Talk:Chamber of Arms - Aldhafera

Simple strategy
Aldhafera does a lot of damage, but unlike other Chamber bosses you don't have to worry about any pesky immunities.

Offense team:
 * Two physical chainer
 * Two magic chainer
 * Summoner

Defense team
 * 100% evade physical cover tank with provoke (Warrior of Light or Earth Veritas)
 * Elemental resist magic cover tank
 * Healer
 * Breaker
 * Buffer

Aldhafera's preemptive strike will kill one of the offense team, but you can switch in the healer to raise them. Cover with the physical tank while using the summoner to build up esper orbs, one of which you'll fire off for mission credit. Keep reraise up on the tank for thresholds. If you have CG Lid and CG Nichol for breaking/buffing, swap them in to build up their limit bursts for later. Once that's finished, bring in your magic tank for cover and use your physical chainers to knock Aldhafera down to 50%.

Aldhafera will heal and start his magic rotation, but your tanks should block all the damage. Swap in your magic chainers, summoner, breaker, and buffer. Use all five to do as much damage as possible. Even if Aldhafera doesn't die, he'll be softened up for the finishing blow. Aldhafera's retaliation will kill the magic squad, swapping in the physical squad. You should be able to do enough damage to finish him off, throwing in a magic spell from one of your other units to complete the magic mission. 107.198.84.231 01:43, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Defensive OTK Strategy
Greetings haven't posted a strategy in awhile. I heard a lot that Aldhafera was a lot easier than Tegmine. Sure no RNG factor really involved but this beast is a prick on its own, so I figured a method to beat it. Took me 3 times tho, but in two of them I fucked for very stupid reasons (like reddit guide saying it would just use Normal Attacks on transition, or at least it was worded like it said that, or changing phase at 50% instead of 49% so fucking up my preparations).

Anyway here is what you need: Main Team: Shantotto, Lexa (well any two Nado users, Aeroja too is welcome just in case), Dragonlord, Mystea, Garnet. Reserve: CG Fina, CG Nichol, CG Lid, WoL, Sara.

See what I did there? Basically put the "non-relevant" units for P1 to take the ambush and everyone of importance on reserve to spare them from Snap. Once Snap is out, revive whoever needs reviving (on 3rd attempt DL took the hit but survived with 1 HP) and replace the pt with the reserve members, I left CG Fina/Nichol/Lid, WoL and Garnet up.

What Phase 1 is about:What you will do for Phase 1 is to avoid damaging Aldhafera at least not focus your turns on trying to damage it, and let the disease and 3% self damage do the thing. The reason? You will use Phase 1 purely for set up to OTK Phase 2. To do that you will be building Esper Gauge with Garnet (and summon once given you need to summon twice for missions). Once she has used 1 summon and filled the Esper Gauge at full, her job is complete, put her on reserve. Next are the Nado users, you will have them Dualcast Aeroja to build stacks. Once their stacks are full their job will also be complete for now.

How you will defend yourself:What you do need to watch out for are the thresholds and behaviour change given Aldhafera will keep on damaging itself you need to be prepared for this unsavory stunts. What I did was to use Lone Stance on WoL and Impregnable Stance, and have WoL use The Light is With Us!! and Guard. Furthermore have Fina cast Dispel (had her with Carbuncle) EVERY TURN, I usually did a mix of Dispel on Aldhafera+Reraise on WoL, or apply the Reraise on herself or Dispel+Curaja. Why Dispel? Because Aldhafera loves to buff itself with Howl very much every turn which trivializes breaks. But if you use Dispel + Lid's Attack Absorb EVERY turn then Aldhafera's attacks during this phase are greatly simplified. This alone is not a foolproof method tho, given Aldhafera's attacks grow stronger with each threshold where its AoE attacks can kill WoL if you aren't careful. Also make sure you've read and memorized when it will use Snap, basically twice during 79% and 69% thresholds, and once every turn divisible by 3 on 79% - 70%, and every turn divisible by 6 on 69% - 50%. HOWEVER given Aldhafera uses an ambush on you its turn counter is different from the one on your screen so you need to add 1 more to that counter. That is to say Snap when the screen says 2, 5, 8, 11, etc. OR later on 5, 11, 17, 23, etc. When you see that Aldhafera will cross a threshold out of self damage OR because it is on a turn it will use Snap, IMMEDIATELY put Sara and have her use Command Retreat, this is important because it will save your WoL from being Snapped to hard and also the rest of the party, given there ARE times when it will Snap at others and WoL won't react. Doing this should ensure you are safe, and I gave massive amounts of MP to Nichol and Lid to make sure they kept their gimmicks up as required (Nichol doesn't need to buff every turn but it still eats through his MP).

