Only ranking i disagree with is flash fencer i mean the class itself isnt what makes it op its just how fast it gets the special art guage full and make noah go god mode with lucky 7. On its own yeah flash fencer is meh but with the right abilities slotted its prob arguably S if not S+ because it can abuse lucky seven. Being able to use lucky seven at the start of a boss makes the fight go alot faster.
@@RaidenKaiser I think the main argument that convinced me is that most of the things that make the class good can be given to other classes. Crit dmg up, Cross Impact, Hidden Thorn, Capable Hands. Even its Talent Art has a fantastic use on Ogre builds
@@thecoolestquackduck there's an item in the inventory that cannot be sold because Mwamba uses it. Why tf would you do that for nothing more than an NPC
Something funny about Variable Turret: if you use it as a fusion art with Wide Slash, the evasion effect gets applied to Variable Turret, meaning you just don’t take damage for a comedically long time
That was part of my Heavy Guard build for ages. Combining it with any "Evade during" effect makes it so funny. I also use the Evade during arts jackal claw and aerial slash with FMJ so it always evades while using arts sounds dumb but that (using flame lord with quick draw) just makes it so so much dumb damage with so much evasion windows...of course I do NOT think it is a good setup, bit it is a fun setup.
On Guardian Commander: during the final boss fight of chapter 5 (not saying who for obvious reasons) my entire team was down except Taion who was using Guardian Commander. He had about 500-ish HP and the boss was at around a quarter health. Taion literally would not die at all because I would just block everything, regenerate health, keep getting talent gauge, regain more health, and I whittleddown the boss's health with Falcon Swoop and Shield Bash for like 10 minutes, finally resulting in beating the boss. As a pure tank Guardian Commander is pretty damn crazy.
i had the same thing happen early game when had the guardian commander hero. he was the only one alive and he just kept healing up while i watched. but since it can only be controlled by an AI he eventually lost.
This exact same thing happened with me, I literally had 2 chars left alive with Lanz on guardian commander and had to slowly chip away at the half the boss's health with him and Taion on incursor. Glad to see someone else had the same experience!
Man I really can't wait until Custom Difficulty is a thing in this game just to lower enemies' debuff resistance to make Tactician and Machine Assassin actually good.
@@jackcarlson4358 what's funny, she felt like she wasnt good enough in the games story. as it turns out. she's the 3rd best Class in the game. "Yippee!" but my boy Noah not even in top 10 though smh.
Honestly the biggest issue is that the class needs accuracy to function well. With the slow attacks, missing a single attack drops your damage significantly by virtue of making your damage art recharge far slower.
What's pretty interesting is that most of C tier looks like it could be bumped up into B tier with just a couple of accessories if Monlith decides to add some in the DLC. A way to reduce debuff resist and/or a way to turn block rate into halfway decent damage would be plenty to improve the lower tier class consistency. That alone shows how much better the balancing is in this game compared to previous titles. Even if none of the add content helps those classes out of C tier I can still appreciate how much better of a job Monolith's devs did for this game. I don't need the classes to be perfect in Post game so long as I can enjoy them during the bulk of a new playthrough to experiment with new strategies and setups without feeling like I should avoid anything specific like I did with Shield Hammers in XC2 or Sharla in XC1.
It's sadly a common problem in jrpgs where debuffs done by the party just drop off (or were never useful to begin with). One of the few jrpgs where it does not drop of a cliff is actually Pokémon. Some others like dragon quest allow some debuffs to still be good, but not all. Which is in the end a shame. I am just guessing that it would be to hard to balance a game around debuffs.
@@NathanWubs lots of JRPGs use debuffs well, look at the SMT games, even persona, you're thinking of status effects, the only game i saw them well done is probably etrian odyssey.
This game is very unbalanced after the fight against Camuravia and Ethel. The game was actually a challenge on hard until after that fight. Some of the late classes and being able to gives other characters certain skills and arts was a mistake. It's better than 2, although I still think 1 is better, although none are great in balancing classes. Did you just say you had to worry about avoiding Sharla in Xenoblade 1? But she's not even that good, especially late game. Early on, sure, but she's far from broken.
Quick tip about spoiler hero 2: don’t use Elemental Discharge. What the game doesn’t tell you is that the other 3 arts also summon a single element, and if you summon a 4th element the oldest element is automatically discharged. Therefore you can just spam the other arts as fast as possible and watch as it starts to put out some rather tasty damage numbers. Starfall in particular has a rather ludicrous damage multiplier for a topple art, and once you have 3 elements every subsequent cast of Summon Element will cause 2 discharges. As a Kevesi class you can run Ring of Roses to spam even faster. Just be judicious with your Talent Art as it clears all your elements, though with the reward of a pretty large damage boost.
Machine Assassin should've been the strongest Kevesi Attack class with how it's structured, however, SHOULD is a powerful word. Debuff Resistance is problematic across the board for endgame usage, and should be looked at by Monolith, because this would be an A to S Tier Class if you were able to apply and sustain debuffs on your enemy.
@@ericx6969 then we'd just have Shackle/Bind/Sleep locking, which would be arguably more broken. I agree stuff like Defense Down, Attack Down, Bleed, Blaze, and ESPECIALLY Resistance down etc. should never have resistances, but there are some pretty broken ones that may get abused if they arent careful.
Its funny because in X debuff strats were really powerful having massive numbers for blaze and shock if you understood them and had the requisite weapon arts
Will be interesting to see how things will change with Challenge mode. Classes with strong AOE damage like Soulhacker in particular should be really useful to clear all the mobs quickly. And if Signifer loses its buffs each round it might not be as broken though probably still one of the best classes in the game.
@@LelouchOnTwi The classes aren't to do with allegiances, but the race of the class's origin. If the race is from XB1 it gets XB1 art recharge. If it's from XB2, it gets XB2 recharge. From a gameplay standpoint master arts wouldn't work with an extra allegiance for City. Unless you wanted to make it so that City Classes could have Kevesi and Agnian Master Arts, which would actually be really busted.
@@LelouchOnTwi I think it's more to do with where that character's body physically comes from? If it was their faction, there'd need to be a Lost Numbers type and a Moebius type. But that'd still make Yumsmith an exceptional case. There should be an attacker version based in Keves, and a defender version based in Agnus.
It's going to be interesting coming back to this video a year from now. There'll surely be more information on existing skills and gameplay changes that will alter this tier list by a tiny bit. Signifer's staying at S+ though. That shit is BROKEN.
I could legitimately see Ogre crawling its way up to low S+ level, just because reaction combos are broken in Xenoblade. Signifer should be S++ then XD
@@MarkusHobelsberger while im not near end game, just at the end of chapter 5 but man that fencer class feels like S+ cause my tanks cant hold aggro. I usually must wait a bit before attacking and comparing his numbers on the screen it could be the mob def having better resist but I'm hitting 2-3k crit on white dmg all the time as Fencer.
It's gonna be interesting to see how this list changes up when challenge modes become a thing. While I don't necessarily expect the particularly weaker classes in C tier to raise all the way up to S, I wouldn't be surprised to see some B or A tier classes shine even more than some of the S tier ones due to a particular challenge mode
Man it's fun looking back at this list and seeing how much our opinions has changed. All kevsi healers are better now because we later realize oh we could fusion art what signifer can do but faster and all the kevsi attackers have access to the grossly overtune fusion art smash that basically destroys any superboss under 1 minutes... Man good times lol
Thanks so much Enel for this tier list guide. I can tell you put a lot of time and effort into it. What you bring to the Xenoblade community is so appreciated.
Something that just occurred to me: Throughout the Xenoblade series, you've mentioned "burst damage" as being able to deal a ton of damage in one go rather than over the course of a fight. However, since we now have a status condition called "Burst," we may have to come up with a new term. 😅
@@codename618 It probably would most likely be "burst status" or some other name for the status effect rather than changing burst damage considering the fact that burst damage is a general term used by several different real time based rpgs to refer to doing large amounts of damage in a short period of time, and it has been used to mean that forever. "Burst status" does work perfectly fine as well, considering you're refering to the *status effect* of Burst rather than refering to damage. Something which, from what I've seen, the Burst status doesn't even do
@@Magic_Ice I mean, most of the good arts and skills for Soulhacker are from lv60+ Unique monsters, so if you speedrun the game, he wouldn't be that strong... You'd need to be around lv70 to get decent arts and skills on Soulhacker after getting him, so it's actually not that different of a story. It just feels less grindy because we don't have to play Tiger-tiger for arts and skills. But arguably, if you actually like Tiger-tiger, Poppi alpha can actually get relatively stronger earlier compared to Soulhacker, who's level locked.
@@AndrewTheUltraBoss99 yeah but I mean in game playthroughs. Like when you get Torna Poppi isn’t that great and you need to use him for so long without getting QT it’s agonizing
Yup, this bothered me as well. Probably designed that way to make early game not too easy with spamming break. On the other hand, if a new player overlooks break and removes swordfighter from his loadout by chance, he is going to have a bad time....
Art Follow-Up is a weird field that I think has the potential to be really silly if used as a master art on a class that sticks with the pack of party members, particularly an attacker. Every party member within the field, whenever they use an art, will cause a bullet to shoot from the orb that does 2x of the placer's Attack power as damage. When 6 party members are all spamming arts within it, it can shoot that bullet a lot. Whether that ends up being a lot of damage or still very little I'm still unsure of though.
