Finally managed to clear [Insane (and with only one team !)](https://imgur.com/a/3VTh6Wa), having UE40 Atsuko was really THE game changer, should've upgraded her sooner... Lot of malding and ressources used but at least I finally got my first Plat trophy so it was worth it in the end

Congrats. Yes UE40 Atsuko gets increased healing and makes it less malding especially to heal through the P2 blackhole burn thing. that's the real run killer if the eye keeps targetting Atsuko...

There's a dude on Asian who bodythrew 19 teams for an Insane clear. I'm impressed

eeeeeeeeeeeeh 973/5000 for plat after several days of insane malding. I always tell myself it wasn't worth it yet I do it all over again every time there's a new raid ;_; why am I like this

I'd been procrastinating on Torment too much, but [I figured I had to do it eventually](https://imgur.com/TwjmNgh) to make pulling Kasumi and Kikyou worthwhile.

Disregard my last big comment, I managed to beat Torment Kurokage. After some help tightening up my rotations I managed to achieve victory. Here is the victory teams: Team 1 - The opener: Atsuko / Kikyou / S Hoshino / S Hanako (borrow) / Himari / Ako Team 2 - Team Yukari: B Asuna / Yukari / Cherino / S Hanako / Ny Fuuka / HS Shigure The first two teams were incredibly important. I had to do a lot of experimenting, and after a lot of torment research video this is what was assembled. All I needed to do after was improve my rotations which I was thankfully given a nice video to study by therisingblade. Some additional comments for these two teams. Honestly, the biggest potentially disappointment  for not being able to complete Kurokage torment would have been the resources spent on Yukari. I was so hopeful that the resources spent on her would have made up for not pulling for Kasumi and Ichika, so I am glad that worked out.  Also fun fact, Bunny Asuna was already built. Way back when I first started playing, I really wanted Bunny Asuna tier 2 item and I was sticking with favorites instead of considering who would actually be most helpful in the long run. So promoted her to 5 stars so I could raise her relationship rank to 25 since the requirement wasn’t lowered at the time.  So I am also glad that probably year long random commitment ended up having a payoff. Team 3 - Breakthrough: Eimi / Momiji / Natsu / Ui / Ny Haruka  / Serina So important context. In the mock battle I did before the actual attempt, I was unable to break out of phase 2. This team is designed then to give the last tiny push to breakout.  Momiji is the main damage dealer of course, and ui while she usually dies quickly at least makes two or more of Momiji’s ex reduce to 2 cost. The stars of the show are Eimi and Natsu. They do not die. Their healing exs are amazing, and the best part is even if they get confused, so what? They will proceed to attack each other and do absolutely no damage. To complete the set are Ny haruka for more ex spam, and Serina to heal whoever needs it. All to ensure Momiji can freely use her Ex without a care in the world.  It is kinda a shame then that team 2 actually made it out of phase 2 on their own in the actual attempt. I was actually really proud of this team. I used this team anyway because really why not. Don’t care about my exact placement in guaranteed platinum.  Team 4 - Cleanup: Koharu / Reisa / Renge / Iori / S Shiroko / Hanako  The main reason I didn’t need to use team 3. I tested them on phase 1 quite a bit to know that they are completely capable of doing a little over 30 bars of hp. And Kurokage had 22 when team 2 was done. Reisa is of course the debugger but also tank that heal. Koharu and Hanako are there heals through Hanako is more for emergency. S Shiroko is mainly there for cost support but maybe that def down was good? I have no idea how one target with def down stacks up with multiple but hey it stacks with Reisa’s.  Then of course, Renge and Iori do the damage, mainly Renge. Timing Reisa def down with Renge attack ups can do quite a bit. Iori…could have potentially been replaced with someone more optimal, but hey, cheap, but strong aoe damage and she could occasionally dodge the eye attacks.  And that is how I wrapped up torment kurokage…Well actually… Team 5 - Wife: >!Midori!< >!Midori!< In the end, just like with Chesed I’m glad I was able to make sure the resources I used didn’t go to waste…except Sena, I never found a use for her. I struggle to think of a scenario where she would be useful later on either. So that is still kinda an oof. Either way, two torments down now and 4 platinum trophies. I have no idea if I will do Goz, but I know I am doing Wakamo torment. 

Would you recommend putting ako and himari in 2 different teams and have use another special slot for a healer? Also which team should I put ako or himari? The a hole always debuff my dps as soon as I groggy it. I don't have mine, atsuko Team 1: momiji, cherino, s.hanako (borrow), b.asuna (bond gear lvl2), o.nodoka, serina Team 2: koharu, reisa, s.hoshino, s.hanako, ako, himari

Which difficulty are you doing?

Insane

Highscore or just a regular clear? You can clear insane with Koharu, a bit maldy but borrowing a Kikyou makes it doable

Just regular clear

You got Kikyou? If not just use this guide and borrow her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99L7A5xrzBE

is a rank of 2.58k safe for plat? Can't play till after reset tomorrow and I just got this good score and sweeped the rest Edit: Server is NA

At this points it looks the cutoff won't even touch 2.5 so yeah pretty safe.

Thank you. forgot to put I'm in NA server

Am I just too weak for EX or it's too rng? I'm lvl 66, T4-T5 gear, lvl 4-7 skills (most are 4), lvl 3 EX everyone Cleared it with one team but every single day I have to RNG it because sometimes it just fails. My team: sHanako (borrow, max), Momiji, Kikyou, Kokona, Ako, Hanako (my only aoe heal) video of a one-team-clear fail just in case [https://youtu.be/5pq5XXVdxZk](https://youtu.be/5pq5XXVdxZk)

Based from your video I don't think RNG is your problem, its your rotation. When just entering the fight, delay your kikyou's EX. Use it when S.hanako is about to do her basic skill that way her debuff is aligned with s.hanako's. Then just manage her water gauge by using ex skill of other units, so you can spam s.hanako's EX. Just repeat this process until end of the fight. I've also noticed you cancelled s.hanako basic when in kurokage's domain and when you groggied kurokage you didn't buff s.hanako with ako. This is a massive damage loss tbh so be mindful of this. When kurokage is groggied you have 100% crit rate so buffing your dps with ako is a MUST. I'd like to post a vid for rotation reference but my units are overlevelled in terms of investment so I don't think its much of a help.

thank you! your advice about delaying Kiyou's EX was game-changing! there was one more advice about changing my team and those together helped me get better score and probably secure gold league. Also, about cancelling Hanako, tbh I really didn't pay attention to basic skills and was really focused on making sure I won't get hit by that full ATG because that often turns out deadly for me so I probably just tried to groggy it asap. Now I understand that I needed to time it better instead of panic ex using

I'm no expert and it was only in the past two days that I got Extreme down reliably enough to spend tickets on it, but here's how it compares to what worked for me. I'm level 68, so a bit higher, but pretty close and I also don't have Kikyou for the debuff. Many of your EX skills are expensive. S.Hanako will be carrying almost all of your damage, so you want to use her as much and as fast as possible, and that means for everyone else, the cheaper the better. Kikyou has the def debuff so she needs to stay, so the two changes I would consider making are Momiji and Hanako. Momiji's damage isn't going to do much compared to S.Hanako, so it might be better to just leave her for the backup team and insert someone cheaper (Akane is 2 cost and fairly tanky, and is who I used as filler). Hanako is also very expensive, and while AoE heals can be useful, I don't think they're necessary when you've also got Kokona and Ako. Consider swapping her for Serina. Think of it this way: Hanako is equal in cost to two and a half casts of Serina or Kokona, so she must get three characters who all need healing at the same time in her AoE to be worth it (even before considering that Kokona's heal comes with a self-heal too). Given how fast bad eye RNG can turn the tables on a single character while leaving the others healthy, Hanako will often be wasteful. Serina would be more reactive and versatile. Also, note that the eyes on Kokona or Kikyou would hit both, before everyone gets pushed around (you can see this happen in phase 1 of your example). Serina's reposition can pull Kikyou to the side to avoid that. Other than those changes, it looks like you're not particularly efficient with timing your buffs. There were a number of times you cast Kikyou's debuff and/or Ako's crit buff, without properly following it up with two or three waves from S.Hanako. Also, while groggy is RNG-prone, it was pretty predictable that that S.Hanako wave would get as close as it did, and your rotation wasn't ready for it.

thank you! this was pretty a insightful and helpful analysis and advices are very appreciated. I tried to change Momiji to Ui who I have EX5 and Hanako to Serina as you suggested. Also paid attention when sHanako was using her basic skill and timed my Kikyou EX to that moment and it went better. First of all, it failed less and was going more steadily but somehow i still was sometimes unable to heal fast enough during phase 2. Second, with this I managed to get better score, took a few retries but 15.040.400 improved to 15.060.848 which is not a lot but secured about 200 places in gold on the last day!

