Tales of the Abyss - Cameo Team [Tear Solo/No Damage/Unknown Mode]

In this video, I take down the Cameo Team from Tales of the Abyss with Tear only and without taking any damage.
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║Description
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Well, that was something. It's funny how, unlike the Nebilim fight, I found the strategy against those 4 pretty quickly but it took much more time to actually execute it properly and get a successful take.
The problem is that they all have at least 1 very annoying attack aside from their AI behaviour and MAs. Before diving into the final strategy, let's analyze the enemies' behaviour
Mint
- Can use Raise dead twice during the fight
- At ~75%HP, will use First Aid once
- At ~50%HP, will use Heal once
- At ~25%HP, will use Cure, Resurrection and Time Stop once (~52000HP left)
- Mint can only heal the other cameos
- Mint doesn't move
Letting Mint heal others as she loses HP is a no no. Pikohan is one of the worst thing to deal with since it's instant, as full range and is very hard to react with. She can also use it anytime during the battle.
Philia
- Can use Raise dead once during the fight
- At ~75%HP, will use Meteor Swarm once
- At ~50%HP, will use Stop Flow once (~87500HP left)
- At ~25%HP, will use Sacred Penance and Big Bang once (~43750HP left)
- Philia will only move towards you to use Bombs if you are at mid range
- Philia can move towards you to use Stop Flow, no matter where you are
Philia probably has most of the annoying stuff in the fight. Flare Tornado is super quick, has surprisingly good range (even vertically) making it pretty hard to react to. Stop Flow is just like an Hourglass but slighly shorter so it's a pain to deal with. Big Bang is impossible to dodge in this context (no time to cast Force Field) and Sacred Penance can be activated just by getting closer.
Nanaly
- At ~50%HP, will use an Hourglass (~122500HP)
- At ~25%HP, will use Wild Geese (~61500HP)
- Nanaly will start getting to better spells (mainly Negative Gate) and cast them more often as the fight goes on
Aside from the awful Hourglass, Nanaly is probably the least annoying of the bunch. However, her Artes have so much range (vertically and horizontally) that the only way to properly dodge them is to bait her into using them just before jumping over her head. Wild Geese can also be activated from almost anywhere but it's very unlikely.
Reid
- Can use a Life bottle once during the fight
- At the beggining of the battle will use Rising Phoenix into Burning Phoenix
- At ~50HP%, will start using Rising Phoenix into Burning Phoenix
- At ~25%HP, will use Aurora Wall (~70000HP)
Reid could have been the easiest to deal with... if he didn't have the most annoying Arte of the whole fight. Rekkuzan is an instant Arte with crazy speed and soooo much vertical range that it's impossible to dodge with a double jump unless you anticipated it. You need almost half a battlefield to gain enough height in order to dodge it. This Arte ruined the majority of my takes. Aside from that Aurora Wall can be activated as soon as you stagger or force him to guard.
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║Rules
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• Tear Solo
• No Damage
• No Item
• No Death
• No Menu
• No "Free Run"
• No Nullify AD Skill
• Unknown mode
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║Run information
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• Playlist : • Tales of the Abyss [Te...
• Collection : Main Runs
• Category : Classic Run

[@Muctales]

