So I'm told that Athena can do Trifruits. Seems fair enough, but I'm also told that I'm supposed to stall for skills on the Tamadra. How do I do that? Once he hits me once aren't I basically trapped there forever? Or at least, for an arbitrarily large amount of time until he gets the 20% chance normal attack a shitload of times in a row. As far as I know I'm not supposed to bring any special de-bind stuff. Is there something I'm missing?
You don't need special de-bind stuff. What you *want* is fast light orb changers. If you have a skillmax Valk and Verche you should-- should!-- be fine.
My problem was that I never did, so I died a lot. But it is doable.
Here's the strategy I used:
Athena/Verche/Apollo/Izanagi/Odin/Athena
Floor 1: A single light TPA will take out the seeds but leave the fruit alive. Based on the skill boosts you have, you may want to stall killing the fruit (it's always on a 3 turn counter). If you don't have any light or dark (which happened to me SO MANY TIMES), you are fucked. Valk would solve this problem and you could safely just do two TPA from the get-go to wipe them all out.
Floor 2: A single TPA should wreck them all.
Floor 3: Two TPAs should be enough, but I always went all-out. Unload as much light as possible to kill the flower and the fruit WITHOUT KILLING THE TAMA. I did this once. Bad time. The flower and fruit always have a 3cd timer, so you DO have the option of stalling a turn if you're psyched out by the -1 second from the fruit, but don't do that, because the Tama could bind one of the Athenas and you WILL take a million+ damage to the face. Once they're dead,
slowly set up your board.
***If you need to, you can move one orb without matching and the bind timers will go down! Kill the tama when you either are bind-free or are at 1 turn left!*** What I did was try to get dark, light, and hearts (with none of the same touching) arranged something like this:
xxxxxx
xxxxxd
dhldxh
xxxxxl
lhdhxdwhere 'x' can be anything BUT hearts, light, or dark. Do this one orb movement at a time if you want. Just do your best to not hurt the tama until you have that arrangement. Then take the baby down to the point where one more hit will kill it. Try to leave some hearts/light/dark at the top for changing.
Then for Trifruits, convert your hearts and dark to light. I do this all in one swoop with Apollo. Do this:
llllxx
xxxxxl
llllxl
xxxxxl
llllxlfor four TPA hits. Enhance the orbs with Athena and boost with Izanagi. That SHOULD be enough to wipe them all out.
A safer strategy though would also be (and better if you don't have Izanagi):
Set your board up like this:
xxxxxx
xxxxxx
ldldld
dldldl
ldldldor
xxxxxx
xxxxxx
lhlhlh
hlhlhl
lhlhlh
This way you have easier matching at the top. Make sure you have extra light or heart or dark at the top when you kill the Tama.
That way, when you fight trifruits, you can do something like this:
llllxx
xxxxll
llllll
llllll
llllllEnhance with Athena (and Izanagi if you have him). This should also reliably take everything out, maybe with a little left, especially the green fruit. Don't worry, you always have two turns. Use Valk or Verche afterward if you have them available and TPA down the rest. Make sure to use your second Athena enhance here.
It's hard and not always reliable, but it does work. I spent all of last Thursday working this strategy out.
BUT!
Now that I have Hanzo maxed and Ronia online, I have made for myself a foolproof Trifruit killer team:
Pandora/Skillmax Hanzo/Skillmax Vamp/Ronia/DMeta/Hypermax Pandora Friend
Floor 1: 16x from Vamp or Hanzo clears it all.
Floor 2: 9x or 16x from Vamp or Hanzo is fine.
Floor 3: Pandora wipes the flower and fruit out. Stall until Ronia is up.
Floor 4: Ronia+Hanzo+DMeta = fully enhanced dark board. It's an OHKO on all fruits.
So now I can farm Trifruits reliably (and will be able to moreso if I can hopefully skillmax my Pandora with Badpy in upcoming weeks).