1:28:24 - "Damn, what even happened? I don't feel like I did that much different" 1:26:51 - You have a good formula to start the fight. It doesn't look like it, but in the opening salvo, you take out half his shields. (the outer bars of the shields are worth more than the inner bar) 1:27:02 - You learned that the missile salvos, formerly a deadly attack, are an opening for melee damage. 1:27:22 - You learned the timing and movement to dodge the cannon. This is what most people have trouble with. You waited a half beat, then dodged in a way that changed your vector (instead of just dodging in your current direciton). 1:27:40 - Probably most important: you were incredibly aggressive, and you were rewarded for it. With the few attacks Balty got off, you dodged by just being close by. Then you basically stagger locked him by using your melee on cool down. 1:27:48 - You use your assault boost to chase Balty down. Not enough people do this. 1:28:02 - You got better at using your missiles on cooldown. Your attempts were incorporating more and more as you learned the fight. Then it all came together in a glorious beat down. Well done, pilot.
Relentless Aggression is probably the #1 hurdle most people I've seen play this game have to get over, myself included. Its hard because there's so much damage flying your way so your first instinct is to be defensive. In my first playthrough Sullah and Balteus combined easily took me over an hour. In NG+ I did the mission deathless, with most of my parts and all of my weapons being from Act 1 Idk how it'll change with more vods but it seems like Max's biggest issue is thinking of parts as upgrades and downgrades, good or bad, rather than what they are: options
@@calebolds9609 This is the same issue a lot of people had with Sekiro, I think. Because of the deflect mechanic, people treated it like a super defensive game when it actually opens up and flows best if you're extremely aggressive.
When you have a double-sided bar (like what the stagger and shield meters are, or the stamina bar in Skyrim, etc.) it's actually only half of what it looks like visually. Normally this is pretty clear. The bar is split up into three segments, but that's less a measurement of how empty the bar is and more so a point of reference so that you don't forget where the center is.
Another change on the last run I saw was Max treated his sword as his primary weapon. This can be viewed as a culmination of your points 3, 5, and 6. Previous runs I would watch the sword be recharged and go unused in perfect positions. Instead, Max would lead with his grenade cannon and was often punished by trading damage due to being locked in place. The last run was much more fluid, and the grenade cannon was used to deliver damage when Balteus was staggered (or luckily not in a position to attack). It was fun watching him learn.
BALTEUS taught me a very important thing about Armored Core 6. It's okay to quit the mission, go back to the shop, grind some cash if you have to and then come back with the appropriate weapons to completely *obliterate* the boss. In this case, I highly recommend the pulse gun to anyone struggling with Pulse Armor in general.
I did the same. Im in ng++ now with different builds for each boss. Valve's taught me to listen to audio queues. The others taught me that middle hell is normal lol
At first i dreaded the thought of running through snipers alley and miniboss again. Then i found out, i could play it safer with the turrets by popping up in different locations as they take their sweet time to rotate their gun if im not right in front of them, and 2nd set even easier when i hopped up on the roof to the left. And miniboss became trivial after slowly gearing up for Balteus.
I probably spent around 7 hours or more trying to get him, granted, a lot of my attempts had me getting him low to around 10-30% so it would make the fight last for quite a bit, but I'd say at least 20 retries
For anyone wandering why BALTEUS fire sword do so much damage, is because in this game fire damage ads anomaly to the AC and that is like a armor debuff. The same with Electricity attacks, accumulate discharge and works like bleed in other fromsoft games.
Balteus trains players to abuse the stagger meter like in Sekiro and save their resources when the enemy is stationary so they can unload full dps, you can stagger him twice in a row after he recover from the first stagger with Assault armor and get rid of his barrier the second time and keep your dps going, i think aggressive close range players wouldn’t find this boss difficult
@@WhiteDragonTC Those missiles sucked. You basically had to say "fuck it we ball" to the multi ones. But that one giant one feels like it knows where you are at all times
Balteus' grenade is a lot like the charge plasma cannon Max struggled with in the Arena. One of the things this game carries over from older AC titles is the way FCS tracking works when trying to lead targets. Not everything can be avoided on reaction, but erratic movements can make you difficult to hit on top of your ability to react. The Arena fighter with the plasma cannon sometimes seemed to hold his shot extra long because he was waiting for Max's movements to become predictable enough to attempt a shot. Maintaining good movement is tough for long periods, so those opportunities will come up and some of the AI in this game seems especially good at exploiting them.
I think so too. My build when I first fought him was similar to Max's but then I went back with a Double Gattling Gun Tank build and erased him. It felt good. Lol
@@redfalcon8062 The big thing with the huge cannon is that it's tracking your movement and relative velocity when it fires, so if you keep moving in the same direction it will hit you. What I found super consistent was a jump during the warning a dash to the side when it fires. It requires getting familiar enough with the timings but once you do it'll never hit you unless you have no energy. If you're doing an assault boost in it's also pretty easy to dodge if you remember that moving left or right during it performs a dash as well.
The funny thing is with dual shotguns and a faster mech he's not that hard. He was the hardest boss for me, but once I did dual shotguns the only boss that put up a fight was the smart cleaner
i went with dual plasma missiles and dual grenade launchers. I basically learned the basics of it's attacks and developed a movement tech for it. True, there were much easier options, but I felt way more rewarded my way
So many things that Max either did or said around the Balteus fight were the same things that I said/did. Even down to the accidental rage restart of the mission instead of the checkpoint. Glad I was not alone with that fight.
Problem Max, is that all your stuff is slow, high recoil, low mobility, and you arent capitalizing on staggering your enemies, you just fire one slow thing after another every 5 seconds, you havent got any pressure tools of any kind, you need something with lots of ammo that can pepper your opponents over time before going in for the kill.
agree and in my case I just used a build that a youtuber named "Boomstick Gaming" created to help newbies like me and that build is called Meefcake; that build carried me all the way to chapter 3, btw: right now I still haven't bought anything from the part shop except those parts for the "Meefcake" build as well as the OS tuning so my money is around 6,000,000 plus.
Nah, it's the ultimate: Fuck you for spending your money you don't get to play the rest of the game" moment. Difficulty spikes are shit design and the reason I refunded the game.
