JP Boss Guide by /u/Zurai001

Multiplayer Enemy AI by /u/TFMurphy

BOSS: Crimson Hound & Guard Hounds (VII)

Difficulties: 160 (Ultimate ) and 220 (Apocalypse )

Mastery Conditions:

• Defeat the Crimson Hound with at least 4 members alive at the end of the battle.
• Reduce the Crimson Hound's ATK.
• Reduce the Crimson Hound's DEF.

Overview:

• Entirely physical damage here. Leave magic mitigation at home.
• All enemies here are weak to Fire-elemental abilities. Crimson Hound has additional resistance to Ice, Earth, Holy, Water and Bio-elemental attacks.
• Most of their attacks are single-target by nature, though there is a mix of PHY and NAT abilities. Dive Attack does supermassive NAT physical damage to one target, and Rush does piercing NAT physical damage to one target. Tentacle is the standard single-target PHY physical attack.
• They have a Counter Jump that activates in response to receiving black magic damage, which is a heavy ST PHY attack.
• In the weaker phases, he has Ultimate: Tail Jab (hits 3 random targets for heavy NAT physical damage), Ultimate: Tentacle (hits all front-row with heavy NAT physical damage, with low chance to Paralyze), and Ultimate: Dive Attack (heavy NAT AoE physical damage to all party members).
• The Guard Hounds (I assume it's a typo on Zurai's guide) has one notable ability called Ultimate: Tackle which is an ST PHY attack that has a medium chance to cancel the target's ATB.

Tips:

• Lots of options to deal with Fire-weak bosses. Go ham on this one. Vincent is great here if you have either his SSB or BSB to spam with since both are AoE, and he can use Wrath to build bars.
• Tauntaliate sort of helps here, if you're either bringing a mage party, or just to deal with the Guard Hounds' Ultimate: Tackle ability.
• Since this fight doesn't have any elemental damage to resist, bring Paralyze resist on your front row units, and probably HP/damage on the back rows.
• Dancers work very well here as debuffers.
• Overall a pretty straightforward fight.