OK, I think I've figured out most/all of Kowlla's mechanics. Krinadon may hate me for this, but I don't think people would mind a helping hand.
Kowlla works like the elite versions of her at first, except the buff she gets that generates mana does not stack up, she only gets one stack and that's it (thank goodness). Make sure you're ready to deal with her if she's going to be at full mana when she starts her turn (if she is 5 mana away from being at full mana, and has the buff on, treat her as if she has full mana) by blocking with all pets.
On to the mechanics, she behaves normally until you hit 80% or less hp on her. This is when she will first start summoning wisps. The wisps appear at the *start* of the turn she summons them, meaning if you order your pets to use AoE attacks (I recommend conflagrate from a fire pet), you'll damage the wisps, and make it easier for an air pet to wreck one with decimate.
Once you see the wisps, you have one more turn to kill them before they start channeling their Kamehameha lasers. If both are still alive on the next turn, you're doomed unless you can successfully run away. If one is still alive, you may just survive 80-90% damage to all your pets (the damage done by wisps is proportional to your max hp, so having a pet with 3 points in health does not really help much) if you can kill that wisp in the next turn. If the second wisp is STILL around after your pets have barely survived a Kamehameha, just run for it, because you're doomed once again.
The trick is to figure out how to blow both wisps up starting on the turn she summons them. You have two turns to do it, and for the first turn you can't target the wisps with single-target attacks because they're not there yet.
Here's how I do it. I slowly damage Kowlla and block her first full mana attack before pushing towards 80% health. I make sure my air/fire pets are buffed up before getting to the critical turn where Kowlla starts summoning (although I could get away with having my air pet using Torrential Blow on Kowlla on the turn she starts summoning as the air pet won't be able to hit the wisps anyway that turn).
When Kowlla starts summoning, I have the fire pet use Conflagrate to deal a fair bit of damage to the wisps, and I have my light tank pet use Fairy Light for some more damage to boot (and some party healing).
On the next turn, I have my air pet use Decimate on the wisp with the highest health (this is much easier to get away with if Decimate is at Rank 4, I've done it with rank 3, but you really need a critical hit to stand a chance), and I have my other two pets use Finishing Blow on the other wisp. One reason I do slow damage at the beginning is so I don't burn a lot of mana, as you *really* need to have plenty of it to power Finishing Blow for blowing up the wisps ASAP.
If things go well, both wisps are dead, and Kowlla turns into a boss fight similar to fighting the regular elite versions of her. In these cases I can just kill her before she has a chance to start summoning more wisps. If things go poorly and you have to spend an extra turn on the wisps, you might have to use consumables to rez a dead pet or something, and take longer to get back to doing damage. If this happens, go back to going slowly with the damage and keeping mana high so that you can repeat the wisp nuke strategy, as after a certain amount of turns, Kowlla will start summoning more.
One last thing to note is that after a certain amount of turns (I'm guessing about 30 or so), she will repeat summoning wisps, so it helps if you can burn her down quickly before that happens. From what I've read about, if you have the opportunity to finish her off when she summons wisps for the second time, you can end the fight by taking out Kowlla on that turn. If she doesn't go down and the Kamehameha lasers get set up, you have to run away again.
Some things to note: You really want Training Grounds at rank 3 for active and passive buffs. Make sure you have the buff from using a Battle Trinket on for Kowlla. Lesser Ent flasks from trading post can help too (crit chance is very important, you really need it when nuking wisps), but I was able to do Kowlla without them once, albeit with fully ranked pets. Bless from the Temple of Light can help a little bit (recover 50hp a turn for 300 turns when you use it at barracks). Also, spending loads of empty bottles on the various consumables from the Trading Post (not just Ent flasks) can help turn the tide a bit. If you suspect there's going to be a 3rd turn with 1 wisp remaining, be ready to heal any pet that isn't at full health up to full at the start of the turn (probably your tank if it's not at full health, you really want everyone to stay alive if you can).
TL;DR At 80% or less she'll start summoning wisps (or use her full mana move if that's ready first), be ready to nuke them, you have two turns to do it without taking real damage except a bit from Kowlla directly, and 3 turns to do it without dying completely, but perhaps barely surviving with maybe a dead pet that needs revived. You have maybe about 30 turns to kill her before she repeats the summoning. |
