Game Breaker / Final Fantasy Record Keeper

In Final Fantasy Record Keeper, breaking the game is sometimes necessary for the hardest bosses. The Roaming Warrior ability pretty much lets any player make their character's Limit Break available for free use by anyone for other players, allowing for absurd exploits.

NOTE — Due to the constant rise of Power Creep, what was a Game-Breaker on release may be So Last Season less than a year later. Some examples on this page may be outdated, but they were considered Game Breakers at an earlier point in the game's history, and while they may not be useful in the game's top-tier content, they are still useful in other areas.

Characters

• As usual, the Onion Knight is a Jack of All Stats able to fill multiple roles.
  • He has some of the highest Attack, Magic and Mind stats at Level 99 before Record Spheres, and with maxed out Record Spheres he has 5✩ Combat, Support, Celerity, White & Black Magic and Ninja abilities. This means he can be an offensive spellcaster, offensive physical, and can carry support and healing skills as needed. His Legend Materia give him a 35% chance to use Celerity or Black Magic abilities twice in one turn, and his Relic Materia removes the charge time from his first two turns.
  • His initial two Ultra Soul Breaks are absurdly effective for the entire party. Forbidden Power grants the party Hastega, a 50% boost to Attack and critical rate, and an EX Mode that increases his attack by 30% more and reduces his charge times with every action. Forbidden Wisdom, meanwhile, casts Hastega and grants a 30% boost to Magic, Mind and Resistance and reduces magic casting time for three turns, and his EX Mode for this one gives the Onion Knight a 30% Magic boost and a 15% boost to Black Magic damage.
  • He then got a third Ultra, Sage Unleashed, which lets OK function as a dedicated offensive mage — it deals ten Fire/Water/Wind/Earth attacks on entry, boosts his Magic by 30%, halves the charge time of Black Magic abilities, and follows up Black Magic in those four elements with a five-hit attack of the active element. He later got a Glint that gives him two turns of tripled cast speed and +30% damage when hitting an enemy's elemental weakness.
  • His Awakening Arcane Potential grants him Awoken Black Magic (which lets him automatically dualcast any Black Magic ability), grants the party a Magic and Resistance buff, and he follows up every third Black Magic with Onion Sorcery, dealing a single Overstrike hit. When Hero Abilities were added to the game, he got a quad-elemental Black Magic ability that hits five times.
  • With most players presuming Onion Knight was now a dedicated mage, in the fifth year he got a physical Awakening, Swordsman's Potential, which deals fifteen quad-elemental hits, gives the party 100% critical hit rate and two turns of High Quickcast, and his Forbidden Ninja Awakening mode gives him a rank-based quickcast on Celerity, Support, and Ninja skills, and he follows up each use of such skills with a six-hit quad-elemental attack. He still suffered though because he has no innate access to physical fire attacks and can't use 6* Ninja abilities, limiting his 6* access to Wind through Celerity. Then later he got a second Hero Ability, which of course is a quad-elemental Celerity that deals five hits.
  • His other shortcoming is lack of easy access to infusions. While he had access to Water with his Glint+, the event that gave him his physical Awakening also gave him a Glint with Quad-Element Mode, letting him get an infusion off his next elemental attack. Then in the sixth year and the Arcane Dyad era, he got Dyads and Synchros for Water, Wind, and Earth, and Glint+ for Wind and Earth. The catch is that they're magical, leaving his physical prowess lacking again. He bounced back with his fourth Synchro and a third Awakening, both of which are quad-elemental, physical, and give him Quad-Element Mode. This means the Onion Knight now has full capacity to go all-out on any opponent in any of his four elements as either a fighter or a mage.
• Dark Knight Cecil is one of the standout physical Dark fighters.
  • His Ultra Endless Darkness deals 10 single target Dark and Non-Elemental attacks, gives him Dark Infusion, damages him for 99% of his HP, gives him a shield that negates 100% of his max HP in damage and gives him Red Wings EX Mode, which increases his Attack and causes him to doublecast all Darkness school attacks at 1/3 cast time. If his shield is ever in danger of falling, no worry; his Glint Evil Force will refresh it and give him Darkness Ability boost to boot.
