Whats you favourite party and why!?

[Militant]

At endgame, with everything max, I found Light/Fang/Hope to be pretty much the best mix for all situations, especially when you see who has what spells/abilities available in their "non-main" roles. Sazh's overall fairly underpowered IMO, but his Blitz on his COM is pretty insane, and he does seem to be the best buffer. Snow's great in the select few fights where you're going to need a SEN full time to keep things manageable. Fang's awesome cause of her insane STR which can easily break 3K come endgame, and put up some redic. numbers with Genji Gloves. Lightning is awesome at both COM and RAV and has fairly even stats. I upgraded my Omega weapon from a lionheart so it too has balanced stats and makes her pretty beast in either role. At first I didn't really like hope but once his medic is maxed out its actually good and his ravager beats vanille's. If you roll with my group you don't need Vanille to debuff since fang can do it, and even with her shitty magic she lands debuffs easily even on the giant turtles.

[Neoscrilla]

At endgame, with everything max, I found Light/Fang/Hope to be pretty much the best mix for all situations, especially when you see who has what spells/abilities available in their "non-main" roles. Sazh's overall fairly underpowered IMO, but his Blitz on his COM is pretty insane, and he does seem to be the best buffer. Snow's great in the select few fights where you're going to need a SEN full time to keep things manageable. Fang's awesome cause of her insane STR which can easily break 3K come endgame, and put up some redic. numbers with Genji Gloves. Lightning is awesome at both COM and RAV and has fairly even stats. I upgraded my Omega weapon from a lionheart so it too has balanced stats and makes her pretty beast in either role. At first I didn't really like hope but once his medic is maxed out its actually good and his ravager beats vanille's. If you roll with my group you don't need Vanille to debuff since fang can do it, and even with her shitty magic she lands debuffs easily even on the giant turtles.

I agree with all of this

[Furion]

Why Hope is so good ? I hate the character, but if I want best setup I need him, gahhh!

[Brandson]

Fang (comm/sab)

Vanille (rav/med)

Sazh (rav/syn)

Works out great for me, plus it's always nice to summon Bahamut if I get in a pinch.

I refuse to use Hope. Not only is he a weak ass healer, his personality bothers me.

That's my party too. I usually start it Fang (sab), Sazh (syn), Vanille (sab) then switch to Fang (com), Sazh (rav), Vanille (rav) once all the buffs and debuffs are on. This was the only party that worked for me to grind that behemoth-and-friend CP spot in Gran Pulse when I was a weakling at the beginning of ch11. Now that I got everyone's main three jobs capped at level 4 I still stick with that party since it's working so well. I'd like to sub in Light (com) for someone but I don't want to lose either a syn or sab. I'm still on ch11 though, so things could change.

[Tyrath]

Why Hope is so good ? I hate the character, but if I want best setup I need him, gahhh!

Eh thats not true. Once you unlock the extra role for people, you can get more creative with your groups.

Honestly, I made a party with my favorite characters rather than the 'best' team. So I use Lightning, Fang, and Vanille.

[Null]

Yeah, I've beasted everything with Light, Fang, and Vanille. Van gets some nice weapons like a healing staff if I want her to be a healer or a buffing staff for that. And so on. Just love that group more then others and since I've beat everything I don't see a reason to change.

[Nevex]

Why Hope is so good ? I hate the character, but if I want best setup I need him, gahhh!

He's the best mage overall and has the best Eidolon.
Highest MAG stat in the game coupled with access to virtually every spell, except very few ones.
Despite not being one of his primary roles he's an incredibly good SAB as well.
Once he learns Haste there's really no reason to have Sazh in your party anymore.

[Yuri-G]

Now that I'm near the end of the game, it's pretty much Light/Fang/Hope or Light/Fang/Vanille.

Light because she's the best attacker overall. Even though she's not the best individual COM or RAV, no one else excels at both roles like she does. Also has great strength, and can perform pretty well as MED in a pinch.

Fang because I fucking love her, but also because she's the second-best SEN and I don't really care for Snow, plus she's the best COM and having two launchers can be handy. Also has some decent debuffs, though it's harder for her to land them, and being one of only two characters with -ra buffs is a huge asset that saves her SYN from being a crapfest.

Hope because he's the best mage in the game. Excellent RAV, more or less tied for best MED, great SYN, not bad as SAB. Alex is great too, though I don't use Eidolons much.

