Abusing Funny Zaaro Weakness

IS-S-5 CM Defender Only, No 6 Stars Zaaro’s howl is one of the strongest phase 1 boss abilities. Although in EX-8 you can perfectly counter it with Shalem Liskarm, it’s much harder to setup Shalem turbo on S-5. If I tried spamming bodies, I would just run out of DP, and there’s no way my Defenders can quickly kill his phase 1. Instead I exploited a different weakness: Zaaro can’t howl again so long as there’s an operator alive with the howl currently active. This means I can have Friston take the howl (He has low HP so % damage is weak on him) and have Bassline keep him alive for over 60s, delaying his next Howl tremendously while also using Bassline as bait for the next howl too, giving me time to actually beat the rest of the stage. Although it’s easy in principle it was extremely annoying because it relies heavily on the specific attack cycles and a small change can affect the timings a lot. Zaaros max howl kill a unit in under 4s so if my units end up with a bad cycle they’re just 1s too late with their next heal and everything gets ruined. I was annoyed doing that part of this clear, but phase 2 tank rotations rotating to kill the cleaners in phase 1 was a fun exercise in DP management. I cut out the cycle but in order to tank Zaaro Phase 2 you need to cycle Bubble Skill - Hung Skill - Bassline Skill Cuora Deploy - Cuora Skill - Hung Skill - Basseline Skill Bubble Deploy. Thankfully Vulcan’s module lets me handle all the cleaners so I have plenty of DP to use. Music: Phyrnna - Of Sand and Wind