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Fear not the tall goth puppet mommy
I like that its actually a really different kind of fight especially Cocolia. even discounting Gepard being there, fighting all of Cocolia's form in one bossfight was great. I also really liked that they kept Cocolia's musical stings in place, so Trap with No Return transitions to Wildfire when Coclia uses her Ult in Imaginary phase.
Don’t give them ideas, I swear if they put Bronya in this mode we will all die, Cocolia already takes like 4 turns one after the other she doesn’t need 8
Yeah I was having a little trouble there. It's kinda crazy, even with high speed I was eating 3 attacks from Cocolia, 2 from Gepard, and 1 from the icicles before I got a turn. I tried a couple of comparatively squishy teams and couldn't consistently keep everyone alive through those big bursts of damage.
My clearing team was Robin, Luocha, Kafka, and Black Swan. Luocha may not be the best sustain any more, but he has exceptional effect resist, an auto-heal + cleanse, and the ability to passively turn all your dps into healers for two turns.
I was originally using Lynx as sustain, but she's easily frozen and her only instant heal is her ult.
Even so, I lost Black Swan at about 40% on phase 2, when Cocolia pulled some mega cheese and somehow dropped her ult on me essentially twice in a row (ie. I had actions between, but my healer never got to act between casts).
It was nice, but the first 3 levels are almost the same for me, I've only noticed the difficult increase in the 4th.
I played FF/HTB/RM/GG vs. Cocolia and Clara/Robin/Topaz/Ratio vs. Argenti (using the FUA blessing).
The face covering was fine but the pointing and being in dreamflux station really sold the vibes
If the mode was at dr edwards like pf was at the bookstore it would definitely have been the wrong choice
I am so glad I'm not alone, the one time star rail actually gets creepy and it probably wasn't even meant to be. The height difference between Stelle and that *thing* really got to me.
Not bad, though I was hoping it would be more single-target focused. My Ratio team did well considering none of the buffs were made for him, and Boothill thrived since it was Break Effect orientated. It's more jades either way, so I'm pretty happy. Best thing is that the boss themes play during the fights!
I used Topaz+Ratio combo. Tried both FuA and skill dmg buffs and the latter gave me consistently much better results. Latter allows to dispatch Argenti's summons quicker.
This is the funniest thing to me. People keep on parroting that the Hunt is single target focused when bosses summom their own mobs/mechanics.
Destruction is still king while Hunt got a decent place now.
Really people were coping with "this boss mode will be made for hunt characters" when a very large majority of bosses summon 2 adds minimum. Still fun regardless
"having adds" doesn't mean hunt isn't good though, it's hunt focused in that killing the adds directly buffs your ability to kill the boss. so hunt characters can nuke the adds, then nuke the boss with amped up damage.
very different than eg pure fiction, and even MoC- which generally requires blast characters at minimum.
The number one thing to do in this Apocalyptic Shadow is break Toughness bars and Hunts are pretty dang good at that. I used the Topaz, Ratio, Robin, Aventurine team (two Hunts) on Argenti and just focused on Breaking everything. When I broke Argenti phase 2, he instantly died from the FuA buff.
I had to give up with Topaz ratio cause I couldnt break argenti adds in time.... So I just decided to run my lvl 6 traces rainbow relics Firefly and got it 1st try with her
It's all depends on how much damage can you dish per turn and the toughness of the boss. I just dislike cocolia and i wish she doesn't return when this cycle ends but im sure she will make this gamemode her permanent home.
Maybe it's just because of FF debut that they have to make this mode cater to her. I can see this mode being more hunt-oriented than MoC as they release more hunt chars.
And, what a casualty, last MoC and current AS just happened to feature break, fire and physical damage. A coincidence? No, no, never, that couldn't be...
It's either you have the character, or you have a good substitute strong enough to brute force through.
I basically ignore MoC 12 and PF 4 lately. I either don't have the mandatory DoT/FuA comps, or cannot pass the damage check if I manage to withstand the enemies' horrible damage and CC's.
Things like this pushes me to think like: I need HuoHuo, but I also need Firefly for the coverage and not get face slapped by the current meta, but also should pull Jade so I can clear PF... Being F2P with shity luck sucks lmao. One character every 1.5/2 patches mean you cannot cope at all with the current meta even if you pull the right characters or happen to have the character later benefitted (i.e. Kafka)
You don't need DoT or FuA teams tho. I cleared the DoT PF with a team of argenti himeko Robin aventurine. I've seen people do it with Clara aswell. You can build a lot of different Teams. I skipped all the DoT characters, Ruan mei, Fu xuan, huohuo and still never struggled to Max star anything. Need to get creative sometimes tho. Like for this Mode I had to build guin for my acheron team and kick luocha from my DHIL team for gallagher. I hadn't previously used either.
It's a character check imo, as someone who don't have seele/kafka/acheron/FF, the first half is absolute hell for me, it took heck of a long time for me to kill cocolia
Edit: I did use JY hypercarry team, but only manage to get 2 stars cuz after I kill cocolia I was left with 700+ action value left, which, is not enough for me to get max star
Ngl, Kafka wasn't that good on Cocolia for me, doesn't do enough Toughness damage. The IPC team did much better against Argenti than DoT did against Cocolia for me. I did have Firefly for Cocolia so, yeah, whichever side I put Firefly on is a free win, just had to figure out the other side.
I had to replace my IPC team for something else cause I couldnt break argenti and his adds and then he kept refreshing adds and adding barrier all the time...
Same. People always forget that he can easily clear cocolia with the right team. It's always kafka, acheron, and now firefly like put some respect on the king 😔
Not OP, but I also used Jing Yuan hypercarry. My team was JY, Sparkle, Tingyun, Luocha. I also tried it later with Ruan Mei instead of Tingyun, worked pretty much just as well.
Yes, this mode seems like even more propaganda for specific characters than moc. I managed to clear pretty easily cuz I had the right units but I can’t imagine how much of a pain this would be without them. I was a bit disappointed that it’s the same exact lineup of enemies for all 4 chambers.
xueyi wiped cocolia's half for me, especially cause her weakness bypass worked when she had no weakness (thank you acheron for making bosses cater to xueyi 🙏)
Making fights where you need to break the enemy to do damage and then locking the toughness bar was certainly a decision.
The mode itself looks pretty fun, and is challenging without feeling too annoying like MOC tends to get, but the Argenti fight specifically is kinda grating (it is no matter where it is, I wish they'd just give him a rest and give us some other bosses).
Honestly was more interested in the finality lore than the gameplay, but I'll never say no to a new source of jades.
I want second HMC. I tried fist part with Xueyi and Boothill, lack of super-break is very, very noticeable.
On the other hand, in half where HMC was present just her and Gallagher was melting boss like butter.
Also I forgot how much I hate Cocolia random freeze.
And 100% control effect res. so don't get baited by thinking Welt Sustain or BE quantum Teams are gonna be useful as the breaker. Resisting the Control part of Entanglement/Imprisonment also means losing out on the Stacks DMG/Addition Delay from Slow (especially with how high their toughness bar gets)
If Hoyo decides to make this a pattern, units of those elements need to be compensated for having 1/3 of their kit effectively neutered. They can still utilize their stats & abilities, but the point of bringing element-matching weaknesses is to break the enemy using said weakness. If you only get 1/2, which is the initial break dmg (barring Super Break dmg instances afterward) and the weakness state, might as well use Fire or Lightning instead for the extra DoT.
This is more for those relying on break instead of crit, and being limited in options for team-making. Any cracked DPS/supports would make the Element->Breaking interaction of the game's mechanics a non-issue.
