MOBIUS FINAL FANTASY

MOBIUS FINAL FANTASY

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GUIDE TO FF MOBIUS MULTIPLAYER (MP)
By mrowmrif2
For players looking for info on all things Multiplayer in FF Mobius... To preface my thread: I have been a Mobius FF player since November 2016 and am player level 182, multiplayer rank 140 and currently and have every job. I've also consistently ranked top500 in every tower since Summer 2017.

I have every ultimate skin and supreme card except 3 (Ultimate Chaos, Emperor and Shadowlord) and didn't reroll for any of these, just got lucky/spent a little $$$... too much money really, but more more luck involved (I average 1 supreme in 36 pulls). My second account (player level 162 and MP rank 121) also has 7 supremes, as well... so both accounts are loaded and have a combined close to 14,000 played hours. (...that is kinda horrifying actually.)

I have completed all 5* battles to date, including the Sephiroth and Ultima Weapon event bosses, most of them solo, as in no AI to help me and only 1 character. Breaker is my favorite role because I can guarantee success of any run with my hybrid setups... I have beaten 4* and 5* battles in under 1 minute with a flawless/deathless runs using all healers or defenders in my group, duo'd them with my mule rag bard + neo bard... Solo'd 5* bosses with only my ninja and MM and more easily on the newer sarah jobs... but I have also beaten them in 25 minutes with raises galore... I have seen the good, the bad and the oh-so-ugly. I have been great and I have sucked so hard (I have even one-shotted the boss too many times to count in 4* MP carelessly without killing guards... super embarrassing). So I've seen it all in my 2+ years of playing Mobius.

I hope my experience pulled together into this MP guide is helpful to everyone who reads it! Please feel free to comment and correct me on anything you feel is inaccurate - I am open to suggestion and willing to update my guide accordingly! I also try and updated it a couple times a year as meta shifts occur, but if I haven't in awhile forgive me...

This guide is to enable players looking to get into FF Mobius Multiplayer to be valuable group members by understanding their roles and how fights progress. **Updated 2-15-2019.**

:MFF_Tonberry:
   
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Intro
Rule #1: Do not attempt 3* Sicarius fights (and do not even think about 4* or 5*!) as anything less than 8* jobs maxed out card levels with 260+ level decks. Just don't. That means no starter jobs, no cards that arent close to maxed out (with story mission 5-2 finished, 5* cards are max 80, 4* are 70 and 3* are 50... even with 4x 3* cards maxed you should be 200...) and no one hoping that the group will carry you through... everyone in a 5* fight should contribute or you waste time. DON'T waste people's time - don't waste your own stamina! It won't matter how good your team is, how elite the other 3 players are... you may have to raise a bunch of times each and it will take forever... if you can even win, because it is likely you won't be able to consistently break and damage the boss enough after the guards are gone, and therefore its break bar will keep resetting after he oneshots all of you every 2 turns. Be patient, do your 1* through 3* fights and farm better cards, seeds and xp – and knowledge! One exception to this rule would be defender... I've seen a defender with a deck level < 175 take on 4* battles and do very well - because they performed their role! drives + debuffs + attacks to generate orbs...(credit: Talako) Anyone else showing up to the party better know how to dance and have a deck level that represents at least 4* cards.

Rule #2: Do not come to multiplayer without damage card ability level 8+ and without all available extra skills unlocked... you will basically be a detriment to the team and frustrate everyone. Just put the time in soloing until you unlock your extra skills and your cards are at least level 45. If you don't know what an extra skill is... sigh. Google. (the little boxes under your ability level that tell you what your card can do in addition to its activated primary ability...) Farming some fractals to add Auto-Abilities is also a great way to boost a card's power... however, you can only really apply Auto-Abilities to cards that are 4* with some exceptions, because these depend on available slots that open up as you augment cards to the next tier. So work on augmenting your cards!

NOTE: Every new "Presence" (meaning change of primary Sicarius Boss, which is on a schedule), you have access to be able to complete quests. Initially, you get to complete all of the 1* battles as well as one each of the 2*, 3* and 4* battles... Once you complete your 1*, 2* and 3* quests, you can still form parties to fight bosses at that level but the quests are forever complete. Each new presence, though, you can complete one of the 4* and 5* fights for that new Boss; rinse repeat every new presence for "first clear" rewards. Running a quest that needs completion gives your group members (people who are "helping you"), 20 magicite! Alright! Magicite for all! Run your quests, share the magicite.
Job Roles
Now... onto MP roles!

HEALER ROLE: required cards are FAITH, BARRIER and HASTE. after that, buff cards you can include to round out your deck would be Boost, Brave, Wall or Snipe effects... Knights of the Round "Ultimate Boon" (KOTR) grants brave, boost and faith and is a staple of healer decks right now. Multi-Buff cards are great but typically cost 3 orbs, so you need good life/prismatic orb starters to be able to drop all buffs first round after using a gaia/lifeshift/aerith; that is the meta, going with weird alternate setups is dumb unless the group is including a two healer setup - then you can run an ultimate generator and complementary buff build. Your primary job is TO HEAL AND BUFF. You are not supposed to be dealing damage or breaking... you shouldn't have to. Faith >Haste > Barrier > everything else for buffs. Haste is sooooo important for the group if you arent going to be able to kill everything in 1 round. CURRENT IDEAL HEALER DECK (without aerith or any event cards): Undying (snipe, haste, drain) + KOTR (brave, boost, faith) + Hell's Gate (barrier, wall, regen) + Gaia (heartshift)... this allows you to shift all orbs to life orbs round 1 and apply all buffs immediately to your group, and all of these cards are available in the ability shop at 3*... and you can use them at 3* immediately. This is meta, and if you cannot perform in meta, it really would be a good idea to stick to another role. For jobs that do not have enough life/prismatic starters to power your Gaia round 1, you have to use black mage's Truescale Staff or thief's Tyrfing weapons with Prismatic Starter +3 panel... if you have none of the right jobs/cards with prismatic/life starters and you dont have prismatic starter weapons to use in their stead... do not come healer.

BREAKER ROLE: required card includes HIGH BREAK POWER. Trying to be a damage dealer is gimping your group... stop trying to kill things as the breaker - let the attacker do that. Your job is to BREAK. In 1* and 2* fights, sure... have an ability that will do over 9999 just to have in your back pocket in case you get a gimp group that can't kill things in under 60 seconds. But in 4* and 5* fights it may not even be feasible to have on your bar unless it has auto-abilities that add increased break or magic power %, Job Change Recast, etc. or resistances to the boss element...

Enspells are ability cards that give you the basic "attacks deal XXXXXX elemental damage" effect - and that is what you want in order to either target weakness or use your strongest element bonus to increase the break damage you deal with your attacks. As of July 2017, there are summoned cards that replace the Pupu cards and can be augmented 5*; all 2nd gen sicarius monk cards and other monk cards (and some ranger/mage/warrior cards) also add enspell effects of their element. The element applied to your attacks against an enemy weakness damages break bars way more than standard physical attacks do. Monks get enspells added by their monk cards of various elements (I prefer the AOE versions of monk cards for the cleaving as well). Cleaving is huge for a breaker, and there are many options to get that nowadays, allowing you to break all enemies at the same time.

