There is 3rd way: IGNORE the adds, just hit the boss - Get MATK down + 2 (mid) weapon - MDEF or PDEF down + 2 (depend on your DPS setup, but target only 1 of them) The first is to survive big hits, second to increase your DPS .
Hello! I have Lucia’s Mad Minute (MATK Down) and Red XIII’s Sleek Collar (MDEF up for all allies). Used Aerith for healing and relied on materia for everything else. Was able to clear the fight at 116k CP. My strategy was… ignore the adds the whole time. The AOE MDEF up, combined with Red’s Lunatic High, was enough to make sure I had shields even with the adds up once the boss AOE went off.
None of the magic defense weapons protect the entire party if they aren't gold or better, but Barrett's never does, no matter how high it gets. Barrett won't have time to cast the MATK down and three single target MDEF before the boss casts the multi target attack.
Everyone has different setups, but for me Tifa as healer/debbufer with her LB sommersault to lower boss pdef/mdef by 2 tiers did the job. And i let Cloud and Sephiroth go full Dps, my strategy was kill the ads first and focus the boss with sommersault (it's fine if u use sommersault before having the other LB's ready because sommersault has a fast charge so u should have it again pretty fast). Be ready to have sommersault and the Summons ready as soon as the sigil break phase starts, make sure sommersault targets the boss and let the summons do the aoe attacks (u need Hellfire and Diamond Dust, or Ramuh AoE atk), if for some reason the ads survived, finish them off quickly and focus on breaking the sigils. My setup was purely debuff boss defenses and full Dps with no barriers, so it's wise to manual Tifa in case someone needs healing (U need her summer outfit and weapon though). Did this as a F2P. Good luck.
Thank you. This guide helped me defeat Dark Army Leader EX1. However, I only have a four-star Fairy Tale, which only has a single target cure ability instead of a group cure, so I had to use the event weapon instead.
I did it with a 115k power team Aerith [Fairy Tale/Prism Rod], Red XIII [Sleek/Junk], Zack [Falchion/Cutlass], no OB on anything except Fairy Tale which doesn't really matter.. Red was definitely the MVP at lv43. Your trick on playing on Semi was all the difference, I was having to micromanage too much but after watching your video it was smooth, thank youuuuu
Manually selecting the boss so no DPS goes on the adds at the start and making sure everyone was DPSing(including the healer) at the end were the two make or break things that helped me with the DPS race. I had the Chocobo staff and manaward for the def up and got everyone raised up to -2 on mag defense or better. They all lived. Two having 4700 health and the other with 5500 health. Very tough fight for 127900 power. My power is 126,600 and I barely killed him.
@@SmellyOctopus Yeah I honestly shouldn't have invested as much into it as I had but I have this nostalgic connection to that move from the original final fantasy 7 because kid me thought it was like the coolest manifestation of magic tissue blades of energy out of your sword LOL
ua-cam.com/video/2bmBv9nIouY/v-deo.html These are a few of my first clears. I figured out how powerful the Sun Umbrella is in this fight in round 2. This also makes breaker Aerith a great coop carry because you can easily break the defense stacks in the first stream phase and chunk down there
@@SmellyOctopus worked on my no summon build more and Tifa makes things so much faster with the equipment you recommended for her (I wish listed both early in) and somersault! One somersault and one nightbloom will fully def break the boss to neutral from 3 tiers and Uppershot is much better than running defaith for a no defensive skills build.
Passed it with 119k power and 4,5k hp on Aerith ^^ Hardest part was to control everyone on manual, because on semi Aerith would never heal only trying to attack and Sephiroth wouldn't stop casting manaward on Cloud over and over if I switch to Aerith to make her heal everyone, regardless of stance. They tried to do it even on manual, but then I passed with full hp somehow :D
Defeated this without using magic attack down. Only the manaward for everyone and using 2 healers. Then combo LB the boss. Needed 7k HP and around 120 mdef with manaward to survive his full stacked AoE skill.
