Nex: Angel of Death (First EVER Solo)

This is so surreal. First ever solo AoD completed! Without a doubt, this was the hardest thing I have ever done in this game yet. Harder than 4000% Telos no food and no armor, harder than Beastmaster Durzag with no food and no pet lures, harder than solo Yakamaru, and harder than solo Solak post-scaling. While it took 40 hours to do, which is still behind solo Solak post-scaling at 50-60 hours, the execution is much harder and I had far more failed runs that couldn't even get to P3, contrasting solo Solak where most runs ended on P4, the very end.

First off, very, very big shoutouts to both Kahva and Pan u for coming up with all of the big strategies and rotations for solo AoD. Without them, solo AoD would have taken far, far longer for it to happen and I'm forever grateful for it.

Here's a quick run-down of how AoD solos work. On P1, you need to carefully place sticky bombs like I do in order for the blood reavers to clump together for easy chin damage. You cannot let any live, as when Nex does elements again she will immediately absorb all reavers on the field so you must kill them. You may also notice I frequently move Nex around the arena, even abandoning my Death's Swiftness multiple times. This is because of how Nex's secondary enrage (below her large LP bar) ticks up/stop ticking when she's in a quadrant for too long: it only stops ticking after a successful Melee attack. That's also why I sometimes take off my Achto body, in order for this bigger chance.

P2 is interesting. Start with an eldritch spec rotation, then go into whatever quadrant you want. I picked Glacies because I actually wanted to kill Glacies first, but I wasn't able to. Anyways, wait for them all to spawn, then precisely Surge through the middle clicking on the exact spots (I throw a Vulnerability bomb on the spot you click to make it easier on myself), then immediately stall Incendiary Shot. To make it easier to stall, I try using a spell that I don't have the runes for, which automatically stops all movement. So after stalling, I Bladed Dive over to the center, release it, and use Snipe and Snapshot to instantly get massive crit adrenaline refunds from Incendiary Shot's buff. After getting to 100%+ adrenaline, I use Natural Instinct on Nex. Do not use it on the minions, as you will instead simply drain their adrenaline and not get the doubled adrenaline gain buff. After that, I use Shadow Tendrils for the guaranteed critical hit to instantly take me to 110% adrenaline, then instantly Death's Swiftness. Use SGB spec in one of my Essences of Finality for big damage on Nex herself, then from then on it's just spamming dark bow spec in EoF. You will crit and hit so hard, you can eat as much food as you want and you would still gain an adrenaline overflow. Once you phase into P3, kill minions as quickly as possible and start kiting after Death's Swiftness so you only take Magic damage.

For P3 it's literally just a spec tanking simulator. Icicles aren't actually too bad, since you can just pray Melee and have Enhanced Devoted and spirit shields reduce a ton of damage. Smoke lines are also very easy and allows you to get some free damage in. But smoke pools are the absolute worst. They do 14,000 damage, meaning you generally can't tank the hit without eating up to full every time one shows up. So I have two ways of dealing with it: one is a powerburst of vitality which simply doubles my LP, so I can tank it just like that. The other is using trimmed masterwork's damage offset effect that reduces the initial hit and spreads the rest of the damage later on as a DoT. It hurts a lot and you need to make sure you properly switched everything, but it's a thing.

P4 is pretty simple but after spending around 16 minutes getting there, it's extremely nerve wracking. You want to stack bombs as I do, where you Surge into the place you want to place the bomb right after your bar finishes filling up. In this case, the Surge would line up with starting a new instant kill mechanic. Then a tick later, Bladed Dive out and you'll be able to stack bombs on top of each other without needing to tank damage or use Barricade.

Also, shoutout to my friend Ri n for making this thumbnail for me. It's so perfect haha.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

Full unedited kill with chat and full reaction:   / 793582461  

Music:
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition - Zanza
Xenoblade Chronicles - Mechanical Rhythm
Devil May Cry 3 - Devils Never Cry
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