Who and what weapon?

[Skyylya]

I am lvl 26 with everyone, just finished king's tomb and i'm still using gladius on all three with gold shields/armor/helmet, 2 of the counter bands on vaan and balthier and the gauntlets on basch, and i rip through shit. with all three of them basically finished with the augment section of the license grid they attack like once ever 1.5 seconds and for 500-700 on normal stuff either at or higher lvl, 1k on stuff weak to wind and 200-400 on much higher lvl marks.

kotetsu was ok, but slow, the hammers are slow and not as much dmg, and the axes didn't do crap dmg for me for some reason. I am not all that far in the game, so i'll probably change weapons when better stuff is available, or i find out other stuff.

[Illusions]

Vaan: Katana healer
Baltheir: Katana DD
Fran: Bowgun DD
Basch: Sword/Shield tank
Ashe: Sword/Shield tank
Penelo: Gun healer

That's hot! very original :D

For me its:

Vaan: Dagger/Shield or Ninja Sword and light armor
Balthier: Gun or Crossbow and light armor
Fran: Katana or Bow and heavy armor
Basch: Hammer/Shield or Axe/Shield and heavy armor
Ashe: Mace/Shield or Sword/Shield and mystic armor
Penelo: Mace/Shield and mystic armor

basically I use Fran or Basch to tank (Decoy OWNS), Vaan or Balthier as damage and Ashe or Penelo as healer.

[Bkbahamut]

Vaan: Tried Axe/Shield for awhile, but Axe dmg so random, now back to Sword/Shield

Ashe: GKT and/or Spear

Fran: Bow

Dont use anyone else XD

[Soul Side]

Vaan: Katana healer
Baltheir: Katana DD
Fran: Bowgun DD
Basch: Sword/Shield tank
Ashe: Sword/Shield tank
Penelo: Gun healer

That's hot! very original :D

For me its:

Vaan: Dagger/Shield or Ninja Sword and light armor
Balthier: Gun or Crossbow and light armor
Fran: Katana or Bow and heavy armor
Basch: Hammer/Shield or Axe/Shield and heavy armor
Ashe: Mace/Shield or Sword/Shield and mystic armor
Penelo: Mace/Shield and mystic armor

basically I use Fran or Basch to tank (Decoy OWNS), Vaan or Balthier as damage and Ashe or Penelo as healer.

How are the maces for damage? Penelo is my main healer, the gun works out well since she generally stays out of AoE range. (helped out alot on Elder Wyrm)

[Palin]

Found this over on Gamefaq:

Daggers and katanas will do combo hits much more
often than a knight sword or axe will. There are also more interesting
differences between the weapon types. Most weapons are 'standard' in
that their damage depends on your Strength parameter versus the enemies'Physical Defense parameter. However, there are exceptions to this
rule:


-Bo staffs compare your Strength to the enemies' MAGIC Defense, not
physical defense. So Bo staffs will do a lot of damage to enemies
that have high physical defense but very low magic defense.

-Daggers, Bows, and Ninja Swords derive their damage from the Speed
stat instead of Strength.

-Katanas, Staffs, and Maces derive their damage from the Magic
Power stat instead of Strength.

-Breakers (axes and hammers) and Handy Bombs have a wider spread
of damage for a given attack value. So an axe with 30 attack
power can do significantly more damage than a 30 attack sword,
but it can also do significantly less damage for any given hit.

-Guns and Slide Rules ignore defense altogether. However, some
enemies (for instance, Slimes) have specifically high defense
against Guns.

The way I interpreted this is: if you have someone using Bow for example, you don't want them in Heavy armor, you want them in Armor that boosts their Speed(Light). Same goes with Maces and Mystic, etc. Guns i guess doesn't matter what armor you put the character in.

[Soul Side]

Strength has a factor in everything but Guns. For example daggers are Speed and Strength based.

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/jacob...istattable.htm

[Toralyn]

Basche: Sword+Shield/Spear with minor white magic skills, built him towards HP/attack up/shield block. All Heavy Armor, only unlocked Light armor when I needed to get to Heavy Armor 5.
Ashe: GKT/Bow+Arrow. GKT on normal stuff, Bow+Arrow on bosses/hunt NMs/flying mobs, has White Magic 1-8 unlocked, some Black Magic unlocked, some Green for buffs and then Time and Arcana for Haste and Decoy (Decoy = God). I've stuck with Mystic Armor for her so far, just started getting her some Attack Up bonuses and better armor options.
Balthier: Gun. Also has White Magic unlocked up to 6 or 7 (not ingame, so I don't know for sure) with some Black and Green magic unlocked. Light Armor all the way.

Vaan, Fran and Penelo don't get used much, but Penelo is basically the epitome of death. All Channeling unlocked, all MAB unlocked, all Black Magic unlocked, I think up to 5 in White unlocked as well, and Mystic Armor up to 9 unlocked. Vaan is just a Dagger wielding kid, and Fran.....I don't like Fran, she's like the Yuffie of FFXII to me (and I hated Yuffie).

[XxSlusherxx]

I've been using polearm with Basche, cause he looks like a dragoon to me, the damage is considerably more than anyone else in my party, but them I'm only lvl20

[Reshasha]

Vaan: War Hammer (axe) & Ice Shield
Balthier: War Hammer (axe) & Ice Shield
Fran: Loxley Bow & Onion Arrows
Bash: War Hammer (axe) & Ice Shield
Ashe: War Hammer (axe) & Ice Shield
Penelo: War Hammer (axe) & Ice Shield

All of my guys are about level 30 right now. About to fight the esper in the Stilshrine. Farming up a couple more hundred LP and then I'll go at it.