I feel like it can be decent as a master art. I feel like its cast time is just too hugh to ever be worth it not asa fusion art, and it also just doesn't work well with stalker, a class with a lot og hugh cadt time abilities.
It doesn't scale with literally anything other than your base attack (and neither does Energy Grenade for that matter -- doesn't scale with % damage boosts, buff/debuff boosts, blaze damage in the case of grenade, just literally nothing, with the ONE exception of one of the Yumsmith class passives), so it's ultimately underwhelming when it can't scale with the ridiculous crit damage boosts attackers get later. But more importantly, it has the same problem as Energy Grenade: you can only have three field effects on the battlefield, and the ones your healers are using are vastly more important than the incidental damage that offensive fields provide.
I knew there was something up with the [final attacker class], either I was really dumb and couldn't figure it out or it just wasn't very good... Incursor has been my go-to for destroying everything, scored a 31M chain with it earlier running a bleed build, got it ticking for half a million damage, pretty sweet.
Good list, I generally agree with everything said here. One thing that is slightly outside of this list's scope, but I think is worth mentioning though is while machine assassin as a class overall is decidedly low tier, the associated hero has one very specific niche; Namely being by far and away the single best multiplier builder in chain attacks in the entire game. As an example, just playing casually with no real testing or iteration, I've seen a score of 559% on round 4 of the chain attack alone. Just try this setup; Taion on DPS, machine assassin hero equipped with the TP booster rings. Yes, I know, but you're not building them for damage, they're purely for utility. On round 1 of a chain attack, pick a dps order ideally (the hero's is actually quite strong, though no idea if it stacks with Eunie and Taion's,) and just use Taion followed by the hero. You should get a bravo rating, getting them both back. From there it should be fairly obvious how this goes as the hero's TP value snowballs from 40 initially to well over 400 by the start of round 5, resulting in some absurd damage multipliers for the rest of the team to make use of. I don't know if this is actually stronger than Ashera's abilities overall, but it at least warrants testing imho.
couple things is that ashera is way more consistent in chain attacks. heroes are generally pretty weak so taking herself out of the pool while guaranteeing 3 returns and a 200 on the first round is amazing. segiri you are pretty commited to having a poor first round while also being more subject to the rng of returning. not only that but it means youll be using a lot more attacks using segiri which is honestly pretty terrible damage. I think getting a super high TP% is a fun thing to do but is incredibly overrated in terms of actual application and dealing as much damage as possible.
Actually Ethel is the best hero for Chain Attacks imo. She gets the same multiplier bonus, but just for going first. If you give her the TP up Ring, she starts with enough TP to get 100 solo herself round 1, bravo round 2, and will be getting Amazings the rest of the rounds. I've had her hit TP values of 800+. EDIT: I forgot to add that Ethels chain order also is a 200% damage ratio bonus just like Ashera, but gives Crit up buff instead of power charge (your Signifier should already have powercharge covered, so if you are going for Eunie Ouroboros finisher then Ethel is actually even better for max damage final round because it's a less redundant buff). Ethel's chain order is also attacker type, which I think is more valuable than Tank chain orders for flexibility with TP bonuses if you want to use someone other than Ethel on some of the later rounds.
@@CramerGamer99 I think what makes ashera good isnt so much the powercharge, thats just a little bonus if you didnt have things line up super great. the aspect i think that makes her the best is how fast she accelerates the damage multiplier letting the high damage start faster and more importantly removing herself from the redraw pool. heroes are weak compared to the actual cast in how much damage they can do strategies that use them just to inflate the TP% as high as possible are fun but i think significantly worse in terms of actual damage. Not only that but just the general consistency that comes with using her. You have to high roll pretty hard on heroes like segiri or ethel to surpass the damage multiplier of a normal ashera chain with much worse damage. With ashera im usually in the 60-75 million damage range. with any of the other heroes im around 35-45 million with good rng
@@soulofalbedo Yes, but no enemy has that much health at the moment. With Ethel, I can quickly and easily reach 25+ million damage much quicker than I would with an Ashera strat, because for the first 3 rounds I just use Ethel for the chain, then all the damage comes in round 4 and the Ouroboros round. When Challenge Mode hits and we get enemies with way more health, taking more time with Ashera may be worth it.
I'd be curious to see how you rank the Heroes. Either way just looking forward to more guides, this is the first Xenoblade game that has hooked me and I'm currently being a crazy person and grinding everything.
It’s a shame that Tactician and Heavy Guard are on the weaker end. Since the cutscenes use their base classes, I wanted to stay on base classes + Yumsmith hero for story progression fights.
To be honest, using Heavy Guard is fine. Since you can simply just cancel the bad animations. And as Enel said, the class is neigh unkillable. You just have the babysit the class more to make sure it can hold aggro. Which means less time optimizing damage/healing from other classes.
@@dinotaco4651 Probably going to happen, since FF is all about buffs at the start of the battle which is helpful when it comes to speedrunning. Noah with Capable Hands will carry the run late-game.
I want to mention that it seems the AI can’t use full metal jaguar with the back attack up Art properly. I suspect the damage build up of never missing an attack takes priority over positional arts for the AI
Funny thing that happened to me in a boss fight, won’t say bosses name for spoilers sake, where the boss mind controls a party member they chose my eunie who was my main dps on full metal jaguar almost wiping my over leveled party
I feel inherently that some (if not a lot) of classes are limited because they have a Master Skill or Art that could be INSANE if it could be used on any other class. (Dead Set on FMJ, as an example) Another major problem is that a LOT of the best Master Arts/Skills are completely inaccessible to any player who literally isn't right before the final boss. Capable Hands & Saber Strike will likely remain elusive to any player who doesn't pick up a scent of how to Master Flash Fencer, Seraph has literally the exact same problem, and even for the "easier" classes to master, among them Troubadour, still will likely take players hours upon hours upon hours to even get them unlocked for a character that could use the skills they provide. (Because OF COURSE nobody can unlock the classes until they're mastered first)
Just use Nopon Coins for fast mastering. It only takes like 12 Silver Coins to get to Level 5, and the rest can be grinded out very quickly if you fight the right enemies or Chain Attack Overkill frequently.
Spoilers kinda For my newgame+ run on the final boss I thought it would be really funny if I used a team of 4 incursors, 2 signifiers, and miyabi, while running the skill protectors pride and the accessory with the same effect for ultra art spam and buffs. Let me tell you it was certainly something. I thought I might have a bit of a hard time not having a tank but 3 healers + evasion art made it easy to stay alive and deal massive damage.
what the point of armour if you are not going to be hit hahah. evasion is king hahaha I ran through out the game with 1 tank zephyr with the maximum evasion i can give to it with agility boosting skill hahaha.
@@owenrendall Really hope they turn the current tank meta on its head with a tank that gets a damage boost every time it blocks an attack or something like that
Honestly yeah I agree with this list, would maybe switch Seraph and Swordfighter but I'm just not a huge fan of the recoil gimmick of seraph personally
Damn, I was hoping to see fencer a bit higher, I cleared so many areas with Noah alone and his Unlimited Sword by abusing the fact that you start with the talent art ready. Then again maybe that strategy is not as good against super bosses on hard who have bonkers amounts of HP.
It's the best Tank class on anyone who isn't Mio but tbh Tanks aren't amazing in this game - Which is absolutely hilarious after 1 and 2 basically being "use mainly tank with some attackers and no healers" to "use S tier healer class"
@@effluxi9587 Xc1 having the better party setups having the two tanks, xc1 breing mostly pure DPS and xc3 having healers be incredibly busted and broken is hilarious
Glad to see my boy Cammuravi’s class up there in S tier, S for Seraph. I just wish he and my party members who use his class didn’t eat up aggro like a starved lion, it’s a trial to keep them alive. And I must say, I’m curious to see how this tier list will look like a year from now
I’m replying xenoblade 2 and I’ve been watching your videos like crazy. Your xenoblade 3 videos are amazing as well. Definitely one of my favorite TH-camrs
It's great that there's no outright bad class in this game. Although I definitely felt that what REALLY mattered was what you inherited from each class, rather than the classes themselves. This felt the most apparent when I understand how important Break is, which is probably why I began to see bigger results in my adventure when I was able to get the Break Art from the Yumsmith onto everyone. Same thing with Ultimate Qigong. I can't assume you've played much Fire Emblem, but that series has made obtaining and inheriting certain Skills a big deal in its recent entries, and this feels strikingly similar.
I really cant wait for the Hero tier list if there is gonna be one because its just so all over the place. Certain Heroes are amazing in chain attacks, others suck, and some heroes are actually really good as a 7th party member outside of chains
Great list. Personally i would have preferred a list per type (attacker, defender, healer) but this generalized list does give you an idea how any class compares to another (and how they can pretty much break the game... ehem signifier) Looking forward to a tier list of master arts and master skills. Cheers and keep up the great work!
A little disappointed with royal summoner. I love the look of it and Melia being completely broken in Xenoblade 1, the class just lacks everything. Party passive is really nice but the damage and no other team buff makes other classes a better choice. Especially since you can just slap Essence of Ether on another healer.
at least her hero chain is incredible. it's the only way I've been able to pull off 5 Amazings. overall she actually has pretty high chain potential since if you get both her and Eunie that's -100% ether defense (even better if it works like ultimate Qigong but still amazing if not), but that's still pretty situational
I was hoping Machine Assassin would be one of the strongest considering you have to bend over backwards just to get it, I hope the class is buffed in the future somehow...
