Phase 2: Usurper of Frost

As soon as Fatebreaker dies, the arena transitions to Shiva’s arena from E8S, and Shiva herself appears. Although she looks the same, Ryne is possessed by Mitron and is called the Usurper of Frost. But everyone still calls her Shiva.

This phase is the closest that FRU has to a trio phase, with two long downtime mechanics. Unlike a traditional trio phase, however, there is a little bit of uptime mechanic sprinkled in. To complete the phase, she must be brought down below 20% health before the end of the enrage. Also, unlike in the original fight, the edge of the arena is not a cliff but stays as the traditional Ultimate deathwall.

As before, unless otherwise noted, any attack other than a spread, stack, raidwide, or tankbuster inflicts 2m Damage Down , and all spreads and stacks inflict 2 Magic Vulnerability Up to prevent players from taking multiple hits.

Intro

Shiva kicks things off with Quadruple Slap, a tankbuster that only actually has two hits. It’s a typical one-two buster with room for a tank swap. It inflicts a cleansable 15 Physical Vulnerability Up , forcing a swap, cleanse, or invuln.^[1]

After one follow-up auto—which can also be lethal, thanks to the vuln—Shiva teleports to south of center, faces north, and begins casting Mirror Image. This cast has no associated attack, but summons a light-form clone, the Oracle's Reflection, directly in the center of the arena. The Usurper of Frost herself remains in ice form. The two of them will bounce around a lot during the next mechanic.

Sequence 1: Diamond Dust

AoE Hell

Once the Reflection appears, Shiva casts Diamond Dust, a raidwide that kicks off the real mechanic. Note that the raidwide is slightly delayed from the end of the cast. Don’t mitigate too early. Shiva herself disappears, kicking off the long downtime mechanic.

Three different things happen in rapid succession:

1. It wouldn’t be a Shiva fight without the classic circular AoEs around the oustide of the arena.
2. The Oracle's Reflection begins casting either Axe Kick or Scythe Kick.
3. Four players–all DPS or all supports–are targeted by markers with a circular yellow omen.

All of these mechanics, and more, need to be solved simultaneously.

1. Omens for the classic circle AoEs—the true Diamond Dust—appear in the principal directions in three waves. The first wave has two circles, appearing opposite one another.

   The second wave spreads out from the first wave: If the first wave was on a pair of cardinals, then the second wave will be on the four intercardinals. Conversely, if the first wave was on intercardinals, then the second wave will be on the four cardinals.

   The third wave will hit the two remaining cardinals or intercardinals, at 90° from the first wave. All three waves must be completely dodged.

2. The Oracle's Reflection’s cast will be either a point-blank (Axe Kick) or a donut (Scythe Kick). These AoEs are very big:

   1. The point-blank Axe Kick goes all the way out to the outer line^[2] on the floor.

   2. The donut Scythe Kick extends to well within the Reflection’s hitbox. The safe area is only as wide as the small four-pointed star within the inner circle.

   At the same time as the point-blank or donut, the Reflection also shoots out four The House of Light cones at the four nearest players, These cones, combined with the four marker AoEs, create an 8-way spread.

3. The four circular markers go off moments after the kick, hitting their targets with Frigid Stone at the same time as the first Diamond Dust circles go off. These drop a second set of AoEs, 8-way lines, with the omens appearing a few seconds after the Frigid Stones hit. These 8-way lines are similar to the ones during Icelit Dragonsong in phase 2 of E8S.

4. The Oracle's Reflection moves out towards a principal direction and begins casting Sinbound Holy, while the Usurper of Frost reappears in the center of the arena. You will likely want to pay attention to the Reflection’s location, as it’s important later.

   Without any warning, the Usurper performs Heavenly Strike, a knockback raidwide, and disappears. This is the point where the second set of Diamond Dust AoEs go off. You must get knocked back into a spot that’s safe from both the line AoEs and Diamond Dust, with the final circles going off almost simultaneous with the lines.

After all of this, it isn’t even over.