Vanille sometimes because I like a little variety, and she's basically Hope with a few major differences. It hurts that she doesn't get Haste, but everyone else does so that's usually not too big of a problem.

I usually control Fang because I love her, although I should really use Light more since she tends to use spells as RAV instead of strike abilities. I almost never use Hope since I don't use Eidolons and don't like healing, rarely I might control him to make sure buffs come out in the right order.

Sazh is my favorite character storywise, but battlewise, eh. And Snow can just suck it all-around.

[Null]

You know, I didn't like Sazh to much as a fighter (love the character though.) That is until I heard all the ways he is 'over powered'. Now that I've tested it I really feel sorry for those that keep deeming him as the 'weakest'. Dude is an F'n beast. Its like bringing a gun to a sword fight.

[Xno Kappa]

How so?

[sephir]

Light/Sazh/hope

I think Sazh is hands down the best portrayal of a character ever done in a FF game. That whole scene before he gets his Edileon sealed the deal for me. He's never leaving my party, ever.

[Militant]

I agree I think he's pretty bad-ass but his stats are just so meh that I couldn't actually get myself to use him.

[Plow]

urdoinitwrong

I'm gonna add to this thread tho.


My fave is light/van/fang. I usually run with fang main for highwind, though.

But yeah, super fast buffing and debuffing, van's curaja is just hax, and light and fang together do crazy damage.

I need to finish starring sazh's weapon tho, when I was using him I did love the extra stagger duration.

[Xajii]

You know, I didn't like Sazh to much as a fighter (love the character though.) That is until I heard all the ways he is 'over powered'. Now that I've tested it I really feel sorry for those that keep deeming him as the 'weakest'. Dude is an F'n beast. Its like bringing a gun to a sword fight.

Elaborate, I want a reason to use him.

Did see the video where he was the key to killing an adamantortoise at lvl 9 cryst with something like 7k HP, no idea how that even works, seemd to spam Blitz and Cold blood

Currently using Fang/Hope/Light, before too long characters will have a lv5 fourth job and can widen the options a bit though. Once Light gets Haste I might switch out Hope for Van.

[Plow]

Use fang for haste, van is so superior to hope it's not even funny.


It's like... annoying sometimes because the AI will choose to use her normal stuff instead of her massively overpowered curaja that she should be spamming at all times when she's healer lol.

The interesting thing about sazh is he extends your stagger, which is very nice situationally.

The depressing thing is that the tradeoff is when you get enfire on and all start meleeing... van literally melees more than twice as hard as him.

[Koul]

Just got to the point where I can choose my team and I'm doing light/sazh/vanille.

I might switch out sazh for fang but sazh's buffs are so good right now. I really wanna use Snow but I just don't see a place for him lol

I might mess around with it though. use all dude team and all chick team. see what I like the best

[bori]

I just can't stand Van's constant moaning when casting in Ravager : (

[fren.]

Fang/Light/Hope for everything
Sazh/Fang/Light for turtles.

Sazh is fucking awful against lowbie mobs though

[Yuri-G]

I'm not sure yet. I'm actually trying to figure this out because I have two traps and am going for a third before I start straight-up gil farming. I've already used one on Taming Pole since Highwind makes Fang a shoe-in, but I'm not sure what the other two main party members will be. they all have their advantages

Hope - great buffs and healing. having maxed SYN and whatever the second form of Vidofnir is greatly extends the time between rebuffs, but when straight-killing turtles, I won't be rebuffing often anyway, should go down in two staggers max. shitty physical damage.
Vanille - great debuffs and healing. no haste. shitty physical damage. Death doesn't matter if controlling Fang.
Snow - ridiculous HP, but that's not really important with maxed-out Gaian Rings. good strength though. being the only other character with maxed Sentinel is handy for damage reduction.
Sazh - too specialized, I know he can be useful but I don't want to bother figuring out how to use him properly. he's the only one who's not in the running at all, although in reality Snow doesn't have a chance either.
Light - she's a weird one. not great at anything except for chain-building and Army of One (and using Highwind excludes me from using AoO anyway). but not bad at anything either. only non-mage on my team who has AoE healing at this point. doesn't get Haste until near the end of her SYN role though. supposedly she's a fantastic evasion tank, but that doesn't matter for stomps and yells and quakes.

right now I'm thinking it will probably be Fang/Light/Hope or Fang/Light/Vanille. Vanille's advantage in debuffing is nice, but turtles are ridiculously easy to debuff once they're down anyway. Hope's advantage in debuffing is handy, but turtles should die pretty quickly once they're down so does it really matter? Vanille has the HP advantage, but again, maxed Gaiain Rings mean that's no big deal.

