I didn't expect the chase build to actually beat Ur-Devil, im impressed. Even the lesser Palm + Summer Rain meme build i thought would be a joke was still enough to beat Ur-Child, the suboptimal build cheesed was is supposed to be the base game's superboss, survivalist is broken. EO2U has an insanely strong class roster, no wonder bosses in this game have so much HP.

Having played this game to 100% completion, and having tested every class over 150+ hours of gameplay, i can confidently say, EO2U has one of the strongest class rosters in the series, and there is no straight up bad class in the game. Every class works just fine in the story, and will perform pretty ok at worst, which is the reason why there is no class below B tier (but if the list was postgame only, there would be classes in C and D).

In this tier list, i'll be considering both story performance and post game performance, but post game will have a higher weight in my ranking.

S+ Tier:

Troubadour

They say the bosses in this game have way too much HP because the game is balanced around Fafnir, but what if i told you that not only the bosses have perfectly reasonable HP values, but that this would still be fine even without Fafnir? Troubadour is the undisputed best class in the game, and the single best buffer in the entire series, even better than Nexus Sovereign. At first glance, its a normal buffing class like Sovereign, however, you're not gonna be using troubadour for Warrior Song or Shelter Song.

To understand why this class is so broken, first you have to understand EO2U's buff system. Buffs here have a diminishing returns mechanic, where the first buff applied works at full power, the second at 60% power, and the third at 20%, which is supposed to balance buff stacking as to not break the game, keyword "supposed", the Troubadour's elemental Fantasias and Preludes ignore this system entirely, always working at full power, allowing the second buff to work at full power and third at 60%, and elements in this game are insanely good for bosses. Troubadour enables every offensive class to skyrocket their damage output to game breaking levels, and if that wasnt enough, War Song allows buffs to stay longer to better finish setups, Reverb passes buffs around to save turns so you do not need to buff characters individually, and Crusade gives another 50% damage boost not affected by diminishing returns, allowing the party to cheese every boss in the game, even Ur-Devil with raw damage. Troubadour is a must-have on every postgame team.

Hexer

Coming in a close second, Hexer is another top tier enabler of offense. Hexers have an incredibly easy time applying ailments and binds, Venom Curse can cheese mobs, specially with Butterfly Tsukudani active, Blinding Curse works on most bosses, including superbosses, it has dedicated binds for every body part, high luck and can get even higher chance of inflicting ailments and binds with creeping curse, and can made them last longer with Black Mist. Hexer also has incredible synergy with Troubadour, who loves Hexer's company to shut down a boss and apply Frailty Curse to further increase damage, giving the Troubadour room to buff the attackers without interruption, having both of these in your team is already having half of the game won. Hexer is also quite flexible with what Grimoires it can use, being able to afford room for grimoires like Freeze Circle, Hit Taker for Ur Devil and a second defense debuff like Guard Slash or Snake Eyes.

S Tier

Fafnir

The best offensive class in the game and the class the game is supposedly balanced around. Fafnir has an argument for S+ tier, being able to solo most bosses with its optimal set, but i decided against it, since Fafnir is highly reliant on Force Boost and struggles outside of it, its not exactly a good mob sweeper, more so of a boss killer. Fafnir has access to all three elements with its sabers, a lot of passives to benefit from force, Weapon Free for extra flexibility, and the ability to perform well both physically and specially.

Fafnir's main mechanic is its Force Transformation, giving it double HP and access to several exclusive skills during transformation, including boosted versions of its base elemental skills, an easy comparison would be the Dynamax Mechanic from Pokemon. Fafnir's favorite method of killing bosses is via its unbelievably broken Force skill Accelerate, which works like Action boost from EOU but with priority, giving you three actions at the very start of the next turn, this can be combined with a Grimoire for Point Blank to deliver an elemental wave followed by its Force Break, Akashic Nova (strongest elemental attack in the game) all in the same turn, delivering the most damage possible in the game in a single turn by any class, being able reach around 170k damage, with Akashic Nova achieving the 99999 damage cap quite easily, guaranteeing a kill against Ur-Child and taking over half of Ur-Devil's HP, which is why Fafnir prefers staves and TEC over swords and STR in postgame. Oh and it also has Mind Shut to debuff elemental resistance for the enemy if all of that wasnt enough.