  • Cecil's Awakening Dark Crescent grants the standard Awakening bonuses of an Ability damage boost, infinite hones, increased damage cap and automatic dualcasting, and Cecil will follow up Darkness abilities with Evil Blade, dealing eight additional hits that gain power and critical hit chance every other Darkness ability used. This is where the fine print on the dualcasting of Endless Darkness is critical — it isn't an "Ability Double" effect like many other Soul Breaks have, it's an effect of Red Wings EX Mode, which means Cecil doesn't use up extra ability hones when he dualcasts. Thus his dualcasting from Endless Darkness will stack with the dualcasting from Dark Moon, allowing Cecil to triplecast Darkness abilities, and each one can break the damage cap.
  • The drawback of this is that Endless Darkness and the chase effect of his Awakening damage Cecil, but several Darkness abilities like Dread Weapon include a Life Drain effect. Further, Cecil's Legend Materia Thirsting Fang has a chance to trigger another Life Drain with any Dark-elemental damage, including Dark-elemental Soul Breaks, so there's a chance that after using Endless Darkness and losing most of his HP, he'll immediately fully heal himself, and he still gets the damage-absorption barrier. With Dread Weapon and Thirsting Fang, Cecil is a self-sustaining fighter who has no need of a White Mage to heal him, even taking into account all his Cast from Hit Points effects.
• Bartz is the Spell Blade user, able to deal outstanding damage in any element he can grab a Spellblade command for.
  • His Legend Materia give separate chances to activate Spellblade abilities twice in one turn, and his Legend Materia Relic gives a small chance to activate it two more times, and they will stack. With a Glint that gives him three turns of Ability Boost and Quickcast for Spellblade abilites, Bartz is able to pull his weight even without his other tools listed below.
  • His first Ultra Soul Break, Chosen Traveler, deals ten hits in Fire/Water/Wind/Earth/NE, lowers the casting time of Spellblade abilities, and follows up Spellblade attacks in those four elements with either two or eight hits of the same element, which in tandem with his multicasting potential makes Bartz one of the best Chain builders in the game. His second Ultra Soul Break Crystals' Chosen boosts his Spellblade damage more and more the more abilities he uses of his four elements, and when the EX Mode from it ends he uses Spellblade Finish, which can break the damage cap. He then got a third Ultra, Essence of Wind, made to solely focus him on his Wind element, that deals ten Wind/NE attacks, grants him Wind Infusion and a chase that deals from one to fifteen hits as Bartz uses Wind-elemental attacks, and reduces the charge time of the front row's physical attacks next turn.
  • Bartz's Awakening Tetra Spellblade grants him Awoken Spellblade, causing all his Spellblade abilites to dualcast, boosting their power, and raising their damage cap to 19,999, he gets a 30% boost to the damage of his Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth attacks, and he follows up every other Spellblade ability with Barrage Master, dealing another eight hits in the four elements. On its own Tetra Spellblade makes Bartz beastly, but when combined with his other Ultras, Bartz can deal dozens of hits off of a single attack, every one of them breaking the damage cap.
  • For a long time Bartz's damage output on any element other than Wind lagged because he lacked an Infusion for them. The course of the fifth year saw him get Awakenings for Wind, Earth, Water, and Fire, along with a Glint and Glint+ for each, giving him an easy way to get Infusions. Further, the three Awakenings other than Wind give him the same dualcasting Spellblade effect, Earth gives him a separate chance to dualcast them again, Water gives him a Brave command to grant him instantcast or a damage reduction barrier, and Fire gives him a damage reduction barrier and a follow-up attack that refreshes his Fire Infusion and barrier if the barrier falls. Finally, he got his record board ability, which is a five-hit Spellblade in his four elements. This makes Bartz the most supported character in the game, with lots of tools to put together in lots of different ways to deliver fantastic DPS in four elements.
