Lanzelt Mountains/New Trial of the Ice Demon

Abilities

 * Blizzard: Ice magic damage (7x) to one enemy.
 * Blizzaja: Ice magic damage (7x) to all enemies.
 * Osmose: Magic damage (0.05x) as MP drain (100%) to all enemies.
 * Cure: Restore 10% HP to caster.
 * Diamond Dust: Ice magic damage (12x) to all enemies. Decrease ice resistance (150%) for 3 turns to all enemies.
 * Silence: Inflict silence (100%) to one enemy.
 * Shooting Hail: Physical damage (5x) to all enemies. Decrease DEF/SPR (50%) for 3 turns to all enemies.

Conditional Attacks

 * First turn: Shooting Hail twice, Osmose once, ends turn
 * Every 3 turns: Shooting Hail, Silence
 * 80/60/40% HP threshold (Max 1/battle): Diamond Dust, Cure, Silence, ends turn

Other Attacks

 * On standard turns, Shiva casts Blizzaja once and remaining actions are used as Normal Attacks.
 * After the 40% HP threshold, Shiva starts casting Blizzaja once per turn in addition to her standard rotation.

Tips

 * See testimonials and discussions.
 * The mission is to defeat Shiva in 5 turns or MORE, not less.
 * Shiva has a very high ATK, 2.5 times higher than her MAG, though you can break her ATK and not her MAG. If you aren't using high enough ATK break or mirage, a physical cover tank might be easier than a magic cover tank.
 * Use one cover tank (either physical or magic), as Shiva will use both types on turns divisible by 3. Depending on which cover tank you use, the strategy will change accordingly, see below.
 * HP threshold moves takes priority. This can be beneficial to skip over Shooting Hail every 3 turns.
 * Using Pod 153's A060: P Shield or other sources of mitigation helps a lot with dealing with Shooting Hail.
 * Physical Cover Tank route
 * Use a physical cover tank to redirect Shooting Hail and the normal attacks.
 * Make sure your tank has a high effective HP, or simply use a full evasion tank.
 * Your party will be receiving the full blow of Blizzard/Blizzaja/Diamond Dust, so you need to raise your whole party's ice resistance (including innate resistances + buffs) to 100% or higher
 * You must dispel your own party and reapply the buff whenever she casts Diamond Dust at each threshold (e.g. using Bushido - Freedom or Kryla's Nullifying Chant or by dualcasting Dispelga)
 * Magic Cover Tank route
 * Bring a magic cover tank to redirect all elemental damage and rely on your party to withstand the physical blows
 * The magic cover tank needs either:
 * 250% ice resistance (innate resistances + buffs). You won't have to dispel your tank after every cast of Diamond Dust
 * 100% ice resistance (innate resistances + buffs). You MUST dispel and rebuff your tank after every cast of Diamond Dust
 * Bringing a provoke tank allows you to redirect all the incoming normal attacks
 * Your whole party will be hit by Shooting Hail on the first turn and every turn divisible by 3.
 * This can be temporarily avoided by hitting the 80/60/40% HP threshold on turn 3/6/9 respectively, as Shiva will use her threshold attack instead of Shooting Hail.
 * Shooting Hail can be dodged with AoE mirage (e.g. Sara's Retreat Command, or LBs from Thief, Toby, and Illusionist Nichol).
 * Solo
 * Any unit with 100% ice resistance, 100% evasion and equipped with Bushido - Freedom can solo Shiva. Use Bushido on the unit itself to clear the ice resistance debuff, and repeat for each threshold (40/60/80%)
 * Chizuru has 40% physical evasion passive and can easily be built to 100% physical evasion. She has Fingersnap as well which can be used for dispelling at the thresholds.
 * If you need to bring another unit for the Ifrit evocation mission, simply use Hide until the evocation gauge is full.
 * If you use a Hide or Jump ability to avoid the threshold attacks, Shiva will only use Cure. The next time that same threshold is passed, Shiva will use her threshold abilities again, including Cure.
 * Dragonlord can be very useful if you have the mana battery.