Mastering Taion: The Ultimate XC3 Guide

As a passionate Xenoblade Chronicles fan with over 100 hours played, Taion has easily become one of my favorite characters. His complex backstory provides great depth, and mastering his tactical support abilities offers immense party-wide value. This extensive guide aims to fully maximize Taion‘s potential for both new and experienced players.

Overview

Race: Agnian
Weapon: Mondo (Flying Blades)
Role: Support (Healing/Buffing/Debuffing)

Despite his young age, Taion serves as the party‘s ingenious tactician – leveraging his strategic intellect to turn the tide of battle. However, underneath his calm exterior remains immense grief over losing his former comrades. This fuels his overcautious nature and motivation to prevent further tragedy.

I found Taion‘s backstory extremely compelling and impactful on his character growth. Seeing him open up and bond with the party proved incredibly rewarding. From a battle perspective, mastering Taion‘s arts can enable highly aggressive, front-loaded damage strategies.

Stats & Growth Rates

Here are Taion‘s base stats at Level 1 and growth rates for each stat per level:

As expected for a support character, Taion boasts impressive Ether and Luck growth backed by high base HP and decent Dexterity/Agility.

However, his Strength remains extremely low, severely limiting his talent as an Attacker role. I highly advise against classes like Swordfighter or Ogre as they waste his potential.

Arts & Skill Trees

Here is the full list of Taion‘s arts and skill trees:

Level 1 Arts:

• Shackle Bolt (Ether): Inflicts Bind on a single target
• Information Shield (Buff): Grants barrier to an ally
• Final Defence (Debuff): Reduces physical/ether defense on a single target

Advanced Arts:

• Worldly Slash (Ether): Damages in a line
• Night Vision (Debuff): Lowers enemy accuracy
• Last Stand (Buff): Grants resurrecting power
• Brainjack (Debuff): Confuses a single target

Master Arts:

• Nullify Interference: Extends duration of inflicted debuffs
• Optimization: Boosts heal potency
• Danger Detect: Notifies when aggro is drawn

I favored emphasizing his debuffs through arts like Night Vision and Brainjack – crippling challenging enemies proved extremely useful. Optimization and Nullify Interference both offer incredible synergy as well.

However, for players struggling with survival, Information Shield and Last Stand provide some much-needed breathing room.

Role Implementation

Given his specialized toolkit, Taion thrives when supporting allies in the Attacker role:

• Debuffing enemies to reduce damage/accuracy
• Healing to counter attrition from drawn aggro
• Buffing to enable allies to push aggressive dps

Against superbosses, I operated Taion in more passive support duty:

• Keeping tanks alive with focused heals
• Refreshing buffs/debuffs when needed
• Utilizing Ouroboros emergency party heals

Conversely, against groups of regular enemies I often leveraged Taion as a debuffer to completely shut down threats while allies unleashed more arts.

Party Synergy

I found Taion synergized best with these party members:

Noah

By debuffing enemies‘ physical defense, Taion enables Noah to shred through health bars with his Thunderous Impact spam. Once enemies are briefly stunned, Taion can also use Final Defence into Noah‘s Swordstorm combo for immense burst.

Eunie

As a fellow support, Eunie forms an extremely potent backbone alongside Taion – providing the highest team healing output potential in the game. Particularly for superboss marathon fights, running both prevented almost all attrition until cooldowns refreshed.

Sena

When bosses enrage at low health, Sena can draw enough aggro for Taion to freely resurrect fallen allies and reapply crucial buffs/debuffs without interruption. This combo single-handedly won me numerous fights down to the wire.

Skills & Ascension

For general progression, I recommend focusing Taion‘s Ascension skill tree into these branches:

• Medic Gunner: Boosts HP potency from basic attacks and arts
• Master evasion art: Adds Final Evade art for dodging attacks
• Master air slash art: Adds Circulating Air Slash for increased dps

Once those are acquired, the Support branch offers valuable buffs:

• Medic Gunner Mastery: Restores HP every second while Final Defence is active
• Evasion art charge: Increased recharge speed
• Extend Brainjack timer: Longer confusion debuff

However, for the postgame focusing on his healing is advised:

• All About Support: 30% healing potency
• Ninja Healer: Revive art recharges other arts
• Eternal Formation: Extends team buff/debuff duration

Equipping gems to enhance these is also recommended (details below).

