This is a guide for the Avenger boss fight found in Teach’s Ascension Quest, Shadow of Enmity in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, taking place in the Aetia region.

How to Beat Avenger¶

Teach’s past has caught up with him, and Avenger is here to deliver his reckoning. The Avenger boss battle works in two phases, although phase two plays out exactly the same way, you just have a scene that triggers in the middle of the battle. Avenger wields the same weapon as the Heavy Guard Class, although his Arts are not all strictly Tank based. Indeed, he has some nasty debuffs up his sleeve.

You’ll need to pay attention to several of Avenger’s Arts, and you can learn more about them below:

• Bide Earth: Avenger will slam his sword into the ground, dealing moderate damage to targets in a line and inflicting the Physical Defense Down and Bind debuffs.

• Leonine Bash: Avenger will thrust his sword into a single target, dealing moderate damage and Blowdown.

• Skyflow: Avenger will swipe his sword upwards, dealing moderate damage with a chance to inflict Launch.

• Critical Vengeance: This will grant Avenger the Invincible buff, causing all attacks to fail. He will use this to end phase one. In phase two, Teach muse use the All-Slayer Art to nullify it.

• Rebellious Spirit: Avenger will charge his strength, granting him the Attack Up and Critical Rate Up buffs.

Avenger is a surprisingly tough battle, he may look like your typical Keves soldier, but he has plenty of hard-hitting attacks and can debuff your party too. You may notice from the get-go that there doesn’t appear to be an Enrage marker for Avenger, this is because a cutscene will trigger just before half HP that will then restart the battle for phase two.

Avenger will use Bide Earth often, and it’s a nuisance as it will hit all characters standing in a line in front of him while also lowering their Physical Defense and often, inflicting Bind. If you spot any Healers afflicted with this, be sure to switch over and press the onscreen buttons to release them as quickly as possible.

Leonine Bash is less of a problem, but it can still cause Blowdown which may use up an Art if you were in the middle of using one and he targets your controlled character. Likewise, Skyflow has the chance to inflict Launch on you, although this seemed to be rare on the Normal difficulty.

Once you get Avenger down to just before half HP, he’ll use Critical Vengeance which will make him invincible to all of your attacks. There’s nothing you can do but miss your attacks until a scene takes over, triggering the start of Phase two. During this scene, Teach will learn a new Art, All-Slayer, and this becomes the key to dealing with Critical Vengeance in Phase two of the battle.

You’ll now notice that Avenger has all of his HP back and there is now an Enrage icon. The main difference in Phase two is that Avenger will start using Rebellious Spirit, this will grant him Attack Up and Critical Rate Up making Arts such as Bide Earth even more deadly, you’ll definitely want buffs of your own at this point. Every now and then, Avenger will use Critical Vengeance and you’ll have to wait until Teach uses All-Slayer to remove the buff and allow you to keep attacking. There’s nothing you can do to speed this up, you have no control over the actions of Heroes unfortunately.

As should always be the case at this point of the game, you’ll want to ensure you have a Signifier in the party to provide buffs of your own and it can’t hurt to have a Machine Assassin (should you have unlocked it already) to inflict debuffs of your own. Avenger is highly susceptible to them and you can easily lock him down using constant combos.