Mother Whale is the Season 1 raid boss for the newly added Solo raid game mode (5/10/2023)
There are currently 7 stages with progressing difficulty, with a Challenge stage that unlocks when the 7 stages are cleared.
The challenge stage is set to an equalized level of 400 and is a very challenging mode for players who wish to set themselves a high ranking for the end of season rewards.
Seasons lasts 1 week and rewards will be given at the end based on your ending rank.
There are no major differences in any of the stages of Mother Whale except for higher HP on all the breakable parts as higher damage from the bosses attacks and the attacks of the mobs that are summoned during the fight.
The attack order of Mother whale is straightforward, but the further stages make damage dealing mechanics a little bit more difficult.
- Mother Whale will always start with spawning several missiles that target randomly, these missiles cannot be taunted but are very weak and destroyed easily.
- The spawning platforms deal heavy damage to the boss, so breaking them will help you clear, and they respawn periodically later in the fight.
- The Core is an important area to break IF you are looking to deal with one of the mechanics.
- The core gets substantially harder to break in further difficulties, forcing you to deal with the boss differently.
After missiles are done spawning, the boss will put up a barrier that is impenetrable and cannot be broken with damage. The way you get rid of the barrier is the following:
- Killing the first wave of monsters spawned
- Taking the damage of monsters and the barrier goes down after a certain time, this is extremely dangerous and rarely happens if you kill the monsters over time.
What makes the mobs extremely dangerous is, the longer they spend on the screen the more dangerous the boss gets, you take extra projectile damage from the boss and mobs potentially killing units.
The mobs themselves do go away, however, this is where the core comes into play. And why killing it is very important.
- Breaking the core before mobs spawn prevents the boss from applying a 99.9% defense buff to the mobs, making them take 1 damage per hit.
- Breaking the core should still be a priority if you can survive the waves of mobs as the shield goes down again afterwards allowing you to deal damage.
- The core break will prevent the buff from being applied to later waves of mobs summoned.
In later stages where the damage required to break the core is very high, there is another way of dealing with the mobs.
- The mobs only take 1 damage from normal attacks. They will still take full damage from AOE burst skills.
- Clearing the first wave with AOE burst allows you to break the shield and continue to deal damage to the core.
- Mobs still take full damage as they are appearing on-screen, there is a short gap where they are targetable and killable quickly before the boss applies the buff to them (it shouts)
- High amount of overall hits is what allows you to kill the mobs when the defense buff is applied to them.
- Minigun units and SMG units are absolute king for this if you are unable to kill them with burst, it is a hard requirement in a team to have at least 1 to be safe.
One attack that probably catches players off guard is when Mother Whale flies over you, early stages the attack is negligible and does pretty much no damage.
However, in the stage 7 and challenge mode, any unit that is not in cover will die. The solution is simple, but try not to greed to avoid losing units to something easily avoidable.
This attack happens very early, so losing a unit that early is not great.
After the third wave of monsters, Mother whale will summon a 4 wave, these monsters are extremely tanky and are not as easily killable as the prior waves.
After a short duration they will launch of volley of attacks targeting randomly, this wave is the most dangerous and no cover or sustain will cause you to likely lose units on later difficulties.
Mother whale will also do a volley of laser attacks that are very telegraphed by the 6 glowing areas on its sides, this volley does moderate damage on all difficulties (excluding Challenge)
Sustain isn’t really necessary on any difficulty below stage 5, If you are capable of using AOE burst and have enough hits in your team to deal with the mobs, you can get through the entire fight without healing.
Units recommended for sustain are up to Stage 7 as challenge mode is specific to how you deal with mechanics.
TLDR way you deal with the fight is:
- Have enough AOE to clear out the initial wave of mobs and kill the core.
- Have enough hits to kill the mobs quickly enough, so they don’t overwhelm you.
How you build your team is mainly around either of those 2 things, or a bit of both.
Recommended Units:
There are various ways of dealing with the different mechanics of the boss, the further stages you go, the more you are forced to adapt to. The units below are recommended based on how well they can deal with the mechanics of the fight.
Notable burst 1 unit for the fight: Dorothy
Dorothy’s passive skill 2 “Baptism” deals with every mob spawn wave without you having to use an AOE burst, it deals more than enough damage to one shot the waves helping you deal more damage.
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