Stage 4 Prime Weapon's Effect On Sortie

So, I posted yesterday in the Sortie main thread about how some of the basement bosses had changed AI after acquiring a Stage 4 Prime Weapon. We went in again tonight to test the rest of them, and...well...this is bad. It's bad enough that I felt it justified its own thread so more people can see it.

TL;DR Do not upgrade your Stage 4 Prime Weapon until you are finished with acquiring Gallimaufry, or be prepared to tank the Galli rates for you and any group you join as soon as you get it.

First off, a few commonalities - despite the basement bosses getting harder, the rewards are completely unchanged. 10k Gallimaufry per boss, no guaranteed Case+1, no Mesosiderite (this is probably luck based). Second, actually equipping the Prime Weapon is irrelevant, the bosses are harder if anyone has the Stage 4 anywhere in their inventory. It might be the case that it only looks at the person entering Sortie to determine the AI (both times our party leader had a Stage 4), but that's unlikely. Finally, the base stats of each enemy seem unchanged, it's only their AI that gets altered.

Now, on to the specific bosses. We have recordings of all of the new enrage mechanics, in case anyone's skeptical about all of this. There may be other changes, but these are the ones we've seen. This is all mage strategy, too, so YMMV if you use melee strategy.

Dhartok - Seems mostly unchanged. It seems to favor Noyade more and might use Cesspool earlier, but it dies just the same to mage strategy.

Gartell - Enters double hands mode MUCH sooner, and enters it repeatedly. In our run, he entered it at 65% and 30%, and stayed in it for full duration each time (at least 3 minutes, maybe a bit longer). Bind works from a RDM fairly easily in this mode, but all damage gets tanked and his damage output skyrockets, so it's basically a forced staring contest eating your time while waiting. Gravity seems to work once, then resists badly. It's possible that forcing him to change elements resets the double hands timer, but it's not like that's at all consistent...

Triboulex - Instantly uses Setting the Stage in response to using the same SC element more than once in succession. This one is less confirmed, but after doing a Fire -> Thunder = Fusion Skillchain, doing either Fire or Thunder with Immanence up resulted in death. You can still avoid Setting the Stage going off by kiting him. I don't know if the "same SC property = Death" applies to Weapon Skills, and now that we know Gravity kiting works I quite frankly don't want to test it.

Aita - Has...some sort of new trigger for Vivisection, I'm honestly not sure what it is. The first Vivisection was used 1 minute after pull, the second was used 58 seconds after it's first TP move after re-pulling it. The third took far longer, but we stopped nuking it midway through and it still wasn't the full 3 minutes. These are, of course, separate from the insta-Vivisections it still does upon re-pulling it after a wipe. It might have to do with number of Magic Bursts or something stupid like that?

And last, and certainly worst...

Aminon - 10 seconds after using Bane of Tartarus, Aminon will now instantly use Incessant Void again, regardless of TP. After upgrading to Stage 4, the Absorb-TP strategy is IMPOSSIBLE. Anyone who tried to fight this thing pre-Absorb strategy knows that it's an absolute disaster of a fight, so Aminon basically doesn't exist for our group anymore.

I'm honestly speechless. The fact that the bosses are this much worse for *** reasons, there's seemingly no way to opt out of it after upgrading a weapon, there are no extra rewards beyond a worthless -drite we haven't even seen yet, and there was ZERO indication that this would happen prior to upgrading?! There wasn't even a chat message or any visual indication the bosses are buffed until our group got blindsided by Vivisection at 70%!

The worst part, though? Not everyone in our group even HAS a Stage 4 Prime Weapon! So, unless it only counts the person who enters the group (which, in that case...why?!), that means that if you upgrade to Stage 4, you're destroying the Gallimaufry potential of ANY group you join! Truly, this is one of the most severe case of punishing the player for upgrading an item I've ever seen.

That's why I'm making this a separate topic I guess - making sure as many people see this as possible. Our group was the first to upgrade to Stage 4, and we're paying the price for it now. Spread the word: either keep your Prime Weapons at Stage 3 (and thus be unable to use their WS outside of Sortie), or tank your Gallimaufry rate. What a fun choice that is......

I'm still not sure I follow you here. We have time for basement roamers as it is, we just dont choose to do them at this time. And our DPS is sky high hitting 99999 on basically every nm including chain, as again I ask, how is rdm "better"? Better seems to imply it would improve something about our run, and its not damage or speed so what is it?

@baniak

I'm pretty sure you are the hype man of that group.

You seem to be saying we should be taking 70k savages over 99k chains and I struggle to follow you there. Also as above the Cor only holds back on 3 NMs, BFH, the Brd sits back and co-heals/tosses some cures/erases.

I mean... Mischief is a grown *** person. He can further explain and defend himself if he so wanted. Just saying.

You seem to be saying we should be taking 70k savages over 99k chains and I struggle to follow you there. Also as above the Cor only holds back on 3 NMs, BFH, the Brd sits back and co-heals/tosses some cures/erases.

@baniak

I'm pretty sure you are the hype man of that group.

you can do savage for free if you do it after the final ws of the sc and before the first ws of the next, with no meaningful delay for anyone, you just can't spam it at timer that way

LMFAO.... He comes off the same exact way to me.

This is hilarious. There's a few of them here.

On his defense he would need to have amazing timing here, because Savage>Fimbulvetr is distortion, so it would heal Aita in ice mode and destroy his chain on Gartell. So not only Savage would need to be used right after Origin, but also Fimbulvetr right after Savage.

Nothing in Odyssey changed this patch, but Sheol C was giving scale boxes for each Halo kill.

It is almost certainly the case that stage 5s do not cause this behavior. When you upgrade a stage 2 to 3, you stop getting the -drite drops unless you have another stage 2, ditto stage 1, and I presume stage 3->4. This means that the "enemy behavior" or however they described it is altered depending on the stage you have.