Fights against Fanatics?

[returning player]

My run was running smooth, until this fight against Fanatic and other 2. The Fanatic had a buff called Fanaticism: 4 charges, cannot die. Once is vulnerable, spends 1 charge to heal to get to full HP. The other 2 enemies had a linked buff (Worship, i guess), where they cannot be damaged until the Fanatic loses 1 charge. When the fanatic heals and spend one of the four charges, their shield is down, so you gotta kill them in a single turn (their shield is up again next turn, when the Fanatic is full HP again).

The problem is: the fanatic won't spend a charge when hes vulnerable. He and his allies can keep attacking while they all are invulnerable and you're a sitting duck with nothing to do but die :(
The fanatic will spend a charge after a few turns and you can restart the process, but the damage they deal while invulnerable most of the time was too much. Are they OP? Any tips?

[Owli]

Bear in mind that they lost 1 charge if both their HP and SP are lost, so you have to attack both healths bars.

[sono]

As mentioned above, you need to do both SP and HP damage. It's one of the only reasons to keep more than 1 damage type around.

Alternatively, White Lady can switch health types, allowing you to kill him with only SP damage. Depression decreases max SP through invulnerability, so inflicting it on the 2 shielded characters can help soften them up.

Also useful: some characters have skills that deal HP or SP damage based on what's lower. Since his 2 health pools are identical, the skill deals damage to both.

[sono]

Oh, and you can obviously lower his health using Devil Essence though it'll be expensive.

[rcuajunco]

Fanatic fight encounter increases everynight, so best tactic is don't do elite fights in week 6 and week 5 when possible, even pay 6 to teleport away from random cause high chance it will be an elite containing fanatic.

weaken fanatic first 2 rds
start of rd 3 pay essence to trigger fanatic charge usage
use full ap bar and essence to atleast kill 1 of the 2 worshippers both if possible

if ur party has enough sustain or mitigation
lower fanatic hp or sp while staying alive ( whichever ur party is built for )
when priestess shows question mark she is about to cast permutation on fanatic switching his mp/hp and now u can attack same bar, happens every 4 to 5 rds

white lady permutation is useful here
for hp damage build split spirit is useful so ur hp damage does sp damage

Basically its greed to safety consideration in essence usage or losing ur run

the more essence u spend the less chance ur run ends
Its possible to win without using any essence but u need a mountain of mitigation, damage reduction, sp/hp heal or steal.

[Spawnling]

You need to deplete both health bars.
If you deal good damage of one type you cand eplete his bar twice in a turn.
e.g. You deal massive HP damage. deplete his SP on turn 1, then deal ~90 dmg turn 2 to deplete the health bar twice. Repeat until hes dead, then deal with the 2 other goons.
Depression will reduce the Fanatics max SP so it'll be easier to reduce it to 0 over and over.

[returning player]

Oh, i didn't notice i needed to deplete both bars. So far, the game let me run a HP-only build. Thank you guys :)

[returning player]

Still, kind of a bummer to newcomers, isnt it? You must guess the SP damage will be mandatory for the fight or have plenty of DB essence (which you're encouraged to use to some degree) to overcome it :\

[Spawnling]

Boss fights are also kind of a bummer to newcommers. But that's rogue likes for you I guess.
You need to learn what enemies exist before you have a chance to win.
Fist save file it took me 23 hours to get to the final chapter and then a bug appeared where I couldn't proceed, so I started a new run and now I'm at the same point after 10 hours. (6 games win streak.)

[Sky]

Originally posted by returning player:

Still, kind of a bummer to newcomers, isnt it? You must guess the SP damage will be mandatory for the fight or have plenty of DB essence (which you're encouraged to use to some degree) to overcome it :\

Unfortunately split damage systems are relatively new when it comes to these sorts of games. So a lot of the mechanics and implementation can be finicky. And a lot of people new to the mechanics have difficulties understanding how they work.

Same thing happened with Iratus, when it came out the game was rated as "mixed" between good and bad reviews. Granted Rogue Lords has more polish and love put into it.

Rogue Lords has a lot of text and things you need to read. Miss one status and you could lose a run. Which is often offputting to players who are new.

[Scratchula]

I'm in my first fanatic fight now and I finally save scammed with alt F4 because I didn't get it at first. Wish me luck, I have both damage types at least.

[sono]

Originally posted by Scratchula:

I'm in my first fanatic fight now and I finally save scammed with alt F4 because I didn't get it at first. Wish me luck, I have both damage types at least.

Remember, you can still attack the shielded enemies to inflict debuffs on them, this can help to minimize the damage you take.

[Scratchula]

I had a lot of tools to win it, just beat book one now. I had like 18 stacks of depression on act 1 boss as well

[Dire]

Fanatics are just pointless. I think they should be optional fights. The time investment in a run is too high to run into a random fanatic almost at the end.

I've just cleared chapter 3 and the game seems to just increase enemy HP/SP, etc. No new enemies really that I can think of. Having a fanatic with two enemies that continously increase their damage output is utter garbage.
The game hasn't even remotely forced me to switch up my "White Lady strategy"...with the exception of this one chance encounter, which has happened in 2 out of 4 runs ... none of the bosses or even most elite encounters prove a problem, but ♥♥♥♥, if I see a fanatic, I'll likely just cheat or abandon the run. Too much RNG to properly defeat those guys. And most skills mentioned here are actually gimping your build. Why take a skill that deals split damage in your run if most enemies have lower SP and one damage type gets the job done twice as quickly?

[sono]

Originally posted by Dire:

Fanatics are just pointless. I think they should be optional fights. The time investment in a run is too high to run into a random fanatic almost at the end.

I've just cleared chapter 3 and the game seems to just increase enemy HP/SP, etc. No new enemies really that I can think of. Having a fanatic with two enemies that continously increase their damage output is utter garbage.
The game hasn't even remotely forced me to switch up my "White Lady strategy"...with the exception of this one chance encounter, which has happened in 2 out of 4 runs ... none of the bosses or even most elite encounters prove a problem, but ♥♥♥♥, if I see a fanatic, I'll likely just cheat or abandon the run. Too much RNG to properly defeat those guys. And most skills mentioned here are actually gimping your build. Why take a skill that deals split damage in your run if most enemies have lower SP and one damage type gets the job done twice as quickly?

Personal recommendation: If you run WL, you're probably using Bloody Mary and possibly Lilith. Bloody Mary starts with HP damage, sacrifice one and keep the other. It's only a single slot, which hardly matters that much, and it keeps you secured against Fanatic most of the time. Lilith's finishers deal HP damage as well, making it useful to keep one around.

Also: Staff of Storms is great, and scales off of your HP damage skills, including ones that deal both damage types. This is great incentive for you to keep some HP damage around.

[returning player]

Originally posted by sono:

Originally posted by Dire:

Also: Staff of Storms is great, and scales off of your HP damage skills, including ones that deal both damage types. This is great incentive for you to keep some HP damage around.

Staff of Storms is REALLY great.