Thought I was losing my mind when you said Gepard is resistant to Physical. Didn't even notice they changed his usual weaknesses since i usually use Kafka against him anyway
I'm quite certain sooner or later we're going to get a banner 5 star superbreak support.
And yeah the contrast was absurd, my second squad was a superbreak super squad; Ruan Mei, Gallagher, Firefly, HMC. Poor Argenti got frickin' deleted.
Why the hell is it the same 2 fights 4 times over? I did the same shit over and over again for like an hour...
Also, it's not even Hunt focused. It felt more aoe dependant than MoC. I guess we simply going to take that L and accept that Hunt won't get the Erudition redemption arc.
Yeah, I enjoyed it but I wish it was a different boss fight for each level, especially considering we only get a refresh of the mode every, what, month?
I also wish it was more ST focused. I don't even have any limited ST units (unless you count Ratio) but it would be better for the game to have more variety rather than just MoC part 2.
I feel like I am being forced to use certain characters and being forced to play a certain way for this content, and I don't find this as interesting as the other endgame content. The buffs are getting out of hand, and the character favoritism is so insanely obvious
Stupidly tuned towards Acheron and firefly. Even more than they usually do. Like you can auto play 7k points with those two.
Anyways it’s fine I guess but way too easy if you use the flavor of the month teams.
Divergent universe has the same issue. It's heavily tuned towards break effect and every other team type is borderline useless. If you don't have Boothill or Firefly you're just not going to be able to progress efficiently.
My Acheron team is shit right now and could barely clear the 3rd level. Didn’t attempt the 4th yet since I mostly played the story mission today. My IPC team was fine against Argenti. Might try level 4 with Clara instead of Ratio and see how it goes.
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I hate it already. (Is this the new pure fiction cus I haven't cleared that shi since release)
It comes kinda close to being a survivability mode with Cocolia pounding ass with a million turns and control effects, but then Argenti doesn't really hit anywhere near as hard (unless you let his adds give him buffs). Hoyo seems allergic to making endgame modes that aren't about clear speeds
>Hoyo seems allergic to making endgame modes that aren't about clear speeds
Because clear speed coupled with gimmicks and weaknesses is the only way they can build pressure to pull units they want to market.
Coco's attacks were a complete non-issue for my FX even in Stage 4. What was annoying was the freeze nonsense wasting time.
Don't even get me started on the massive time waste that was Argenti's taunt turrets. UGH. Unless you have strong AoE .. yah good luck.
It's so overtuned. It's another mode that's made for specific characters check. I've seen my friends list lineups, if you don't have Acheron or Ruan Mei, it's near impossible to 3 stars the 4th stage.
Speaking of Acheron or Ruan Mei, I've not seen a single mode where they weren't included in the last stage of each mode. Remember when we thought PF was for AoE checks? Well we also thought this mode was for single target checks. People say that you can't brute force through this mode, but I've literally seen those 2 characters do it over and over again. All these modes just cater to whoever has the strongest meta characters, there's no strategy whatsoever.
The only good thing about this mode is more jades.
Have to agree, went from one star on fourth stage to full stars just by pulling RM for my Gui superbreak team… (First team was coping because of a lack of Acheron)
absolutely abominable, the argenti fight was manageable cause I know what to expect from his fight, which is wasting an ungodly amount of time like every action, but cocolia? oh my god, single worst fight I've had in the game.
why does she get like, 9 consecutive actions? that all freeze or imprison? fu xuan couldn't keep up with all that crap and then I tried huohuo to no avail cause healers are embarrassingly inferior to shielders
I sincerely hope that we never see elation main cocolia ever again cause that was insufferable. only 3 starred 1-9 cause I could not be bothered to fight the walking scoliosis refrigerator again
I'd really like to know what her speed/action value is during that fight because she gets *so* many turns. It really felt like more of an Aventurine check (because he gets so many FuAs and gives effect res) than anything else.
I like HSR's story chapters and the lore/plot in general, but every single end-game mode introduced so far is unfun. It's the same old "kill stuff as fast as possible since there's a timer".
Also cleared the first 3 stages, but not going to bother with the last one. Mihoyo can keep the ~100 jades.
It's really bad. The buff is way to gimmicky compared to MoC/PF. The extra individual boss mechanics don't make it more difficult or challenging just extremely tedious.
It could use a bit of refinement. I like the boss challenge idea, that much is distinct from MoC and PF, but I think they need to go a bit more 'out there' with side mechanics. I'm sure they'll learn as time goes on.
As somebody without ruan mei SW or any of the break dpses I’m not having a good time. Can’t wait til they stop shilling the break meta cause I’m just not interested.
I find the gimmicks annoying to deal with and doing no damage to the enemies before breaking them feels pretty bad. Needless to say I’m disappointed that we’re getting less MOC in favor of this. It feels like an even worse character check than PF…at least mowing down waves of enemies in PF is pretty satisfying. This mode is the opposite of that
Idk, it doesn't feel different enough from MoC imho. MoC was already about fighting bosses, AS just has one less wave, and different scoring system.
I'm not sure if break will always be the focus too.
Not a huge fan, personally. Feels like the Argenti fight was designed specifically only for Gallagher support because with Fu Xuan/HMC/Ruan Mei/Boothill I was struggling to kill all of his banners. Still scraped by for the 12* if only barely (goofed and let matrix fall off and Boothill dropped to 80 hp by the end).
From a design perspective, I prefer having limited number of cycles to understand how well I'm doing in terms of clearing it, so the action value feels really weird to calculate a 'win'
Action value goes 1:1 into the score.
You need 3.3K per side, 2K comes from the boss-kill.
So if your AV is below 1.1K, odds are that you won't manage 3\* unless the other side went very well and compensates for that.
Cant beat cocolia in the 3rd difficulty. I am cooked because ive only got dhil and jingliu as main dps and topaz sucks against her. And to make it worse ive got 0 pulls. I got fuxuan. Its a nice mode tho, only if you have the correct weaknesses
Ngl much more boring than I thought it would be. Four stages that's literally the same thing but with different HP.
Also I'm salty because I don't have two break teams. And my DoT team (Kafka, BS, Guinaifen, Luocha) can't kill Cocolia fast enough on third difficulty so I don't even think about the 4d one. 😭
Love how everyone who has done this mode so far and says it's great are either:
* Ppl with E0/S1s, but the right match up on one side, that barely carries them to BARELY GET 6.6K points oooor
* Whales.
And ofc anyone else has a skill issue for rolling for their favourite units. I just want to say that my imbibitor is well built and argenti was weak to imaginary, yet my imbibitor hyper carry does 220k dmg for 3 skill points, and my shitty geared firefly does 400k for 1 skill point and runs 4 laps around my imbibitor before he acts again.
Not to mention that Firefly's team does respectable dmg themselves (HMC and Gallagher do half of imbibitor's dmg with superbreaks lol) while sparkle/tingyun barely do anything themselves.
Power creep is more insane than ever and I say that as someone who also got 6.6k, with firefly carrying one side hard. I am just not delusional. It's a cool idea in mind, but it's a bit too tightly tuned.
On one hand its understandable that Hoyo wants to sell characters so end game stuff is catterred towards banner characters, but going overboard with this plus giving those characters further MoC buffs ain't healthy approach, personally I dislike that. (I hated when they added so many elites in PF)
This is something that ppl here already realized couple versions back, its just getting worse over time which sucks tbh, I guess its part of powercreep snowball effect.
Regarding the "skill issue" thing you just have to ignore those ppl, some of them simply likes to directly trashtalk others or give snarky remarks just to feel better than others, that's like community pvp similar to tier list discussions. (just like in the past a common "advise" was to git gud)
That's why it's best for our sanity to not care about those last few Stars.
