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Combat Basics

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Introduction

While Epic Seven’s combat at first appears to be a straightforward turn-based system, it deviates in the details. Combat Readiness enables dramatic variation in turn order and action management, while the elemental relationships are more nuanced than simple damage modifiers. Beyond that, different game modes place various constraints on the party, requiring players to carefully adapt their strategy for each situation. Outlined below is simply the foundational knowledge for this.

Combat Screen

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Explanation
1 Combat Readiness is each character and enemy’s placement in turn order. After each action, the icons will move down at a rate based on that character’s Speed stat. Skills that directly manipulate Combat Readiness will also take effect here.
2 This area shows a Hero’s status in terms of HP and Conditions. Buffs effects appear as blue icons, while debuffs will be red.
3 In Adventure mode, tap the Helper to switch to them in the middle of battle. They will also automatically fill any spot left by a fallen Hero.
4 The Soul Gauge fills as Heroes use Skills. Souls can be spent either on summoning Guardians or enhancing Skills with their Soul Burn effect.
5 Tap to select and use a Skill. The cooldowns will also be listed.
6 Any drops will be picked up after the battle when the team walks forward.
7 Enemy HP is displayed above the mob’s head. In the case of bosses, their HP and any buffs or debuffs will be listed at the top of the screen.
8 Controls such as pausing, Autobattle and the story log can be accessed here.
Combat Readiness

This is the turn order for every entity in combat. Heroes and enemies will move along the left side of the screen towards the bottom, at which time it’s their turn. The Speed stat affects the rate at which a Hero moves along the line, while Combat Readiness is a percentage that indicates the Hero’s position along the line at a given time. Once Combat Readiness reaches 100%, the Hero is at the bottom and takes an action. While increasing Speed is the most reliable way to enable more actions, using Skills to influence Combat Readiness also provides short-term benefits.

By manipulating Combat Readiness, one can “lap” the enemy, gain more actions over time, or even prevent foes from acting. 

Classes and Combat Roles

There are six different types of Heroes in Epic Seven:

warrior

Warriors are the straightforward melee combat class defined by high damage, debuffs, ATK break, and good synergy with lifesteal sets.

knight

Tanky and supportive, Knights are there to reinforce the survivability of other Heroes. Buffing is the name of their game, and they’ll often want to stand in the front slot to take the brunt of incoming damage.

thief

Thieves thrive on high Attack and higher Speed. They’ll be flying towards 100% Combat Readiness and landing frequent Criticals.

mage

Although the Mage class contains your typical flimsy DPS, it also has some variety in roles. Tanky lifesteal, support, afflictions, and debuffing are all various things mages can do, depending on the character and their kit.

ranger

Rangers tend to focus on supplemental damage through debuffs and Dual Attacks. Some also have Combat Readiness and HP-based damage, which make them MVPs in certain contexts. For strategic planning and support, Rangers are the go-to class.

Soul Weaver

Those used to fragile healers are in for a nice surprise: since their healing scales off of Health, Soul Weavers often end up being quite tanky with Defense builds. Others have a more buff and support-focused set, making Effectiveness and Speed more urgent. In any case, Soul Weavers act as the designated survival experts on a team.

Elemental Relationships

Elements

Epic Seven follows a standard rock-paper-scissors wheel where Fire beats Earth, Earth beats Ice and Ice beats Fire. Light and Dark have advantages against one another, and neutral matchups with the other three elements. The bonuses and penalties are as follows:

Advantage:

  • +15% Critical Chance
  • 10% more damage
  • 75% chance to land a Crushing Hit

Disadvantage:

  • -15% Critical Chance
  • 25% chance for Crushing hit
  • 50% Chance for Miss Hit

So what do these types of hits mean?

Normal Hits are not modified and deal damage based on the Attack stat. 

Crushing Hits do 30% more damage than a normal hit. These are shown in big white text.

Miss Hits are in gray text and have 25% reduced damage. Status effects calculated with Effectiveness vs Effect Resistance will always fail on Miss hits.

Critical Hits are shown in large orange text and modified based on the Critical Hit Damage stat.

Going against the elemental wheel isn't guaranteed demise, but it is highly discouraged. In the long run, ignoring elements leads to less damage and landing debuffs infrequently. In the short term however, a disadvantaged Hero can still perform effectively after several tries. 

Gearing Up

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Explanation
1 The Hero Info panel includes basic biographical information, Skills, and the Devotion Skill.
2 Character level, CP and stats are grouped together on this panel. CP acts as a generic summary of a character’s power, with higher CP representing stronger characters. Stats listed in white are total stats, while the orange numbers include bonuses from equipment.
3 This area shows Set Bonuses. A character can have up to three set bonuses from their armor, which are indicated on the lower-right of a piece of equipment.
4 Left Equipment refers to the Weapon, Head and Chest slots.
5 An Artifact is a special type of equipment with a passive effect.
6 Right Equipment includes the Necklace, Ring and Boot slots.
7 The Options in this menu include seeing the Specialty Skill, upgrades, viewing Hero Ratings, changing their facial expression, or viewing the character model in fullscreen.
8 Use the right of the screen to sort and scroll through the Roster.

