[DFFOO JP][Llyud Lufenia+] Zell, Vayne, Llyud | Faster pace comp with a lot of consecutive turns
4I am kinda surprised that I left Zell on HA only considering he was my first JP character alongside Ignis and Exdeath, and those three carried my early clears of previous content for materials.
I do have a fist ultima weapon so he can have it (actually doing it for lyse later on lol). Should he have HA+3 he would have been doing 10K more per HP dump, so bear that in mind.
Zell's C90 awakenings:
Zell's EX upgrade is quite massive actually. Not only does his EX now have 4 dumps, it also comes with upgraded burning rave combo and meteor barrage combo. The combo themselves also use the initiating attack and inflict the debuffs and grant you the buffs from using punch rush or booya. Structurally they seem to be the same as their skill version (e.g. 4 hit AoE with 100% "splash"), but they seem stronger in practice.
In generally, I prefer meteor combo more, since it comes with a stronger DEF down debuff (60% instead of 30%), same amount of mBRV up (40%) and an additional PHY ATK up (30%). It also destroys single target with more HP dumps. Do beware that both the skill versions and combo version cancel the duel buff and collectively revert themselves back to either BRV/HP attack or Punch Rush/Booya pairs, so choose wisely.
Zell's attacks structurally are the same, so in general he is still having just a few BRV hits with damage refunds in between HP dumps. Similar to Llyud, he is susceptible to BRV gain reduction, so when I do my non-synergy test I may probably toss them with a BRV gain character and see how well they are doing.
Zell's C88 is a partial solution to this low BRV hit problem as well. It increases his BRV caps by 30%, so it is easier for him to accumulate BRV to reach HP damage cap (and refund more). Since it sets up duel as well, it can be used to force a consecutive Meteor Barrage after using a combo from a previous EX. Under Zell's LD though, do beware the C88 is still an attack and will break the enemy, causing consecutive turns and increase the stacks leading to "My Final Heaven". I got a few hiccups in this run having forgetten about this.
What is this team setup?
The idea is Llyud is pretty much the sole support with his 5 stack Ex and LD buffs. Zell will apply the debuffs alongside the CAs (technically only Fran and Jack). This is a fast pace but risky setup for this orb, because the only person who can uptick the orb is Llyud and Vivi LDCA, all the while Zell and Vayne are enjoying their consecutive turns. Vayne is less of the star here, as the lack of intensive buffs and debuff setup hampers his damage potential greatly, as one can see after the 30% HP thresholds. It is more a Zell taking advantage of Vayne's BT kind of setup, with a little bit of CoD abuse on the side (3 turns lol). Zell pretty much carried the damage for the last phase.
This setup is rather volatile with 2 consecutive turn abusers and it is very easy to go overboard with the turns and the orb would die. It is designed with around 3 breathing rooms:
1. Vivi LDCA - sacrificing another CA for potential debuffing, but not only was Vivi CA on a turn abuser a safety net to boost the orb while going ham with the turns, it also happened to be enough to trigger Odin's 30% ATK up passive that requires a threshold of HP lost, while not consuming 50% and failing Llyud's "ally must be above 50% HP for 80% BRV dmg up for himself" requirement.
2. Summon
3. Friend summon that has less turn abuse (way less than Zell in his own mini "BT" phase)
This time around without Ashe, Llyud in a fast pace team certainly played out way more hectic than before. He had to be balancing between orb management, getting to EX stack 5 as soon as possible, and healing himself., the slowness of building up stack did become more apparent, yet it is still manageable.
Also, since Llyud wants to use his Ex as soon as possible, it caused me to change Vayne's rotation a little bit by starting off with LD instead of normally building up with Mach Wave, 2 turns then LD, then EX, as I can just cut to the EX immediately after and rebuild 3 stacks. Zell has a similar situation with using EX inside of his LD cycle. So Llyud's EX charging other EX may encourage you to think of ways to play your other characters differently.
Also apparently in-game notice spoiled that Noctis BT+ alongside Prompto Lv90 is incoming for the first part of Level 90 awakening commemorating campaign. As much as I want Noctis I may hold off for a bit and see who the next BT+ is. I sincerely hope that Prompto EX++ is absolute carnage lol.