Stuck in Vows of Virtue, Deeds of Cruelty

I've tried this repeatedly, and still fail every single time.
I'm starting to think this is the end of the line for me since its a MSQ.
I am constantly attacking, while moving to avoid stupid damage.
I follow the on screen advise, such as using the Horrid Roar.
I've read everything I can find from other people on the subject.
Apparently at the point where I'm dying from the room wide explosions, I'm supposed to use Limit Break.
However my limit break bar never gets past half full by the time the explosion happens, and I'm never able to use it.
Like I said, I'm constantly attacking, so I don't understand how else am I supposed to get the limit break meter to fill up so I can use it?
Is there something I'm missing?

So it sounds like youre describing the Estinien RP fight, and more specifically the boss at the end of it where the powers you have at your disposal are changed. So this is how i remember it. You have 5 moves. The first, is a heavy hit that also heals you for a good amount. This is your spam move. The second is a DoT you can put on the boss to speed up the fight a tiny bit. The third is an AoE hit. The fourth is an oGCD attack - specifically a jump(and i dont remember if it works as a gap closer). And last is the limit. So start the fight spamming the first move and dodging the AoEs you can. Weaving in the 2nd move to keep the DoT up and the 4th move for added damage where you can will take a few seconds off the fight. At specific intervals in the fight a pair of garlean soldiers will run up on the platform behind the arena and load new combat data into the prototype giving it new moves. After they do this, they become targettable and start attacking you directly. Once the names appear over their heads, use your 3rd move(once will kill them both, its range and damage are sufficient). Two small flying ships join the fight at one point, both can be dropped with a few direct hits. When the boss summons a ring of arch ultima bits(this is paired with a star-burst aoe pattern of alternating safe and danger zones), one move 3 will kill them all without you having to run around the room. A little later he summons a couple more while filling the room with explosions, find the safe spot that isnt being targetted and another move 3 will end the bits. Soon after the techs set him to invulnerable, and you finish the fight with a limit(specifically his limit - i think if you use your own LB move you may have on a hotbar that nothing will happen). If youve done everything right(followed the script, dodged most of the attacks, and kept up spamming your damage+heal combo move) you will be at or near full health when he goes invulnerable and have plenty of time to trigger the limit before his damage output(or any enrage move) is a threat to you. The gauge doesnt seem linked to the damage you do, the attacks you dodge, or the enemies you kill(although all of these make surviving the fight easier). At specific moments in the fight it goes up by large amounts all at once, the last of which doesnt come until his invulnerability is on. All told, the fight takes a bit more then 3 minutes to complete(not counting cutscenes or the first part where youre running with shadowhunter and have a different moveset), and i have every confidence you will succeed.

I had to stop playing for a while, I was doing 5 hours of attempts that were going no where, and just couldn't do it anymore. It got to the point where, after each attempt, I couldn't even lift up my left arm, because of spamming the keybinds constantly. I though of just starting a new character, but I realized that I would just get stonewalled at this same fight again.
During the fight a limit break bar appears onscreen, for me it's on the top, just to the left of center, but the limit break option is never available to me. This is the bar that never fills up before the room wide explosions wipe me.

The explosion comes from the bits that you need to use your roar skill to oneshot. The Limit Break can't be used until a few seconds after the boss goes invulnerable later in the fight.

I get past the bits part, using that Horrid Roar ability, the explosions that kill me come much later. This is why my arm feels like its gonna fall off, by the time I get to the part where I'm supposed to use the limit break I've been mashing keys for what feels like 15 minutes or so. Maybe that's not much for some people, but 15-20 minutes of constant solid key mashing is a lot for me. The on screen limit break bar never fills up for me, I never get the option to use it. Unless there is a second round of invisible bits that are invulnerable to the Horrid Roar when I use it at that point, I believe I'm getting to the part where I'm supposed to have the limit break, but I never get it.

UPDATE: I finally got it! I don't know if it was the several days off, or if it was the reset that fixed whatever was not right, but today I finally had the limit break button on my bar with the rest of his attacks, and this time the limit break bar at the top of the screen actually filled, so I was able to use it when the time came.
Thank you to all who posted with tips to try and help me.

I'm still stuck on this quest and have been for two days now. Why on earth don't they give you a option to skip it. It's spoiling my game and my story.
If you were to ask me my one major dislike I have with the game it would be having to RP your comrades. It shatters the story to tiny little fragments.

