Endurance build

The Endurance build focuses on mitigating damage to the point that healing can keep up, ideally allowing the team to fight indefinitely. Stacking ATK down to -50% (or more) is fundamental to this build. Endurance builds also typically have a means to mitigate overdrives, either by delaying them or with damage cut abilities. Endurance builds are best suited to multi-stage fights, or bosses with very high HP (such as high-level Demons in Union events). The prime disadvantage of Endurance builds is that they’re time-consuming to use when auto-battle is not feasible. Also, some encounters are tuned so that they become more punishing the longer the encounter drags on.

Endurance builds rely primarily on ATK down stacking to mitigate damage. By stacking -20% class A (e.g., Joan’s ability), -20% class B (e.g., D’art’s Sniper Shot), -20% class C (Sol), and -10% from an eidolon (Jormugand, Yatagarasu), a total of -70% ATK is readily obtainable. Caspiel (Wind R) also has a stacking ATK debuff that can further reduce ATK by 15-20% in solo encounters, potentially nullifying even the most powerful attacks. To further mitigate normal attack damage, Endurance builds will often include Blind or Combo attack down.

To mitigate Overdrive damage, overdrive extension can be combined with overdrive reduction (e.g., Cthulhu, Raphael) to delay overdrives. Alternatively, overdrives can be mitigated with damage cut abilities (e.g., Joan, Gaia). Gaia is particularly useful for Endurance builds since she can 100% mitigate single-target attacks on the team once every 6 turns, and mitigate any attack by -40% once every 6 turns, allowing her to single-handedly mitigate single-target overdrives that occur once every 3 turns or less. Gaia is also particularly useful against bosses who switch between single-target and AoE overdrives at the Rage transition (assuming the boss only has one opportunity to overdrive in each phase).
Endurance builds will often feature 2 healers to keep the party topped off and provide additional utility. Awakened Sol is particularly useful since she can buff all heals on the party by 50% for 3T (7T CD), cleanse status effects, and dispel enemy buffs, all while providing her characteristic -20% class C ATK debuff.

Endurance builds were dealt a crippling blow by the ATK debuff nerf in the DMM version in February 2017, which capped ATK down at -50%. For builds previously running with -70% ATK, this increased damage taken by 67%, instantly disabling Endurance builds that relied on ATK down stacking for viability. Post-nerf, Endurance builds will be be hard-pressed to clear top-difficulty content without an alternative means to mitigate overdrives.