Ignis Scientia Hero Guide

After months of Ignis Scientia appearing in graphics, he finally has decided to join us in Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire.

It’s been a few months since Luna was added as a hero, and players have been salivating for a new hero. Whether you love him or hate him, Ignis is a welcome addition to the current roster of heroes.

This guide will walk you through how to unlock Ignis, the best way to allocate his skills, depending on your play type, and some practical uses for Ignis on the battlefield. Let the fun commence!

How to Unlock Ignis

As with Luna and Prompto, to unlock Ignis and have him as a playable hero you simply need to purchase the pack containing the Ignis Unlock item. If you don’t see this pack in the Gold Store, go to the Hero Monument and click on “Unlock” under Ignis. Keep in mind, before you can switch to Ignis, your current hero must be in your empire and active (not captured).

After we look into Ignis’ skill tree in more detail, we will discuss whether unlocking Ignis is the right move for you.

Ignis’ Skill Tree

Here is Ignis’ full skill tree.

Let’s break down Ignis’ skills one by one, starting at the top, with his Double Loyalty skill.

Let’s face it: no one can ever have enough loyalty, but you can read our Loyalty Guide to find out how to maximize your loyalty and make sure you aren’t missing any of the secret methods of building loyalty. Ignis’ “Double Loyalty” skill is a little misleading, because it only doubles your base loyalty by adding +10,000 to your daily loyalty guild help bar. That means that if you have the lifetime double loyalty boost active, or if you completed the Economic Research that boosts your loyalty, those are not counted in Ignis’ Double Loyalty skill.

While being able to get an extra +10,000 loyalty a day is very helpful, it is definitely not doubling your loyalty bar. However, that being said, Ignis’s Double Loyalty skill does provide double loyalty on monster hits and guild quests.

After that, Ignis’ skill tree is heavy on economics-related skills that are centered around saving you speedups, resources, and money. Research Cost Efficiency, Farm Production, Research Speed, Food Capacity and Upkeep Efficiency are the following skills, which are significantly more useful at the beginning of the game than endgame.

Straight down the middle of Ignis’ skill tree, you have Trap HP, Trap Attack, Trap Repair Speed and Trap Repair Capacity.

Ignis’ Analyze Weakness skill is unique in that it doesn’t appear anywhere else in the game. According to its description, Analyze Weakness converts a portion of your basic research speed into an additional attack bonus during combat. This skill has a maximum of +1,000% Basic Research Speed converted into Troop Attack, which could make Ignis a force to be reckoned with at higher levels, when the Chief Inquisitor’s Gear Set is equipped.

Just as Luna only has combat skills pertaining to Mage troop types, Ignis’ Airship HP, Airship Armor, and Airship Attack only affect the Airship type mercenaries. As of the date this guide was originally published, there are only two types of Mercenary Airships: Corsair Airships and Steelwing Airships. Airships are known for their devastating advantage against Guardian Mercenaries, making Ignis the perfect choice to lead your initial siege on an opponent whose empire is loaded with Guardians.

Ignis’ final skill is Master Tactician, which is only accessible after leveling him up to 50 and beyond. This skill increases the attack of all troop types, with a maximum of +1,000% Troop Attack for Warrior, Mage and Calvary and +3,000% Attack for Siege type troops. This is a significantly larger attack bonus than Noctis, Prompto, or Luna!

 

Ignis and Trap Players

While it might seem that Ignis’s added Trap HP, Trap Attack, Trap Repair Speed and Capacity skills may be beneficial for trap players, testing and analysis carried out by xAlyKat have revealed this to not be the case.

Historically, wall traps have never been as effective in empire defense as troops, which is why the vast majority of experienced trap players elect to not make any wall traps. Regardless of what tier they seem to be, or how many traps you have, against troops that are T4 or higher, wall traps always die too quickly, thereby increasing the likelihood of burning.

