A Couple of FFVI Questions

[Pro]

I've been playing this game on and off since '92...and re-bought it when it was re-released for the GBA...So I finally got into it to the point where I want to max shit out~

Anyways...on to the questions.

1) What is the best combination of Characters?
I'm pretty sure this is personal preference, but I'd like to see peoples opinions...atm I'm using Shadow - Locke - Terra - Edgar...tho I'm thinking of switching edgar...but idk

2) While lvling, is it more important to be buffing up the characters with Esper specific stat boosts? or Should I disregard and just learn the spells.

(I'm at Endgame basically, and lvl 35~40 atm grinding)

[Jeryhn]

1) What is the best combination of Characters?
I'm pretty sure this is personal preference, but I'd like to see peoples opinions...atm I'm using Shadow - Locke - Terra - Edgar...tho I'm thinking of switching edgar...but idk

Most character combinations work. However, many characters are obviously better than others.

For instance, let's say Sabin vs. Cyan. They both appear to be physical brawlers. However, Sabin actually benefits more from his Magic stat than his Strength because the majority of his Blitz attacks are considered magical attacks (including Phantom Rush). Now, Cyan can be a decent enough powerhouse with his Bushido skills... but they take time to charge, and the enemy will not wait for you to charge the attack.

Terra is a good all-round character, very good at physical attacking, good armor selection, completely awesome at magic. Trance also basically doubles all of her stats as well, and is easy to maintain. Edgar also benefits from having a good armor selection and his Tools are awesome in the first half of the game, but the thing is they don't improve in the same way like when you acquire stronger weapons for your character, so towards the end they because a bit lackluster.

Best advice here is simply to experiment with each character to find their strengths and their weaknesses.

2) While lvling, is it more important to be buffing up the characters with Esper specific stat boosts? or Should I disregard and just learn the spells.

Ideally, you should do both. Your characters should be aquiring a lot of spells, but you should also keep an eye on their "To Next Level" and switch in Espers to benefit from stat gains when they level up.

I'll use the Sabin example again. He has naturally high HP, Strength, and Stamina, and his Magic stat is fairly low. His good Blitzes are magical attacks, and therefore depend on his Magic stat. So if you want the most out of Sabin, you should be pumping the hell out of his Magic at every opportunity.

[Julian]

My current party I'm building for this playthrough is Celes/Locke/Relm/Mog.

I really really wanted to make Relm a physical attacker, but jtdc, the new weapon they gave her sucks, while Strago's has a 25% chance to cast Meteor. =( =( =( =(

[Slayzer]

My main has been Locke, Sabin, Celes, and Edgar. I've been grinding the other characters with growth eggs though so I have decent groups for Kefka's tower. not that its hard (gogo Ultima)

One also has to consider that damagae does cap at 9999 so eventually the stats wont really matter. Sabin is already doing 9999 for me so I dont worry as much about boosting his stats.

You could always do your spells on Cactaurs, as they dont give xp if I recall (or very little xp) and then grind the esper bonuses on the dragon forest

[Rysa]

If you are a perfectionist and love maxing stats then go ahead and boost str and magic on who you want. However, it is not important to do so, as your characters' levels have a larger impact on your damage more so than their stats. All your characters will end up doing max damage with magic and/or physical attacks at some point in the game. Increasing your stats will just make you reach that point faster. This game is not very difficult.

As to who is best to use, that is up to you really. Since everyone can use all of the same esper spells, the deciding factor on who is "best" is determined by special abilities and equipment, but since every character can just spam ulitma for outrageous damage towards the last 3/4 of the game, it all boils down to who can equip what. In my opinion Terra is probably the best overall character due to her equipment options and her morph ability. Gau and Mog are the two most defensive characters due to equipment options and their potential abilities. However, unless you are doing a challenge (low lvl game, no/natrual magic game, etc) there really is no "best" character as any combination of characters can beat the last boss pretty easily.

[Carbon]

I used:

Terra
Mog
Cyan
Strago

Terra because she has nice magic. All around good character.
Mog because he's Mog and he dances. Win, kupo!
Cyan because I like his character background and his attack. Bushido is pretty nice if you can charge it up in between Quick (If X character casts quick while you're charging it, free charge basically). Otherwise just attacking is pretty nice. Free slot here basically.
Strago because having 100% blue magic is like having a whole new spell set. His magic can be pretty intense, Lore fucking rocks, and Behemoth Suit is a nice piece of armor.

