Xenoblade Chronicles - A giant WIP

[Tide]

Welcome to the Xenoblade Chronicles stat topic! For once, yours truly isn't doing a stat topic on something insane...well maybe not given how much ground we have to cover. As the game is relatively new, first off:


SPOILER WARNING

This is the only one you'll be getting. I'll try my best to keep this spoiler free for people who like to read stat topics even if they haven't played the game yet, but that's my disclaimer. Now then, on to actual business. First, this stat topic will start off defining a few things. Most notably due to how Xenoblade's battle system works, it's not a traditional and easy to piece together stat topic. There are a few mechanics I want to throw down first before approaching anything else. After that, I'll try to cover various views I've thought about in measuring averages (most notably turns and damage). This is because Xenoblade Chronicles doesn't work on a turn base setting and it's also not a true ARPG. If you want a parallel, it's sorta works like a MMORPG except even then, sorta not. But it's a good start to wrap your head around the general framework.

Special thanks to Trancey for helping me translate some stuff from the Jap Wiki. Thanks to him, we now have formulas! Hurray! Even better, I was able to scrounge around and did some testing. So the basics should be ready.

DEFINITIONS:

Aggro: Is essentially the focus of the enemy target. If aggro is drawn towards character A, it's attacks will be centred on character A. Character B can move around the enemy and not get hit as long as the attack used on character A isn't AoE, MT, GT or the like. Aggro is a very important factor in Xenoblade Chronicles (XB) because certain characters have special attacks (arts) that require specific positioning. Two ways to go about this.

1) Allow these arts to work with the special effect intended. The plus of this view is that you get characters with more varied abilities and it emphasizes the uniqueness and skillset synergy they have. The negative side of this view is that it is completely unrealistic and kinda steps all over its own battle system. There are certain portions in the game where you are solo and fighting enemies in that will cause their aggro to always be centred on you. Can't get into position? Too bad! Which leads to view 2

2) Aggro is focused on the dueller. This is the more realistic view and the one adopted the game. The downside is basically the good points mentioned above.

Again, this is not an enforcement of any one view, but it needs to be brought up.

DPS: Damage per second. Exactly as it sounds. A character with a high DPS means they deal more consistent damage over time than another.

DoT: Damage over time. Very simple. Basically, deal damage over a period of time, spread out, instead of all at once. As an analogy, you can think of it as dealing damage per clocktick.

Cooldown: Refers to the length of time before an art becomes usable again after it is first used. XB characters have access to all their arts at the start of any battle. And unlike other games that requires resources, XB characters can repeatedly use their arts over and over - as long as the art (or the conditions for art) is available. The state where its unavailable is the cooldown. So for example, an art with a cooldown time of 5.6 seconds means that it takes 5.6 seconds after the first use before it can be used again.

Aura: Essentially a buffing effect, boost, or trait that is bestowed to the character on activation. Only one Aura can be active at a time. If another aura is used while one is already active, the first aura is overridden.

Talent: A specific unique attack to every enemies and every PC. Everyone has a Talent art in XB and they all function differently. They are also unique in the sense that they also cannot be removed from the arts grid. Not all talent arts deal damage (see each PC's section for what their talent art does) and they don't all fill up the same way either. For enemies, species of enemies generally share the same talent art. Enemy Talent arts vary in strength, denoted by the roman numeral behind their name. Because these arts are so specific and the game places a focus on these, we will also need to find a way to treat them for DL purposes (more on this later).

OVERVIEW
Battles in XB take place on the field. In short, there is no transition between random battles and the map. Enemies that are engaged in battle with the party will focus their aggro generally on the character who has dealt the most damage to them. This isn't always the case (you can also draw aggro via healing), but as a general rule, this is how the game's aggro system works. PCs are allowed to switch their targets at will so unlike enemies, PCs do not abide by this aggro rule. PCs can also move as they see fit on the field (only in boss battles are you restricted from running). As the battle progresses, PCs and enemies may use arts against each other. Arts can be divided into three types: Physical, Magical or Talent/Unique. If a PC doesn't use an art, he or she will attack normally (without the player needing to issue a command) as long as the PC is in range of his/her selected target. This attack cannot be stopped unless you are not in range or you have been temporarily disabled from acting (such as Sleep). Battles go on until either the PC being controlled by the player is dead and cannot be revived or the engaged group of enemies are all defeated.

VISIONS
A unique feature in XB is that the protagonist, Shulk, has the ability to see into the future. Even if Shulk is not in the party, after a certain plot point, the game introduces Vision mode to you. Visions occur if: a) a PC will take a hit that brings to 10% of their HP or lower or b) it will guarantee kill that character. As a function of Visions, you are allowed to see what the next enemy's attack is and are given a set amount of seconds to react to it. For DL purposes, this means that there should be no arguments in regards to the timing of any art if the said art requires a specific timing (like Reyn's Last Stand). Also, some skills are Vision specific. I would basically treat them under the criteria listed above (either a or b works) - so similar to a limit mode.

UPDATE: A note about Visions. If a Vision will cause a status effect, any resistance a character has is taken into consideration for the vision. So for example: If the selected attack has a 100% ID rate and it is being used on Melia with 75% ID resistance, a Vision will take place only if the ID attack is going to be rolled as a success (the 25% kicks in). Vision occurrence for status effects seems to be influenced based on how badly the fight is going. So a character in critical condition is more likely to see a Vision of non-lethal status attacks, then a healthy character will.

UPDATE 2: I confirmed with Uno on both these things. Auto-attacks that will kill a PC will never trigger a vision. For the DL, this is easily to translate. If a dueler wants to avoid triggering a Vision limit, they just have to kill the PC off with a normal attack. In addition, if a PC manages to Stun/Daze an enemy when a Vision has occurred, it will "destroy" the Vision. In other words, it resets the charge time accumulated on enemy arts/talents/magic. This is also fairly easy to translate DL wise.


TENSION
As characters attack in XB, their morale can increase or decrease. Scoring critical hits, evading attacks, using arts or trigger their bonus effects all contribute to gaining tension. On the other hand, missing attacks, getting inflicted by status or debuffs decreases tension. Tension is very important in-game because it is factored into accuracy and evasion. By how much? My rough estimate is an additional 50% in accuracy and evade when tension is maxed. People have reported it's possible to fight Red monsters without night vision as long as you can keep tension consistently high to score hits. Night Vision boosts accuracy by exactly 50%. So let's go with that for now. I'm not sure how you can determine the accuracy/evade boost because levels screw around with accuracy and evasion in XB, which means it is a pain in the rear to calculate tension's effects. UPDATE: 

Thanks to Trancey, we now have the exact effects of tension and character performance. There are 5 visible levels of tension (Panic, Low, Normal, High, Focused). At each level, the following occurs for certain:

Focused:   +20% damage
High:   +10% damage
Normal:   +0 Agility
Low:    -50 Agility
Panic:   Accuracy = 0%
 
It's also possible that High levels of tension may increases the chance of scoring crits although the wiki does not document this. Testing confirms the following regarding tension:

1) Max Tension cannot be reached by any PC alone. It requires a PC to encourage them to reach max tension. The sole exception to this is Seven, who cheats by using one of her passives to reach max tension. Intuitively, this also means zero tension cannot be reached unless a PC dies.

2) NEW THEORY: The tension gauge looks something like this:


Zero (-200) ----- Low (-199 to -100) ------ Normal (-99 to 99) ----- High (100 - 199) ----- Max (200)

1 level of tension is about 100 points. The test I ran confirms this. By equipping Seven with Initial Tension +100, she needed 5 crits before reaching the peak of high tension (characterized by the fact that she no longer gains red arrows on her portrait from hitting crits). With Tension Swing (which cuts the tension range by 1/2) along with Initial Tension +100, she reaches peak high tension at the start of battle. The reason why my original theory of 200 for each level probably isn't right, is because if that was the case, then normal tension can only be achieved when the character is at exactly the neutral point. Given that a character can have a neutral portrait and still gain/lose tension without the portrait changing, there has to be a range within Normal tension. It is possible that the range for Normal tension is lower although this diagram tentatively supports my testing.

3) The following are modifiers that I have run tests for. All approximate figures as there are very few numbers I have available to play around with:

Use of arts: +10 tension (presumably the opposing equivalent to missing/resist. Again, requires further testing)
Crits: +20 tension. This is likely confirmed (see above)
Misses/Resist: -10 tension (it seems like 10 attacks or so were needed to miss before the portrait fell one level)
Topple/Daze: -50 to -100 tension (I think. A PC with Tension Swing equipped eating a topple attack often dropped one level)
Status effect: -20 tension (Kneejerk. To actually confirm. Feels right from anecdotal evidence though.)

EQUIPMENT/GEMS
Something else for people to chew on. PC equipment is widely varied. To put it simply there are two types of all equipment: Slotted or free slot. Slotted means that the equipment already has an active effect and that effect cannot be removed. Free slot means that you can put a free bonus effect (like strength +100 or Blaze resistance 75%). In-game, free slots almost always always beat out slotted equipment due to the freedom you have in what to assign to each slot. DL wise? Not so simple.

While you get tons of drops to make gems, making gems very commonplace, it makes little sense to give every PC Double Attack 50% and Haste 50%. Although not all PCs want the same types of gems (the combination above is useless on Melia for example), it's still borderline against standard DL rules for uniqueness. However, nerfing weapons and armors that are basically normally superior is not very intuitive either. Off hand, here's what I think; similar to the RoF topic, I will list gems and their effects (when we get there) and denote which gems are more rare and which ones are not. From there, take that as you will as to what should be placed on each PCs standard equipment.

For those of you who find this view to be completely silly, no worries. I thankfully have amassed some endgame drops on my file for each PC that are already slotted.

Note that armor doesn't have uniqueness but is separated into three classes. Melia can only use Light armor, Shulk cannot use Heavy armor, Riki cannot use Medium armor and Dunban, Sharla and Reyn can use all three. Seven can only use armor unique to her so hers is very easy to call. Because of the intermingling of armor classes, there's no unique armor to any PC. Instead PCs can just choose to have slotted or free slot in their respective armor classes. I'll have to check to see what I have on hand though I suspect most PCs will want the free slots anyway (status protection for those of you that allow it!)

ART LEVELS
Most art levels in-game can be reached up to 7 without worry as there are skill books that can be bought in stores. This is not true for all arts, but usually is the case. To get skills to reach level 10, you have to get them from gold chests around 50% of the way through the game. These drops are random and it is not always possible to tell what skill books come from what monster (unless you use that googledoc document on uniques). However, it is very likely that you will pick up more than a couple if you're fighting things and doing quests through the game. There are only a few skills that do not need drops to get up to level 10: Summon Bolt, Battle Soul and all of Shulk's Monado Arts.  I'll be using Level 10 skill mastery numbers as they are a) easier to come by and b) Yamikei claused essentially. YMMV of course, but it'll be really hard to get only level 7 art masteries since you are very likely to get a few advance tech books in-game and dump points into them.

STATS
HP - Self explanatory. Play more RPGs if you need this defined >_>
Strength- Adds to physical attacks. This + weapon strength = damage dealt by auto-attacks (tech modifier appears to be 1)
Ether - Used for magic attacks. Presumably uses the art damage formula (more on this later) on all arts that are magic based
Agility - Governs hit/evade. Higher the better. UPDATE: See below to see how the hit/evade formulas work.
P.Def - Reduces physical damage. Note that all PCs have a default Defense scores of 0 unless they set their class tree bonus to boost it.
E.Def - Reduces magical damage. Note that all PCs have a default Ether Defense scores of 0 unless they set their class tree bonus to boost it
Crit - A character's chance of scoring a crit. Crits apply to all arts as well, so even magic attacks can crit. The normal damage modifier on a crit is 30% more damage.
Block - A character's chance of auto-defending against regular attacks. A higher rate means a greater chance to reduce incoming damage. Blocking reduces damage by a fixed 50% before defense.

