u/ElegantRadish4646

I didn't get to play Hugo this cycle because no attacker buff, so I made Aria do double stunner instead

This was soo fun to do, Butcher didn't get to move for 56% of the run lol

Can definitely go upto 110 seconds if I get a proper 4pc shockstar, and max out my skill levels

The Banyue score can 100% go WAY higher. I am just terrible at playing him and doubly so on Thrall

But choosing whether to run Nangong on butcher or on vesper is hard. Vesper really hates any other stunner, while butcher has so much hp you kinda rely on the stun to deal enough damage

1.4 mil assault was barely 500 score

The next 1.28 mil assault + 930k disorder was 700 score, ignoring the performance points

I thought I was doing something wrong because I only got 29k score after five whole stuns with Nangong, but nah it's the HP

This means that Vesper is equally bad for alice as Butcher this cycle because her HP after adjusting for low def is 225 mil

I guess I'll just run Aria on butcher instead

I accidentally got this rotation while trying out different routes

Will need to test more to get the exact timing but I believe activating Zhao's veil right at the start of the run and doing a Zhao EX at 2:21 to 2:17 will make her refresh it right in the middle of stun

This post will eventually get taken down like every other criticism of endgame

By "no effort" I mean I didn't have to think of any strategy, play faster/harder rotations, or have to bring different builds for the situation (my Alice has 5 builds depending on the DA boss/buffs)

It's all just RNG in the first wave

Resetting room 1 until the first wave group themselves for two stuns

Resetting room 2 until the big robot doesn't jump out of Alice's EBA

Resetting room 3 until Dullahan gives me his extended parry to stun them together at the correct time

After I get through first wave I can genuinely close my eyes and do WHATEVER and still score high

I tried to apply some strategy to the boss (e.g. stopping attacks and waiting for manato to start his parries to avoid interrupting him), but it barely resulted in a 1k score difference, and the amount of resets on first wave needed to get to the boss in the first place made it impossible to learn the boss' attack patterns

Ramiel or Miyabi will be my first void hunter and then maybe I'll be able to enjoy shiyu finally, by deleting the first wave without RNG to get to play the boss itself

I don't have enough good puffer or pen5 discs otherwise this could be easily 30k+

Before you take one glance and comment I'm stupid for my team choices (this happens pretty much everytime) pls listen:

Room 1 elites are absolute hell to group, only Hugo, Banyue's One's Path and Nangong's EBA3 can deal with it. But manato's stun timer is wayyyyy too short for hugo or banyue to do anything, so only Aria works best for dropping nukes with ablooms quickly. However, Nangong takes *extremely long* to stun manato, so I had to also run Lycaon to get consistent stuns. Still got lower score than before (34k) since I reset the room to change builds and haven't been able to get the elites to properly group ever since :/

Room 2 Alice gets the physical advantage + her EBA range is massive so even if the elite jumps around she will do damage to him. Lockspring is Shunguang's shill so he has a HUGE daze limit, meaning Hugo is dead, S11 is dead, Banyue is double dead. I initially played Alice Nangong Yuzuha but it was only 1k score higher since stunning lockspring is so difficult

Room 3 is the chillest, both of the elites chase you so you can get them into a corner easily. Boss also doesn't do much until the miasma phase. But now my problem is my sigless Lucialess Banyue doesn't do enough damage....entirely my fault for skipping his essentials. Probably Lucia will be able to get the clear but I wanna save for Norma and get Banyue's sig on his rerun instead

I love Aria. She's been carrying my account due to her alternative teammates being a standard (Lycaon) + a free agent (Zhao) and not relying too much on engine or mindscapes to perform well on a neutral matchup

Like any new DPS yeah she's doing very good in current content. But I find it weird Prydwen moved her up from T0.5 to T0 after Nangong release

Every T0 DPS has something exceptional about them that makes them stand out:

- Shunguang not caring about stun windows at all makes her deal 1.5x damage minimum out of the box, plus being the best user of double support in the game by replacing a stunner/subdps

- Yixuan ignores enemy defense, but unlike other ruptures, her multipliers and kit buffs are much higher to deal more overall damage than an attacker against a normal def neutral matchup

- Miyabi can utilise both crit and anomaly buffs to balance her build for whichever is anti/more shilled on a boss to bruteforce, or absolutely destroying a boss weak to both

Their speciality means they will be able to bruteforce pretty much everything with good scores—Miyabi can get very close to Promeia's numbers on the new boss, Yixuan can beat Vesper and Sweeper despite low defense, Shunguang can kill Defiler despite low stun multiplier. There is currently no boss in the game these three can't destroy and it will probably be that way for another season

Aria currently just has big raw damage numbers because we're in an anomaly + abloom shill. Her kit is very simple: proc an anomaly, then deal a percentage of it multiple times per stun. But it's too reliant on three things:

- Dealing good anomaly damage, or *at all* (Sobek, Defiler fin)