Thaumaturge in C tier feels absolutely wrong. The class doesn't have good healing, sure. Instead it gets Divine Protection on almost no cooldown. This is one of the strongest field effects in the midgame: it takes massive AoE arts that would one-shot your healers and saves them, it keeps your tanks topped off on health, and it stacks with itself. Having two Thaumaturges spamming Divine Protection is incredibly powerful in the midgame and does significantly more to mitigate damage than any of the actual healers.
The problem with Machine Assassin is using the Class on a Party member, or at the very least Sena, does not give them a custom robot. Only it’s weapon.
I'd love to see team set up rather than individual class strengths, where so classes have weaknesses other classes can cover them which does raise the viability
Wasn’t expecting FMJ to be in A. Thought it was gonna be at least S. I thought a few would be higher too, like Yumsmith and Flash Fencer, but overall is pretty agreeable.
Summoner might not have the best damage as a class, but the summoner hero is incredibly funny in chain attacks. Iovis rings for 55 base TP plus their heroic chain ability make it trivially easy to get an excellent every round (and reactivate them every time) and their damage output and chain order is better than ashera's provided you can get power charge from a signifer. great video,, would love to see a master skills/arts tier list some time soon!
I feel like the Summoner Hero is better than Ashera when it comes to chain attacks as she can consistently get Amazing Ratings and Ashera's Power Charge doesn't matter when Cross Impact Signifier and Dragon Decree Soulhacker exist and her Chain Order stacks with Eunie's
Thaumaturge has two uses 1 for item farming due to burst. And secondly for clearing debuffs, which isn't passed as a master art. I was able to comfortable fight level 40 enemies at level 30 using one of them during the early game, using two swordsmen (due to the +daze on talent), a medic gunner (Before I got hold of items that basically instantly charged master arts), two guardians. It was basically a burst lock. The burst healing's one benefit is that it doesn't have a range limit as far as I could tell. Which means it will fully heal attackers who are flanking a very large enemy that other arts won't work on. Armor Viel plus healing every auto meant it doesn't die from stray AOE's. It is without a doubt better than War Medic, Medic Gunner, Tactician, or Strategos. While flash fencer late game might be able to spam Burst easier, due to losing out on the healing, its not as an effective strategy for item farming higher level enemies.
Some people would actually argue Stalker is broken. That hadn't been my personal experience, but I've heard a lot of people saying that. I mean, I guess if you build your entire team around bleed and if enemies don't resist it, then by all means, I'm sure Stalker would be doing some dmg. But that's just too many ifs for my taste.
Real talk; if they buffed status ailments, we’d probably be looking st Yumsmith and Machine Assassin going up a little. I wonder what the DLC classes will offer for Ether damage; since Ultimate Qigong makes physical damage so much better.
@@effluxi9587 Its funny; It feels like Thaumaterge was supposed to be a healer version of Lone Exile. I think the idea could still work; but you'd really need to change some of its numbers and maybe make its kit a little better at dealing with aggro.
I won’t watch this all the way through, but that discovery about Ultimate Qingong is mind blowing. I think this game is a lot better than the first two games when it comes to confusing Art and Skill descriptions, but evidently, nothing that exists is perfect
Keep in mind Enel made this literally a few weeks after the game launched. Obviously the list would change as new things are discovered. If he updated the list, that would be nice… but it’s fine as is.
This video is incredible, and I was wondering if you were ever thinking of revisiting it now that, not only has it been 2 years, but two new classes were added in
Flash Fencer is EASILY my favorite to play as! They do decent damage, and being able to use Noahs insanely OP Lucky Seven arts right from the start of a battle when you max the class out, is SOOO satisfying...
Thaumaturge felt really good in the early-mid game in hard mode. The healing is a bit weak but the fact that it has a debuff clear on the same art as an aoe attack buff is really good. Very helpful against J for example, who has that nasty aoe bleed. Early access to burst is also really nice (also for J for example who has a really annoying enraged). And finally, the aoe barrier is also really nice to tank big arts. After a while it felt like it didn't do enough, but for this part of the game it was extremely helpful
Debuff scrubbing really is Thaumaturge's unsung niche. The only other classes that can do that are Soulhacker with it's massive toolkit filled with just about everything, and War Medic which gets the effect on way too long of a cooldown to be useful.
Another issue I found with the Stalker class is that a lot of the animations just take too damn long. Like the one where you essentially do a 360-no-scope, spending a solid 10 seconds just slowly spinning around. Also, as someone with a tiny bit of experience in archery I can say that it makes no sense to keep the bow pulled back for as long as some of the animations do, because that will tire out your arms very quickly. The class would be better if it was a lot more quick firing.
Yup. Feels like the class got settled with every inoptimal characteristic possible: damage centered around a debuff, damage up to enemies in chain attack kill range, slow arts, ether attacker (no Ultimate Qigong)
I really hope they change the way debuffs work in 3, because currently the few ways that lower debuff resistance don’t work. The Art that reduces debuff resistance specifically needs to have a 100% success rate.
War medic might not be a great class, but Valdi under certain circumstances can be really op; if you select him as a hero and you’re fighting robots (which there are a lot of towards end game) he will add 50 tp to his attack every time after. He starts off on 20 tp so if you consistently use him in a regular chain attack you can get like 300+ tp
War Medic is actually great! Basically Signifer but with actual healing and debuff clearing. Just slap Aureole and Resonant Flag on it as master arts, and maybe Ring O Roses too (because it gets both), and you've got a top-tier healer support build
Tbh I find medic gunner a better than troubadour in 90% of cases. Better healing and faster revives are generally more useful, and troubadour's best arts are master arts anyway. The enemy buff cleans is the 10% tho
Martial Artist is phenomenal on Noah. You can fuse two front attack arts if you have Quickdraw, and with the boost to auto attack, you'll have access to Unlimited Sword within thirty seconds of the fight.
The fact that leaping current clears debuffs matters a lot, at least for the story, because Moebius enemies almost always have freeze, which does a ton of damage and only goes away when you die, or it's cleared. Other classes have debuff purge, but the fact that Thaumaturge has it does give it some situational advantage
I’ve found thaumaturge to be a necessity for ng hard mode midgame because of leaping current, the attack up buff is good for setting up eunie/taion ouroboros chain attacks and the debuffs on some bosses and unique monsters are insane. Cooldown of 5 seems so short, medic gunner’s clear debuffs art takes I think 30 seconds and it does not do the job
I feel like every class in this game will at least make you feel like you're doing SOMETHING. Which can not be said for a lot of the bad blades in 2. Overall the game was balanced pretty well. At least in terms of fun. :)
I'd agree except with Machine Assassin I feel very useless player controlling it because of debuffs failing. Even with reduced cooldowns, the arts take too long as well :(
I don't know if I am insane or not but I have some impression about Summoner: You can stack Summon Elementals. Judging by animation, if you stack at least 2 elementals without releasing them, their floating animation gets more powerful and the damage escalates. I just don't know if this really works or if you can spam more then 2 times.
you can stack up to three, they accumulate with attacking skills from what I know(elemental summon brings 2, other arts, or at least starfall from my use case, summons 1, unsure if the other attack skills work or just the magic ones)
Great list! Just wanted to say thank you for this as well as for all the XC2 guides you made. You've helped me a lot since I jumped into the series. Anyways, I find it funny that Lanz has the worst class, inherits the 2 best classes, and inherits the Machina boy that later gets completely outclassed.
With how influential Ultimate Qigong is when compared to other skills, I would not be surprised if one of the DLC heroes unlocks an Ether-based equivalent.
Until now, I didn't know it was spelled "Signifer", as I thought it was always "Signifier" with an "i" before the "e" at the end. Knew it would be the S+ ranked class at the "one class is S+" part. Not surprised Tactician is so low for healing, as soon as the game let me change classes again I basically avoided it for the rest of the game. What makes me the most sad is how slowly some of the Arts come out for these classes, like Full Metal Jaguar (still a pretty fun class as Dual Guns along with Dual Swords are I prefer to use in X, even if it can't get as much damage as physical classes due to being Ether-based) and Stalker (even though Stalker is rather situational and I never understood what Arts Follow-up did). On top of that, Violent Streak being controlled and precise is disappointing, because I loved how chaotic it was in X (when in boss fights, because it can get the attention of nearby enemies you might not want to fight right then like no tomorrow). Another thing that makes me sad is how small the "defense ring" around Twin Rings users is when compared to the other tanks. Something cool I noticed with Lone Exile is the weapon-spinning Art gives 200% Spike damage when you're attacked, so it could help out to stay alive against higher-level enemies in a few situations. Haven't tried the Incursor class yet, but just reading the skills it has told me it's really good based on how it deals with Criticals alone. More broadly, unless I missed something, it seems like only two Keves classes have basic, single-target Break Arts, which ends up requiring putting more thought into a team build if Break, Topple, etc. combos are desired (without needing Level 3 for Break All) because of how Master Arts work, so you can't just do the team you want. Kinda disappointing, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if Soulhacker (which seems a lot like the "Cross [from X] Class" when it comes to the sheer scope of what it lets you do with it; the main weapon is x-shaped, even) can get a Break Art, but that's still another Keves class and I haven't looked fully into how it works on the main cast.
