Plasma Phantom

The Plasma Phantom is an abstract boss in CrossWorlds. It is the boss of Zir'vitar Temple, the Shock dungeon.

Appearance
The Plasma Phantom is a large humanoid figure covered in dark purple armor plates which give it a skeletal appearance. It has long toes and clawed hands and is covered in spines. Its head has a single eye, which glows violet and is typically nearly closed in a V-shaped slit. The top of its head flows and flickers and appears to be made of smoke. It has a prominent glowing violet disc on its chest, and is typically wreathed in lightning. While broken or inactive, it takes the shape of a large purple egg with small wings, and retains the glowing disc on its front.

Combat
The Plasma Phantom will typically walk slowly towards the player, occasionally dashing quickly from side to side to throw off targeting. During the first stage of combat, it uses two attacks. In its ranged attack, it summons three balls of lightning, which orbit it. After a short period, they shoot at the player one at a time. Its second attack is a dash attack, where it dashes at the player while surrounded by swirls of lightning.

Like the Ectovolt, the Plasma Phantom is normally immune to any attacks that aren't of the Wave element. Attacking it slowly builds up a Break meter, and when the meter is full it enters its defensive stage. It moves to the center of the area and summons a wall around it in the shape of an hourglass, and begins to target the player with lightning bolts, represented by slow-moving glowing spots spitting sparks that follow the player, and trigger a bolt after reaching them or a long delay. Hitting it with a Compressed Wave Ball during this stage will break it; this can only be done by hitting the top or bottom of the hourglass. If it is not broken after three lightning bolts, it will heal a large amount of HP and return to its active stage. While broken, it will be very weak; this is also the only time it can be damaged by non-Wave attacks. It will eventually call down a large lightning bolt and return to the active stage.

The fight has two HP breaks, dividing it into three parts. The second part adds a new attack in which it dashes at the player three times, dealing contact damage and drawing a trail behind it, and then summons lightning along the trail. It also increases the number of lightning balls in its ranged attack to five, and changes the shape of its defensive wall into a bowtie, requiring it to be hit from the side. The third part is quite similar to the second, but its chain lightning dash attack is increased to five dashes and the defensive wall shape changes again, into a complex shape that can only be hit from one direction (which changes each time it is activated).

Strategies
As befits the Shock element, the Plasma Phantom is relatively easy to damage, but hits very hard with attacks that are difficult to dodge consistently, exacerbated by the fact that you need to be in the Wave element and weak to its attacks to damage it. For this reason, it is recommended to concentrate primarily on watching the boss for when it telegraphs its attacks, and dealing damage only when it is safe to do so. Try to keep moving and keep your distance if you don't have high defense, as close quarters make avoiding attacks even more difficult.

Once it is in the defensive state, it is important to move quickly and hit it with a Compressed Wave Ball before the lightning bolts overwhelm you and give it a chance to regenerate. It may be worth taking a hit here in order to make the shot. Once it is broken, pull out your best combat arts and hit it hard.

Trivia

 * The Plasma Phantom first appeared with the introduction of the Zir'vitar Temple in v0.8.0.