Thread: Accessory Quest Rank 5 Discussion

Accessory Quest Rank 5 will likely be introduced Christmas 2018. These use the same materials as Rank 3 to spawn, always drop an SSR accessory, and can drop an upgraded "Ancient" SSR accessory with higher stats and stronger effects.

Rank 5 is extremely difficult. The final boss has a 5-orb overdrive meter, and uses a lethal AoE overdrive (normal or raging). This must be near-total mitigated using damage cuts and elemental resistance, or the boss must be stunned before it can use it. I've outlined both strategies in my Endurance and Rapid Burst builds.

Furthermore, AQ5 bosses have high affliction resistance, combo attack frequently, and hit hard (~3k/hit without debuffs). Landing debuffs on a boss of the same element is likely to be extremely difficult. Elemental advantage can ameliorate the affliction resistance to some extent, but then you have to commit to raising every single grid and spending a lot of money on SSR Kamihime Gatcha.

You can get a taste of what fighting one of these bosses could be like with a typical team without elemental advantage from these videos. I picked these videos in particular because the users don't trivialize the fight with 2x +100% eidolons or other cheese that won't be available to most players.

Light team against Light boss, using a single +100% eidolon and a Light Versatile build with Mordred



Light team against random-element boss using a cobbled-together Endurance build with Joan, Gaia, and a single +100% eidolon



Note that he would've taken 0 damage from the Overdrive with Joan's HP Relic weapon, and a similar team with Joan's weapon could mitigate damage equivalently with an SR Dragoon instead of Gaia, or much better with an SSR Kaiser. This video is useful because the player doesn't rely on DEF debuffs that might miss and cause the fight to play out differently.

Why bring this up now? Because we'll need to use Miracle tickets strategically to be able to defeat these. I'm personally trying to determine which would be more effective: a combination of one excellent Wind team and an ok Water team, or a single excellent Light team. The Light team has the advantage of built-in affliction resistance down with Light Tsukuyomi. A comparable Wind Endurance build would need to run Black Propaganda (and therefore wouldn't have access to Vicissitudes of Fortune), while a Rapid Burst build could run VoF, but would likely be extremely dependent on DEF down landing. The Rapid Burst build would be unlikely to survive 1 Overdrive with -50% ATK down and 70% damage resistance (Gaia + SSR Kaiser).

Edit 3/30/18: Added the Light Versatile build video from Yolo's post.

Originally Posted by sanahtlig

Accessory Quest Rank 5 will likely be introduced Christmas 2018. These use the same materials as Rank 3 to spawn, always drop an SSR accessory, and can drop an upgraded "Ancient" SSR accessory with higher stats and stronger effects.

Rank 5 is extremely difficult. The final boss has a 5-orb overdrive meter, and uses a lethal AoE overdrive (normal or raging). This must be near-total mitigated using damage cuts and elemental resistance, or the boss must be stunned before it can use it. I've outlined both strategies in my Endurance and Rapid Burst builds.

Furthermore, AQ5 bosses have high affliction resistance, combo attack frequently, and hit hard (~3k/hit without debuffs). Landing debuffs on a boss of the same element is likely to be extremely difficult. Elemental advantage can ameliorate the affliction resistance to some extent, but then you have to commit to raising every single grid and spending a lot of money on SSR Kamihime Gatcha.

You can get a taste of what fighting one of these bosses could be like with a typical team without elemental advantage from this video. (Note that he would've taken 0 damage from the Overdrive with Joan's HP Relic weapon, and a similar team with Joan's weapon could mitigate damage equivalently with an SR Dragoon instead of Gaia, or much better with an SSR Kaiser). I picked this video in particular because the user doesn't trivialize the fight with 2x +100% eidolons or other cheese that won't be available to most players, nor is he relying on DEF debuffs that might miss and cause the fight to play out entirely differently.

video

Why bring this up now? Because we'll need to use Miracle tickets strategically to be able to defeat these. I'm personally trying to determine which would be more effective: a combination of one excellent Wind team and an ok Water team, or a single excellent Light team. The Light team has the advantage of built-in affliction resistance down with Light Tsukuyomi. A comparable Wind Endurance build would need to run Black Propaganda (and therefore wouldn't have access to Vicissitudes of Fortune), while a Rapid Burst build could run VoF, but would likely be extremely dependent on DEF down landing. The Rapid Burst build would be unlikely to survive 1 Overdrive with -50% ATK down and 70% damage resistance (Gaia + SSR Kaiser).

That does make me curious: How does a Cthulhu SSR Nike Snow Raphy combo hold up in AQ5?

Against Fire? I'd assume they'll have no issues, with Cthulhu and Water Raphael working on those Orbs.

Off element? Unknown. The good news is, HP Relic Joan with Water Raphael can drop damage by 90%. When combined with any Dragoon of the proper element (SR or SSR), you can mitigate 100% of damage... twice. That leaves you with... something like 18 turns to deal 7.5m off-element damage. Should be doable.

