Contents
Definitive Guide to Teambuilding
By Bamiji
Introduction
This is a general guide to understanding some fundamentals on how to build strong teams for boss fights in Another Eden. Something important to get out of the way early is that you should separate yourself from a mindset of ending up with single fixed teams for each Zone. It is vital to understand that teams are only ever really built when there is actually something to use them for. Otherwise, you lack too much information than to be able to plan practically.
Instead, if you desire to get into teambuilding, you should approach it from a mindset of picking the right tools for the job each time something needs to be done. This brings us to the next point: you’re not ready to build teams if you don’t understand what your characters do to begin with. It can feel easy when you think things such as “I’ll just put Fire characters in a Fire team”, but understanding the disparity in strength across some characters, and the varied utilities they may possess, is what will really let you be effective at it.
With those out of the way, in the following sections will be explanations on topics that should serve to clue you in on things to look out for or consider when assessing your capability to build a strong team of a certain type and, naturally, how to put it all together.
Damage Is Everything
The most obvious thing a strong team is going to need is one or more good damage dealers. Every victory over a boss is going to come down to your ability to output enough damage in time before things can go south. It is still possible to win with weaker damage and reserves rotations to restore MP in most cases, but it is generally something you want to avoid due to increasing complications, potentially extreme length, and in some cases, rng dependence.
It is therefore important to identify who your significant-damage characters are. And because of things such as enemy resistances/weaknesses, single or multiple enemies in a fight, and the synergy between same damage types or elements, it is important to have a wide variety of these if you want to have access to varied team types.
To be able to classify good damage dealers, it is necessary to understand characters’ desired skill rotations and see what skill multipliers they can practically and consistently end up with. Of course, not everyone is going to be designed for damage to begin with. But in general, this will mostly come down to looking at their 5* skills and figuring out how to maximize their damage conditions, if any. Some characters may have more inconsistent damage spikes that relegate them to fewer strategies in this role, such as one-shots after HP stoppers.
For an example of evaluation, Deirdre with her maxed manifest will have her main damage come from Chaos Saber. It requires Pain on its target and her being at full HP to get a total 2.25x bonus on the base multiplier, bringing it up to 562.5% from 250%. She can inflict guaranteed Pain on all enemies with her other 5* skill to fulfil the outlying condition of Chaos Saber, and the same skill will also buff her PWR by 70%.
Before I continue, it should be noted that you should be careful with when you should factor self buffs of a character into their damage potential. The reason for this is, because of how buff/debuff stacking works, it will frequently be unimpactful to have multiples of the same effect. So, characters reliant on them as self boosts for their damage will perform relatively worse in cases where those same effects are granted to the entire party by someone else on the team.
The takeaway from this is that you may have multiple options for a slot that appear fairly equal but noticing this interaction of buff effects can point out which are more preferred for the scenario, because the ones who are equal without utilizing the buff(s) will be able to gain something the others cannot. Certain buffs/debuffs are more common than others for certain team types and damage dealers too dependent on common ones, as opposed to high-potential skill multipliers, will mostly only see valuable use in weaker parties for the respective type. Familiarity with the type of team you’re building will be needed to be able to spot these easily.
That being said, you will find that there are practical exceptions to this guidance. One is that the higher the values of the self-buffs, the less the above guidance will tend to matter due to the intricacies of stacking and the respective character may just end up further boosted above the competition, provided the character’s skill multipliers are high enough. Another naturally follows from what was alluded to: the reality that certain buffs are fairly rare across characters, and so there is no real challenge in most cases to those using them for comparable damage. Returning to Deirdre, you will find that she matches both of these.
In the current state of the game, it is important to understand what level of average multiplier can be considered a benchmark for good damage dealers. A safe value to start with can be effectively 600% to form the lower end, and around 800% as a solid standard, with some of the strongest damage dealers going significantly beyond these into 1600%+ range.
With Deirdre, we ended at a 562.5% multiplier with all of Chaos Saber’s conditions fulfilled, but courtesy of the exceptionally high PWR +70% self buff on her guaranteed Pain skill, it’s fair to treat her effective multiplier as 956%+. There are several things at play here. PWR buffs that are party-wide are fairly rare to begin with outside of Valor Chants, which can be restricting to use. But even with those, none of them come close to being as high a value as hers than to allow others with close skill multipliers to be comparable after receiving them. It should also be noted that unlike most buff/debuff effects, PWR buffs/debuffs (and by extension, INT & SPD when used for primary damage) are direct stat changes rather than final damage multipliers. This makes it so that when considering common enemy defense values, a 70% PWR buff is closer to being an 88% damage boost than a 70% one.
One thing that may stand out to you through this is the potential unreliability of maintaining Deirdre’s max HP, and you will sometimes find similar quirks on other characters that can incline you towards what to prefer when choosing party members or equipment. In Deirdre’s case, she also possesses a lower board skill that drains damage dealt on its target, which can be favored for her 3rd skill slot as a result, for reliable max HP in Another Force. But even then, being able to save the action to use it on damage would be welcome if there are desirable allies capable of maintaining her max HP conveniently, especially in the context of Earth Zone, which would disincentivize her non-Earth drain attack.
