Warlock

A very polyvalent class with a very solid offense, buffs and debuffs. It is one of the most used T4 job outside of 6-man HL raids. It is of course recommended to use a guild war dagger with this class. Because it doesn’t have a bonus to debuff chance like Dark Fencer, it is not recommended to use Warlock with Black Haze / Gravity over a DF in a 6-man raid.

Aether Blast will serve as a generic aoe nuke without added effect that caps at around 550k damage. Nothing extremely noteworthy, but it can be handy and caps damage extremely easily.

Zenith Skills:

• Black Haze (30 EMP): An upgraded mist that will deal -25%atk/-25%def, blind and poison. One of the best warlock skill as it combines two very precious abilities in one (miserable mist + blind). The fact that it is a zenith skill allows you to not be restricted by the 1 zenith skill + 1 ex skill minimum, as you’ll bring black haze with you most of the time. The landrate of the debuff is pretty decent, but still lower than a Dark Fencer landing Miserable Mist. A must buy.
• Aether Bane (10 EMP): Gives the aether bane debuff to a foe, a stacking debuff. With each stack, your Aether blast damage and damage cap will increase (roughly by 100k). While very powerful at the release of warlock (with the maximum amount of stacks it was possible to nuke boss for 2m damage every 5 turns), the skill was nerfed quickly after. Before the nerf, landing the aether bane debuff was guaranteed and duration of the debuff was 180s at all stacks. Now, aether bane is considered as a normal debuff that can miss based on elemental resistance. Furthermore the duration of the debuff got reduced depending on the number of stacks, which makes aether bane very difficult to use, even if several warlocks in the raid try to stack it. Avoid buying this skill if you can.
• Chaser (25 EMP): Will give a 25% same element echo to your team for 3 turns. Synergizes extremely well with GW Dagger and with characters who can abuse Triple attacks or Break assassin / Overdrive assassin. A must buy as well.
• Choke (5 EMP): Not exactly a warlock zenith skill since it’s unlocked through the Hermit class, but it’s with Warlock that you will get to use the most this Zenith. For 3 turns, the autos of your team will hit in aoe. It’s a situational but extremely valuable tool to mvp race in multitarget raids such as Grande, Tiamat HL, Baal, Agni. Note that Choke will apply all the added buff and effects on your autos, so by using Break assassin on three targets on break in Tiamat HL for example, each target will receive the salted wound boosted damage. Since it’s pretty cheap to buy, it’s recommended to get it.

Suggested Zenith and EX skills:

• Black Haze, Chaser and Choke for the reasons mentioned above.
• Armor break (defense breach) for solo play if you don’t have a def down on your team.
• Splitting soul if you have an enmity grid and if you want to ougi right away to benefit from the GW dagger buff.
• Double Trouble III  as an alternative to Splitting soul (if you don’t like to lower your HP)
• Clarity if you’re playing Light with Ferry.

Element synergy:

Warlock will synergize and work well with any element so long as your own a GW dagger. Dark will be able to deal extremely high damage with Chaser combined to Summer Zooey since it will add 25% damage to the team that isn’t limited by the auto cap. Light will be able to use Black Haze, Clarity and Chaser which synergizes well with Ferry and her guaranteed TA.

Main uses:

• Magna raids
• Summon raids (DAO / Athena / Odin etc…)
• Celestials raids (ex and ex+)
• Maniac and Nightmare dungeons
• 18-man HL raids
• Ex event raids
• Ex+ and NM guild war raids.
• Clash events (such as Xeno Ifrit)

Berserker

An offensive class that is a direct upgrade to Weapon Master. Very rarely used in long fights (Baha / Grande / HL raids), it’s a class that shines when your goal is to destroy a raid in a short amount of time. It synergizes best with other ignition characters who can fill their ougi gauge in order to get a quick burst on turn 1 even outside of Strike Time. Because they bring very limited supportive abilities, Berserkers are often prohibited in 6 man raids and Baha HL. They are however very potent to snipe pubbed raids.

Full Arsenal III is your usual ignition skill that will give you a one turn atk buff, ougi damage up and chain burst damage up. It is recommended to use Weapon Burst in order to trigger a partial chain burst rather than a full chain burst, since a full chain burst will reach the damage cap regardless of the chain burst damage up buff of the skill.

Zenith Skills:

• Rage IV (25 EMP): 40% atk up buff, team cap damage increase of 5%, consumes 30% of your charge bar, lasts 3 turns with a 5 turns CD. Probably the Zenith skill you’ll want to use most of the time. Combine it with Weapon burst in order to benefit from the damage cap up. Make sure to cast Rage IV before casting weapon burst in order to not lose your ougi. Note that only the atk buff part of the skill will affect the entire raid.
• Armor Break II (30 EMP): 25% def down with a nuke added that caps to around 440k damage. A must have since you can cap the def debuff by using miserable mist and armor break.
• Rampage II (15 EMP): 100% DA 50% TA buff and 30% def down for 3 turns with a 6 turns CD. Actually a pretty strong ability that is kinda underrated, unfortunately the fact that this skill is tailored for mvp racing in a class that is not made for racing makes it rather subpar. The def debuff is clearable.

Suggested Zenith and Ex skills:

• Rage IV, Armor Break II for the reasons stated above.
• Miserable Mist in order to cap def down.

Element Synergy:

• Fire is probably the element that can benefit the most from Berserker as it has the strongest Main Hand axe in the game: The Xeno Ifrit Scythe. Its ougi will grant you the same effect as a GW dagger, and the ignition skill + Rampage II can allow you to keep a very good uptime on the DA/TA buff, what’s more the true path evolution of the scythe gives a chance to burn enemies on ougi and to benefit from 20% echo on autos and ougis against burned enemies.

• Dark and Earth will benefit from the axe and sword synergy, greatly inflating the stats of Berserker.
• Water with Silva, Yoda, Riruru, Altair can create a very ougi centric team that can unleash several ougi chains in a few turns.
• Earth with the “Old man team”: SSR Eugen, Okto, Altheia synergizes extremely well with Berserker as it allows you to deal multiple chain bursts in a very short amount of time.

