Combat and combat builds can be a lot to get your head around when you're starting out in Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition. So much so that we reckon your best bet is to relax and learn as you go. Enjoy it, first and foremost.
However, when you're ready to get deeper, and once you've become au fait with combat in general, you may seek to put together the best builds you can for reach character. In order to help you cross this bridge, we've put together a guide to the best builds for every single party member.
[Note: This guide is a WIP, so keep checking back in as we experiment and find the best builds. Also please be sure to jump in and let us know your favourites in the comments!]
Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition - Best Combat Builds For All Characters
Before we dive into individual characters, if you're looking for a starting place, we've put together a combat guide that covers all of the most fundamental aspects of the game's battles. So make sure to jump over to our full Combat Guide for all you need to know on Overdrive, TP, Arts, Skills and more! Once you've got your head around the fundamentals, the following builds and suggestions are going to make a whole lot more sense.
With these builds, you'll need to level up to unlock access to some of the skills and arts, naturally. However, for the most part, these builds - or close to the same effect of build - are easy to achieve fairly early on in the game.
Remember that you can use lesser versions of the same arts, or switch things around with the same basic end result in mind. Once you get used to how each character operates, you'll most likely find aspects you prefer.
Also, if you don't fancy copying our skills and arts setups wholesale, you could just use our build focus summary for each character as an idea of the general direction to take each one. Have fun!
Elma - Full Metal Jaguar
Build Focus - Extended periods of Overdrive
Elma's class gives her a serious boost in terms of engaging overdrive, and any decent build with her should have this in mind. She is devastating later in the game, capable of hitting Overdrive and staying there for entire battles.
Make sure to enter tough fights with her TP primed and ready for Overdrive, then incorporate the arts and skills we've listed to maximise her effectiveness.
Arts
- Primer - Raises your critical power & boosts your ability to generate TP
- Electric Surge - Increases your damage output when your HP is low, also deals ether damage.
- Shadow Strike - Inflicts Stagger and works best from behind, this should be in your arts lineup from the get-go.
- Thirsty Edge - When you're struggling, engage this art to start healing your HP with melee attacks
- Hundred Shells - a strong positional, especially from behind, but requires TP. It's extremely effective, though!
- Ghost Factory - Decoy that requires some of your precious TP, but makes Elma super-extra-effective at confusing foes
- Side Slash - Boost damage and makes for very quick TP build up when you hammer it. A very useful art for extending OD once you are in it
- Sliding Slinger - Deals extra damage from the side and, crucially, raises your TP, getting you to overdrive faster
Skills
- Steel Flesh - Increases your max HP, and can be upgraded through several levels, adding big HP gains
- Shield Screen - Raises defences. Sometimes it's the simple things
- Trauma Tension - Essential, as it gives you a chance (upgradeable) to receive TP when you take damage. A lifesaver at times.
- Combat Presence - Extends the effect of your taunt, meaning that debuffs to enemies will stick around a little longer.
Lin - Shield Trooper
Build Focus - Tank
Lin may be small, but holy moly is she strong! She's a perfect tank who can soak up punishment like nobody else, and enemies that take another party member out quickly, will have to work overtime to knock Lin down.
So, with this in mind, we want to use Lin to soak up punishment, distract groups of enemies, and then buff and debuff with a selection of choice arts and skills that assist the team in big ways. With this mix of arts, you can do bigger damage to toppled foes, and you're also giving your full squad big bonuses on foes who are toppled, too.
Arts
- Wild Down - Deals weapon damage and, more importantly, inflicts topple
- Thermal Payload - Boosts damage on toppled foes, and inflicts nice crispy thermal damage for extra flavour
- Wild Smash - To be used on the enemies you topple with Wild Down. Smash them!
- Trash Talk - Inflicts taunt and raises your TP
- Reality Lift - Deals damage, but also slows enemy arts right down
- Drum Roll - Use this to do damage, whilst also debuffing physical resistances
- Shield Wall - Boost your defenses
- Cool Off - Removes debuffs, and can be used to yield instant TP, which is always invaluable
Skills
- Stand Strong - Boosts your resistance to being toppled, knockbacks and launches, adding even more to Lin's tanky prowess
- Dirty Fighter - Raises attack damage on toppled foes
- Shield Screen - Boosts your shield even further
Irina - Psycorruptor
Build Focus - Support
Irina's focus, as a Psycorruptor, should be on buffs, healing and defensive barriers - support, in short. As well as your typical support buffs, Irina can also control minds, turning your foes into friends, and even put some enemies to sleep, giving your team big chances to do massive damage. This build looks to bring all of these traits to the fore.
