Commencement of a new semester

Harrow everybodeh.

Been a while since I said anything about myself. 

Occupied to the brim now since my semester just started again. Funny how the 1 month of sem break pass by so fast?

I was about to go on and on about something that most people won't probably bother reading so yeah.

New Semester as started over the past couple of weeks.
It has been hectic as ever with new stuff to learn as well as assignment and reports to hand in.
I tried everything I could for them to realize what they are doing but it seems to bare no fruits of effort. Still gullible and ignorant of the indirect message I have tried telling them.

But who am I to say anything right?
It is up to them that determines their action and not me.
I can't control their actions but I can control what I feel and act.

I have learnt so much that I feel as though there are so many things to learn everyday.
"The only time we stop learning is when we are no longer breathing"

Can't seem to remember who said that but it sort of came to my mind when I was thinking about all this.
Of course the most I learn is the people that you mix around with. I'm always the people kinda guy you know? Always like to see a smile on someones face, or maybe even a laugh.
But I don't like it when you are being very inconsiderate. There are limits of course but I'm not sure how long I can take it anymore.
Perhaps this is just how uni life works?
Every person for themselves?
I know it's just small small things but in the end it piles up together to form such a huge mountain of things that keep bugging me that I lost sight of what is really important.

Me

I'm better then that.
If I am feeling those now, I will ensure it will never happen to the people close to me.
Be it friends or family, or anyone else that I have known.

You are worth more then that
Remember that the next time you feel alone or down against the whole world

Maplestory Post "Hard Magnus Guide" -ish

Back at you with another Boss Guide - ish for MapleStory! Aha!
Gotten a few positive feed back from few people and my friends and decided to continue on with this so called guide-ish of mine for tips and tricks to down bosses as well as their attacks and patterns.
As I said before, I am only here to tell you what you can do to down him and not to tell you that you have not enough damage.
If you think you have it, then by all means

So, Hard Magnus.
His phases are a little big different compared to the other bosses. He has this blue shield aura around him that plays a very crucial way for you to deal damage or heal yourself up.
Any damage done to him or any healing effect done to yourself will be reduced to 10% when you are standing outside his shield.
It is also important to mention that you lose 10% health when you are outside his shield and 1% health when inside the shield.
The health reduction varies depending on the difficulty of Magnus with Hard Magnus being fastest to reduce your hp outside or inside the shield.

There is also a potion cooldown in this map

The first phase (100% health) starts off as you enter and you can see that the shield aura surrounding him is very huge.You should be able to avoid most of his attacks in this phase.
What are his attacks?
I'll get to that later but this is mainly what you should be doing during these phases

The shield gets closer each phase.
Phase 2 ( 75% health) has not much difference then phase 1. You should focus more on doing damage as survivability is much easier done here then the last phase 3 and phase 4

Phase 3 ( 50% health )will conclude you are not really safe in his shield aura area most of his attacks will instantly kill you or send you flying to your doom.

Phase 4 ( 25% health )or what I like to hell Hell phase starts  when the shield is as big as him only.
This is the phase that most Maplers fail to down him as they will start dropping like flies.
Survivability is very hard to maintain during this phase even more so while you need to damage him and avoiding all his death skills.

I'll compile all the list of things you need to take in mind at the end as you know, Magnus does a lot of crap ton of skill as you are fighting him.
You are need take note of the falling meteor balls that happens randomly across the map as you are fighting him.
Small green meteor ball = 50% health damage
Medium blue meteor ball = 100% health damage
Large purple meteor ball = 100% health damage

But ideally you want to avoid ALL the balls when possible as you are not only tanking damage from the meteors but also from Magnus.
It should also be worth mentioning that Magnus has no touch damage so you can hug him and give him all the love he needs <3 p="">
Now lets get to his attacks

The diagonal beam.
Magnus flies up and charges his next attacks to be 2 beams of devastation across him
This beams instantly kills you.

