Octopath II: Solo Ochette vs Claude クロード

Ochette solo with no items, befriend, hired help, or nuts.
Playlist:    • Octopath Traveler II: Ochette Solo  
0:00 Equipment
0:19 Time Attack 2T / no-damage (Armsmaster)
1:20 Equipment
1:46 no-skip / no-alpiones (Thief)

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Throne Chapter 4: Claude (クロード)

Claude - 68kHP with 9 shields. Dagger/Axe/Staff/Elec/Fire
Pirro - 28kHP with 5 shields. Sword/Light/Dark
Mother - 18kHP with 5 shields. Dagger/Bow/Ice/Light
Father - 18kHP with 6 shields. Spear/Dagger/Axe/Wind/Light
Parent (Marietta) - 13kHP with 5 shields. Dagger/Bow/Fire/Elec
Child (Throne) - 13kHP with 5 shields. Sword/Dagger/Dark

Everybody except Pirro is weak to daggers. Pirro himself is weak to Sword. Claude can use his chain ability to lock our main class skills, and later in the fight, the "attack" and "item" options, and he can end up locking more than one if we don't break his shield. When we take his HP down to certain thresholds, he'll poof from the field and one of the summons will be in his place instead, starting with Pirro, then Mother and Father together, and then Parent and Child as the last set.

As far as I can tell, all damage skills in this fight are physical. Pirro gets three actions per turn, and his first move will always be a physical single-hit that brings one member's HP to zero. I don't know the cycle time for the skill, but I know it could be dodged but it cannot be prevented by the instant death accessory.

In order to fulfill the no-damage condition (on Ochette) under our limitations, the only method I know of is highly luck-based. Basically we either stack speed or passive evasion on Ochette. Either way, this is the pattern:

Turn 0: 3x Somersault for 3 stacks of physical dodge.
Turn 1: Fully-boosted armsmaster axe attack. The boss will chain our main class skill, and then use a 3x physical AOE.
Turn 2: Attack the boss to finish the fight. The boss will do 2 actions, each is a single-hit physical.

As you can see, there are way too many attacks to dodge at 100%. However, if Ochette gets to move first in all 3 turns, the boss will only get off three attacks, which we are guaranteed to dodge. If not, then we need to rely on passive evasion.

When we're not rushing him, it's mainly the timing of Pirro's first attack that we're concerned about. Assuming we do at least about 10k damage during the first break, in his next turn, his first action will be to summon Pirro, and then his next action will morph into Pirro's 1st attack that has the instant death component.

His skill lock has the highest priority in his entire repertoire. For example, when he reaches yellow health, his next move would be to summon in his next shadow. However, if we bumrush him to yellow health before he even gets to move, first thing he does would still be to throw out the skill lock, and only then he'll summon. It should be obvious that triggering his summons with your skills still locked is a very bad idea, because Claude himself will not be on the field, so we can't break his shield to get our skills back. Anyway, Claude's moves are:

Turn 1: Main skill lock + 3x physical AOE (耐久テスト)
Turn 2: normal attack + physical hit (慈愛の鎖)

I'm not exactly sure what the condition of his first summon is. I believe his shield needs to be broken at least once, and we need to have done at least 10k damage or so. In that case, his next actions would be:

Turn 3: Summon Pirro + Pirro's 1st attack.

After we dispatch shadow Pirro, if Claude is not in yellow health, with absolute certainty, he'll immediately follow up with a combo that contains his own instant death attack. Usually it'll be something like:

Turn 4: 3x physical AOE (耐久テスト) + instant death attack (間引き)

However, if he's in yellow health, as mentioned previously, he'll summon in the next shadow as a priority move. That'll be Pirro if he's not used up yet, otherwise it'll be Mother and Father. Similarly, if he's already red, he'll queue up the last pair as priority. Note that when he brings in the last pair of shadows, Claude will stay on the field himself so he's vulnerable to damage, but he'll also start locking normal attacks and items.

Generally, trying to force the summons is the best way to make him avoid using his instant death skill, because it can be very difficult to build up 4 stacks of physical immunity to dodge it, in the same turn as we bring Pirro down. In theory, this means reducing Pirro's shield to 1, then making sure Ochette moves first in the next turn by spamming Repeated Phantom Slash, and then at full BP, we use a 5x summon (4x Somersault + 1x breaker) followed up by a 3BP-boosted attack to take Pirro out.

In practice, Ochette's summons can miss Pirro - and Trousseau in Cassti's final chapter - as these two bosses seem to have some kind of passive evasion independent of their EVA score, so trying to land 4x Somersaults is not reliable in the least.