Part 51: Pre-Update 42: Harpuia pre-fight overview

Harpuia pre-fight overview


Harpuia
HP: 19660, STR: 45, TEC: 45, VIT: 41, AGI: 38, LUC: 45
Skills:

• Shrill Cry: Uses the head. Attempts to inflict fear on the party, with a 60% base chance. Has no speed modifier.
  
• Claws of Despair: Uses the arms. Deals 2 instances of 150% melee STR-based Cut damage to random targets. Can hit the same target multiple times. Attempts to inflict paralysis on hit targets, with a 20% base chance. Has an 80% speed modifier and 99 base accuracy.
  
• Storm Feather: Uses the arms. Deals 110% melee STR-based Stab damage to the party. Attempts to inflict blind on hit targets, with a 20% base chance. Has an 80% speed modifier and 99 base accuracy.
  
• Feast: Uses the legs. Deals a variable amount of instances of 80% melee STR-based Cut damage to random targets. Can hit the same target multiple times from the second cast on. Attempts to bind every body part of hit targets, with a 10% base chance. The number of hits Feast deals varies based on how many times Harpuia has casted it. In order based on number of times: 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21. The number of times a target can be hit also scales based on number of casts: 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Has a 40% speed modifier and 99 base accuracy.
  
• Chaos Scream: Uses the head. Triples the chance of all party members being afflicted with ailments and binds for 6 turns.

Drops:

• Normal: Harpy Wing. 100% chance. Sells for 6000 en. 1 needed to make Nihil Blade (+147 ATK, +10 TP, +2 AGI).
  "Winged arms with three sharp talons at the tip. Its power charms those who look upon it."
  
• Conditional: Queen's Quill (Kill while head is bound). 100% chance. Sells for 12500 en. 1 needed to make Sylpheed (Survivalist ultimate armor; +94 DEF, +30 TP, +3 AGI).
  "A seemingly weightless sky-blue quill. Silence its bearer's song to obtain it."

Damage resistances:
100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 125%
Disable resistances:
0% 75% 25% 25% 25% 50% 0%
0% 0% 10%
75% 25% 25%
AI pattern:

• Normal loop:
  
  • Turn 1: Shrill Cry
    
  • Turns 2-4: Attack/Claws of Despair or Storm Feather
    
  • Turn 5: Feast
• Harpuia uses Claws of Despair more as her HP lowers.
  
• On the turns after Harpuia is brought below 80% and 30% HP, she will use Chaos Scream at the end of the turn, use Feast on the next turn, and begin a new loop.

The queen of the skies, whose beguiling shriek must be silenced if you hope to claim a feather...


Harpuia is an oddity. She's pretty widely regarded as a joke, especially after Scylla, mostly because her skillset is very small, and fairly easily countered. Her entire thing is having a pretty wide variety of disables that she can inflict: she has access to blind, paralysis, fear, and all three types of binds. You might look at that and assume that'd be difficult to counter, but it's actually simpler than you'd think.

Shrill Cry's fear is the #1 thing you want to avoid, since it's her highest base infliction chance at 60%, which is then boosted by her high LUC--you can take care of this either through Barrier, Prevent Order, or Scorpion Plumes. Hell, you don't even need to outfit your entire party with Scorpion Plumes--you could just put one on a Medic, and have them use a party-target Refresh, since Shrill Cry will outspeed Refresh.

Claws of Despair's paralysis should be second in "ailments to block" priorities, since it's a debilitating ailment. Barrier and Prevent Order are, again, answers to that, along with Mushroom Pins--keep in mind that characters can only equip one accessory at a time, though. As for Claws of Despair itself, it hurts, and can one-shot less-sturdy classes in some instances, but as long as it doesn't target the same person twice, you can probably just heal it up.

Storm Feather's blind is the lowest priority ailment here, since none of Harpuia's attacks rely on disabling your evasion, and while your damage dealers getting tagged with blind sucks, it's the least annoying to get rid of, since it's not debilitating. As for the damage, like Claws of Despair, it's healable, although having a Beast tank it with Hit-Taker is basically a death sentence.

