[SPOILERS] Any tips on the final boss?

[DangerNoodles]

So, I just arrived at the final battle with Bhunivelze.
However, I seem to be stuck at his 4th form. His resistances are so high that none of my attacks seem to do much damage and my debilitating attacks (Deprotect or Deshell) are useless in that fight, so the battle just goes on until I run out of items/EP.

I know that I have to stagger him somehow, but I never managed to do so.
Do you have any tips on which garbs or abilities I might use to defeat him?

BTW: I play on normal, did almost all of the sidequests and Canvas of Prayer stuff and repaired my Crimson Blade.

[MechaSalvo]

I had the same problem, you have use attack and start throing him magic like crazy.

[Yorien]

4th form essentially has two phases: Stagger and damage. He's essentially immune to any form of debuff, so no point there on trying to stick anything.

Stagger phase: If last form is not staggered, damage is negligible.

1-. Stick Aerora in al three garbs (any level). Aerora is probably the best skill available for staggering.
2-. Know his skills and when you can safely cast. Keep casting Aeroras to slowly increase his stagger bar.
3-. You must somewhat keep a constant cast flow, trying to block just when needed in case you're not playing with total immunity garb setups (I tend to play with a Magic immune "Saboteur" Cyber all the time, switching accessories if I'm going to a zone where physical damaging enemies are more common).
4-. Equipping a Chaos Revenge in the garb you can spam the largest amount of skills per ATB bar is specially useful.

Damage phase: Once he's stunned, switch to full DPS mode, and try to take away the biggest chunk of life possible. Save overclocks for this phase.

You should essentially kill him in two/three damage phases.

[Stitch]

Man, ♥♥♥♥ magic attacks. A person called Thyrial on GameFAQs has found the best way to kill him without much effort.

Original thread: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/681990-lightning-returns-final-fantasy-xiii/68588243

Originally posted by Thyrial:

Here was my setup, it uses some common concepts with one HUGE difference.

1: Garb - Dragoon (my main damage schema)
Weapon - Ultima Weapon
Shield - +Str shield (can't remember the name)
Access - 15% Str
Abilities - Lancet (locked), Heavy Slash, Attack, Heavy Guard

2: Garb - Equilibrium+ (my Sab/Defensive schema)
Weapon - Blazefire Saber (not important I just wanted the extra ATB)
Shield - Ultima Shield
Access - Ghost Hood
Abilities - Attack (locked), Deshell, Deprotect, Heavy Guard

3: Garb - Vengeance (yep another physical garb)
Weapon - Chaos something (the weapon from Caius with Quick Stagger)
Shield - Can't recall but doesn't matter
Access - Other 15% Str
Abilities - Beat Down (locked), Heavy Slash, Light Slash, Mediguard

This setup was entirely based on the 4th form as once you learn the first 3 they are ridiculously easy, though I'll go over them real quick. I actually screwed up a bit too as I should have grabbed something other than Deshell as I wasn't using any magic but oh well.

The concepts behind the three garbs are pretty simple, the first is just flat out the damage, just flat out attacking the boss with Attack ends up killing him faster than focusing on other things. Heavy Slash is there for it's unusual B rankings in both Stagger Damage and Time

The second is my defensive schema, the Ghost Hood means you basically only ever have to worry about his magic and since you have basically no strength and magic with it equipped it makes it the perfect Schema for debuffing as well.

The third was designed entirely for the 4th form. I had tried the fight 4-5 times by this point, taking all the advice I could find online about staggering him and having no luck with it. So I decided to try something outside what people were suggesting and this is what I came up with. Entirely focused around staggering with Beat Down and the Quick Stagger weapon.

So on to the fight then...

1st Form: Pretty straight forward really, keep him debuffed and beat him down with the first Schema. His attacks are pretty obviously telegraphed, just swap to the second schema to defend. Because the defensive schema is Equilibrium+ you'll hardly ever have to use the 3rd Schema as the fast ATB charging it provides to your other schemas mean just while defending/reapplying debuffs your first schema will charge quite a bit.

2nd Form: Bit more annoying as almost all the damage is magic based, he has one major attack, Dancing Mad, that he charges up and it does a LOT of damage. I could never get the timing down to Just Guard it but with the HP boost from the Ultima Shield you should be able to EASILY survive it just by guarding. Other than that it's the same thing, beat him down with schema 1 and defend/debuff with schema 2, using schema 3 when you have to due to ATB.

3rd Form: The easiest form as long as you're using a Ghost Hood setup, almost all his damage is physical so as long as you swap schemas you'll take almost no damage even if you don't guard. Other than that same thing.

