About 8 S/L in total to figure out the fight well enough to complete. Managed to not figure out that the mana spheres in phase 2 had an upside. Had to restart several times due to being too slow to clear a phase, or queuing too many attacks at the end of phase 1 and having them randomly target the red orb to start phase 2. Only had one case where someone randomly targeted the orb in front of them (thus no counter), but I assumed it was a fluke of a not-100% counter rate and didn't pick up on the fact that the two characters nearest the orb are allowed to hit it. Would have been nice to have some sort of hint about that in Dr Mog's briefing or in the fight itself. Of course my AOE SB (Sephiroth) was in the center so I didn't get any reward whenever he cleared both orbs, ha. Eventually got a run where I Magic Blinked the correct attacks and had enough SBs still in the bank to blow through Phase 3 in a timely fashion. Definitely would have been helpful to have a couple more OSBs for that part.
I wonder how feasible it is to YOLO the fight with five combat characters if you know the gimmick, by using the green orb to heal? If you don't know the gimmick (like me) you almost certainly need a healing BSB to be able to deal with all the crazy AOE damage coming in.
One neat thing is that finally on Nightmare 12 they made a fight where I didn't want to bring Tyro for Wall, synergy heals, and/or a weird skill set.
0
silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
I'll be running MP tomorrow evening after 5 ST for those interested.
Huh, 100-gem got me Vayne's SSB. Vayne's got a neat skillset (BLM 5, COM 5, MNK 5, DRK 5), so he'll at least be able to fit into most teams, but I'm not sure I'd ever use him unless I absolutely need a Monk (that's not Yda) for some reason.
At least it's a great stat stick, being +dark armor with both ATK and MAG. I now have a full set of +dark gear (at least, for physical darkness users like Gabranth), and something to boost dark mages with. The Inevitable Fate/Dark Zone/Morbid Countdown combo continues to look better and better!
0
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
100 Gem for garbage yet again.
It's okay, I'm just getting these rolls out of the way before the banners I really care about.
+3
BeastehTHAT WOULD NOTKILL DRACULARegistered Userregular
I can't stress enough how much I hate these shit bags. Everything is smooth until my healer is confused, asleep, and silenced before I can respond in any way at all. If you need me I will be trying to will the person who designed this fight to death.
0
BeastehTHAT WOULD NOTKILL DRACULARegistered Userregular
Mastered the U+ CM because I'm stubborn as fuck
Larsa @ ultra cure/protectga
Ashe @ ultima weapon/alexander (BSB)
Basch @ gaia cross/retaliate (SB)
Fran @ power chain/dark buster (shatterheart)
Penelo @ curaja/multi break (SB)
RW: vessel of fate
Blinded tomato head, focused down three then used aoe on the last two
Everyone had status resist accessories
Vinuskar hits stupidly hard and is really fast btw
0
ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
edited February 2017
Failed attempt
Failed to join party
Failed to join party
Party full x5
Failed to join party
Party full x8
Failed to join party
And then finally managed to get the 160 down. Multiplayer, why do you hate me so?
Celes w/ Maria's Song + Shout + Full Break + Armor Breakdown going was doing 24k per turn so that was cool, though. One Orlandu OSB for five 9s but then he got stopped or slept and didn't do anything for the rest of the fight.
I'll be honest I don't really have any idea what was going on in the latter half of the fight. Demon Wall looked like it was trying very hard to kill people but between Asylum and presumably other shenanigans people were barely staying up. I'm not really looking forward to the 200.
Failed attempt
Failed to join party
Failed to join party
Party full x5
Failed to join party
Party full x8
Failed to join party
And then finally managed to get the 160 down. Multiplayer, why do you hate me so?
Celes w/ Maria's Song + Shout + Full Break + Armor Breakdown going was doing 24k per turn so that was cool, though. One Orlandu OSB for five 9s but then he got stopped or slept and didn't do anything for the rest of the fight.