[MisterBob]

Some characters are way better than others in the endgame.

The really overpowered ones are as follows:

Mog - Snow Scarf + Merit Award or DRG relics. Snow Muffler puts him to 255 defense. Slap a Paladin Shield on him and he's pretty much invincible. Merit Award lets him use things like Lightbringer, and DRG setup makes him a powerhouse

Gau - Since they fixed Wind God Gau, he's not quite as awesome anymore. He's still literally invincible with the Magic Pot rage, and there's a few other rages that are incredibly cheap, like Rafflesia

Terra - Insanely high magic, very high physical. Morph doubles all of her damage output. Need I say more?

Celes - Similar to Terra, slightly higher stats in general. Deck her out and she's god

Locke - Valiant Knife + Atma Weapon w/ Offering + Genji Glove. Atma Weapon and Valiant Knife's special properties ignore the damage reduction caused by the relics. 9999x8 = lol

Setzer - Similar to Locke, use the same Relic combo with Fixed Dice.


Those are pretty much the "broken" characters endgame. All of the other characters can become pretty broken as well with the right gear, but it takes more effort.

There are two characters who essentially suck at this phase of the game:

Umaro - Can't wear Espers for stat bonuses, and you can't control him. Thus, his damage lags massively endgame

Gogo - Can't wear Espers for stat bonuses, this pretty much makes him garbage. He's a mediocre utility character if you want to set his skills up nicely, but he'll never come close to anyone else, only beats Umaro in power lol.

[Julian]

Terra - Insanely high magic, very high physical. Morph doubles all of her damage output and defenses. Need I say more?

fixed^

And technically.. strongest party would consist of 4 characters who can all use ultima weapons, to couple w/ offering/genji gloves <__<

[Rysa]

And technically.. strongest party would consist of 4 characters who can all use ultima weapons, to couple w/ offering/genji gloves <__<

Terra, Edgar, Locke, and Celes iirc. Or giving everyone Ultima, Quick, Gemboxes and Econmizers would work better

Edit:

I really really wanted to make Relm a physical attacker, but jtdc, the new weapon they gave her sucks

Can she use the gradeus from the chest on the way to the underground castle thing? IIRC Strago can use it, not sure about Relm. Best way to make her a good physical attacker would be to give her a merit award and genji glove and 2 of the Tempest Katana (casts wind slash on striking) or offering + 1 Tempest. One of these is in the Sealed Cave, the other is the only steal from the boss during the mine cart ride while escaping the magitek factory. Unless you abuse the merit award you are pretty much stuck with brushes and staves and possibly the gradeus.

[Julian]

And technically.. strongest party would consist of 4 characters who can all use ultima weapons, to couple w/ offering/genji gloves <__<

Terra, Edgar, Locke, and Celes iirc. Or giving everyone Ultima, Quick, Gemboxes and Econmizers would work better

Except quick+ultima take freaking forever to cast and go through animations <_<

[Imitarate]

I like Shadow in a tank position, pumping his evasion and magic evasion out; I usually use a Stamina esper on him instead of a Speed, because he's there to be unbeatable, not a slaughterfest. I usually like to keep Golem on him; if the sh*t hits the fan, it's another strong level of defense. Golem, Interceptor, Shield, Parry, Cape.

I prefer Celes over Terra, because, once you have a Celestriad/Economizer and Gembox-thing, there's virtually no difference between a Quick-Triple-Ultima Terra and a Quick-Triple-Ultima Celes, but Celes can use Runic in a pinch. If she manages to survive whatever makes me go into Defensive mode, she can combine this with Golem to enhance Shadow's survivability as he gets everyone Arisen.

The other two slots are entirely personal preference. I tend to like a "heavy" character (Cyan, Sabin, Locke) and a "light" character (Gau, Relm, Gogo). Heavy usually has Master Scroll/Genji Glove, light uses gimmick attacks. Although, I've been experimenting with Gogo, and Cat Scratch Rage with offering/genji is kind of nice. His weapon selection is somewhat poor, though.

I usually prefer Sabin and Gau (because of per-fight versitility), though Mog can work really well in either slot -- I just haven't built him up this time around.

I also make sure Shadow has Ultima, this has come in handy when I'm low on throwing tools.

