u/Accomplished-List657

I've been wanting to do another 100% run (partially because V fun, partially because I lost the file for my original 100%), and I really, really want to focus it around a Blade Dancer comp this time. It's just not really clicking, and I've been racking my brain for why.

I think it's because at least to me, EOV has an odd feel to its classes where it almost seems like, for the most part, classes don't really interact with one another, with the main exceptions being Shaman and Chain Fencer.

Maybe this is an odd take, but I kinda feel like it goes hand in hand with how classes seem to stack pretty well in most cases. Even in the case of Masurao, a Blade Master supports a Blade Dancer pretty well since it has a triple-bind inflicting skill.

I dunno, Blade Dancer is the class that clearly needs the most support, but it feels like what support it gets doesn't really boost Blade Dancer itself, if that makes any sense, they're all buffs that would be doing the same thing no matter what that DPS character is.

And sure, the other games have the whole party-wide/affects everyone about the same sort of thing, but there's an absence of like... For example, in Nexus, War Magus has abilities that can inflict debuffs and a chance of binds if the enemy has an ailment. And while WM can inflict ailments itself, it's much better if someone else does so for multiple reasons, which gives it a more specific interaction with particular classes.

Is there really anything like that in V? Botanist's smoke bombs can reduce resistance to its respective ailments, but how often are you running multiple inflictions of the same ailment? (Not to mention that at least in my experience, the only one that could use much help on that front is Harbinger) I remember taking advantage of I think Pugilist? having a followup on others inflicting binds, but that mostly happened by chance because I was also using a Rover and wasn't an intended aspect of my party comp, not to mention that the most reliable inflictor of binds is pugilist itself (talking strictly classes/class abilities, not union skills).

I dunno, maybe I'm going about this all wrong. Originally I wanted to avoid using duplicate classes, but I let go of that for the most part (the only one I've still resisted using is pugilist simply because while other classes I could use different builds, for Pugilist I'd literally just be using the exact same build as my prev 100% run), and even then I just haven't been able to make things click. I've tried a few comps now, primarily geared around stacking buffs/debuffs with Harbinger and Shaman, and at first I used a Necromancer, then tried Dragoon (and was immediately reminded why I despise bunkers). I'd prefer to have a Botanist's on-demand heals and I thought its blind bomb could make for a great option to help with survivability since I'm not using binds, but yea.

In all fairness, I've yet to get out of the first stratum, and I imagine all of it will vibe a lot better when I actually have access to the full kits of everyone, but still, I despise trying to completely change comp mid-playthrough (as in classes, changing expertise is fine by me, and I basically always have at least one character swap class at the start for the sake of race/class shenanigans). But I kind of need to get there first, so finding a party comp to do that is the first hurdle, after all.

EDIT: Thanks for everyone's input on this. Definitely seems like I'm largely the odd one out in this opinion, so it's been really interesting to hear others' thoughts on it and has helped me sort through some things I couldn't quite pin down when I originally made the post. Definitely back to the drawing board on this teambuilding, and maybe I'll shelve the Blade Dancer entirely for the time being (probably not though, I really wanna use it lol), but I've got a few new ideas and a few concepts I want to retry for sure.

I'm trying to put together a party for a new 100% playthrough and I've been looking at things, and I feel like I'm missing something even though I'm pretty sure I'm not, so I figured I'd just make a post about it:

Are Rovers and Pugilists the only classes with any sort of bind infliction?

I feel like there's more, but digging around, I can't find it, so yea, really feels like I've missed something.

For reference, I'm centering the party around a Blade Dancer Masurao, who is the only concrete "HAVE TO HAVE" member. I'm leaning towards Bunker-centric Dragoon for my main defense and Graced Poisoner (earthlian) Botanist for blinding enemies. Of course, my next step was looking at binders, which is why I ran into this question.

Rovers aren't really an option with Bunker Dragoon, and even if I don't use dragoon I'm at least trying to use different types of party members, and I've used a Rover in literally every party I've made because I adore its skillset. Pugilist is also something I've used a lot for its straightforward bind attacks. If I don't use one of those, it seems like I'm going to be reliant on union skills, which I'd really rather not do.

Idk, maybe I'm just blind. Wouldn't be the first time. I've got at least one other party member to sort out regardless (probably gonna go debuff-centric harbinger, maybe celestrian due to their higher TP).