Something to add about diamond dust; You can use the first hit to finish an enemies stagger gauge since the bulk of the will damage is in the first hit, and then the second hit on a staggered enemy will take you to 1.3x immediately.
The downside to using it like that is that you’ll have less time during the stagger window to use more powerful abilities. Diamond dust freezes time when used but if the first hit causes a stagger, time will resume during the animation of the second hit instead of throughout the entire animation
@@jakemoore5077 when you very efficiently use both rift slip and cold snap you can get up to three additional zaketsukens bc cold snap freeze pauses the stagger meter and the second hit in dust is significantly weaker than the first but it's still good enough to get to 1.30 so it's worth doing anyway, though if you really wanna maximize stagger you should be staggering with a lv.4 megaflare I guess
Happens a lot in video games when people see things in demos or trailers. Once the full game releases and you can stack other things on top of it it becomes pretty good. But by itself it's not that great. You see what other tools he is using to make lightning rod a good cast. But alone not so great in my opinion which is why everyone stacks other stuff on top of it. I can guarantee you if he had one spell to choose and that's all he can use. It would not be lightning rod.
My final build so to speak going into the end of the game was Heatwave, Will of Wykes, Lightning Rod, Satellite, Gigaflare, Diamond Dust, with pheonix, bahamut, and garuda as feats. Easily ramped up 140k staggers as will of wykes hits lightnining rod over 200 times, diamond dust to break stagger to start at to bring the multiplier up inmediately, sattelite cause you can continue to fire magic whilst charging megaflare, gigaflare for the big dam, it was a truly brutal combo and i was all for it!
@@inzone88yeah Rebirth is one of the best trash killers, apart from like level 5 Zen. You just go in and delete all weaker enemies immediately upon use.
Gigaflare+Lightning Rod…. Haven’t taken it off since I unlocked Bahamut. As for rift slip… I have only used it during Odin’s Chronolith Trial. I’ve tried to find videos going over how to use it effectively but have found very little to nothing. I love to save Diamond Dust to finish off a stagger bar and the second hit buffs the multiplier on the staggered enemy.
Outside of the skills you mentioned, two of my favourites are Judgement Bolt and Ignition. The latter in particular, during encounters with multiple opponents, is crazy strong and fun
you can also reactive impulse and have the orbs do even more stagger damage when they're level two or three (blue-orange and then pure orange). I've taken out 75% of a stagger bar in the training room with that and wicked wheel though not entirely sure why it sometimes does 75 or sometimes does up to 50. maybe if it's reactivated right when you hit 50 from wicked wheel i guess.
i beat the game yesterday and i have used 1 ability on this list (diamond dust). so nice that there's so much viability in builds and it's really up to you on which one you like the best
I love using gigaflare, it eats at bosses' health bars (even the final boss). paring it with setting off some megaflares or a flames of rebirth for crowd control, really can be an op build for raw damage output
While not that great on single target bosses, I cant get rid of Ignition for trash packs. Gathers them all up and nearly wipes them all out in a single cast.
Garuda's Claw combo to knock the stagger down to half, use her Scorpion Spear to yoink them down, then spam Impulse and Phoenix wings. Works every time.
shiva core ability is the most broken shit in the game, it's not even close the fact that you can freeze everything in the screen for almost 10s without any cooldown on the ability is just...
One of my favorite combinations is Garudas Ultimate in combination with Lightning Rod because you can still use other Skills to trigger the Rod while the Storm itself does DMG and also triggers the Rod
The storm might not be the most powerful ability but on trash mobs it is the most hilarious. I would literally drop it and just afk the rest of the encounter. Shame Clive doesn't have as good taunts as Dante.
I hate using that one because you literally cannot see shit inside it. I tried it out once on an elite mob, and he just went to town on me because I couldn't react to anything he was doing while he was standing inside the tornado making him basically invisible lol.
@@Tohlemiach I ended up swapping it out end game for the Ramuh ones for that reason, but it was pretty good for getting extra damage ticks during a stagger. It would just last longer than the stagger phase and yeah elite mobs could get back up.
My combo currently(Lv. 49) does about 194K damage on a stagger. Build up Zantetsuken with Dancing Steel. Put it away for later. Stagger using just basic combos. Once you hit the stagger, use: Diamond Dust Lightning Rod Gigaflare Lv. 5 Zantetsuken Judgment Bolt Windup Burning Blade I will admit, it's very, very backloaded damage. Your fights will take awhile, but the health bar gets deleted once you stagger.
