Regarding Empress Cygnus

I've got some questions regarding Empress Cygnus, the boss, that I hope someone will be able to answer:

1.) With the Dual Blade revamp in KMS, what about Empress was changed? I've heard people say she is 'fixed' after that patch in KMS but I don't know what that means.

2.) Do we have the 'fixed' version of Empress Cygnus in the current GMS version? When did this happen, or have we always had it if so?

3.) How did/does she behave in other versions? JMS/MSEA, I'm not sure which other versions have her.

4.) Is it intended that she can repeatedly use Damage Reflect and her Transform skill without a cooldown period? The Maple Archive database for her has her transform skill down with a 60 second interval, but she seems to use it non stop sometimes. Same with damage reflect, she just uses it over and over. Sometimes immediately after coming off the first one.

5.) What tactics are used when killing her fully and what sort of DPS does it require? Is there a way to time her damage reflection like at Pink Bean or can you literally only attack her when she's crashed or bound in order to be safe?

6.) Which KMS patch removed the ability to knockback/pin the minions, and is there a way around this at all? Does the knockback get added again later or is it permanent?

Thanks for any help, I appreciate it!

I can't give any solid answers, but:

Well first of all, I think, and this is just my opinion, she's always been killable, but no one has really tried, the heals are really discouraging, and we've never had a boss that continually healed like that before. I'm not sure if anything changes with the DB patch, but that's when people started killing her in kMS, is all.

In jMS, from what I've heard and remembered, at first she didn't heal at all, or healed very few times, so she was killable easily early on, until recently when she started healing.

I really doubt spamming damage reflect is intended, if you ever try soloing her, you'll see you can time her damage reflect easily, ~25 second duration casted every 80 seconds. From what I've seen, this isn't limited to being the only person in the map, while I was locked out of my Demon Slayer, we had one of our runners solo her in order to get to V2, it was faster than waiting for crash. For some reason, her damage reflect just glitches up when there's multiple people attacking her. Since this doesn't occur with any other boss, I'd have to assume it's because her DR is full map, but we don't have any other bosses with full map DR to confirm.

I'm pretty sure that kb was removed a patch or two before Tempest, or when Tempest was released, it was around the time of the Phantom nerf.

Nice to see people actually using my site. Now to only get people to give more feedback/suggestions..

On topic: as with above, some of these are purely my speculations and may very well not be true (unless otherwise noted).

1. Supposedly I hear that her DR spam gets fixed.
2. GMS Empress spam DR if her control (or what some people would call aggro) is changed from one person to another, this is a fact. If you have only one person attacking and others stay back, she will keep to 80s cooldown. I'm not too entirely sure about the transform as I don't pay much attention to that. I hear that she's "more fixed" that she was before as it, supposedly, used to take 65 heals, as opposed to the 35 heals currently.
3. No clue about other versions.
4. See point #2.
5. I've tried in small groups of having only one main DPS and others assist, but so far to no avail (the fact that Scania's Empress is dominated by hackers certainly doesn't help either). The only current legit way that I am aware of is having two DS bind her as soon as her resist cooldown is over (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq7XBtraisM) and crash right after, and only attack during bind/crash.
6. As with #5, the removed KB should not affect much except people who were able to solo purely based on KB (I saw some Phantom do it, not sure how he did it considering I could KB Empress fairly consistently but she still keeps casting).

Thanks a ton for the answers!

God, I hope DR spam gets fixed. I had noticed you can time it when you solo but I didn't make the connection between multiple aggro > multiple DR, so thanks a lot for pointing that out. Also, am I right in thinking you can have a higher chance to avoid getting transformed with more abnormal status resistance? Forgot to put that in the first post.

Related, crash is broken again, in that you can chain it repeatedly and it won't resist. Going to attempt a full Cygnus run tomorrow, I hope it goes better than my first attempt. Thanks again! ^^

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For @StellarAshes; I didn't know you were the owner of MapleArchive! I've been using it a lot lately and it's really useful. One suggestion for the new layout (re: monsters/bosses) would be to have the drop table go below the mob attributes, because on mobs with large drop tables it looks a little messy.

For example:

Spoiler

http://puu.sh/Pb5W

Mhm, more status resistance decreases your chance of getting transformed, and also banished, for some reason. Almost nothing ever happened to my Demon Slayer with 96% status resistance.

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Originally Posted by iAmFear

Mhm, more status resistance decreases your chance of getting transformed, and also banished, for some reason. Almost nothing ever happened to my Demon Slayer with 96% status resistance.

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Well, it's easy enough to view banish as a status infliction, yes? Some kind of teleportational geas or something.

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Originally Posted by Mazz

Thanks a ton for the answers!

God, I hope DR spam gets fixed. I had noticed you can time it when you solo but I didn't make the connection between multiple aggro > multiple DR, so thanks a lot for pointing that out. Also, am I right in thinking you can have a higher chance to avoid getting transformed with more abnormal status resistance? Forgot to put that in the first post.

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Nexon doesn't even know about the DR spam.
You can resist transform/banish/pot lock, and the tornado.

Banish does have a status associated to it (see Von Leon @ http://maplearchive.com/mob-wp.php?id=8840000 under affected of his Banish skill).

Tornado is a skill that Empress only uses if she faces the left, and resistance potion does appear to help with transform and pot lock. I always use one when I solo instructors.