Glad I stumbled upon the Ultimate Qigong thing by accident when I noticed my chars nearly doubling the damage numbers and attack strength against some enemies when having it on and taking it off and it's why I was surprised at first not seeing anyone recommend its usage on physical DPS classes or even the tanks, and I feel like on tanks like Zephyr it might even be better than the physical arts buff from Ogre because the defense reduction applies on auto attacks as well.
Huh, I've always been prioritizing Fighting Prowess over Qigong, but it sounds like I'll be doing the opposite from here on. Thanks for the insight! As always, thanks for the spoiler warning.
so played and beat the whole game on hard and my endgame party was Noah(Incursor) Mio(Zephyr) Eunie(Troubador) Taion(Lone Exiler) Lanz(Signifier) Sena(Seraph) and Fiona(Signifier,bcuz this class is too good to have only 1 on party) and just saw u tier list game literally taught me which classes are best puttin literally HP Sponge as a Boss on Hard so.. i cant agree more with u tier list since all the top ones (except ogre and SoulHacker) was on my party on endgame
I love FMJ and Incursor and used them on Eunie and Taion respectively for pretty much my entire playthrough. Sometimes I may go a bit overboard when player-controlling them and grab aggro and die. Maybe improving my defenders might help. Also love Signifer, but haven’t tried much of Troubadour yet. Maybe I should give that a go sometime. Also will you cover the heroes themselves and their unique properties (i.e. chain orders and heroic chains)?
I hope they buff all the bad classes with maybe some improved class skills and new dlc accessories. It's sad to see some of my favorite classes being so low. Also dlc quests to upgrade weapons for the rest of the classes would be awesome. Excited to see how the tier list evolves when challenge mode releases
Lots of good info, thanks. Soul Hacker is really powerful though it does feel like it has the common problem of "if you're strong enough to unlock everything for this class then you've already cleared almost everything anyway so you don't actually need this class" so it definitely doesn't feel like it has its chance to shine. But hopefully that'll change in DLC. Lone Exile is in a funny spot too cause, you might as well just run with Ashera for her insanely good contribution to Chain Attacks and no need to run another one in the party. Great that you can get a launch master art off of the class though.
I'm a crazy person because I actually really like Stalker, at the point in the game I'm at right now it's damage isn't amazing, but I found that Art Follow-up is fairly good when placed next to your trigger-happy AI members. I just see it less as pure DPS and more like a support class.
Listen, Enel. I'm not watching this video. At least not now. But I want you to know that I'm super excited to watch your XC3 content once I've finished the game
Postgame spoilers: The thing about Hero 2 is that it's mostly based on RNG. The difference between a water and a fire is significant (and you could even get 2 elements instead of 3), and the art cooldown definitely doesn't help with bad rolls. At least, I've noticed that Summon Element actually discharges your old elementals, which should count towards the bonus. However, all of her element arts deal damage even if you have nothing summoned, so it could break Power Charge setups. This is a shame, because the damage output is amazing when it works, and the class is still fun to use anyway. Just wished for everyone to be starlight kicking around though... (btw it's a great topple)
It's really just a by-product of Keves classes feeling really bad compared to Agnus classes. Xenoblade 2's combat system mostly copies over to 3 fine. But in Xenoblade 1, your hotbar had something like 8 or 9 ability slots. That doesn't work well when whittled down to just 3.
@@Willias Spot on. That just reminds me that Melia was the only reason for XC1's system to exist imo, for her arts it's the best while for everyone else the new one is way better
Thank you! It would be great if you did a short vid on your full team set up with the master arts/skills. I know you say ogre, troubadour, sig but seeing a full team set up for toughest bosses or upcoming challenge mode would be awesome. Glad I picked the Sena and Mio class for the weapon upgrades lol.
With this discovery on how ignore defense work, how would you rank the master skills for physical attacker in terms of effectiveness? Say at a 30-40% crit rate with thermo headgear. Ultimate qigong, eye for weakness, fighting prowess, critical strike, greatest warrior (only at base 35% for consistency). I did not include conditionals like when hp is above/ below a threshold, if enemy is debuffed etc. Same question applies for accessories (if applicable).
Timestamps:
1:21 - Swordfighter
3:08 - Zephyr
3:56 - Medic Gunner
4:44 - Tactician
5:29 - Heavy Guard
6:13 - Ogre
7:15 - Flash Fencer
8:21 - War Medic
9:00 - Guardian Commander
9:38 - Thaumaturge
10:17 - Yumsmith
11:00 - Full Metal Jaguar
12:05 - Strategos
12:59 - Stalker
13:50 - Lone Exile
14:30 - Incursor
15:16 - Lost Vanguard
16:09 - Signifer
16:46 - Soulhacker
17:46 - Martial Artist
18:38 - Troubadour
19:39 - Seraph
20:45 - Machine Assassin
*SPOILER HEROES*
21:53 - Spoiler Hero #1
22:45 - Spoiler Hero #2
Only ranking i disagree with is flash fencer i mean the class itself isnt what makes it op its just how fast it gets the special art guage full and make noah go god mode with lucky 7. On its own yeah flash fencer is meh but with the right abilities slotted its prob arguably S if not S+ because it can abuse lucky seven. Being able to use lucky seven at the start of a boss makes the fight go alot faster.
I choose Fifi.
@@RaidenKaiser I think the main argument that convinced me is that most of the things that make the class good can be given to other classes. Crit dmg up, Cross Impact, Hidden Thorn, Capable Hands. Even its Talent Art has a fantastic use on Ogre builds
I havent unlocked signifier class for noah how to speed up unlocking class for other party do i need to use fiona all the time ?
@@rezarfntri1895 Yeah, it'll unlock faster with more characters of the class. Also make sure you're fighting stuff around your level
A detailed and well reasoned tier list, unfortunately rendered completely invalid because Mwamba’s class was not placed in SSS tier.
I'm still pissed about Mwamba not being a class hero
@@giusoriano I 100% agree. It would surprise everyone and let's be honest, we all thought he was dead
@@thecoolestquackduck there's an item in the inventory that cannot be sold because Mwamba uses it. Why tf would you do that for nothing more than an NPC
What's his class?
@@ryu-ken Corpse?
Something funny about Variable Turret: if you use it as a fusion art with Wide Slash, the evasion effect gets applied to Variable Turret, meaning you just don’t take damage for a comedically long time
Omg that’s genius lmao
@@TARDISES there is an accessory that increases aggro for every attack evaded. I put it on the Zephyr to basically lock aggro
That was part of my Heavy Guard build for ages. Combining it with any "Evade during" effect makes it so funny. I also use the Evade during arts jackal claw and aerial slash with FMJ so it always evades while using arts sounds dumb but that (using flame lord with quick draw) just makes it so so much dumb damage with so much evasion windows...of course I do NOT think it is a good setup, bit it is a fun setup.
This is what I did as soon as I had access to the master art
@@rdraken okay I have to try this Fullmetal Jaguar set now; it sounds absolutely stupid in all the right ways
On Guardian Commander: during the final boss fight of chapter 5 (not saying who for obvious reasons) my entire team was down except Taion who was using Guardian Commander. He had about 500-ish HP and the boss was at around a quarter health. Taion literally would not die at all because I would just block everything, regenerate health, keep getting talent gauge, regain more health, and I whittleddown the boss's health with Falcon Swoop and Shield Bash for like 10 minutes, finally resulting in beating the boss. As a pure tank Guardian Commander is pretty damn crazy.
SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 5
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N: WHY WON’T YOU DIE?
Taion: Block Rate son. It regains my health in response to physical trauma
Class blessed by the sword and shield
@@Magic_Ice Spoilers
It was actually M but close enough
i had the same thing happen early game when had the guardian commander hero. he was the only one alive and he just kept healing up while i watched. but since it can only be controlled by an AI he eventually lost.
This exact same thing happened with me, I literally had 2 chars left alive with Lanz on guardian commander and had to slowly chip away at the half the boss's health with him and Taion on incursor. Glad to see someone else had the same experience!
Man I really can't wait until Custom Difficulty is a thing in this game just to lower enemies' debuff resistance to make Tactician and Machine Assassin actually good.
ha ha ha monolith hates us
A healer/support member being amazing is the ultimate ‘be careful who you call ugly in school’ moment
Then there is Ghondor's class dealing a casual 2 million damage on a talent art. It's like someone hit hit the instant kill button.
@@tricmagicSeraph can do it too, while also doing about 10 other things
I would not have predicted Ogre would ever be that high just looking at the pre-release stuff with a Xenoblade 2 brain. Good job, Sena.
I mean she IS the girl with the gall after all
She DID do good out there!
@@jackcarlson4358 what's funny, she felt like she wasnt good enough in the games story. as it turns out. she's the 3rd best Class in the game. "Yippee!"
but my boy Noah not even in top 10 though smh.
Shrek Class is best class
Honestly the biggest issue is that the class needs accuracy to function well. With the slow attacks, missing a single attack drops your damage significantly by virtue of making your damage art recharge far slower.
Signifer was always destined to be top tier, it even starts with S. We should’ve known from the start.
Truth. The moment I saw "shares buffs with allies" I was like 🧿👄🧿
@@jaredkhan8743 why would u need that when soul hacker can just spam it for whole team lol
@@ericx6969 so that soulhacker can focus on pure damage 😏😏
Wait till they nerf it in an upcoming patch for the next dlc in the expansion pass
Sena and Soul Hacker also starts with S, which is why they are S tier.