You should look into rift slip/cold snap if you really want to optimize your stagger combo. My stagger combo at level 50 right now does around 380k damage. Have zantetsuken lvl5 ready Get enemy 1 hit away from stagger Megaflare level 4 Lightning rod Diamond dust Rift slip/cold snap Limit break + lvl5 zantetsuken Rift slip/cold snap Dancing steel Rift slip/cold snap Flames of rebirth Rift slip/cold snap Limit break + gigaflare Rift slip/cold snap Lvl5 zantetsuken Rift slip/cold snap Lightning rod + dancing steel Rift slip/cold snap Limit break + lvl5 zantetsuken Rift slip/cold snap Diamond dust Rift slip/cold snap And then you just do any normal combo to the enemy for the next 3ish seconds. Rift slip/cold snap freezes the stagger meter for a while which lets you do extremely long stagger combos. I'm able to fit two diamond dusts in one stagger window which is pretty insane
I accept that it's not really optimal, but pairing Impulse with Satellite put in a *lot* of work for me in the back half of my playthrough. Very effective for maintaining distance while you learn/improve at managing an enemy's skillset and chunking away at the stagger gauge.
one of my favorites is upheaval, idk if it's actually that efficient dps wise but it feels amazing to slam down from super high as an aerial combo ender
damn, I havent used any of the top 3 in my whole playthrough. I did read the Ifrit one and thought, that it sounds busted, but that was at a point where I was just too comfortable with the setup I had going for myself to change stuff around.
i use gouge over wicked wheel personally. shiva ultimate to drop will to half>garuda pull to knock them down>gouge. otherwise i use basically all these except heatwave in my build. with lightning rod and dancign steel CDR acc
Ah no wonder after cruising thru the entire game post Ifrit I started dying again in the Odin and Ultima fights, I dropped Will of the Wykes from my rotation b/c I was kind of bored of my kit and wanted to try new skills. Oops.
I'm personally fond of Shiva's Mesmerize. It does respectable damage for something with such a short cooldown, it helps gather weak enemies for cleanup, and it's very quick and noncommittal. There's rarely a situation where I shouldn't be using it if it's on the bar.
I wouldn't say "strongest" but one of my favorite skill combo's in the game for random enemies is Mesmerize into Upheaval. Absolutely obloterates groups of basic enemies. One of the later sidequests wiped out an entire wave of enemies in 2 attacks.
Yeah those are good for mobs for sure. I wish there was a way in the game to quickly swap loadouts without having to replace each skill one by one. I would have a loadout for mobs, and a loadout for elites and bosses….
Meh. It’s strong but it barely does more damage then giga flair while lacking really any synergy with other skills due to how it’s cast. It also has no aoe use so you can’t really use it at all against mobs. It’s stagger strength isn’t really a factor either since wicked wheel and diamond dust will handle all your stagger needs.
@@SH1NK1R01 i always have used it as a staggered ender, because it stops time you can sneak it in the last second of stagger especially with LB activated. I'm sure there are more optimal set ups though.
Raging fists is my favorite counter and was also left out. But he includes a lot of other good counters so I guess that makes sense. Judgment bolt is basically just worse than gigaflare and Diamond dust.
I've been stuck on aerial blast since unlocking it. Really fun to use air juggle combo's and it tracks and follows targets. Just beat Bahamut and still haven't taken it off. After watching this, may switch up a bit. Kinda wish you could preset a combo for a specific button combo between all icon's. GG's.
Best part of the combat in this game is hands down the insane amount of synergy opportunities with pretty much everything. I'm sure there's a minmax "best" setup, but through my regular playthrough it felt great to just be able to constantly evolve your kit to taste. Never really felt like you needed to replace it either if you didn't like something, just refine.
One of the things I love about this game is the versatility between play styles. Almost all of skills are useful depending on how you use them. I personally don't like Wykes or heatwave because I like to dodge/parry and I'm too close and personal to ever use heatwave. I'm more of a fan of the Titan counter and I feel like Titan never gets any love on these lists. Also very surprised Ignition didn't make this list because it's basically broken.