Main uses:

• Magna raids (solo or pub)
• Celestial raids (ex)
• Ex event raids
• Ex+ Guild war raids
• Clash events (such as Xeno Ifrit)

Sage

The best healing class in the game, which also provides pretty good offense and extraordinary utility to the raid. It’s a class mainly used on the most difficult raids (6 man, baha HL), but their presence is mandatory if you want to succeed those. It can be used either with a Spear main hand in order to buff the raid and provide good dps, or either with Nirvana in order to heal large amounts of health and have a free auto resurrection every 5 turns. The fact that sage is immune to ability seal makes it extremely valuable as well against boss who love to throw debuffs.

Panacea III is the main reason why your allies will love you in battle for healing them after being poked too hard by the boss. It will heal around 2-3k HP without Nirvana, and around 4k HP with Nirvana. Combined with your passive which increases tremendously your atk based on the amount of players you’ve healed, it allows you to deal important amounts of damage as well. Note that while you could be tempted to always wait in order to synchronize heal all III with your ougi, in some raids such as Baha HL you will get more contribution for spamming heal as much as possible.

Zenith Skills:

• Shining II (10 EMP): Aoe light damage with a dot effect. Useless, no reason to buy this skill.
• Dispel deluge (25 EMP): An aoe dispel. Somehow useful against multitarget raids, but there aren’t a lot of raids where you actually need an aoe dispel (Maybe Medusa HL?). Though since you need a mandatory Zenith skill among your three skills, it’s always good to have the option. Buy if if you have extra Zenith points to spare.
• Peace of mind (15 EMP): A clear that is only for your party, and will add a barrier effect of 500hp on your team. You will always prefer to use the Clarity ex skill instead of this since it affects the raid, so don’t buy it.
• Veil (10 EMP): Not really a sage zenith skill, but since it’s a bishop zenith, it will take your zenith ability spot 99% of the time since it’s the most useful skill to have among them. Never underestimate veil against nasty boss that like to throw debuffs at you. It’s also the shortest CD veil in the game.

Suggested Zenith and Ex skill:

• Veil as Zenith skill. Sometimes Dispel Siege if veil has no use.
• Double Trouble III (with Spear equipped): Gives a much needed DA/TA party buff and a guaranteed TA to MC that can combine with Heal All in order to deal a very high damage TA.
• Clarity, Dispel: Depending on the needs. Clarity is mainly to clear debuffs of the other raid members, more than your own (though it could be both).

Element Synergy:

Every element can play Sage, it’s a class that is played most of the time because it is needed, not because it has the best synergy. But among them there are elements that will benefit more:

• Light since DT allows to charge ferry ougi bar, and since you’ll always pack Clarity as an ex skill for Ferry anyway, and since it will allow your team to have a veil.
• Fire if you want to play a very supportive role.

Main uses:

• 18-man raids

• 6-man raids
• Baha HL
• Guild War NM raids
• Ultimate Bahamut, Ultimate Bahamut HL

Sparta

Probably the HL class by excellence. The damage cut it provides to the raid is a requirement in order to survive the multiple ougi and triggers that will kill the raid if left unmitigated. A class that combines both offense through Double Trouble III and defense through its various skills. Sparta has also a fixed chance to recover from a debuff at the beginning of each turn, pretty useful if you have clear. Sparta has also a non negligible chance to reduce by 50% any incoming damage on himself, which makes it an extremely tanky class

Phalanx III is basically the same as Holy Saber phalanx except that it will add a raid wide resistance to debuffs (that is negligible, but can sometimes be handy). Note that it’s the raid skill that counts for the most honor when casted, especially in Baha HL. However, unlike Heal all of sage, it is necessary to use phalanx in situations when it’s needed instead of greeding for points, as a phalanx in CD right before a lethal trigger can be the death of the entire raid. 

Zenith Skills:

• Hardened Shield (20 EMP): A slow that will also buff your attack and lower your def. The atk buff component is very serviceable as it gives a +50% atk up boost, but the crucial part of the skill is the chance to slow, as it can really save you from accidents, for example a boss breaks right when it has full diamond. While you mash the auto button to kill the boss, he suddenly recovers from his break state during your attack, and you proceed to eat an unmitigated ougi that kills your team. With shield wire, you can slow the boss to prevent an accident like this, what’s more the landing rate of the slow is pretty decent. A must have zenith skill that you need to buy.
• Centurion II (10 EMP): A targeted skill that will make the selected ally invulnerable to damage for one turn. Extremely useful with characters such as Six and Halle since it will prevent them from losing their stacks. However, note that Centurion doesn’t protect you from white damage. Situational, but great when you can make use of the skill.
• Guardian (15 EMP): A somehow interesting skill that will grant you a 30% def up as well as hostility up for 3 turns, with a CD of 5 turns. It has quite a high uptime and is actually a good alternative to protect your teammates if the boss ougi consist mainly of multihit attacks or if the threats comes mainly from the autos. Not a must buy, but can be situationally useful.

Suggested Zenith and Ex skill:

• Shield wire in most of the cases.
• Centurion or Guardian if your team has six or halle.
• Double Trouble III always. That also means that you should always be playing Sparta with a spear. Note that like with sage, you can combine DT3 and Phalanx for a hard hitting TA.
• Rage III, Clarity, Dispel, Arrow rain depending on the needs of the raid.

Element synergy:

Similarly to Sage, Sparta is a class that is played by every element. Elements that can make use of enmity will prefer using sparta over sage though, since they’d rather stay at low hp and be safe through damage cuts rather than through heals.

• Sparta is often the go to class for dark as they have good and easy to find dark spears and since protecting six with Centurion is a must. The DA/TA buff of DT3 also helps to get Korwa going.
• Similarly for earth and halle, sparta is a great class to play earth with. Sparta will also benefit from the sword synergy to reach a very high atk. The main issue of Earth Sparta being that the only available earth spear is the GW one.
• Wind will also benefit from using sparta as they can afford to stay at low hp by alternating between the damage cuts of sparta and gawain.