[Tonko]

Um.... the ONLY thing stamina does is determine how much Poison does per tick... and how much Regen heals per tick.

More Stamina = more of each.

lol Stamina.....

[Jeryhn]

It also determines how often the character is effected by instant death attacks. Higher Stamina = less chance of dying. But Evasion/M.Block takes care of that.

So I agree. lolStamina.

[Imitarate]

Kay, good to know! I'll...ignore that completely in the future. I still try to keep Golem on for its summon ability, though.

[Kaylia]

Why bother picking the "best" team when every character can become overpowered. It's so easy to use cheap combo that make you invincible or almost.

[HAcoreRD]

I use for my main team:

Celes, Terra, Edgar, Locke

All have Phoenix Spells, Ultima, Meteor, Quick, and Celes/Terra have the relic that reduces all spells to 1 MP.

My second team is Strago, Setzer, Sabin, Shadow, all with Ultima and reraise.

It's more of teaching them certain spells before feeling confident to tackle most Dragon Den bosses

[Eratosthenes]

I like to use Celes and Terra because they both get the Minerva, which is a just plain awesome piece of armor. It has a lot of magic immunities, and if you can pair it up with the Paladin Shield, the character wearing them becomes basically immune to magic. If there's a risk of Ultima or Meteo, I can have Celes use Runic, which is why I give her the Illumina instead of the Atma Weapon. Terra gets the Atma Weapon and the Offering.

[theo]

The thing about FF6 is that its incredibly easy reguardless of what characters you pick, so you may as well have fun with it and pick based on who you like best.

I've played through the game several times, last time my pt was:

Terra - Somehow it feels wrong not including the main character of the game, so yeah. Plus her magic capabilities are amazing as others have mentioned.

Locke - My favorite thing to do with Locke is to pimp out his speed stat with espers, then equip him with Genji + Offering. Its hilarious how fast he attacks, most enemies won't even get a chance.

Mog - Just can't resist the moogle.

Setzer - Yeah he's not that great in terms of battle capacity, but he's a pimp so why not. I ususally make him learn the healing spells early on and use him as the cure-whore.

I try to use a different combination every time I play it, and really they're all pretty fun/interesting. The only characters that I absolutely refuse to play are Relm and Strago.

[MisterBob]

I like Shadow in a tank position, pumping his evasion and magic evasion out; I usually use a Stamina esper on him instead of a Speed, because he's there to be unbeatable, not a slaughterfest. I usually like to keep Golem on him; if the sh*t hits the fan, it's another strong level of defense. Golem, Interceptor, Shield, Parry, Cape.

I prefer Celes over Terra, because, once you have a Celestriad/Economizer and Gembox-thing, there's virtually no difference between a Quick-Triple-Ultima Terra and a Quick-Triple-Ultima Celes, but Celes can use Runic in a pinch. If she manages to survive whatever makes me go into Defensive mode, she can combine this with Golem to enhance Shadow's survivability as he gets everyone Arisen.

The other two slots are entirely personal preference. I tend to like a "heavy" character (Cyan, Sabin, Locke) and a "light" character (Gau, Relm, Gogo). Heavy usually has Master Scroll/Genji Glove, light uses gimmick attacks. Although, I've been experimenting with Gogo, and Cat Scratch Rage with offering/genji is kind of nice. His weapon selection is somewhat poor, though.

I usually prefer Sabin and Gau (because of per-fight versitility), though Mog can work really well in either slot -- I just haven't built him up this time around.

I also make sure Shadow has Ultima, this has come in handy when I'm low on throwing tools.

Mog is a waaaay better tank. All it takes is a single item (Snow Scarf/Snow Muffler, depending on version) to make him immune to phys attacks. Slap a Paladin Shield or a Force Shield/Aegis on him to make magic laughable, and he's pretty much unkillable. Make sure to have a Safety Bit handy in case you need to resist instant death.

[Rysa]

Mog is a waaaay better tank. All it takes is a single item (Snow Scarf/Snow Muffler, depending on version) to make him immune to phys attacks. Slap a Paladin Shield or a Force Shield/Aegis on him to make magic laughable, and he's pretty much unkillable. Make sure to have a Safety Bit handy in case you need to resist instant death.

Throw on a Dragon horn and give him a spear and toss him in the back row and he will never die and do really great dmg at the same time.