There's two problems though. This means that you need to have access to ALL element of Dragoons. SSRs can just be bought for a mere 10k Eidolon Orbs. One or two is doable. Six? ... that's a lot of work.
Secondly, you might get torn down by the normal attacks. If you don't get your atk debuffs to land, the boss will hurt a lot. Losing out on a full burst during those 18 turns might cause a wipe.

The standard Water trio should fare as well as any other element--against its strong element, at least. You could make that into an Endurance build with Joan, or a Rapid Burst build with Athirat. The Rapid Burst build will require one of the Overdrive reductions or Charm to land, and if Cthulhu's misses she won't make the 2nd Burst without taking a hit or combo attacking. That's probably an acceptable risk--bit a risk nonetheless. You could also run Black Propaganda, but I'd be very hesitant to run a Water team without VoF and no elemental advantage.

Don't quote videos please. It slows the page loads.

Originally Posted by Slashley

Off element? Unknown. The good news is, HP Relic Joan with Water Raphael can drop damage by 90%. When combined with any Dragoon of the proper element (SR or SSR), you can mitigate 100% of damage... twice. That leaves you with... something like 18 turns to deal 7.5m off-element damage. Should be doable.

Something I forgot to mention initially is that due to the Rage cooldown penalty, there's only a 5T CD on the 2nd Overdrive. You have to get that up to 7 in order to block the second one. It's dangerous to assume that both your overdrive reductions will land. So you'd have to bring Black Propaganda, which means you can't bring VoF, and then you have to start playing the debuff gamble game.

Is there much leeway in r5 quests? I'm a little worried my secondary team wont be able to handle to farming accessories for my main element as they have had no miracle tickets used on em, thus imperfect unlike my main team who holds all my strong SSRs. Using an off element team for a r5 seems like it might be very difficult, unlike r4.

AQ4 was supposed to be really hard, but once we got used to it, it wasn't that bad.

Time will tell...

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Is there much leeway in r5 quests? I'm a little worried my secondary team wont be able to handle to farming accessories for my main element as they have had no miracle tickets used on em, thus imperfect unlike my main team who holds all my strong SSRs. Using an off element team for a r5 seems like it might be very difficult, unlike r4.

I'm doubtful that a secondary team would be as strong as your primary team without element advantage / disadvantage at play.

Originally Posted by Slashley

AQ4 was supposed to be really hard, but once we got used to it, it wasn't that bad.

Time will tell...

^This.
On the vid, the fight looks extremely tough because the guy is running a sustain build (without reaching -50% atk) + an off element KH, with only 12% def down trough eidolon, and no element advantage. His damage output is really low (its pretty low even according to Nutaku's actual standards).

Sanahtlig is talking about ppl squeezing the fight, but most of the time they are just overkilling the boss (Fire team with Shingen and x2 Bellial one shooting it without Mars' debuff, Light team with Nike going trough the rage phase without even using his 2 full burst, Water team with water Osiris not using his burst just to lol at the boss overdrive doing 0 damage, all of them without element advantage)
Just tip アクセ5層 on youtube and see by yourself

I wouldn't worry too much honestly. If your team is (or your teams are) properly levelled (and optimized if you're running a main team without element advantage) there is no reason to not clear it in the end

The problem is that most YouTube videos are from enormous whales. Like, the last boss "only" has 7.5m HP. That's exactly the burst damage cap, for off-element. So whenever you see somebody oneshot the bosses, you should be thinking "uh, is that realistically possible or not...?"

For non-whales, reaching damage cap is really, really, REALLY hard. Like, using a calculator, I could be using double Kirin (which I don't have) against Water, with a full SSR team (which I don't have), with -50% Def (which I don't have without Dartagnan) and I'd be able to reach 3.7m Burst WITH Provisional Forest.

Sure, my base attack and slightly my grid would improve over the many months before AQ5 comes here, but it's really difficult to imagine going above 5m Burst...

Originally Posted by Yolodesu

Sanahtlig is talking about ppl squeezing the fight, but most of the time they are just overkilling the boss (Fire team with Shingen and x2 Bellial one shooting it without Mars' debuff, Light team with Nike going trough the rage phase without even using his 2 full burst, Water team with water Osiris not using his burst just to lol at the boss overdrive doing 0 damage, all of them without element advantage)
Just tip アクセ5層 on youtube and see by yourself

To which I pose the following questions, all for teams without elemental advantage:
What if you don't have limited SSR kamihime, a +100% eidolon, access to a +100% friend eidolon, or any MLB Gatcha SSR weapons?
What if your DEF debuffs miss?
What if your ATK debuffs and/or other debuffs (like overdrive extension, reduction) miss?
Do you have any way to ensure that any critical debuffs will usually land, especially against same-element?

That's the scenario I'm trying to plan and write guides for.