kill a non-powered up Seraphic Ceratinia within the span of 11 seconds on Hard Mode. As Noah's starting class, it's more effective on him than on any other character after upgrading his Blade, which also usually means access to Unlimited Sword; Noah's Lucky Seven moveset has two Smash Arts, giving it good synergy with a Swordfighter loadout focused on Smash damage.
Troubadour, the class that gives Glittering Melody, is no slouch when it comes to support, with a kit that revolves around quickly charging arts for spamming, with one art placing a buff field that gives fast recharge and passives that give a 12% chance to retain charge, fully recharge the Troubadour's arts when allies are incapacitated, and vice-versa. This recharge focus culminates in Glittering Melody, which, even without the permanent invincibility Cheese Strategy, is enough of a Game-Breaker in its own right because it can be used not only to extend buff duration for a long time, but also instantly charges the entire party's arts (barring Talent Arts), enabling even Awesome, but Impractical arts with long cooldowns to hit for high burst damage. Depending on the loadout, it can even be spammed fairly often.
While it is a Magikarp Power to the highest order and has a lot of ramping up to do to overcome the Scrappy Mechanic of obtaining abilities by hunting Unique Monsters, the Soulhacker class easily outshines most other standard classes by way of being a Master of All capable of fulfilling nearly every role with a myriad of options for arts and skills with customizability akin to the previous game's Poppi QTπ. Also like Poppi QTπ, Soulhacker can do great as a DPS, possessing among the highest attack power arts in the game in Elimination Beam, Transient Bond and Wild Wave, two sources of Power Charge (both to self and AOE, the latter of which is only otherwise achievable via Chain Orders or Signifer), and an excellent set of conditional attack boost skills, though unlike Poppi, it is not the greatest at inflicting break, but it is still very viable. It is pretty telling that the whole party can all run the class and not suffer from Crippling Overspecialization.
Soulhacker definitively supplants Signifer and Lapidarist as the premier support class, let alone the best overall, with the fact that it has a skill that boosts buff effects on its own that stacks with Swelling Blessing, along with skills that pass all the pertinent offensive buffs, bypassing the need to wrangle with RNG in the case of Signifer.
Mighty Glacier classes in Xenoblade are generally a recipe for failure, but among the starting classes, Sena's Ogre class is by far the best, and one of the best classes in the game overall. This is all due to its "Fury Smash" ability, which reduces enemy resistance to reactions such as Break, Blowdown and Knockback and enables easier combo-locking similar to previous games if the Ogre is equipped with a Break Brooch. Mastering the Yumsmith class and then applying its Break art in an Ogre's loadout is an early means of bypassing Break resistance. The class gets even better on its originator, Sena, after completing the "Gathering the Seven Nopon" sidequest and upgrading her weapon, giving her extra stat points on top of her huge damage and absolutely vital Fury Smash ability.
Because damage is the biggest factor behind aggro, multiple Attacker classes shine as ersatz dodge tanks, often doing the job better than the actual dodge-based Defender classes such as Zephyr. Often, this is due to access to multiple evasion Arts that synergize well with the class' default kit, and this is only helped by the "Protector's Pride" skill that further incentivizes the use of an Attacker as a tank rather than a true Defender:
Gray's Full Metal Jaguar class was designed as a Glass Cannon whose massive damage output is balanced out by its slow Arts animations and tendency to generate high amounts of aggro. But with the right setup it's possible to turn these around to its advantage by configuring it into one of the game's best dodge tanks bar none. Being a Kevesi class, FMJ has access to as many as five evade Arts at once (with a second viable Talent Art option in Mio's casenote After upgrading Mio's weapon, her default Zephyr class' Talent Art Gemini Strike will change from a physical attack to an ether attack (a property it can't attain on any other party member), making it synergize more with the rest of the ether-based FMJ's kit, on top of being faster to charge than Violent Streak, allowing for all three Fusion Arts pairs to have invincibility as a property, and for a very long time at that. Better yet, its innate Quick Draw Art already has one of the lowest cooldowns of any Kevesi Art, and being a forward positional, synergizes especially well with tanking on top of charging an evasion-based Talent Art (including the class' default Violent Streak) even more quickly. Support it with the various cooldown-decreasing skills or equips and you have a class that both deals huge-enough damage to maintain aggro better than most Defenders and is practically invincible the entire time, ironically calling to mind the similarly abusable Ghostwalker strategy learned from the original incarnation of the Fullmetal Jaguar class from Xenoblade Chronicles X despite the class otherwise playing completely differently.