Optimal Equipment & Gems

To maximize Taion‘s capabilities, this is the equipment and gems I utilized:

Weapons

• Amenonuhoko – Obtained from superboss reward. Increases healing potency by 15% after revive.
• Labrys – Found in Hidden Objet 3 Prize Box. Extends buff duration by 40%.

Accessories

• Affection Ring – Reward for Colony 4 hero quests. Improves healing artes by 20%.
• Solis Ring – Reward for Colony Lambda side quests. Boosts healing by 40%.
• Devotional Necklace – Found in Hidden Objet 6 Red prize box. Recharges arts upon revival.

Gems

• Lifesaving Expertise – Restore 15% more HP. Found in Maktha Wilds enemies.
• Energizing Belt – Reduce art cooldown by 10%. Found in enemies near Colony 30.
• Soothing Spring – Heals 5% HP every second. Found in Vandhams secret cave chest.

I highly recommend farming Vandhams secret cave and the Relic Hideout in Maktha for gems – they proved far more efficient than random enemy drops.

For added damage, the Steady Striker and Death Knell gems also work very effectively when using his Master Arts.

Best Classes

After heavy experimentation, these classes truly maximized Taion‘s capabilities:

Strategos

Focused entirely around boosting his debuffs/healing. Key arts I utilized:

• Mirror Trap: Reduces physical defense to entire party
• Moon Dog: Restores HP to all party members in an AOE
• Earth Bind: Reduces enemy ether defense

With the gems/gear above, I was able to maintain almost 100% party uptime on defense debuffs against enemies.

Lifesage

Specialized unique class for Taion focused on healing.

• Redemption: Restore a large amount of HP in an AOE
• Redeeming Bloom: Applies regeneration to party members
• Waterlily: Removes debuffs from party members

The sheer volume of healing, regeneration, and debuff cleansing enables unbelievable sustain. Lifesage is mandatory for taking on the hardest superbosses.

Superbosses

Against the Level 130+ superbosses, I leaned heavily into a strict support heal/debuff role with Taion. My strategy:

1. Apply Mirror Trap and Redeeming Bloom buffs
2. Use Night Vision and Shackle Bolt to slow enemies
3. Focus on spot healing front-line tanks
4. At 50% HP, utilize Ouroboros Fleeting Form AOE heal
5. Cleanse debuffs with Waterlilly as needed
6. Always revive allies safely away from the boss

A key insight I‘ve learned is to not worry about dps on Taion – keeping allies alive to dish damage is far more important. The goal is facilitating an aggressive pincer assault to stagger lock bosses before devastating finishes like Noah‘s Swordstorm. Minimizing interrupts by controlling the pace of battle proved essential to success.

Endgame Potential

While Taion‘s personal damage output remains low compared to dedicated attackers, his diverse supportive abilities cannot be overstated. In the hands of a skilled player, he unlocks jaw-dropping potential from the entire rest of the team. I cannot imagine defeating most superbosses without Taion‘s healing and debuffs enabling hyper-aggressive ally dps.

For those struggling in the later stages, I highly recommend re-evaluating Taion‘s builds and equipment to fully maximize survivability and party buffing as detailed in this guide. With a couple key optimizations, he can considerably reduce the difficulty of virtually all challenge content. No player aiming to 100% complete Xenoblade 3 can afford to ignore Taion and his incredibly powerful talents.

Overall his fantastic backstory and rewarding growth coupled with the sheer potency of well-executed tactical support places Taion among my absolute favorite Xenoblade characters. I cannot recommend him enough to any player looking for a supremely fun and impactful ally!