Samurai 54: Blood on the Deck

[✚ Mariel ✚]

Just beat this, though I had to gear up to 260 shire gear and put a lot of vit and skill speed materia on. Even with potions and second wind/bloodbath the samurai guy nearly killed me at the end. I actually lost when I tried it at lvl 54 with ironworks, he just deleted me. It's even funnier how Musosai is trash talking him and then he just trashes me harder than Zenos, I feel like that old samurai is blinded by his pride or something lol

How did anyone else find this? On the one hand I'm annoyed that the difficulty spiked so hard and I wonder if there was supposed to be some healing support in that fight that glitched. On the other hand it made me feel like I had a rival that I had to work to defeat, levleling up, gearing, using materia and food. It would've felt better without Musosai trash talking him though, he was way more badass that anyone else I've fought, except maybe Zenos but even Zenos couldn't tank my HP as hard as this guy could. I'd like to see more fights like this, but as final battles or story battles, not just random super powered mooks

[Gabby]

I’ve done this, thought at first I might have to as well but it’s entirely unneeded.

Switch your role abilities for HP Recovery and defense. Keep out of AoEs and don’t focus on finishing combos. The entire point of the challenge is to teach you awareness and combat survival.

[✚ Mariel ✚]

It's not so much the AoEs as his rage of Halone combo. When I first tried the fight he did 75% of ym HP in damage with that one move, and the rest of his attacks hit generally hard. With all my healing role actions I got him down to 33% but his third rage of halone killed me. The time when I beat him his rage was only doing 50% of my HP in damage. I took the first one and use a potion, then the second one dropped me to low HP and I use my health recovery which brought me up to near full, he hit me again to half HP and then I killed him finally

I think it's definetly tuned for good gear and overlevelling, which I dont mind so much but I think it should've been the final boss. I just beat the lvl 60 boss, and although it had a lot more moves it didnt hit anywhere near as hard as that 54 guy did, it would've made more sense for the 54 guy to have been the final boss, or for the 60 guy to have the 54 guy's level of damage

[Gabby]

Here’s a hint: If you’re taking the Rage of Halone, you’re doing it wrong. You don’t have to stand still to fight him.