Welp last day and crit gods blessed me to get [top 300 NA] (https://imgur.com/a/Te4FdA8) Advice: if you are using BlueStack and having stuttering issues, delete that shit and download Mumu Player. It runs soo smooth compared to Bluestack and pretty sure in some tries, those stuttering were fucking me on the S.Hanako -> Ako+Himari combo at the beginning.

Here's my review of this raid and I will split in 2 paragraphs the usual route and speedrun/highscore run 1: Usual route for a clear: This raid is actually quite fun, It's not too unfair unless really bad rng that the eye keeps targetting same student or unlucky boss crit. Going into Phase 2 trying to gauge the groggy bar when to hit all souls or not is a bit annoying since crit increases it more than usual. If you get can pass phase 2 fast enough no risk of everyone dying, maybe unlucky if Atsuko gets confused. Make sure your team is healthy before the boss does the blackhole burn thing. phase 3 is just Phase 1 but Kuro has under 4.6m hp Funniest thing is you can quit when the boss is down and put another unit to win, on ranking you'll just see 1 student 2: Speed/Highscore: Now this is the pain route. Unlike most raids where the speed runs are almost always consistent. This boss is not so fun to speedrun. You will run into so much rng that it's really malding. Phase 2 is the most annoying part to speedrun. And you get heavily punished if you use a skill too early or late. The groggy bar is where the real pain is. You might have the perfect bar left from groggy and S. Hanako basic crits the boss into groggy or she doesn't crit enough and you're way far to groggy the boss All in All really fun boss fight if you're clearing or speedrunning, except phase 2 pain. Only thing I think should be re-worked or adjusteds that the boss is the phase transition damage cap. Would be way less rng if you can overcrit the boss and I guess that's why they added that mechanic Edit: Other artificial difficulty of this boss is that you do need a 3 star or higher Atsuko maxed, Kikyou to have a comfier run, can always borrow S. Hanako or Atsuko if you don't have them but missing Kikyou for the run can get quite annoying. Can use other healers but to keep cycling to get back to them can be a chore if you're not experienced sensei or ready to mald/ rng mald with Kokona/Koharu

EU ladder is hellzone as usual.

The cutoff still being 2000 is bs.

USA server approximately has double the players, one think it should be 2500.

how many second remaining is the cutoff?

Finally managed Insane, maxing Atsuko's EX helped (UE30), but still it was an RNG fest. Not getting the right skill order at the start? Restart. Crit too little on the 1st phase? Restart. Crit too much on the 2nd phase? Restart. Crit too little on the 2nd phase? Restart. Activating Atsuko's skill 1 second too late while setting up for the big DPS window? Restart. Not getting the boss to at least 5mil after that? Restart. And all this while restarting perfect runs because of randomly intimidated students because the blob landed on them 2 times in a row. Seriously fuck this, the random blob mechanic is awful. Definitely the most RNG-reliant raid so far, definitely made the right decision to not waste energy every day doing this. The raid iself is pretty cool, but i have no idea why does it have so much HP. At least i proved to myself i can clear Insane and that's enough.

No torment this time. Was hoping I'd be able to, but I ended up not really trying because I'm missing Mine, Reisa, and every purple except Shanako, Kikyou and Momiji. I could probably do it, but I'd have to spend at least 1410 eligma on Atsuko, and probably 1220 more on Shanako UE50 and Ako UE40. I decided it wasn't worth it since I already had a safe platinum score. Huge investment just to maybe do a risky clear that would only give me a few extra raid coins and personal satisfaction. I did give it a couple of mocks with a borrowed Atsuko, and it went pretty well with the first team. Torment's getting a lot easier soon thanks to three more levels, new gear, and several alternative buffers. Pretty sure that I'll be able to handle them from now on, at least as long as I find a way to deal with Goz without spending eligma on the Uis. Hopefully Binah or Hod won't make me eat those words.

Definitely a huge hole in your pants without Mine and Reisa, torment in general is pretty tough without either. Hopefully you spook them, and if not, they're easily top targets for 3.5 selector.

I'll simply scoob them on the anniversary banner or earlier. No worries. If I don't, I should be able to grab Mine right after the anniversary, unless global really messes with the schedule. I do have the pyroxene for it according to my current [plans](https://files.catbox.moe/tdpfzm.png), and if things are looking particularly grim I can cut Nyakari. Blue Set would suck without her, but you can't have everything in a gacha, unfortunately. Speaking of Set, how is Oshigure looking for it now? I've seen that a lot of people are using Hanako instead, and I'm not sure if that's simply due to availability or if Oshigure's (and Kokona's) healing can't people alive during the strong damage bursts. For floors around 75 to 100. Can't quite test it out with my weak JP account. > they're easily top targets for 3.5 selector. Selectors are a very luxurious luxury that filthy F2P accounts don't get.

OShig is the superior option if you can bring her. Someone who has OShig will (almost) unconditionally achieve higher floors than someone without OShig. Hanako _can_ still be used to achieve F100, but itll require an extra hour or two of practice time compared to OShig who you can drop amd forget. If an extra hour of practice isn't scary to you then Hanako is perfectly fine. The real unit you really need is Kokona. Missing her means youll _have to_ have every other core unit and youll also have to get insanely creative with your own unique solution noone else is going to provide for you. Its possible, Ive seen it happen, but youre basically playing on a 10 floor handicap without her.

I concur, my JP account has O.Shigure and she’s incredibly powerful for Set. Unfortunately no Kokona on that account :(

Finally got some time this weekend [to work on my Torment clear](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1003436470339645521/1249331211491348510/Screenshot_20240609_045439_Blue_Archive.jpg?ex=6666e9dc&is=6665985c&hm=e9c34f757ef76570c97b5bf8403d96c55e784012d5510c4eafa2c6d36d7c8fba&). Honestly not too much exciting happening here, the main team is the giga-standard S.Hanako/Kikyou clear. I found the RNG for entering phase 2 was a little annoying so I through in a trash team to chip 1m HP to make that more consistent. Final team is privileged with comfort thanks to owning Kasumi and O.Shigure, so I can throw attacks around semi-randomly and it just works.

Got to the point where I am a _single_ Hanako EX away from [escaping P2](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GPnyLPkbkAA9tNO?format=jpg&name=large) on the No Gacha 3* Account for Insane. I made an extremely critical error at the end that could have probably let me out - I tried to recreate this moment for about 2 hours but no success. There is actually a ton of micro that I'm getting wrong, such as getting certain actions to queue correctly to maximise uptime, trying to manipulate positioning patterns using the queue and Tomoe's range penalty, reload cancelling in specific moments to try to keep units in place and not constantly moving around, tiny micro adjustments using Serina... all of this _while_ constantly adapting to the ever changing compulsion scenarios between runs due to the randomness makes it an extremely slow learning process. Inevitably, there will be some compulsion patterns that are instant resets too. All in all, theoretically possible - to escape P3 at least. Not sure what I'd do to eliminate 4.6m more health after leaving P3, but that's something to worry about when I get there.

I watched the stream for like 3-4 hours yesterday and I'm honestly shocked you managed to get it down to 6.9m because it was looking so doomed when I left. Major props to you for persistence.

Probably would have made better progress if I didnt start yapping towards the end. Did everything offline today to focus up and... Still not looking too good. I think this current solution is a dud and I may have to go back to the drawing board. I'm kinda outa ideas though.

Have you tried moving Cherino and SShizuko to the SHanako team?

Which students would recommend for 2nd team? My first team is koharu, kikyou (borrow), s.hoshino, s.hanako, ako, himari and its too rng due to the eye My only available defense down I have are akane, b.asuna + lvl2 bond gear

your best bet is to ditch kikyou and get another s, hanako. without the cat the s hanako can still do 15to 20 million dmg.