I'll be honest I don't really have any idea what was going on in the latter half of the fight. Demon Wall looked like it was trying very hard to kill people but between Asylum and presumably other shenanigans people were barely staying up. I'm not really looking forward to the 200.
There is usually a group of people who run through those that get together on Mondays to save you some of the headache of groups. Good people who will help run you through stuff. I try to help out from time to time as well.
Edit: 100 gem got me Yoichi's Bow! Fran doesn't exactly get used a ton, but imperil lighting is always cool. Not my first choice but still pretty excited.
Larsa @ ultra cure/protectga
Ashe @ ultima weapon/alexander (BSB)
Basch @ gaia cross/retaliate (SB)
Fran @ power chain/dark buster (shatterheart)
Penelo @ curaja/multi break (SB)
RW: vessel of fate
Blinded tomato head, focused down three then used aoe on the last two
Everyone had status resist accessories
Vinuskar hits stupidly hard and is really fast btw
Vinuskar also reslows at 50%, which Tyro forgot to mention. Schmuck. Still beat him CM style.
Nicely done Beasteh, looks like I won and mastered about 10 minutes after (1 medal for actions). Tip: do NOT try to kill all of the Mandragoras at the same time, the sub50% AoE is painful. My winning run came when no one was made useless by status... Basch using Gaia's Cross helps, the only concerns for him then are Blind and Stop. Basch caught a lot of Stop. Banishing Strike helped a lot to break the Mandragoras' mitigation, found that Retaliate didn't help much. Found that taking out the two vulnerable to dark/holy FAST, and then Tomatohead, and then King (second from top) helps a lot. First two (middle/bottom) to get them out of the way, Tomatohead because he can cast AoE before sub50% phase, King because he's got AoE status (AoE Pollen). Basch debuffed current target as priority, they like to spam haste and proshellga.
Ashe and Vayne used Metamorphose RW, Vayne cast Memento Mori first. Fight went on so long that Vayne died. Would've run out of hones if not for Ashe's BSB.
Here's a useful image for the CM for what's vulnerable to what if you want to take the status effect/lockdown method instead of the DPS rushdown method. The one with nothing on it is vulnerable to stun.
+1
SpectrumArcher of InfernoChaldea Rec RoomRegistered Userregular
Vinuskar hits stupidly hard and is really fast btw
No kidding. Crown did 4k and took out Y'shtola between Wall casts, which made the end of the fight more interesting than I had anticipated. Before that the damage was manageable, just make sure to Dispel his Haste.
Oh god Mandragoras now. Enthusiasm fading...
edit:
Whew, Demon Wall Apoc down. Literally down to the I think very last turn, Orlandeau's OSB got the last bit of HP before he was going to Crushdown us. Shouldn't have been nearly that close except our Shout caster was disabled the last 1/3 of the fight gimping our late DPS, our good slow user was disabled the last 1/3 of the fight and my bad slow user was disabled the last 1/4 of the fight so he started walking forward and killing people veeeeery quickly at the end. All that nonsense stuck even though we did have Affliction Break and Mind Break on the team. Interestingly, we basically didn't really have a healer except for one Medica out of nowhere late and a single Wall up late also.
Spectrum on
0
BeastehTHAT WOULD NOTKILL DRACULARegistered Userregular
Did I say Vinuskar, I meant Hydro
Starts the fight with haste
Then immediately fireballs aoe for 4K
Then immediately casts a 4K aoe darkra
Then does it again!
Had to back out and switch to Vanille for the early heal
I've got everyone to 50, almost every burst to 80, next goal will be to get every SSB to 65, then probably splitting between getting SSBs to 80 and getting everyone to 65.
Except for the core classes, I guess. I got them to 50, but I really can't be bothered to get them up any further. I've already gotten them to learn their SBs from any equipment that I got, but they're laughably bad.
Do you think we'll get a Lucky Draw for each Torment going forward, or was the one for FF7 only because there was no accompanying banner?
Specifically I'm wondering if there'll be a SSB+ Lucky Draw for FF2 in the middle of the festa.
