How do you cause stuns/knockdowns in Tales of Berseria?

I'm trying to figure out how to do stuns and knockdowns for Eizen's more advanced arts, but I don't know how to consistently stun or knockdown.

Any advice or mechanics that can help me with this?

Solution 1:

You're question is a little vague, just asking about general stuns with a character, so I'll give you a high overview.

Get stuns with fate/coercion/eleventh hour, spam BS which has a good AOE and invincibility on it. Use Flash Step to go to next target. Get stun. Rinse and repeat.

Below is a setup and play-by-play from a thread to help you. Thread is linked at the bottom.

Y: is for single combat/weakness chains. Not much to say here, the attacks all flow into each other; Last Throes is for potential Down status, however.

X: is for general stun/damage. Fate has surprisingly decent range, great stun, and is extremely fast. Great combo starter. Coercion has great range, decent speed and good stun. Eleventh Hour causes Down, and Lighthouse picks 'em up. My go to chain.

B: This is where things are interesting. Flash Step is low-key probably Eizen's best arte; it casts very quickly, and allows him to teleport to an enemy, with a bit of invincibility upon arrival, a nice good AOE, and potential stun. It's an amazing combo starter, almost as good as Fate. I use this to zip around the field without having to move, or go to an enemy after I finish one off. The rest there is just fluff; I've changed this through the entirety of the game, put whatever you want there.

A: Another weakness chain, not much to say here. This set is better for damage than Y, but not as good at stunning as X, however. Mostly based on Earth and Wind here.

LB artes are simple to explain. Y: Deceiving Pummel is one of Eizen's best artes. A bit slow to start, but great range and AOE, good damage, good for stunning, it's just a good arte in general. (Also looks sick as f***). It's something you can spam at any given time, really, just due to its range, power and AOE.

X: Lighthouse is good for bringing enemies up when they're down and you don't want to /can't BS them. The arte has an alright radius, and it's fairly quick and spammable. Feel free to replace with Last Throes, which I also had here. Last Throes is great for spamming from a distance and getting knockdowns and allowing for easy BS. It's also a huge hitbox, though it's narrow. Important to note, it does hit behind Eizen, which is very handy.

A and B: I'll explain these simply since their purpose is the same. Spells that you can spam at the end of a chain, or when you have some space and can use them. Hell's Gate has a huge AOE, and is Eizen's only magical Fire attack. Geo Rumble is the same, except its hitbox isn't quite as huge, but it hits harder and almost guarantees knockdown. Both are very spammable at the end of arte chains, and you have souls to spare and BSing isn't optimal/you don't want to.

There's a really good thread here that goes into my answer, and set up pictures here and here.