Taima Five VR Strategy Guide SQ

# Spider Queen Strategy Guide

## Key Information:

The Spider Queen mission takes place in that circular hub in the sewer. For steps 1-5 there are three stages, and on 6+ there are five stages. The initial and middle stages will have normal mob spawns, but her final stage will not. Every other stage, Spider Queen will climb up the drain and cower while she sends normal mobs to delay you. On her final stage, Spider Queen will occasionally summon purple spiders around herself. Occasionally, when Spider Queen is present on the stage, she will do a "web drop" attack around her, which slows and bleeds allies who are hit. All of the following attacks are present regardless of the stage you're in. The only change to her pattern is the addition of a extra cycle stage 6 and onwards.

### Spider Queen's normal attacks:

- **Double Stab:** Pull back slightly winding up for about a two seconds, then swings down with her right and then her left legs, doing 2 hits in quick succession. Both hits will cause flinch.

- **Pounce:** Points downward accusingly at a target for a second, then pounces and attacks with her front legs. Has knockdown effect.

- **Spear Sweep:** Pulls her spear back on one side for a second, then does an upwards sweep attack in front of her. Knocks the characters hit high above her.

### Spider Queen's special attacks:

- **Web Drop:** A Special attack that targets the first character that attacks the Spider Queen inflicting Bleed and Slow as well as Damage. The hard trigger is Spider Queen getting hit and it has a 25 second cooldown after which the next character who hits her gets attacked. Player character can simply avoid this attack by allowing your partners to hit her before you do and getting a sense for the timer. Dealing with the bleed and slow, however, is something you're going to have to account for when building a team.

- **Web Traps:** Scrunches down for three seconds, then slowly springs upwards. Drops harmless splotches of webs around her in a wide hexagonal pattern, 6 in a circle and 1 in the center (under herself). Webs cause slow as long as a character stands on one while they're active and fades if they walk away.

- **Web Spit:** Leans head back really far, then spits white goo in a narrow cone in front of her for several seconds. Causes slow and deals damage over time. Very powerful move that can oneshot a character in higher stages if they take the full hit.

- **Summon Spiders:** Stretches herself up for three seconds and then slams her spear into the ground to summon purple spidey bois in a circle around her. The move itself doesn't perform any damage, however she's invulnerable while she performs it. She will attempt to summon the spiders gain once they're killed.

## General Strategy

There are 3-5 stages to the SQ fight, and from steps 6+ there will always be 5 stages. The prevalence of bleed damage from her web drop attack as well as random damage from the surrounding normal mobs means it's highly advised to bring some method to heal everybody during the level, through abilities like Felicia's Evil Strange or Vampiric Zone, or Emily's Healing Field, Shizuru's Sprout Garden or even through individual healing abilities like Asagi's Rakusenka or Murasaki's Greataxe: Senpu. Supporters like [New Year] Felicia, [Holy Night] Kirara who sets a healing effect with her main active or passive skills are good choices for this end.

During this fight Debuffs are nerfed, being shortened by half of their full duration. This doesn't mean they're abolished, however, and they still prove quite effective in this fight as extreme dodge attacks have plenty of opportunities to trigger. Tokiko's Clairvoyance, Kirara's Freeze Zone, Felicia's Vampire Zone, etc. all prove to be quite useful. Even speed debuffs can be very effective due to the already slow nature of the Spider Queen, as such one should not shy away from equipping skills and supporters around applying debuffs. As a VR Boss her critical hit resistance is a high, however "Rebellious" type weapons still find opportunities to land a stray critical hit and apply a defense debuff, so they should still be considered.

The normal mobs are a pain in the ass, as they can inflict bleed and the ranged spiders can inflict slow with their projectiles. It's advised that you bring at least one character that can clear them quickly with wide normal attacks such as Rin or Shiranui. Although slow, the Spider Queen's very wide normal attacks, melee characters controlled by AI will get hit and fall down very often, leading to frequent dps drops. Additionally, SQ's web drop is much more likely to hit melee characters that run up to her, causing dps drops from the slow. It is recommended that you manually control one high damage melee or ranged character and allow the other two team members to attack while healing themselves with recovery moves. If you're running more than 1 melee character, try to be on the opposite side of SQ from your melee teammate(s) while drawing aggro, and be sure to dodge successfully.

