Hey all, I've been playing FFXV and it's pretty fun; kind of surprised about that actually considering how ridiculous the whole boy band aspect of it is. Anyways, just wondering if anyone has any tips on combat in the game? I am in Chapter 8 and I haven't gotten to any parts that I haven't been able to defeat yet, but I have to use potions like a madman. When I go through dungeons I always eventually end up with almost all of my characters having their max HP reduced to the minimum by the midway point or towards the end. I have been bringing about 50 potions with me into dungeons/big battles and easily burn through a majority of them. I pay attention to enemy resistances and I dodge as much as possible. Not sure if this is just par for the course in this game, I'm just bad at combat or I'm missing something. Any tips? Cheers all!

@rentagosa:

Ignis has a 2 bar Tech called Regroup, which puts your team together and heals them to full (but doesn't heal lost max hp, still need elixirs), I usually keep that on him and it's been incredibly useful. Other than that, maybe put some Vitality/HP gear on your dudes, unlock the Vit/HP nodes on the Ascension grid, get a bunch of gil and blow it all on elixirs, potions and hipotions.

Other things like Prompto's Gravisphere tech are really good for giving your team some breathing room.

What are you doing in terms of attacking? Are you aware of all the different kinds of attacks you can do? Some moves on weapons like swords and daggers have invincibility frames on them which can be really helpful. For defense, try not to get caught in a group and stay near the outskirts of fights. Greatswords and polearms have a lot of openings when you attack with them so you have to be more careful with those, whereas daggers, swords and guns are pretty safe to use.

Warping is your best friend: it's fully invincible so if you ever feel like you're in a bad situation you can just warp away. Similarly, instead of guarding against an attack you see coming, just warp strike the attacker at the right timing and you'll dodge the attack while hitting them. You can use warp offensively to get behind opponents and blindside them, or to break appendages as well.

When you're facing daemons, there's two important things to know: their attacks reduce your current HP and your maximum HP so bring some elixirs to help that out. Secondly, Prompto has a technique called Starshell (?) that weakens daemons for the duration of it, which is really handy.

HP, Vit and Spirit are extremely important. Make sure you're activating those nodes in the ascension grid that doubles/triples those stats.

Vit and Spirit sure, those give decent boosts and are relatively cheap compared to the boost they give. But the HP perks on that free are really not good at all. An extra 990 health at level 99 is barely worth it at all and it's definitely not worth 432 AP before 99. Spend the time you'd use getting the AP for that and get the Platinum Bangles from the Justice Monsters machine for 700 health each. Those things will easily last you until the end/post-game content.

1. There is a node on the grid that allows you to restore your bros to full current Max-HP when you rescue them. That's useful since your companions are colossal morons and won't retreat (especially Prompto and especially from AoE attacks, which is frustrating on a few later-game dungeon bosses). Being able to restore them to ~80% health rather than ~25% will save you a lot of items in the long run.

2. It took me awhile to realize, but the "Block" prompt is a hold, not a timed press, so you don't need a separate press if you are already dodging. Which to be fair the game does an incredibly shitty job of explaining. In a lot of fights, you can get away with just turtling up until you get the opportunity to parry an attack. This is particularly true against groups of smaller fast enemies. Grab the reduced cost-phase nodes if you are running out of MP.

3. You really shouldn't be using Noctis to whale on enemies in a group unless they are already in a vulnerable state or what you are targeting is a weaker straggler. It's usually better to move around the edge of combat and then warp in to get the damage multiplier and try and get blindsides and the resultant link-strikes. There are grid nodes that increase both warp strike and bindside damage.

4. Your companion techs generally make everyone invincible while being fired off. You can use it to avoid a big hit, even if you don't specifically otherwise need the tech. Fair warning, the game is really inconsistent on this point, so sometimes characters take damage and sometimes they don't, but I think it generally help to avoid a lot of damage.

5. If all else fails, you can just abuse the leveling system to pretty easily break the game. I was level 65 before I even left for Altissia. To be fair, I did nearly everything prior to leaving, but I reached level 30 about 8 hours in by just using the 2x XP inn at Galdin Quay.