The only safe spot for this attack is to remain directly underneath him.
This is very situational and must be up to you how you interpret this situation. If he begins to charge his diagonal beam but you see a large purple meteor falling slowly in the middle of the safe spot, it is most probably more safe to recover yourself to 100% inside his shield and quickly move outside of range of his diagonal beam.
You need to recover your health before moving out as your life will drop 10% every few seconds which could lead to your death as you try to enter back his shield

The Sword Dash
Magnus does a dash attack that does damage according to your % max hp + magic defense
This is the only skill the moves magnus rapid from 1 spot to another.

This attack is not really that threatening but what comes after might decide when you live or die.
If you are a class with low magic defense ( warrior ), this attack will deal quite a significant amount of damage to your hp. If you have skills that help you recover hp, it will help you a little bit as you don't have to rely so much on potions only.
(Make sure you use only Power Elixir in this fight as he occasionally cast zombify that reduces that effectiveness of potions/making you damage yourself if you heal using skills)

The Shadow Strike Clone.
Magnus summon several portal which his clones appears and strikes ground instantly.
There is a little cast delay on this skill so you can see the animation of magnus casting it and the portal appearing before it strikes the ground.

Magnus usually combos this with his other skills making it almost certain death.
The portal usually come out with different timings making it quite possible to dodge if you maneuver properly at the right timing.
That comes with practice and it doesn't come overnight. You just need to get used to it.

The Spider Web debuff
Magnus places a web debuff on your that reduces your speed to 50% and you are unable to use certain moving skills for a set period of time.
There are certain skills that ignore this debuff such as

• Wild Hunters moving while attacking skills ( you need to hold down your hurricane while moving to ignore the effects of the webbing)
• Aran's combat step
• Demon Slayer/Avengers Glide ability

I don't really attempt Magnus on every character so this is what I know so far xD

This skill almost guarantees a death for you because you are very vulnerable at this period.
Focus more on surviving until the debuff wears out. You need to know where to move as the 50% movement speed makes you sitting ducks.

I knew the portals were coming out so I moved towards him in the webbed state.
If his next skill was the spin skill, I would have been dead.
Spin skill?
Yes there are plenty more skills he has =P

Poison Cloud
Magnus spawns puffs of smoke on both corners of the map that disable (like seduce) you for a period of time.

Getting hit by this is almost like an instant death for you ( but at a slow rate if you are outside his shield, talk about a slow death xd)
Remember what I said about your life depleting 10% every few seconds?
Yeah, You are a dead man.

The good thing about this is that the poison ONLY spawns at both corners of the map.

Solution?
Well the best solution is to get 100% status resist then you will never get hit by the spider web xD
Always keep the Magnus fight as center as possible.
If you are forced to face the corner in order to survive and he dashes to that corner, focus more on baiting him back to the center.
Or if you died because you couldn't avoid, wait for him to dash back to the center before respawning.

It gives plenty of opportunity for Magnus to slaughter you if you are standing near the corner.
If he webs you right next to the poison, it is pretty much good bye

You won't have time to move out of the poison indicator due to lower movement speed and the inability to use any moving skills.
And proceed to slow death of 10% life reduction outside his shield xD

Spell combos are deadly no? =P

Sword Slam
Magnus flies up and prepares his massive sword and slams directly underneath him.
You will notice that he uses this skill frequently past phase 3 (50%) and even more so during phase 4 ( 25% ).
This is because he knows that you need to be in his shield area to deal damage and better survive, and he strikes right underneath him.

It is not so bad during phase 3 as you can still remain in his shield at the edge and not dying to his sword slam. You can even take it as a few seconds to attack him in the air as he just floats there for a few seconds

This skill becomes very deadly at phase 4 where the shield is only as big as him.
Staying under him when he strikes down only ensures your death.
So you would need to avoid staying under him when he strikes down and quickly move back in.

The skill I hate the most....
Meat Spin.
Magnus raises his swords and shake off enemies near him.
It does damage based on your % max hp and magic defense, similar to his dash attack.