Another thing you might notice is that due to the random turn duration of Deirdre’s Pain, she does not perform best for long periods outside Another Force, and you might want to choose certain other characters or equipment that can help this if you have the capability.
With all those covered, the following are some miscellaneous points also worth understanding.
Damage dealers will not necessarily be limited to a damage focus, and several will have supportive effects for offense or defense that can further increase their value. For example, Deirdre will debuff her target’s Physical Resistance with Chaos Saber, up to -60%, essentially providing not only a boost to her own damage value, but enabling her team to also be more effective at it without having to compromise damage herself. Furthermore, if you have other characters with similar support effects, that’s one less thing to consider and you can look into different ones to gain even more value.
On the other end, damage characters with defensive skills can provide valuable flexibility of being able to mitigate deadly attacks and still go fully on the offensive at a moment’s notice, such as Shannon AS having a guaranteed INT -20% debuff in a kit capable of easily achieving a consistent 840% multiplier.
Elemental Modifier is a factor to keep in mind when reviewing skill multipliers. It means that damage skills without an element are weaker than they appear to be when compared to the more commonly used elemental attacks, because elemental attacks will benefit from the character’s INT/MAtk resulting in a bonus of about 1.6x on average that non-elemental skills will not receive. As such, it’s fair practice to divide non-elemental multipliers by 1.6 to see how they compare.
Understanding Zones
Something most players will be introduced to early if they ask about the game is Zones. They form the general foundation on which most strong teams are built, but it is important to understand why that is, so as to maximize gains and understand when they might be a hindrance.
The value of Zones is very heavily linked to Another Force (AF). Under normal circumstances, the AF gain of a damage skill is set as 1.5% * the number of hits. Note that the minimum for activating AF is interpreted as 50%. Characters mostly range from having 1 to 3 hits on their damage skills. Now, with Zones, using a damage skill that matches the Zone will result in a fixed 7.5% gain (10% in Flash Zone), regardless of hit count. This is equivalent to if every character with matching skills had them with 5 hits under normal circumstances.
The exception to this overwhelming advantage of Zones is in cases where the enemy possesses a weakness to the attack being used. In those cases, regular AF gain is set as 3.5% * the number of hits. 2-hit skills become about on par, and 3+ hit skills exceed what Zones would allow.
The speed at which you build AF gain is a decisive factor to the strength of your team. In Zones, it will take 7 matching attacks to be able to fill half of the full bar, which can be achieved in as short as 2 turns. Without them and weaknesses, it can average at requiring about 17 attacks, which would span to a rough minimum of 5 turns. The more turns pass, the less likely you’d actually be able to repeatedly just attack too, so it would realistically take more.
Zone teams are able to use AF early in the battle and quickly regain it in short timing to deal with other threats or further progress the fight efficiently. Even for fights that have no need for more than one AF, the AF gain translates into being able to maintain AF for longer against the decay within it, resulting in more actions.
Zones also have other properties such as their inherent damage boost to matching types and penalties to some others, which affect all skills used, regardless of if by the allies or enemies. The characters that activate Zones will also frequently come with effects that are based on it to further strengthen their teams.
It is possible to build teams without Zones and do well for most things. Especially when you understand a variety of character synergies that may not fit with any Zone, specific to a fight being planned for. But, generally, they will scale better into more difficult challenges for efficient clears.
The first section described good damage dealers as the starting point for good teams, as based on needs for a specific element or damage type, and so on. Zones generally provide the synergistic foundations on which to build the rest. If you understand who your good damage dealers are for each type and can pair them with matching Zone enablers, that would mostly be 50% of the work done, varying depending on the overall strength of the enabler.
It is important to see or look for further synergies between your choices, and also to notice what may still be lacking for the specific enemy you’re facing. For instance, with a starting point of Felmina with her maxed manifest, against Fornjot in its superboss form, which has resistances or worse against all except Wind, Earth, and non-elemental attacks.
Felmina is capable of providing very high single-target Wind damage, with a consistent 920% multiplier, further yet augmented by her self buffs. She does this while also providing valuable offense support to the rest of the team between her Physical Resistance debuff and 3-turn Pain/Poison application to enable stronger Grastas.
A Wind Zone provider serves particularly well for this fight, as a lot of the attacks are of the penalized Earth element. Looking at Veina AS and Claude AS, both provide fairly useful support in their kits for the specific enemy. Veina can heal to sustain the longer nature of the fight, buff Earth Resistance of the party by 50% to significantly mitigate the Earth or non-elemental Magic damage used, and further buff the offensive output of the team with her Critical Rate and Wind Attack buffs. Claude similarly provides offensive utility but also notably can grant Status Immunity to the party to bypass the ailments present in the fight. Either way, you’d get some good synergy going against this boss, and using both would serve to create a powerful combination as well, since the boss is capable of changing the active Zone to Earth occasionally.
