[Level9Drow]

Could someone make an Aneska guide? I'm not the most elite gamer here, my current MMR so far is 59%, probably average. But the Aneska fight was VERY confusing and I often didn't know what the objective was, and to be honest, I STILL don't.

Me and my group burned 80k to beat her. But some of us did little more than get mentally blitzed by explosions, fighting adds, dodging bubbles and laser cuts and just shrugged our shoulders and shot things and ran around.

One of out party members said we had to "overload" something when she refueled, but I didn't know WHEN she was refueling or where it is she refuels. Then he said he explained several kinds of attacks she does and to watch out for. And then i thought to myself, "why isn't this intuitive? Why does he have to explain this fight like a World of Warcraft raid boss? Should an action game fight be this non-intuitive?"

We beat her, as stated before, but we just powered through and DPS raced her at the end getting killed over and over while being confused and spending money to come back. I had to use Harec so I would just be out of the way from all the chaos below that I couldn't make heads or tails of, just so I could slowly chip away at her armor with full charged x4 shots, but something told me this wasn't the optimal way to fight her. But to be honest, I didn't know what the optimal way to fight her was.

Could some one make a step by step guide on how to fight Aneska? Please detail what do to at certain times and what to look for.

Thanks!!

[Derclaw]

Well not gonna write a guide but:

- When she flies around she does plasma sword attacks that mark the ground and then explode, electric balls attack - those balls can be shot down to avoid damage and I guess she also does missile strike - and if she locked on you - you need to be constantly moving to avoid damage.

- When she proclaims that she needs refueling - several refuleing arms will arise - and after few moment she will dash towards one of them and will start refueling. You have two options there - if somebody with Aleph is close - you can overload the fueling arm that will cause some damage and will open cockpit of the mech - alowing you to do major damage for quite some time. Other option - blow up the Aleph canister at the base of refueling arm - that wont open up cockpit or do damage - but it will stop refuleing process.

IF YOU FAIL BOTH - she will enter unvulnerability state and will barrage you with improved versions of her attacks for a while - so avoid her refuleing at all costs.

I think at low HP she stops floating and starts running around the ship shooting missiles and electric balls. She wont trample the Raiders by doing so, or atleast I never saw her killing anyone in process.

[Level9Drow]

Thanks! That should help tonight.

I have one question though. When her health was low she hung off the side of the barge and did nothing but constantly did missile strikes and didn't ever stop. Is this supposed to happen? Seems you cant do any damage constantly running.

[Derclaw]

Well you can do damage - she just never tries refuel from this point - so you wont get "open cockpit" bonus anymore. I dont know what your team comp is - but as usually - 5-th Council can facetank barrage while dishing damage, before they need to retreat to cover.

[LordDraco3]

yeah once she gets to her last health bar it's constant missiles. She will announce every single attack pattern over intercom, so pay attention and turn on your subtitles if you haven't already (I didn't know some people played without them!). It is a crazy chaotic battle for sure and can get very hard, but I think that's due to the fact that we all have shit-tier Lv0 weapons that need to be upgraded. Once my team fought her with a forged Phax rifle, Shae hit her in the open cockpit for almost 900 damage!! A forged Shtorm was hitting 100+ crits! The difficulty feels tuned for forged weapons now, and with Lv0, we're gonna have a hard time.

[Black_Adder_]

She reminds me of Killing Floor's 2 boss Patriarch - tells every single move she's gonna do and always gives you time to get cover/run away. So basically the boss guide is "read subtitles"

[Level9Drow]

Thanks guys. I played it solo for a better understanding as well.

EDIT: For the record, I almost NEVER got to a refueling station in time. This has to be something for 4 players only to pull off consistently.

[LordDraco3]

Keep an eye on her when the stations open, she flies in the center and looks around, then picks one and moves once squads of enemies come out of the gates (there will ALWAYS be packs of elites at this moment). I usually use Hans here and he has no trouble getting there in time. Ginebra is a good solid option for this mission as well.

