Disclaimer: Most of the Information came from the Xenoblade Wikia: http://xenoblade.wikia.com/wiki/Perceval
Xenoblade chronicles 2 has These types of beings called Blades, There are two kinds of Blades, Common and Rare Blades.
Blades Provide Weapons and Extra Abilities to a Driver, Each Blade is different in their own way
So Since I'm Replaying Xenoblade 2, and an Update containing New Game + is coming, I want to do a Guide on Every Single Rare Blade. Starting with one of my Favorites, Percival.
Just Note, for this Series I'm Not going to go over Story Important Blades. Such as Pyra, or Dromarch so I dont Spoil the Plot, And i'm also Not going to cover Blades with their own Unique Weapon Either.
As Long as a Blade has an Awakening Scene and does not have a Unique Weapon I'm going to Cover them.
Now thats out of the way, Lets Talk about Percival.
Name: Percival
Element: Dark
Weapon: Chroma Katana
Class: Tank
Method of Obtaining: Randomly from Common, Rare, and Legendary Core Crystals
Percival is Probably one of the Most Over Powered Blades in the Game.
I Will be Honest Percival is only Really a "Tank" by Name, In Terms of Usage, Percival is more Like an Offensive Blade.
His Weapon is the Chroma Katana, Which Usually having this makes you an Evasion Tank.
The most Interesting thing about Percival is that he is a Dark Element Blade, Which is one of his bigger Weaknesses, Because Dark Elements dont really combo Well with Other Elements besides Earth and Other Dark Elements.
But the Thing with Percival is he does not Need Synergy with Other Blades.
If you take a Look at his Affinity Chart real Quick, You can see that Using him can basically make you touch-able.
Lets look at his Specials First.
His Level 1 Special, Dark Serpent, Increases aggro when You use this Special.
His Level 2 Special, Blade Vortex, is one you will be using a ton. It Does more Damage if you Currently are being Targeted by the enemy, Which combos well with His Level 1 Special.
Finally for his Specials is his Level 3, Grim Moon, Has a low Chance of Incapacitating a Foe when you use it(this does not work on Bosses or Unique Monsters).
Now for his Passive Battle Skills.
Eater of Men. This Skill increases the Damage you Deal for Each enemy you Incapacitate(Which caps at 300% more damage), Incapacitating enemies is SUPER EASY. Now Because of this Skill, Percival Benefits From Fights with a Ton of Enemies in them. and Because he is a Tank he is going to have a ton of Aggro, Which means his Level 2 is going to do a ton of damage. And While Chroma Katana Arts for every Driver are all Single Target, it does not Matter because Percival is going to allow you to dodge attacks, Which is Nice.
Next Skill is Soulsucker. This skill Restores HP Whenever you get a Kill. As I said Earlier, You Benefit from Fights with a ton of enemies in them, and When this Skill is Upgraded to Max, it Restores up to 75% of your Health.
and his Final Skill is Brandish, This makes you have a small chance of instantly killing Humanoid Enemies in 1 hit(like with Grim moon, This fails on Bosses and unique Monsters)
And of course There is his Field Skills.
There is Dark Mastery, Which is always useful
Leaping is another Field Skill, which in the Early game is Rather Redundant because of Poppi Alpha having the same Field Skill. but ok.
Finally is his Exclusive field Skill. Assassination.
So yea.
Now for Aux Core Set ups.
Percival's Biggest Weakness is that he can only Equip 1 Aux Core. Which means you cant really Customize him really well.
As for the Best Aux cores for him, Affinity MAX Attack can work really well. as you are going to be building Affinity really Quickly with how much damage you are going to be dealing, So this can increase your damage output even more.
Now In Terms of Driver and Equipment.
Out of the 4 Drivers you get the one I Recommend putting Percival on is Morag. Since Morag is already Designed to be a Dodge tank, you can Pair Percival with Brighid and any other Tank Blade you want to get the Master Defender Class.
For your Driver's Equipment, This part is Very Important because this will either Make or Break Percival.
So First up is the Star Cube, this Adds a Chance of attacking again after a Successful auto attack, You can get the Star Cube in the World Tree in Chapter 7.
Because of the way the Chroma Katana Works, you will doing auto attacks when it looks like you are not. and for those who don't know, the Chroma Katana has a Special Art that makes you invincible when you use it. so what it does is it's basically a Cooldown Invincibility button. So you will be Alternating between using that Art, Followed by another Art. Then Rinse and Repeat. and you will not be Touched in a Long time. so if you have a Decent Healer on your Team you will be Untouchable.
The Other Equipment is the Auto-Balancer, This will Prevent your Weapon from Bouncing off when they Guard an attack. This can Also be obtained in the World Tree in Chapter 7.
This is because Bouncing off of Guards can REALLY slow down your Art's Cooldown, But all this would really do is Prolong the Inevitable, this is more of a "Quality of Life" Thing.
Now Back to Morag, The other Main Reason why I Recommend putting Percival on Morag is because her Chroma Katana Arts set Has an Art that inflicts Smash, and Brighid can Inflict Break. So if you have a Team that also inflicts Topple, and Launch, you can Finish the Driver Combo with Smash.
So you can Start the Driver Combo with Brighid by inflicting Break, then Rex or Tora can inflict Topple, Then Nia or Zeke can Inflict Launch, then Morag finish it with a Smash art with a Chroma Katana. So yea it's the only Chroma Katana Moveset that has a Smash Art.
So yea, that's Percival and the Build I Recommend, Of course this is NOT the only Build that can work well for Percival. but this is the one I Personally use. and it works well.
Any Build Suggestions? or any Suggestions for the next Blade to Cover? Please tell me below. That's about it for Percival.