Wild Arms XF update, in which I die to boss fights a lot.
3-10 (Asgard 2) [3 resets]: Ugh. This is where I start to learn about this party's struggles with bosses. Asgard in this fight does a cycle of Fortress of the Gods, Barrier Storm, Mode Shift, Barrier Fist, Mode Shift, repeat. Fortress is invincibility for one turn, Barrier Storm is 9999 to all adjacent hexes (can't be used after moving), Barrier Fist is huge physical damage. (OHKO or 2HKO depending on durability). If he can't hit anyone with Barrier Storm he'll use a regular physical instead.
You may have noticed his glaring weakness: all melee. So Shut Out is king. The problem is damaging him; he has elemental resistance so spells barely scratch him, and Shut Out prevents grappling. The only ranged damage I have is shuriken, which by themselves are useless but they can trigger Combination Arts. I sadly hadn't realised I would need this strategy so I only have two good shuriken. Once I realise this has to be my party, I give those to my mages and my fighters get crappy out of date ones.
This in turn makes the rest of the battle really difficult too, and at one of the resets is just dealing with this. (Another is Asgard breaking out of Shut Out at a bad time... there really isn't much you can do about this because Shut Out wears off at the start of a turn. In theory I could count for this, but Accelerate makes this even more impractical than normal.) Still, I'm able to win it, and then I can troll Asgard with Shut Out lock + using shuriken Combination Arts. Obviously I try to have the higher-MAG PCs trigger them. They break his defence rather nicely; little else that I have does.
3-11-A (jelly blobs): This is one of my proudest moments of the run. I set up everyone in Extremist so that I can use Anchor Hook to beat the map in its intended way... but then, midway through (and well on my way to victory) I realise... wait a tick. I can totally do this with only my fiesta classes!
To beat this map you must either get everyone to the ending point or defeat all the jelly blobs. The former pretty much requires Anchor Hook, since the final platform is too high above everything nearby for Warp or Replace to reach. However, Ground Slam has no vertical limit, and the highest platform is only 3 hexes away from a much lower one. So I can get someone up there to kill the final jelly blob. With all the ranged magic damage I have, killing them is quite easy (I pack some misery cures just in case). I need to use four tosses to reach all the jelly blobs, and I only have three PCs so this isn't possible... except I also have Replace which can get me to new platforms as well. So yeah, a combination of throwing my own allies and Replace lets me reach every enemy, and Elementalist OC lets me destroy them. There probably aren't many (non-Extremist) draws of fiesta classes that can beat this, but I got one!
3-11-B (Weisheit duel): I don't even heal, Weisheit can only kill you with counters I'm pretty sure, just uses gravity otherwise.
3-11-C (Weisheit 3): So this is a test run for another, much tougher fight later. By which I mean that I can use Shut Out to troll him. As long as nobody is on a line with him, he can't hurt them, and unlike many bosses he doesn't resist all elements. So... simple enough. I do walk in for some stronger hits with other PCs sometimes because o his method of calling shots.
3-12-A (Asgard 3) [3 resets]: Oh fuck a boss fight which isn't really easy.
So Asgard's AI is a bit different this time; it's now Fortress of the Gods, Barrier Storm, Mode Shift, Spread Barrier, Mode Shift, repeat. In other words, the second AI is now Spread Barrier, which does 2HKO magic damage to an area of effect. (Don't put PCs adjacent!) Barrier Fist isn't gone, either; it replaces Iron Fist and will be used if he can't kill anyone with Barrier Storm. So, yeah, the turn after Fortress of the Gods is going to hurt real bad unless I use Shut Out. I use Shut Out.
Of course this doesn't turn off Spread Barrier, which drains my rather limited item healing (I foolishly only brought 10 potion berries into this dungeon, that didn't help) really fast. He's also annoyingly fast (he only uses Spread Barrier every four turns, but that's every two rounds so forces healing often) and breaks up CAs a bunch, and he has a ridiculous HP pool. As usual him breaking out of Shut Out at a bad time is bad, worse than it was before since the fight isn't fully controlled otherwise. Eventually after some setup tinkering I execute it properly.
3-12-B (golems): Not easy by any means, but not too bad. Hit the golems with the elements they don't resist, four of them have high HP but the other eight die pretty quickly. So standard tactics work well enough. Some of them have a weaker version of Spread Barrier so I avoid clustering, all the rest can be temporarily controlled by Shut Out if necessary, though the ones with Power Fist do hit quite hard.
3-13-A (rewind): After taking out the initial four undead, I use Replace to swap a couple PCs with the golems on the upper platform, then immediately send one of my PCs over to kill the smoky specimen which is an instant reset if it reaches its sixth turn. I take out the remaining Golems well enough; the other three charge me at this point but again the melee ones can be controlled because I use Replace to get everyone to the top platform and toss the remaining melee ones to the bottom. Haha.