- Fast stuns with high multi + length

- No ether/ice resistance so Nangong/Lycaon gets enough daze

Any one of these things isnt available, and Aria's damage plummets

I didn't notice how much the Metamorph buff (reduces stun speed + gives atk% + abloom dmg increase) was carrying her until it was removed this DA. Metamorph can *stack*, which is why people were getting 30 second stun windows on Sweeper by spamming anomalies. You can give Aria a very high number of light sticks to deal the maximum damage in that long stun—Bladecube managed to get 18 bounces and I was frequently running out of enough ablooms on my runs

But now the new boss has a 12 second base stun timer with no DA buff that increases it, and suddenly Aria is struggling to get enough bounces. The highest I could get without Sunna after perfectly playing was 11 bounces on the first stun, which is very, very hard to replicate on the next stuns (averaging 8 or 9 bounces instead). Sunna can offer two more bounces if you even get the time to use it

Outside of stun, her abloom multiplier is so low that you need to rush the next stun to do any meaningful damage. But her best teammate Nangong still needs Aria to stay on field and proc corruptions so she can get resources to stun. This becomes a problem in shiyu e.g. Miasmic Brute room's first wave takes a bit of time to be stunned by M0 Nangong while Lycaon can get it much faster (with less damage unfortunately). Hugo mains will relate to why all your damage coming in stun becomes a pretty big problem

Finally, her mindscapes are not as good as the other T0 DPS either. Her M1 is great, M2 is good, but M3-M6 is really bad for the investment. In comparison all of Miyabi's mindscapes are great throughout (I dont know Yixuan or Shunguang's kit well enough to speak on it)

All this means that Aria does not belong in the T0 tier meant for units you can throw at anything to clear. She still needs the right conditions like other T0.5 DPS to shine, and honestly that's not a bad thing at all. Balance is good and keeps the game fun for experimenting rather than bruteforcing everything. I just don't want Prydwen to give people the impression that Aria is among *the* best DPS for every situation in the game

22 subs is very low by my standard but I need to finish Hugo and Grace first before maxing gong's discs. Also gotta cage the EX Ult

Two days of grinding later, I finally crossed 30k

I love this boss, it's mechanically hard to *play* instead of being a Promeia/Nangong check, and feels super rewarding to learn how to work around it

One of the only three runs where I've managed to hit four complete stuns using Lycaon. Probably if I cage his skills and level Aria's parry I can get it easier

M0W1 Aria, M0W5 (steam oven) Lycaon, M0W1 Zhao

Was averaging <800k on the abloom buff before switching to rupture and suddenly my damage spiked

Finally figured out how to properly get full phaethon + astral + stage buff uptime so I can hit a million plus. Unfortunately forgot to actually USE the astral disc on lycaon 💀 otherwise it would be 1.2 million

I believe I can hit 30k with this team on a perfect run

- 4pc Phaethon 2pc Freedom R1 Fusion (27 substats)

- 4pc Astral 2pc Summit R5 Steam oven

- 4pc Bunny 2pc Yunkui R1 Steam oven (ER statstick)

Using the Yixuan/Rupture buff for the ether dmg and stun multiplier

This score can definitely get a lot higher, but I keep messing up Lycaon's daze

I say without ether veil because Sunna or maybe even Zhao may be able to skip a chain to get 1 or 2 more bounces, as Aria's chain takes too much time

I need Metamorph back 🥀

None of these are particularly good runs. With few more days of practice I can get 1-3k more scores

Really the only problem with the new boss is that it has very high buildup ans no ether weakness, so managing corruptions without Aia's sig + Nangong is very hard

Ice weakness also makes Lycaon sometimes proc freeze overriding the corruption, which kills the damage. But it shouldn't be that difficult to work around it with better gameplay

nanoka.cc has the same info, the boss only has 148 million HP on debut

Even accounting for DEF differences, this breaks the cycle of ever increasing debut HP. Currently only Pompey has a lower equivalent HP

But the stage buff is interesting: you start from -125% cdmg debuff that goes down by 25% each time an anomaly is applied.

Perhaps the HP is low because they want attackers to run buildup buffs to quickly get rid of the debuff. AM6 and/or 2pc phaethon would probably be enough

Teams of 2/3 matching elements would get an advantage e.g. Soldier 11's teams, Lycaon teams, Banyue/Manato + Ju Fufu

However, it looks like my 5-cost Aria team might kill this boss at this HP so maybe it'll get 10-20 million buffed before the final release

2.8 phase two: We now have 300 million HP bosses

Vesper is half def, but normalising it to a 953 DEF boss it's 225 million HP which is still insanely high

Metamorph buff won't be available, instead replaced with a Promeia buff that is much worse. So the angels team is going to take a big hit in score

All of these scores can be improved ~1-2k each but primordial and defiler is soo hard to fight

All M0

Engines: Aria sig (shared with aria and alice), nangong sig, zhao sig, kaboom (yuzuha) and steam ovens shared between the stunners

The waves in room 2 are very easy to deal with but somehow Alice does negligible damage to the boss. Giving her Aria's engine (she was on W1 fusion compiler before) didn't help much either :/

And if I take away Nangong or Zhao away from Aria her score plummets too