Alexandria's Incursor class is obtained rather early in the game for being a Critical Hit Class, when critical hit builds have traditionally always been a quick way to bust Xenoblade games wide open. Better yet, the game offers a lot of equipment, gems, and skills that allow critical hits to do even more absurd damage, on top of synergizing particularly well with Frenzied Combo, not to mention Aerial Slash is an incredibly useful Master Art due to its ability to evade attacks while using it, making an aggro-pulling Glass Cannon much more survivable. With all the aggro the class draws in and its access to Aerial Slash, it can be configured into a physical version of the Full Metal Jaguar's dodge tank loadout using other available evade arts. In particular, the class' Mystic Vision Art is a stance with a very long animation, making it perfect for fusing with Quickdraw, while the Noponic Champion's Talent Art of Shining Refrain also has a very long animation and is a physical Art that synergizes well with the Incursor's kit, especially since it becomes stronger each time the user becomes incapacitated for the few occasions that enemy attacks do go through.
Ghondor's Martial Artist class, for similar reasons as Incursor, being a Lightning Bruiser with quick Arts cooldowns, a Quickdraw-compatible Stance Art, and an extremely high Critical Rate. While it doesn't hit quite as hard as Incursor due to its lower base Attack stat and Arts damage multipliers, and has a shorter attack range, it more than makes up for it with the Frenzied Combo skill, which causes both its regular Arts and its Talent Arts to recharge at particularly crazy rates. Its Talent Art Raging Force becomes even more powerful the more charged-up Arts are available, but thanks to its naturally short cooldown and Frenzied Combo, you'll be hitting near maximum damage with it very frequently. Combining this with Fraternal Badge and Protector's Pride's effects (not very difficult as Martial Artist hits hard enough to be a reliable aggro magnet) can lead to a comical degree of Arts spam. Better yet, one of said Arts is the evade art Jackal Claw. Under these conditions, Martial Artist can also serve as a dodge tank due to Jackal Claw's very short recharge times allowing for frequent windows of invincibility. As Destructive Charge is a forward positional art and has a Blowdown stun effect, it also synergizes well with a tanking Martial Artist. Uniquely among the Attacker classes used in this manner, its base Agility stat is nearly as high as the Zephyr's, and it can also be set up for a max agility build while retaining most of its offensive potential and Arts recharge.
The Seraph class for Attackers is this game's interpretation of the standard high risk/high reward playstyle in RPGs, except that in this case there's barely any risk. Their strongest Arts do self-damage, but only by 10% of current HP, making it highly unlikely for the Seraph to kill itself. More importantly, Seraphs have a Skill which grants them the extremely potent Awakening buff after taking a bit of damage; however the damage does not need to be done in one hit, and the self-damage does count toward triggering it so it'll have high uptime. Combine that with its Skills that provide massive damage buffs under easily-obtained conditions and you have a winner. Leveling Fire being a lengthy Stance art also gives it some degree of dodge tanking if necessary.
While the post-game Lifesage class isn't as busted as the Signifer or even Troubadour classes due to their ability to grant Status Buffs, it's still considered the best "true" healing-focused Healer class in the game. Most of this is due to multiple healing-focused Arts, as well as the "Aqua Mind" stance that both speeds up Arts recharge for the user and constantly heals allies around them. By far the class' best ability, however, is "Ocean of Plenty", which is a party-wide permanent buff that increases healing and reduces all damage taken. Having a Lifesage on the team drastically reduces the odds of running into a dreaded Total Party Kill.
Heroes
Ashera is a Hero that makes it trivial to get high damaging Chain Attacks. Her Heroic Chain (guaranteed 200% "Amazing" if she ends the turn at the cost of being unable to reactivate) makes it so you can use 3 party members + Ashera on the first turn, and get all 3 party members reactivated with enough TP to ensure snowballing ratio increases for the rest of the Chain Attack and making the downside irrelevant. Her Hero Order (+175-200% Damage Ratio) is simple, but allows for much more damage overall if achieved early during the Chain Attack. On a side note, her class, the Lone Exile class provides the only Launch master art available, making investments into her class worthwhile.
While she is slightly inferior to a Signifer party member due to lack of Glittering Melody or Fusion Arts to pass useful buffs around, Fiona herself is a great hero for Chain Attacks since her Chain Order is one of the sources for partywide Power Charge and the other effect fills up the Chain Attack Gauge when used, allowing for up to seven rounds of continuously ramping damage.
As expected of the true queens of Keves and Agnus, both of the postgame Heroes are absolute powerhouses:
The Royal Summoner class, relegated to postgame, isn't amazing because of how slow it is to build up power and only worth investing in for its "Essence of Ether" skill; however, the Royal Summoner hero, Melia, while not as strong as Ashera, is a high-tier menace for similar reasons to her. Her unique Arts are superior to those used by an Ouroboros member with the Royal Summoner Class, with her signature Starlight Kick (ouch!) having a faster animation than the Starfall Art that replaces it for the playable characters. For her Heroic Chain, even if she brings the TP ratio above 100%, the chain doesn't end and you can use another character to bring it even higher, making her similar to Ashera in function but being able to reactivate herself at the cost of not being an auto-guaranteed "Amazing" at the end of the turn — though with the Veneris Rings, she can help her teammates reach "Amazing" ratings more consistently, as they bump her base TP up to 55. Her Chain Order has the same effect as Eunie's already-broken Order, decreasing opponents' ether defense by up to 50 percentage points, but it can also stack with Eunie's to devastating effects and push enemies' ether defense even further into the negatives; it can be argued that Melia may be even better than Ashera on Hard Mode because Ashera's Chain Order is severely nerfed by the reduced Chain Attack damage ratios, while Melia's is not. Between this and the Royal Summoner class' ability to boost its damage each time an Elemental Discharge is performed, she's one of the very few Heroes that can do significant damage in her own right during a Chain Attack. Behold, a Level 1 party with Melia taking down Levialord Empireo at Lv. 180 and using her abilities to achieve early and repeated "Amazing!" rankings during Chain Attacks.