towards the very end the bosses LAST PHASE his magic attack power INCREASES PERMANENT, it KO's my enite team with 8k worth of damage crazy... so i took your advice instead of trying to heal towards the end, I just stick with attacking non stop and my cloud died but i kept attacking non theless and i won at the vest last second doing a cheering phase and pleading not to die and next thing you know. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED just just barely, NOTE: I used the same team as you but my power was lower than yours. I also did not use SHIVA OR IFRIT, I used my best limit breaks
i did with. tifa for def + mdef lb break. she still lv 50. cloud dps lv 55, aerith 2nd dps with event weapon + lv 60 wind staff. i tried 3 times. to learn boss mechanic. at 1st. i kill his minions first. if not, boss will consumed them to increase his mag, and sigil break phase will not showing. after kill 1st minions phase. my team focus on boss. make sure your team had 117-120 mdef, +-4500 hp, and ice dmg reduce on sub.
I just took this guy down. I used Aerith as my main wind DPS(Gown outfit was key), TIfa for debuffs, Cloud for healing & sub damage. I had Cloud's costume lighting boost to help with Ramuh damage, was able to get about 30k damage from him and Ifrit. Total CP was somewhere around 135k. I just barely was able to get an S rating with a score of 10,030ish
great vid but it was too complicated to me, I had Tifa with AoE heal, magic attk dwn and somersault LB, Aerith Fairy Tail and chocobo staff (for stats bc i had it 10stars but didnt even use its buff) and Cloud with Aero Blow (instead of Septh bc boss casts mag atk down and cloud is physical).Ignored minions and spammed Mag Atk Dwn with Tifa, for some reason Boss never got that huge Mag Def Down on me. had only 1-2 arrows down but he did have all 3 phase and never did more than 3.5k dmg. When I tried to kill minions at my first attempt- i failed. So just ignore them, target boss and dont forget to break him everytime he summons them bc he dispels debuffs then.
Yeah I'm stuck, eventually the bosses AOE does 6-7K to everyone even with the bosses MATK down and all my guys MDEF upx3 + def sigil on. Not sure what I'm doing wrong
I had the exact same issue as you. My team is overleveld for this and I still died even with triple barrier and defaith on him. If it takes too long to kill him, he will insta kill your party no matter what. When he has about 30%-40% hp left, you need to stop healing and just spam damage until he dies. Alternate between your 2 dps and spam wind damage.
Depends, are your chars prioritizing what they SHOULD be prioritizing? Just because you have defaith, doesn't mean they will use it if your build is different than the video. They might use something different if they feel that's a "better" choice. But yeah, auto defaiths and team M.Def buffx2 via Cloud's event weapons saw I never took more than 3.5k from any attack. Not sure how you take so much damage. Unless you're dragging out the 2nd wave of adds, as they actively debuff your defense the longer you keep them out.
Thank you octopus your video was a bit long but your core points got me through the fight. I used manaward,defaith & strong wind magic I won it on auto all I did was pop hellfire a few times 😅
My Matt made this much easier. Got really lucky with drops so have a great core defender and prime number. Added in gigantic shield too makes buffing for that second surge a breeze.
many heroes have weapons with mag atk down skills, they decrease 2-3 arrows down, Defaith does only low potency(1arrow) i think and stats on Defaith materia are usually not great
u can use any heroes but u need to have boss mag atk down , need wind materia to hurt him and target Boss ignoring small minions. Need hp over 4k and mag def. Physical attacker is better bc boss casts magic atk down and if u break his defence you can kill him before he gets to phase 3
@ArenJohnston weird coz I only had 107 mdef on Sephiroth no buff and went to defense mode and it only dealt 4.8k damage and it had stacked magic buff. Same when you remove the temporary buff and it has the fixed magic buff that can't be removed.
@ArenJohnston Yeah I just tried it again with Seph and Tifa with 107 Mdef with the boss having all Magical attack buff and my team has a mdef down debuff and it only dealt 5k+. If its defaited and you have mdef buff you should have lower damage than my team.
Uninstalled the game yesterday. As much as I love FF7 I can't help but feel that all the Gatcha and anti player monetisation strategies used within this game are too predatory. I think the straw that broke the camels back for me is the limited attempts at crisis dungeons, especially for a player who struggles to completely understand the battle mechanics and needs to practice to get better at said mechanics. Especially as crisis dungeons seem to be the only way to get mythril ore to upgrade weapons to max levels. I wish you well in your endeavours but this is square putting money first over good game design
U get 1 from playing the story (First Soldier i think),or u might have used it to lvl up other materia on accident. Right now there is no way to create defaith materia.
