How to Force Basically
General Gameflow[edit | edit source]
A type that relies on Technics for attacking and providing support. The type's high TEC and MND make it adept with Technic weapons. For advanced players.
"haha Sazonde go BRRRRRRR"
tl;dr[edit | edit source]
- Weapons
- Notable Abilities
- Full-Charge Shot (Ranger Lv2): Vital if you use any ranged weapons.
- Hi-Speeds (Force Lv11 to Lv17): Follow Hi-Speed and Assist Hi-Speed is bad, allocate others based on your preferred element.
- Advances (Force Lv23 to Lv28): Hell yeah more damage.
- Half Defense (Vanguard Lv8): Clutch
- Auto-Heal Half/Critical (Default): when combined with Half Defense, makes you basically invinicible.
- Healing Item Boost (Hunter Lv2): Saves you some monomate uses.
- Yohmei Fan (All Lv5): Did you know yohmei makes every force weapon?
- PP Escape Save (All Lv3): Makes dodging easier.
- Partnership (Vanguard Lv6): Makes your partners better.
- Tips
- SAZONDE GO BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
- Learn how to strafe cast with wands.
Perks and Drawbacks[edit | edit source]
Perks[edit | edit source]
- Small amount of required Extend Type use (only 2 or 3 weapon categories), allows uses of many weapon outside of the types' expertise.
- Technics provides a huge range of coverage, between large amounts of attributes and various ways of damage.
- Significantly better Shifta, Deband, and Zalure gives the player higher damage and makes excellent support.
- Weapons are very customizable and easily repurposed, allows the player to get by large parts of the game with a few weapons.
Drawbacks[edit | edit source]
- Low HP and low DEF results in the player being easily killed.
- Low ATK is very poor with melee weapons and some ranged weapons.
- Reliance on Photon Arts levels results in weak early-game and a longer grind than others.
Termology[edit | edit source]
Casting Time / Casting Speed: The amount of time between pressing down the button and the Technic coming out.
Tri-casting: By casting multiple Technics in succession, the casting time of the Technics past the first one is shortened. Can apply to a maximum of three presses (hence tri-casting). Applies to Rods and Wands, but does not apply to Tech-Mags. Some Technics are incompatiable with Tri-cast.
Strafing: movement while holding L. Some weapons can be used while moving this way, such as Handguns, and, more importantly for us, Wands and Tech-Mags. Only the Technic on is usable, though. Some Technics are incompatiable with Strafing.
Strafe Casting: A glitch that allows the the player to basically skip the casting time, and quickly spamming Technics, by casting while alternating between strafing and not strafing (pressing and not pressing L). Applicable to both Wands and Tech-Mags, but can only be used with .
[Attribute] Hi-Speed/Advance: Abilities which enhances Technics of the mentioned attribute. Hi-speed shortens the casting time of those Technics, and Advance provides a high damage boost.
Empower Attribute: Instead of Status effects, Technic weapons have Empower [Attribute] abilities, which provides a flat damage boost to Technics of that attribute.
Damage Multiplier: The TEC % on Technics.
ailment Matching: If an enemy has a status ailment, a bonus 35% damage is added to a Technic attack that has an attribute corresponding to that ailment. The corresponding ailments are:
Attribute | Fire | Ice | Lightning | Ground | Light | Darkness |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ailment | Freeze | Burn | Confuse | Shock | Infect | Sleep |
Technics[edit | edit source]
Unlike Melee and Ranged weapons, Technic Weapons do not have inherent attacks. Instead, Technics must be linked to a Technic weapon for it to be able to attack. Similar to Melee and Ranged Weapons, attacks from accumlates chains, while attacks from breaks chains. Obviously, you would want to be linked with multi-hit attacks to deal chains quickly, while is linked with high damage, multi-hit, or multi-lock attacks.
As such, Technics are the centerpiece of a Force strategy. Choosing the right Technics is more important than using the right weapons, even.