Arts
- Quick Cannon - Thermal damage, blaze damage and bonus melee combo damage, all rolled into one
- Flash Grenade - Inflicts Blackout and deals electrical damage
- Last Stand - Spend some TP to boost your team's TP
- Medic Free - Spend TP to boost debuff resistances, auto-revive (once upgraded)
- Absorber Skin - A barrier that can be made super strong by upgrading through levels
- Repair - Straight-up healing and debuff removal!
- Smooth Recovery - Pump up your evasion stats, whilst also restoring HP
- Energy Source - Boost your TP
Skills
- Inner Search - Boost potential
- Healing Touch - When you revive, which you'll be able to do automatically with the arts we've shown you above, the party member revived will gain a health boost.
- King's Decree - Increases the effectiveness of your debuffs on enemies. This also reduces their resistance to mind control. Resistance is futile, after all!
- High Tension - Boost your maximum TP
Gwin - Samurai Gunner
Build Focus - Thermal Damage
Ok, so Gwin is cool and everything, but he's one of the harder characters to get great use out of. There are other characters that do his job, but they do it better.
If you choose to use Gwin, his best build is based around the fact he has Conflagrant Edge as a built-in skill. Conflagrant Edge, as wild as it sounds, just means extra thermal damage output btw, so we are therefore going with a thermal damage-centred build. Oh, and Cross and Gwin are the only characters with Conflagrant Edge.
Arts
- Defensive Stance - Get your defense stats raised to tank damage as you dish out fiery death
- Flash Grenade - The good thing about this skill and Gwin, is that he can spam it a lot, which is useful!
- Grenade Blitz - Powerful, but a little slow, make sure to time it well so you're exposed
- Power Dive - Power Dive is a skill that nets you TP quickly - it also looks cool - so if you intend to boost into Overdrive a lot with Gwin, make sure to have this in your loadout. Otherwise just replace with a gun art.
- Furious Blast - A skill that raises the damage of your rifle attacks and melee
- Tornado Blade - Make use of Conflagrant Edge with this fiery attack
- Takedown Shot - Very useful against all enemies, and gives Gwin stopping power against robots
- Magnum Edge - Another weapon art that also debuffs enemy resistances.
Skills
- Flame Trigger - Boosting our thermal damage as far as we can with this skill
- Conflagrant Edge - Combined with Flame Trigger, you're seeing big gains to your fire-based attacks now
- Unwavering Courage - Boosts attacks accuracy
Doug - Blast Fencer
Build Focus - Support
Doug isn't exactly exciting - maybe it's the name - but he's actually a really good support character. So, let's set him up to make the most of this and get some big healing action on the team.
Arts
- Astral Horizon - Grants the effects of Astral Heal & Astral Purge to all team members, whilst also boosting your AOE attacks.
- Astral Heal - Restore HP (when Doug is in a Skell, this art also restores appendage HP)
- Astral Purge - Remove debuffs
- Pathogen Blast - This art inflicts virus on your foes
- Myopic Screen - Alongside weapon damage, this inflicts blackout
- Subterfuge - Debuffs enemy resistances
- Phenomenon - Add more debuffs and resistance damage to the mix
- Geolibrium - Boosts resistance to beam damage, and also continually restores HP
Skills
- Inner Search - Boosts healing effectiveness
For Doug's other skill slots, it's down to personal preference. With this build, it's only essential to have Inner Search to boost his healing! So choose skills for his remaining slots that align with your choice of weapon
Lao - Partisan Eagle
Build Focus - Ranged DPS (Damage Per Sec)
For this build with Lao, we are going to max his output as a ranged attacker who deals shock damage, by focusing on buffing these aspects of his skillset.
