As a newbie, you might’ve not lucked out in getting Wind characters from your free rolls. If so, grab these 3 from their respective sidestories for your starting teams! Yes, Arcarum Monika and Christina from Casino exist, but they’re kinda bad characters so let’s just use these 3.
| Character | Description |
 μ’s First Years(That’s pronounced Mu’s you uncultured swine) | Great buff provider and sustain/healer for early game.Hype is one of the strongest buffs in the game for your characters. Their S1 providing hype (given they dodge) allows your team to do better DMG on a newbie grid.Their S2 is their main source of sustain for your team, providing healing and clarity.S3 and S4 work in tandem with each other, with S4 CB gain up buff making S3 gives ~37% bar. The extra heal from refresh is also very nice.Their ougi also gives you more heal, which again adds to sustainability. Wind ATK up means a different stacking/modifier buff which is really good if you understand how buff stacking works (read wiki) |
 Suzaku Kururugi | Is going to be your tank/damage dealer in this team.S1 doing a good DMG and also resetting on Ougi provides you with a solid amount of dmg.S2 can be used to tank certain hits/triggers that otherwise will kill you.S3 is mainly used to activate he Passive 2 faster.The hit to CB gain Suzaku has is countered by Mu’s S4 giving CB gain up so it doesn’t actually hinder you. |
 Kokkoro | Has a bit of everything, damage, debuff, buffs, healing.S1 with Supplemental DMG is quite underwhelming in this team without many multihits but the 25% CB is welcomed, paired with Mu’s S4 for more.S2 and S3 are just free DMG, with S3 providing 20% DEF Down debuff, that is stackable with MC’s Miserable Mist.Ougi giving a special stacking buff with 30% ATK and another 25% Wind ATK that also gets boosted by her passive. Oh and a nice heal. |
 Lyria | Whilst being an SR, the buffs she provides are quite strong and her ougi does more than some SSRs.With Mu’s boost to CB gain, you can easily make her ougi twice in a row, replacing Suzaku in the team, for shorter fights.Very good character in other content such as Bluechesting and GW OTK.Get her anyways because you can get a free Bahamut Weapon from the sidestory line that’s going to be useful for your grids later. |
The characters in this team synergizes very well with each other, from Mu’s S4 removing the demerit on Suzaku’s passive to both supporting Suzaku with skills that increase his chargebar. A nicely balanced team to get you through the early stages of the game!
Now with that out of the way, let’s get into the crux of progression, the Grids.
Magna 1
Now, when you’re starting out with any elements, you gotta start with M1. Let’s see the weapons that you might have or want to get!
Color Code:
CORE
NICHE
USELESS
| Weapon | Description | Mod Type |
 Tiamat Bolt Omega | Your BiS for all of the slots. Double ATK modifiers are strong.Don’t let the Enmity modifier fool you, this weapon is still very strong thanks to SL20 Might and Wind not being able to upkeep HP at M1.You should’ve gotten a few of these from the Main Story for free so use them. | MAGNA |
 Tiamat Fist Omega | SL20 Big Might. A sidegrade for the Gun, better if you’re not dropping HP.Will come in very handy for Burst (see Burst section) as a mainhand due to lack of options for Magna. | MAGNA |
 V.A.R.I.S | One of Wind’s best early-game Mainhand and EX Modifier.Provides skill-cap for all the skill-based characters in wind which makes up for pretty much 99% of the characters.The recent ULB of this gun makes the Ougi, 15% echo and DATA, teamwide, making it even better at supporting weaker teams.Has a good amount of use in OTK and FA as mainhand for Relic Buster, also seen in No-Ougi Galleon FAs. | EX |
 Ring of Raphael (SR) | The reason this is SR for now is because you’re Rank-Gated to get it to SSR and it’s not worth as much for M1 to rush SSR.Every element and every On-Ele grids needs this thing. It’s a seraphic weapon…what else do I need to say about it. | SERAPHIC |
 Bahamut Coda | This isn’t even a Wind weapon, it’s just an extremely strong normal mod that can be slotted in any elements.You can get a free one if you clear What Makes the Sky Blue sidestory line.Any of the Bahamut works really, the dagger is depicted here because most of Wind’s characters are usually Humans or Erunes.Your biggest and probably only Normal Mod in the grid. | NORMAL |
