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I've finished the storyline and am now finishing all the missions. Up to this point, there have been many battles that took a few tries, but never any battles that I felt I had to grind for. A few moments' thought, a carefully-crafted Paradigm deck, and a bespoke strategy have gotten me through every battle at the moment I encountered it.

I'm now in Titan's Trials, I've gone through one set of five battles, and now I'm on the last battle of another: E1, Mission 45, against a Neochu.

I cannot figure out how I can beat this thing — not without leaving and coming back WAY later, anyway. It's hard enough to survive to the halfway point of the battle, and once the bloody thing spawns his Picochus it's all over.

I've been using Fang - Lightning - Hope. Fang has around 15,000 HP, Lightning around 12,000, and Hope around 11,000. All my Physical and Earth defense accessories have been distributed among them in several configurations. All three characters are over halfway through Stage 10 of their primary role Crystaria (all the 30,000-CP crystals are lit up), and Lightning and Hope each have Stage 1 of Sentinel.

I begin by Hasting everyone, then immediately switch to COM - COM - MED. I always have to have a Medic, because if I don't, two consecutive regular attacks can kill a party member.

This continues until Neochu is about to Screech, at which point I switch to SEN - SEN - SEN, which is pretty much necessary to survive the attack. I then switch to COM - MED - MED or SAB - MED - MED to heal while keeping the chain gauge (barely) up.

Then the Neochu uses Pollen, so I have to keep my two Medics for a moment, then try to reHaste everyone, which is tricky because Lightning is not a good Medic and by this time the Neochu is attacking again! So I have to go back to COM - COM - MED which leaves me with several debuffs on each character, which are barely gone before the stupid thing Screeches again.

Thus I can limp along until the Neochu is at half health. Then he summons his Picochus. Then he screeches, making me pull out SEN - SEN - SEN. If I survive that, I can go SEN - COM - MED, but I can hardly get them all Provoked before my party members start falling, and even if I do, I can't then get Mediguarded in time to survive their initial onslaught.

What am I doing wrong? None of the strategies I've read elsewhere seem to indicate that I should be having this much of a problem just keeping everyone alive.

TL;DR: Help me exact vengeance on this accursed beast.

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3 Answers 3

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I went with the Death strategy featuring Vanille as leader.

Death has a low chance of doing an instant kill (15%) but this gets higher if you use Vanille's Malboro staff (improved debuf).

This tactic involves luck but is the easiest way. My recommended setup is:

Vanille/Hope/Lightning
Sab/Med/Med <-- start in this one.
Sen/Sen/Sen
Rav/Rav/Com

As mentioned in the post, go to Sentinel only if Screech is used, otherwise stay in the first paradigm and keep casting death manually.

Use the third paradigm to kill the other mobs.

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    I may resort to this at the final extremity. But it seems like cheating, and not the sort of strategy that would leave me feeling like I'd actually mastered the enemy. And for the record, Death is not actually a debuffing skill, and, contrary to widespread belief, its chances of success are not increased by equipping the Malboro Wand or Belladonna Wand.
    – Lanny Heidbreder
    Commented Feb 18, 2012 at 22:35
  • ic, well it's you're call i guess ^^.
    – Stefto
    Commented Feb 19, 2012 at 0:47
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    If you do use this strategy i would suggest inflicting as many status ailments as you can. seeing they each increase the chance of inflicting death by 1%. Also its a myth that the Malboro wand increases the chance of death sticking.
    – Serge Bekenkamp
    Commented Feb 19, 2012 at 2:57
  • After several more fruitless attempts to actually beat the Neochu, I tried this and won on my first attempt. Didn't even take that long. I still feel like I'm missing something obvious — none of the other Titan's Trials E bosses have been very hard at all — but I'm planting my flag and declaring victory for now.
    – Lanny Heidbreder
    Commented Feb 21, 2012 at 22:12
  • What Serge said. I'd just do like I do for killing turtles - Vanille/Fang/Sazh, start SAB/SAB/SYN then SAB/SAB/SAB once hasted, SAB/SAB/SEN or SAB/MED/SEN once mostly enfeebled. (If you need more healing, Hope makes a better Medic than Sazh obviously, but for turtles you obviously don't care about healing or even defense at all. This guy may hit harder than I remember so you may not have the luxury of extra SAB)
    – Shinrai
    Commented Feb 21, 2012 at 22:27
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If you want to beat it without using the Death spell, you need to almost constantly have a sentinel present. your other two characters need to switch between MED, RAV and COM roles.

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outline of non death strategy:

sazh hope snow 
rav med sen 
sab sab sen 
com com com

equip haste accessories on all members, and physical resistance, and earth resistance on snow since he will be tanking get random: instant chain passive on sazh as well

at the start of the fight spam cold blood over and over until you stagger then debuff and launch neochu and kill in cerberus

This outline should allow you to fill in the details and succeed easily with a non death strat.

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  • Now for a Gigantuar strategy LOL
    – Captain Kenpachi
    Commented May 19, 2017 at 10:45

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