Speaking as someone who just now unlocked expert match, I thought I'd share some of the things I learned in the process that helped me to finally break through and do it.
First, for the Solo XQ. My biggest obstacles here were Deus Hunas and Phaleg. I skipped out on most of Episode 4, so before I started doing the solo XQ, I had never actually fought Phaleg before, and had rarely fought Deus Hunas, so I didn't know the fights at all. My observations from the process of learning to clear it:
1). If you have the ability to record your own runs, do it. And then watch them. You will see mistakes you are making on the video that you don't see while you are playing, because while you are playing you are focusing on trying to survive and trying to deal damage. On the video, you can see why you got hit and how you could have avoided it, and where it cost you opportunities to deal damage. Believe me, it helps.
2). A lot (but not all) of Deus Hunas' attacks can be avoided by staying up at his head height. This is easiest to do with Dual Blades, but I don't recommend using Dual Blades for the Solo XQ because they're really difficult to fight Phaleg with. It can also be done with Twin Daggers, Katana (Phantom), and I'd presume Jet Boots, but I haven't tried it. I ultimately went with Phantom, because it gave me two weapons I was confident I could fight Phaleg with effectively.
3). While I was learning this, I believed that I would need to clear all the stage orders in order to make the time threshold. This caused me to waste a lot of runs by abandoning quest after failing Deus Hunas' stage order. Don't do that. You're costing yourself valuable practice against the later stages. Also, it's simply not true - on the run where I finally got under 15 minutes (14:0I didn't clear either Deus Hunas' or Phaleg's stage orders. If your damage dealing is strong enough, the resistances won't really slow you down that much.
4). On the Aratron and Wolgahda's stage - yes, you can wait for Aratron to shock them, but it's really much more reliable if you bring your own shock. I had a couple of runs scrubbed because Aratron just couldn't seem to shock the Wolgahdas in a reasonable amount of time (usually he'll get them pretty quickly, but sometimes you just get unlucky). What I did: engaged them with Gizonde until shock was inflicted on at least two of them and then switched to katana for the killing.
5). It really does help to have two weapons that you're very comfortable with for Phaleg. In my case, I used katana until form change, then switched to Rod. I chose to use katana first because I found that keeping her at a distance (with rod) after form change helped me to anticipate her moves better (and thus stay alive).
6). On the Chrome Dragon stage, especially if you didn't clear Phaleg's stage order, forget breaking parts. Just go for the head and stay on it. You do more damage there, and with the way these bosses move around, sometimes getting the lock-on to target the thing you want is tricky. I chose to go Chrome -> Angel -> Apprentice, but YMMV. You should clear the whole stage before the stage order expires if you are killing fast enough. I did this with katana, using shifted PA's and Quick Cut.
7). Once you get to Omega Hunar, the biggest thing to remember is to get away from him when he's about to slam the ground (because that will kill you really fast if you get caught by it) and to watch out for the sword charges. He's got a lot of HP, so you need to be aggressive, but don't be stupidly aggressive. As a Phantom, I saved both of my Phantom Time charges for Omega Hunar to hammer him with marker detonations.
On Destroyers of Light:
1). My first big challenge on this quest was PP management on Mother. Mother isn't a very difficult fight, but it is a very mobile fight, and it's easy to burn all your PP chasing around the stage after targets. The Lightstream potential helps here, but mostly you need to think about yoiur DPP in addition to your DPS. As a Phantom, I found the most important part of this was making heavy use of Quick Cut, as shifted PA's with Quick Cut have much better DPP than regular PA's while still having reasonably good DPS.
2). Don't chase around more than you have to. When fighting the hands, don't chase all the way across the stage at the target that happens to be in front of you if there's one close by off to one side. Travel PA's chew up PP. As a Phantom, I relied on shifted Schmetterling -> Quick Cut to get around, but this is only PP-efficient if you're close enough for Quick Cut to actually hit the target.
3). The biggest thing that was hurting my time on the Deus Esca part of this quest was missing damage windows due to getting hit, and the biggest place that happened was after chasing the orb across the stage - if I chased it all the way to the end, I found I would invariably get hit when he brought his hand back with the lightning wave. The answer to this for me was to stop chasing about 3/4 of the way across the stage and start backing away to give myself time to react. As a Phantom, this also allowed me to set myself up to dodge through the lightning on the way to hit the orb and pick up a free Dodge Counter Shot.
4). Building on point 3: ultimately, the key to finishing this quest in time is to make every damage window count. You never want to get hit, but there are certain times that avoiding damage is especially important. Getting hit right before a damage window costs you time-on-target, so it directly impacts your clear time. Ultimately, the bulk of my improvement on this quest came from analyzing where I was losing damage opportunities and changing my approach to make sure I didn't lose them.
In the end, it really boils down to knowing the fights. Most of the trouble I had with these quests was due to lack of experience with Deus Hunas, Phaleg, and Deus Esca. The only answer to that is practice, but see the observation about recording your own runs - it helps you to find and fix your mistakes faster.
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Originally Posted by reaper527
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