SKILL TREES:
Similar to arts, these are Yamikei claused. Some skill trees cannot be gotten unless you fight level 98 monsters. Note that the level cap is 99 and that in order to even hit monsters without getting massive stat penalties, you have to be within 5 levels of the monster. So for those of you that are particularly harsh on this stuff take note. The following skill trees are very likely after game: Riki's Heroism Skill tree, Reyn's Camaraderie Skill tree and Seven's Innocence Skill tree. Melia's Passion skill tree is very borderline (level 86 mobs, you may be higher than level 80). PCs are allowed to choose a dominant characteristic to focus on. This dominant trait has a passive stat bonus that will be applied to the PC in battles. However, if a PC chooses a different trait, then the original trait's bonus is gone. tl;dr version - PCs can choose one stat to improve on DL wise. Due to Yamikei clause, all skills and traits are assumed maxed. Skill linking between PCs, is of course, illegal.

ARMOR SETS
This is a massive WIP, I'm listing down the armor sets that are available to the PCs. With the exception of Seven (as hers are unique), refer to this chart if you are wondering about armor swaps. Note for whatever bizarre reason, the female members of the cast if unequipped with any armor, get a 10% bonus to any defense or ether defense provided to them from weapons. This bonus defense is gone the moment is armor is worn though. XB PCs may equip armor covering the head, torso, hands, legs and feet (displayed in this exact order below for each set). Each piece of equipment also has a weight value, which reduces the Agility stat of the character when equipped by exactly the weight of the equipment.

Further of note is that free slots appear on Light and Medium armor much more frequently than Heavy armor. You may want to factor this in if you consider gems. Light armor often has slots (near 100%), Medium will typically have slots although not always (about 70%), and Heavy armor having slots is typically infrequent (50% or less).

LIGHT ARMOR
Rondine
Cap: +98 P.Def, +110 E.Def, 1 weight
Top: +130 P.Def, +200 E.Def, 1 weight
Gloves: +70 P.Def, +110 E.Def, 1 weight
Bottoms: +108 P.Def, +130 E.Def, 1 weight
Shoes: +95 P.Def, +110 E.Def, 1 weight

Hierex
Cap: +110 P.Def, +100 E.Def, 1 weight
Top: +144 P.Def, +180 E.Def, 1 weight
Gloves: +76 P.Def, +100 E.Def, 1 weight
Bottoms: +118 P.Def, +120 E.Def, 1 weight
Shoes: +105 P.Def, +100 E.Def, 1 weight

MEDIUM ARMOR
Rafaga
Gear: +132 P.Def, +92 E.Def, 3 weight
Armor: +168 P.Def, +164 E.Def, 3 weight
Gauntlets: +92 P.Def, +92 E.Def, 3 weight
Leggings: +137 P.Def, +110 E.Def, 3 weight
Boots: +128 P.Def, +90 E.Def, 2 weight

Lancelot
Gear: +114 P.Def, +125 E.Def, 2 weight
Armor: +175 P.Def, +195 E.Def, 3 weight
Gauntlets: +80 P.Def, +125 E.Def, 2 weight
Leggings: +144 P.Def, +126 E.Def, 3 weight
Boots: +110 P.Def, +125 E.Def, 2 weight

HEAVY ARMOR
M100
Helm: +158 P.Def, +72 E.Def, 4 weight
Plate: +188 P.Def, +136 E.Def, 5 weight
Arms: +108 P.Def, +74 E.Def, 5 weight
Cuisses: +170 P.Def, +92 E.Def, 5 weight
Greaves: +156 P.Def, +70 E.Def, 4 weight


Rex
Helm: +148 P.Def, +90 E.Def, 3 weight
Chest: +180 P.Def, +164 E.Def, 4 weight
Arms: +104 P.Def, +90 E.Def, 3 weight
Cuisses: +160 P.Def, +107 E.Def, 4 weight
Greaves: +145 P.Def, +90 E.Def, 3 weight


STATUS EFFECTS
Break: The most common XB status (often inflicted by PCs and not enemies). Breaks an enemy's defensive stance. Allows enemies to be toppled.
Topple: Knocks an enemy to the ground, reducing evade and block rate to 0. While toppled, the victim cannot act. Continuous topple attacks add to the topple counter. This means that if an enemy is toppled for 3 seconds, but then Reyn hits it again with a topple art like Wild Down, it will take the enemy 6 seconds to recover.
Stun: If an enemy is toppled, stun can then be inflicted. Stunning an enemy does the same thing as topple, but on top of that, damage dealt at this time does not accumulate aggro. Note that stunning an enemy essentially counts as the enemy being toppled but a toppled enemy is NOT stunned. In short, if an attack can stun, topple attacks afterwards will work 100% of the time. Normally, you have to Break a target before Topple can be inflicted.
Bind: Equivalent to Don't Move in FFT. Locks movement.
Lock On: Forces the target to focus their attack on the user that inflicted the status (you can't change targets essentially)
Arts Seal: Prevents the use of any arts except talent arts. PCs can still auto-attack however.
Paralysis: Occasionally causes Auto-attacks to not activate (some may see this as turn skipping). Disables counters and double attack chances
Slow: Increases the interval taken between each Auto-attack and cuts movement speed in half.
Blaze/Chill/POIZN/Bleed: Essentially equivalent to POIZN in other games, but of different elements (Fire/Ice/Earth/Wind respectively). Note that Blaze/Chill/POIZN are all magical status but Bleed is often Physical.
Confuse: Effected targets will run around aimlessly and not attack at all (also disables arts)
Pierce: Target's p.def and e.def both temporarily reduced to 0.
Sleep: Self explanatory >_>
Instant Death: Also self explanatory


FORMULAS

For those that are curious and also as a reference to myself, here are all the known formulas so far:

Damage formula
(Weapon power + [str/ether stat * buff bonuses/penalties]) * (Art multiplier * Heat level bonus/penalty [Sharla]) * (1 + Gem multipliers + skill multipliers + elemental burst boost [Melia]) * (Critical hit multiplier)

While this looks really complex, it essentially can be summed up as Auto-attack × modifier for anything that is physical. Anything magical can be calculated as (Auto-attack - strength + ether) × modifier.

Defenses from my tests are subtractive and considered only after damage has been calculated. So 600 p.def Melia may take 1000 damage from a basic physical but 1000 p.def Reyn takes only 600 damage.

DoT formula
(Initial damage) * (Art DoT multiplier) * (1 + gem multiplier + skill multiplier)

Where initial damage is the damage calculated above. Rewritten, it can also just be Initial damage*modifier. Used only on DoTs of course.

Physical Accuracy
Agility - INT(Weight/4) + (Art level * 5) + Level correction difference - Opponent's agility + 100 = hit rate as a percent

For DL purposes, level correction difference is always 0. This is bonus or penalty applied depending on the level difference from the party and the enemies. This equation can be simplified in the DL as well. While I do not know the agility numbers of end game enemies, their presumed average is basically a constant in the equation. Therefore, if we need to calculate the relative scales in percentage of how much more accurate one Xenoblade PC is from another, we can treat that as a constant number (like say 0).

Magic Accuracy
100 + (art level * 5) + Level correction difference = hit rate as percent

Also very basic. Level correction difference is 0 here as well, so all magic attacks have inherent 150% accuracy. Note that Melia's Enlightenment passive raises her magic accuracy by 20%. There is no evade rate other than the level correction difference from this equation. Therefore, Resisting magic (reduce magic damage 0 to in-game) for the DL is 0% for all PCs by default. 

Evasion Rate
Agility - Weight + Level correction difference - Opponent's Agility = evasion rate as a percent

See comments above. Similar to accuracy, we can treat enemy agility for our purposes of calculating hit/evade as a constant. While weight is calculated into the equation, skills such as Shulk's Natural Born Warrior passive will essentially reduce the value in this equation by its set amount as well.


DL TRANSLATION -
What constitutes as a "turn"
Before I even get into any major numbers, calculations or what not, one very important thing that needs to be defined for DL purposes is what exactly makes up a turn. There are lots of reasons for this. For one, it gives us a better way to define DPS and DoTs if we know how long an approximate "turn" should be. For another, it's easier to convert it against other duellers (whether they are CTB or Turn based or even ARPGs). As I see it, there are three ways to do it. YMMV and I strong urge people if they have other ways of defining a turn for XB to post it in this topic.

Method 1) Measure turns by Auto-attack speed - using this method essentially states that one "turn" is equivalent to the average amount of time it takes for each PC to attack normally. This can be supported by the fact that attack is normally a full turn command (in most games). As such, the average amount of time for XB characters to auto-attack once is a standard turn. Two problems with this. First, most PCs would rather rely on their arts to do the fighting. With the exception of Seven and possibly Shulk, this is typically the case in-game. So using this method doesn't appropriately reflect what you're doing most of the time in game anyway. Second, this definition skews things massively in Seven's favor. As she has unique armor that grants her Haste, her auto speed is probably 3x faster than everyone else's before taking into account one of her arts. This then creates a viewpoint that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Seven becomes possibly 300% average speed and everyone else becomes slugs. Yet in reality, Melia with a single Summon and dismissal of Bolt probably deals around the same damage as she does over that many attacks as their roles in game are totally different. Thus you end up with "Every PC but Seven is a slug but they hit a lot harder while Seven is basically poking people with toothpicks".

Method 2) Measure turns by Cool down - the method I personally support. This considers a turn based on the average length of time of all cool down on all arts. It's major benefit is that it is much more reflective of in-game. PCs such as Melia and Reyn don't really auto-attack unless all their arts are on cool down. Using cool down time to define a turn means that PCs that utilize arts with large cool downs as part of their battle strategy are appropriately penalized in the long run. At the same time, fast attackers are still appropriately reflected as their faster art cool downs or attacks would be above the average (and thus get many more attacks in). 

Method 3) Measure turns by a number of real time seconds, such as 20. The goal with this is try to set the real time seconds in game it takes to kill enemies and scale it to the number of actions usually taken to defeat enemies in turn based games. Its biggest problem is that it's completely arbitrary. Anecdotal experience suggests that against monsters of equivalent level, most of these fights last about a minute, although depending on the state of the party, it can certainly be a lot shorter or longer.

Method 4) Suggested by CK in chat, take a turn as performing a single action. This is probably the simplest way if the above is making your head spin.

Defining Speed
YMMV on each of these methods. Just listing everything that came to mind.

Method 1) Same as defining turns. Use auto-attacks to determine who would normally "strike first" amongst the party.

Method 2) Use range as a determinant. Since there is no transition from one battle to the field, PCs with longer range in-game have an initiative advantage to those that don't. Using this method, speed ends up being something like:

Sharla > Melia > Riki/Dunban (with magic attacks)  > Dunban > Seven > Shulk > Reyn > Riki (with physicals)

Method 3) Use movement speed as a determinant. PCs that move faster can close into the enemy quicker and thus attack first. Using this method, speed is then:

Riki > Seven > Everyone else

Method 4) Use Agility as a determinant. A little arbitrary given the stat in game does nothing of the sort to determine who strikes first. Using this method, speed is then:

Dunban > Seven > Riki > Sharla > Reyn = Shulk > Melia

Method 5) Consider everyone as average speed and completely ignore the above (similar to other games when turn speed is not easily determined).

[Tide]

Okay, done with the nitty gritty stuff, time for the fun part: PCs. Bonus from skill trees are just listed with the PCs information. I have not added them to the character's stats since they might want to choose a different bonus depending on the situation. Enemy defense intuitively should work the same way as PC defenses (so subtractive). I don't have the average (and doubt I ever will), however, I suspect that most enemies either have very low defense or none at all. Most arts damage doesn't seem to fluctuate too much from one enemy to another.

NOTE: All damage figures are without factoring in crits unless otherwise noted. This is done so people can adjust damages. For example, if you don't think Shulk should be defaulting to his Bravery Skill tree boost, then you can adjust the damage figures to consider 80% crit instead of 100% crit. The only things I have factored are passive skills which would always be in effect.



SHULK - "This is the Monado's Power!"

