Percival Build Guide
Known as the Lord of Flames, Percival is a knight who travels the world in order to learn what it means to be a leader. Despite having an old relationship with former Order of the Black Dragon members, Lancelot and Siegfried, Percival is not actually a member of the newly formed Order of White Dragons. Taking on the Captain as his trusted vassal, Percival is looking to better both himself and his homeland of Wales. Here's our guide to Percival in Granblue Fantasy: Relink.
Percival Build Guide
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Skills Overview
Percival has eight total skills to choose from, each with different situational uses. He also has two passive skills that enhance his gameplay.
Skills | |||
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Skill | Skill Type | Description | Evaluation |
Zerreissen | Offensive | A lunging thrust attack that inflicts Burn. Schlacht charges faster when charged right after the attack. | Percival's basic gap-closer and a useful one. Although the only thing it does additionally is provide burn, it also allows him to charge Schlacht much faster, which is the core of his gameplay. However, since all of his damaging abilities allow for this, you'll mainly want this gap-closer for the lower cooldown it has compared to his other one. |
Roter Wirbel | Offensive | Spawns fire coils in front of Percival that deal constant damage. Schlacht charges faster when charged right after the attack. | While this ability may seem underwhelming, this skill can be exploited with one of the game's most basic mechanics: Link Time. Since Link Time is extended with skill damage, a constant and rapid pace of Skill Damage that is independent of Percival will allow him to continue DPSing and extending it even more, even getting multiple successive casts. Don't sleep on this skill. |
Royal Authority | Offensive | Expels fire from the ground around Percival. Schlacht charges faster when charged right after the attack. | A wide AoE attack for Percival. Since all abilities allow him to charge Schlacht quickly, it doesn't even have that benefit for him. It can be useful in certain situations when AoE might be desirable, but other than that, he's got better abilities. |
Flammenmarsch | Offensive | Grants ATK↑ (20%) and DEF↑ (20%) to the entire party. | A rather underwhelming buff. Since attack and defense buffs are sort of unneeded in the game's current state, you won't get a lot of mileage from these early on. However, they are not range-restricted, which can make them slightly more useful. |
Macht | Offensive | A lunging slash that deals a high amount of stun. Grants Stout Heart to Percival while lunging. Schlacht charges faster when charged right after. | Zerreissen's big brother. This is a second gap-closer that's built-in with more damage, more hits, and built-in Stout Heart to make it impossible to halt his advance. Instead of substituting this over Zerreissen, I'd recommend just running both for the utility, as Percival is quite slow otherwise. |
Träumerei | Offensive | Grants Strength (Max 70%) and Supplementary DMG to Percival. | This is Percival's self-buff and it's a big one. The supplementary damage is already a sought after buff, but the Strength buff, which scales with how high his HP is, can easily make it so Percival hits damage cap without much issue. It has a slow cast time, but it's well worth the wait. Just don't get interrupted as it can be a pain to try and recast it after the wait. |
Feuerangriff | Offensive | Unleashes a series of slashes. Schlacht charges faster when charged right after the attack. | Percival's highest damage ability. It doesn't do anything else, but if you're looking purely for DPS, you've got it. This is a great ability to have as your last ability when you don't need anything else. |
X-Seele | Defensive | Inflicts Petrified on foes within a conical zone in front of Percival. | Percival's supportive debuff and one of the better ones. Petrify is a unique debuff that slows enemies actions and also reduces their defense. Although it doesn't last very long, it's AoE and it allows you to take advantage of the window you've got it active. |
Support Skills | |||
Flammen Rüstung | Passive | Foes won't interrupt Percival while he's charging Schlacht. | Built-in Steady Focus trait means you don't have to use the Sigil, which is greatly welcomed! Without this, Percival's consistency would be much worse. |
Adrenaline Rush | Passive | Greatly increases Schlacht charge speed when charged immediately after a combo finisher. | This is your main way of getting Schlacht active if you don't have a skill available. Just part of Percival's bread-and-butter. |
Recommended Skills
Percival has a lot of powerful skills, meaning you'll be running into some issues fitting them all in. Zerreissen and Macht should be your two main abilities, while you fiddle around with your other two abilities. We highly recommend taking Träumerei purely for consistency, making a starter build look something like this:
- Zerreissen
- Macht
- Träumerei
For your last ability, it can really be anything you like. You can also even drop Träumerei for another damage skill if you're looking to go fast and furious.
- Zerreissen
- Macht
- Roter Wirbel/Feuerangriff/X-Seele
- Träumerei/Roter Wirbel/Feuerangriff/X-Seele
You can realistically run any Percival setup that fits your needs so long as you include his gap-closers at a bare minimum. His skills have a lot of raw damage and you're mostly looking to combo into Schlacht anyways, so you can think of his skills as transitional abilities most of the time.
Best Sigil Choices
As you begin the game and Sigils are sparse, go ahead and equip anything you can get your hands on that provides a sizable DPS boost. HP and Defensive sigils are also good choices.
Since a lot of this game lends itself to the end game, this will cover only optimization of Percival at the highest level. Remember to always prioritize V and V+ sigils in the late game, as anything else is simply not good enough.