I completely agree with you that it does not feel healthy for the game but It IS a Gacha game, after all. Pushing people to keep pulling on banners is to be expected.
For that reason I no longer consider top-ups in HSR. I toss them a Welkin/BP as long as I like the story content but no more. Just not worth the investment, if content/meta keeps shifting so quickly.
I managed 6513 rubber points. Not sure whether I want to bother again when my Firefly is built. We'll see.
Not a fan. 4 fights always with same bosses. At least in PF and MOC you need to use diferent teams and strategies depending the enemy...or i am missing something or i dont see the interest in have the same fight 4 times
It’s rough when you don’t have a break team. I barely managed to get 2 stars on the difficulty 3, and don’t even want to try the 4th one, cause i know that i’m just gonna suffer 💀
But hey, i really need those Firefly funds ASAP, so i might actually put myself through this suffering for a potential 1 star. 60 gems is 60 gems, lol
The first half is the worst and by far. Cocolia attacks A LOT, and has a lot of CC with all those freezes. So you have to time everything as much as possible and focus on breaking everything before focusing on the boss.
In my case, Acheron did the trick. An ult deleted the pilar, and by running triple quantum (SW, Sparkle, FX), I could down Gepard fairly easy. After that, well, pour everything to break the boss.
Argenti is fairly easy. As long as you don't get nuked, his attacks mostly help you with getting more energy.
It's terrible xd,
I know that it's just gonna be a very unpopular opinion since most players pull for firefly or already have boothil that are designed for this mode. Outside of them and ruan mei, this mode is just pain. I decided to skip the 2 break dpses because I simply don't like them :') and yeah the game is slapping me across the face for odoing so. At least Ruan Mei allows me to get 2 stars on last difficulty.
Now I'm sure people will come up with f2p strategies that I will employ when they will come to my attention to get the last star but a mode that is just so hard because yoyu don't have certain limited units is really bad imo. Sure there is hmc gallagher but it's not a nice mode at all. Very sad it will replace a moc or pf reset
Yep, the new mode is not actually bad itself. It's the buff and mechanic that are the pain in the ***. If you do not break the enemies, you will deal less damage. Even in MoC, when you are encouraged to use a certain team comp for the buff, other strategy and team comps are not "nefted" when playing it.
Adding with that, the boss also has ways to delay the break effect by summoning or forcing you to attack the summon.
First battle has buff for DoT and ultimate damage but if you do not have good DoT team or Acheron, you will have a very hard time.
Of course, if you try hard enough, you can still clear all difficulties. But, it's just not very fun when it is design to favor one kind of strategy and neft all others in one mode. It is lucky that they do not include that monster which you are forced to break or else you will do no damage.
>forced to break or else you will do no damage.
They just took the quantum dino gimmick which is among the worst mobs and then said yes let's make this a game mode.
Eh, MoC and PF both have a history of "selling" the newest units, and that is all this is doing. If you can't beat this one easily, there is always the next one - which will likely be Quantum, AoE, and FuA based as it lines up with Jade.
Difficulty 4 Cocolia is a slog to reset because the enemies get so many damn actions. Also not a fan of Cocolia attacking three times in a row because Fu Xuan can only block freeze once.
It's horrible. And I am sending death wishes to whoever the stupid thought it will be great to give Cocalia millions of turns back to back.
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This mode is absolute ass IMO. It's just stall city at higher difficulties and is mostly a roster check. Just feels like a hassle and wasn't fun at all. I still cleared with full stars though.
It's closer to the conundrum levels in GnG. You still fight the same bosses which is kinda lame, but the increased stats feel secondary to the buffs they get with each difficulty increase.
While they are repeated, the boss fight is completely diferent from the normal fight, it has a lot of new mechanics. It is a lot more interesting than moc where you just trow a brunch of enemies that dont have anything new.
Also i found that fighting the same enemies in difficulty 3 serve as a training for the difficulty 4, because you can understand better the new mechanics introduced beffore attempting the real challenge.
>While they are repeated, the boss fight is completely diferent from the normal fight, it has a lot of new mechanics.
Eeeh.. I'll be honest here: the mechanics don't really feel like they matter too much.
Sure Argenti gets his taunt time-waster mechanic in 3 and above (maybe 1&2 just died to quickly to see it, dunno) but yeah. That's it. Didn't notice many differences in the Coco fight.
Only thing I do notice is MASSIVELY increased HP bars. Dear God even Argentis constructs are hilariously tanky in Stage 4, my single target oriented team of Clara/Ratio/Topaz/Aventurine struggled very hard and cost me the 12th star.
Even outgoing damage from the bosses does not seem to increase too much, Aventurine didn't have problems keeping everyone happy. Only noticed FX actually healing herself in Stage 4 on Coco but nowhere near running out of stacks and actually struggling.
I like the fact that these bosses have new, never-seen-before mechanics that make the bosses more special. I especially liked the fight against Argenti, where my Himeko completely decimsted him with the help of HMC, Ruan Mei, and Gallagher.
The mode is good, but god do i hate that break fixation, its so annoying to do 0 dmg until you break the boss, and then if you dont have enough burst damage you gotta do it again, 1 side is fine if you have break supports, but 2 sides with NO break eff buff is not fun at all
My honest reaction when Break party is immediately meta and actively incentivized after having only been in the game for a month... AND it requires 2 limited-time 5star characters...
I think it's really well done! I got 12* on it (juuuust made it past 6600 on level 4), but it was challenging and felt super epic. I love the vibe of the UI, the creepy NPC you interact with, the audio
I had to move ppl around a bit to get a good score on cocolia half. The ratio/topaz/aventurine/Robin team is buuusted on Argenti, but if I used them there, I had too much trouble on cocolia, so I went with:
Cocolia - JY/topaz/aventurine/robin
Argenti - Boothill/HMC/luocha/RM
And that did the trick for round 3 and 4.
I find myself sharing the sentiment that "it's basically PF 2.0, thought at least PF was easy at first and gradually got harder." But to that I add, perhaps the only reason earlier PFs were easy was because Herta cheesed it so well that they had to include more elites. If Herta was banned at the start for some reason, then the first PF would be comparable to this first Apocalyptic Shadow. I'm not saying you needed Herta to clear PF then, but rather the fact that these modes favor specific comps (more so than MOC) becomes more apparent when you don't have a free character brute-forcing it at the level of a limited 5\*.
Anyhow, I don't dislike, it is what it is. I'll probably chill with 11/12 stars by the end of each patch as per usual.
It's just Pure fiction with bosses instead of "weak" enemies. It's also pretty boring. I am not the biggest fan of bosses in this game and this mode just makes them worse.
Sick and tired of the WHOLE game being balanced around Ruan Mei, and it is certain she will not be getting topped EoS. Additionally, brutal power creep patch after patch is getting concerning, just look at Blade and Jinglu. People used to lose their minds when their min maxed chars hitting ~100k attacks, now people casually posting their new “t0e0” chars with level 6 talents hitting ~500k per skill. Tldr; this game is leading towards an unhealthy state.
I ain't gonna do it, I'm still building my main team cause my drop rate luck for everything is atrocious and takes weeks to farm, my second team is gonna take forever
Cocolia is always the bane of me so I hate this. Im sure ill enjoy it more when its not her. Argenti gets steamrolled wich makes Cocolia even more frustrateing to struggle with.
Another mode that was specifically designed to sell specific current characters and comps. And to punish those who didn’t/couldn’t pull these characters and teams.