Level 79

HP: 4839
Strength: 381
Ether: 393
Agility: 113
Crit: 100% Crit (5% base rate)
Block: 15% Block (0% base rate)

P.Def: 745 (assumes Lancelot gear)
E.Def: 829 (assumes Lancelot gear)
Weight: 5

SKILL TREE BONUS
Integrity: +15% Block rate
Intuition: +15 Agility
Humanity: +50 Ether
Pessimism: +50 E. Def
Bravery: +20% Crit


WEAPON: True Monado. +25 P.Def, +25 E.Def, +75% Crit, +15% Block. Unlike other weapons, the damage from the Monado is effected by Shulk's level. At level 79, it deals an average of 1645 damage a hit before crit. Deals 2138 damage on average per hit when crits are factored. Note that the True Monado is similar to the Glance Reviver. Completely unique to Shulk but usable for only one battle unless you do NG+. Regular Swing speed is 2.0 seconds.

Alternative equips
Note that the Monado Dogma and the Monado Saga are pretty much after game, requiring you to kill a level 99 monsters for the ingredients. They also only have two slots instead of 3. Listing them anyway of course. All other weapons for Shulk have 3 free slots.

Replica Monado: +25 P.Def, +25 E.Def, +10% Crit, +5% Block. Can be considered his initial equip
Monado Rudra: +25 P.Def, +25 E.Def, +5% Crit, +5% Block. Average of 1179 damage a hit
Monado Agni: +50 P.Def, +50 E.Def, +5% Crit, +25% Block. Average of 1020 damage a hit
Monado Abyss: +25 P.Def, +25 E.Def, +15% Crit, +5% Block. Average of 1163 damage a hit. Pretty much a straight upgrade of the Replica Monado. Shulk's default if you disallow the True Monado.
Monado Dogma: +25% Crit, Average of 1163 damage a hit
Monado Saga: +150 P.Def, +150 E.Def + 5% Crit, + 15% Block. Average of 1013 damage a hit


NOTABLE PASSIVE SKILLS
Medium Equipment - Allows Shulk to use Medium weight equipment
Healing Wisdom - Boosts Healing techniques by 15%. Already factored.
Resilient Warrior - Boosts P.Def and E.Def by 5%. Does not effect Skill Tree Bonuses. Already factored.
Battle Cry - Increases Tension at the beginning of battle by 20 points.
Equipment Master - Allows Shulk to lower the weight of his overall equipment by 5. This bonus is not applied to each piece of equipment individually. Already factored.
Element of Surprise - Adds a bonus 100% multiplier on skills that do increased damage from the back
Immunization - 100% Resistance to Stat downs
Fight the Future - Allows Shulk to see farther ahead into the future, giving him a +4 second bonus to react to visions
Ultimate Defense - Boosts P.Def and E.Def by 10% for the entire party. Already factored.
Glorious Future - Instantly fills Talent Gauge to full upon seeing a future.

ARTS
Slit Edge: Physical. Drops enemy's defense by 50% for 9.5 seconds if hit from the side. Average damage of 3355. Cooldown of 8.2 seconds
Backslash: Physical. On hit on enemy's back, damage dealt is multiplied by 3 (2 default, +1 from Element of Surprise). Average damage of 6251. Cooldown of 14.6 seconds
Light Heal: Restores HP equivalent to Ether * 3.87 (modifier's average). Translates to about 1749 HP healed when the his passive is also factored in. Cooldown of 18.2 seconds
Shaker Edge: Physical. If enemy is Toppled, hitting with this art stuns them for 2.0 seconds. Noticeable start up (about 2.0 seconds). Average damage of 4047. Cooldown of 14.8 seconds
Air Slash: Physical. Inflicts Break. Also inflicts Slow if used on the enemy's side. Cooldown of 8.2 seconds. Average damage of 4984.
Stream Edge: Physical. Inflicts Break on hit. Fills Talent gauge by 15% for each enemy struck in this way. Fan-shaped in front of Shulk. Cooldown of 21.9 seconds. Average damage of 4984.
Shadow Eye: Miscellaneous. Drops all enemy's aggro on Shulk by 75%. Increases all art damage by 1.5x for the next 5 seconds. Cooldown of 36.9 seconds
Battle Soul: Miscellaneous. Decreases own HP by 50% of its current value to increase talent gauge by 52%. Cooldown of 43.8 seconds


Talent Art - Activate Monado
When the talent gauge is full, Shulk can access the Monado's power and utilize any of the following arts. Gauge must be maxed before he can use it. Note that unlike other character's Shulk's usage of his talent art doesn't always completely drain his metre.

Monado Buster: Deals 11515 physical damage in a straight line. Inflicts 2x damage on machines. Uses all metre
Monado Eater: Deals 5021 magic damage in a fan-shape in front of Shulk. Dispels all buffs. Inflicts Bleed on hit, which causes 1004 Bleed damage every 2 seconds for 20 seconds. 15061 damage total (assuming full 20 seconds). Uses 2/3s metre
Monado Purge: Deals 5849 magic damage to a single target. Long range. Inflicts Aura Seal for 14.5 seconds on hit and removes all buffs. Uses 2/3s metre
Monado Cyclone: Deals 6761 magic damage surrounding Shulk. Inflicts Topples on enemies for 3 seconds if they were under the Break status before being hit. Uses all metre.
Monado Enchant: Allows regular weapons to be able to deal damage to mechon. Questionable DL use. Adds an additional 50 damage for each level invested to all attacks (so 500 for every attack). Uses 1/3 Metre.
Monado Shield: Reduces all enemies' talent arts to 1 point of damage. Barrier stays intact until it takes a hit or for 15 seconds. Note there are a few ways to interpret this. The way that made the most sense to me is that it blocks unique attacks from other duellers (so something like a FF7 Limit Break or an attack no other enemy/PC posses in game such as Raquel's Iron Divide). Alternatively, you can throw it out altogether and just write it off as being junk like Monado Enchant >_>. Uses 1/3 Metre.
Monado Speed: Adds 190 points of Agility for 12.5 seconds when rolling for evade. In short, unless it's ITE, it will probably miss (I've never seen physical attacks hit if under Speed). Uses 2/3 metre.
Monado Armor: Creates a barrier around Shulk that reduces all incoming damage by 75% after defenses for 15 seconds. Uses all metre.

Initial Comments:
How good Shulk is depends on a couple of factors, although his game plan is typically the same. Build to a full metre so he can access his Monado Arts and then use the appropriate counter ability to negate or stop the enemies from doing anything effective. Glorious Future does give him some neat Limit potential. He can inflict Topple by himself and then from there go for a Boosted Back Slash which results in massive damage (about 36568 when crits and Shadow Eye are considered). Alternatively, pull out Shaker Edge to reset the charge time on the spell/tech that the enemy might use on him. Subject to change of course, but likely a High Middle or a Low Heavy of some sort. His healing is nearly useless unless he can crit-lock people like P3/P4 characters. See below for a full analysis + adjusted numbers for crits.




REYN - "It's Reyn time!"

Level 79

HP: 9417
Strength: 452
Ether: 252
Agility: 113
Crit: 10% Crit (5% base rate)
Block: 20% Block (0% base rate)

P.Def: 812 (698)
E.Def: 591 (747)
Weight: 17 (10)

() numbers are with Lancelot armor while unbracketed is with Rex armor. Depending on the enemy he faces, Reyn may want more of one type of defense over another. Also, due to the large Agility penalties associated with Heavy armor, he may want to use something that doesn't penalize him as much, but still gives him the best defense otherwise.

SKILL TREE BONUS
Spirit: +100 Strength
Diligence: +15 Agility
Enthusiasm: +15% Crit
Impatience: +20% Counter attack rate
Camaraderie: +50 P.Def

WEAPON: Atomic Driver. +75 P.Def, +50 E.Def, +5% Crit, +20% Block. 3 Empty Skill slots. Deals an average of 1237 damage a hit. With his passive skill, this increases to about 1360 damage. Note that this boost does NOT effect arts damage calculations. Regular swing speed is 2.8 seconds.

Alternative equips
Vangarre Driver:  +50 P.Def, +50 E.Def, +10% Crit, +15% Block. Average of 1117 damage. 3 Free slots. Battle Character boosts this to 1228 damage.
Machina Driver II: +85 P.Def, +40 E.Def, +14% Crit, +18% Block. Average of 982 damage a hit. 3 Free slots. Battle Character boosts this to 1080 damage.
Safe Driver: +80 P.Def, +40 E.Def, +0% Crit, +10% Block. Average of 982 damage a hit. Fixed slots. Resists all status by 20%, Resist Topple by 30%, Resist Stun by 30%. Battle Character boosts this to 1080 damage.
Rigel Hand: +25 P.Def, +15 E.Def, +16% Crit, +0% Block. Average of 1142 damage a hit. Fixed slots. Increases Aggro drawn by 25%, extends Topple duration on enemies by 40% and increases chance to Double attack by 30%. Battle Character boosts this to 1256 damage.

NOTABLE PASSIVE SKILLS
Medium Equipment: Allows Reyn to equip Medium weight equipment
Heavy Equipment: Allows Reyn to equip Heavy weight equipment
Feel the Heat: When Reyn takes damage, his tension increases by 5
Body Builder: Boosts HP by 5%. Already factored.
Battle Character: Causes Reyn's equipped weapons to do 10% more damage.
Wall of Muscle: Boosts HP by 10%. Already factored.
Rampage: Reyn gains a 10% base chance to double attack from auto attacks
Speed Strike: If Reyn misses an attack, 10% chance of receiving the Haste status, boosting his next auto-attack to occur 15% faster. Lasts 10 seconds.
Channeled Pain: When Reyn takes damage, his Talent Gauge increases by 5%
Flying Start: At the start of battle, Reyn receives Haste status, boosting his auto-attacks to occur 15% faster. Lasts 30 seconds.

ARTS
Set
Last Stand: Aura. When activated, Reyn auto revives if he receives fatal damage/instant death status within the next 15 seconds. Restores 75% of his HP on revival. Cooldown of 87.6 seconds
Sword Drive: Physical. Reyn punctures an enemy with his pilebunker. Deals 7459 damage on average. Cooldown of 57.6 seconds
Dive Sobat: Physical. If used after Bone Upper, adds Agility Down 25% on top of paralysis for 19.2 seconds. Deals 3166 damage on average. Cooldown of 19.2 seconds
Bone Upper: Physical. Boosts the Talent gauge by 30% on hit. Very fast. Deals 2400 damage on average. Cooldown of 5.8 seconds
Aura Burst: Magical. On hit, drops opponent's strength by 25% for 14.5 seconds. Reyn must have an aura triggered for this attack to be available. Deals 2624 damage on average. Cooldown of 16.4 seconds
Magnum Charge: Miscellaneous. Increases the damage on the next attack art by 4.2x the damage. Note that to activate Magnum Charge, Reyn's talent gauge MUST be full. Cooldown of 65.6 seconds
Berserker: Aura. Increases Reyn's strength by 210% while dropping his defense by 25% for 15 seconds. Cooldown of 24.8 seconds.
Guard Shift: Miscellaneous. When activated, Reyn goes into a defensive stance, raising his Block rate to 100% for 24.6 seconds. During this time, he cannot attack or use any other arts unless he cancels out of Guard Shift by selecting it again. While under Guard Shift, arts will still cooldown as normal. Cooldown of 25.6 seconds.

In Reserve/Not used
Hammer Beat: Physical. Attacks in a circle surrounding the target. Deals 3142 damage on average. Cooldown of 9.8 seconds
Wild Down: Physical. Topples an enemy over if they are suffering from Break for 3.0 seconds. Deals 2548 damage on average. Cooldown of 13.8 seconds
War Swing: Physical. Attacks the area surrounding Reyn for 3 hits. Each hit raises talent gauge by 1 0%. Deals 816 damage per hit. Cooldown of 22.2 seconds
Shield Bash: Physical. Stuns target if already inflicted with Topple for 2 seconds. Deals 2301 damage on average. Cooldown of 8.4 seconds
Engage: Adds Lock On status to the enemy, increases aggro generated from Mad Taunt for 24 seconds. Cooldown of 49.5 seconds
Rage: Decreases strength by 25%, Increases defense by 25% (?) and gradually fills up talent gauge for 30 seconds. Cooldown of 33 seconds
Anchor Chain: Prevents Reyn from being knocked back or thrown into the air for 33 seconds. Also removes aggro loss from opposing allies' damage and increases own aggro to target over time. Cooldown of 29.4 seconds
Lariat: Physical. Attacks a fan-shaped area in front of Reyn. On hit, increases talent gauge by 25%. Deals 4367 damage on average. Cooldown of 16.5 seconds

Talent Art - Mad Taunt
Increases Aggro by 100% from one enemy on to Reyn. Reyn's passive skills help boosts this to 145%. DL useless barring team battle hype.