Main uses:

• 18-man HL raids
• 6-man HL raids
• Baha HL
• Guild War NM raids
• Clash events (Such as Xeno Ifrit)
• Ultimate Bahamut, Ultimate Bahamut HL

Gizoku (Bandit Tycoon)

A dps class that is fortunately enough not devoid from utility. There are two main use to Gizoku: the triple Treasure Hunter setup where you use TH2, TH3 and TH4 as skills in order to farm drops, or the break lock setup where your role is to ensure that the boss will remain in break state for a longer state. The farming setup will generally use Oliver as it will increase your TH stacks by 1 (TH2 will apply 3 stacks instead of 2), and combined with Esser it’s extremely easy to reach TH9 in one turn. Note that Gizoku will deal slightly higher damage depending on the number of TH stacks on the boss. The class also has a high innate DA/TA rate (10% da/ta).

Break Assassin III is even stronger than its previous iterations since it now adds a high chance of critical for 1 turn, making it even easier to reach the 1m BA auto damage cap if you’re fighting on element.

Zenith skills:

• Treasure Hunt IV (25 EMP): The main reason to use Gizoku, the fact that it’s a zenith allows you to effectively cumulate TH2, TH3 and TH4 in the same setup. It’s also a nuke that scales pretty well and caps at around 440k on a 5 turns CD. If you’re not interested in getting this skill, you might as well not unlock Gizoku and save your CP. TH4 will add up to 3 additional stacks with a pretty high landing rate and it also tends to land more easily than TH3 at higher values.
• White Smoke (30 EMP): Provides illusion on your party, aka one mirror image that will make any auto, single target or multi target miss for one hit. The mirror image effect will stay until it is consumed or until you’re hit with an (elemental) aoe. Note that white smoke doesn’t protect from aoe. A very handy skill especially for elements that want to abuse enmity, but the very long cooldown (11 turns) prevents you from abusing it. Note that mirror image doesn’t protect you from white damage, but it won’t consume the buff either.
• Rupee flip (10 EMP): Neutral damage to the enemy at the cost of your rupee. Do you want to be this one guy that doesn’t have enough rupees to uncap his 5* charas? Because that’s how you become this kind of person. Not even worth using for slime blasting since you lose more rupees than what you earn… The only use of this skill is to beat Feower/Quatre and Esser/Tien during their final uncap fate episode battle with the power of money.
• Break lock (5 EMP): Actually a Hawkeye Zenith, and the one you will get to use when you’re joining 6-man HL raids. Break lock duration scales depending on the amount of TH on the boss, so bringing TH4 (or TH3 if you’re bringing White Smoke as well) is recommended. It is actually mandatory for you to bring Break Lock in a 6-man as it is the only utility you’ll provide to the raid. You need to have a good knowledge of the raid so that you don’t break lock too early, especially since resistance to break lock builds up extremely quickly. It is also recommended to be on element when break-locking in order to not miss, and to bring a summon that can break lock too (Macula or Medusa) in case the skill misses.

Suggested Zenith and Ex skill:

• TH4: Multipurpose and everyone will always appreciate more loot chance.
• Break lock: only if in 6 man HL or Baha HL
• Double Trouble III to guarantee a TA during Break Assassin.
• Splitting Soul if you have an enmity grid and you want to get an early ougi
• Miserable Mist and Def breach in solo play.

Element Synergy:

All elements can use efficiently Gizoku for farming purposes. For dps and raid purpose however, the elements Gizoku is more used for are:

• Light since Ferry can guarantee a TA during BA, add an echo and raises the damage cap. What’s more, it’s often pretty important to have a Light Gizoku to Break Lock during the later dark phases of Baha HL. Gizoku will also benefit from cosmos bal gun and chev gun due to proficiency.
• Wind since korwa raises the multi attack rate by quite a lot, and since Lecia can allow you to reach 2m2 (1m5+700k echo) autos during break assassin. What’s more TH4 can be used to build up the attack order. Much like light, Gizoku benefits from the gun proficiency and gets inflated stats with Tia bolts. Oliver is also wind by default.

Main uses:

• Any content where TH is important
• 6-man HL (on element preferably)
• Baha HL (Light preferably)

Chaos Ruler

Formerly known as the least impressive T4 class, Chaos Ruler had one main issue due to the fact that you’re forced to use 1 Zenith skill minimum: you couldn’t take the usual Mist/Gravity/Blind combination. And none of the Zenith skill offered a good alternative to any of those three essential skills for raids or solo. Months later, at the occasion of the third anniversary update, Cygames finally decided to fix the class, making it the worthy successor of Dark Fencer. The upgrade it provides over DF is rather substantial and allows more flexibility for solo play that is greatly appreciated, but also is a really decent dps class. If your favorite class is DF, chances are you’ll want to unlock CR rather sooner than later.

Stall III barely received an upgrade compared to Stall II and simply does higher damage, capped at around 420k. 

Zenith Skills:

• Uprising (30 EMP): Grants DA up, 50% Atk up (normal mod, dual sided) and 20% meter at the end of the turn to one ally for 3 turns. A great ability that is pretty useful on characters that are meter dependant or even if you simply want to boost the damage of someone in your team. Using the skill on the MC in particular will allow you to sustain the DA/TA buff from the GW dagger ougi more often. The uptime of the skill isn’t extraordinary (3/7 turns) though, and you most of the time won’t have enough flexibility in your skillset to pick uplift as you’ll be expected to bring debuffs. But in the right circumstances (a character already has gravity / mist, boss is immune to gravity…), this ability can really shine and is worth getting.
• Unpredict (15 EMP): Miserable Mist + Random debuff to all enemies. While it used to be a rather unreliable skill in the past as it only casted a random debuff, the skill got buffed and received a guaranteed Mist (25% atk down / 25% def down, dual sided) added when casting unpredict. Which makes the skill a direct upgrade to Dark Fencer’s MM, and thus will nearly always be your Zenith skill of choice when setting up your skills. The random debuffs you can get are the following:
  – DA down (Very likely)
  – TA down (Very Likely)
  – DA+TA down (Likely)
  – Blind (Likely)
  – Burn (once in a while)
  – Charm (Rare)
  – Sleep (Extremely rare)
  – Fear 60s (Extremely rare)
  – Paralysis 60s (Extremely rare)
  There are several interesting things to know about those random debuffs: first of all, they all have extremely strong effects. The DA/TA down will be very effective(making it extremely unlikely for a boss to DA/TA if he’s not scripted to guarantee multi attacks). The blind is actually stronger than Dark Fencer’s blind, and the charm is stronger than the Ex skill with a harp MH. Finally, Fear and Paralysis are counted as special debuffs that will not increase a boss resistance to the same debuffs of other characters when casted (it won’t increase resistance for Song Paralysis or Percy Fear), removing the possibility to ruin a raid because of an untimely para at the start of a difficult HL raid. The debuffs will even get a special icon to differentiate them. On a 5 turns CD, there is just very little reason to not get this Zenith since it’s basically Mist with a free random bonus.
  