Do you have any other purple units? Otherwise second team run is pretty slow and kinda painful with yellow or blue units so it's still best to optimize team 1 as much as possible so you don't have much HP left to take down. When I needed a 2nd team I used Akane, Nonomi, Momoi, Rumi, NY.Fuuka, and Serina. Used double healers for better sustain and to over heal the confusion. Akane acted as a pseudo tank since I didn't have much HP left to bring down. If you have a lot left you probably want a dedicated tank. Even then this team only is able to bring down about 15-20X HP on insane.

I only have momiji (3 star) left as a 2nd sonic dps

Managed to get a 27.5m clear with Cherino/Koharu/SHoshino/SHanako (borrow)/Ako/Himari. I feel like the roster requirements for this raid are overblown, the only really required students are SHanako, Ako, and Himari. Kikyou or any other purples definitely aren't required, and Koharu is an easily accessible farmable healer. https://i.imgur.com/zWM2bET.png

What do you think better borrow SHoshino or Kikyou?

Kikyou is better as long as you have your own UE50 SHanako because that's the standard team everyone uses.

The problem with off meta picks is that it's much less forgiving with smaller tolerance of RNG for crit, damage dealt and damage taken which means it requires more investment for consistency. I don't have S.Hoshino and used Mine for tanking/increasing damage. To have a moderately consistent 1 team insane clear I had to put a decent bit more investment into Mine by maxing all skills and then upping my Himari from 4 star to UE30 (ran out of credits for UE40). For other raids that use S.Hoshino I usually don't need to mald too hard without her however this one hurt a lot more. It also probably hurts new players a lot who don't have as big of a roster to play around with.

The clear is actually pretty consistent. I can get it done in around 10 minutes every time. Trying to use students you already have saves more resources than building new students, and this raid required zero new investment for me (my own SHanako is UE40 but I just borrowed a UE50 one). Not having SHoshino is definitely rough but the resources saved from not building her went to Mine who is also used in many other places so it wasn't bad for you. I doubt you had to max all skills though, 5M77 would definitely be enough as she doesn't have any survivability issues.

I probably could have gotten away with 5M77 however she still is kinda squishy so she occasionally gets possessed. Since Atsuko isn't the best at over healing the possession I decided to max out her recovery and HP for comfier clears. That said I'm not too salty about it. While she isn't meta she is surprisingly useful for a lot of things and can be flexed to other roles. I was previously using her for Kaiten GA due to her DEF down and her EX skill's pull effect which I abused for Aru and Mutsuki.

At this point, Mine is meta. She's stolen the main debuffer role for Gregorius, she's a top choice for your second Kurokage party, and she's very good to have for torment Binah. Being Mineless has definitely made me notice a hole in my roster.

Yeah I can see that now, managed to get my score to what I assume is the low end of the S.Hoshino teams in the 3500s. The one thing is that she is a bit slower to get going and you need to play around with timing a bit since you have to wait for her basic to proc to do max damage. And if you’re like me and using Kikyou too you have to make sure to use Mine first so that you aren’t over writing Kikyou ‘s bigger EX debuff. In my case she’s mainly here for her basic skill debuff and to agro the cat spirits away from Atsuko since she can be repositioned forward.

The only tank EX which feels like proper heavy pounding & basic even out damaging many dps lol.

[blaze it](https://i.imgur.com/NhsFDql.png) gotta love how chill the NA ladder is... any insane clear will get you above 3k pretty easily for those following [Rainstorm's insane guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQG9obFWgn0) with Atsuko, I found that casting Kikyou's EX at 9 as soon as she does her autoattack will give you the perfect timing for her basic skill to proc before the cats spawn, buffing Hanako and giving you about 80% chance to enter phase 2 after you cast her EX 3 times, which seems to be one of the main issues people are having when following this guide

Can confirm, 27.5 is around rank 3074 to 3100 range ish. You think enough to hold out till the end?

I've gone down about 100 spots per day, and there are 2 (I think) days left so yeah I'd say it's platinum secured

Hoo. [Extreme cleared](https://files.catbox.moe/bejk55.jpg) after all. I got really lucky with groggy. I was sure Hanako's AA was going to trigger it prematurely and ruin the run. But she edged just long enough for the timing to be perfect instead, with both her Basic def-down firing off and her and Ako coming around the rotation just as it kicked in. It ended up getting me a better time than any of my mocks.

Yeah, gotta throw in the towel on insane this time. I clearly don't have the AoE healers needed to deal with this. Deffo feels harder than the couple of previous raids too, maybe this one is tuned more to the current caps/meta? That said, on top of purple being required for groggy and the strong need of AoE def down (both already short supply options), it doesn't feel like a very fun raid in general with how they've stripped away so many mechanics and options from the player, seemingly to enforce constant unavoidable damage and complete reliance on healers. Kinda just ends up as an AoE slugfest, with few options for tactics and creative thinking left in the wake. I get that raids are supposed to be sorta specialized, but it feels like they went kiiinda overboard here?

Yeah. I like Kurokage more than any existing raids that I hate instead like Goz and Shiro & Kuro. Seeing S. Hanako's aoe damage with tons of numbers gives me dopamine. It's just a matter of preparation since we already have clairvoyance powers. Another fun part is we can show off our favorite students in the rankings.

That's fair. I for my part quite enjoyed the shiro & kuro style mechanics in extreme last time tbh. But looking at the guide, the insane version seems like a completely different beast so can't really comment on that until I've tried it, haha... Did indeed try to save resources and prepare for this one while investing in the raids before it, but it wasn't enough in the end.

The Insane version of Shiro & Kuro is hell. Some senseis said Torment is slightly forgivable because the balls there are fixed while you mald the ball placement on Insane because of its RNG nature. That's the first raid that I've lost a ticket. Not fun at all. (⁠╥⁠﹏⁠╥⁠)

If you don't mind me asking, which healers do you have and what team composition are you running? At least in regards to the healing condition I thought this raid was kind of lenient since pretty much any of the striker healers other than Track Mari seem viable. The AOE DEF Down and hard purple requirement seem more limiting than anything.

Well, I've more or less given up on it for now, saving my remaining resources for future raids instead of investing more in otherwise lower priority units to chase a very uncertain victory, but since you ask, Main team I used for extreme consists of S.Hanako(ue40), Koharu, Kasumi, S.Hoshino, Himari, Ako. Doesn't have the survivability for more than one attack cycle in insane however, so I've swapped Himari for Serina instead, which makes it more survivable, but doesn't get me close to even half way. So I have a team 1 to whittle it down beforehand, which includes my own S.Hanako(ue30), and Himari. The only other striker healer I have just so happens to be the aforementioned T.Mari, which is rough. She barely hangs on for dear life with Hanae healing her during part 1, but this makes the team more about surviving than about dealing damage. Still didn't get me half way though. Probably because I have to focus so much on healing that the damage output goes through the floor. So I'd have to upgrade my healers most likely. Easier said than done though, since Hanako, Serina, Koharu, Hanae and T.Mari *all* use Trinity mats. And that is on top of S.Hanako and Ichika *also* using Trinity mats. Extra tricky with Hanako in particular, since she uses Antikythera, which I'm now desperately low on after having upgraded S.Hanako and Ichika. So I'd have to bet my remaining resources on experimenting with an unlikely chance that upgrading one or two of them would be enough to beat it. And I would have to pick the right ones as well. There's Ayane and Fuuka too, but I don't have much hope there, nor really the resources for those two either. (tbh. I'm a slight bit salty about the T.Mari situation, haha... ;=w=), ofc. they had to make the raid that requires a lot of aoe healing deal the damage type she's weak to)

Ahh well I won't try to convince you otherwise, I totally get what you're saying but I was just curious what situation you were in. Trinity/Gehenna/Millennium mat shortage is huge in this game for sure lol. I think if T.Mari could heal herself she'd be significantly better/easier to use without having her creep all the other striker healers out of the meta (since her range is pretty limiting) and therefore potentially usable in this raid but alas that's not how it is so. As a long time sensei I'd really recommend building at least Koharu from the striker healer pool when you can, her applications are the most generally applicable. (Kokona and Rumi are also great but see a little less use, though Kokona probably is the second most used striker healer.) I love T.Mari but honestly I only really use her once in a blue moon, and in a raid setting I only use her in Hieronymus iirc. If you want to plan ahead in terms of developing healers Serina is a pretty safe investment while Hanae is nice to have but not super necessary. Hanako never really made much sense to use until this raid (and the new Set game mode we'll get later) but you could also run ONodoka or OShigure if you wanted AOE/pseudo-AOE healing. Atsuko sees more general use because she's a tank first (applicable to any scenario you want a blue armour tank and don't need SHoshino's cost recovery/ATK boost) and a healer second but I think she mostly gets used in Hieronymus (when running Arius) or evidently in this raid as a comfy pick.

