Mechanics Breakdown
This section contains a detailed description of the various attacks and mechanics present in ToF CM. The basic gameplay of the encounter is centered around keeping Cerus’s attacks as manageable as possible while staying inside of the enrage timer. The fight becomes progressively more difficult and unforgiving, due to two important mechanics:
- Cerus will
Empower some of his recurring attacks, greatly increasing the challenge they pose. The mechanism for which attacks are selected is deterministic, allowing the group to choose which skills get strengthened and enabling various different strategies.
- On failing certain mechanics, Cerus will gain stacks of
Empowered, which permanently buff his damage for the rest of the fight.
Minimising and mitigating the effects of these two mechanics is the most crucial aspect of the encounter.
Mitigation Tables
Whenever an attack directly affects the players, we will highlight how various skills interact with its effects using a table such as the following one.
The top header represents various skills, buffs and abilities: Distortion, damage-to-healing conversion such as
Infuse Light,
Feedback and other projectile mitigation,
Evasion,
Jumping,
Protection,
Blocking/Aegis and
Barrier.
The following row represents levels of mitigation for the normal attack. means that the corresponding skill is effective against the attack if used correctly,
means the attack can be at least partially mitigated, and
means the skill has no effect whatsoever on the attack. The second row, if present, represents the same but for the empowered version of the skill (more on this later).