• Terra is the game's standout Fire and Wind mage, and one of the best Black Mages in the game period thanks to some Loophole Abuse described below.
  • Terra's first Ultra Omen deals ten Fire/NE hits, grants her Fire Infusion and an EX Mode that grants +30% MAG, doubles her magic cast speed and lasts 25 seconds (most EX Modes only last 15). Her second Ultra Tornado Combo deals ten Wind/NE hits, grants her Wind Infusion, an an EX Mode that gives +30% magic and a chase attack on Wind abilities that six more hits. Her Legend Materia Trance trigger at low HP to fully heal her, boost all her stats 20%, and doubles her casting speed.
  • Her Awakening Chaotic Inferno boosts all her Fire damage, ups her Fire attacks' damage cap to 19,999, makes her dualcast her Fire abilities, and immediately puts her in Trance. Her second Awakening Violent Sword boosts her Wind damage and ups their damage cap, gives her instant casting for Wind abilities instead of dualcasting, and she follows up Wind abilities with another attack that deals 5, 10, and then 15 hits, resetting to 5 afterward.
  • This is where Loophole Abuse makes Terra so powerful — a 4th year Balance Buff to the game changed how elemental effects worked in relation to abilities with multiple elements, that instead of looking at the element of the damage done, the game looks at the element of the ability used. This means that any ability that includes Fire in it, Terra's first Awakening will dualcast it, and any ability that includes Wind, her second Awakening will instantcast it, and both will boost its damage and raise its damage cap. This means that she can cover five elements competently, hitting Ice and Lightning through Valigarmanda and hitting Wind and Earth through Meltdown. For that matter, because Meltdown is Fire/Wind/Earth, it is compatible with both Terra's Fire and Wind Awakenings, allowing for absurd DPS if the two are combined.
• Shadow is the best Dark Ninja in the game.
  • His first Ultra Soul Break, Abandoned Past, instantly deals ten Dark/NE attacks to random targets, gives High Quickcycle for Shadow's Dark attacks, and the Vanishing Blade Chase that deals an additional hit for each Blink stack Shadow has. His second Ultra Darkbound Blade has similar effects to Abandoned Past, but in exchange for not casting instantly and no Quickcycle, its chase deals 4, 6, or 8 attacks, depending on his Blink stacks.
  • As with all Ninjas, the trick to maximizing Shadow's damage output is keeping his Blink stacks high. He has an easy time of it thanks to a Legend Materia to dualcast Ninja abilities, another that gives him a chance to gain a stack of Blink after using a Ninja ability, and a Glint that gives him two stacks of Blink.
• Mog started off as one of the worst characters in the game. But throughout the years, he eventually rose to be one of the best supports for magic teams and even Physical teams sometimes.
  • His legend materia when you complete his legend dive, Dance Lover has a 35% chance to cast an AOE heal when using a dance ability. It helps him become a pseudo healer for the party. And it gets even better with certain soulbreaks mentioned below. He also has the Dancing Death Legend Materia Relic, which gives him quickcast 3 at the start of a battle, which he can use to set up wall or other effects.
  • His first Ultra Forest Nocturne buffs the party's Attack, Magic, and Mind by 30% and grants them quickcast 3. A standard buff Ultra that barely got power creeped and actually got better when he got more soulbreaks. Especially when paired with...
  • His first Awakening Wind Rhapsody, the main soulbreak that propelled Mog to top magic support. It instantly buffs the party's Magic and Mind by 50%, gives them haste, grants them magic High Quickcast during the duration of the Awakening, and gives Mog dualcast Dancer, and finally every 3rd use of a dancer ability grants the party magic +70% for one turn. This greatly helped magic teams a lot and greatly buff the damage done. It also helped make Mog a great pseudo healer as well as Passionate Salsa is an AOE full break that heals the party a small amount which increases a little every time from around 500 to 1100 when it's used at a max of 4 times. So Mog can get the full healing benefits by his 2nd turn as well as from his own Legend Materia as mentioned above. So he can sometimes act as the main healer instead particularly since he also gets access to white magic up to rank 6. While Cait Sith also received a similar Awakening an arguably better Ultra than him which made him the more preferred choice for Magicites and Argent Odin. Mog eventually received the best relic to deal with it's counterpart end game fights, the Dreambeakers.
