Strategy / Notes
Unlike the other two Weaponry Trial bosses, this one doesn’t completely shut down a single type of damage (ranged or melee), so you can bring your best heavy-hitters. That being said, the Lvl. 70 version of this guy swaps between magical and physical shields, unlike his earlier versions, which means that—unless you’re going to finish him off before he uses his first Misfortune Cohesion AoE—you really need to bring both physical AND magical damage to the battle. Dantalion is nice because he has skills that can do both, but Beryl also works very well on the magic side (didn’t have space to include her picture, but she’s great here).
The boss follows a pattern for his attacks. On Turn 1, he uses Ashes to Ashes, but after that, he goes into the following pattern (one attack per turn): Omen of Doom > Misfortune Cohesion > Apocalypse, then back to Omen of Doom and the three-attack cycle repeats.
Angel is very helpful in this fight because of her M.DEF aura, since the boss’ attacks are all magical. Omen of Doom hits pretty hard, so you want to make sure whomever has the highest M.DEF in battle is buffed and ready to take the hit.
Devil tarots work very well in this fight because of the amount of weak minions the boss summons. Make sure to kill them as they show up, as they cause the boss to take much less damage, and, in the case of his Apocalypse AoE, do a LOT more damage. Just be aware that each time you kill a minion, the boss gets a stackable buff that increases his M.ATK by 4% permanently. Make sure you have someone like Auguste, Outlaw Axeman, and/or Dantalion to remove these stacks, or you’re really going to start to feel the damage ramp up a few turns in.
Col or Crimson Falcon are perfect for running around the map to kill the minions. My advice is to make sure there’s never more than one minion hanging out on the map at a time, as they just make things much harder. Col in particular can make short work of two per turn her trait activates. Just be aware that the yellow ones are resistant to ranged attacks and the purple ones are resistant to melee attacks.
Misfortune Cohesion summons a shield around the boss, alternating between a magical shield and a physical shield with each use of the skill. His attack afterward will do damage based on the shield value remaining, so prioritize removing the shield. As I said above, that means having physical and magical attackers, and enough damage from each to pop the shield before the follow-up attack gets unleashed. I promise, if you don’t touch the shield, your entire team will almost certainly die.
Lastly, he uses Apocalypse, which isn’t too bad if you’ve been engaging in pest control with the minions. For each minion present at the time of attack, the attack does 20% more damage, and if there are 4 or more minions, the AoE hits everyone on the map, and is pretty much an instant loss for you. Angel’s aura really helps mitigate the damage from this, as long as you’ve been diligent with minion removal.
Because it bears repeating: focus on buff-removal from the boss, and on killing as many minions as soon as you can, and your life will be much easier for it! And spam the AoE heals from Angel on your main group of characters, and they should be fine.
Use your Tactics to adjust turn order, increase your damage output, and/or provide your team with stat buffs and extra NRG—these really make a huge difference throughout the fight!