Initial Comments:
Reyn's got a really nasty tanking game going. His ultimate goal in any match is to set up Berserker, Magnum Charge and then Sword Drive for about 55300 damage. If for some bizarre reason that doesn't kill, he can set up Guard Shift and just reduce incoming damage practically forever (there's only about a 1 second period between the duration and art cool down) until Magnum Charge and Sword Drive have recovered and then set up the combo again. To help him out, he's got a few tricks up his sleeve such as Aura Burst to reduce the enemy's strength and Bone Upper/Dive Sobat combo to reduce their hit and evade. And if he's about to die at any point, he pulls out Last Stand to auto revive, and then go through this process all over again. Some form of Heavy tentatively.




SHARLA - "I could really use a shower right now"

Level 79

HP: 4280
Strength: 338
Ether: 458
Agility: 117
Crit: 20% Crit (5% base rate)
Block: 15% Block (10% base rate)

P.Def: 716
E.Def: 820
Weight: 10

Assumes Lancelot gear. Note that while Sharla can use Heavy equipment, she generally won't want to due to Agility penalty and her passive skill which boosts the defense gains on Medium armor.

SKILL TREE BONUS
Devotion: +50 Ether
Confidence: +100 Strength
Perseverance: +50 P.Def
Reliance: +50 E. Def
Affection: +15% HP


WEAPON: Endless Rifle. +50 E.Def, +15% Crit, +5% Block. 3 free slots. Deals an average of 1158 damage a hit. Regular Swing speed is 3.5 seconds.

Alternative equips
Machina Sniper II: +30 P.Def, +8% Crit, +13% Block. 3 free slots. Deals an average of 928 damage a hit.
Agape: +40 P.Def, +10% Crit, +15% Block. Deals an average of 1108 damage a hit. Fixed slots. Increases HP by 30%, decreases amount of metre generated by Arts by 20%. Provides a constant 30% chance to survive any fatal attack at 1 HP.

NOTABLE PASSIVE SKILLS
Medium Equipment: Allows Sharla to equip Medium weight equipment
Heavy Equipment: Allows Sharla to equip Heavy weight equipment
Long Range: Increases the range of long distance arts (5 metres?)
Always Ready: Increases Agility by 10. Already factored.
Rapid Healing: Cooldown of healing arts is reduced by 15%. Already factored.
Firm Defense: Increases P.Def by 5%. Already factored.
Ether Expansion: Increases Ether by 25. Already factored.
Solid Defense: 75% chance to increase P.Def at the start of battle by 20% for 30 seconds.
Ether Unleashed: When Sharla's HP drops below 50%, her Ether score increases by 15%
Ultimate Sniper: Reduces the real time taken by Sharla to cool off her rifle. Already factored.
Ether Assault: Boosts damage dealt by Ether attacks by 20%. Already factored (only one art of hers considers this ._.)
Initial Endurance: 50% chance to reduce Physical damage received at the start of battle by 20% for the first 30 seconds.
Middleweight Expert: Boosts the defensive ratings of middle weight armor by 10%. Already factored.
Adrenaline: Increases tension by 5 when damage is taken
Memory of Gadolt: Increases base block rate by 10%. Already factored
Vendetta: Increase counter rate by 15%
Ether Explosion: Increase Ether by 75. Already factored
Vote of Confidence: Increases the power of healing immediately after seeing a vision by 25%
Bedside Manner: Improves Healing by 10%
Shield of Kindness: 75% chance to reduce Ether damage received at the start of battle by 20% for the first 30 seconds.


ARTS
Set
Heal Bullet: Restores HP equivalent to Ether * 5.265 (modifier's average). Translates to about  2652 HP healed when Bedside Manner is factored in. At 50% HP or lower, increases to 3050 HP healed. Generates 10% Heat. Cooldown of 15.5 seconds.
Shield Bullet: Creates a barrier that absorbs 2650 points of damage for the 34.4 seconds. Generates 15% Heat. Cooldown of 49.5 seconds.
Cure Bullet: Removes status effects and prevents being afflicted by status effects for the next 9.5 seconds. Generates 10% Heat. Cooldown of 16.5 seconds.
Thunder Bullet: Magical. Fires two rounds, each shot dealing 3741 electric damage (7483 total). If used on flyers, deals an extra 25%, boosting it to 9354. Generates 10% Heat. Cooldown of 11 seconds.
Tranquilizer: Magical. Adds Sleep to the target for 29.4 seconds. Generates 15% Heat. Cooldown of 22 seconds.
Head Shot: Physical. Deals 7808 damage. Has a 100% crit rate (already factored) and if used on a Stunned target, a 15% chance of ID. Generates 25% Heat. Cooldown of 33.6 seconds.
Heal Blast: Restores HP equivalent to Ether * 9.675 (modifier's average). Translates to about 4872 HP healed when Bedside Manner is factored in (so full for her). At 50% HP or lower, increases to 5605 HP healed. Generates 20% Heat. Cooldown of 28.1 seconds.
Heal Counter: Creates a barrier that automatically restores 5% of Sharla's max HP when she is struck by any attack. Protects her for either 14 attacks or 39.8 seconds, whichever occurs first. Generates 15% Heat. Cooldown of 37.2 seconds.

In Reserve/Not used
Drive Boost: Aura. Reduces the cool down of all other arts by 65% for 25.8 seconds, with the exception of Drive Boost itself. Cooldown of 66 seconds.
Cure Round: Removes status effects for the whole party and prevents the party from being afflicted by status effects for the next 9.5 seconds. Generates 25% Heat. Cooldown of 24.8 seconds.
Heal Round: Restores HP equivalent to Ether * 5.88 (modifier's average). Translates to about 2962 HP healed when Bedside Manner is factored in to all allies. At 50% HP or lower, increases to 3497 HP healed. Generates 25% Heat. Cooldown of 41.8 seconds.
Metal Blast: Physical. Deals 3381 damage. Line fire, and penetrates targets. Adds Break for 9.5 seconds. Generates 20% Heat. Cooldown of 49.2 seconds.
Heat Bullet: Miscellaneous. Increases all allies' tension around target by 158 points. Generates 15% Heat. Cooldown of 16.5 seconds.
Head Shaker: Physical. Deals 5038 damage. Stuns target for 2 seconds if they are suffering from Topple. Cooldown of 57.6 seconds.
Aura Bullet: Miscellaneous. Increases the duration of any aura by 10 seconds. Generates 15% Heat. Cooldown of 38.4 seconds.
Covert Stance: Aura. Drops Aggro by 52% and prevents any aura gain at this time for 29.5 seconds. Cooldown of 32.8 seconds.

Talent Art - Cool Down
As Sharla uses her arts, her gun will heat up and fill up her talent gauge. If the amount of heat generated by the art will exceed the gauge's maximum point, the art cannot be used. Instead, she must Cool Down her rifle first (resetting the talent gauge to 0) before being allowed to use the desired art. The maximum point of the talent gauge is 100% (easy enough). Note that Sharla has a bonus/penalty effect on her arts. As the heat in the rifle goes up, the amount of damage dealt by her arts increase by 56% at maximum while healing is penalized and decreases to 85% efficiency. When the heat of the rifle is at 0, Healing is improved by 25%.

Initial Comments:
Weird case. Being the team's dominant healer, she has multiple techniques that focus on healing or status removal. This isn't necessarily bad perse, but it does leave her relatively strapped for having good damage arts. Sharla's go-to money move is Thunder Bullet. It's fast, deals a good deal of damage and can be boosted. A lot of Sharla's other arts (especially physical) have longer cool downs, which limits their use. Drive Boost is therefore, a good option if she can afford it by giving up status healing. Her healing gradually gets better the more she is injured, so she can afford to delay healing a little to get more bang for each healing art and be efficient with handling cool downs. One more notable aspect about Sharla is her Tranquilizer skill. It is absolutely devastating if the enemy doesn't have any sleep protection as it has great range, and 100% success barring resistances/immunities. So if an enemy isn't sleep immune, she can effectively sleep lock them (due to the cool down/duration) and wait for her better arts or healing to recharge. Heal counter is their for multi-attack moves that deal a lot of damage in total, but individual hits are not very strong; also replaceable depending on circumstances. Kneejerk is some form of Middle




DUNBAN - "Amateurish!"

Level 79

HP: 5216
Strength: 511
Ether: 330
Agility: 142
Crit: 20% Crit (5% base rate)
Block: 10% Block (0% base rate)

P.Def: 606 (787)
E.Def: 726 (541)
Weight: 0 (2)

() numbers are with Rex armor while unbracketed is with Rondine armor. Shifts the focus of his defenses essentially.

SKILL TREE BONUS
Bravery: +15% Counter rate
Wisdom: +15 Agility
Prudence: +15% Block rate
Obstinance: +50 P.Def
Enthusiasm: +100 Strength

WEAPON: Wyvern Cutlass. +50 P.Def, +15% Crit, +10% Block. 3 free slots. Deals an average of 1326 damage a hit. Regular swing Speed is 1.8 seconds.

Alternative equips
Darkness Sickle: +18% Crit. 3 free slots. Deals an average of 1281 damage a hit.
Machina Sword II: +26 P.Def, +13% Block. 3 free slots. Deals an average of 1171 damage a hit.
Chosen One: +30 P.Def, +15% Block. Deals an average of 1314 damage a hit. Fixed slots. Decreases aggro drawn from using arts by 40%, increases damage dealt if attacking an enemy's back by 50% and increases the first attack's damage by 100%.
Calming Spear: +25 P.Def, +20 E.Def, +5% Block. Deals an average of 1066 damage a hit. Fixed slots. Increases resistance to all status by 20%, increases resistances to Topple and Stun by 30% each.
Reward Defender: +10% Crit. Deals an average of 994 damage a hit. Fixed slots. Increases EXP gained by 25% and AP gained by 50%. HE GETS MORE EXPS FROM WINNING NOW.

NOTABLE PASSIVE SKILLS
Medium Equipment: Allows Dunban to equip Medium weight equipment
Heavy Equipment: Allows Dunban to equip Heavy weight equipment
Invincible Hero: When Dunban's HP is maxed, his strength increases by 10%
Warrior's Ambition: Increases tension at the start of battle by 25 points
Hero's Valour: 75% chance to increase Dunban's Max HP at the start of battle by 20% for the first 40 seconds. Note that this does NOT
refill his HP to the new maximum (so yes, it has poor synergy with Invincible Hero)
Gentleman's Valour: 25% chance Dunban's Max HP at the start of battle by 30% for the first 40 seconds. Note that this does NOT
refill his HP to the new maximum. Stacks with Hero's Valour.
Sustained Spirit: Increases the duration of auras active by 10 seconds. Already factored.
Lightweight Expert: Boosts the defensive ratings of middle weight armor by 10%. Already factored.
Critical Drain: Restores 2% of Dunban's HP when he scores a crit
Natural Born Warrior: Allows Dunban to lower the weight of his overall equipment by 5. This bonus is not applied to each piece of equipment individually. Already factored.
Equipment Expert: Allows Dunban to lower the weight of his overall equipment by 10. This bonus is not applied to each piece of equipment individually. Already factored.
Body of Steel: Cuts physical damage received by 15%. Already factored.
Steel Protection: Reduces Spike damage by 20%
Solid Foundation: 100% Resistance to attacks that knock back or will send Dunban flying
Reckless Abandon: Increases Dunban's Agility by 15% when his HP is 50% or below
Twin Swords: 5% base chance to double attack on auto-attacks
Counter Rage: Increase counter rate by 10%.
Ardent Strike: Increases tension by 10 for every critical hit made
Deadly Determination: Increases tension by 10 for every time an art is used.
Charge Acceleration: At the start of a battle, 25% chance of receiving the Haste status, boosting his next auto-attack to occur 30% faster. Lasts 15 seconds.
Inner Peace: If Dunban has no armor equipped, his base agility increases by 30% (up to 184)