Generic Sigils | |||
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Sigil | Sigil Type | Description | Evaluation |
Damage Cap | Attack | Raises the damage limit of attacks. | As with all characters, Damage Cap is mandatory in pushing the limits of the game. You should aim to cap this Trait if at all possible as soon as possible. |
Critical Hit Rate | Basic Stats | Boosts critical hit rate. | Critical Hit Rate is important on all characters. Prioritize trying to get your critical hit rate to 100% or as close to 100% as you possibly can. Percival wants 100% critical hit due to the fact that he attacks rather slowly and missing a crit on a charged Schlacht would feel quite bad. |
Guts | Special | Survives a lethal hit with 1 HP. Reactivation time is shortened based on trait level. | A get-out-of-jail-free card. This is great for Proud Quests where even the best players may make a mistake sometimes. |
Autorevive | Special | Automatically recover from critical condition. Reactivation time is shortened based on trait level. | Another get-out-of-jail-free card. Although worse than Guts since you're stuck in a limbo period while reviving, this is still great to have as a secondary backup option. |
Supplementary Damage | Attack | Grants certain chance for normal attacks and damage skills to deal supplementary damage. | One of the rarer sigils in the game. This sigil can only be obtained through Curios from Zathba. Since Percival attacks quite slow and is mostly reliant on doing burst damage, this sigil may be worse when not at 100% proc rate, but will still be a 20% damage increase most of the time. |
War Elemental | Attack | All attacks count as the superior element (except for plain element attacks). | One of the rarer sigils in the game. This sigil can only be obtained through Curios from Zathba. This is a flat 20% amplification against all foes, granted they have an elemental weakness. This sigil is recommended in all situations unless you're already strong against that element. |
Character Specific Sigils | |||
Lord's Procession | Special | Boost's Percival's movement speed (20%) while charging Schlacht. Boosts Schlacht's damage cap (50%) | I would honestly have taken just the movement speed increase for quality of life, but that fact that this also increases Schlacht's damage cap makes this a must for all situations. You can get this Sigil by either buying it from Sierokarte as a singular or through the Transmarvel service from Sierokarte. |
Lord's Ambition | Special | Restores a small bit of health (8%) and temporarily boosts Percival's attack power (30%) after a charged parry. | This will increase Percival's consistency and survivability, but it requires you to understand how Schlacht fully works. SInce this is only after a parry version of Schlacht, this means you'll need to be using Schlacht both offensively and defensively. Regardless, we'd recommend this Sigil for any playstyle. You can get this Sigil by either buying it from Sierokarte as a singular or through the Transmarvel service from Sierokarte. |
Quick Charge | Attack | Charged attacks charge faster. Boosts attack power. | Schlacht is all Percival wants to be doing, so this is basically just a way to speed up Percival's rotation. Will translate to a direct damage increase. |
Some other Sigils aren't bad, such as Stamina, Critical Hit Damage, Potion Hoarder, Linked Together, Quick Cooldown, and many of the Support and Unique Sigils, but these as baseline skills are the ones you want to aim for. Getting additional skills on a V+ sigil will allow for flexible build space to discover what works and what doesn't work for you.
Best Weapon Choices
Joyeuse | Lord of Flames | Gottfried |
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Stinger - Early to Mid | Ascension - Mid to Late | Teminus - Best Weapon |
When it comes to weapons, there's little room for discussion. While you're playing through the early stages of the game, you want to prioritize Joyeuse, or your Stinger Weapon. This weapon will carry you all the way until the late game as your main weapon of choice. Once you reach the late game, focus on the Lord of Flames, or your Ascension Weapon.
Getting the Ascension Weapon to 150 will unlock Weapon Awakening, a service offered by Sierokarte that involves boosting the power of your weapons even further, giving you additional Traits and the Sigil Booster Trait, which empowers ALL of the Sigils in your grid.
Once you reach the endgame, you'll want to aim for the Gottfried, the Terminus Weapon, for Percival. This weapon is also susceptible to Weapon Awakening, for the same benefits as the Ascension Weapon. The Ascension Weapon is still great even before you're able to get the Terminus Weapon, but the Terminus Weapon is without a doubt the strongest weapon currently available.
Basic Playstyle Guide
When playing Percival you really only want to be doing one thing to really be maximizing his DPS: Charging Schlacht. Anytime you're not charging Schlacht, you could be, so really getting into the rhythm of having it up at all times is where you want to be. Since Schlacht can even be used defensively as a parry, you also want to just use it for everything.
There are four ways to charge Schlacht:
The first way is raw, just charging it whenever. This method is not recommended, but it has some uses if the boss is very far away for instance and you anticipate needing a parry soon.
The second way is after a combo finisher. When you don't have any skills up, this is how you'll be spending your time anyways, trying to maximize your downtime. This will also decrease the charge time, allowing you to go again sooner.
The third way is immediately after a skill. Like your combo finisher, this will decrease the charge time, allowing you to go again sooner.
The fourth and final way is after a Link Attack. Like most characters, landing a Link Attack will always be advantageous, and you'll get access to the fast Schlacht here as well.
That's pretty much all you need to know for playing Percival. The steps to mastery lie within learning how to parry properly, which only take practice more than anything. You'll basically be rotating around using skills on cooldown to get to a charged Schlacht and then using your standard combo and combo finisher when nothing else is up.
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