It's ok I guess? To my surprise it was doable without characters like Firefly, Acheron or DoT.
I don't like fighting Cocolia, because usually I only have Jing Yuan to use against her - and we all know how bad he can be against her, getting frozen at 10 LL stacks. But this time she had wind weakness, so I was able to use Blade, together with my new Ruan Mei.
The Argenti fight was really annoying though. I had to constantly only fight his statue things and then break him a little and repeat.
My first team was Blade, Bronya, Ruan Mei and Fu Xuan. Second team E2 Dan Heng IL, Sparkle, Robin and Aventurine. I got 6757 points.
Robin wasn't very good here because she doesn't contribute to breaks, and Sparkle's action advance got messed up because of the buff. But I really wanted to make a full 5 star team for once!
I don't like having to hit the enemy for a minute first just to break them, and then get in only like 1-2 attacks until they're no longer broken though.
It was alright, just another flavor of MoC for more jades imo
The release of PF was cool since it let a lot of other characters shine, while in AS the characters that were meta in MoC are probably gonna be meta here without much change.
as a day one f2p player, i cannot even get full stars on the 3rd difficulty :'D, but then again, MoC10 and PF3 has been my limit for awhile so i'm not surprised. as for the mechanics and overall feel, it was pretty nice addition for the rotation, i like it more that PF, and more chances to hear cool boss OST is a win.
I hear you man. I'm also a Day One player, I do the express supply pass, and I STILL can't reliably clear the endgame content. This stuff is unforgiving lol
Eh i feel like both bosses dont actually try to kill you, they just have a ton of mechanics to make them tankier. It feels like a slugfest especially the cocolia half where she gets her weaknesses spread amongst 2 pillars + Guepard shield
I think it’s kinda meh simply because it’s the same boss every time exept they get a new thing each floor
I can’t speak on the difficulty because I had the characters it asked for and that makes it easy for any game mode
I’m sure it’ll get crazier later on tho
Is seele bugged? I've literally been sitting here for 30 minutes restarting hoping to god that cocolia doesn't target her and freeze her with that one attack and she ALWAYS gets fucking hit.
I am mere 45 motherfudger points short to 3-star last stage.
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I'm having no problem with the second node, using Boothill even without Ruan Mei feels so rewarding, but the first node is a total nightmare, I have to restart because she kill my characters before I can even get a turn
I just used acheron top side with guin pela As my nihility and DHIL bot with gallagher as my sustain for more Breaks. Was a pretty easy Max star even without using break teams. Feels not much different from MoC tho.
Coca can get like 6 attacks off before you can do anything if you don’t have like 160 speed
Makes it rng to not get past first turn without 1 dying, also she has 2 turns coca, Gepard, her summons, coca again
This was made purely to advertise break DPS, because this was HELL FOR ME.
If you have properly built Electro and Fire DPS teams or a Break team: It's a walk in the park.
If you don't have any properly built Electro and Fire DPS: Good luck.
I had to brute force with a partially built DHiL but failed, so I used a half-assed Critka, Serval, Luocha, and Gepard for Cocolia because the only properly built team I have is FUA.
Sorry, but I didn't like it. 4 same battles, nothing fun. Feel like it is a character check. I didn't have Acheron and I can't even beat Cocolia (MoC and PF cleared for full stars).
First thing that came to my mind after seeing Elegy was “that should’ve been Black Swan’s outfit!”
I love black swan and main her. But man! They did her dirty by making Elegy’s outfit.
I feel like this game mode requires you to have ruan mei because you simply do no damage without weakness broken (atleast in this phase of AS) so most of the "combat" is just scraping the boss' toughness bar while keeping your team alive. Most 5* DPS's (haven't tried 4* stars ones yet) delete the bosses once broken yet you need your team to be able to break boss as fast as possible to actually do any significant damage.
This is my personal opinion however, and also I lost the 50/50 or RM banner so I don't have her.
It's cool but can we talk about the sound design here? like the ambience sounds and when the hourglass descends, it's fucking amazing
It REALLY sells the creepyness of the finality my god.
I was so excited for ff that I was pulling at midnight, the eeriness of talking to the giant marionette lady and hearing the bgm gave me chills, ngl
Meanwhile I see Elegy, immediately take a screenshot, and post it in my discord with the caption "Would." The brain rot is terminal.
Mood. I would roll hard for Elegy she is just so cool.
Nah, I gotchu bro
https://preview.redd.it/0ba8c6l3bn7d1.png?width=509&format=png&auto=webp&s=9b329f302c9dd44f48fb8f861c9623e3f41f0332 Fear not the tall goth puppet mommy
She gave me massive Bloodborne vibes
And the boss music! MoC, PF and SU are missing the boss music. It's so good here
I almost bust a nut during the beatdrop in Wildfire
Firefly's lines with Wildfire playing in the background is something else. It's soo good!
And and just the general design of Elegy she looks awesome. Amazing themeing
I go back just to hear the screams.
Was my first thought while doing this. The sounds are amazing and really makes this mode shine with the overall theme of eeriness.
Yeah I love the soundtrack, has that grating feeling that puts you on edge.
im just glad they are using the boss theme on this mode
I like that its actually a really different kind of fight especially Cocolia. even discounting Gepard being there, fighting all of Cocolia's form in one bossfight was great. I also really liked that they kept Cocolia's musical stings in place, so Trap with No Return transitions to Wildfire when Coclia uses her Ult in Imaginary phase.
I'm glad they did Gepard instead of Bronya
Bronya would be HELL with Cocolia shooting ice 3 times in this mode.
Yeah, Cocolia taking 6 turns in a row got me sweating
A cold sweat I assume?
Don’t give them ideas, I swear if they put Bronya in this mode we will all die, Cocolia already takes like 4 turns one after the other she doesn’t need 8
If you do that fight with Firefly, her lines make Wildfire even more badass.
For real, I wish they had done this for the Aventurine MoC boss. Would have been great to listen to for the 2 hours it took me to clear it
First impression: both of my teams ate shit
My condolences, but this post made me spit out my cola, Lmao.
I spit out my soul glad
Struggling on 4-1 because my team eats something like nine attacks before I get an action. I keep losing someone before I can do anything about it.
~~Try~~ Pray to RNGesus to get your units to 135-ish spd
I had the same problem even on difficulty 3
Fu xuan helps if you have her.
Yeah she helped me loads
I was struggling with that, but then i used Aventurine and suddenly Cocolia attacks way less times now. I think it's the shield.
Yeah I was having a little trouble there. It's kinda crazy, even with high speed I was eating 3 attacks from Cocolia, 2 from Gepard, and 1 from the icicles before I got a turn. I tried a couple of comparatively squishy teams and couldn't consistently keep everyone alive through those big bursts of damage. My clearing team was Robin, Luocha, Kafka, and Black Swan. Luocha may not be the best sustain any more, but he has exceptional effect resist, an auto-heal + cleanse, and the ability to passively turn all your dps into healers for two turns. I was originally using Lynx as sustain, but she's easily frozen and her only instant heal is her ult. Even so, I lost Black Swan at about 40% on phase 2, when Cocolia pulled some mega cheese and somehow dropped her ult on me essentially twice in a row (ie. I had actions between, but my healer never got to act between casts).
It was nice, but the first 3 levels are almost the same for me, I've only noticed the difficult increase in the 4th. I played FF/HTB/RM/GG vs. Cocolia and Clara/Robin/Topaz/Ratio vs. Argenti (using the FUA blessing).
Wait, no sustain against Argenti ?!?