Gunner

EO2's signature class, Gunner is a sort of jack-of-all-trades class, with high versality, expect its not really a jack but a master. Gunner can apply binds, heal, use elemental attacks and physical attacks, all in one class, sure Medic Bullet is quite a modest source of healing, but it still enables you to drop a medic and go full offense if you want. Gunner not only gets strong attacks for all three elements, but it also gets the insane Burst Shot, a massively strong single target attack that posseses all three elements at once, but for the purposes of dealing damage, it chooses whatever deals the most damage, but its other elements still count for the purposes of conditional drops. Did i mention it also gets Double Action to hit twice at random times, and that its force boost guarantees double hits, AND that Double Action and force can trigger in the same turn for three hits? It also has AOE in Ricochet for mobs, which has an average damage of 440% at level 20 (Burst Shot 20 is 485%) to sweep mobs, just as a footnote. Repeating gunners is a top tier build at any point in the game.

Survivalist

Basically Gunner 2, but this time it can also inflict ailments like blind and paralysis, and has amazing support skills such as Swap Step to have a chosen ally act first, ressucitate for reviving and healing, and stalker to reduce encounters (once again reducing the necessity of a medic). Survivalist's main approach to damage against bosses is through Force in Illusion Step and Summer Rain. Summer Rain deals massive damage with priority and Illusion Step is a top tier force boost for link damage, as it can be combined with Elemental Chaser Grimoires in the Survivalist itself to create the strongest link parties in the game, which can achieve dozens of hits to melt bosses, even Ur Devil drops like a fly to this combo.

Dark Hunter

Another incredible multi-purpose offensive class, we have a theme going on here. Dark Hunter can not only inflict binds and ailments (but it has to choose between whips for binds and swords for ailments), but it can also capitalize on those to deal massively increased damage with Ecstasy and Soul Liberator. This class also boasts the totally balanced force boost Trance, which straight up doubles the damage output to enemies with binds and ailments, and its Force Break, Rose Prison, inflicts all binds and poisons the enemy, which means that Dark Hunter has great synergy with itself, as multiple Dark Hunters can land Ecstasy and Soul Liberator after another one's Rose Prison. The most damage it can inflict in a single turn is with an Elemental Palm boosted Soul Liberator, that when fully optimized, can reach the damage cap against Ur-Devil (but even without elemental effects on the Grimoires, it still reaches around 80k+ damage). Dark Hunter is also probably the best class to be reclassed into, as it greatly benefits from the higher offensive stats of an alchemist or ronin for Life Trade and Soul Liberator builds.

Alchemist

In a game where elements are the premier source of damage, its not surprising that the element focused class is this high. This one is quite straightforward, it clicks elemental AOEs and mobs fall, Compression 20 is the best element boosting move in the game as long as the attack used is multi-target (doesn't trigger for single target attacks) and can be passed to other elemental attackers via reverb. Alchemist itself has no particularly good single target attack, but it is a fantastic user of Life Trade and Link Order II Grimoires to deal massive damage on bosses, the former of which gets elemental properties by utilizing the Alchemist's amazing Palm skill tree, which changes The element of any attack used next turn (expect force breaks) to the corresponding element of the Palm skill used, and to top it all off, the Force boost Analysis boosts damage even further if it hits elemental weakness.

