The timing sequence for Damage Reflect for Empress Cygnus.

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Originally Posted by ShinkuDragon

and from what i got from hurricane (it was only one instance though) low-HP classes can't kill people with high HP (say the mercedes and me are in a party, the merc does 2 shots of hurricane, both get reflected, one would hit her, the other one would not get reflected)

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I don't think this is the case. Ref damage always seems to be fixed values, at least not based on the attacker's hp.

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Originally Posted by Stereo

If I'm reading that right, a non-attacking Bishop with the most HP in the party could just resurrect everybody and never die from DR?

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Originally Posted by ShinkuDragon

correct, assumming everyone dies clumped together.

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And assuming there aren't enough "hits" left in the dr activation to get to the bishop. Even if a bishop is built for pure HP, it'll be nigh impossible getting to 50k. Ref hits straight through magic guard and goes right for hp.

You have to remember they only get about 10 hp per AP point. so all your base AP into HP is still only 10k base hp. Warriors are almost certainly going to exceed whatever you end up with, so even the idea of making them last in line to be hit by dr is probably infeasible.

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Originally Posted by Stereo

What's the minimal int/matk for Heal to be useful? I could probably stand to reset my Bishop's AP and dump most of it into HP now, it's 170 anyway, doesn't need more than the current over 20k HB-less MP.

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I don't know if we could come up with a hard and fast minimum. It seems to be a fairly linear relationship with damage range. If you want to heal more than 2k to the whole party, you need a significant amount of int/matk. Also, despite all my bishop's hp, the limit on my survival is my max mp, so don't discount that. Unless you're really going hardcore and plan on cubing for %hp in addition to adding AP to hp. If you just go mgless to empress thats an option... but not a particularly tantalizing one - having to heal after every hit isn't practical during zombify. Or during the horribly long stuns several enemies inflict.


Lastly, the solution to the bind hitting dr problem is to swap the order. Instead of binding before you crash, crash before you bind. Crash isn't an attack so it can't trigger dr.

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Originally Posted by Exidous

I don't think this is the case. Ref damage always seems to be fixed values, at least not based on the attacker's hp.



And assuming there aren't enough "hits" left in the dr activation to get to the bishop. Even if a bishop is built for pure HP, it'll be nigh impossible getting to 50k. Ref hits straight through magic guard and goes right for hp.

You have to remember they only get about 10 hp per AP point. so all your base AP into HP is still only 10k base hp. Warriors are almost certainly going to exceed whatever you end up with, so even the idea of making them last in line to be hit by dr is probably infeasible.


I don't know if we could come up with a hard and fast minimum. It seems to be a fairly linear relationship with damage range. If you want to heal more than 2k to the whole party, you need a significant amount of int/matk. Also, despite all my bishop's hp, the limit on my survival is my max mp, so don't discount that. Unless you're really going hardcore and plan on cubing for %hp in addition to adding AP to hp. If you just go mgless to empress thats an option... but not a particularly tantalizing one - having to heal after every hit isn't practical during zombify. Or during the horribly long stuns several enemies inflict.


Lastly, the solution to the bind hitting dr problem is to swap the order. Instead of binding before you crash, crash before you bind. Crash isn't an attack so it can't trigger dr.

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i never said anything about the damage of reflect, just who it targets.

you have a party of 6, they are:
bishop: 10k hp
hero: 20k hp
DrK: 30k hp
paladin: 40k hp
mercedes: 70k hp
bishop: 80k hp.

mercedes is spamming her hurricane, the other six are standing next to her. empress uses DR.
>first arrow hit->who has least HP of the people in the map?->bishop 1 only has 10k
bishop 1 receives 50k damage->dies

>second arrow hits->who has least HP of the people in the map?->bishop is dead, hero has 20k
hero receives 50k damage->dead hero

>third arrow hits->who has least HP of the people in the map?-> bishop and hero dead, DrK has 30k hp
DrK receives 50k damage->dead DrK

>fourth arrow hits->who has least HP of the people in the map?->bishop/hero/DrK dead, pally has 40k hp
pally receives 50k damage->dead pally

>fifth arrow hits->who has least HP of the people in the map?->merc has 70k, bish has 80k
merc receives 50k damage, merc now only has 20k hp

>sixth arrow hits->who has least HP of the people in the map?-> merc with 20k
merc takes 50k damage->dead merc

>seventh/eight/ninth arrow hit, however caster is dead, bishop with 80k hp doesn't receive any damage.

