Advice for Vulcan (on Epic)

[anothrgamer1234]

I am currently at about Level 34 or so with the majority of my available skills maxed out, and even with full fire resistance or absorption on most of my party I can't seem to beat Vulcan. I can get him down to very low health and usually survive his supernova with maybe 1 or 2 deaths, but then he just keeps buffing himself faster than I can dispel him (the one where he also gives haste to himself, the Ores I can deal with more easily unless I'm more focused on avoiding a wipe) and then wipes me with his non-elemental charge attack.

I assume I should be trying to set up the Wet+Ice combo for extra damage so I try to use seaweed chomper to force rain (and also prevent him from using Burn to heal) and supplement it with skills like Judgment on Natz to keep her alive and buffed-up limit breaks (at least until he starts spamming his dispel too), but I still can't quite seem to bring his health down to capture-able levels without dying myself first. Is there any specific gear setup, mix of skills, or other general strategy I should be using?

[rikkaWow]

i equipped matt natz and i think lance with as much fire res as i could (100%+) and that was good enough. equipping lance/anna with defensive/utility equips such as priest/pope set tends to be pretty good for every fight. if you havent, i recommend putting revive on anna and healmore on natz.

[Panterich]

To "beat" and to "capture" are different things. You can beat him on epic without capturing, then load and capture him on lower difficulty.

The only other thing that comes to mind, is that you should use viking monolith at the last turn, to get extra actions. Try to capture him right before he discharges. Use all the tools you have: 3 capture equips, good luck on yourself, stagger and burn on him. Debuff him with putrid worm summon. Thats exactly 6 actions in total.

Btw, looks like just under 50% HP should make him capturable.

[anothrgamer1234]

Originally posted by Noire Is Waifu:

i equipped matt natz and i think lance with as much fire res as i could (100%+) and that was good enough. equipping lance/anna with defensive/utility equips such as priest/pope set tends to be pretty good for every fight. if you havent, i recommend putting revive on anna and healmore on natz.

I don't think I have the pope set yet, where is it? (Currently have all 4 orbs, haven't fought 3-headed zombie hydra or ultra chibi knight yet.)Andere any reason why Anna should have revive and not Natz? It's worked for me with most of Epic up to Telperion.

The weather already burns him, but since burn restores Vulcan's health I don't know if that'll actually help me. I also try to keep defensive buffs up as much as possible but that just makes Vulcan dispel me every turn.

Could it be that I need more summon points? My max is 175 and I'm starting to think I need to get it higher.

[rikkaWow]

Slightly late response, but if you haven't beaten him yet:

Using revive over the course of a boss fight consumes far more turns than healmore due to the importance of setting up auto revive, and you would much rather have anna take that loss compared to natz who deals way more damage. You don't need priest equips for any particular fight but they are very helpful on lance and anna, the two characters best suited for relegating to mostly utility, because they have good defensive stats and randomly give auto revive.

Try to save aoe limit breaks for when there are multiple ores alive. Keep in mind that the best way to remove syphon is lance's heal strike so try not to use that cooldown if possible when vulcan is under 50%, and for that reason keep him in reserve for that portion of the fight if heal strike is available so he doesnt get syphoned himself.

The two biggest things to watch out for against vulcan are not letting the ores set you too far behind on health/revive status, and making sure to survive the limit break at ~25%. His face will change for the last time when he reaches the point that he will use it, but once you get him close to 30% you should try to set up auto revives (preferably on people who resist whichever ores are currently alive, if you dont think you can kill them in time) or simply use either the stumpy gloop or lost fallen summon to grant morale to your party. Alternatively you can use the angel mirror summon for immunity to magic damage. Generally speaking, simply having one of these summons available is almost good enough to win the fight on its own. I only used morale myself in the epic boss rush, the first time i beat vulcan i just got through with auto revives.

Your max SP doesn't really matter for any encounter in the entire game, the most expensive "highly useful" summon is viking monolith at 95, with the other borderline mandatory summons (imo just stumpy gloop and angel mirror) being in the 20s.

[correction needed]

Bit of a late reply, but I figured out that when Vulcan buffs himself, it is easiest to summon a Flybot (Red or Yellow) and his Atk, Magic Atk, Def and Magic Def will both go down to -45

[anothrgamer1234]

Not late, was just taking a break for a while. Natz is already fairly resistant to syphon and has autorevive from the fairy flair, but you make a good point with lance. Didn't think about using Angel Mirror before, I'll see if that works.

And using the Eyebot doesn't work well, that just gets him to reapply the buffs.

[Epicsteve2]

Don't dispel him as he will rebuff immediately. I'd say save your limit breaks until he starts buffing, then unleash them all to quickly get rid of them. I made a video if it's any help:
https://youtu.be/kbPtLGpCAJ8

[arnaud_defrance]

Better method, equip somebody with all capture items (no Leg is good for that : weapon, hat, armor, flair) and you can capture Vulcan on epic at about 40% hp. You need good luck on the capturer, and you can use the summon robot to reserve Vulcan buffs into debuffs. Then it's easy.

Resistance-wise, you need fire above 100% on your team, so fire heal you. It makes keeping your team up absurbly easier.

[Natzor]

Originally posted by arnaud_defrance:

Better method, equip somebody with all capture items (no Leg is good for that : weapon, hat, armor, flair) and you can capture Vulcan on epic at about 40% hp. You need good luck on the capturer, and you can use the summon robot to reserve Vulcan buffs into debuffs. Then it's easy.

Resistance-wise, you need fire above 100% on your team, so fire heal you. It makes keeping your team up absurbly easier.

I found that vulcan would stop using Fire skills or do it rarely when he started to hit the 40% threshhold (often he would either spam his Wind attack that dispels you, do his Aoe Water move or Bomb/Earth skills). He would however use them pretty frequently from 100% - 50% Hp (either Aoe or Solo) along with his ram attack which is non-elemental.