This is the first boss I couldn't get done. I have spent a bit and have just under 140k power but no aoe heal weapon as of yet. I have everything else recommended. Ngl I am kind of losing some love for the game its insanely grindy and just keeps scaling up harder already.
There is 3rd way: IGNORE the adds, just hit the boss
- Get MATK down + 2 (mid) weapon
- MDEF or PDEF down + 2 (depend on your DPS setup, but target only 1 of them)
The first is to survive big hits, second to increase your DPS .
Hello! I have Lucia’s Mad Minute (MATK Down) and Red XIII’s Sleek Collar (MDEF up for all allies). Used Aerith for healing and relied on materia for everything else. Was able to clear the fight at 116k CP.
My strategy was… ignore the adds the whole time. The AOE MDEF up, combined with Red’s Lunatic High, was enough to make sure I had shields even with the adds up once the boss AOE went off.
None of the magic defense weapons protect the entire party if they aren't gold or better, but Barrett's never does, no matter how high it gets. Barrett won't have time to cast the MATK down and three single target MDEF before the boss casts the multi target attack.
Everyone has different setups, but for me Tifa as healer/debbufer with her LB sommersault to lower boss pdef/mdef by 2 tiers did the job.
And i let Cloud and Sephiroth go full Dps, my strategy was kill the ads first and focus the boss with sommersault (it's fine if u use sommersault before having the other LB's ready because sommersault has a fast charge so u should have it again pretty fast).
Be ready to have sommersault and the Summons ready as soon as the sigil break phase starts, make sure sommersault targets the boss and let the summons do the aoe attacks (u need Hellfire and Diamond Dust, or Ramuh AoE atk), if for some reason the ads survived, finish them off quickly and focus on breaking the sigils.
My setup was purely debuff boss defenses and full Dps with no barriers, so it's wise to manual Tifa in case someone needs healing (U need her summer outfit and weapon though).
Did this as a F2P.
Good luck.
TIFA MVP
@@foxtalksgames She's the Queen
Thank you. This guide helped me defeat Dark Army Leader EX1. However, I only have a four-star Fairy Tale, which only has a single target cure ability instead of a group cure, so I had to use the event weapon instead.
Great video. Matt with heals and Core Defender made the fight much easier.
I did it with a 115k power team Aerith [Fairy Tale/Prism Rod], Red XIII [Sleek/Junk], Zack [Falchion/Cutlass], no OB on anything except Fairy Tale which doesn't really matter.. Red was definitely the MVP at lv43. Your trick on playing on Semi was all the difference, I was having to micromanage too much but after watching your video it was smooth, thank youuuuu
Manually selecting the boss so no DPS goes on the adds at the start and making sure everyone was DPSing(including the healer) at the end were the two make or break things that helped me with the DPS race.
I had the Chocobo staff and manaward for the def up and got everyone raised up to -2 on mag defense or better. They all lived. Two having 4700 health and the other with 5500 health.
Very tough fight for 127900 power. My power is 126,600 and I barely killed him.
Thank you, this was very helpful!
Loved the honorable mentions list up front!
But, why use Shiva over Blade Beam if they all resist ice?
Thanks!
The majority skipped it because of summons and limited memory crystals but you're correct I should've mentioned it.
@@SmellyOctopus Yeah I honestly shouldn't have invested as much into it as I had but I have this nostalgic connection to that move from the original final fantasy 7 because kid me thought it was like the coolest manifestation of magic tissue blades of energy out of your sword LOL
ua-cam.com/video/2bmBv9nIouY/v-deo.html
These are a few of my first clears. I figured out how powerful the Sun Umbrella is in this fight in round 2.