As most trap players usually aspire to kill entire enemy marches without burning, the increased  risk of casualties is simply not worth it. Not only are traps expensive to make, taking quite a lot of resources and gold to create, but they also add quite a lot of power that doesn’t necessarily result in a more effective defense.

xAlyKat carried out tests on her trap account, vs her T5 account. To ensure that the tests as accurate as possible, she healed troops between each hit, and sent the same hero and makeup of T5 troops each time.

These are the results:

Defending Hero	Casualties	Troop Setup	Attacking Hero	Casualties
Luna Lvl 35	2,529	Frost Guardians, 300,000 T3 Troops	Prompto Lvl 77 with Tonberry	23,395
Ignis Lvl 25	2,704	Frost Guardians, 300,000 T3 Troops	Prompto Lvl 77 with Tonberry	21,645
Ignis Lvl 25	2,490	Frost Guardians, 300,000 T3 Troops, 140,000 T3 Pits	Prompto Lvl 77 with Tonberry	23,740
Ignis Lvl 25	58,297	300,000 T3 Troops, 140,000 Traps	Prompto Lvl 77 with Tonberry	23,670
Luna Lvl 35	2,757	440,000 T3 Troops	Prompto Lvl 77 with Tonberry	26,090

 

What we discovered via testing is that Ignis is an underwhelming hero for trap players with troop setups.

Overwhelmingly, Ignis does not perform nearly as well as Luna in many circumstances. He has higher casualties on defense, and does not really kill that many troops, even with the additional 140,000 traps built.

Without a wall of Frost Guardians to protect the traps, Ignis performs terribly, with over 58,000 casualties. In comparison, Luna only experienced 2,757 casualties without Frost Guardians, when we added an additional 140,000 troops.

Considering that both heroes were decked out in the same purple Undertaker Gear with a blue Mercenary weapon, this is a real problem. There’s also the additional fact that Frost Guardians are not always accessible, and not everyone can necessarily afford them.

At level 25, with traps built out, Ignis adds 500,000 in Hero Power, and 1.5 million in Trap Power, for a hefty 2 million power bump. This is quite significant in comparison with Luna, who only reaches 2 million power well after level 30.

Because trap players like to run with lower power, to make themselves look “weak,” thereby setting up attackers to lose their heroes or most of their troops when they attempt to attack, the additional power Ignis adds is undesirable for trap players. His poor performance in comparison with Luna, also makes him not as great of a hero to use for defense.

While we can theorize that Ignis probably scales better as his hero level increases, keep in mind that hero level increases mean more Hero Power. It also means more traps and more Trap Power.

If you are a trap player who relies on a troop build, you are better off sticking to Luna and building troops, instead of traps.

However, if you are amongst the new breed of trap players who have a siege build, Ignis might actually be a good hero for you, due to the siege attack he can add to your empire.

Should I Unlock Ignis?

With so much good content coming out every week, it’s hard to pick and choose which packs will be the most helpful for your empire. Now that we have 4 heroes in the mix, the appeal of unlocking a new hero as soon as they come out just to attack more monsters is gone. Now is the time to think strategically about which hero best suits your play style.

All of Ignis’ Economics skills are useful if you’re below Citadel 30. At higher levels, all of your troops tend to devour any food resources you have laying around, making many skills like Upkeep Efficiency completely useless.

Trap players might think that Ignis’ bonuses to Trap Attack and other trap related skills could prove useful, but Luna’s Empire Defense Attack is still better suited for most trap players.

Offensive players have been ogling Ignis’ Master Tactician skill the moment he came out, and for good reason. While many of Ignis’ skills won’t even be used by most players, this skill gives a massive attack boost to all troop types, however, it would only be useful after leveling up Ignis well past 50.

Keep in mind that Ignis’ skills work best when he is level 50+, so be sure to level Ignis up as much as possible!

As with Luna and Prompto, Ignis’ strengths as a hero will reveal themselves over time.

 

For more information about Ignis, such as AP gained per level and EXP points needed to level, make sure to bookmark this article and check back soon, as this will be added soon!