An Actual Good Guide for Fatalis: Part 2/2

[ZealousAbsurd]

Part 1: Part 1

How to play MHW and Fight Fatalis:

There’s quite a bit of information so here we go. I’ll first talk about the general way you should be playing MHW, and how it applies to Fatalis, and then I’ll go over some general tips for the fight itself. Keep in mind, I main Long Sword, so some of the things I say might not directly apply to other weapons, but the information and philosophies are the same and will absolutely still help you even if you use a different weapon.


1. Stop spamming attacks:

You don’t get to spam attacks, the monster does. Understand that you need to stop attacking in order to respond to the monster’s attack so you don’t get hit. It might seem quite obvious, but you’ll be amazed at how much you’re getting hit and dying, simply because you are attacking too much.

This is especially true for longsword, where you build stacks of damage by using foresight slash, which you can only perform after you do an attack, and the monster attacks you.

This is why I recommend Long Sword to newer players as well, it teaches you the basis of the game since the "playstyle" or "philosophy" of Longsword matches pretty well with the game: Don’t spam attacks. Stop attacking, and respond to the monster attacking you.


2. Avoid long animations:

These are what get you killed. If the monster’s current attack is ending, you don’t have time to throw out the triple hit Spirit 3 attack with longsword, no matter how badly you want that roundslash for damage stacks. For longsword players, practice building stacks solely through foresight. No more spamming the special attack button to do the entire spirit combo to land roundslash, it takes too long.


3. Be disciplined:

Wait and see. When I was learning Fatalis, I would literally stop after every single input of any attack or movement, and stop and see what Fatalis was doing to see what I was able to do next. You have to wait and see what is coming so you know how you can react, whether you need to dodge or if you can continue attacking.

With Longsword, when you land the foresight slash, and you’re one button away from performing the roundslash and getting a damage stack, you still need to wait and see if you’re able to roundslash. It takes a good bit of discipline to not get greedy and just throw it out in hopes that you land it. Failure to do so can get you killed.

Then, if you have decided to throw out the roundslash, the direction you roundslash in matters quite a bit. And then on top of that, the auto sheathe animation after the roundslash (if you don't do special sheathe) also lets you walk in whatever direction you input. This small bit of movement is a big deal. I often try to roundslash away from Fatalis to either the left or right.

If you do a roundslash or helmbreaker, you also need to wait and consider if you can safely perform a special sheathe. Don’t do special sheathe unless you’re confident it won’t get you killed, as special sheathe locks your character in place, and the only way to move is the iai spirit slash, or the regular slash into a roll. You can get killed quite often from special sheathe. Return to the habits of the pre-Iceborne Long Sword Players and let your character sheathe the sword if it is necessary, which most of the time, is.

In short, stop spamming, don’t do long animations unless you know you have the opportunity to do so, and be disciplined.


4. Stay mobile and focus on positioning.

Constantly repositioning is part of the fight. Don’t just take whatever angle you have because you got behind him. Simply walk back into a good position, and continue fighting. Take the time to walk around back into his crotch/torse/head so you can get good hits. Hitting his legs or tail or neck or basically anything that isn't torso or head is a waste of time.

Another tip is to stay close to Fatty. If he moves back, you move with him. If he runs away, you run towards him. Being far from Fatalis makes him use much more dangerous attacks that can be quite hard to dodge. Even if he does do those longer range attacks, if you’re close to him, it’s much easier to dodge.


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Learning the attacks:


So, we have a comfort build with the idea that we are not focusing on dealing as much dps as possible, and instead we are here to learn the attacks of Fatalis. In fact, if you just wanted to run around and watch Fatalis for several minutes or hours to learn all the telegraphs and attacks, and literally never hit him at all, that’s fine. It’s actually what I did. If you stare hard enough, focus hard enough on learning what each attack’s telegraph looks like at the very beginning of the animation, you will get to a point where you know what attack is coming out as soon as he starts the attack.

"It does not matter if you fire only once. Show me control." -Kratos


Here are some examples.

The crotch spray that starts from his crotch and goes outward has a sound effect. It’s pretty hard to tell he’s doing this attack just by looking at his body, so the sound cue is very useful. The fire really does just spawn on top of you, so keep your ears open.

