DFFOO [JP][6 Warrior Quest Area 2] Mostly older characters vs 6 Warrior Quest 2
10Actually spend 350 tickets for Gladio LD and snatched Yuri BT even though I have no plans to BT+ him, especially when I don't have his FR.
I think there are at least 4 distinct approaches for this one. I took the evade and counter strat here with older characters that predate FR era, such as Laguna, Shadow and Edge. Edge is the primary subject to build the team around. FR characters are Kain, Lunafreya and Braska, although only Lunafreya and Braska's FR are used.
Laguna's BT actually has more strategic value than Kain and Luna's here,
Boss Info:
Dullahan and Zombie Whale
Shinryu reductions types, but only at 70% BRV/BRV and no HP dmg reduction
Force Mechanic:
0/20/40: Player ATK/DEF/SPD down
FA: Northern Cross (From Dullahan)
- puts on ice imperil on player characters
- field effect: freeze (cannot move until Dullahan's next turn)
FT: 2 turns
- Party ice enchant
Weakness:
- FA that deals Holy magic BRV dmg
Threshold Mechanics on player characters: (All effects drop at a 20% HP interval)
For Dullahan:
At QS/below 60%/20%:
- take HP dmg
- no BRV recovery
Below 80%/40%:
- still takes HP dmg
- BRV recovery is now possible
- Dullahan Immediately does an off-turn attack "Absolute Zero" when threshold is met
Absolute Zero inflicts both paralysis and the silver framed debuff "Ruin", which makes characters self delay by 1 turn, this debuff cannot be dodged by debuff immunity
- When Dullahan receives HP dmg from attacks that has BRV dmg, it will counter with Ruin Holy (AoE BRV+HP attack that inflicts Ruin
For Zombie Whale:
Below 60%/20%:
- Player healing becomes harmful and inflict HP dmg instead (cannot go down to 0). Essentially putting a traditional zombie debuff onto you as a field effect.
Zombie whale is not that dangerous, mostly it does some BRV attack. If it gets too much BRV, then it may ram you with a ST HP attack or does a supersonic BRV+HP attack. This can potentially kill you if your HP is too low.
Dullahan mostly does a drive by ST BRV attack, or a ST HP attack outside of his special moves.
Approach:
Depending on what kind of fight design you are going for, it can be either of them being the problem.
Dodge & counter:
Dullahan has more complex interactions. It inflicts debuffs that you cannot evade with debuff immunity, but all of its moves can be dodged. Devs intended for you to use Yuri BT, but Edge's EX is just as effective.
Set up during the pre-80% phase and donn't too much dmg. The idea is to fish for counters inside of FR. Get Edge to use his EX before 80%, use Lunafreya to put heavy hitters on related characters that you want for the counter phase (mostly Kain/Laguna/Edge, Shadow moves too much for me to bother with this). Use Braska to boost FG and pop FR before 80% and them hitting FT.
*Not dmging them too much during this phase helps, because Braska can spam Curaga for some HP% bonus before the Whale drops below 80% and puts on the zombie debuff, making the "full HP" FR requirement not active.
Once Dullahan drops below 80%, it starts AoE countering when you hit it with an on-turn BRV+HP attack. Once some % is setup, switch to Shadow and use AoE attacks on the whale to knock him out of zombie phase and not dmging Dullahan too much to fish for max amount of counters (LD/EX). Laguna BT would trigger twice here, as Shadow + Edge's counters would target Dullahan.
* Technically, Shadow can go forever with free turns/abilities here, because he keeps dodging with Edge's EX buff and Dullahan keeps countering. I opted not to here because it is faster to blow it up in other ways.
Once our FT is over, I would advise summoning and prep for additional Edge EX/ healng (Whale out of zombie mode)/WoL LDCA. The boss FG would suddenly skyrocket. Better safe than sorry, because Northern cross freezes you and you cannot dodge in frozen state.
WoL LDCA is not strictly required, but safer to have. If you have enough HP, they can do BRV attacks only.
Once Dullahan gets his next turn after FA, everything is back to normal. Rinse and repeat with the second set, but with Lunafreya instead and finish them off after their FT. Whether they get out of FT or not is irrelevant.
With dodge & counter with characters like this, the trouble is actually meeting the HP requirement. The Whale's zombie mode can be inconvenient to you healing party members, covering up the HP drain from Dullahan's existence. Knock it out of zombie mode quick and heal before finishing it.
Hope/Sazh/Iroha CAs are great here. They extend Edge's EX buff and help deal with the "no BRV recovery" phase, as you would rely more on pure BRV dmg/ less consumption. Rydia/Raijin LDCA are also useful.
Because the boss is relatively squishy and poses no gateway to your DPS or turn manipulation, other approaches I thought of are:
- skipping counter phase with FR+BT/summon
- counter the counter with Reno FR on
- delay or turn deletion with CAs to deal with the one FA hit
Will do another one if I have time.
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