The FF2 Torment will probably open at the same time as the FF2 event, which should be in the middle of the fest. I doubt they would do a realm-only draw for it with all the other shit going on (including the actual event banners), but who knows.
If they do make a FF2 SSB+ lucky draw, it's going to be a very small pool of items with a high proportion of very good items, so fingers crossed.
So apparently this is just the event of annoying status effects. The raids were plenty obnoxious as the damn thing kept using sleep and stop at really annoying times. Running a backup healer helped a little bit, but sleep sucked after Y'shtola's bubble was up and running. Would have been cool if he had't kept sleeping/stopping my people with dispel and slowga. Of course the worst was when the damn wall opened with eviscerator before I could get any mitigation up and would one shot a few of my people. This fight might have been best saved for a group affair, but I am too stubborn for that. I did manage to master both but it took a bit of luck in terms of who was stopped and who was slept. I will say it is hilarious how little time Y'shtola with her BSB active and another 30% mind buff spends being stopped.
wow, everything about this event can go fuck itself. makes me want to quit.
0
BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
Yeah, Mandragoras were fucking awful. Repeatedly had one throw down a Ram right after Warsong to one shot one of my characters. Eventually S/L'd through it, using:
Used Banishing Strike and the dark attack immediately after mitigation went up, pushed the Fire weak guy down first, then Imperil fired the rest and let Refia punch everything. At the end Refia died, and took out the Queen with a back to back Balth Cid OSB... It took long enough for imperil to wear off...
Then took the same team(except Tyro had Fullbreak/Armor Break) to the U++ and pushed his shit in. Back to back 99999 hits really just ended that fight super fast.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
U+ sucks infinite butts and I'm seriously considering skipping it, or just seeing how far OSBs take me.
Mandragora are my nemesis.
People were saying that two casts of Edgar's OSB does ~70% of their HP.
That seems to be a complete lie and it's more like 30-40%.
I'll probably make the first try with the lockdown method and RW Raines to help with the Def and nuke down at least two instantaneously. Or maybe save those two for last so they die all the quicker.
for U+, I had Basch's shield, protectga, wall RW, multibreak and the attack down dance, Gabranths AOE Dark SSB, Penelo's Wardance buff, Ashe's BSB from the summoner lucky draw and Ultra Cure R3.
and it still took me multiple reloads and multiple reworking of skills to get a good run where their ultimate aoe physical attack didn't just batter through my teams complete physical mitigation. tried with haste a few times and failed miserably from taking too much damage. tried a damage RW and failed horribly it was awful.
and then I got to the MP 200 fight and spent 20 reloads trying to get a time where my healer didn't get silenced, someone didn't get 3 shot in the beginning, slowga didn't miss twice, he didn't spam sleep, confuse or interrupt attacks to screw over my run or he just haste'd himself constantly.
very frustrating.
0
ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
U+ sucks infinite butts and I'm seriously considering skipping it, or just seeing how far OSBs take me.
Mandragora are my nemesis.
People were saying that two casts of Edgar's OSB does ~70% of their HP.
That seems to be a complete lie and it's more like 30-40%.
I'll probably make the first try with the lockdown method and RW Raines to help with the Def and nuke down at least two instantaneously. Or maybe save those two for last so they die all the quicker.
Depends on what their attack was. I just changed my Edgar RW for XII synergy, and he's pushing around 560 attack now. I didn't get to try him out in the actual mission myself though.
I'll probably make the first try with the lockdown method and RW Raines to help with the Def and nuke down at least two instantaneously. Or maybe save those two for last so they die all the quicker.
Nope, you do not want to leave Alraune King and Pumpkin Star to last. Pumpkin Star is 20% status AoE in normal phase, and Alraune King's weak phase is 50% AoE damage and 30% AoE status. And they'll be 200% stat buffed if you leave them to last. Good luck mitigating that.
Here's my attempt at a guide for killing U+ Mandragoras that works for CM if you have a leveled team and can get two mages to about 450 MAG or better.
