In preparation for Astral Sabnock tomorrow...
Sabnock nightmare was the hardest nightmare we've gotten so far, so I was thinking it would be helpful to remind myself on the mechanics in sabnock nightmare.
TLDR; If you did sabnock nightmare previously, you will remember charge canceling and baiting, baiting the nightmare vortex away from the middle, spamming FS and breaking right hand -> left hand. And it inflicts curse.
While sabnock astral will likely not be as hard of a dps check as nightmare, it's possible that master astral will hit just as hard as nightmare. And that worries me a lot, because if it does, it will be the hardest master astral so far.
Mechanics:
Charges: Sabnock charges across the room, giant rectangular purple aoe. Extremely annoying because you have to chase him across the arena multiple times, but also 2-3shots your team. He does this twice at the start of every cycle. The way we used to handle it back during sabnock nightmare was that someone would run in to intentionally be the closest target from the boss, so that the boss targets him, and run clockwise around the boss in a tight circle. As with other bosses in the game, when the bosses fails to target the closest target after a number of seconds, the attack is canceled. For Sabnock, it was around 270 degrees. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkE-4EMrSs8
Canceling is easier to do at the start of the fight. Later on in the fight, if cancelling cannot be done, then baiting the charge is a reasonable alternative. https://youtu.be/xnkhpefHD0w?t=176 The boss targets his charge in the direction of the closest target, so you can intentionally bait the charge against or along the wall, to minimise the distance of the charge. This keeps AIs safe, and lessens the distance everyone has to run.
Nightmare vortex: Sabnock uses phantasmal wolves (the ring thing that valfarre uses) but instead of the criss-cross attack like valfarre, he uses nightmare vortex. This is a purple aoe that chases the character you are controlling. When it lands, it becomes a vortex that grows. After a set amount of time, it explodes as a purple aoe. AIs that get caught in vortex is often a 1hit ko. The way we used to do it during nightmare was that players would run out from the middle when vortex was used, i.e. making the purple aoe that chases you land far away from the middle of the boss, so that the middle of the arena will be safe from the growing vortexes. You can also switch to a ranged character before vortex will be used. Remember to check your AI teammates if they will be safe when vortexes are growing, and move them in.
Dark Side: Sabnock punches half of the arena, purple aoe, likely a 1hit ko for AI. If that arm has been broken it will be red instead. With the AI changes it's likely AI will run out on their own, but move them manually if they don't.
Controlling your AI: While there's lots that can be improved about the current AI, the only thing we can do is to learn how to control the AI. Honestly, this should be in its own thread, I can talk in more detail about controlling AI if people are interested about it, but for sabnock I will just talk in brief.
In order to make AI run to your side instead of attacking, you need to run far enough away from the boss to break target range (identified by the target circle underneath their feet). This distance is longer if you are controlling a ranged character, and shorter if you are controlling a melee. Getting your AI to you is important before charge happens, because melee AI will be caught by charge. AIs also need some time to run to your side, because they are just moving to you, they are not animation-cancel rolling to dodge towards you, they are just moving to you when they have a gap in their combo (Imagine if you are playing without the ability to dodge, and you want to move somewhere during your combo. The animation lock is pretty big).
Recommended characters: Since sabnock astral isn't here yet, I will only recommend characters that will definitely be useful.
Lead with swords, Alfonse, Albert, Odetta. Swords are great at destroying the OD gauge with their Force Strikes, remember to spam force strikes as swords. Optimal combo is 2 or 3taps then force strike (optimal for swords all the time, even when not in overdrive, for all content, for all swords). Equip The Shining Overlord + Stellar Show/Sister's Day Out, and transform with them to get the str buff. Transforming with any other character will not give your character with TSO the dragon claws buff.
Don't bring a healer if your healer does not have curse res. There's nothing more useless than a healer that is cursed. Ideally you want to bring a healer that can also curse heal, but having curse res on the healer is minimum (Heavenly Holiday gives 100% curse res).
TLDR; If you did sabnock nightmare previously, you will remember charge canceling and baiting, baiting the nightmare vortex away from the middle, spamming FS and breaking right hand -> left hand. And it inflicts curse.
Good luck to all of us tomorrow!
Posted Aug 23, 2019, 8:55 AM UTC
But your guide doesn't cover how to handle the nightmare level salty tears the sub will generate.
That said, very comprehensive!
With how much tears phraeganoth brought to the sub, I'm really worried about sabnock. I'm hoping the AI changes since sabnock nightmare makes a big difference, but if it hits as hard as it did in nightmare, I think lots of people will struggle with this.
The tears for Phrae were completely unwarranted. This next raid will be harder, but hopefully just as well designed as the last, so we'll see. The sub will whine regardless.
This sub is getting progressively worse at handling "hard" content. The opportunities for them to get carried is a lot lower since the token change and it shows with the amount of spam the sub gets after these events.
More on topic, If it is anything like the other raids, I think it is important for those who have Cupids to save their dragon for raid-wide heals, rather than damage. Phantasmal wolves (or the residual circle thingy) generally punish the AI pretty hard.
The sub has always been pretty casual, it's just we've gotten some more challenging content lately making it more noticable.
I doubt this raid will be worse than the last just because Cupid exists.
To be honest... kinda, yeah. The AI is janky, but from the ARs we’ve had so far, I haven’t had much issue getting deathless semi-consistently, even with subpar DPS. Taking the time to figure out how to best manipulate or protect AI for each boss was an interesting process. Certainly frustrating during the early stages of learning, though.
Phraeg, as you said, wasn’t too bad. Dodge breath, disengage or freeze volcano and you’re usually fine, barring random or bad Phraeg positioning during volcano phase. It certainly had one of my favorite AR runs ever - a PUG that knew to target farthest volcano, used stickers to mark one, plus me carrying the last remaining ally at the end with a full team (I think an unexpected breath wiped two teams at like 15% remaining).
Thank you for this comment, I could not agree with it more. It's exactly what I though about the fight too.
The difficulty and process is what makes it fun and rewarding.
I don't think they were. I did it with discord announcing the intent (Which volcano to focus) and it still took a few tries. I'm fairly sure I would have given up if I still had to do the full 10 attempts instead of the 1 successful run. (Didn't care to buy extra pieces) because I don't have 8k-10k strength of a Water team like some do.
There was a bit of a trick to it, in that if you didn't have hard 24k+ carries you could do it by backing up seriously preemptively every tail swipe until the tail dies. However the only tools you had to communicate that are stickers.
It wasn't unjustified at all.
It was completely unjustified. If you took the time to learn the fight you could get flawless 90% of the time. I ran with alliance members and that was the case for most of us. Once you understand it, it's honestly a simple and well designed fight.
I found myself amongst those who were frustrated by the difficulty but I also just shrugged and figured that I just don't get that until I get better or upgrade to more 5 star weapons. I feel like you can't be casual about the game and get ruffled when "nightmare" level content is too difficult for you. But, perhaps I'm belittling how frustrating it can be for some who simply can't or won't commit the time to a mobile game.
Calling it now that Astral Sabnock hits harder.