@@17thknight because the guys that are infamous for making tough games wouldn't make their new game difficult. btw balteus compared to other fromsoft bosses is downright easy you just got to pay attention to ayre, she mentions the shield in hopes that you buy the pulse gun and make him a cake walk.
It took me 3 hours to beat Balteus After 2 hours I took a 30 minute lunch break to refocus and went back in there revitalized and ready to kick its ass. Moral of the story, take a breather and reevaluate what works and what doesn't
Bro it took me around 8hrs to beat him 😭 started from 6am to 10am and I stoped. Then again around at 3pm to 5pm and finally at 11pm to 1am and that’s when I finally defeated him 😭
Took me at least 8 or 9, I literally spent all night trying to beat him and I had to admit defeat and went to bed. I then beat him a few hours after waking up.
It's really cool to see so many people get into the AC series w this game. I'm so glad they brought it back! Nothing scratches the mech fighting itch like AC. 'Deamon X Machina' was a decent game, but AC is just another level of sick! 🤘
I was watching the stream and Max get sidetracked with playing MKX. I couldn't stick around but really wanted to see him play AC6 just for Balteus. Glad to see it went how I thought lol
A big part of Max's struggle with Balteus was that his build had too many heavy weapons with long reloads. Need to balance it with at least one regular weapon that you can fire more quickly to slowly chip away the shield/health and then use the heavies for when he is vulnerable. I almost got him beat with a quad-leg heavy weapon approach but could never evade his fire attacks on the second phase. Finally got him with a light-weight biped focused on evasion with two laser pistols and two 8x missiles on the shoulders. Didnt burn him down as fast but I was able to avoid a lot of his attacks much easier.
The reason isn’t because his weapons even though his weapon choice is poor overall for amc6 in general it is actually a good load out for this boss because it eats his shields. His problem is that he’s not dodging the attacks when it gives him a clear sound indicator and visual indicator when the attack is coming red box on enemy flashing and 2 beeps btw and he’s not properly spacing his stagger with weapons he should use his weakest weapons to stagger than dump with sword and launcher.
My exact thought, I had the 4 missile launchers on both shoulders, bazooka, and I had the blade that doesn’t charge up, so I could get more hits in faster, had to learn the sound queues in order to go in
@@diegosaenz8054first run I hit him with the pulse gun on attempt 5, just did it again in new game plus with dual pistols and a dagger with the lightest being I could make first try, as long as you can get that shield down and move he really isn’t that bad
I took Balt down with twin assault rifles and twin 8-tube VLS. The only thing that ever gave me trouble was the flamethrower. I got barbecued 4 or 5 times before I learned how to dodge it.
It's not actually Balteus' theme, it's Ayre's theme called "Contact With You". There is another version of it called "Contact With You -extended-" that goes even harder.
@@KurNorock that mission made me find a new respect and love for shotguns and also why im probably never taking off the spike melee for the rest of the game
@@KindDmoN The Pilebunker makes the game far too easy. Just build around it with dual wield shotguns (using shoulder slot for one) and the shoulder weapon either being something to get rid of energy shields quickly, or apply even more stagger. Then you just stagger the enemy, hit the Pilebunker charge attack and sigh. Seriously; normal ACs are either killed instantly or require two of them, and bosses take maybe 3-4 tops. The stagger bar would otherwise be a cool and fun optional way to fight if other combos were more reliable to time with it, but as it is there's no simpler way to demolish anything that stagger with shotties then punch it in the face.
@@arkainjalex12 It's almost both, really; doing him in NG+ after fighting everything else feels remarkably easy even without a build catered to fight him. At that point your AC and weapons are up there along with your gameplay and familiarity with dodging, stagger windows etc. I'm sure if I made a new game I'd not have nearly as much trouble with him with appropriate gear.
@@arkainjalex12more of a build skill check. A big component of the game is the ability to make mechs for the right situation. That said there's still somewhat of a skill check since his flaming sword is hard to dodge unless you know what you're doing
What’s more triggering is that he keeps bashing his head against the wall instead of going back to the garage and changing his build to better suit the challenge at hand
Ahhh, Balteus, the “you better figure this shit out or die forever” boss. I wonder how long it takes Max to realize that the incredibly loud and annoying alarm is the game telling him to get the fuck out of the way lmao. Instead he just eats them devastating shots over and over.
This is the fight that teaches you to listen for that "Beep Beep" audio cue. "Beep Beep" is your COM telling you to dodge immediately or get hit by that frontal cannon and hit Restart From Checkpoint. It also teaches you that "Jumping" is usually a death sentence as Quick Boosting is faster when on the ground.
BALTEUS…. The Raven final entry exam of AC6. Took me a while to bring it down. 2 DAYS. I actually celebrated like a loon when I beat it!! It was truly sold me that this game is more incredible than I thought! And the importance of abusing the STAGER MECHANIC… 😅
More AC tips for newcomers: - Some missles are classified as "pincers", because they pause / have an arc trayectory before hitting so you can use them for pressure tactics. The idea is that you get in range of your other weapon, trigger the pincers, charge in and slash or shoot as the pincers hit in order for them to track the pressured enemies. I used them for a while and they are definitely viable with practice. - Weapons show their "Ideal" and "Effective" ranges in the extended Stat section: Ideal is minimal chance to ricochet; the further from it you go, the chance to ricochet increases. Ricochet Hits can still be valuable though, while they inflict a minimum amount of damage and stagger they also briefly pause your target's stagger bar from draining. - In the shop, press Square to show a brief video of how a weapon fires. This will show all firing modes on any weapon. Good fast way to get an idea how long something takes to charge or how a missile will fly before you purchase it. - You can change the name of your AC on the AC Data screen. By default it is named "Loader 4".
Shotty and melee got me through this dude. I mean i instantly fell in love with the game after the fight. Coming back to it after sorting out my gear and everything.
I dont know if max is going to read this but there is Zero invul frames on all movement options. Like 90% of the damage he's taking is just running directly into it's shotgun or cannon. He could just move to the side so he isn't making out with a cannon directly pointed at his face.
Balteus is every new "Lynx" pilot introduction to the series. Try fighting Otsdarva and his henchmen on Armored Core For Answer. There is no such thing as stagger, just speed and trajectory.
