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 :)