Whats you favourite party and why!?

[Plow]

Somebody needs to go back and test protectra/shellra/bravera/faithra and come back and redo their whole list.


Seriously though, I don't wanna like... "tear down" your post but damn... craziness.

First off, Light:

Yes, she's fragile. Not so much so with protectra/shellra. Her chain building is utterly unmatched. Her damage per swing is not so impressive, but the rate at which she attacks makes up for it easily. Her enspells fill in for her otherwise shitty syn beautifully, she casts haste and enspells while fang and van get everyone protectra/shellra/bravera/faithra'd.

Fang:

Untouchable damage. Great defensively. *BEST SYN IN THE GAME*. Seriously, you're WAY underestimating the -ra buffs, which she gets *all* of, PLUS haste. Great sab, albeit can be a pita to land her debuffs.

Snow:

is a fantastic SEN, and a pathetic everything else. His ATB gain is too low to be any good as a RAV, and his damage is inferior to light, fang, and situationally even Van, as com.


Hope:

Hope is just terrible, period. The only thing he has going for him is haste as a healer, which is meaningless when you get near endgame and everyone has haste. His damage is a joke. His chain building is nothing special. His healing pales in comparison to Van. His buffs are a joke compared to anyone with -ra. Seriously, hope is easily the *worst* overall character. At least Sazh has points of usefulness. Hope is *never* better than Vanille. Period. You're always better to have her as long as you have someone with haste, which is always by the time he has it.

[Yuri-G]

I think the biggest problem with Hope is that a lot of his strengths aren't that important or become obselete endgame.

- Haste, everyone else gets it
- Buff duration, best in the game with Vidofnir but who cares? very few things live long enough for this to matter
- Last Resort, as you said, not one of the best ultimates (even if it is FFXIII's version of Holy which is awesome)
- Healing, ok he's good but Vanille is better. if you need two healers for some insane reason, he's pretty much the only other option. but why would you need two?

And the other thing is, people get attached to Hope because he is the fucking man throughout the game, especially the short period between beating Ch 11. boss and the end (he might even be the best character at that point really). It's only in the endgame that he really takes a nosedive in usefulness.

[Plow]

Yeah, I mean, I always hated him so maybe I'm prejudiced against his usefulness, but I look at him and this is what I see:

Worst damage in the game.
Nothing special about his buffs.
Inferior healer to Van.
Nothing special about his chain building.
Nothing special about his SAB.
HP so stupidly low he's a constant liability... Lightning is bad enough in that regard, 17k fully maxed out? lolnothx

In comparison:

Fang: Offers unmatched damage
Light: Offers unmatched chain building
Van: Offers unmatched healing *and* unmatched debuffing, and on par with the best buffing once everyone has haste.
Snow: Offers retarded hax tanking. There's almost nothing in the game you couldn't kill "eventually" by sitting on Fang com, van med, snow sen.
Sazh: Offers unique chain extension, nobody else has.
Hope: ...

[Yuri-G]

hold on, his buffs are special. with Vidofnir's upgraded forms his last longer than anyone else's.

too bad that doesn't mean shit. but still. he technically has an edge there.

[Plow]

It's not just meaningless, it's counterproductive.

Like, oh boy, I can make his buffs last super long... so I can overwrite them 2 seconds later...

[Nevex]

Only reason it doesn't mean anything is because practically every single end-game mob has access to some form of dispel (Attacus, Jumbo Cactuar, Neochu, turtles, physical shield guys and so on).

Still, -ra buffs' duration is too short even when you factor dispel spam; it's really annoying when Bravera wears off in the middle of a stagger, which is why both Fang and Vanille are terrible SYNs imo.

Hope is regardless the best character to use against more than a single mob given his aoe spells are insanely strong, he clears a lot of hunts like no other.
Personally I never had problems using him except on turtles where I had to load him with -damage accessories. Reprieve solved that issue though.

And uh... since he has the highest MAG he actually is the best MED (I don't think anyone uses Healing Staff over Belladonna Wand on Vanille), best magic damage dealer and his debuffs stick pretty often even though he lacks a specialized weapon for that.

I agree the game wasn't designed to be very friendly for him once you max out weapons though - at that point just use Fang/Light/Sazh and kill everything in one stagger.
I just don't see the point of going that far though, which is why the other three characters have seen a lot more use for me.

[Plow]

You're much better off to just put on fresh bravera/haste right before you go into stagger than worry about either kind lasting any amount of time.

And yeah I can't figure out why Van's Curaja is so good, but she just clowns hope in that regard. It's silly.

As far as AOE, triple COM and you could stand there controlling a 3rd doing nothing while fang and light just destroy everything with blitz.

[Katlan]

Ive been doing fang/van/hope for end game, but u all make me want to try fang/van/light. Have only used light when I need Army of One spam to trigger instant chain

[yzn]

Sazh : Buffs
Fang: Damage
Hope: Magic

[Mytiwar]

So much hate on Snow. Sure, you can favour a few chars over some other but at the end of the day they can all do the job.

[OWS_Tonx]

Light: Medic, Damage
Fang: Damage, Sentinel
Hope: Buff, Debuff, Damage

Hope is a bitch, I love Sazh.... but Hope is just more dangerous to have in your party.

[Kamil]

Sazh has mediocre stats besides his HP.