Going against Balteus on NG+ felt so satisfying. Thought I'd die against him a couple of times, but I got him first run. Really helped that I had newer guns.
It feels so satisfying coming back to murder him on New Game Plus and the True Ending. Especially when you can absolutely just murder him in 30 seconds with the right build. Plus after Ibis Bullshit I feel like Balteus is a joke to dodge in comparison.
Ahh true filter thy name is Balteus. That large rocket he has was the bane of my existence when i was learning this fight. It also taught my how important mixing ground and aerial movement is along with assault boosting. Its fun watching people learn this fight
"Oh wow you get blasted in this mission," exclaims Max, after get shot down by a laser canon on his first attempt at the watchpoint. Little does he know that this is just the beginning.
Watching people play before they grasp the mechanics is so maddening lol. So many times he would stagger the boss and run away instead of doing any damage.
Lost to Balteus 100 times but it’s a really fun boss battle. I finally beat him while I was one hit away from dying 😂 dodged a missile mid air dashed and finished him with the sword. So epic.
Bingo! Shoji Kawamori designed _both_ of those things. He also did Nero's Devil Breaker. Other things he has done include: Macross, Diaclone (and thus Transformers and Robotech), Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories, Escaflowne, and Ghost in the Shell.
Admittedly I did pretty much the same thing, if I did change anything it was weaponry. Grenade cannons and laser sword has been a mainstay for my main Medium weight bipedal, I'm just now (after three playthroughs) trying a lightweight fast moving bipedal (that I occasionally switch to reverse legs) still haven't had anything force me to go full face tank legs
2:46:19 - I haven't played Armored Core since the 2nd, and the combo you start deploying here reminds me of what I would use when doing Vs with my friends. There was a plasma rifle ("Kurosawa" I think?) and a set of shoulder missiles that did something similar. You'd pound them with the missiles and while they were stunned you'd unload with the rifle. They never had a very good day. Until one guy figured out he could nullify my advantage in a tighter arena with less room for the missiles to deploy.
Beat this guy with dual shotguns and double 4x missiles. Lightweight reverse joint mech with about 8k AP. As Max said, the most important attack in the first phase is Balteus' bazooka. Use the audio telegraph to dodge. The missiles aren't nearly as important. With a jump mech you can dodge most of the missiles with a single press of the space bar. The second phase is simply keeping distance each time he replenishes his shield and waiting out his fire attacks. He only uses each of them once each time he shields back up. One of the easiest ways to play this game is to pair up weapons with identical reload times so you can reduce input requirements. Just alpha strike each time you're in range, unless the boss is nearing stagger. That way you don't have to track each weapon cooldown.
The reason you felt like nothing was different was just the way you cycled your cooldowns. You had it cycled in such a way that you were staggering balteus before it could put the pulse armor back up.
Balteus is hard, but you can use pulse guns and shoulder mounted grenade launcher to wreck his shields prettty good, problem is on phase 2 when he goes full soul of cinder and wrecks half a bar with single flaming slash
@MasterCode86 it sounds really silly, but you can flat out just jump over the one he starts phase 2 with. As for Any others, keeping an eye on where he's coming from and jump/dashing over or under it is usually the best way to go. Good luck, you've got this!
@@MasterCode86If you’re still having problems with him, I found that if he goes for a slash when I’m airborne, I can just stop moving entirely, drop like a rock, and he’ll miss you completely if it’s one of the horizontal slashes.
I wish he used bigger missile pods for Balteus. He was using 2 base level pods when he could have been using the 8 shot ones. They wouldn’t have overburdened him either…
Balteus was a pain in the ass man. Those fucking missiles were the bane of my existence. But eventually I got past him. I had to be aggressive in the 1st phase and back off a little in the second one
I'm amazed that Max is getting far without ever using cover and concealment! Just as much firepower as his build can carry. I beat these bosses but kept running and shooting behind cover except the Juggernaut. Testament to how versatile one can play this game.
The spider guy so far for me is the most honest boss so far. Everything is consistently dodgeable. His vertical tiny missiles don't have great tracking so going in the air is easy. The big lunge you can go under every time. The bazooka you just need to dodge in and to left or right on second beep. Lasers you can go above under or left or right depending on where you are. The second phase you have to be in the air to dodge every so it's mostly patience and spacing far away. I like that fight a lot. Challenging for me, fast paced, honest hitboxes, easily readable, very fun.
The Sea Spider kindof establishes the game's rules. 1. You can't stay airborne, you need your energy to replenish- and enemies have an easy time shooting something floating 2. Jumping is a dodging action (like QB) that only costs energy when the booster is used (not during the jump unless on treads) 3. The audible warning comes before the dodge window. Most attacks in this game track frightening well, so dodge windows are much tighter to the actual movement. Similar to MHR:Sunbreak. Really forces you to slow down and play more deliberately.
I would think you need more fire power for some bosses...Max digs his heels into his load and suffers more than he should. Boss fight looked fun and that music for Balteus is great!
since everyone sharing their build. imma share mine. Whip weapon , Minigun to force enemy use their booster and 2 grenade launcher shoulder for damage. work like a charm for me.
Nice. I went with laser lance, pile bunker, grenade launcher and shotgun. Mini bosses and even a good number of bosses absolutely melt under assault boost-> kick-> charged laser lance-> charged pile bunker. The shotgun is just there if a little extra stagger is needed.
When does Max start pressing triangle in the garage? So many important stats are hidden behind the expanded menu prompt, it’s necessary to build good AC’s.
Tank legs are great for high-toughness, heavily armed setups that use shoulder cannons or other weapons with strong recoil. They tend to be slower and not be as good at aerial combat (though there is a “high mobility” tread leg piece that is fast while providing great stability).
Not only are the bubble guns really cheap, they are an absolute shield eater. I watched someone else's playthrough and the bubble guns devour shields with ease.
It took 3 sessions for me to beat Balteus. It was a tough fight but I never got frustrated and I couldn't wait to restart it when I lost. That win was so satisfying. I used the 2 pulse grenade launchers and 2 pulse rifles.
