Team Building
When starting story mode off, the stages you are able to do mostly have you using a team of 4. But it isn’t as simple as sticking 4 meta characters into a group and expecting them to do well, as one might imagine. In this section, we’ll cover some of the basic considerations when it comes to putting together a team that works well together.
The way I see it, there are 2 broad rules to follow when it comes to making a functioning team composition.
- Your team has to be focused on dealing 1 damage type.
- Your team should have a tank, a damage dealer and a healer. The last slot is flexible and should be used to support your other heroes in some way.
If you can get a team going with just that advice, great, but for more details, please continue reading below where I’ll elaborate a little bit on both of these rules.
Damage Type
Rule 1 states that your team should be focused on dealing just 1 damage type. But what exactly does that mean? Heroes in King’s Raid deal 1 of 2 damage types; Physical or Magical. You can view what damage type a character does in their stat page.
But you probably already knew that. This guide is written for physical characters, but this rule extends to magic as well. Now you might be asking why exactly is it important that you stick to 1 damage type? The reason why is because many debuffs in the game that help with increasing your team’s damage only apply to one damage type. For example, let’s take a look at Phillop’s S1, [Collision].
The effect we particularly want to look at is the Skill’s third attribute (where the cursor is). When Phillop uses S1, he can cut hit enemies’ physical defense in half greatly improving the amount of physical damage enemies take. Phillop does next to nothing when it comes to helping with dealing more magic damage. This synergistic effect is why it’s important to make sure that your party is focused on just one damage type.
A common mistake to avoid would be thinking that this is as simple as using characters that just deal 1 damage type. This is a mistake because there are a fair amount of characters that deal the opposite damage type, but have generic enough buffs (such as attack or critical chance improvement) that they benefit both sides. For example, even though Frey, Laias and Lavril deal magic damage, they offer a fair amount to physical team compositions.
Now you might be asking yourself what damage type should you focus on? Well, it doesn’t really matter. Physical and magic are pretty much equivalent to one another in relevance, but the content they focus on is different. What really matters is that you stick to one damage type. A common approach is to choose a hero you’re interested in and build a team that compliments that one hero.
Character Roles
Rule 2 states that you want 1 tank, 1 damage dealer, 1 healer and 1 support. If you’ve played any rpg in the past, you’re probably aware of what all this means, but for those that don’t, below is a short list of role descriptions. Keep in mind that the sections below will separate characters into these roles to help with comparing and contrasting characters of the same roles.
Tank – Frontline unit that serves as the shield of the party. They’re responsible for taking damage so the rest of your party don’t have to.
Damage Dealer – Also called the main DPS. This is the character that deals the most damage in the party. Teams usually revolve around buffing this unit and debuffing enemies being attacked by this character to further increase the damage this hero does.
Healer – A hero that restores missing health. Keeps the party alive with their healing skills. Usually has skills that offer other utilities such as barriers that prevent damage or buffs.
Now you might be wondering where’s the definition for support. Unfortunately, support isn’t quite as simple as the other 3 roles. If it had to have a formal definition it would be… “A hero that provides utility skills to the party that helps them out in some way.” As you can see, even the definition is a little abstract and vague. The truth is, most characters are support to some capacity. It’s just some characters fill neither the tank, damage dealer or healer role, but still have utilities. Those heroes are usually the ones designated as a support. Other names for support that you might have heard used in the community include “Sub DPS” and “Amp, Buff, Crowd Control” (ABC).
Utilities you might want include damage amplification [Amp], crowd control [CC], buffs, etc. Good examples of support characters include Naila with her ability to control the field with very good crowd control and her ability to improve physical damage through a multitude of debuffs. A slightly more unorthodox support would be Lavril, a magic priest that can still fit into physical teams because of the variety of universal damage improving buffs she offers.
The role is broad enough to not only include dedicated support characters, but also characters from the other roles. For example, if you were using a team that already had Clause, Roi and Frey, you might think to include Naila. However, it is completely valid to include Phillop as well despite already having Clause filling the tank role. That’s because Phillop can further increase the amount of damage dealt by Roi via his defense lowering skills as well as help protect the entire party by lowering enemy attack significantly.
Expanding Your Roster
As you progress through the game, you’ll eventually unlock content and stages that have more than 4 character slots. Your first run in with these stages will most likely be Chapter 9 where there are 6 character slots, World Boss where there are 8 or Dragon Raid where there are 8 in solo mode.
Chapter 9 has 6 character slots. 4 characters you can control. 2 will be forced to auto.
Taking a party of 4 into a dungeon where there are more slots is clearly disadvantageous. Furthermore, you’ve probably been itching to expand your roster because of a growing interest in the game and its characters. So what’s a good way of going about this process?
The most conventional way to expand your roster is to keep adding on supports, tanks and healers onto your team while sticking to one main dps. The primary reason for this is because a main dps takes a lot of effort and resources to get into an ideal state. Supports on the other hand are relatively easier and cheaper to get into a serviceable state. If you recall, the section above talks about splitting resources between physical and magic teams is a mistake. It’s the same case here but applied to splitting resources between characters. Most of the resources should go into the main dps, while the minimum is spent on awakening support unique equipment.
Another reason for this is because many buffs in the game only affect one character, usually the character with the highest attack, aka: your main dps. If you start adding in more dps characters, they’ll start competing for buffs.
In short, what you want to do when you start expanding your roster is focus on getting more characters that can benefit your main dps. For example, let’s say the 4 character setup you chose at the beginning looks something like this.
From left to right
Juno, a healer. Cecilia, a main dps. Priscilla, a support. Clause, a tank.
If you were to try to prepare this team for chapter 9 and its expanded roster of 6 character slots, a sensible thing to do would be to add one more healer and one more tank.
The same party but Mediana, a healer, and Phillop, a tank, was added to help with Ch. 9.
This setup maximizes Cecilia’s DPS as Mediana increases Cecilia’s attack and Phillop lowers enemy defense.
You would apply these same these same concepts when expanding to a party size of 8 as well. Just make sure to try and maximize your main dps’ damage and you’ll be just fine.