Thanks to you and this post I just dominated this fight after failing miserably on my first try. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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Originally Posted by Frizze

So it sounds like youre describing the Estinien RP fight, and more specifically the boss at the end of it where the powers you have at your disposal are changed. So this is how i remember it. You have 5 moves. The first, is a heavy hit that also heals you for a good amount. This is your spam move. The second is a DoT you can put on the boss to speed up the fight a tiny bit. The third is an AoE hit. The fourth is an oGCD attack - specifically a jump(and i dont remember if it works as a gap closer). And last is the limit. So start the fight spamming the first move and dodging the AoEs you can. Weaving in the 2nd move to keep the DoT up and the 4th move for added damage where you can will take a few seconds off the fight. At specific intervals in the fight a pair of garlean soldiers will run up on the platform behind the arena and load new combat data into the prototype giving it new moves. After they do this, they become targettable and start attacking you directly. Once the names appear over their heads, use your 3rd move(once will kill them both, its range and damage are sufficient). Two small flying ships join the fight at one point, both can be dropped with a few direct hits. When the boss summons a ring of arch ultima bits(this is paired with a star-burst aoe pattern of alternating safe and danger zones), one move 3 will kill them all without you having to run around the room. A little later he summons a couple more while filling the room with explosions, find the safe spot that isnt being targetted and another move 3 will end the bits. Soon after the techs set him to invulnerable, and you finish the fight with a limit(specifically his limit - i think if you use your own LB move you may have on a hotbar that nothing will happen). If youve done everything right(followed the script, dodged most of the attacks, and kept up spamming your damage+heal combo move) you will be at or near full health when he goes invulnerable and have plenty of time to trigger the limit before his damage output(or any enrage move) is a threat to you. The gauge doesnt seem linked to the damage you do, the attacks you dodge, or the enemies you kill(although all of these make surviving the fight easier). At specific moments in the fight it goes up by large amounts all at once, the last of which doesnt come until his invulnerability is on. All told, the fight takes a bit more then 3 minutes to complete(not counting cutscenes or the first part where youre running with shadowhunter and have a different moveset), and i have every confidence you will succeed.

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Im glad my post was able to help. A good general rule when you get tossed into an RP battle controlling an NPC(even if you play the class theyre mimicking) is to spend the first min(or however long you need) of the time limit before starting the fight examining their moveset so you know your options. Theres always a primary damage move(or 1-button combo), theres usually a heal, but each one has its own quirks(some of which can even hint at aspects of the battle to come - do you have a version of esuna? then you will probly have a debuff that needs to be cleared with it at some point). Then once the fight has started(and i know this isnt easy for everyone), try to pay attention to any text boxes that appear on screen. The text will point out the general type of script they want you to follow. Whether its moving to a new location, using a specific attack, or whatever - following the script prompts usually leads to the quickest way to win the fight.

Really struggling with this as estinen hp is 353.61 is it supposed to be higher than that as I can't get passed it

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Originally Posted by Snizzle_990

Really struggling with this as estinen hp is 353.61 is it supposed to be higher than that as I can't get passed it

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If you've been watching guides from when the quest was first released, Estinien's HP is now lower because of the stat squish that came with Endwalker.

Just make sure you use Ala Morn when you can (unless you need to get rid of adds fast) because that move also heals him.

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Originally Posted by Snizzle_990

Really struggling with this as estinen hp is 353.61 is it supposed to be higher than that as I can't get passed it

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So i was watching a streamer go thru this fight recently(in the last 2 weeks). Everything i wrote above is still 100% true. The script has not changed, the stat squish does not matter. But the streamer i was watching was struggling with the fight. Why? For starters, they were trying to kite the boss around the room. Dont do this, it is very dumb. The boss can still hurt you, but you cant hit it back. Then they would go into a tunnel vision on just the boss and aoe markers, leaving the extra mobs to not only repeatedly attack them but drop more aoes on the ground forcing the streamer to keep moving more then they needed to(which lead to less damage, then them trying to kite again when health got low). Then they finally got to the circle of magitech bits. They started by ignoring the adds, then they went around and tried to kill them one by one. Neither of these works, as there are too many to kill individually and after they fire off a few lasers they all go into self-destruct mode at the same time and end you. The next pull, they got it. And while the streamer was getting advice from chat after each try, it was only advice on what they had already seen and failed at - no hint at mechs to come(specifically i was watching this part on VoD, as they did the fight before i got off work and couldnt help live). In the end i think they went 5 pulls to a clear. You can clear on your VERY next attempt. Here is my updated and slightly simplified strategy.