@@bruhder5854 Maybe he's feeling better about it in recent streams, I'm not sure, but these first two VODs seem to be on a very similar enjoyment-to-frustration pipeline to when he went through Sekiro.
Ahh, the early game humbling boss. Im pretty sure I had the bazooka and the more powerful lazer sword (the one Max started this fight with) but Balteus beat my ass for like an hour and change. And Im starting love looking for these "Max facts" i.e some shit he just makes up in time of losing or just not having read something. My favorite this early in the ep was "wondering if back dashing has some invulnerability" just before he gets nuked, backdashing , from that shield discharge attack. But this boss had me seeing ghosts too, lol. That fire sweeping shit was a nightmare till I figured out to stay in his grill.
Once you reach new game + and new game ++ these fights become trivial,I'm on my second playthrough and my plasma missile and Gatling gun setup shredded this mech
Maeterlinck was one of the only fights to give me trouble in the arena. I don't know why she's randomly so hard, and placed so low. It's not that the Sea Spider is easily stunned, it's that Max's starting loadout against it is all explosives, and they have the highest impact. They do have the lowest direct hit bonus to stunned targets though, and all of his stuff has long cooldowns, so when he does stun it he doesn't have much to capitalize on the stuns. But contrary to what new players might start to think, you aren't doing zero damage to enemies that aren't staggered.
I don’t think he really gets the acs strain thing at all. The amount of time I see him back off when his enemy is staggered, even though he’s got a grenade round ready to go, is pretty crazy.
So idk if I missed it Max said he was gonna ng++ after this playthrough. Is he? I hope so so he can see more of the world/"happenings" Also please someone just slip him a mention on how R3 works. Him just constantly turning it on and off and then being like "why" 😭
I feel like resetting when the fight starts to not go your way is missing out on the big "one HP and a dream" moments. My first time fighting the Sea Spider I got bitch slapped with zero repair kits and thought "whelp, that's the end of this run" and I still took out the last third of its health bar and won. You never know if you're gonna come out clutch.
Fun fact. Your AC:s auto-aim is substantially worse if you have hard lock-on. Controlling the camera yourself while harder actually makes your auto-aim way better. You will learn to use it more when your enemies start getting faster and faster.
Yup max that pretty much armored core in a nut shell. You blow in the wall of an important part of the city then the next mission you're defending the hole you just blew in it lol
1:28:24 - "Damn, what even happened? I don't feel like I did that much different"
1:26:51 - You have a good formula to start the fight. It doesn't look like it, but in the opening salvo, you take out half his shields. (the outer bars of the shields are worth more than the inner bar)
1:27:02 - You learned that the missile salvos, formerly a deadly attack, are an opening for melee damage.
1:27:22 - You learned the timing and movement to dodge the cannon. This is what most people have trouble with. You waited a half beat, then dodged in a way that changed your vector (instead of just dodging in your current direciton).
1:27:40 - Probably most important: you were incredibly aggressive, and you were rewarded for it. With the few attacks Balty got off, you dodged by just being close by. Then you basically stagger locked him by using your melee on cool down.
1:27:48 - You use your assault boost to chase Balty down. Not enough people do this.
1:28:02 - You got better at using your missiles on cooldown.
Your attempts were incorporating more and more as you learned the fight. Then it all came together in a glorious beat down. Well done, pilot.
Relentless Aggression is probably the #1 hurdle most people I've seen play this game have to get over, myself included. Its hard because there's so much damage flying your way so your first instinct is to be defensive.
In my first playthrough Sullah and Balteus combined easily took me over an hour. In NG+ I did the mission deathless, with most of my parts and all of my weapons being from Act 1
Idk how it'll change with more vods but it seems like Max's biggest issue is thinking of parts as upgrades and downgrades, good or bad, rather than what they are: options
@@calebolds9609 This is the same issue a lot of people had with Sekiro, I think. Because of the deflect mechanic, people treated it like a super defensive game when it actually opens up and flows best if you're extremely aggressive.
When you have a double-sided bar (like what the stagger and shield meters are, or the stamina bar in Skyrim, etc.) it's actually only half of what it looks like visually. Normally this is pretty clear. The bar is split up into three segments, but that's less a measurement of how empty the bar is and more so a point of reference so that you don't forget where the center is.
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Another change on the last run I saw was Max treated his sword as his primary weapon. This can be viewed as a culmination of your points 3, 5, and 6. Previous runs I would watch the sword be recharged and go unused in perfect positions. Instead, Max would lead with his grenade cannon and was often punished by trading damage due to being locked in place. The last run was much more fluid, and the grenade cannon was used to deliver damage when Balteus was staggered (or luckily not in a position to attack). It was fun watching him learn.
BALTEUS taught me a very important thing about Armored Core 6.
It's okay to quit the mission, go back to the shop, grind some cash if you have to and then come back with the appropriate weapons to completely *obliterate* the boss. In this case, I highly recommend the pulse gun to anyone struggling with Pulse Armor in general.
lol that what also I did and for sea spider as well and I finally beat them with the right weapon love this game I’m glad we got armored core back
I did the same. Im in ng++ now with different builds for each boss. Valve's taught me to listen to audio queues. The others taught me that middle hell is normal lol
At first i dreaded the thought of running through snipers alley and miniboss again.
Then i found out, i could play it safer with the turrets by popping up in different locations as they take their sweet time to rotate their gun if im not right in front of them, and 2nd set even easier when i hopped up on the roof to the left. And miniboss became trivial after slowly gearing up for Balteus.
Dual pulse guns and dual shoulder mounted plasma rifles obliterate this boss. It was SOOOOO GODDAMN FUN to figure out.
Basically, half of FromSoftware games in a nutshell.
Really digging the thumbnail art! Props to the artist
KAINONAUT is the goat!
@heroblast3978yep. Their channel is in the description too👍🏻
I like how Ayre just said "Raven, you need a rest" after Balteus fight as if she knows that a lot of people spend half a dozen of retries.
a lot of people spent more than 6 even
A lot of people refunded the game (like me)
Half a dozen is on the low end tbh
I probably spent around 7 hours or more trying to get him, granted, a lot of my attempts had me getting him low to around 10-30% so it would make the fight last for quite a bit, but I'd say at least 20 retries
@@17thknight Welp he really is a filter.