^ that's how her reflect works.

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Originally Posted by Exidous

You have to remember they only get about 10 hp per AP point. so all your base AP into HP is still only 10k base hp. Warriors are almost certainly going to exceed whatever you end up with, so even the idea of making them last in line to be hit by dr is probably infeasible.


I don't know if we could come up with a hard and fast minimum. It seems to be a fairly linear relationship with damage range. If you want to heal more than 2k to the whole party, you need a significant amount of int/matk. Also, despite all my bishop's hp, the limit on my survival is my max mp, so don't discount that. Unless you're really going hardcore and plan on cubing for %hp in addition to adding AP to hp. If you just go mgless to empress thats an option... but not a particularly tantalizing one - having to heal after every hit isn't practical during zombify. Or during the horribly long stuns several enemies inflict.

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It's a pretty impractical idea anyway. But if you can push it up to ~25k hp (8-9k base + hp pot + HB/gear) and all the attackers stay with less, you might be in an interesting position compared to using high-hp attackers, where DR can kill them, but the Bishop can bring them back. Maybe let some TLers tag along.

Running with an hp bish is interesting in theory, but real testing would take an obscene amount of funds for really no benefit. You'd come out ahead for the foreseeable future just by buying everyone wheels instead of trying to ap wash/cube for enough hp to pass the average warrior and you would never reach someone like shinku.

The tried and true method is simply crash then bind and only attack then. Trying to to watch animations carefully is just going to get people killed at the most inopportune moments (Murphy's Law). The tiny bit of time you save trying to attack between crash+bind can't really make a difference. IMO if your group is that desperate for damage, just take an extra member. My group of 3 attackers (plus bish and pally mule) managed to kill summons by ~30min and none of us were outrageously funded (read: not hitting damage cap). Empress is only hard due until you get the routine down, then she's fairly simple.

Unless you're trying to get a full kill without hacks...

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Originally Posted by VerrKol

Running with an hp bish is interesting in theory, but real testing would take an obscene amount of funds for really no benefit. You'd come out ahead for the foreseeable future just by buying everyone wheels instead of trying to ap wash/cube for enough hp to pass the average warrior and you would never reach someone like shinku.

The tried and true method is simply crash then bind and only attack then. Trying to to watch animations carefully is just going to get people killed at the most inopportune moments (Murphy's Law). The tiny bit of time you save trying to attack between crash+bind can't really make a difference. IMO if your group is that desperate for damage, just take an extra member. My group of 3 attackers (plus bish and pally mule) managed to kill summons by ~30min and none of us were outrageously funded (read: not hitting damage cap). Empress is only hard due until you get the routine down, then she's fairly simple.

Unless you're trying to get a full kill without hacks...

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personal note, but i prefer bind->crash, after being binded i can simply slipstream in and whack away, demon slayers can stand in front of her without getting pigged so they have no problem binding when she does an attack/status effect, it guarantees that i will get 20 seconds of attacking at the very least, then i simply crash while binded.

it also prevents the huge issue of going in to crash, only to be hit by pig/stun, and find out you're unable to crash. most warriors can't really stand in front of empress with her using genesis, so i prefer bind->crash as a more "safe" method of getting the 40 seconds in.

i'd expect someone who worked hard to get to my hp wouldn't just throw it away and kill everyone in their party though, hopefully they're smarter than that

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Originally Posted by ShinkuDragon

personal note, but i prefer bind->crash, after being binded i can simply slipstream in and whack away, demon slayers can stand in front of her without getting pigged so they have no problem binding when she does an attack/status effect, it guarantees that i will get 20 seconds of attacking at the very least, then i simply crash while binded.

it also prevents the huge issue of going in to crash, only to be hit by pig/stun, and find out you're unable to crash. most warriors can't really stand in front of empress with her using genesis, so i prefer bind->crash as a more "safe" method of getting the 40 seconds in.