Thin Ice

Right after the lines go off, Sinbound Holy targets both healers with four LP stacks each, in quick succession. Each hit leaves behind a puddle that inflicts Bleeding , forcing the party to keep moving.

As players run away from Sinbound Holy, the Usurper of Frost moves to the edge of the arena, in a random principal direction.

About 4 seconds after the last puddle drops, without any other warning, she uses Shining Armor. This is a gaze attack that inflicts 2m and 8 Stun . The stun will make impossible to pass the next part of the mechanic, so you can’t look at Shiva no matter how hot she is.

Additionally, the arena will become icy. Moving will now send a player sliding most of the way across the arena. Two bosses will also swap appearances. The Usurper of Frost changes to light form, and will remain so for the rest of the phase, at the same time as the Oracle's Reflection changes to ice form.

Stillness & Silence

The Usurper will disappear while the Reflection begins casting either Twin Stillness or Twin Silence. Which attack she is using is also telegraphed by her voice line (and accompanying caption): either "In stillness freeze!" or "Sink into silence!"

If she uses Stillness, she will first cleave a massive 270° in front of her, leaving only a small safe area behind. She will then cleave 90° her, hitting exactly the small area that was just safe. If she uses Silence, she does the exact opposite, first with a small cleave behind then a very large cleave in front. Both cleaves are one-shots.

The snapshot on the first attack is right at the end of the first cast bar, with the second coming earlier than you might expect. In practice, the long slide required to get behind her, versus the short slide to get in front of her, mean that you have to move slightly earlier for Stillness.

The sequence finally wraps up as the Usurper of Frost reappears, targetable, in the center of the arena.

Sequence 2: Mirror, Mirror

Hallowed Ray

Immediately after reappearing, the Usurper begins casting Hallowed Ray. This is a full-party stack line AoE on a random player.

The only thing of note is that the attack direction snapshots quite early, so it’s actually possible for the targeted player to dodge it entirely. This is not consistent, however, so it can’t be used to avoid the mechanic.

Mirror, Mirror

Her next cast is Mirror, Mirror. This move summons three Frozen Mirrors around the edge of the arena at principal directions. There will be two red mirrors and one blue mirror. The red mirrors will always be 90° apart, but the blue mirror can be anywhere, including in between them.

The Usurper begins casting Scythe Kick which is the same as before: a large donut with a very small hole, and four protean cones at the nearest four players. At exactly the same time, however, the blue mirror will also use the exact same move. Since Scythe Kick on its own is a four-way spread, two copies of it make for an eight-way spread.

Right afterwards, the two red mirrors cast Reflected Scythe Kick. Unsurprisingly, this is the exact same move. But it must be solved so that none of the players clip each other.

Each of the mirrors disappears shortly after

Banish III

Shiva’s last cast in this segment is Banish III, which she begins casting right as the Reflected Scythe Kicks During the cast, she’ll have a ring of light above her head, with either a single orb or four orbs orbiting on it.

If there’s only one orb, the attack is a pair stack targeted on DPS. If there’s four, it’s a spread targeted on DPS. Unlike in E8S, there are no indicators over individual players’ heads.

Sequence 3: Light Rampant

The infamous mechanic from E8S is back, although it’s arguably not even as bad. Naturally enough, it kicks off with a teleport to center and the Light Rampant castbar. There’s a raidwide on this one, so make sure mits and shields are up.

This mechanic makes use of the Lightsteeped debuff, given out by various attacks through the mechanic:

This is a total of 32 stacks, which is exactly enough to give to every player. This is very convenient, because causes a wipe. Everyone must get exactly four stacks.

The initial raidwide doles out several markers and debuffs. It is believed that these are given out completely at random, with no role-based patterns.

• Two players receive a pink marker with a circular AoE omen.

• The remaining six players each receive 10 Chains of Everlasting Light , visibly displaying as tethers connecting them to two other players. These tethers are not yet active.

  • Two of these players receive 16 The Weight of Light , indicated by large golden orbs above their heads.