  • His second Awakening Dance As One instantly buffs the party's Attack, Defense, Magic, and Resistance by 30%, gives the entire party general quickcast for the duration the awakening, boosts weakness damage depending on how many FFVI characters are in the party including Mog himself, gives him dualcast dancer, and every 2nd use of a dance ability heals and esunas the party. This relic was the main relic that made Mog a top tier support in the current endgame meta as the fullbreak counter character. In Dreambreakers, everytime the boss changes phases at 70% and 40% HP Thresholds, it debuffs the party with fullbreak severely hindering the party's damage output. This relic and many others often called FullMake relics were designed to counter the debuff. Tyro was usually the most common character used as his OSB was the only one when Dreambreakers were first released that could counter the debuff, however De NA countered this in future Dreambreaker bosses by adding Dreambreaker stop which they used every phase change after they debuff the party and it required a high mind to shrug off and Tyro's mind was too low for that. What makes this relic the best Dreambreaker counter relic over the others is that with it, Mog can be used in all realms rather than one specific one like the other relics of it's kind. Orran's Sync works similarly but since it's a Sync it can't be honed to be used again like awakenings and unlike Tyro he has much higher Mind than him so he can shrug off the stops from the Dreambreaker bosses.
  • He also his Sync Snow Ensemble, and Hero Ability Heroic Harmony. Snow Ensemble instantly buffs the party's Magic and Mind by 50%, and Sync Mode & Moogle Music to Mog. His attack command Moogle Salsa debuffs the enemies Attack and Magic by 50% and heals the party by 1500 HP. His defense command grants Quickcast 1 to the party. Moogle music buffs the party's magic by 70% everytime Moogle Salsa is used, up to three times. Heroic Harmony heals the party by 1500 HP and gives a stack of Warrior Dancer to Mog. Each stack of Warrior Dancer buffs the party's magic by 10% up to a max stack of 30%. With Mog's Sync and two awakenings this makes Mog into a powerful buffer and healer.
  • Finally he's one of the two FF6 characters to have the Realm Chain Soulbreak making him the main staple character in VI parties.
• Cloud is one of the standout Wind physical fighters.
  • The key to Cloud's power is his Ultra Soul Break Ultra Cross Slash, which hits five times for Wind and Dark damage and grants him Soldier EX Mode, which gives him 100% critical rate, 30% physical damage boost and uncapped damage. His second Ultra Climirage deals 15 Wind and Non-Elemental attacks, gives him an Attack boost, Wind Infusion, and he follows up Wind-elemental attacks with Air Hazard, dealing four or eight attacks that can break the damage limit. When Cloud's two Ultras are combined, he can rip enemies apart with his Wind spellblade abilities. His Arcane Overstrike, Sonic Braver, is one of the 21-hit Arcane Soul Breaks, dealing 20 hits of Wind damage followed by one Overstrike hit of Wind damage. Backed up by both his Ultras, Cloud will break the damage cap on each of those 20 hits, allowing him to do hundreds of thousands of damage even against the strongest bosses.
  • The Fourth Anniversary saw Cloud get a bushel of new Relics that turned him into a powerful Dark fighter. His third Ultra Darkpetal Bloom lands ten hits of Dark/NE attacks, grants Dark Infusion and a 4-Hit Chase on Dark, and boosts his Heavy Physical attacks; his new Glint Mako Abyss is a Dark version of Mako Power; and to finish the deal, he gets a Dark Infusion Legend Materia. This, summed up with the sheer number of relics he already has, makes Cloud one of the best DPS characters in two different elements, and has a wide variety of options to play with in them.