 Xeno/True Conviction Flashspear | A huge source of EX and extra boosts if you can get good AXs on it, ie Stamina, CA Dmg etc.If you’re lucky enough to run across Xeno Sagittarius Showdown, try to farm one copy of this spear.Also a good MH thanks to the 2x Dispels on ULB, very potent for certain raids like Siegfried that spams a lot of buffs. | EX |
 Silver Bow | Another EX optionYou can get this in the Shadowverse: Duelist of Eternity sidestory.The 2nd, MH-only skill isn’t worth it. | EX |
 Qinglong Spear | It doesn’t have to be Malus, even Cipher-less is fine for now.No, you’re not running it for cap-up, it’s for the extra Normal Mod it provides for how cheap it is, a good slot in if you don’t have anything else.Fairly easy to uncap with the materials dropping commonly. | NORMAL |
 Peridot Crossbow | A slot-in for your 6th Magna mod, better than another Gun or Fist thanks to the extra Progression skill.Slightly harder to uncap, due to needing Huanglong Omega animas which you can either farm from the HL version of the raid, or trade up the materials by farming the single version.Potent in contents that last a long time, even after M1. | MAGNA |
 Ancient Nalakuvara | A slot-in for your 6th Magna mod, the Preemptive skill is very big.The opposite of the Peridot Crossbow, this weapon is potent in any fights that lasts below 10 turns (pretty much all of them at M1).You can buy 2/month in the Prestige Pendant shop.The showdown is relatively easy to farm .Comes in handy in burst grids later on. | MAGNA |
Now that we have the weapons out of the way, let’s start crafting a grid!
“What does a Magna grid need? What are good weapons to slot? How do I know if I have a good distribution of modifiers? Wha-”
Ok stop there. We’ll answer all of those questions one by one.
The usual Magna grid would contain;
- 5-6 Magna mods
- 1-2 Normal mods
- 2-3 EX mods
- 1 Seraphic mod
(made it big so people can actually understand how grid making works and don’t just blindly copy every grid posted here)
With that in mind, let’s use the table above to make a grid and…
Now, of course, in GBF, there’s no One-Size-Fits-All grid. That’s why you should learn about each weapon and how different modifiers work with each other.
As mentioned in the table, Fists can be better than Guns if you’re never dropping HP, but it’s still good to have at least 2 Guns, due to Enmity still giving a slight minimal boost at 95% HP. A different modifier would be better than another one of the same modifier.
The slot with Ancient Nalakuvara is a free-open slot, you can always mess around with the different options listed above to see which ones works best for you.
Your MH would obviously change depending on the class, but it’s recommended to just stick to Relic Buster with VARIS as MH.
It’s important to mention that at this stage, Skill Level of your weapons are WAY more important than the actual Weapon Level themselves, so do keep that in mind and save your resources.
By this point on, you should have at least an MLB Tiamat Omega. Use that as your main summon for now. If by any chance you happen to come across any summons that say “X% Boost to Wind Elemental ATK” (i.e. Grimnir, Anat), you can use them instead, or you can also use Beelzebub summon as main summon if you have him. In the case you pick elemental summons as your main you should pick Tiamat Omega as your support summon.
Why does this matter? This goes back to the mod distribution thing I talked about. Notice how we’re calling it Magna, and Magna is the most abundant mod type in our grid? That’s because that’s the farmable “mod” type. And they’re boosted by one, and only one, summons for each element, the… “Magna” summons. What did you expect them to be called?
Let’s look at Tiamat for a second:
“Boost to Stormwyrm’s weapon skills”. What does that mean? It means that if you use the Damage formula, you add 140% boost to the formula. What is this formula? Well, you don’t ever need to use it but here it is for show;
Anyways, just know that at this point in game, it’s best to go with the Magna x Elemental summon set. Meaning you main either a Magna or Ele summon, and pick the other that was not mained as your support.
Worth mentioning that you should also start looking into working on your Arcarum Summons, specifically the ones that “Amplifies” your DMG. Specifically, Judgement. As we’ve covered before, Seraphic is one of the most important modifier in any team. Seraphic modifier from Arcarum Summons do indeed stack with Seraphic Weapons, making them free DMG.
