Final Fantasy 16: The Rising Tide – Best Leviathan Eikonic Abilities

Highlights

Unlock Leviathan’s abilities like Deluge and Abyssal Tear to enhance Clive’s fighting skills and dominate enemies with water attacks.
Serpent’s Cry transforms Clive into a water shotgun-wielding fighter, giving players more options for ranged combat strategies.
Master Tsunami, Leviathan’s ultimate ability, to unleash high damage and control the battlefield while filling up the limit break gauge.

Final Fantasy 16: The Rising Tide focuses on Clive learning the secrets about Leviathan The Lost. Early into the DLC, players will be given the new Eikon, adding multiple new skills and the new Eikon to be equipped and used in battle.

The Player Talking To The Blacksmith & Unlocking The Stores

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Leviathan focuses on ranged attacks, excelling when attacking groups of smaller enemies. While already having access to so many Eikons at this point in the story, along with all their Eikon abilities, it’s important to know just how powerful Leviathan’s abilities are and if they’re worth using.

5 Deluge

A Rapid Fire Single-Target Machine Gun

Deluge is one of the first Eikon abilities players will start off with after unlocking Leviathan. This machine-gun-like skill deals fairly average damage but is boosted by its overall stagger ability. While fun to use, this ability is ultimately held back in that other Leviathan abilities have similar effects, only better. This ability can be versatile in how it’s aimed, easily hitting flying units or going from enemy to enemy to distribute damage.

Deluge cannot cut through enemies and will only affect one enemy unless the burst of water is moved to a different target. This ability’s overall cooldown does help make it more useful, but it doesn’t fix the overall shortcomings when compared to other skills. The final shot in this ability also does a lot more damage than other shots, making it important to distribute that last shot properly and always hit a target.

4 Abyssal Tear

Charge Up Your Next Ability While Fighting

Abyssal Tear is a two-step ability, with it first charging up before being unleashed. Once initially cast, a ball of water will appear over Clive and begin to charge up at a steady pace, no matter his actions or movement. The initial cast is quick, letting players begin this ability while continuing to fight as usual while it further charges up.

Once cast again, this ability will target nearby enemies and release a barrage of water, stunning smaller enemies while they are being hit. This ability can be cast outside of combat, but after about half of the first vent filling, the ability will dissipate. This ability is overall good and deals decent damage when charged to Vent 4, with its only downside being that Clive is locked in an attack animation when unleashing the ability.

3 Serpent’s Cry

Switch From A Sword To A Water Shotgun

The Player Using Serpent's Cry In Combat

Serpent’s Cry is Leviathan’s Eikonic Feat and will require the Eikon to be equipped as one of Clive’s three to be used. Once activated, Clive’s left arm becomes a serpent, with his basic attack now being a shotgun-like blast of water. This ability can be used and canceled for as long or short as players would like, making Clive a fully ranged fighter when needed. Damage from this attack is determined by how many bursts of water hit the enemy, with distance not effecting damage and larger enemies taking more damage from each shot.

The Adder Stone In The Inventory & The Player Collecting Aquamarine

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With the quick reload and brief infinite ammo, this ability is great when fighting groups of small enemies. Most small enemies, when hit by a burst of water, will be knocked into the air and can be juggled by consecutively landing additional shots. Quickly reloading and continuing can have entire fights completed by stun-locking enemies with only this ability.

2 Tsunami

A High Damage Rush Of Water Straight Ahead

The Player Using Tsunami Against A Single Enemy

Tsunami is Leviathan’s ultimate ability and, by far, one of the coolest-looking Eikonic abilities in the game. Compared to other ultimate skills, this one arguably has the longest reach, and lining up the ability from the right spot can hit even widely spread-out groups of enemies. While this ability already does huge amounts of damage, it also greatly fills up your limit break gauge.

While many of Levitathan’s abilities focus on staggering your opponents, Tsunami has a bigger focus on dealing incredible amounts of damage. This ability also consolidates and knocks back enemies, controlling the battlefield should any of them survive the initial onslaught. While this skill will cost a lot of ability points to master, it is well worth the cost for the fights throughout the DLC.

1 Cross Swell

Control The Battlefield By Grouping Your Enemies Together

The Player Using Cross Swell Against A Group Of Enemies

Cross Swell may not seem like an outlier in terms of stats in the Abilities menu, but its use on the battlefield is arguably one of the best in the game. Its primary purpose isn’t to damage or stagger enemies but to bring together spread-out groups to make follow-up Eikon abilities even more effective. Even with that, the final burst of damage from this ability at the center of the Swell deals quite a good bit of damage.

Using this ability will usually affect all enemies in front of Clive, pulling them into one consolidated line. This ability pairs perfectly with Tsunami as the potential line of enemies is exactly what Tusnami will hit. While Tsunami pairs well with Cross Swell, just about any area of effect Eikonic ability is a devastating follow-up, and starting random encounters with this ability can quickly set the stage for an easy win. To top it all off, this ability also has a fairly short cooldown, letting it be used multiple times even in quicker fights.