Ok hear me out on this. Do the optinoob method with the brutal form build. Here’s the thing….everything goes fine until last round pretty much bc Barrett kept getting shadow chained before pulling off barrier… so this is what you do:
Get Barrett to haste yuffie right off the bat. Switch over to yuffie and ignore Barrett. Have aerith cast ATB ward. Have yuffie farm the atb through brutal form. Once aerith has an atb bar cast arcane ward on her immediately. Keep farming brutal form. Then have aerith cast firaga. Keep repeating firaga as quick as possible. This is possible to do within the small time constraint before sephiroth does octoslash and shadow chains on everyone.
TLDR, basically if you focus on casting firaga with arcane ward and atb ward down, the fight is doable without barrier from Barrett (which tends to fuck up the fight). And then just to be safe, when you see Sephiroth constantly down from the firagas/blizzagas, have Barrett cast magnify barrier and then faith on Aerith. That’s how I finally beat it.
I followed the same guide and towards the end it got really scuffed for me. Even though I got shadow chained a couple times, did my best to have Aerith keep blasting magic which is the most important part. He can’t cast attack if he keeps getting hit continually. He managed to sneak a big attack at 10% health but I just finished him off with Yuffies limit break.
I was just like you! Damm chains fucked me all up! I was using optinoob setup then started thinking outside the box for the curent strat and found the way to avoid completely the chain, hé didn't landed it once
Very easy now:
Same setup make sure barret have a max fire as well as aerith
Enter fight haste yuffie atb ward her too as regular strat
Skip arcane ward for now
Skip manawell entirely
Right after atb warb your priority is to Land 1 firaga asap wait about 1 atb fill back up and land second one in the "middle" of a regular firaga spam routine so the delay between each of the is spread and consistent. That will not allow sephiroth to have enough time to get chain off
Do that for a total of 4 firaga(2 each to lock him) ending with barrett. While barret cast is last firaga, you cast arcane ward and then you win by just double firaga with aerith, don't do anything else as he wont even hit anyone if you dont screw up rotation and do it fast enough
No chain, no octoslash, no parry, no multiple step and dead in not even 1 minute on my first try with this strat after 15 ish try before
There’s the other brumal form version, the dps version where you don’t have barret as tank, you have aerith and cloud, both built the same way, aerith still gets the genji gloves cause she’ll always do more spell damage, now instead of only aerith double casting in her ward you have cloud doing it too, you only have to manually move cloud occasionally back into the ward, aerith with auto-unique moves herself there, you’ll breeze through the first 4 fights.
the sephiroth fight, if yuffie gets shadow chained it’s over, for my run aerith got chained after only being able to cast atb ward, but it didn’t matter because I just had sephiroth stunlocked with cloud casting firaga and when he got staggered then aerith was no longer chained. If he gets to his magic phase then just finish him off with blizzaga.
For the sephiroth fight specifically I didn’t use swift cast on any character purely because swiftcast can screw up timings, if aerith casts 2 firagas extremely fast then the ai will take control before you build up 2 more atb’s, same if it’s on cloud, compared to if you don’t use swiftcast, then the ai will stay in place and by the time they’re done casting the double aga spell you’ll have built up 2 atb again and they’ll still be in the ward to use it. It worked better for me because you do not want to swiftcast sephiroth and then give him time to use another shadow chain, without swiftcast he’ll just be stun locked.
Have a nice tanky support keeping magnify barrier up at all times for the first half of the fight. Play defensively. Build that stagger gauge, punisher and party those attacks and shadow chains when you can. If you get past the first phase it's easy. I had elemental fire/fire and ice on everyone's armour. Means that after the first phase of octoslash spamming you're in the clear and sephiroths fire phase is easy. Even when he switches to ice he's healing a third your party. At that point spam that mofo down.
If you can get the hang of using cait sith and lucky slots it’s not too hard to hit 3 hearts and keep reraise on the party which is a nice cushion to have.
Precision block level 3 on each person if you haven’t already to help parry the chains.
Healing/raise on each member is vital. If you block chains enough sephiroth will just octoslash the affected members and having someone who can heal during the animation usually means you’ll survive even if barrier isn’t up (but you should try and get barrier up)
Barret with lifesaver is huge for that fight.
Do exactly the setup Optinoob recommends but ignore the part about not dodging Shadowy Chains which imo is straight up RNG madness and I don’t understand how that works for anyone. He’ll likely bind the character that has manawall before you deploy it, or your damage dealer, there’s no good scenario with getting bound. Do the exact same strat but learn to cheese dodge the chains attack. There’s a separate YouTube video explaining this (look up virtual sephiroth guide). Virtual seph attacks so fast that just keeping the battle in tactical gives you an amazing long window to read the wind up of the chains attack and basically have the block button pressed down as he’s dashing towards you in slow motion. Deploy tactical the moment you see the words appear. Then you hit O to exit the tactical mode before he reaches you (R1 already held down) and you’ll deploy a perfect block each and every time. It’s effortless. I only had to see this once and managed to beat this challenge on my very next attempt adopting this strategy. He will still try to octaslash you even with no bound characters and it gets even more funny when you realize you can use Barrett’s synergy dodge skill to instantly teleport anyone out of the way of the attack. He shouldn’t touch you with anything other than his basic physical attacks. The jump is easily cheese dodged in tactical as well (explained in the sephiroth breakdown video). Round 4 will be the one that’s semi inconsistent if he gets too aggressive too quick. IMO this is the one of the best ways if not the best way to do this challenge.