ARTS
Set
Gale Slash: Physical. A dashing slash attack at the enemy. Deals 2758 damage and adds Bleed for 10 seconds on hit, which then deals 552 damage every 2 seconds. Total 8274 damage. Cooldown of 12.3 seconds.
Worldly Slash:Physical. A 2 hit slash combo with each hit dealing 2135 damage (4270 in total). On hit, drops opponent's defense by 20% for 20.8 seconds. If Gale Slash was used immediately before hand, also drops enemy's strength by 20% for the same duration. Cooldown of 19.2 seconds.
Steel Strike: Physical. Dunban delivers a precise shoulder rush that his for 4681 damage. If the enemy is under Break or Stun before hand, also topples the target for 3 seconds. Cooldown of 16.5 seconds.
Tempest Kick: Magical. Deals 3469 damage. If Gale Slash is used before hand, this also removes 1 buff from the enemy. After use, Dunban will always be facing away from his enemy. Cooldown of 19.2 seconds.
Thunder: Magical. Deals 4614 damage. Can only be used on a target behind Dunban. When used in conjunction with an Aura, automatically forces Stun on to the target for 2 seconds. Cooldown of 22 seconds.
Soaring Tempest: Physical. 3 hits of 1512 damage in a circle surrounding Dunban. Each hit raises his talent gauge by 10%. Cooldown of 49.5 seconds.
Peerless: Aura. Boosts Dunban's strength by 145% for 31.5 seconds. Draws aggro from allies when activated. Cooldown of 24.8 seconds
Serene Heart: Aura. When activated, Dunban's Hit and Evade are boosted by 50% for 34 seconds. If Dunban is at 50% HP or lower, this boost is increased to 75%. Cooldown of 24.8 seconds.

In Reserve/Not used
Jaws of Death: Aura. Boosts physical arts by 1.5x and auto-revives Dunban to 75% of his HP if he will take fatal damage while active. 40 second duration. Cooldown of 66 seconds.
Final Flicker: Miscellaneous. Sacrifices 20% of Dunban's HP to fill his talent gauge by 50%. Cooldown of 33 seconds.
Electric Gutbuster: Physical. If used after Gale Slash, Adds Break for 9.5 seconds. Cooldown of 6.6 seconds.
Spirit Breath: Aura. Removes status effects and adds Haste, increasing auto-attack speed by 95% for 24.5. Cooldown of 20.7 seconds.
Blinding Blossom: Absorbs 56% of an ally's accumulated aggro. Cooldown of 21.9 seconds.
Demon Slayer: Physical. Noticeable start up (about 2.1 seconds). Deals 6007 damage. If used as a killing blow on an enemy, inflicts Topple on all adjacent enemies for 3 seconds. Cooldown of 87.6 seconds
Battle Eye: Inflicts Lock On to selected target. Increases double attack rate by 25% and allows evasion to fill up talent gauge. Active for 34.9 seconds. Cooldown of 41.2 seconds.
Heat Haze: Aura. When activated, Dunban's crit rate is boosted to 100% for 49.8 seconds. Drops all accumulated aggro. Cooldown of 65.7 seconds.

Talent Art - Blossom Dance
Dunban performs a series of 5 slashes in 4 consecutive attacks. Each hit needs to be timed via QTE (fairly easy to do as long as the screen is not lagging). 1 hit at 1.5x, 1 hit at 2.0x, 2 hits at 1.25x and the final hit at 4.5x for a total multiplier of 10.5x total. Deals 13923 damage by default.

Initial Comments
Scary. Dunban is the man (tentatively speaking). Aside from having a buff that makes him hard to hit and another aura that auto-revives him once when activated, his moves all have combo like properties. While Thunder is normally difficult to set up, Tempest Kick puts him in the perfect position after it's use. If used with an Aura active, Dunban can automatically stun targets, and then Steel Strike them to keep them defenseless. If he adds Final Flicker (and setting up his arts differently), he can get to his Talent Art quickly to deal lots of damage. Worldly Slash adds to his repetoire by dropping defense and the opponent's attack when combo'd. Has lots of usable auras and skills depending on the situation, so he likely has other art sets or equips to take advantage of some other passives. Some form of Heavy on initial inspection I want to say.




MELIA - "Oppose me, and your destruction shall be inevitable"

Level 79

HP: 3535 [4242]
Strength: 292 [350]
Ether: 604 [724]
Agility: 112 [134]
Crit: 23% Crit (5% base rate)
Block: 30% Block (15% base rate)

P.Def: 603
E.Def: 650
Weight: 5

NOTE: Unadorned Beauty does not effect P.Def or E.Def - only HP/Strength/Ether/Agility. Stats boosted by unadorned beauty noted with []. P.Def/E.Def numbers used the Hierex set. Melia doesn't have much of an option to adjust for P.Def, so any boosts that she can get will probably be her default.

SKILL TREE BONUS
Serenity: +15 Agility
Honesty: +15% Crit
Reliability: +50 P.Def
Reticence: +50 E.Def
Passion: +100 Ether

WEAPON: Sun Staff. +50 P.Def, +50 E.Def, +18% Crit, +15% Block. 3 free slots. Deals an average of 832 damage a hit. Regular swing speed is 2.5 seconds.

Alternative equips
Empress Staff:  +10% Block. Deals an average of 792 damage a hit. Fixed slots. Increases Electric damage dealt by 50%. Increases Max HP by 50%. Provides a constant 30% chance to survive any fatal attack at 1 HP.
Alcor Staff: +50 E.Def, +15% Crit. Deals an average of 927 damage a hit. Fixed slots. Increases Electric and Fire damage dealt by 50% each. Decreases aggro gained from using Arts by 40%.

NOTABLE PASSIVE SKILLS
Amplified Healing: Healing used on Melia is 15% more effective
High Speed: Boosts Agility by 15. Already factored
Palace Guard: Increases Block rate by 15%. Already factored.
Ether Awareness: Boosts Ether by 25. Already factored
Ultimate Ether: Boosts Ether by 50. Already factored
Unadorned Beauty: Increases Strength, HP, Ether and Agility by 20% if Melia does not have any gems equipped. Denoted by []
Nonchalant Heart: Reduces tension loss when an attack misses by 5
Unyielding Heart: Reduces accuracy penalty from low tension by 50% (in essence, low tension penalty of -50 Agility is cancelled for attacking purposes)
Mental Barrier: Decreases damage taken from Ether attacks by 25%
Rejection of Evil: Cuts Spike damage by 50%
Power of the Moon: Melia's strength increases by 15% during Nighttime. Most likely DL useless for multiple reasons >_>. Average of 7.5%. Factored into the next post.
Awakening Strike: Increases the damage dealt to enemies suffering from sleep by 50%
Serenity of Water: Increases the HP drained from Summon Aqua by 25%. Already factored.
Whisper of the Wind: Increases damage dealt from Summon Wind by 25%. Already factored.
Glistening Ice: Increases the duration of the Chill status inflicted by Summon Ice for 6 seconds. Already factored.
Playing with Poison: Increases the duration of the Poison status inflicted by Summon Earth for 15 seconds. Already factored.
Passion of Flame: Increases the duration of the Flame status inflicted by Summon Flare for 20 seconds. Already factored.
Electric Shock: Increases damage dealt from Summon Bolt by 25%. Already factored.
Ether Guard: Immunity to effects that will decrease Ether Attack.
Enlightenment: Increases Ether accuracy by 20% (from 150% to 180%)

ARTS
Set
Summon Bolt: Magical. Boosts Ether by 20% until dismissal. Effect can be stacked up to 3 times, once for each elemental.  Dismissal deals 6371 lightning damage (factors in one Ether+20% boost and her passive). Cooldown of 12.3 seconds.
Summon Earth: Magical. Cuts Physical damage by 15% until dismissal. Effect can be stacked up to 3 times, once for each elemental.  Dismissal deals 1304 poison damage on initial hit. Inflicts Poison on hit, which deals an additional 1304 Poison damage every 2 seconds for 45 seconds. 29996 damage total (assuming full duration of Poison). Cooldown of 49.5 seconds.
Summon Flare: Magical. Boosts Strength by 20% until dismissal. Effect can be stacked up to 3 times, once for each elemental.  Dismissal deals 1750 fire damage on  initial hit. Inflicts Blaze on hit, which deals an additional 700 Blaze damage every 2 seconds for 40 seconds. 15750 damage total (assuming full duration of Blaze). Cooldown of 24.6 seconds.
Summon Ice: Magical. Cuts Magic damage by 15% until dismissal. Effect can be stacked up to 3 times, once for each elemental.  Dismissal deals 2299 ice damage on initial hit. Inflicts Chill on hit, which deals an additional 1380 Chill damage every 2 seconds for 16 seconds.  13337 damage total (assuming full duration of Chill). Cooldown of 16.7 seconds.
Summon Wind: Magical. Boosts Agility by 10% until dismissal. Effect can be stacked up to 3 times, once for each elemental.  Factoring in her passive, dismissal deals 4333 wind damage on initial hit. Cooldown of 18.2 seconds.
Summon Copy: Re-summons the last elemental summoned. Cooldown of 24.8 seconds.
Reflection: Protects Melia for 5 seconds from all physical and magical attacks by reducing all damage to 0. During this period, she is only vulnerable to damage from talent arts. Cooldown of 16.5 seconds.
Hypnotize: Puts an enemy to sleep for 30.8 seconds. Cooldown of 33 seconds.

In Reserve/Not used
Summon Aqua: Magical. Regenerates 109 HP every 2 seconds while summoned. Effect can be stacked up to 3 times, once for each elemental.  Factoring in her passive, drains 672 HP on dismissal. Cooldown of 12.3 seconds.
Spear Break: Physical. Deals 2122 damage. On hit, adds Slow for 9.5 seconds. Cooldown of 13.8 seconds.
Starlight Kick: Physical. Deals 2596 damage. If Spear Break was used immediately before hand, auto-forces Topple for 3 seconds. Cooldown of 22 seconds.
Shadow Stitch: Magical. Adds Bind for 25.8 seconds on all enemies surrounding Melia. Cooldown of 87.6 seconds.
Burst End: Magical. On hit, drops enemy defense by 10% and enemy ether defense by 25% for 19.9 seconds. Only usable when Melia is under Element Burst state. Cooldown of 33 seconds.
Mind Blast: Magical. Noticeable start up (about 4.3 seconds). Deals 5182 damage. Only usable when Melia is under Element Burst state. Adds Art Seal on hit for 29.8 seconds. Cooldown of 57.6 seconds.
Power Effect: Aura. Doubles the range of each element's boost effects for 29.4 seconds. Cooldown of 32.8 seconds.
Healing Gift: Drains 20% of Melia's Max HP to heal an ally for 29% of her Max HP. Cooldown of 8.2 seconds.

Talent Art - Element Burst
When her Talent gauge is full, Melia enters into Burst state, which causes the dismissal of any summoned elements to deal 2x their original damage. Unlike other characters, Melia's Talent gauge resets itself to 0 on random chance basis tied directly to her level of tension:

Max - 10% chance to drop out of Burst state
High - 25% chance to drop out of Burst state
Normal - 40% chance to drop out of Burst state
Low - 50% chance to drop out of Burst state
Zero - 100% chance to drop out of Burst state

Also unlike other characters, Melia's talent gauge only increases normally when she dismisses elements. Her auto attack does not fill up her talent gauge unless equipped to do so.

NOTE that Melia can have three elements summoned at anyone time. She cannot summon more than three and the order of dismissal is always the last element summoned is the first one dismissed.

Initial Comments
Damage, damage, damage. Aside from packing the strongest single hit tech with the fastest recharge time in the game (hi Summon Bolt), Melia also has the same DoTs as Riki, which as you can see above, do stupid high damage if they can hold their duration. Her biggest problem is trying to find a way to milk those DoTs since she is frail. Her biggest help in doing that might be Sleep. Hypnotize the enemy, then run out of attack range and watch the damage pile up. Secondary to that is Shadow Stitch, which allows her to do something similar, but won't work on other ranged opponents. Reflection can block a single attack to help things out and if all else fails, Summon Earth x2 or Summon Ice x2 will cut the incoming damage by 30%, although she can't have both up. She can also try dodge tanking with unadorned beauty and Summon Wind x2, although this is probably not as viable as the previous two. Possibly a Heavy, but leaning more High Middle myself. Unless of course, someone else finds a better way to keep damage off her.