(1) Kill them in the correct order (bottom to top),
(2) use RW Metamorphose on two mages (with Faith or Memento Mori if you can fit them),
(3) use Draw Fire or Gaia Cross to heavily mitigate damage,
(4) use Banishing Strike to keep at least your current target debuffed,
(5) don't get more than one Mandragora at a time below 50% HP until only two are left (buffed AoE and higher rate status procs in Weak phases=ouch!),
(6) bring lots of Earth and Fire spell hones or high-end summons for the last Mandragora or two,
(7) use Confuse resist on your knight, as much Sleep resist as you can (WM first, then BM), and Silence resist for the rest of your mages, and
(8) if you don't have a medica, use two healers, preferably Penelo with heal/atk-breakdown dance, and Larsa with heal/protectga.
Retailiate is a waste of a slot because Silence, Confuse, Sleep and Stop are the only debuffs procced by PHY-type Attack, and any Attack will wake your knight up. Use Confuse resist on your knight. Topstalk, whose Attack procs Stop, should die second (he's second from bottom). Banishing Strike removes the Haste, Protect and Shell procced on all living Mandragoras by each dying Mandragora. The bottom two Mandragoras have hard-hitting AoEs in normal phase that proc status ailments, the bottom and middle ones are vulnerable to Metamorphose, and you may need to finish the last two with hones (YMMV on whether two 200% buffed Mandragoras spamming AoE are better than one 250% buffed Mandragora spamming AoE). Do not try to kill three Mandragoras with AoE at once, the middle one spams Poison/Slow/Sleep at a 30% rate during Weak phase.
Why is bottom to top the 'correct' order? You should leave the ones that can be hard locked down for last. The bottom two are weak to sleep and blind. Stick those and leave them to do nothing while you dismantle the rest.
I had remarkable success using a total mage party for back row defense, plus using Yuna's Tenets of the Fayth as an RW. The medicas saved my ass, plus the AoE damage on the summoned commands, on top of giving the RW user the 2x Summon ability RW, and it's a party Faithga that stacks with Leylines and Deployment Tactics for all the magic damage shenanigans.
I did it without a hastega (by accident) and CM style (on purpose). It was ugly. Ashe used RW Metamorphose after the first slow, and again after the second; everyone else was slowed the whole fight. The only native SB I used was Intercession. I had one death and got full medals.
Why is bottom to top the 'correct' order? You should leave the ones that can be hard locked down for last. The bottom two are weak to sleep and blind. Stick those and leave them to do nothing while you dismantle the rest.
It's the "correct" order if you're following my guide. If you can fit Sleep and Blind, and still fit sufficient buffs, debuffs and damage, and have the patience to get both to proc before something happens to trigger an S/L, then that's a good plan. There's a guide for status lockdown on the ffrk subreddit, and it's worked well for some people. Status lockdown is outside the scope of my guide - it may be compatible, I just haven't thought (or played) that through. My guide just tries to kill off the biggest RNG threats ASAP.
Re: using Edgar OSB for the Mandragoras, I arrived at the same numbers as given in the reddit thread when I use the same assumptions: 30% damage RM + Multi Break + armor breakdown dance with 650 ATK vs 1452 DEF = 41162 damage per cast. If your RW caller doesn't have a correct RM equipped, you don't have armor breakdown stacked, and your RW only has 550 ATK, then yeah you're only going to see like 20968 per cast, so you're gonna have a bad time. eta: hmm, seems likely you would see Mystery Waltz by the time you're ready to go off, which will reduce your damage by ~10% from the calculated numbers
I found a friend code that has 650 ATK (QTzy), so I'm going to give it a try. The one immediate issue I can see is that it might be tough to get two RW casts out of the same character without getting blown up by five shrubs that are all in weak phase at the same time. It'd be a lot easier if I had Quistis or my own Edgar up to level 99 so I could have two correct +30% damage RMs - then I could have one character launch the first RW while Vaan/Fran is sitting on a Powerchain charge to immediately follow with the second. Maybe I'll see if I can get by with one 30% and one 20% RM. I also worry that going with armor breakdownce instead of power breakdownce might be suicidal, but we'll find out.