• Six stacks of 36 are distributed. The players with markers each receive one stack, and the remaining four are distributed randomly amongst all eight players.

  So a player with a marker can receive 1 or 2 stacks, while a player with a tether can receive 0 or 1.

While the debuffs are mostly random, the tethers are not. The two players with golden orbs are always tethered together. Additionally, provided the players stand roughly equally spaced, the tethers will not spawn crossed.^[3]

First Wave Towers

A moment after the cast, Shiva disappears and six towers appear. The orientation is always the same: a perfect hexagon with points to the north and south.

The markers begin going off first with a series of four Luminous Hammer attacks each. These inflict 1 Magic Vulnerability Up , but more importantly they drop lethal puddles on the ground like Sinbound Holy. Don’t stand in bad.^[4]

The towers go off simultaneously with the third set of puddles, inflicting 36 A missed tower is a heavy raidwide with a 2m . Although the towers do not inflict a themselves, they are magic damage, so players taking a tower cannot also be hit by a Luminous Hammer.

At the same time as the towers go off, the expire, becoming 9 Curse of Everlasting Light . This is indicated by the orbs in the middle of the tethers growing more brightly. Unlike in the original Light Rampant, for these tethers there is no maximum distance, but if any two tethered players get too close together before the debuffs expire, they will explode and cause a wipe.

Orbs

The six silver orbs that descended on the towers, Holy Lights, hover in place above the ground.

Three of them, in an equilateral triangle, begin casting Burst and display large circular omens. The other three follow suit shortly after. This is very similar to the fists during the phase 4 transition of TOP, if you are familiar with that fight.

As the second wave of omens appears, the denotate in a small circular AoE. This is Powerful Light, a LP stack that inflicts 36 . If fewer than 4 players are in the stack, it additionally inflicts 2m Mark of Mortality . A 4-stack tower also appears in the center of the arena at the same time.

After the Powerful Light—but not right after, so don’t move too soon!—the first wave of orbs explodes. The puddles begin disappearing in the sequence they were dropped, and the second wave of orbs explodes as Shiva reappears in the center. She remains untargetable as she begins casting Banish III. The telegraph and effects are identical to the first time she used it.

Second Wave Tower

4 players must soak the tower to prevent the 2m Damage Down raidwide and receive a stack of 36 . Care must be taken that nobody takes on too many stacks. Banish III resolves a few seconds later.

Shiva wraps the mechanic up by casting House of Light, becoming targetable at the start of the cast. House of Light is an 8-way cone spread. This inflicts a final stack of 36 on every player. If executed correctly, everyone should now have 4 stacks. They will fall off harmlessly during the transition to the intermission.

Enrage

The phase ends with Shiva casting Absolute Zero, the enrage. If the party does not bring her below 20% HP before it completes, it deals infinite damage and wipes the party. If she is brought below 20%, however, it is only a heavy raidwide. As the transition to the intermission begins, she knocks every back from the center, so don’t stand too far out and get pushed into the wall.

Acknowledgments

Thanks in particular go out to Mikah Tayuun, Aleretha Nyana, Esey Faye, Nicky, Seba, and felty fan for helping me with mechanics in this phase. As always, thanks also to everyone else in the NAUR discord who helped, as well as anyone who’s uploaded PoVs and guides.

1. Personally, I suggest not passing up this rare opportunity to yell at the bard, instead of a tank or healer, when the main tank unexpectedly dies to the second hit. ↩

2. Sometimes the lines are circles. ↩

3. It was initially believed that they could never spawn in with two tethers crossed, however, this was shown to be untrue.

   Our best theory on the actual mechanics of the tethers is that, after two players are randomly chosen as the marker players, one player is randomly chosen as the starting player for the tethers. This player is tethered to the closest player (without a marker), who is then tethered to the next closest player, and so on, until everyone either has a marker or a tether, and then one more tether is added to close the loop. The orbs go out to two random tethered players. ↩

4. For black mages: It’s okay, it’s a downtime phase again. ↩