With the fast pace at which new content has been pouring in on Sword Art Online Unleash Blading, there is an equal desire for most players to make rapid progress in the game. While some story-centric RPGs may end the adventure once you have cleared the campaign, the same hardly holds through for mobile RPGs, especially ones that offer plenty of additional game modes that test the limits of your units and team’s strength along with your strategic prowess.
Strategy RPGs like Sword Art Online Unleash Blading makes it so that clearing the campaign in its entirety is just a fraction of the challenge, as unique events will continue to provide various challenges and most contenders in PvP rise in power as well.
If you are still new to Sword Art Online Unleash Blading or to strategy RPGs altogether, we encourage you to read our beginner’s guide as it provides useful tips and strategies to help you grasp the basic mechanics and features of the game.
As starting out strong, beyond knowing the basics of the game, will make it easier for you in the long run, we also have a reroll guide that encompasses everything you need to know about rerolling. It may require some time and patience depending on the device you play on but in any case, doing a reroll before diving further into Sword Art Online Unleash Blading will surely pay off.
If you are yet uncertain as to which characters to go for when you reroll, you can check out our tier guide as we rank the initial 4-star heroes in Sword Art Online Unleash Blading from best to worst as far as overall strength and utility is concerned. Keep in mind that all 4-star characters, even the least desirable ones, are more formidable than the best 3-star characters in the game.
Like any strategy RPG, claiming victory over battles and numerous challenges within Sword Art Online Unleash Blading requires more than just having the best heroes enhanced to the fullest and armed to the teeth as much as you can. While different tier lists you will discover may more or less present the same heroes on the top of the list, simply lumping them all together will not net you an ultimate team.
In truth, there are numerous factors to consider when it comes to building a team and Sword Art Online Unleash Blading is not short on providing a variety of unique challenges that may require you to switch heroes in and out of your team just to pull through. Likewise, there are elemental affinities to consider as well and regardless of how strong any character is; he or she will always have a weakness.
Before we proceed to our suggested teams, keep in mind that the teams we have come up with are not exactly what we want you to follow most especially considering that you may not have all the characters in the team. Additionally, what we will focus on in this guide is the idea or rationale in building a team, which mostly starts with a character that is of core importance followed by other heroes who can support that character well. For purposes of flexibility, we will only be covering main members of the team, composed of 4 characters, although we will make suggestions on sub-members in non-PvP setups.
Naturally, we will consider 4-star characters and if you have yet to reach a level that would leave you enough points for a full 4-star team, do not worry because you will soon be able to do so with a few rank ups on your account level.
All-Around Team [Alice (Osmanthus Knight), Ronie, Eldrie, Tiese]
For clearing general main story stages as well as some dungeons and events, we consider this team as the best for the most part. We consider Alice [Osmanthus Knight] as the best character in the game and, like most players, aim to secure her for the initial 11x scout. Alice boasts excellent AoE damage that can help clear mobs on most of the game’s content.
She also has a powerful single target attack that not just deals massive damage on an enemy, but also shaves their magic attack proficiency by 10% on top of it being a break type skill. Her enhance skill is likewise a huge plus for her overall value. Boosting the team’s magic defense by 20% may not be significant against non-elemental opponents, but it will be of great help against those with strong magic attacks.
If there is one thing to worry about when you rely heavily on Alice, it would be her weakness against wind elemental attacks. Considering as well that Alice is a little slow compared to other units, partnering her up with someone who can eliminate threats to her is important. This is where the top fire elemental damage-dealer in the game comes in.
Tiese both has a non-elemental and fire-based single target attack and the latter works even better against wind elemental opponents. While the primary consideration for Tiese in this roster is to eliminate all threats against Alice, she is also a formidable character to have. Tiese can also buff the team’s magic attack by 20% and while there are not as many exceptional magic users in the game, there may be more to come in future updates.
Healers are an essential component of any team in strategy RPGs or even any other game genre where they are available. Truthfully enough, it is very difficult to come up with a team in Sword Art Online Unleash Blading without any healer in it. As far as 4-star heroes in the game are concerned, we have Ronie, Leafa, and Alice [Childhood Memories] to choose from. If all are available, the tough choice actually boils down to choosing between Ronie and Leafa and while Leafa is faster and may be able to cast more heals in combat, Ronie is our choice.
This choice is not because of Ronie ranks higher in our picks for best characters but rather, it is due to Ronie’s light elemental affinity that makes him strong against dark elemental units that pose as a threat to him. Capable of only dealing magic damage, Ronie will also benefit from Tiese’s magic attack buff and as a healer and support character, Ronie can dish out decent damage even without the magic damage buff.
Under normal circumstances, a team that can do good damage and have enough support and break skills in the mix is fine. Unless you want to go for a more defensive stance, therefore, you would want to bank on raising damage in hopes of being able to clear battles more quickly. For farming or going through levels where there are hardly enemies that can kill off any of your units with one shot, Eldrie is our fourth and final pick.
Eldrie is an aggressive character and currently the only 4-star character that holds 2 assault skills. He has a good mix of single target and AoE damage skills and has physical and magic-based ones as well. His second assault skill, Frostscale Whip, lowers the physical defense of his target on top of the damage it deals setting up the opponent for an even bigger damage from a succeeding attack from Tiese or Alice.
For the greater part of the early content of the game, you can easily breeze through most of it with this team. There may be exceptional challenges ahead that would require more break and charge skills so feel free to back these guys up with those characters. It may take a while for you to be able to earn a high enough team cost limit to include exclusively 4-star heroes in your team so do not hesitate to choose 3-star ones that compliment your 4 main characters.