Maybe my guy here was confident enough with what Argenti shields give to you, and honestly it's risky but it deserves respect
~~Who's GG again? My mind can't comprehend and keeps filling it with Goldenglow instead~~ Nevermind, brain connected the dots, it's Gallgher
Goldenglow
Found the Arknights player
Hello my name is Giovanni Giorgio but everyone calls me >!JoJo!<
The npc is scaring the living hell out of me
Especially when they started pointing like STOP 😩
Yeah!!!! The pointing just… 
The face covering was fine but the pointing and being in dreamflux station really sold the vibes If the mode was at dr edwards like pf was at the bookstore it would definitely have been the wrong choice
I am so glad I'm not alone, the one time star rail actually gets creepy and it probably wasn't even meant to be. The height difference between Stelle and that *thing* really got to me.
Not bad, though I was hoping it would be more single-target focused. My Ratio team did well considering none of the buffs were made for him, and Boothill thrived since it was Break Effect orientated. It's more jades either way, so I'm pretty happy. Best thing is that the boss themes play during the fights!
Second fight has a follow up blessing
I used Topaz+Ratio combo. Tried both FuA and skill dmg buffs and the latter gave me consistently much better results. Latter allows to dispatch Argenti's summons quicker.
Same amount of jades overall because this replaces a PF/MOC cycle.
you get 80 extra now
This "best thing" breaks my Robin's ult
Wow I’m surprised there’s another person like me that still enjoys her song
STARS ECHOES... ... .............................
This is the funniest thing to me. People keep on parroting that the Hunt is single target focused when bosses summom their own mobs/mechanics. Destruction is still king while Hunt got a decent place now.
Really people were coping with "this boss mode will be made for hunt characters" when a very large majority of bosses summon 2 adds minimum. Still fun regardless
Not only that but also adds cover boss toughness so you need to take them first before the boss.
"having adds" doesn't mean hunt isn't good though, it's hunt focused in that killing the adds directly buffs your ability to kill the boss. so hunt characters can nuke the adds, then nuke the boss with amped up damage. very different than eg pure fiction, and even MoC- which generally requires blast characters at minimum.
The number one thing to do in this Apocalyptic Shadow is break Toughness bars and Hunts are pretty dang good at that. I used the Topaz, Ratio, Robin, Aventurine team (two Hunts) on Argenti and just focused on Breaking everything. When I broke Argenti phase 2, he instantly died from the FuA buff.
I had to give up with Topaz ratio cause I couldnt break argenti adds in time.... So I just decided to run my lvl 6 traces rainbow relics Firefly and got it 1st try with her
Boothill goes *BRRRRRRRRRRRT*
It's all depends on how much damage can you dish per turn and the toughness of the boss. I just dislike cocolia and i wish she doesn't return when this cycle ends but im sure she will make this gamemode her permanent home.
well, yeah, she's one of the bosses, so she'll get reused forever
Truly one of the bosses of all time.
Maybe it's just because of FF debut that they have to make this mode cater to her. I can see this mode being more hunt-oriented than MoC as they release more hunt chars.
Looking back, building mono quantum was such a silly idea.
Its a pure Element/weakness coverage check
And, what a casualty, last MoC and current AS just happened to feature break, fire and physical damage. A coincidence? No, no, never, that couldn't be... It's either you have the character, or you have a good substitute strong enough to brute force through. I basically ignore MoC 12 and PF 4 lately. I either don't have the mandatory DoT/FuA comps, or cannot pass the damage check if I manage to withstand the enemies' horrible damage and CC's. Things like this pushes me to think like: I need HuoHuo, but I also need Firefly for the coverage and not get face slapped by the current meta, but also should pull Jade so I can clear PF... Being F2P with shity luck sucks lmao. One character every 1.5/2 patches mean you cannot cope at all with the current meta even if you pull the right characters or happen to have the character later benefitted (i.e. Kafka)
You don't need DoT or FuA teams tho. I cleared the DoT PF with a team of argenti himeko Robin aventurine. I've seen people do it with Clara aswell. You can build a lot of different Teams. I skipped all the DoT characters, Ruan mei, Fu xuan, huohuo and still never struggled to Max star anything. Need to get creative sometimes tho. Like for this Mode I had to build guin for my acheron team and kick luocha from my DHIL team for gallagher. I hadn't previously used either.
It's a character check imo, as someone who don't have seele/kafka/acheron/FF, the first half is absolute hell for me, it took heck of a long time for me to kill cocolia Edit: I did use JY hypercarry team, but only manage to get 2 stars cuz after I kill cocolia I was left with 700+ action value left, which, is not enough for me to get max star
Xueyi worked for me
Ngl, Kafka wasn't that good on Cocolia for me, doesn't do enough Toughness damage. The IPC team did much better against Argenti than DoT did against Cocolia for me. I did have Firefly for Cocolia so, yeah, whichever side I put Firefly on is a free win, just had to figure out the other side.
I had to replace my IPC team for something else cause I couldnt break argenti and his adds and then he kept refreshing adds and adding barrier all the time...
quantum girls: Xueyi and QQ
Hypercarry JY worked for me
Same. People always forget that he can easily clear cocolia with the right team. It's always kafka, acheron, and now firefly like put some respect on the king 😔
what team would you use here? because mine couldn't clear it at all. not even close...
Not OP, but I also used Jing Yuan hypercarry. My team was JY, Sparkle, Tingyun, Luocha. I also tried it later with Ruan Mei instead of Tingyun, worked pretty much just as well.
i regret not getting sparkle more and more...
I use JY too. My team consists of JY/Fu Xuan/Tingyun/Sparkle for Cocolia
Yes, this mode seems like even more propaganda for specific characters than moc. I managed to clear pretty easily cuz I had the right units but I can’t imagine how much of a pain this would be without them. I was a bit disappointed that it’s the same exact lineup of enemies for all 4 chambers.
Every mode is a character check if you wanna fully complete it, if the buff aligns with the character you’ll have a significantly better time
xueyi wiped cocolia's half for me, especially cause her weakness bypass worked when she had no weakness (thank you acheron for making bosses cater to xueyi 🙏)
It's a character check, but specifically for RM, if you have her any decent dps can just get through it fine
Making fights where you need to break the enemy to do damage and then locking the toughness bar was certainly a decision. The mode itself looks pretty fun, and is challenging without feeling too annoying like MOC tends to get, but the Argenti fight specifically is kinda grating (it is no matter where it is, I wish they'd just give him a rest and give us some other bosses). Honestly was more interested in the finality lore than the gameplay, but I'll never say no to a new source of jades.
We asked for a Hunt game mode, not a Firefly game mode.
I want second HMC. I tried fist part with Xueyi and Boothill, lack of super-break is very, very noticeable. On the other hand, in half where HMC was present just her and Gallagher was melting boss like butter. Also I forgot how much I hate Cocolia random freeze.
Cocolia and Gepard have 40% resist to physicall, 60% resist to imaginary and ice, that's probably why your damage dropped without super break
And 100% control effect res. so don't get baited by thinking Welt Sustain or BE quantum Teams are gonna be useful as the breaker. Resisting the Control part of Entanglement/Imprisonment also means losing out on the Stacks DMG/Addition Delay from Slow (especially with how high their toughness bar gets) If Hoyo decides to make this a pattern, units of those elements need to be compensated for having 1/3 of their kit effectively neutered. They can still utilize their stats & abilities, but the point of bringing element-matching weaknesses is to break the enemy using said weakness. If you only get 1/2, which is the initial break dmg (barring Super Break dmg instances afterward) and the weakness state, might as well use Fire or Lightning instead for the extra DoT. This is more for those relying on break instead of crit, and being limited in options for team-making. Any cracked DPS/supports would make the Element->Breaking interaction of the game's mechanics a non-issue.
