Cassius Bright

[BuggeX]

No Boss in the whole 3 games where harder than him.. the name divines blade fit very well.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by BuggeX:

ok forget about cassius tempest pom is a real pain lol

Agate => Dragon Dive 2. GGS tempest pom. Seriously, that actually happened. Easiest boss in the game, because he got oneshotted by an S-craft. My Agate had 3680 STR though. Dunno how much less STR you can have and still do damage to them. I dunno if that works on nightmare mode or not. This was on normal.

Another option is using Zin, and set him up with a full speed setup, like kitty armor + boots. You should act before the poms, use his STR buff, then use the rest of your CP gauge to S-craft them. That should give you way more STR than 3680 base I had with Agate. You should effectively have 5k range STR after buffs, which can probably kill them all on nightmare before the poms have a chance to even act.

[Nonexistinghero]

I played on hard and didn't think he was very hard. I didn't even play with my usual team (Tita + Klaudia). Instead I used Estelle and Joshua because I thought it would be more fitting. In fact, I think it's pretty ridiculous that Estelle and Joshua aren't required for that fight.

Anyhow, I managed without too much trouble. But if it was on Nightmare, I think it would've been a lot harder even with my usual team and setup. But I still think it would have been doable.

But it was a pretyt badass fight. Everyone else needed help, but this one is a living legend and he took them all on alone.

[OnlyOffensive]

yep, pretty easy fight, he sure does pack the punch, but unlike previous bosses he doesnt have any additional minions, which make managing earth guard piece of cake, just get good number on speed for characters, buff few speed ex's and enjoy easy victory. He will be unable to break turn order and you can maintain support easy. The only trick in this fight is that he doesnt do his S-craft as first action and you actually need to predict it, but with grail sphere should be easy enough.

[Talithmara]

I beat him on my first try (Well, okay, TECHNICALLY second, since I wanted to see his interactions with Estelle and Josha before loading back to my main members I had properly geared) since I noticed the following:

Even with Clock Up EX, he gets a good number of turns compared to you, so don't even bother wasting time on Earth Wall. Not even joking. No point in spending one turn to block one attack when it's a toss-up who goes next - the healing spells have a much faster cast time and give you better odds. Earth Wall is amazing and all, but there's a time and a place for it - and this is about as far from it as you can get without giving him a map-wide arts canceller.


So with that in mind, I capitalized on the following:

- DO save up Kevin's CP for 200 CP Grail Sphere. Since it blocks two attacks, and against Cassius, Sacred Breath 2 just isn't enough to be worth the CP cost. Save it for when things look really bad, so you have a chance to recover.

- Kloe. Just. Kloe. She's been a staple since FC for Lichtkries, and this battle was no different. However, I DID try a new "Boss Buster" setup for this fight, since I expected it to be brutal. I had Arch Drain and Energy Drain on her (Onyx Gem, Cast 2, Mirage Gem, Silver Gem, Water Gem, Sapphire Gem, and Heal) along with all the ATS boosting equipment I could use - so she was attacking and healing for 5000+ damage simultaneously. This meant it was good when Cassius attacked her, since she was able to keep up the damage without dying as quickly as Kevin or Richard.

- My last ally had Zodiac, in addition to Energy Drain, and much like Kloe, had an ATS-ccentric equipment setup. She also had Ingenuity 2, which is why I gave Kloe Arch Drain instead.

... in other words, just like in FC, it was an Artsfest.

[Narffle]

He actually starts off easy enough, just hits fairly hard combined with AT Delay. The problem comes from the Str/Spd self-buff which he doesn't seem to use 'till after his S-Craft.

Opened with Grail Sphere to block his initial AT Delay, then used Richard+Josh to push him to the top corner with Kevin+Blank grouped in the back. Both K/B had Earth Wall so it's easy enough to keep it up on R/J and themselves.

While he's certainly the beefiest, he's fairly straight forward. The first fight of the area with the Freeze/Faint/Blind helper buddies was far more annoying.

[Mark]

spoiler title.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Either group up and use Earth wall, or spread your party members out in this fight so multiple characters are less likely to get hit by attacks. If you got La Tear-All on someone, you shouldn't have any issues keeping your groups HP topped off.

[OnlyOffensive]

Originally posted by Ranylyn:

Even with Clock Up EX, he gets a good number of turns compared to you, so don't even bother wasting time on Earth Wall. Not even joking. No point in spending one turn to block one attack when it's a toss-up who goes next - the healing spells have a much faster cast time and give you better odds. Earth Wall is amazing and all, but there's a time and a place for it - and this is about as far from it as you can get without giving him a map-wide arts canceller.

