Final Fantasy XV Guide: Combat Ascension Grid

The Ascension Grid, or Nexus, is how you unlock new skills, passive abilities, and other bonuses to help you on your journey in Final Fantasy XV. There are 9 total grids, which all give bonuses to something specific. Some of them benefit each other, while others stand alone.

The Combat Ascension Grid gives bonuses to Noctis’ combat skills, including abilities or passives to help him during a fight. These give you a variety of ways to take out and avoid your enemies. I’m going to explain the choices you have, and give tips on which to get first.

This guide will go over everything about the Combat Ascension Grid including:

• Combat Skills – Each Combat skill and what they do.
• Combat Suggestions – Which skills you should focus on first. 

Combat Skills

I’m going to break the grid up into different categories. Each skill will be a bullet point and skills that come later in a tree will be indented.

Blink Skills

• Blink (16 AP) – Pass through an enemy’s attack without using MP by pressing the phase button at the last second.
• Blink Boost (32 AP) – Recover a bit of MP by blinking through attacks at the last second.
• Impervious (333 AP) – Negate damage by pressing the Phase button immediately after being hit.
• Warp Decoy (48 AP) – Leave behind a hologram to divert enemies after warping.
• Static Edge (64 AP) – Significantly increase damage dealt after entering Stasis.

Aerial Skills

• Airstep (6 AP) – Move in a direction and press the attack button to take a step in midair after attacking, one time only.
• Airslip (16 AP) – Dodge attacks in midair by holding the phase button.
• Airstride (52 AP) – Perform a 2nd airstep after a 2nd midair attack.
• Airdance (333 AP) – Airstep after midair attacks an unlimited number of times.
• Death Drop (28 AP) – From afar, press the attack button in mid air tow warp into range and strike down from above.
• Osmostrike (52 AP) – Recover MP when an aerial attack lands.

Warp-Strike and Blindside

• Chained Fury (10 AP) – Boost damage dealt when unscathed during chain attacks.
• Stalker (28 AP) – Boost blindside damage.
• Super Stalker (64 AP) – Further boost blindside damage.
• Warp Factor (24 AP) – Boost warp-strike damage.
• Daemon Destroyer (24 AP) – Warp-strike to break daemon appendages.
• Warp Factor II (52 AP) – Further boost warp-strike damage.
• Point-Blank Warp-Strike (333 AP) – Deliver a critical hit when warp-striking at close range.

Misc.

• Light Phase (8 AP) – Reduce MP cost of phasing.
• Ultralight Phase (32 AP) – Further reduce MP cost of phasing. 
• Experimagic (99 AP) – Increase Noctis’ MP by the number of levels gained.

Combat Suggestions

All of the skills are great in this grid, though I would get the Warp-strike/Blindside ones first.

Boosting the amount of warp-strike damage is a great idea because you should be doing that often.

I would get the Daemon Destroyer ability for sure to help break Daemon appendages. This helps you take them down faster, as well as get rare items.

If you don’t mind saving up, I would get Point-Blank Warp-Strike because getting critical hits, with already boosted damage, makes fights a lot easier.

Going down the Misc route early is also a good idea to get Experimagic. This gets you a lot more mp and you are using less MP for phasing. This means you can do a lot more before you go into stasis or have to go to a Warp-Point.

This does make Static Edge less useful because you won’t be in Stasis as often, so keep that in mind if you want to use that skill.

For a more defensive approach, the Blink abilities are perfect. You just need to have good timing so you can either avoid at the last second, or completely negate damage with Impervious.

That’s it for my guide on the Combat Ascension grid in Final Fantasy XV. Let me know if you have any questions!