A quick recap of my experiences with Rainmaker's abilities:

Execute: I use it lots. It's a big pile of damage to one enemy and he resets his Fury to max every turn. With my talisman mix, he's doing about 1500 per hit, five hits in the flurry, so around 7500 damage. (My talismans are all 4-star, level 40 at the moment, and I'm gradually upgrading them to 5-star.)

Strike: You could use this or you could use Execute. The only reason why you would use Strike is if the enemy has very low health and you want to save yourself 5 seconds of animation time finishing them off. I frequently use Strike for that reason.

Guard: I used it for a while before I leveled him up enough that his Fury resets to full every turn. With a Magus Allied Soldier in my party, I have absolutely no reason to use this ability anymore.

Life Steal: I have never used it. It might be a good buff against a major boss. I should try it out and report back.

Rain: Terrible. You're just pouring 5 Power down a hole for an attack that doesn't do much damage. I haven't seen the Marks do enough damage to be worth putting effort into placing them, and it's only a 50% chance anyway. Of course this is where all my Skill Shards went.

Mark: It does little damage and the Mark isn't as exciting as I'd hoped it would be. However, if you have multiple enemies out there and one is at its last sliver of health, it's worth it to use Mark over Execute as the finishing blow because you get that 30% chance of another turn (with your Fury fully loaded). It's also my preferred opening attack on the first turn of the first fight because you have to load up your Fury anyway - might as well get that 30% chance of another turn. After that, it's usually Execute the rest of the way. Only 1 Power, too.

Cleanse: Good "in case of emergency" ability as it gives a lot of HP back to an ally. Also gets rid of negative effects. You won't use it much, but it comes through when you need it.


I can see where the developers were going with Rainmaker. There's a design idea in there for a counter-strike Assassin, where you use Guard to absorb attacks and then unleash the Fury with an Execute. There's also a design idea in there for marking your target and then cashing in those Marks for a big death blow on a boss. However, his ludicrous Special makes the Guard ability irrelevant, as you're using Execute nearly every turn regardless. The abilities that add Marks aren't particularly good or worth using over just attacking normally.

Something I'd like to try is finding allies or talismans that have the ability to place Marks on enemies (the purple dog can do it, as does the purple axe talisman, I think). Maybe there's a more useful way to stack up Marks as a team rather than trying to do it solo with Rainmaker.

In my main party where I'm trying to complete missions and unlock new territory, my leader is a Soldier Eddie. Rainmaker is in reserve if I need to do a lot of damage to a single target, if Soldier Eddie is getting beat up and I need someone to tag in, or if I need to reload my Fury ASAP. For grinding XP, gold, and evolve bits, I'm using Rainmaker, one ally, plus a Trooper's ally to maximize the XP gain on Rainmaker and to learn more about how to use him.