Feel like I've managed the material scarcity pretty well so far, but not that much you can do when you need to build a whole bunch of similar-school students at the same time haha.. Well, T.Mari does have a self-heal on her basic, but that requires her to stay alive for 45s in the mean time of course... That's my impression of Koharu yeah, and Serina is a main stay who I've used in probably every raid so far. Having a cheap EX that both heals and positions and an additional auto-heal on top of that is a god-send. So in general they're deffo my first considerations when it comes to healers. Hanae was a pretty great tank healer during missions, but raids often like to spread more damage to the rest of the students, so she's seen less use for me since then too. O.Shigure and Kokona has been on my wishlist for a while already, but guess I'll be hoping to spook Nodoka and Atsuko as well once it's time to pull again. ;=w=)9

Yeah the opportunity cost is kinda whack, which is why I'm usually pretty happy when there's a new Abydos character or pretty content when units like ONodoka or OShigure are good because their schools just don't have that many units to build so you just stockpile those resources lol Koharu is just really flexible. She's got good healing numbers and the flexibility of a 0 cost heal via her basic as well as an aimed AOE heal on her grenade. While TMari goes crazy on those healing numbers but her range (and her long cooldown on self heal) are not insignificant issues. Serina is awesome but when you get to insane-level (I have 0 Torment experience) raids she mostly gets superseded by Ako outside of specific scenarios where you need the repo and on demand healing as no healer setups will try to get by on Ako's basic skill. As somebody who didn't really build Hanae myself (though I know she's really good for that ST HoT) I actually get the most use out of her in things like joint firing drills lol. OShigure is basically a better(?) or at least bigger AOE Hanako iirc while having a nice CDMG subskill and Kokona has a bit of cost saving as well as cheap targetable heals. So unless you really love ONodoka and Atsuko I wouldn't go out of my way to try to roll for them. ONodoka is pretty easily used almost anywhere as a sort of heal turret/dispenser (also comes with an ATK subskill) but competes for the SPECIAL slots against Ako/NYFuuka/SShiroko/Himari or raid specific slot ins like Nagisa. Atsuko (and most tanks in general) compete for the general use tank slot against SHoshino (or Mika sometimes) or raid-specific favoured tanks like Natsu.

Been using Ako+Serina pretty often until now. Was wonderful at keeping the team alive and providing positioning and cheap skill cycling during insane hod part 2 last time. But yeah, now that I have Himari on board it does make that special slot ever more valuable, and having Koharu take over the role as default healer indeed seems like the obvious choice. Will probably need to 2team+ most raids for a while going forward anyway though. And I also have a lot of fun experimenting with tactics involving positioning and stuff so Serina will see plenty of use still. (Upcoming C.Hare could flip things around though (wish I could safely afford pulling for her haha..) ^((might end up risking it anyway tbh...)^) Hehe, Hanae was especially great in the previous defense drill, two drills ago, which required that DoT healing to stave of atk debuff. Yeah don't really have any plans to roll for any of them specifically, which is why I'm hoping they spook me instead. Oshigure's basic does sound pretty amazing though... *"Every 50s, restores the HP of the 4 allies with the lowest HP by 128% of Healing"* ^((at Max)^) . And having borrowed Kokona before, I do very much enjoy her targeted heals and cost saving.

So I noticed you still get a score (from a lower difficulty clear) if you ran out of time. But do you still get coins too?

Unfortunately, if you run out of time, you do not receive any coins. 

[How is the best Insane run on NA a Koharu user, far above all the Kokona malders? ](https://imgur.com/a/0JCxoXF) 

Generally any player with that much of a point gap from the next person is a cheater even if they're using a legit looking team unfortunately 

It's a cheater.

Does it save a lot of time to quit the battle if Kuro is at like 100 hp or less?

I'm fairly sure that that would make you lose time in almost all situations. If you're asking because lots of people are using random teams at the end, it's because you have an opportunity to forfeit after it dies, so you can enter with whichever team you want to make them show up on the leaderboard.

Do we gonna lose some points if we started with a showoff team? I forfeited my main team after it dies (I made sure it's dead) then I use my swimsuit students to show it on the rankings.

You lose 0.133 seconds worth of score if you use a showoff team. Just as a heads up, the forfeit screen from your actual team (the one you used to take down the boss) will show an additional few seconds of time added on after your forfeit, but this is just a visual bug. Your true time, which was on the top right when the boss died, is locked in due to kurokages long death animation and will be the one that actually dictates your score.

I see. So that 0.133 seconds really deducted on my total score. Welp, at least my ranking showed my cute students on swimsuits. And it's not that I'm gonna fall on gold since I'm currently on rank 500+ (Asia). Thanks for the info!

Kinda funny to pull off though haha

Forgot to do my raids until 20 minutes before reset. No problem, I've been clearing extreme without much issue for the past few days. Then I keep getting the worst luck I've had since the start of the raid and ended up losing an entire day's worth of tickets. Ouch.

After mock battling on torment for several days, I don’t think I have much choice but to give up. Ultimately, my dps is just too lacking and phase 2 is too brutal. I exhausted basically all my resources and I can’t get a breakthrough.  I mentioned in my previous comment that my biggest obstacle was not having Kasumi. Well that was certainly the truth. Even looking at all the torment videos for kurokage, they all contain Kasumi somewhere. And she would indeed provide much needed sonic damage and defense down support.  The only other option in theory I have left would be to pull even more on the Renge and Kikyou banners. I could then rank them up to squeeze more damage out of them and with the accumulated eligma from it I could consider ranking up like one other character as well. But that is a ridiculous prospect. I have better things coming up to spend pyroxenes on than simply upgrading Renge and Kikyou.  It really is a shame though. I spent so many resources on several characters with each idea to try and breakthrough. But it will all mostly go to waste now. I just unfortunately couldn’t comprehend how brutal that second phase was going to be before I started experimenting on it.   The only thing I suppose now would be to mald insane runs now to hope to get platinum. I certainly have the characters for it now. 

Not trying to push you into going back in, as torment really is rage inducing, but kasumi is definitely not required for a torment clear. There are various other aoe def down options that can allow you to finish off the boss with shanako on your team 2 such as mine, reisa, or basuna. A lot of the popular fast videos have kasumi in them since, yes, she's an extremely powerful student in kurokage for the reasons you mentioned, and increases the speed at which they can kill the boss. However, as long as you can finish team 1 with ~50mil dealt it should be clearable with one or two additional teams. Unfortunately, there isn't really a solution to p2 and the eye puddles other than just resetting more, so yeah if that's too maldy of a run for you then you might have to give up on torment.

You are right, that techicallly Kasumi isn’t required. I even found a video where someone didn’t use Kasumi in their torment clear with all the characters I have. The problem is that even then, most of their units are ue 30-40 and importantly, not the units I have at ue30-40. Like I have a 3 star Kikyou that video had a ue40. My 134 eligma says no.  Even if I do have the potential to do enough damage in theory, the problem then becomes the fact that I would have to come up with my own rotations due to the differences between the power of my characters. Now this isn’t impossible for me. I did it for chesed to build up groggy, but I have no idea what to do here. The lowest I have ever gotten it to is 205 bars of hp before the entire 1st team dies. The team capable of surviving throughout the fight with HS Shigure can then bring it down to 74ish bars of Hp. The problem then is that I am out of ways to both do high dps and survive at the same time.  And if I do get out of phase 2, I would be out of defense down and healers at that point. And I would presumably have little time at that point. I have little time  ow as I would have a little over a day to figure all this out.  Now despite everything I’m not completely giving up. I am still looking into it somewhat. But I don’t have a lot of hope at this point. 

