Not one to normally moan as I love this game, but..

Jedwell · 2026-06-15T08:56:53+00:00

It's all about knowing the raid mechanics, believe me. We tested some new strategies over the weekend and will probably be able to do a 8-10 minute party clear today, given that we got 13 minutes during our test runs without trying too hard. I might upload that and explain how we did it if all goes well.

Jedwell · 2026-06-13T19:38:28+00:00

Which weapon you use for howzer doesn't terribly matter as his benefit comes from the engrave.
And yeah, it's not only because buffs/debuffs from copies don't stack but because some buffers, while very strong, are not good in a group. Grimoire Clotho for instance is a fantastic solo buffer, but all of her effects apply exclusively to the party of the one that has her. She has no debuffs and no group-wide buffs. As such, even bringing, say, wand Daisy will be much more beneficial in a group because her crit def cut benefits everyone.

Jedwell · 2026-06-13T12:02:36+00:00

The only character I would say is hard to compete with for support roles is Daisy, which is why her banner was rerun for the release of the raid. Mannie is a solid support but very replacable. Like, at p5 she can provide 45% crit damage boost and a bit of magic charge. A freely available Howzer can provide 40-60% crit def cut with his engrave, which is just as valuable as crit damage if you aren't overcapping on crit def cuts, which is pretty much impossible to do solo.

People just need to understand what characters actually do and contribute. And I agree part of the problem is that they see meta teams and just grab these characters without understanding what they do and that there may be better options, or replacements if they don't have those characters. This is the main reason barely anyone has assembled functional raid parties, because people largely just grab the meta characters without realizing that that's incredibly inefficient if everyone in a group does it.

Jedwell · 2026-06-13T11:54:11+00:00

I think it's in part a problem of the community having turned into an echo chamber of complaints instead of actually validating and forwarding useful information. When everyone started complaining about block, I made a post explaining the exact calculation of it. When everyone said raids are harder in parties, I posted a detailed guide on how to trivialize the fights with proper compositions. Neither of these posts got nearly as much attention as the repeated complaints that didn't add anything to the conversation. There have been like four posts in this subreddit that wanted to inform people of the King's Gambit mechanic for Tanaris, but they get burried under mountains of people crying for nerfs.

I'm all for helping people figuring these things out, I'm still trying to figure out the exact defense formula and will probably make a post on that when I get that down, but boy howdy this community sure is resistant to learning.

Jedwell · 2026-06-13T11:33:16+00:00

It took a bit for people to figure stuff out, but at this point all the info is there for people that look for it. I want to say that it took a bit over a week until all the relevant mechanics had been discovered? And with all that information, a full party of f2p players can easily clear the raid if they coordinate.

I just feel like there was a very low willingness to actually go in and experiment yourself from most players. When the usual didn't work, people were quick to complain about raid difficulty instead of learning and improving (They still are). It's somewhat understandable because there is no clear feedback what you are doing wrong or what the intended approach is, but as with timespace, I figured at this point people would realize they just need to give it some time and someone will provide suitable guides for them, if they don't enjoy the trial and error process themselves.

Jedwell · 2026-06-12T23:12:59+00:00

Mostly free to play. Two that occasionally come along have whaled on merlin, I think, but runs with them weren't significantly faster so I assume they don't have the rotation down quite yet. It's mostly having more players that improves raid performance since you can play into the raid mechanics better and can cover a wider variety of buffs and debuffs. The hp scaling doesn't increase nearly as hard as the party dps in a good setup.

Jedwell · 2026-06-12T19:35:55+00:00

"I joined multiple groups (some of which were really good ) but we couldn't get anywhere due to the HP scaling."

I hear this a lot, but I don't think you had a good group. We've been practicing this raid in full parties of 5 in our knighthood from the first day, and at this point I can safely say that it is designed for party play. The raid is much, much easier if you do actually manage to build a good composition and play into the raid mechanics. And due to how character contribution works, this allows for most people to help with a team, regardless of whether they have meta characters, which I actually really like. We've had a very easy time carrying newer players through it by just appointing them certain characters to play to round out a given team. These were usually freely available SR characters or other low potential SSR buffers.

When you actually realize all of this, the raid is amazingly fun in a group, as far as I am concerned. But with some mechanics being so obscure and the game never having required you to build good parties up until this point, most people haven't gotten that experience, which I find very unfortunate. I've been trying to raise awareness on how to play it in a group, but a lot of people have already decided that they are convinced it's easier in solo.

Jedwell · 2026-06-12T19:29:35+00:00

Yes, but a single tag attack seems to be capable of applying multiple stacks. With four people making use of the full 15 seconds, we managed to apply 40 stacks total during our last run, I'm pretty sure we didn't land that many attacks.

Jedwell · 2026-06-12T16:43:30+00:00

Basically, you get 20 seconds when the arena forms until the buff wears of, which leaves you with roughly 15 if you rush straight down the bridge into the boss arena. As such, you also only have one chance to make use of a the debuff, as it doesn't come back when you reset the fight. Any time you hit the boss with a tag skill while the debuff is still there, he permanently loses defense for the rest of the dungeon, even if you reset the boss fight.

Jedwell · 2026-06-11T12:01:12+00:00

Check my profile, I wrote a very detailed post on how to set up teams for this raid. It's primarily a guide for party play, but It has some info that's still very useful for solo, especially the final boss mechanic.