(See description for details on patterns)
With the bosses' patterns in mind, it becomes very apparent that I simply can't let the 4 cameos reach their 25%HP thresholds. If I do, they will punish me with undodgeable attacks. I can't even try to kill some of them as they have access to many revival options, which would only make the fight even longer. Thus, the most obvious solution is to lower their HP as much as possible and kill all of them at once with Fortune's Arc. But to do that I'll have to deal with all their annoying patterns along the way. This is why documenting all their HP thresholds and checking how much damage I deal was an absolute necessity.
The beginning of the fight always starts with Reid using Burning Phoenix and Mint using Acid Rain. The enemies position is randomized at the beggining of the battle but thankfully there is one battle formation that makes them all close to each others. I can use that battle setting to hit every enemy at once with Innocent Shine and significantly shorten the fight.
Since every enemy will recover at the same time, it gives me time to cast Enhance cast but I'll have to run away from all the attacks. Since this also triggered Philia's Meteor Swarm, it's the perfect moment to go to the other side of the battlefield and cast spells.
What I did is to mainly focus on hitting both Mint and Philia in order to shorten the fight. Since I reached both First Aid and Stop Flow's thresholds at the same time, I could not prevent Mint from using her healing spell. However, Mint will always target the character that lost the most HP. Since Reid has the lowest Magic Defense of the group, he will be the most injured from Innocent Shine and will always be healed first unless I keep damaging Philia. As you can see, I stayed close to Philia in order to force her into using Stop Flow without moving. That way it's also much easier for me to time my jumps and be stopped at the peak of the second jump.
As I kept damaging Mint, it was very important to use Nocturnal light when she was casting Heal. Cancelling the casting animation will completely prevent the character from ever using the spell. No Heal means the fight went much faster too.
After both Philia and Mint got close to their 25%HP thresholds, I switched to Nanaly. Due to the change of axis, dodging her attacks became much harder, so I had to bait her from using them before I start jumping over her. Just like for Stop Flow, the idea was to bait the Hourglass and make sure I'd be at the top of my jumps in order to dodge most attacks. As you can see I barely dodged Flare Tornado which has a pretty big vertical hitbox. When fighting her, it was harder to cast spells so I went mostly melee. You will notice that I barely used Free Run Spell Cancel in this fight. The reason is... that the game can actually completely lock you into the casting animation if there are too many things happening on screen and this always lead to a failure if that happens. What I did to overcome this issue was to end all my combos with Nocturnal Light. The Arte has very very low end lag and is perfect for running away.
Once Nanaly was done, I switched to Reid. You will notice I actually dealt a bit too much damage on Nanaly so I got very scared during the whole fight to get trolled by Wild Geese but since she stayed pretty far away, she never decided to use it. Once again, the change of axis made the Rekkuzan dodge insanely harder to anticipate. Thankfully, Reid loves chaining Artes which can create some opportunities to cast spells. Since he is very vulnerable against them, he can loose his HP very quickly.
Finally, once everybody got hurt enough, it was time to end it once and for all.
I'm very glad I was able to get that take. Despite the well crafted strategy, there is many many bad things that can happen quickly and luck has to be on your side if you want to get that No Damage take. On a side note, I tried doing this fight with Free Run and it invalidated so many annoying Artes that I was not expecting this to be that much easier haha.
In any case, thanks a lot for your support. I'm now finally done with Tear.

[@LoverOnTheLineMajora]

Excellent fight. You got things very well researched in order to pull this off. Managing those four fuckers at the same time looked like a total nightmare to me.
It seems so obvious that you could have trounced them so fast if you needn't be careful of those damned HP thresholds. You probably could have spell chained them to death after the first Innocent Shine... and eat the heals for breakfast...
And thanks for bothering to write those walls of text for us. I appreciate knowing what you are doing here, how and why. Really puts things in perspective.
As a side note I don't remember Wild Geese at all. Was it a super arrow shot? Storm of arrows? Spell? Would it have immediately ruined the take? You were being incredibly careful around Nanaly while managing your distance.

[@Muctales]

@LoverOnTheLineMajora Wild Geese is her Mytic Arte. It seems she can only activate it at close/mid range this arrows seem to be able to reach the other side of the battlefield. So if it triggers, it's kinda an instant fail.

[@LoverOnTheLineMajora]

Annoying. And archers tend to suck so badly when I have them on my side...

[@guiraudwilliam5545]

​@@LoverOnTheLineMajora Except when they're the Healers right?

