Defeating Burble Hekelot with a Single Shield Boomerang Throw
39What happens when you try to beat one of MMZ2’s most luck-driven bosses in the most obtuse way possible? Well, you get this.
Joining the likes of Z1 Stagroff and Z2 Harpuia, a single Shield throw win against Burble is a silly idea indeed. Finding a path through Burble’s attack pattern while keeping the Shield in orbit requires an insane amount of trial and error, and unlike his contemporaries, Burble doesn’t offer the luxury of ending the battle quickly. His lack of an elemental weakness, small stature, and wildly variable attack selection all play crucial roles in making the experience of pursing this victory highly demanding.
More so than any other boss I’ve faced under this condition thus far, Burble demands an excellent understanding of the types of orbits you can create with the Shield and how to switch between them on demand. The ideal boss pattern is one where you can stand or jump in place while performing minor adjustments to keep the Shield alive. Phoenix Magnion and Poler Kamrous are good examples of this. The next step up is if a boss requires horizontal repositioning, forcing Zero to drag the Shield across the arena while keeping the same general elevation—Z1 Staggroff falls into this category.
Burble transcends this by requiring constant changes to the Shield’s elevation. In addition to being a small target, Burble’s movement pattern has him either glued to the ground or up high among the leaves and walls. This means that it’s imperative to learn how to switch between low, medium, and high orbiting routes for the Shield in response to Burble’s actions. Expectedly, doing so is quite precise; it’s challenging just on its own in an empty room, not to mention in the heat of battle.
Trying to describe the step-by-step process I took in these fights would be foolish for a couple of reasons. First, the number of minute details is such that I’d be rambling for far longer than I typically do. Second, the pattern Burble gives isn’t constant; there’s a reason that speedrunners dread this guy. Searching through different patterns by changing RNG and deducing whether the pattern you’re given is suitable for a single throw win takes a good chunk of time. However, even when you do find something promising, actually plotting a path through the fight and accurately manipulating Burble takes even longer, especially if you’re like me and you do it twice to let him show off more attacks.
With that noted, I approach the fight in two ways. The first bout showcases an “efficient” method, while the second is all about excessively flashy dodging. Unlike my other escapades with the Shield in Z2, I use Defense Form here to cut the number of hits needed down by one. Plus, Burble’s green, the Shield is green, and the leaves are green, so I may as well have Zero be green too. Wonderful justification, I know.
Here are the types of Shield orbits I alluded to, followed by a few notes regarding Burble’s attacks.
-Low: This is characterized by Zero standing on the ground and having the Shield loop around him without having to move. The Shield will either pass through the ground or over Zero’s legs before circling above his head. The loop can be established in a few key ways: throwing the Shield mid-air just before landing and then dashing forward, dashing under the Shield as it returns from an upward throw (this is what I do at the start of the second fight), or jumping away from a returning Shield before landing and quickly dashing under it.
-Medium: Any orbit that requires relatively short hops to maintain. Achievable in a number of ways, the easiest is to perform a standard throw from the ground, then dash forward and begin hopping. It’s fairly simple to turn a low or high orbit into a medium one, provided there’s enough space for the Shield to ascend or descend.
-High: An orbit that requires full jumps or wall jumps to maintain. Identifiable by the Shield overlapping Zero’s legs as he jumps over it. An upward mid-air throw is the most reliable way to start it. If the arena you’re in has walls, jumping off them can guide the Shield upward. Tight jumps around a Shield that’s at medium elevation can push the orbit higher as well.
Undoubtedly, the star of the show is maintaining these orbits while avoiding Burble’s Spring Kick. Wrapping your head around how to do that takes a good while. The way I dodge it depends on the type of orbit I’m working with at the time. Energy Tongue is painful too; there are some harrowing escapes from it in both fights. The Caterpulls can either be intercepted as they fall or be destroyed while crawling by a low or medium orbit.
I hope that, between the video and this text, I’ve been able to shed some light on how in-depth manipulating the Shield can be. It’s peculiar and amusing that a silly frog acts as the catalyst for such skill-intensive play.
Timestamps:
00:00 - “Quick” Kill
00:30 - Letting Burble Eat
Thanks for watching!
Other Videos By DZ3
Other Statistics
Mega Man Zero 2 Statistics For DZ3
There are 62,954 views in 19 videos for Mega Man Zero 2. The game makes up 1 hour of published video on his channel, roughly 9.01% of Mega Man Zero 2 content that DZ3 has uploaded to YouTube.