For anyone wandering why BALTEUS fire sword do so much damage, is because in this game fire damage ads anomaly to the AC and that is like a armor debuff. The same with Electricity attacks, accumulate discharge and works like bleed in other fromsoft games.
Balteus trains players to abuse the stagger meter like in Sekiro and save their resources when the enemy is stationary so they can unload full dps, you can stagger him twice in a row after he recover from the first stagger with Assault armor and get rid of his barrier the second time and keep your dps going,
i think aggressive close range players wouldn’t find this boss difficult
he is definetly designed to be rather fought close then far. but that STUPID FUCKING MISSILE made me rage enough in close then it did in ranged xD
@@WhiteDragonTC Those missiles sucked. You basically had to say "fuck it we ball" to the multi ones. But that one giant one feels like it knows where you are at all times
Balteus' grenade is a lot like the charge plasma cannon Max struggled with in the Arena. One of the things this game carries over from older AC titles is the way FCS tracking works when trying to lead targets. Not everything can be avoided on reaction, but erratic movements can make you difficult to hit on top of your ability to react.
The Arena fighter with the plasma cannon sometimes seemed to hold his shot extra long because he was waiting for Max's movements to become predictable enough to attempt a shot. Maintaining good movement is tough for long periods, so those opportunities will come up and some of the AI in this game seems especially good at exploiting them.
I think so too. My build when I first fought him was similar to Max's but then I went back with a Double Gattling Gun Tank build and erased him. It felt good. Lol
@@redfalcon8062 The big thing with the huge cannon is that it's tracking your movement and relative velocity when it fires, so if you keep moving in the same direction it will hit you. What I found super consistent was a jump during the warning a dash to the side when it fires. It requires getting familiar enough with the timings but once you do it'll never hit you unless you have no energy. If you're doing an assault boost in it's also pretty easy to dodge if you remember that moving left or right during it performs a dash as well.
Never mind the patrol chopper, Balteus is the true gatekeeper of AC6.
The funny thing is with dual shotguns and a faster mech he's not that hard. He was the hardest boss for me, but once I did dual shotguns the only boss that put up a fight was the smart cleaner
I beat him with 2 plasma rifles, 2 shoulder cannons, and full tank... which I had to go back and farm for
@@mightguy911 Dual shotgun makes every boss a joke tbh. Big balance mistake by Fromsoft on that part, but ignoring it makes the game much more fun
i went with dual plasma missiles and dual grenade launchers. I basically learned the basics of it's attacks and developed a movement tech for it. True, there were much easier options, but I felt way more rewarded my way
@@mightguy911ahh the roomba. My first encounter ended in 2 seconds after he hugged me and 1 shot me
Max going "..the life stream..?" a perfect beat before the SFX was actually too perfect that it felt real. 35:49
When he finally gets Balteus and is like "what? what happened?" Its awesome to see the moment someone gets it.
So many things that Max either did or said around the Balteus fight were the same things that I said/did. Even down to the accidental rage restart of the mission instead of the checkpoint. Glad I was not alone with that fight.
Bit of a tip for newcomers, unlock the weapons bay early on in, it is crazy useful as it allows you to carry an extra set of hand weapons.
Problem Max, is that all your stuff is slow, high recoil, low mobility, and you arent capitalizing on staggering your enemies, you just fire one slow thing after another every 5 seconds, you havent got any pressure tools of any kind, you need something with lots of ammo that can pepper your opponents over time before going in for the kill.
Also kicking is king in ac6
@@TheTrveMothlordI love speeding towards an enemy and then using the Reverse jointed legs to yeet and delete enemies.
@@TheTrveMothlord Is that kick really effective? I've been hesitant to purchase it.
@@anakinsol I literally cant imagine playing without kicking to help build stagger
@@anakinsolkick is crazy strong and the heavier your mech the more damage it does especially when someone is staggered
5 hours of Max playing Armored Core....
my popcorn is ready!
Balteus is the ultimate “GET GOODER” boss. Once you get past him the rest of the game opens up and you realize, “oh shit, I’m a Got damn pilot now!”
agree and in my case I just used a build that a youtuber named "Boomstick Gaming" created to help newbies like me and that build is called Meefcake; that build carried me all the way to chapter 3, btw: right now I still haven't bought anything from the part shop except those parts for the "Meefcake" build as well as the OS tuning so my money is around 6,000,000 plus.
Balteus, Rusty, and Carla are the anime main protagonists, you are just a side character.
Nah, it's the ultimate: Fuck you for spending your money you don't get to play the rest of the game" moment. Difficulty spikes are shit design and the reason I refunded the game.
@17thknight get gud. Got through it no problems after about 10 tries.
@@17thknight because the guys that are infamous for making tough games wouldn't make their new game difficult. btw balteus compared to other fromsoft bosses is downright easy you just got to pay attention to ayre, she mentions the shield in hopes that you buy the pulse gun and make him a cake walk.
It took me 3 hours to beat Balteus
After 2 hours I took a 30 minute lunch break to refocus and went back in there revitalized and ready to kick its ass. Moral of the story, take a breather and reevaluate what works and what doesn't
Bro it took me around 8hrs to beat him 😭 started from 6am to 10am and I stoped. Then again around at 3pm to 5pm and finally at 11pm to 1am and that’s when I finally defeated him 😭
Took me at least 8 or 9, I literally spent all night trying to beat him and I had to admit defeat and went to bed. I then beat him a few hours after waking up.
Took me bout 1 or 2 hours,my IRL rage meter started peaking and with assault kick oh boy I fked him up.
I was surprised when I managed to do it in 5 tries, swapped to the pulse gun and he melted
It's really cool to see so many people get into the AC series w this game. I'm so glad they brought it back! Nothing scratches the mech fighting itch like AC. 'Deamon X Machina' was a decent game, but AC is just another level of sick! 🤘
Whoever made the thumbnail art is legendary
KAINONAUT is the goat!
I love this game bro. The soundtrack is insane.
I love how max’s arsenal is described as “Size:yes” at the beginning, and somehow its effective against the MDDs
The best thing in Fromsoftwere bosses, is they are hard you die a lot but you see yourself improving until you become a badass
Kainonaut really killing it with the thumbnail game.
