Any protips for this for when I get back to the game and plow it for real? I haven't even delved into the combat options yet. I definitely feel like I'm not maximizing my staggers. I basically hit Rising Phoenix (not sure what it's called), then Spinning Phoenix (ditto), then wail on them with attacks and hope I can do the specials again before the stagger time runs out.
I was one of the few people who liked FF13's battle system and I think a lot of that was because I figured out the stagger system and how to get fights done quickly / maximize damage during staggers. Was night and day between knowing how to play and not knowing, with that game. Had friends who hated the game but also turned out to be doing the battle system all wrong.
SE has really been hung up on stagger as a concept since 13 and I understand what they're going for, at least.
Little things like the Phoenix ultimate during a stagger actually pauses the time on the stagger bar, but every single hit it's doing will keep boosting up the damage bonus while not wasting any of the stagger bar time. Could either use it to help build up the bonus, or when you have other ways to boost up the damage bonus quickly like Malakriss noted with his ability combos...you can use it when the bonus is already high/maxed for full damage at the end of the bar without it finishing b/c it pauses for the duration. Upgrading the Phoenix ultimate makes it last longer with more attacks to it, as well.
Counters and Parries will also affect the stagger bar more than normal attacks. Hell even just firing a few Charged Magic shots can chip their bar a bit. At half an enemy's stagger bar, they will do a mini stagger that also is subject to the increasing damage bonus for hits (although the window is pretty short). You can extend this window slightly by using Garuda's static ability (mapped to the circle key by default setup), the one that normally will pull enemies to/down to you. It'll actually grapple them and you will yank them down for a larger window to go to town. Often on minibosses after pulling them down I'll use another good Will damage ability to either go immediately from half stagger to stagger, or to drop it a good bit to where they are close. Gouge is a nice ability for this, although it's another ability that does a lot of fast hits which might want to be saved to help build bonus in stagger...but there are better options for that pretty quickly as you get 3+ eikons.
Another thing I've noticed is the ability to charge up your sword (I think it's Burning Blade? forget exact name), while it feels too long to be useful initially, when mastered it charges up faster, and the attack animation takes a little bit longer than a normal attack, but this actually benefits you when trying to land a Pary during an enemy attack, by increasing the window to do so somewhat.
I haven't really messed with air combos at all, although I'm sure there is a good bit you can do with Garuda's skill set for that.
In general reminds me of my 7 Remake playthrough. At first I thought combat wasn't going to have a lot of options, but I keep learning new stuff and trying out different combos of abilities during/getting to stagger to see how quickly I can re-stagger something and how much damage I can pump out during to quicken fights. I can only imagine the options with even more eikons potentially, and once you master an eikon skill, it can be transferred to another eikon's loadout.
