Pandoria/Gameplay (XC2)

Pandoria is the primary of   in Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

Overview
Pandoria at first seems to be a rather underwhelming blade. Although her weapon type boasts a high auto-attack, and she is in the same critical rate tier as Greataxes, her arts on her main driver Zeke are slow, befitting of Zeke's style-over-substance approach. In fact, Rex's arts on Pandoria are faster and in general better. Her main use case is as a driver combo support, since she provides a launch art to either of her possible drivers and has a low blade cooldown (15s at base).

However, this all changes with the unlocking of Zeke's -exclusive driver skill Unleash Shining Justice, allowing the player to activate the legendary Eye of Shining Justice (EoSJ) in gameplay. This effect provides a 2x multiplier to all damage, and increases the animation speed of Zeke's auto-attacks and arts greatly, making EoSJ Pandoria a top source of arts DPS. Additionally, EoSJ provides immunity to all reactions as well as faster movement speed. This effect lasts 90 seconds, which is ample time to deal with all overworld enemies.

Gameplay
Due to the Unleash Shining Justice skill having such a dramatic effect, Pandoria's options and viability are practically night and day based on whether the game is in a New Game Plus cycle or not.

New Game Plus gameplay
If using Pandoria as a driver combo support, she can be equippped to either Zeke or Rex (often Zeke) with a Fast Blade Switch Aux Core and her driver an Overclocking Bangle so that they can cycle through blades quickly to advance the driver combo. In fact, the Overclocking Bangle may be overkill, since Pandoria's blade cooldown is quite low. For example, with Fast Blade Switch Aux Cores on every blade, Zeke can repeatedly topple, launch, and smash enemies with /, Pandoria, and. Rex can also make use of Pandoria to launch alongside to topple and /Corvin to smash, although this will usually require an Overclocking Bangle. Giving Pandoria's driver a Goliath Ring to increase launch duration is a good choice as well. If a Lv.1 or 2 blade combo is active, giving Pandoria a Fusion Combo Up Aux Core will boost both the duration of the Blade Combo and the launch when it happens.

If using Pandoria for arts damage, Zeke just has to get Pandoria to Max Affinity either using Hunter's Chemistry Aux Cores on non-used Blades or simply by having her out for a while, press R and +, wait for him to complete his extremely cool and extremely necessary activation animation, and then essentially just start pressing buttons. In this case, using Meat type items (which are Zeke and Pandoria's favorite item class) that provide Art Recharge, such as Char-Grilled Grumbird and Glarna Stir-Fry, will allow continuous art spam without any waiting. If fighting a single enemy, it is a good idea to wait for the third auto-attack and begin a cancel chain from there, since this will provide a 1.3x multiplier to damage that continues for all arts canceled into subsequently. Continuously canceling into arts will maintain this damage multiplier throughout the whole chain. Due to Pandoria's Thunderblast skill, enemies cannnot interrupt this chain by blocking. Good accessory choices for this are Crimson Headband, to increase damage on critical hits, and Noise Dampener, which provides a 1.69x increase to arts damage when canceled into. This stacks with the native arts damage increase from canceling into arts (1.1x if from auto-attack 1 or a raw art, 1.2x from autoattack 2, 1.3x from autoattack 3), as well as Zeke's Fiendish Pursuit skill (1.2x damage boost from canceling), but these increases all stack independently from other increases, making the Noise Dampener item, and canceling in general, very powerful.

While EoSJ provides immunity from reactions, it does not provide protection from damage, meaning combined with Pandoria's rather unimpressive defenses and the insane amount of aggro earned by dealing so much damage, Zeke will have a hard time surviving the full EoSJ duration. Thus, equipping an Avant-Garde Medal for critical healing is not a bad choice, since he will be dealing damage so fast that he should maintain full health unless he gets one-shot (or unlucky, as he does). However, an even stronger (although slightly expensive) solution is to pair unleashing the EoSJ Pandoria with also unleashing. This solves two major problems with EoSJ: first, since Rex with Pneuma will take all aggro and will increase party evasion and reaction success rate by 50%, Zeke's survivability increases by a lot. Second, although EoSJ provides a huge boost to damage, Pandoria's middling critical rate holds it back somewhat. Pneuma will increase party critical rate to 100%, allowing Zeke to take full advantage of critical damage bonuses. Some natural team pairings for EoSJ Zeke are using Rex/Mythra (and later Rex/Pneuma) to topple, and Tora with to break and launch, with Zeke providing a backup Launch art. Another option is to use with  or  to break and Adenine or  to launch with Zeke as a backup Launch. Pneuma's break resistance reduction can help Nia break, and Fiora and Elma's high critical rate can build up party gauge to get Pneuma out sooner. For Nia to cycle between breaking and launching with this setup, a blade combo has to be active, and this blade combo should be one that either the breaking and launching Blade can continue or one that neither Blade can continue. Both these options should allow for Zeke to take full advantage of launched enemies to deal maximal damage, and should make survivability not a huge problem, and thus should make critical healing unnecessary.

Pandoria's specials, while not bad, suffer from low hit count and slow animations. Especially when using EoSJ, which does not speed up specials like it does arts, it is really not worth wasting the limited time using specials when arts will do more damage and faster. However, the critical damage effect and small AoE on Pandoria's Lv.2 special, Electric Circus, and Lv.3 special, Thunder Doom, are not bad. The exception is Pandoria's Lv.4 special, Sonic Thunderslash, which is arguably the best Lv. 4 special in the game. With its 16 hits, 60% critical increase mod, and 85% increased critical damage effect, it is incredibly powerful, especially with critical rate increases. It is especially devastating in Full Bursts, where it can quite easily do 16 million damage even without using EoSJ.

If using for arts spam, the Tachyon Chip, providing a 25% critical damage increase, is often the best choice for Pandoria, especially if using a source of critical rate increases like Fiora or Pneuma. If equipping the Crimson Headband item without any source of critical rate increases, the Moon Matter Chip is also a good bet, and will provide similar or better damage to the Tachyon chip if the Crimson Headband item is equipped. Pure damage Aux Cores like Affinity Max Atk and Outdoor Atk Up are also good fits.