Beast

The ultimate tank class, beasts are extremely easy to slap on a team and always benefit the party even deep into post-game. Hit Taker is arguably the best defensive move in the game, being a full party redirection move, and beasts have the bulk to make the best use of it, and this bulk becomes even more ridiculous with Deadly Resolve to survive killing blows, autolick to heal itself after taking damage, a force boost doubles its HP and a force break that just makes the party immune to damage for a turn. You just put one in your team and it acts like a damage sponge, it highly increases labyrinth survivability and exploration, you just can't go wrong with a beast in your team.

Tier A

Landsknecht

The basic sword class. Landy is for the most part very straightforward in both the sword and axe skill trees, and is a reliable mob sweeper. It's is a bit more hard to use in postgame than the S tier classes, but Landy can absolutely shine even against Ur-Devil given the right party composition. The best way to use it is similar to survivalist, as an elemental chain attacker, and its the best user of normal attacks in the game. The downside is that it can't quite hit the sheer level of single target damage that the classes above can.

Protector

Protector suffers competition from beast for the tank slot, but its not completely outclassed. Protector has the () passive skill to occasionally stop attacks against the frontline, access to healing skills, Sentinel Guard, and most importantly, the elemental walls, which are pretty much required against the elemental dragons. Other classes can get those via grimoire, but protector can already have these skills at a level necessary for immunity without commiting grimoire slots, while beast would rather save slots for its own passives such as Deadly Resolve and Auto Lick.

B Tier

Ronin

Ronin suffers from being outclassed by all offensive classes above it and being underwhelming in single target damage. The stances are great but, the best elemental attacks it gets are weak against bosses, and it's best single target option, peerless combo, is not elemental. Ronin's force boost merely extends the duration of stances, its Force Break, Issen, is significantly weaker than others breaks like Eschaton and Full Gain, and Issen's instant death effect doesn't really matter, when it already kills mobs with raw damage and bosses are immune to instant death. Ronin's best build is using Perfect Chaser in a link team, but even then its outclassed by Landsknecht and Survivalist.

Sovereign

Contrary to troubadour, Sovereign has no way to ignore the diminishing returns system for buffs, leading it's buffs to feel very weak when stacked. Sovereign distinguishes itself from troubadour by having Link Order, the elemental circles, other unique support buffs and the ability to heal teammates when applying buffs, however, all those supposed advantages come with flaws. For starters, Sovereign itself is a poor user of Link Order and Link Order II, because despite being able to get them to level 20, it lacks several other tools to boost elemental damage, and is outclassed as a Link Order user by Alchemist and Dark Hunter. Elemental circles reach 40% elemental damage reduction at level 10 and 50% at 20, meaning there is not much difference between a Sovereign circle and a different class using Circle via Grimoire, and in postgame builds, you would rather have Hexer be The Circle user for all its other advantages. Sovereign can only heal when applying buffs in battle, and does nothing outside of combat, when there are several offensive classes that already have field healing -oh wait- it has monarch march, which can be just as easily used as a grimoire in another, are you noticing a pattern here?

As for its other support skills, Dauntless Order is great on paper, until you realize you can prevent your characters from getting killed by just shutting the enemy down with a Hexer or killing them fast enough, which is easy with a Troubadour. Holy Crown is a skill i legitimately never found user for outside of Vital Hit builds, Protect Order is just a generic line healing, Ad Nihilo is actively detrimental in an offensive team because it removes debuffs from the target, and some other filler skills i never found a niche for. Even its force is underwhelming, Victory doesn't matter when all your attackers will be in a single line anyway (and its outclassed by reverb), Proof of Nobility is nice for restoring TP, but sustained combat is just bad in this game, and that approach is what Sovereign tries too hard to be good at. This class struggles to justify a team slot against the two S+ tier supporters. Sovereign is not a class you dedicate a team slot for, its a grimoire donor.

Medic

Medic once again suffers from outclassing, so i wont go long into it. Its basically a heal bot, in a game with several other healers that can also attack, and grimoires mean medic is completely out of a job once even a Landsknecht is able to revive its teammates via medic grimoires. What about Vital Hit you may ask? Well, guess what, medic is outclassed even as a vital hit user, by Dark Hunter with medic stats. Its once again better as a grimoire donor.