Posts
About 8 S/L in total to figure out the fight well enough to complete. Managed to not figure out that the mana spheres in phase 2 had an upside. Had to restart several times due to being too slow to clear a phase, or queuing too many attacks at the end of phase 1 and having them randomly target the red orb to start phase 2. Only had one case where someone randomly targeted the orb in front of them (thus no counter), but I assumed it was a fluke of a not-100% counter rate and didn't pick up on the fact that the two characters nearest the orb are allowed to hit it. Would have been nice to have some sort of hint about that in Dr Mog's briefing or in the fight itself. Of course my AOE SB (Sephiroth) was in the center so I didn't get any reward whenever he cleared both orbs, ha. Eventually got a run where I Magic Blinked the correct attacks and had enough SBs still in the bank to blow through Phase 3 in a timely fashion. Definitely would have been helpful to have a couple more OSBs for that part.
I wonder how feasible it is to YOLO the fight with five combat characters if you know the gimmick, by using the green orb to heal? If you don't know the gimmick (like me) you almost certainly need a healing BSB to be able to deal with all the crazy AOE damage coming in.
One neat thing is that finally on Nightmare 12 they made a fight where I didn't want to bring Tyro for Wall, synergy heals, and/or a weird skill set.
At least it's a great stat stick, being +dark armor with both ATK and MAG. I now have a full set of +dark gear (at least, for physical darkness users like Gabranth), and something to boost dark mages with. The Inevitable Fate/Dark Zone/Morbid Countdown combo continues to look better and better!
It's okay, I'm just getting these rolls out of the way before the banners I really care about.
Think about it though. 3 Orlandeau OSBs. You can tell how it went. Easy 40 Braverys.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
I can't stress enough how much I hate these shit bags. Everything is smooth until my healer is confused, asleep, and silenced before I can respond in any way at all. If you need me I will be trying to will the person who designed this fight to death.
Larsa @ ultra cure/protectga
Ashe @ ultima weapon/alexander (BSB)
Basch @ gaia cross/retaliate (SB)
Fran @ power chain/dark buster (shatterheart)
Penelo @ curaja/multi break (SB)
RW: vessel of fate
Blinded tomato head, focused down three then used aoe on the last two
Everyone had status resist accessories
Vinuskar hits stupidly hard and is really fast btw
Failed to join party
Failed to join party
Party full x5
Failed to join party
Party full x8
Failed to join party
And then finally managed to get the 160 down. Multiplayer, why do you hate me so?
Celes w/ Maria's Song + Shout + Full Break + Armor Breakdown going was doing 24k per turn so that was cool, though. One Orlandu OSB for five 9s but then he got stopped or slept and didn't do anything for the rest of the fight.
I'll be honest I don't really have any idea what was going on in the latter half of the fight. Demon Wall looked like it was trying very hard to kill people but between Asylum and presumably other shenanigans people were barely staying up. I'm not really looking forward to the 200.
There is usually a group of people who run through those that get together on Mondays to save you some of the headache of groups. Good people who will help run you through stuff. I try to help out from time to time as well.
Edit: 100 gem got me Yoichi's Bow! Fran doesn't exactly get used a ton, but imperil lighting is always cool. Not my first choice but still pretty excited.
Vinuskar also reslows at 50%, which Tyro forgot to mention. Schmuck. Still beat him CM style.
Nicely done Beasteh, looks like I won and mastered about 10 minutes after (1 medal for actions). Tip: do NOT try to kill all of the Mandragoras at the same time, the sub50% AoE is painful. My winning run came when no one was made useless by status... Basch using Gaia's Cross helps, the only concerns for him then are Blind and Stop. Basch caught a lot of Stop. Banishing Strike helped a lot to break the Mandragoras' mitigation, found that Retaliate didn't help much. Found that taking out the two vulnerable to dark/holy FAST, and then Tomatohead, and then King (second from top) helps a lot. First two (middle/bottom) to get them out of the way, Tomatohead because he can cast AoE before sub50% phase, King because he's got AoE status (AoE Pollen). Basch debuffed current target as priority, they like to spam haste and proshellga.
