Braver Class Talk

[gigawuts]

Ha ha ha, the bibras wired lance has more tatk than satk.

oh sega

also it looks like punish arrow and the stun PA drop from enemies other than bibras, since I had a common bibras but found both the stun PA and punish arrow level 14

edit: Also, just gonna say I predicted this OP force/braver combo focusing around a tatk bow way way back and am so glad I was right, sega might be learning how to hybrid

[Not Crazed]

Im literally a complete noob to Braver...

Can anyone summarize the class for me, is it a bad idea to go Katana and Bow, which is best?
What should i focus on with skill tree? What are the new PAs like?

Thanks, Crazed

[gigawuts]

Im literally a complete noob to Braver...

Can anyone summarize the class for me, is it a bad idea to go Katana and Bow, which is best?
What should i focus on with skill tree? What are the new PAs like?

Thanks, Crazed

Here's a post I made a bit back that answers this to some degree or another:

Thank you for this.

And yes, do what you like. Braver is honestly three classes in one - katana, bow, and force element weakness support. Similar to how techer is three classes in one (melee, support [rofl], and PP battery). It can do two roles at once fairly well, usually just katana/bow (because average stance benefits bows only a bit worse than weak stance does, or you can go dual stances) or bow/forcesupport (because bows benefit the most from weak stance, and weak stance is what force benefits from with its element weakness bonus).

My advisories, not in order since it's entirely up to the user's preference:
Dedicated katana (average stance)
Dedicated bow (weak stance, doubles for force subbing)
Dedicated katana (split stances)
Both weapons (one stance - average will get you the best general performance)
Both weapons (split stances)

The class in summary is this:
Choose two to excel in:
[_] Average Stance
[_] Weak Stance
[_] Katana Combat
[_] Rapid Shooting

You can use a bow without even 1 sp in rapid shooting - I do on occasion. It still serves its purpose. Katanas can probably be used by bow bravers, but I don't really see much of a reason to besides kanran's AOE knockdown and the new stun PA. Bows offer long range damage to katana specced bravers (such as myself), but bows already have close range damage covered so there isn't much use for katanas on bow specced bravers.

[Not Crazed]

How does katana combat and katana gear work? It seems oddly worded....

I thinks its Just Guarding for the gear, adn then combat is just like a short stance?

[gigawuts]

Katana Gear is unique. Completely different from any other gear.

First: You build it by dealing damage. This is the normal part.

You attempt to activate it by using Just Guard. If you don't have the 3 bars lit you reset to 0 gear, without activating it. If you do have 3 bars you activate it, and get a purple aura plus a 20% bonus to all of your combined satk (as displayed on your character info screen). You also get a huge boost to your crit rate.

The gear will deplete over time like sword gear, and you can keep refilling it with damage like sword gear. Once it's fallen to 0 and you lose it you repeat the process to get it back.

Katana Combat is also different from most other things. It's a 20 second self-buff that does the following things:
Another huge boost to your crit rate
Normal attacks approach your target (this can be irritating at first)
You can activate Katana Combat again while it's active to release Combat Finish
Your hits during KC are tallied and used to determine the damage of Combat Finish. The count is capped at 30. Multihit attacks count for more than a single-hit attack, i.e. kanran will count for two (since it hits twice) but tsuki will count for one. Since kanran is also huge it will count for each enemy it hits. You can cap your KC counter in one single attack if 15 enemies are in range.

During Katana Combat you can get a 15% JA boost from one 5 SP skill, but more notably you can use Combat Escape to get a full 20 seconds of invulnerability. This is a big deal if you're using katanas. Get this. This is class-defining. Everything about Braver changes when you have 10 SP in Katana Combat and 5 SP in Combat Escape. You go from offense to offense, defense, support, etc. You can pop KC and moon someone in the middle of 20 predicadas. You can use KC during a PSE burst for its shockwave. You can use it for the plain old 15% damage buff if it means oneshotting instead of twoshotting. The skill is very versatile.

[Arksenth]

Not sure why everyone always associates Bow with Weak Stance. I play pure Bow Braver, and I actually really dislike Weak Stance because it pigeonholes your options too much. The only thing it really benefits IMO is Master Shot if you're consistently aiming at Weak Points, and that's only a small fraction of pure Bow play.