### Dodging the Web Drop

The web drop is can be a pain in the ass because it has no visible warning, however it has three major weaknesses you can exploit:

* It's timed to a 25 second cooldown starting the moment she becomes active the first time during the fight after one of your characters hits the boss, which means you can predict it with ease. Across multiple repetitions of the fight you will get a good feel of when the move will come down and plan accordingly
* Despite it's animation, the hitbox of the move is narrow and homed to a single target in front of her. You can avoid it by simply allowing someone else to hit the spider queen first and standing away from the direction she's facing. Projectiles are enough to trigger them, so simply waiting for your AI partners to do anything to her. Standing diagonally to her, right next to her, or simply behind her are also enough to to be completely safe the attack as seen on this video https://streamable.com/bjxpkm. However the boss can instantly turn around to target you if you're the first one to attack her, so it may be unreliable to attack her right away after she appears, however sticking to her sides when she drops and waiting for the move to appear is enough if you'd rather stay close to her.
* The attack counts as a Debuff with no real hurtbox or attack properties, therefore you can prevent it with supporter skills that clean debuffs or prevent the enemy from using them like Lydia Barreta's active skill.

You AI partners, however are more likely to receive the full attack whenever it comes out, so despite this it's important to gear your designated AI characters around getting hit by this move.

The initial web drop will not happen if something happens to interrupt her ability to attack or inflict debuffs. An example is to use the main supporter skill of Lydia Baretta which disables enemy debuffs for 10 seconds. You can also you can activate any character's ultimate as soon as SQ spawns on stages 3 and 5, and cause the web timing drop to occur during the ultimate cutscene, negating its effects. This will not stop the 25 second timer, however, and subsequent web drops will occur.

## Squashing the Spider

The greatest weakness the Spider Queen has are her slowness and her huge size. All of her attacks are very slow, winding up for long periods of time and only hit directly in front of her. This means that the safest place to be in the match is right behind her and right next to her, which makes in turn being aggressive with against very effective. As such **the key to this battle is** **to be as aggressive as possible**. The main character you control should focus on being on top of her at all times, weaving while trying to maintain a position close to the abdomen of the spider. This way it's entirely possible to go entire fights with your main character unscathed, with only your AI companions receiving damage.

Do not show any respect to this boss. On later stages the battle has a tendency to draw out for a long time due to the amount of phases the bosses has, as such investing your Magatamas and Supporters around surviving can backfire to a situation where you cannot finish the battle on time. On the contrary, going all in on offenses can lead to more frequent breaks to her super armor and faster clear of her mobs which makes attacking her safer. Her third phase is specially easy to exploit because the spider boss will continuously attempt to summon spiders, and if you're able to skill them quickly in one fell swoop the boss will waste more time summoning them again doing nothing but being vulnerable to your offenses.

## Who to Bring

The ideal team composition would be a Main attacker who dishes out a lot of damage and/or can exploit the Spider Queen's large hitboxes with extreme dodges with strong effects. Obvious choices for AI partners include generally strong characters such as Green Murasaki, Blue Sakura, Green Rin Uehara, and Red Shiranui with the latter opting for Rondo instead of Senkou.

Running Felicia with Evil Strange and 2+ blue supporters allows her to easily inflict Blood Mark, which is a debuff that heals you back for a percentage of the damage dealt to the target inflicted by it. Since it's a debuff applied on the enemy, all of your allies benefit from this making it a very reliable option to sustain the whole party. By manually controlling Felicia, one can dodge SQ's mostly-melee-range attacks, drawing aggro away from your ranged teammates, and trigger blood marks to mitigate (and potentially eliminate) sustain problems.

Tokiko is a surprisingly good choice for a Main character against VR bosses due to Clairvoyance, an extreme dodge skill that inflicts a crushing 50% defense debuff, which in turn becomes huge damage for the whole party. Stone Piercer and Autum Wind allows her to bob and weave in and out of her range, making it very safe to attack, provided one keeps track of the web drop timing and pays attention the the tells to the animations announcing her attacks. The lack of sustain, however, means she needs to find a secondary way to heal her. Main supporters with heal effects like [New Year] Felicia on main or Hanazaki Yozora prove valuable even if equipped temporarily to heal damage taken. Partners with AoE healing like Felicia, Emily, Shizuru also help with providing characters without individual sustain with HP.

Shizuru with a Red build also proves a fantastic choice for a main character against the Spider Queen. Rose Rondo and Whip Shot on a red build reduces enemy defenses which translates on an increase to all of your character's damage, Sprout Garden proves easier to set and for all your characters to heal if you're all huddled around the boss, and her wide normal attacks can clear small spiders faster.