Do yourself a favor and try the Hero class in Etrian Odyssey Nexus. Newly added for what is likely to be the final ever game in the series, this particular class seems purpose built to feel just slightly too powerful at pretty much everything it wants. Defensive options, party healing, straight damage and even elemental choices, the class comes together to feel quite unlike anything else – immediately powerful, tremendously useful and broken in all the right ways. Should you decide to see ‘Nexus through to it’s late game then you’ll soon unlock the ability to choose a Subclass, but what do you give the most complete feeling class in the game? Join us below as we detail some of our favourite options.
Highlander
Our first choice is the Highlander, a class almost entirely designed around, but not limited to, dealing as much damage as possible. To achieve this the class will expend health to power up it’s physical attacks, which may sound like a tricky tightrope to walk in such an unforgiving game, but should an opponent die at the hands of the Highlander then the party will be healed. This is the class in a nutshell; deal big numbers for health, slay a few enemies, have health restored. It’s a wilfully simple class in reality, but one that can be very powerful with the right team setup.
So how does this fit with our Hero base class? Well, the base class has some excellent offensive abilities already, so we’re really looking for ways to augment this as much as possible. Passives are the main benefit here, since the Highlander has excellent boosting skills like HP, Attack and Defence up, but the Hero can also benefit from the class defining Turning Tides which, when paired with Encouragement, can allow it to contribute hugely to the health restoration of your party. Additionally, Bloodlust makes for an excellent addition to the Hero’s defensive kit, especially if you’ve chosen to build it as the main form of tanking in your team.
Subclass Benefits
- Excellent passive skills can boost both attack and defence of your Hero.
- Turning Tide is another form of health restoration that the Hero can take on, and pairs well with Encouragement to make it a HP battery of sorts.
- It’s possible to set up Afterimages that deal great damage to groups with Draining Burst, though you will need to equip spears to unlock the option.
- Bloodlust will benefit a front line Hero, giving it some free passive counters.
- Investing into Bloodlust can open the way to Black Sabbath.
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Imperial
In our previous choice we applied the passives and benefits from the Highlander to make our Hero a better version of itself. The reason we couldn’t lean into the damage side of our first choice mainly came down to it’s differing equipment; spear not being compatible with the innate Hero sword abilities being the downfall. So what about a class that comes equipped with the same type? The Imperial’s Drive Blade is different in name alone and for the purpose of using Hero skills, it functions as a sword. Thus the doorway is open for us to share in all manner of delights offered by the Imperial, by which we of course mean the insanely huge amounts of damage they can deal.
To fully understand this combination the Hero must be explained a little. Aside from all manner of goodies available to the class, it’s main drawing point is the Afterimage skill, which essentially makes a copy of the Hero and places it in a free party slot. This can only happen after the Hero has used a skill, but the Afterimage will continuously use the very same skill that spawned it for at least one further round. So what we have here then, is a class capable of dealing absolutely massive damage with single attacks, and another class that has the capability of spawning a clone that repeats the very last attack… Perhaps you might want to use a huge Imperial attack, like Flame Drive or such, whilst also activating the Hero Force Boost which vastly increases the chance of summoning an Afterimage, thus almost guaranteeing the ability to deal some of the highest damage numbers in the game, twice in a row. Such things might be useful, no?
Subclass Benefits
- Afterimage will repeat powerful Drive attacks. Force Boost can be used to significantly increase the chance of them appearing.
- Passive defensive benefits through Heat Shield.
- Overheat doesn’t matter, since the Hero can still use non-Imperial abilities whilst the clone repeats a Drive.
- Absorber can help to sustain TP.
- Weapon skill requirement does not matter since both classes use a Sword type.
- Access to HP Up.
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Protector
So far we’ve talked at length about ways to improve your Hero’s offensive abilities, and we’ve touched on both Passive and Active ways to do so. It should be understood however, that there are multiple ways to play the Hero class, and quite a popular method is to take them in place of pure tanking units like the Protector. This is actually quite a reasonable approach, because the Hero itself will make up for any major lack of party protection by contributing a good amount of healing where required. Etrian games are anything but easy however, so for our final option we recommend that you pair your Hero with a Protector Subclass to create what is, in our opinion, the best defensive combination possible.
Much like our initial choice, a good portion of the benefits come from passives; Healing Wall, Aegis and En Garde are great choices here and even the basic Phys and Elem DEF Up can be of benefit. When it comes to active skills, the Fire/Ice/Volt Wall buffs are by far the most useful; as the game progresses you’ll be inundated with a variety of elemental party attacks, so being able to mitigate these will be tremendously useful. HP Up too can help make yourself a beefy Hero, and contributes to making the whole package feel much more sturdy from a defensive perspective.
Subclass Benefits
- Skills like En Garde can boost the Hero survivability.
- Elemental ‘Wall’ buffs are fantastic for party defence.
- Healing Wall adds to the healing options for the Hero in a pinch.
- Even the basic Front and Rear guard are nice options for reducing damage.
- Protector also has access to HP Up.
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Categories: Etrian Odyssey Nexus