  
• Chaos (20 EMP): Bestows Chaos Field effect: chaos field will do two things, on one hand it will increase the debuff success rate of the whole raid, and on the other hand it will increase the ougi damage of the enemy against all players. The values are 10%/20%/30% after 0/60/120 seconds (the field lasts 180 seconds). It’s a double edged sword that in theory could work well since you’d be able to land more Fear/Para, but in practice sounds pretty difficult and risky to put in place, especially in pubs. You have more chance to kill your own raid than helping the other players by putting chaos field, so just don’t use it. The sole exception being when you have Song 5*, and especially off element where extending a paralyze with a group of sufficiently geared players can allow you to actually kill 6-man HL on the duration of the para, thus negating the downsides of the field.

Suggested Zenith and Ex skills:

• Unpredict like explained will be your go-to Zenith skill, unless very specific cases where you already have a mist (Altair, Socie)

• Gravity is a no-brainer, and will be what you want to bring in most cases, unless the boss is immune to gravity or another character can bring Gravity in your team (Quatre, Carmelina)
• Blind is, more surprisingly, something you’ll want to bring as well despite having Unpredict. Even though Unpredict’s blind is stronger than the ex skill, the fact that it’s far from being a guaranteed cast makes it pretty unreliable as your sole source of blind.
• Uprising, Def breach or AR III can be used for solo play if you don’t need one of the previously mentioned skills.

Element synergy:

Much like Dark Fencer, it will often be required of you to come as an on element Chaos Ruler for difficult HL raids, regardless of element synergy.
– For solo play however, it’s worth noting that elements with easy access to debuffs like water will see less interest in using CR as other characters can already cover a good part of its kit (unless you’re somehow addicted to gambling on random effects with Quatre and Unpredict). 

– To a similar extent, wind might not be extremely interested in a class that has effects that will make the enemy less likely to hit you when they want to build stacks and use enmity in solo play. And if they really need Gravity, they have Carmelina.

– On the contrary, teams that use Korwa and have a hard time sustaining her buffs will appreciate a lot the uplift buff (whether she benefits it in a direct or indirect way) that will allow her to sustain her buffs more reliably.

Main uses:

• HL raids (6-man or 18-man)
• Baha HL
• Guild Wars NM raids
• Clash events (such as Xeno Ifrit)
• More generally any challenging solo content where delaying an enemy ougi is important.

Luchador

An interesting class that you could define as the raid counterpart of Berserker. Mainly focused on dps, the class has extremely high innate DA/TA rate: around 70% chance of DA and 20% chance of TA without any additional buffs (this takes into account Luchador’s level bonus). The passives are pretty nice as well: False finish will allow you to survive any lethal hit with 1 hp (similar to Kata’s passive, note that it won’t protect you from multi-hits such as Chev’s Blade of Light trigger), and War God’s Wrath will boost the Pandemonium ex skill from the Ogre classe. Luchador has also the advantage of being able to use one of the strongest guild war weapon: the GW fist which will bring a team counter buff on ougi. It gives an extremely high protection potential and additional damage since a counter will hit for 1.5x of the base damage.

Knifehand Strike is a pretty weird ability as it is not a counter, but a retaliation: you’ll get a def boost and aggro up boost and in exchange will be able to retaliate every time you receive damage, up to 3 times during 2 turns. When a counter will dodge damage from an auto and counter attack, retaliate will receive / tank damage and strike back. As a result, Knifehand Strike will be able to proc both on enemy ougis and autos, what’s more it will be able to retaliate several time if Luchador tanks a multi-hit ougi. Knifehand strike retaliation also has a high damage multiplier (around 4 times the base auto damage). Its main issue however, is that it synergizes very poorly with Luchador’s main Zenith skill that I’ll talk about right after.

Zenith Skills:

• Ring Ruler (5 EMP): One of the more interesting Zenith skill and what makes Luchador a good dps class, it is very similar to Six’s Gate of Demons. Once the skill is activated, you will gain a level of Hype on MC at the end of each turn, and the effect will last until you get hit and lose your Hype. Ring Ruler has a 8t CD. For reminder, Hype is a special buff that will boost your attack by 5% / 30% / 60% / 100% depending on if you have a lvl 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 Hype. It has a special multiplier, which means it is strictly cumulative and multiplicative with all the other buffs (basically, a hype lvl 2 buff will result in a concrete 30% increase of damage contrarily to a rage III 30% atk buff). The first time hype is cast, the level of hype you get is chosen randomly between 1 and 4 (included), every subsequent hype buff you’ll cast while being already under the effect of Hype, such as Aoidos, Anthuria or the Idol summon, will raise your hype count by 1 until it reaches it max level.
  Ring Ruler is a very good skill that will be really efficient against charmed and blinded boss who will have few occasions to hit you. GW fist main hand will definitely help you to avoid autos that can remove the Hype Buff, making it much easier to keep the x2 damage boost.
• Mic Hype (25 EMP): The only utility buff that Luchador gets, and it’s a pretty good one. For 3 turns, it will grant a 10% Uplift to your team and the whole raid, on a 8t CD. Which shows again how pitiful is the Chaos Ruler uplift in comparison. Uplift will synergizes with GW fist as it will allow you to get the counter buff from ougi more often. It is also a blessing for all the Korwas in your raid who will appreciate a lot getting some meter to keep going and refreshing their buffs. It also allows you to play with Korwa with less guilt since uplift will compensate a bit for the lack of DA/TA buff from Luchador. To a lesser extent, Ferry users can also benefit from uplift. Mic Hype is the only skill that can justify playing Luchador in a raid if you’re not strong enough to carry and justify your presence with pure damage, so definitely get this skill if that’s the case.
• Tag Team (40 EMP): Speculated to be the most broken skill of the class when it was revealed, it ended up becoming more niche than expected, although still extremely strong for the few elements that can use its potential to the fullest. When used, Tag team will make your whole team take a free regular auto turn (i.e without the enemy attacking), it is very similar to Yngwie and Gunslinger skill where they get a free auto. The same rules apply to tag team: it will apply buffs without consuming a turn of effect, for example if you’re under the effect of Ferry’s TA buff (4 turns of TA with echo), using tag team will not count as a turn of using the buff, but will still apply its effects. Notable exceptions: Break Assassin and Overdrive Assassin, and more generally any effect that is described as “For the next hit”, will be consumed upon using Tag Team. It is by essence a skill that synergizes well with “low uptime, powerful effects” buffs (such as Ferry, Lecia or Rosetta), but the main drawback of the skill comes from its extremely high CD: 15 turns in order to reuse tag team, which pretty much makes it a one time use to race in fight where the MVP is decided early. It is however extremely potent for those short fights, especially when enemies have health triggers (such as chev blades of light), since it will allow you to chain two round of auto attacks without triggering any animation, which would make you otherwise lose quite a lot of time in MVP sniping.. Because it has an extremely high ZP cost (40 points), only buy the skill if you can exploit the niche it offers.

