[DFFOO JP][FEOD:T 4 Main Gate on 1-m-old account] Exdeath being MVP
1With the 6 characters used to clear the left and right wing to choose from, Mog does not do anything useful; Gabranth and CoD without BT and buffers does not offer enough damage to deal damage after around the 30% mark of even the first boss, so Exdeath is here to save the day with the void.
Video is split into two parts, because I failed a few times at the second half.
Second half starts at around 14:19.
Exdeath is actually growing on me that through this fight I found his ATK down, BRV sap to be so potent to the point that both bosses would hit you for 1s and posed no threat until some debuffs were pushed off as seen near the end of the first boss (the left one dealing thousands). So surviving is not an issue at all with Prompto HP regen for heal, evasion and Exdeath's blind.
Lann and Reynn did much less without a buffer and 3 targets as expected. (their buff scales with enemy numbers). Stat-wise I think they are not that much different from units that were released 2-3 months ago, but they do get a lot of HP dumps as a form of powercreep. One notable issue is that their buffs wear off quite easily, so they require more attention to use at times.
Calls and summons: Mostly for setting up for Exdeath
Faris: One use in first boss and second-half of the second boss to keep on the pressure. Exdeath and Prompto's debuffs are sufficient for the most part.
Fujin: For extra enchant and weakness damage, and most importantly the party-wide ATK up for Exdeath's BT scaling. I would have used Ignis instead if not for the ATK tbh because it has additional weakness damage up.
Cait Sith: On Exdeath before BT in hopes of being blown away so that others have more turns to deal large amount of damage after the 30% mark.
Ifrit: Free 30% attack up for Exdeath. Could have used Odin but since the bosses hit like a wet noodle with him in the party, that ATK bonus in theory would not have kicked in had I not messed up with the debuffs on the first boss.
Principle Strategy:
Since surviving is not an issue, contrary to normally how to go about this fight, I opted to make bosses take more turns to take advantage of the Exdeath HP saps when they finished taking a turn, to cut down the amount of active turns taken to meet the tight 70 turn requirement. As such I tried to break them "incorrectly" most of the time to facilitate this.
The second wave of boss was the bigger issue, but them blowing your turns off was ironically a blessing for Exdeath. At one point, I wanted to put a target lock call like Zack on Exdeath, but it did not work so well that the blind debuff made them miss him anyway, so instead I put Cait Sith call on him and hope that he would get blown away for Lann and Reynn / Prompto to utilize the call as much as possible. It did not happen that much in this run because the main issue that is going to be discussed.
The main issue of this boss with this setup is when they gain a massive amount of BRV, especially at 49% HP, they would delay themselves. Combining this with the infamous "if player gets 10 actions before they get a turn, you can't hurt them" mechanic, as well as the inconsistency compared to other fight that is "Burst and Summon still count towards this 10 turn restriction", this creates a very narrow window for bursting, summon and the aftermath turn hoarding for Exdeath BT effect. This mechanic made me failed a couple of times, when one of those times had the perfect run of them delaying Exdeath with BT and Cait Sith call on (Note: his HP saps still work when this happens but the others can't do damage) but failed at 71 turn and ended up getting a hit for 10k without healing up. Had summon and burst not been counted, this formation would be so much easier to work with.
I tried using the Twins BT before but found out that without a buffer, their damage fall off significantly after the 30% mark even with two sets of strong debuff calls, though the fall off was much lesser than using CoD. Therefore I kept them in the team and opt for the Exdeath strategy instead.