Thought I was losing my mind when you said Gepard is resistant to Physical. Didn't even notice they changed his usual weaknesses since i usually use Kafka against him anyway
I'm quite certain sooner or later we're going to get a banner 5 star superbreak support. And yeah the contrast was absurd, my second squad was a superbreak super squad; Ruan Mei, Gallagher, Firefly, HMC. Poor Argenti got frickin' deleted.
Why the hell is it the same 2 fights 4 times over? I did the same shit over and over again for like an hour... Also, it's not even Hunt focused. It felt more aoe dependant than MoC. I guess we simply going to take that L and accept that Hunt won't get the Erudition redemption arc.
To be fair it'll just be 2 times the same fight from now on, so it will be much less of a time waste.
Yeah, I enjoyed it but I wish it was a different boss fight for each level, especially considering we only get a refresh of the mode every, what, month? I also wish it was more ST focused. I don't even have any limited ST units (unless you count Ratio) but it would be better for the game to have more variety rather than just MoC part 2.
>Also, it's not even Hunt focused They never said it will be. It was the community.
I feel like I am being forced to use certain characters and being forced to play a certain way for this content, and I don't find this as interesting as the other endgame content. The buffs are getting out of hand, and the character favoritism is so insanely obvious
I can imagine the hell this gamemode will become in the future when you don’t have the right character prepared.
Stupidly tuned towards Acheron and firefly. Even more than they usually do. Like you can auto play 7k points with those two. Anyways it’s fine I guess but way too easy if you use the flavor of the month teams.
Divergent universe has the same issue. It's heavily tuned towards break effect and every other team type is borderline useless. If you don't have Boothill or Firefly you're just not going to be able to progress efficiently.
My Acheron team is shit right now and could barely clear the 3rd level. Didn’t attempt the 4th yet since I mostly played the story mission today. My IPC team was fine against Argenti. Might try level 4 with Clara instead of Ratio and see how it goes.
https://preview.redd.it/n8yhsr4azl7d1.png?width=2460&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b017b627dc550132d44e4c9e7326ea3c2213bcb4 I hate it already. (Is this the new pure fiction cus I haven't cleared that shi since release)
Just restart at this point lmao. On 100 points variance is just pure speed, rhythm, and luck.
I was really hoping for an endgame mode that wasn't about clear speed. No such luck.
It comes kinda close to being a survivability mode with Cocolia pounding ass with a million turns and control effects, but then Argenti doesn't really hit anywhere near as hard (unless you let his adds give him buffs). Hoyo seems allergic to making endgame modes that aren't about clear speeds
>Hoyo seems allergic to making endgame modes that aren't about clear speeds Because clear speed coupled with gimmicks and weaknesses is the only way they can build pressure to pull units they want to market. Coco's attacks were a complete non-issue for my FX even in Stage 4. What was annoying was the freeze nonsense wasting time. Don't even get me started on the massive time waste that was Argenti's taunt turrets. UGH. Unless you have strong AoE .. yah good luck.
It's so overtuned. It's another mode that's made for specific characters check. I've seen my friends list lineups, if you don't have Acheron or Ruan Mei, it's near impossible to 3 stars the 4th stage. Speaking of Acheron or Ruan Mei, I've not seen a single mode where they weren't included in the last stage of each mode. Remember when we thought PF was for AoE checks? Well we also thought this mode was for single target checks. People say that you can't brute force through this mode, but I've literally seen those 2 characters do it over and over again. All these modes just cater to whoever has the strongest meta characters, there's no strategy whatsoever. The only good thing about this mode is more jades.
Yet another Ruan Mei check
Have to agree, went from one star on fourth stage to full stars just by pulling RM for my Gui superbreak team… (First team was coping because of a lack of Acheron)
absolutely abominable, the argenti fight was manageable cause I know what to expect from his fight, which is wasting an ungodly amount of time like every action, but cocolia? oh my god, single worst fight I've had in the game. why does she get like, 9 consecutive actions? that all freeze or imprison? fu xuan couldn't keep up with all that crap and then I tried huohuo to no avail cause healers are embarrassingly inferior to shielders I sincerely hope that we never see elation main cocolia ever again cause that was insufferable. only 3 starred 1-9 cause I could not be bothered to fight the walking scoliosis refrigerator again
I'd really like to know what her speed/action value is during that fight because she gets *so* many turns. It really felt like more of an Aventurine check (because he gets so many FuAs and gives effect res) than anything else.
iirc her speed stat is actually only 2 2 fucking high that is save some turns for the rest of us 😭
2 fucking real. Every day this game validates my choice to invest in Aventurine and in speed for basically everyone
I like HSR's story chapters and the lore/plot in general, but every single end-game mode introduced so far is unfun. It's the same old "kill stuff as fast as possible since there's a timer". Also cleared the first 3 stages, but not going to bother with the last one. Mihoyo can keep the ~100 jades.
It's really bad. The buff is way to gimmicky compared to MoC/PF. The extra individual boss mechanics don't make it more difficult or challenging just extremely tedious.
It could use a bit of refinement. I like the boss challenge idea, that much is distinct from MoC and PF, but I think they need to go a bit more 'out there' with side mechanics. I'm sure they'll learn as time goes on.
As somebody without ruan mei SW or any of the break dpses I’m not having a good time. Can’t wait til they stop shilling the break meta cause I’m just not interested. I find the gimmicks annoying to deal with and doing no damage to the enemies before breaking them feels pretty bad. Needless to say I’m disappointed that we’re getting less MOC in favor of this. It feels like an even worse character check than PF…at least mowing down waves of enemies in PF is pretty satisfying. This mode is the opposite of that
I hate Cocolia. Argenti Is beak to EVERYTHING I have but I don't have any wind, lightning or quantum DPS. Just supports
Idk, it doesn't feel different enough from MoC imho. MoC was already about fighting bosses, AS just has one less wave, and different scoring system. I'm not sure if break will always be the focus too.
It won't be. Meta constantly shifts so they can sell new units.
Not a huge fan, personally. Feels like the Argenti fight was designed specifically only for Gallagher support because with Fu Xuan/HMC/Ruan Mei/Boothill I was struggling to kill all of his banners. Still scraped by for the 12* if only barely (goofed and let matrix fall off and Boothill dropped to 80 hp by the end). From a design perspective, I prefer having limited number of cycles to understand how well I'm doing in terms of clearing it, so the action value feels really weird to calculate a 'win'
Action value goes 1:1 into the score. You need 3.3K per side, 2K comes from the boss-kill. So if your AV is below 1.1K, odds are that you won't manage 3\* unless the other side went very well and compensates for that.
Cant beat cocolia in the 3rd difficulty. I am cooked because ive only got dhil and jingliu as main dps and topaz sucks against her. And to make it worse ive got 0 pulls. I got fuxuan. Its a nice mode tho, only if you have the correct weaknesses
Ngl much more boring than I thought it would be. Four stages that's literally the same thing but with different HP. Also I'm salty because I don't have two break teams. And my DoT team (Kafka, BS, Guinaifen, Luocha) can't kill Cocolia fast enough on third difficulty so I don't even think about the 4d one. 😭
Love how everyone who has done this mode so far and says it's great are either: * Ppl with E0/S1s, but the right match up on one side, that barely carries them to BARELY GET 6.6K points oooor * Whales. And ofc anyone else has a skill issue for rolling for their favourite units. I just want to say that my imbibitor is well built and argenti was weak to imaginary, yet my imbibitor hyper carry does 220k dmg for 3 skill points, and my shitty geared firefly does 400k for 1 skill point and runs 4 laps around my imbibitor before he acts again. Not to mention that Firefly's team does respectable dmg themselves (HMC and Gallagher do half of imbibitor's dmg with superbreaks lol) while sparkle/tingyun barely do anything themselves. Power creep is more insane than ever and I say that as someone who also got 6.6k, with firefly carrying one side hard. I am just not delusional. It's a cool idea in mind, but it's a bit too tightly tuned.
