What part of "enormously experienced former #1 magical girl" says "easily taunted" to you?
The fact that she is also mentally unstable and probably mindfucked.
And we know her berserk button, which is Amanda.
No. She's far from conventionally sane, but that does not make her unstable or easily provoked. Just because she's obsessed with Amanda to an irrational degree* does not mean she'll become irrational in the
pursuit of that obsession.
*Arguably no more irrational than any other human motivation, but I'm not here to talk about philosophy.
We aren't trying to surprise White Soul with Starshine or Core Purge. The point is that Starshine has a big enough AoE that she can't avoid it anyway. Ditto Core Purge, except we add on the fact that we're faster than her and can chase her down. And even if she escapes both, they're still useful as area-denial; she can't come near us if we're Core Purge'ing and she can't bring both bodies too close in case we use one of them, which limits how quickly she can send clones to harass us.
Which still needs us to have her throw out
Soul Rend first, otherwise she just clones herself away.
The point is not to get her off our backs, the point is to drop her... which will not happen if we keep her at bay because there is no opening to exploit.
Again, no. Nothing I said in any way requires her to be unable to clone herself, and I can't see how you could get that impression. The bit you quoted was me explaining how
Starshine and
Core Purge kill her without surprise, and then mentioning that even if those plans fail they change the tactical picture in a potentially-favorable way.
And making her stay away
is favorable, since it allows us to control her movement—if we were out in the open, we could chase down her bodies and pop them one by one until they're close enough together to be caught simultaneously, regardless of how much of a lead she has. That's a mathematical fact (under some simplifying assumptions), a consequence of our speed advantage. Since we aren't in the open, it's possible for her to survive us chasing her with
Core Purge (which is why the plan is to do it when she's poorly positioned for such), but buying time is still useful because our allies can probably get out of that trap with a bit of effort and creativity.
It's massive AoE and the only way to stop it from constantly obliterating you is being Nepgear's ally, not being Nepgears target, or being far, far away from Nepgear.
That's how she'll avoid it. She keeps one body far away. The plans involving
Core Purge either have us charge her with it (we're faster than her, so she can't get away in time) or do it after we've
Starshined her (in which case it's just a backup).
It has a 1-second window to be interrupted, which is probably faster than she can hit us starting from where she is. Though if anyone would have an easy time interrupting it, it's her: kinda hard to talk when a river is jumping down your throat.
Mostly because the self-damage effect can lead to Nepgear dying. If we can get it active without taking a Soul Rend to the face it would be quite useful for making space.
Unless she hits us between when we decide to activate it and when we finish activating it, we'll be fine, because she can't hit us with it afterward. And even then we'd be fine, since our pre-
Soul Rend Health would be high enough to take the extra damage with no danger.
I think this is another one of those encounters where the best option is talking our way out of trouble. Which is rather tricky in this instance since the boss put our sister in one of those compacting traps.
Also, she's rather hard to reason with. Could probably do it if we knew more about her motives, especially if she's rational in the pursuit of those goals, but we don't have that information. I'd love to do this—debating people with unusual perspectives is great fun, and diplomatic solutions are great—but it's just not likely in this situation.
Also, tactic I just thought of: firing up, as a giant "here I am" sign so backup can arrive.
What backup? Who would be useful? Samael has
Unlock, which might get rid of those barriers, but it's disabled by
Scream For Me. The rest of Team GEAR has their weapons and spells disabled (save METEOR). Brilliant Key and Goddess Gold could both contribute, though GG would have difficulties with collateral damage and Brilliant has trouble with
Revel In Darkness and
Walk With Me (and
Flare is disabled by
Scream For Me).
Also, we can just call Basilicom on the radio; she knows where we are and can send backup. Though the lightshow would help people find us quickly.
At the moment, I favor plans which get Red Rose back in play. Having two people means that unexpected problems are much less problematic (though Sega is something of a problem since she'd be killed by
Soul Rend). After that, I like
Core Purge plans because they should kill her if properly executed (note: proper execution is not trivial), they have little to no collateral damage, and if they fail we're in a fairly favorable situation. After that,
Starshine, which has an even better chance of working than
Core Purge, but has collateral damage. Then Conceptual Language, because it's risky and unreliable, but if we get far away it only risks us. Uber's idea about letting her
Soul Rend us is also risky and not completely reliable (but better than Conceptual Language); it goes below Conceptual Language because it leaves us in a worse position if it fails. Any plan which relies on provoking her into making a mistake (rather than letting her do something which she doesn't know we can counter) is at the bottom, along with any pure-diplomacy plans, because they're very unlikely to work.
Conceptual Language can be used as a contingency if she gets close while we're away from our allies during another plan—this would mostly come up for a
Starshine plan (otherwise, we're either too close to our allies or already Core Purging). Diplomacy actions may be added to any plan which does not involve an immediate attack.