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We largely decided to go crash -> bind because it let the DS leave the orb skill (dark meta?) on without worrying about the passive attacks accidentally triggering DR. This was a HUGE pain when the glitch finally got fixed.

Pig/stun is occasionally an issue, but we run with a DrK and Pally so the odds of both getting pigged are pretty low since myself and the bish are pigs 95% of the time. One of my buff macros is now Pig 4 lyf. After we killed her a few times and really got the patterns down we just crash or bind first depending on convenience.

It's a small matter of preference, really either works if done properly.

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Originally Posted by Mazz

Was on a run when a DS used Bind on DR and everyone in the map died, but there was also a Mercedes so presumably she (I'm looking at you @MapleCookie;) was attacking at the same time, my bad.



Yep, that's pretty much what I'd been building my Bishop around. Hopefully I'll get an AP reset with Justice and will actually be able to make it happen xD

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I mostly only attack when she's doing animations though, and I would be one of the first to die aside from the bishop so it was one of the people with higher hp. :f3:

Anyway, I've been doing silly empress runs for a while where we've been trying to get to the second wave with less than a full party and without crash. It seems that sometimes, she just goes ahead and does DR even after she just got off of it a few seconds ago.

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Originally Posted by Stereo

What's the minimal int/matk for Heal to be useful? I could probably stand to reset my Bishop's AP and dump most of it into HP now, it's 170 anyway, doesn't need more than the current over 20k HB-less MP.

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From what I've seen, magic ATT is much more helpful for healing more HP than INT, but I'm probably going to split my AP about 600 INT / 400 HP. I should be able to get past 25k HP with that, I'll be using 3 part empress set (15%), Chaos Zakum helmet (10%), Rex earrings (10%) and 1/2% HP nebulites on everything. I also have Decent HB, some of my reveals came out 3% HP too. I'm using a 211 MATK Elemental Wand on my Bishop, hopefully by the time I get a full AP reset I'll be able to figure it out a bit better.

In my experience it works like this.

Cygnus attacker, on DR, and everyone with lower HP on the map dies.
Rest live.

I've taken mules in and kept them in the corner, pinned cygnus to the right, and tested it with a battle mage.
Almost never do my mules kept in the corner die (They have higher HP than the BaM as well).

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Originally Posted by VerrKol

We largely decided to go crash -> bind because it let the DS leave the orb skill (dark meta?) on without worrying about the passive attacks accidentally triggering DR. This was a HUGE pain when the glitch finally got fixed.

Pig/stun is occasionally an issue, but we run with a DrK and Pally so the odds of both getting pigged are pretty low since myself and the bish are pigs 95% of the time. One of my buff macros is now Pig 4 lyf. After we killed her a few times and really got the patterns down we just crash or bind first depending on convenience.

It's a small matter of preference, really either works if done properly.

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Technically, whichever hits first will allow full use of dark meta orbs to be used on her. So order isn't big deal really. If you bind/crash whenever she does an attack, that's a 100% guaranteed success, can't mess that one up ever really (exception of CD issues). If she does a DR buff and you go and use crash/bind afterwards well that's kinda your fault for being impatient. To put it simply, she attacks slow so make use of her slow attacks and bind/crash when she actually does something. Bind has a huge range, so it never hurts to stand back and wait until the right time to cast it, crash however has limited range and the only time you really care about the range issue is when she uses too many tornado + flame DoT attacks and you gotta run back to heal yourself.

