(spoilers for late SoTC) how do i beat Yan reliably

[OMG real dante frm LoR comapmy]

God, I despise Yan's fight. While I love my precious femboy and his typewriter form his reception is bad and he should feel bad for being an awful boss battle. His gimmick is unique, i'll give PM that, but he feels completely unfair to fight against. The only strategy I could think of is just attempt to kill the hands and try to stagger Yan before he gets below 300 hp, but if he goes below 300 hp, EVEN WHEN STAGGERED, he just restores all of his stagger resist and gains a ton more dice, with the hands gaining even more dice, and I get overwhelmed and die. How tf do i beat Yan reliably?? I got PT's page and I can grind Myo; electric boogalo but I haven't touched Xiao's reception in the slightest. pls help steam.

also why is Yan's name in Korean? I still don't understand why it's not translated by now or what it translates into.

edit i have now beaten yan thanks for the help it has indeed worked

[bgammax]

Yan’s name is a cipher, if you look at those letters on a Korean keyboard and compare them to the positions in an English one it’ll read “Distorted Yan”

As for how to beat him consistently make sure to bring Nikolai and a few other strong key pages. Attack the strength buffs with a light gen page to redirect it while most of the team catches the hands. Then once they merge you attack and set up any strength buffs (like Observe or Bi Xi) and roll over the mass attack with Disposal. With Nikolai’s mark and 4 other librarians going all out you can usually do around 400+ damage in one turn. If that doesn’t kill him it usually gets Yan low enough to finish the job with mass attacks (which ignore counter die)

[OMG real dante frm LoR comapmy]

Originally posted by bgammax:

Yan’s name is a cipher, if you look at those letters on a Korean keyboard and compare them to the positions in an English one it’ll read “Distorted Yan”

As for how to beat him consistently make sure to bring Nikolai and a few other strong key pages. Attack the strength buffs with a light gen page to redirect it while most of the team catches the hands. Then once they merge you attack and set up any strength buffs (like Observe or Bi Xi) and roll over the mass attack with Disposal. With Nikolai’s mark and 4 other librarians going all out you can usually do around 400+ damage in one turn. If that doesn’t kill him it usually gets Yan low enough to finish the job with mass attacks (which ignore counter die)

im hoping this reply feature works

would Gebura's or Yesod's floor be better for Yan? Yesod has big stagger damage EGO cards but I like Gebura's starting abno cards a bit better and it doesn't make me lag as much as Yesod's floor does.

[bgammax]

The strategy outlined doesn’t rely on any abnormality pages so you can pretty much use whatever floor you want. Red Mist is a really solid key page with a great strength buff so it would probably work a bit better, just remember not to get Mountain of Corpses sunce that’s a normally strong card that basically folds to him

[AritheReaper]

It's a cipher, and wasn't translated on purpose.

I typically use the Floor of Philosophy for just about everything, so my explanation will be more about my setup with that floor, and my experience with the fight when using it.

I generally end up wearing his health down below 300 by unga-bungaing him down with fairy/burn/bleed/etc. Xiao's page is really helpful for this fight imo, as once you get to a high emotion level they have three innate mass attacks, and counter dice can't even attempt to block mass attacks. Xiao with the combat page Fiery Waltz is also nice, since you can get 4 burn on an enemy pretty easily with her page and spread the burn around. That being said, Xiao's fight is also pretty tough (harder than Yan's, depending on who you talk to) so keep that in mind.

In general, if you have a lot of mass attacks after Yan enters their final hand form, spamming them isn't inherently a bad idea since you may hit all of the hands at once and are guaranteed to hit Yan. Also, if you wanna farm for Myo's page, there's something to be said for the running meme of taking her Myo's Prowess passive (up to 5 more strength when faster than an opponent) and throwing it onto Gebura, since the Red Mist page always has an infinity speed die each turn.

Otherwise, having a proxy on hand can be nice just to have someone that can roll high (without relying on Weight of Sin in my case), and Nemo's page with R. Corp's 20 charge for a full revive can be nice if you just need someone to take hits for a turn or two. Nikolai is also useful as always, as Mark's +50% is great on single target enemies.

[David]

Nikolai is amazing, mark was good even before it got patched to affect both damage and stagger and it stacks with smoke. His ability commander is +1 to all dice for all characters, which again, is amazing, you just need to get 11 charge, which can take a while.

[CarThief]

My approach so far was always ye olde Floor of Language power-stacking, with the best pages available, in my case nowadays:

Gerbura (Myo's Prowess, Fervor), Purple Tear (Wedge, Fervor), Xiao (Grace of the Prescript, Crying Children's +1power-vs-burned enemies passive), Yan (Fervor, Blade Unlock) and Nikolai (Fervor, Blade Unlock).

It pretty much lets Gerbura eat up any 3-dice card with her spears, and a lot of otherwise-nasty cards with her slashes, Purple Tear is, well, friggin' Purple Tear, and the rest benefit from +2 to +4 power. And Nikolai's mark adds a immense +50% damage debuff that'll nuke even the sturdiest boss to death.

Frankly, for bosses like these, Nikolai's debuff seems mandatory. It really helps give the push DPS-wise to kill them. Might also not hurt to invest into Deep Drag for another +35% damage or so with 7 stacks of Smoke. I mean, jeez, that's +85% damage then, jeez, with the ability to go up to +100%. Which is like QUADRUPLE damage on staggered enemies. Gets even more rediculous with stuff like Maxim's Maximum Crash...

Man, i should invest more into Smoke debuffs again, probably... Wonder if there's space for Maximum crash on Nikolai...

[Traumaturgy]

Using Binah proved to be the best approach for me. As this fight relies on burning HP quickly more than anything else, her Fairies are extremely potent, especially with Yan using 4,000 counter dice in their vulnerable phase. The power they give in burning the hands' HP can't be understated, either. Using other Objet D'arts is, as usual, the optimal strategy though it's perfectly doable with just things like Emma's page to lean on for the rest of your Librarians. Xiao probably helps a lot but I just used rather basic pages. Nikolai is also a godsend as mentioned above.

Focus on one hand first instead of spreading your damage thin. This minimizes the amount of turns you'll have to deal with both hands. Once you're past the hands, try to burn down Yan to just about before 300HP - anywhere from 400-350 should be ideal. Hopefully, your Librarians will have a good amount of Stagger Resist just in case for the Mass Attack, but even if you don't, that's fine. If it looks like you're going to get super staggered on most of your characters, avoid attacking too much so you don't end up sending Yan into the death sentence of Phase 3 at minimal lost HP. Having Slash-resisted pages will be beneficial in this stage - Gloria, maybe? And Binah, obviously.
If you can mitigate the mass attack [with strong multi-dice pages like Emotional Turbulence or stuff like Flaming Dragon Fist] or otherwise tank it without being staggered, then go absolutely wild on Yan on that turn. They'll also have less Block Dice on the turn they use their mass attack, so it'll contribute a little more damage. If you're using Nikolai, using Disposal is excellent, best used on the slowest speed die to maximize the damage should you be able to Stagger Yan with your other characters.

If you fail to kill at this point, you should hopefully still have burnt down Yan pretty low. If you're on Phase 3, your main priority is to RUSH DOWN THE HANDS. You cannot afford a war of attrition with those 33 roll mass attacks every other turn. It's best if you also have a bunch of Mass Attacks at your disposal, as those will still hit Yan without resistance, along with doing hefty chunks to the hands. If you're really lucky, your mass attacks alone might finish off Yan.