FFXIII-2 DLC Jihl Nabaat coliseum battle strategy

Instead of dishing out only the playable characters from the first FFXIII, Square Enix released Jihl Nabaat, the silver-haired antagonist in the first game. Surprisingly, Nabaat is a much tougher opponent than both Lightning and Amodar. This is not a battle that you can go in unprepared with the usual ravager and commando decks. Most tough battles in FFXIII-2 can be conquered with ravagers, commandos, and sentinels, but Nabaat practically wrote her own rules for the fight and thus call for a different sort of strategy.

For starters, Nabaat is practically immune to any sort of attacks. Her most powerful attack, Sadistic Surge, will most likely kill at least a single character, and it even ignores defensive advantages like the Tortoise paradigm. Nabaat doesn’t fight alone. She summons Azure Behemoths, Nightblade Pumas, and Psicom Wardens to aid her. That means for most of the fight, you’ll be fighting 6 separate characters. Thankfully, they aren’t too powerful and can be ignored. Defeating the individual monsters won’t do much good because she’ll just resummon them in full health. There is a way to defeat the monsters in a strategic order to defeat her, but that strategy is not recommended.

There are 2 ways to approach the battle. 1. To chain Nabaat to a stagger while ignoring all of her summoned monsters. 2. To use Nabaat’s own monsters against her. The latter of which is a lot of fun, but is also a lot tougher and relies on luck (which makes it more frustrating than it’s worth).

The best way to defeat Nabaat is to force her to a stagger, which can be a tough thing to do since you’ve got 5 other monsters to worry about. It requires a bit of focus since the azure behemoths and the nightblade pumas are able to interrupt your attacks. The nightblade pumas are especially annoying because they can use the lunge ability which launches a member of your party into the air, which not only stops your character from acting, but also stops their ATB from progressing.

Preparation:

• Party levels needs to be at or near max level. 
• Obtain the Monster Collector fragment ability from the mystic in Serendipity. Obtainable after collecting all fragments from the Vile Peaks -200 AF- and -010 AF-. Increases your chances of obtaining monster crystals by 20%. 

 Paradigm pack:

• Synergist with bravery/bravega and/or faith/faithga (Thexteron, Gancanagh Ace, or better yet, buy the Sazh DLC and obtain his monster crystal). 
• Sentinel with the challenge ability (Bunkerbeast) 
• High level Commando (Red/Gold Chocobo, Tonberry, or Dragoon)

Paradigm deck recommendation:

• Relentless Assault-X: Ravager, Ravager, Commando 
•  Ruthless-X: Saboteur, Ravager, Commando
• Guerilla-X: Saboteur, Ravager, Synergist
• Solidarity: Commando, Medic, Sentinel
•  Discretion: Medic, Medic, Commando
• Cerberus-X: Commando, Commando, Commando

Nabaat has a pattern that she never detracts from. It is as follows:

1. Call Reinforcements—respawns all of her monsters in full health.
2. Sneer—a taunt. Just a warning for what’s to come.
3. Sacrifice Pawn—Nabaat changes her monsters into energy for mega HP recovery and damage to all of your party members.
4. Sadistic Surge—an immensely powerful attack against one character. Unless your character is near full in HP, this attack will most likely kill the attacked character. There is also an explosion at the end that will damage any nearby party members.
5. Repeat

In boss fights where it is best to focus on one enemy, always use the X (Cross) tune which can be modified in Party Paradigms – Customize. If not, paradigms like Cerberus, if left alone, will have all three characters attack different enemies.

The Battle:

Sadistic Surge, Nabaat's strongest attack.

Begin the fight by chaining Nabaat with Relentless Assault-X. She will immediately call for reinforcements. Ignore the monsters and continue to chain Nabaat. During this first run through of the pattern, Nabaat will not use any defensive or offensive maneuvers that would buff herself and her party with protectga and shellga (defensive) or bravega (offensive).

Whenever Nabaat sneers, change your paradigm to Solidarity. Make sure Serah continues to attack her with commando abilities to keep her chain going. Noel as a medic will briefly heal your party to prepare them for the Sadistic Surge attack.

Make sure you stay in Solidarity until after the explosion at the end of Sadistic Surge. Without the sentinel in your party, the explosion will likely take down any nearby characters. After Sadistic Surge, have Serah attack Nabaat to keep her chain going then change to Discretion and revive any fallen characters before healing others. Healing the characters to about 60% to 75% of the health gauge should be able to hold off the enemies before Nabaat’s next Sneer.

Change to Ruthless-X and debuff Nabaat with a single dispel. Dispel will work 100% of the time and will take out 2 of her buffs. This can be done by selecting dispel in the abilities menu and pressing triangle (PS3) or Y (360). Debuffing Nabaat will cause her to keep casting defensive maneuver and prevent her from using offensive maneuver, which strengthens all other monsters enough to cause problems. The point is to chain her to a stagger and not to take out any of her monsters.

Change to Relentless Assault-X to speed up the chaining process, but make sure you change to Ruthless-X whenever she uses defensive maneuver.

Keep repeating until you bring Nabaat close to a stagger. 480% in her chain gauge is good. Now wait until you’ve healed up after Sadistic Surge to unleash your final attack, but don’t forget to attack her as a commando.

Change to Guerilla-X and not only do you dispel any defensive buffs she has, you will also need to debuff her with deprotect and deshell. Meanwhile, your synergist will buff your party with bravery and faith.

Nabaat should be at a stagger now, change to Cerberus-X and wallop on her. With debuffs on her defenses and bravery and faith on your party, she should go down quickly.

Brief note on how to defeat her the “other” way:

You can actually defeat Nabaat without even touching her. The monsters that she summons all have different properties when they are sacrificed:

• Azure Behemoth: nothing. If defeated, will cause major damage to Nabaat when sacrificed.
• Nightblade Puma: damages your party.
• Psicom Warden: heals Nabaat significantly.

The basic strategy for this way of fighting Nabaat is to take down the azure behemoth to damage her and the Psicom wardens to stop her from healing. This way is not recommended, however, because when Nabaat has taken enough damage, she will start to summon the monsters randomly which can result in 4 Psicom Wardens and an Azure Behemoth. With those monsters on the field; it becomes extremely difficult to keep her from healing large chunks of her HP.

About Nabaat as a monster crystal:

A list of Nabaat's abilities.

Nabaat joins your party as arguably the most powerful Saboteur in the game. She focuses on offensive debuffs and most of her abilities have the side effect of dealing heavy damage to your enemies. If you want her to learn more passive abilities like deprotect and deshell, you can always infuse her with other monsters, but abilities like that should be left to Serah and Noel.

Right off the bat, Nabaat needs crystals to level up, but do not buy them from Chocolina as the expense adds up. Potent crystals can be obtained from Microchus in The Archylte Steppe -???AF- Clearwater Marshes (the left part of Archylte Steppe) on rainy conditions. There’s a little “island” near the middle of the left section. Just keep wandering around there and you’ll be seeing a lot of Microchus. 

Obtain the Encounter Master fragment ability from the mystic in Serendipity and you’ll be able to collect potent crystals to level even Twilight Odin to the max. The Encounter Master fragment ability can be obtained by collecting all fragments from all Yaschas Massif timelines which include -010 AF-, -01XAF-, -110AF-, and -100AF-. She maxes out at level 13 just like Lightning and Amodar (but not like Sazh who oddly maxes at 45). Another item you should consider getting before going on any monster material hunt is the Collector Catalog from the chocobo races.