How to Force Basically

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General Gameflow

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"

Perks and Drawbacks

Termology

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 Square 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 Techinics, 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 Square.

[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.

Technics

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

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

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 bonses and damage.

Attribute Bonus

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:

  1. 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.
  2. For each Technic equipped to the weapon that has the same attribute as the Technic used (including itself), a further 5% is added.
  3. 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.

Projectiles
Midrange AOE (Ra-)
Close-range AOE (Gi-)
Hold for Damage (Dam-)
Hold for Tracking (Nos-)
Hold for AOE (-Verse)
Persisting Damage (Sa-)
Support (Others)

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.

Fire
Ice
Lightning
Ground
Light
Dark

Weapons

Rods

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

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 Triangle on Wands.

Tech-Mags

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

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. Its Square 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

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

....Other Weapons? What other weapons?

Whips

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

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

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

Type Abilities

[Attribute] Hi-Speed

[Attribute] Advance

Technic Hi-Speed +

Technic Advance +

Full Charge Shot

Racial Differences

Human

Newman

Cast

Beast

Deuman

Notable Weapons

Where to go from here

Other Notes