I'll just upgrade Kain's Lance to level 100 for now, and probably Lionheart/Omega Weapon next, I'm sure at that point it won't make much of a difference whether I choose Vanille or Hope.

[Nevex]

Got my Platinum trophy yesterday.
I used to switch around all 6 characters for the whole duration of the game until my Cristarium was maxed, ending up using Snow/Vanille/Hope.

Gonna type a small analysis about maxed cristarium characters when it comes battling the strongest mobs (Long Gui and a few hunts in particular).
Going from the (imo) worst to the best.
Keep in mind that I didn't bother maxing out the ultimate weapons after I got them for each character, so people who did might disagree(especially when it comes to Fang).

6. Sazh is terrible - absolutely horrible stats except HP, and even then he's the only character who doesn't learn SEN's Reprieve, making him automatically useless on Long Gui since he has a good chance of not surviving Ultima without a dedicated setup.
Sure you can max his ultimate weapon and give him a ton of +STR from equipment so you can Blitz-spam everything, but what's the point? By the time you manage to pull that off you'll already have all the trophies.
Plus, if you focus on STR, his magic (despite having a pretty large selection of spells) outside of his SYN abilities will be completely worthless.
On top of that he's the slowest character when it comes to both physical and magic attacks.

5. Lightning is a very solid offensively-oriented character but she has two glaring weaknesses:
1. she's too frail for my taste - her pathetic 20k HP just doesn't cut it. Hope is worse in that departement, but...
2. ...he learns Curasa/da unlike her. Seriously Cure and Cura are horribly ineffective in endgame and she ends up becoming a completely useless MED, which is a shame.
I want every MED in my team being able to cast the good healing spells.
Her SEN focuses on evasion rather than defense, making Light a good choice against Attacus and Zirnitra, though.

4. Fang, imo, is overrated. She's a terrible MED and subpar SYN (I dislike the -ra buffs, the effect/duration ratio is really poor compared to the base versions).
Her SEN is strongly inferior to Snow's, while her RAV is acceptable and her COM and SAB are really good.
However, Snow/Vanille cover everything Fang can do as SAB and this game doesn't really need the extra damage she deals, as you can 5-star most battles without her regardless.

3. Snow starts as a pretty mediocre character, but once he reaches the top of his development he's surprisingly effective.
He's by far the fastest spellcaster, for starters, and a very fast physical attacker as well.
He has access to Slow, Daze and Curasa, all three of them being key spells when farming tortoises and his MAG stat is actually good enough to take advantage of that.
His SEN is without doubt the best in the game - he can probably tank everything that doesn't spam AoE attacks with Mediguard alone.
His SYN is meh but he does have access to Haste and Vigilance, both important spells.
Finally, his COM and RAV are both decent, even though he's outclassed by Fang and Light, respectively.

2. If it wasn't for his 18k HP Hope would easily be the best character in the game. He learns every spell except Death, single target debuffs and Vigilance.
Even though he's physically weak it doesn't matter since the AI will spam Ruin (and Hope is a pretty fast spellcaster to boot) instead of throwing his nerf boomerang around, making him able to deal decent damage as COM as well.
He has the best Eidolon(although you shouldn't really main Hope given his low HP and Last Resort is nowhere as good as Death) and as SEN he can learn Reprieve, giving him a huge advantage over Sazh.

1. Vanille is hands down the best character in the game.
Her Death is ridicolous - guaranteed 999.999 damage on pretty much anything not immune to magic if you switch to Cerberus paradigm during the animation, and you only need Deshell/Faith/Imperil/Enspell to max it out. Oh and Death can actually oneshot a lot of things regardless of the damage dealt too.
She surprisingly has more HP than Light, even though 21050 isn't much either, but access to Curasa/da offsets this.
Her only disadvantages are her horrible SYN which lacks Haste and her slow attack/spellcasting (but not as Slow as Sazh).