@Mazz; yes I do realize that it is an issue. I'm still pondering on how best I could actually sort the large drop list though. I suggested to @ShinkuDragon; a while ago about using the item icon instead but he said that it would affect people to Ctrl+F what they need.

Edit: moved it down as you suggested.

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Originally Posted by StellarAshes

@Mazz; yes I do realize that it is an issue. I'm still pondering on how best I could actually sort the large drop list though. I suggested to @ShinkuDragon; a while ago about using the item icon instead but he said that it would affect people to Ctrl+F what they need.

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Expand All at top of page? Hide/expand is pretty simple.

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Originally Posted by Cere

Expand All at top of page? Hide/expand is pretty simple.

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That's still not really a way to sort it. It will still be a big blob when you expand it.

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Originally Posted by StellarAshes

That's still not really a way to sort it. It will still be a big blob when you expand it.

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I mean, right now they don't seem to be sorted by itemtype. It'll be less blobby for browsealongs if there's different expandables for different kinds of drops, and Ctrl+F folks -- among whom I count myself -- can still Expand All to find stuff quickly.

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Originally Posted by StellarAshes

That's still not really a way to sort it. It will still be a big blob when you expand it.

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I think the page looks nicer with the drops below the attributes, and you can still ctrl+f if you're looking for something in particular without expanding anything.

edit: but yeah spoilers might work for large drop tables, and an expand all spoiler. Maybe on really large pages have a 'jump to' with attributes/drops/skills? each in a separate spoiler.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cere

I mean, right now they don't seem to be sorted by itemtype. It'll be less blobby for browsealongs if there's different expandables for different kinds of drops, and Ctrl+F folks -- among whom I count myself -- can still Expand All to find stuff quickly.

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I see. Well, Jane has suggested a few things and I'll probably do something about it right now and see if it's better. Check back in a bit.

adding that tornado can get blocked with a resist potion too, and not so sure what are the requirements, but the firebirds can also be resisted some way, as i remember DS's getting "resist" when hit by it.

is there still any doubts left? i don't know much about how empress is in other versions unfortunately.

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Originally Posted by Mazz

I think the page looks nicer with the drops below the attributes, and you can still ctrl+f if you're looking for something in particular without expanding anything.

edit: but yeah spoilers might work for large drop tables, and an expand all spoiler. Maybe on really large pages have a 'jump to' with attributes/drops/skills? each in a separate spoiler.

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Updated it. Let me know what you think.

Jane is still working on the arrows so it wouldn't look as horrid as it currently is with the WordPress layout.

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Originally Posted by StellarAshes

Updated it. Let me know what you think.

Jane is still working on the arrows so it wouldn't look as horrid as it currently is with the WordPress layout.

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Raven Horn Crimson Cane sprite is incorrect, but aside from that very minor thing it looks much nicer/easier to use now!

seconded, that does look MUCH better now.

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Originally Posted by Mazz

Raven Horn Crimson Cane sprite is incorrect, but aside from that very minor thing it looks much nicer/easier to use now!

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Must be because that sprite was from an earlier version of GMS. I still need to figure out a way to update images/animations, because right now it would be too ridiculous to re-extract every image/animation, but my current set up doesn't detect any image changes. This is something I still need to work out somewhere down the line. For now I manually updated it.

Edit: Jane also has finished with her icons.

Wait. MapleArchive is your site @StellarAshes; ?

If so, I just want to say thanks, it is extremely useful, especially for recipe requirements and such.


Also, thank you for making this thread @Mazz;, I wanted to make a thread or something similar because I wanted to know the answers (Mainly to answer #1) but I thought if I made a thread about it on any community, I would just be flamed. I was really wondering what fixed means. I have heard multiple things, such as heal count dropping and empress DR staying timeable after the "Aggro is switched" .

Well, if it really does fix the damage reflect issue, then bera may finally be able to do a hack-free empress run now. Guess we'll see!

Also, status resistance helps an incredible amount. Especially on V2s. 80% status resistance in comparison to 40%ish allowed me to kill v2s at around 35 minutes remaining instead of like 13 (solo). I believe I only got potential locked/pigged about 2-3 times as well, I don't remember but I don't want to watch the whole video of it haha

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Originally Posted by Proxied

Also, thank you for making this thread @Mazz;, I wanted to make a thread or something similar because I wanted to know the answers (Mainly to answer #1) but I thought if I made a thread about it on any community, I would just be flamed. I was really wondering what fixed means. I have heard multiple things, such as heal count dropping and empress DR staying timeable after the "Aggro is switched" .

Well, if it really does fix the damage reflect issue, then bera may finally be able to do a hack-free empress run now. Guess we'll see!

Also, status resistance helps an incredible amount. Especially on V2s. 80% status resistance in comparison to 40%ish allowed me to kill v2s at around 35 minutes remaining instead of like 13 (solo). I believe I only got potential locked/pigged about 2-3 times as well, I don't remember but I don't want to watch the whole video of it haha

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Yeah I read a lot of old threads and saw wildly varying answers to the 'fixed' issue and wasn't sure, so I thought I'd be better off asking in a new thread xD I've been working on maxing my willpower and crafting Resistance potions (should be at 80% base/100% with Endurance card with willpower maxed!) in order to survive better/be able to attack more often. Only a few more days until the DB revamp hits 'til we can see if the DR thing is fixed or not, I really hope so.