Final Fantasy XV’s chef and team driver, Ignis, has arrived in the world of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. As a support unit that provides a slew of different food-themed buffs, he’s a top tier unit that can compete with the likes of CG Nichol and other strong buffers. He does have some unique mechanics which may make him less appealing a pick in certain team comps. Let’s take a closer look at the newest 5-star unit to make his way into FFBE.
Ignis Review
Traits
As a support unit, Ignis’ passive traits are decent enough, though they could have been better. The first trait he gets access to, Regalia Driver, provides him with 20% DEF/SPR, as well as granting him immunity to three ailments – poison, confuse, and petrify. At 6-star, he gains First Aid, which gives him a 30% chance to counter physical attacks with a 25% HP/MP heal to himself and can occur twice in one turn. He gains further passive stat buffs with Ebony Freak, which grants him an additional 30% MAG/SPR and provides a 5% MP refresh.
If you’re lucky enough to pull two of him, Ignis gets a rather pointless ATK/MAG buff and blind resistance with Glasses Enthusiast. He also randomly gets a +20% ATK buff at level 115. Finally, at 120, he gains The Hand of the King, which gives him +20% HP, +50% MP, and a big 40% boost to MAG/SPR.
As noted before, his traits are pretty solid for a support unit as ideally you’d want him to be as tanky as possible with high HP/DEF/SPR and a good MP pool to continue using his abilities. His bizarre ATK/MAG passives don’t really add much to him as you won’t be spending any turns doing any damage with him.
Active Abilities
Ignis has a TON of active abilities. His first notable ability is Analyze which gives him a useful 5-turn ST 50% ATK/MAG break that also allows you to view monster info. While there are units with on-demand 60% breaks nowadays, 50% is still respectable and could be enough to prevent a wipe if your breaker happens to die on a bad turn. Speaking of an ally dying, Ignis can also revive fallen allies with 80% HP using Regenerate.
Ignis also has three other skills that are worth noting. Regroup is an AoE heal that restores 3000 HP with a 3x coefficient that also comes with a 3x 9000 HP heal over time that lasts for 3 turns. Alim/Gumi decided to randomly throw in a chaining ability for the guy with Final Blow. This 8-hit attack only chains with a duplicate at the moment, and in addition to dealing a small bit of damage, provides an AoE 80% ATK buff for your party.
With those two abilities out of the way, let’s move onto Ignis’ bread and butter – his cooking and enhancement skills. Using Cooking, our resident chef receives a 3-turn 20% damage reduction buff to himself and gains access to the following 6 food-themed buffs for 3 turns.
- Oil-Drizzled Steamed Fish: Refresh (60 MP, 0.2x) split over 3 turns to all allies. Increase ATK/MAG (120%) for 3 turns to all allies.
- Fluffy Chiffon Cake: Heal (9000 HP, 3x) split over 3 turns to all allies. Increase DEF/SPR (120%) for 3 turns to all allies.
- Robust Bean Soup: Increase LB gauge fill rate (200%) for 3 turns to all allies. Increase LB gauge (1-4) to all allies.
- Creamy Milk Risotto: Heal (2000 HP, 2.5x) to all allies. Cure all status ailments to all allies. Increase resistance to all status ailments (100%) for 3 turns to all allies.
- Lasagna al Forno: Recover MP (80) to all allies. Increase resistance to all elements (50%) for 3 turns to all allies.
- Golden Tail Soup: Mitigate damage taken (30%) for 5 turns to all allies.
Upon hitting max 6-star level, Ignis gains Enhancement, which imperils one enemy by 50% to fire, ice, and lightning, as well as granting him for 1 turn the ability to imbue either fire, ice, or lightning onto one ally for 3 turns.
7-star is where Ignis really shines. His first cooldown move is Overboost
Limit Burst
At 7-star max level, Ignis’ limit burst, Sagefire, is extremely powerful. With his TMR equipped, it deals a 4x fire magic attack with 50% SPR ignore to one enemy. At the same time, it also brings with it a 5-turn 100% imperil on fire, ice, and lightning. Think that’s all? Nope, it also opens up his enhancement abilities on the following turn.
TMR and STMR
Ignis’ TMR, Ignis’ Food Notes, is the new Rikku’s Pouch utility TMR accessory that comes with three more food-themed support abilities: Prime Garula Rib, Meat-and-Beet Bouillon, and Memory Lane Pastry. Prime Garula Rib provides an AoE 2000 HP heal with a 2x coefficient. On top of this heal, it gives your party a 3-turn 100% DEF boost while also removing DEF breaks off your allies. Meat-and-Beet Bouillon gives your team an on-demand 20 MP recharge along with a 100 MP refresh split across 3 turns. Memory Lane Pastry gives your team a 100% MAG/SPR boost for 3 turns and also provides a 100% increased LB gauge fill rate buff.
Upon equipping his TMR onto himself, Ignis gains access to a new passive trait Quick Recipeh, which allows him to cast two food skills in a single turn, as well as boosting the effects of his limit burst.
Ignis’ STMR, Zwill Crossblade, is a 145 ATK, 145 MAG, +20% MP dagger. It’s a good dagger for hybrid damage dealers, but at the moment, there aren’t any units that can fully make use of its stats.
Conclusion
Ignis is a support unit that can pretty much do it all. At 7-star, he has powerful stat buffs, heals, MP refresh, damage mitigation, and can imbue 3 different elements. He really only has two major downsides:
- His 6-star form’s lack of W-cast for his cooking skills makes him easily outclassed by most supports.
- While he can W-cast two of his cooking abilities in his 7-star form, the fact that he needs to first use Cooking to open up access to his cooking skills means he has a harder time picking your team out of a bad spot if he dies and gets messed up out of his optimal skill-rotation. In other words, setup skills hinder his reliability and turn efficiency.
In the case of the latter, you’ll need to spend two turns just to get a DEF/SPR buff up as well as a damage mitigation buff. In some fights, that might not be a luxury you can afford.
Ultimately, is he worth pulling for? It depends on your playstyle and team comp. If you are able to slot units that can provide your team with defensive buffs in an emergency situation if Ignis dies and needs time to revamp his buffs, then he could be worth dropping some resources for if you’re a money spending player. If you’re completely F2P, Ignis is harder to justify pulling because you need his 7-star form for him to be in his best shape. His 6-star form’s lack of W-cast really hurts him. If you’re F2P and lucked out with a CG Nichol, Ignis is easily skippable.
In short, Ignis is a strong support unit, but requires a team comp that can play around his weakness of requiring a setup turn to get going. If you have CG Nichol, he’s an easy pass. If you enjoyed Final Fantasy XV and loved Ignis, just pull if you really liked the game’s resident chef!
Featured Image Source: J-En Translations