Grandia 2 -- Building Elena
Grandia 2 was a decent ps2 jrpg, although everybody knows that the stats, characterisation and plot are all subservient to the true aim of travelling the world and having Ryudo repeatedly heap verbal abuse on every single npc in it. In a somewhat uncommon pattern for a jrpg, you have no choice who is in your party at any one time -- it's motivated entirely by story events. A character you'll be seeing an awful lot of is Elena, who joins you in more or less the first town and hangs around for the majority of the story. This is a shame, because she's easily the worst character in the game.
Why? She has poor hp, physical attack, physical defense, middling speed, and a fairly unremarkable pool of unique special moves -- although her area damage + sleep move is good, the rest of her moves are either underpowered compared the rest of the cast (her basic physical damage + stun is the worst in the cast), or hideously slow and overcosted (her healing move, in particular, is so slow and expensive that it's barely ever worth it). Her good MP -- and the fact that she's using a staff and is literally a cleric -- would naturally lead the player to believe that she's got good magical ability, but in fact, her actual magical power is the second worst in the entire game. And make no mistake, Grandia 2 is a game where almost every single random encounter can be ended before the enemies move if you pick the right spell and cast it with a strong enough person. Even her normal attack animations are slow and clunky. Her only good points are MP and her magic defense.
The obvious answer is to make her a healer/buffer, but unfortunately, the plot works against you. Again, most random encounters can be finished in one or two turns with no damage incurred, which leaves only bosses in terms of situations where you need to buff or heal. And sadly, Elena spends more than a few bosses on the bench so the much more powerful Millennia can do her plot things. While it's fitting that the servant of a dead god is a weakling on the battlefield, it leaves us with a fairly bad character. So, what to do with her?
In my experience, the best choice is... well, nothing. Or, rather, have her aggressively do nothing. Because of her lack of uses elsewhere, Elena is perfect for an item-based build, which could conceivably done by any character. However, all those characters save Elena usually have something better to be doing.
First, we start with skills. Our goal here is to counter Elena's poor stats by using as few of them as possible, while amping up her Act (controls how quickly she takes her turns) to ridiculous levels. First, we start by giving her the Speed skill, which increases her Agility (which factors into her IP turnover, unlike the Speed stat, which controls movement speed on the battle map). Five stars will crank up her turn speed like crazy. Then, Skilled Item use (five stars) and Item Recover (five stars) will complete her skill build so far as necessary stuff goes. Any other skill slots should go to enhancing her bulk (extra HP, defensive stats, IP defense) or pure utility (Pirate's Ring), because she won't use anything else.
We supplement this with equipment -- give her either the Glass Slippers from the arm wrestling minigame, or the Queen's Heels. Anything with extra ACT, so she gets her turns even quicker. A staff with a good on-use effect will also help -- ignore any passives or attack gains, and just pick one with a decent proc.
Now for the final and most important piece of this build: Bonds of Trust. Bonds of Trust has a small boost to Act when equipped, but when used, it sacrifices the the character's turn in order to give another party member a sizable boost on the IP gauge -- often enough to allow them to enter their commands right away.
In-battle strategy is simple: we don't want to use Elena since she' bad at everything, so every time she gets a turn -- which she'll do often -- we immediately pass it to someone better. The Skilled Item and Item Recovery skills mean that she can do so near-instantly and will regain a significant part of her IP meter upon doing so, which means she's soon ready to pass again. If, for whatever reason, you don't wish to pass her turn, you use her equipped staff. She gets several that allow her to use mid-level elemental spells for free, and faster than she would do ordinarily. In a boss battle, you either buff/heal with her equipped mana egg and then pass turns to promote party-wide dps, or, better yet, you buy some of the powerful buffing/debuff items available (Nanaan Village is a good place to stock up while you're there) to allow her to buff up the party much faster than spells would be able to. Then pass turns. It sounds like a screwy strategy, but try it out -- it's honestly surprising how well it works.
Why? She has poor hp, physical attack, physical defense, middling speed, and a fairly unremarkable pool of unique special moves -- although her area damage + sleep move is good, the rest of her moves are either underpowered compared the rest of the cast (her basic physical damage + stun is the worst in the cast), or hideously slow and overcosted (her healing move, in particular, is so slow and expensive that it's barely ever worth it). Her good MP -- and the fact that she's using a staff and is literally a cleric -- would naturally lead the player to believe that she's got good magical ability, but in fact, her actual magical power is the second worst in the entire game. And make no mistake, Grandia 2 is a game where almost every single random encounter can be ended before the enemies move if you pick the right spell and cast it with a strong enough person. Even her normal attack animations are slow and clunky. Her only good points are MP and her magic defense.
The obvious answer is to make her a healer/buffer, but unfortunately, the plot works against you. Again, most random encounters can be finished in one or two turns with no damage incurred, which leaves only bosses in terms of situations where you need to buff or heal. And sadly, Elena spends more than a few bosses on the bench so the much more powerful Millennia can do her plot things. While it's fitting that the servant of a dead god is a weakling on the battlefield, it leaves us with a fairly bad character. So, what to do with her?
In my experience, the best choice is... well, nothing. Or, rather, have her aggressively do nothing. Because of her lack of uses elsewhere, Elena is perfect for an item-based build, which could conceivably done by any character. However, all those characters save Elena usually have something better to be doing.
First, we start with skills. Our goal here is to counter Elena's poor stats by using as few of them as possible, while amping up her Act (controls how quickly she takes her turns) to ridiculous levels. First, we start by giving her the Speed skill, which increases her Agility (which factors into her IP turnover, unlike the Speed stat, which controls movement speed on the battle map). Five stars will crank up her turn speed like crazy. Then, Skilled Item use (five stars) and Item Recover (five stars) will complete her skill build so far as necessary stuff goes. Any other skill slots should go to enhancing her bulk (extra HP, defensive stats, IP defense) or pure utility (Pirate's Ring), because she won't use anything else.
We supplement this with equipment -- give her either the Glass Slippers from the arm wrestling minigame, or the Queen's Heels. Anything with extra ACT, so she gets her turns even quicker. A staff with a good on-use effect will also help -- ignore any passives or attack gains, and just pick one with a decent proc.
Now for the final and most important piece of this build: Bonds of Trust. Bonds of Trust has a small boost to Act when equipped, but when used, it sacrifices the the character's turn in order to give another party member a sizable boost on the IP gauge -- often enough to allow them to enter their commands right away.
In-battle strategy is simple: we don't want to use Elena since she' bad at everything, so every time she gets a turn -- which she'll do often -- we immediately pass it to someone better. The Skilled Item and Item Recovery skills mean that she can do so near-instantly and will regain a significant part of her IP meter upon doing so, which means she's soon ready to pass again. If, for whatever reason, you don't wish to pass her turn, you use her equipped staff. She gets several that allow her to use mid-level elemental spells for free, and faster than she would do ordinarily. In a boss battle, you either buff/heal with her equipped mana egg and then pass turns to promote party-wide dps, or, better yet, you buy some of the powerful buffing/debuff items available (Nanaan Village is a good place to stock up while you're there) to allow her to buff up the party much faster than spells would be able to. Then pass turns. It sounds like a screwy strategy, but try it out -- it's honestly surprising how well it works.