He has hand slams and a hand sweep. The hand slams are fast, too fast for a foresight and roundslash. But the sweep is slower and gives a bit more of an opening afterwards to do a foresight and roundslash. He will often do hand slams and finish off with the sweep at the end.

If he does a tail swipe, whichever shoulder he looks behind, the tail will swipe starting from the opposite side.

The shotgun blast has a hissing sound. You’re only safe from this attack if you’re extremely deep into his crotch or thigh area, or just far away enough in general, but if you have max level evade window, you can avoid the explosion by waiting for the hissing noise to end, and then hitting spacebar. Though this is pretty hard.

Sound cues and animations. Stare at them enough and you will learn them.

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General tips for Fatalis:

Watch some speed runs.
Actually this goes for every monster. They help a lot with learning and finding out the openings for some big damage opportunities. I actually recommend watching the slower speed runs as they’re usually better for learning. This piece of advice actually applies to any monster with any weapon.


Don’t do the ghillie cannon strategy unless you’re really dying to reach that cutscene.
I think you’re better off to just learn the fight. Also, the damage isn’t great, and if you’re playing a weapon like longsword, it’s much better to get the artillery knockdown using the roaming ballista with heavy artillery 2 equipped since you'll likely have 2 or 3 stacks as well as agitator proc'd.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Fatalis has a heavy artillery damage threshold. When you do enough damage with the cannons, ballista, or roaming ballista, Fatalis will get knocked down to the floor, and you get to temporarily smack him for free.

Getting the knockdown at the beginning of the fight as a longsword means I won’t deal any damage since I don’t have my Long Sword damage stacks. It’s a bit of a waste. Also, you can actually knockdown Fatalis twice, maybe even 3 times utilizing all the artillery on the map, but past the first knockdown, it’s hardly worth it. As a full team, your whole team will possibly miss out on damage for similar reasons, or if they take too long to come off the wingdrakes at the start of the mission.


Dragon pods.
2 Dragon Pods on Fatalis will cause him to recoil back. Note that these only register if you hit him while he’s in an attack animation. Other animations such as him flinching, being knocked back, recoiling, or doing a pin attack do not count and hitting him with a pod during those animations will not count.

Keep Fatalis “primed” with 1 pod and keep pods on you whenever possible so that you can flinch him in an emergency to save yourself or a teammate.


Fatalis has 2 modes, one where he’s standing, and the other where he’s on all 4’s.
His attacks change as he goes from one to another, but where this really matters is wallbanging. If you try to wallbang Fatalis while he’s on his hind legs, he will simply go down to all 4’s. This also counts as one of the 3 chances you get to “flinch” or “turn” monsters before they enrage. Once Fatalis is on all 4’s, if you then try to wallbang him, he will run forward, possibly hit a wall, take massive damage to his head, and become enraged.


If Fatalis is in the air, and he decides to target a player that is hiding in a smoke bomb, he will land on the floor and look around.
This is a good way to stop him from flying, as he’s very hard to hit and does some annoying attacks. Take note that smoke bombs are not always safe and can sometimes still decide to attack you while you are in the smoke if other players are not in smokes. If everyone is in a smoke, Fatalis SHOULD, 99% of the time, land on the floor.


1st Nova:
As soon as the fire ends and you are able to leave the iron curtain, grab the binders next to the wall. We can use this after the 2nd nova.

After the first nova, Fatalis will fly back. A good strategy is to throw a smoke on the roaming ballista, and make sure you have heavy artillery. Fatalis will land on the floor, and you can attack him almost completely for free on the roaming ballista while you’re smoked. If you land about 80% of shots on the chest with agitator and heavy artillery and tenderized, you will get the knockdown.

If you have teammates, and they don’t get in a smoke bomb, and Fatalis decides to target them, well, he’ll continue flying for a while and it’s rather annoying. Also if you're in a smoke bomb, but your teammates aren't, Fatalis can target you through the smoke and hit you anyway.


2nd Nova
As soon as the gates drop, go to the right where the ballista is in front of the 2nd binder. As soon as Fatalis turns/begins his attack after the big roar/energy wave thing, bind him and he will fall out of the air. If he targets you, his head will land nicely on the ramp in front of the ballista. If you're coordinating with your team, the binder goes to bind, the other 3 players simply go to the ramp as soon as the gates drop from the 2nd nova.

