Hmm, I'll try to answer these since nobody replied yet

dannyaic původně napsal:

My first guess is, I don't have a ton of time for grinding these days, so how cumbersome would it be to just soul switch once? I see lots of skills Everywhere that can do cool things, so might even do twice on selct characters but wanted to get an idea of the actual time consumption.

It doesn't really have to take any extra time if you just take turns soul transferring, so you have one group of dead weight in a high exp pact being carried by the rest of the party. You can also grind pretty quickly on Ringa Metallias in Melm and Umbra Tower 5F, as long as you have a lot of blunt attacks to deal with them (and I wouldn't soul transfer before that).

Also you don't strictly need soul transfer for the main game, as long as you have enough HP (no moon stance for units that don't have an S rank HP growth) and some good donum attacks, you should be able to get past everything.

my concern is a)is stun widely resisted? b) will the damage outpout from this be underwhelming compared to donum attacks, etc.

a: most things can be stunned and it's quite good, but not exactly reliable and you might not get good uptime on it
b: donum are basically stronger than everything, that's just how it goes, especially in pacts where you can fit in a lot of Marginal Mazes (their donum power up passive stacks)

Are most abilities on the Facet guide passives, or do some need to be activated for a turn before use etc.

All of them are passive, some just have an activation condition (as you've seen). The only manually activated skills are donum from pacts.

You can check the Labyrinth of Refrain Compendium in guides for some useful info and general tips. Also shows where the Ringa Metallia grind spots are (under EXP tab)

SleepingSeaweed původně napsal:

Hmm, I'll try to answer these since nobody replied yet

dannyaic původně napsal:

My first guess is, I don't have a ton of time for grinding these days, so how cumbersome would it be to just soul switch once? I see lots of skills Everywhere that can do cool things, so might even do twice on selct characters but wanted to get an idea of the actual time consumption.

It doesn't really have to take any extra time if you just take turns soul transferring, so you have one group of dead weight in a high exp pact being carried by the rest of the party. You can also grind pretty quickly on Ringa Metallias in Melm and Umbra Tower 5F, as long as you have a lot of blunt attacks to deal with them (and I wouldn't soul transfer before that).

Also you don't strictly need soul transfer for the main game, as long as you have enough HP (no moon stance for units that don't have an S rank HP growth) and some good donum attacks, you should be able to get past everything.

my concern is a)is stun widely resisted? b) will the damage outpout from this be underwhelming compared to donum attacks, etc.

a: most things can be stunned and it's quite good, but not exactly reliable and you might not get good uptime on it
b: donum are basically stronger than everything, that's just how it goes, especially in pacts where you can fit in a lot of Marginal Mazes (their donum power up passive stacks)

Are most abilities on the Facet guide passives, or do some need to be activated for a turn before use etc.

All of them are passive, some just have an activation condition (as you've seen). The only manually activated skills are donum from pacts.

You can check the Labyrinth of Refrain Compendium in guides for some useful info and general tips. Also shows where the Ringa Metallia grind spots are (under EXP tab)

Thanks for the response! I have an aversion to taking more than one of the same class, so like two mazes wouldn't work for me haha.

My thought was making a hammer fortress, with Swiftness, tancious spd, and Instant trasmission so he goes first to stun, (hopefully countering the hammers poor ACT) and then have two dps guys with the ninja's Crit skill and heroic stance. Just wondering if that might take away too much from the fortress being an actual fortress.

Like I considered a hammer Bard, but it would mean they'd have to be on the front line which since they would be my primary healer and have poor HP wouldn't be great.

I have an aversion to taking more than one of the same class, so like two mazes wouldn't work for me haha.

Well, the game does give you a lot of different portraits to choose from, and support characters never show up in combat... you can field up to 15 units and there are only 8 classes total in the game, so it could make things difficult if you want to stick to that. Should be totally doable though. Signature passives like the maze's donum boosting can be transferred, but it requires soul transferring at level 99 so it's not very viable for most of the game.

My thought was making a hammer fortress, with Swiftness, tancious spd, and Instant trasmission so he goes first to stun, (hopefully countering the hammers poor ACT) and then have two dps guys with the ninja's Crit skill and heroic stance. Just wondering if that might take away too much from the fortress being an actual fortress.

If you're not doubling up on classes I'd definitely suggest focus on tanking with it. Endgame fortresses do take speed though since it's needed to defend before some of the faster enemies. There's nothing stopping you from slapping a hammer onto any character without specifically building for it though, aside from fortress it works well on knight and shinobushi, and one of the later unlocked classes specializes in hammers. Weapon mastery doesn't matter that much when it's not needed to trigger other passives, mainly shinobushi requiring S-rank for their dual attack. The weapon's damage type is much more significant than the bonus stats from having a higher mastery, so don't hesitate to switch weapons depending on the area.

Like I considered a hammer Bard, but it would mean they'd have to be on the front line which since they would be my primary healer and have poor HP wouldn't be great.

Theatrical Star, I assume? They can survive on the front line, but they also just work really well with bells, and bell is a really useful weapon type.