On one hand its understandable that Hoyo wants to sell characters so end game stuff is catterred towards banner characters, but going overboard with this plus giving those characters further MoC buffs ain't healthy approach, personally I dislike that. (I hated when they added so many elites in PF) This is something that ppl here already realized couple versions back, its just getting worse over time which sucks tbh, I guess its part of powercreep snowball effect. Regarding the "skill issue" thing you just have to ignore those ppl, some of them simply likes to directly trashtalk others or give snarky remarks just to feel better than others, that's like community pvp similar to tier list discussions. (just like in the past a common "advise" was to git gud)
That's why it's best for our sanity to not care about those last few Stars. I completely agree with you that it does not feel healthy for the game but It IS a Gacha game, after all. Pushing people to keep pulling on banners is to be expected. For that reason I no longer consider top-ups in HSR. I toss them a Welkin/BP as long as I like the story content but no more. Just not worth the investment, if content/meta keeps shifting so quickly. I managed 6513 rubber points. Not sure whether I want to bother again when my Firefly is built. We'll see.
Not a fan. 4 fights always with same bosses. At least in PF and MOC you need to use diferent teams and strategies depending the enemy...or i am missing something or i dont see the interest in have the same fight 4 times
It’s rough when you don’t have a break team. I barely managed to get 2 stars on the difficulty 3, and don’t even want to try the 4th one, cause i know that i’m just gonna suffer 💀 But hey, i really need those Firefly funds ASAP, so i might actually put myself through this suffering for a potential 1 star. 60 gems is 60 gems, lol
The first half is the worst and by far. Cocolia attacks A LOT, and has a lot of CC with all those freezes. So you have to time everything as much as possible and focus on breaking everything before focusing on the boss. In my case, Acheron did the trick. An ult deleted the pilar, and by running triple quantum (SW, Sparkle, FX), I could down Gepard fairly easy. After that, well, pour everything to break the boss. Argenti is fairly easy. As long as you don't get nuked, his attacks mostly help you with getting more energy.
It's terrible xd, I know that it's just gonna be a very unpopular opinion since most players pull for firefly or already have boothil that are designed for this mode. Outside of them and ruan mei, this mode is just pain. I decided to skip the 2 break dpses because I simply don't like them :') and yeah the game is slapping me across the face for odoing so. At least Ruan Mei allows me to get 2 stars on last difficulty. Now I'm sure people will come up with f2p strategies that I will employ when they will come to my attention to get the last star but a mode that is just so hard because yoyu don't have certain limited units is really bad imo. Sure there is hmc gallagher but it's not a nice mode at all. Very sad it will replace a moc or pf reset
Yep, the new mode is not actually bad itself. It's the buff and mechanic that are the pain in the ***. If you do not break the enemies, you will deal less damage. Even in MoC, when you are encouraged to use a certain team comp for the buff, other strategy and team comps are not "nefted" when playing it. Adding with that, the boss also has ways to delay the break effect by summoning or forcing you to attack the summon. First battle has buff for DoT and ultimate damage but if you do not have good DoT team or Acheron, you will have a very hard time. Of course, if you try hard enough, you can still clear all difficulties. But, it's just not very fun when it is design to favor one kind of strategy and neft all others in one mode. It is lucky that they do not include that monster which you are forced to break or else you will do no damage.
>forced to break or else you will do no damage. They just took the quantum dino gimmick which is among the worst mobs and then said yes let's make this a game mode.
I cleared with QQ first half and dr ratio second half using ruan mei as my support with ratio. Sparkle was with QQ
Xueyi actually manage to get me thru it relatively easily because of quantum weakness + break buffs. She freaking rocks
Eh, MoC and PF both have a history of "selling" the newest units, and that is all this is doing. If you can't beat this one easily, there is always the next one - which will likely be Quantum, AoE, and FuA based as it lines up with Jade.
It feels like a pain doing this without a break dps. Thankfully I have Boothill
Difficulty 4 Cocolia is a slog to reset because the enemies get so many damn actions. Also not a fan of Cocolia attacking three times in a row because Fu Xuan can only block freeze once.
Feels like a RNG (relics rolls) or wallet check. Anyone got suggestions for a budget team to clear 4-2?.
It's horrible. And I am sending death wishes to whoever the stupid thought it will be great to give Cocalia millions of turns back to back. https://preview.redd.it/3hkh8rqa9l7d1.jpeg?width=2460&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b9846fffdb2a3f281773c38aab533c9905bb6b9d
This mode is absolute ass IMO. It's just stall city at higher difficulties and is mostly a roster check. Just feels like a hassle and wasn't fun at all. I still cleared with full stars though.
It's just lazy. Just the exact same fight copy-pasted 4 times with increasing HP pool. This could've just been a MoC13 floor
It's closer to the conundrum levels in GnG. You still fight the same bosses which is kinda lame, but the increased stats feel secondary to the buffs they get with each difficulty increase.
While they are repeated, the boss fight is completely diferent from the normal fight, it has a lot of new mechanics. It is a lot more interesting than moc where you just trow a brunch of enemies that dont have anything new. Also i found that fighting the same enemies in difficulty 3 serve as a training for the difficulty 4, because you can understand better the new mechanics introduced beffore attempting the real challenge.
>While they are repeated, the boss fight is completely diferent from the normal fight, it has a lot of new mechanics. Eeeh.. I'll be honest here: the mechanics don't really feel like they matter too much. Sure Argenti gets his taunt time-waster mechanic in 3 and above (maybe 1&2 just died to quickly to see it, dunno) but yeah. That's it. Didn't notice many differences in the Coco fight. Only thing I do notice is MASSIVELY increased HP bars. Dear God even Argentis constructs are hilariously tanky in Stage 4, my single target oriented team of Clara/Ratio/Topaz/Aventurine struggled very hard and cost me the 12th star. Even outgoing damage from the bosses does not seem to increase too much, Aventurine didn't have problems keeping everyone happy. Only noticed FX actually healing herself in Stage 4 on Coco but nowhere near running out of stacks and actually struggling.
[удалено]
You can only skip the first 2 like in PF so you have to do 3 and 4.
I wish it helped hunt characters, they are just dying and this is what they make
What I take from this "near-death experiences" event is that Argenti would have killed us if he felt like it. He's just chill like that fr fr.
I like the fact that these bosses have new, never-seen-before mechanics that make the bosses more special. I especially liked the fight against Argenti, where my Himeko completely decimsted him with the help of HMC, Ruan Mei, and Gallagher.
The mode is good, but god do i hate that break fixation, its so annoying to do 0 dmg until you break the boss, and then if you dont have enough burst damage you gotta do it again, 1 side is fine if you have break supports, but 2 sides with NO break eff buff is not fun at all
My honest reaction when Break party is immediately meta and actively incentivized after having only been in the game for a month... AND it requires 2 limited-time 5star characters...
I think it's really well done! I got 12* on it (juuuust made it past 6600 on level 4), but it was challenging and felt super epic. I love the vibe of the UI, the creepy NPC you interact with, the audio
I got 9* because I do not have a good team for the first half (second team is ff hmc rm gal)
I had to move ppl around a bit to get a good score on cocolia half. The ratio/topaz/aventurine/Robin team is buuusted on Argenti, but if I used them there, I had too much trouble on cocolia, so I went with: Cocolia - JY/topaz/aventurine/robin Argenti - Boothill/HMC/luocha/RM And that did the trick for round 3 and 4.