The only real problem I've ever had was when our timing sometimes goes out of sync and we forget when the next effect CD is worn off, like for instance using bind every 1min, which sometimes we bind too early and it would actually "miss." When the miss happens, it doesn't even matter if you used crash or bind, if the party wasn't paying attention and thought your skill worked (most people won't even bother watching that your skill missed) they would've kept attacking until they potentially killed themselves and/or you.

edit: well you can scratch off the 1st paragraph of mines really, its kind of like what you said already. When it comes down to how few people and if it ever only comes to just 1 crasher and 1 binder, I'd suggest bind > crash mostly for v2 summon. Just to get that CD kicking in and so nothing goes wrong save for the person using it at the same time as DR buff or after DR buffs appears which shouldn't happen usually unless you messed up the first time.

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Originally Posted by iAmFear

That's because it is.

When you attack her solo, she casts reflect as defined in the game files, roughly 80 seconds from the last cast, but when attacking as a group, she can pretty much reflect whenever the hell she feels like, sometimes spamming in rapid succession, with no rhyme or reason, making it impossible to time. We've chalked this up to just her being glitched.

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So, it is best if one would to solo it, means, only ranged classes, ds, shadowers and mage can do it currently. (Paladins, heros, dks would face more challenge?)

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Originally Posted by ultimax21

Technically, whichever hits first will allow full use of dark meta orbs to be used on her. So order isn't big deal really. If you bind/crash whenever she does an attack, that's a 100% guaranteed success, can't mess that one up ever really (exception of CD issues). If she does a DR buff and you go and use crash/bind afterwards well that's kinda your fault for being impatient. To put it simply, she attacks slow so make use of her slow attacks and bind/crash when she actually does something. Bind has a huge range, so it never hurts to stand back and wait until the right time to cast it, crash however has limited range and the only time you really care about the range issue is when she uses too many tornado + flame DoT attacks and you gotta run back to heal yourself.

The only real problem I've ever had was when our timing sometimes goes out of sync and we forget when the next effect CD is worn off, like for instance using bind every 1min, which sometimes we bind too early and it would actually "miss." When the miss happens, it doesn't even matter if you used crash or bind, if the party wasn't paying attention and thought your skill worked (most people won't even bother watching that your skill missed) they would've kept attacking until they potentially killed themselves and/or you.

edit: well you can scratch off the 1st paragraph of mines really, its kind of like what you said already. When it comes down to how few people and if it ever only comes to just 1 crasher and 1 binder, I'd suggest bind > crash mostly for v2 summon. Just to get that CD kicking in and so nothing goes wrong save for the person using it at the same time as DR buff or after DR buffs appears which shouldn't happen usually unless you messed up the first time.

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So technically for a squad, Bind 1st followed by Crash when crash expires. Then during the R, everyone sits back relax.

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Originally Posted by sw2009

So, it is best if one would to solo it, means, only ranged classes, ds, shadowers and mage can do it currently. (Paladins, heros, dks would face more challenge?)



So technically for a squad, Bind 1st followed by Crash when crash expires. Then during the R, everyone sits back relax.

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you need classes with high status resistance, main issue in the boss fight is the amount of status effects you're gonna get spammed with.

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Originally Posted by ShinkuDragon

you need classes with high status resistance, main issue in the boss fight is the amount of status effects you're gonna get spammed with.

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Yup or imba avoid like db,shads, nls. Btw are mercs' avoid decent? Seems like they do die in Cygnus too.

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Originally Posted by sw2009

Yup or imba avoid like db,shads, nls. Btw are mercs' avoid decent? Seems like they do die in Cygnus too.

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depends on funding, meh mercs die easily, their avoid skills do help a lot when coupled with high avoid stat and status resistance (you can dodge the tornado, and if it hits, you can "dodge" the tornado status)