Cerus will perform this attack every four seconds in the final phase of the fight, and will not perform any other attacks. The first attack will occur right after the players break his Defiance Bar at the end of the third phase.
Deals unavoidable damage to all players, and gives Cerus two stacks of Empowered. The damage dealt by each smash therefore increases gradually until either Cerus or the squad dies.
Cerus will gain three Empowered stacks whenever he performs this attack, instead of two.
Extra Information
Cerus will gain the Empowered stacks before applying damage. This means that the phase will always start with at least three stacks.
This skill’s existence imposes a soft limit on the number of Empowered stacks you can let Cerus gain before getting to the final phase. This is especially pronounced in legendary CM, where it becomes extremely difficult to keep the squad alive if the final phase begins with 10 or more stacks.
The figure above shows the minimum survival time in the final LCM phase for two DPS builds: a normal, raid-ready Condition Virtuoso, and a modified version of the same build that is running Spherified Peppercorn-Spiced Oyster Soup for more survivability. There is about a +/-5% variance in the damage dealt by each smash, so each build starts running the risk of getting oneshot at 45 and 53 Empowered respectively. With the Peppercorn build, if starting at 0 stacks, this means around 68 seconds into the phase. If starting at 10 Empowered, this is lowered to 52 seconds, a much tighter interval.
