Beasts

[Omunall]

I started a beast today after a lot of testing of the other races. I've found them to be quite an interesting race for class combinations.

I'm curious; how do you all play your beast? I'm using a female at the moment, and haven't gotten to a very high level, but i'm loving the stats they have and how well they mix with the job types. (Ranger gives a great boost of acc and other stat boosts over the HU, so it's sort of eliminating any acc issues for melee. I'm looking forward to leveling VA and FO as well)

Any advice? I'm seeing that the Nanoblasts are pretty useful in the early stages, though i'm not no a point where it's gotten as bad as people say.

(Also, i liked her so much i made a doodle lol: http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/009/6/3/phere__by_freaky_scribbles-d36tc3h.jpg)

[TheAstarion]

Heh heh, cool.

I play mine as a melee Vanguard. They have the highest evasion, which ties with Beast evasion extremely well, as well as the second highest attack, accuracy... and, well, everything else.

I use twin sabers nearly all the time, they chain pretty well, and Blade Destruction was my favourite new move even in the JP version before I realised it was just that much stronger than everything else. It's fast enough to do everything before a chain runs out, and strong enough to use on its own against weak enemies.

Other than that, I have the ranger lv 8 ability Elemental Hit, which increases the rate I inflict status problems (great for the Tumiriki Hyori with its level 4 instant death) and pick weapons with decent status on them (Hyori, and things with stun). When I'm bored I might crack out my whip, machinegun, slicer, claw, twin claws... Vanguard can do anything pretty much.

Other Vanguard abilities to look out for are HP Restore rate, which gives you 10% of your health back every 10 seconds, and Burst Bomber, which gives extra damage on traps... something Vanny can really capitalize on, having both EX traps available. At max level 30 they get Professional, which makes your melee weapons just sail through things as if they were made of butter, rather than stopping to hit them.

As for the Nanoblast... the regular "cat" blasts are all pretty bad, with long animations for a low number of hits. The newer gold and silver ones are a lot better in that respect... silver can run faster too, while gold is better for chaining. And with both of those, you get the chance to go into the black berzerk mode, where you can kill your enemies and allies alike! Trouble is, you can't heal... which is where the restore rate comes in, as well as hoping you have a good team of healers behind you.

In PSP2 Infinity, all Nanoblasts are invincible and more damaging, but shorter, making them more in line with other races' blasts... only fully controllable. In regular PSP2 though, you have to watch out, especially for spells. A few techs to the face and you'll drop faster than Michael Jackson's son from a hotel window.

[Broken_L_button]

I play my female beast (lolparadox) as a Force that uses almost exclusively techs (sometimes she melees with her Ignis for shits and giggles). Since I got her a set of extended Ecoeco sticks, PP is not much of a problem and her naturally ridiculous EVA allows for awesome evasion despite using a rod as well as less slots spent on EVA = more slots spent on resists = more advance abilities for more nuking.

Anyways...For ACC issues, I'd say just try getting a better weapon or stack units; just equipping 1 Lumirus/hit pretty much reduces the 0s I see popping up by a LOT, and since I'm playing a force, the effect would be even better on the higher ATA classes.

Anyways, abilities you should look for in general are most likely stuff like the PP boosts, burst bomber and maybe HP restore rate depending on how careful you are when Nanoblasting. The other abilities are pretty situational and depend on your class and play style IMO.

As a Hunter, I'd most likely be set with just PP boosts and HP restore, while as a ranger, adding elemental hit+burst bomber to that would be better. For force, I'd say PP boosts, MAYBE escape save (depending on how good you are at walking away from enemy attacks) and fill the rest with tech save+advance abilities. For vanguard, Burst bomber, PP boosts and HP restore rate will pretty much be more than enough and you'll still have space left to add more stuff.

As for actually using the Nanoblasts, Astarion covered that extremely well, so I'll just add a small precision abou the gold Nanoblast: do 1 attack--> guard cancel, rinse and repeat until chain goes high enough --> break with triangle attack. Just be careful about the long delay with that shoryuken move.

[Omunall]

Okay sounds great! I'm loving the character at this point, since I didn't get into ranged that much, and melee is just pure fun. Right now i'm having fun playing with dual knuckles. While they aren't better than anything, i just love being able to run up to an enemy and evade most of which is thrown at me while you pummel everything into the ground.

I'll keep the nanoblast info in mind. I'm interested in the silver atm, but seems that gold would be great for group play (that is if everyone doesn't freak out when you blast haha). Hopefully i'll get high enough to hunt some weapons soon, but either way the 50% code weapons i have seem to be doing well, so that should hold me over for a bit.

I can't wait to get Infinity, since the swords have been sped up.

[FOkyasuta]

Guess i'll add my input to.

Heres a tip.

"High EVP is fun but don't rely on it to much."

[Shakuri]

Beasts are overlooked, they reach their full potential when you utilize set bonuses (Bugei/Mitama). Stacks high ATP on top of their already high ATP, and gives them high enough ATA to actually hit something. This leaves space for units that aren't Hit units all across the board (Power units, Leg units, or if you are really worried about accuracy, Hit units). Of course, they have horrible PP naturally, and equipment doesn't fix this. Depending on what class you play this isn't a big deal though. At most you should spend 5 AP fixing the PP issue, and 3 at least.

[Drawers]

Their low pp doesn't make any sense, due to their backstory. They were created in order to withstand intense weather and area conditions yet they get tired out almost instantly...?

[Broken_L_button]

Well, I think the PP thing is perhaps more about being able to concentrate to repeatedly use complex skills as well as their spiritual abilities, while HP & ATK would be a better representative of their actual physical ability. Their backstory mentions that they're horrible at anything that requires concentration and precision, like shooting and techniques. Since skills seem like a complex chain of movements that most likely requires a certain degree of finesse and precision (not all of them, true. Spinning your axe around like a madman doesn't require finesse at all), it would be all too logical that they wouldn't be able to abuse them often.