Beating the Optional Superboss / Min-Maxing

[slartifer]

I just finished a second playthrough and spent a while trying out mechanics & min-maxing -- and boy are there a ton of options for that late-game. So I figured I'd share what I came up with.


THE SUPERBOSS

The superboss poses fatal threats on a number of levels, but there is a way to neutralize each of these if you're careful.

1) Incredibly strong ST attacks, physical and magical.
Solution: Tanky Teresa (or Carrion -- or both) with extremely high HP, Defense, and Block; plus maxed out revival spells on both Teresa and Maric. Sometimes somebody WILL die, but good enough defense means that the tanks can often survive.

2) Extremely strong magical MT attacks.
Solution: You can sometimes get around these just by giving Teresa lots of HP and using her MT heal/revive spell, but if your timing gets screwed up, this can still doom you. The better solution is to max out everyone's elemental defenses. This means 3 Shields of Durai each with the Rainbow Crystal augment, for a total of +2 to all elemental defense. Teresa and Maric each have a +1 elemental defense passive, too.

3) Unblockable 3500 damage MT drain attack.
Solution: Everyone needs over 3500 max HP, no exceptions. This is not hard to do once you have lots of iridium but it can be a real obstacle if you try to fight the superboss as early as possible. If this lands and Maric/Teresa have other things to do, do not be afraid to have someone else throw a Rain of Rejuvenation.

4) All statuses, plus damage, MT attack
This is maybe the nastiest trick -- if you aren't protected against it, it can guarantee a loss, since both Stun and Confusion stop you from taking a turn.

Solution: Although you can piece together status defenses from augments, Teresa's passive, etc., the best solution is just to buy a Ribbon for everyone. Ribbons block certain statuses (like Burning and Bleeding) that you can't block in any other way, and I think they also resist (but do not block) instant death spells (not relevant here), so IMO they are the best use of an accessory slot for every PC anyway.

5) Paragon (sets tons of buffs on the superboss)
Solution: Shield Bash level 5 from Teresa. Sometimes you can get screwed before Teresa gets a turn, due to Paragon including a haste effect, but this is your best chance.

6) High speed
This basically compounds all the other problems. If the superboss gets actions faster than you can mitigate them, you lose. Also, though, it is possible (though unusual) to get hosed by a superboss attack even when you are well prepared -- Paragon into multiple MT attacks in a row without enough time for Teresa and Maric to repair the damage.

Solution part 1: Make controlling the flow of actions your #1 priority. Teresa's Zealous Strike level 5 and Carrion's Shockwave level 5 are the key here (along with Haste, of course), but even with a few speed boosts, the superboss will still get turns. (You can also use a water spell from Ruby, with level 5 in the water passive, to set Slow, which helps a little too.)

Solution part 2: Stun. The superboss can be stunned. Shockwave already attempts to Stun, but you have a few other options: namely Ruby's lightning spell (with level 5 in the passive), and putting two Amethyst's on Maric's swords, so he gets two chances to stun with a normal attack. If you use these consistently, you'll land a stun before most (but still not all) times the superboss actually gets to take a turn.

7) Actually killing it
Solution: because it has such hilariously high HP, and the attacks and buffs listed above do pretty paltry damage for the most part, you can set damage over time effects on any turns where Stun is already set and you don't need to heal or buff:
- Blood Tap (Ruby)
- Poison (Ruby via Dark Holy, or Maric via Water Slash)
- Burning (Ruby via a fire spell w/passive, in theory, but she really shouldn't have enough skill points for all of that)
- Bleeding (Carrion via Adept Strike)


GENERAL ENDGAME MIN-MAXING TIPS

Imbued Iridium:
The most important uses for Iridium are the Durai Armor (prevents enemy crits) and Durai Shield (built-in resist all elements). They both give over a thousand extra HP as well. The other options for those slots are fun if you want to blow stuff up with big numbers, but in the end they aren't as strong as those picks. (This also means that the defensive Lightfury choice is probably better for Carrion.) Yes, even Ruby wants both of these -- that's why you got that Experimental Potion and those Seals of Constitution. The Landis items are also great, since they all give +1 Speed (and half MP use to boot).

You won't get enough Iridium to fully outfit everyone without massive amounts of grinding. There are around 8 available just from beating bosses and quests in the last chapter, and that should also hand you enough money to purchase another 1-3 (depending on how thrifty you were in chapter 4 and whether or not you are buying Ribbons, which I recommend). After the Durai items I mentioned, I recommend picking up Landis Helms for Ruby and Teresa (and Maric if possible, but Half MP is less crucial on him).

