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.

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 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.

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.