[PSO2:NGS] (

I decided to do an arks record for the first time in forever because I started learning Bo last week and I think combat records are a very nice environment to get comfortable with a class. The only thing is if I start any arks record, I get competitive and obsessed with it, and this is the result of that. That's why I normally try to prioritize health and skip them :P I'm sure there are optimizations I may have overlooked but I'm pretty happy with how this flowed.

Anyway, lemme talk about my thought process....

The gear setup was straightforward:

1) Unwix 5: burn + hysterical + endure pb because I need pb when the down comes
2) Blastor 5: lively hp + whatever for the down
3) Termina 5: hysterical + lively for a single pinion in the down while burn is still up

Since it's a short fight, the main priority is ensuring that the down and pb happen at a suitable time. Harrier is the best pb generation pa and also the best dps so it's really spamming the unshifted version of it. The only difficulty is ensuring that the rain from the unshifted version doesn't whiff as monkey moves. This is easy to fix though: the rain happens at around the 2.5s mark of every pa, and monkey has fixed duration for its moves, so it's easy to math it out on a spreadsheet.

I just need to have a particular sequence of moves to make everything align. To help with that, I can double counter with pheasant the fire aoe attacks so I can reset the timer for the harrier flow. Also, if monkey does two single swing attacks before a double swing, I shift harrier because he will most likely do a double swing next and my unshifted rain would be misplaced. Once I decided on those routines, I just had to reroll for the optimal sequences.

Another thing I have to keep in mind is that I can only have a max number of harriers and double counters or else my down will happen too soon. That's when a single regular step at the start, and a few falcons come into play. I particularly chose to have the last pa be a falcon so I can swap gear to the down without sending my lingering pa to the void.

Part 1 can't be extra long or extra short either or else it compromises how I enter the down in p2. This means that for my flow to work I can't have more than one spin after a double swing or any step back into fire throw since those are longer sequences. I also can't have any fireball because they speed stuff up.

If everything is favorable, I will have the down at the 1:11 mark. In this run I had it at 1:12 because there was some fudge after I used pinion and jolt and didn't want to gamble being able to start a pa and counter after a very nice pinion crit lol

In terms of active skills, I do a pinion and jolt in p1 to help build down factor and deal good dmg. If they are not high rolls, I have to reset because I'm whiffing a counter for that. To build jolt I use a held fierce wave either after a spin attack or a double swing depending on when my last harrier finished. It all fits nicely. There is no need to speed up jolt with a boots counter since we only have room for one meaningful jolt before the down.

I start fanatic at the specific time in the video so it will end around the 1:17 mark allowing the beginning of my down pinion to come with the fanatic blades.

If I did it all that according to the plan, my PB will come up the exact moment I use a JB normal to switch to JB in my blastor (yes, I mathed out the precise amount for pb generation I needed from PAs so this would happen). There are other ways I could speed up the PB (for example, by casting or using JB PAs for element set), but they would compromise my active dmg and I would rely even more on crits, so I went for this more stable route.

If the rolls are good, I kill with the pb at the 1:20 mark. If not, I kill at the 1:21 or 1:22 mark with jolt.

What went wrong in this run? I'm stupid and forgot I can't have hysterical by itself on my pinion down weapon or else the burn effect will compromise my potency. So, my pinion dealt 145k instead of 157k. Oh well, I chose to sleep today instead of going for the 1:20 and this was the final result :p

Overall, I'm happy with the arks record since it made me more comfortable with Bo which was my ultimate goal.