The artist (because I do not know the gender) is really talented.
Wow you can see the improvement in dodge timings and attack timings as Max continues attempting Balteus. It's really a mission that teaches
I was watching the stream and Max get sidetracked with playing MKX. I couldn't stick around but really wanted to see him play AC6 just for Balteus. Glad to see it went how I thought lol
Man Max's face when he watched the preview of songbirds was an instant buy face.
A big part of Max's struggle with Balteus was that his build had too many heavy weapons with long reloads. Need to balance it with at least one regular weapon that you can fire more quickly to slowly chip away the shield/health and then use the heavies for when he is vulnerable. I almost got him beat with a quad-leg heavy weapon approach but could never evade his fire attacks on the second phase. Finally got him with a light-weight biped focused on evasion with two laser pistols and two 8x missiles on the shoulders. Didnt burn him down as fast but I was able to avoid a lot of his attacks much easier.
The reason isn’t because his weapons even though his weapon choice is poor overall for amc6 in general it is actually a good load out for this boss because it eats his shields. His problem is that he’s not dodging the attacks when it gives him a clear sound indicator and visual indicator when the attack is coming red box on enemy flashing and 2 beeps btw and he’s not properly spacing his stagger with weapons he should use his weakest weapons to stagger than dump with sword and launcher.
My exact thought, I had the 4 missile launchers on both shoulders, bazooka, and I had the blade that doesn’t charge up, so I could get more hits in faster, had to learn the sound queues in order to go in
@@8minatothe amount of times he jumped into the missile made me pull my hair out
@@diegosaenz8054first run I hit him with the pulse gun on attempt 5, just did it again in new game plus with dual pistols and a dagger with the lightest being I could make first try, as long as you can get that shield down and move he really isn’t that bad
I took Balt down with twin assault rifles and twin 8-tube VLS. The only thing that ever gave me trouble was the flamethrower. I got barbecued 4 or 5 times before I learned how to dodge it.
Balteus theme really freaking slaps
It's not actually Balteus' theme, it's Ayre's theme called "Contact With You". There is another version of it called "Contact With You -extended-" that goes even harder.
He literally teaches you how hard it's going to be tho
Fr tho. Act 3 research data gathering where the pca shows up and drops 3 fast mechs with some grunts somehow felt harder than this boss
@@KurNorock that mission made me find a new respect and love for shotguns and also why im probably never taking off the spike melee for the rest of the game
@@KurNorockthat's a whole-ass battleship
Duel shotguns for the main guy that drops down from the ship with that shield makes it pretty easy that guy is quick as hell tho
@@KindDmoN The Pilebunker makes the game far too easy. Just build around it with dual wield shotguns (using shoulder slot for one) and the shoulder weapon either being something to get rid of energy shields quickly, or apply even more stagger.
Then you just stagger the enemy, hit the Pilebunker charge attack and sigh. Seriously; normal ACs are either killed instantly or require two of them, and bosses take maybe 3-4 tops.
The stagger bar would otherwise be a cool and fun optional way to fight if other combos were more reliable to time with it, but as it is there's no simpler way to demolish anything that stagger with shotties then punch it in the face.
It's always a blast to see you conquer a difficult Fromsoft boss, getting better and changing strategies with each new attempt.
Awesome!!!
Fighting Balteus the Skill Check Gatekeeper of this game.
Perish!!!
It’s more of a build check, as soon as you load a pulse weapon the boss becomes trivial.
@@arkainjalex12 It's almost both, really; doing him in NG+ after fighting everything else feels remarkably easy even without a build catered to fight him.
At that point your AC and weapons are up there along with your gameplay and familiarity with dodging, stagger windows etc. I'm sure if I made a new game I'd not have nearly as much trouble with him with appropriate gear.
@@arkainjalex12more of a build skill check. A big component of the game is the ability to make mechs for the right situation. That said there's still somewhat of a skill check since his flaming sword is hard to dodge unless you know what you're doing
You call it filter I call it a learning experience, Blateus taught me that sometimes its better to change my usual weapons or take a break
i watched this thinking max is doing some sort of challenge called "just dont use my med kits"
So inspiring of Max to go for a no heal challenge run on his first playthrough.
Kept triggering me how he would just be chilling in a fight with less than 1000hp and not using a repair kit, then die to a random hit.
What’s more triggering is that he keeps bashing his head against the wall instead of going back to the garage and changing his build to better suit the challenge at hand
Ahhh, Balteus, the “you better figure this shit out or die forever” boss.
I wonder how long it takes Max to realize that the incredibly loud and annoying alarm is the game telling him to get the fuck out of the way lmao. Instead he just eats them devastating shots over and over.
This is the fight that teaches you to listen for that "Beep Beep" audio cue. "Beep Beep" is your COM telling you to dodge immediately or get hit by that frontal cannon and hit Restart From Checkpoint. It also teaches you that "Jumping" is usually a death sentence as Quick Boosting is faster when on the ground.
When you unlock shoulder weapon swap, it's opens up a whole new world
Yeah, for real. It almost feels like it shouldn't be an unlock with how absurdly powerful a tool it is.
I had so much satifaction beating baltius with dual curtises and dual missles was such a fun fight
36:34 The music is the reason why restarting isnt so bad.
BALTEUS…. The Raven final entry exam of AC6.
Took me a while to bring it down. 2 DAYS. I actually celebrated like a loon when I beat it!! It was truly sold me that this game is more incredible than I thought! And the importance of abusing the STAGER MECHANIC… 😅
Took me 9 hours over two days, don't feel bad.
I did the EXACT same thing Max did; accidently hitting confirm to restart the entire level instead of restart at checkpoint to fight Baltus ☠️
Same here
More AC tips for newcomers:
- Some missles are classified as "pincers", because they pause / have an arc trayectory before hitting so you can use them for pressure tactics. The idea is that you get in range of your other weapon, trigger the pincers, charge in and slash or shoot as the pincers hit in order for them to track the pressured enemies. I used them for a while and they are definitely viable with practice.