Ashe and Vayne used Metamorphose RW, Vayne cast Memento Mori first. Fight went on so long that Vayne died. Would've run out of hones if not for Ashe's BSB.
Ashe Meltdown R1 / Bahamut / BSB / 10% Magic
Vayne Memento Mori / Chain Firaga / Devotion
Basch Gaia Cross / Banishing Strike / Apoc Shield
Penelo Multi Break / Exhausting Polka / Intercession
Larsa Ultra Cure / Protectga
RW: Metamorphose
Oh god Mandragoras now. Enthusiasm fading...
edit:
Whew, Demon Wall Apoc down. Literally down to the I think very last turn, Orlandeau's OSB got the last bit of HP before he was going to Crushdown us. Shouldn't have been nearly that close except our Shout caster was disabled the last 1/3 of the fight gimping our late DPS, our good slow user was disabled the last 1/3 of the fight and my bad slow user was disabled the last 1/4 of the fight so he started walking forward and killing people veeeeery quickly at the end. All that nonsense stuck even though we did have Affliction Break and Mind Break on the team. Interestingly, we basically didn't really have a healer except for one Medica out of nowhere late and a single Wall up late also.
Starts the fight with haste
Then immediately fireballs aoe for 4K
Then immediately casts a 4K aoe darkra
Then does it again!
Had to back out and switch to Vanille for the early heal
I've got everyone to 50, almost every burst to 80, next goal will be to get every SSB to 65, then probably splitting between getting SSBs to 80 and getting everyone to 65.
Except for the core classes, I guess. I got them to 50, but I really can't be bothered to get them up any further. I've already gotten them to learn their SBs from any equipment that I got, but they're laughably bad.
Summoner's SB takes 2 SB charges. What the fuck.
Oh hey, this fight features one of my most hated mechanics; moves that don't behave like the kind of moves they are because fuck you.
38thDoE on steam
Specifically I'm wondering if there'll be a SSB+ Lucky Draw for FF2 in the middle of the festa.
The FF2 Torment will probably open at the same time as the FF2 event, which should be in the middle of the fest. I doubt they would do a realm-only draw for it with all the other shit going on (including the actual event banners), but who knows.
If they do make a FF2 SSB+ lucky draw, it's going to be a very small pool of items with a high proportion of very good items, so fingers crossed.
Burn in Mega Flare Purgatory hell.
In contrast, Hydro fell over in a bloody heap not being able to put up a fight.
Balthier: Blazing Twinstrike R2/LS R4/Imperil Fire/OSB
Refia: Fires Within R2/LS R4/Dance of Carnage
TGCid: Banishing Strike R3/LS R4/OSB
Tyro: 5* Dark physical R2/ MultiBreak R1/Wall
Yshtola: Ultra Cure R3/Curaja R(never used)/BSB
RW: Shout.
Used Banishing Strike and the dark attack immediately after mitigation went up, pushed the Fire weak guy down first, then Imperil fired the rest and let Refia punch everything. At the end Refia died, and took out the Queen with a back to back Balth Cid OSB... It took long enough for imperil to wear off...
Then took the same team(except Tyro had Fullbreak/Armor Break) to the U++ and pushed his shit in. Back to back 99999 hits really just ended that fight super fast.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
The U and U++ are actually fine as far as fights go. Multiplayer and U+ suck complete ass is all.
Mandragora are my nemesis.
DS Friend code: 3840-6605-3406
People were saying that two casts of Edgar's OSB does ~70% of their HP.
That seems to be a complete lie and it's more like 30-40%.