[ZooL]

That's another issue with the game:
people cannot figure out the simplest boss fights on their own. To make things worse: there is no way to communicate in game. so you have no chance to explain people how bosses work. a MAYOR flaw.

[Level9Drow]

I've done the fight more now and have an idea of how it works. So, here's my criticism, and it's REAL simple.

It isn't fun to constantly and forever run because of homing missiles. It's fine if you are targeted once and then it switches to someone else or there is a time in between where you can shoot her. But ALLL i did was run and run and run and run while dodging missiles. This is boring, it's redundant and tedious.

Give the player a break for a moment so they can actually, you know, fight back.

[LordDraco3]

her missiles do pause, just gotta watch the arrows on your character.

[Level9Drow]

her missiles do pause, just gotta watch the arrows on your character.

At the last phase? I sure didn't notice. There was the red arrows spoinning around me for the complete time at the last health bar. All I did was run around constantly. It would pause for a few seconds and then start up on me again.

It was basically my team mates who did damage at the end. And I know what you might say, "Well you took her attention for your team to damage her." No, this isn't fun. she should be designed to switch targets so others can have some kind of fun shooting at her. It's a boring and eye rolling situation to be in, because you know a human developer designed this part and you think, "Really dude? Did you really think doing this for 8 minutes straight was going to be fun?"

My solution would be to program her to have a 100% of switching her homing missiles to a different target each time to give everyone a break from playing a running simulator and shooting her up a bit. feel like a heroic character.

[Black_Adder_]

Derclaw already wrote a perfect Aneska guide. Also being the targeted guy is the easiest and most fun part of fight IF YOU HAVE DECENT TEAMMATES. If you do and they actually kill adds while you're avoiding missiles then last phase is super easy and you still can shoot Aneska in between the missiles.
I play with randoms and almost always lose Aneska fight at the last phase when people all try to shoot her and nobody cares about taking out adds anymore.

[LordDraco3]

Drow, her missiles shoot at everybody, not just 1 player. Any time you see her target lock you for missiles, it counts for everybody. So pointing out that the rest of your team killed her is pointing out that they were dodging missiles while attacking the boss. Those few seconds of rest you mentioned at the pauses I was talking about. There's only a couple of seconds between missile barrages, you have to use that precious time to shoot her or kill enemies.

A few characters can also shoot on the move, Alicia and Hans immediately come to mind as they can both attack her whole using their movement powers, Harec is very good with stalking if you build a high powered Hero Killer rifle, Ginebra is fantastic, Mikah is good too with her straightforward rifles. And like Black Adder said, killing enemies is equally as important as shooting the boss sometimes, different characters are good at doing different things. I also recommend bringing along some type of stress-cancelling card if you are Hades so you can heal on the move, and 5th council should have closed systems on because the blue orbs will count to heal them.

[Level9Drow]

Drow, her missiles shoot at everybody, not just 1 player. Any time you see her target lock you for missiles, it counts for everybody. So pointing out that the rest of your team killed her is pointing out that they were dodging missiles while attacking the boss. Those few seconds of rest you mentioned at the pauses I was talking about. There's only a couple of seconds between missile barrages, you have to use that precious time to shoot her or kill enemies.

A few characters can also shoot on the move, Alicia and Hans immediately come to mind as they can both attack her whole using their movement powers, Harec is very good with stalking if you build a high powered Hero Killer rifle, Ginebra is fantastic, Mikah is good too with her straightforward rifles. And like Black Adder said, killing enemies is equally as important as shooting the boss sometimes, different characters are good at doing different things. I also recommend bringing along some type of stress-cancelling card if you are Hades so you can heal on the move, and 5th council should have closed systems on because the blue orbs will count to heal them.

Everyone? Well that doesn't make the argument better, that sucks even more. And 2 seconds isn't enough then, not for me. That's ridiculous. It should be 6 to 8 seconds at least.

Wow, what a huge disappointment that news was.