Etrian Odyssey - Aftergame! Beat Primevil! Only took me... three and an half hours? Much longer than it took just to even get to him. Yay for shortcuts!
So anyways, here's how it went.
First try: Use Defender, Immunize, Relaxing to set up the buffs, have the Landsknecht and Alchemist attack. Except Primevil goes first and uses Explode, dealing 2400 damage to everyone. Note that average HP is like 500 or so. Yeah.
But! Explode is fire! Protector has Antifire, which has initiative! Easy enough, right?
Second try: Same as above, Protector uses Antifire instead of Defender, everyone else does the same thing! Yay, I live! Next turn, he uses Resolve (Dispel). Boo. Third turn, use the buffs again, he uses Explode! Of course I spammed Antifire fearing that he was going to use that skill anyways. Turn 4, he uses Resolve again! Turn 5, he uses Expl--STORM. 2400 damage to everyone. Except lightning elemental. I die.
Okay, so, fire, resolve, fire, resolve, lightning. No biggie. Let's try this again.
Third try: Same as above, except on turn three he uses Storm. what
Fourth try: At this point, I figured his Resolve might be a counter to having buffs. So! No buffs! See what happens! Turn 2, he uses some MT physical. Guess what? It overkills.
Apparently I need Immunize!
Fifth try: Use Immunize, Protector uses Antifire as usual, Troubadour just shoots an arrow in his face. Turn 2 he uses... some MT status move, sleeping my front line and fearing the back. It just goes downhill from there.
Sixth try: Same as above, but he decides to physical someone for crap damage on turn 2. I survive to turn 5, use Antivolt to block the Storm, then turn 6 he Explodes again. Okay...
Seventh try: Same as above pretty much. Antifire on turn 6. Turn 7 he uses Frigid, which you might guess to be 2400 MT ice damage. You might be right.
So around this point, I started figuring out that those huge elemental attacks were likely scripted. Turns out they are. In fact, most of his AI is. After a few more tries, I managed to start figuring out the AI quirks. Basically, he uses Explode every 5 turns (1, 6, 11, etc.), Frigid every 6 turns (1, 7, 13, etc.), and Storm every 4 turns (1, 5, 9, etc.), with Explode > Frigid > Storm taking priority (last two being horribly unintuitive and gave me a reset when I had to make the guess. I guess it's the order you fight the original 3 optional superboss dragons, but whatever. Their clones right before Primevil are in a different order which makes things confusing.
Other than that, he only has one more AI quirk, Resolve. At first, I figured he'd use this when everyone had two or more buffs, but in fact, it's only used if the party has a total of 10 buffs or more (I found this out by having someone die and therefore only had 8 total but 2 on everyone). The problem is, on the turn after Resolve, he can use ANY of the three elemental overkills, UNLESS it is already a scripted turn (as described above). On any other turn where he doesn't have a scripted move, you don't have more than 10 buffs, and he didn't use Resolve the turn before it, he'll use a random physical attack (which could be ST, MT, or random targets, most of which are overkill before Immunize and sometimes even after), binds (skill blocking), status, some elemental shield buff (which I don't know what it does because everyone was defending and I dispelled it immediately on the next turn), and very rarely, FULLHEALING. He also gets the ability to cast an MT ID spell at low life. It's only ~40%, but that knocks off two people on average, and if one of them is your Protector and he uses a huge elemental skill the next turn, you're fucked. This happened to me twice. And said Protector had ID resistance. Hate.
Oh, I forgot to mention he has 90,000 HP. But he's weak to all elements (including physical elements). Even then, I only deal about 2,500 damage per round. Also, all his attacks have initiative (though lose to PC initiative), except Resolve (meaning you CAN'T buff on the turn he uses Resolve to force another Resolve turn, boo).
So! The strategy? Fairly simple. Obviously I use the elemental shield to block out whatever elemental attack he's using on the scripted turns. On turns he's doing random shit? I defend, and make sure I have Immunize up before then. However, on turns he's supposed to do random shit where there's a scripted turn after it? Buff. Then he'll use Resolve and waste the next turn, the turn after that is basically free as well since all I have to do is put up an elemental shield and can do whatever else I need to on that turn (buff and/or attack). There are several times where I can get a lot of free shots in due to him having a scripted turn, a non-scripted, a scripted, a non-scripted, scripted, etc., forcing him to alternate between elemental overkill that gets blocked and Resolve, meaning I don't have to worry about healing for awhile.
There are only two problems in this. There are spots where he can get two non-scripted turns in a row, meaning he's going to get at least one turn of beating you up. With Immunize up, and defending, he CAN still overkill someone. Two problems here. First, if it's your Protector, better hurry and get him back otherwise you're fucked. If it's someone else, and you tried to buff up to 10 buffs, you get stuck at 8, meaning he gets ANOTHER turn to beat you up. Sometimes he'll get three non-scripted turns in a row, but those are few enough that you can use Boosted Immunize to really reduce the damage taken and make it easier to live through. Doing that for every dual-non-scripted turn sequence means getting lots of Boost Point increasing items, which is admittedly a strategy I didn't think of. Not sure if you can buy those in mass quantities or not though. ANYWAY, yeah, he's still got a chance.
The other problem is obviously his ID, since if he nails too many people with that, and if one is your Protector, you're in a bad position. Best bet here is to just blitz the guy when he hits red and hope to finish him off. I actually ran out of TP on my Protector, barely keeping enough with Relaxing from the Troubadour to block the elemental attacks, Landsknecht was out too, so her damage was kind of low, though Alchemist was still shelling it out. Barely managed to pull it through.
Oh, forgot to mention I didn't do that Retiring with the characters or whatever. Who said that was necessary? They lie.
Also finished the Monstrous Codex soon after that. Now just the Item Compendium. Blech.
The World Ends with You - Week 3, Day 3. Boss kicked my ass. I am sad.
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Lion War - Got Holy Dragon Reis and Beowulf! Reis has 67 MA and owns everyone else in damage. Clearly she should be in Godlike! Okay maybe not but I don't care.