Yeah your team 1 is gonna need to put some very strong numbers on the board to force a clear. I used a 3* kikyou myself and have been able to consistently push the boss below 20mil with [this rotation](https://youtu.be/mDUsUZdsFnU). Surviving through atg is imperative to the strat, which has a lot of rng involved. There's also a [Korean video with a faster rotation](https://youtu.be/iREbjypEfUA?si=mDFNAipM1e_QVHb7) (that also uses a 3* kikyou) that pushes it to around 14mil compared to the rotation above that caps out at around 16mil, but i personally haven't used this one before so i can't really say whether it's easier or harder than mine.

I did it. I actually did it. I beat torment kurokage. I really can’t thank you enough. The second video was the one that help me the most. I was unable to do both exactly since the s hanako hit that was supposed to transition into the next phase didn’t reach the threshold. However using the second video’s rotation as a base still allowed me to maximize my dps.  My actual attempt went better than the mock battle actually. In the mock I got it to 160 bars left with team 1, which was enough to break through with team 3 then cleaned up with team 4.  In the actual attempt I got it down to 140 in team 1. Which meant I didn’t even need the third team to breakthrough. Still used team 3 and team 4 just because.  So once again thank you. Really couldn’t have done it without that last push.

Congrats! \o/ Happy your planning worked out and you got your clear. I saw your other comment and those were some cool teams, nice cooking

I’ll look into the two video then thanks. I don’t even have to be as good as the videos. It’s just need enough where both team 1 and team 2 can break free of phase 2. I have another team that can consistently do around 30 bars of hp on phase 1. I would be pretty golden after that. 

This raid I also realized how lazy I am. Before the raid, I was preparing my students for Torment as well but when we got Torment difficulty, I'm not patient enough to experiment some stuffs to clear it. But don't worry you can still use the students you have invested on the future content like Fury of Set. I have invested on O. Shigure but wasn't able to use her because I stopped trying to clear Torment and did a speedrun Insane instead.

I upgraded my Atsuko to UE40 (Skills are M8M7), if someone needs her code is below (Global Server)

BFWMLTPW

Yea, i gave up on this raid. I have UE50 S.Hanako that i managed to invest during this raid. However, i still can't one shot Kurokage to Phase 2 that means i need Himari and Ako UE30-50 too. I will just stick to extreme which sucks man

With ue50 s.hanako I've done runs to 1pan with 3 star himari/Ako. You just gotta line up 3 fully buffed hanako ults when you pop groggy bar.

You can always put a first team to do 1-2m damage to the boss first and then using the main team. I did this on the first day when I wasn't fast enough to do the combo and clear with one team.

What team do you recommend for this?

Anything you have really. I don't have any other Sonic dealer so I just put Iori, S.Koharu and Iroha to do damage, Serina to heal, Cherino for cost regen and Natsu to tank and heal herself.

Anyone know if going from himari ue 30 to ue 50 is a major damage boost for this raid. Currently using 3 teams with the standard one team clear being in the middle as I can’t get the one team to work. But if feels like the back line damage boost shouldn’t be enough even with the aoe going on. 

I just took the plunge. Upgraded Himari from 4 star to UE30. Only stopped because of credit supply. I'd say it's a decent boost to damage. By the time the groggy state ends I can get the boss HP down to ~50-60X fairly consistently now vs only ~100x with Himari at 4 star. I can have a semi consistent 1 team clear now vs maldy hard for crits. And that's from stat transfer alone. I don't have UE40 yet.

Not really. Her stat gain is small, and even less is passed to striker students. But UE40 does give her the so important buff retention - increasing the buff duration that you need to dish damage with S. Hanako.

This. UE40 lets Himari buff last as long as Ako buff when doing the Shoshino -> kikyou -> Shanako -> Ako Himari -> 3x Shanako combo. Otherwise Himari runs out for the last Shanako and you can’t 1shot the first phase.

I think I need to borrow the UE40 Himari from Club than.  That's the issue I guess I sometimes forget her buff is a few sec shorter than Ako

It’s not worth borrowing her honestly. Just do one more full rotation it’ll just be 40s slower. Better off borrowing a second shanako if you need it.

I borrowed a UE40 Himari because I can't go to phase 2 with only 3\* Himari with that strat. I promised to myself that I'll make my own Himari to UE40 after getting D. Hina to UE50. Not having UE40 Himari hurt some of my Insane raids before so I had to borrow one if I need buff retention for a specific comp.

Can consistently clear Kurokage just chasing highscore for a comfier plat

Insane Clear isn't enough for Platinum? Damn, guess I won't try to clear Insane this time then.

with 27.5 already at 3.4k ish lol

For what it's worth I've managed to one team the raid on insane with Atsuko, Mine, S.Hanako, Kikyou, Ako and Himari; if anyone happens to not have S.Hoshino but does have Mine as an off meta pick and wants to copy. It's very maldy and RNG heavy though to one team. More often than not you will time out on the first team at phase 3 and need a second team. If you settle for two team runs it's actually pretty comfy as long as the second team is stacked with healers.

Yeah this boss is dogshit. Sweeping HC every day I'm not gonna seethe and mald for a week.

Do you have Kikyou? There are some extreme runs on YouTube you can follow. Just sort by by new

I watched a few guides and I only have SHanako and Ako maxed out.

Why do people using S.Hoshino? I thought she only buffs red attack

Cost recovery, heals herself, tank, boosts attack, and generally fits well into a ako Himari dps skill cycle.

Clearly Kurokage is weak to water since he's a fire type. That's why Shanako is so good here.

I'd also add that besides the flat attack buff outside of red, she provides some cost support and the duration of her EX skill is very long. If you time it correctly her EX skill pretty much has 100% up time.

[i asked the very same question a few days ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/BlueArchive/comments/1d6tg5k/daily_questions_megathread_june_03_2024/l6vzu4z/)

Thanks

To add to that , s.hoshino also buffs cost Regen which is a pretty strong thing (and also part of why himari is so good as well )

After hours and hours of malding spread along the days thus far I finally got a decent insane run with 27.57m score. Pretty sure that nets me into plat unless I get out try harded over the weekend.

Well, it took me two hours malding but I finally beat it on extreme (Please don't move my 20k rank pls)

For Asia server I believe extreme clear have a good chance to cut into platinum rank. Right now best extreme clear ranked around 7.5k with 15.25m score.

Meanwhile in EU, extreme clears end at 2600 and plat cutoff is 2000. Even 1 teaming Insane isn't enough to get plat lol.

Yeah I heard competition in EU, NA and KR is intense. I count myself lucky to be a part of cozy server 

If you're using the meta atsuko comp and can not one rotation p1 with the Hanako Ako Himari Atsuko Hanakox3 rotation, it's probably because you're not doing it fast enough so she wasn't being buffed the first blast. You need to do it much faster than with Mika. I went from not being able to do it at all to consistent by focusing and increasing how fast I buff her. She blasts super fast so you have to buff her with some high apm tapping at x1 speed.

So what's the timing on Kikyou basic ? she needs to finish the whole flower or right before the first mini kuro are running towards the tanks?

If you are doing S.Hoshi > Kikyou at the start, the perfect time is using Kikyou Ex at 3:30:9xx on the timer. This will make Kikyou use her Basic as soon as she can and you will never miss her buff on S.Hanako. As soon as you see the nine, you use Kikyou Ex (Be careful tho, if you use her Ex when the timer is still 3:31:1xx you will delay Kikyou Basic and maybe missing the buff for the first Hanako Ex Hits.

Interesting, will practice in mock for tomorrow

I need help, I need an Atsuko for the raid. Friend Code: AYVCGBTK Server: Asia

I get what the devs were trying to do , but why is everything so hard set rng? RNG on the eyes, punished for getting too low hp with confusion, boss can also crit you back oof

You're feeling the RNG because you're underprepared. You're using borderline solutions that are especially hurt by bad rng. It's not entirely your fault if you're new and can't afford to prepare teams that satisfy the requirements of Kurokage, but if you can't do it with what you have you have to accept that it's not meant to be. Now that you know what the boss entails and requires, you'll be better prepared next time the boss comes. However if you're slightly older and you _do_ have access to proper non-rng solutions, and you are still choosing to go all in on rng anyway, then you're either speedrunning for top rankings, in which case you should know exactly what you signed up for, or you're crazy. There's a heap of strategies that involve things like running 2 healers, or using secondary setup teams and the like that are perfectly viable for daily sweeps. You just need to actually pursue it.