What's pretty interesting is that most of C tier looks like it could be bumped up into B tier with just a couple of accessories if Monlith decides to add some in the DLC. A way to reduce debuff resist and/or a way to turn block rate into halfway decent damage would be plenty to improve the lower tier class consistency. That alone shows how much better the balancing is in this game compared to previous titles.
Even if none of the add content helps those classes out of C tier I can still appreciate how much better of a job Monolith's devs did for this game. I don't need the classes to be perfect in Post game so long as I can enjoy them during the bulk of a new playthrough to experiment with new strategies and setups without feeling like I should avoid anything specific like I did with Shield Hammers in XC2 or Sharla in XC1.
It's sadly a common problem in jrpgs where debuffs done by the party just drop off (or were never useful to begin with). One of the few jrpgs where it does not drop of a cliff is actually Pokémon. Some others like dragon quest allow some debuffs to still be good, but not all. Which is in the end a shame. I am just guessing that it would be to hard to balance a game around debuffs.
@@NathanWubs lots of JRPGs use debuffs well, look at the SMT games, even persona, you're thinking of status effects, the only game i saw them well done is probably etrian odyssey.
@@guilhermecardoso2365 debuffs are a type of status effect
Crap I clicked the wrong thread and I can’t delete the comment
This game is very unbalanced after the fight against Camuravia and Ethel. The game was actually a challenge on hard until after that fight. Some of the late classes and being able to gives other characters certain skills and arts was a mistake. It's better than 2, although I still think 1 is better, although none are great in balancing classes.
Did you just say you had to worry about avoiding Sharla in Xenoblade 1? But she's not even that good, especially late game. Early on, sure, but she's far from broken.
Quick tip about spoiler hero 2: don’t use Elemental Discharge. What the game doesn’t tell you is that the other 3 arts also summon a single element, and if you summon a 4th element the oldest element is automatically discharged. Therefore you can just spam the other arts as fast as possible and watch as it starts to put out some rather tasty damage numbers. Starfall in particular has a rather ludicrous damage multiplier for a topple art, and once you have 3 elements every subsequent cast of Summon Element will cause 2 discharges. As a Kevesi class you can run Ring of Roses to spam even faster. Just be judicious with your Talent Art as it clears all your elements, though with the reward of a pretty large damage boost.
Shit, that's actually huge.
What?!?? Will it still count for your additive damage that you get by using discharging elementals, though?
Machine Assassin should've been the strongest Kevesi Attack class with how it's structured, however, SHOULD is a powerful word. Debuff Resistance is problematic across the board for endgame usage, and should be looked at by Monolith, because this would be an A to S Tier Class if you were able to apply and sustain debuffs on your enemy.
I wish all enemies would take debuffs no resist etc
@@ericx6969 Or have debuff resist reduce the effect/duration of debuffs rather than make them miss?
Theres always Taions Oroboros form to shred debuff resist of enemies.
@@ericx6969 then we'd just have Shackle/Bind/Sleep locking, which would be arguably more broken. I agree stuff like Defense Down, Attack Down, Bleed, Blaze, and ESPECIALLY Resistance down etc. should never have resistances, but there are some pretty broken ones that may get abused if they arent careful.
Its funny because in X debuff strats were really powerful having massive numbers for blaze and shock if you understood them and had the requisite weapon arts
Will be interesting to see how things will change with Challenge mode.
Classes with strong AOE damage like Soulhacker in particular should be really useful to clear all the mobs quickly.
And if Signifer loses its buffs each round it might not be as broken though probably still one of the best classes in the game.
Buffs don't expire when weapon is unequipped so as long as it can recover quickly it should be fine
I really hope they'll add more defender classes in future updates
I feel like they HAVE to. At least 1 right?
I wonder why Riku and Manana are classified as Keves even though Manana is from Agnus and there should be a 3rd allegiance for classes.
Same! It feels like the least optimized role in the game, and a starting class, that being Zephyr, being the best one is pretty underwhelming.
@@LelouchOnTwi The classes aren't to do with allegiances, but the race of the class's origin. If the race is from XB1 it gets XB1 art recharge. If it's from XB2, it gets XB2 recharge. From a gameplay standpoint master arts wouldn't work with an extra allegiance for City. Unless you wanted to make it so that City Classes could have Kevesi and Agnian Master Arts, which would actually be really busted.
@@LelouchOnTwi I think it's more to do with where that character's body physically comes from? If it was their faction, there'd need to be a Lost Numbers type and a Moebius type. But that'd still make Yumsmith an exceptional case. There should be an attacker version based in Keves, and a defender version based in Agnus.
It's going to be interesting coming back to this video a year from now. There'll surely be more information on existing skills and gameplay changes that will alter this tier list by a tiny bit. Signifer's staying at S+ though. That shit is BROKEN.
I could legitimately see Ogre crawling its way up to low S+ level, just because reaction combos are broken in Xenoblade. Signifer should be S++ then XD
@@MarkusHobelsberger while im not near end game, just at the end of chapter 5 but man that fencer class feels like S+ cause my tanks cant hold aggro. I usually must wait a bit before attacking and comparing his numbers on the screen it could be the mob def having better resist but I'm hitting 2-3k crit on white dmg all the time as Fencer.
@@Simulati0n it feels the Alexandria class is by far the best Crit class
It's gonna be interesting to see how this list changes up when challenge modes become a thing. While I don't necessarily expect the particularly weaker classes in C tier to raise all the way up to S, I wouldn't be surprised to see some B or A tier classes shine even more than some of the S tier ones due to a particular challenge mode
I mean, a lot of C tier classes could theoretically get massive buffs in viability if something’s done with the debuff resistance of enemies
Archsage Gauntlet's debuff emblems have given us hope
Fiona: Waving the flag.
Noah: I’m feeling motivated.
Oh no, and he even has a "katana"
Man it's fun looking back at this list and seeing how much our opinions has changed. All kevsi healers are better now because we later realize oh we could fusion art what signifer can do but faster and all the kevsi attackers have access to the grossly overtune fusion art smash that basically destroys any superboss under 1 minutes... Man good times lol
1:58 The clarification on Ultimate Qigong is extremely helpful. It's a much more useful skill than I initially thought.
Thanks so much Enel for this tier list guide. I can tell you put a lot of time and effort into it. What you bring to the Xenoblade community is so appreciated.
Something that just occurred to me: Throughout the Xenoblade series, you've mentioned "burst damage" as being able to deal a ton of damage in one go rather than over the course of a fight. However, since we now have a status condition called "Burst," we may have to come up with a new term. 😅
Just say "burst combo" or "burst status" then no?
@@arminarlelt7471 No, those are the same thing.
@@codename618 It probably would most likely be "burst status" or some other name for the status effect rather than changing burst damage considering the fact that burst damage is a general term used by several different real time based rpgs to refer to doing large amounts of damage in a short period of time, and it has been used to mean that forever. "Burst status" does work perfectly fine as well, considering you're refering to the *status effect* of Burst rather than refering to damage. Something which, from what I've seen, the Burst status doesn't even do
I feel like Soulhacker is kind of a response to QTPi being overpowered. They made the super customizable class good, but not broken.
It’s only as broken as you allow it to be.
Also you don’t have to use the super weak version unlike Poppi which you had to use a super weak and limited version for the first half of the game.
@@Magic_Ice I mean, most of the good arts and skills for Soulhacker are from lv60+ Unique monsters, so if you speedrun the game, he wouldn't be that strong... You'd need to be around lv70 to get decent arts and skills on Soulhacker after getting him, so it's actually not that different of a story. It just feels less grindy because we don't have to play Tiger-tiger for arts and skills. But arguably, if you actually like Tiger-tiger, Poppi alpha can actually get relatively stronger earlier compared to Soulhacker, who's level locked.
@@Magic_Ice """super weak"""
each poppi is a beast if builded right.
@@AndrewTheUltraBoss99 yeah but I mean in game playthroughs.
Like when you get Torna Poppi isn’t that great and you need to use him for so long without getting QT it’s agonizing
I was moderately bothered that the swordfighter was the only way to inflict break for a decent while until yumsmith came around
Yup, this bothered me as well. Probably designed that way to make early game not too easy with spamming break. On the other hand, if a new player overlooks break and removes swordfighter from his loadout by chance, he is going to have a bad time....
Yeah, but once you were able to give everyone break, topple, and launch, then the game was broken.
thankfully now we live in a post ino world
@@robertomacetti7069 Our one and only non-positional Break Art. Seriously even Soulhacker had to get it as a side attack.
Art Follow-Up is a weird field that I think has the potential to be really silly if used as a master art on a class that sticks with the pack of party members, particularly an attacker. Every party member within the field, whenever they use an art, will cause a bullet to shoot from the orb that does 2x of the placer's Attack power as damage. When 6 party members are all spamming arts within it, it can shoot that bullet a lot. Whether that ends up being a lot of damage or still very little I'm still unsure of though.
