How to beat Yiazmat and Zodiark (The Longest and Hardest battles)

[emilstyle91]

So I just finished to beat those two, and it take me a while to figure out a strategy that works. Online there are tons of guides but most of them are wrong, or incomplete and you end up losing the battle.

I highly advice to have all the characters at least level 60, with 1-2 at level 70 and some final weapons as well. For Yiazmat, if you want to beat it in 30-35 minutes like I did, I will explain how to do it.

I only used three characters for both of them:
Vaan: Knight, time battlemage
Balthier: Bushi, Shikari
Penelo: White Mage, Monk

ZODIARK:
Zodiark has been the hardest boss in the game, as I had to figure out how the hell to beat him. He was the first to be able to kill all my team twice and game over me before I could beat him.

The thing about zodiark is his last 10% of health.
The first 90% is quite easy as every other boss, but then when his HP goes lower than 10%, it become simply invincible.

He throws up a barrier who protect him from ANY damage, that it last for 30 seconds and you only have some windows of 2-3 seconds to attack him before he put that up again. The thing is during these very short period of time, you will be reviving your characters, because in this final phase this boss also spawns his final move once every 10-15 seconds.

However, there is a way to beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of him: You have to kill him faster than the speed he use to get into his final form.

So when I went in I used basch only, and he got killed from his final move that he uses immediatly upon entering the room.
Then I switched to the main team (vaan, balthier and penelo) and all of them have reverse on them. This is a great strategy as many Zodiark attacks will heal you instead of damaging you, and you do not have to spend time healing your characters.

Then you have to use berserk on balthier, who was equipped full gengi and with the masamune. DO NOT use holy weapons on Zodiark, cause he is smart and as soon as you do , he is able to change element and absorb holy as well, so you end up healing him before evey realizing it.

So with all three characters on REVERSE and balthier, vaan and penelo beating him, his HP bar goes down quite fast. Here is the final trick: When the HP bar is around 15-20% you need to use your mist.
Here you need to be really lucky, try to strike for 12-18 hits. If this goes well you will have shotted him, so you will skip his final phase when he becomes invincible.

I didn't kill him but after the mist he was left with like 2% and balthier was still on berserk and he took care of him.

YIAZMAT
This is not the strongest boos, cause for me was Zodiark, but is by far the longest and most tricky battle in the game.
The tactic is exactly the same as the above, so have balthier, vaan and penelo, same levels, same classes. For this I only used dark robes and yagiu blade on balthier so he does dark damage +50%, which is waht Yiazmat is weak on.

The strategy is the same:
Vaan and Penelo revive allies with rise and arise, while balthier uses phoenix.
then you have the appy reverse to any ally from both vaan and penelo.
Then you have vaan apply berserk on balthier
Then you have cure stop, petrify and sap which are the three conditions Yiazmat can inflict.
Then you have attack him.

Try to stay always in the center of the colosseum, as if you go down the stairs he will go rage mode: casting himself with a lot of spells like regen and shell, and use a lot of instant death skills.

For the first 5 bars, switch balthier with basch and use expose and writh on him, lowering down his physical defense and physical attack by 50%. This will make the battle...50% easier and 50% faster.

Switch back to balthier once you done and If all of them die from his final skill, switch in basch and fran or ashe, revive them and swipe them back until all of them have reverse applied.

So the technique here is always the same for the first 40 bars of health:

For the first 40 bars is just a constant balthier hitting multiple times for 15-30k every single hit. He basically does 80% of the damage by himself, supported by vaan and penelo.

When you get down to 10 bars however, it become really hard. Yiazmat become much stronger, goes into rage mode and start to kill your characters really fast and apply stop and sap quite often.

Remove from the gambit balthier on berserk, as it will happen quite some times that you have two characters dead and only one alive, and if it happens to be balthier on berserk, you are ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

All the rest stay the same. Make sure to have 99 phoenix before the battle as you can easily use them all before it's ended.

When the hp bar goes down to 5, Yiazmat will put reflex on your allies. Make sure to never us any healing skill and always have reverse on your characters, othersiwe specially if you use renew on a reflex character, you are going to fully recover yiazmat's health.

When he applies reflex on your character, use dispel on them.

The last five bars are the hardest and take more time specially cause he has much more defense and attack.

During my first attemp, I run out of phoenix dawn while I was on his last HP bar, and he was able to kill all my team... I couldn't believe it also cause I didn't have setup this techinque and took me two hours and a half to get there and x1 speed.

Second time with the right gambit and x2 speed, it took me only 35 minutes to complete it.

Good luck !

[Casurin]

So basically your "strategy" is the same as the easy-rout that nearly all guids had for the past 15 years... get the best equipment, be overleveld, and just bash them to death.

[Hinnyuu]

This isn't even a particularly good strategy. There's way more optimal ways of doing things, let alone using cheap strats like Wither and Addle that make those fights non-issues.

You know how we get so many bad guides on the internet?

This.

This is how.

How's that for irony ;)

[Nezkeys]

Personally I don't think Yiazmat should be considered a superboss anymore. Instant Death and stupid high hp is just an annoyance in an otherwise easy battle.

Zodiark and Omega were tougher by far but that's because one puts up palings and another just outright hits so hard and fast that you basically need to resort to reverse or attack/heal methods. Zodiark can be zerged though and killed before they get a paling up using the two holy destroyers (knight and uhlan) bravery berserked + faithed holy. I prefer this method than having to deal with all the nonsense palings and increased stats at low hp. Just blast him with attacks no healing lol. Nothing else in the game really needs reverse anyway (it's just Omega is kinda hard without it)

I could be skewing this slightly because I fought zodiark and omega at lower levels than I fought Yiazmat so maybe they just appeared harder than they actually are. I still feel like Yiazmat is easy though in the remaster (original is a different story altogether as I remember having to leave the arena back then. Now I can just x4 speed and semi-afk and the battle is done in 10 -15 mins ish and thats with me casting probably pointless spells like protectga shellga bubble since his attacks do nothing after the breaks)