Press 1. You can ignore 2, you can ignore 4. Press 1. Every chance you get, press 1. If you arent comfortable enough playing to pay attention to mobs spawning, then just focus on the boss and pressing 1. The first time you will want to use 3 is when the circle aoe's start appearing on the floor(in the above guide, this coincides with the troops on the bridge becoming targettable after giving the weapon an updated move set). Using 3 once will make them stop for awhile, then go back to 1. Around here a pair of airships will appear to attack. You can kill them both with 2 or 3 uses of 3, or quick swap targets and 1 them down. Again, if the circle aoes restart hit a 3. Then when the star-burst pattern aoe appears, 3 again. And your final 3 should be when the room fills with explosions. Any time you arent hitting 3, try to hit 1. Finally the script will fill your LB(5), and you end the fight in style. The fight is a tiny bit faster if you can mix in some 2 and 4 uses with your 1's. But all it really takes to get to the end of the script is: avoiding some of the aoes, consistent 1 usage(this will keep you at or near full health), and being reasonably quick eliminating the extra threats with your 3's.

So there you go, the 3 button plan. And the fight will still be over in like 4 mins.

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Originally Posted by Frizze

Press 1. You can ignore 2, you can ignore 4. Press 1. Every chance you get, press 1. If you arent comfortable enough playing to pay attention to mobs spawning, then just focus on the boss and pressing 1. The first time you will want to use 3 is when the circle aoe's start appearing on the floor(in the above guide, this coincides with the troops on the bridge becoming targettable after giving the weapon an updated move set). Using 3 once will make them stop for awhile, then go back to 1. Around here a pair of airships will appear to attack. You can kill them both with 2 or 3 uses of 3, or quick swap targets and 1 them down. Again, if the circle aoes restart hit a 3. Then when the star-burst pattern aoe appears, 3 again. And your final 3 should be when the room fills with explosions. Any time you arent hitting 3, try to hit 1. Finally the script will fill your LB(5), and you end the fight in style. The fight is a tiny bit faster if you can mix in some 2 and 4 uses with your 1's. But all it really takes to get to the end of the script is: avoiding some of the aoes, consistent 1 usage(this will keep you at or near full health), and being reasonably quick eliminating the extra threats with your 3's.

So there you go, the 3 button plan. And the fight will still be over in like 4 mins.

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Thank you for the three button plan! It won the fight for me. A battle is not where I like to be learning what buttons do though, and I wouldn't like my soldiers to be doing so if I were a commander. One wonders what the point of these encounters is, particularly as no lasting knowledge is carried away. At least not by me...

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Originally Posted by caterin

Thank you for the three button plan! It won the fight for me. A battle is not where I like to be learning what buttons do though, and I wouldn't like my soldiers to be doing so if I were a commander. One wonders what the point of these encounters is, particularly as no lasting knowledge is carried away. At least not by me...

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Fan service to previous FF titles where players got to play as their favorite NPCs and so franchise fans asked to be able to do it in this game as well. They're not going to disappear so I just deal as they come up.

You don't have to enter combat immediately so take a few minutes to read tooltips and rearrange the abilities on your hotbar to your liking before starting. Depending on the job of the NPC, you're generally going to have a combo single target attack, an AoE attack, a more powerful attack with a cooldown and some sort of buff (+damage, +defense,+ mana). Healers will get some sort of healing ability in place of the powerful attack. There's also a limit break included in some battles though it won't be available until a scripted moment in the fight so it can be ignored until it lights up.

Knowing the general pattern to what you'll have available during these RP encounters will make it a bit easier to get through the future ones.

Doesn't seem to be any point other than causing people to rage quit.

The point? It feels to me like half fan-service as Jojoya, and half consideration for the game/story. Looking at this instance, Estinien fought a big thing. He could just TELL us some version of "I fought a big thing i didnt understand." Our imagination would fill in something. But the devs want us to understand more then just whatever we would imagine. So if they want us to understand better, we could WATCH a simplified version of this via the Echo. This happens often enough in the story. But this is already pretty far into the story from the last time we had any combat(and when it was new, it was also obviously the LAST thing that would happen for 4 months). So they made a playable version of the fight. Gives us the proper idea of how the fight would have went, includes actual gameplay instead of just cutscenes, and serves as fan service. A lot of people love these fights, but not everyone. But this one in particular isnt hard enough to warrant a rage quit.

The Hien RP fight in 4.55 was cool too. It showed how much powerful the WoL is compared to our allies. It's like the Nappa Dragon Ball Z fight where the Z fighters couldn't do anything to Nappa and was just hanging on til Goku arrived.