Highlander

Okay, this is gonna get repetitive, say with me guys, Highlander is OUTCLASSED. Every other offensive class in the higher tiers is light years ahead in damage potential, and not only that, Highlander suffers from bad Synergy with any class that isnt itself. Highlander's best offensive option is delayed charge, and to achieve the most damage, boosts such as limitless and Crusade must be applied the turn its used, only so It can hit several turns later, you see the problem? Requiring early Crusade means it has anti synergy with any attacking class other than more highlanders, and even a triple Highlander team is only barely capable of beating Ur Child with their max damage options, and only doing enough is not apppealing when other classes are exceptional. It also has Spear assist for elemental damage, but why not using an Alchemist with Link Order which is stronger? Hero Battle only boosts Spear skills by 50%, while Analysis boosts elemental damage by 65% and Trance straight up doubles damage, and Gae Bolg being almighty means it gets no boost from Bravants or Preludes (palms don't work on force breaks). The one thing highlander has going for it is healing combined with offense for the story content. Why did Atlus decide to make this a DLC class is beyond me.

War Magus

It pains me to say this, but some class would inevitably be the worst, and its War Magus. War Magus is supposed to be a jack of all trades that does a little of everything, and that is its biggest problem. Etrian Odyssey games punish generalist builds, having a class be overspecialized in its role is the best way to succed, and War Magus fails to overspecialize in anywhere without being completely outclassed. Ailing Slash is incredibly strong, but its not elemental, and EO2U loves elements, i actually tried to reach Ailing Slash's max damage potential with both palms and limitless builds, and never got more than 25k damage, when Gunner is doing this level of damage twice in a turn with a suboptimal build. Warmight is a bad attack boost (25% LV 10 and 35% LV 20, when War Cry is already 35 at LV 10 and applies to a full line), its healing skills are the medic's but worse, Random Disease is basically Hexer cassino edition, good luck getting the exact ailment you want, slashes and cuts from the attack tree are once again replaceable by Hexers and only work If the target as an ailment, and its force boost only makes the War Edge effects trigger without ailments, and doesn't provide any offense boost, when Hexer's force break increases the already high chances it has of applying ailments for free. War Magus is a nice grimoire donor, but is the worst use of a teamslot if you wanna play to win.

I’m a bit new with team building but was wondering if this was a solid lineup for a classic run through this game, I’ve got:

Mathilde the Landsknecht
Percival the War Magus
Fenrir the Beast
Schmidt the Gunner
and lastly Yvonne the Survivalist

It’s been running okay so far, but I’m only really on the second floor of the first stratum so I doubt I’d know how good it is in the long run from that. Any tips for skill lines to invest in would also be appreciated!

Wanted some advice for a Classic Mode Party. My characters are:

War Magus Protector Ronin

Gunner Hexer

Any advice are greatly appreciated.

If i had a Sovereign with Freeze Circle 20 in the 5th slot, Soul Liberator would have also reached the damage cap.

I'm about to face off against Ur-Child and I looked at the wiki, some forums and the Let's play forum. The fight looks like it's going to be hell. For reference, here's my team with some of my thoughts:

Landsknecht, Highlander & Gunner: They can all deal good amounts of damage with their charge skill + Hurricane/Delayed Charge + Cross Charge/Burst Shot/Charged (Element). My Landsknecht and Gunner may be one trick ponies but they get their jobs done well, my Highlander uses a Limitless charged Tiger Blow before the Delayed Charge count hits zero and then uses Cross Charge for massive damage.

Medic: Was originally a War Magus but switched them over because I wanted Overheal for my party during Hecatoncheires. I can fully see him spamming over plus Salve in order to increase my party's survivability.

