SMT IV - Matador (Low Level, Prentice [Default] Difficulty, No Fusion)

Описание: Challenge run rules broken:
Fought on Prentice difficulty (default).

Matador was my third fiend attempt, coming right after Chemtrail because I wanted to see if I could pull off the same cheese strategy. Unfortunately, it doesn't work here for a variety of reasons; Matador chooses the targets of his basic attack regardless of the opposing team's HP, and he also tends to use Energy Drain to kill off any demons that have low HP. That pretty much ruled out the possibility of winning on Master difficulty without fusion or a significant amount of grinding. I decided that beating him on Prentice difficulty would be good enough, and he still provided a very solid challenge.

In a lot of ways, Matador functions similarly to Chemtrail, which is why I thought that I might be able to cheese him as well. He spends a lot of his turns buffing and debuffing with Taunt and Sukukaja, and the rest of his attacks will most likely be basic physical attacks unless his buffs and debuffs were not removed on the previous turn. He also has Hades Blast and Crushing Wave, which reduces the HP of its target to 1, but he doesn’t use Hades Blast with a physical-repelling target present and he usually only uses Crushing Wave if buffs and debuffs have not been canceled out. To limit the damage from his attacks, his buffs and debuffs need to be removed as often as possible; however, the only Dekaja/Dekunda users available without fusing have very little HP, so the best solution is to whisper Silent Prayer to Flynn and use that almost every turn.

The problem with having Flynn as the only Silent Prayer user is that he already has too many other roles that he has to play. There isn’t another solid healer, no one else can summon demons, and Flynn is really the only source of damage. The key to winning this is having the demons switch themselves out; they're not really usable after being swapped out, but it acts as a full heal and reduces the chance that Flynn has to summon new demons himself. I ended up using nine different demons in those last two slots throughout the battle. Peri was just barely able to survive two hits of Matador's attack with a Taunt applied, so I was able to use her to heal off the damage a few times. I also brought in Tiamat a few times for Silent Prayer, but with only 300 HP she's very fragile.

Offensively, Flynn is able to deal a lot of damage, especially with the High Electric Pleroma accessory. The problem is actually finding those opportunities to attack on higher difficulties. This battle is near unwinnable on Master difficulty because his attacks do 40% more damage, which would be nearly enough to kill even my highest-HP demons with a two-hit attack, and would kill with a critical. It's not really viable to have another physical-resisting demon, because Matador will start spamming Antichthon if the only non-physical resistant demon dies. Without Doping and being able to fuse Life Surge/Life Gain/Enduring Soul/Silent Prayer onto demons, it's just too difficult to survive his attacks long enough to win.