Defeating Lorence

[Mizufluffy]

I was finally able to get Preemptive Powerhouse achievement during my 2nd playthrough (playing on (Hard) this time) and I was having quite hard time with defeatingLorence. Has anyone else found this battle especially hard when compared to rest of the game? And what kind of strategies have you used during the battle?

Here is image near end of the battle. Some of those arts felt unfair more than a few times. Double guard... 2k heal... And resistance to all status conditions including chance for K.O. And that speed, not only he was rather fast to cast arts but I think he might have casted 3 arts in a row once without giving me a turn. Even turn bonuses sometimes felt unfair when he got healed for 10%. Luckily he didn't use any items but what really surprised me was amount of EP he must have had for all those arts...

...anyway, what everyone thinks about this battle? Who has been able to do it and how?
Funny thing is that during my first playthrough I was sure I had to defeat Lorence to advance in the game. Because of that I used Alt+F4 to exit the battle a couple of times when I was almost defeated so I could try it again. Well, unfortunately I kept losing and I decided to see what would happen if I just let him beat me, that made battle much easier.

My winning strategy was basically using Estelle's S-Craft during crit turn bonuses with Morale buffed and Lorence's defence lowered (Kloe's craft helped with that). Rest of the battle was just surviving with Earth Walls, Earth Walls, a little bit heals, items and even more Earth Walls. Schera's craft for speeding up allies helped a lot too.

[Letari]

I gave all my members accessories that block his status abilities (forget if it was for silence and confusion or what) and the bonus CP generating accessory to Estelle since she would be using crafts the most. I set Schera to be a long range damage dealer and interruptor (saving craft points for impede abilities is a huge help) as well as keeping Clock EX up on everyone. Kloe was the healer and Earth wall buffer of course and Estelle focused on meleeing his earth wall to waste the charges and using arts if you've set her quartz that way.
Then when he gets down to 1100-2000 hp I finish him with Barrage if I can steal an attack up or crit bonus. I got him on my first try in my normal playthrough and by the time I got to him on nightmare I had enough Gladiator Belts, Headbands and Grail Lockets that every fight was trivial at that point. =/

[Dudu(C)]

Well, This is my favorite battle of the game~ I lost a couple of times on my first playthrough in order to defeat him and I can say, it was pure luck, the purest type of luck hahahaha. but here comes my story in beating him. First let´s remember how tough he is

This is the kind of boss where the difficulty depends on which itens you´re using, 'cause you know, lorence has A LOT of attacks with status effects for a boss, and I like that so much :D
He can inflict mute, impede, confuse, faint and has a very good healing (I really hate when he just spend two turns healing)

For the status effects I was really... unprepared, I thought I had the itens which gives immunity for confuse and mute but... I had only 1 for confuse and 2 for mute and my grail locket was with joshua~ so I used the accessory to prevent faint in everyone and the two for mute with kloe and shera and the confuse one with estelle, and now comes the quartz~

Everyone was using defense 3, hp 3 and action 2 and cast 1-2 and I don´t remember the rest sorry, The battle would have been much easier if I had synthezided more action 3 buuuuuut~ I didn´t do that.

The first thing I did was cast clock up on my kloe and afterwards shera while estelle was just using arts, my arts were dealing roughly 500 dmg per art and 700 with kloe´s impose, and I needed to get him to at least 3000 hp and at that same time have an critical buff for my estelle~ and he had to be imposed at that same time for my S-craft deal at least 2400 dmg and for shera finishing him off. It was at the very least 4 fights until I had the perfect opportunity (I have to consider the luck of him not using his status effects attacks on me, and mostly using vile thorn on kloe and shera) the demon flames was pretty anoying too so I tried to get only estelle near him, to make her the only target, it actually worked, but he focused more the vile thorn on the other two~ In the end I got real lucky

My character levels were...I think 30-33 can´t remember well. In my honest opinion he´s the hardest boss in the game~ a lot harder than reverie final form. And I expect some fights like that in SC too, they would be interest hahaha,

Oh and congratz for you to beat him too :D

[myhr2]

Lorenze fight is noticeably harder than the rest of the game (except maybe the last Boss). But there are effective strats against him.

Things I've noticed right away :
- his basic attack isn't very threatening
- he will try to interrupt your spells with his low damage ranged attack
- when he reaches around 50% HP, he'll start to cast Tear like there is no tomorrow...

So, my basic strategy was the following : keep him debuffed with Kloe (lowering Str and Def is awesome! Glatiator's Belt was very usefull in that regard), wear him down with Arts, with characters far away one from each other, which means one party member will often get interrupted, but with almost no damage, making it easier to focus on Damage and Debuff.
Then at around 4500 HP left, unleash Sherazard and then Estelle's S-Crafts to finish him without allowing him to recover.

No Earth Wall used, minimal healing, just basic Boss behavior manipulation, really.

However, I must add that I had to reload a save after understanding that Lorence was able to heal himself, and I had to drag the fights before a little in order to fill my S-Craft gauges.

But, yeah, all in all, cool fight!

