Hyrule Warriors/Zelda Musou (Spoiler Warning in effect)

The thing I had to learn about Zelda's Rapier was that her combos were not better with light charges, just different. Her no-charge C5 is pretty handy for just cutting through things.

edited 19th Mar '15 6:16:33 PM by Pulse

I love the mortar arrows so much I use them when I maybe shouldn't, though.

just beat ganon :X

i think i was a few seconds away from hyrule castle falling as well...

er, wow.

playing adventure mode for the first time and trying out twili midna

is it just me or is the a bit...OP

seems to be doing a lot of damage at a reasonable speed and rather large range.

edited 20th Mar '15 2:49:26 AM by Tarsen

Ganon does a ridiculous amount of damage at a ridiculous range :P.

tbf he's a boss monster.

I really wish I had friends with a WiiU and this game; I don't get the friend bonus on Network Link fights.

With the Dominion Rod, I find it to be a bit of a Disc-One Nuke. It certainly helps clear any level with Zelda that doesn't force you into one of her other weapons, particularly if you're like me and have a Zelda ambiibo (get ALL the Dominion Rods!) to quickly guarantee some of the level 3 versions. That said, I honestly find it much faster to plow through things with her rapier or even the baton once you get those at level 3. That said, it is probably the most fun of Zelda's weapons to use.

Ganon's much easier if you go in with a plan. I usually start with having the boomerang at the ready - his shoulder Bullet Seed attack is the one that gives you the least heads-up, so having the boomerang ready to stop it ASAP is a priority. Otherwise, switch to the subweapon that will stop the current assault, then switch back (unless he lost both shoulder spikes).

Beyond that, standing just off to the side, a bit away, seems to work best for me, Better chance to dodge his red light blasts, and if you dodge forward just as he's about to finish his charge, I find I'm in perfect position to nail him with the arrow to reveal his Weak Point Gauge. From there, you know what to do.

I've got the Royal Dominion Rod...

And, yet, when trying one of those Devastating Attack levels where I had to defeat 30 Stalmasters while not getting one-hit killed by random Beamos, I tried the Dominion Rod for a couple of unsatisfying goes... and then brought out my level-1 Wind Waker Baton and... cleaned up with that! I like controlling the little whirlwind you can create with that, though it takes finesse. So satisfying on those "all attacks are devastating" rules to murder big, armored mean Stalmasters with a little dust-devil.

I've noticed that all of Zelda's weapons take wisdom. Have you? I find the sword finagely, the baton is something you have to know when you can risk exposing yourself to being hit from behind to do some of the whirlwind attacks, and the Dominion Rod statue... you have to know when to bring it up and figure out out to get it in good position in relation to Zelda. It's like... her weapons are smart-people weapons, or something!

For any Devastating missions that don't disallow items, I just cheat with the bow. Saves so much time and patience.

As for Zelda's weapons, I've found them mostly precise and dainty, but the Dominion Rod is just brutish. Link could have used it for his dark weapon...but with that and the Spinner, he'd probably be over equipped.

Actually, I find that bombs are the weapons that give you the least time to act. His Fury Horn is easy to switch to and take down, fiery breath has a huge windup time, and his Ganon Bomb exposes the weak point after the attack, not before.

Hm... it seems elemental damage is divided into two categories: The representative element and the secondary elements.

The representative element is basically what affects elemental damage and whether you get a boost to your damage on missions and stages with recommended elements. Sheik for example will do more damage against Ruto (who is weak against lightning) and will enjoy an attack boost on missions where the recommended element is Lightning.

The secondary elements decide whether certain attacks can get buffs like dealing more damage to an enemy if you continuously attack only that enemy (if the secondary element is darkness) or making it easier to juggle enemies in the air (if the secondary element is lightning), or the other elemental buffs. Using Sheik as an example again, depending on the attack she uses, she could activate either the darkness or the lightning buff (or even the other buffs since she has all the elements as secondary elements in one attack or another). Notably, the secondary element is separate from the representative element, so if Sheik uses Bolero of Fire against an enemy weak to fire, the enemy won't take increased damage since the attack is for all damaging purposes actually a lightning-elemental attack, even if it activates the Fire buff. (But it would do increased damage to Ruto since, as a lightning-elemental attack, it would hit her weakness.)

I don't know - in my experience with Sheik, it's frequently best to attack your opponent with the element that they're weak against. Granted, this might just be due to a defense stat that isn't quantified for the player, but I find that Ruto takes much less damage from Bolero of Fire than Darunia, and both pale to the damage that Lana will take from it. Meanwhile, Ruto gets wrecked by the Song of Storms, and Darunia gets ripped up by Serenade of Water.

