Help FFXIII: [SPOILERS Mark 51 Attacus THE Souless]

[Rey]

Ok really this guy is hard! I can not beat him when he takes out his peerless blade. I deprotect, de shell, curse and slow him down and casy bravera with Fang and bravera to Lightning. Still he always ends up killing me at some point in the battle. Seriously its really hard to pay attention to status effects while looking at the damn chain guage cause he can not be staggered! Plz I need strategy! Help! Also he has the ability to take out my status effects!

Thanks

 

[Whoareyou]

Delta Attack. That's about all I have to say.

Basically this is how it goes. Get him to this point (peerless blade is the second one right?)

Once he draws it, set up Delta attack straight away, as this allows you to keep your main character alive by drawing the attacks away from him/her.

He will use meditation, after this switch straight over to Solidarity in order to heal your sentinel. If you would then like a Saboteur switch to Rav, Sab, Sen and then back to Delta attack once you've debuffed in order to keep yourself alive.

The point I'm making is you need a sentinel for the whole fight in order to stay alive. IT WILL take forever, get used to the idea. I think I only managed to get 3 stars, so yeah, enjoy it next time you try.

 

[VegaNovus]

This guy is a real ass.

Trick here isn't to try stagger him, its to get his stagger bar to about 600% with rav/rav/rav

Then your gonna want your best attacks to be used. I had Light/Fang/Vanille - Rav/Com/Rav

Just gotta always have Med/Sen/Med ready as a backup and ALWAYS keep buffed up.

If he keeps taking out your status effects, cast slow and buff him for a while, that should knock his stagger bar up quite a bit

 

[Whoareyou]

Novus you realise you can't stagger him right?

And I'd say go with safety for this as if you get unlucky with meditation and he casts deprotect on your leader he CAN kill you in one hit.

 

[VegaNovus]

Novus you realise you can't stagger him right?

And I'd say go with safety for this as if you get unlucky with meditation and he casts deprotect on your leader he CAN kill you in one hit.

Read my post please, I said the trick ISNT to try stagger him, its to get it up, as high as possible, about 600% I did.

 

[Rey]

Ravagers are horible against him. Magic does shit all on Attacus but they do raise the chain guage up. Meh im gonna try Lee's strategy. Also Rav Rav Rav is quite dangerous tbh especially when he has his peerless blade.

 

[VegaNovus]

Yeah, thats when I changed to Med/Sab/Sen


But my aim was just to raise the chain bar

 

[Division]

Ok I know this is a bit old thread but since I had some serious trouble killing Attacus I decided to post here what I did to kill him. Actually this tactic worked really well afterall and I managed to down him in 11 minutes, getting 5 stars.

I have level 4 crystarium with maxed main abilities and one lvl 2 "off-spec" crystarium branch. I used Fang (leader), Hope and Lightning. I'll list the paradigm roles in the same order below. One more thing: All the crystarium roles and equipment (except Nimbletoe boots) will be needed also at Adamantoise and Long Gui fights, so you shouldn't lose anything if you use your CP for these branches and buy the equipment.

Crystarium:
You need Lightning to learn at least Evade or Elude in Sentinel branch, but since they're the 2nd and 3rd ability it shouldn't really be a problem. My Fang is a lvl 2 Medic, but I don't think it's actually necessary for this fight.

Paradigms:
1. Combat Clinic (Med-Med-Sen)
2. Premeditation (Sab-Syn-Sen)
3. Relentless Assault (Com-Rav-Rav)
4. Consolidation (Sen-Med-Sen)
5. Solidarity (Com-Med-Sen)

I realised afterwards that Aggression (Com-Rav-Com) might deal more damage than Relentless Assault, so you may as well make it the sixth paradigm and try which one is more effective on him. I think RA is better in the beginning, and at later point Aggression may be more effective.

My main problem with this boss was that I played too much defensive. The battles were taking forever, and he would eventually one-shot my party leader since he got so many shots at it. I tried probably every possible character combination here, and I ended up with this combination because of the good damage output and lvl 4 Sab and lvl 4 Syn.

Equipment:
Fang: 2x General's belt lv.* and a Diamond bangle
Hope: General's belt lv.1, 2x Sorcerer's mark lv.1
Lightning: General's belt lv.*, Nimbletoe boots lv.1, and Diamond bangle

The idea is, that Lightning has really good evasion with Nimbletoe boots and the boss does only melee damage. The reason why I'm having so many General's belts is that I bought them for Long Gui encounter and therefore will need them later. I don't think you need to wear that many General's belts, but a one or two on Fang will probably help. Nimbletoe boots for Lightning is a good buy, since they're pretty cheap and will help a lot on this encounter.

The fight:
Don't try to stagger him! Ravagers deal crappy damage and the battle will just take much longer and I'm not actually sure if you can even stagger him. You will kill him much faster with just concentrating on his health bar instead of stagger bar. Your main damage output will be Fang and Lightning.