ATTACKER ROLE: required cards are 1. HIGH DAMAGE + 2. ORB MANAGEMENT... Your primary job is to kill things... If you try to do too much and be a breaker or self-buff a lot, or you come lacking the ability and knowledge to manage orbs, you are a waste of space on a team. If you show up to a 3* or 4* fight as an Attacker role and do not have a single ability with the extra skill unlocked giving it access to over 9999 damage... you should be slapped. An Attacker that can't do its job - deal damage - is the worst member on the team. Attackers typically can't break well, they can't heal anyone or use drives on anyone... come prepared to KILL. Have a 5* card with 9999+ unlocked or please... please... do not bother doing 3* or higher Sicarius fights unless you are completing your quests and giving the other group members who are carrying your butt through the battle some magicite.

ALSO!!! so important... STOP TRYING TO OMG I HAVE TO KILL ASAP all the time... pay the F*CK attention to the dynamic in the group. If your breaker can break the boss in one round by himself, just be patient... let the boss/guards get broken, THEN kill. give your breaker a chance to lock the boss up with a break or someone in your group to apply a 2 or better action stun/slow combo to the boss so that the guard's death doesnt reset the break bar and cause you to start all over again with the yellow break gauge. That is just stupid, and as someone who mainly plays a breaker... I have to say that is the MOST frustrating part of playing multiplayer in this game - stupid people who are obsessed with attacking first and getting the kill. The purpose is to WIN as a GROUP in the shortest amount of time possible........ just do your job, but do it smartly. And don't waste people's time.

DEFENDER ROLE: Required cards are a Taunt of the boss's element and then debuffs... See the Job/Roles Notes section for recommendations for other cards. The taunt cards released in May 2017 have at 4* ability level 5 an extra skill called Enhanced Ailments... this means that when you use the taunt on an enemy it will remove even the most powerful buffs! Ultima's Break Defense Up buff is an example. If you do not own a taunt card, go buy one from the ability shop. They are there at 3*, no excuses. Your primary job as a defender? Believe it or not... DRIVES. USE DRIVES! Drives used by a defender extend to all group members, protecting them from that element of damage by an increasing % based on the counter on the drive defense icon (drive potency). 1 potency gives you 15% resistance; 2 potency gives you 35%; 3+ potency gives you 50%.
This is a fantastic way to grant elemental resistances and HEAL (use your life orb drive!) your group... sort of like a classic paladin heal/tank from many MMOs. Debuff cards like debarrier and weaken can also increase damage dealt to the target, making attackers more effective.

TRY TO GO LAST IN THE ORDER. You should be attacking every round at least once, usually two to three times... you will be the primary source of orbs for your group apart from the breaker who attacks to break the red gauge and a healer that has used all of its bufs already and has nothing else to do. The group doesn't need your break bar damage, and they shouldn't NEED the yellow bar damage from you (the attacker should be able to assist with that if breaker cant solo... only if you have the orbs for it and an ability to get yellow fits in your deck).

Another really important note about being a Defender in MP: equip a weapon with prismatic orb generation (reunion on Masamune, Ogrenix or a heavily modded Blood Anchor if you have them are best in slot, but Dragvandil is free from MP shop and has good panels for defenders)! Having prismatic orbs allows you to have flexibility to access any of your abilities or drives for resistances or healing - really critical for a defender to generate life or prismatic orbs consistently.
Job/Role Notes
Some basics... Look at your cards. You see the symbols that are a staff or cane, sword, dual-wield swords/daggers, 3 diagonal lines and the person with the raised arms? Those are card types, and only certain jobs can utilize them to their fullest effect. It took me a month of playing before it clicked for me... The Staff symbol cards are used by mages (white mage, red mage, black mage, scholar, meias, etc.), and the blue staff gives meia synchro effect (bonus magic power for that card when used by meia jobs); the Sword cards are used by warrior types (dark knight, knight, dragoon mythic knight, samurai, etc.); the Dual-wield cards are used by ranger types (Hunter, Thief, Viking, sarahs, etc.); the 3 diagonal lines are monk cards (used by Wol monks or sophies); finally, the raised arm cards are used by anyone and represent buffs, heals and enemy debuff cards of various elements ("support" cards). Many damaging cards of any type and element have additional effects that debuff the enemy or buff you upon activation and are useful utility in MP... Cards also have different Attack and Break Power numbers... high Attack cards typically have low Break Power; high Break Power cards typically have low Attack... area of effect abilities typically have a higher orb cost than single target attacks. Please be mindful of all of these things when choosing cards for your MP deck! A good deck takes into consideration cost + additional effects + elements aligned against your target + role purpose. This is true for single player and MP, but it is especially important in MP. Being able to use abilities when needed and effectively within the number of aviailable actions is super important.

There are always exceptions to the above... For instance, some Legend jobs and most monk jobs tend to have access to two types of cards via Lores - an example is the SOLDIER 1st Class job everyone seems to want even though it is old at this point (Cloud/FFVII fanboys!). It has access to both Warrior and Ranger cards, which is neat for creating a truly useful deck and utilizing some of the cool event cards you can get of either type and still be effective. Just be careful you don't spread yourself too thin when building... Since SOLDIER is an Attacker job, you should still be focused on that role in MP... don't screw around with break, support and debuff cards just because you can use them... Build your deck right and help the group! Keep your eyes open for new events that have unique cards available and save your summon tickets for them! Sometimes there are some real gems (The FFXI alter ego cards, for example, are amazing for orb management and yellow break damage...), and you don't want to miss out on the limited time availability, even if you don't have jobs that can use them... yet!

Healers can cast support on other people in the group, Defenders can use drives on others. Breakers and Attackers can only affect themselves and enemies with buffs, but their attacks or abilities can charge the group's ultimate gauges, respectively. Know what your job can do by reading its auto-abilities; do your research.

You can also tell what you are able to do on a given job, what their elemental affinity/damage bonuses are and what automatically activated ("starter") buffs might be included if you go to the Decks menu and click the tiny blue "Auto" box under the job picture on the left... this will display all the active bonuses applied to your character based on cards, custom skill panels, job abilities, etc. Note: in MP you have additional passive bonuses (look at your job card, scroll to the right to your active abilities... note at the very bottom the 2 bonuses). Example:

Ranger (pulled job not neophyte garbage starter job): clutch boost, clutch drain, clutch regen, enhance wind +150%, resist wind +45%, elemental starter +16 (max orbs right from the start), extended break 4, avert stun +50%, avert action loss +50%, job change shift: wind, job change recast: 4 turns, area ultimate charge: normal attacks, break power up +50% (!) Those last two are the mp-specific bonuses.

So you might choose Ranger as your preferred breaker if you are fighting Hashmal or Hecatoncheir... it has boosted break power, a bonus to wind damage (which affects wind enspell additional damage... which affects breaking even more against the weakness of an enemy such as Hashmal, an earth elemental!)... it also means that you don't want any elemental starter+ auto abilities on your cards because they are a waste when you have 16 already at start... AND Ranger has access to earth, so they are able to drive earth if the defender in the group cannot... so they die less easily. With Hall of Fame panels, they now have additional bonuses, too! (Older jobs typically get Hall of Fames to bring them up to snuff with newer jobs...)