I feel like it can be decent as a master art. I feel like its cast time is just too hugh to ever be worth it not asa fusion art, and it also just doesn't work well with stalker, a class with a lot og hugh cadt time abilities.
iirc is it not affected by Yumsmith's Slicey Dicey? if it is that could be fun
It doesn't scale with literally anything other than your base attack (and neither does Energy Grenade for that matter -- doesn't scale with % damage boosts, buff/debuff boosts, blaze damage in the case of grenade, just literally nothing, with the ONE exception of one of the Yumsmith class passives), so it's ultimately underwhelming when it can't scale with the ridiculous crit damage boosts attackers get later. But more importantly, it has the same problem as Energy Grenade: you can only have three field effects on the battlefield, and the ones your healers are using are vastly more important than the incidental damage that offensive fields provide.
@@amitaish1055 the problem with it as a master art is it competing with troubadour's ring a roses which gives faster cooldowns which is just better.
Thanks for explaining how it works dude I finished the game wondering what that shit do
I knew there was something up with the [final attacker class], either I was really dumb and couldn't figure it out or it just wasn't very good...
Incursor has been my go-to for destroying everything, scored a 31M chain with it earlier running a bleed build, got it ticking for half a million damage, pretty sweet.
how? what is your party class build?
I've been gimping my current Incursor setups on purpose by making them breakbots and they still shred healthbars XD
Incursor is absolutely busted. Flash Fencer's Capable Hands is absolutely busted on Noah for clearing out mobs and one-shotting elite monsters.
@@PlazDreamweaver incursor for noah as main dps?
@@mr.leroysmith7012 I think he mainly meant Noah because Noah having 100% talent art at battle start is fun
Good list, I generally agree with everything said here. One thing that is slightly outside of this list's scope, but I think is worth mentioning though is while machine assassin as a class overall is decidedly low tier, the associated hero has one very specific niche; Namely being by far and away the single best multiplier builder in chain attacks in the entire game. As an example, just playing casually with no real testing or iteration, I've seen a score of 559% on round 4 of the chain attack alone. Just try this setup; Taion on DPS, machine assassin hero equipped with the TP booster rings. Yes, I know, but you're not building them for damage, they're purely for utility. On round 1 of a chain attack, pick a dps order ideally (the hero's is actually quite strong, though no idea if it stacks with Eunie and Taion's,) and just use Taion followed by the hero. You should get a bravo rating, getting them both back. From there it should be fairly obvious how this goes as the hero's TP value snowballs from 40 initially to well over 400 by the start of round 5, resulting in some absurd damage multipliers for the rest of the team to make use of. I don't know if this is actually stronger than Ashera's abilities overall, but it at least warrants testing imho.
couple things is that ashera is way more consistent in chain attacks. heroes are generally pretty weak so taking herself out of the pool while guaranteeing 3 returns and a 200 on the first round is amazing. segiri you are pretty commited to having a poor first round while also being more subject to the rng of returning. not only that but it means youll be using a lot more attacks using segiri which is honestly pretty terrible damage. I think getting a super high TP% is a fun thing to do but is incredibly overrated in terms of actual application and dealing as much damage as possible.
I personally prefer Spoiler Hero #2 for chain attacks to get the 200%+ in every round
Actually Ethel is the best hero for Chain Attacks imo. She gets the same multiplier bonus, but just for going first. If you give her the TP up Ring, she starts with enough TP to get 100 solo herself round 1, bravo round 2, and will be getting Amazings the rest of the rounds. I've had her hit TP values of 800+.
EDIT: I forgot to add that Ethels chain order also is a 200% damage ratio bonus just like Ashera, but gives Crit up buff instead of power charge (your Signifier should already have powercharge covered, so if you are going for Eunie Ouroboros finisher then Ethel is actually even better for max damage final round because it's a less redundant buff). Ethel's chain order is also attacker type, which I think is more valuable than Tank chain orders for flexibility with TP bonuses if you want to use someone other than Ethel on some of the later rounds.
@@CramerGamer99 I think what makes ashera good isnt so much the powercharge, thats just a little bonus if you didnt have things line up super great. the aspect i think that makes her the best is how fast she accelerates the damage multiplier letting the high damage start faster and more importantly removing herself from the redraw pool. heroes are weak compared to the actual cast in how much damage they can do strategies that use them just to inflate the TP% as high as possible are fun but i think significantly worse in terms of actual damage.
Not only that but just the general consistency that comes with using her. You have to high roll pretty hard on heroes like segiri or ethel to surpass the damage multiplier of a normal ashera chain with much worse damage. With ashera im usually in the 60-75 million damage range. with any of the other heroes im around 35-45 million with good rng
@@soulofalbedo Yes, but no enemy has that much health at the moment. With Ethel, I can quickly and easily reach 25+ million damage much quicker than I would with an Ashera strat, because for the first 3 rounds I just use Ethel for the chain, then all the damage comes in round 4 and the Ouroboros round. When Challenge Mode hits and we get enemies with way more health, taking more time with Ashera may be worth it.
I'd be curious to see how you rank the Heroes. Either way just looking forward to more guides, this is the first Xenoblade game that has hooked me and I'm currently being a crazy person and grinding everything.
It’s a shame that Tactician and Heavy Guard are on the weaker end. Since the cutscenes use their base classes, I wanted to stay on base classes + Yumsmith hero for story progression fights.
I did this for the final fight too! Seemed appropriate
To be honest, using Heavy Guard is fine. Since you can simply just cancel the bad animations. And as Enel said, the class is neigh unkillable.
You just have the babysit the class more to make sure it can hold aggro. Which means less time optimizing damage/healing from other classes.
I just wanna say that I can't wait to watch you speedrun this game. Wonder what's the strats going to be this time.
I'm hoping to see some Flash Fencer abuse personally
@@dinotaco4651 Probably going to happen, since FF is all about buffs at the start of the battle which is helpful when it comes to speedrunning. Noah with Capable Hands will carry the run late-game.
I want to mention that it seems the AI can’t use full metal jaguar with the back attack up Art properly. I suspect the damage build up of never missing an attack takes priority over positional arts for the AI
Unfortunately the handsome man had to go without a handsome thumbnail. We must summon Michael Xenoblade for a thumbnail.
Funny thing that happened to me in a boss fight, won’t say bosses name for spoilers sake, where the boss mind controls a party member they chose my eunie who was my main dps on full metal jaguar almost wiping my over leveled party
I feel inherently that some (if not a lot) of classes are limited because they have a Master Skill or Art that could be INSANE if it could be used on any other class.
(Dead Set on FMJ, as an example)
Another major problem is that a LOT of the best Master Arts/Skills are completely inaccessible to any player who literally isn't right before the final boss.
Capable Hands & Saber Strike will likely remain elusive to any player who doesn't pick up a scent of how to Master Flash Fencer, Seraph has literally the exact same problem, and even for the "easier" classes to master, among them Troubadour, still will likely take players hours upon hours upon hours to even get them unlocked for a character that could use the skills they provide.
(Because OF COURSE nobody can unlock the classes until they're mastered first)
Just use Nopon Coins for fast mastering. It only takes like 12 Silver Coins to get to Level 5, and the rest can be grinded out very quickly if you fight the right enemies or Chain Attack Overkill frequently.
Spoilers kinda
For my newgame+ run on the final boss I thought it would be really funny if I used a team of 4 incursors, 2 signifiers, and miyabi, while running the skill protectors pride and the accessory with the same effect for ultra art spam and buffs. Let me tell you it was certainly something. I thought I might have a bit of a hard time not having a tank but 3 healers + evasion art made it easy to stay alive and deal massive damage.
what the point of armour if you are not going to be hit hahah. evasion is king hahaha I ran through out the game with 1 tank zephyr with the maximum evasion i can give to it with agility boosting skill hahaha.
I have been waiting on this. Great work as always.
Tier lists are always fun. I can’t wait to see how this list evolves over the next few months.
especially given the DLC heroes we'll be getting later
@@bulborb8756 the DLC heroes are gonna be broken as fck again like in xc2
Maybe if they fix debuffs
@@mr.leroysmith7012 I can't wait
@@owenrendall Really hope they turn the current tank meta on its head with a tank that gets a damage boost every time it blocks an attack or something like that
Honestly yeah I agree with this list, would maybe switch Seraph and Swordfighter but I'm just not a huge fan of the recoil gimmick of seraph personally
Seraph is always my go to attacker due to signifers insane support capabilities my seraph almost never drops below half health
Damn, I was hoping to see fencer a bit higher, I cleared so many areas with Noah alone and his Unlimited Sword by abusing the fact that you start with the talent art ready. Then again maybe that strategy is not as good against super bosses on hard who have bonkers amounts of HP.
Immediately hoping for Lone Exile to be S tier. My favorite tank to control by far, though I haven't unlocked the last tank class.
It's the best Tank class on anyone who isn't Mio but tbh Tanks aren't amazing in this game - Which is absolutely hilarious after 1 and 2 basically being "use mainly tank with some attackers and no healers" to "use S tier healer class"
dont let tier lists decide what class to play.
@@effluxi9587 Xc1 having the better party setups having the two tanks, xc1 breing mostly pure DPS and xc3 having healers be incredibly busted and broken is hilarious
Blossom Dance is such a fun talent art. I feel you, man
@@hayatojin2886 Well, duh.
Glad to see my boy Cammuravi’s class up there in S tier, S for Seraph. I just wish he and my party members who use his class didn’t eat up aggro like a starved lion, it’s a trial to keep them alive. And I must say, I’m curious to see how this tier list will look like a year from now
Cammuravi my boy
S for Smoldering
I’m replying xenoblade 2 and I’ve been watching your videos like crazy. Your xenoblade 3 videos are amazing as well. Definitely one of my favorite TH-camrs
It's great that there's no outright bad class in this game.