It is very annoying as this skills gives you such a ridiculous knock back area around him.
If you get hit by this dash, there a few things that could kill you

• Hit you straight to an OHKO meteor ball ( GOAAAAAAAAAAAL)
• Spider web you before hitting you out resulting in less time to recover and enter back his shield
• Hit you to the poison clouds sitting at the corner of the map
• Position you right under his Shadow Strike Clone thingy.

And you will be deaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

And that basically is all his attacks.

Now for some tips and tricks to attempt Hard Magnus.

Try and place your buffs on separate keys and not on macro as sometimes a fast moving meteor can kill you.

Always move to Magnus first before starting any rebuffs as you are losing 10% health outside his shield and being in vision of Magnus will help if he does any skills next.

Prioritize surviving then buffing, You can always buff later on. If you die again, you will have to buff all the way from the start.

Having pet auto buffs help you from buffing up while being able to move around and avoid attacks.

If your job class has a vertical ascend skill, you can actually "jump" over the meat spin.
This requires practice and deadly precision.
If you jump too late, you will still get hit by the spin.
You jump too early and it will be like playing baseball for Magnus.

Always keep Magnus from the corner and bait him back to the center
( Even if it means dying at the center instead of going kamekaze into him in the corver )

Know the perimeter of the poison cloud to more or less estimate which area of Magnus is safe if he is close to the corver.
Do not stay at the side of Magnus which is near to the corner as he can aggro to you and dash in that direction

When you see a bunch of the Shadow striker portal appearing, You need to time when each portal appears to determine when each strike will take place.
I don't know if you guys played Megaman X but this sorta reminds me of that game as you need timing to stay alive.
Of course you could just jump the opposite direction and jump back in once everything is cleared up.
BUT
This will give you potential extra hits on magnus especially during phase 4 when you are required to hug him closely.

You could see that I jump through the strikes as I know which clone was about to strike first.

And of course as I mentioned in my previous CRA Vellum guide
Link skills that help you in survivability.

• Eunwol : Close Call that gives 10% to withstand a fatal attack. Considering the amount of times you actually die in Hard Magnus, This skill could always give you a chance or 2
• Knights of Cygnus : Status Resistance up to 25% for the 5 knights which will help you not get spider webbed as frequently as possible
•  Resistance : Up to 6 Seconds invincibility upon ressurection which can help your buffing time as you re-enter Magnus Fight. You can afford to start at the start of the respawn area for around 4 sec buffing before moving to Magnus. During this 6 seconds, You will be hit by anything at all ( this includes metoers, poisons, and anything from Magnus )

Or alternatively, you could just bring in a crap ton of binders and only hit during binds if that is what you wish xD
Then you only need to worry about the falling meteors.

I wish good luck to whoever attempts Hard Magnus with lots of cape drops for you :)
I would say more coins too but every run is set at 6 coins by default ;_;

MapleStory Post "Chaos Root Abyss Vellum Guide" -ish

With a few weeks of freedom from my finals, I'm back actively more then ever on MapleStory =P

Ever since the last few runs of CRA (Chaos Root Abyss) bosses and also Hmag runs (Hard Magnus), I realized that very few people actually knew what the bosses actually do

And I don't mean saying its easy and all to down such tough bosses.

I'm talking about their patterns and change of attacks as the battle continues.

(God dammit I have the sudden urge to watch SAO again after I mention change in attack patterns ) 

 So for the first guide-ish, I preset to you
Chaos Vellum!
Now this guide to meant to tell you how to approach C.Vellum and his different attack pattern upon changing phases. I like to classify this phases differently as certain bosses change patterns when their HP goes below a certain threshold. Of course you won't notice this threshold as much as you are concentrating on staying alive in the fight.
You should always take note when the first change in pattern when the HP reaches the threshold level to adjust accordingly.
I'm not going to say, "OH you need certain amount of damage, boss damage % and ignore defense to kill him etc etc"

You be the judge of that, if you think you have the required amount of damage to successfully down him, start practicing and notice the HP threshold level.
I am hitting almost the bare minimum amount of damage to take him down.
How do I know this? I attempted solo on him and I downed him with a minute left on the timer.
Meaning it took me 19 mins to down him with my character control.

