Ruthra - raid guide

The most important aspect of this raid is Ruthra’s passive, Manipulating Causality. It makes the boss immune to almost all crits (guaranteed crit skills such as Lizelotte’s bypass this), and locks your team’s ultimate abilities, which makes the stun into DPS phase upon the boss using its main skill imperative for good overall damage.

Ruthra has a pretty simple rotation that doesn’t deviate because the boss doesn’t care about mana and can’t be speed reduced. The skill order is as follows:

Normal > Smash > Normal > Dissolve > Normal > Punishment > Main skill

The normal attacks and Smash don’t do anything of note, but Dissolve will debuff your team’s defense and applies crit vulnerability, Punishment will debuff their attack, and the main skill is very important as this is when you need to use a skill that stuns to interrupt the boss for the DPS phase.

Dissolve (giant eye laser):

This will apply the first debuffs to your team, but for the most part you can just ignore this one because the more punishing debuff is the attack down that comes after.

Punishment (Two arm swings where his fists rocket off):

This attack debuff really hurts your DPS units as it is applied right before the DPS phase, so you’ll definitely want to bring a unit with a cleanse to get rid of it right away. Examples of cleanse units will be discussed in the recommended units section of this guide.

Main skill:

The most important mechanic in this raid revolves around Ruthra’s main attack. After using Punishment, Ruthra’s rune lights will turn from purple to blue and she will start to summon a large orb of light which will manifest a large sword of light that she shanks you with. Just after the runes turn blue, the boss becomes vulnerable to skills that stun. At this point, if you do not stun the boss, it will use its main skill which not only hurts, but will cause your team’s DPS to suffer by missing the DPS phase. Watch for this icon to appear on the boss’ status bar:

Using a stun during this debuff will apply a CC to the boss that stuns it, causes all attacks against it to be guaranteed crits, and unlocks your team’s ultimate abilities. It also gives the boss crit damage vulnerability. This is the point where you want to unload all your DPS skills (the DPS phase).

It is important to note that although the boss does not attack any faster or slower based on your actions, your reaction time on the stun mechanic can affect how many DPS phases you get! The last stun phase normally gets cut off if you’re not perfectly timing your stuns - however, it is possible to get one last stun off at around 2 seconds remaining if you are efficient with all of your stuns throughout the match. Cutting the boss’ main attack skill animation short by stunning as soon as the window is up can pay off pretty big, giving you a chance to throw out all your skills on a debuffed boss one last time before the fight ends.

Defense debuffs:

Another mechanic of note is the use of defense debuffs. Ruthra takes extra damage while its defense is debuffed, so bringing characters with abilities that do this will also help your overall damage.

Cleanse

Out of these four, the easiest to use are Prim, Talia and Erika, as Jiho’s cleanse is tied to her subskill and may not go off when you need it to.

• Prim slots perfectly into the usual undead team, has great buffs and a defense debuff on top of that.
• Talia is great in many team comps, and brings a lot of buffs along.
• Erika works well in most teams, also has a defense debuff, but using her may be slightly harder since you have to remember her heal is a targeted AoE. Using a team that is split between melee and ranged DPS might make her harder to use.

Stun

There are quite a few characters with stuns, but some of them shine more in this raid than others.

• Aira has become a staple raid character, bringing a lot of utility. She also has defense down, and her main skill is a stun on demand. She doesn’t even have to be highly ascended which makes her useful for F2P players.
• Erusha is perfectly suited to slot into the typical undead raid team, bringing along stun on demand and more DoT to raise Violette’s damage. Also a decent F2P option, although she is squishy at low ascensions and may need support (keepsakes, manors) to avoid dying at high boss damage stacks.
• Haru is another raid staple, almost always seen on a team with Lizelotte because of her huge team-wide attack buff. Her main skill stuns, but she may be better used as a DPS if you can find another character to stun for her.
• Renee is seeing big numbers this raid, going from a fodder character to a huge DPS capable of doing almost as much damage as Lizelotte given the right team and high investment. She works great as a stunner even at low ascensions.
• Velanna is a good replacement for Erusha if you’re unable to keep your Erusha from dying, or to use with Haru’s bleeds for guaranteed crits, ignoring the boss mechanic.
• Linzy is a decent secondary DPS option, but isn’t quite as good in this raid as usual since human teams suffer here.

The other characters listed here are all viable options but may not be as ideal in teams for reasons such as low DPS (tanks aren’t needed for this raid), or not fitting into team comps quite as easily.

Defense reduction

As before, there are some characters that fit into teams a lot easier than others. Aira, Erika, and Prim are all dual-use characters for this raid’s mechanics and so are highly recommended.

• Lizelotte really needs no explanation. Her damage is top tier for raids.
• Violette also probably doesn’t need to be explained, as she’s been a raid staple since the very first raid in the game!
• Garnet is an amazing addition to many teams, she works well on the undead team or as a partner for Lizelotte, bringing amazing debuffs to raise your team’s damage significantly.
• Miriam is another great option for this raid, she can even be used as a main DPS if she’s well invested thanks to her recent buffs and her fairy advantage over Ruthra.

The last three are options as filler as well if you need, they all have decent personal damage, and Linzy brings stuns so she serves dual purpose.

Main DPS

As with most DPS, the highest invested characters are (almost always) your best option, but these shine above others.

• Lizelotte is basically the bossing standard, as every raid so far has been a single entity, which guarantees her skills to crit. Ruthra is no exception, and her crit guarantee even bypasses the boss’ no-crit passive!
• Violette is the OG bossing character, with her awesome ramp-up damage and an easy-to-build undead team that has amazing synergy that’s worked on pretty much every boss so far. She even works without investment, making her very F2P friendly.
• Vivienne shines in this raid with the boss being undead. She also buffs your team and is so fast you can spam her skills even not during the DPS phase to help ramp up her damage.
• Miriam post-buffs is a great addition to the DPS options with her defense debuffs, physical defense shred, and fairy type advantage.
• Renee is another new addition that brings great DPS if she’s invested in, again with fairy advantage shining against the undead boss.