The next best pick is probably a Cyrene Gauntlet (rings) for Ruby. The Cyrene and Galzus items are hard sells because of how they reduce other stats, but Cyrene's OK for Ruby since STR doesn't really matter for her.

If there's anyone you AREN'T buying a Ribbon for, you will want to give them a Durai Helm for sure (prevents silence *and* confusion), and if they aren't Ruby, they may also want a Durai or Galzus Gauntlet (to prevent blindness).

Lightfury:
The defensive Lightfury has the following stat differences compared to the offensive one:
-187 STR, +175 DEF, +225 INT, +10 BLK%, -2 WGH
+50% to Vexing Strike instead of Adept Slash
One-handed instead of two-handed

Otherwise they are the same. IMO, Adept Slash and 187 STR are not nearly enough to give up all the other benefits of the defensive version (including the ability to wield a Durai Shield).

Top Augments:
Divine Quintessence (from the Hearts boss) is probably best used on armor, where it provides 500 INT, 500 AGI, and 3 SPD. Maric is the obvious recipient for this.

The Anachronic Regulator has 2 effects (shield and armor) that look great, but ultimately either don't matter or are done better by an accessory. The +15% crit however is one of the best weapon augments. Because of the way CRIT is calculated, I recommend putting this on Ruby. All her spells can and do crit, and she is unlikely to have a very high crit beforehand, which means you can get the full 15% out of that bonus.

The Demonic Soul's free status effects are great. However, whereas Clear Mind multiplies ALL your INT by 1.5, Bloodlust's multiplier of 2 does not apply to STR from your weapons. Because that's generally where the vast majority of your STR comes from, it's a much less useful status. This can plausibly go on Maric (stacking with the Divine Quintessence bonus) or on Ruby. Either way, it means you can stop being tempted to put Maric's skill points into Clear Mind.

The Rainbow Prism is really expensive, and you find a bunch. Its shield buff (+1 to all magic resistances) is probably the best shield buff, but after using it on 3 Durai Shields, I would sell the rest -- you can make enough for half a piece of Iridium this way. The +10% magic damage effect sounds great, but it is additive, not multiplicative, with other magic damage bonuses (all those +50% effects on weapons), so it's really not worth it.

The Phoenix Feather sounds great but sucks. Even the weapon effect -- I tested it and it just doesn't make a significant difference that I can see. And they're expensive. Sell them.

Puffin Feathers are probably the augment of choice for any remaining armor slots (+1 SPD). They are ALSO really expensive, though, so it may not be worth it to buy them. Its 8% crit weapon augment is also good -- critical hits do 3x normal damage and seem to have a greater chance to land a status effect -- but maybe not worth buying new ones for.

For leftover weapon slots, unless you have built a serious damage dealing machine, I'd consider Behemoth Pelts. 500 HP is never a bad thing.


MISC.
The percentile bonuses on those elemental swords DO stack (additively, but still) for Maric, so his best setup in the end probably combinines the Terravolt and Gigavolt blades. This actually lets him more or less keep up with Ruby in terms of single blast damage.



Phew. Time to move on to the next game! Discussion (including disagreement and/or criticism) is welcome.

[grahfstampede]

I just beat the arena champion boss yesterday when my group was around lv 65. I fought the boss before I entered the final dungeon since I figured the loot from the boss would help with the dungeon. Looking back it probably would have been best the other way around.

Gear wise, Theresa had full imbued iridium armor, Ruby had 2 pieces, Carrion had 1, and Maric had 0. I beat the fight a bit differently although it took a very long time due to my low damage,

1. Decked Theresa out in +speed gear. I believe she had at 18.6 speed when I did the fight. She used Zealous strike almost every turn, with the occasional heal if absolutely necessary. This slowed down the boss and gave my other characters more chances to perform actions.

2. Carrion was my tank, but not in the normal way. I figured I couldn't live through any of the elemental hits so I just let him die if he was attacked. That way there was no need to heal him. That made it so that 1 hp was just as good as full hp. He occasionally buffed the other team members when he didn't die. This required someone resing everytime he died, but that wasn't that bad. I mainly had Ruby res him with items, with Maric, and Theresa occasionally ressing with spells.

3. Maric buffed everyone and did dps.

4. Ruby did dps with lifetap, resed Carrion a lot (used 19/20) of my res items, and did some dps with attacking spells.

[slartifer]

Yeah, that was more or less what I tried to do initiailly too (also before the final dungeon goodies). Several times I got through about 1/2 to 3/4 of the boss's life bar, and then died to an unlucky sequence of events. Makes sense that it's doable, it's just such a long fight that those deaths were really painful.

[Dancing Dragon Games]

Thanks for all the helpful advice Slartifer!