DFFOO [JP][6 man Beta] Snow making every one a BRV gain addict
12Very enjoyable new content style. I haven't played JP when alpha dropped as a coop event but this one is quite well paced and ask you to swap team member according to different phases or modes the boss is currently in.
Orb (Lethal): Traditional countdown (-1: Player action, -2: Boss action)
+2: HP regen
Basically the Aphmau LC robot has two modes:
Flying = Physically weak and Magically resistant
Ground = Magically weak and Physically Weak
At 79%, this boss would be teleporting behind your turns immediately 3 times. Ususally at the 2nd or 3rd one it will unleash a red marker AoE that puts a bunch of nasty debuffs on you. After all teleport turns are finished, it would land and cleanse all debuffs.
If you let it have a few more turns, it will put on buffs. If it goes airborne, it will cleanse debuffs and put on buffs once again.
One way of dealing with it is to delay and kill it after the teleport turns. That way it cannot buff itself and you would not need to dispel and put on debuffs over and over. I would say it is more convenient to push this robot to 79% first before the other, or the frog robot would put on its absolute defence blue aura and be a roadblock to your dmg.
The Frog robot is the one that has the orb.
The more dangerous one and has a stronger phase presence. It has 2 aura status:
Blue Aura: Defensive stance
If it is at the start of the battle, it takes 50% less BRV/HP dmg.
If it is at its subsequent thresholds (59/19%), it will be in absolute defence mode and takes 999% reduce dmg.
The red marker AoE in this mode is very devastating, it is survivable with Snow alone but it hits quite hard and you would have been taking HP poison dmg when it is in red aura beforehand. So heal first.
Red Aura: HP poison aura
In addition to the HP poison, if any of your character falls below 30%, it will immediately use gatling gun on said target without needing a turn. It is a guaranteed instant kill.
My current strat for 6 man Beta:
The basic gist of this is to juggle between magic and physical attack for the Aphmau robot, or use BRV gain characters or Snow BT for ordinarily non-BRV gain characters to not care and refund through the 0 BRV dmg phase.
Since it is a 6 man configuration, it favours a lot of 'Fire and Forget" style of debuffs and mechanics, such as Laguna BT and Selphie/Alphinaud LD debuff. They stay in effect even if you swap them out.
Another 6 man specific mechanic is you can revive dead team members, and let their EX charge in the background team. So say if you use Y'shtola revive if there is a dead member at the back, they will be revived. In this run, I let Beatrix charge her EX and get her out when she needs to use her HP+++ for the safeguard debuff.
I would be honest that I seem to have an easier time with my initial clear when I did not have Laguna BT tokened, because fitting so many debuffs from 6 characters + CAs is a quite hard and the Aphmau Robot's phase change makes his BT timing very odd. Ideally it is to drop it in between the teleport turns, so it does not run out too fast and his BT finisher can do dmg when it is still in the air.
Snow BT and C90:
Just like that one time I used Snow vs Divine Shiva, Snow does not care about 0 BRV dmg. Now that his BT gives other people 50% BRV refund, he makes other people care less about that as well.
Snow himself has 30% BRV gain from armor and 30% from LD buff. Those alone made him ridiculous already. Now he has 10% more for the party on C88 and inherit BRV gain on C85 extension, it basically means he does not need anyone's BRV gain to do dmg lol. When you put the BT refund on top of his refund, he only needs initial battery to practically do full dmg himself.
Basically his BT gives every one an additional BRV gain related component to their dmg, effectively turning everyone BRV gain compatible and an addict. When you put Y'shtola besides him or even just Selphie, you can see when they use HP attacks in the air, their BRV immediately refund back to full without Selphie on active duty. It is absolutely ridiculous especially in launches.
He may not have HP dmg cap up, but he also has 40% Ice enchant and BRV dmg and cap up. So He covers the BRV dmg people's need as well.
It is going to be interesting to see how he does pairing up with someone like Prompto/Cid, whose Ex typically needs a bit of setup to reach full potential. I would say I like his effect a lot.
I made 2 mistakes in this run. I applied Seymour's debuff too early so Alphinaud's poison did not infect the frog robot. Also, I did not get Alphinaud out when Snow is having his BT phase for more poison dmg. Otherwise Snow's BT dmg should go up even more. Though I would say BT phase dmg in general is hampered by either the Aphmau robot dying too fast or the frog robot going into 19% blue aura before finishing.
On a side note, you can actually knock the frog robot out of Blue aura reducing it HP to the next 10% with Alphinaud's poison or extremely high sudden dmg.