Although I definitely felt that what REALLY mattered was what you inherited from each class, rather than the classes themselves. This felt the most apparent when I understand how important Break is, which is probably why I began to see bigger results in my adventure when I was able to get the Break Art from the Yumsmith onto everyone. Same thing with Ultimate Qigong.
I can't assume you've played much Fire Emblem, but that series has made obtaining and inheriting certain Skills a big deal in its recent entries, and this feels strikingly similar.
XCX was the first game in this series to do that, though it included basically every skill and not a specific selection.
Ah, yes. Break arts. Break arts for everyone
In Yumsmith we trust
coming off of fire emblem three houses I definitely felt prepared for the mid game class shuffling to get the best master skills lol
I really cant wait for the Hero tier list if there is gonna be one because its just so all over the place.
Certain Heroes are amazing in chain attacks, others suck, and some heroes are actually really good as a 7th party member outside of chains
Great list. Personally i would have preferred a list per type (attacker, defender, healer) but this generalized list does give you an idea how any class compares to another (and how they can pretty much break the game... ehem signifier) Looking forward to a tier list of master arts and master skills. Cheers and keep up the great work!
This is a great video! It's helped me a lot!
This is pretty sick, kinda feels like a mini guide for every class
A little disappointed with royal summoner. I love the look of it and Melia being completely broken in Xenoblade 1, the class just lacks everything. Party passive is really nice but the damage and no other team buff makes other classes a better choice. Especially since you can just slap Essence of Ether on another healer.
at least her hero chain is incredible. it's the only way I've been able to pull off 5 Amazings. overall she actually has pretty high chain potential since if you get both her and Eunie that's -100% ether defense (even better if it works like ultimate Qigong but still amazing if not), but that's still pretty situational
Really the biggest disappointment I've seen, in terms of expectation vs reality.
I was hoping Machine Assassin would be one of the strongest considering you have to bend over backwards just to get it, I hope the class is buffed in the future somehow...
Now this is the spicy content I subscribed for
Thaumaturge in C tier feels absolutely wrong. The class doesn't have good healing, sure. Instead it gets Divine Protection on almost no cooldown. This is one of the strongest field effects in the midgame: it takes massive AoE arts that would one-shot your healers and saves them, it keeps your tanks topped off on health, and it stacks with itself. Having two Thaumaturges spamming Divine Protection is incredibly powerful in the midgame and does significantly more to mitigate damage than any of the actual healers.
The problem with Machine Assassin is using the Class on a Party member, or at the very least Sena, does not give them a custom robot. Only it’s weapon.
Are you sure you didn’t just have her clothing set to Ogre?
I'd love to see team set up rather than individual class strengths, where so classes have weaknesses other classes can cover them which does raise the viability
Wasn’t expecting FMJ to be in A. Thought it was gonna be at least S. I thought a few would be higher too, like Yumsmith and Flash Fencer, but overall is pretty agreeable.
Enemies with evasion/invincible arts pretty much screw over FMJ. But in a chain attack it definitely shreds.
love the thumbnail..!!!
Same
Summoner might not have the best damage as a class, but the summoner hero is incredibly funny in chain attacks. Iovis rings for 55 base TP plus their heroic chain ability make it trivially easy to get an excellent every round (and reactivate them every time) and their damage output and chain order is better than ashera's provided you can get power charge from a signifer.
great video,, would love to see a master skills/arts tier list some time soon!
I don’t know exactly how good they are (I think they’re great but what do I know) but summoner is also just really fun to me
I feel like the Summoner Hero is better than Ashera when it comes to chain attacks as she can consistently get Amazing Ratings and Ashera's Power Charge doesn't matter when Cross Impact Signifier and Dragon Decree Soulhacker exist and her Chain Order stacks with Eunie's
Thaumaturge has two uses 1 for item farming due to burst. And secondly for clearing debuffs, which isn't passed as a master art. I was able to comfortable fight level 40 enemies at level 30 using one of them during the early game, using two swordsmen (due to the +daze on talent), a medic gunner (Before I got hold of items that basically instantly charged master arts), two guardians. It was basically a burst lock. The burst healing's one benefit is that it doesn't have a range limit as far as I could tell. Which means it will fully heal attackers who are flanking a very large enemy that other arts won't work on. Armor Viel plus healing every auto meant it doesn't die from stray AOE's. It is without a doubt better than War Medic, Medic Gunner, Tactician, or Strategos. While flash fencer late game might be able to spam Burst easier, due to losing out on the healing, its not as an effective strategy for item farming higher level enemies.
Been waiting for this one
Can’t wait for the fulll metal Jaguar class breakdown
Nice to see Guardian Commander get some love I've heard a lot of people calling it the worst class in the game next to stalker
Some people would actually argue Stalker is broken. That hadn't been my personal experience, but I've heard a lot of people saying that. I mean, I guess if you build your entire team around bleed and if enemies don't resist it, then by all means, I'm sure Stalker would be doing some dmg. But that's just too many ifs for my taste.
@@UltimateLordMonkey Yeah I think Enel has a good point though with debuffs being really easy to resist especially on late game/post game bosses
@@poppapalpatine8624 that's exactly my point. 😝
Real talk; if they buffed status ailments, we’d probably be looking st Yumsmith and Machine Assassin going up a little.
I wonder what the DLC classes will offer for Ether damage; since Ultimate Qigong makes physical damage so much better.
Maybe we'll get an ether version of UQ. Would be nice on an Aegis Class
what class can u get that ultimate qigong?
@@mr.leroysmith7012 Thaumaterge, surprisingly
@@effluxi9587 i see lol u wouldn't expect it from that healer class of all hero.
@@effluxi9587 Its funny; It feels like Thaumaterge was supposed to be a healer version of Lone Exile. I think the idea could still work; but you'd really need to change some of its numbers and maybe make its kit a little better at dealing with aggro.
Damn man a tier list already? Also the thumbnail says it all lmao
I won’t watch this all the way through, but that discovery about Ultimate Qingong is mind blowing. I think this game is a lot better than the first two games when it comes to confusing Art and Skill descriptions, but evidently, nothing that exists is perfect
Gonna need that hero tier list too! Good stuff! Love your videos.
Troubadour is my favorite healer so far due to the fast cooldown field, thus Miyabi is my hero-of-choice to bring with me.
I like her a lot as a hero as well but the reason i don't really bring her along is because of potential spoilers.
@@EnelXC This plot point is what i hate most about the whole story
I hate how 99% of this game's deaths are irrelevant
Sweet, I was so hoping you would create a video like this.
Keep in mind Enel made this literally a few weeks after the game launched. Obviously the list would change as new things are discovered.
If he updated the list, that would be nice… but it’s fine as is.
any good resources for me to check out for more up to date builds?
@@Orcawsom there’s a Google doc floating around somewhere of postgame builds somewhere
This video is incredible, and I was wondering if you were ever thinking of revisiting it now that, not only has it been 2 years, but two new classes were added in
One good thing about Thaumaturge is that you can essentially put the entire Burst combo from Start to finish on it, which i think is fun
You can do that on Troubador too tho
Flash Fencer is EASILY my favorite to play as!
They do decent damage, and being able to use Noahs insanely OP Lucky Seven arts right from the start of a battle when you max the class out, is SOOO satisfying...
I had very similar thoughts on [Spoiler Class 2] I really thought I was just doing something wrong but I guess the class is just kinda quirky.
Thaumaturge felt really good in the early-mid game in hard mode. The healing is a bit weak but the fact that it has a debuff clear on the same art as an aoe attack buff is really good. Very helpful against J for example, who has that nasty aoe bleed. Early access to burst is also really nice (also for J for example who has a really annoying enraged). And finally, the aoe barrier is also really nice to tank big arts. After a while it felt like it didn't do enough, but for this part of the game it was extremely helpful
Debuff scrubbing really is Thaumaturge's unsung niche. The only other classes that can do that are Soulhacker with it's massive toolkit filled with just about everything, and War Medic which gets the effect on way too long of a cooldown to be useful.
Another issue I found with the Stalker class is that a lot of the animations just take too damn long. Like the one where you essentially do a 360-no-scope, spending a solid 10 seconds just slowly spinning around.
Also, as someone with a tiny bit of experience in archery I can say that it makes no sense to keep the bow pulled back for as long as some of the animations do, because that will tire out your arms very quickly. The class would be better if it was a lot more quick firing.
The feeling when an art called Rapid Shot is their slowest art
Yup. Feels like the class got settled with every inoptimal characteristic possible: damage centered around a debuff, damage up to enemies in chain attack kill range, slow arts, ether attacker (no Ultimate Qigong)
Ngl, I hate that art with a passion!
I really hope they change the way debuffs work in 3, because currently the few ways that lower debuff resistance don’t work. The Art that reduces debuff resistance specifically needs to have a 100% success rate.
Dang I completely forgot to add my background music to this lol
You should go rest a bit, close Xenoblade 3, then come back and fix this because I think you accidentally put Cry of Faith on Strategos at 12:20.
I finished the game at 165 hours and I still learned a ton of ways to build my team here. Thanks for much for the video !
