FINAL FANTASY: RECORD KEEPER

I was going to do XP daily, but the notice indicated that Kefka is tomorrow so I decided I got enough XP over the weekend and spent my stamina on the bonus battles. I hate how I am always just short of being able to do them all in one go and have to wait an hour on stamina.

Ultimate Vossler is a joke if you have Stoneskin/SG, Protectga, and a tank. My party idea was dogshit but I mastered the fight anyway. My party was pretty much the same that I mentioned previously, except I gave Leon Shield Bash instead of Lifesiphon because I figured he'd get hit often enough to use his Hypnotize limit break regularly. I gave Dispel to Y'shtola since I used Lunatic High as my RW. I replaced Aeris's Dispel wth Quetzalcoatl because it's my best honed summon and it'd give her something to cast if Y'shtola was too tied up to dispel Vossler's reflect.

So Leon did get hit enough to have ample soul meter, but Imperial Swordsmen are assholes and attack each other and my party anyway, so the confusion doesn't last nor is it very effective. They did hit Vossler once for about 3k, though, so if their confusion AI wasn't dumb then it'd probably be a good idea. Between Protectga, Draw Fire, Stoneskin, and Shield Bash: Vossler's multi-strike abilities only hit Leon for about 120-200 per hit, so it was easy to keep his HP high enough to draw every single one of those attacks. The only threatening ability in the encounter for me was the Imperial Guards' water spell, since I didn't bring any form of Shellga.

Aeris was a stupid idea, but she did clue me into something. Dragon Force is useless here. Vossler doesn't use normal attacks or his AoE attack often enough for it to matter, such that after only a single Dragon Force use, I still had three party members with an active blink. However, Quetzalcoatl turned out to be a pretty great idea. That water spell I mentioned previously wasn't nearly the problem it could've been because those guards are vulnerable to paralyze, so they only used the spell once before they were all paralyzed and made irrelevant for the rest of the fight. I ended up killing Vossler at pretty much the same time as his guards, and that actually allowed me to get full speed medals (I still missed two damage medals). So consider bringing a summoner if you've got Quetzalcoatl.

Drunk Cecil did his usual thing of keeping the attack buff active on the party. I changed Locke's Steal Power to Power Break just so he could do some damage during those turns. Dismissal worked twice, so that was cool. I got the slow medals via Locke's limit break, which was actually hitting the damage cap against Vossler and his turds once Armor Break and Cecil's buff were up.

Anyway, just bring a tanky dude and keep his health high and Vossler is nothing compared to Beatrix.

Also, Bartz's wind limit break was super dope against the tree dragon. I totally forgot it hit all enemies since I've mostly used it against bosses that are alone, so blasting a bunch of plant creatures for 20k damage was a nice surprise after I manually targeted the dragon. During that fight I used my Mako Might/Dr Mogs Teachings on Yuna and Sazh. I didn't bring any cure magic and relied on a single Hymn of Fayth near the start. As a result, I discovered that Wrath works pretty damn well on Y'shtola for getting her Stoneskin ready in a hurry. Consider Esuna and some form of dispel on that fight. I had the former but not the latter, which kept my damage lower than it could've been.

Also, I didn't see a single Gigantaur during the whole weekend, so that's lame. Leveled Locke up about ten levels though, so now he's in his 60s and should be pretty strong for the Kefka event. Also got a bunch of record materia... I can't remember all of them, so that was lucky. Good thing XP also correlates with those limit break mastery points. Made it a snap to learn Dragon Force permanently.

I looked ahead a bit and Exdeath has a runic weapon. So I'll probably go for that since it's something I'm missing and I've yet to do an FF5 banner pull, which is weird because I have a bunch of 5-star items from FF5 (Judgement Staff, Air Knife, Heavy Spear, Genji Armor, and Genji Helm). I talk a lot about how other banners give me FF7 all of the time, but apparently they've given me more FF5 when I actually look at my items. Actually, I think I might've gotten Judgement Staff during the very first Lenna event, since I recall getting it at about the same time as her. This was when I was still doing single pulls every time I had 5 mythril at once and often using mythril to refresh stamina for story dungeons. Ah... Ignorance.

I don't think using Paralyze Shot or Intimidate are a good idea since they're single target. You can probably kill them before they even use their water spout attack since you won't be foolishly trying to ignore them because you think Confuse will work well. Vossler's starting pattern isn't a big deal so you have time to kill them.

I'm not sure what you mean by Shield Strike... Do you mean Shield Bash or do you mean Armor Strike? I would choose the former even if it does less damage. Don't be afraid to stack the crap out of defensive buffs. Shield Bash is +50% and I think Draw Fire is another +100%, and they stack. The taunt component of Draw Fire isn't important. Does the defensive bonus of Cecil's limit break taunt stack with Draw Fire's? I haven't ever had the need to check since I don't have it. If so, consider Lionheart. As long as Cecil's HP is always higher than the rest of the party's, he'll be eating 2-4 multi-strikes constantly so he'll have no issues with meter, and it looks like Cecil's taunt has a pretty long duration. Hell, if you make sure you have enough meter to use it by the time Vossler uses his second enrage (which you probably will), you don't even need to bring Draw Fire. Back row Cecil should be even better. Bastion is also decent.