Technics are separated by elements, and can be loosely categorized based on their effect:
Fire | Ice | Lightning | Ground | Light | Dark | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Projectile | Foie | Barta | Zonde | Diga | Nagrants | Megid |
Midrange AOE | Rafoie | Rabarta | Razonde | Radiga | Grants | Ramegid |
Close-range AOE | Gifoie | Gibarta | Gizonde | Gidiga | ||
Hold for Damage | Damfoie | Dambarta | Damdiga | Damgrants | Dammegid | |
Hold for Tracking | Noszonde | Nosdiga | Nosmegid | |||
Hold for AOE | Diverse | Megiverse | ||||
Persisting Damage | Foverse | Sabarta | Sazonde | Samegid | ||
Support | Shifta, Jellen | Deband, Zalure | Anti, Resta |
Note: despite the naming convention, Foverse works very differently from Diverse and Megiverse, and is more akin to the Sa-spells.
We will discuss these Technics from two angles: Attributes and Effects.
There's a few reasons Attributes are very important for Forces:
Empower Attribute[edit | edit source]
Unlike Melee and Ranged Weapons, Technic Weapons does not have attached Status effects, and instead have Empower [Attribute], which boosts the damage of offensive Technics of that Attribute from the weapon. The boost is a flat boost, and applies regardless of enemy attribute. Since each weapon only Empowers one attribute at a time, ideally we want to fit multiple Technics of that attribute onto that weapon to maximize the damage boost.
Attribute Based Type Abilities[edit | edit source]
Forces gain 16 Abilities related to Attributes: Hi-speed and Advances for offensive Technics of each Attribute, Resta, and Support Technics. Hi-speed shortens the casting time of Technics of the designated attribute, while Advance provides a sizable damage boost to all offensive Technics of the designated attribute. Bringing every attribute ability is not realistic, since we don't have the room to fit all the abilities. Instead, we want to focus on a few Technic schools, so we have more room to stack damage bonuses and hi-speeds.
Attribute Bonus[edit | edit source]
Attribute Bonus is a rather big part of damage. By matching up the correct attribute, the player can gain a hefty bonus to their weapon ATK. Unlike other weapons, Technic Weapons has three stages of attribute bonus stacking:
- the attribute of the Technic used is matched with the attribute of the enemy. If the attributes match correctly, the weapon gains a 30% attack boost.
- For each Technic equipped to the weapon that has the same attribute as the Technic used (including itself), a further 5% is added.
- If the attribute of the weapon used is the same as the attribute of the Technic used, the % of the weapon is also added.
Example cases:
Weapon Used | Technic Used | Enemy Attribute | Result | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Example #1 | Wand (Neutral 0%)
Barta, Foie |
Barta | Fire | Barta is the correct matchup against a Fire enemy, thus providing a 30% weapon attack boost.
Since there's 1 Technic equipped with the same attribute as Barta (Barta itself), it gains a further 5% boost, for a total of 35% boost. |
Example #2 | Wand (Fire 25%)
Barta, Foie |
Barta | Fire | Same reason as above, for 35% boost.
The attribute of the weapon used is not checked if it's not the same as the Technic used. Even if it's the same as the enemy's. |
Example #3 | Wand (Fire 25%)
Barta, Rabarta |
Barta | Fire | Barta is the correct matchup against a Fire enemy, thus providing a 30% weapon attack boost.
Since there's 2 Technic equipped with the same attribute as Barta (Barta and Rabarta), it gains a further 5x2% boost, for a total of 40% boost. |
Example #4 | Wand (Ice 25%)
Barta, Rabarta |
Barta | Fire | Barta is the correct matchup against a Fire enemy, thus providing a 30% weapon attack boost.
Since there's 2 Technic equipped with the same attribute as Barta (Barta and Rabarta), it gains a further 5x2% boost. Since the Wand has the same attribute as the Technic used, the weapon's % is added, for a total of 65% boost. |
Example #5 | Wand (Ice 25%)
Barta, Rabarta |
Barta | Ice | 0%. Attribute boosts does not apply if the matchup isn't correct. |
In other words, for optimal damage, we should aim to strap Technics onto Rods of the same attribute, and then match it up against the correct enemies. While it's beneficial to have a lot of Technics with the same attribute for that 5% bonus, it comes up too little and increases so little that the damage is barely noticable, so don't feel obligated to use only one attribute on one Rod.