Arts
- Arcing Horn - Electrical damage and electrical resistance down for your enemies
- Balance Breaker - Stagger and weapon damage
- Trident Buster - Electrical and shock damage
- Overwhelm - This art inflicts fatigue on enemies whilst also raising your attack strength whilst high HP, so when you've got the upper hand you can really start to hammer them
- Eagle Eye - Ranged attack and accuracy up
- Ghost Sniper - boosts crit chance in ranged attacks, also buffs accuracy and gives you more TP - but costs TP to use!
- Shrapnel - Weapon damage is raised, but this art also boosts the damage you do to appendages
- Afterburner - Raises attack damage
Skills
- TP Overdrive - With this skill active the TP you earn in Overdrive is boosted. Handy if you like to stay in OD for extended periods
- Conductive Shock - Boost shock/electric damage
- Knock n Shock - Inflicts shock when melee attacking
L - Shield Trooper
Build Focus - Tank
The big blue lunk is a tank, he can soak it. In fact, he's so good at taking it, and in many ways we feel he deserves it, so this build is of a super-tankish nature. Not much on the damage front, unfortunately, but put L in your team with this setup and he'll take a ton of pressure off your more dangerous party members.
Arts
- Mindstorm - Grants boosts to potential
- Trash Talk - Inflicts taunt and raises your TP gains
- Reality Rift - Weapons damage and slow enemy arts
- Wild Down - Use this to inflict topple, and remember that it uses up your TP reserves!
- Wild Smash - Weapons damage, and boosted damage against toppled foes
- Astral Projection - Boosts all resistances and restores HP as you attack
- Shield Wall - It's a shield!
- Lightning Cloak - Boost your electrical defences
Skills
- Stand Strong - This is about keeping L in the game with buffs to all resistances, stagger and topple
- Shield Screen - Reduce incoming damage
- Steel Flesh - Raise your max HP
H.B. - Shield Trooper
Build Focus - HP Generator/Tank
Another Shield Trooper, H.B. can be set up to generate lots of lovely TP for the team. Because his taunt gives you lots of TP, you can use this to generate TP to use on skills that allow you to soak up the punishment. So a tank who also generates TP for the squad? Quite useful!
Arts
- Shield Wall - Grants Barrier
- Power Dive - Grants supercharge and total evasion
- Trash Talk - Inflicts taunt and raises your TP output and morale
- Decoy Round - This one also Inflicts taunt and raises TP gains
- Wild Smash - Boosted weapons damage against toppled foes
- Furious Blast - Topple foes and do big weapons damage
- Wild Down - Use this to inflict topple, and remember that it uses up your TP reserves!
- Iron Prison - Delas spike damage and boosts your physical resistances
Skills
- Combat Presence - Extend taunt effects
- Steel Flesh - Increase max HP
- Shield Screen - Defence up
- Trauma Tension - Gives you a chance to earn TP when you take damage
Boze - Partisan Eagle
Build Focus - DPS (Damage Per Second)
Big ol' Boze battles like nobody's business, and so we want to create a build that plays to the fact he can cause so much trouble at such a rapid pace. He also deals lots of electric and shock damage, so you'll see shades of how we set up Lao in this build, too.
Arts
- Vortex - Inflict electric damage and stun
- Arcing Horn - Electrical damage and electrical resistance debuffs
- Trident Buster - More electrical damage, alongside boosts to ranged damage from combos and shock damage
- Rajin - Restores your HP when doing melee damage, also reflects electric damage
- Sidewinder - Debuffs enemy resistances and does attack damage
- Hair Trigger - Puts you into supercharge for bonus damage and effects
- Slayonet - Weapon damage up
- Overwhelm - Inflicts fatigue, increases damage output at higher HP levels
Skills
- Conductive Strike - Electric damage up on shocked enemies
- Knock n' Shock - Inflict shock damage with melee attacks
- Electric Boost - Electric damage up overall
Mia - Psycorruptor
Build Focus - Subterfuge
The key to Mia is her subterfuge skillz, which mean she can debuff the hell out of foes whilst retaining the ability to also deal massive damage. Alrighty then!
This build capitalises on the debuff boosts of subterfuge, and with the Tactical Analysis skill, she can debuff even further. Let's check out how we've got her set up.