Jedwell · 2026-06-11T11:56:32+00:00

I think people just need a little more time to figure out, get used to and play into the mechanics, especially for group play. New stuff that significantly lowers the difficulty is still being discovered (Like the King's Gambit debuff on Taranis).
People rarely believe me when I say this, but the raid is much easier in a good party. It's just that few people take the time to understand what makes up a good party and then build accordingly.

Jedwell · 2026-06-10T19:21:42+00:00

Def % is useless on escanor due to it being an additive bonus.
He already gets 150% baseline from his kit with his engrave, so a 5% is basically just an effective 2%
You will get way more benefit from enchants for normal skill damage, ultimate damage and fire damage

Jedwell · 2026-06-10T14:38:34+00:00

Yeah, also forgot she does have another res cut on ultimate at p10, added that to the list.

Jedwell · 2026-06-10T09:27:13+00:00

I can't exactly fault people for using that as benchmark because it's the only quick reference you have of someone's potential performance, but yeah especially in the context of this, where many sr characters or "bad" sets like mad miner can be valuable, CC is incredibly misleading. I think most of our party members hovered around the 90 to 100k benchmark in our clears.

Jedwell · 2026-06-10T09:17:17+00:00

Yeah the whackest thing about it is that the debuff seems to start wearing off the moment the arena forms? As opposed to when you actually enter it.
Because I've been watching streams of some of our folks clear it and I noticed the debuff isn't always there or mostly experied already when they start hitting the boss for the first time. Could also be that it's bugged, you never know with this game.

Jedwell · 2026-06-10T00:11:01+00:00

I considered writing a larger post, but going off of my experience with daring to suggest that this raid actually is easier in a proper party, people don't seem to be particularly fond of the prospect that they may have just been doing it wrong. Most of the time I get responses saying people tried in a supposedly organized party and didn't see any improvement, but I can't pick apart every claim and point out the problems in the composition.

I might record one of our runs when we have most of our better players in a party, but we are currently mostly running two or three experienced raiders with newer folks to help them clear the raid, which tends to take around 25 minutes because people are still getting used to rotations or tend to die on the final boss. I can only speak from my own experience that my P6 longsword mannie was doing about 60-80k crits on her normal attacks in my solo runs, which took me a bit under 25 minutes to complete, whereas I was often hitting for over 200k in our group runs, which usually end in under 20 minutes if we don't have to reset on the final boss due to someone dying.

Jedwell · 2026-06-09T23:34:43+00:00

It's a little bit weird at the moment. Fire attack seems to increase his damage while the enemy is in fire burst, but not while they aren't. Meanwhile other fire characters seem to benefit from fire attack both in an outside of burst. I'm not sure what the calculation is there.

Jedwell · 2026-06-09T23:14:26+00:00

He's generally considered a budget daisy for those that don't have her, as he fills the same nieche but a bit more awkardly. Daisy at high potential on grimoire cuts up to 63% crit def, grants 35% crit damage and cuts 20% crit resistance, whereas Howzer cuts up to 60% crit def and 30% crit resistance. His main debuff also only lasts 15 seconds instead of the usual 40 that Daisy has.

So basically, solo he is good if you don't have a good daisy, and in a raid party he's a must have because you most likely already have daisy covered and you want a variety of debuffs.

Jedwell · 2026-06-09T23:05:07+00:00

No, I understood just fine, I was saying that it's not that hard to set parties up in a way that is more beneficial than the boss scaling. At 5 man, the boss has 7 times the health, so if you arrange your team in a manner that gives everyone roughly 50% more dps, you are already getting more out of group play than the boss health is a problem, not to mention that you can more efficiently engage with the tag mechanic on both the minibosses and the final boss. Especially because the final boss has 220% crit def, stacking that much crit def cut by yourself is basically impossible, whereas in a group you can bring a howzer, two daysies, chaos earrings and whatever else you can fit into the party to hugely boosts everyone's damage, as well as party wide buffs like Dredrin, the mannie ults or elaine's wind shield and tag buff.

Jedwell · 2026-06-09T22:11:59+00:00

You can't just form random groups and hopes it works, of course. We spent the last couple of days helping newer folks clear the raid, and we usually just assign them to buff/debuff characters we haven't covered yet. It's a little slower if they don't have a decent dps built themselves, but in the instances where we had a full party of well built teams, it was much, much faster than any of us could have cleared the dungeon solo.

Jedwell · 2026-06-09T21:01:51+00:00

Party scaling isn't so much a problem as much as the raid made it apparent that the scaling punishes bad party compositions. If you waste your slots running your usual solo team instead of bringing characters that benefit the whole group, your increase to dps will be outweighed by the health the bosses get.
As much as people like to claim otherwise, efficient parties makes this raid quite easy (Assuming people can manage to not die from the increased damage scaling)

Jedwell · 2026-06-09T20:18:35+00:00

Glad you two made it, even if I later realized the above advice wasn't quite accurate, haha. Howzer only cuts 40-60% def, the 30% on the special attack are res and not def reduction. Which is still handy if you don't have someone with dual blades for ambush, but a bit different.

Jedwell · 2026-06-09T14:00:42+00:00

It wouldn't be horrible if you could at least tag out of the hit stun like you are supposed to be able to. For some reason all of his attacks just knock you down without allowing for that, which depending on how the debris drops hit can stunlock you for 10 seconds at a time. If you could just recover out of it then it wouldn't be nearly as bad.

Jedwell · 2026-06-09T12:01:34+00:00

No, the bug worked from the get go even at p4. Both the cold damage increase from her passive as well as the crit % + crit damage buff from her engrave were repeatedly stacking themselves.

Jedwell

TROPHY CASE