Filling the slots

Equipment pieces in Epic Seven are incredibly numerous and varied. The main features to pay attention to are its Slot (what type of gear it is), Rarity (indicated by the background color), Tier, Set bonuses, and stat bonuses.  

4. Left Equipment

  • Weapons always have flat Attack as a main stat with random percentage substats.

  • Head pieces always have flat Health and random percentage substats.

  • Chest pieces always have flat Defense and random percentage substats.

6. Right Equipment

  • Right gear pieces (Rings, Necklaces and Boots) can have any type of main stat, with a few exceptions. See this guide, page 3 for more details on slot-specific bonuses. 

  • These have primary stats as percentages, which are superior to flat numerical bonuses. An exception is Speed boosts which are always flat.

Rarity

Gear also comes in several Rarities, outlined below:

1. Epic (4 substats)
2. Heroic (3 substats)
3. Rare (2 substats)
4. Good (1 substat)
5. Normal (no substats)

Equipment pieces will gain substats with every three levels of enhancement, with existing bonuses being improved once there are four substats. So while lower gear pieces can still acquire good bonuses, Epic gear is best because the stats will only improve upon upgrading. In addition to that, having the substats visible upfront makes it easier to decide whether to commit to that particular piece. 

Tiers

Equipment Tiers are one through seven based on the item’s level (viewable in upper-left corner of its icon).These are static numbers that indicate the growth of an item when enhanced; higher-tier weapons have the most potential because they gain more stats when enhanced.

  1. Levels 1-15
  2. Levels 16-30
  3. Levels 31-45
  4. Levels 46-60
  5. Levels 61-75
  6. Levels 76-90+

Artifacts are a separate category altogether, being obtained from the Gacha.

Stats Decoded

Most of these terms come naturally to RPG veterans, but a few are still worth explaining in the context of Epic Seven:

  • Attack influences direct attacks, as well as Bleeding and Burning damage.

  • Defense reduces damage taken by 1 - 300/(300+Defense). Increasing the stat yields lesser returns, so past 1200, it is recommended to begin focusing on HP instead.

  • Health is HP, the amount of damage taken before the Hero dies. Healing also scales off of Health for most healing Skills. 

  • Speed is the rate at which Heroes take action (approach 100% Combat Readiness).

  • Critical Hit Chance the chance of landing Critical Hits. The maximum for this is 100%.

  • Critical Hit Damage is the modifier applied to Critical Hits for bonus damage.

  • Effectiveness is calculated against the enemy’s Effect Resistance when applying debuffs. A Skill lists the chance of landing a debuff, which acts as a first check. Then, the actual potency of said debuff is affected by the enemy’s resistance stat and caster’s Effectiveness stat.

  • Effect Resistance works against Effectiveness. After an enemy lands a debuff, the Hero still has a chance to evade the condition with their Resistance stat.

  • Dual Attack Chance influences the chance of this Hero assisting a teammate in combat.  

Soul Burn

The Souls Gauge fills passively as Heroes take actions. Once charged to a certain amount, the player may choose to either summon a Guardian or Burn Souls to enhance a Hero’s Skill. Each Hero has one Skill with a Soul-burning variant, which can have increased attack power or additional effects.

Combat Field

This is simply the areas in which entities stand on the field; the player’s Heroes occupy one diamond-shaped 2x2 grid, while the enemies occupy another. The frontmost Hero (far right on the Team screen) will be targeted the most, while the remaining three share lower priority with targeting. A notable exception is in the event of elemental weakness, in which case the opposing team will pick targets based on favorable elemental matchups.

AoE vs Single-Target damage

A lot of the variance in game modes comes from the advantages and disadvantages of different types of targeting. While some Heroes excel at hitting the entire group of enemies, others deal high damage to a single target. HP-scaling status afflictions and debuffs also work very differently from direct damage, so mastering all of these is important to progression.

See here for a full list of Conditions.

Sources

“Epic Seven Guide and FAQ” by a duck with a headache (aka Hayashi#8923), accessed February 25th, 2019. See http://nazr.in/12Gh

“[GUIDE] Elemental Relation and Type of Hits” by u/lucia_none, accessed March 9th, 2019. See https://www.reddit.com/r/EpicSeven/comments/a56f2u/guide_elemental_relation_and_type_of_hits/

"Jianjin's Epic Seven Equipment Guide" by Jianjin, Puffy, Oeseous, and @Helper on the global server Discord, accessed March 28th, 2019. See https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vaDtN3O4oJEbnf4PkR_4GVS1RpRg001PztA6a7AEaN8/edit?usp=sharing