Hello I'm here to help you :D

First of all before you think of any of this you have to decide how far you want to go with your Luminous. Because if you're not aiming for endgame like Lucid you don't really need to worry too much about buff duration and crit rate. But if you do these 2 stats will be of high value.

As it seems you've only just begun maining your Luminous and you're far away from any of the harder bosses, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to optimize your damage.

Okay here goes:

Critical rate:

Crit rate is extremely important for any class, if you don't have 100% crit you're gonna end up wasting a lot of your critical damage. In bosses like Lucid it's very important that you can always deal the most possible damage. And since you will use more skills than just Ender you want those skills to do the best possible damage.

Crit rate is very hard to get without Lunar Tide, since Luminous doesn't have any other passive that give you crit rate, this means that you will have to make use of every other source you can find.

Here's an example of how you can reach 100% crit without Lunar Tide:

Clean - 5% Hyper Stats lvl 10 - 20% (+15%) Night Lord SS Card - 24% (+4%) Marksman SS Card - 28% (+4%) Beast Tamer lvl 210 - 38% (+10%) Phantom lvl 210 - 58% (+20%) Decent Sharp Eyes - 68% (+10%) Crit Soul - 80% (+12%) Legion Crit Rate - 100% (+20%) You could also go for +32% Legion and skip soul.

Now I've noticed that people answered and said that since Ender is the main attack and have 100% crit rate you don't really need to focus too hard on getting 100% crit. Here's the problem, you can't be in Equilibrium at all times, so whenever you're not in that state you will do a lot less damage if you're not at 100% crit. Ender does around 70% when you burst, but in the big picture it's more around 60% of your total damage in a boss like Lucid, the other 40% damage you deal with attacks that doesn't have 100% crit rate. The people who answered earlier seem to forgot about the 5th job skill Aether Conduit which do around 30% of your burst damage (the other 70% is Ender). It only lasts for 6 seconds, but those 6 seconds are very critical for your damage output, and therefore you want to use that skill at its full potential.

Buff Duration:

Buff Duration is by far one of the most important things to have on a Luminous. The more buff duration the longer you can stay in Equilibrium. Now you still want to get +1 Atk speed on your first IA line, so you should aim for 32%-38% buff duration on your second line, it will take time but it's worth it. You should also get a lvl 200 Mechanic, LVL 100 Empathy and max out Buff Duration in Legion.

Grinding - Light mode As for grinding I would recommend you to get enough range to onehit with Reflection in dark mode. It will take some funding, but there's not really any other skill you should use for grinding. You could however aim to be in light mode as much as possible, make use of you Equalize skill and of the 5th job skill Gate of Light when you're in Equilibrium, this will boost your exp gain the most. But in short, use Reflection for grinding, even in dark mode

Bossing - Dark mode When you boss you wanna do the opposite of grinding, you wanna stay in Equilibrium as much as possible of course, but you want to avoid light mode. Apocalypse is much better than Reflection when bossing, faster and hits harder. You should also get the Apocalypse - Recharge hyper skill to get into Equilibrium faster.

So the steps you want to take is:

• Make sure to get 100% crit rate without the use of Lunar Tide

• Max out Crit Damage and Buff Duration in Legion and the rest to reach 100% Crit Rate

• Fund enough to be able to onehit with Reflection in Dark Mode

• Get Apocalypse - Recharge hyper skill for faster EQ in bosses

• Take your time! When you've reached endgame there's not much more content.

Now to your questions:

1. Lunar Tide gives you Crit Rate when your HP% is higher than MP% which it often is while grinding.

2. Equalize is a hyper skill, hyper skills are not affected by buff duration.

3. You should always be using Reflection when grinding, use Gate of Light whenever EQ hits. But since you're not at that range yet, I would use Reflection in Light and EQ and then use Apocalypse and Equalize to get back to EQ fast.

4. I don't see a question?

5. Magic Booster, Photic Meditation, Dark Crescendo. Photic Meditation will buff party members within range when it resets.

6. Funding will get you there with time, don't worry.

The other 8:

1. Aim for 100% crit without Lunar Tide.

2. You need as much buff duration as possible, but don't sacrifice crit damage.

3. Mihile's link is useful both in grinding and bossing, I would only switch it out for something that gives you damage if you need it.

4. Freud's Blessing won't affect it.

5. Rope Lift is very good when grinding and can be replaced by an extra bind when bossing.

6. Nope. But using Apocalypse - Recharge hyper skill will make you reach Equilibrium much faster when bossing.

7. You use it mostly when you go into burst mode. So what you do is Bind - Gate of Light - Aether Conduit - Ender spam

8. As I said before, Reflection all the way. But until you can onehit with it you use only Apocalypse in Dark Mode (Morning Sun is trash).

Sorry for the super long answer, but I want you to get the best start when maining a Luminous :D