Use the 2nd binder whenever suits your fancy. Use it for head damage if you're struggling to get that.

Also, after the 2nd nova, Fatalis’s fire attacks will be stronger based on how many head breaks you have done beforehand. If you have not gotten any head breaks by this point, his fire attacks will basically one shot. If you’ve gotten 1 head break, his fire attacks will be weaker, and if you have 2 head breaks, they will be back to normal. This is why getting head damage is so important on Fatalis. When he’s on all 4’s that’s your opportunity to get head damage. 1 hit on the head is easily worth 20 on the body.


And Lastly, NEVER take your eyes off Fatalis.
Even if you’re far away for whatever reason, when you look away is when he will kill you.

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AND. That’s pretty much it. I tried to keep this as short and condensed as possible without leaving out important details, so hopefully you guys weren’t too bored by the load of information. There is of course a lot more stuff I could go over, but hey you’ll learn that on your own. Hope this guide helps and don’t be a ♥♥♥♥ and don’t get discouraged. And definitely don’t say “I’ll just stay up here at the camp.” You don’t get better by not playing.

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For my fellow Longsword chads: I made a video detailing some of the helmbreaker opportunities as well as some other small tips.

MHW Fatalis Longsword Helmbreaker Guide

[SuicidalBanana]

Excellent guide! You should post it as one to the guide tab so people can save it to their favorites!

[ZealousAbsurd]

Originally posted by SuicidalBanana:

Excellent guide! You should post it as one to the guide tab so people can save it to their favorites!

I didnt know that existed till like 2 mins ago (I'm new to steam forums entirely), but looking in there, it doesn't seem like something people really use? Not sure.

[SuicidalBanana]

Originally posted by ZealousAbsurd:

I didnt know that existed till like 2 mins ago (I'm new to steam forums entirely), but looking in there, it doesn't seem like something people really use? Not sure.

plenty of people use guides! and you can easily access them from the shift-tab menu while ingame. definitely quite frequented.

[Qua2ar]

You forgot 2 important things which make the fight easy:

1. Smoke bombs break the fight and make him a joke, just spam them for easy openings, not just to make him land, you can easily use them all the time, even when he is on the ground he will pause for a couple sec and look around confused, standing STILL.

2. You can bait his cone breath attack over and over again, to get easy head dmg in.

[ZealousAbsurd]

Originally posted by Qua2ar:

You forgot 2 important things which make the fight easy:

1. Smoke bombs break the fight and make him a joke, just spam them for easy openings, not just to make him land, you can easily use them all the time, even when he is on the ground he will pause for a couple sec and look around confused, standing STILL.

2. You can bait his cone breath attack over and over again, to get easy head dmg in.

First part of Part 1:

"I'm making this post because I saw the “tutorials” and “guides” for how to beat Fatalis and was mostly disappointed with what I saw. None of them properly addressed the root of the problem that many players are having with Fatalis. From cringe “anti-Fatalis” builds that has dragon attack on longsword, to “just use this cheese method and plunderblade to get 2 head breaks easily for the evil eye”, none of these actually helped the players who were struggling with Fatalis because they got to him too early.

This is more focused for those who wish to actually learn Fatalis and excel at the fight, If you just want the evil eyes and other materials, and you wanna do that super boring method and just get the gear, and you don’t care about beating or learning Fatalis, that’s totally fine, but this post is probably not going to help in that regard."

Yes you can do that if you want. No you will not get better.

[Hariman]

And if you've held off on using things like Fortitude and the Temporal Mantle... it's probably time to give up that dose of pride.

Fatalis is quite frankly the final boss of the franchise, so you need every edge you can get.

[ZealousAbsurd]

Originally posted by Hariman:

And if you've held off on using things like Fortitude and the Temporal Mantle... it's probably time to give up that dose of pride.

Fatalis is quite frankly the final boss of the franchise, so you need every edge you can get.

