Zenos: The Big Bad (The Feedback Thread, Part 1)

[KizuyaKatogami]

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I think the first battle presents the situation well. Zenos is bored, and he\\\\\\'s just watching you to see how strong you are, while setting out some simple attacks. You fail to impress him, so he ends it and calls you pathetic. Though he did break a sword on you. Which is why you get to live, because you\\\\\\'re not worth drawing another one on.

The second fight you\\\\\\'re actually dealing somewhat normal damage for the first half while Yugiri is there, and she LB3s him(and it only does 14.3k). He then powers up, and it turns into the same fight as before. You can barely land hits on him, let alone scratch him, and if he didn\\\\\\'t choose to just end it, then you would die before you got him half way down. He also does way more attacks than the first time around. Lightless flames, tangible copies of himself, Ame-no-Hibakiri, and loads more of Vein-Splitter. The fighting area is a lot smaller, so if you\\\\\\'re not careful you will take damage, and you can duty fail that one relatively easily.

In Zenos\\\\\\'s final fight with you, before he mantles Shinryu, he uses his full power. It is enough, and I have seen people fail to it. Should you live through all that he brings to bear, at the end of the fight he takes a book out of 80/180 Behemoth\\\\\\'s book and mingles auto attacks with repeated castings of Concentrativity over and over until one of you is dead. He could have done that or anything else in the earlier fights to kill you.

It\\\\\\'s much better conveyed and done than the Ran\\\\\\'jit fight in SHB. In that one, especially on tank, Ran\\\\\\'jit definitely feels like someone you could kill if the game would allow it (Lyna be like, "We\\\\\\'re overmatched! 10 seconds in and he\\\\\\'s at 80%). They don\\\\\\'t because they have further narrative use for him, but unlike in the Zenos fight where he uses Concentrativity first to remove people and it deals 80% of your HP, Ran\\\\\\'jit instead uses some overblown version of Raiton one at a time, and then has Gukumatz do a move called wrath to push them out of the arena. Ran\\\\\\'jit is going all out in every battle that he is in, and his fusion later doesn\\\\\\'t even seem like an actual power up, because you fight him on Thancred first. By rights though, he should just be able to use his super Raiton to two shot anyone(
Both are timed, so you see different %s on tank, DPS, or healer.

Tbf the zenos power level thing honestly makes 0 sense. The fact he wipes the floor with us basically those 2 times, we get stronger yes but the thing is, so does he. He gets the resonance which puts him even higher on the scale yet somehow we can beat him in Ala Mhigo? And then again with shinryu? The power scaling just doesn’t add up and i guess that’s the problem with Zenos. They tried to make him a massive threat but just forgoed any plot coherency for it.

[Vyrerus]

Tbf the zenos power level thing honestly makes 0 sense. The fact he wipes the floor with us basically those 2 times, we get stronger yes but the thing is, so does he. He gets the resonance which puts him even higher on the scale yet somehow we can beat him in Ala Mhigo? And then again with shinryu? The power scaling just doesn’t add up and i guess that’s the problem with Zenos. They tried to make him a massive threat but just forgoed any plot coherency for it.

I thought it added up just fine. We don't actually know at what point he gained the Resonance. Even though he did, Fordola gained it too. We beat her, so it's not that big of a deal compared to his "natural" strength anyway. Also in Ala Mhigo, we get that line about, "Gather your most trusted comrades." To explain away why it's a dungeon, so we fight him with 3 talented adventurers and the WoL.

As for beating him as Shinryu, well, mantling a primal is all well and good, but it's not any less believable than beating Thordan. Thordan was the summation of 1,000 years of piety. one of Nidhogg's Eyes, and the entire Heavensward. He also got to drink up a Source Ascian and some of the Warring Triad's power juice. Shinryu was just both of Nidhogg's eyes, Ilberd's hatred, and that swathe of the Ala Mhigan Resistance that followed him. Nevermind that the eyes lost aether by Ilberd using them at the top of Baelsar's Wall to try and kill us. Shinryu had also just come out of a subdued and weakened state, and we know from watching Garuda try and fail to temper us that when it tried to temper us along with Zenos and not only fail but have its will subsumed... it's another weakening to the primal. Plus it started out "life" sealed by Papalymo. Imagine how much stronger it could have been.