How to Vanguard Basically

1. Vanguard Lv50.
2. Equip Ignite Arts.
3. ???
4. Profit

Overview

A jack-of-all-trades type that can employ different combat styles to fill diverse roles in parties. A good fit with lighter weapons.

Don't worry about the lighter weapons part: the true spirit of Vanguards, is to do whatever the hell you want! With decent offensive stats both sides, and the ability to use any Photon Arts at a barely acceptable level, Vanguards are a walking talking Gurhal's Greatest Hits album.

The Greatest Hits of Gurhal

As per usual, we want a weapon to chain with, a weapon to break chains with, and some weapons for utility purposes.

However, unlike other types, Vanguards has the ability to pick whatever they want!

So here's a simple chart for some recommendations. Check the other guides for specific details.

	Melee	Ranged	Technic
Chaining	Twin Daggers, Twin Sabers, Twin Claws	Twin Handguns, Machine guns (Meseta Shot)	Foverse, Sazonde, Sabarta, Nagrants
Chain Break	Swords, Axes	Shotguns, Crossbows	Sazonde, Diga, Nosdiga
Utility	Double Sabers, Daggers	Rifles, Laser Cannons, Handguns	Zalure, Shifta, Deband, Resta, Anti

Chainbreakers and chain techs are oftentimes interchangable, dependent on your playstyle. Some utility weapons are also interchangable, for example, Rifles and Handguns, which, when used for the purpose of shooting buttons and weak points, doesn't make much of a difference.

However, there are also a few weapons which provides utilities that other weapons cannot match:

Laser Cannons: Charge Shot II can easily and safely stunlock all enemies within a fairly sizable area.

Machine Guns (Meseta Shot): allows you to chain quickly at range even with 0pp. Meseta consumes at a completely irrelevant rate (around 40 per shot, apparently). Slicers can also attack at range with 0 pp, it chains much slower but recovers pp much faster.

Zalure: basically a free damage multiplier that lasts 1 minute and a half. Why the heck not? Weapons with Zalure effect doesn't cut it: they have a much shorter duration and doesn't hit 100% of the time.

Of course, these are just recommendations. Try all the weapons out: finding something you are more comfortable with is more important than anything else.

How do I palette?

"There's too many choices! How do I make my palettes?"

Let's go over how we make palettes, now that we have so many potential weapons to choose from.

There's a few things we need to worry about when it comes to picking a weapon.

First, its purpose; Second, if it's an one-handed weapon, what we would using on the other hand; Lastly, what we should place next to it.

For example, we try to put Sazonde on our palette somewhere, for chaining purposes.

Since we just want chains, we don't care for the higher TEC score on Rods. Wands and Tech-Mags are much better as they cast faster and can strafe cast. Out of the two, we pick Wands, as we would like to pair it with a left-hand weapon. Left-hand weapons are generally ranged weapons, which Sazonde, being a ranged technic, works really well with. In this case, we pick a Machine Gun equipped with Meseta Shot to go with the Wand, as the Machine Gun can add additional chains quite quickly as the Sazonde resolves, and with meseta shot, allows the player some time to recover pp to compensate for Sazonde's high pp cost. Being a ranged chaining Technic, Sazonde naturally works well with ranged chain breakers, thus we put it right above a Shotgun, which is our primary ranged chainbreaker, to be easily accessed during fights.

(Of course, this is just an example, feel free to fit Sazonde wherever you like.)

Race Differences

Your ability and weapon composition is really just dependent on your race, more than anything.

Human

Humans are balanced in every direction as Vanguard: meh ATK, meh TEC, good DEF and MND, meh PP, meh ACC, and thus meh damage output. Feel free to do whatever you want.

Newman

Newmans have low ATK, but very high TEC and fine ACC. In other words, they are not very good at melee weapons, but very good with technic weapons. Ranged weapons usually wind up being just fine as they rely more on ACC than they do ATK.

In esssence, focus on technic weapons and ranged weapons. melee weapons can still have uses, despite newmans being worse with them than other races. TEC-based ranged weapons especially can be very good. In my experience, Longbows CS2 tends to outdamage Rifles, but is still outdamaged by Shotgun CS2, unless the Longbow way outclasses the Shotgun.

Also note that Newmans have very low DEF, which is dragged down by Vanguard's low DEF multiplier. Some defense abilities may be required to compensate.

Beast

Beasts have high ATK, high HP, but low TEC and low ACC. In other words, they have a focus on melee weapons, and are poor with technic weapons.

Don't let that scare you away from technic weapons, though. Technics provide a ton of utilities, and don't miss. Sure, you can't break using technics like Newmans probably can, but dealing 1 damage is the same as dealing 100 as far as chaining goes.

Melee damage is a lot less prone to missing compared to beast hunters (since vanguards have far better ACC), and ranged is also more effective. Would still recommend you to break off melee as opposed to ranged if you can, though.

Cast

Casts have good ATK, high ACC, but low TEC. In other words, a focus on ranged weapons and melee weapons, but are poor with technic weapons.

Similar to beasts, don't let that scare you away from technic weapons: Technics provide a ton of utilities, and can still provide great chaining support. Forget breaking with them, though.

With good ACC, casts can lean into both Ranged and Melee weapons, dependent on the situation and playstyle.

Deuman

Deumans have good ATK, TEC, and ACC, which allows them to use anything offensively.

Theortically.

Deuman's low PP and low PP regen holds them back considerably, as they don't fare well with high PP users (such as most melee photon arts, Sazonde, and most Charge Shots). As such, they desperately need ways to either recover pp quickly, or reduce pp usage. This means either specific weapons with low PP usage, and/or PP Save skills from reaching Lv30 on other Types.

Also worth mentioning that Deumans have atrocious defenses, and very much requires defensive abilities, such as Half Guard, to patch them up.

Traps

Vanguards have a proficiency with Traps, and is the only type that can use both EX traps, so let's go over them.

Trap have a couple properties: their damage scales to the player's level, they don't add chains, and all of them has a chance to inflict a specific status aliement when used.

Single-hit Traps are quantity over quality, and can be used early game to quickly melt bosses: even problematic enemies, such as Bag Deggas, would die to a dozen traps or two exploding under their feet. However, their damage becomes irrevelant towards higher-levels, as its damage does not scale as hard as enemy HP does. It's possible to attempt inflicting statuses with them, but generally they are too inefficient for that.

Burn Trap EX produces a persisting hitbox that hits 10 times when detonated, and has a good chance of inflicting Burn. While it can't chain, it's useful for inducing Burn on problematic enemies, such as Boosted enemies. Burn deals percentage based damage every other second, and can cause quite a bit of damage if it persists for a long time.

Stun Trap EX produces a persisting hitbox that hits 10 times when detonated, and has a good chance of inflicting Stun. While its use is largely replaced by Sazonde nowadays, it can cover some situations that Sazonde does not: it has a higher amount of locks (to deal with larger mob groups), can stun boosted enemies (who will ignore Sazonde), and can deal with enemies that can't be launched or knocked down (such as Komazlis). As such, it's still a useful tool to have on the palette.

Note that Traps don't drop from the vast majority of containers, meaning that the player cannot replenish their traps in the middle of a mission. Thus traps should be saved for particularly problematic enemies.

Ignite Arts

Weird to mention a Lv50 Ability in the beginner's guide, but this is worth a write up.

Ignite Arts costs 7 slots, and increases the level limit of all player Photon Arts from 20 to 25 (with the exception of Shifta and Deband). This may sound like a massive cost for something that seems insignificant, so let's go through what exactly it covers.