Sharing my current and favourite loadout here: Windup + Gigaflare Raging fist + Rook Gambit Lightning Rod + Dancing Steel My general gameplay would be fist + Rook counters to break stagger. During stagger I would opt between a single/double Zantetsuken combo, assuming I enter stagger phase with Lv5 Zantetsuken already up: Single Zantetsuken: Stagger → limit break → Lightning Rod → Zantetsuken → Dancing Steel → Windup → Gigaflare Double Zantetsuken would be same as above, but replace Gigaflare with Zantetsuken (Lv5 should be up due to Dancing Steel during the combo), you could even squeeze another skill after Windup for more damage (e.g. Rising Flame) I'm sure people have better combos but I find the above really comfy to execute 😁
Personally have loved using Impulse and Ignition. Though I didn't think the big ultimate skills slapped cheeks so hard. Might have to respect some of my skills
The ultimates really start to shine in NG+/Final Fantasy mode (especially Dancing Steel+Lvl5 Zantetsuken.) In your first playthrough, there's really no point (other than they look awesome) in suffering their giant cooldowns when you can clear an entire room of enemies with Ignition, but holy crap do the ultimates super speed up your progression in the higher difficulty mode
@@jesuisradmusic I was having a bit of a hard time figuring out what move I wanted to use against a boss once you get their bar half way down and they crumple for a second, now I just through a lvl 5 Zan in their face and build it up again with arm of darkness during the stagger. It's my favorite shit in the game as it ozes Vergil vibes
ive yet to really try out other skills besides the ones the game gives you by default. I'll have to try some of these. I agree with Wicked Wheel tho, its super clutch.
I agree with the top 2, they are even so obvious that I assumed going in that they would be #1 and #2. They are just crazy useful in so many circumstances. One ability that I would have added as at least an honorable mention is Ifrit's Ignition ability. It doesn't do a ton of damage or stagger, and but it's great for gathering up minions when fighting tons of enemies, as it collects them all in front of you, which then makes them easy to wipe out entire spread out groups really fast. It's even decent against bosses if you drop a Lightning Rod and run into it while wearing Will, as you get tons of procs really really fast.
@@tehCostHD odins ult can usually fill it to 4 sometimes 5 in 1 rip , if you can catch multiple in the combos. I usually walk in wykes, Odin ult, zantezuken, unless I think a second wave might come. Then I save it for that
@@jakemoore5077 well true but then that ult has a long cooldown, works great when agaisnt bosses that you don’t stagger every 2 seconds but seems harder to use agaisnt mutliple waves of mobs
Will o the wykes and Lightning bolt are must skills. I already knew it once I saw the skills. It always reminds me of Vergil's light swords. I think everyone have their own skills combo. I always use Mesmerize and lightning pike as a combo to stagger enemies faster besides that those 2 skills have shorter Cooldown which you can use multiple times. I'm not actually using ultimate skills often because the Cooldown is so long. Diamond Dust and Dancing steel are the only ultimate skills I have.
My one big gripe about FF16 is the shortage of usable abilities. Only 2 abilities across 3 Eikons isn't enough. My setup is Raging Fists and Heatwave (so i can counter anything), Gungnir and Dancing Steel, for damage, stagger, and building Zantetsuken, and then Impulse to open fights and Gigaflare because duh. There's no room for stuff like Lightning Rod + Wykes or Wicked Wheel and Rooks Gambit
@pedroportela6476 It's good for pulling enemies in and building Zantetsuken, but I was considering dropping Impulse for Lightning Rod, even though I just found out you can explode Impulse by pressing the button again while it's happening
Dancing Steel is great but it's so boring to me; I use Gungnir and Heaven's Cloud on Odin cause I just prefer to play around Odin in general and something about Dancing Steel just doesn't do it for me
Will o the wykes + Ignition pretty much makes me an unstoppable trash mob clearing machine. It's not good in boss fights but it's terrifyingly strong in random encounters.
Holy shit that number 1 combos, I already finished the game but NEVER used lightning rod lol, I thought Diamond Dust would be the best but guess I was wrong
Damn and here I was thinking diamond dust was actually underrated. Ignition is great and judgement bolt is also great as a finisher. Doing the time trials really helps you appreciate the pros of each skill, except ifrit because fak ifrit
If I may ask, are there recommended eikons and skills when using the ring of timely skills? This is my first action game and my progress with learning combos and such is slow going. Any help is appreciated.
Surprised not to see impulse on this list. It's crowd control, it's good will damage and it's an auto-lock "set it and forget it" kind of skill. Combos well with will-o. Rime -> lightning rod -> impulse -> will-o, rinse until staggered or almost staggered, then diamond dust -> gigaflare -> zantetsuken lv.5 is a fun boss melter.
Still in the middle of the game grinding levels but I love Will-O'-The-Wykes. It helped me get easy no damage fights against Belphegor and Dozmare and also got me the no hit trophy on the War Panther by replaying that in the Hideaway stone. The vids for these fights are on my channel. Uploading the Dozmare fight in a bit. I still had to precision dodge and be careful when it wasn't active but when it was active I got go absolutely ham on the bosses. As of now I'm keeping it until the end game but when I hit the highest level of play and get confident in my precision dodging and parrying for the hardest bosses I'll probably take it out. But it also augments the damage/stagger damage on Ignition and it's fun to use it along with that ability.
