How to Smash in Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Featured with permission by botay93

Rex-rex want to learn how to smash? Poppi, initiate education mode!

The Blades

Rex:

• Mythra (must have Moon Matter or Mirror Matter chip)
• Roc (with whatever chip but preferably gold chip)
• Optional: Zenobia or any great axe blade

Nia:

**Avoid using ice/fire element rare on Nia for this set up

• Dromach + 1 knuckle blades (Preferably Adenine for extra loot) + 1 Bit Ball
• Or Dromach + 2 knuckle blades

Tora: All the poppi (QT and QT 3.14) with no need for upgrade (except for core chip)

The Items

Food:

• Your best Regen art per second food (0.4 per second is the highest grade and you can equip 2 making it 0.8 per sec)
• Check here if you don’t know where to find Rare food

Accessories:

• Overcloking Bangle (highest rarity) on all 3 character
• Beta Scope (highest rarity) on Tora and Nia. Last slot on Rex is optional (I usually go with Avant Garde Medal for survivability since my Rex tend to pull all the aggro)
• Check here for farming location Rare Accessories. There’s time stamp in the video description

The Process

Important: Someone pointed out that the fusion combo animation takes up time (in which he/she is right), so in order to optimize solely for the purpose of farming crystals, you want to ignore stage 1 completely and DO NOT USE any specials what so ever (there might be consequences with this because I have never tested this method without using fusion combo, I will test it out later and report back here)

• You want Mythra to be first slot of Rex, QT 3.14 first slot of Tora, and doesn’t matter what’s the first slot on Nia but preferably Dromach

Stage 1: force AI into their according blade

• Spam arts with high crit MYTHRA and use stage I special on PYRA as soon as possible then switch back to MYTHRA and stay there for the rest of the fight
• As soon as Dromach on Nia special hit stage II, use it right away.
• Do not finish the combo or you’re gonna have to redo the combo again

Stage 2: SMASH, SMASH, and SMASH!

• As soon as you see a Break status, topple with Mythra right away, do not wait. When there’s no break status (which is quite rare), just auto attack. It is preferably to not use any other skill for Overclock Bangle to work to its full potential
• As soon as you see Launch status, you know what to do Rex Rex. What are you waiting for? Switch to Roc and SMASH!
• After smash, switch back to Mythra right away (do not use any other skills)

The Explanation###

So how does this process work?

• When you force a Steam bomb combo (Fire + Water), the last hit on the combo can only be either Ice or Fire which on Tora is Poppi QT (Fire base element) and Poppi QT 3.14 (Ice based element). Which means Tora will always rotate between QT and QT 3.14. QT 3.14 is your main Break initiator here because her Break hits 3 times, and all 3 can cause break (OP af). She can also Launch and Poppi QT can help you Smash
• Nia having Dromach + 2 rare knuckle or Dromach + Knuckle + Bit Ball meaning she won’t have any Fire or Ice blades on her (unless you use common blades then avoid those elements), since she doesn’t have fire/ice base weapon, she can freely swap between blades. So she will be your main Launch (because launch animation on knuckle is extremely fast) and a helper with break.
• Mythra as your main toppler simply because if you miss your topple (which is rarely), there’s a high chance you can just topple again immediately or build it back up fast enough to still topple within the break time frame.
• Roc will be main Smash because you control Rex and you can do it much faster than Tora AI switching to Poppi QT
• The build is optimize for pulling constant CC effectively because you always have 2 breaker (QT 3.14 actually count as 3 because of her 3 hits break skill so it’s 4 breaker), 2 launcher (Nia Knuckle, and QT 3.14), and 2 smasher (Roc and QT) thus making the build a guarantee when it comes to CC chaining.
• The arts regen food synchronize very well with Overclocking Bangle so your AI can pretty much switch blades on command.
• Reason why you want to CC as fast as possible (topple, smash without waiting) is because this combo work so well that as soon as you CC, your AI will immediately follow leading to more smash per fight (if you wait, you lose all that precious smash time)

Additional note

• Cooldown stat on Blade affect how fast they regen when not in used so pick ones with higher cool down stat on Nia (tbh, anything with 3 and above is good)
• You can bring a Great Axe on Rex in case your NPC have cool down on their launch, then you can launch the monster yourself (preferably Zenobia over Dagas since she has a cooldown of 5)
• If fight higher resistant bosses or you do not have QT 3.14 yet, put a Lance weapon and Beta Scope on Rex for more break (tho I’ve never found this to be needed if you have QT 3.14)
• There are other elemental combo that can forced NPC into their blade, but I found Steam Bomb (Fire+Water) last the longest (it last the whole time I fight with Ardun UM where I smash him ~50 times or so per fight, I usually lost count)
• The way Tora AI and Nia AI works are different, Tora AI prioritize Driver combo whereas Nia AI prioritize Blade Combo (you can see this easily after you hit the first Fire special, Tora will still switch to other poppi freely to break/topple, where as Nia will just stay on Dromach the whole time waiting to use Water special) so the special combo is mostly to prevent locking Nia into a specific blade so if you’re gonna modified the build, keep that fact in mind.
• Reason why you only want to auto attack is to make the fight last longer (getting in more smash), and to not waste your cooldown with Overclocking Bangle (more skill available, faster the switch)
• This build with a little tweak can become an end game build and pretty much destroy any superbosses except Artifice Ophion because he’s immuned(!? or have very high resistent) to CC.

Anyhow, that’s how you smash Rex Rex, now go out there and farm all the legendary crystals. KOS MOS await!