Bar management - August 3, 2015

Daily posting, on the topic of bar management.

Your characters have two bars in combat, a yellow Speed Counter and a green Defend Bar.

When in battle, a character (player or enemy) can act when their yellow Speed Counter is fully charged. Unless the character is stunned or suffering from something that immobilizes them (such as the Behemoth debuff), they can move while their Speed Counter is charging.

Given the importance of positioning for your character's and enemy human's weapons, it is best to take advantage of movement and positioning between attacks (i.e. weapon range, damage modifiers for distance for Shotgun/Rifle, covering allies with Shields, standing near allies with an Assault Rifle equipped to gain buffs, staying away from allies to avoid AOE attacks, etc.).

The green Defend Bar only charges when the Speed Counter bar is full and the character is not moving or attacking. The higher the bar charges, the more damage your character deals on their next attack and the less they receive, and when full, the character deals 2x damage and takes 0.5x damage. In this way, the Defend Bar acts as a Defend command that can be used by simply not moving or acting, and can be used as short or as long as needed.

There are many abilities related to the Defend Bar. Examples include Quick Defend speeds up the Defend Bar's charge rate and Power Defend boosts the damage boosts from the Defend Bar.

There are also abilities that trigger only when the Defend Bar is fully charged, namely Full Defend Damage Reduction (which decreases damage received further), Full Defend Stun (enemies attacking a character with a full Defend Bar have a chance to be stunned), Full Defend Counter (enemies take damage when attacking the character with the full Defend Bar) and Evervigilant (Battering Ram passive ability that doubles damage further when the Defend Bar is full).