Check description for info.
Battle Conditions:
- Limited Crystarium Use
- No Equipment Upgrade
- Treasure/Drop/Reward Equipment Only
- No Shrouds
- No Auto-Battle
- Sub-10:00 Battle Duration (9:04)
Full Playlist:
• FFXIII - Low Developme...
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=Start of Battle=
- Toss a Libra/scope so the AI teammates immediately focus on physical COM/RAV attacks instead of switching between magic and physical.
- Debuffs to stick in order of priority are Slow, Curse, Deprotect, and Deshell. Slow and Deprotect are pretty obvious. Curse is to lessen the odds of the characters getting interrupted. And Deshell isn't necessary, but having it helps build Chain faster.
=Chain Building=
- Attacus's Chain Resistance is 100, the highest in the game. So to build up Chain as quick as possible, you're gonna want to take advantage of Ravager passives and Conditional Modifiers. The ones that'll be useful in this battle are:
* Using different/alternating Commands. (I.e. don't use a string of Fire-Fire-Fire-Fire)
* Character's HP is full (boosts RAV's first Command only)
* Stacking all possible character buffs and enemy debuffs (the more the merrier)
* Overwhelm: RAV passive ability that boosts Chain building when allies are attacking the same target
* Vigor: RAV passive ability that boosts Chain building if character's HP is green/above 70%. Can be learned by all except Sazh and Vanille.
* Chain Bonus Boost: Auto-ability of Sazh's Antares Deluxes.
=Notes=
- How high you need to raise Attacus's Chain Gauge depends on how high your characters' Strength stats are. Higher Str, of course, means lower Chain needed. For my team, I aimed to raise the Chain to at least 600%.
- Attacus has 3 phases: Initial phase, Unrelenting, and Peerless (named after his swords). You're gonna want to raise the Chain to the desired amount during the Initial phase so you won't have to suffer too long during his Unrelenting and Peerless phases.
- Offensive Screen (COM/COM/SEN) is the better and safer damage-dealing Paradigm to use compared to Cerberus (COM/COM/COM). Unrelenting's Concentrate and Peerless's Meditate are capable of one-shotting the party leader, so having a scapegoat is a must.
- Additionally, the COM's Blindside passive ability will surely active since Attacus will be focusing on the Sentinel. Blindside boosts the damage of the COM's first Attack/Ruin when hitting a target that isn't Staggered and is targeting a different character.
- Something I learned from a previous playthrough is that when Attacus casts Doom (after 20mins Battle Duration), he will hit the Party Leader with 3 quick consecutive attacks regardless whether or not he’s been Provoked by a Sentinel. This usually causes KO for an unprepared party.
=Setup=
- The best team to use for this fight is Fang/Snow/Lightning, given that Snow has learned Curasa. But without it, Fang/Snow/Hope or Fang/Hope/Lightning would work fine too.
- There was no way for Hope to survive Meditate (see 9:04 mark) unless he used Elude rather than Entrench. Unfortunately, the Sentinel AI always prioritizes Counter stances over Guard stances when HP is high.
- Because Attacus's attacks are mostly physical and can be evaded, Lightning is the best Sentinel to use in this battle since Elude is her specialty (and her only other non-passive ability other than Provoke).
- Elude offers the same level of defense as Mediguard and Steelguard. The difference is Elude gives 50% chance to evade certain attacks, Mediguard heals 4% of max HP per stacked command, and Steelguard's damage reduction increases by 1-3% per hit.
=Other=
- Really wanted to go the Stagger-route and launch Attacus, but the battle duration averaged 13-14 mins. Kinda defeats the purpose of the playlist.
- Besides, I love the irony of this team.