Paladin/Knight/Warrior you will see "area element drives"... white mage, devout, red mage, dancer you will see "area heals and boons"... so defenders get area drives, healers get area buffs/heals. Use them wisely!

EDIT: having started this guide more than a year ago, I just wanted to add one more thing (probably reiterating from some other area of the guide... needs to be said though): It is fun to get the killshots. We all love getting the killshot on an enemy and making the big boom that is so impressive... but if you want that killshot, PLAY AN ATTACKER. Stick to your roles... please. The goal is to win a battle, right? And when farming, the goal is to win FAST, right? If everyone sticks to doing their roles and does them well, that is what happens. If you are a healer, buff people and heal them... if you are a defender, use drives and debuff the targets... if you are a breaker, break (i.e. get yellow gauge, tap with normal attacks, buffed with enspells and boost)... if you are an attacker, kill with high damage, high magic. Don't try to do other people's jobs. We struggle in pick up groups (pugs) because people try to reach beyond their roles/capabilities and fail... stop wasting people's time; just play your role. *Disclaimer: I frequently play a hybrid breaker that can break, kill and survive without a healer or defender... but i'm also running a deck with 4 supremes in it and have 5* weapons, maxed fractals in every auto-ability slot, etc. etc... I am capable of that level of gameplay; most are not. Since pugs stink in general, I typically run such hybrids to be able to ignore everyone else and guarantee a win no matter the group makeup... sorry in advance if I make you feel useless, but I don't really have time to waste on people failing to do their roles, so I just do it for them. Don't be like me, it is annoying. Do your role. :)

EDIT2: Taunts are extremely important in the current meta, as is the healer being able to lifeshift/heartshift round 1... as are many breakers being able to break yellow and red + cleave break guards on their own in the first round... if you cannot do those things, it is really best to not play one of those roles in 4* or 5* MP... seriously, do not waste people's time by causing a run to drag out for 10 minutes when it should take 2 or 3 minutes tops... or having someone die and cost everyone the materials they were farming. Come prepared or just don't reach higher than your capabilities... if you are hosting and that is the case, especially when you need first clears of 4* and 5* bosses of each presence, at least put a disclaimer in your room host text that says "please carry me" - gives people the opportunity to choose to do so or to stay away if they can't.
Mrow's Deckbuilding Strategy
This section is just to highlight how I like to build my role decks in MP... Lots of strategies of course, but these are my favorites that I find most effective.

Attacker (2 builds):
...Build 1, single element focus - target boss weakness
-Force card (of same element as your primary damage card)
-Primary damage card (event card / ST multistrike / sicarius AOE)
-Break card (of same element of your primary damage card; currently I prefer an AOE CRD)
-Trance (berserk is a 50% elemental bonus, +15% damage taken... be careful, not recommended!... trance is +30% to all stats)

*The strategy here is to use force and then drive out your bad orbs... then use break power card to get rid of the yellow gauge for your breaker... but never tap before your breaker! the current breaker meta includes Flash Break mechanic, which is ruined upon the first tap anyone makes; also, current meta has breakers breaking without your help with yellow gauge... so you probably don't even need to worry about this anymore... just note it. If it is available during Break, use Trance to empower your first attack ability or (if no orbs) your ultimate. The basic strategy is to be able to 1-round kill boss and guards when it is broken and have plenty of orbs available to do it.

...Build 2, flexible/multi-element well-rounded
-Shift card (of same element as boss weakness damage card)
-Primary damage card (event card / ST multistrike / sicarius AOE)
-Break card (of different element of your primary damage card)
-Trance

*Strategy here is to use both orb types to first reduce boss break gauge, then Shift to your damage element when broken and spam away. Alternately, if you shift in one round and don't kill boss but have orbs for Trance, you can ignite an ultimate or another ability. Shift grants a x2 ignition (bonus magic power) to your next ability... so shift + ability is huge damage if you are already berserked... if not, shift will remove all orbs, including life and prismatic.

There are other possible build setups, these are just 2 example strategies that work well. Vs 3rd gen sicarius bosses, you typically will need more orb control and power to be able to kill them - they have 20x the HP of normal sicarius bosses in 5* battles.

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Breaker (2 build options), try to have 4 to 5 Job Change Recast in your deck and at least 2300 break power; 800% or higher magic power... I prefer 2500+ break power and 1200+ magic power.
...Build 1, includes event cards
-Garuda FFXIV (life starter +1, cleaving attacks x15, quicken and haste and 2 JCR)
-Garuda or Legendary Dragonlord (second one is strictly for the life starter +1)
-Elemental shift (of your break card element to ensure round 1 orbs to do your job... break)
-AOE Break Defense Down (BDD) break card... you are aiming for 1200+ card break power (1000-1500 best for rangers, 3333+ for monks; some event cards come with 4000+ break power); cards that have high break power AOE and add cleaves are best in slot.

*Strategy here is to use shift round 1 to provide you with instant access to your break card, which should be an AOE BDD. Best in slot cards include NeoExdeath (duh, it's a supreme), dark pursuit, wind pursuit, jenova cards, etc. The pursuit cards are, in particular, really nice because they not only break yellow but they also add cleaves to your next attacks - which means you are hitting guards as well as the boss. Lightning skin breakers do well here with boost starter giving you boost round 1 and haste starter giving you an extra action... combined with 4 JCR you start with 7 actions. Since you can only ever cue up 8 total actions per round (that includes quick cast abilities that cost 0 actions, this is plenty)... Shift = 1, break card x1-2, attack x5... the first 3 tap attacks will be cleaves after a pursuit or monk AOE card, so with 2300 break power and around 100-150 piercing break you should easily break both guards and boss in a 5* battle in 5 taps. If you are using a weapon with quick break, even better - you can ensure a break on that last tap if you are close as long as the break bar is under 20%.

...Build 2, standard breaker deck, nothing special
-Enspell of boss weakness element (can use monk aoe cards for enspell + cleaves)
-Trance of your job type
-AOE BDD, preferably targeting boss weakness
-Artemis (boost, 5 round duration + attack ignition at 5*)

*Pretty standard defensive + break power focused. If your attacker is running AOE CRD and getting the yellow gauge for you, the boss should have CRD + BDD and be broken in 1-2 rounds pretty easily with the right rng luck on life orbs for trance/boost and a decent healer. Prioritize trance over boost when healer is running the meta deck of gaia/lifeshift + Tyro + KOTR + Undying... you can expect boost already, so trance would give you that extra break and magic power you need; using artemis would be superfluous. as would be using artemis with a lightning skin ranger breaker, since you'd have boost starter already.