Suggested Zenith and Ex Skill:

• Mic Hype in most cases since you can never really go wrong with Uplift.
• Ring Ruler in raids mainly since charm and blind will help you to maintain the hype buff. Use mic hype in solo play only if you have ways to effectively manipulate aggro (earth has a lot of tools for that for example).
• Tag team + DT3 in short raids where you want to snipe MVP, note that DT3 will give you a one turn guaranteed TA which makes it extremely efficient with Tag Team (you will deal 2 TA in a turn and have ougi ready for the next turn right after the start of the battle).
• Soul Split can be cumulated with Pandemonium in order to have even more protection from the ougi, though it’s more recommended for elements that can benefit from the enmity.

Element Synergy:

• Earth will benefit a lot from playing Luchador. The hype buff will allow you the MC to deal damage comparable to its other main attackers (Halle and Ayer), and the GW fist ougi effect will allow you to protect Halle much more effectively, and even allow Ayer to play more greedily as he will be able to lower his HP and attack while still benefiting from counters. What’s more because of the extremely high power of their attackers, the counters from GW fist will easily reach the damage cap. Finally, uplift is always welcomed in an element that relies heavily on Korwa as their main buffer, but characters like H-Eustace can benefit from it as well. Aggro manipulation tools such as Baihu Staff, Ayer third skill, or even Sara can also help a lot to keep Luchador’s hype buff going. Finally, the counter that offers the GW fist can help you to build Mahira’s drum stacks faster.
• Dark will also benefit from playing Luchador, but not necessarily in the same way as earth. While they will often have a GW fist built in order to get Six, the counter from the ougi isn’t as necessary as for earth: only Six would benefit from it and even then it’s not necessarily crucial for him as he has a lot of tools to already dodge enemy autos and mono hit ougis. As a result, getting the full cuts from Sparta might prove to be a better option as Six has no way to dodge AoE (unlike Halle). However, Dark will be able to capitalize on Tag Team thanks to Zooey: use conjunction, use DT3, use Vira veil for guaranteed TA or Djeanne self buff, and get to blast boss even faster as you get a free turn with additional TA for some characters without waiting for the enemy attack animation. Note that Tag Team and counters will however proc Zooey drain. Also note that if you’re playing a claw based build, Luchador will benefit from the weapon proficiency bonus.
• Light can benefit from Tag Team during short fights where you won’t require more than one Ferry rotation, giving you one additional turn of ferry buffs. The mismatched cooldown between Ferry third skill and Tag team makes it really hard to use for longer fight though.
• With the right characters, water can also be extremely potent with Luchador, using Summer Diantha for the guaranteed TA turn + hype buff, as well as Uno 5* for the one turn assassin, which can grant you a burst that has nothing to envy to dark zooey teams. The celestials shellfist are also a great main hand, providing a good echo on MC after ougi and a perpetual echo on your fourth member at the cost of less meter generation.

Main uses:

• Magna sniping
• One turn kill of any boss with less than 10m HP (dark and water only)
• Celestials
• HL raids (for experienced players)

Nighthound

The last class in the Sidewinder line can most likely be summarized with the word “niche”. Its use can be described as raid support for HL content as it lacks sustained damage, and magna one-turn kill gimmicks for solo play. Strangely enough, despite having class bonus that boost skill damage, Nighthound doesn’t offer any damaging skill outside of its base first skill, and even then the damage isn’t that amazing. The class doesn’t grant any skill cap breaking ability, making it barely better than Sidewinder if you equip the Bullseye Run ex skill. It will at least have a shorter cooldown, but no cap break through its Target passive. The other Nighthound passive, Night Hunter, grants the usual boost to attack based on the number of enemy debuffs, but also an immunity against blind effects which can be handy, but not extremely noteworthy as you’ll want to bring clear or veil against enemies that blind often.

Evasive Maneuvers is the usual dodge + attack up for one turn skill in the Sidewinder line, except it got two added gimmicks: it now is also a 580k damage capped nuke, and dodging an attack with the MC will result in dealing an AOE damage (around 580k damage cap as well) that will also blind all enemies. The damage trigger on dodge will activate only once even if you dodge several attacks. The skill is best used against boss AOE as Nighthound doesn’t have any way to redirect aggro on themselves, unless coupled with the substitute ex skill. It’s worth noting that the blind strength, while relatively good, is lower than DF ex blind skill. 

Despite it various gimmicks and utility it can bring, Nighthound main drawback is that it suffers from not having good MH weapons in nearly every element, especially since it’s often expected from MH weapons to bring good utility such as DA/TA team buffs. By the nature of its skills, you’ll often want to bring Nighthound in on-element fights for more difficult content, as its utility decreases drastically otherwise. Players who own Yoda or Sarasa will often use Nighthound with the change ex skill in pendant teams to farm their hard raids, as they will be now able to bring TH2 + TH3 in the ex skill spots.