RIKI - "Riki like fighting easy monsters~"

Level 80

HP: 9147
Strength: 484
Ether: 378
Agility: 120
Crit: 20% Crit (5% base rate)
Block: 15% Block (0% base rate)

P.Def: 551 (787)
E.Def: 685 (566)
Weight: 5 (17)

() numbers are with Rex armor while unbracketed is with Rondine armor. Note that due to the large agility penalty associated with Heavy armor, Riki may not necessary want to use it.

SKILL TREE BONUS
Vivacity: +15% HP
Innocence: +50 E.Def
Flexibility: +15 Agility
Cowardice: +20% Block
Heroism: +20% Crit

WEAPON: Comet Biter. +50 P.Def, +25 E.Def, +20% Crit, +15% Block. 3 free slots. Deals an average of 1144 damage a hit. Regular Swing speed is 1.9 seconds.

Alternative equips
Banquet Biter: +30 P.Def, +20 E.Def, +15% Block. Deals an average of 1161 damage a hit. Fixed slots. Increases Fire, Ice and Poison damage all by 50%.
Calming Biter: +30 E.Def, +20% Crit, 5% Block. Deals an average of 1136 damage a hit. Fixed slots. Increases resistance to all status by 20%, increases resistances to Topple and Stun by 30% each.

NOTABLE PASSIVE SKILLS
Heavy Equipment: Allows Riki to equip Heavy weight equipment
Adventure Time!: Increases movement speed by 5%
Make it all better!: If Riki's HP drops below 50%, his healing improves by 20%
Like Sun!/Pretty Stars!: These boost Riki's strength depending on the time of the day. Daytime is +10%, Nighttime is +15%. Average 12.5%, which is factored in the next post.
Love Sun!/Amazing Stars!: These reduce the cooldown period for Riki's arts. Daytime is 10%, Nighttime is 15%. Average is 12.5% Cooldown reduction, which is already factored.
Bullseye!: Riki gains increased accuracy (+50%?) if he's attacking an enemy's back
Riki Strong!: Riki is immune to Strength down effects.
Watch Out!: If Riki's HP drops to 50% or below, his Agility increases by 20%
Nutritious!: Increases Riki's strength by 50. Already factored.
Ouchies!: Increases Spike damage dealt by Riki by 25%
Cuddly Hero!: Riki resists all status by 30%. Stacks with Calming Biter for 50% resistance to all status.

ARTS
Set
Freezinate: Magical. 1640 initial Ice damage. Inflicts Chill on hit, which causes 984 Chill damage every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. 6560 damage total (assuming full 10 seconds on Chill). Cooldown of 7.2 seconds.
Burninate: Magical. 1739 Fire damage that hits around Riki. Inflicts Blaze on hit, which causes 714 Blaze damage every 2 seconds for 20 seconds.  8927 damage total (assuming full 20 seconds on Blaze). Cooldown of 22 seconds.
Lurgy: Magical. 695 Poison damage that hits in a fan shape in front of Riki. Inflicts Poison on hit, which causes 695 Poison damage every 2 seconds for 30 seconds. 11127 damage total (assuming full 30 seconds on Poison). Cooldown of 28.7 seconds.
Hero Time: Aura. Prevents tension loss for Riki and any allies around him. Further boosts a random stat of Riki's by 156%. Lasts 24.5 seconds. Cooldown of 14.4 seconds.
Bitey Bitey: Physical. 2642 damage. Inflicts Bleed on hit, which deals 529 Bleed damage every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. 5285 damage total (assuming full 10 seconds on Bleed). If attack hits from behind, Bleed duration is doubled, dealing another ~2700 damage or so. Cooldown of 21.5 seconds.
Say Sorry: Physical. Deals 4038 damage by default (base tech modifier is 3.53). If opponent is inflicted with status effects, increase the tech modifier on this attack by 1 for every status. With this default set up, tech modifier can go up 7.53. Cooldown of 38.3 seconds.
You can do it: Restores HP equivalent to Ether * 4.05 (modifier's average). Translates to about 1531 HP healed. If Riki is suffering from status effects, the multiplier on this art increases by 1 for every status (I think). His passive boosts this to 1837 HP healed if he is under half HP. Cooldown of 16.8 seconds.
Riki is Angry Aura. When activated, Riki automatically reflects any damage dealt to him as spike damage for 25.8 seconds. The amount of damage reflected varies between 2, 4 or 8 times (becomes 2.5, 5 or 10 when factoring in his passive). Reflects all sources of damage except those dealt by Talent Arts. Further testing is needed to see if the rate of variation is the same across all three modifiers or if one modifier is more prevalent than another. Assuming that each of the modifiers has an equal chance of kicking in, the average amount of damage reflected back is x4.66. Cooldown of 48.2 seconds.

In Reserve/Not used
Happy Happy: Riki powers up the Party Gauge by a full bar. Useless unless for team battles where all team members are XB characters.
Sneaky: Physical. Deals 2380 damage. If attack hits from behind, damage is tripled. Cooldown of 10.8 seconds.
Roly Poly: Miscellaneous. Random chance to auto-force Topple. If Topple fails, inflicts Bind. Can completely miss and does when level difference is too large. Cooldown of 28.9 seconds.
Bedtime: Magical. Riki inflicts sleep to himself and all enemies surrounding him for 29.4 seconds. Cooldown of 57.8 seconds.
Behave: Magical. Riki inflicts Paralysis for 19.9 seconds. Has a chance to remove Crazed (enemy only status). Cooldown of 24.1 seconds.
Tantrum: Physical. Deals 3 hits of 1739 damage (total 5217 damage). Adds Break for 8.6 seconds. Cooldown of 9.6 seconds.
Peekaboo: Physical. Deals 4039 damage. If hitting machines from the side, adds Confuse for 9.5 seconds. Cooldown of 12.1 seconds.
Play Dead: Aura. Riki plays dead, dropping his accumulated aggro to 0. He recovers HP equivalent to genuine revival (about 25%) and his physical arts are 1.5x stronger during the duration. Cooldown of 43.3 seconds.

Talent Art - Yoink!
Riki steals something random from an enemy. Can be anything from an item, EXP or AP. No damage is dealt by this. BUT HE CAN LEVEL UP MID BATTLE AND GAIN LEVEL ADVANTAGE OVER OTHER DUELERS OMG no.

Initial Comments:
I'll need to do some more analysis into Riki is Angry, but for now...um, Jesus Christ. Riki is surprisingly competent and possibly the game's best dueler. I was going over my notes and lamenting at how bad he is since he requires time for his damage to stack up (just look at this DoTs!). Then I realized that Riki is Angry actually has DL use. And then further realized just how amazingly bad ass it is in the DL. It wouldn't be anywhere near as cool if Riki himself wasn't durable or if he can't heal. He does both, albeit, not the best in either category. And as result, you get someone who can reflect on average, 4.66x the damage he receives back to his attacker and that's BEFORE his passive which further boosts spike damage by another 25%. That might outright scare people from attacking Riki while that Aura is up, and it works to his advantage because now he can let his DoTs take effect if they decide to be passive. He might need a bigger punch against healer, but he has a Sleep move and Say Sorry for that. He may have a little less variation than Dunban and Seven, but Riki's a threat no doubt. High Heavy on initial evaluation, subject to change of course.


SEVEN - "One-hit kill, or something~"

Level 80

HP: 5984
Strength: 567
Ether: 336
Agility: 134
Crit: 20% Crit (5% base rate)
Block: 10% Block (0% base rate)

P.Def:  876 (695 /w Storebought)
E.Def:  688 (no change)
Weight: 8 (7)

SKILL TREE BONUS
Courage: +15% Crit
Zeal: +15% HP
Daring: +100 Strength
Rashness: +20% Counter Rate
Innocence: +50 E.Def

WEAPON: Conviction Blades. +25 P.Def, +50 E.Def, +15% Crit, +10% Block. 3 free slots. Deals an average of 930 damage a hit. Randomly double attacks even without Double Attack skills or gems. Regular swing speed is 1.5 seconds. Her Speed armor boosts her swing speed to 0.95 seconds.

ARMOR:
Ether V Goggles: Innate Resist all status 75%. +130 Defense, +150 Ether Defense, 2 Weight.
Speed V Frame: Innate Haste+45%. +187 Defense, +210 Ether Defense. 0 Weight
Attack V Arms: Free slot. +152 Defense, +94 Ether Defense, 2 Weight.
Attack V Boosters: Free slot. +232 Defense, +104 Ether Defense, 2 Weight.
Sedna Drones: No slot. Allows usage of Sword Drones X Talent Art. +175 Defense, +130 Ether Defense, 2 Weight.

NOTE that Seven is the only one who gets all this detail regarding her armor (since all this is completely unique to her). In particular, all of the above require fighting some really powerful monsters to get (Level 95+). So YMMV on it. If you disallow this, then she wants the storebought set of parts as her default:

Ether IV Goggles: Innate Resist all status 75%. +130 Defense, +130 Ether Defense, 2 Weight.
Speed IV Frame: Innate Haste+45%. +173 Defense, +195 Ether Defense. 1 Weight
Speed IV Arms: Innate Agility+40 (caps at +50). +92 Defense, +135 Ether Defense, 1 Weight.
Speed IV Boosters: Innate Agility+40 (caps at +50). +140 Defense, +156 Ether Defense, 1 Weight.
Segment Drones: Free slot. Allows usage of Sword Drones II Talent Art. +160 Defense, +72 Ether Defense, 2 Weight.

Alternative equips
Dystopia: +10% Crit, 3 free slots. Deals an average of 947 damage a hit.
Infinity: +10% Crit. Deals an average of 912 damage a hit. Fixed slots. Increases tension at the start of any battle by 50, increases chance to double attack by 30%, heals 50 HP every time and Art is used.

Loki Drones: Free slot. Allows usage of Cannon Drones II Talent Art. +155 Defense, +135 Ether Defense, 1 Weight.
Eris Drones: Free slot. Allows usage of Gun Drones II Talent Art. +100 Defense, +100 Ether Defense, 1 Weight.
Ardi Drones: No slot. Allows usage of Shield Drones II Talent Art. +110 Defense, +232 Ether Defense, 1 Weight.
Mitra Drones: No slot. Allows usage of Shield Drones I Talent Art. +138 Defense, +186 Ether Defense, 3 Weight.

NOTABLE PASSIVE SKILLS
Mechonis Equipment: Allows Seven to equip mechonis armor parts and only mechonis armor parts.
Desperate Daggers: When Seven's HP drops below 50%, her counter rate goes up by 15%
Desperate Defense: When Seven's HP drops below 50%, her block rate goes up by 15%
Ultimate Counter: Causes Seven's counter attacks to all crit
Critical Combo: Causes Double attacks from Seven to all crit
Physical Resilience: Cuts Physical damage taken by 10%. Already factored
Strength of Will: Cuts Magic damage taken by 10%. Already factored
Opening Blow: Increases the first attack made by Seven by 50%
Nimble Feet: Seven's movement speed increases by 4%
Ultimate Strike: Increases the critical modifier by an additional 20% (so 1.5x for her)
Vision Mode: Boosts the damage of the next art by 25% upon seeing a Vision
Explosion of Energy: Increases tension by one level every time Talent Arts are used. This allows Seven to reach max tension (no other character can do this).
Vital Force: 2% chance of completely filling the Talent gauge on auto-attacks
Battle Stance: 75% chance of increasing Strength by 15% at the start of battle for 30 seconds.
Strong Links: Grants Haste buff at the start of battle, increasing her auto-attack speed by 20% for the first 15 seconds. Stacks with Haste from her armor.

