Well, I finally beat Abraxas, and it was thanks largely in part to all of the advice scattered around this sub and to those who directly responded to my plea. A huge thank you to everyone. However, it was also due to the fact that I went through the entire fight without him ever using Swallow. Not even once.

Now, I avoided using any offensive magic (Exdeath stuck to Wicked Light for that one), but he was still supposed to use Swallow every 4th turn, right? So why didn't he?

My hypothesis: With the Gilgamesh trial in mind, with the way boss resistances were structured, and with their interest in pushing the new units, maybe Swallow is based on whether you dealt both Light and Dark damage to him each turn.

Realistically, I know that one fight doesn't make a good sample, and maybe I just got lucky to overlap his Double Break/Release combo on any turn he would have otherwise used Swallow. I don't know if the AI would just pick up the turn count or if it would reset, so I can't really say.

So I'm asking anyone willing if they can help me test whether consistently dealing Dark and Light damage each turn suppresses his Swallow, and if anyone has a previous experience that they know conflicts with mine (dealt Light and Dark every turn but still got Swallowed), please let me know.

Every Turn went like this:

• Snow used Provoke
• Cecil used Dual Curaja
• Rain cycled Leadership, Barfira, Barblizzara
• Exdeath used Wicked Light
• Dark Knight Cecil used Raging Fist (Dark Damage dealt by Deathbringer)
• Friend Noctis used Warp Break and Jumped on Release turns.

And that kept up until the end (with Snow feeding chocolates to the team on turns where he didn't have to Provoke). The fight had to have taken over 12 turns, but I don't remember exactly.

Anyways, thanks in advance to anyone willing to help test, and thanks again to everyone who helped me find a strategy that worked.

EDIT: Well, it definitely seems like this isn't the case. Turns out that the only reason I never saw him use Swallow was because of a lot of dumb luck in how quickly I was - or rather wasn't - killing him. His Swallow turns were just overlapping with his Release turns, and that's how I avoided them. Sorry all.