I'll probably make the first try with the lockdown method and RW Raines to help with the Def and nuke down at least two instantaneously. Or maybe save those two for last so they die all the quicker.
and it still took me multiple reloads and multiple reworking of skills to get a good run where their ultimate aoe physical attack didn't just batter through my teams complete physical mitigation. tried with haste a few times and failed miserably from taking too much damage. tried a damage RW and failed horribly it was awful.
and then I got to the MP 200 fight and spent 20 reloads trying to get a time where my healer didn't get silenced, someone didn't get 3 shot in the beginning, slowga didn't miss twice, he didn't spam sleep, confuse or interrupt attacks to screw over my run or he just haste'd himself constantly.
very frustrating.
Depends on what their attack was. I just changed my Edgar RW for XII synergy, and he's pushing around 560 attack now. I didn't get to try him out in the actual mission myself though.
Well THERE'S 60 wasted stamina.
Nope, you do not want to leave Alraune King and Pumpkin Star to last. Pumpkin Star is 20% status AoE in normal phase, and Alraune King's weak phase is 50% AoE damage and 30% AoE status. And they'll be 200% stat buffed if you leave them to last. Good luck mitigating that.
Here's my attempt at a guide for killing U+ Mandragoras that works for CM if you have a leveled team and can get two mages to about 450 MAG or better.
(1) Kill them in the correct order (bottom to top),
(2) use RW Metamorphose on two mages (with Faith or Memento Mori if you can fit them),
(3) use Draw Fire or Gaia Cross to heavily mitigate damage,
(4) use Banishing Strike to keep at least your current target debuffed,
(5) don't get more than one Mandragora at a time below 50% HP until only two are left (buffed AoE and higher rate status procs in Weak phases=ouch!),
(6) bring lots of Earth and Fire spell hones or high-end summons for the last Mandragora or two,
(7) use Confuse resist on your knight, as much Sleep resist as you can (WM first, then BM), and Silence resist for the rest of your mages, and
(8) if you don't have a medica, use two healers, preferably Penelo with heal/atk-breakdown dance, and Larsa with heal/protectga.
Retailiate is a waste of a slot because Silence, Confuse, Sleep and Stop are the only debuffs procced by PHY-type Attack, and any Attack will wake your knight up. Use Confuse resist on your knight. Topstalk, whose Attack procs Stop, should die second (he's second from bottom). Banishing Strike removes the Haste, Protect and Shell procced on all living Mandragoras by each dying Mandragora. The bottom two Mandragoras have hard-hitting AoEs in normal phase that proc status ailments, the bottom and middle ones are vulnerable to Metamorphose, and you may need to finish the last two with hones (YMMV on whether two 200% buffed Mandragoras spamming AoE are better than one 250% buffed Mandragora spamming AoE). Do not try to kill three Mandragoras with AoE at once, the middle one spams Poison/Slow/Sleep at a 30% rate during Weak phase.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
I did it without a hastega (by accident) and CM style (on purpose). It was ugly. Ashe used RW Metamorphose after the first slow, and again after the second; everyone else was slowed the whole fight. The only native SB I used was Intercession. I had one death and got full medals.
It's the "correct" order if you're following my guide. If you can fit Sleep and Blind, and still fit sufficient buffs, debuffs and damage, and have the patience to get both to proc before something happens to trigger an S/L, then that's a good plan. There's a guide for status lockdown on the ffrk subreddit, and it's worked well for some people. Status lockdown is outside the scope of my guide - it may be compatible, I just haven't thought (or played) that through. My guide just tries to kill off the biggest RNG threats ASAP.
I found a friend code that has 650 ATK (QTzy), so I'm going to give it a try. The one immediate issue I can see is that it might be tough to get two RW casts out of the same character without getting blown up by five shrubs that are all in weak phase at the same time. It'd be a lot easier if I had Quistis or my own Edgar up to level 99 so I could have two correct +30% damage RMs - then I could have one character launch the first RW while Vaan/Fran is sitting on a Powerchain charge to immediately follow with the second. Maybe I'll see if I can get by with one 30% and one 20% RM. I also worry that going with armor breakdownce instead of power breakdownce might be suicidal, but we'll find out.