Final Preparations: Before going into transition there are a few details we need to have set first, making sure every attacker is in optimal condition to OTK this bastard. What you will do during the final turns of the phase (Aldhafera won't self damage itself anymore once it reaches 60%) is to get Nichol and any of the Nado users and DL and buff them with Lone Stance and then switch them back on reserve so they keep their buffs (you still need to follow the above defensive strategy).

The transition: Once the above has been taken care of, we need now to HIT Aldhafera to change phase. What I did here (and also helps for the OTK) was to as usual Dispel Aldhafera and then break it with Lid's LB (Lid had Prodigy Goggles to load her LB for all these turns), and has Dragonlord Kafrizzle+2 the bastard which ended up at 49%. I had WoL use Brave Presence and Mystea up (geared with as many elemental resistances as possible, btw she only needs to do her job for one turn here, since we're OTKing this prick). So once the transition occurs, Aldhafera will use its Claw attacks for Mystea to take the blows, while WoL takes the physical attacks.

The KILL!!: So with all preparations set, just switch over to your attackers, have Bahamut, Kafrizzle and both Double Nados (can use Nado+Aeroja too, haven't tested it but it should work). Then use them in that order, and then watch as the chain builds up the nukes go KABOOM and the Eldritch monstrosity becoming 0 in a matter of 0.

Final Notes: This strategy is somewhat slow. Phase 1 will take close to 20 turns to beat due to the self dmg + all the other preparations. Lid was equipped with LB boost for the finale, and I also had Sara equipped with Crazy Day JUST in case it needed the Fire Imperil for Kafrizzle. Turns out it wasn't needed, Lid's LB (which wasn't maxed) + Lone Stance + Plenty of Killers (Elnath's Man-Eater+ and Ifrit's Beast Killer+) were enough to turn Aldhafera into sub-atomic ashes. Double Tornado is better to ensure you "kill with magic" but if all you want to do is kill the sorry bastard, Nado+Aeroja combo should work. Bahamut too is useful on Garnet (equip her with lots of EVO MAG and enhance her of course).

And that's it, rather turtle approach but you should show this beast who is the real King of the Hill. --BGMaxie (talk) 03:43, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Testimonial - Geryth
Similar strategy to the one above (dispel + HT Lid ATK break every turn), but tailored to what I had available. This strategy simply aims to survive while Aldhafera kills himself and then OTK at phase 2. We accomplish this with NO evade tank since I don't have one, but this would have been much easier I think if I had an evade tank. Here's the team:

Defense Survival Team:
 * HT Lid - Mine only has LB level 10 but that should be about a 55% full break. If you have her without a leveled limit break her 50% DEF/SPR breaks will do if your damage is good enough, or just stick with 60% SPR break if your OTK team is mostly magic damage like mine. So if you plan to use her LB (only need to use it once right when 49% is crossed) then put some +LB crystal gear on her, otherwise gear her with whatever you want. She's mostly here for 60% ATK breaks in phase 1.
 * Eiko - Used to build summon gauge to get esper mission accomplished and to heal. I put Bahamut on her to cap a chain for the phase 2 OTK (equipped with +40% EVO MAG materia). Try putting at least one mana refresh item on her and them build her for SPR for heals.
 * Veritas of Earth - Anti-breaker, damage mitigation, and provoke. He's also going to have passive provoke to eat the preemptive Snap. So give him Moogle Plushie, Yellow Balloon, and Rico's Wingsuit. With Rico's Wingsuit he'll dodge the Snap, and he has a 45%+ chance to tank it. You may be able to recover if it doesn't target VoE and kills someone, but hopefully that doesn't happen (you can start with your other team members so snap doesn't kill HT Lid or someone crucial). Give him Golem for a 3 turn provoke (his own provoke is only 2 turn) so he can rotate in this order: Omni Block --> Defensive Barrier --> Provoke. Build as much HP and DEF as you can after passive provoke, or maybe some evade to try to RNG luck out of the few hits he'll take.
 * Warrior of Light - Cover tank to eat all the damage. Build straight defense, as much HP and DEF as possible. I got mine to 11.9 HP and 604 DEF and he did okay, but still died to a couple snaps if he wasn't defending. Reraise took care of him.
 * LM Fina - Dispels, reraises, and heals. Build her with whatever you want after a bunch of SPR and maybe some mana regen items. Ideally she uses Dispelga + Reraise each turn and prioritizes WoL and VoE.

Offensive OTK Team:
 * MS Nichol - For buffs at the last turn. I actually didn't need mine - I left his buffs off as a test run to make sure my chaining and capping timings would work so I could reset if I failed (and also to gauge if I had enough damage to begin with). Still, if your damage is lacking he can give you an extra push.
 * Lexa and Barb - Simply here for Tornado chain building and to get the magic kill mission. Don't need a whole lot, they both only averaged out to about 800 MAG for me. Shantotto is fine here too.
 * Raegen - Okay so he's technically not for the last turn, he's for solo DPS'ing down from 60%-49% when Aldhafera stops damaging himself. He solo kills him the last 11% for phase 1 and leaves a 60% fire imperil for the last turn. I built mine with a fire elemental weapon to take advantage of self-imperil and Diablos and Man-Eater+ for 125% human killer to help him with damage. He landed at 944 ATK and with a fire elemental weapon + 125% human killer he did his job perfectly fine and handled the last 11% of damage alone in only about 6 or 7 turns.
 * Dragonlord - The big D for this OTK strategy. Mine is only at Krafrizzle+1 (a x25 mod) and he got the job done quite well. 901 MAG with Ifrit (beast killer+) and Barbariccia's Spirit (50% magic human/beast killer). With the killers and Raegen's 60% fire imperil, he got quite a comfortable kill.