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Healer (current meta first round all buffs)... white mage, santa lucia, aerith meia, glam vamp... or any healer with a prismatic starter +3 weapon:
-Gaia/Lifeshift
-Hell's Gate/Tyro
-Knights of the Round (KOTR)
-Undying

Pretty much expected nowadays, with all cards except Tyro available in the ability shop and fodder available to be farmed in Yggdrasil map... Covers all essential buffs: barrier, wall, regen, veil, haste, snipe, boost, brave, faith... can't ask for more from a pug healer. After round 1, just tap last in the group order every round until it is time to buff again.
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Defender... so many build options, and really they change based on the boss immunity and element... so here are a couple examples of my preferred defender jobs/decks vs the bosses:

Odin boss = knight job defender
-Legendary Powie Yowie (slowga)
-Wind taunt
-Legendary Vampire (Debarrier AOE)
-Devil Ride (AOE dispel + Stun + Bio)

I use Devil Ride to remove immunity from guards in 5* and also apply stun to them + bio to them and boss; after that legendary powie yowie to apply stun to all enemies, legendary vampire (if for some reason you had 9 total fire orbs round 1... unlikely... or apply Debarrier to boss in place of Devil Ride if do not have 5 orbs for it); then apply wind taunt + wind drive immediately afterward.
Wind drive following this final taunt will receive a bonus of 3 orb ignition, basically allowing you to ensure maximum resistance (potency 3+) right off the bat round 1 with enough orbs driven. Hopefully your breaker can break them all anyway; but if not, people will take little to no damage with the resistances and the wind pact from wind taunt drawing in all AOE wind damage from the boss to you in addition to barrier and wall from healer.
Mrow's Deckbuilding 2.0 (1-21-2019 update)
So the past few months we have had releases of some cards and Hall of Fame panels that change the game a bit, so I wanted to offer some deckbuilding strategies that take these into consideration for the truly high end builds... Some notes first:

Trance cards: these cards represent the pieces of Aerith that everyone loves... if you are a warrior job, you use the warrior trance card for a massive bonus to everything you do... increases normal and ultimate attack and break power and increases ability magic power. If you are a legend job or monk with a Lore ability (for instance S1C with ranger lore), you still use your JOB TYPE trance card (S1C would use warrior trance)... this will still benefit your lore abilities!

Below are the builds I USE... I don't expect people to be able to mirror these.

Attacker: Tifa skin over EX Monk with 2 JCR, rest are Attack fractals, using 5* wolf star weapon
-Aerith
-Lights of Hope
-Prishe FFXI
-Duncan

Breaker: Prima Donna with lightning skin, Magical Rave or even Septentrio weapon, most cp are magic; 40% additional piercing break, 18% improved criticals, 8% painful break, +40% break from top500 tower panels, 5% quick break... this is my Hybrid breaker/attacker that 1-taps any 1st or 2nd gen 5* boss after getting yellow with Neo and then kills guards (over yellow) and broken boss in one shot with Ragnarok. Obviously doesn't work on Earth bosses, but I do solo Valefor and Brynhildr 3rd gen sics with this pretty easily...
-Aerith (2x JCR)
-Lights of Hope (1x Magic Power, 1x JCR)
-Ragnarok (2x Magic Power)
-NeoExdeath (2x Magic Power)

Healer: Yshtola skin over Tonberry with all xp+ custom panels and prism staff for more xp/seeds :P...... basically all possible buffs except berserk, including 2 potency drive defense of all elements. I can instead slot a second ult charge card like LOH or second Aerith even, charging everyone's ults first round - but I default to Luna for most battles in the event the breaker stinks and we lose Wol perfect defense.
-Aerith
-Lights of Hope
-Warrior of Light
-Lunafreya

Defender: Any warrior job class defender job works with this setup with a combo of Soulrender (3 prismatic starters), Sephiroth skin (1 Prismatic starter), 2 prismatic starters from Berserker/Highwind HOF... ~40k HP in MP with trance up and some tower reward HP panels.
-Taunt (of whatever element I want/need)
-Legendary Powie Yowie (slowga)
-Devil Ride (Dispelga + Bioga + Stunga)
-Aerith (to shift all orbs to prismatics round 1 with soulrender orbs)

I aerith (4 orbs) > devil ride (5 orbs) > Slowga (4 orbs) > taunt (3 orbs) = 16 total orbs, full bar used and all debuffs applied for CC + taunt... round 2 after breaker refills my orbs on round 1, i drive the boss element using drive ignition from the taunt at end of round 1, which should fully load out my group's resistance.
My Decks
Just to illustrate the principles above for attackers and breakers, here are some example builds:

Prima Donna (with Lightning Skin... 2400 break power + 5 JCR gives me max starting actions) using Magical Rave:
-Aerith
-Lights of Hope
-NeoExdeath
-Chakra

Ascetic (Wind) using 5* Wolf Star:
-Aerith
-Lights of Hope
-Emerald Weapon
-Yiazmat

Ascetic (Light) using 5* Wolf Star:
-Aerith
-Lights of Hope
-Prishe FFXI
-Duncan FFVI

Mellow Mermaid (with Y'shtola skin, Fire) using 5* Sventovit:
-Aerith
-Lights of Hope
-Fusoya FFIV
-Bahamut FFXIV


Sword Saint (Dark) using 5* Braveheart or Gunblade:
-Unbreakable Bonds
-Darkforce/Odin FFXIV
-Warrior Trance
-Amon/Skytank

EX Meia (Dark) using 5* Chaos Crescent:
-Aerith
-Lights of Hope
-Ariela FFXI
-Sin FFX

Tonberry (with Y'shtola skin) using Prism Staff:
-Aerith
-Lights of Hope
-Warrior of Light
-Lunafreya

Heretical Knight (with Sephiroth Skin and Soulrender weapon):
-Aerith
-Taunt
-Legendary Ghost (Dispelga)
-Bismarck FFXIV (Slowga + Stunga + Debarrierga)
Auto-abilities and Extra Skills
Some critical bonuses you get from cards that you slot in your builds include Auto-Abilities and Extra Skills...

Auto-Abilities (scroll to the far right on your ability card to see a list) can be added to locked slots using Fractals (obtained farming Pleides Lagoon on the different days of the week depending on the element). "The Best" auto-abilities to unlock on cards are... (the % scale from 1-5% so I listed only 5% as best, and I listed the abilities in order of what I think is most useful for each role)...

For anyone (generic best in slot):
*Job Change Recast (this is interesting... it adds extra actions during the first round of combat, and you max out at 8 total starting actions so +6 from this at max...)

For healers:
*Job Change Recast
*HP +7%... dead healers don't heal.
*[Element] Resistance +7%
*Prismatic Draw

For breakers:
*Break power +7%
*Job Change Recast (I suggest putting 2 of them on Artemis/Trances so you always have the extra actions no matter which breaker job you are using...)
*Magic +7% (helps with ability break damage on yellow bar)

For attackers:
*Magic +7% (for ability damage)
*Attack +7% (for ultimate damage or for Duncan/Yiazmat builds)

For defenders:
*HP +7%
*Prismatic Draw
*Resist [element] +7%

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Extra Skills, on the other hand, come along with upgrading your card ability levels... and then need to be unlocked over time and usage.

Unlocking Extra Skills on cards - being efficient and effective:
So (mostly for the new people starting out, but also for vets looking for a neat trick i just figured out after 3 months of gameplay.../facepalm), you look at a card and see the Ability Level and then Extra Skills listed under that in icons that might be darkened... meaning not unlocked yet. The way to unlock these is to use them in combat until you see this burst of light around that ability icon that persists through the end of the battle and even stays there if you job change! That indicates that at the end of the fight when you are getting your XP reward a little window will pop up and show the next auto-ability on the list being permanently unlocked! in order to get them to unlock, hold your cursor/finger (for mobile users) over the extra skills on the card to see what the required ability level is... if you have reached that ability level, you can possibly unlock it! So load out your primary and sub job decks with cards that need to be unlocked with at least 1 support skill to heal yourself and go go go!

