At the beginning of the raid, I was a bit frustrated with not being able to kill the boss (ELT) on the first turn because of his mega self buffs. I was also confused as to how the boss’s self buff mechanics worked; sometimes my battles ended quickly, sometimes they dragged on. But after playing enough battles and reading up on him on the Exvius wiki, things started to make sense.

Shadow Lord randomly buffs himself with either an uber magic or physical buff on the first turn and then again on the third turn (alternating between each one). All I have to do is kill him in one turn when the buff favors my party, which means he either dies on turn 2 or turn 4. If he buffs himself with magic defense first, then he’s dead on turn 2 because my party deals all physical damage. But if he buffs himself with physical defense first, then he dies on turn 4 after he switches over to magic defense and loses the physical defense.

I started my party off with enhanced Soleil, Warrior of Light, Tilith, Ashe, A2 and friend A2 to cover both magic and physical. I figured Ashe could perhaps chain with A2 and do some magic damage while the physical buff was active. The battles went okay, but would drag on if Shadow Lord buffed himself with physical defense first. Farming ELT wasn’t time efficient and I was looking for alternative ways to run it faster.

After hanging around reddit and finding out that 2B’s “Avoid Attack” is pretty great against the raid boss, I quickly swapped out my Ashe for 2B to see if it was true and boy did it make a huge difference! I haven’t been using my 2B at all ever since I got her because A2’s chaining just wins so it was nice to finally take her off the bench and make good use of her. Because of the inability to first turn KO the boss, this allowed for set up of 2B’s Avoid Attack.

I used to hope that Shadow Lord buffs himself with magic defense first so that I can finish the battles faster. But then I realized if he buffs himself with physical defense first, that gives me time to build up both A2’s limit gauges to use their limit breaks on turn 3 so that by turn 4 their attacks are increased by 250%! Depending on where the limit crystals go, sometimes both A2s would fill their limit gauges and sometimes only one would. My highest damage so far has been 9.2 million – I’m digging it!!!

I liked that this raid helped me think differently about some of my units. Normally I aim for first turn kills to quickly blast through the battles so I can get back to my TMR farming. Not being able to do that allowed me to explore other skills from units that I normally would not bother with and discover the uniqueness of each unit.

I also fully potted my A2 and maxed out her limit burst, which I am super excited about! After the raid, when I swap back in the ATK+30% materia, her attack should be over 1100+ 💪💪💪

How are you making out for the raid? Have you been exploring units that you never use or are you using your same party as usual? Post below in the comments as I’d love to know 😀

Game on!

– V