Start the fight with Premeditation. Use Libra on him, and start spamming buffs on your party and debuffs on him. Lightning won't take much dmg since she's evading most of the attacks. If she's low on health, pop Solidarity or Combat clinic and heal her to full in no time.

After you have buffs on your party (I tried to keep 4-6 buffs on everyone all the time with Haste being always one of them) and 4 debuffs on Attacus (Deprotect, Deshell, Slow and Curse I think), just go Relentless Assault and nuke him. Whenever someone's hp goes below 50%, pop Combat Clinic or Solidarity and heal yourself, and go back RA.

Whenever he cleanses his debuffs or your buffs wear out, just go Premeditation until they're up again. You should be able to take him down to 75% pretty fast since he's not doing Concentrate or Meditate and his damage output is pretty low.

You should be able to continue with this same tactic after he casts his first blade. He'll start cleansing his debuffs and buffs from your party members, so you'll need to go Premeditation more often though. He'll also deal more damage, but you should be able to nuke him pretty fast with a couple of heals every now and then.

At 50% Attacus summons Peerless Blade, and this is where the fight becomes interesting. Keep the buffs and debuffs up all the time, but now you'll need to keep an eye out. You need fast fingers here; immediately when he casts Meditation you need to cancel everything you're doing, heal your party to full with either Combat Clinic or Solidarity, and pop Consolidation. Pick Mediguard/Steelguard x5 from the ability list as fast as you can and use triangle to immediately use the ability even if you don't have all the ATB gauges full, since at this point he's about to hit his one-shotter and if he picks Fang it's probably a bye-bye without guarding. Usually he'll hit Lightning and she will evade the attack. If she doesn't, she should still be able to outlast the assault. Even if she dies, it's still not game over yet. Resurrect her, heal her, buff her up and try to get everything ready for the next Meditation. Same tactics if he decides to kill Hope, which happened for me. Cast Raise if you can, or simply use Renew or Phoenix Down. If Attacus picks Fang you shouldn't have a problem if you have Steelguard/Mediguard active.

If you survived his Meditate, just heal to full if you need to, make sure you're buffs are up and start nuking him with Relentless Assault. It will take a while until next Meditate, just keep an eye out again. The tactics are pretty simple from now on, just be quick with paradigm shift, don't let your characters' hp get too low, and use guard with Fang at Meditate.

That's about it. Sorry about the wall of text, I hope this helps someone. This isn't the only or the best tactic but at least I got him down fast after banging my head to the wall a couple of times.

 

[Rey]

Can a mod plz close this as There is no further use of it. I beat Him 5 stars

 

[Gorthaur]

Trial 51 is not easy at lower levels

I don't know if everyone appreciates that there is a significant difference between attempting to beat the Titan trials when you are well below being fully maxed out and doing it when you have already maxed the crystarium and your items out. In other words, the people who laugh at how easy Trial 51 is because the got 5 stars with no problem after maxing out the crystarium are not in any way superior to people trying them at lower levels and having problems. In fact, it is kind of cooler when you are good enough to beat it at a lower level.

I used a strategy similar to Division's since I had a low level party. Fang/Hope/Light with Nimbletoe boots and Evade for Lightning with damage resisting items. Hope's ATB was pushed to 15%. Fang got lots of damage resistance too.

Start off with Premeditation, get the Hastes and Protects, switch to Ruthless since he probably isn't slowed, deprotected, and deshelled, likely only just one of those. Once you get there, get Fang attacking too. Relentless Attack is used a lot in the beginning when attacking to drive up the chain gauge, but once it was pushed up to 450 or so, I used Aggression. Actually, in retrospect it would probably make more sense to stick with Relentless Assault at least until you get to the 50% on his hit points, rather than counting the gauge. Combat Clinic for recovery w/ Fang as Sentinel. Lightning dies a couple times in battle, but Hope can raise her quick and send some healing while Fang distracts. Hope might die, but then Light can raise. Delta Attack and Premeditation w/ Light as Sentinel, although you do *not* want to overrely on Delta Attack or you will get doomed for taking too long. The main difference is I also used Ruthless, so Fang could sabotage while the others were swinging. Once I had Haste and Protect on everyone, that was it for Hope as Synergist, but I wanted to keep Fang getting the deprotect, deshell, and slow on him. Attacus shakes his negative effects quicker than the positives wear out, so I found Ruthless useful.

Diversity is too slow to be of much use and Consolidation seems too defensive if you are lower level.

Basically, I had to play risky and straightforward. A lot of attacking. If I had only up two hastes, two protects, and only a deshell or deprotect on him, the group was still swinging on him. If Hope or Light were getting below 50% on hp, I was fighting on some more. The only thing that sucks about one of them dying is that it slows you down some.

You just absolutely cannot let that chain gauge go down.

Anyways, if the thread is asking for tips about how to beat Trial 51, then I suppose one answer is: "Max out the crystarium, all of your items, be super powerful, and it is no problem." I'm just not sure if that is the most satisfying answer.