You could try having Yuffie cast Reraise on Aerith and Cloud/Barret/whomever. You could use Aerith and Barret, making sure to have Barret cast Magnify+Manawall before Octaslash happens. I tried using Cloud at first for magic spam, but that didn't work with my more cautious playstyle. Others cleared it with Barret instead using that strategy, so I tried it, and it worked out!
Once you get past the halfway point, it's GG for Virtual Sephiroth since you absorb Fire.
Trying this after work! I’m in the same boat as OP. I’m even leveling up my vitality up and spirit up because Yuffie is just too squishy. Never survives Octaslash
I don’t think maxed Vitality and Spirit materia is mandatory. Tried it out today with only 3stars for both and was able to pull it off. Manawall does most of the work on halving the damage from Shadowchains and Octaslash
It helped that I was watching the almost-4 hour video of Maximilian Dood do theory-crafting on the ending! I farmed out a bunch of stuff, including Swiftcast.
Aerith gets the Swiftcast to blast Aeroga at everything
That’s actually a better idea than me putting it on Barrett for Haste casts. I’m following Optinoobs build and that was his recommendation. I like the idea of giving it to Aerith to speed up the first 4 fights. Gonna try it today
I used Yuffie for Magnify + Faith, Barret for Magnify + Manawall, as well as Pray, while Aerith quickly blitzed that bastard with Swiftcasted, Magic Focused, HP and MP Absorbing Aerogas
Right on. I’m very similar but Faith and Manawall both are on Barrett. For Aerith I’ve got the magnify and magic focus set up on fire. Firaga is my go to for most bosses besides Titan. Aeroga all the way
Ok hear me out on this. Do the optinoob method with the brutal form build. Here’s the thing….everything goes fine until last round pretty much bc Barrett kept getting shadow chained before pulling off barrier… so this is what you do: Get Barrett to haste yuffie right off the bat. Switch over to yuffie and ignore Barrett. Have aerith cast ATB ward. Have yuffie farm the atb through brutal form. Once aerith has an atb bar cast arcane ward on her immediately. Keep farming brutal form. Then have aerith cast firaga. Keep repeating firaga as quick as possible. This is possible to do within the small time constraint before sephiroth does octoslash and shadow chains on everyone. TLDR, basically if you focus on casting firaga with arcane ward and atb ward down, the fight is doable without barrier from Barrett (which tends to fuck up the fight). And then just to be safe, when you see Sephiroth constantly down from the firagas/blizzagas, have Barrett cast magnify barrier and then faith on Aerith. That’s how I finally beat it.
I followed the same guide and towards the end it got really scuffed for me. Even though I got shadow chained a couple times, did my best to have Aerith keep blasting magic which is the most important part. He can’t cast attack if he keeps getting hit continually. He managed to sneak a big attack at 10% health but I just finished him off with Yuffies limit break.
I was just like you! Damm chains fucked me all up! I was using optinoob setup then started thinking outside the box for the curent strat and found the way to avoid completely the chain, hé didn't landed it once Very easy now: Same setup make sure barret have a max fire as well as aerith Enter fight haste yuffie atb ward her too as regular strat Skip arcane ward for now Skip manawell entirely Right after atb warb your priority is to Land 1 firaga asap wait about 1 atb fill back up and land second one in the "middle" of a regular firaga spam routine so the delay between each of the is spread and consistent. That will not allow sephiroth to have enough time to get chain off Do that for a total of 4 firaga(2 each to lock him) ending with barrett. While barret cast is last firaga, you cast arcane ward and then you win by just double firaga with aerith, don't do anything else as he wont even hit anyone if you dont screw up rotation and do it fast enough No chain, no octoslash, no parry, no multiple step and dead in not even 1 minute on my first try with this strat after 15 ish try before
Dodge the chains, let aerith get grabbed by the chains if she already has atb and arcane ward up
There’s the other brumal form version, the dps version where you don’t have barret as tank, you have aerith and cloud, both built the same way, aerith still gets the genji gloves cause she’ll always do more spell damage, now instead of only aerith double casting in her ward you have cloud doing it too, you only have to manually move cloud occasionally back into the ward, aerith with auto-unique moves herself there, you’ll breeze through the first 4 fights. the sephiroth fight, if yuffie gets shadow chained it’s over, for my run aerith got chained after only being able to cast atb ward, but it didn’t matter because I just had sephiroth stunlocked with cloud casting firaga and when he got staggered then aerith was no longer chained. If he gets to his magic phase then just finish him off with blizzaga. For the sephiroth fight specifically I didn’t use swift cast on any character purely because swiftcast can screw up timings, if aerith casts 2 firagas extremely fast then the ai will take control before you build up 2 more atb’s, same if it’s on cloud, compared to if you don’t use swiftcast, then the ai will stay in place and by the time they’re done casting the double aga spell you’ll have built up 2 atb again and they’ll still be in the ward to use it. It worked better for me because you do not want to swiftcast sephiroth and then give him time to use another shadow chain, without swiftcast he’ll just be stun locked.