  • Then Cloud got his Awakening, Angelic Synergy. It grants Cloud Wind Infusion, 100% critical hit rate, Awoken Wind to dualcast Wind attacks, boost the power, and raise their damage cap to 19,999, and after using three Wind attacks, Cloud will (one time) gains 250 Soul Break points and one charge of instantcast. In tandem with the Soul Break gauge Cloud will generate with those three Wind attacks, he will have enough charge to immediately transition into one of his first two Ultras to increase his Wind power even more.
  • To cement his future in the Dark metagame, Cloud's second awakening S Cell Movement grants him Infused Darkness, Awoken Heavy to automatically gain an additional Heavy Charge stack when using Heavy Combat abilities, boosts their damage cap by two to 29,999, and grants Cloud 100% critical hit rate. With this he doesn't even need Ultra Cross Slash anymore for Dark builds.
  • One of Cloud's main drawbacks as a Wind fighter he can't use the 6* Spellblade abilities so he's reliant on weaker commands that charge the Soul Break gauge less, and as a Dark fighter he's reliant on Heavy Combat commands that need Heavy Charge stacks to hit their full potential damage. Both problems were shattered with his Hero Ability Braver, a 6* Spellblade ability that deals five hits of Wind/Dark damage, making Cloud better than ever in both roles.
• Appropriately, Sephiroth is also a major Dark character.
  • His Heartless Angel deals 15 Dark and Non-Elemental physical attacks, buffs his Attack by 50% at the cost of reducing his Defense and Resistance and grants him Enhanced Darkness Infusion, while his Zanshin deals deals 15 Dark and Non-Elemental hits, gives him Dark Infusion, a 50% critical hit rate, allows him to break the damage cap with Darkness-elemental attacks and buffs his next Darkness-elemental attack by 30% after using 2 Darkness-elemental attacks, making him a Glass Cannon just as lethal as Cloud in his own element. His Arcane Overstrike is a 21-hit variety like Cloud's.
  • Then Sephiroth got his Awakening, which grants the standard Awakening buffs of Darkness abilities getting a damage boost, breaking the damage cap, and automatically dualcasting. But its second effect is to grant Sephiroth 500 Soul Break points, which means his Awakening is self-refunding, allowing him to go straight into his other Soul Breaks to ensure maximum mayhem. This makes Sephiroth so powerful, he can act as a mage with magical Darkness abilities and still pull his weight in spite of his awful magic stat.
• Shelke is one of the game's best Supporters.
  • Shelke's most famous utility is as an "Entrust Bot", using Wrath to build Soul Break gauge and then Entrust it to an ally. Her Legend Materia lets her begin the battle and removes the charge time of her first three actions; in tandem with the Battleforged or Ace Striker Materia to raise the Soul Break generated from abilities, Shelke can Wrath twice and then Entrust to give a party member a full Soul Break charge in the first five seconds of a battle.
  • She's not too shabby as a debuffer, either. Her Ultra Soul Break Transparent Rush is an instantaneous ten Lightning/NE hits which lowers ATK and DEF by 40%, and grants her a 4-hit Lightning/NE Chase that Breaks MAG by 40% upon use of Celerity or Support abilities. Shelke also gets a Glint, Technical Defense, which reduces her party's damage from a single attack by 75% and grants them Haste.
  • Then she got her Awakening, Transparent Lightning, cementing her as a competent Lightning fighter. After the 15 hit Lightning/NE entry, it grants her Lightning Infusion, rank-based cast time reduction on Celerity and Support abilities, and she follows up Celerity and Support abilities with a six-hit Lightning chase and a 40% party damage reduction shield. This allows Shelke to provide support DPS to Lightning teams while still being an Entrust Bot or debuffing enemies, or lets her be a dedicated Lightning attacker while protecting the party in either role.
• Yuffie is hands down the game's best Water Ninja, and one of the best Ninjas in the game.
