DFFOO [JP][Arc 3 Ch 7-1] Arciela C90 feels good, Greg returns and Laguna's legend continues
27Who would have thought Cloud has gifted sub to Sephiroth once again and Larsa is actually mentioned? Possible next era character hint? Overall good stuff in this chapter and plot kinda advancing towards to gods.
I have all of Ciaran's stuff since Exdeath BT banners (pulled on the last day before BT+ actually lol) and Arciela from a long time ago. If I ever get his BT from Alphinaud or Seymour's banners I will build him up. Also no Leo because he hates me.
Devs seem to be churning out more interesting fights lately. Not too hard but there are still intricacies to the mechanics that you have to deal with using synergy characters. Arciela have tools to trivialize some of it, but by no means she shuts it down entirely. Without understanding the delicate bits of the fight you can still easily die.
Boss: Kefka and his manikins
All targets are immune to launch and break delays.
Reduction: 70/70 (70 BRV dmg reduction for manikins)
Orb (Lethal): 8/15
+5: When there is a player character with a buff/special effect at 5 stacks+
-2: PC action
-1: Boss action (manikins do not have the orb)
Back to lethal orb again. This one can be easy or hard, depending on what kind of characters you are bringing. If you are using someone like Papalymo or Thancred with fluctuating stacks, then you may have to keep an eye on them on top of their continuous turns. Otherwise if it is someone like Greg with pretty much perma 5 stacks unless you somehow lose the buff, go nuts with your continuous turns and there is no punishment to it.
Mechanics:
The potential problems for you to solve in this fight are mainly "how do you deal with the manikins" , the HP attack spams and the debuffs from Kefka's Trine.
Can't just use HP silence and win?
While it may seem easy to just "take synergy Arciela and spam HP attack silence", there is another layer on top of the HP attack spams. All targets are break delay immune, and real Kefka boss would remove your unframed HP silence as he buffs the manikins with BRV gain. If the turn order is Real Kefka - manikin 1/2, and your debuff is rinsed off due to overflow, you can die at the start of the fight when they get the first round.
You either have to ST delay real Kefka somehow (with Quistis, Garland etc), manage your debuff count before you can apply some other shenanigans later or get lucky with the turn order.
HP thresholds mechanic against braindead perma delay:
Kefka may not act like those "if you have 5 turns consecutively I would teleport to right after you" bosses, but he would order his manikins to kamikaze at you at 79%/49%/29%. They will do a guaranteed hit Trine+ if they are alive. So even if you perma delay them you would still have to deal with the manikins somehow. Also he resummons them if they die.
The Trine+ applies HP attack silence and darkness to the person they hit. They gain BRV before attacking, so you would have to use Unceasing Dread (Arciela LD) to shut down the BRV gain. The attack would kill the manikin and they don't always hit the currently targetted person (highest HP?). I have seen it dealing upwards of 20K+ so something needs to be done.
It is possible to time threshold pushing attack with a simultaneous manikin kill, just like what I did at around 08:37. That way Kefka won't have manikins to kamikaze.
If you have no debuff evasion, the debuff lasts for ages. Either use a multi-buffer like Sazh CA or a cleanser CA like Balthier or Penelo to get rid of them. Balthier CA also has to benefit of ridding the boss of buffs that real Kefka put onto them.
Troll 10% attack:
Kefka is a troll and everyone knows it. Not only at the start of the fight but also when he is at 9%, he would use light of judgement to gravity your HP to 1%, ignoring all reduction. The dmg criteria for completion is 65K HP, but if you are using characters with large HP pools or you don't have a HP attack silence character, better bring a healer with you before killing him or giving them a turn.
Arciela:
Arciela gets pretty standard C85 and C88 things, but it makes her feel good to play again. A whooping 80% BRV dmg up, and 40% BRV gain up, overflow etc. She also has a standard package of party wide 30% BRV dmg up and 20% HP dmg up and additional 60% iBRV regen rolled into her EX buff, which pretty much at 100% uptime.
She get much more HP dumps across the board, even her HP+ on both stances have 3 dumps. Curiously they now give 10% extra EX gauge charge, but tbh I never found her Ex needs charging faster.Overall she is much easier to put into the party while you utilize her tools.
Her C88 works very similarly to Quistis's. Both are at 13 turns, giving more BRV cap and recovering skills. Now hers give 20% more party ATK and BRV dmg cap. I would pop it earlier for the constant buff, considering she now has 7 skill 1s and 2s now and the recovery is less important.
Will prob do non-synergy run later.