Barthandelos - Chapter 9

[Exoduso]

Just beat him with Light/Snow/Vanille quite easily... Vanille was on constant MED for the second half of the battle though... while Snow was tanking it most of the time, with RAV/RAV/RAV attacks as often as I could to stagger him often.

If you haven't gotten used to the idea already, the whole point of staggering quickly is to attack an enemy with a COM, and then switch that COM out to RAV (along with the other party members who have RAV as well) to build up the stagger bar quickly... COM makes the bar go slower as long as it hits even once, but RAV is what actually builds it up fast.

[Tobi]

Did this last night with Light/Fang/Sazh, RAV COM RAV. With Sazh Haste/Bravery/etc buffs the fight was pretty easy. Ended up going 1/1 and killed in about 7:52 I think, fun ass fight though.

[Boyiee]

It took me 18 minutes using a defensive strat.

Light fang hope, started as bully and killed each head 1 at a time while hope buffed us all... easiest part of the fight were the heads. Then I swapped between relentless assault, and diversity, slowly taking him down. When he cast his destrudo move (like every 10-15seconds against me) I would heal everyone to full, toss sentinel on fang and que heals, literally just eating it. With maxed crystarium I was living with <100 hp lol. Next time i'll probably go with sazh and just burn him.

[Fhloston]

Thanks for the info! Watching my fiance fight this beast and she went with the "zerg while destrudo charges" strat. Fight seems much more survivable now. Got him at about 10%!

Edit: Bart Bart down!

[Nevex]

Spoiler: show

I don't recommend using a Sentinel because his -ga spells can get 2 or even the whole party caught in the blast, which will give you a lot of troubles with healing.

If you deal damage fast enough, you should be able to kill at least 2 heads before he starts casting -ga spells, so you can wear a lot of fire resist accessories and leave the fire head for last, or whichever element you prefer with the corresponding accessories.

You may want to use a Scanner as soon as the fight starts so the AI won't use the wrong elements; every second matters.

Of course make sure to have 3 TP so you can use Odin as "oshit" button should you not be able to deal enough damage when Destructo's countdown starts.

P.S. How are people going 1/1 on this boss on their first playthrough without healing? Overgrinded much?

[Boyiee]

For anyone using the strategy guide - from 9 on it wants you to use Lightning Fang Hope as your party, where most of this forums users are saying swap fang for Sazh (for haste) until hope gets it later on.

[Kiarax]

P.S. How are people going 1/1 on this boss on their first playthrough without healing? Overgrinded much?

Who said they didn't heal? And you can't exactly overgrind anyway. You should be practically maxed on all the crystariums by the time you get there with absolutely zero grinding.

[Nightraid]

I beat it on my 3rd try and i had max stats for everything. Its pretty much good party setup which gets you the win.

[Boyiee]

^ I was maxed everything cause I stopped to farm a bit and the battle took me 18minutes, but I did make it harder for myself lols. Running a sentinel and not burning down during Distrudos... oh and did I mention not putting on HP accessories lolz.

[Eaglestrike]

Who said they didn't heal? And you can't exactly overgrind anyway. You should be practically maxed on all the crystariums by the time you get there with absolutely zero grinding.

Not if you're like me and skip lots of fights XD I started skipping fights when I maxed the crystarium during early chapters and just kept doing it despite not maxing more than a single job per character since like chapter 5-6, heh. It adds difficulty!

I two-shotted this guy though, just zerged during destructo and everything was fine, just need to make sure you're setup just right for it. If you can dps hard enough to stagger him before he casts destructo you'll get through it real easy, iirc. Think that's how I destroyed him during his first one but he always reset the chain gauge before I could hit it off on the 3-4 other casts in that fight.

[Tobi]

As long as you keep his destructo from doing full dmg, the fight isn't that hard. I was only taking around 200-250 dmg max from destructo/spells, just swapped to Med when I was around 800 HP, then went back to RAV/COM/RAV. Sazh's Bravery/Faith/Haste made the fight really easy though.

[KuroTsuki]

Most bosses in this game are actually pretty easy to 1/1. It's getting 5 stars that freaking sucks on some of them, like this guy.