So how do you actually unlock them efficiently... it costs stamina to do it in mission areas on the map and you end up with a bunch of crap cards you have to sell or augment and dont really need... and you dont really want to go unlocking important extra skills in multiplayer because you will be garbage until they are unlocked (for instance, quick cast on support cards... or 9999+ damage on damage cards... you have to have them unlocked before you go into 3* or higher MP because you just be taking up space on the team and have to be carried by others... which isnt fair.)

Here are my tricks for doing this efficiently:

1) Use BOTH decks, main and sub, to your advantage! if you swap decks (or your AUTO swaps decks on you), you can unlock sub job slotted card auto-abilities as well! The glowing aura around the ability stays if you swap back and forth between jobs during the fight... ALL of the abilities that get triggered (yes you can unlock more than one in a battle).

2) Slot the ability you want unlocked closer to the top of your deck... the way the game is coded, the AI when using AUTO will always prioritize the top ability of an element type as well as that which needs extra skill unlocks... so ensure the card you want used the most is above others of the same element in your deck. Also make sure the Eye icon is highlighted in AUTO mode so the AI knows you want to use those cards that need unlocks.

3) Read this thread in the forums... lots of theories as to how it works, but this guy did a ton of research... and it is quite possible what my numbers show below align with his researched data as a perceived method, and indeed i'm looking into my numbers as I type this... but for a good reference look at his research here or on reddit: http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/536930/discussions/0/1456202492182803123/
I did a ton of my own testing to debunk/prove his theories and I have to say, pretty darn accurate method...

So let me quick translate his guide into my own table:
#times to use it PER NODE OR MP BATTLE ability level skill# (attack / support) #battles 2 1 1 / 1 10 to 15 4 2 2 / 1 20 to 30 6 3 3 / 2 30 to 45 8 4 3 / 2 50 to 80 10 5 3 / 2 50 to 80 10 6 3 / 2 50 to 80

if your card needs ability level 2 skill unlocked (the first skill), you need to use 1 once per battle for between 10 to 15 battles.

4) Use Improved Skill Unlock bonuses! For every +1 bonus you gain 50% stackable bonus to reducing the number of battles you have to use a card in to unlock it. If I am using +4 skill unlock bonuses it gives me a +200% bonus effectively (1/2 the total battles)... so if in the chart above you need to use a card in 10 battles, that is 10 battles / 2 = 5 battles. For every +2 skill unlock bonus you divide the total battles by an additional 1x... I know that is confusing, but focus! With the MP improved skill unlock weapons granting a base of +3, you can add +1 on a fractal for a total of +4... which means take the number of battles in the list above and divide total battles by 2. So in my example of 10 to 15 battles for an ability level 2 unlock you instead need to use the card in 5 to 8 battles (rounded up from 7.5)... and you only need to slot the skill unlock bonus weapons and cards with fractals in your MAIN deck, then fight only using your sub deck with the to-be-unlocked cards in it... use the card the minimum number of times per battle... finish the node... rinse repeat. Card unlocks. If you have questions about how that works, ask me or ask @Blue Aurora, author of that post (also posted it on reddit). Thank you Blue! Fantastic work. As of 9/4 when editing this guide, I can say this still holds up today, almost a year later from the original thread...

5) Finally, if you burn all your stamina in the world mission areas, feel free to spam 1* Sicarius boss battles... since they are so easy, other players won't care if you are gimping it up... use that to your advantage to unlock your extra skills. Once you have them unlocked, then go after the 2* or even 3* fights to farm seeds and drops until you feel capable of doing 4* and 5* battles and contribute.

Good luck! UNLOCK YOUR EXTRA SKILLS! /poke!
Group Setup
There are 2 basic strategies I like to use when building groups... you have the standard balanced group and then the attack-focused advanced group. I will list examples for 5* battles.

Standard group:
-Defender (any HOF warrior class job is great, as is Ascetic monk... just have the boss element to drive)
-Healer (any meia or HOF job healer should be fine)
-Attacker (HOF attacker jobs or any newer job, as in any within the last few months, should be fine)
-Breaker (Any Sarah breaker job, Deep Diver monk, HOF viking/grappler/hermit or Sahz legend job are good nowadays in MP)

Healer uses Gaia/Lifeshift/Aerith and then applies all buffs... Breaker applies BDD debuff and attacks yellow gauge. Ideally breaker is able to then break ultima in 1 round, and then attacker should be able to kill ultima in 1 round with 2-4 attacks, ideally dark element.


Advanced group (Belias boss example):
-Attacker (yolo build, dark or water and lots of self damage buffs)
-Attacker (balanced build, dark and water elements)
-Healer
-Breaker

In this group you have the standard attacker from that first group setup coupled with a second attacker instead of a defender... we assume that the healer is able to sufficiently buff and all members can drive the boss element to keep them alive through the final attack at the end of 5*, that the breaker is breaking round 1 to prevent enemies from even hitting the group and that the attackers are able to do their job effectively. In this case, the yolo attacker may just oneshot the boss and that's all he does... the balanced attacker would assist the breaker with yellow break, if needed. This is more risky of the two setups, especially since idiots like to try to go first and kill ratehr than be patient and let people play their roles out, but you will see more supreme users and high end builds preferring this for speed of runs over smoothness and safety.

Either way, the battles should not last more than 3 minutes. You tend to see 1-2 minute battles using either strategy if people are doing their roles... very little difference unless you are sitting on your PC for hours and hours grinding sicarius fights... then speed becomes attractive and you might start preferring to kill over yellow without breaking using the 2x attacker setup. If you are just casual farming, go with the standard group setup and relax :) And for 3rd gen bosses like Brynhildr and Zalera, please just use balanced groups and stop dying to final attacks... and you arent killing them over yellow anyway, so bring a breaker.
General 5* Sicarius Strategies
Disclaimer: I assume that if you are looking at 5* strategies you aren't a newb. No offense, but if you do not have deck level 300+ and LEGIT decks, you should not be doing anything above 4*. 5* is for non amateurs... bring the pain or it is a graveyard. Also using common wordings not writing everything out because I'm going to assume you know what things mean. Going to give an example battle with some mechanics to deal with... in another section I will detail each of the 3rd gen bosses, since they are more difficult.

Adrammalech + Guard B (light) + Guard A (water):

Defender (Heretic, Monk, Moogle Suit or Scholar... Scholar can drive wind and water, which is really nice)
-slow/slowga (Bismarck FFXIV or Powie Yowie card are preferred but Yasha is fine vs boss alone)
-WIND taunt preferable
-Sleep
-Curse/Cursega (or Gladiolus card if you have it)

Healer (Hall of Fame white mage or a bard/dancer with prismatic starter tyrfing or tactician/devout with prismatic starter truescale staff):
-Lifeshift/Gaia/Aerith
-Cindy/Garuda/Undying
-Hell's Gate/Tyro/Lunafreya
-KOTR
(i prefer undying + hell's gate + KOTR setup, but you could use my setup of Lunafreya + Cindy + KOTR if you have the FFXV cards available)... healer needs to have a method for using all buffs round 1... or don't heal in 5*.

