Elma/Gameplay (XC2)

Elma is a Rare Blade in Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

Overview
Elma is one of the best damage dealers in the game on any difficulty, and her kit in general is focused towards that goal. At the same time, she provides the support ability, which can enable Driver Combo locking strategies and art spam strategies via the buffs it grants to the team.

Elma's skill provides a 90-150% additive increase to  and a 20-40% additive increase to critical rate at Max. This skill alone makes Elma into an offensive powerhouse, providing her with an 89% critical rate with the Tachyon Chip (which also provides a Critical Damage effect) and automatically high damage. In fact, her critical rate can reach 100% with the Tachyon Chip by equipping the Massive Melee Mythra Aux Core. Her skill increases damage when behind enemies by 30-150%. Although in general positional effects are not very useful within Xenoblade 2, especially since a player-controlled Elma driver will always be dealing enough damage to obtain, it remains true that enemies who are toppled, enemies who are launched, and enemies in s do not turn around, so this skill can be more useful than it may appear.

Elma's skill functions effectively as a party-wide buff to damage, art cooldowns, and enemy  resistance, with these buffs getting stronger the more arts and s that are used. The reduction of reaction resistance is invaluable to the existence of teams focusing on driver comboing enemies, which is a common feature on the Bringer of Chaos difficulty. A further explanation of the Overdrive mechanic can be found below.

Elma's weapon type,, is a clone of the Twin Rings weapon type. On all drivers, Dual Swords provides a Back Attack up art, a Cancel attack Up art, and an Evasion art. On Male Drivers Elma also provides a Side Attack Up art, and on Female Drivers a Healing art. In general, Elma's arts have low cooldowns, and these cooldowns can be reduced even further by Overdrive and Elma's Recharge Boost blade art when it activates. This allows for drivers to be able to spam arts continuously once Overdrive count is high enough, which can supply a great source of damage especially in the context of Elma's damage boosting skills.

Elma's specials are, in general, strong, fast, and have high hit counts. Elma's Lv.1 special,, is a strong, very fast source of damage which is boosted against higher level enemies. Elma's Lv.2 special,, is a 14-hit special which can be used to either build overdrive count or to do massive damage, particularly from behind, in chain attacks. Elma's Lv.3 special,, is a 16 hit special which is both unblockable and pierces defense, with a wide area of effect. It can be used for high damage blade combos as well as to clear mobs. The high hit counts and power of Elma's specials make her the best Chain Attack blade, allowing her to do up to 34 million damage in three chain attack rounds.

Strategy
This section contains ideas for using Elma in postgame combat.

If planning to use Elma for damage, it is a good idea to get her to Max Affinity as soon as possible. This allows her to use her Crisis Catalyst skill to increase damage and critical rate. There are some cases (such as in chain attacks) where Max Affinity is not necessary, but it is always preferable. Because of her high critical rate, accessories that increase critical damage like the Crimson Headband are natural fits for her driver. The Tachyon weapon chip, which provides a critical damage increasing effect, is the best choice for cases where Elma is providing damage. Due to her fast, multi-hit arts and specials, critical healing items such as the Avant-Garde Medal should provide near constant, full HP heals. If planning to use her art spam capabilities, the Noise Dampener accessory, which increases art damage ratio on a cancel, is very useful. If you are planning to use her for chain attack damage, stacking Burst Symbols on her team will allow you to get the most out of her specials. Otherwise, additive damage increasing items such as the Abyss Masque, Divine Vambraces, and Enlightened Loincloth are useful, although not necessary due to Elma's internal additive damage.

For arts spam purposes, Elma's best driver is, who's arts are the fastest among drivers on Dual Swords. However, true art spam on him requires the use of Overdrive as well as Art Recharge pouch items. When possible, activate Overdrive, and use Elma's Lv.2 or Lv.3 Special to build up Overdrive count. Then begin to cycle between arts, making use of the low-cooldown Dark Edge art interspersed with other arts, and use more Specials to build more Overdrive count and do more damage until the art spam feels comfortable. This approach naturally synergizes with a driver combo lock focused team, as this will allow you to focus on dealing art damage while the Overdrive count you build up will provide greater security to your allies as they combo lock the enemy. In this approach, Elma's Lv.1 Special provides a fast burst of damage and Overdrive count, while Elma's Lv.3 Special can provide a large amount of Overdrive count while also dealing with multiple enemies. While Elma's Lv.2 Special, Hundred Shells, provides a large amount of Overdrive count, it's lopsided damage distribution makes it an unreliable damage source. Rex's art Trickshot has its damage increased when canceled into, and this damage increase is multiplicative, so this art should always be canceled into and should be used as one of Rex's main damage sources. Arts spam on drivers besides Rex is possible but not recommended for damage purposes due to the relative slowness of Twin Ring arts on other drivers, but if doing so the strategy is roughly similar. Zeke's art spam with Dual Swords is serviceable, especially when making use of his slow Evasion art Profundity Grace. Morag can repeatedly use her Evasion art Gloomwheel with Dual Swords to gain unconditional full evasion uptime, something not even Corvin can boast of, since this approach doesn't require you to evade anything to recharge evasion arts.

For chain attack purposes, Elma can be used on any driver. For best damage results Elma should be at Max Affinity and should be behind the enemy, although neither is strictly required for large amounts of damage. Chain attacks that take place while a damage-boosting Fusion Combo is active provide the best results for increasing damage. If the driver is behind an enemy at the time a chain attack is triggered, Elma should remain behind the enemy throughout the chain attack. This will provide a large damage boost to all Specials, but especially Hundred Shells, which gains an additional additive 100-150% damage increase separate from Background Noise when behind an enemy. However, being behind an enemy during chain attacks or in general is, while preferable, not required, and can be difficult to accomplish due to slow movement in combat and Elma's driver easily being able to take aggro.

Finally, Elma can be used to simply activate Overdrive and nothing else. This is common in the Bringer of Chaos difficulty, where Overdrive provides buffs which are very helpful to combo locking, art spam, and damage in general. Activating Overdrive and increasing Overdrive count with other characters should make breaking enemies much easier, and can be used to assist drivers spam arts with Blades other than Elma such as Crossette.

Overdrive
Elma introduces a new mechanic to Xenoblade 2, Overdrive, which is referential to the mechanic in Xenoblade Chronicles X but is simplified greatly. Overdrive can be activated when the is full via the button command R and -, which expends the full party gauge and begins Overdrive. To activate Overdrive, Elma must be on the field, but if Elma is on a non-player controlled driver, the Overdrive command will force that driver to switch to Elma as soon as possible and begin Overdrive. Overdrive provides three different, party-wide buffs: additive buffs to damage, reduction of art cooldowns, and reduction of enemy reaction resistances. When overdrive starts, these are at 25% increased damage (125%), 50% decreased art cooldowns, and 20% reduced enemy reaction resistance. These can all be increased by increasing the Overdrive count, which appears as a large number on screen. Any successful hit of an art increases Overdrive count by 1, and any successful hit of a special increases Overdrive count by 5. Overdrive lasts between 60-90 seconds depending on the level of Elma's skill, but can be extended at the cost of a full party gauge by pressing R and - again. Note that party gauge gains are slowed during Overdrive. Additionally, Elma does not need to be on the field to extend Overdrive, only to begin it. Furthermore, note that the percentage of damage increase listed on screen is an additive damage increase: e.g. a listed Damage increase of 125% is a 25% increase which stacks additively with other percent damage increases from accessories, Aux Cores, and Blade skills. The Overdrive counter maxes out at 1000, where it will read "MAX".

Gallery
Elma (XC2)