His Destructo is easy to handle if you have 2 healers with Cura in your party. You don't even have to zerg it down. The moment his Destructo fires off just switch to your MED x2 Paradigm and you'll all be in green in seconds. Then you can just jump back in to damage him. I used his Destructo as a time to start rebuilding the Chain Bonus, so I switched to RAV x3, then MED x2 once it fired off, then back again. And this is doable without max stats or def/magic def buffs.

[Marcicus]

Just went 1/5 on this not too long ago, and I used Lightning/Hope/Fang. I had MED/MED/SEN, COM/SYN/SEN, and RAV/RAV/COM paradigms, amongst others. I had Lightning spam Blitz on the masks with Hope casting cures and Fang on Sentinel, and when I took the masks down I swapped to the COM/SYN/SEN paradigm and whittled down Bart's health while buffing myself up.

As other have stated, when it starts using Destructo, go full offense on it. You can interrupt it (indicated by a groan), and it attempts to do it again; however, it'll be weaker that time around. After it groaned, I swapped to double MED/SEN paradigm and capped off my HP, because a Destructo->double Ruinga can fuck your shit up before you know what happened to you.

I took it slow and got a 0 star rating on it, but I don't care, finally beat it.

[miokomioko]

First try, no warm-up. So fun.

Listed from most-used to most situational roles

Lightning-COM>RAV>MED
Snow-RAV>SEN
Vanille-MED>RAV>SAB

I don't recall exactly how close I was on time, but it was way less than 20 minutes because I saw no doom. I think it was closer to 10~12 minutes (0 stars) considering some armadillo battles felt like a long time at 3-5 minutes.

Relentless Assault (COM-RAV-RAV): for when everyone is healthy. I wasn't on this one too often. I usually switched to Diversity as soon as someone dropped to yellow.

Diversity (COM-RAV-MED): to keep up damage while 1-2 characters have low HP. Used this 80+% of the time. Especially at the beginning when the heads are alive and casting spells constantly.

Attrition (SEN-MED-SAB): for recovering from big hits and reapplying debuffs. I usually switched to this when 2-3 people are near-death or when he was preparing his massive damage move.

The tactic that worked best for me was to keep up the damage even while he was charging that big move since you have plenty of time for even one little Medic to top everyone's HP off while he charges. Not to mention, I think physical hits can stun him a little bit and slow down his charging.

Right before he unleashed it on me, I would switch to Attrition: Lightning to MED, Snow to SEN, and Vanille to SAB. Snow was on SEN to keep the attacks following after the big one off my leader. I think the important part was that I kept my leader's Medic finger on Potion (MED enhances potions) and hit it as soon as HP started dropping to get everyone out of the red ASAP.

Once only one person was yellow still, I'd switch back to Diversity, when we were all green again, back to Relentless Assault. Rinse and repeat every time he raped me in the ass with Destructo or whatever it was called.

[Wakabo]

I am sorry but I need to lol.

1/1 cake walk haha.

I don't see how people had trouble with this

[Exoduso]

Meh this fight was okay I guess, but (spoilers a bit further ahead..)

Spoiler: show

He is a lot harder in Chapter 11...

[Boyiee]

I am sorry but I need to lol.

1/1 cake walk haha.

I don't see how people had trouble with this

If you do it like the strategy guide says, it's like a 15minute fight.

[Priran]

Meh this fight was okay I guess, but (spoilers a bit further ahead..)

Spoiler: show

He is a lot harder in Chapter 11...

Spoiler: show

he's actually a lot easier in chapter 11, he just has so much HP it's very easy to run out of time and get doomed

[Exoduso]

Spoiler: show

he's actually a lot easier in chapter 11, he just has so much HP it's very easy to run out of time and get doomed

It's not the fight itself that I was struggling against, it was that damn doom bar like you said... I had trouble with it my first time, got him down to 20% or so and then died because I ran out of time. 2nd time around I stopped healing constantly and getting rid of the debuffs like I was doing earlier, and concentrated on making sure he was staggered as much as possible..... and STILL beat him in 19:20 or so, so I was pretty close to the doom bar.

I wonder what a faster setup for him is, because I used Light/Fang/Hope, and although that setup was perfect for staying alive and getting through the fight, it was taking quite a while.

[Mayareira]

The fight was extremely easy, beat it without any trouble in first try. Then I realized that I forgot 2 treasure chests so I repeated it.

I don't overgrind, but I killed everything in sight up to that point....that's how I generally play JRPGs.