This also makes breaker Aerith a great coop carry because you can easily break the defense stacks in the first stream phase and chunk down there
@@SmellyOctopus worked on my no summon build more and Tifa makes things so much faster with the equipment you recommended for her (I wish listed both early in) and somersault! One somersault and one nightbloom will fully def break the boss to neutral from 3 tiers and Uppershot is much better than running defaith for a no defensive skills build.
great breakdown as usual
2:10 "not so much of what the stats are over here" say the mf with 4.5% MATK on 4* Materia hahaha love it Octo ❤
Passed it with 119k power and 4,5k hp on Aerith ^^
Hardest part was to control everyone on manual, because on semi Aerith would never heal only trying to attack and Sephiroth wouldn't stop casting manaward on Cloud over and over if I switch to Aerith to make her heal everyone, regardless of stance. They tried to do it even on manual, but then I passed with full hp somehow :D
Thanks for the guide on ex 2.
Defeated this without using magic attack down.
Only the manaward for everyone and using 2 healers.
Then combo LB the boss.
Needed 7k HP and around 120 mdef with manaward to survive his full stacked AoE skill.
YES, I TURNED THAT STUPID PUMPKIN INTO PUMPKIN PIE! 🎃
towards the very end the bosses LAST PHASE his magic attack power INCREASES PERMANENT, it KO's my enite team with 8k worth of damage crazy... so i took your advice instead of trying to heal towards the end, I just stick with attacking non stop and my cloud died but i kept attacking non theless and i won at the vest last second doing a cheering phase and pleading not to die and next thing you know. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED just just barely, NOTE: I used the same team as you but my power was lower than yours. I also did not use SHIVA OR IFRIT, I used my best limit breaks
I just spammed chi attack with tifa and made sure both her and aerith were on healing duty. Completed it in auto.
Thank you. That made it infinitely easier
i did with. tifa for def + mdef lb break. she still lv 50. cloud dps lv 55, aerith 2nd dps with event weapon + lv 60 wind staff.
i tried 3 times. to learn boss mechanic. at 1st. i kill his minions first. if not, boss will consumed them to increase his mag, and sigil break phase will not showing. after kill 1st minions phase. my team focus on boss. make sure your team had 117-120 mdef, +-4500 hp, and ice dmg reduce on sub.
I just took this guy down. I used Aerith as my main wind DPS(Gown outfit was key), TIfa for debuffs, Cloud for healing & sub damage. I had Cloud's costume lighting boost to help with Ramuh damage, was able to get about 30k damage from him and Ifrit. Total CP was somewhere around 135k. I just barely was able to get an S rating with a score of 10,030ish
We will meet again on EX3.
great vid but it was too complicated to me, I had Tifa with AoE heal, magic attk dwn and somersault LB, Aerith Fairy Tail and chocobo staff (for stats bc i had it 10stars but didnt even use its buff) and Cloud with Aero Blow (instead of Septh bc boss casts mag atk down and cloud is physical).Ignored minions and spammed Mag Atk Dwn with Tifa, for some reason Boss never got that huge Mag Def Down on me. had only 1-2 arrows down but he did have all 3 phase and never did more than 3.5k dmg. When I tried to kill minions at my first attempt- i failed. So just ignore them, target boss and dont forget to break him everytime he summons them bc he dispels debuffs then.
Yeah I'm stuck, eventually the bosses AOE does 6-7K to everyone even with the bosses MATK down and all my guys MDEF upx3 + def sigil on. Not sure what I'm doing wrong
I did it after the first try of watching this video. 127k power level. You should be able to do it
The boss shouldnt be hitting you for 6-7k if youre doing it right. I only have 4kish hp on everyone and never got hit that hard
If u have the Ifrit weapons they reduce ice damage.
If not, see if u have any that reduces ice damage
I had the exact same issue as you. My team is overleveld for this and I still died even with triple barrier and defaith on him. If it takes too long to kill him, he will insta kill your party no matter what. When he has about 30%-40% hp left, you need to stop healing and just spam damage until he dies. Alternate between your 2 dps and spam wind damage.
Depends, are your chars prioritizing what they SHOULD be prioritizing? Just because you have defaith, doesn't mean they will use it if your build is different than the video. They might use something different if they feel that's a "better" choice.