Rushing them to SSR and FLB is very much recommended as soon as you can. ULB however can be left for later as that doesn’t improve the Sub-Aura, and is only for the purposes of unlocking the respective Evoker.
Magna 2
Let’s move on to Tutorial II, M2, where you’ll be doing way more farming and have more specialized grids for different contents and team comps.
| Weapon | Description | Mod Type |
 Last Storm Harp | At least 2 of these will never ever leave your grids. A strong Stamina mod and Crit mod. You want 3-4 of these farmed to FLB for various purposes. | MAGNA |
 Coruscant Crozier | Also known as SpoonYour best bet for a HP weapon, pairs up really well with the Harp for 100% Crit without gimping your DMG if you lose HP.There used to be a need to farm multiple copies but you’ll only ever use 1 now thanks to other existing options. | MAGNA |
 Spear of Renunciation | Despite being color coded as CORE, you should prioritize getting this only after the rest of your grids are done.Requires a lot of Quartz to build hence it’s better to wait and spend your quartz on other weapons. The free cap-up at FLB is nice, skill cap will always be the go-to for Wind, but not necessary to rush.ULB’s skill should first and foremost always be Stamina for most of your purposes, it only changes once we get into Bursting. | MAGNA |
 Ring of Wandergale | Just SSR is fine, the FLB adds 3% more seraphic modifier so it’s nice to rush.Again, it’s just seraphic. Nothing to say about it. | SERAPHIC |
 Ultima Blade | Extremely high-level to get, but very worth it. Ultima ULB having a 3rd skill makes it a very slot-efficient gridpiece.ULB giving it a 3rd skills allows for it to be made an upgrade to your Seraphic weapon, 2% more mod while freeing up a grid slot is huge.Can be pretty much any Ultima but Katana is most used (in Wind at least) because of Naru (see more in Bursting).No, it doesn’t have to be made Wind. Element doesn’t matter for Ultima Weapons because you’ll never MH them.S1 is usually Stamina, S2 being whatever else you need and S3 is usually alternated between Seraphic and Cap Up.Commit yourself and make them wind anyways (joke) | SERAPHIC/NORMAL/ EX |
 Innocent Love | The biggest and fattest source of EX mod.With Astral, you won’t need any other weapons with EX mod, though, you can slot more of course.Slowly being phased out thanks to various other weapons also providing EX | EX |
 Ewiyar’s Beak | The lord and savior of Wind skill-dmg comps.Provides 100k Skill DMG Supplemental, unconditionally. Stacks up to 200k so get 2 of these.Supplemental is amazing because it pierces through the DMG cap and DMG Cut. Say, your DMG Cap for a skill is 300k, this will make you do 500k because it’s a flat 200k increase with 2 copies.Needs rank 151 to be farmed, and requires FLB so better start daily hosting ASAP.Older arcarum and Event VH Decimate strats require 3 Beaks, but nowadays you can just call Beelzebub.Still a big normal mod to slot if you need one. | NORMAL/SUPP |
 Mandjet | ~30k supplemental to all hits, Stamina based. Very useful in many situations such as Supplemental for Auto/Skill based teams.Also used a lot in Bursting, FA, OTK.Wind’s first farmable Delay on ougi weapon, making it extremely useful for Belial solos.Awakening will almost always be ATK, as DEF and Spec have almost no uses.The extra progression, despite being Primal-boosted, is still nice to have and can replace the need for Peridot CrossbowYou should farm 1-2 of these, 3 to be sure. | NORMAL/SUPP |
 Abu Simbel | Opposite of Mandjet, this is an Enmity based Supplemental weapon, but that’s not the point of getting it.Provides Preemptive skill, stacking with Ancient Nalakuvara.An upgrade MH over the TiaFist for bursting.Awakening is the same as Mandjet, always ATK.Farming 1 is enough. | NORMAL/SUPP |
 Spring’s Whisperings | A good HP option if you’re in need of more.Does absolutely nothing else outside of that.Slowly being phased out at later stages as better options arrive. | MAGNA |
 Daur da Blao | Would you look at that, another weapon that helps with skill-dmg.The skillcap this thing provides is huge.Pair it with Special awakening for even more cap up | EX |
 Windhose | This used to be a very strong OTK weapon, but Wind OTK has become so simple that it’s phased out.Provides extra chainburst cap. | EX |
M2 is not as simple as M1. You don’t run the same thing everywhere. Now, you actually have to think about your team composition as that will determine how your grid will look.
