DFFOO [JP][Sice Event] The battle of traps with Ace, Vanille and Raijin
21Sice is a bit similar to Ace without needing to use two abilities to trigger an active trap with dark dmg, self evasion and delay as side utility. Not having the biggest desire to pull so good old Ace came back to the rescue.
The boss have few mechanics but the few mechanics are actually not commonly seen. Orb looks restrictive but the boss is quite squishy in terms of HP, so it should not be hard to pull through.
I must say though that's one hell of a nightmare fuel version of a FF8 enemy.
Boss:
Reduction: 70/70
Lethal orb: limit 10
+2: Boss takes BRV dmg from any debuff/special effect as its duration (?) decreases (i.e. Traps)
+2: Boss takes dark dmg
-2: Player action
Orb goes down really fast. With Ace it should be noted that he needs to use LD/HP+ to turn his "trap card" into active traps. Otherwise you would have to wait for the boss to move to turn his trap card to the surface.
Without active traps such as Sice and Ace though, passive traps from someone like Emperor and Vanille traps would only activate once after boss turns. You may need dark enchant to keep up with the orb. I think Trey kind of have a bit of both if you have him.
The wording says "duration" but I think counts for special effects decreasing also counts. So Garnet's Ark, Jegran's crystallization (as the stacks disappears) all counts. I am not exactly sure why Freya and Kain's aerial off-turn counts every time but it does lol.
In this case I just used both active and passive ones from Ace and Vanille. There would not be a lot of free turns that you can spam C88/CAs, so time your uses and get the most out of it.
Mechanics:
Debuffs:
Boss normally cycles between attacks that either inflict poison, dark dmg resist down + speed down or most undesirable of all: HP dmg down (an ALL attacks). They also puts on a BRV regen when they do one of their ST attacks.
They are not awfully dangerous as they only have one HP attack (no BRV gain/BRV hits) other than the orb going off, but while it is not the end of the world getting the HP dmg down, it still slows you down with little window to use C88/CAs to buff your dmg. Also, the turn requirement is 45, so don't get too relaxed even though it is a squishy boss.
Turn jumping:
They do jump turns when HP thresholds are met, but they don't do it all the way to the front. They always put your character to the first turn order slot and then one of them next. So don't leave them with a count of 2 and no active trap on thinking they will set it off and save the orb. They do this at 79%, 49%, 29% I believe, but I jumped quite some HP% near the thresholds so I am not 100% sure on that.
Shield + Counter debuff (Down counter stance) at 39%
The HP shield is not uncommon but the down counter stance is. Not sure if it has been done in this game before, but it reflects all debuffs you attempt to inflict on them when the shield is up. For example, if Raijin uses Lightning Discharge on the enemy at 39% and shield up state, Raijin gets paralyzed and they are not. It is a hurdle to prevent you from putting traps on them during that timeframe. It can screw up the orb if you are not careful.
I brought a Yuna friend summon to swap her out for a big shield shave and avoiding Vanille's debuffs getting thrown back at her.
Besides Ace, Raijin LD stops the debuffs, enchant the party and paralyze them / stall enough such that Ace's trap durations are relatively stretched out. It is a more offensive and active debuff prevention than using someone say Lenna. Vanille's EX with the trap does quite a bit of dmg and upticks the orb, and the massive DEF down besides having 2 Ace's LD traps are a good combo for dmg boosts. She dispelling the BRV regen is also an extra layer of safety net that the boss would never do their HP attacks, but most of the time Ace's active traps would take care of that.
Not a particularly troublesome boss, but since the orb is quite short fused, more precise actions is preferred for this fight. You can definitely DPS race this with a Dark enchant CA, but I don't think this boss really asks for such a high calibre dmg dealer anyway lol.