The Lifesage Hero, Nia, is considered to be among the best Heroes in the game behind Ashera and Fiona; she has the highest Healing stat in the game, and has abilities that make her useful during Chain Attacks. Her Chain Art is a guaranteed revive on all fallen party members; while it can be niche, it's invaluable in sticky situations, meaning that if worse comes to worse, you only need to focus on keeping said Hero alive so she can revive your allies during the Chain Attack, making it an excellent comeback/emergency tool. Her Heroic Chain is more versatile in most situations, re-activating all characters for the next round regardless of your TP score; while this is usually offset by her very low base TP of 15, this can be made up for by equipping her with the Veneris Rings, bumping her TP up to 35, and having her finish a Chain during a Healer's Chain Art (herself, Eunie or Taion) to get the extra role match TP, granting a very likely "Bravo!" and having every playable character available to use for the next round. Overall, having Nia or a Lifesage party member is an absolute necessity for any postgame team that needs a dedicated healer, and drastically improves the team's odds of survival against extra-tough enemies.
Clearing both the main game and Future Redeemed provides access to one more broken Hero, Rex, who is just as potent in the base game as he is in Future Redeemed. He keeps most of his useful skills, making him one of the few Heroes who can deal very significant damage in his own right, and has access to both Topple and Launch Arts, making him the best Hero for helping with Art combos. On top of this, while his Heroic Chain is good but nothing spectacular, his Chain Attack completion bonus reduces the opponent's physical defense by up to 75 percentage points — an even stronger version of Taion's completion bonus that lets him hit even harder. Furthermore, his Glass Cannon status can be mitigated through the greater customizability of the Ouroboros members, allowing a Defender or off-tank such as a Full Metal Jaguar to take some of the heat off him. While Rex's unlock conditions make him something of a Bragging Rights Reward, he can still be used to great effect in postgame, Challenge Battle and New Game Plus content.
Some Heroes that are otherwise unremarkable in the base game can be used to great effect in the Archsage's Gauntlet:
Riku and Manana are moderately useful in the early base game, but shine in the Archsage's Gauntlet with the "Debuff Rate Up" and "Debuff to Break" emblems. Given that they mainly focus on inflicting debuffs and have a Break Art, Debuff Rate Up increases the success rate of their otherwise unreliable debuff Arts, and Debuff to Break makes it easier for their Break Art to land successfully. Lastly, they're the only Hero that counts as both Kevesi and Agnian, allowing for more synergy with any of the playable characters and potentially allowing both the Kevesi and Agnian versions of the Zeal and Prosperity bonuses to be used.
Shulk is one of the weaker party members in Future Redeemed, but like Riku and Manana, he fares better in the Archsage's Gauntlet due to the Debuff Rate Up/Debuff to Break combination. However, given that he's a Bragging Rights Reward, he arguably benefits even more from the mode's mechanics than they do. Shulk has very high endurance, and his tanking ability depends on the success rate of Monado Rage inflicting its Lock-On debuff; the Debuff emblems therefore make him better at his job, in addition to the same benefits that they provide to Riku and Manana. This also makes him a good "revive bot" for the mode by giving him a Memory Locket, similar to how many players use him in Future Redeemed. His Chain Order, while a weaker version of Ashera's, is still good, increasing the damage ratio a fair amount and granting Power Charge to all allies. He is also the only character who can receive the powerful Awakening buff twice, due to the way his personal skills operate.
Future Redeemed
Rex is the overall best character in Future Redeemed due to being a Critical Hit Class just like he was when equipped with Mythra or Fiora in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. His "Heroic Spirit" skill helps negate his initial Glass Cannon status, and the rest of his skills combined with his propensity for multi-hit attacks boost his already-insane crit damage even higher as well as allow him to bypass enemy defense. As a result, Double Spinning Edge is incredibly spammable due to recharging after every Critical Hit, not to mention he is the only character with access to the full Driver combo, as he has Break, Topple, and Launch and can use Smash with Matthew's Union Strike.
Alternative Title(s):Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Future Redeemed
with Melia taking down Levialord Empireo at Lv. 180 and using her abilities to achieve early and repeated "Amazing!" rankings during Chain Attacks.