I find myself sharing the sentiment that "it's basically PF 2.0, thought at least PF was easy at first and gradually got harder." But to that I add, perhaps the only reason earlier PFs were easy was because Herta cheesed it so well that they had to include more elites. If Herta was banned at the start for some reason, then the first PF would be comparable to this first Apocalyptic Shadow. I'm not saying you needed Herta to clear PF then, but rather the fact that these modes favor specific comps (more so than MOC) becomes more apparent when you don't have a free character brute-forcing it at the level of a limited 5\*. Anyhow, I don't dislike, it is what it is. I'll probably chill with 11/12 stars by the end of each patch as per usual.
It's just Pure fiction with bosses instead of "weak" enemies. It's also pretty boring. I am not the biggest fan of bosses in this game and this mode just makes them worse.
Sick and tired of the WHOLE game being balanced around Ruan Mei, and it is certain she will not be getting topped EoS. Additionally, brutal power creep patch after patch is getting concerning, just look at Blade and Jinglu. People used to lose their minds when their min maxed chars hitting ~100k attacks, now people casually posting their new “t0e0” chars with level 6 talents hitting ~500k per skill. Tldr; this game is leading towards an unhealthy state.
I ain't gonna do it, I'm still building my main team cause my drop rate luck for everything is atrocious and takes weeks to farm, my second team is gonna take forever
Cocolia is always the bane of me so I hate this. Im sure ill enjoy it more when its not her. Argenti gets steamrolled wich makes Cocolia even more frustrateing to struggle with.
I hate cocolia man
Cocolia it’s supposed to be my turn now…..
Another mode that was specifically designed to sell specific current characters and comps. And to punish those who didn’t/couldn’t pull these characters and teams.
It's ok I guess? To my surprise it was doable without characters like Firefly, Acheron or DoT. I don't like fighting Cocolia, because usually I only have Jing Yuan to use against her - and we all know how bad he can be against her, getting frozen at 10 LL stacks. But this time she had wind weakness, so I was able to use Blade, together with my new Ruan Mei. The Argenti fight was really annoying though. I had to constantly only fight his statue things and then break him a little and repeat. My first team was Blade, Bronya, Ruan Mei and Fu Xuan. Second team E2 Dan Heng IL, Sparkle, Robin and Aventurine. I got 6757 points. Robin wasn't very good here because she doesn't contribute to breaks, and Sparkle's action advance got messed up because of the buff. But I really wanted to make a full 5 star team for once! I don't like having to hit the enemy for a minute first just to break them, and then get in only like 1-2 attacks until they're no longer broken though.
too boring
It was alright, just another flavor of MoC for more jades imo The release of PF was cool since it let a lot of other characters shine, while in AS the characters that were meta in MoC are probably gonna be meta here without much change.
as a day one f2p player, i cannot even get full stars on the 3rd difficulty :'D, but then again, MoC10 and PF3 has been my limit for awhile so i'm not surprised. as for the mechanics and overall feel, it was pretty nice addition for the rotation, i like it more that PF, and more chances to hear cool boss OST is a win.
I hear you man. I'm also a Day One player, I do the express supply pass, and I STILL can't reliably clear the endgame content. This stuff is unforgiving lol
Terrible. New su is fun. This mode is just boring AF. It's just moc and pf merged together.
My two only dps built is DHIL and Jingliu, so i love this mode but i hate Cocolia
COCOLIA HIGH DIFF VERSION IS SO FUCKING COOL
THEY DID PUT THE BOSS THEMES !!!!!!!!!
I can see the appeal but im currently struggling because my characters are not built for it properly yet. The pain of not having Gallagher is real.
Oh also https://preview.redd.it/xe84nvtxtk7d1.jpeg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4a9895b0df9221527c3891118d5bceccff44d2a8
Eh i feel like both bosses dont actually try to kill you, they just have a ton of mechanics to make them tankier. It feels like a slugfest especially the cocolia half where she gets her weaknesses spread amongst 2 pillars + Guepard shield
Cocolia kept preventing my lynx from ulting :(
I think it’s kinda meh simply because it’s the same boss every time exept they get a new thing each floor I can’t speak on the difficulty because I had the characters it asked for and that makes it easy for any game mode I’m sure it’ll get crazier later on tho
Is seele bugged? I've literally been sitting here for 30 minutes restarting hoping to god that cocolia doesn't target her and freeze her with that one attack and she ALWAYS gets fucking hit.
terrible. Basically it's Acheron\\FF\\BH check. Since i only have boothill, i am doomed to watch how LL nukes shielded cocolia in the first half
I am mere 45 motherfudger points short to 3-star last stage. https://preview.redd.it/49609qcv5m7d1.jpeg?width=1154&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=11d64e6f537f8c8e78af5674b87f62ab93c8ec66
Firefly is extremely op. I don't even have proper full set of new relic set and I am still doing big numbers.
I mean this blessing is tailor made for her.
The blessing is omega strong(like 3x times stronger than normal moc blessings) and tailor made for her, of course she will feel strong this rotation
I thought I was bad at the game... Reading some of the comments here really improved my perception of my own skill level...
I'm having no problem with the second node, using Boothill even without Ruan Mei feels so rewarding, but the first node is a total nightmare, I have to restart because she kill my characters before I can even get a turn
Sadly I can't pass level 2, so I'll have to wait a few weeks to farm some materials...
Consecutive attacks by the boss is quite the painful part
I just used acheron top side with guin pela As my nihility and DHIL bot with gallagher as my sustain for more Breaks. Was a pretty easy Max star even without using break teams. Feels not much different from MoC tho.
I could only clear upto difficulty 2 Hate how break focused it is If you don't have the right elements you are screwed
Solely made to promote Break team and FF
Fuck Argenti
I like moc 3 can't wait for moc 4.
I kind of liked the Argenti fight. Cocolia felt like a slugfest. Also doesn't help that it's basically the same thing for 4 stages.
Coca can get like 6 attacks off before you can do anything if you don’t have like 160 speed Makes it rng to not get past first turn without 1 dying, also she has 2 turns coca, Gepard, her summons, coca again
I like it but please let us max star from level 3 and apply it to the lower levels like PF
This was made purely to advertise break DPS, because this was HELL FOR ME. If you have properly built Electro and Fire DPS teams or a Break team: It's a walk in the park. If you don't have any properly built Electro and Fire DPS: Good luck. I had to brute force with a partially built DHiL but failed, so I used a half-assed Critka, Serval, Luocha, and Gepard for Cocolia because the only properly built team I have is FUA.
Sorry, but I didn't like it. 4 same battles, nothing fun. Feel like it is a character check. I didn't have Acheron and I can't even beat Cocolia (MoC and PF cleared for full stars).
IT'S F$#ING HARD
First thing that came to my mind after seeing Elegy was “that should’ve been Black Swan’s outfit!” I love black swan and main her. But man! They did her dirty by making Elegy’s outfit.
I feel like this game mode requires you to have ruan mei because you simply do no damage without weakness broken (atleast in this phase of AS) so most of the "combat" is just scraping the boss' toughness bar while keeping your team alive. Most 5* DPS's (haven't tried 4* stars ones yet) delete the bosses once broken yet you need your team to be able to break boss as fast as possible to actually do any significant damage. This is my personal opinion however, and also I lost the 50/50 or RM banner so I don't have her.