With these, building Technic Setup is fairly straight forward: pick an attribute, fit Technics onto a Rod that empowers that attribute, and equip the appropriate Hi-speed and Advances.
Which attribute do we pick then? Technic Schools are not born equal. Some attributes have very good Technics so strong that you'd use them on every enemy, while others either have nothing notable, or barely have one half-way decent one. It's not really worth gimping yourself just to hit Attribute weaknesses, and, if you need to use a specific Technic often, you want to avoid bloating your palette with Technics that you wouldn't usually use.
Another thing to mention, is the importance of PA levels for Technics. Technics gets a huge upgrade at Lv11, and another at Lv21. Besides the usual improved damage, they also gain improved range, improved pp efficiency, improved hitbox coverage, and in some cases, improved hit count. This is a big reason why Technics are so much more devastating in the hands of a Force than other types. Obtaining high Lv PAs, then, is incredibly important, and directly affects the viability of many Technics.
Anyway, let's first look over the effects of each technic category and see how they work out.
Once we understood how Technics work out, let's see how each school of attribute performs. Attribute is important to how we distribute Technic setups, weapons with Empower effects, and Attribute Advance/Hi-speed abilities, after all.
Ailment Matching[edit | edit source]
Didn't know where to put this, so here this is.
If an enemy has a Status effect, a bonus 35% damage is added to a Technic attack that has an attribute corresponding to that status ailment. The corresponding ailments are:
Attribute | Fire | Ice | Lightning | Ground | Light | Darkness |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ailment | Freeze | Burn | Confuse | Shock | Infect | Sleep |
The damage bonus is incredibly massive, and can pair with various [ailment] Strike abilities for more damage. However, this mechanic is far too unwieldy:
First, ailments inflicted are dependent on the Technic themselves. Some attribute schools are too spread out ailment wise, and may require the player to use sub-par Technics, which is counter-productive. For example, Sabarta, the best Ice Technic, does not inflict any status ailment at all. For Dark Technics, only Megid and Dammegid inflicts Infect; Ramegid, Nosmegid, and Megiverse have Poison, Rage, and Drain attached respectively instead.
Second, due to the way ailments are attached to attribute schools, you may wind up using Technics on enemies of badly matched attributes, which is once again counter-productive. For example, if you want to amplify your Ice Technics on a fire enemy, you'd have to inflict Burn on them, which is only attached to Fire Technics.
Third, ailment inflict rates are pretty bad and unrealiable. The rates on Technics are generally quite bad, and even weapons with 50% or more status rates, such as the Frost Shot, are still unrealiable. Not to mention a Force needs to go out of their way to set one up.
So like, keep this thing in mind. It's an inherent mechanic, so it doesn't cost you anything to use it when it comes up, (in multiplayer especially), but don't dedicate yourself to it.
Weapons[edit | edit source]
Rods[edit | edit source]
Read More: Rods
Rods is the primary Technic weapon of choice for Forces. It can equip 4 Technics, has vastly more TEC than Wands and Tech-Mags, and is triple-castable. They are the primary choice when it comes to chainbreaking, as they have by very far the highest TEC out of the three Technic weapons. In fact, the damage difference is so much that you should probably always use a Rod to break chains.
When it comes to chaining, though, it has a major weakness: Rods cannot cast while Strafing. The lack of ability to Strafe Cast affects chaining somewhat: while does not affect some tools such as Foverse (only stacks once) and Sazonde (only stacks three times, so a triple-cast), it does affects other more spammable Technics, such as Nagrants and Diga. You should keep that in mind while equipping Technics.
Also, if the R-side of Rods is not linked with any Technics, R would allow the player to Guard instead. Quite a good feature if you like Guarding.
Wands[edit | edit source]
Read More: Wands
Wands go on the right-hand, allows equipping 2 Techs, and has significantly worse TEC scores than Rods (usually around half). Wands' casting speed is faster than Rods, allow both Triple-Casting and Strafe Casting, which allows it to cast quickly whether you are standing still or strafing.