4th From: Ah now the fun one... Staggering this guy is a NIGHTMARE as his stagger gauge seems drop much faster than most enemies. I had no luck with the advice to spam Aeora/Thundara that most people give, using overclock to push it. So I came up with this setup that managed to Stagger him MUCH faster than I expected and it's very simple. You use Quick Slash, Beat Down, Beat Down (repeat) with the 3rd Schema and Attack, Heavy Slash (repeat) with the 1st, swapping to the 2nd for defense. The Beat Downs stack up his gauge and the others maintain the gauge, with Heavy Slash serving to both stack it up and maintain it.

It's certainly not the normal strategy people have been using but I've found it to be much more reliable.

Could not manage to beat that boss. Using Thyrial's strategy I did it on the first try (sounds like a bad advertising, but I'm not lying, I promise!)

[DangerNoodles]

So, i tried it again today and I finally got to beat him :D
Aerora really worked wonders on him, I just spammed the ♥♥♥♥ out of that spell on my magic garb (equipped with Chaos Revenge) with overclock.
After he got staggered I just switched to my Attack garb (equipped with the upgraded Crimson Blade) and finished him with overclock.

Ty for all your help guys :)

[NuhUh]

I really wish someone would tell me why Aerora skill is so OP at end game? I went through most of the lower levels never using Aerora until end game when I discovered how awesome Aerora is for quick staggers and high damage output.

Most ng+ players equip either Aerora or maxed out Elementa for quick stagger/high damage.

[KarmaTheAlligator]

Originally posted by NuhUh:

I really wish someone would tell me why Aerora skill is so OP at end game? I went through most of the lower levels never using Aerora until end game when I discovered how awesome Aerora is for quick staggers and high damage output.

Most ng+ players equip either Aerora or maxed out Elementa for quick stagger/high damage.

Because it hits several times over a few seconds, building and maintaining the stagger wave all the time. Thundara is also good. And when used with the accessory that restores ATB for every hit from a magic attack, you can see why they're great.

[ ZL|SirOO7 (Lv.99 Lightning)]

Originally posted by KarmaTheAlligator:

Originally posted by NuhUh:

I really wish someone would tell me why Aerora skill is so OP at end game? I went through most of the lower levels never using Aerora until end game when I discovered how awesome Aerora is for quick staggers and high damage output.

Most ng+ players equip either Aerora or maxed out Elementa for quick stagger/high damage.

Because it hits several times over a few seconds, building and maintaining the stagger wave all the time. Thundara is also good. And when used with the accessory that restores ATB for every hit from a magic attack, you can see why they're great.

Yeah in FFXIII Fire magic were the fastest spells, here in LR it's Aerora :-)

[Yorien]

Originally posted by NuhUh:

I really wish someone would tell me why Aerora skill is so OP at end game? I went through most of the lower levels never using Aerora until end game when I discovered how awesome Aerora is for quick staggers and high damage output.

Most ng+ players equip either Aerora or maxed out Elementa for quick stagger/high damage.

the damage output on all -rA spells, as long as the enemy has no special elemental strenght/weakness tends to be the same. Aerora is simply considered best because of his stagger sustain potential.

As Karma said, Aerora, Thundara and Elementa are multihitting spells that deal their damage over a time lapse, and while an enemy is receiving damage can't start recovering from stagger; Fira and Blizzara, while having the same ammount of stagger value, deal it on a single hit, and thus, specially on rapid stagger decay monsters, by the time another spell lands, the enemy may have already started recovering from the stagger. Thus, the longer the damage is spread over time, the better the spell for stagger purposes

Of the three multihitting spells:

Elementa is the fastest damaging one (enemies receive all elementa hits practically at the same time), but has a fast cast and flight speed (while, for example, Thundara doesn't actually have a "flight" pattern, but instead "forms" on top of the enemy, you may see that it's animation takes a little to actually start dealing damage). If you're sure you can stagger an enemy in a single ATB barrage of spells, you'll probably achieve the fastest stagger with Elementa.

Thundara has a medium cast time, but it's hits land thightly packed. As long as the enemy has not an extremely fast stagger recovery and you can perform the stagger with a full ATB bar spam, it's usually the "safest" one to pop.

Aerora hits have the most spread over time, which help on fast stagger recovery enemies. While it takes the longest to stagger with it, as long as the enemies don't move away from the spell and stop receiving hits, it's also the best for actually sustaining stagger bars and preventing them for dropping (specially on enemies where you must have to slowly build stagger over several ATB barrages).

So, that's why Aerora is used on many "big" (and slow-moving) enemies that require stagger buildups and where they have no special "stagger weakness" (or they actually have an "use magic attacks" weakness)

[NuhUh]

Thanks for the explaination guys! Aerora and Elemental have become my favorite stagger skills. Some great info here. I never even thought about casting speed and multiple hits casted skills had that much of an effect on gameplay.