From here, you’d have at least one more slot to fill, and deciding what’s best will come from further understanding of the boss’ capabilities.
Before talking about what those flex slots could look like, in the next section, it’s important to note that Zones add another layer when considering who to use for support. There are a number of characters that are capable of a variety of supportive utilities or healing, so much so that some players may get accustomed to using them everywhere without thinking twice about it. However, in some cases, it is possible to get the same necessary support or healing without having to give up Zone synergies, and identifying these will lead you to making stronger teams. As an example, the aforementioned Shannon AS can provide an INT debuff to defend against Magic attacks, while contributing to Wind or Slash Zone with both the debuffing skill, and with her primary damage skill. Compare this to taking Yuna everywhere for her popular debuffs and then losing out on the AF gain in this instance while debuffing.
What Makes for Good Flex
There are a number of things players will find desirable to have on their teams than have been specifically identified. These are also subject to varying on the basis of specific fights.
Continuing the example against Fornjot, further reading or experience will show it is accompanied by followers it will occasionally re-summon. The skills of these followers add further complications to the fight, especially their capability to change the active Zone at a more frequent pace. In the resistances breakdown, we can see that Fornjot’s followers actually possess a weakness to Piercing attacks, which can aid significantly with dispatching them.
Looking through our options for Piercing attacks in Wind Zone, we find that Suzette with her maxed manifest is capable of a consistent 840% multiplier against all enemies, particularly with Felmina able to more reliably fulfil Suzette’s conditionals for out of AF as well. Suzette’s attack hitting all enemies will particularly help for when multiple followers are summoned at once, without losing any damage on the boss for it either. With this, we’d have 4 characters for the team, which is the minimum for a maximized Another Force.
Additional 2 characters may be added for more flexibility with handling other gimmicks, even if the characters may not play a primary role in the fight. These can be such as fast Wind characters to speedily switch in a Zone enabler and possibly contribute to damage later, or Bertrand with his maxed manifest to reliably control the turn 1 knockback of Fornjot, and so on.
You will not always require the additional 2 reserve slots, so it’s important to know to not overcomplicate strategies by forcing yourself to always fill them out. That being said, at the point you have access to Grasta upgrades, the extra team slots can allow for use of shared effects without needing to compromise the damage output of your frontline.
The following are some notable common things to try and fit on a team for increased effectiveness. You will find that a lot of the time, with good selection, your initial damage dealer and Zone setter will already possess some of these, leaving you more room to add further support.
- Party Critical Rate buffs are now commonly found across characters. Guaranteeing critical hits with +100% buffs allows characters to more than double their damage output, from one effect. The specific effective value of critical hits will vary based on enemy defenses and your attacking stat, but it will generally be upwards of 2x. For more information, refer to the damage formula. Note that there is strong bias towards having Critical Rate buffers that attack while doing so, or that can give multiple stacks of it at once if not. This is because, unlike most buffs, Critical Rate buffs will be consumed per move used rather than by elapsing a turn duration. This means that they may need to be reapplied in AF to get full effect, and doing this without attacking may result in a net loss due to a lack of AF maintenance.
- Guaranteed Pain/Poison Infliction is important for teams that can make use of Pain/Poison grastas for maximizing passive damage boosts. Due to formula specifics, those are the unrivaled best options for it. The ideal is characters such as Felmina, capable of inflicting either one for a fixed 3-turn duration, allowing high damage flexibility in or out of AF, while also providing significant value to teams outside of the infliction. The next best up is having the grasta attempt to inflict them on their own when the equipped characters attack, unlocked by dormant upgrading them. This method is not guaranteed but each grasta upgraded this way will individually attempt it so it is fairly reliable, and then it will last for a fixed 3-turn duration. The last is using characters that can guarantee either but without having fixed durations, which mostly relegates the grasta activation to Another Force or big setup turns.
- Various Other Buffs/Debuffs dependent on the existing characters of the team. Naturally, you will want to have appropriate defensive ones in the mix when the situation calls for it, but the point on variety is mostly for offensive ones. As explained earlier, you will generally get the most out of your damage if you’re able to augment it with varied effects as opposed to multiples of the same. So, for instance, if you already have a Physical Resistance debuffer as your initial damage dealer, you could look for other good damage dealers that have other things such as matching-element Attack buffs, or Critical Damage buffs (provided you have a Critical Rate buffer), and so on.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I hope the general points posed in this guide are valuable to you when considering who to build teams with, or in deciding who you may feel are good additions to your rosters. And, of course, it doesn’t take having strong teams for every Zone (or even having gacha characters at all) to be able to complete the game, but for those who enjoy more variety and, sometimes, more appropriate teams, it can be fulfilling to dig into.
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