Okay lets get started.

Before getting into the advanced stuff, You need to know his basics first. 

And we all know about his head popping out and his tail spiking out when his head is up

"The Vertical head pop up"

If you get hit by this, you will instantly die.

It does 100% damage according to maximum health

 "The Horizontal head pop up"
This attack deals 90% of your maximum health, pushes you back and stuns you for a brief moment
You should instantly use double elixir or a power elixir when you get hit by this. There are not many attacks will not OHKO you so if you do happen to get hit by one, you will survive.
There might be an instant where you are knocked back too close to him, and you will die from the spiking tails below
Remember, spiking tails do 100% and will OHKO you

The spiking tails will come out after a few seconds of a yellow circle indicator on the ground similar to before his head comes out.
However, you can differentiate the head and tail circle if you notice a slight delay in the indicator.
The indicator of the tail pop up will remain there until the tail comes out
The indicator will be much faster and disappear for a second before the head pops up

The differences are very much minuscule which will you will get used to after practices

Of course you should always try to avoid them, there is no distinguishing which head will pop up vertical or horizontal, 

Just pray when you get stunned, hopefully it will be a horizontal head so that you won't instantly die.

Another thing to take notes are this falling rocks that happen every few seconds.

These rocks don't do any damage to you but they will stun you for a brief time.

There will be an indicator on the floor few seconds before the rocks come crashing down. It is VERY crucial that you avoid these rocks as the stun is almost guaranteed death. 

C.Vellum's head/tail will ensure a tombstone falling from the sky

 Rocks + stun + tails = dead.
Wombo Combo.

Those are the basic patterns that will remain through out the entire run will adding in more and more attack patterns.
Horizontal head pop-up
Vertical head pop-up
Constant falling rocks
Tail pop-up when his head is up

As I said before, I like to classify the bosses into different phases
Take note with each introducing phase, the previous phase attack pattern still remains the same. Meaning he can just switch any time during the fight.

 Phase 1 starts from the very beginning.
After he does the "vertical head pop-up", he will start shooting fireballs that deals 100% damage as well. He fires 3 consecutive fireballs before going back down.
The first fireball is always the closest to him and the next 2 will be quite considerably far. If you are already near him, You need to stay clear of the first fireball before having more space to maneuver for the tail pops up that will constantly appear as he is spitting fireball.

Do take note that his head actually damages you, stuns and knockback you as he is going back down so do not stay near him as he is submerging.

 Whats the purpose of the next 2 fireballs then?
If you are far from him or respawning from death, the fireballs can catch you off guard leading to another unfortunate death count wasted.

You can distinguish when he pops his head to do a fireball then a normal vertical pop-up. He does a different "roar" when he comes out to fireball. For this very reason, I recommend you to play with sounds on.

Phase 2 begins when he starts doing big leaps across the ground.

 The indicator will be very huge and you will have plenty of time to react and avoid the death leap.
However, if you are stunned by the falling rocks, it is pretty much game over with another death count.
Take advantage of this time to buff back with less risk.
You will have a few seconds to buff up remaining skills that are about to wear off.

Try not to run off into the distance to buff up.
If you are respawning, quickly find him again and buff up slowly with him in your vision.

C.Vellum can do lots of shenanigans without you knowing off screen. It is best to keep track of his movements even when buffing while avoiding his attacks.

 Phase 3 begins when he start spitting poison.

After doing his "horizontal head pop-up", He will start spitting poison across an area around him.

I have no idea whether these poisons do % damage, but getting 3 direct hits from falling poison kills me instantly,

2 direct hits + the damage over time on the floor also kills me instantly.