Granted, this is mitigated by the fact that the post-Bolero strong attack just eats away at any life bar, regardless of element, like nobody's business. That said, I still find that it does its best work against lightning-aligned foes (to the point that Sheik can take out Lana with just one or two hits of the post-Bolero strong attack).

Hmm... then I stand corrected.

On a different note, Keyblade Master Ganondorf is finally a reality!

Well, to be fair, that's just my observation. There might be some other mitigating factor that I'm not accounting for.

That said, I can say that elements do seem to come into play with the giant bosses, because I swear that Fire attacks chip away the Weak Point Gauge on Manhandla faster than any other type, but Water attacks do the same to King Dodongo. Anyone else notice this, or am I crazy?

It makes sense though. Manhandla is a plant monster so fire should burn it and King Dodongo is a creature of fire so water would douse it.

I THINK that Argorok is weak to lightning since it's in the air all the time, but I don't remember what Gohma's or the Imprisoned's weaknesses are.

Good going- In my experience, that mission is a real doozy just to win, much less A Rank.

I believe Gohma is weak to Darkness and The Imprisoned to Light.

edited 30th Mar '15 8:25:32 AM by Pulse

From what I've seen, Pulse is right about Gohma (Zant and Ghirahim plow through Gohma's Weak Point Gauge) and The Imprisoned. (Ganon is also Darkness-aligned, but I think everyone already guessed that.) What I find interesting is that it seems to only affect how quickly the weak point gauge depletes, not how much damage you do with a strike or a Weak Point Smash (i.e. a Fire-elemental attack that triggers a WPS against Manhandla does as much damage as a Fire-elemental attack that triggers a WPS on King Dodongo - it just takes fewer such attacks against Mandy).

This is all personal observation in the heat of the moment, though - I haven't done any delving to see how well it holds up. However, I think it provides a jumping-off point for further analysis.

Not every character has the same weaknesses though. Agitha for example has resistance to Light AND Darkness and is weak against Fire. Lana is somehow weak against Lightning and Impa has weaknesses to Darkness and Fire.

To be fair, Lana just seems to have low defense in general. I compared her damage taken to that of Zant on a level where both of them were captains. It didn't matter what elemental affinities were involved, she was taking much more damage unless I was specifically using a Light elemental weapon (even after accounting for the fact that Zant's AI blocks much more readily, from what I've seen).

I think the problem with quantifying any of this is that the game doesn't actually give hard-and-fast clues as to what's working well against a foe and what isn't beyond eyeballing the life gauges and splitting hairs on just how many pixels were depleted. And beyond that, there are still other factors depending on the level of the stage itself and whether the character is just a regular captain, a mission-critical captain, or a commander. We're all making stabs in the dark here.

So, Gohma is dark-weak? That certainly explains why Midna is my favourite for plowing through maps with him.

I could probably use her to beat the Twilight Boss map in Termina, if I could just kill Ganondorf quicker. Gohma goes down fast for a Termina boss against her.

Again, though, with Giant Bosses weaknesses only affect how quickly their Weak Point Gauge depletes. The Imprisoned doesn't really care about its Light weakness, for example- Just about everyone can take off half of a Giant Boss' Weak Point Gauge in the time allowed, and The Imprisoned always slithers off and stands back up at that point.

Although, now I'm curious. Could you maybe use Sheik to sneak a larger portion of his gauge? Cut it down a bit, then use the Bolero of Fire strong to knock a huge portion off. Would the final hit be able to knock off more because it strikes before he stands up?

Beating the Imprisoned:

• Break all its toes
• Dodge its fall
• Beat its Weak Point gauge down to half because it's unlikely that you can get much more
• Let it worm around chasing you and try to steer it into a wall so stands up
• Dodge its toe-regrow waves
• Repeat

If you want to do a Weak Point smash on an Imprisoned on the first go then you need an attack that really hits hard.

It might actually be possible that the Dark Imprisoned is easier to fight, because you just get into a rhythm of dodging and attacking, and don't need to rely on weak point smashes to deal damage. Also, hit many times harder because each toe you strike counts as another strike.

Dark giant bosses are an interesting challenge. They're easier to damage, but there's less time to safely attack them.

For other things that would really annoy me, but I kind of like it in them..

I am surprised by how many Darkness Element weapons there are in the game. I think there are more Darkness Element users than any other weapon in the game, although A Light weapon, the Master Sword is the most powerful weapon in the game once fully powered up, as is appropriate for a Zelda game. I Thought the Dominion Rod would be a Light Weapon for sure, but it is Darkness, I guess the devs wanted to vary Zelda's weapons a bit.