Breaker (any breaker job with access to earth; +2 prismatic starter is ideal)
-Earthshift
-Trance
-Hecatoncheir sicarius monk card / Titan FFXIV (enstone + cleaves)
-Break card (to get yellow)

Attacker:
-Trance
-Force/Shift bis card of your damage element
-Flex spot (use for life starter card or a self buff)
-Damage focus card... need to be able to 1 or 2 shot the boss on demand... AOE multistrikes preferred, but as long as you have good orb management, doesn't matter what you use here...

Round 1... both guards start off with total invulnerability... this means you cannot break them, you cannot touch them. Boss is immune to stun, so no cheese methods. Healer drops all buffs instantly... this is risky because if you kill in 2 rounds you are fine but if it takes longer, you may not have wall available for final attack or any way to heal group after the first buffs are dropped until the cooldowns are up in 2-3 rounds... this means the defender needs to be dependably able to generate life/prismatic orbs to ensure people are full healed every round and a taunt of the boss element for the pact to limit everyone's damage. Breaker... break. Attacker... orb manage and be ready to kill boss and guards round 2. If you can't first round break a 4* battle, don't even bring your breaker to 5*. If you can't get yellow by yourself as a breaker, too bad - that is the meta. DON'T BREAK IN 5* THEN.

If boss is broken round 1, good things! Guard B will Esuna or faith/brave/wall buff... Guard A will cast Blizzaga or Debrave... without wall or barrier + water drive, someone could die if they don't have over 10,000 HP, no excuse for that in 2019. On the plus side, the guards' invulnerable status that only lasted 1 round at the start is gone! leading us to...

Round 2... if boss was broken round 1, then the easy task of breaking both guards is up. Breaker needs to be able to do this alone... get yellow + tap each guard OR if you are using cleaves, 1-2 tap both guards at once... you have to break and kill both guards right now or this run will potentially fail or at the very least go on for another 2-3 rounds... at which point you find yourself breaking boss and guards all over again. Healer... you are just managing orbs at this point because your buffs are all on cooldown... go last with taps if you can to give whole group orbs. Defender... HEAL DRIVE + WIND DRIVE... if you fail in this, someone will die to the final attack... Attacker, kill all 3 enemies. If you don't, the boss will heal to 85% hp (unique mechanic to Adram boss), then next round need to be broken again... clusterf*ck. IF the attacker kills all 3, the group needs to be fully healed with 10,000+ HP each with barrier + wind drive 3 or better potency... if those conditions are met, no one dies to the final attack and you go home victorious in 2 rounds... well done.

IF THINGS GO BAD... here are scenarios:

Round 1 break doesn't happen... boss places immunity on both guards, potentially 2 rounds each. Breaker NEEDS to break boss Round 2 in order to buy time for buff cooldowns as well as the invulnerability to tick down on guards... healer has no buffs to heal with, so defender needs to cover healing for the group. Attackers/Breakers with heal drives are a boon here, in that you can self heal by driving. Rinse repeat break boss > break guards > break boss > break guards... until at least guards are dead or all 3 are broken at same time for total kill. Beware the final attack, make sure everyone is healed and defensive buffs up.

If round 2 kill doesn't happen when all 3 are broken... at the very least kill Guard A. you need to take down the attacker guard to prevent it from killing the group with Blizzaga when it is back up... boss will invulnerable both guards when it is unbroken, so if you don't get either guard killed in Round 2, assume you are just managing orbs and helping breaker break boss for the next 2-3 rounds... Breaker, make sure if boss isnt invulnerable that you break it in one round every time... store actions, manage orbs... be ready to rock. If he is ever unbroken, break him.

Lining up breaks on boss and guards is hard after round 2... it takes a tight group with good decks and skill to make it happen. If you are pugging and not on discord or steam chat... I would not enter a hosted room for a 5* without first deck checking every person in the room for their player level, deck level and cards. Experience is important to success.

Couple mechanics to watch for...
1) Dispelga DOES remove the immunity to debuffs the guards have, but it does not remove the invincible. Don't bother bringing AOE debuffs, tanks.

2) If you deal damage to boss before he is broken and he reaches 85% hp mark, he WILL trigger an invincible on himself. You have to break him before you damage him or risk wasting time/causing a wipe. You can actually take advantage of this as a supreme user (rag or UB) - @TheOppressed (from my discord, Dreamer Society) uses a strat on his UB attacker that is a no break strat. Use UB round 1 to take him to 85% and trigger the invincible on purpose... he will NOT invincible the guards turn 2, allowing you to kill both guards with UB spam... then turn 3 he is already at 85% so you can just kill him no break style. Really interesting strat... not for the weak, can be used as a fallback if there's a bad breaker, too. Just takes longer.

3) If guards die round 2 but boss does not, just save your actions and let one person tap once.
This will trigger Adram's HP to restore to 85% and wipe all debuffs. If you failed to kill it when broken first time, this is your pnishment. You now have to wait for perfect defense to wear off. Just get buffs back up start of round 4, break and kill him. If he is above 85% HP, however, you CAN break him again immediately... Just don't deal enough damage to drop him under that mark before breaking or he will go invincible.

I wish you luck! 5* is fun, so enjoy the challenge, and above all... play your role!

A big thank you to The Dreamer Society, Robbie Dagger's discord - you guys are what make this guide and my skill possible. :swardpwr: https://i.imgur.com/z7XSGbg.png
Dreamers with an all defender 5* run lulz
5* Third Generation Sicarius Battles (1)
In this section, I'm going to detail out some of the unique mechanics/issues to deal with for each of the "third gen" bosses - that is to say... Generation 1 were the standard bosses... Odin, Hashmal, Shiva, Ifrit, Anima, Ultima... Generation 2 were the bosses that gave AOE cards: Hecatoncheir, Adrammelech, Famfrit, Belial, Bahamut and Alexander. The third Gens are characterized by having much more HP than the first and second gens, and they have some very dangerous mechanics to deal with... I will detail this out from the perspective that you should be breaking these bosses, as the damage dealt during break is so great and it is pretty difficult (nigh impossible) to deal enough damage without breaking in order to kill these bosses.

One general mechanic is that each of the third gen bosses comes with their opposite element Attacker Guard (A)... this means a breaker's enspell will be canceled upon first tap due to conflicting elements when you use cleaves... you can adjust for this by using 1 tap on boss with an enspell, activate cleaves, then start tapping... or you can activate cleaves, tap, enspell again, tap... that gives you 2 enspell taps on boss, which when used by a 2500+ break power breaker with sufficient piercing/flash break auto abilities, should get you within the 40-50% or lower of break gauge; if using quick break, that means you only need a couple more taps to break it without enspell. At that break power, guards will break in 2 taps (one tap without enspell), so nothing to worry about there. Focus on the boss, guards will fall. Looking at your group, if attacker has an AOE card that is capable of killing guards without breaking them, then you are in good shape anyway - can ignore breaking the guards completely. Safer to just break them.