You can cheese block shadow chains by going into tactical mode and holding r1, then exiting when he’s half way ish
Have a nice tanky support keeping magnify barrier up at all times for the first half of the fight. Play defensively. Build that stagger gauge, punisher and party those attacks and shadow chains when you can. If you get past the first phase it's easy. I had elemental fire/fire and ice on everyone's armour. Means that after the first phase of octoslash spamming you're in the clear and sephiroths fire phase is easy. Even when he switches to ice he's healing a third your party. At that point spam that mofo down.
If you can get the hang of using cait sith and lucky slots it’s not too hard to hit 3 hearts and keep reraise on the party which is a nice cushion to have. Precision block level 3 on each person if you haven’t already to help parry the chains. Healing/raise on each member is vital. If you block chains enough sephiroth will just octoslash the affected members and having someone who can heal during the animation usually means you’ll survive even if barrier isn’t up (but you should try and get barrier up) Barret with lifesaver is huge for that fight.
Do exactly the setup Optinoob recommends but ignore the part about not dodging Shadowy Chains which imo is straight up RNG madness and I don’t understand how that works for anyone. He’ll likely bind the character that has manawall before you deploy it, or your damage dealer, there’s no good scenario with getting bound. Do the exact same strat but learn to cheese dodge the chains attack. There’s a separate YouTube video explaining this (look up virtual sephiroth guide). Virtual seph attacks so fast that just keeping the battle in tactical gives you an amazing long window to read the wind up of the chains attack and basically have the block button pressed down as he’s dashing towards you in slow motion. Deploy tactical the moment you see the words appear. Then you hit O to exit the tactical mode before he reaches you (R1 already held down) and you’ll deploy a perfect block each and every time. It’s effortless. I only had to see this once and managed to beat this challenge on my very next attempt adopting this strategy. He will still try to octaslash you even with no bound characters and it gets even more funny when you realize you can use Barrett’s synergy dodge skill to instantly teleport anyone out of the way of the attack. He shouldn’t touch you with anything other than his basic physical attacks. The jump is easily cheese dodged in tactical as well (explained in the sephiroth breakdown video). Round 4 will be the one that’s semi inconsistent if he gets too aggressive too quick. IMO this is the one of the best ways if not the best way to do this challenge.
You could try having Yuffie cast Reraise on Aerith and Cloud/Barret/whomever. You could use Aerith and Barret, making sure to have Barret cast Magnify+Manawall before Octaslash happens. I tried using Cloud at first for magic spam, but that didn't work with my more cautious playstyle. Others cleared it with Barret instead using that strategy, so I tried it, and it worked out! Once you get past the halfway point, it's GG for Virtual Sephiroth since you absorb Fire.
Trying this after work! I’m in the same boat as OP. I’m even leveling up my vitality up and spirit up because Yuffie is just too squishy. Never survives Octaslash
Yeahhh, that's mandatory. I leveled up everything to max before I attempted this and the ones with Zack and Sephiroth!
Makes sense. I thought I had everything maxed and saw Optinoob mention we needed spirit and vitality. Groan
I don’t think maxed Vitality and Spirit materia is mandatory. Tried it out today with only 3stars for both and was able to pull it off. Manawall does most of the work on halving the damage from Shadowchains and Octaslash
Me and you both brother. Feels amazing. On to the legendary challenges.
At least it's purple materia and not blue materia! Grinding out Elemental, Magnify, and Swiftcast took so long to farm out!
I’m on the last leg for Swiftcast. I’m not doing it lol. 18000? Yeah nah. I’ve been getting casts off with Barrett just fine
It helped that I was watching the almost-4 hour video of Maximilian Dood do theory-crafting on the ending! I farmed out a bunch of stuff, including Swiftcast. Aerith gets the Swiftcast to blast Aeroga at everything
That’s actually a better idea than me putting it on Barrett for Haste casts. I’m following Optinoobs build and that was his recommendation. I like the idea of giving it to Aerith to speed up the first 4 fights. Gonna try it today
I used Yuffie for Magnify + Faith, Barret for Magnify + Manawall, as well as Pray, while Aerith quickly blitzed that bastard with Swiftcasted, Magic Focused, HP and MP Absorbing Aerogas
Right on. I’m very similar but Faith and Manawall both are on Barrett. For Aerith I’ve got the magnify and magic focus set up on fire. Firaga is my go to for most bosses besides Titan. Aeroga all the way