Particular SSR characters are able to learn Faction Buff skills if they go a certain class route. For example, Bozel receives the Dark Waltz Faction Buff if the player builds him into a Dark Prince.
These skills go far beyond most buffs and make some stat buffs almost useless, which is why you must plan your characters’ classes out with the knowledge that these skills will be an option at Level 35.
This system also explains why so many characters are clumped within two factions rather than one, which grants you flexibility in building your teams.
What do Langrisser Faction Buffs do?
Every one of these buffs is phrased the same way in its first part: “ATK & DEF increase significantly for all allies with [faction] within range.”
That’s not really descriptive, though. Faction Buffs apply to every one of your characters of that faction in that battle, meaning it has no real range. It just doesn’t work on other faction characters. Furthermore, it increases more than just ATK and DEF. It actually applies:
+20% ATK +20% INT +20% DEF +30% MDEF
Most Faction Buffs include another unique effect with them, which adds some distinct playstyle variance between leaders.
There’s one particular thing to note about these powerful buffs, though, and that is the fact they do not stack with other buffs using the phrasing “ATK/DEF/MDEF/INT … within range increases by X%.”
With this in mind, the game instead applies the largest percentage increase and ignores the lower one. However this does not mean skills that increase buffs based on other criteria do not apply; it simply means you have to pay attention.
You are also not able to stack Faction Buffs themselves, so you’ll want to plan your team(s) around using a particular hero with one of these skills. I recommend you use them as the leader for your teams since a Faction Buff takes up two of a hero’s skill slots.
Heroes with Faction Buffs
As a reminder, each of these skills also grants +20% ATK, +20% INT, +20% DEF, and +30% MDEF — the base stat increases are simply not listed because they are all the same between each Faction Buff.
Oddly enough, not all Faction Buff holders are SSRs even so early in the global release. This trend will probably continue as more heroes are released, but SSRs are obviously the gold standard.
Protagonists
Legion of Glory
Origins of Light
Princess Alliance
Empire’s Honor
Strategic Masters
Dark Reincarnation
The current pool of heroes with Faction Buffs is currently rather small, but some members of the Langrisser community have already data-mined some hints pointing at upcoming characters.
It shouldn’t be long before we see our first big update for Langrisser, but for now, you have to plan with what you’ve got and it seems single faction teams are the way to go.