I actually find myself whipping out Bow a lot for certain scattered spawn patterns, or if I'm in a MPA and am focusing on the big mobs - Kamikaze Arrow isn't always guaranteed to hit a weak point, and is strong enough to 1hko with Average Stance anyway. It's also pretty useful for exit bursts and certain bursts where Gunslash isn't a great option, because you can unload a constant DPS AoE using Torrential Arrow on certain otherwise inaccessible spawn points while benefiting from excellent PP management by alternating between Ketus Proi and Rapid Shoot.

Plus, Bow is fantastic at breaking boss parts with its homing Master Shot, and especially parts that are hard to consistently reach for other classes due to speed or height or distance or whatever.

Bow normals actually pack quite a bit of a punch to them too - it could just be that I'm overgeared (I use a susanohiki with 50 element and a full Close Rig set with Mizer/Shoot/Spirita/Shooting Boost), but my bow normals do about 7-8k damage on normal mobs, and they whiff from trajectory too much to really depend on hitting a weak point all the time.

Both Weak Stance Up and Weak Stance Charge bonus also depend on hitting a weak point, so your damage drops by more than 40% if you whiff a weak point or if you're not even aiming for one in the first place. Too much of a loss IMO.

I'd actually recommend against Weak Stance for anyone going pure Bow just because there's too many tricks you can pull off with Bow that don't involve hitting a weak point. I mean, if the only thing you intend to do with bow is shoot off weak-point Master Shots, sure, but you're missing out on a lot of gameplay.

[Rakurai]

a 20% bonus to all of your combined satk (as displayed on your character info screen).

The fact that they're willing to make Katana gear buff your stats in this manner, but not Shifta confuses me terribly.

[gigawuts]

Not sure why everyone always associates Bow with Weak Stance. I play pure Bow Braver, and I actually really dislike Weak Stance because it pigeonholes your options too much. The only thing it really benefits IMO is Master Shot if you're consistently aiming at Weak Points, and that's only a small fraction of pure Bow play.

I actually find myself whipping out Bow a lot for certain scattered spawn patterns, or if I'm in a MPA and am focusing on the big mobs - Kamikaze Arrow isn't always guaranteed to hit a weak point, and is strong enough to 1hko with Average Stance anyway. It's also pretty useful for exit bursts and certain bursts where Gunslash isn't a great option, because you can unload a constant DPS AoE using Torrential Arrow on certain otherwise inaccessible spawn points while benefiting from excellent PP management by alternating between Ketus Proi and Rapid Shoot.

Plus, Bow is fantastic at breaking boss parts with its homing Master Shot, and especially parts that are hard to consistently reach for other classes due to speed or height or distance or whatever.

Bow normals actually pack quite a bit of a punch to them too - it could just be that I'm overgeared (I use a susanohiki with 50 element and a full Close Rig set with Mizer/Shoot/Spirita/Shooting Boost), but my bow normals do about 7-8k damage on normal mobs, and they whiff from trajectory too much to really depend on hitting a weak point all the time.

Both Weak Stance Up and Weak Stance Charge bonus also depend on hitting a weak point, so your damage drops by more than 40% if you whiff a weak point or if you're not even aiming for one in the first place. Too much of a loss IMO.

I'd actually recommend against Weak Stance for anyone going pure Bow just because there's too many tricks you can pull off with Bow that don't involve hitting a weak point. I mean, if the only thing you intend to do with bow is shoot off weak-point Master Shots, sure, but you're missing out on a lot of gameplay.

I agree, honestly. I find the whole emphasis on weakpoints to be a bad idea, but ranger and its weak hit skills in general don't appeal to me and a lot of players are all about that so I dunno.

The fact that they're willing to make Katana gear buff your stats in this manner, but not Shifta confuses me terribly.

It's weird, right? It's like Sega made the game in read only mode. They never update old stuff, but instead add new stuff that works the way things should have from the start. It's just bizarre.

[UnLucky]

Is that how it works? I thought it was like 30% base. Never really tested it, though.

[Not Crazed]

Okay, liking the sound of katana! Which PAs do you recommend currently?