Foreword
This guide goes over mechanics that are mentioned in our Reviews, but not elaborated on in detail to fully iterate what an ID or team of IDs can do with their utility and how they fit into teams and/or adopt a certain play style. It’ll also mention all IDs and teams tied to that specific mechanic. This guide also aims to explain certain gameplay mechanics that aren’t explained enough in-game.
Discarding and Insight Locking
Related IDs: Dieci Rodion, Dieci Hong Lu, Dieci Yi Sang, and Dieci Meursault
Discarding is relatively straightforward in what it does. The effect randomly deletes skills that are selectable during the Chaining phase from the Dashboard, allowing you to cycle through skills faster. However, for the Dieci Association of IDs, they gain or lose Insight depending on the rank of the last skill you’ve discarded, for example, Discarding an S3 sets your Insight to 3, in which other skills that are dependent on your value of Insight will be activated.
Insight Locking is a technique that can be used by discarding a certain skill, and then using a defense skill so that you won’t discard anything else, effectively locking your Insight to a certain value. Dieci Hong Lu is the most well known case of Insight Locking as both his damage and Clashes skyrocket if his Insight is at a value of 3. Other Dieci IDs can utilize Insight Locking as well, Dieci Yi Sang for example being able to inflict more sinking on his S2 if he is kept at a higher Insight value. However, more often than not it’s not really worth using this technique with IDs such as Dieci Yi Sang, Rodion, and Meursault as they don’t really benefit from Insight Locking as much as Hong Lu.
Swordplay of the Homeland
Related IDs: Blade Lineage Meursault, Blade Lineage Yi Sang, Blade Lineage Faust, Blade Lineage Sinclair, Blade Lineage Outis, Blade Lineage Don
Swordplay of the Homeland is relatively straightforward and is exclusive to the Blade Lineage faction of IDs. Blade Lineage Meursault provides this status with his Passive of the same name which makes him pretty much mandatory for a Blade Lineage team to actually be usable, because without this status, they all severely lack in multiple different areas, whether it be Poise generation or just damage.
Starting out with the Passive, whenever he gains Poise, whether it be Potency or Count, he will give +1 Poise Potency and Count to 2 other Blade Lineage allies with no or the least Poise, and if you have the full team, he’ll give 2 Poise Potency and Count instead. He will always also apply the Swordplay of the Homeland buff to all other Blade Lineage allies.
The buff, Swordplay of the Homeland, buffs the unit’s S1 and S2 if they have 5+ Poise by giving them Coin Power, the amount of which is 3 divided by the number of Coins, which can always be a minimum of 1, and deals +(30/# of Coins) damage on a Critical Hit. At 7+ Poise it also gives the unit’s S3 +(30/# of Coins)% more damage and +(50/# of Coins)% on Critical Hit .
This makes your game plan with the team simple: Activate Blade Lineage Meursault’s Passive as often as possible for the other Blade Lineage allies. This is easily done by getting 3 Pride Resonance for his Passive to activate.
Swordplay of the Homeland also has 2 more variations as a buff, Sword of the Homeland - Rending and Sword of the Homeland - Penetrating, both of which also provided by Blade Lineage Meursault.
Sword of the Homeland - Rending would give its user Final Power by the effect’s count for their Skill 1 and Sword of the Homeland Mending would do the same but for the user’s Skill 2.
Charge Potency
Related IDs: Multicrack Faust, Multicrack Heathcliff, W Corp Outis
Charge Potency is an attribute that only certain IDs can obtain if they have a Passive for it. Charge Potency does something different depending on which ID has it, and is mainly used as a certain type of permanent Counter which allows IDs who can obtain it to scale further in longer fights, and isn’t 100% tied down to the burst nature of Charge Count IDs like W Ryoshu and W Don.
Butterfly (“The Living” and “The Departed”)
Related IDs and EGO: Solemn Lament Gregor (EGO), Lobotomy EGO: Solemn Lament Yi Sang
Butterfly is split into two different keywords, “The Living” and “The Departed.” Its Potency is called The Living, and its Count is called The Departed.
Whenever you attack an enemy with Butterfly, you heal “The Living” divided by 4 SP, so if the enemy would have 8 of “The Living”, you would heal 2 SP on hit. The enemy will also take Gloom damage if their SP is less than 0, the number of which is determined by the amount of Sinking Potency the enemy has, divided by 5, and then multiplied by the number of The Departed you have. For example, if you had 10 Sinking Potency on the enemy, and 10 “The Departed” on the enemy, you’ll be doing 20 Gloom Damage to the enemy. The damage dealt from this status is capped at 30 per hit, and would always deal half damage to targets without SP.
Finally, at the end of the turn, "The Departed" is set to 0, and "The Living" is converted to Sinking Potency, which is then converted to The Departed.
Butterfly is a great source of extra Gloom Damage as well as Sinking Potency, thanks to it’s conversion effect from "The Living". Combined with fact that it can also provide SP healing, it makes Butterfly a great alternative for damaging enemies with Sinking.