I thought we threw all the silly stuff like knockdown/away, stunlocking, juggling, sidestepping, guarding/guard lock, invincibility tricks, etc out for ARPGs in the DL? >_>
I have a slightly skewed view of the TOV cast regardless because I didn't really synthesise on my first run through except from picking up Limit Duo/Trio late and a few limit bottles here and there (blah blah VIOLENT PAIN!) so I missed a lot of stuff but yeah.
*CT burns Repede and Estelle hype, flees* ^_^
Well, sidestepping is right out for the sake of sanity.
Stun locking varies from person to person.
Knock down... I dunno about most people, but after ToL I started to take the view that, while opponents will have a full CT and immediately attack when they stand up (ie no, no "knock them down -> attack before them!" infinite loop), if you could sneak in another move while the opponent was knocked down (a buff, or in ToL's case Senel's throws) that was kosher.
Juggling is an interesting question and depends on how you mean that. If you mean "the enemy is mid-air and helpless even though the combo ends" then eh, I could see tossing that. If it's more "you can keep your combo going a long-ass time" then that's probably legal and something you just account for in damage average terms.
(For clarification, for Tales games I judge comboability and turns by the listed combo gauge. If you can get stuff to chain without breaking that, it's something that counts as one attack. if the combo breaks, you ended your turn and the enemy gets to smack you around)
Guarding/Waiting isn't unique to ARPGs, so it's not really specific there. Some people allow it, I tend to dismiss it out of hand because that sort of artificial stalling annoyed me as a DL thing, although exceptions exist for games like Xenosaga where you using defending to build up your attacks and it's really something you do all the danged time.
This makes Estelle a strange case, because while most of the ToV cast has traditional, "fuck.dat" style Defend command, Estelle has about a third of her unique Skills devoted to the defend command and it's obviously something she was meant to work with in-game. I'm still inclined against it because, like I said, it's still a universal stall command for everyone else and as I recall I don't tend to allow, say, people to use the item command just because they happen to be better at it.
Invincibility hype now... well, that's neither here nor there. I know Niu often finds characters who can, in fact, attack indefinitely while being completely invincible (ie, infinite invincibility frames) and generally hypes them as unrankable. I'm not sure if other people take that view though.
However,
skills that directly cause invincibility have always been legal. See also Elc, Arc. Repede's invincibility is along those lines, although not quite the same (he has to use shorter combos to maintain it correctly. However, he can maintain it for a long ass time, or indefinitely if you get his unique accessory. Not that I did, stupid letting you fight fun optional boss monsters without triggering that quest) >.>)