Some of my fave abilities are Diamond Dust and the fists from Titan also is not talked about enough. You can stop almost any attack if timed right and do huge stagger damage, also for me Titan power is a must due to how quickly you can build limit break with mastered block/counter. For me I use Phoenix, Titan and Odin because it gives me 3 big things. Mobility, Defense and big Damage. Abilities I've been running is Rebirth and Ignition on Phoenix, Gigaflare and Raging Fist (think the name is) on Titan and the Odin dash through enemies and Diamond Dust on Odin. Hardest enemy I've had to deal with is Svarog and I only died to him once, rest though I may have died a time or 2 against was just because of mechanics, like Behemoth Meteor, thought I could kill him before it would hit the ground but nooo he has to get it through and you have to evade it pff, once I figured that was how it worked then it was over.
Yooo I just finished my first playthrough and I hadn’t even tried some of these! So many of these moves have super cool hidden synergy. They did an amazing job with the combat system in FF16.
There's so many eikonic abilities and ability combinations that it's impossible to fit in all the best ones at once. I've played the game at the same time as 3 of my friends and we all have a different setup and different playstyle, the fact that the game allows that is just insane to me. Trying out the Lightning Rod/Will-o'the-Wykes combo because of your video but I'm already missing Wicked Wheel for example. Impulse is another great ability as a setup for multiple passive hits alongside Megaflare. That said, being able to equip a 4th eikon (2 more ability slots) would solve a lot :D
Appreciate the tips! Aside from continued grinding towards acquisition of the strongest weapons and armor available, I sustained a great deal of success during boss battles using Precision Dodge [augmented by the Berserker Ring], Limit Break and constant rotation of the following upgraded and/or mastered ultimate abilities: Aerial Blast & Diamond Dust (for high stagger damage) and Flames of Rebirth and Gigaflare, Judgment Bolt & Earthen Fury (for high attack damage). Upon attainment of the Odin Eikon, I eventually replaced Earthen Fury with Gungnir (to quickly fill the Zantutsuken meter)! I found Aerial Blast to be extremely effective in rounding up multiple enemies and eliminating them one by one while focusing on the larger entity… After having almost completed the game, FFXVI has been a blast to play! Looking forward to navigating FF NG+ mode - will try optimizing use of Will O' Wykes and Lightening Rod during this gameplay! All the best!
Diamond dust and lightning rod are definitely my 2 that stays in rotation... I usually pair Lightning rod with rime or impulse and other moves that stick around or puts out lots of hits and damage
I used it heavily for stagger multiplier because it doesn't care if you actually use magic, only that the button is pressed. So I'm basically mashing square and triangle during a Limit Break combo then using the bigger damage moves. The whole way it works just reminds me heavily of CBU3s work on ffxiv and the idea of the 2m burst window.
I feel like i have to many moves and not enough places to put them. I wish the ultimate skills could be used differently than putting them in your normal moves.
Well the damage of the lightning rod bolts isn’t based on the strength of the hit so it really wouldn’t matter if it gets used up early. It deals the same max damage regardless.
@@SH1NK1R01 @SapphireDragon357 it's not about the damage, it's about getting double the zantetsuken gauge on a boss, because rod doubles the ammount of targets hitting rod with dancing steel is the best way of getting 2 lvl 5 zantetsuken casts inside a stagger window on a single target without having the +1 talisman from the end of ng+
And here I was thinking I was doing great getting over 100k dmg in a Stagger without looking anything up lol 400k?! I'm starting NG+ and now I got MORE work to do lol
Impulse is by far more useful than that cancel ability from Odin. Impulse literally melts a stagger gauge and keeps smaller enemies in check, especially around bosses, and it’s cooldown time is effectively nothing. It also takes you straight to 1.3x multiplier during stagger and hits Lightning Rod 💁♂️
How about Impulse? Yes it doesn't give you an Aerial launch but it eats the Stagger Meter and you don't even do anything it just sits on the mob, and can completely stun up to 4 normal mobs, its the only thing i really use outside of my stagger windows other than Lightning Rod but I am level 46 and can do 265k in my stagger windows, Ultima doesn't stand a chance against my stagger combo :)
Will-o-wykes is a no brainer. But I've learned some new stuff from this vid. I've been mostly avoiding help videos but now i'm close to end, just wanna see other ideas. I had a feeling rift slip was good, I just didn't have a chance to test it out. Might have to re-do my kit. Do you have a torgal video?