- Weapons show their "Ideal" and "Effective" ranges in the extended Stat section:
Ideal is minimal chance to ricochet; the further from it you go, the chance to ricochet increases. Ricochet Hits can still be valuable though, while they inflict a minimum amount of damage and stagger they also briefly pause your target's stagger bar from draining.
- In the shop, press Square to show a brief video of how a weapon fires. This will show all firing modes on any weapon. Good fast way to get an idea how long something takes to charge or how a missile will fly before you purchase it.
- You can change the name of your AC on the AC Data screen. By default it is named "Loader 4".
Shotty and melee got me through this dude. I mean i instantly fell in love with the game after the fight. Coming back to it after sorting out my gear and everything.
Idk why the soundtrack is so low when you boot the game up, when you can actually hear it it’s pretty good
I dont know if max is going to read this but there is Zero invul frames on all movement options. Like 90% of the damage he's taking is just running directly into it's shotgun or cannon. He could just move to the side so he isn't making out with a cannon directly pointed at his face.
Yup, no i-frames only boosting.
Thumbnail art going absolutely ballistic
When he rage restarted on accident...yeah I felt that because that was exactly what I did on that boss! >
I feel so proud knowing I’m not the only one struggling with that SOB of a boss may god have mercy on your soul’s (pun intended )lol
Balteus is every new "Lynx" pilot introduction to the series. Try fighting Otsdarva and his henchmen on Armored Core For Answer. There is no such thing as stagger, just speed and trajectory.
you ever realize you can build the Megaman Guts Man tank in this game
Going against Balteus on NG+ felt so satisfying. Thought I'd die against him a couple of times, but I got him first run. Really helped that I had newer guns.
It feels so satisfying coming back to murder him on New Game Plus and the True Ending. Especially when you can absolutely just murder him in 30 seconds with the right build. Plus after Ibis Bullshit I feel like Balteus is a joke to dodge in comparison.
Ahh true filter thy name is Balteus. That large rocket he has was the bane of my existence when i was learning this fight. It also taught my how important mixing ground and aerial movement is along with assault boosting. Its fun watching people learn this fight
"Oh wow you get blasted in this mission," exclaims Max, after get shot down by a laser canon on his first attempt at the watchpoint.
Little does he know that this is just the beginning.
Watching Max continue to use vertical missles in the arena despite them almost never landing is painful to watch.
My strategy is to just be ungodly aggressive 😂
Watching people play before they grasp the mechanics is so maddening lol. So many times he would stagger the boss and run away instead of doing any damage.
I think every streamer I've watched never figured out that every time he flies backwards, its going to fire the big grenade launcher.
Lost to Balteus 100 times but it’s a really fun boss battle. I finally beat him while I was one hit away from dying 😂 dodged a missile mid air dashed and finished him with the sword. So epic.
The human that draws you thumbnails is really talented
KAINONAUT is the goat!
Now I remember why Balteus looks familiar. Its one of Dante's Devil arm attacks in DMC 4! The briefcase one.
Pandora neutral style action while in gunslinger. Yea I can see the resemblance
Bingo! Shoji Kawamori designed _both_ of those things. He also did Nero's Devil Breaker.
Other things he has done include: Macross, Diaclone (and thus Transformers and Robotech), Gundam 0083: Stardust Memories, Escaflowne, and Ghost in the Shell.
Loved the "look how happy he is... shutup" when painting his ac
Dude just brute forced that. Didn't change builds or anything just stubbornly pushed on. I love it.
Admittedly I did pretty much the same thing, if I did change anything it was weaponry. Grenade cannons and laser sword has been a mainstay for my main Medium weight bipedal, I'm just now (after three playthroughs) trying a lightweight fast moving bipedal (that I occasionally switch to reverse legs) still haven't had anything force me to go full face tank legs
2:46:19 - I haven't played Armored Core since the 2nd, and the combo you start deploying here reminds me of what I would use when doing Vs with my friends. There was a plasma rifle ("Kurosawa" I think?) and a set of shoulder missiles that did something similar. You'd pound them with the missiles and while they were stunned you'd unload with the rifle.
They never had a very good day. Until one guy figured out he could nullify my advantage in a tighter arena with less room for the missiles to deploy.
Beat this guy with dual shotguns and double 4x missiles. Lightweight reverse joint mech with about 8k AP.
As Max said, the most important attack in the first phase is Balteus' bazooka. Use the audio telegraph to dodge. The missiles aren't nearly as important. With a jump mech you can dodge most of the missiles with a single press of the space bar.
The second phase is simply keeping distance each time he replenishes his shield and waiting out his fire attacks. He only uses each of them once each time he shields back up.
One of the easiest ways to play this game is to pair up weapons with identical reload times so you can reduce input requirements. Just alpha strike each time you're in range, unless the boss is nearing stagger. That way you don't have to track each weapon cooldown.
The reason you felt like nothing was different was just the way you cycled your cooldowns. You had it cycled in such a way that you were staggering balteus before it could put the pulse armor back up.
Balteus is hard, but you can use pulse guns and shoulder mounted grenade launcher to wreck his shields prettty good, problem is on phase 2 when he goes full soul of cinder and wrecks half a bar with single flaming slash
Weirdly enough with my current build i find phase 2 easier. The openings are longer
@@calebolds9609 any tips in how to dodge the slashes, the only one i have is mad back dashing to get away?
@MasterCode86 it sounds really silly, but you can flat out just jump over the one he starts phase 2 with. As for Any others, keeping an eye on where he's coming from and jump/dashing over or under it is usually the best way to go. Good luck, you've got this!
@@MasterCode86If you’re still having problems with him, I found that if he goes for a slash when I’m airborne, I can just stop moving entirely, drop like a rock, and he’ll miss you completely if it’s one of the horizontal slashes.
@@spiraljumper74 yeah, that a good suggestion, gonna try my next run.
I wish he used bigger missile pods for Balteus. He was using 2 base level pods when he could have been using the 8 shot ones. They wouldn’t have overburdened him either…
Balteus was a pain in the ass man. Those fucking missiles were the bane of my existence. But eventually I got past him. I had to be aggressive in the 1st phase and back off a little in the second one
Playing on default camera speed looks like pain.
This guy made me fully restart the mission aswell.