Zenith Skills:

• Tactical relocation (30 EMP): It’s a skill tailored for two characters mainly: Summer Zooey and Ferry. On a 20t CD, it will allow you to swap the position between any two members in your team, sub-party or main party. As it has one of the longest CD in the game, its use is only a one-time thing and thus mainly fits short duration fights. Start the fight with a dark enmity team and Ferry in the last spot during Strike time, use her third skill for guaranteed TA, swap out Ferry for Zooey, use conjunction, and enjoy the damage for 4 turns. There are a lot of other combination possible in all elements, although most of them will involve zooey and ferry, so I can only encourage you to try to find your own combo, you can find even more crazy combination if you couple it to the change sidewinder Zenith. . While you can use it to snipe magna raids, the additional time required to swap in and out characters can be too slow in practice in raids that blow up very quickly. It can be also used in medium length fight to get a headstart in non dark enmity teams as you can put Zoi in your frontline, conjunction and simply swap her out for another character (ideally someone who can cut down their hp by themselves). If you have the characters to make use of the skill, it’s probably worth your EMP/ZP.
• Frequency Jam (20 EMP): A team buff that will increase the dodge rate of your team, as well as 40% chance of critical damage on a 40% multiplier (so 1.4x more damage if you crit). The buff has a 2 turns duration and 7 turns CD. While the skill grants a correct damage boost on element with a crit that has a relatively high chance to activate (it’s worth noting that all crits have separate chances to activate), the dodge component of the skill only synergizes with characters who want to avoid getting hit (and is outright a demerit if you have characters who need to get hit to build stacks, or if you want to get hit for more enmity). Not an essential skill to buy unless you have characters that synergize well with dodge.
• Twilight Zone (30 EMP): Nighthound’s signature skill is a 180 seconds field effect that is a bit special: it’s one of the only field effect that will only benefit the players in the raid and will have no demerit. Its effect is to increase on-element Wind, Water, Earth and Fire damage. Light and Dark are not affected by the field effect. Twilight Zone will more precisely increase your elemental multiplier by 30% in the damage calculation formula, if you’re not really familiar with how it works I recommend to try to search for explanations about it. To make it more simple, all you need to know is that it will not result in a straight 30% damage boost, the effective damage increase will range between 20% and less than 5% depending on the number of elemental summons you’re using and elemental buffs your party has. It’s a great support field that will increase the raid overall damage, especially for people playing on element double primal builds. A must have if you want to use Nighthound in HL raids (that are not dark or light).

Suggested Zenith and Ex Skill:

• Tactical relocation if you want to make use of Zoi / Ferry in order to get an edge at the start of medium length fights. You can also add change for funny and niche combos.
• Change with TH2 and TH3 for your hard raids farming.
• Twilight zone with two other supportive abilities, such as Clarity or Dispel if you only want to support the raid.
• Use Frequency Jam if you have a crit oriented build and characters that can benefit from dodge.
• Substitute can be an interesting choice as an ex skill in order to both protect your party members against lethal multihits, and also guarantee a nuke + blind attempt.

Element Synergy:

Every element that has an enmity grid can make use of Nighthound to a certain extent, as being able to use Zooey conjunction without having to keep her as a dead weight until she gets her CD back is extremely useful. The fact that the class doesn’t bring any DA/TA support for the MC or the team means it’s extremely reliant on having either a DA/TA focused grid for longer fights, or a character that can independently boost the team multiattack rate. The consequence is that more than often, Primal grids (especially double primal comps) will be able to use Nighthound more effectively as some have all of the above requirements, and magna grids or team compositions reliant on using Korwa will see little synergy with NH.

• Fire might be the element that gets to use NH to its full potential as it has both weapons and characters that can synergize with the different skills it provides (although it will mainly synergize with agni grids). Agni grids will be able to provide crit, enmity and trium (through Ecke Sachs, Crimson Finger and Athena Spear), which allows to use Zooey at the start of the fight in order to proc the team enmity (let’s not forget that fire potato will also boost the team damage as her HP gets low), and often swap her out for H-bea / SS Bea who can lower her own HP. The crit synergizes with Frequency jam, and Trium allows the team to completely forgo any DA/TA team buff. Especially since on element crit based agni will often use double agni, making it easy to cap the 50% DA/TA with trium, and get higher critical chance. The fact that no elemental summon is used makes Twilight Zone even more valuable as it will increases the damage output of the team rather substantially. As for characters, Anthuria will have good synergy with Frequency Jam as it will allow her to reach (nearly?) 100% dodge chance, making it easier to proc her hype buff. Fire Socie is one of the few character that can grant high DA/TA buffs to the team with no string attached, so she can compensate NH in that regard for non Agni grids.
• Earth has also an okay synergy, even though it’s not as good as fire, their primal grids also have access to DA, crit, enmity, and they have characters that can require protection (mainly Ayer and Halle).
• Water in double Varuna comps can also make use of Nighthound, even though they’ll only have DA and crit, frequency jam becomes much more valuable as it can allow characters to not get hit and prevent fenrir bow efficiency to drop (as varuna grids will still want to use a few bows), Quatre can also extend the buff to give it a 3/7 uptime which is much more acceptable.

Main uses:

• Magna
• Guild War (Ex+, NM)
• Qilin/Huanglong
• Celestials
• HL raids where you have the important roles already filled.

Apsaras

A very raid oriented class that has the particularity to bring some relatively unusual raid buffs and debuffs at the same time, and as a result is a pretty good supporting class. Thanks to DT3 and its high base DA/TA, it’s also a very decent offensive class. Much like the other jobs of the Valkyrie line, its main gimmick is that most of the skills used will have different effects depending on if your main hand is a spear or an axe, but Apsaras also gets a Zenith skill that allows to get both the spear and axe effects of a skill regardless of your Main Hand, which allows for much more flexibility. The passive (which grants a slight ATK and DEF bonus) will also get a different additional effect: wielding an axe will grant you 80% additional damage on single attacks (meaning that it won’t activate if you DA or TA), resulting in a minimum 180% damage auto per turn for the MC; using a spear will grant a further boost in multiattack rate, giving a very decent base DA/TA to the class. 