Another general mechanic is that these, and the 1st and 2nd gen bosses, come along with debuffs to the group and buffs to the boss/guards upon starting the battle. Mitigating these varying buffs and debuffs is a pretty essential component to success, and strategies for such do change... for instance, you may fight Zalera one month and it has Snipe and Break Defense Up buffs upon start, in addition to its usual immunity to debuffs buff and Gate; perhaps the player group starts with Slow debuff. And the next month, perhaps instead of Snipe the enemies start with Faith and instead of Slow on the group you start with Trance Down... Players need to look at the MP menu to determine what is to be expected and adjust their decks. Healers running cards like Lifeshift, Aerith or Lunafreya FFXV can expect to remove some/all of the player debuffs instantly, so many times can ignore those... But between the defender and breaker, dealing with the buffs on the boss can be difficult. For example I gave with Snipe + Break Defense Up + Debuff Immunity, a breaker would need a deck that looks like... Aerith + Lilisette FFXI + Prompto + Prompto... First use lillisette to shift to wind... followed by a prompto to remove 1 buff (snipe, because it removes left to right on the buff bar)... followed by a second prompto to remove the Debuff Immunity AND the BDU (because prompto applies hexagonal BDD, which cancels the BDU but does not replace it)... then you use Aerith (meaning you have 2 prismatic starters in your custom panels as a ranger/sarah breaker...) to give you enlight... first tap on zalera is with enlight but the guard cancels that buff; second and third tap are without enspells but do use cleaves (breaking both guards)... since an action gauge can only include 8 actions total, lili + prompto x2 + aerith = 4, so you have a total of 4 taps... you better have enough break power and sufficient piercing/flash/quick break auto abilities to be able to break all 3 enemies in 4 taps. An alternate rotation could be with the same deck: Aerith > prompto > prompto > tap tap > lilisette > tap tap... the first two taps are on boss with enlight, which should virtually break it anyway... then lili applies enwind and cleaves, allowing you to 2 tap the guards leisurely or get them and remaining red gauge of Zalera together. Takes precision.

Zalera... always has Light Guard A and always starts with a doom Gate buff + Debuff Immunity and some other buffs. Gate is bad, because anyone who touches zalera while it is up will gain a Doom debuff, which, if still on you when boss gets to act, means Zalera will cast Death on that person. This could be an instant wipe for an unprepared group. If you break zalera, the Gate buff goes away instantly, and the Doom debuff disappears on the next player round anyway because the duration is only 1. Apart from the Gate and multiple buffs to deal with, Zalera has over 20 million HP. Otherwise, pretty standard Final Attack damage (~10k), so have barrier/dark drive 3+ and a wall and most people survive it easily.

Brynhildr... always has Water Guard A and always starts with some buffs and "feathers;" these feathers can only be removed normal tap/ultimate attacks, which remove 1 tick on total. If Bryn starts with 12 feathers, this means you need to tap/ult 12x to remove them all... but! Each round Bryn is left active/unbroken during the enemy round, she will replenish more feathers. When she does her final attack, she first dumps all her feathers into the group - each feather does around 1k damage, so it is very important to remove all feathers before killing her. This is accomplished by breaker tapping the maximum number of actions possible to break (at least 4 taps after self buff and yellow break abilities), followed by the defender and attacker (3 taps each brings the total to 10); healer and breaker do even more taps on Round 2 after boss/guards are broken (should only need 2 left of the initial 12 feathers anyway)... Attacker kills all 3 enemies, and then defender follows attacker. If all feathers are gone, the Final Attack damage is pretty standard and easily soaked.

Valefor... Our favorite weird looking bird thing Aeon from FFX... Always has Dark Guard A and starts with various buffs. Valefor has 2 unique mechanics to deal with... the first is the ability to mirror the element of attack with a drive... It starts with 5 dark drive, which is annoying for breakers and attackers who use dark... that means all HP damage dealt to Valefor while its dark drives are up will be minimal. The trick is to use elements that are not dark to get that drive number down before you kill it... but not to exceed the 5 potency of the initial dark drive. If you use, for example, 5 earth abilities... this will yield a net counter of 0, which is good. If you use a 6th earth ability, and you are counting on it to kill the boss... a multistrike ability's first hit will cause Valefor to drive 1 earth, greatly reducing the damage total of the other subsequent hits of the ability... a 7th earth ability use will make that potency go up to 2, and so on. You could, however, use any other element to force valefor to reduce that potency back down, which gives you potential control over the drives. Typical attacker decks are, unfortunately, mono-element decks in the current meta... which means that if you reduce the 5 dark drives and start building a resistance to another element, you will have a very tough time killing Valefor. And... if the battle ends with a potency of 4 or greater, the Final Attack actually will be altered... instead of dealing a standard damage, Valefor will instead do around 3x more damage with its Final Attack, killing many healers, breakers and attackers in the process. To avoid that, a Defender with light drive and light taunt (with pact) is critical... or just reduce the drive counter to 3 or below :wink: The remaining mechanic is odd, and you only ever see this if you allow Valefor to act. At the end of its actions during the enemy round, Valefor will cast sleepga on the group. (continued in next section)
5* Third Generation Sicarius (2)
Valefor (continued):
If you do not have debuff immunity up (Lights of Hope or Chocobo Saint cards, for example), sleepga will put the group to sleep for at least 1 round, sometimes up to 3... Many meia jobs are immune to sleep, which is great... for them. But if your breaker and attacker are asleep, or your defender is asleep and cannot drive heal, there will be some deaths. NEVER LET VALEFOR ACT... and you win. Standard 3rd gen HP of around 20 million.

Leviathan... always starts with Fire Guard A and various buffs, and unlike the other 3rd gen bosses, Leviathan has WAY more HP... we're talking over 40 million (I think 46 million, iirc?)... that's a lot. It also a unique buff that requires you to tap it 8x before any abilities will work on it. If you do use abilities on Leviathan before its shield is down... woe is to you. This shield REFLECTS damage back to you, to a maximum damage that will leave you with 1 HP remaining. That's a problem. Not to mention it does absolutely nothing to the boss, including no yellow break damage. To counter this, the healer drops all of its buffs round 1 (4) and then taps 4x... followed by the DEFENDER tapping 4x... Then the breaker is free to use yellow break abilities and break, as normal. The attacker can then deal damage and manage orbs with some taps or a primal boon (will have to deal some damage to boss for sure, else they will not be able to deal 46 million HP of damage in round 2)... Apart from this reflective shield, Leviathan is pretty standard as far as a boss; just a lot of HP. Nothing else that's really fancy.

Chaos... always starts with Earth Guard A and various buffs... this boss is weird in that it is very similar to the single player Chaos boss you encounter in the later chapters of the game... It begins the battle with elemental buffs (fire, water, earth, wind) that can only be removed by having the requisite Arch Lieutenant cards in someone's deck - the Archlich, Arch Tiamat, Arch Kraken and Arch Marilith cards (which you get maxed out from completing the Story Digest maps, so dont bother farming these cards). Also note, one of these buffs will be dropped instantly when the boss is broken... which means a defender only should slot 3/4 of these cards, and then slot a taunt (wind, to match the boss element); this plus breaking the boss will bring all of the buffs down. After that, Chaos is a normal boss with standard 3rd gen HP.