  • Her second Burst Soul Break, Doom of the Living, instantly dishes six Water/NE hits to all targets and gives them two stacks of Imperil Water, her first Burst works quite much the same as Reflecting Pool, dealing two hits and giving a Blink stack, and the second command gives Smart Ether 1 to her, which helps on long fights.
  • Her second Ultra, Freewheeling Gauntlet, deals ten Water/NE hits, gives her Water Infusion and a stack of Blink and allows her to chase Water attacks with Torrent Blade, dealing 4, 6, or 8 hits, depending on her stacks of Blink. She then got an Ultra from the second Kingdom Hearts event, Landscaper, which is a copy of Freewheeling Gauntlet but for Earth. She also has the Glint Freewheeling Reflection, which instantly gives her two Physical Blink stacks and Rank Boost to her Ninja abilities.
  • As with Shadow, she has a Legend Materia to dualcast Ninja abilities and one that gives her a 25% chance to gain a stack of Blink when using Ninja abilities, making it very easy for her to keep her Blink stacks up and get maximum DPS from her two Ultras.
  • Finally, she got her Awakening Sublime Doom, which grants her Awoken Ninja and chases every other Ninja ability with 6, 8, or 10 hits. While the Awakening gives her Infused Water on usage, both the initial damage and the chase are Water/Earth/NE, letting Yuffie run either element off of it, and if combined with one of her chase Ultras, she can deal anywhere from 15 to 39 hits per turn. This is further helped with the new 6* Ninja ability, Azure Unending, which essentially combines the 2 existing water Ninja abilities into one, both letting her stack blinks and deal damage at the same time, and thanks to her Awakening, she can always get 2 blinks per turn at minimum, allowing her to always deal the maximum number of hits with her chases.
• Aerith is one of currently only two White Mages able to compete with Elarra, and she doesn't need Regenga to do it.
  • Her second Ultra, Innocent Cure, casts instantly to heal the party, grant them Last Stand, and grants them three charges of High Quickcast for physical abilities, which will stack with other sources of quickcast. This makes her the best White Mage a physical party could ask for, and with an Entrust bot to support her she'll have no problem keeping the party alive and kicking.
  • Her Awakening Star Pulse is an upgraded Innocent Cure that instantly heals the party, revives anyone KO'd at full HP, gives them Haste and Last Stand, and three turns of High Quickcast for physical attacks. Her Awoken mode gives her continuous High Quickcast for White commands, and instead of dualcasting like most Awakenings, she follows up White Magic abilities with Holy Wave, giving the party HP Stock depending on the rank of the White Magic ability used to trigger it — at Rank 4 it gives 2000 stock, and at Rank 5, 3000 Stock. This effectively makes every White Magic Aerith uses, even offensive ones, a group heal spell.
  • Her Synchro Guarding Spirit is then another upgrade to Innocent Cure, again being an instant party heal (though no revival), HQC3 for physical, Last Stand, and it gives Aerith the "Planet Conversation" status. Her first Synchro command is an instant-casting single target heal with 3000 HP stock, which basically makes it an instant version of Curada with more HP stock, and of course she can combine it with Curada to cast both of them. Her second Synchro command is a party heal, and if Aerith has Planet Conversation status, she loses it but gives the party Last Stand and gives herself 250 SB points. This gives Aerith a way to restore Last Stand to the party without a Soul Break if they need it, and charges her gauge to launch out of her Synchro into her Awakening or Innocent Cure on short notice.
  • Her Legend Materia includes the standard dualcasting, but her second Legend Materia is what really puts her over the top. It has a 35% chance to trigger a group heal on the party on any White Magic ability. What makes it particularly noteworthy is that, unlike most proc and chase effects like this, Aerith's can trigger on dualcasts, so she can cast a healing spell, trigger a group heal from her Legend Materia, possibly dualcast her original healing spell, and possibly trigger her Legend Materia again. And with her Synchro and Awakening, guess what — her Synchro commands and her Awoken mode's Holy Wave are also compatible with her Legend Materia, giving her three chances to trigger it. And then she got her Record Board ability which is a group heal with a long casting time, perfect for comboing with her Synchro or Awakening. With a bit of luck, Aerith can fully heal the party from critical health every turn with normal Cure commands, and even if someone would be KO'd, odds are they have Last Stand to keep them alive a bit longer until Aerith can get to them.
