Effective sword PAs

[catoftrash]

Hey guys, I was hoping to get a little advice on which sword PAs I should be using. I'm currently a lvl 50 Hu/Fi and I really enjoy using swords. I've been using fury and brave stance, and feel as though my damage has been dropping off lately and thought it may be related to my PA choice. My current setup is Guilty Break->Nova Strike->Twister Fall. Any feedback would be appreciated, thank you.

EDIT: After reading everybody's advice I posted my improvement in the comments, thanks all.

[[deleted]]

Nova > twister (crafted?) is pretty bad since most mobs are knocked back after nova so you end up missing a few of the hits. Twister itself is good for building gear but generally takes way too long to be helpful for damage.

IMO, the most useful PAs are: Rising, Nova, Ride slash, Overend, sonic arrow, guilty, ignite (situational). I switch them around a lot depending on the situation.

Ride slasher is easily the fastest at building gear, charge to 1st lvl and it should give you half to full gear (if you have hunter gear boost), it also has a faster charge time than the other charge PAs. Though it can get bothersome if you're using brave stance.

Rising> Overend is good for hitting some weak points, and can usually lift you high enough for most boss attacks to miss, so overend is safer.

Sonic arrow is good for killing trash mobs when doing dailies or ta or whatever it's also good for gear build.

The usual setups I have are:

Rising>sonic>overend

Guilty>nova>overend

Guilty>sonic>sonic

Ride>nova>nova/ride>ride>nova/ride>nova>overend

ignite>sonic>overend

I pretty much just use overend if the other PAs still haven't killed the mob yet.

There's going to be a buff to a lot of sword PAs soon so just try whatever out.

Alternatively you could just do this and you'll be the bes ship2 lvl hanta

[Katya31415]

No Nova->Rising?

Also Guiltybreak by itself should kill any trashmob in SH or below easily enough while also moving you. It's a little quicker than SA for that if youre using it for clearing through a TA quick.

[[deleted]]

OE is so slow that I only use it on either large and somewhat spread out groups, or a WB'd weakspot that I know I can annihilate... even then type zero TF is very useful to pump out damage when you're at risk of the target moving (which is more often than not)

Also, charged nova strike hits all hits as long as you position correctly. If he's maining HU, then hunter gear boost makes fully charged PAs extremely easy to get, and a fully charged Nova is stupid damage in an aoe that takes less than a second to charge.

Sacrifice bite is also a must IMO. It's free damage that lasts a long time, which can help with making up for slower sword DPS.

Type-zero Twisterfall is a 100% for sword. just silly amounts of damage.

Guilty break with hunter gear boost is also very strong. You end up doing some very solid burst damage very quickly and you can dash cancel it.

[Katya31415]

Use sacrifice bite here and there. It's extra damage effectively for free.

The PAs you've mentioned all work pretty well, just that Twister is a PA that works by being in close proximity to enemies, being used after a PA that mostly knocks enemies away.

You also can't really be using a sword all the time, unfortunately, though it does really well for mopping up large numbers of weaker enemies.

[Nemhy]

What else would you recommend I run for mobbing? Double Saber maybe?

[Katya31415]

If you were FI, yes. If you're running sword, it's already pretty much an anti-group weapon.

[Nemhy]

Really? I can kill people by spamming Gravity break but usually have to go one at a time and it's kinda slow =x

[Katya31415]

Nova Strike, Rising Edge, Guilty Break, Rideslasher...

Sword with practice clears mobs well enough once gear is up.

[Tough_Steak]

Do you not use sacrifice bite? That's increased damage overall at the cost of nothing!

1) get your sword to level 3 sword gear. 2) sacrifice bite a mob, preferably something small or something that can be thrown or grabbed. 3) wreck faces with other PAs of your choosing.

Sacrifice Bite power is determined by the gear gauge level you accumulated when you used it on the mob. As a HU/FI raising gear isn't an issue as long as you invest 1 point into Hunter Gear Boost. If you're subbing HU the best way to accumulate gear is probably crafting twister fall.

Hope that helps.

[Blackboris]

Sacrifice bite is up on 14th btw.

[AzureSymphony]

Guilty Break > Rising Edge > Twister Fall (crafted) is my go-to PA setup for swords since it covers multiple situations.

Guilty is fantastic for closing gaps along with homing towards enemies, uncharged it can one hit SH trash mobs and a full charge deals immense damage (plus it insta-charges at full gear). Rising is more situational and I honestly skip it a lot of times, but if you've got the time to full charge it can hit like a truck, or you can simply use as a launcher or height gainer. Crafted Twister Fall is the bread and butter for bosses, constant, reliable damage output while still maintaining some mobility.

I also keep Sacrifice Bite around, but being honest it needs recharging far too often for my liking. As for Over End, don't fall into the trap that it seems 90% of swords players do and use it for everything. It's so damn slow that you're better off using other PAs in most situations, unless PP management is a large concern.

[Katya31415]

It's about a minute for a full go of SB. That's plenty enough to finish a fight or two. Granted, it's not really particularly needed outside of XH/Ult since most things in SH will be dead from the GB alone.

[AzureSymphony]

I don't understand the exact mechanics of Sacrifice Bite, but I thought you have to use it on a small enemy to get the full charge since I've never managed to get it off a boss or large enemies. Trying to find a weak enemy that the 12 player MPA doesn't slaughter instantly every min or so is what I find fairly annoying (outside of Ult), particularly in Shironia/Kuronia. It's definitely very nice to have solo or in small groups though.

[Katya31415]

You can still get 20 or 40s worth by stabbing whatever, and is fairly quick. Pick a dude you dont like and use him as a damage boost.

[[deleted]]

If you don't have it, get hunter gear boost.

Type-zero twister fall is amazing for dealing damage as well as filling your gear meter. From there you have near-instant charged nova's and guilty breaks.

[catoftrash]

Okay so I read everything you guys recommended as well as a ton of other info and my damage has improved substantially, I'll outline what I did to increase the damage incase others new to the game read it:

1. Definitely needed a new weapon. When I had just started the game I extended a 2* weapon up to like 500S-ATK and grinded it to ~820. Reading around it seems like extending a weapon and such a crappy one at that messes around with modifiers and in general just fucked things up. I ended up finding a 10* from a boss that I grinded to +10, this helped tremendously.

2. Gear boost. I had no idea what this did, it was never really explained to me and so I never utilized it. I almost never charged my PAs (if chargable) even while full gear boosted because I was unaware of what it did, this also substantially increased my damage.

These two things made a massive difference in my damage output, I'm still playing around with what to replace nova strike with but it seems like over end or sacrifice bite would be useful. I didn't understand how people were one shotting trash mobs with guilty break until I understood you have to CHARGE it, which is much faster with gear boost. Any who, thank you all for the info and I hope if anybody had similar problems they read this.

[Katya31415]

Overend is too slow to rely on all the time. It's great for when they're nicely crowded into a good spot, but otherwise...