6-34 guide for base sinners and base ego

Video of the Run: Link

General Overview: Ah, [Heathcliff?]. Born to deal one-sided damage, forced to lose clashes. The basic premise of the battle is that "your" Heathcliff is targeted by all of the boss' attacks, and you must prevent him from dying and deal around 2.2k damage to the boss in order to win the battle. That allows us to make some basic observations about the fight:

- 1: The boss will *never* target a sinner besides Heathcliff unless that sinner has aggro. Because we are using base sinners and base ego, this should never happen. Therefore, the only reason why your sinners will die is because you chose to intercept an attack with them which ended up dealing more damage than they could absorb.

- 2: The boss gains 15 SP each turn by default. If it fails to deal damage to Heathcliff for a turn, it loses 5 SP. Once per turn, when losing a clash to Heathcliff, it loses 5 SP as well, and suffers 2 bind. While it may be tempting to clash with Heathcliff's skills in order to keep the boss at a manageable sanity, keep in mind that it will still gain 5 each turn, in addition to any sanity gained from winning clashes. The 2 bind is also useful for maintaining a speed advantage for interception, but is not strictly necessary.

- 3: The boss rolls up to 5 for speed each turn, sometimes allowing it to outspeed your entire team and get a huge number of one-sided attacks in against Heathcliff. If you can only intecept 1-2 attacks, always go for the Wrath and Gloom attacks, as Heathcliff resists his weak envy-based "Bat Bash" skill.

- 4: The boss starts the battle with mostly Wrath and Envy attacks, with low skill power and few coins. The Envy attacks are very basic attacks which deal substantial damage, but have no gimmick. The Wrath attacks, on the other hand, give the boss 1 power up if they win a clash against a non-defensive skill. For this reason, you should never attempt to clash the Wrath attacks unless your chances of winning are >70% as otherwise, you risk giving the boss a massive power boost which can end up making it impossible to win clashes on the next turn.

- 5: The boss cycles through different affinity weaknesses; Gloom, Envy, and Wrath. The most dangerous one is Wrath, as when this weakness is active, the boss gains up to 9 offence level up per turn; one level per hit that it suffers.

- 6: Most importantly: after several turns, the boss begins using powerful Gloom skills. These skills are often high-damaging, multi-coin, and either area-of-effect or can only be clashed by Heathcliff. To contend with these, your only viable option is to use Bodysack, which must be used once every 1-2 turns during the latter half of the fight.

- 7: Near the end of the fight, after its fourth stagger bar has been reached, the boss will start using multiple fixed-target gloom skills per turn. You need to have enough resources and HP on Heathcliff to be able to survive this phase and burn the boss' health down.

- 8: The boss starts with a few stacks of Explosive Emotion which are drained if it fails to damage Heathcliff during a turn. You want to remove these as fast as possible as if you are not successful in removing Explosive Emotion by turn 3, the boss gains a large amount of offence level and speed, potentially ending your run immediately. Therefore, do not let Heathcliff get hit during the first two turns. Period.

Knowing all this, we can establish some priorities:

- Generate as much envy and lust as possible to fuel continuous use of Bodysack, which has the added benefit of draining 5 SP and inflicting 2 bind to the boss.

- Bring high speed, high clash power sinners to ensure that Heathcliff is never hit. Ideally, he should never even clash outside of using Bodysack against fixed-target gloom skills. Sinner weakness to the boss' attacks is generally irrelevant because you can simply choose not to redirect attacks with them. However, you should still be mindful of their health; absorbing attacks is almost never viable unless you're using Ishmael or Meursault (who are gloom resistant, blunt resistant, and don't have several stagger bars) to do it.

- The first 3 turns of the fight must be used to generate enough sanity to start consistently winning clashes against the boss who, after 3 turns, will almost certainly be at 45 SP. This means that you want to bring sinners with multi-coin high-rolling S2s and S3s so that you can start winning clashes on turn 1. This means that Ishmael and Don Quixote, while powerful in the later stages, are not useful at the start because they have 50% winrates with their single-coin skills. I recommend taking Hong Lu, Gregor, or Outis as your 'early clash mule', and either Don Quixote or Ishmael as your late-stage clash mules.