ARTS
Set
Speed Shift: Aura. Adds Haste, increases auto attack speed by 95% (stacks with her armor and strong links to about bring her swing speed to about 0.4 seconds) for 29.4 seconds. During this time, adds double attack rate by 25% as well, while dropping own defense by 25%. Cooldown of 87.6 seconds.
Second Gear: Miscellaneous. Increases physical arts damage by 1.5x for 5 seconds. Cooldown of 44 seconds.
Power Drain: Magical. Drops enemy strength by 20%, increases own strength by 20% for 19.9 seconds. Cooldown of 16 seconds.
Spear Blade: Physical. Deals 3655 damage on average. Damage dealt triples if the enemy is suffering from Topple. Cooldown of 24.6 seconds.
Double Wind: Physical. Deals 3116 damage on average. Increases tension on hit by 50. Cooldown of 29.2 seconds.
Air Fang: Physical. Hits 2 times, each hit dealing 2864 damage on average (Total: 5728). Adds Break for 8.6 seconds. Cooldown of 8.2 seconds.
Final Cross: Magical. Can only be used when tension is maxed. Hits 4 times, each dealing 2852 damage on average (Total: 11408). Auto-Topples for 3 seconds on hit. Cooldown of 115.2 seconds.
Shutdown: Physical. 100% chance of inflicting Sleep for 14.9 seconds on hit barring resistance. Deals 2818 damage on average. If used on machines, this attack also acts like full Dispel (removes all buffs and debuffs). Cooldown of 24.8 seconds.

In Reserve/Not used
Double Blade: Physical. Deals 2372 damage on average. Triples if hitting the enemy's back. Cooldown of 12.3 seconds.
Cross Impact: Physical. Deals 2409 damage on average. Stuns target if they are already Toppled for 2 seconds. Cooldown of 24.8 seconds.
Healing Energy: Aura. Removes all status effects and restores Seven's HP every 2.5 seconds for 250 HP. Lasts 29.4 seconds. Cooldown of 38.4 seconds.
Zero Gravity: Magical. 100% Paralysis barring resistance for 29.4 seconds and deals 2684 damage on average. On hit, fills up talent gauge by 25%. Cooldown of 65.7 seconds.
Mag Storm: Magical. Deals 2405 damage on average. Forces Stun when used on machines for 2.0 seconds. Cooldown of 49.2 seconds.
Ether Drain: Magical. Drops enemy ether by 20%, increases own ether by 20% for 19.9 seconds. Cooldown of 16.5 seconds.
Lock On: Aura. Inflicts Lock On status to target for 19.9 seconds. Auto attacks from Seven fills up talent gauge faster than normal. Cooldown of 49.5 seconds.
Guard Shift: Aura. Seven gains 100% Block rate while reducing her strength by 25% for 29.4 seconds. Cooldown of 32 seconds.


Talent Art - Drone formation
Seven's auxiliary equipment transforms into different devices to attack the enemy. She has a choice of the following:

Gun: AoE Magic attack that deals 7549 damage, spread over 6 hits.
Sword: ST Physical attack that deals 13950 damage, spread over 10 hits.
Cannon: Line Magic attack that deals 10485 damage over a single hit.
Shield I: Blocks 1 talent art. Shield disappears after 30 seconds
Shield II: Removes all status effects and creates a barrier that protects Seven from being inflicted by status for the next 30 seconds.

She will want Sword drones by default, although depending on the circumstances, she may have uses for Shield, Shield II and Cannon drones.

Initial Comments:
Holy attack speed Batman! While Seven has other armor sets (which I will get eventually), the speed set is pretty much her default. 45% faster attack speed, that then stacks with Strong Links AND Speed Shift, giving her an improved speed of 160%.  Seven shreds enemies ridiculously fast due to how quickly she attacks. Vital Force would normally be terrible, but given how quickly she's attack, there's a good chance that it might actually go off. And when it does, she can always Power Drain/Second Gear to boost the power of Sword Drones. Her one weakness would be counter abilities such as Spikes from in-game. With limited free slots, Seven always needs to be aware of counter attack/auto counter abilities because she causes them go off a ridiculous number of times. Like Dunban, she has some other skills too that may come into play (such as Guard Shift or Ether Drain), so this may not be her best art set for all situations. Again, tentatively Heavy.

To come...

[Tide]

AUTO-ATTACK SPEED AVERAGES:
Tested these by fighting random enemies and using a stopwatch, counting the length of time from one attack to the next. All PCs are at the same level so there shouldn't be any differentiation. I also made sure none of the % Haste skills went off with the exception of Seven (since she has those innately and are unique to her). Here's how it ends up looking like:

Haste/Speed Shift Seven - ~0.4 seconds per attack
Haste Seven - ~0.95 seconds per attack
Seven (no Haste) - ~1.5 seconds per attack
Dunban - ~1.8 seconds per attack
Riki - ~ 1.9 seconds per attack
Shulk - ~2.0 seconds per attack
Melia - ~2.5 seconds per attack
Reyn - ~2.8 seconds per attack
Sharla - ~3.5 seconds per attack

Average: 2.285 seconds.

Results:
To the surprise of no one, Seven kind of rapes the average. With Speed Shift/Haste her attack speed is about 5.71x faster than everyone else, with the occasional double attacks thrown in there for even more damage. After that, some of the results are a little surprising. Riki, who is common suggested to have a slow swing speed, is actually decently quick. It makes sense in retrospect since his "class" is supposed to be like a thief. Shulk being just above the average makes him very happy since he can build up his Talent art faster. Melia, Reyn and Sharla are all sluggish for various reasons. Melia and Reyn take a long time to wind up their swing. To the good news of Reyn, Bone Upper works as a supplement attack to build up his talent gauge for Magnum Charge. Sharla is horribly slow, as she needs to seemingly unlock the safety of her rifle after every shot.

GEM LEGALITY
I mentioned about this on the very first page of the topic and I didn't get back onto this until now. There's a very good reason for this because determining what gems to factor and gems not to factor in is a bit of interp case and translation issue all in itself. So let's get down to business.

First, there's a difference between what's "common" and "rare". Let's just use these labels because although the game doesn't label, it's quite obvious some gems are more in abundance and others aren't. Aside from just common and rare, some gems do very specific things that are only good for a few members of the cast. In short, even if everyone can equip it, the true effects of the gem are only realized by a few members of the party. Finally, there's also the consideration of whether something is offensive or whether it makes sense to give to the entire cast on a substance level.

With that in mind, my thoughts on gem are something along these lines:
1) Gems where effects are only recognized on 1 or 2 PCs would definitely be allowed by me. This would be "unique" to the PC. An example of this is Heat Sink. Heat Sink reduces the heat generated from arts used on an ether rifle. The total number of PCs who can actually make use of this is 1 (Sharla). A caveat to this are where gems only give benefit to the PC in question under the DL format. I'll also allow these (as even if everyone else can use it, they can't really do anything with it).

2) Parametre (HP, Strength, Defense/Ether Defense, Ether, Agility) and Status defense gems where they are common (i.e: It is easy to have an abundance of them) are also allowed by me. Obviously Reyn, Dunban and Seven will all want extra strength where as Melia, Riki and Sharla would focus in on ether. Shulk may want a mix, depending on the situation. Everybody wants more HP sans Riki and Reyn. This cuts into their massive HP advantage though (since they hit the cap before using the extra percentages), so that's something you may want to consider.

3) If only 3 PCs want a gem and it's frequency is in question, then it goes on to my grey area list (has questionable legality so to speak). If more than 3 PCs want a gem or it is considered relatively rare, my view point is to disallow it.

4) Disallow based on substance where it doesn't make a lot of sense to give to the whole cast. The best example of this is Physical protect, which reduces incoming physical damage for the first 30 seconds of battle by X%. Not only is this normally a unique passive to some of the PCs, but seeing everyone from XB cut 50% physical damage for the first 3-4 rounds doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

5) Alternatively, you could allow PCs access to the gems on their fixed slot weapons and give those to them to be freely used on their ultimate equips. While you cannot do this in-game, it does allow you to decide who gets what gem without being completely arbitrary. Note that this viewpoint heavily hoses some (Shulk) and massively benefits others (Seven).

UNIQUE
Heat Sink (20%*2 is easily allowable. It is possible to get a 50% gem, but this one is rare. Max is 75%. YMMV on this).
Revival HP Plus (Riki may want this assuming it effects Play Dead. Reyn and Dunban have fixed auto-revival healing, so this should not effect them. No one else can use it)
Talent Boost (Halves auto-attack, +5% in talent gain when attacking. Only one is available, but no PC really wants this either because their talent art does nothing of value (Riki, Sharla), or they would very much appreciate their auto-attack damage (Dunban, Shulk, Seven). Only Melia really wants this since it allows her physical to now boost Talent and she doesn't use her physical anyway.)
Quick Step (only if you don't see movement = initiative. Shulk is the only one who wants this since it let's him get into position faster. Dunban too if using his fixed slot weapon).

ALLOWED
HP +50% (caps at 50%)
Strength +100 (caps at 150)
P.Def +100 (caps at 150)
Ether +100 (caps at 150)
E.Def +100 (caps at 150)
Agility +50 (caps at 50)
Status defense gems (See listing on page 1. Max of 100% resistance for each status. Caps at 100% for each)
Bleed Plus (Shulk/Dunban. Riki is debatable, but he will usually prefer Chill/Blaze/Poison. So this limits it down to 2 PCs as he can't equip Bleed if he already is using those gems)
Chill Plus (only Melia/Riki. +100% is easily allowable)
Blaze Plus (only Melia/Riki. +50% is easily allowable)
Poison Plus (only Melia/Riki. +40% is easily allowable)

QUESTIONABLE
Status effect gems (these are usually 25% to inflict status on auto-attack only. Seven loves you forever if you allows these. Note that since most other PCs will use their arts, Seven (with her attack speed) is the only one who really uses these effectively)
Electric Plus (unlike Chill/Blaze/Poison, Dunban may also wants Electric Plus for Thunder depending on his opponent)
Stun Plus (Increases length of Stun. Dunban/Shulk/Seven only)
Stun Up (increases damage to enemies suffering Stun. Again, only the above three characters can use this)

BANNED
Topple Plus (increases length of Topple. There are 6 PCs who can topple and everyone would want these except Reyn because he can't inflict Topple by himself)
Topple Up (increases damage dealt to topple'd enemy. See above)
Aura Heal (Heals HP with an Aura Up. Pretty much everyone with an aura may want this for constant regen)
Critical Up (Crit rate boost. Uno informs me that less powerful versions are available for purchase at end game. However, I kneejerk a lot of PCs may want this since most of them border along 20% crit or so, which means that it can boost them easily to 50% crit rates.)
Back Attack Plus (deals more damage when hitting an enemy's back. See comments on the Topple gems).
First Attack Plus (first chosen attack deals more damage)
Recovery Up (Increases amount of HP healed. Only Reyn doesn't have a use for this. All of the 6 other PCs have ways of restoring HP and would want this to increase the amount healed)
All Status Guard (called Debuff Resist in game. Everyone wants this. Comes from a level 98 monster)
Unbeatable (constant chance to survive at 1%. See above otherwise)
Initial Tension Up (+100 tension at start of battle. Free +10% damage on everyone! No.)
Night Vision (boosts hit immensely when it's night time. Aside from interp issues, this is also rare. Hurray, double strike!)
Double Attack (allows chance of attacking twice in one auto-attack. Pretty much everyone wants this sans Melia)
Haste (reduces the cooldown duration of auto-attacks. Again, almost everyone wants this and its pretty rare to boot)

With this in mind, we get the following gems that are considered "default for each PC" if you allow PCs access to gems on their free slot equipment.

