- 34 Spirit covers all Guardian Spirits
- Kato
- Best overall: CCD, Skill Damage, lots of Ki
- Daiba
- CC spirit to knock humans out of LW
- Hit once after knockdown, wait a couple secs then do finishing blow to get them out of LW
- Kara-Jishi
- Twin Raiken: Electric
- Saorise: Farming
- Ninetails: Fire
Good Guardian Talismans: Suzaku, Paired Raiken, Enko, and Daiba-Washi. Latter 2 will flatten any human boss.
- Toughness
- Ki
Has a hidden damage bonus when Onmyo power gets to 201. Worth prioritizing if using this for damage.
- Devigorate
- Weakness
- Kekkai
- Also synergizes well with gear that gives you Purification bonuses
- Carnage
- Steel
- Always use after Carnage as it overwrites the Carnage debuff completely
- Divination
- Pleiades
- Extraction
- Guardian Spirit
- Lifesteal
- Sloth
- Earthfolding: Teleport to last shrine
- Incantation: +Onmyo capacity
Has a hidden damage bonus when Ninjutsu power gets to 401. Worth prioritizing if using this for damage.
- Quick-Change
- Suppa
- Catwalk
- Levitation
- Makibishi
- Slows movement, not attack
- Close Combat Damage
- Change to Attack x
- Familiarity Damage Bonus A
- Parry Against Guarding Enemy (weapon) - prevents parry & bounce from guard
- Nioh 2: Adept Lessons - 66 - Sword Guide I
- Nioh 2: Adept Lessons - 78 - Sword Guide II
- Nioh 2: Adept Lessons - 89 - Sword Guide III
- Flowing Shadows
- Iai Quickdraw
- Get just the next Extended Charge time skill, don't bother with Tiger Running or the four-slice variant
- Look for "Skill Damage (Iai)" weapons
- Haze
- Backwave
- Ki Burst
- Relentless: Max out for Toughness
- Sword of Execution
- Doubles backstabs
- Also applies to Finishing Blows(!) plus Water Shadow and Haze follow up attacks
- Great against Yokai who are slow to turn around
Use strong attack and Reaper when in Living Weapon.
My stat-spread is currently:
30 Body
30 Heart
15 Stamina
15 Strength
30 Skill
15 Dexterity
60 Magic
60 Spirit
You don't need that degree of stat-investment to get my results, just those proportions or similar (and you might want to rejig those physical stats a bit if you prefer kusarigamas over the weapons I use).
My equipment is pretty basic - an earth katana and a wind spear for offense (I sometimes replace the spear with fire twin swords, which I recently obtained enough samurai points to use properly) and the Onmyo Mage's Joi set for defence. I haven't tweaked my equipment bonuses much, but I do keep half an eye out for boosts to magic and Amrita gain.
In terms of skills, my loadout for a mission is presently as follows:
- Elixirs
- 2 Carnage talismans (I used Power Pills before I had the onmyo points to buy these)
- 4 Extraction talismans
- 4 Pleiades talismans
- 9 elemental shots of some variety (my default is Water, but I mix it up according to the boss and the mission).
- 9 elemental shots of a different variety (my default is Lightning, but see above)
- 4 Sloth talismans
- 4 Weakness talismans.
My Mystic Arts are Awakening for my magic (for those sweet-ass instant casts), Sword of Execution for my sword (because it's easy to get behind a Slothed enemy), Stability for my spear (for general utility), and Momentum for my twin swords (so I can keep slicing the enemy with Water Sword all day).
My original Guardian Spirit for this build was Hi-Nezumi, but I've since switched to Tengen Kujaku.
My default boss tactic is as follows:
- Pop Carnage, Extraction, and Pleiades talismans before the fight.
- Hit them with Sloth, Weakness, and enough elemental shots to trip Confusion.
- Charge in and start carving them up with an elementally-appropriate weapon until they get that elemental debuff as well.
- If you're not going for a Crusher title, or if you think you have a big enough window of opportunity, activate your Living Weapon and stunlock them into oblivion. The sword is especially good against single enemies, because it has such a small gap between its combo-strings that they functionally become one infinite combo. Tengen Kujaku offers some especially mean extra utility here, because you can switch to another element with circle-plus-triangle once you've built up one, letting you maintain Confusion as long as you want (though the switchover is slow and breaks the stunlock, so again, this is only if you aren't going for Crusher).
- Giggle madly.
- Build for Sword over Kusarigama which doesn't need as much Dex - Heart, Strength, Skill. Max those and maybe Spirit to 100. Get gear dependencies to required minimums. Then split remaining between Dex and Magic.