GBF Relink: How Combo Booster (コンボボーナス) Works

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Recently I have noticed more questions regarding how Combo Booster (コンボボーナス) works in various places (along with Cascade (怒涛) which is another mystery to be solved), so I decided to take a closer look at it and found some interesting details.


Mechanics

  • The damage increase effect ramps up as a step function. Every 5 hits gives +10% damage increase.

  • Trait level does not change the rate at which it ramps up, only the possible ceiling. For example, Combo Booster level 11 will reach +54% at 31 hits.

  • The effect resets at exactly 2.5 seconds after the last hit.

  • As noted in my previous article, Combo Booster is confirmed to be additive to Life on the line (捨て身), Power Hungry (修羅), and Less Is More (裸一貫).

    • Pending confirmation against other Sigils. Refer to the previous article.

Skybound Art (奥義)

  • One rather obvious interaction is that cutscenes seem to pause the timer, so the effect is not immediately lost when someone uses SBA.

  • For unknown reasons, SBA of certain characters can instantly max out the damage increase effect, so Combo Booster is fully applied to most of their SBA damage.

    • Io: applies on all hits.

    • Percival: applies after the first 2 hits (the forward thrust).

    • Ghandagoza: +10% on the second hit, max effect afterwards. (Thanks JDdDee for the information.)

    • Confirmed not applicable (they work normally as expected): Gran/Djeeta, Katalina, Rackam, Eugen, Rosetta, Ferry, Vane, Siegfried, Cagliostro, Id.

      • Test data contributions for the remaining characters are very welcome.

Summons

The damage increase effect applies to summons, but Rosetta's roses cannot ramp or extend the effect. Ferry's pets work normally as expected.

Status Effects

Damage from Burn/Poison does not interact with Combo Booster at all.

(Addendum 2024-02-21)

Supplementary Damage (追撃)

I did not explicitly write about this at first because most people seemed to agree on a consensus that it works and I was still trying to get a Sigil drop, but I still see questions about this interaction from time to time.

  • Supplementary Damage (追撃) both from skills and Sigils work as expected with Combo Booster. Each extra hit adds to the combo count and individually applies the damage increase effect. For example, if an attack lands as the 20th hit with its Supplementary Damage as the 21st hit, the attack itself applies +30% damage from Combo Booster, while the Supplementary Damage hit instead applies +40% damage.

  • Currently there is an odd issue where Supplementary Damage hits do not seem to ramp Combo Booster on ranged attacks.

    • This has been confirmed on:

      • Io's normal attack

      • Eugen's ranged normal attack (melee punches work as expected)

      • Cagliostro's Disruption (ディスラプション)

White Dragon's Glory (白竜の誇り)

It was brought to my attention that Lancelot's unique Sigil is basically a mini Combo Booster so I tried looking into it as well.

  • It functions very similarly to Combo Booster but worse. Every 10 hits gives +10% damage increase.

  • The damage increase effect is multiplicative to Combo Booster.