After a parry, there is a damage modifier (I want to say 20% for regular damage but not sure, and it is quite a bit higher for will damage) for a brief duration. That gives a reason to do it instead of dodge counter, as dodge counter only gives you a shorter interrupt with no damage modifier. While the micro stagger from parry doesn't last long, combined with the slowdown you can fit a full basic string with magic burst in there plus a charged blade and end the sequence holding onto a charged magic that can be used both offensively and defensively (since it has some level of invincibility). Alternatively, you can have one of the longer duration skills for this particular situation too, such as gouge, so you can reliably get full potency off it.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwpbQgpD2-0
I'm not 100% sure how damage modifier scales during stagger. Different hits have different values in adjusting it and I think it's also increasing passively with time. I think will power damage is the factor as skills that do more will power damage seems to scale it faster. I know that about 2 full basic strings with magic burst will get you to 1.5x, so one way is to do two strings into 2 fast damage skills (My second skill partially whiffed because i didn't do my strings fast enough, specifically the charge magic release is too slow both times).
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApkWLVBpeuQ
Alternatively you can bank a bunch of skills for the burst window, but obviously that could cut into usage rate. I feel like (for normal mode at least) it is probably expected that half the damage should be done outside of normal, and half is in stagger, so building your loadout between skills for damage, skills for stagger/damage mod scaling, and possibly counter skills should add a good amount of variety. By default 2/2/1 is probably a good spot (with 1 free choice). The ratios can be adjusted for playstyle (faster stagger, more stagger state damage, more turn stealing with counters, more regular state damage, etc) from there, and any gap that's created due to those choices can just be filled with normal movesets (specifically more regular parry and optimized basic strings).
This is extremely preliminary. Without knowing exact cancel/recovery points of various moves and how certain animations interact with each other this is just going to be a starting point. I'm also making an assumption that the basic string is meant to be the bnb and making decisions around that right now, which might be entirely wrong (maybe charged blade/magic alternating spam is the way to go, as long you can take care of the charged magic pushback). It's hard to test in demo since move recovery frequently behave really differently between in combat and out of combat. Arena in the full game will be really helpful in figuring this stuff out, but as of now I think this is a good starting point for the game in terms of customization considerations.
Phoenix's dash, stinger, and several other action have significant recovery when outside of combat. I'm not sure what's the design goal of adding that recovery for specifically outside of combat.