Fortitude doesn't do as much as you might think or hope, your skill will still be the determining factor and mantles should be used more as a safety net, not as a crutch. When I try to teach or guide players through Fatalis, them running around trying to use all the equipment at their disposal is pretty much always just a waste of time. If they put on mantle, they lose it in 20 seconds. Much better to focus on getting in there and just learning.

But yeah maybe get your mantles if you're at Fatalis lmfao

[Hariman]

Okay... now that I've beaten Fatalis:

Does it matter which armor pieces I craft first, or if I craft my Fatalis weapon of choice first? (I have two evil eyes, so I could craft it completely, but that -30 Affinity makes me wonder if I need the full Fatalis set to make up for that.)

[sor]

Originally posted by Hariman:

Okay... now that I've beaten Fatalis:

Does it matter which armor pieces I craft first, or if I craft my Fatalis weapon of choice first? (I have two evil eyes, so I could craft it completely, but that -30 Affinity makes me wonder if I need the full Fatalis set to make up for that.)

armor first, all beta except waist, waist alpha, bc it is more deco-slot efficient

edit: also it depends on your weapon, fatalis head has 3 lvls of guard for example, so pick whatever suits you best

[Hariman]

Originally posted by sor:

Originally posted by Hariman:

Okay... now that I've beaten Fatalis:

Does it matter which armor pieces I craft first, or if I craft my Fatalis weapon of choice first? (I have two evil eyes, so I could craft it completely, but that -30 Affinity makes me wonder if I need the full Fatalis set to make up for that.)

armor first, all beta except waist, waist alpha, bc it is more deco-slot efficient

edit: also it depends on your weapon, fatalis head has 3 lvls of guard for example, so pick whatever suits you best

Greatsword, so Beta everything, and both for the waist, because both will have their uses.

Especially once I get better decorations.

[overmage]

Originally posted by Hariman:

Originally posted by sor:

armor first, all beta except waist, waist alpha, bc it is more deco-slot efficient

edit: also it depends on your weapon, fatalis head has 3 lvls of guard for example, so pick whatever suits you best

Greatsword, so Beta everything, and both for the waist, because both will have their uses.

Especially once I get better decorations.

Beta waist has no use for greatsword builds, I'm not sure what to tell you.

[Qua2ar]

Originally posted by Hariman:

Originally posted by sor:

armor first, all beta except waist, waist alpha, bc it is more deco-slot efficient

edit: also it depends on your weapon, fatalis head has 3 lvls of guard for example, so pick whatever suits you best

Greatsword, so Beta everything, and both for the waist, because both will have their uses.

Especially once I get better decorations.

Greatsword uses AT Velkhana armor for frostcraft, fatalis armor is useless for Greatsword.

[sor]

Originally posted by Qua2ar:

Originally posted by Hariman:

Greatsword, so Beta everything, and both for the waist, because both will have their uses.

Especially once I get better decorations.

Greatsword uses AT Velkhana armor for frostcraft, fatalis armor is useless for Greatsword.

That's just not true... For monsters with certain attack patterns like ruiner nergi, frostcraft GS build is just not as good, bc of how often you need to attack and basically you have little to no time to optimally recharge your frostcraft bar. Same thing with teostra, with optimized timings you can chain topple him and continue attacking over and over again.
BUT Frostcraft overall is the best option for GS.

[ZealousAbsurd]

Originally posted by Hariman:

Okay... now that I've beaten Fatalis:

Does it matter which armor pieces I craft first, or if I craft my Fatalis weapon of choice first? (I have two evil eyes, so I could craft it completely, but that -30 Affinity makes me wonder if I need the full Fatalis set to make up for that.)

Everyone's deco situation is different. So there's no technical best but yeah, probably don't take the alpha piece if it offers the "Guard" skill and you're playing GS lol. Most people are running the full beta set except the dragonbarbs alpha for their endgame max damage speedrunner type builds, but again, what decos you have and what you find useful is a bit unique to you.

Also yeah, Greatsword "endgame builds" are almost always frostcraft (4 piece Velkhana) but if you're not at that skill level yet, fatty armor is going to be more comfy/stay alive.

Also congrats on the win. Good work.

[makinaccion]

Oh, so you finally made a guide, good going!

I rate it 9 out of 10, solid advice but had to subtract a whole point for recommending the use of LS