Thunder on the Water is Apsaras default skill and will have two effects: if you’re using a spear it will cast a break lock on the enemy. While weaker than a summon or Hawkeye break lock (since it only has the time component and not the damage component of the lock), it can still be handy in raids where no one wants to bother bringing a Break Keep. It will also increase the raid skill damage. The axe effect, probably the more interesting one, is a duration effect coupled with a 20% meter boost to your whole team. It’s a really strong ability with a relatively short cooldown (you can see it as a more frequent but less powerful Altair third skill) that will serve extremely well meter hungry characters such as Korwa.

Similarly to Nighthound, Apsaras suffers from the fact that while it brings interesting utility to the raid, it doesn’t have any skill that is a must-have, and limited amount of spots in raids makes it difficult to justify bringing it in 6-man HL raids. NM GW raids might be the place where the class shines the most as the various buffs it provides to the raid can help a lot to reduce the time needed to kill the boss.

Zenith Skills:

• Springwater Robe (10 EMP): Grants a 2-hit Mirror Image effect (lasts indefinitely until consumed) and grants the Springwater Robe effect for 3 turns. It basically means that the next Valkyrie ability that you’ll use within the next three turns will activate both spear and axe effects. This skill is the main reason why Axe Apsaras is actually very good as it will allow you to still benefit from DT3 DA/TA raid buff (although on a 3/6 uptime only).. Spear users will be able to use Thunder on the Water coupled with Springwater in order to get the 20% ougi bonus. A must have zenith for Apsaras.
• Dance of Zeal (5 EMP): A boost to party ATK (60% normal modifier) that will also reduce the def of allies for 3 turns. Note that the MC is excluded from those buffs/debuffs and will instead gain “Devotion”: if the MC is targeted, the character with the highest HP in the team will tank the hit for him. A rather gimmicky skill, and maybe the less impressive zenith of the Apsaras class, while it brings a rather strong offensive buff, the uptime is rather low (3/8t) and the devotion buff is pretty difficult to use since you have no way to guarantee that one of your character in particular will receive the hit. It’s not even a good way to protect the MC since Springwater Robe mirror images will grant a better protection instead. If you’re short on ZP, you can probably skip the skill, unless you can find specific situations where it would have some use.
• Swan Song (20 EMP): A raid buff that will boost by 10% the raid ougi generation, and either grant raid critical chance (80% chance to deal 120% total damage) if you’re wielding a spear or a party drain + debuff success rate if you’re wielding an axe. All the buffs last three turns, and the skill has a 8 turns cooldown. The spear version is a pretty strong raid buff that can be very handy when you know that most of the raid is fighting on element, as the crit has a high proc rate and decent damage multiplier. The 10% ougi generation buff isn’t extremely high, but it can make the difference for Korwa users in order to get their ougi one turn earlier, and it can synergize with Thunder on the Water to give to your team 22% meter instead of 20%. Note that the ougi generation gain will not stack with similar skills such as Amira and Anriet buffs. The axe effects aren’t too bad, especially the debuff success rate can help you to land the Break lock or the DA/TA down debuff from DT3, but the drain can be relatively annoying if you’re playing an enmity based team. Still a very good zenith skill to grab.

Suggested Zenith and Ex Skill:

• DT3 is a must have no matter what, and you’ll want to have it for both axe and spear MH. Axe users will combine it with Springwater Robe in order to get both the DA/TA buff and the DA/TA down debuff on enemy effect. Remember that DT3 buff strength depends on the number of buffs you have on your MC, and Apsaras has a good amount of buffs that it can use in order maximize the strength of DT3.
• Spear users will want Springrobe Water and Swan Song (if fighting on element) in order to have DT3 effect, Break keep, 20% ougi generation every 5 turns, critical chance raid buff and ougi generation raid buff. Be careful though to not break lock a boss early while using Thunder on the Water for the 20% ougi gain.
• Axes users generally have a free spot to bring any skill they want,, as Swan Song isn’t nearly as good as the spear counterpart.

Element Synergy:

Before talking about element synergy, the question that will come in mind is: Should I use Spear Apsaras or Axe apsaras? The answer is: “It depends.” The best way is probably to try both and see for yourself which one you prefer since they both have their advantages and issues. Overall, axe Apsaras is safer as it will permanently apply DA/TA down on the enemy boss, and spear Apsaras will improve the raid damage thanks to the better DT3 uptime and the crit raid buff.

• Fire benefits the most from Axe Apsaras since it has the best main hand to go with that class: Xeno ifrit scythe which grants a 30% DA/TA buff on ougi for 3 turns, as well as a 20% permanent echo effect against burned enemies. Combined with DT3, you have an extremely high amount of DA/TA, although Agni grids might not necessarily need DT3 buff with the amount of MA they already get from trium. The debuff success rate of axe Swan Song can be pretty handy for Percy Fear, and the drain can be pretty useful as well if playing with stamina characters. The best use of fire Apsaras might be with magna grids + Korwa since all the meter and da/ta buffs make it pretty easy to keep a good uptime on Korwa buffs, making it the class that offers the highest possible dps for fire magna.
• Light with Ferry will definitely appreciate a class that can bring DT3 and further grant meter to the team so that Ferry can get going faster and earlier.
• Earth gets to be able to use DT3 with an axe and still benefit from the DA/TA buff effect, which will rejoice a lot of earth players as they are often gated by needing a Gacha spear in order to play Spear classes. They also have characters they use that will appreciate the meter gain (mainly H-Eustace and Korwa)
• Wind can also make use of Spear Apsaras, with Korwa and Rosetta being rather meter hungry (be careful to not ougi accidentally with Rosetta because of Thunder on the water).
• Water Apsaras is decent as well since all the meter boost combined between Apsaras first skill, Riruru and Altair can allow for extremely quick and frequent chain bursts. All its various buffs it grants can also be extended by quatre.