You sure didnt see what a high speed characters are capable of. Gear your casters with some kitty gear, give them stuff like fools emblem and everything you said above become total nonsense. Im telling you, with proper management he doesnt break turn order, quite opposite, after using heavy crafts like lighting strike or whatever it name, he will be out of order. So there is absolutely no problem in maintaining earth walls or heals if you know what to do. Just so you can make some conclusions, he hitted me only once in fight, and i only used grail sphere once just before his S-craft, so it is TOTALLY possible to match his speed, not using heavy abilities, especially since single earth shield is a very light time.

btw your "strat" also not gona work well on nightmare i'd imagine, since he will probably oneshot your Kloe.
As for good characters, about anyone will be good, with proper gear, Richard himself is crazy good, one of the best characters for sure and orbal gear tita stands above others slightly, but all good imo on any difficulty.

[AH-1 Cobra]

I forget if you can get the Time Quarz (cast 3) before or after Cassius. But I avoided using it for a long time due to the debuffs, but that quartz is really good to use on healing/buffing characters. Use it on someone with kitty armor + speed setup, and you can cast buffs/heals with no wait. Meaning you can Earth Wall up before Cassius acts a single time, and keep it up. Oliver and Renne make good candidates for this due to having 6 linked slots. You could easily get Earth Wall (or the full screen version) + Zodiac + Genesic barrier by end game. The later of which is very useful against the last boss.

[OnlyOffensive]

Originally posted by crimsonedge11:

I forget if you can get the Time Quarz (cast 3) before or after Cassius. But I avoided using it for a long time due to the debuffs, but that quartz is really good to use on healing/buffing characters. Use it on someone with kitty armor + speed setup, and you can cast buffs/heals with no wait. Meaning you can Earth Wall up before Cassius acts a single time, and keep it up. Oliver and Renne make good candidates for this due to having 6 linked slots. You could easily get Earth Wall (or the full screen version) + Zodiac + Genesic barrier by end game.

after, its from mirionere or whatever its name minigame, basically from the next and last trial on that plane.

[Plerr]

Earth Wall didn't help me much against Cassius because he would spam his AOE AT Delay craft if we were grouped or the one where he hits everyone in a wide area and knock it off anyway. I got crushed the first time and I had to swap Renne for Olivier and give him La Tearall to survive the second one. Renne was just too slow and fragile at that point.

[Hat8]

Hard difficulty

For the opening part of the battle I had Richard out front tanking him while the other 3 stood together and got protected by earth wall spam. Didn't go crazy and use Zerams but I did use some food. Finished him off with powerful S-Crafts.

Renne is definitely a good pick for this battle.

[asdf]

If you're properly equipped for it it's a pushover really - just stack as much +speed as you can, use mueller as support for more speed, and spam earth wall or gaia shield if you don't want to clump together. I just beat him on nightmare with no NG+ carryover and I didn't find it at all difficult - I had a 189 speed Kevin spamming earth wall though (2 fool emblems for +50, kitty suit for another +30, +15 speed from boots and onyx gem + cast 2 of course), and use clock up EX on all of your characters.

[Hat8]

Originally posted by Ryuseki:

Why are non nightmare people in here bragging about anything? lel

Can anybody really brag? He was using a staff which shows that he was tough enough to go against the "system" and not go all out.

[Sewer56]

Originally posted by Jindujun93:

Actually there is one that's even harder - I hope you're looking forward to the last battle of the Nightmare Arena (which is accessible on Normal difficulty too, as long as you find the corresponding items).

Originally posted by Ryuseki:

Why are non nightmare people in here bragging about anything? lel

Did someone say Nightmare? I've just beat those two on my first try, on Nightmare (NG) :P, I did Game Over previously though on Kilika + Walter though on my first attempt qand had to restart the arena to get to Loewe + Cassius again, can't deny that :P.

Tita's Mech for strategic abuse and Ries' heal ability were a real lifesaver, got K.O'd a few times before I managed to hold strategic manipulation of Cassius with the use of Tita, as for Loewe, just didn't touch the poor guy at all, so he wouldn't clone right from the offset, still, since the start of my playthrough I am yet to use a Zeram item (I've also made a mistake of not cashing in my Zemurian Ore for items before entering this arena, I didn't know at the time).

Individual Cassius wasn't worth it, was cake, Individual Loewe/Schwarzritter I just abused the AI so badly that he was a joke and the two of them together were surprisingly very decent, were almost giving me a run for their money until I figured a little something about Cassius' craft having a certain little property, or change compared to regular attack I could exploit, making him not knock my entire team's guard at once each time :P. All in all, good fight, but not the worst one of this playthrough thus far :P