Wands are primarily used for Chaining, since they can cast significantly faster than Rods. It also pairs well with R-Mags for passive chain during a Strafe Casting spam session. Another popular choice is Shields, which allows Guarding while strafing. Since chainbreaking damage is better off left to Rods, support Technics such as Zalure is a popular option for on Wands.
Tech-Mags[edit | edit source]
Read More: Tech-Mags
Tech-Mags go on the left-hand, allows equipping 2 Techs, and has significantly worse TEC scores even compared to Wands (usually around half). Tech-Mags' casting speed is faster than Wands, and allows Strafe Casting but not Triple-Casting. In other words, it's slower than Wands when standing still, while being faster than Wands when Strafing. Tech-Mags also commonly have 80% PP usage, and 60% PP usage in some cases, which makes them much sustainable for strafe casting Technic spams.
Similar to Wands, Tech-Mags has such low TEC compared to Rods that chain breaking on one is really not recommended. Support Technics such as Zalure is a popular option on Tech-Mags as well.
The biggest problem with Tech-Mags, though, isn't the Tech-Mags themselves, but rather, what to put on the right-hand. Right-hand are almost all melee weapons, none of which Forces care about. Save for maybe Daggers for Shisoku Tenkai-zan as a travelling PA, or maybe Slicers in some cases. You can use Wands too, but in my opinon, at that point you are probably better served by either splitting them up or just use a Rod.
Longbows[edit | edit source]
Read More: Longbows
Longbows are a Ranged Weapon that uses TEC instead of ATK for damage. It's basically a budget Rifle for Forces: its normal shot fires 1 shot pre press in a straight line, but has a small lag after fire; its Charge Shot 1 shoots a big shot, similar to Rifles, but instead of exploding for 2~3 hits, it pierces enemies for 1 hit per enemy; its Charge Shot 2 has the player jump up, and fire 4 shots directly downwards in front of the player, and pierces (not that it's gonna pierce anything at that angle). Its range is also slighter shorter than Rifles for some reason.
Despite sounding really poor, Longbows are actually fairly useful. As a Ranged Weapon, Longbows don't need any Photon Arts to be effective, which makes it very useful for early game, where players don't have their Technics leveled yet.
Longbow's CS1 is fairly useful for early game, where smaller mobs can often be killed between one or two Charge Shots. With piercing, it's possible to kill two or three enemies in one or two Charge Shots, even without chains.
Longbow's CS2 is pretty useful as a chainbreaking option. While it doesn't outdamage crazy Technics like Diga and Sazonde, it makes a good alternative single-target damage option for attributes without such strong Technics, such as Ice, Dark or Light attributes. It also works well with Foverse.
Longbow is very bad, but at least you can use FPS mode for switches, which is something Forces may otherwise struggle to setup.
The issue with both Longbows and Ranged Weapons on Force in general, is that they require additional resources to optimize that you wouldn't otherwise need to get. Technics don't miss, so there's no reason for Forces to put any Rebirth into ACC. However, Longbows not only requires ACC to hit things, but also requires it as a part of its damage, meaning to use Longbows long-term, Forces will have to go out of their way to rebirth for a stat they otherwise would never need. At least Full Charge Shot is incredibly easy to get.
Cards[edit | edit source]
Read More: Cards
Cards are also a Ranged Weapon that uses TEC instead of ATK, but it's far more janky than Longbows are. For starters, Cards gain an additional bullet for its normal attacks and Charge Shots if the PA level is above 21, which basically immediately locks the weapon type to mid-late game. Then, both its normal shot and Charge Shot 1 fires 2 to 3 bullets, that stays in place for a second before auto-tracking a close-by enemy. The range for its track is quite short, and usually would require a Range Extension to hit anything without being right up to them. Theortically it can do a lot of damage with Charge Shot 1, but the delay and short range can hinder its effectiveness. Charge Shot 2 fires multiple shots at a long distance. It's pretty cool, but similar to Rifles CS2, it's slow, not as much damage as you'd like, has weird ranges, and fizzles if you get hit. Fancy but unwieldy.