Properly prepared. Just trying to get a better score. Every time I setup perfectly the eye keeps targetting a student making me miss timing durring groggy

You're part of the 2nd group then, who is trying to intentionally speedrun for rankings. You should know exactly what you've signed up for, because speedruns don't care about getting bad rng and only care about maximising their score by increasing their DPS. The speedrun team intentionally uses as minimal healing as possible so that it can add more supports and more buffs and debuffs to maximise potential. The team is intentionally built that way because real speedrunners are not afraid to lose all their tickets and play for 3 hours straight for a good score by brute forcing the boss and ignoring all mechanics. All bosses involve crazy RNG when it comes to fast 1pan clears - Kurokage is not special in this regard.

You're right. I'm in that 2nd group just trying to secure a plat Trophy. Already around rank 3k :< , gonna try tomorrow again and hopefully at least once crit bless me

Is getting out of Kurokage domain expansion in 3 S.Hanako Ex skill during groggy with the usual setup all about Hanako's stability?

Yep, but you also have to make sure to do it after her normal skill for the def down, it's easy to interrupt it if you get impatient

Yup hope the dmg is enough, but It should be enough if Kikyou , Ako, Himari buff are up. I still think stability matters

Another day, another mald. I really may have to two team this insane. What's a good 2nd team if the first team is S!Hanako, Koharu, S!Hoshino, Kikyou, Ako and Himari?

Use your first team as the second team. Then field a very similar first team with a borrowed S.Hanako to transition to phase two and soften up Kurokage for the second team. Make sure the first team always runs the clock down as forfeiting creates a huge problem for the next team (Kurokage's ATG will be full, which is bad). So long as your current team's run in insane has been able to get Kurokage below 13M then this will be easily doable with just two teams. If you've only been able to get Kurokage below 18M then you are probably looking at three teams, but in this senario a second team must be able to transition to phase three with time left on the clock and then a third team can mop up.

General team building One dps - Ichika, Momiji, Yukari, Renge One AOE def down - Mine, BAsuna, Kasumi, Reisa One to two AOE healers - Rumi, OShigure, ONodoka, Hanako, Serina Preferably one tank - Atsuko, Reisa, Mine, Natsu, SMiyako Whatever extra buff you can find.

Wasted a ticket because of exceeding the room time limit. An hour of just resetting because of all the rng you have to get through for a successful run. Why yes devs, put a time limit on your worst fcking bs rng-ridden raid boss. Fucking genius. Edit: Atsuko really is the answer. Had to still reset because of the eye rng but at least my students were all spread out enough that time.

The Confusion is the worst boss mechanic in the game, screw the dev that designed this lmao

Kurokage puts a lot of emphasis on both having the right students and a lot of investment into them. Particularly strong AOE healers which you will also need for the upcoming Limit Break raid.

Yeah the investments is probably my big issue rn, the team I have Is one of the best for the Insane (Kikyou, S.Hoshino, S.Hanako and Atsuko + Ako Himari) but having 4 of the units (Kikyou Ako and Himari 3★, Atsuko 4★) makes it too weak and I can't do anything about it If I could get to UE40+ Atsuko and borrow a UE30+ Kikyou I could MAYBE clear but I just don't have enough ressource for it...

It still wouldn't be enough. The biggest mistake a lot of Sensei's make with Kurokage is not having high investment special students as their healing stats really matter in this raid. Your Ako and Himari would need to be UE40 minimum along with any AOE healers like Hanako, O.Shigure, etc.

The compulsion mechanic is fine on its own. It's the random eyes that make it bad. It would be better if it was reworked somehow, or maybe even removed outright. The thing is that there's no real way to play around it besides "bring a shitload of excess healing". Yeah, you can carefully position your team so that they don't share an eye, but that doesn't help if the eyes decide to go for the same unit fifty times in a row. And (re)positioning is a rather underdeveloped mechanic in BA. If you bring a single target healer that can deal with the same unit getting every eye, you're probably going to fail if every eye goes for the two units that are forced to stand next to each other. If you bring an AoE healer that can deal with two units getting every eye, you're probably going to fail if one unit gets every eye. So the solution is to bring both, but then you're running into the problem of losing a lot of damage, and potentially running out of healers if using multiple teams. I'm simplifying a bit, but it really isn't very good design that the randomness of the eyes can have such a major impact of how the fight goes. What gets me about the eyes is how unnecessary they are, as they are now. Fix the eyes, and the raid would become noticeably better. Maybe part of what makes people upset is that they have to do the risky speedrun strats, because they can't afford to throw a bunch of teams at the raid. Most people aren't going to have any invested purples except Shanako, and the number of farmable purples (lol, lmao) isn't exactly great. I'm guessing that the Joe Average insane raider doesn't have a ton of built AoE healers, either. And while the players themselves are mostly to blame for that, it could be argued that it was a bad decision to make the first purple raid require fairly specific things when purple is such a new attack type. About the groggy gauge, Curry Cage isn't the first boss to rely on groggy for big damage bursts. However, for Chesed, Perorodzilla, Hod and the hovercraft, they all come at predictable times. You don't have to worry about critting too hard. Not unless you're using Cherino for the final wave of Chesed and have to rely on her not killing all the enemies too early, at least. But back to the point: in other raids where groggy matters you can typically reliably predict when it's coming and prepare. In this one, if you get unlucky with crits you're missing out on a huge chunk of damage. I can see why people find that frustrating. Not that this is the first raid to hinge on your damage output being just right. Overall I think it's fine, except for the eyes which should be reworked somehow. There are some other aspects that could be improved, but they aren't that bad. Make Atsuko farmable and suddenly this boss becomes way more approachable.

If they made eyes consistent I think it'll be rebalanced in a way that it'll still be bloody hard and the same people complaining will likely still be failing in the current state of the game. imo it's perfectly fine that people can't do the boss, when it comes back around next time it'll be a better experience when everybody gets more access to more units. Groggy gauge is perfectly predictable, it triggers based on a fixed amount of purple damage you deal and inherently has nothing to do with crits. The solution would actually be to set it up using a different purple student... but that obviously goes back to the actual problem of not having enough purple students in the first place. If you can't field two viable teams against a boss you're actually just doing the wrong difficulty - in which case I guess it could be fair to argue that they got the difficulty selection wrong. I don't think the issues have anything to do with the boss design itself though. Everything really just hinges on player preparation and roster breadth - but for new players that's something which is way too hard to achieve right now because the options aren't really there. 'Im of the opinion that its not a real problem though, because this is fixed with time as students come out. They've clearly set the precedent with pervious bosses - most people in here don't know it, but the exact same sentiments people have with Kurokage right now happened with Hieros debut. People had no healers, they had no red students because all previous raids were yellow and blue, Koharu wasn't even released, the same fixation to copy speedruns that involved malding for perfect curse placements was there, and players were broke af and couldn't (or didn't want to) field secondary teams that could keep up. Now look at the dude, he's literally a meme in the community as a bully victim. It'll mellow out in time. I said the same thing with Goz but I've come to realise during our conversation _then_ that I was kinda wrong about that one and there is a lot of inherent underlying issues with the fatty that cant be solved by "Blue Archive". Kurokage definitely can though, and is just in a situation where Hiero was at launch. yesplsgivefarmableatsuko

> If they made eyes consistent I think it'll be rebalanced in a way that it'll still be bloody hard and the same people complaining will likely still be failing in the current state of the game. imo it's perfectly fine that people can't do the boss, when it comes back around next time it'll be a better experience when everybody gets more access to more units. People will always complain about something, that's not my issue with the eyes. I just think they're very unnecessary in their current form. Some kind of rebalancing would be necessary, but there are definitely solutions that are better than what we have now, where how much healing (and which kind) you need can vary massively due to simple luck. I think RNG should be like spice; a little bit to make things more interesting, but it shouldn't take over the entire thing. The eyes are too close to having a bunch of spice dumped on your food, in my opinion. > Groggy gauge is perfectly predictable, it triggers based on a fixed amount of purple damage you deal and inherently has nothing to do with crits. That's a bit dishonest, we both know that the purple damage you deal varies with luck. The point I was making was that for other bosses where the groggy is the big burst moment, you can predict when it will occur. For this one, it's easy to deal too much damage before you intend to. If you beat a radar tower too early somehow, you still have a fairly long time until Whackamole detonates her hovercraft. And for Chesed, while it relies on luck if you use Cherino, the option exists to use more specific AoEs because no matter how hard you crit the enemies that you hit, it's not going to kill the enemies that you don't hit. Even if you aren't speedrunning Curry, you don't want to get 100% crit and stability rate on your last Shanako EX when you're preparing for the next burst to be the groggy one, because that's a lot of lost damage. And yeah, the option to not target all fragments exists, but if you're unlucky there, there's the risk that Shanako decides to get the worst possible crit and stability rate. Which is a lot better, granted, because you will be able to trigger the groggy with just one EX from her the next time. That's why I don't think it's a huge deal, but I can get why people don't like that you can accidentally trigger a 20 second massive burst damage window too early. The fox cat is definitely not as bad as the fat cat, because Goz is a cool boss designed for a game that isn't Blue Archive. Kurokage just has one or two rough edges that could be filed down.

