I always prefered Dunban over Sharla, but it's a matter of opinion, I think. Mostly because Sharla doesn't have alot of darkred coloured attacks, which is annoying when doing group attacks (I kinda forgot the name of it, the repetitive attack where you gotta press b when the blue circle enters the other circle and when the battle pauses).
All in all just choose who you prefer and enjoy playing with most. It doesn't matter that much when you get to the end of the game anyway. Thing is you need either Dunban or Reyn to tank attacks and keep Shulk out of harm, otherwise you'll get into trouble. Third person is preferance IMHO.

well, who's in your current party, and which arts do you have and on which character specifically?

I quite like Dunban since he dodges a lot and has quite good health for a tank.
My team has become shulk, Dunban, and Sharla.

Dunban should always replace Reyn - Dunban will dodge the damage Reyn would take, allowing Sharla to heal others more often, and still has all the topple options.

Right now, my team is Shulk, reyn and sharla. I'll try swapping in Dunban, and see how well I do. What's dunban's rate to dodge attacks?

Fire-lord Zuko wrote:

Right now, my team is Shulk, reyn and sharla. I'll try swapping in Dunban, and see how well I do. What's dunban's rate to dodge attacks?

not sure on the exact rate, but it's rather high, and of course, agility is a large factor, which Dunban has a lot of.
I switched Reyn out quite quickly, wasn't too fond of him :c

Dunban's voice acting > Reyn's.

Also, while we're on the subject of Dunban, which armours give the biggest agility bonus at my level? Wanna beef up my tank as good as I can, after all.

Also, gems. Which ones should I slap on which character?

Fire-lord Zuko wrote:

Dunban's voice acting > Reyn's.

Also, while we're on the subject of Dunban, which armours give the biggest agility bonus at my level? Wanna beef up my tank as good as I can, after all.

Also, gems. Which ones should I slap on which character?

Check out Dunban's Skill trees - a lot of them are about raising agility. Also, light armour has the best base agility modifiers.

For Dunban, Agility/Topple up gems.

Sharla - Ether Up, Heat Sink and relevant healing gems

Shulk - I typically went with Attacking boosting ones, and Haste. Aggro down is useful, too.

Okay, I now have Melia and Riki. Same questions as with dunban, really... swap them in? Who would they replace? What's their 'role' in the team? Ect, ect...

Oh, and sorry if my constant questions are aggravating... :oops:

The single most effective team is Melia, Shulk, Dunban. Melia is useless when AI controlled.

For a lot of info, try this Google Spreadsheet

melia can be the best lead character but there are 2 options:

a) you use her for guaranteed topple and pushing high level enemies off cliffs, making the game super cheap

b) you use her as a blast character to kill off high level enemies with thunder while other characters tank (used this to kill off lvl90 or so enemies while at level 70)

or you use her as the second character in yoru group to get "max" chains every time (because her attack is grey so everything will chain with it if she's in spot2). just be aware of this:

a) when your group bar is full, she will buff herself and not attack to prepare for chain, wait until she has 3 elements before chaining. if you want her to attack instae dyou will have to command to attack manually for her to restart.

b) never use water, possibly don't use wind or ice either. thunder, earth and fire are your best elements.

she's not useless when ai controlled by all means, she just won't use topple guarantee moves (which are cheap, i never use topple) and she will stop attackign with a full group bar, i assume someone doesn't know you can just have her restart. i killed most story bosses in 1 chain with her as second char, maxed dunban attacks easily go over 80k damage, maxed thunder goes over 40k, poison can deal 20k damage per round and so on...

quidam wrote:

b) never use water, possibly don't use wind

Wind should always, ALWAYS be the first one up, and the one you hold onto the buff from the longest.

^the ai doesn't know that, and if you ARE using melia, i much rather prefer boosting my ether with thudner to keep up the damage.

If melia IS In you team hen your far better if main-ing her since the ai won't nearly take advantage of her topple spam abilities, or use the right elementals, riki can be an alternative tank due to huge health, but I never really liked him much.

Spear break • starlight kick • rinse and repeat • (cheap) victory

exactly, that's overly cheap isn't it? :P

quidam wrote:

exactly, that's overly cheap isn't it? :P

Try fighting Abaasy without it ;)

Personally, I haven't used Melia for topple spam yet, Dunban will randomly use steel strike, so all's good

did it

used shulk, melia (not as lead) and 7

Okay, what arts do you need on each character to topple spam? o.O

melia main to use strakick thing, green arts on other characters

Okay, now... what are the benefits of fighting those nebula thingies? They don't drop anything, and I haven't seen them give any XP...

they do drop stuff, usually they sell for good price. also there's a pretty big sidequest near endgame that will have you search for nebulae drops.

Really? Never once had a single chest from them.

they generally tend to explode for some reason, critical health or something, so when it's nearly dead just rush it with strong arts.

Yeah, when nebulae get low on health, they explode, and since physical damage is virtually nil on them, it's hard to get the kill yourself, as is required for a chest to drop. Melia is your answer here.

Their rare drops are used frequently for Colony 6's upgrades

I can never get Dunban to dodge... I'm making sure he has the highest agility equipment I have on me but either I'm not noticing the dodges or he isn't dodging at all. He dies just as much as Reyn does too so Iun even know wuts going on...

Melia is pretty awesome though, dat burst damage. xP Can't get her to work well with Shulk though, they're definitely both player controlled characters IMO.

(still at the Mechonis Field btw, I really need to start playing again)