3-13-B (Weisheit 4) [3 resets]: Ack. There's nothing really NEW about this fight, it's pretty much just 3-11-C's Weisheit together with 3-12-B's golems. (Six of them, three of them the bulky types.) Unfortunately this is an ugly combination, since all seven enemies attack immediately and aggressively. The terrain here is mostly flat so it's much harder to avoid Weisheit, although I do try at first, since using the turns to control the golems. After a few tries I hit on using the wind leypoint near the start to use Ley Boost, allowing my wind spells to hit harder, which greatly increases my offence against two of the golem types (sadly, the one wind-resistant ones are the ones with the ranged AoE magic). This helps turn the tide in controlling them. Beyond that it's a combination of avoiding Weisheit's Rank of Death, using Shut Out on him if I have to, Shut Out on other melee golems occasionally too (but not too often, since it only lasts around 2 rounds), controlling golem positions by tossing them around, and blasting away with magic. I almost win once with two PCs but Weisheit eventually slips Shut Out at the worst possible time and I lose; I get him the next time, though.
4-1 (Tormenta Triad) [1 reset]: They kill one person a turn and are faster than everyone but my Nightstalker; with four PCs and no particularly fast ways to kill them and no control options whatsoever (Triple Storm has huge range, so my strategy to toss the one who uses it far from the main fight doesn't work), I get wrecked. The end.
So at this point I relax one of the rules of the run and allow myself to use Revive Fruits. Honestly I'm quite happy that I got to Chapter 4 without them, but Chapter 4 has, looking ahead, several fights where I'll absolutely need them; this just happens to be the first. So it goes!
Anyway this is still a reasonably tough fight since the brothers kill one PC every round really fast and are good at finishing me off once I kill one. I kill Trueno first because he dies fast to physicals (the brothers have lots of elemental resistance, so CAs are my only magical offence). When he dies, Viento's MAG boost is about to wear off, but Lluvia's was just refreshed, so I toss Lluvia away and try to kite him until it wears off. I kill the other two mostly with CAs; they have lower Res but high evade (Viento) and defence (Lluvia) respectively, so other damage isn't too practical. I use all my revive fruits to get through the first stage but it works.
4-2-A (Rupert 3) [1 reset]: I charge Rupert once and get wrecked. He has two High Cavaliers who'll boost his speed and now possesses Blade Pulsar, a massive AoE attack which does 3-4HKO damage (but rises to 2-3HKO if he's hasted or at low HP), so Shut Out doesn't work and in fact is undesirable. Having to deal with this and the other enemies gets me killed.
So I try again and try to kite around and leave Rupert alone. I don't really expect this to work... but it does. Rupert doesn't use his MT attack. It's only later that I figure out why; Blade Pulsar actually only has a range of ~8 in this fight. So by staying far away from him, I'm able to take out the Sacred Slayers, Emulator (fuck misery so much, this ruins me the first time and almost does the second), fantastica, and sentinel. Rupert does eventually charge before I'm done, but it takes a while, and by then I'm in much better shape to heal and control everything. I try to isolate the High Cavs from Rupert so they can't use Quicken on him (it can't be used after moving, which helps) which makes his damage easier to control. Not too much to say, Rupert dies last and I'm very aware of his Crisis Reflex Up limit, so I make sure I'm in good shape before lowering him to crisis.
4-2-B (lategame classes): This fight features Extremists right at the start which spoil my physical damage badly, so I have to take them out with magic. There's also an emulator with poison (thank goodness it isn't anything scarier). Next come the High Cavaliers and sleep emulator, and finally the Nightstalkers and petrify emulator. I get a bit lucky on resisting the scary status but this fight isn't too bad, especially past the start, usual tactics suffice.
4-3-A (paigeols): Crush really wrecks the bulky 1500 HP paigeols, taking them out in 6 hits or so. I toss them away from their would-be healers and off their leypoints and deal with them simply enough. The forsaken mutants at the end are a pain because of their large HP and magic stats, which means they heal for a lot! And hit quite hard too. Fortunately they will waste some turns on physicals, so this isn't as tough as it could be.
4-3-B (Chelle 4): Chelle's got elementalist spells for this fight, they're a respectable but not overwhelming offence (3-4HKO) but mostly serve to make Shut Out not a win. Of course when not Shut Out she's free to run around and Predator Barrage... with positioning I'm able to make sure she never gets off more than a 2-hit version. She's not easy, especially with her support which has Quicken, Heal, AND Slow Down, but manageable enough; I smash all the support first with their weaknesses while healing and stalling with everyone else, and... actually run Chelle out of MP before I kill her, which is kinda funny.
Oh yeah and this fight also features four Stealth Stalkers, in two groups of two. These are a pain in the ass, since I can't damage them except with AoE atacks which also target someone else. I don't have any of those... wait! Exploder Gems! When used by my mages they're powerful enough to one-shot Stealth Stalkers. I don't have IFF sadly, so I have to hit one of my allies with one each time but I use each to kill two enemies, and it's easy to take them out at the start before dealing with the rest, just uses some valuable inventory slots.
4-4 (Tormenta Triad copies): Probably the easiest Tormenta Triad fight, but not the easiest fight ever or anything. The goal is to kill the three real brothers (their clones just annoy with 10HKO magic, and die if the original dies; I do kill them occasionally just to reset their turn gaudge) I try to kill one by tossing him off a high cliff, but it's still not enough. Combination Arts it is! When triggered by my mage, a two-man CA will 3HKO, a three-man CA will 2HKO, and a four-man CA will OHKO barely. So yeah I use those. Heal, control where enemies are, etc., not too bad.
I'm currently kinda stuck on the final Rupert fight.
