Zakuzaku Actors draft run - Daimaou Mao

Mao is a fight that is frankly so capable of going wrong that I came overprepared enough to misrepresent it here in this video.

Mao uses lethal attacks of multiple elements and absolutely no status effects or debuffs (that you can prevent) whatsoever, with Fire and Electricity empathized. She also has the Wind-element % damage attack Abaddon Storm, which will leave anyone with such low HP if unresisted that it also requires you to account for it. There are several Wind-weak characters it will also kill instantly, so that's nice.

Her first phase exclusively uses magic, which is her weaker attack stat, and her only multi-target moves are Abaddon Storm and Mastema Laser, the latter of which is only used when she has 100 TP - roughly every 4 turns, though faster if she takes damage. As such I opt to take things very slowly and remain in this phase as long as possible.

Hell and Delichi are optimized for magic defense and Delichi has a glut of TP regeneration gear equipped here to ensure Living Chain can always keep Mao at maximum magic debuff, which makes the Mastema Lasers very managable. Even then, the first phase has plenty of things that can go wrong and require improvisation. Astaroth Fire can critical hit, Azoth Zone is an unresistable stun (though Mao tends to remove it by attacking the same member twice, or using abaddon storm after, this can prevent my Julia from protecting people or my healers from healing - this is also why I brought three healers), and Abaddon Storm can still cause issues since wind resist isn't feasible to keep up and equip everyone with.

Once she gets off the chair she starts using her physical attacks, and in fact will exclusively use physical attacks in her second form. Her physicals are all Fire-element and thankfully unlike her player form her Mao Tunnel cannot critically hit. They are, however, significantly stronger than her spells and Mao Tunnel now means she has an all-party attack that isn't percentage based.

More notably, she'll charge up every 4 turns in her physical mode and cast Fury Wave the next turn which still did half of my party's health despite her being fully debuffed and using every defensive measure! A timer is clearly present on the fight now. After Fury Wave she swaps to using magic exclusively - her pattern remains the same as her first phase, though she swaps to physical again after Mastema Laser.

In her third phase she ditches the pattern entirely and just casts whatever, and her physicals upgrade to having two hits each, and she also casts Electric and Ice spells that are just as strong as Fury Wave when she charges up.

I do not fight this third phase at all, it is ludicrous. It is also half her collective HP bar, so the fight feels a bit dry without it. Even my first playthrough just pushed through the first two and then did 500 thousand burst damage to avoid fighting the third.

Finally, unlike Marion who would shift phases mid-turn, you have to wait until the end of the turn for Mao to regenerate, so you can't skip anything. She also removes all statuses on her so I can't even make her weak to Ice before the final phase.