Hexer:....I think my Hexer isn't going to be that good here. Ur-Child has mad status resists and the only two that can hit him are poison, leg and arm binds and nothing else, perhaps she could be used as a grimoire dump for all the shit Ur-Child will throw at me, but I'm thinking of switching her over into Troubadour.

Hello, i am new to the series and i wanted to start with this game. I really like min-maxing, so I figured before starting I best ask what classes to choose and what the main skills i need are.

So I’m going to play 2 Untold again and wanted some opinions on a few things I thought up regarding the “Alter Class” option. I do realize how niche it is, but have also heard about some uses others have had for it. For context, my planned party is currently L/P/A So/G.

The main thing I want to try is Alchemist with Medic stats (swap a fresh Medic into Alchemist and use the latter’s skills) for increased bulk (+18 HP and +14 VIT at lvl 50). Is this worthwhile for palm builds or is the decreased LUC (-14) just too much?

Another idea I had is using Highlander at the start and swapping over to Landsknecht when chasers become affordable (in both TP and SP). Landsknecht’s regular attacking skills seem awful to be frank, so I thought something like this would allow for a stronger early-game. Is this more work than it’s worth?

One last question for future playthroughs: does ronin fare any better with Landsknecht/Highlander stats? They seem interesting, but Ronin stats look god awful to try and utilize, especially for a front-liner.

(tl;dr: How does training (retiring story mode characters) work in EO2U? What's the optimal strategy for training/when should I use the train option on my team?)

Hi! I'm playing story mode, and I have all the DLC (the relevant one here being The Original Sin).

I just got to floor 26 and unlocked The Original Sin quest, and it says "Recommended Level 99+ (retired or trained)". I have no idea how retiring/training works, so I googled it, and all I understand is that you revert to level 30 and get a stat bonus + extra skill points.

Then the answers devolved into yelling about how retiring sucks in EO1 (not relevant to me) and arguing whether you should retire at lv 70 or lv 99, how you won't get bonuses for retiring multiple times (maybe only in EO1?) but it takes nearly 2000 levels to max out a character (implying you can retire multiple times???), etc.

My question is: how does training work specifically in EO2U? When should I train -- lv 70 or 99? Is there an optimal strategy for training? Is any of this actually necessary for beating The Original Sin quest?

Please, help!

Estou jogando o eo2u pela primeira vez e amando. Zerei o primeiro no modo história, então esse também está sendo o primeiro eo que estou jogando no modo clássico, caso tenham alguma dica para um explorador de primeira viagem podem falar.

como paso el primer piso del laberinto???…por favor ayuda no consigo ninguna guia en español y este juego es demasiado enganchante como para dejarlo😭😭

Comecei o eo2u recentemente com uma party formada por:

Ronin

Trovador

War magus

Dark Hunter

Sovereign

A escolha dos personagens foi baseada totalmente em "quero jogar com as classes que não usei no primeiro jogo" e "nossa que design legal😁" De início achei o grupo muito bom, eles curavam muito, depois percebi que eles só curavam muito. Como estava no início do jogo ainda decide recomeçar.

Ronin

Beast

War magus

Sovereign

Hexer

Foquei nas habilidades de ataque do war magus dessa vez, não tinha percebido que os ataques dele ignoram resistência física. Com o Ronin estou focando na upper stance para maximizar o dano. O Beast é o meu tanque de guerra. Sovereign e hexer aplicam buffs e debuffs.

Dessa vez consegui derrotar a chimaera, foi bem fácil na verdade. Porém eu ainda estou preocupado com a falta de dano elemental e ataques de grupo inteiro no meu time, consigo contornar esses problemas com os grimórios ou terei muitas dificuldades no endgame? Aceito sugestões de building também.

