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 ;_;