Rathalos EX

[JunseiKei]

Well, here's some tips for people struggling:

As a general rule, Rathalos is easiest to avoid at melee range. It might be habit for ranged, casters or healers to be far away, but you actually make it much harder on yourself.

First Phase
- Rathalos's upper left side is safest to stand (near his face, near the wing tip). This avoids his tail sweep and you're far away enough from the bite that you won't be hit.
- The bite attack has a hitbox on the tail (seen a lot of ranged get clipped by this).
- First set of adds don't need to be picked up, grab the Coeurl and DPS it down. No one likes dealing with crackle hiss or whatever it's called in this fight.
- Put fireballs on adds and bait Rathalos toward adds; everything he does damages them. This lets you continue to focus on Rathalos.
- Large healing when adds pop up may cause them to make a run straight for your healer; if this happens, grab them and keep them near Rathalos so his attacks will still hit them.

Second Phase
- Never stand in front of Rathalos, even if you're at ranged. This makes Rathalos take an extra moment to turn before he will do his dive into poison claw.
- Rathalos always changes his target to the person he will attack (the name that pops up next this his, AKA the target's target). This is especially useful to see who exactly he is targeting for poison claw.
- Melee range is still the best to avoid his attacks; keep in mind the poison claw definitely feels "fatter" on his right.
- We had tank take their fireballs alone; they came and stacked with everyone else's.
- Healer should be pro-active with Esunas; a DPS can survive poison claw if it gets removed ASAP. Would recommend removing Healer DoT and one DPS's DoT before the second fireball. On second, recommend removing Healer DoT and the DPS with 2 stacks of DoT. If SCH with Selene, wait and group remove after 3rd fireball while still removing DoTs mentioned here.
- LB only when Rathalos is down; it's the difference of 8% damage done or 3% (something along those lines).
- Save LB for Rathalos, not the tail. Saving all of your CDs for the tail will take it off fine enough.
- GCD hits fill Rathalos's down meter. (Thanks to Rowde for sharing this information~)

Bonus tip:
- Can mash while stunned to reduce your stun timer, much like in Monster Hunter.