- It may seem reasonable to bring Meursault to utilise Chains of Others, but this is generally not an effective use of EGO resources. The boss does not have intermittent phases where it uses powerful attacks; it has a constant stream of strong, unclashable gloom attacks that only Bodysack can contest. The resources that are dedicated towards Chains of Others are much better spent on clash winners such as To Pathos Mathos, or sanity-building EGO such as Representation Emitter.

- The boss starts on 15 SP, and benefits from all of the SP effects that your sinners do. So, when it wins clashes, it gains between 10 and 15 SP. This means that if you lose any of the clashes on the first 2 turns of the fight, you can suffer from a snowball effect, where the boss' sanity is too high for you to win any clashes, and your own sanity is too low to overcome this. Generally, you want to reroll the fight if you lose any clashes on turn 1, or if Heathcliff is hit by the boss before turn 3.

- The boss has four stagger bars, which you can exploit by hitting them on turns where you don't think you can win/redirect all clashes. When the boss is staggered, do not focus on dealing damage; generate useful EGO resources and clear your sinners' S1s so that you can maintain high clash power throughout the remainder of the fight. This is a war of attrition, first and foremost.

In general, regardless of whether you're sticking to only base sinners and base EGO or are simply stuck with a relatively weak team, I recommend never letting Heathcliff clash, farming sanity in the early stages of the fight irregardless of how much damage you take, and ensuring that Bodysack is always available to use in case of clutch scenarios. The team composition I put together was almost exclusively built around fuelling Bodysack.

Recommended Team:

- Heathcliff: A required pick, whose Bodysack EGO is necessary to beat many of the boss' powerful attacks which, if not defeated, may end the run in a single turn.

- Faust: Faust is slow and not particularly good at intercepting attacks. She also has very poor sanity management and will generally struggle to be useful in the middle stages of the fight. However, her Representation Emitter EGO is very useful for shoring up your sinners' sanity once you've managed to build up the necessary resources to use it, and is also a consistent source of clashing power. I recommend using pride-based skills (and some gluttony skills) to deploy Representation Emitter as soon as possible once the fight has begun. Faust's S1 also inflicts paralyze, which can benefit faster sinners using defensive skills (e.g. evade and block) against the boss. Her S3 is less useful than you would think, but having 2 attack power down on the boss on some turns is still quite significant, and sets you up for sanity farming turns.

- Hong Lu: A good source of Lust (S3) for Bodysack, and Pride (S1) for Representation Emitter. A good clasher with damage resistance to the boss' attacks (gloom and blunt resistant).

- Ishmael: A great clash mule, once you've built up her sanity. She generates gluttony for Representation emitter. I recommend saving what scant gloom she manages to generate for Snagharpoon, which you want to deploy in the later stages of the fight. Ishmael also has gloom and blunt resistance, making her essentially your only sinner who can fully eat the boss' attacks without being staggered or permanently crippled due to being left on low HP.

- Don Quixote: Almost necessary for her lust and envy generation, both of which feed into Bodysack. Don Quixote is fragile, a poor clasher, and deals little damage. However, her high-rolling S2 is very useful once her sanity is built up. Despite the risks, I recommend trying to raise her sanity during the first few turns of the fight to ensure that she can start taking over clashes ASAP.

- Ryoshu: Despite being blunt weak, Ryoshu has high-rolling skills with multiple coins, making her a good clasher in the early game, where she can give you a few second-chances against the boss' multi coin skills. However, her highest potential clashing power is quite low, making her much less useful later in the fight. She is most important for being a consistent source of Lust for Bodysack, and Gluttony + Pride for Representation Emitter. At the start of the fight, she should mostly be used for clashing. Near the end, she is almost solely utilised for EGO resource generation and sometimes evasion.