Demon Phaleg, Lord Of Jank

Take a shot every time I try to guard an attack that doesn’t hit me.

So the final Phaleg fight just dropped, and watching people deal with it is pretty interesting. Like most content that’s supposed to be hard in this game, it’s incredibly vulnerable to cheese, but it was still kinda neat to work on it for a while.

If you’re looking for a casual clear, here are some things to be aware of as a Hunter:

• You can guess-block a lot of patterns with relative safety just by holding Forward and tapping Guard to refresh your Just Guard window.
• If you’ve got PP to spare, you can manually Guard out of your Charge Parrying window for an airtight defense. You fucking scrub.
• Phaleg’s launcher kick, command grab, and stun bullet are all slower than you think they are, even if you take this into account.
• You do not have time to manually heal, except at the start of phase 2. Do not try.
• If you’re Automate, carry nothing but Trimates. Burn Guard helps a lot for survival here. Iron Will and Healing Guard is the cheesiest way of getting through this if you just want the SG.

If you’re looking for a clean fight, here’s some of Phaleg’s jank you’ll need to know:

• Phaleg’s launch kick is a mess. The main hit will whiff at anything but point-blank range, unless it doesn’t: there’s a secondary hit that comes out super late, with a really weird hitbox. This is probably intended to be the launch followup, but it can hit you well after the initial kick has whiffed. This seems more likely to hit you at max range.
• Wave kicks (the forward-lunging ones) don’t actually have a physical hitbox: it’s just the wave. You can stand point-blank and never get hit. If she does this at round start, it’s a good opportunity to activate Sacrifice Bite.
• Some of Phaleg’s attacks are too quick to be successively guarded. Launch kick is the biggest offender (if you guard it point-blank, the explosion afterwards can miss you), but the phase 2 flame waves are also sort of subject to this. Charge Parrying through these situations is probably the best way to get damage.
• I use lock-on in the above video because I’m lazy as fuck, but it costs me Brave Stance bonus in a few situations (and whiffs half an Ignite Parry once). Unlocking for precise Ignite Parry positioning is probably worth. Experiment with opportunities to air guard, since grounded Ignite Parry moves forward and is a gigantic pain in the ass to hit the right side with.
• Sometimes Phaleg decides to run directly at you at round start instead of going for the explosive ground slam…thing. I have no idea what triggers this, but Step Jumping directly backwards seems to bait her into using the “right” attack most of the time.
• SOMETIMES ATTACKS EAT YOUR JUST GUARD BECAUSE SEGA HATES MELEE. Err towards guarding early to avoid multi-hit attacks chipping you out.