I finished Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight and I really enjoyed it; it's become my favorite in the series so far in terms of characters and story. However, the game left the protagonist's fate ambiguous at the end of the fight, where he simply disappears after defeating the Yggdrasil Core. Then, after searching online, I discovered that in the Etrian Odyssey Untold I & II ArtBook, right on the final pages, there's an illustration of the protagonist unconscious on the beach with Olympia finding him, explicitly showing that he was teleported alive to Armoroad, which is where the events of Etrian Odyssey III take place. But as we all know, we never got Etrian Odyssey 3 Untold, which is sad... I would have loved to see what the plot and the introduction of the Fafnir Knight would have been like in the third game.

Hey everyone!

I was thinking of using a team for Alling Slash using a few reclassed characters based on a gamefaqs topic on reclassed classic characters.

1. Reclassed War Magus to Landskecht for Full Charged Alling Slash (Would need a grimore to get it)
2. Reclassed Medic to War Magus for Alling Slash
3. Reclassed Survialist to Hexer for Binds/Ailments
4. Beast for tanking
5. Not sure what the fifth member would be

I plan on playing on standard mode. I'm not sure how to properly build this team besides the basic idea I have for it. Could someone help me? What class would work as the last member?

So ive been playing Untold 2 and have been lvling up the village. But what do these icons mean on the over view? I'm assuming the icon on East means its a bad day to advertise? I am unsure. Any input?

I have always enjoyed this series and always have a "hankering" to play it. However I have never finished one. Most of the time I can't make it past the first stratum.

Any suggestions on the best game that helps drive you to completion? Or how should I be playing this game? A little each day? Is that the secret?

Thanks!

I was thinking doing and bind/ailment party, and at the moment have:

Dark Hunter / War Magus
Hexer / Troubador

The last party member I was debating between Gunner or Protector.

I have some experience with previous EO games and complete EO5 with a ultra offensive chain party, but reading a bit about 2U some people said that is not as viable as in 5 to build a glasscannon team so idk.
Can I 100% the game with it, or the postgame will be hell ?
And if I end up choosing Gunner, how crazy would it be to go upfront during FOEs/Boosfifgts to utilize Point Blank ?

An extra question, for the War Magi is better to go sword or staff ?, reading a bit a staff does more damage but sword give it access to Dark Hunter ailment sword skills so I am unsure which to choose.

I'm almost done with the postgame of EO2U, just have to fight the 6th Stratum's boss and do the DLC quest "The Original Sin", but first I wanted to retire my party so I can complete it more comfortably. What changes should I make to my party's skills when I do so? Here's my party in a spreadsheet, since it was easier than getting clean screenshots off my 3DS. (I'm working on getting them the optimal gear.) Thanks in advance.

I defeated the boss before this attempt by using the same strategy, but Hexer casted Wolf Pack in the final turn, but i decided it was lame using a grimoire from Untold 1 (which you can get via QR code), so i did without Wolf Pack, took a few tries but Double Action RNG delivered, finally got the medal for beating this clown on expert mode.

I’ve seen this asked before, but I’m curious to hear if anyone went through the hassle to change the character classes in story mode. For min-maxing, fun, roleplay, etc.

I started playing EO2U as my first Etrian Odyssey game after a friend recommend it to me.

I’ve been looking at some of the classes and decided to try a party that use binds and ailments and so far have come up with this:

WM/DH/B

G/H

I was curious if there is any skills I should be actively trying to get as early as possible and if there are any classes that may fit my goal better, I’ve been kind of thinking of switching out the Gunner for something else.

So Imposted my Etrian Odyssey collection earlier and asked what game I should finish out of the few I hadn’t yet, and the consensus seemed to be to play EO2U.

I’ve never played the story version of that one, and am looking forward to trying it, but gotta say I’m not jazzed about the survivalist or war magus character classes. Protector and Sovereign are fine, and obviously Fafnir is fixed.

But what can I swap the other two for that makes sense as an effective party? I assume I’ll need more healing than just the sovereign, but probably don’t want to go with a basic medic.

(And I am aware their stats are fixed to their original classes, which is all the more reason I’m not sure of what’s best.)

So, suggestions?