Mother Brain's various parts

[Magus_84]

So, been doing some Mother Brain/SEED Express runs lately. In doing so, I realized I know jack about the finer points of the Mother Brain fight.

I know that if you destroy her arms, she can't use her shield for a bit, and that if you hit her face enough times, she dies. However. There are also the two little floating mag things that zip around, and the two tentacles off to the sides.

What do they do, can they be killed (mainly the tentacles), and what effect does killing them have? I know the mag things can be killed. They're a pain, as they zip around constantly, but enough FPS shooting takes them down. That causes the arms to spark...but I have no clue what that does.

On the mags and the sparking arms...I've heard various things from "they lower the defense on the arms" to "they make the arms take longer to regenerate" to "they make the arms have lowered HP while they're sparking". I've also heard people say that the mags have something to do with her tech casting, but I've noticed no difference on that. My own experience has borne out that the arms seem to die faster and stay dead longer when the mags are exploded, but due to the way my PC decides to act up during the MB fight (lag city), I can't be certain.

Anyway, onto the tentacles. The tentacles seem to be active when she's casting a tech, and I've been able to shoot them for damage, but never able to make them blow up, like you can with the mags. Can they be killed? Do they have their own HP, or is damage to them reflected on the main Mamabewb?

With those questions asked, a note on general strategy/strategies:

I know that Jabroga is generally advertised as the way to go, or Diga on the arms. Thing is...my characters are AF, FG/GM, AT/GT and WT/FT. I have no Jabroga, and "Diga on the arms" gets me knocked around far more than I'd like. Enough to where the arms have time to regenerate after a combo or two on her face. It seems that's just the way things are, but people on the forums never really complain about having trouble with her. Are they all just Jabroga spamming the arms and calling it a day?

What I usually do in the fight (and this is probably horribly inefficient), by class:

-AT: Diga the arms, Hishou/Rising Strike/Hikai the face, rinse and repeat. Get knocked around a lot til both arms finally die.

-FG/GM: Rifle her face, shotgun her arms, nanoblast (beast gunner lol)/majarra/shotgun her face. I've recently experimented with taking out the mags, but as noted above, I'm not sure what they do.

-AF: Cry. >_> Zubba/Ikk Hikk the arms when they're on the platform, Choutou them when they're off. If I can ever get both of the arms broken, use Robado/Assault Crush on the head, between getting pushed back (my PC lags too badly to do the whole "sit down and avoid the pushback wave" thing.

-FT: Cry more. <_< Diga the arms when they're off the platform, Nosdiga them when they're on. Diga her face. Thought about trying Ground Bow on her head...but the FT's my lowest character, my Ground Bow is level 5 and his FT level is low. So I doubt that'll turn out well.

Any suggestions on strategy or hard information on what the tentacles/mags do and what happens when you kill them would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for catering to my nubbery.

[Falke]

I too have found that taking down the arms makes her unable to use her shield, at least until the arms have regenerated.

Sadly I'm unsure what the mag things/tentacles actually do. I've been watching them for a while but haven't really noticed anything to make any kind of connection.

I hope someone can answer this for both our sakes. D:

[beatrixkiddo]

Taking down the flying bots makes her arms spark, which removes the ranged halfguard on them (I'm pretty sure... unless it just drops the DFP a ton).

Shooting the tentacles doesn't seem to do much aside from make her say "Light damage received"... it may inflict some hidden amount of damage to her (in addition to the damage done to the tentacles), but I'm not completely sure.

[Waki Miko Syamemaru!]

I think the MAGs use that electricity attack or other techs. I've noticed when I took them out that lightning tech she uses no longer comes into play.

[Magus_84]

I don't think taking down the flying bots removes ranged halfguard, as I was doing the same damage before they started sparking as after.

There are two flying bots, one that glows sorta blue-ish, and one that's sorta pink. The pink one, when destroyed, makes the right arm spark (from the player's perspective. It's mamabewb's left arm). The blue one, when destroyed, makes the left arm spark (from the player's perspective. Mamabewb's right.)

The tentacle (at first, there's only one, but as the battle goes on, I think another appears) seems to do two things. Move around, and glow yellow. I think the "yellow glow" is related to the "targetting circle" looking thing that appears, which then strikes the area within the circle with a Razonde.

It occasionally retreats behind MB's shoulder, where it's still visible but unable to be targetted. It also randomly retracts and reappears at different spots. I don't think this can be "destroyed", but it can be damaged to the point where it will completely disappear for a bit.

I noticed that when I took down both mags and the tentacle (damaging it to the point where it disappeared), her arms both broke. However...I hadn't really been targetting them, except for stray rifle shots that hit them when I was aiming at the mags or tentacles. And I don't think the stray damage was enough to kill each arm simultaneously, as what happened.

