Squee

So. Thanks to great advice I got on Discord, I actually managed to beat this boss. Once I got the RIGHT advice (reading old posts about doppelganger gave some wrong information), I managed to actually win much more quickly than I was expecting. Apparently the right way to beat this boss is to mix demi-god and brionac and reduce his defense as close to zero as possible so you can just whale on him. Combining that with my rank 5 chain impale completely wasted him.

I didn't really understand why it was needed to force players to fight an annoying boss instead of using a much easier upgrade system like Demi-god and the knights powers (Dark and Paladin) had. The crusador requirements for leveling skills and requiring apostle raids to level these skills is more hastle than it needs to be. Especial since there's no way to help ease the training through things like training potions and talents of it's own.

The divine knights skills should be able to be trained on normal enemies, not doing an outdated raid that no one does anymore. Even if you can find people to do this, the apostles are much more annoying than they need to be, and even though there's a solo option, the apostle isn't even that fair with it's attack patterns. It doesn't telegraph it's attacks at all before just killing you for no reason when you're doing the raids, and that was the major problem I had with Girgishiy to begin with was that he didn't really telegraph, unless it was above the screen where you can't see his telegraph. The main skills need to just require using them on enemies, and maybe add another training requirement like using on an enemy, like using shield of trust and then having an additional training requirment for an enemy attack you while it's active rather than forcing you to train against the Apostle's mineral rain which is darn near impossible to see coming.

Then there's the subskills. These need a far better training method than doing raids. Personally, I think the best method of leveling these up would be like the potential stat system, where every number of cumulative levels you get a number of points to put into your divine knights subskills rather than being forced to constantly spam these stupid missions I don't see anyone doing anymore. Honestly, I think the entire stat system needs a huge overhaul, but that's a discussion for another time. For now, it's the crusador points that need some serious fixing. I would love to level up my crusador skills, but I absolutely refuse to do these absurd apostle missions that keep killing me because I can only see the bosses feet and can't see what he's going to do.

Take the knights skills and demi-gods. Leveling up was the way to get points to level up those skills (At least when I leveled them, I don't know if that's still the case since I haven't kept up with those systems after I rank 1'd everything), and honestly it felt pretty cheap to not have that with the crusador skills as well, especially after the Nascent Divinity transformation was intro'd (which I still have yet to get).

The crusador points need a better way for us to grind for them. I'm okay with grinding, but overall, we just better options for doing so. This game has always about choice and having multiple choices for just about everything. Why not have that option for Crusador skills as well so we aren't forced to play missions no one wants to play.

This whole game needs an overhaul. I can see why the player base has dropped so significantly over the years. They need to stop introducing new things period and focus on making the older stuff playable. Shadow missions are still very useful as they are still spammable, but things like the apostle raids and theater missions need to be revamped and redone. I agree with everything here. But honestly, every new skillset has been like that. Everyone started using gunner when it was intro'd, everyone started using puppets when they intro'd, everyone was using martial arts when that intro'd, everyone started using chains when they intro'd. Each new skillset seems like it's made to be better, and Chain Slash is just the newest one until something else comes along (I have no idea what they could intro next for skillsets, but I'm sure Chain Slash won't be the last new skillset we see). So far, from what I've seen, Chain Slash doesn't do much more damage than a good trained skillset like magic (well, most of the time since some enemies are immune to magic) and I'm almost at rank 1 in all chain skills (still working on getting Bachram explosion and Raging Spike).

Honestly, I don't know how I'd feel about them rebalancing all the skills (AGAIN), but it DOES need to happen. The last time they rebalanced the skills it broke a lot of skillsets (Like close combat people having to wait in between smashes). Most of the skillsets just don't do the amount of damage anymore that the game expects you to do to creatures like the Abyss dungeon bosses or the Apostles. I haven't even gotten to G22 or G23 yet, so I haven't done anything introduced in those generations. But we definitely need a major game overhaul. This game just has too much going on and not enough interest to warrant having so much extra crap in it.