DFFOO [JP][Act 3 Chapter 9 part 2] Lunafreya Swiftness + Totsugeki
16Been a long time since this game has something VIII related lol.
As much as I like Sabin's FR, my eyes are still set on Vayne and Cor later into the month. So atm it is TBD whether I would get his FR or not.
Although Machina is here, the star of the show is actually Cinque on Lunafreya swiftness buff crack. He is here mostly as an immobile buffer and counter attacker (kind of an odd use but it works).
Lunafreya is still at BT+2, so no UW and can only BT once.
Boss info: Junctioned Ultimecia and Irvine manikin
Standard Shinryu reduction on Ultimecia
Force Mechanic:
FG: (before 100%)
BRV/HP dmg up, Ally action delay down
FA: Meteor++
Guaranteed hit, hits REALLY hard (around 25K+ AOE HP dmg)
Force buff:
All allies' actions would delete target's turns
Weakness:
Wind aspected FA BRV dmg
Threshold mechanics: (Ultimecia only)
The boss has 2 lives
79%: Time "K"ompression 1
Ultimecia would jump turns to the front followed by 2 consecutive turns. Think of this sort of like her jumping turns and used apocalypse.
As she enters this phase, she would become immune basic HP dmg (not the additional dump from Leo LD/Lunafreya heavy hitter effect though). You would need to delay her to knock her out of this state.
29%: Form Shift
Ultimecia would cleanse all buffs and debuffs (silver framed inclusive), and regain all health.
She would also use Meteor and a ST physical attack at this point. Meteor, even in its non ++version, is still able to one shot you.
29% of second life: Time "K"ompression 2
It is essentially the same as the first one, however this only happens at 29%, not 79% of the second life.
Normal attacks:
Ultimecia follows a pretty strict cycle of attacks.
1. Tornado - just a ST BRV dmg attack, often miss as well
2. Quake - AoE BRV dmg
3. Holy - ST BRV + HP attack, very hard hitting. Can potentially one shot your character.
Irvine Manikin pretty much does nothing but free counter dmg pinata. He deals single digit BRV dmg and single digit HP dmg, does not inflict the dark debuff from his darkshot when he is in your party. The only time he can be a problem is when you don't want your turns gone and he deletes it in FT. Even if he breaks you, he only deals somewhere around 4000 HP dmg. AoE breaking them may be cause them to break "wrongly" though, because Ultimecia often has more than 10K BRV and would be broken later.
The only things dangerous about this fight are Ultemecia's Meteor and Holy, and her double lives making the fight a bit long that you may need to design your approach in some way to finish it before your FR/ resources are all spent. Typically mitigation, WoL shield, Caius Doom would take care of her dmg/turn shenanigans really well. Counter attack/consistent off turn attacks like Machina, Yang, Kain would also work.
Approach:
My idea here is just to give swiftness to Cinque to negate her self-delay while consecutively delays both of the bosses, so Ultimecia does not run her attack cycle as much. Force her to the point of using Holy as she is entering FT, so one WoL shield would take care of it all. Then Machina BT + Lunafreya FR to fish for counter dmg while they delete your turns.
Cinque provides a lot of dmg, debuff and delays. The most optimal way would be to make her hit the 79% threshold or let her be the next in line when the threshold attack happens, so she can immediately delay and knock Ultimecia out of the invincible state. Kam'lanaut EX near the end serves the same purpose, though I accidentally switched to Machina's turns first with Cid Raines LDCA and wasted some time.
As long as you are able to delay her, letting her stay inside FT is actually safer, because you don't need to race against her FG build up again and risk eating another meteor++ in the face. Alternatively, you can delay her so far that Irvine would waste all of the FT turns.
The run has been further optimized later by using Luna LD after FR before the counter fishing phase for Machina and ensuring Kam EX comes up just after Luna BT is over and Ultimecia becomes invincible.
Cinque's C90 EX is actually quite crazy with the launches and dmg (also AoE refreshes all stun stacks), so there is Bahamut summon.
Personal Thoughts on Sabin FR even though I don't have it (yet?):
His FR giving ignore defence and +60% bonus is really strong.
He does not party enchant wind and holy, so needing both elements that are not so commonly seen together is a double-edged sword. On one hand you would need to invest on said party enchant, but once that is done your entire party can get the full bonus benefits. The ignore defence and enchant also means a big dmg boost. So it is a matter of whether you want to put in the work.
It is also interesting that devs have been actively putting in additional effects to FR now. Luna's water enchant, Sabin's ignore defence. They may have as much uptime and diverse effects as LD does, but FR is becoming less of a generic HP dmg up and more crucial to defining a character's role.