Obtaining Abomination S Rank?

[HappyDance]

I was just wondering if anyone could give me some tips on achieving S Rank on the Abomination fight.

I've been able to kill him with 2/2 health potions and 1/1 mana potions (does that even affect rank?) and still only got S/B/S : A

Obviously, I must have to get hit even less, but I don't think I'll be making it through the fight without getting hit at least once anytime soon; is that the requirement?

Thanks!

[aemaet]

whom are you playing and what difficulty?

[Morphic]

The B ranking is you style.

Style is the combination of your combo length/style, Knight vs Stigandr comboes and is also how many times you're hit.

Basically the better comboes you do + getting hit less will increase your Style Rank. Which means you either need to get hit less or perform better comboes. Personally I went in with Light Affinity and 3 Skill Cancels as Wyatt.

What really helped me was; at some point during the first phase both bosses were very close to each other, since they were attacking one another. At that moment I blitz both of them and did a Light Attack combo -> Heavy Attack Combo -> Launcher -> Focus -> Air Combo -> Heavy Attack -> Finisher using the Sword. This was a pseudo infinite combo that stunlocked them until we reached one side. However because I was hitting 2 of them this ramped up my Combo meter and gave me a Godslayer combo. After that it was down to playing smart and not hitting hit as much as possible.

Also I *think* you can use one(1) Potion during the fight and still get an S for Health/Potion rank for this fight.

[myhr2]

The second rank, Style, is not only the number of time you get hit. It's a little more complex than that.

First, you'll loose more style if you take a slow hit. Against Abomination, it means that getting hit in the first part of the fight is less bad than getting hit in the second and especially the third part of the fight. When you fight both Azudor and Dhistan, with all the adds, unless you have quicksilver reflexes, you're bound to get hit quite a few times, but it won't lower your rank too much.

But in the other parts of the fight, you need to be extra-carefull. In my opinion, avoiding hits is easier against Possessed Dhistan than against Soul Rage Azudor, since the latter summons clones, and the more there are ennemies on the screen, the more likely you are to get surrounded, and taken off-guard. So try to kill Azudor and not Dhistan first.

Also, do not rush against the Abomination, all its attacks are very very slow, and you should be able to avoid all of them. Take your time.

Finally, Style rank is increased by performing stylish combos. The basis is that you need to use some diversity of attacks to gain Style, light, heavy, skill cancel through attacks, every 5 hits, things like that. Check BoswerLK's guide for a more complete explanation about how Style works.

In the case of Abomination fight, you'll likely get your more stylish combos in the first part of the fight, because you have many ennemies and you can make a really long chain of hit.

But really, your main focus should be to avoid getting hit in the second and third part of the fight, it should be enough to get and keep an A-rank in style.

[a cartoon duck]

The number of potions you have doesn't affect your rank, only how many Health Potions you use. You can burn through Mana Potions without penalty.

I don't know what formula goes into calculating your combo rank, but it goes up the more combos you do and lowers the more you get hit, so you can get hit a couple times and still get an A or S rank. You also wanna turn Info on in the options menu as that conveniently shows your Combo and Time thresholds during bossfights.

Also, who do you focus on in the first phase/who do you fight in the second? Personally I always have an easier time focusing on Azudor AND fighting Possessed Distahn. In the first phase Distahn spends so much time running away that whenever I hunt him Azudor or some of the other mobs usually get to me first instead and mess with me. Possessed Distahn is also a fair bit less aggressive, is easier to hit-stun out of attacks, doesn't have that annoying clone move that got way worse in the Vladyn/Gilda patch, and I am fairly certain he has either less HP or less armor, either way I tend to beat Possessed Distahn significantly faster than Soul Rage Azudor.

The Abomination is pretty simple afterwards. Whenever he turns blue he shoots light magic across the floor and whenever he turns red he shoots three aimed crystals at your current position. Only thing to watch out is that sometimes when he turns red he does a pretty painful tornado attack, so whenever I notice him gearing up to attack while red I skill-cancel outta there. I don't think I ever got punished for staying close while he's blue though.

[aemaet]

Also, during third phase be extremly careful about tiny bomb spawning near you, especially when background turns blue: it is impossible to see it at this moment (at least for me), and if it hit, even if you survive, you lose a ton of rating.

[The Lunar Child]

Only tip I want to add to the excellent ones above: if you're playing a ranged build (i.e. guns Vladyn with Esperanda, full int Reina, etc.), during the Abomination phase you can just hop on one of the lower platforms (the farthest from the boss) and stay there: it won't be able to hit you with most of its attacks, and you can just focus on avoiding the slow projectiles while spamming your ranged stuff.

[MimicMachine]

someone already said this but as a reminder:

you can't get the achievement (if you're going for that) for abomination s rank or another boss (the one in the Halls of the Fallen I think), unless you're playing on godslayer or higher difficulty.