I'm amazed that Max is getting far without ever using cover and concealment! Just as much firepower as his build can carry. I beat these bosses but kept running and shooting behind cover except the Juggernaut. Testament to how versatile one can play this game.
The spider guy so far for me is the most honest boss so far. Everything is consistently dodgeable. His vertical tiny missiles don't have great tracking so going in the air is easy. The big lunge you can go under every time. The bazooka you just need to dodge in and to left or right on second beep. Lasers you can go above under or left or right depending on where you are. The second phase you have to be in the air to dodge every so it's mostly patience and spacing far away. I like that fight a lot. Challenging for me, fast paced, honest hitboxes, easily readable, very fun.
Expecting anything to be "honest" in Armored Core is kind of laughable
This boss fight made me fall in love with this game and it only got better from there
LMAO 😂😂 58:00 Oh man… I feel you Bro.
The Sea Spider kindof establishes the game's rules. 1. You can't stay airborne, you need your energy to replenish- and enemies have an easy time shooting something floating 2. Jumping is a dodging action (like QB) that only costs energy when the booster is used (not during the jump unless on treads) 3. The audible warning comes before the dodge window. Most attacks in this game track frightening well, so dodge windows are much tighter to the actual movement. Similar to MHR:Sunbreak. Really forces you to slow down and play more deliberately.
I love how when the game launched everyone hated melee builds but now everyone is picking up on how strong melee builds are.
I would think you need more fire power for some bosses...Max digs his heels into his load and suffers more than he should. Boss fight looked fun and that music for Balteus is great!
Ahh yes! He said the magic words at 17:58 !
Will Max ever figure out missile multi lock?
since everyone sharing their build.
imma share mine. Whip weapon , Minigun to force enemy use their booster and 2 grenade launcher shoulder for damage. work like a charm for me.
Nice. I went with laser lance, pile bunker, grenade launcher and shotgun. Mini bosses and even a good number of bosses absolutely melt under assault boost-> kick-> charged laser lance-> charged pile bunker. The shotgun is just there if a little extra stagger is needed.
When does Max start pressing triangle in the garage? So many important stats are hidden behind the expanded menu prompt, it’s necessary to build good AC’s.
Tank legs are great for high-toughness, heavily armed setups that use shoulder cannons or other weapons with strong recoil.
They tend to be slower and not be as good at aerial combat (though there is a “high mobility” tread leg piece that is fast while providing great stability).
Not only are the bubble guns really cheap, they are an absolute shield eater. I watched someone else's playthrough and the bubble guns devour shields with ease.
It took 3 sessions for me to beat Balteus. It was a tough fight but I never got frustrated and I couldn't wait to restart it when I lost. That win was so satisfying. I used the 2 pulse grenade launchers and 2 pulse rifles.
*Screams at the screen* Dodge when you hear the beep!
I think I face palmed when Max went all in when the boss only has a bit of health left BUT a chunk of shield left and then he proceeds to die lol
I really feel like Max is going to come out the other side of this game feeling like he did about Sekiro.
That would be ironic af given this game was directed by the same guy that directed Sekiro
@@bruhder5854 Maybe he's feeling better about it in recent streams, I'm not sure, but these first two VODs seem to be on a very similar enjoyment-to-frustration pipeline to when he went through Sekiro.
Ahh, the early game humbling boss. Im pretty sure I had the bazooka and the more powerful lazer sword (the one Max started this fight with) but Balteus beat my ass for like an hour and change. And Im starting love looking for these "Max facts" i.e some shit he just makes up in time of losing or just not having read something. My favorite this early in the ep was "wondering if back dashing has some invulnerability" just before he gets nuked, backdashing , from that shield discharge attack. But this boss had me seeing ghosts too, lol. That fire sweeping shit was a nightmare till I figured out to stay in his grill.
That boss pissed me off to the point that I had no choice but to be cheap …tank +vertical missiles= chaos
Once you reach new game + and new game ++ these fights become trivial,I'm on my second playthrough and my plasma missile and Gatling gun setup shredded this mech
Maeterlinck was one of the only fights to give me trouble in the arena.
I don't know why she's randomly so hard, and placed so low.
It's not that the Sea Spider is easily stunned, it's that Max's starting loadout against it is all explosives, and they have the highest impact.
They do have the lowest direct hit bonus to stunned targets though, and all of his stuff has long cooldowns, so when he does stun it he doesn't have much to capitalize on the stuns.
But contrary to what new players might start to think, you aren't doing zero damage to enemies that aren't staggered.
I don’t think he really gets the acs strain thing at all. The amount of time I see him back off when his enemy is staggered, even though he’s got a grenade round ready to go, is pretty crazy.
So idk if I missed it Max said he was gonna ng++ after this playthrough. Is he? I hope so so he can see more of the world/"happenings"
Also please someone just slip him a mention on how R3 works. Him just constantly turning it on and off and then being like "why" 😭
Chaingun got me through so many hard parts of the game. I laughed when he said it was “alright”
I feel like resetting when the fight starts to not go your way is missing out on the big "one HP and a dream" moments. My first time fighting the Sea Spider I got bitch slapped with zero repair kits and thought "whelp, that's the end of this run" and I still took out the last third of its health bar and won. You never know if you're gonna come out clutch.
Fun fact. Your AC:s auto-aim is substantially worse if you have hard lock-on. Controlling the camera yourself while harder actually makes your auto-aim way better. You will learn to use it more when your enemies start getting faster and faster.
Balteus: The Great Equalizer.
Margit has returned in mech form.
Okay the Balteus is already a badass looking mech and the thumbnail makes it took cooler
How?
KAINONAUT is really talented!
1:51:33 Looks like we got us a double-wielding bubble baby
Balteus is a lot easier of you use the little pulse gun as it deletes his shield real quick otherwise its a hard skill check
I went in no main gun and sword with shoulder missiles, took me like an hour and a half to win like that
Yup max that pretty much armored core in a nut shell. You blow in the wall of an important part of the city then the next mission you're defending the hole you just blew in it lol
Genius business plan!
Thumbnail is so cool
In the sea Spider, weapons that halt you movement usually get you killed
I swear as soon as I got the red square being the indicator for the stagger rocket I destroyed this dude but he definitely had me stuck for a minute