Any advice or help on beating dastardly duo

[Taliesin_2943]

On Comraad's the last bonus mission I have left is dastardly duo but I just can't win I have some pretty high stats and even gone into it with all party members with probably the best stats possible and we hardly scratch these guys I'm at wits end on what to do it's not even the 1 hit kill that's the problem we just fight and fight and their health just barely budges and we are hitting for 9999 or there about per hit and still end up eventually taking too much damage and get kicked out  

Edited December 17, 2018 by Taliesin_2943

[Whirled03]

It's possible you've managed to get it done already, but in case you haven't...

 

I came across this as I was looking into what the fight was about:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXV/comments/a6wfya/is_there_some_way_to_cheese_dastardly_duo_in/

 

The first reply is basically how I managed to beat them. The person who responded says to use the "martial arts sigil", which should be The Fierce (iirc), which changes your L2 + Circle attack to a Ground Pound.

 

The strategy they mentioned worked for me - Work on Ravus first, use Ground Pound, then immediately dodge, repeat until you're out of mana. Warp to a point to recover MP, then just repeat the process. Use All Creation when you feel like it (it's R1+L1 when the gauge is full), and it basically acts like 2 quick hits in a row, with a lot of i-frames to keep you safe while you do it.

 

Ravus isn't much of an issue, but Ardyn is significantly more dangerous. Even with top-end gear, there's a good chance you're going to die within a few hits. Same strategy still applies, just expect to be put in danger a lot.

 

For that reason, it's pretty important that you keep an eye on your team (and yes, they can all be AI), just to ensure they're not in danger themselves, so they can revive you.

 

What is kind of interesting (I'm unsure if it's always been like this), is that it's possible to revive yourself, even with your maximum HP drained. What I saw happening is that if I was put into danger, and just didn't get hit for about ~10 seconds, I would revive myself. I'm unsure if this is based on anything I had equipped though, as I never noticed it before this fight. But as a result, I would recommend always moving away from Ardyn as much as possible when he puts you into danger. Most of his attacks don't have that much of a range, and some of them have decently slow animations, so I was continually able to revive myself (I actually didn't even use my food item).

 

If you're curious about my stats, I was level 63 when I beat them. With the Fierce sigil, I had about 1700 STR and 1900 VIT, with a little over 8k HP.

 

My gear was the Double Pen. Dragon Whisker everyone recommends, with 600 STR/VIT (upgraded with ~50 Laser Sensors); Dancing Daggers (level 120), primarily upgraded with Sinister Sharpscales; Hotarumaru (level 120), mostly upgraded with Sinister Sharpscales as well; and the Aegis Shield (level 120), upgraded with various things for penta-resistance and HP.

 

If it's not already known, there's a Google sheet with a bunch of information on it (including the Aegis Shield build I used):

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BEGmEHH5TlnlZhSRLx1ToZzijeLm7--jB_QafNSSBCk/htmlview#

 

The reason why I used Sinister Sharpscales with 2 of my weapons is because I really didn't want to farm more Laser Sensors. Sinister Sharpscales can be bought from the Norduscaen Garrison Trading Post (assuming you elected the leader for it).

 

I was using the Jitterbug from Dancing Daggers fairly often, but not the entire time. My Ground Pound was hitting for about 6500 normally, but with Jitterbug, it was around 9k.

 

Regardless though, it's a long fight.