Cathedral Team [Sortillena, Ronie, Kirito, Asuna]
If you have managed to unlock and made it all the way through to final stage of The Cathedral, chances are that you may find difficulty in beating it considering that it currently stands as the most challenging PvE battle you will partake in at this point in time. It may happen that you have decent characters at high enough levels packed with the best equipment as well and still get defeated by the boss. While the cathedral as well as other end-game content in Sword Art Online Unleash Blading may change over time, our current focus for now is the Fire Dragon Boss inside the Cathedral.
For one, most beginners or relatively new players to the game will go for defensive teams and in this case, it is a very important point to consider. You will naturally identify the Fire Dragon as a fire type and would correctly presume that its fire-based attacks will hurt. Incarnation levels of this boss is beyond provocative as well. With this, you should now know what you may want to have in your party and which characters to definitely not consider bringing along. With fire being strong against wind and weak against water, Leafa is definitely not your team’s healer and should be left out of this endeavor.
One way to go about this is to use water elemental heroes for your team along with Ronie for his heals but more importantly, for his Incarnate Break buff on an ally. The three 4-star heroes often considered that have water affinity are Sortillena, Eugeo, and Eldrie and having some resistance against fire attacks will give you good rate of survivability. Sortillena [Young Seirut Style], which is a free 4-star character, also has water affinity and can heal but as far as damage-dealing goes, the other 3 fair much better.
For the team we consider, though, we are keeping Ronie for the buff and heal but would consider more heroes that can break incarnation and prevent the boss’ incarnation skill activation. As such, going with Kirito, Sortillena, and Asuna serves that very purpose. On top of having break skills, each of these heroes can deal decent amounts of single target damage. With only Sortillena having fire resistance in the team, you will still need to bank on additional healers or a magic defense buffer for the team in the sub slots and the young Sortillena, as well as Alice [Osmanthus Knight] can serve that purpose.
Ordinal Battle Team [Yuuki, Kirito, Leafa, Alice (Osmanthus Knight)]
PvP in Sword Art Online Unleash Blading can be surprisingly challenging especially for new players as well as those entirely new to the genre. In some cases, it can be disheartening to be paired or matched with some stronger opponents especially if you have yet to find your team or obtain each of the characters you want to build your dream party. While there will occasionally be disadvantages in match-ups, what makes Ordinal Battle in Sword Art Online Unleash Blading enjoyable is that you get to control your team and pit it against the other players team that is on auto mode, giving you tactical advantage.
One thing to consider in Ordinal Battles is that you have to know each character well enough to have an idea about each one’s strengths and weaknesses. Whether the character is a member of your team or on the other side of the fence, knowing which ones are most important or dangerous and should be protected or eliminated first already puts you at an advantage. Another point to take note of is that Ordinance Battles have special rules.
Although currently, the special rules are only party number limitation to 4 members and absence of switch combinations, the special rules on the next season may makes it so that our current team consideration will not be optimal or viable at all.
Our approach towards engaging in Ordinal Battles takes advantage of the opponent A.I., which lacks discriminating preference as to which skills to use or enemies to target. Likewise, we prefer speed as well so picking fast characters and banking on launching the first attack is important. While there are powerful AoE damage-dealers in the game, we prefer single target attackers and that is why we chose Yuuki and Kirito as our first 2 choices.
Both Yuuki and Kirito have dark elemental affinity making them both strong and weak against light elemental units. Young Alice and Ronie are currently the only 4-star light elemental units in the game so there really is not much to worry about for both our Assassins. Yuuki and Kirito both have strong single target attacks and may even be able to eliminate their targets before someone manages to damage them.
Yuuki currently stands as the best PvP character in the game with strong single target attacks, top-notch speed, self-heal and even a single turn evasion buff. If you have her, be sure to invest in her for Ordinance Battles and if you see her on the opposing team, take her out first if you can.
For PvP, we are going with the faster of the best healers so we are taking Leafa instead of Ronie. She is also among the fastest characters in the game and her decent single target attack serves as a good plus on top of her AoE heal. While we want fast characters for our team, we also cannot ignore Alice’s overall utility for the team. With strong single and AoE attacks and her team buff, her overall package very much compensates for her relatively slow pace.
That’s pretty much all we have for you on our Sword Art Online Unleash Blading team guide. Again, we would like to stress the point that as new content come with upcoming updates and new characters join the roster while old ones may be altered for balance, tier lists and effectively suggested team rosters may very well change. In any case, the basic idea we would like to share through the sample teams we enumerated above is choosing a basic idea of what you want to do and setting up the rest in support of that objective.
Clearing mobs on story stages and some dungeons fast, breaking incarnation, and eliminating top threats are just some key goals we have for most of the challenges we have encountered in the game and later on, we expect additional varieties of challenges that require a completely different setup.
There will naturally be instances where the characters presented in our guide have not yet been unlocked on your end or the team cost cap you does not yet suffice to cater them all. In any given case, there are plenty of workarounds to these ideas involving 3-star characters. The harder part is actually choosing to invest in some of the lower-rarity heroes or waiting for lady luck to bless your scouts with the 4-star heroes you are missing.
There is much fun and excitement in mixing and matching characters in Sword Art Online Unleash Blading so don’t deny yourself of it because of our or anyone else’s suggestion. Just invest a bit of time in reading through what your characters can do and take them to the field if you can. If you have encountered unique scenarios that call for a roster different than ours or if you have any other suggestions for the teams we shared, we welcome you to enlighten us through the comment section!