idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
You still aren't going to be able to know that ahead of time--most players would have died before reaching phase three, or they would have died upon entering it.
Yunalesca is difficult for three reasons:
1. She counters attacks against her with the appropriate status-ailment. So you're going to need either gear that protects you from it, or you'll need a dedicated dispeller.
She ONLY does this during Phase 1.
Once you get to Phase 2, she stops counter-attacking you completely. She does not cast Zombie, nor Mega-Death in Phase 1.
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2. She will inflict you with zombie, which means you can't heal them. She'll also cast healing spells on them.
Regen only does 200-300 damage a tick; characters should range between 2500-4000 HP. This is easily manageable and you have plenty of time to react to it and/or plan ahead.
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3. She has an AoE attack powerful enough to be noteworthy. Especially if we are talking about a scenario in which you will have only one character alive at the start of phase three, and that character must be in zombie mode.
The only AoE attack she does, Mind Blast I believe it is called, does 500-700 damage. When you have 3-4k HP, this is a pittance amount of damage. Also, she only does it in Phase 3, and she only does it once every 3 turns, and she has very low agility (most characters get 2-3 turns to her one).
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4. She can insta-death you.
Yes, the very first time she uses Mega-Death you are going to be unprepared for it. So you reload and you KNOW she's going to do it the 2nd time around. She doesn't even cast Regen in Phase 2, she only casts Cura if I recall correctly. Cura that only does 1k-ish? Something like that. Oh, she's only got like 25k health too, and she has fairly low defense.
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Realistically, it's a fight that (when done at an appropriate level) still has more than a small aspect of luck to it, unless you are seriously geared. Which is pretty much exactly the same as what we have here--when appropriately geared, the chance of you getting screwed is pretty small.
The only bad situation you can run into, is 1 character non-zombie, and 2 zombies with regen and low health. This happened to me, literally, a few days ago and nearly caused me to wipe on her. But I will admit, that I _should_ have had Yuna in my group all along, I could have casted Dispel to get rid of the Regens. Doing that, would have made the fight MUCH easier.
If you have Tidus and Yuna in the group, use a heavy-hitter like Wakka or Auron, you literally can't lose if you make sure to keep Haste up on Yuna at the very least, and have her Dispel the Regens ASAP. The only damage you will ever take during the whole fight, is her dispelling counter attacks (Yuna will never lose her haste unless you are stupid and have her melee the boss), the zombification move and her Mind Spike. Both of the above only do 500-700 damage. The counter-attacks do 300 or less on a melee character. Once she casts Mega-Death, feel free to cure the zombie and pop heals, Yuna should easily be fast enough (thanks to Haste) to heal at least two people before the next All-Zombie attack.
You literally cannot lose.
If you beat the Zanarkand Guardian on the Mountain, there's no reason you should ever lose to Yunalesca, and it has absolutely nothing to do with gear. It has everything to do with observing the boss on your first attempt, realizing that Zombie = Death Protection and Dispel is the new Esuna in this fight, and you'll do just fine. Also, prolonging the Second Phase to make sure _everyone_ gets hit with Zombie does wonders too, Sub em in, let them get hit with zombie, then switch them out.
If you ever find yourself with all non-zombies, switch in the zombified people in temporarily when Mega-Death is coming.
Oh, and making sure Bahamut has a full Overdrive gauge is nice too. lol. Get her down to about 15-20k left, and then blast her to death for an Overkill and extra AP.