Don't Underestimate - Pushback - May 30, 2020

Pushback, by default, is a rather weak ability - it does nothing but inflict Stagger, a status ailment that interrupts an opponent for half a second. It is also an ability that all 9 characters start with in Story Mode and Endless Dungeon.

However, it does have some notable uses as a support tool -- it is a good influencer/maintainer for the Body Field Effect with its 8 second cooldown -- where the Stagger will be more useful and last a full second. As a less common scenario, it is practically a requirement for some bosses in Story Mode if undertaking the dreaded "no Soul Triad/level 1 default Weapons only" challenge (not an official challenge) to interrupt the few enemies that have large interruptable abilities.

Another important aspect of Pushback is that when fully customized, it functions differently across all 9 characters, with the differences as follows:

Cherry - Learns Pushback Launch, which changes the Stagger to Knockback. When maxed out, it has a very large Knockback distance, making it useful in large battlefields to give your party some breathing room if they run into trouble.

Knight - Learns Pushback Damage Enemy, which inflicts damage to an enemy. Maxed out, it deals 50 damage normally and 100 during the Body Field Effect. 100 base damage and one second Stagger makes for a very useful Body Field Effect ability, especially with the Ragnarok weapon reducing Pushback's cooldown to 3 seconds, making for a strong combination of damage, preventing the enemy from acting and influencing/maintaining the Body Field Effect.

Alberto - Learns Pushback Cooldown, which reduces Pushback's cooldown to 3 seconds, allowing Alberto to use Pushback as a Body Field Effect maintainer/influencer.

Tara - Learns Advantage Pushback, which grants Tara a buff that doubles attack and boosts her Combat Movement by 100% for 3 seconds on a successful Pushback.

Pound - Learns Pushback Energize, which cuts 5 seconds off of all Pound's current active cooldowns on a successful Pushback.

Cook - Learns Steel Pushback, which grants Cook 3 seconds of invincibility on a successful Pushback -- very useful during the Body Field Effect when everyone is taking double damage (and combined with Provoke, makes for a useful tanking combination in the Body Field Effect).

Claire - Learns Power Shove, which inflicts Knockdown at the end of the Stagger.

Jimmy - Learns Pushblast, which inflicts Stagger to an area around Jimmy rather than in front of him (very useful for one second Staggers to multiple enemies) and heals Jimmy 5 HP per enemy affected by Pushblast.

Brooks - Learns Pushbreak, which inflicts a debuff on enemies hit by successful Pushback to take 5x Knockback collision damage from all sources for 5 seconds.