[Mizufluffy]

I actually failed my first attempt during my 2nd playthrough because Kloe and Schera got confused during the fight, I totally forgot how annoying his status inflicting attacks are. It was close I didn't just say: "Come on girls, it's no time for us to fight among ourselves when we have more serious problem here..".

Since this was already 2nd playthrough, I had two Grail Lockets (unfortunately Joshua had 2nd) so Estelle was completely safe from status conditions and had Gladiator Belt (Joshua had 2nd belt) for CP recovery. Kloe had protection against mute and confusion and Schera had protection against seal and confusion, mostly because I wanted Kloe for Earth Wall and Schera for ally speed up craft.

But yeah, that fight was so annoying. Even if I did like a little over 4k crit with Estelle's S-Craft (morale + def debuff on target) then there was still a possibility that it would be completely healed in three turns (double protection + 2x 2k heals). Another time when I was afraid he would heal a lot was when I did my another huge hit and got it to around 600 hp. There was also that one time when Schera got separated from Kloe and Estelle and was out of range of Earth Wall.
And also the time when both Schera and Kloe were under faint, I solved that situation quite well actually. Estelle used faint healing item on Schera who had next turn, then Schera used same item on Kloe who had turn after that and Kloe casted Earth Wall just in time. This was great also because it allowed Estelle to get close distance and be in range of Earth Wall.

And each time Lorence got full health I was like "Not again!". There were also moments that I can't say I'm proud of. For example when I tried to predict his behaviour and started casting Earth Wall and he did that double guard buff instead. Or when I casted something but I should have used an item instead. And, perhaps worst of all, I was supposed to cast Earth Wall with Kloe but I did something else... can't remember what I did but it might have been a normal attack (with a miss) or something like that. Or maybe it was that craft attack when Lorence had guard up. Not sure, something stupid anyway.

I'm so glad I don't have to kill him again for a while. When I think all of those mistakes I did... even near end of the fight.. if he only had done double guard and few heals then most of my efforts had been pointless. I'm glad I had bought plenty of those ice creams which gave 25 CP per each, they were really useful when I was preparing for this fight.

[Ztarman]

Lorence is easy if you know how to exploit his AI. The only real problem is his ridiculous speed increase when low on health and his cheap tendency to heal a lot.

[jgkitarel]

Oh yes, he approaches "That One Boss" territory. There is a reason there is an achievement for beating him. I beat him with Estelle, Joshua and Kloe. It took a few tries as I learned the mechanics of his fight, but eventually. The trick is to save your big damage attacks until he is around half health (which can be a pain in the ass on its own), buff the attack of your characters, and then hammer him with your CP attacks to finish him off.

Earth Wall is your friend, so have two characters with it, to keep them separate enough to avoid most of his AoE (I had one TPK because of this).

[Ztarman]

Originally posted by jgkitarel:

Oh yes, he approaches "That One Boss" territory. There is a reason there is an achievement for beating him. I beat him with Estelle, Joshua and Kloe. It took a few tries as I learned the mechanics of his fight, but eventually. The trick is to save your big damage attacks until he is around half health (which can be a pain in the ass on its own), buff the attack of your characters, and then hammer him with your CP attacks to finish him off.

Earth Wall is your friend, so have two characters with it, to keep them separate enough to avoid most of his AoE (I had one TPK because of this).

Joshua? The party consists of Estelle, Sherazard, and Kloe when challenging him. Joshua runs off with Olivier and Zane.

[Oshibo]

I'm confused I don't see that acheivement anywhere on the list for the game, I went to my account acheivements twice to make sure.

[Letari]

Preemptive Powerhouse is like a secret achievement, so is S-Craft? What S-Craft? that doesn't show up until you actually meet the requirements. Preemptive Powerhouse requires that you defeat Lorence in the second fight with him (not at the tournament) and S-Craft? What S-Craft?requires that you not use S-Crafts during any of the phases in the final battle (I believe you can still use normal crafts though).

[old Charlie]

Kloes CP-debuff makes this battle alot easier. Finished him on my 2nd try.

[SchwartZero]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiSrUwMs-m0

What a Pro...

[Dogui]

Originally posted by Sairaorg Bael:

I'm confused I don't see that acheivement anywhere on the list for the game, I went to my account acheivements twice to make sure.

You need to defeat him if you want to finish the game with max Bracer Points i guess...so this game have a max BP achievement hauhauh

[Dudu(C)]

Originally posted by meginb:

Preemptive Powerhouse is like a secret achievement, so is S-Craft? What S-Craft? that doesn't show up until you actually meet the requirements. Preemptive Powerhouse requires that you defeat Lorence in the second fight with him (not at the tournament) and S-Craft? What S-Craft?requires that you not use S-Crafts during any of the phases in the final battle (I believe you can still use normal crafts though).

So... for the S-Craft ? What S-Craft ? achievement you can´t use S-Crafts in any phase of the final bosses...that also include the part where we just smash the poor reverie with 5000 hp ?

[myhr2]

In that third part, Reverie just doesn't attack anyway, so why take the risk? ^^

[Dudu(C)]

Because I like to complete smash reverie´s head with my S-Crafts :c, buuuut I can do that way too~