the way the skill is written implies that the cleanse happens after the attack so i expect that it's being placed and immediately removed.

The cleanse definitely happens before the attack. The debuff bar clears before the golem hits.

might be a bug with the visuals, but the effect itself definitely happens afterword. did a couple of test runs and he's still taking reflected damage from my geo when he uses his a2.

Ah, so if it's a visual bug, then at least the decrease attack applied before will still reduce the damage.

I'll have to keep testing. Got a team going on stage 9, but it's slow and infuriatingly inconsistent. I might end up going for strengthen, shield and buff extenders, as decrease attack will always have some downtime with the boss' cleanse. For a consistent team, you have to be able to survive a double smack at any time in the run. Block revive might be another option I guess. I do have a Gamuran but I would be building him exclusively for this.

My goal is a 95%+ consistent run, even if it takes 5+ minutes. Keeyra seemed to fit the bill, but somehow she's not getting the job done.

hope you're more successful than i. spent a few hours experimenting with different setups yesterday, finally found one that was running smoothly and had an okay time, everything was running fine and then all of a sudden it got wrecked 3 or 4 runs in a row and i decided that there were better ways to spend my energy.

Waiting until after fusion to do some experimenting, personally. IG10 and Drag10 are easy, Spider10 and FK10 still need to work on a proper team.

I assume IG is trivial with unkillable. Which I still don't have ;(