During this time when every component was broken, she was only able to cast techs (like when the energy signature appears over her head), sweep with one of her smaller arms and use her hammerfist attack. Didn't do the pushback wave. Her arms also stayed dead for quite some time. I got some Majarra hits in.

However...when they came back up, every component came back up, and I think this is when the other tentacle appeared. From that point on, I was unable to destroy the tentacle. I began to run low on mates and charges at this point, so I started to focus fire on her head.

She eventually dropped, but with less rifle shots than I would expect it to take if I'd just sat there and shot her in the face til she died. Of course, the Majarra spam during the extended period where the shield was down probably had a lot to do with this.

One-off tests aren't really going to get reliable data. We might want to consider setting up several semi-scientific tests with different people trying the same thing and seeing if they get similar results.

But I doubt anyone seriously cares that much, as "break her arms with diga/jabroga, then shoot her in the face" seems to work perfectly fine for the community at large.

Thank you for your reply, though.

[Neith]

I don't think taking down the flying bots removes ranged halfguard, as I was doing the same damage before they started sparking as after.

When her arms are sparking, they definitely take more damage from guns- I've experienced this a lot when I use a Gunmaster there. I didn't actually know what caused her arms to spark though. My GM gets a significant damage increase while the arms are sparking though.

[Magus_84]

Hmm. Not to be a smartass, but define "significant", please.

I screenshotted "before" and "after" damage on a non-sparking and sparking arm, respectively. (Which I'll upload later, as my internet's being a pain.)

However, on looking at the second screenshot, there's one damage number that's about 40 points higher than the rest. It's not "doubled", like I'd expect if halfguard was removed.

Perhaps Beatrix was right, and it's a DFP decrease?

Or maybe it causes the front portion (the drill/shovel/missile launcher) to take the same damage as the rest of the arm?

[Neith]

I can't remember exactly how big the damage jump was, but it was enough for me to notice. I'm inclined to think it's a DFP decrease, or lowering the DFP of the weapon part of the arm.

The problem is that in most games, her arms don't spark (because Diga/Jabroga works too well anyway), so it's not often I get to see it.

[hunterseifer]

I run there alot, for the mags they only cast techs, the tentacles ive only seen them cast megid when your only at certain spots, otherwise they do nothing. As the sparks your talking about, its just a effect telling you your dealing alot of dmg to the arm, nothing special(when they spark, chars do alittle more dmg, again nothing special). Only thing I do is take out the arms and go for the face, the mags are annoying only cuz I keep blocking when they use a tech, tentacles barely do anything(always ignore).When I go there I mainly use majarra, I could use jabroga but that tends to be a problem on the face since she can stun or knock you down, I'd just say use fast 2 it box skills

[Magus_84]

You can make the arms spark without ever actually hitting them. You just have to blow up the mags.

[hunterseifer]

You can make the arms spark without ever actually hitting them. You just have to blow up the mags.
Meh, either way its easier to me just ignoring those things anyway, also just noticed while playing the tentacles seem to debuff, but rarely <_<

[Wolfette]

When the arms sparkle, it juste mean they're under the 50% HP bar : if the bot respawn, the arm will regain what it had lost with the loss of the bot.
Thats what i think, because when i kill a bot and shoot on a sparkling arm, my damage dont increase, but the arm fall 2 times faster ;)

edit : oh and killing the bot upon respawn prevent the arm to be repaired, or at least slow it down by a lot, thats something i noticed, too, each time i did it, so i doubt this is a coincidence.

[Gravagar]

I'd be willing to help someone science this out and find out how it really works. Does anyone else want to get together and try to solve this? For what it matters I can fight MB as a FiG or a FM.

[mvffin]

I noticed that around 95% of the time, The jellen she casts does absolutely nothing.

[Ruru]

for the question about what to do for damage.

i mainly run AF and MF(was FT) as both classes i just go for her face/body, and only attack her arms when she's actually throwing them at me on the main platform. ignoring them pretty much anytime they're not in my immediate way. as AF i just hishou and zubba her body/face as MF its just diga spam to the body and nosdiga to her arms when she's trying to smash me. it seems to work for me just fine. the only time there are any problems with this is when she goes into blue wall push back mode or shield spam mode. but you can usually take her out fast enough just spamming on her face/body if you get lucky.

[Hiero_Glyph]

I noticed that around 95% of the time, The jellen she casts does absolutely nothing.

I was running it yesterday, on an S difficulty, and the Jellen worked almost every time. I think there is an error on the S2 difficulty that causes Jellen to miss because on the lower difficulty it almost always works.