TL;DR: People should slot in Grimnir more often if they have him and can set him up

Disclaimer: lengthy text, not too sure how to shorten stuff at present but figured more details thoughts > less

Hi, I've been a long-time lurker on this sub but decided to post another thread for discussion of Expert Iblis auto teams. Teams below are probably considered rather high-investment, but I'm sure there are alternatives that can be tried as well.

So I've been seeing a lot of different teams for Expert Iblis auto, but there were a few points across the teams which I thought could be further optimized.

1. Dragon = ON leads to unfortunate deaths during Stalking Shadows (lure bat to whirlpool) as the lead character would keep hitting the boss and the bat doesn't die
2. Known bug where the lead fails to target the correct bat during the switcharoo
3. Midgard Zero on the lead seemed not optimal. (A) lack of casting dragon skill for Wind Res -10% debuff due to (1) above, (B) easily dropping combo leads Flurry Skill 70% passive to be useless
4. Occasional deaths of lead unit or healer causing the run to fail, either due to sustained damage or unable to heal off Corrosion
5. Most auto setups I've seen are on the slower end e.g. 6-8 min due to defensive setups (see (4))

Suggested points to fix the above:

1. Dragon = OFF > fixed as your melee lead now prioritizes running from the bat (also helped by (2) below, using Sword lead)

2. Fixed with Sword lead Impregnable Fortress print (can't recall the original poster who came up with the idea, RaenonX expanded on this by optimizing it to use a Sword lead)

3. Using 1.5x on Auto seems to give best consistency for point (2) above, I've seen it fail on 2x speed but never 1.5x speed

4. To better utilize Midgard Zero, Combo Time abilities/chain coabilities can help (e.g. Meene, Griminir)

5. Defensive value > F!Noelle/Lowen HP Up, Meene/Sylas skill share, Lance/Axe coabs, etc. Most teams use some variation of defensive prints on the lead unit as well (e.g. Water Res -10%, HP 70% = Def 13%, Affliction Res against Frostbite)

I came across Grimnir when scrolling through my roster, who seemed to pack quite a good set of features to get around the problems above.

• Lance coab Combo Time chain-coab = defensive value, enables flurry prints and Midgard Zero's Flurry Skill
• Brewing Storm is immune to Nihility effects, giving him a 50% final damage to all his attacks after ramp up is complete
• S1 inflicts stormlash, S2 also works as a good map clearer (e.g. 3 bats DPS check)
• Strong normal attacks, fast charging S1/S2 also help for clearing things

Downsides:

• Long-range lance weapon causes to targeting issues with bats if used on lead (sword/axe/dagger are best), sometimes targets the wrong bat and causes wipes at start of P2
• Requires high hit count to ramp and maintain Brewing Storm Lv. 5

With all these in mind, I came up with two teams, one which tried to be as consistent as possible and another for speedrunning auto, balanced against the possibility of retries.

Team 1: Consistent auto (4-5min, 1.5x speed, dragon OFF) - cleared 39/40

• 40 runs
• Cleared 39/40 without having to click retry (clicked retry on run #40) ~97.5% success
• Survival bonuses: 33 runs completed with no revives, 6 runs completed with 1 revive

Comments

• Leif lead (Sword) for short range = quick to target relevant parts (e.g. bats or DPS check), good skills recharge rate
• Probably the best lead for this quest on auto IMO
• Midgard Zero's Flurry Skill 70% is enabled by Grimnir's chain-coab (Combo Time VI = 2.5 seconds), giving Leif a big DPS boost compared to without Flurry Skill passive
• Notte for big AOE DPS, Stormlash, Dispel all-in-one (Beast Volk because I didn't have a second copy of Midgard Zero/R!Zephyr)
• Grimnir good DPS chain-coab (as above)
• Shared skills: I chose two lowest-cost Poison inflictors (Francesca: SSP 6319, Musashi SSP: 5904) as Leif is the only source of poison (Shielding Stance S2). Could probably go for one poison skill one dispel
• e.g. Lapis, DY!Victor, Ranzal (dispel poison, Sylas (poison ATK -30% debuff), many others
• S!Verica: contains Overdamage (very important fo ramping Grimnir! also maintaining Leif's Flurry), strong HoT plus lifesteal buff helps immensely with survival. I've tested with F!Noelle before - healing is OK but having S!Verica's cheap Overdamage up all the time helps a lot
• Possible to use other healers like F!Noelle Overdamage SS but consistency likely falls as Overdamage uptime is lower you lose a 4th DPS skill