So uhh, it exists, I guess.
Other Weapon Considerations[edit | edit source]
....Other Weapons? What other weapons?
Whips[edit | edit source]
Read More: Whips
So, Sega, let me get this straight:
As support for Force, a Type with the weakest melee damage, you decided to give them a weapon that's incredibly slow, chains poorly, and has one of the lowest melee damages out of all melee weapons?
Why?
By the way, Whips provides a category bonus to TEC. Having more TEC is good, except that Whips are a right hand weapon, meaning the only things that gain benefits from this TEC boost is Tech-Mags (which already has such low damage that you shouldn't be using it for damage purposes), Cards (which are jank), and R-Mags (for which any damage above 1 might as well be the same). So yeah.
Man, Ursula really is a compliation of "the weakest hits of Force", eh.
Twin Daggers[edit | edit source]
Read More: Twin Daggers
I guess you can chain well with it when combined with Foverse.
Not much of a reason for Force to use a low damage melee weapon, though.
R-Mags[edit | edit source]
Read More: R-Mags
Works well with Wands and Strafe Casting. It being left-hand makes it difficult to fit with other weapons, though.
General Tips[edit | edit source]
- Since Photon Arts Level is extremely important to Forces, it might be a good idea to use another character of high level (preferably at least Lv100) to obtain Lv21+ Technics first before starting a Force character, and then use the Shared Storage to pass them to the Force character.
- Each Technic can be linked to a Technic weapon once; for example, if Sazonde is linked to the of a Rod, you cannot link another copy of Sazonde onto the Rod.
- As such, if you want multiple copies of Technic, you need to bring at least two Technic weapons.
- Since everything on a Technic weapon consumes PP, it's not a bad idea to bring something that restores PP.
- Slicers, for example.
- Newmans actually have high enough PP regen that they can self-sustain without a PP restore weapon after you bring some sort of PP reduction ability/weapon.
- Since you already gain 30% Attribute bonus from matching up the right Technics, it's fine to mismatch your the attribute of your Technics and Technic weapons.
- While not optimal, it can be a viable strategy to using only a few Technic weapons and swapping out the Technics equipped to match the attributes.
- For Technics such as Foverse or Sazonde, which you will likely use against most enemies, even the ones of the same attribute (fire and lightning respectively), it could be valuable to avoid matching the attribute of Technics and the weapons deliberately to lessen the attribute damage reduction.
- On the other hand, Empowers are very powerful, and should be played for and built around.
- Since Zalure, Jellen, Shifta, Deband, Anti, and Diverse do not deal any damage, the TEC and PA% of the weapon used for them is irrevelant.
- Despite the Empower Healing present on many Tech-Mags, the amount they heal for with Resta usually ends up being lower than Wands of equal rarity anyway, due to their lower TEC. Even Wands would heal for less than Rods, for a similar reason.
- However, it's possible for the heal amount to be far above what the player would realistically need to ever heal for (for example, if a high-level player Restas from a Rod while not having Rebirthed for any HP yet), making optimizing the heal amount unnecessary.
- Technics do not miss, therefore any ACC boosts is useless unless you are dipping into ranged weapons, such as Longbows.
Type Abilities[edit | edit source]
[Attribute] Hi-Speed[edit | edit source]
Increases the casting speed of the Technic of the attribute by 50% for 1 slot. Very good for Technics of that attribute.
Note that Light Hi-speed does not make Resta faster; instead, its speed is increased by Follow Hi-speed.
[Attribute] Advance[edit | edit source]
Increases the damage of Offensive Technics of that attribute by 8% for 1 slot. Incredibly good, of course.
It's best to line-up chain-breakers with the damage boost. Chainers also get a sizable boost but not really necessary if you can't make the space for it.
Technic Hi-Speed +[edit | edit source]
Increases the casting speed of all Technics by 20% for 3 slots.