These poisons ignore you invincibility frame after getting hit and may hit you multiple times as you are moving from 1 poison to another

 (similar to pre-revamped chaos zakum's fire pillar that does 50% damage if you remember it RIP CHAOS ZAKUM)

His tails can still pop up anytime his head is up so be careful. You need to get used to the poison indicators on the floor overlapping the yellow circle of the tail indicator about to pop up.

However, since the poison doesn't straight up OHKO you, You can take advantage of the open space while avoiding the falling rocks.

Unlike his fireballs, You are limited to 1 side of him as he fires off the other side

When he starts spitting poison, you have the entire field to avoid.

As you lure the tails to 1 side of him, you can time it in such a way that after a few of his tail comes out, you quickly move to the opposite side while hitting him to maximize your damage.

Phase 4 is the legendary kameha meha hyper beam phase.

 You need to immediately know when he is preparing for his hyper beam in order for you to react in time because he can pop up at any corner of the map.
When you notice his rumble is not flying on the ground indicating his is moving, or your status ailment symbol on him suddenly vanishes, you can bet that he is already at 1 corner of the map.

You might say that there is message telling you that he is charging and you have enough time
"Vellum is taking a deep breath"

Well I'm telling you don't have enough time F3
Imagine if you got to the wrong side of where he would come out. You need to move all the way to the opposite end of the map before he fires off while avoiding all the falling rocks that is STILL happening by the way.
Getting stun here is an instant death too.

So how do you avoid this?
You need to know exactly when he is going to hyper beam before the message comes out. The message is only to confirm you that he is going to hyper beam. You need to know before hand to afford to make the mistake of going to the wrong corner of where he might come out.

The initial head pop up is a vertical head pop-up will can also kill you so do not stay right above his head as he comes out to hyper beam.

 Don't worry, The tails go on summer vacation when he is hyper beam-ing so that is 1 less thing for you to be worried about.
This is the perfect time to do the MOST damage you can do to him as the hyper beam last for quite a bit and the only thing you have to be worried about is the falling rocks + the suction into his hyper beam.

Try not to get stunned by any rocks as the hyper beam is finishing as a few tails mite pop up before he goes back down.

He retains all the patterns after phase 4 until he dies.
I wish you the best of luck if you are attempting him after reading this guide!

Tips and tricks 
These are few tricks that I have found out after multiple runs of C.Vellum. It might work for you as well depending on your job class and the pros and cons of your own job.

 Being a Dual Blade with very short range of skill hit box, I need to stay relatively near to C.Vellum to hit him.
Always ensure you are at 1 side of him when he starts any attacks. This way you can move slowly to the other side while avoiding the tail spikes to maximize your damage output when he pops out each time.

 Find the right timing to jump across back to him as you are getting zoned out by his tails.
The tails are harmless once it has already popped out, make use of this and jump across right after the tail comes out before the tail on your end comes out.

 Like I said before, always have him within your vision, I was lucky to see his fireball approaching as I was buffing up from respawning.

There are certain links skills that helps a lot in plenty of boss fights.
As you can see in the picture, I just got resurrected by my bishop right on top of a upcoming head.
The resistance link skill gives you 6 seconds of invincibility frame upon resurrection ( 2 seconds per resistance, 6 seconds at max level)
This boasts my survivability upon respawning or ress-ing by a bishop.

Other links skills that help is also eunwol's link skill close call which gives 10% chance to survive a fatal attack.
It is not really a reliable skill that procs every single time but it can act like a free heaven's door for you once a while. The proc chance is only 10% so don't rely on it so much. I don't use this link skill because I would rather prefer a link skill that aid me in dealing more damage to the boss since you can only have a total of 12 links skills on a character.
If you want to refer to the whole link skill table of each character, do so over here
http://ayumilove.net/maplestory-link-skills-guide/

I'll be uploading 1 of the failed runs I have done to give you more insight about the run using all the tips and tricks I used and the different phases of him.
You can find the run over here on my facebook page as blog videos are not really clear.

Hope you enjoyed the guide-ish~!
I'll try and post more about the other CRA bosses or even Hard Magnus if I feel like it :)