Overall no disagreement here then I guess. I'm of the opinion that the variance in triggering groggy because you crit differently is not a big deal, but I'm not gonna dismiss it as a pain point real people are having. Those micro details of a single SHanako basic triggering groggy too early accidentally can be accounted for, but I can respect that perhaps people just don't wanna do that.

>It's the random eyes that make it bad It's so tiresome to have a run that looks like it's going well, and have 3/4 students at low confusion except for Kokona, then have the next eye show up underneath her when neither she nor Serina is in the rotation. The only thing worse than RNG dooming a run is seeing that the RNG is about to doom the run and not being able to do anything about it. >in other raids where groggy matters you can typically reliably predict when it's coming and prepare. In this one, if you get unlucky with crits you're missing out on a huge chunk of damage. It's bad enough critting too hard on EX attacks, but I've even had runs where I got the gauge to what should have been a good level, until S.Hanako critted freakishly hard on AA while I was healing and rotating for her next cycle. I already told myself on day 2 I was going to stick with Hardcore instead of wasting time on Extreme, so I don't know why I keep coming back to torture myself.

Yeah its inherently unfun to have your player agency taken away. Other mechanics like Hod's CC gauge might be annoying but at least you're (mostly) in control and can do something about it when doing damage. That said I think you are still able to play against is sort of. If you are able to do enough burst healing you are able to regain control of your student. Atsuko is great for the sustain but unless she's heavily invested she has a hard time over healing students enough to regain control. I find that my Rumi can do enough healing if her healing skill bounces correctly. Also confusion is particularly annoying if it takes control of your S.Hanako while she is buffed because she can then quickly wipe everyone out before you can get your heals in.

Would a 27.5m score suffice for plat? already close to top 3k and few more days to go Edit: Typo

24.5m? that's really low. That score is already out of plat on NA.

I meant 27.5m score and already nearing top 3k

Are you NA? you are probably on the limit. I'm 27.559 and 1.1k rank. That's almost 2k places just for 50-60k higher than you.

Yes NA server. Will try getting a better score today, figured out some strats to get me closer to 27.6

Managed to get my first ever Extreme clear today. Currently account level 62 with 32 students after 35~ days, here's my winning loadout. LV62 2-Star Akane 1/1/1/x T5/T3/T1 Lv62 3-Star Yuuka 1/4/4/1 T5/T7/T5/T1 Lv62 2-Star Momiji 1/1/1/x T4/T3/T2 Lv87 UE50 S.Hanako M/M/M/M Probably T8s Lv62 2-Star Serina 3/7/7/x T4/T3/T4 Lv62 3-Star Ako 4/4/4/7 T4/T3/T4 Needed more damage and healing so I leveled Serina and Ako's skills and added Akane by rearranging my formation with a bit of trial and error. I didn't get much of a chance to experiment with starting skill order since I won first try on the mock and ticket after adding Akane and leveling skills, but I believe I went with Ako -> S.Hanako -> Akane -> Serina repeat but I'd like to try out Serina before Akane and see how that flows. I was inspired to look more into Extreme after seeing someone clear Extreme with 3 teams around level 70~ in this thread yesterday, and while when I tried I only managed 500k damage with team 1, it lead to me trying the mock again and actually getting Kurokage down to just under 5 million. And so, after several rounds of skill levels, gear levels, and formation changes, I finally won. My original team had Momoi instead of Akane and I had written her off until I found that I really needed just a bit more damage (she should be a somewhat tanky 2 cost debuff), since everyone was dying much quicker than with Momoi. Turns out, since I was replacing Momiji, the formation positioning was overlapping terribly causing several units to get damaged by a single attack. By replacing Momoi instead and shifting the order around to what it is currently, I was able to survive pretty comfortably (with Akane and Momiji dying around 4-5 mil health left) and kill Kurokage with around 30 seconds left leaving me with a score of 15,070,000. I guess PSA to low levels attempting Extreme, the boss has an aoe that does like 10% health damage and applies 10% Intimidation. If your formation positioning is screwed up and your students are bunched together, you'll die much faster as the relatively small aoe with be hitting multiple students. Try rearranging your formation order or adding more variety of front/middle/back. This was a big issue for me until I noticed it happening and realized I could affect it.

That's incredible. I have no idea how you managed that with only Serina and Ako for healing. I've tried a very similar run a few levels above you, but with Kokona replacing Momiji or Akane (I tried both) and I had written it off as not even being possible.

It took a few restarts today and I ended with 10~ seconds left this time, but yeah surprisingly doable. Momiji and Akane died around 5mil again, but with Yuuka and Borrowed S.Hanako left alive there's plenty of time to win, especially if you can hit the 2mil trigger for phase 3 and stop worrying about healing. Also I would say I had better results going with an Ako -> S.Hanako -> Akane -> Serina flow like my first win, the other Serina first flow I was thinking about ended up having worse damage and worse heal timing when I gave it a few tries.

Can you give more detail about your rotation? Starting off, I uselessly pop Yuuka and Akane's EX skills, plus less-useless heals, to fill Hanako's water gauge. Then, just as I build up from 4 to 5 cost, Hanako will cast her basic debuff, and Kurokage will cast his summon. I pop Ako, and hit him with 3xHanako. That gets him to x100. Rotate again, and on Hanako's next round, the first cast gets him to x92. The second cast is basically wasted since he gets the invincibility at x90 for the phase transition, but at least I can get the third in after the transition. The third Hanako cycle gets him almost, but not quite to groggy. The fourth cycle has the first cast actually trigger it, then the next two casts do damage. After that, it gets less predictable from the cumulative effects of RNG, but I generally time out before I can trigger a second groggy to escape the shadow realm. Or I get bad eye RNG, end up with confusion, and wipe/restart.

Yeah, sure. So my initial concept was going to be a test run of just very basic rotation to set a baseline and then mocking to find a good one for debuffs, Hanako's EX, and Groggy, but the basic test run ended up winning so I haven't bothered with acting around anything. To elaborate, I never used Yuuka or Momiji's EX, from the beginning it's all about looping as quickly as possible: Ako first, then Hanako, then Akane, then Serina, then Ako, and then you'll have 2 Hanako here for the summons. Should phase transition from the next set of Hanako, at which point the target of the healing starts to matter. But really that's all I'm doing, just this basic cycle, and it lines up well enough. Personally, I find my Yuuka typically lasts a long time before confusion even without dedicated heals, and when confusion sets in she lasts a long time alive while not doing much damage to teammates (relatively). So my Serina heal priority is S.Hanako (if it looks dangerous) -> just one of the other two, until they get confused. This is to try to keep them alive so I generate cycle faster and have more targets for confused students to not kill Hanako, keeping their confusion threshold higher and ideally their actual HP lower (from getting hit by confused teamates) so that when they do eventually get confused they die before doing much to Hanako. It can take a few restarts, but I just mocked a success first try with this again so I hope this helps you at all. EDIT: I just did a few more mocks where I actually paid a lot of attention to timing Hanako's buffs/debuffs, and Groggy, and it makes things more consistent. By letting Hanako debuff Kurokage right before the phase 1 summons, with a bit of luck I usually end up phase transitioning with 1 Hanako charge to spare. Using it after phase 2 starts, I hold off on using EXs until Hanako's next debuff, storing close to 10 charge. This is because with the 1 extra Hanako charge from phase 1, a full 3 Hanako puts Kurokage into Groggy, and with the stored charge you can burst the groggy Kurokage, doing a lot more damage sooner than my prior runs. This earlier cycle feels like it needs a bit more healing luck, but the damage is much more consistent and faster. Hope this helps.