I don't think Lifesiphon is a good choice on Balthier. The important part will be doing lots of damage to Vossler himself near the end, not to the guards, and Tides of Fate isn't bursty enough for Lifesiphon. Give him Dismissal. With Steal Power he'll be doing more damage than Tides of Fate, especially when you factor the cast time of limit breaks.

I think it's pretty important to make sure Protectga and Sentinel's Guard are up when you need them, so save your first SG somewhere just before the second enrage. I wasn't paying very good attention to exactly when those enrages happen, especially because my healer was also my dispeller, so sometimes Y'shtola was busy charging a cure for Leon to dispel right away. Even though you have better weapons than I do, you will probably be doing less overall damage since you don't have a group-wide attack buff, so you may want to hold on to that SG for as long as possible or use Lifesiphon/Wrath on Tyro since your fight will last longer.

I kind of think you should drop Sephiroth for your Vanille. It's very unlikely you'll get your buffs up before people get hit for 2k+, so opening up with a group heal and Protectga seems like money, and then refreshing it around the second enrage. I think using a big group heal near the third enrage is probably high risk, since you might expose somebody to a Quad-strike. Keep in mind that after the second enrage, Vossler will pretty much always have Reflect on him. My Aeris never really landed a Drain during the later phases, so it's fortunate that I had charges of Quetzalcoatl leftover from earlier in the fight. Consider using Meteor on Tyro instead, if you've got it. If you have a 4++ of better rod then Ruinga on Vanille will be fine (probably about 6k damage), and then Tyro can be kitted as full-time white mage while Vanille collects medals.

author=Craze
edit: RIP me. did my 11-pull, 3 4* and 8 3*. :<<<

Yeah, it was about the same for me just now. I've been really lucky with 5*s up until now so I didn't expect to not even get one. At least I got a few duplicate 3s that I can combine into something semi-decent.

author=LockeZ

author=Jude
Does the defensive bonus of Cecil's limit break taunt stack with Draw Fire's?

Cecil's limit break taunt, Sentinel, doesn't increase defense at all. It's just the taunting effect of Draw Fire without the defense-increasing effect.

It supposedly draws both physical and magical attacks, at least. (Even though the in-game description explicitly says it only draws physical attacks.) But it's not useful for this boss. Or, uh, ever.

What an unimpressive ability. I just assumed it was identical to Lure Magic and Draw Fire in one action.

I think I'm going to use two mythril to get Cyan's crystal. I don't like him being stuck at 50, and I just don't have enough abilities to kill Deathgaze three times. That, and his rapid-fire Aeroga is also the bane of my existance.

author=Jude
whereas a support character with Lifesiphon follows you almost everywhere.

Do they? As has been made clear by my earlier posts, I'm pretty new so there's a lot I'm missing about the game. So far the only real use I've had for Support skills is to use Revive, because I haven't made Raise yet and would be unsure about using up another white magic skill slot for it anyway. Oh, and I was using Salve before I realised it was taking up a slot for no real benefit.

If you don't mind me asking, what do they get used for primarily? Status attacks? They don't seem to have a good success rate for me. I know there's Boost, but I've been avoiding it because I find single target buffs finicky to employ with the touch screen interface and rather hard to find a decent use for...

But I haven't made any breakdowns yet and I can see the appeal in those.

Thank you! To be honest, I don't think I even realised Support had breakdowns until I took a look while writing that post; I tended to get the Physical categories confused (except for Spellblade) and assumed Support was just the status attacks, Boost, etc.

I guess between the Damage + Status, the breakdowns, the healing and reviving they've got a pretty good, self-sufficient set. Maybe I would have learned that if I'd taken a chance to create and hone their abilities instead of ignoring them or leaving them at 2 uses.

Incidentally, I've seen it said that it's not worth creating abilities like Flare Strike for the 5* Spellblade users like Celes (who I finally got!) because they hit the damage cap easily enough with 3* or 4* abilities, but would it be worth getting the stronger Spellblade abilities so I can stick her in the back row for more defense, or give her a weapon with less attack? This scenario is a fair way off, but I'm curious.

I don't really know if that'd be be viable, because it seems the formula relies a lot more on attack damage than on the accompanying spell... I tried giving Celes a 5*Ice Rod in the back row, along with Blizzara Strike, and the results were... rather underwhelming.

author=Jude
I looked it up. Sentinel is +200% Defense and lasts 30 seconds. Unique status type ID, so it will stack with everything.

Interesting! I guess they buffed it. They need to update the in-game description to be accurate.

If you redo it, give those suckers ranged weapons and go full back row.

Also, assuming Cecil is taking all the hits... give him his own record materia that makes him counterattack with Counter Mend when he's attacked. It's A+ in this fight, since not only does it help him survive, but it helps him maintain the highest HP.

Also, yeah, having two healers seems to be mandatory for every ultimate fight. It's a good argument for honing Curaja, especially since the second healer won't be equipped with much +MND gear.