But first, let’s talk about the “base” of all your grids starting from this point on. Have you noticed how the 2 core weapons I mentioned have Critical Rate skills? Yes, that’s precisely because Wind relies on Crit DMG to start dealing a lot more. Thankfully, it’s fairly easy to hit 100% Crit Rate on your grid without giving up too many weapon slots.
Before I paste the “base” of a grid, let’s quickly glance over at our summon situation. At this point you should have an FLB Tiamat, waiting to hit R151 to ULB it. You should start using that instead of your elemental summon as Main summon, and pick another ULB Tiamat instead of the usual Grimnir you’ve been taking. You’ll see why in a second.
This is the absolute “base” for all of your grids now. Well, kinda. This is the base for your grid if you have ULB Tiamat. But if you’re still here, that means your Tiamat is most likely FLB’d. Why is this a problem though? Well…
(ignore all the other stats there)
Do you see anything off here? Yes, remember how i said we are going for 100% Crit with 2 harps 1 spoon, then why is this only 95.4%? That was under the assumption you have ULB Tiamat. Don’t worry though, it’s easy to fix – just slot another Harp over the Spoon for now. You’ll lose a slight bit of HP but that’s recoverable through other means.
Here’s how it looks like with the change:
Now we have 100% crit, life is good. Let’s go on filling in the rest of the grid!
Let’s quickly name some of these “comps”;
- Auto-attack comps / auto comps
- Skill-dmg comps / skill comps
- Something in between
Ok that was easier than expected.
With all the current knowledge we have on all these new weapons to farm, let’s make a grid that would help with Auto Attack comps and explain it by part! We should still go on with the same Grid “Formula” as M1 for now.
With auto-attack teams, that means you’re trying to shove down as much Echo and buffs as possible to get a lot of hit instances to deal damage. Maybe Ra Axes are a good idea? But what if you also run V.Grimnir, would you want Beaks instead since he spams skill DMG every turn?
Ok, assuming you’re still R120, that simplifies the options a bit more since you don’t have access to Beaks yet. Taking into account all we just said, we ideally want a grid that can boost all those hit instances, so;
Okay okay I know what you’re about to say, why the fuck is there a N weapon there? Oh that’s just a placeholder so I don’t crowd the stats.
(ignore the purple stats, those are AX stats, something you’ll come to understand)
As we can see, the main parts of the grid is the 100% crit and 30k DMG Supp. This means all of your hits are now Critical Hits, which would deal way more DMG. All of your hit instances, by that it means all your attacks, echoes, skill dmg, everything, gets a 30k flat addition to their DMG.
Of course, there are substitutions that you can make. I.E. that Tiamat Fist can be a Spring’s Whisperings, for some HP, or it can be another Mandjet for more supplemental. You should tune your grids to your liking.
Now, once you do reach R150, you might want to go and get Innocent Love (or Astral Harp). As mentioned in the table, it’s your biggest and only source of EX for the next while.
For MH, it all depends on which class you use. Generally speaking, RB provides the most utility for most contents. You can keep running VARIS as your MH as it’s perfectly fine. Or you can also move to Evanescence (GNaru’s weapon). It functions the same as VARIS but better given that it’s a sword (refer to RB’s wiki page for its passives). You DO NOT HAVE TO BAR THE WEAPON PLEASE GOD DON’T WASTE BARS (yet)
Now let’s make a grid for Skill DMG comps.
Let’s look back at our table, that’s a fuck ton of Skill weapons. Do I slot Beaks? Ra Axes? PG Harps???
Simple, let’s slot all:
Yes I kid you not, just slot all. Now you have 260k supplemental on all your skill hits + a good amount of cap up for them.
Ok, fine. You want a proper grid that doesn’t require hours of farming 2 shit raids.
What else to say, you have supplemental, you have cap up. Oh and that Ultima is just your Seraphic as I pointed out in the table.
There. Done. Good Job. You’re “done” with Wind Progression! Well that’s a lie of course, there are further optimizations to make, and more specialized grids for all the many contents wind has to offer, but let’s leave that to the other sections.