But yeah, auto defaiths and team M.Def buffx2 via Cloud's event weapons saw I never took more than 3.5k from any attack. Not sure how you take so much damage. Unless you're dragging out the 2nd wave of adds, as they actively debuff your defense the longer you keep them out.
I ended up ignoring the 2nd set of adds and just broke the boss and went full dps before the AoE wipe lol
Me sitting over here still not having beaten EX1 🫢
Thanks Octo!
-RudaChris
Yeah can we have an EX1 guide too (embarrassing to ask but pleeeaaassee)
Really need that EX 1 guide still not able to defeat them.
Nicee
Thank you octopus your video was a bit long but your core points got me through the fight. I used manaward,defaith & strong wind magic I won it on auto all I did was pop hellfire a few times 😅
Chocobo Aerith is cute 🙃
My Matt made this much easier. Got really lucky with drops so have a great core defender and prime number. Added in gigantic shield too makes buffing for that second surge a breeze.
Same… haven’t been able to even beat EX1 lol
What if you don't have defaith ? I might accidentally use it to upgrade Materia :(
Then lower his MATK down to tier 3.
many heroes have weapons with mag atk down skills, they decrease 2-3 arrows down, Defaith does only low potency(1arrow) i think and stats on Defaith materia are usually not great
Can you show us how to do with the Alt characterw?
u can use any heroes but u need to have boss mag atk down , need wind materia to hurt him and target Boss ignoring small minions. Need hp over 4k and mag def. Physical attacker is better bc boss casts magic atk down and if u break his defence you can kill him before he gets to phase 3
there's guy posted with 114k power clear, i had 133k and beat it on 2nd attempt ua-cam.com/video/k1ga36BzlXA/v-deo.html
Haha I can't even beat EX1
I'm in the same boat. Even with the wind weapons, it's like my team is hitting them with a wet noodle.
The way to beat it is to send Elliott in to take them down
yeah i might have sold that cure
Was wondering why the bosses big AOE went from doing 2-3K to like 7K to everyone lol. Guess I need to pay attention to my dude's mag def more
You need to take down the 2 small mobs as well. Take them down before big move reduce damage.
Even without magic defense, it should only do 3k-4k.
You probably in Attack Stance or have 100% magic defense debuff.
@@akinamori1615Nope, does that to me also. 2 Magic def buffs on whole party, defaithed the boss, Max Defence stance. Still hits for 7K damage.
@ArenJohnston weird coz I only had 107 mdef on Sephiroth no buff and went to defense mode and it only dealt 4.8k damage and it had stacked magic buff.
Same when you remove the temporary buff and it has the fixed magic buff that can't be removed.
@ArenJohnston Yeah I just tried it again with Seph and Tifa with 107 Mdef with the boss having all Magical attack buff and my team has a mdef down debuff and it only dealt 5k+.
If its defaited and you have mdef buff you should have lower damage than my team.
Uninstalled the game yesterday. As much as I love FF7 I can't help but feel that all the Gatcha and anti player monetisation strategies used within this game are too predatory.
I think the straw that broke the camels back for me is the limited attempts at crisis dungeons, especially for a player who struggles to completely understand the battle mechanics and needs to practice to get better at said mechanics. Especially as crisis dungeons seem to be the only way to get mythril ore to upgrade weapons to max levels.
I wish you well in your endeavours but this is square putting money first over good game design
Super BOOP
Where do you get the defaith materia?? I only have debrave. Is it something I missed from events?
U get 1 from playing the story (First Soldier i think),or u might have used it to lvl up other materia on accident.
Right now there is no way to create defaith materia.
@@hug0682 Welp.. 🥲 I guess I use it by accident, huh? 🥲🥲🥲🥲
Thanks, Hug
My bad it's at the end of Crisis core apparently.
This is the first boss I couldn't get done. I have spent a bit and have just under 140k power but no aoe heal weapon as of yet. I have everything else recommended. Ngl I am kind of losing some love for the game its insanely grindy and just keeps scaling up harder already.
*watches your stuff to beat stuff on EC lol
He blueballs his team to make content, period.
fml i have both weapons but my lucia is lvl 20 lmao
Again, these guides seem so useless to me, because I don't have any kind of weapons or materia you possess...