Avoiding Weiss' third phase?

[thickish_post5]

How am I suppose to avoid it where he uses his one hit kill move? I get him down to half health, he phase shifts to the gunner phase, then shortly after he phase shifts again and kills me. I'm using arcane ward/-aga spells but I'm not having any luck killing him.

[liammill18]

While it’s technically possible to beat him before it happens, the best way to deal with it is to have automatic revival skills traits on your gear and try to beat him before he does it a second time. You can’t dodge the skill itself so you’ll just need your characters to pick themselves back up automatically!

Edited June 18, 2021 by liammill18

[undefinedmike]

In my fight I managed to avoid him hitting his 3rd phase and doing his 1 hit kill move. Prior to that run I got him very close 2 or 3 times then he shifts to his 3rd phase and decimates me. I spent half a day trying to get into the groove of dodging him and seeing what materia set ups worked. Every time he shifted out of his gun phase I already knew it was over for me because he immediately followed up with his ult then healed himself at my expense, so I would start over. After watching my own fight again I noticed that during his gun phase timing my -aga spells to interrupt him and switching a lot between characters helped me a lot. Managing to stagger him during phase 1 and 2 seems to be the ideal way to go about it. What is your current set up?

Here is my fight against him, the first few minutes is me getting close and him Weiss-ting me super hard.

 

Edited June 18, 2021 by undefinedmike

[snibe]

for me it was getting his health down to half or more in the first phase and then firaga switching on the second phase.  Here is my video 

 

 

[Doomed_Gary]

I found the two keys to the fight were learning how to dodge his three different unblockables and using his boner for the player controlled character against him.

When he does Stab! if you dodgeroll into him at the right time you'll roll over him and open up a pressure window. Because of positioning after this dodge this is your best chance to build towards stagger.

When he does Evisceration! you can avoid it by dodgerolling away from him twice as soon as the prompt shows up and get that pressure gauge going.

When he does the third one if you dodge roll to the side slightly it'll miss and, once again you can build pressure.

 

Knowing the dodges helped me a lot because I could manage my ATB and be ready when it was stagger time. Having ATB for Ray of Judgement  and for Tifa to do Tifa things is very satisfying after ducking, dodging and getting juggled in phase 1.

 

@snibe's video is a clinic on stage two. Use his aggressiveness against him. He'll zero on who you're controlling and target them immediately. You can use that to maintain safe distance and pepper him with spells while avoiding having to heal. I personally did it a little different. I put down an Arcane Ward and kept my party close to it. It's a little risky because of the gravity orb thing, but it burns him down quick.

 

Knowing that stuff it'll just take a little practice and you'll beat him before he does his cheap bullshit.

EDIT: Having Elemental Material linked with Fire on Cloud and Tifa's weapons is a small thing, but does help in phase 2.

Edited June 20, 2021 by nyarLOLhotep

[TalalHmd]

I don't remember this fight

[NathanielJohn]

27 minutes ago, TalalHmd said:

I don't remember this fight

Because you don’t have the PS5 version or the DLC.

[sepheroithisgod]

Equip the Carbuncle Summon and when he casts Imaculate End, summon Carbuncle. When your party dies, the summon will revive the party.

[Cherrywood]

On 6/20/2021 at 8:42 AM, sepheroithisgod said:

Equip the Carbuncle Summon and when he casts Imaculate End, summon Carbuncle. When your party dies, the summon will revive the party.

 

Oh, wow.  That's a really good idea.  After a couple days of trying I finally managed to defeat him yesterday (staggered him in the first phase and then again in the second phase, managed to finally kill him at the very end of that second stagger).  But, oh man, that would have been very useful.

[Rebourne07]

On 6/20/2021 at 6:42 AM, sepheroithisgod said:

Equip the Carbuncle Summon and when he casts Imaculate End, summon Carbuncle. When your party dies, the summon will revive the party.

The real MVP right here

[SuperSaiyan3985]

I got him on my second try with this guide. He defeats him before even his second phase.

[Eternal21]

Not only you can avoid his 3rd phase, this video shows you how to avoid his 2nd phase as well.  Worked for me on 2nd attempt.  It makes use of ATB boosts including the ones from using Skill materia to unleash a dozen of level 3 Fire attacks to finish off Weiss during his first Stagger.