Exodus... last but not least, always comes with Wind Guard A and various buffs. This boss is annoying, in that it steals all prismatic and life orbs upon starting combat. How obnoxious is that? This makes playing a healer pretty painful, in that you cannot rely on prismatic/life starters to power your lifeshift/gaia/aerith on round 1... One [supreme] strategy is to slot 2x Wol cards... after your job's prismatic and life starters are removed, the two Wols will GENERATE 2 prismatic orbs each... this gives you the 4 you need to get all buffs up with a shift + buff strategy that is standard in every other battle... but if you don't have Wol supreme, there is a way... instead of prismatic return/reunion, make sure that as a healer you are using PRISMATIC DRAW; the strategy is to let the breaker go first (and hopefully break the boss); then the healer can drive all 3 elements, tap x4 or 5... with sufficient prismatic draw, you should (theoretically) fill your gauge with at least 4 life/prismatic orbs. Then in player round 2, just use all your buffs as normal; attacker kills and everyone survives the final attack. But this also presents issues for attackers and breakers... the FFXI alter ego limited cards are huge here. They not only guarantee 3 orbs of that element (ensuring a round 1 usage), but they also generate 6 orbs each + enspells + cleaves... for a breaker on Exodus, the Lilisette card is huge... Slot 2 lili + prompto + whatever else. Instant windshift + enwind + cleaves and a single lilisette will get the entire yellow gauge for both Exodus boss AND the guards (yes, including wind guard because these alter ego cards come with the Guard Breaker extra skill, which allows them to get yellow even if resisted... so as long as they are not absorbed, they will break for you). Same goes for attacker orb management; need to have a way to guarantee your orbs to kill with. However, the tried and true strategy of driving the two elements you DONT need and then tapping will generate most of an orb bar of what you want for the following round. But you better be able to kill with what you draw... better to have a shift bis card or a primal boon available to fill you up.

And that's it for the 3rd gen sic mechanics! There are many ways to go about killing these bosses, but as long as you recognize the listed mechanics above, you can use normal break and kill strategies for each one... so long as your attacker has the damage capability. Many of these bosses are even soloable by powerful players; I have managed to solo Zalera, Valefor and Brynhildr quite easily myself... Leviathan I can solo, but it is annoying... Chaos is pretty obnoxious if you dont bring the Arch cards, so I dont bother soloing that without an AI defender slotting those cards... and Exodus is totally doable by my prima donna using Godo and lilisette or my EX monk using lili + water gun + yiaz... but just takes a very tight rotation and deck building for stats and passives, and you have to be able to survive without buffs.
Closing
So... you can now be super effective in Mobius FF Multiplayer!! ...maybe. You still need to know what you are doing and pay attention... oh and have a good internet connection :P Don't be an idiot and play on 3g on your mobile phone... Use wifi or play on Steam with a wired connection - by having issues connecting, it lags you and makes you run on AUTO sometimes or just not attack at all most of the time. This is a huge problem when 3 other people are depending on you. Don't waste their time and yours by being lazy. Do SOMETHING every round, even if it is just use a drive and attack last. Every attack gives the group orbs, so it is valuable. And if the boss is dead already... stop doing stuff. Just let the fight end - you dont need to be driving elements that aren't the boss element or tapping 5x... Stop wasting time, be efficient and smart. Or you make other players angry and more likely to avoid you in future groups.

Come prepared, play smart - and GOOD LUCK! Welcome to Mobius!!

Please rate my guide, comment if you have questions/suggestions or add me as a contact and set up some multiplayer runs with me! I am happy to come any role needed to help teach or just win/farm.

Thanks for reading! Any questions, feel free to post here in Comments section or reach out to me at Mrowmrif2 here on steam or Goredrinker (my alternate account that I typically chat with). Or check out the Mobius discussion forums, and I'll likely be one of the ones answering your questions anyway. :)
246 Comments
Adelin 20 May, 2018 @ 9:54pm 
Hello, it's interesting about knight of the round, i know there is a wiki where we may find data.
in game information doesn't speack about stats it is sometime confuse.

By the way, i have 5* undying and gaia, i'm glad chapter 8 gave me the last dark pneuma required/

Thanks :)
mrowmrif2  [author] 20 May, 2018 @ 7:27am 
Kotr still scales stats multiplicatively, so it will always be better than trance on healer; its just the only bonus left. Dont force all trance into a healer deck. Aerith is the exception because it has more utility than just trance. What other buffs would an attacker bring? No reason they cant run their own trance...

Elemental shift + break ability + damage focused ability + trance is pretty cookie cutter with the card options we have now. Healer can run the standard deck, meaning everyone brings what is expected of them to do their jobs and winning is easy. When people start mixing it up trying to be fancy, that is when things go badly.
Xiphure 19 May, 2018 @ 6:00pm 
Okay another question what about on overboosted classes from what I heard diminishing returns until you activate trance would KotR still be better or all trance?
goredrinker 19 May, 2018 @ 4:11pm 
Trance is 30% all stats; kotr is +100% attack and break stats and 50% magic. Echo gives all trance effects; kotr is clearly the bigger bonus - and meta is that healers provide kotr or they are bad healers. People can bring their own 2 orb trance or can use echo if they can figure out a way to gaurantee the orbs.
Xiphure 19 May, 2018 @ 2:48pm 
Okay, but what is the difference between Echo Stage left, and KoTR they both boost stats but what is the difference between the 2?
goredrinker 19 May, 2018 @ 8:31am 
No please... do not replace kotr. Echo is not a good mp healer card. Let people bring their own trance; you must probide fsith and boost.
Adelin 18 May, 2018 @ 9:17pm 
thanks a lot.
Xiphure 18 May, 2018 @ 9:05pm 
Replace KotR with Echo stage left, why would you replace Life shift you need life shift. Other than than augment it to 5* max abillity level. Gia and the Undying at 4* both have +1 life orb starter.
Adelin 18 May, 2018 @ 4:25pm 
Hello, i just draw a new card 4* that look cool: echo, stage left, ads trance all ( boost any job states) and quicken for current turn. Should i swap one of those cards for it : Gaia, the undying,hellsgate, knight of the round ?

I edit this message, while i really like echo stage left, ( Aerith of the poor man) it does lack orbs shift from aerith and haste. Dancer start with 3 life orbs, and i draw +2 prismatic orbs each battles start.
It's a risk to not bring gaia, as i would not encounter life orbs in two rounds or three if i'm unlucky, even by driving.

This Echo stage, doesn't fit curent healer, if not with cindy + another card i forget the name.
I'm sad, i liked to have 20k hp
Adelin 16 May, 2018 @ 12:34pm 
Hello goredrinker.

Thanks a lot.
Undying i guess, require 4* grow star, so it's about day 15 of mobius box, i will receive the star/

I survive on boss where dancer has enough element resistance 5* battles.
If i find a healer jobwith light resistance before end ofthis event, it would be nice.
Some say Earth first round to be driven, then wind, then earth again, depend of color of the circle over ultima weapon.
I have lot of 5* life healer cards, that are outclassed by the new mp healer build i use ( thanks to guides) This way i lost too many growstars for cards i won't use again.

At last there is mp shop, where i can find augment cards, and get fun in mp battles :)

next will be about building deck for my dragoon balamb mercenary, althea + op meia job,paladin, ranger, unbroken hero, warior...

I just tryed devout beginner set ( not devout role that is better) couldn't drive enough life orbs.
Almost died on 3*ultima with 9000hp
Dancer at last as dedicated auto.

Have a good day :)