[Illusions]

Vaan: Katana healer
Baltheir: Katana DD
Fran: Bowgun DD
Basch: Sword/Shield tank
Ashe: Sword/Shield tank
Penelo: Gun healer

That's hot! very original :D

For me its:

Vaan: Dagger/Shield or Ninja Sword and light armor
Balthier: Gun or Crossbow and light armor
Fran: Katana or Bow and heavy armor
Basch: Hammer/Shield or Axe/Shield and heavy armor
Ashe: Mace/Shield or Sword/Shield and mystic armor
Penelo: Mace/Shield and mystic armor

basically I use Fran or Basch to tank (Decoy OWNS), Vaan or Balthier as damage and Ashe or Penelo as healer.

How are the maces for damage? Penelo is my main healer, the gun works out well since she generally stays out of AoE range. (helped out alot on Elder Wyrm)

The maces do pretty well on damage. It's not ALOT but it is fairly consistant. Axe really seems to be the most random but I think it hits high dmg more often than not. I've read a bit of stuff stating that armor and weapons play a big roll with eachother so I do try to keep them all grouped together. I think I will be switching to bow for Ashe and maybe Penelo soon though especially for boss fights. I usually set my Gambits for the tank and melee, and then control the mage at a distance to cast magicks. It's alot easier on curing status and everything, so ranged would be good for some added damage between spells. Now the one weapon I have no clue about is Measures. I don't get their purpose at all, but then again I haven't even tried one yet lol.

PS: And I have noticed, Ninja Swords and Katanas attack 2-3 times ALOT. Dagger too but moreso it seems with the others.

[Soul Side]

The measures are for buffing your party, kinda useless.

[Daegar]

Basch GKT/Spear
Fran Bow/G.Sword once they are available
Balthier Gun/Ninja sword

Basically I always have atleast one person with a ranged weapon, right now Fran and Balthier are both using bow and gun respectively just because there the strongest weapon's around. Basch has a GKT and I give him haste + decoy and let him go nuts with the others healing. Basch with a GKT hits hard and combo's atleast 1/4 of the time. Against bergan he had a 5-hit combo three times outta my first five swings, made him really easy.

[Ace-o-fire]

Vaan: Dagger sheild
Baltheir: gun
Fran: Bow / Crossbow
Basch: Spear
Ashe: Sword/Shield
Penelo: Givin up on her since she has perma slow and silence

[zymurgy]

All of my guys are about level 30 right now. About to fight the esper in the Stilshrine. Farming up a couple more hundred LP and then I'll go at it.

How did you fare against him at level 30? I tried him at 35 and didn't do more than 20% of his total hp's damage with 2 quickening combos.

[Maguspk]

Vaan: Dagger sheild
Baltheir: gun
Fran: Bow / Crossbow
Basch: Spear
Ashe: Sword/Shield
Penelo: Givin up on her since she has perma slow and silence

How does she have perma slow and silence ??

[Ace-o-fire]

I have no idea i think it's a glitch or something. I got it on Peleno right after the first sandsea. I took off all her equips, killed her, done other things and no luck.

[zoolandervd]

Vaan Deathbringer/Shield DD/Tank
Basch Deathbringer/Shield DD/Tank
Fran Yoichi's Bow/Poison Arrow DD/Healer

This setup works great at my stage in the game. For any tough nm I just have Vaan and Basch cast berserk on themselves and they go nuts. Everyone is set to cast haste on Vaan at all times, and I have bows for flying mobs.

I'm also currently using 3 golden bangles for double LP at all times until I max out the license boards, nothing else seems very appealing atm. Also all three of them are lvl 37.

[Illusions]

Vaan Deathbringer/Shield DD/Tank
Basch Deathbringer/Shield DD/Tank
Fran Yoichi's Bow/Poison Arrow DD/Healer

This setup works great at my stage in the game. For any tough nm I just have Vaan and Basch cast berserk on themselves and they go nuts. Everyone is set to cast haste on Vaan at all times, and I have bows for flying mobs.

I'm also currently using 3 golden bangles for double LP at all times until I max out the license boards, nothing else seems very appealing atm. Also all three of them are lvl 37.

Some people seem to only use 3 characters the whole time (which is fine, its your choice) but I don't know if people realize that in a battle if all 3 of your party members die, you get to bring in your other 3 to fight before its game over. I try to use all of my characters equally in 2 parties. Vaan, Basch, Ashe in one party, and balthier, Fran, and Penelo in the other. I think it really sucks that your reserves don't gain any EXP at all like in some other FF games, but they all do gain the same LP. So I always keep all 6 members equiped with Golden Armlet at all times. My characters all all level 38-40 barely and I'm on the way to Arcadies, have ALOT of LP spent. All of them have 100% augments, Ashe and Penelo are 100% spells, mystic armor and weapons, Fran and Basch are 100% all weapons, heavy armor, sheilds, Balthier and Vaan are 100% light weapons and armor, and all have several other LP.

Anyway to keep on topic though lol. I switched Baush back to sword and shield, it seems to be doing really good damage and consistant compaired to axe or hammer. Also I use crossbow for Vaan and bow for Ashe sometimes now to keep them distanced if I'm fighting something with aoe. By the way did anyone notice the "relic"(idk what they are really called) weapons. There is only pole, ninja sword, dagger, staff, rod, 2 greatsword, 2 spears and a katana... I think that kinda sucks, no bow, crossbow, gun, sword, lolhandbomb or lolmeasure. Seriously does anyone use handbomb or have tried it yet?

[zoolandervd]

My first gambit is set to ally any = raise, so if I happen to die its not a huge deal. My underleveled characters still have most of the same license buffs and such so they can sub in if needed to raise or use quickenings. I was eventually planning on leveling the other three later in the game when I get the double exp band, but for now they ride the bench.

[untouchable]

quick eq question: when/what can i replace gladius?