War medic might not be a great class, but Valdi under certain circumstances can be really op; if you select him as a hero and you’re fighting robots (which there are a lot of towards end game) he will add 50 tp to his attack every time after. He starts off on 20 tp so if you consistently use him in a regular chain attack you can get like 300+ tp
War Medic is actually great! Basically Signifer but with actual healing and debuff clearing. Just slap Aureole and Resonant Flag on it as master arts, and maybe Ring O Roses too (because it gets both), and you've got a top-tier healer support build
Tbh I find medic gunner a better than troubadour in 90% of cases. Better healing and faster revives are generally more useful, and troubadour's best arts are master arts anyway. The enemy buff cleans is the 10% tho
Martial Artist is phenomenal on Noah. You can fuse two front attack arts if you have Quickdraw, and with the boost to auto attack, you'll have access to Unlimited Sword within thirty seconds of the fight.
The fact that leaping current clears debuffs matters a lot, at least for the story, because Moebius enemies almost always have freeze, which does a ton of damage and only goes away when you die, or it's cleared. Other classes have debuff purge, but the fact that Thaumaturge has it does give it some situational advantage
I’ve found thaumaturge to be a necessity for ng hard mode midgame because of leaping current, the attack up buff is good for setting up eunie/taion ouroboros chain attacks and the debuffs on some bosses and unique monsters are insane. Cooldown of 5 seems so short, medic gunner’s clear debuffs art takes I think 30 seconds and it does not do the job
I feel like every class in this game will at least make you feel like you're doing SOMETHING. Which can not be said for a lot of the bad blades in 2.
Overall the game was balanced pretty well. At least in terms of fun. :)
I'd agree except with Machine Assassin I feel very useless player controlling it because of debuffs failing. Even with reduced cooldowns, the arts take too long as well :(
Awesome video Enel!
I don't know if I am insane or not but I have some impression about Summoner: You can stack Summon Elementals. Judging by animation, if you stack at least 2 elementals without releasing them, their floating animation gets more powerful and the damage escalates. I just don't know if this really works or if you can spam more then 2 times.
you can stack up to three, they accumulate with attacking skills from what I know(elemental summon brings 2, other arts, or at least starfall from my use case, summons 1, unsure if the other attack skills work or just the magic ones)
Glad to know Incursor and Seraph are so good, because Alex and Cammuravi's weapons are so sick I probably would've used them even if they were bad
Great list! Just wanted to say thank you for this as well as for all the XC2 guides you made. You've helped me a lot since I jumped into the series.
Anyways, I find it funny that Lanz has the worst class, inherits the 2 best classes, and inherits the Machina boy that later gets completely outclassed.
With how influential Ultimate Qigong is when compared to other skills, I would not be surprised if one of the DLC heroes unlocks an Ether-based equivalent.
Until now, I didn't know it was spelled "Signifer", as I thought it was always "Signifier" with an "i" before the "e" at the end. Knew it would be the S+ ranked class at the "one class is S+" part. Not surprised Tactician is so low for healing, as soon as the game let me change classes again I basically avoided it for the rest of the game. What makes me the most sad is how slowly some of the Arts come out for these classes, like Full Metal Jaguar (still a pretty fun class as Dual Guns along with Dual Swords are I prefer to use in X, even if it can't get as much damage as physical classes due to being Ether-based) and Stalker (even though Stalker is rather situational and I never understood what Arts Follow-up did). On top of that, Violent Streak being controlled and precise is disappointing, because I loved how chaotic it was in X (when in boss fights, because it can get the attention of nearby enemies you might not want to fight right then like no tomorrow). Another thing that makes me sad is how small the "defense ring" around Twin Rings users is when compared to the other tanks. Something cool I noticed with Lone Exile is the weapon-spinning Art gives 200% Spike damage when you're attacked, so it could help out to stay alive against higher-level enemies in a few situations. Haven't tried the Incursor class yet, but just reading the skills it has told me it's really good based on how it deals with Criticals alone.
More broadly, unless I missed something, it seems like only two Keves classes have basic, single-target Break Arts, which ends up requiring putting more thought into a team build if Break, Topple, etc. combos are desired (without needing Level 3 for Break All) because of how Master Arts work, so you can't just do the team you want. Kinda disappointing, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if Soulhacker (which seems a lot like the "Cross [from X] Class" when it comes to the sheer scope of what it lets you do with it; the main weapon is x-shaped, even) can get a Break Art, but that's still another Keves class and I haven't looked fully into how it works on the main cast.
I finally beat the game today! Took me 143 hours to do almost everything before the final boss. Finally I am spoiler free I think.
Glad I stumbled upon the Ultimate Qigong thing by accident when I noticed my chars nearly doubling the damage numbers and attack strength against some enemies when having it on and taking it off and it's why I was surprised at first not seeing anyone recommend its usage on physical DPS classes or even the tanks, and I feel like on tanks like Zephyr it might even be better than the physical arts buff from Ogre because the defense reduction applies on auto attacks as well.
Thanks! That was helpful! As others mentioned, a hero tier list would be pretty hansy as well! Btw, qigong is pronounced chee-gong (not key-gong)
Huh, I've always been prioritizing Fighting Prowess over Qigong, but it sounds like I'll be doing the opposite from here on. Thanks for the insight!
As always, thanks for the spoiler warning.
so
played and beat the whole game on hard
and my endgame party was
Noah(Incursor)
Mio(Zephyr)
Eunie(Troubador)
Taion(Lone Exiler)
Lanz(Signifier)
Sena(Seraph)
and Fiona(Signifier,bcuz this class is too good to have only 1 on party)
and just saw u tier list
game literally taught me which classes are best puttin literally HP Sponge as a Boss on Hard
so.. i cant agree more with u tier list since all the top ones (except ogre and SoulHacker) was on my party on endgame
I love FMJ and Incursor and used them on Eunie and Taion respectively for pretty much my entire playthrough. Sometimes I may go a bit overboard when player-controlling them and grab aggro and die. Maybe improving my defenders might help. Also love Signifer, but haven’t tried much of Troubadour yet. Maybe I should give that a go sometime.
Also will you cover the heroes themselves and their unique properties (i.e. chain orders and heroic chains)?
I have it planned atleast
I hope they buff all the bad classes with maybe some improved class skills and new dlc accessories. It's sad to see some of my favorite classes being so low. Also dlc quests to upgrade weapons for the rest of the classes would be awesome. Excited to see how the tier list evolves when challenge mode releases
I think it's really unfortunate that Stalker got done so dirty, one of my favourite classes to play as
wow, I never had an issue with Lanz maintaining Aggrowith Heavy Guard, I finished the game with Lanz as our main tank with that class XD
Lots of good info, thanks.
Soul Hacker is really powerful though it does feel like it has the common problem of "if you're strong enough to unlock everything for this class then you've already cleared almost everything anyway so you don't actually need this class" so it definitely doesn't feel like it has its chance to shine. But hopefully that'll change in DLC.
Lone Exile is in a funny spot too cause, you might as well just run with Ashera for her insanely good contribution to Chain Attacks and no need to run another one in the party. Great that you can get a launch master art off of the class though.
Yeah, Ashera and Segiri have been my recent favorites for chain attack abuse, though Ashera is the most consistent of the two
Soulhacker will likely go up in use when we get a Nopon Archsage
@@tylercoon1791 Yup. There's a lot of potential for it with the AOE arts in eliminating fodder, and it's already solid for single target burst damage
I'm a crazy person because I actually really like Stalker, at the point in the game I'm at right now it's damage isn't amazing, but I found that Art Follow-up is fairly good when placed next to your trigger-happy AI members. I just see it less as pure DPS and more like a support class.
Listen, Enel. I'm not watching this video. At least not now. But I want you to know that I'm super excited to watch your XC3 content once I've finished the game
Postgame spoilers:
The thing about Hero 2 is that it's mostly based on RNG. The difference between a water and a fire is significant (and you could even get 2 elements instead of 3), and the art cooldown definitely doesn't help with bad rolls. At least, I've noticed that Summon Element actually discharges your old elementals, which should count towards the bonus. However, all of her element arts deal damage even if you have nothing summoned, so it could break Power Charge setups. This is a shame, because the damage output is amazing when it works, and the class is still fun to use anyway. Just wished for everyone to be starlight kicking around though... (btw it's a great topple)
It's really just a by-product of Keves classes feeling really bad compared to Agnus classes. Xenoblade 2's combat system mostly copies over to 3 fine. But in Xenoblade 1, your hotbar had something like 8 or 9 ability slots. That doesn't work well when whittled down to just 3.
hey at least she uses starlight kick during her chain attack order
Cooldown reduction with her skills can really help alot..
@@Willias Spot on. That just reminds me that Melia was the only reason for XC1's system to exist imo, for her arts it's the best while for everyone else the new one is way better
Thank you! It would be great if you did a short vid on your full team set up with the master arts/skills. I know you say ogre, troubadour, sig but seeing a full team set up for toughest bosses or upcoming challenge mode would be awesome.
Glad I picked the Sena and Mio class for the weapon upgrades lol.
With this discovery on how ignore defense work, how would you rank the master skills for physical attacker in terms of effectiveness? Say at a 30-40% crit rate with thermo headgear. Ultimate qigong, eye for weakness, fighting prowess, critical strike, greatest warrior (only at base 35% for consistency). I did not include conditionals like when hp is above/ below a threshold, if enemy is debuffed etc. Same question applies for accessories (if applicable).