Main uses:

• Guild Wars NM raids
• HL 30 man raids
• Celestials

Elysian

The last class in the Harpist line, focusing mainly on buffs and debuffs. The class received great zeniths allowing it to be used as a replacement to SS, and also gained enough flexibility to be used for solo content as well, being actually the only class able to cap Def Down reliably (unlike Zerker). Possibly one one of the strongest class to use for racing thanks to its insane buffs it provides to your team, but also a great raid support through its “Misterioso” passive, which improves the debuff accuracy of your team members when fighting on element. This passive was bugged at release as it allowed characters with the “Death” debuff to have a chance to one shot any boss in the game (Never in the history of granblue were Baha HL and Grande slaughtered as fast as during this one hour). It was fixed shortly after, but is still an extremely good passive for characters who have debuffs you’d like to land reliably (although it will require to be on element). As usual the class gets enhanced effect on its skills if using a Harp over a Dagger.

Concludere is a direct upgrade to Superstar Overture, it has the same boost to raid healing, and gets your team an Atk/Def unique buff the more non harpist line players are in the raid, lasting 3 turns with a 7 turns CD. But it also now gets a 20% element element attack up buff to your team and the whole raid (10% if using a dagger), which makes the skill even better and also more useful for both solo play and raids . The elemental buff won’t stack with most characters elemental attack up however (Such as Mahira, Altair, Yuel…).

Zenith Skills:

• Dirge for the Dead (20 EMP): A def down with two components, 15% regular Def Down and 20% elemental resistance down (the element being the one of your MC). The Def Down part is dual sided, meaning that it will stack with Def Breach but not Mist-like debuffs. As usual, the element resistance down doesn’t stack with any other element resist down no matter the source. A great skill that allows you to use Elysian effectively for solo play, and that is even more useful if you play an element that has difficulties capping def down on their own.
• Voice Unveiled (10 EMP): Grants for 5 turns Death Grace to your party, as well as Revitalize. Death Grace will transform any DoT effect (burn, poison, putrefied) into heal. It won’t work against field effects like Bahamut Ragnarok field or Macula’s field. The revitalize part is less effective than other similar skills as it will only heal you for 250 HP per turn or give 5% meter if full health. Overall a rather niche ability, that can be used against boss who specifically like to apply DoT very often, otherwise quickly forgotten.
• Call of the Abyss (14 EMP): The real interesting Zenith Skill of Elysian, being a direct upgrade to the SS skill Song of Grande. For 3 turns and on a 5 turns CD, it will grant to your team 80%DA / 30%TA, at the cost of 30% meter generation down over the same period (the values with a dagger are currently unknown). This is the strongest team DA/TA buff that exists for the MC, and is the reason why you should consider this class in priority if you need MA buffs. For those who’d be bothered by the ougi generation down, this debuff is actually clearable so make sure to pack Clarity if you want to use the skill with meter dependant characters like Korwa.

Suggested Zenith and Ex Skill:

• Call of the Abyss is a must have that will nearly always be used. It might be a good idea to take Clarity if you think that the ougi generation down will be detrimental to you (Ferry / Korwa).
• Dirge of the dead is great to have for solo play if you can’t cap def down naturally with your team. Using a 15% additional def down (Summon, Vira, Lancelot…) should be enough to reach the 50% def cap. Else, you can always use Defense Breach in order to cap def down on your own. (Miserable mist has little utility with Dirge of the dead as you’ll only totalize 45% def down / 25% atk down, much like the Mist + Def breach combination).
• Pilfer and Charm will be what people expect you to bring in difficult raids content. If the charm resistance of the enemy isn’t too high, you can decide to replace Pilfer for some more utility (most likely Clarity).
• Blind and Gravity are also options to consider if someone is already covering Charm / Mist and if playing Elysian tempts you more than playing Chaos Ruler / DF.

Element Synergy:

• Light might be one of the element that gets the most out of Elysian compared to SS. Its added flexibility finally allows you to bring Clarity for Ferry, and Call of the Abyss makes it much easier to fill your team meter to 100% for Ferry’s Hin Liechten in 4 turns (the time it takes to get Clarity CD back). As a result, you’ll be multi-attacking extremely often with light Elysian. Finally, the Misterioso passive coupled with the GW harp ougi (or the Event Harp unknown) will make Song more likely to land her paralyzed than ever. Note that Amira’s DA/TA buff won’t cumulate with Call of the Abyss.
• Water’s main issue gets fixed by using Elysian as well: its lack of good DA/TA buffer. Thanks to Quatre and Altair bringing most of the debuffs needed, you will most of the time only bring Call of the Abyss as a Zenith skill. Quatre allows you to extend both tension effect of Concludere and the DA/TA buff of Call of the Abyss to make it a 4 / 5 turns uptime skill. In practice, it means that you’ll be constantly under the effect of the buff when it’s relevant as the one downtime turn will be used to ougi (using Clarity / Altair third skill if needed). The Water attack up buff from Concludere will not stack with Altair, but if you time it well you can have a nearly constant water attack up buff for your team by rotating the two skills. The only issue being that Water lacks any good water harp outside of GW Harp.
• Earth gets some very good synergy as well as it has the Xeno Vohu Harp, granting even more meter generation and making the MC a TA monster while Concludere is up thanks to the harp passive. Call of the Abyss will here be extremely useful to build drum stacks for Mahira, but the high meter generation can also benefit characters like H-Eustace or Korwa. Avoid using with DLF though, as Concludere will erase DLF 10 turns earth atatck up buff.
• Wind can actually get some pretty good mileage out of Elysian as well, but under certain restrictions. First of all, Dirge of the Dead is a good skill to have in an element that lacks Def Down debuffs, coupled with Def breach you can actually reach the def cap without applying any attack down, which allows you to get hit harder to trigger enmity. While seemingly not synergizing well with Korwa, Call of the Abyss will still work so long as you can bring a clear (even if only a single target clear). Clarity, Lennah or Lecia are a must to use with this skill. Particularly, Lecia will be able to get a good amount of Buff orders. Finally, Concludere wind attack up is more than welcome in an element stuck with a 80% elemental summon most of the time.
• Fire will appreciate a lot Elysian as well, but only to the condition you have Percy, as most of his kit synergize extremely well with the class. Concludere’s fire attack up buff will serve to trigger his additional fire attack up passive, while Elysian’s passive will grant more chance to land Fear.

Main uses

Everything, but especially content where debuff accuracy is important.