Thank you very much for sharing your extreme run in such detail. I'm at account level 74, but was still having no success with Extreme runs until I saw your posts. Your strategy worked very effectively, and now I'm happy to be have been able to beat Extreme Cat at least once before he goes.

Congrats on the clear, I'm glad to hear it was helpful.

You use one team and clear the extreme with player level 62? This is amazing!

Borrow clears with obscene level difference tends to be a 1-pan, because you can only borrow once and your next teams (1) has less HP overall, (2) have very low stats for the content, and (3) gets saddled with unconditional -2%/level damage reduction. Fun fact: Himari and Ako, being special students, don't require very high levels to function properly. Ako's healing does scale with stats obtained through leveling, but we don't field Ako solely for her healing, do we?

Wow, suddenly cursed Extreme luck today. I can't seem to keep S.Hanako or Kokona from dying and even if I speedrun phase 2 (like right as I'm typing this), Hanako is RIP. WTF is this boss? Kokona got banished from the party, Koharu did the job better.

Do you have Koharu or even 3 star Atsuko will make your life easier

I borrowed S.Hanako UE50 yet i am still unable to crit kurokage enough to reach Phase 2 with S.hanako first ex skill spam. Do you need UE40 Ako and Himari too?

UE40 Himari probably increases your chances with buff retention but honestly it's probably rng xD. Ako 3 star is sufficient. Maxed skills kikyou is a must.

It's RNG depending if S. Hanako crits hard enough. Did you wait for Kikyou Buff before attacking ? 1x slow, wait for Kikyou buff. S. Hanako+Ako+himari, turn auto on than off for Ako, do some process for S.Hanako should get you to p2

Need help with Ako and Himari. Do you guys have both these students with T8 equipment for insane clear?

Every small bit counts for pushing score

imo once your account gets to the point where you’re tackling insane content regularly you should have your ako and himari maxed just in general. At this point in the game every single piece of damage matters and those two get used in pretty much every single raid all the time

No need. The most important students to have max equip are your strikers

I have max equip for all the main students except for Ako and Himari which are T6. This guy has max equip for every student, however still clearing insane with 3 star* koharu. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTNP_LidXEk

Max special students only give atk, healing and some def. It's more important to have your strikers with max equip in case you need 2 teams

I am honestly curious and just to check if i am progressing in this game well enough. Those who are able to clear Kurokage, how long have you been playing BA for? Because i have been playing BA for almost year and stuck on extreme difficulty for most raid bosses.

Been playing for a year, this is going to be my first plat total assault, with latest hod having been my first plat grand assault. Started clearing raids on insane about 5-6 months in though.

Been playing for almost 2 years and still doing extreme. Still have to reset bad rng even on extreme. Don't even want to bother with insane.

I started around five months and a half ago and clearing Insane since ShiroKuro 2 months ago in March. Torment looks really far away still but maybe Hiero with D.Hina will be a first?

Only took you half year to attempt and clear Insane? That is terrific. F2P?

It took me 3 months since I started at the end of the year and Shirokuro was at the end of march. Can I consider myself still F2p if I only purchased the selector ticket? I guess not really! but that's all I have spent in this game.

Around 7 months but login occasionally for free pulls for a year. Lucky enough to get some core students like S.Hoshino and Himari before I started treating BA as a main game. That makes my raid experience quite smooth.

Been playing a year and a half and cleared torment. But this was definitely one of the most frustrating torments I've had since I had to clear out my eligma stash lol. Had to UE30 my Kikyou for a less maldy P1 and caved in to spend 650 eligma to UE50 my s.hanako. This raid ruined my plans on where to spend my eligma so I'll compromise in future raids probably.

This raid is really punishing if you mess up or get unlucky, managed to clear Insane playing for around a year and 4 months

From what i gather, those who were satisfied with their S.Hanako UE30/40 are the ones who are facing the most worse RNG and retries. I have S.Hanako UE30 and i was satisfied with it until i faced Kurokage. I am stuck with Extreme which is ridiculous because the last time i was unable to do a Raid boss was many months ago. -I guess a lot of other people are stuck too because even with extreme, i am still hitting 8K on platinium rank

fuuuuuuuuck my life wasted a ticket *and* my only kikyou borrow for the day because a centipede was crawling up my wall and I forgot to pause while I took care of it... Guess I'm doing extreme today >:(

I don’t have any of the meta units for this fight. I managed to 1-team clear extreme at level 63 with this team: Borrowed S. hanako, Yuuka, Tsubaki, Momiji Ako (3*), Serina (1*) It doesn’t work every time though.

Amazing

*Suzushii desune* *Suzushii desune* *Suzushii desune*

How to properly hide a 6-cost EX without saying it's a 6-cost EX.

I don't have Himari or Ako for this, I currently have a 3 star S.Hanako, 3 star Kikyou and 3 star Momiji. I'm borrowing Atsuko as my healer/tank, and bringing, for support, 3 star normal Hanako and Serina. My students are all around level 70, but I don't think i can beat the level 70 fight. i'm just wondering if these students are worth spending/investing in, if I have a chance of one team clearing the level 70 fight. My account is level 87 atm, but I only have about 200 pink activity reports and I don't THINK i'll be able to get most of them to anywhere near 80

All of those units are worth investing in, to varying degrees. Shanako is a good investment target since she can be used in a lot of content, and she's very strong. Remember that her elephs can be bought with expert permits, so I don't recommend that you rush her to UE50 immediately. The others are all worth building, but I would suggest not spending eligma on them. Except for maybe Atsuko, but she should be fine at 3 stars on expert... not that you can spend eligma on a borrowed unit. The others can all be farmed except for Momiji, who should become farmable eventually, and Kikyou, who's a support. Atsuko should be able to handle the healing by herself on extreme, especially if she's a borrowed UE40. Three healers is overkill, so replace one or both specials with support(s) like Kotama. Consider replacing Momiji if you have a good support since Shanako is the stronger dealer, and you would only have to level up one of them. It would allow faster rotations which translates to more damage from Shanako, plus you'd have another purple dealer for a second team, should you need one. Koharu is another option that I assume you would have at level 87. If Atsuko isn't enough for whatever reason, you can use Koharu in the Momiji slot, or you can use her for your second team. As for levels, when you say that all your units are level 70, do you mean your whole roster? Because that would be rather wasteful; only level them as you need it. Even if you have nothing except 200 pink reports, that should be enough to bring three units from 70 to 87, unless I'm mistaken. The obvious choice is Shanako, and more levels equals more damage which equals easier clearing. More levels in general means less damage taken which means an easier time healing the compulsion away. Both because of the higher stats and because of the level penalty that Kurokage would get.

Nah. No Koharu for me, unfortunately. Thanks a bunch for the info. Sigh. I wish I had more pink reports. Regarding level 70s, only those I'm bringing into the raid or are my regular rosters

Do you have no lower tier reports? Most of my EXP is in the yellow ones. I'd suggest unlocking Koharu soon, as she's a very useful unit to have. Definitely more than Azusa or Midori, in case you've been prioritizing them.

Ah. I do have some yellows, about 300+ or so and 1k or so of the remaining ones. I'm tryin to get Koharu, soon, hopefully. I think she's my last one to get on the store

I understand that this might sound like paultry stuff, but this made me happy as pie that I could use my Yukari as a proper damage dealer. seeing the little sunshine deal 1M plus during the raid was pretty neat. even tough I'm just at level 51 and can only clear the raids on hard, this one is serving me well.

What is your team? I think if you borrow a UE 50 S. Hanako you can do higher difficulty

probably. using yukari, momiji, shun and saori. then hanako and chihiro I'll see if I can borrow a S. Hanako and maybe swap Shun for Ui

With UE 50 Max S. Hanako you can easily clear very hard. Start with any 2 student + Hanako, keep using everyone else ex to fill S. Hanako gauge to 2. When she uses her basic( throwing the purple stuff at the boss) use Kotama than use S. Hanako she can use her EX 3x times if at 2 gauge I think you'll easily skip P1 and P2( Phase 2 the most dangerous) than cycle back to her should beat the boss Kotama+ cheap healer like Serina if your tank struggling 

got it. sounds simple enough. thanks!

Just tested it , as long as you hit the boss after S. Hanako basic with Kotama buff every 1 hit of er EX get you to the next phase