Hard Mode Summer and Autumn are Pain

[GilVallus]

WARNING: SALT AHEAD
While technically I did finally beat them, the amount of belligerent squawks between my innumerable deaths was too high. Using a 2H character with a gold charge spin attack or 1H shadow clone character works (barely), and I shudder to think of how the fight would've went for a summoner or mage.

The main quirks (read: HAAAX *Throws monitor*) are as follows:

• Autumn's tornadoes can grab you successively and throw you into the wall unavoidably several times (my record is three times, which hurts), and can lead to the arena becoming suffocated by Summer's bulbs because you cannot break them while spinning around like a fool.
• The spiked bulbs Summer spawns are an unending tide in Hard Mode. Shadow clones, Gold Spin Attack, or Silver Spin Attack with Autumn's wind are the only things I know for sure can quell them; otherwise the entire arena is full relatively quickly and those tornadoes I mentioned can then easily stunlock you in the middle of an effective briar patch. Having them disappear over time would be a godsend.

While I did finally git gud and defeat them (focus on Autumn to stunlock away her tornado death storm, use her wind to spin attack across the arena and make space), the fight generally feels like a playstyle bottleneck of sorts for Hard Mode and is hilariously broken. Normal mode works out fine, to clarify.

Assuming that this fight wasn't supposed to be a 30 attempt pain festival, the following things would be nice:

• The ability to aim your ejection from a tornado; while getting captured multiple times is frustrating, it would be tolerable if you could throw yourself somewhere other than another tornado.
• Edit the spiked bulbs Summer summons to either fade with time or grow more slowly; they might be fine in Normal, but in Hard you have to specifically prioritize skills that can hit targets within a decent area at least twice, or die an immobilized death by plants.

Apologies for any bickering, but this fight was traumatic and soft breezes now make me lash out at the nearest thorny plant with a lamp.

 

[The G-Meister]

You've got a point to be fair. When I made a thread asking "does anyone actually have a strategy for the elder faes fight" and most of the answers I got were either people knowing their specific build for the fight inside out, or just a couple general tips & tricks. When using any other build than the best known builds in the current version, it becomes more of a fight where you run in and hope you do enough damage to kill them before the entire room is filled with spikes.

Having said that, I found my best way to do it (although using a pretty powerful build) was to stick on a load of +DEF gear. When I last remember doing the fight the outer ice spikes did roughly 20 damage, the inner smaller ones did about 10. This seemed to be the best strategy as those spikes are their only form of doing damage.

My plan went as follows:

• Start the fight, and just attack them both. Don't worry about the room filling up with spikes.
• Once the room does fill up with spikes, just destroy the ones in your immediate vicinity (around the edge) and wait for either of them to circle round to you, then attack them.
• If you get thrown around by a tornado, break the spikes around you and move towards the edge again. Rinse and repeat.

 

[The G-Meister]

Now onto actual suggestions, so I'll make another reply so people read it.

Having said that, it may be a lot more infuriating with a 2H build to destroy the spikes. That's where a couple other ideas might be useful for making this fight less infuriating:

• Someone mentioned a while back to let 2H players be able to destroy spikes with two hits, as oppose to three. While I haven't tested if that was implemented or not, it will be incredibly helpful in this situation.
• Here's a good one: hitting a green spike resets its growth cycle. That way you can walk around and just tap some of the green spikes gently to stop them from growing. Really helpful if Autumn is doing her big-gust-of-wind attack

 

[GilVallus]

Having said that, it may be a lot more infuriating with a 2H build to destroy the spikes.

Yeah, outside of silver spin attack my 2H character had no other options to create breathing room aside from attempting normal attacks. That typically lead to the tornado stunlocking though