The strategy in action:
 * VoE is on a strict rotation - we need to protect WoL from the 70% DEF break so start off with Omni Block and then do Defensive Barrier (20% general damage mitigation) and then Provoke. You aren't doing any damage this phase so you should get to the Provoke before any Snaps land. If he or WoL die, restart the rotation with Omni Block. VoE has provoke to make sure he takes the second Snap if the first kills WoL. It's also possible for VoE to take some hits if WoL's cover doesn't activate (it's a low chance but it happens).
 * WoL is going to simply do Light is With Us and defend. If you can time his Defend in the Snap turns (crossing thresholds and at turns divisible by 3 or 6 when appropriate) then he might actually survive them with this setup. That might mean using Light is With Us twice in a row or something to make sure he's defending when you want him to be. But that's just for convenience, reraise is to bring WoL back after the Snap x2 thresholds where even defending he isn't likely to survive.
 * LM Fina needs to Dispelga + Reraise every turn she can. Keep it up on WoL and VoE - it's possible they'll both die on x2 Snap thresholds. This keeps your team smoothly going along. If WoL and/or VoE dies then VoE restarts his rotation with Omni Block to prevent the 70% DEF break. Do NOT dispel on the turn you hit 49%!
 * Eiko will be using Crypto Performance almost every turn to push esper gauge. Build the first gauge and use it (I used Golem for extra defense on the turn she's not healing to summon an esper). Then build a second gauge but don't use it yet, you'll use it for the last turn. If LM Fina needs to refresh mana or something, use Eiko to dispel + heal, you'll have plenty of time to build these esper gauges and it's fine to have Eiko do other things for a couple turns.
 * HT Lid is going to 60% ATK break every single turn after LM Fina or Eiko drop a dispel. This is so Aldhafera starts every turn with Howl removed and a 60% ATK break active. This allows WoL to take all of Aldhafera's punishment comfortably. On the penultimate turn (the same turn you cross the 49% threshold) then you need to use her LB, or if it's not leveled at all, use her 60% SPR break since our OTK team is all magic damage.
 * After Aldhafera reaches 60% he stops doing damage to himself, and this is when you actually need to start attacking him. Eiko's job should be done at this point, you have have summoned one esper and have a full gauge ready to go. This is around turn 17. When this happens swap Raegen in Eiko's place so he can spam Blades of Azure Crimson. If you build yours like mine he'll take him down from 60% to 49% at about turn 22 (don't forget the under 30 turn mission, so your 60-49% damage dealer has about 10-12 turns to do the job to get the under 30 turn mission). At this point LM Fina is going to be doing Dispelga + Curaja since Eiko is no longer here to heal, but you don't need reraise as often because Aldhafera is only using snaps 1 turn out of 6 inside the 60% threshold. If you need to then pull Eiko back in to heal so LM Fina can reraise on WoL before a Snap turn (or time WoL to defend it, if yours build is like mine he can live just fine through one snap).
 * Final Turn - So Raegen pushed him down to 49% last turn and he transformed and wiped the defense team (probably). Lid had cast her LB or 60% SPR break last turn as well, and you remembered not to dispel, so you have at least a 60% SPR break and a 60% fire imperil active. Pull in your OTK team and buff everyone 130% with Courageous Stance (don't care about DEF/SPR break on it), start your Bahamut + Kafrizzle and then your Tornado chains and then watch the fire works kill him for some sweet rewards. Again, I did a test run without MS Nichol's buffs so I could reset if needed to see what would happen, and my team killed him without his buffs. So it should be a comfortable kill if you were able to gear up similar to me.

3 units, 2 turns, 3/4 missions
Very straight forward strategy just to give an idea how to handle this boss with or without 7* units.

Units used:

7* Zargabaath to take and survive the pre-emptive attack, snap. No gear, level 110.

7* 2B with her TMR and nothing else. She doesn't even need her TMR actually, merely to be at level 105.

7* Elfreeda, aka the counter machine and solo dps. She needs to be geared with enough Atk (1500) and Def (900) to sustain 45-50% breaks, which means that 2B was more of a luxury with her 70% fullbreak. That being said, the bosse needs at least a 60% Def break.

Pre-emptive: Zarg is the only unit out and survives the pre-emptive with 1 HP left since he can escape KO once.

Turn 1:

Zarg buffs the team with his CD skill, Archadia's Might.

2B uses her 70% fullbreak CD skill, Supreme Support Weapon. Loren and Kryla can do the same. Veritas of the Dark can fullbreak 45% + imperil post enhancements at 6*. 7* Prishe can break Atk/Def by 60% on her CD skill while buffing the party's Atk/Def by 120%. There are plenty options as far breaking/buffing goes.

Elfreeda uses her provoke CD skill which comes with a 50% damage mitigation and a 100% ice imperil, Sub-zero Casket.

Aldhafera attacks and then Elfreeda counters him to 49% very easily. Threshold skip.

Turn 2: Elfreeda uses Empyrean Frost Arrow and that should be enough. For safety measure, you can always awkward chain with the other units if they have a chaining move. Zarg or any unit equipped with an esper with magic spells can finish the boss with a spell, making sure it lands after Aldhafera's hits 0%.

If you want all mission, you can always add any 7* Type-0 units and /or summoners.

Best of luck to you.

--Neptune3s (talk) 23:48, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Neptunesman