Shulk (Uses all slots - needs to choose what to drop. If you don't allow the questionably legal gems, he gets 1 free slot for defenses.):
Bleed Plus+100%. Must be on weapon slot
Stun Up+100%. Must be on weapon slot
Stun Plus+100%. Must be on weapon slot
HP+50%
Strength +100 (or +150 for 2 slots)
Ether +100 (or +150 for 2 slots)
Agility+50
Quick Move+25%

Reyn (Uses only parametre gems. This leaves him 4 free slots for defenses):
HP+50%
Strength +150 (uses 2 slots)
Agility+50

Sharla (uses 7 slots. Leaves 1 slot for defenses. If you don't allow the questionably legal gems, 2 free slots for defenses.):
Heat Sink +40%. Must be on weapon (uses 2 slots)
Electric Plus+100%
Ether +150 (uses 2 slots)
HP+50%
Agility+50

Dunban (Has 1 free slot for defenses):
Bleed Plus+100% OR Electric Plus+100%. Must be on weapon slot
Stun Up+100%. Must be on weapon slot
Stun Plus+100%. Must be on weapon slot
HP+50%
Agility+50
Strength +100 (or +150 for 2 slots)
Ether +100 (or +150 for 2 slots)

Melia (Same as Sharla):
Chill Plus +100%. Must be on weapon slot
Blaze Plus +50%. Must be on weapon slot
Poison Plus +40% OR Talent Boost OR Electric Plus+100%. Must be on weapon slot
HP+50%
Agility+50
Ether +150 (2 slots)

Riki (Uses all slots.):
Chill Plus +100%. Must be on weapon slot
Blaze Plus +50%. Must be on weapon slot
Poison Plus +40%. Must be on weapon slot
Revival Plus
HP+50%
Agility+50
Ether +150 (2 slots)

Seven (Uses all slots.):
Status effect gem. Includes Break/HP Drain/Paralysis/Slow/Bind/Blaze/Chill/Bleed/Str.Down/P.Def Down/Ether Down/E.Def down/Agl. down. You may allow Seven just one or up to three. Must be on a weapon slot.
Stun Up+100%. Must be on weapon slot
Stun Plus+100%. Must be on weapon slot
HP+50%
Strength+150
Agility+50*
Haste+45%*

*Note that Seven's default armor set of choice has those marked with * as a fixed slot armor part. Both armor sets listed above give her 2 slots so she has to selectively choose either HP+50%/Strength+100 or Strength+150 unless she wants to give up her weapon slots.

ADJUSTED DAMAGE FIGURES
These are adjusted to reflect equipment/crits/gems/default skill trees. These numbers are the "average" (so to speak) of each attacking art. Bolded are the ones that I am kneejerking the PCs would want to use as their primary art. More on that later.

Shulk
Auto-Attack: 2269
Slit Edge: 4628
Backslash: 8620
Light Heal: 2194
Shaker Edge: 5581
Air Slash: 6874
Stream Edge: 6874

Monado Buster: 15879
Monado Eater: 6921 initially. 3225 Bleed damage afterwards every 2 seconds for 20 seconds. 39172 total
Monado Purge: 8063
Monado Cyclone: 9319

Reyn
Auto-Attack: 1532 (no double attack)
Dive Sobat: 3921
Bone Upper: 2981
Sword Drive: 9236
Aura Burst: 3354
Hammer Beat: 3890
Wild Down: 3155
War Swing: 1011 a hit for 3 hits. Total 3033
Lariat: 5407

Sharla
Auto-Attack: 1406
Heal Bullet: 3521. Heals 4049 instead if below 50% HP
Thunder Bullet: 4377 a hit for 2 hits. Total 8754. If used on fliers, deals 10943. Doubles damage if you allow Electric Plus+100% and further increases damage slightly if below 50%
Head Shot: 7808 (no change)
Heal Blast: 6471. Heals 7441 instead if below 50% HP
Heal Round: 3932. Heals 4522 instead if below 50% HP
Metal Blast: 3584
Head Shaker: 5341

Dunban - Numbers in [] assume usage of Peerless beforehand (Dunban prefers this aura to others on a pure damage perspective)
Auto Attack: 1618 [2710] (no double attack)
Gale Slash: 3364 [5638]. 1346 [2255] Bleed damage after every 2 seconds for 20 seconds. Total 16823 [28188]. (Bleed Plus 100%)
Worldly Slash: 3365 [4364] per hit for 2 hits. Total 6730 [8728].
Steel Strike: 5710 [9568]
Tempest Kick: 4641
Thunder: 6173 (can be boosted to 12346 if you allow the Electric Plus+100% gem)
Soaring Tempest: 1844 [3090] per hit for 3 hits. Total 5532 [9270].
Electric Gutbuster: 3009 [5041]
Demon Slayer: 7327 [12278]
Blossom Dance: 16984 [28549]

Melia
Auto-Attack: 912
Summon Bolt: 8427. Goes up to 16854 if you allow the Electric Plus+100% gem
Summon Earth: 1699. 2378 Poison damage every 2 seconds for 45 seconds. Total 54022 (Poison+40%)
Summon Flare: 2280. 1368 Blaze damage every 2 seconds for 40 seconds. Total 29640. (Blaze+50%)
Summon Ice: 2995. 3594 Chill damage every 2 seconds for 16 seconds. Total 31750 (Chill+100%)
Summon Wind: 5644
Summon Aqua: 875
Spear Break: 2325 (factors in Nighttime strength boost of 7.5%)
Starlight Kick: 2845
Mind Blast: 6751

Riki
Auto-Attack: 1277
Freezinate: 1990. 2388 Chill damage every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. Total 13928 (Chill+100%)
Burninate: 2166. 1300 Blaze damage every 2 seconds for 20 seconds. Total 15162 (Blaze+50%)
Lurgy: 844. 1181 Poison damage every 2 seconds for 30 seconds. Total 18562 (Poison+40%)
Bitey Bitey: 2949. 590 Bleed damage every 2 seconds for 10 seconds. Total 5899
You can do it: 2138
Sneaky: 2656
Tantrum: 1941 a hit for 3 hits. Total 5822
Peekaboo: 4507
Say Sorry: 4507. Goes up to 9614 if all status on default set is applied.


Seven
Auto-Attack: 1198 (no double attack)
Spear Blade: 4885
Double Wind: 4164
Air Fang: 3828 a hit for 2 hits. Total 7656.
Final Cross: 3137 a hit for 4 hits. Total 12548
Shutdown: 3766
Double Blade: 3170
Cross Impact: 3219
Zero Gravity: 2953
Mag Storm: 2645


AVERAGES
These are adjusted to reflect things like equipment/crits/gems and what not

HP:
1t. Reyn: 9999
1t. Riki: 9999
3. Seven: 8976
4. Dunban: 7824
5. Shulk: 7258
6. Sharla: 7062
7. Melia: 5302

Average: 8060

P.Def
Seven: 876 (Assumes the non-storebought stuff is her default)
Reyn: 812 (Rex gear)
Shulk: 745
Sharla: 716
Dunban: 606 (Rondine Gear)
Melia: 603
Riki: 551 (Rondine gear)

Average: 701

E.Def
Shulk: 829
Sharla: 820
Dunban: 726
Seven: 688
Riki: 685
Melia: 650
Reyn: 591 (Rex gear)

Average: 713


Agility:
Dunban: 192
Seven: 176
Riki: 165
Shulk: 158
Sharla: 157
Melia: 157
Reyn: 146

Average: 164.  NOTE - take this with a grain of salt when factoring in Hit/Evade considerations unless you do straight up scaling of evade and hit.

UPDATE: Did some hard testing with evade. Used the enemies in the last dungeon with Level 79 Reyn and 164 agility (average), out of 31 samples, he was hit 12 times. Factoring the level correction difference, gives us an average enemy Agility of 119 (likely 120). Note that with no gems factored in, the raw average Agility is about 121. Assuming about 120 enemy agility as your average, we get the following:

Dunban: 72%
Seven: 48%
Riki: 40%
Shulk: 33%
Melia: 32%
Sharla: 27%
Reyn: 9%

EDIT: Forgot to factor in weight.

Average Arts Cooldown: 30.3 seconds

P.Dur
DISCLAIMERS ABOUT THESE NUMBERS. Keep in mind that damage dealt in XB by randoms is often low. This is because:
a) The game has a focus on knowing how to control your aggro. As such, mobs are a big deal in game, and auto-attack often come in volleys instead of one to one.
b) Your healing is often limited in. Only 3 PCs can heal others, 2 of which only have 1 technique to do it with. If damage was really high, you would probably wipe repeatedly everywhere
c) Enemy arts are often a lot stronger (we're talking usually about 2-3x stronger than auto attacks). This is done to make use of the game's Vision system and let's them throw nastier attacks at you without being completely unfair.

I do not have the average damage value of end game enemies other than approximate average for auto attack figures (due to evade testing). Finding the average damage would have to factor in all enemy arts too, which will take extremely long to figure out. As such, these will have to do for now. PC with higher defense are better against more hits and lower damage numbers (obvious, but should be pointed out). When damage starts getting very high, defense becomes a non-factor due to subtractive defense.

Special thanks to Random for helping me churn these out. FYI, Auto attack average of endgame enemies is about 1250. The higher the number, the better.

1. Reyn: 1.27
2t. Seven: 1.18
2t. Riki: 1.18
4. Dunban: 0.97
5. Shulk: 0.91
6. Sharla: 0.87
7. Melia: 0.63

M.Dur - See disclaimer above. Assumed damage average is the same as P.dur, we get:

1. Riki: 1.22
2. Reyn: 1.19
3. Seven: 1.11
4. Dunban: 0.97
5. Shulk: 0.93
6. Sharla: 0.90
7. Melia: 0.68

To the surprise of no one, HP is pretty much the determinant for durability.

TO DO LIST:
- Seven's random auto-double attack execution
- Average damage (by single art)
- Average damage (attempt DPS calc)
- Arts Execution time (requested by Monkey)
- Second Evaluation

[dude789]

I usually play as Melia, and I think I have a bit more specifics for some of her skills and some of these could slightly affect the rest of the cast.

I'm fairly sure that DoT's cancel sleep. I poisoned an enemy with Summon Earth that was being completely ignored by the rest of the party and then tried to put it to sleep. The first tick of poison damage after Hypnotize woke him up. This makes Hypnotize and other such skills of dubious use aside from waiting for cooldown. It does however cancel visions, but when the enemy awakes they can immediately start charging up for another talent arte. I guess the best way this would translate is reseting abilities with a charge time attached.

Also, as the name implies, Reflection does reflect damage back to the enemy. It also will definitely reflect physical talent artes. If you time it correctly it will drop the damage down to 0 in Visions and reflect the arte back to the enemy. I don't think it affects ether based artes though. Those will go right through. So it's more like Tetrakarn from SMT games. 

[Luther Lansfeld]

My feeling is that a turn should be around 4-6 seconds. It allows characters to combo commands such as Shadow Eye -> Backslash but doesn't have weird situations like "Seven attacks at 1/16 of a turn, 3/32 of a turn, 1/8 of a turn" that a 30(!) second average gives. I don't agree with one action being a turn either because characters will often combo attacks in some way.

I think the biggest thing I'd like to see tested before actually delving into the game as a ranking idea is the techs' attack time. Without this, it is difficult to put together a damage average for the game.

Also, I am quite confused by the HP numbers in this topic. Did you not include the gems in the HP of the characters listed above? And my Sharla (at 15 levels below this stat topic) already has almost 800 defense and yours is listed as 712. I am using Agrius Plate, is that illegal for some reason or am I missing something?

Melia I feel like should have Summon Aqua on her list. It combos well with Hypnotize to give her a weird healing game against people vulnerable to sleep.

[Tide]

Skill execution time is a thing I want to get notes on. Hopefully at some point when I feel non-lazy. I'll have to check on HP; my gut based on my last written note is that they should've included HP Up Gems, but it has been such a long time since I worked on this topic, I can't say with certainty.

As for the defense, I constructed that list mainly from the Excel spreadsheet notes I had access to at a time when the game was still relatively new. So its quite possible that there was something I glossed over or missed. If you recall where you got the armor and the stats for it, I can include it on the first page. It has been a while since I looked at this, so things are kinda fuzzy unfortunately.

[Dhyerwolf]

My gut reaction is that a  turn should be about the time needed for 3 techs. 2 reasons for this. 1 is that it's really easy to just unleash a tech flurry at once in a manner. The second is that I think Auto-Attacks should at least be some factor in the averages since battles generally tend to go on long enough that they hold some relevance. Granted, I'm not at endgame yet, so as I noted, this is more just gut reaction.