Do boss enemies in NG+ not have a stagger window that can be pulled with the garuda ability? I've been playing NG+ and the moment I get rid of half the stagger bar, theres like a half second window and then I'm unable to use it for that extended window :(
For me Dancing steel for me doesn’t generate up to level 5 Zantetsuken even with the accessory that gives 25% extra. I am not sur why, even when the enemy is staggered. I see in the video that there is no particular combo used and still goes to lvl 5, was it nerfed with the last update?
i would argue that will of wykes is kinda a noob trap it's good but if your good at the game to dodge realible then your kinda wasteing an ability slot on chip damage. sure it's good with lighting rod but you would much rather use that with gigaflare. it's not bad being able to be wrackless for a 4 hits is nice for makeing aggressive plays but i think the oppertunity cost puts it in a solid b tier for me
I honestly simply take wykes just for guaranteeing dancing Steel goes off to wipe the field with Zantetsuken quickly. Since you gotta be up close in a mob for that and it has lengthy wind up window, wykes just guarantees it goes off smoothly at the start without wasting time. That said, I think for boss fights though, it’s fine to swap out for another utility.
@@YUXKEthat's even more of a waste of a slot then; you can guarentee dancing steel hitting by just popping limit break beforehand. You can't get staggered in limit form
@@itsSmivwell yeah, but then again do you really wanna burn LB just for that instead of for burst windows on mobs with stagger gauges? Especially since dancing steel still does little damage and consumes a lot of the LB window while active. I will say though prior to recently getting 100% platinum trophy I did wind up abandoning wykes altogether eventually. I still stand by it making dancing steel go off consistently at the very start of a large pack is really useful. Problem became that it was so useful it made mob fights too rinse repeat uninteresting. Whenever I still felt like opening with immediate Dancing Steel I wound up weaving in torgal attacks instead to interrupt mobs in front of me during the wind up.
@@YUXKE you can cancel the LB the moment dancing steel starts, and dancing steel will build back more LB than was used. It uses pretty much nothing. Waaaaay better than spending an entire ability slot for it.
@@itsSmivwhen you cancel you consume a stack though, it won’t pause the gauge where you stop it. As mentioned I’ve also moved away from the skill, but I’ll agree to disagree that it’s a wasted slot altogether -- except for boss / hunt fights, it’s definitely a wasted slot in those scenarios especially if Lightning rod is not also taken for multi triggers.
I think the best argument for this game’s gameplay is that I disagree with almost all of this list. Almost none of these skills made it into my end game rotation and I had a great time with the game (though almost certainly played “suboptimally”)
My mid build was ifrits will o' the wykes + lightnight rod then go ham with Gouge and wicked wheel. If you have titan, use raging fist along with Gouge ONLY if their stagger bar is about to be full again. That will send them back to stagger status again. If I can have Rammuh's judgement bolt, I'd remove the wicked Wheel.
I prefer taking ignition than wykes as it can help to clear trash mobs and group them up. Lightning rod can combo with bahamut gigaflare. You don't need another extra skill to proc it
I agree with most of this list but the last two. Will o the wykes is a good early/mid game combo piece with lightning rod, but I swapped it for windup. Right now (since I don’t have Odin’s power yet) I’m using Phoenix/ifrit, shiva and bahamut as my three eikons and my skills are ignition, flames of rebirth, impulse, gigaflare, lightning rod and diamond dust. Gigaflare has been my goto finishing move when I stagger a mini boss, but once they are staggered, I’m throwing a lightning rod, using impulse, then ignition, flames of rebirth and finally got the coup de grace, gigaflare for massive damage. So far the highest damage I’ve done at this point is 92k
Really great video, will probably stealing the set you use for NG+ Shiva - Diamond Dust, Lightning Rod Garuda - Will o' the Lykes/Wicked Wheel, Gigaflare Odin - Rift Slip, Dancing Steel
Lightning rod is just so easy to build around. Any multi hit ability becomes better with it out. Obviously, wykes and gigaflare, but ignition, flames of rebirth, Ariel blast, impulse, flare breath all become monsters with lightning rod. Pair it with mesmerize and/or deadly embrace for large groups. Only drawback of lightning rod is that it does mess with your targeting since you seem to prioritize it when it’s out.
Imagine putting Lightning Rod, then Rime, and then Will of the Wykes, then do Impulse, and maybe for your actual melee damage can be either Dancing Steel or Gungnir.. maybe Gouge.. Insta-stagger 😂