Worse than specific hi-speeds in terms of efficiency, but it has a much bigger coverage. Normally, a player would bring Resta, Shifta & Deband, and two or more attributes of offensive Technics. To boost all these would require Follow Hi-speed, Support Hi-speed, and two or more Attribute Hi-speeds, which would total up to more than 3 slots. Boost for Resta, Shifta and Deband isn't really necessary, since most of the time you would be casting them outside of combat situations, but a boost for them can be convenient.
Ultimately down to preference.
Technic Advance +[edit | edit source]
Increases the damage of all Offensive Technics by 4% for 2 slots. Not really good, as 2 slots for 4% is not cost effective, and it's much worse than the [Attribute] Advances if you are using less than 2 sets of attributes. It's not the worst thing to strap if you aren't using the slots for anything else, though.
Full Charge Shot[edit | edit source]
If you intend on using Longbows, definitely grab Full Charge Shot (Ranger Lv2) to heavily improve its damage. 1 slot is pretty easy to spare.
Half Defense[edit | edit source]
If your HP is above 33%, and take damage that deals more than 50% of your HP, you will be left with 1 HP. Costs 3 slots from Vanguard Lv8. Very convenient ability for Forces, who naturally has very low HP and low DEF. Also allows you to forgo Rebirth bonuses to your DEF and HP for TEC.
Racial Differences[edit | edit source]
Human[edit | edit source]
Human is probably the second best Force next to Newmans: the second highest PP total at 200~220 PP, the third best TEC, and decent PP regen. They also get a boost to Mirage Blast, since it scales off TEC. Human performs better defensively than newmans, but performs significantly worse everywhere else due to significantly lower PP regen and TEC. In other words, human Force can work well early-game, but becomes much worse toward mid and late-game.
Newman[edit | edit source]
The absolute kings of Force, with a colossal 230~250 PP, insane PP regen, and sky-high TEC. Even Mirage Blast scales off TEC!
If you wanna play Force, you should probably play Newman.
Unfortunately, Newman does have very poor HP and DEF, which is made especially apparent by Force's low HP and DEF multiplier. Some defensive abilities, such as Half Defense, should be obtained to remedy that.
Cast[edit | edit source]
Casts has the lowest TEC out of all races, and gets their SUV Weapons gimped, as they scale off ATK. The fact that Technic do not miss also wastes Casts' high ACC.
So yeah, don't.
Beast[edit | edit source]
Beasts has the second lowest TEC out of all races, and gets their Nanoblast gimped, as they scale off ATK. So yeah, probably don't.
But hey, at least the fact that Technics do not miss covers up Beasts' weakness in ACC.
Deuman[edit | edit source]
Deumans have good TEC, and a pretty good Infinity Blast on Force. They can do very good damage, potentially even higher damage than Newmans while using their Blast.
However, Deuman's extremely low durability, which is further amplified by Force's low multipliers, makes a Deuman Force extremely risky to play. Deuman also has the lowest PP regen out of all races, which means they will need a lot more setup than others in order to remedy that weakness.
You can give it a shot if you'd like.
Notable Weapons[edit | edit source]
Mr. Ecoeco Stick: Extremely easily accessible Rod with a 70% PP usage and respectable TEC score. Incredibly useful early-game, and with an Extend Code, also incredibly useful mid-to-late-game.
Quick mention to the Kubara replica weapons: they have 110% PP usage and 90% PA damage, which makes them extremely bad for Forces. Replica Longbows, though, can very easily avoid the downside by simply not equipping a PA, which can be valuable to use.
Where to go from here[edit | edit source]
Get higher level photon arts discs, of course. That is more important than landing more Rods and Levels.
Speaking of Rods, look into getting the Psycho Wand: 70% PP usage, very high TEC upon extending, and gets to empower any attribute. Really indispensible for Forces.
Getting higher type level is also important, as Forces have a lot of great abilities at high levels, such as PP Technic Save and various Advances. Speaking of, PP Technic Save is generally a lot better than Spellslinger, since Spellslinger doesn't cover Strafe Casting, Single-cast Technics (such as Nos-, Dam- and Foverse), and doesn't cover Tech-Mags. However, they stack, so if you have the spare slots you can bring both.
Rebirth for TEC too, of course.