Choice of Wyrmprints

• Full DPS, double afflictions punisher for speed (I am not a patient person, especially if I have to run auto on 1.5x)
• Overdrive Punisher: Iblis spends a good amount of time in Overdrive for Phase 2 (start > break > usually overdrive until dead) - conversely, you can only break him once in P2
• HP 70% = Str 10% (Sword) is a good additional buff plus the Psalm effect
• Bow's Psalm, Sword's Psalm for extra skill haste and Str%
• Water Res 10% on lead and S!Verica for better survival
• Lance HP 15% was sufficient to keep things alive, even with P1 Waterfall if 4 orbs still remained on the map > therefore no additional defensive prints
• Buff time 15% affinity on S!Verica plus extra survivability

Team 2: Speedrun (3-4min, 2x speed, dragon ON)

• About 80% clear rate without retries, but much faster runs
• Able to clear even if failing the triple bat DPS check > revives
• Fastest clear 2:52
• Retries usually caused by (1) failing to target correct bat at start of P2 or (2) being in dragon form during homing bat attack

Comments

• For the speedrun, naturally we would want to maximize full DPS from all sources
• Double affliction punisher for speed
• Broken Punisher: in contrast to the consistent run, with this print equipped on 3 DPS characters you can actually chunk Iblis a decent amount during break (whereas for the consistent run, slow and steady usually gives better results)
• Grimnir in the lead with Cecile SS (or Catherine, who I don't have) Overdamage ramps up insanely quick, the fastest I've seen is Brewing Storm Lv. 5 at the start of P2 if Midgard Zero AOE's the six bats (~1.5 min into the fight). He can actually maintain combo over the phase change as well
• Maribelle for simple AI DPS, DEF down on S1, and a much needed Wand coab for all the skill spam Grimnir and Notte are doing
• S!Verica for Overdamage and survival buffs as above
• Phase Change ~0:40-0:55, Break ~2min, Run ends ~3-4min

Other characters I've tried but didn't really work out

• Louise, V!Chelsea: good single-target DPS but tends to fail at triple bats
• H!Midgard: Does pretty OK as a DPS sub, but dragon haste > dragon more often may fail if you have more chances to be in dragon during homing bats
• Y!Lathna: same comment about dragon haste. She also likes to FS around during the Frostbite targeting attack, sometimes eating both purple circle ring then immediately dying to the following lane attacks. For Dragon = OFF comps, Leif still feels better
• Nino, G!Ranzal, Lin You, Mona (as leads or subs): somehow has issues with triple bats, DPS feels lower than Leif leading
• K!Luca: good survivability and damage but feels slow and clunky to use, can get stuck during homing bats
• Cecile, Saiga, F!Joachim: decent single-target DPS but tends to fail at triple bats, also don't bring much in the way of survivability
• Meene: low DPS, contributes survivability poison but slower runs = more chances to fail IMO
• OG Ranzal: a good substitute for most that is easily accessible, however only one damaging S1 feels like a DPS loss overall even through he contributes dispel poison some defensive value (coab S2)
• Same comment with Sylas who is hurt by Nihility as well

Do let me know your thoughts or if you want me to test any other characters! Still searching for that elusive 100% auto, which I think Cygames patching the bat-targeting issue might help with but there are still quite a few pain points in the Expert Iblis run.

It's still pretty fun to see what other ideas people have to get around all these problems. Keep the discussion going :)

Also to mention: I've tested both teams across three devices, iPhone XS, Xiaomi Pocophone F1, Samsung S21 Ultra and the consistency seems to be similar across the board with the above settings.