[@TailsGt1]

Pretty intense! Loved the usage and space and cast windows. Also keeping in mind for things like Pow Hammer and other spells! 💖

[@HorangiTiger]

Very, very nicely played. I played around with the idea of doing no damage on the Cameo battle during my Jade solos but I figured that Hourglass+Rekkuzan+Pikohan might make it unmanageable. Clearly, you've proven my theories wrong haha.
Also, I love how you kept the Eternal Mind transition on your OVL!

[@Muctales]

Thanks. Hourglass is manageable since it happens at a specific HP threshold but Pikohan and Rekkuzan did ruin most of my takes since it's ridiculously hard to react to those or be in a situation where dodging them won't put you at risk

[@kobetoles5925]

The setup to the quadra kill at the end was brilliant. What an amazing fight🎉

[@orelas167]

And yet you still got the music to change. I like how close thr shave was with Pow Hammer. Mint really needs more love.

[@Vayatir]

I appreciated the fact you edited Eternal Mind in there despite not activating Aurora Wall from Reid.

[@donganbonavito9751]

Crazy, awesome gameplay

[@theodorebralla]

God that ending was sick

[@Nazookada]

As usual a great video 👍👍👍

[@Jamesaga]

Congrats on the end of Tear! Amazing positioning around all those artes! I did not know Nocturnal Light had so little end lag, that came in very handy!

[@Muctales]

Yeah Nocturnal Light is absolutely amazing and definitley an overlooked Arte

[@guiraudwilliam5545]

What the!? A Fortune's Arc Quadruple Finish!? Beautiful Finish!!!

[@user-km9rd6el6m]

Thanks for the big explanation.

[@darkatlas4619]

Great fight

[@OmegaVideoGameGod]

Very good

[@sakili9663]

Personally in my opinion, the cameo battle is the end game and the hardest fight in the entire game. Harder than Nebilim (extremely tough boss though) due to the fact that there's a lot of things going on in the cameo battle. Having to deal with 4 characters with their high damaging specials including inflated stats is challenging in normal gameplay. Of course there's AI manipulation and patterns. I played this game many many times on my 3DS and the weird thing is that Reid's Aurora Wall (one hit ko if you're in his hit box), on some occasions, you can survive from that without Angel's Tear and overlimit active for some reason. Yes, I fought the cameo team on Unknown difficulty a bunch of times. Sometimes and I mean sometimes, specials like Sacred Penance and Aurora Wall failed to activate even at low HP. Kinda weird to me, but funny. The stuff that I just said happens on the 3DS version. I'm not sure if it happens on the PS2 version, but mostly likey no. Anyway, nice Tear solo cameo battle. Tear's my favorite character of all.

[@Enum995]

get fortune's arc'd

[@Kevassa]

I love the mega explanation being back for the cameo assholes!
I didn't think Mint could troll you with Pikohan that much but it makes sense considering how it homes in so well (I seen you squeezed one last one to truly meme)
I noticed you didn't end with the Extension, was it unnecessary or is there some problem if someone survives between Fortune's Ark and the Extension?

[@Muctales]

Fortune's Arc Extension can't kill unfortunately. It leaves the enemies at 1HP. So if I didn't kill everyone with Fortune's Arc, I would have to kill everyone manually with some basic attacks. Not only would that look very anticlimatic, but it would put me in a very dangerous situation where everyone has access to their final thresholds (All MAs unlock at once). I would then have to choose who to kill in which order and it's not an easy task since Philia can use Sacred Penance instantly with no confirm, Nanaly's MA can reach the whole battlefield, Reid can revive anyone with a life bottle (and use Aurora Wall if the normal attack doesn't kill him), and Mint would cast either Time Stop or Revitalize if I don't kill her quickly...

[@veghesther3204]

For Unknown mode using mages I would need ENOUGH KILLS after Nibelim is killed so that the WEAPONS used to fight her will have your MA's do enough damage at least 5 to 6 MILLION to KILL all the tales of cameo bosses on Unknown mode like in under 30 SECONDS else I can't even beat them with a FULL LV 200 party on Unknown AT all.