Arts
- Subterfuge - Inflict debuffs and resistances down
- Ether Blast - Deals ether damage and boosts damage
- Full Specs - boosts potential, ranged attacks and ether resistance
- Beam Barrage - Deals weapon damage and increases damage rates
- Gravity Blast - We go with Gravity Blast here so that Mia has the ability to topple
- Beam Bomber - Raises damage overall and inflicts weapons damage
- Black Butterfly - High DPS (Damage Per Second) makes this a big deal for Mia in terms of attack capability
Skills
- Tactical Analyst - Reduce enemy debuff resistances
- Ether Boost - Boost ether damage effects
- Inner Search - Boosts potential
Alexa - Partisan Eagle
Build Focus - Electric Damage Tank
In our eyes, Alexa is best kept as a Skell Pilot in battle, as (along with Yelv) is the only character to learn the Synchrony Skill. On foot, however, she's only slightly less-effective than Boze. As a result, her build should focus on the fact she has two HP-topping arts to access, so she can heal up fast, making her tanky and tough.
With Boze in a party, Alexa comes into her own slightly more, laying him up for even more damage - he's already a DPS monster, after all - as she can provide the party with a topple. softening enemies for his assault.
Arts
- Rajin - Restores HP when using arts, and reflects electric damage
- Trident Buster - Electric damage, shock, ranged damage up!
- Flash Grenade - Does electric damage and inflicts blackout
- Arcing Horn - Electric damage up and resistances down for foes
- Furious Blast - Boots weapons damage
- Overwhelm - Higher HP levels = higher damage and inflicts fatigue
- Assault Hammer - Physical damage up and inflicts topple
- Hair Trigger - Grants supercharge
Skills
- Steel Flesh - Increase Max HP
- Fortified Flesh - Boost Max HP
- Electric Boost - Boost Max TP
Murderess - Winged Viper
Build Focus - Melee Damage
Similar to Elma, here we are focused on getting Murderess into Overdrive and then causing lots of melee damage to maintain that Overdrive form. Murderess isn't as good for this as Elma, but she's a good back-up.
Arts
- Hundred Shells - TP and weapons damage boosts - use from behind for extra ooomph
- Seventh Edge - Weapons damage and increased TP gains for combos
- Killing Machine - Melee accuracy, potential and damage all boosted
- Side Slash - Inflicts fatigue and raises weapon damage - use from the side!
- Back Slash - Weapon damage that's boosted if you attack from the back.
- Electric Surge - Increased ether damage, and also raises your attack damage when you are low on HP
- Jetstream - Stuns foes and causes ether damage
- Astral Protection - All attribute resistances increased and restores HP as you attack
Skills
- Hellhound - Extends Overdrive
- Aura Assault - Boosts melee damage and accuracy - so helps raise your TP quicker
- High Tension - Boosts TP gains
Hope - Psycorruptor
Build Focus - Support
Similar to how Elma and Murderess share a lot of similarities, Hope is pretty much a back-up Irina. With this in mind, healing and provision of buffs are the order of the day in this build. She's not as good as healing as Irina is, but she has a few different support arts as a result.
Arts
- Absorber Skin - Grants barrier to raise defense
- Repair - Removes debuffs and restores HP
- Energy Source - Boosts TP Potential
- Black Butterfly - Ether damage plus resistances down
- Shooting Star - Inflicts shock and electric damage
- Stellar Ray - Beam resistance down, electric damage and
- Tacit Censure - Inflicts Virus
- Astral Projection - All attribute resistances increased and restores HP as you attack
Skills
- TP Overdrive - Boost TP gains whilst using arts in OD
- Inner Search - Boost Potential
- Knight's Soul - Boost Max TP
NeilNail - Full Metal Jaguar
(Coming soon!)
Phog - Winged Viper
(Coming soon!)
Nagi - Duelist
(Coming soon!)
Celica - Psycorruptor
(Coming soon!)
Ga Jiarg - Galactic Knight
(Coming soon!)
Yelv - Blast Fencer
(Coming soon!)
Liesel - Partisan Eagle
(Coming soon!)
Frye - Samurai Gunner
(Coming soon!)
Alois Bernholt - Duelist
(Coming soon!)
That's all of your Xenoblade Chronicles X recruits and the best skills and arts for them.
Got some tips on how to build the perfect party? Or have a favourite character build you want to share? Let us know in the comments.