Feast is basically Harpuia's signature skill, and it's really strange, as you can probably tell from how long its skill description is. It's really unnotable for the first two casts, but after that, it actually does start to become a very real threat. ...Though, if you let the Harpuia fight go on for 4+ casts of Feast, your party is probably ill-put together anyway, and you probably have bigger problems than Feast. Also, note that while the base bind chance is 10%, Harpuia precedes both of her HP-based casts of Feast with Chaos Scream--I don't know if the resistance decrease is applied before or after LUC adjustments, but my point is that you should be on your toes for those instances.

Chaos Scream really fucking sucks and it's why I heavily advocate for either bringing along a Sovereign or some Unihorns, since it can effectively make some of Harpuia's disables guaranteed against classes with low LUC, and still uncomfortably high otherwise. You could also just block it by casting Health Requiem (the one time that dumb bugged spell is useful), but that's not an option here, because...

I am banning Milly from being voted in for the Harpuia party. I've already cheesed three bosses (Basilisk, Flame Demon, Scylla) with some combination of her and heavy nukers, and I don't feel that makes for very interesting fights.

Damage dealers

Zack: We're late enough into the game that I could probably have Zack try out the Chaser build, which can output good damage, but he'd need a party constructed entirely around him--namely, he'd need Stardust, reskilled to focus on Palm skills, Ranger, Rheine, basically anyone with access to elemental damage.

Freyja: Freyja would need a party built around a quick kill, since while she can dish out a lot of hurt with a 2 or 3 bind Ecstasy, because Harpuia has 25% resistance to two types of binds, after she's inflicted with them once, she's immune to them for 10 turns, at which point Freyja becomes significantly less great of an option.

Stardust: Stardust is, as always, one of the best options for damage. I don't really think there's a lot else to say, aside from the fact that I can finally demonstrate what makes the Strawberry Daifuku plus Compression so incredibly good.

Asriel: Asriel's low LUC makes him susceptible to being hit with disables, and his damage output is still lagging behind our better options.

Jackie: Jackie's a much better option for Harpuia than she was for Flame Demon and Scylla, due to the fact that Harpuia doesn't have any summons (aside from some Luminous Birds to the side of the arena that'll take a while to get there, if I don't kill them first). Action Boost also makes her a pretty good partner for Zack.

Tyler: Harpuia unfortunately lacks the Stab weakness that's characteristic of bird enemies, but oh well. Tyler's an okay option for damage--he'll basically do the same stuff he did in the Scylla fight: prep Delayed Charge, Spear Assist for a few turns, then Cross Charge + Delayed Charge.

Ranger: You've seen how powerful Ranger is by now. In addition to that, Accelerate also provides three easy actions for Zack's Chasers.


Defense

Phoebe: Phoebe can't just straight-up stop damage like she did for Scylla, but Front Guard will still go a very long way towards making Harpuia's skillset a lot more manageable.

Ursa: Ursa will 100% die if she tanks Storm Feather, but other than that, she's a pretty decent choice. The Self-Heal Amp and Auto-Heal Grimoire effects have the potential to make her incredibly difficult to kill.


Supports

Nadia: Blind Arrow does absolutely nothing vs. Harpuia, and Paralysis Arrow will probably take a while to land, but when it does, it can make Harpuia a lot easier to deal with for a few turns. She can also try dodge-tanking to set up Hazy Arrow, but Harpuia's high AGI and LUC makes that a dangerous proposition.

Realga: As long as I can keep Realga free of debilitating disables and head binds, she can help reactively mitigate Harpuia's diables. She can also quickly and easily patch up damage.

Sophie: Sophie is, as always, the best option for trying to disable Harpuia, even though Harpuia nullifies both blind and fear. Also as always, she's best used as a partner to Freyja for setting up Ecstasy. She can pretty easily get us the conditional, too.

Colette: I'm going to shift Colette into the Support category now, since her primary job in fights from now on will be blocking disables with Barrier, and providing basically-passive healing with Artery.

Rheine: Rheine's the best option for buffs by default here, and Link Order also means she can contribute some decent damage. It also provides some fodder for a Chaser build.


Vote for a maximum of five characters, with at least 1 character from each category.