The Eikons and their Dominants play a huge role in Final Fantasy 16. Each massive entity has its own human counterpart that can harness the elemental power the Eikon provides, and Clive will come across them all during the game's story.
You will come across one of these Dominants very early on in the game, just after you have finished the brief jump back in time. Clive and his two squadmates are looking to take out the Dominant of Shiva from the Ironblood. In order to do so, you will have to fight the Dominant.
How To Beat Shiva's Dominant
Luckily, fighting the Dominant of Eikon is an easier feat than taking on the all-powerful Eikon itself, and this fight won't be much of a hassle for you at all. When the battle starts, you will have a handful of smaller enemies surrounding you, with the Dominant on the other side of the arena. Take the time to wipe out the smaller enemies first so that you won't have to worry about them. With all of them taken out, you can then lock on to the Dominant and focus on her.
She has pretty basic attacks to look out for:
- She can come at you with her sword to slash at you quickly, and these can be easily dodged when you see them coming
- She can also back up and throw some ice projectiles at you from afar. Like her sword attacks, you can easily dodge these as she telegraphs the attack pretty clearly
- Finally, she can use an area-of-effect attack that will freeze a small area around her. When you see her start to charge this attack up, just dodge or back up out of the area
Your strategy should be to just keep attacking her with anything you've got. Get in close and hit her with your sword, remembering to dodge out of the way of any retaliatory attacks she gives you. When she begins to charge up her area-of-effect attack, get out of the area and hit her with some spells, preferably a Charged Spell.
When you have a chance to get in close, use Phoenix Shift and Rising Flame to do some big damage to her, and then just keep repeating these steps until she reaches about half of her health.
At half health, she will move into her second phase, which plays out just like the first phase, except she will be more aggressive and bring a new attack to the table:
- She rains down ice around the arena in select spots. You will be able to see which spots she is going to send them to by the icy clouds appearing around the area. Just run away from the area before the attack triggers to avoid damage.
Just keep attacking her, just like you did in the first phase, and be sure to keep dodging her attacks. Fully utilize your Eikon Abilities to drain her health as fast as possible.
With this strategy, she should give you at least two Staggered moments, at which point you can really pile on the damage. Eventually, she will go down without barely an issue.