• Red XIII surprisingly has come to be regarded as the best Earth Mage in the game by far. Mainly because he originally started out as a physical support character.
  • His Legend Materia from his Legend Dive and first relic ended up being worthless as time went on. However he received better legend materia relics to match his new niche of being an earth mage. Elder Race which gives him a 25% chance to dualcast black magic, and Warrior's Talisman a trance type Legend Materia that boosts his magic and gives him quickcast at the expense of lowering his resistance.
  • His earth magic path started with him getting the first magic earth chain of the game Howling Earth, making him a staple for earth magic teams.
  • His 2nd Ultra Earth Rave dealt 10 Earth magic attacks, and grants Earth Radiant Shield and Instant Cast 1 to the party. This helps quite a bit to build up the chain from the instant cast and damage being dealt back to the boss thanks to the Radiant Shield.
  • He got better once he got his awakening Lunatic Roar dealing 15 magic Earth & non-elemental attacks, giving him the standard Earth Mode awakening which gives him quickcast, En Earth, infinite Earth hones, dualcast Earth, and cap break level 1. Followed by his chase ability Howling Stone which chases every 2nd earth ability with 6 magic earth attacks. This stacks with his trance Legend Materia so he'll have Elarra USB 1 level of quickcast for the entire awakening duration. He also received his six star Glint to allow him to stack earth infusions.
  • However it was his Sync that made him the best Earth mage in the game. Soaring Comet deals 15 Earth Magic and Non-Elemental attacks and grants him lvl 3 En Earth, Sync Mode, Cap Break level 1, and Quick ATB. If you know by reading some of the other entries here, you know how powerful of an effect that relics that quicken the ATB bar are. His commands are pretty standard, his attack sync command Grand Fang deals 6 Magic Earth & Non-Elemental attacks while his defense command Grand Howling grants the party quickcast 1 and buffs Red Xiii's Earth attacks by 30% for one turn. What actually makes this sync effective however is his Hero Ability Earth Rave. It deals 5 magic Earth attacks and imperils the enemy's earth resistance by 1 for 5 seconds. Combining his Hero Ability with his Awakening and Sync and he'll demolish every earth weak boss in seconds, making him the best earth mage and earth imperiler. To the point that it's entirely possible to beat Ramuh with only him and a healer.
• Squall is one of the best Ice and Fire DPS characters in the game.
  • His second Burst Steely Blade deals eight Ice hits to one target, infuses the user with Ice, and its Burst abilities are designed to synergize; the first Draw & Junction boosts Junction level up to three stacks, and the second Löwen Roar deals four-to-seven hits, with the number of Junction stacks not only boosting the number of hits but also their power and critical hit rate. With three Junction stacks it does seven hits of 125% normal damage and each hit has a 25% critical hit rate. He later got Revolver Drive as a third Burst, which is an exact copy of Steely Blade, just for Fire instead of Ice.
  • His second Ultra, Lion of Destiny, gives twelve Ice hits, Ice Infusion for Squall, and a chase, Renzokuken Ice Fang, whose number of hits and critical hit rate increases the more Squall triggers it. His third Ultra, Fated Fangs, deals ten Fire hits, gives Fire Infusion, and gives Squall "Heart of the Lion" EX Mode. The EX Mode makes Squall's charging time for actions and critical hit rate boost every time he uses a Spellblade ability (maxing at three boosts), and he follows up Spellblade abilities with Renzokuken Firefang, dealing five physical hits of Fire and Non-Elemental damage. For players who can't pick between Ice and Fire, Squall got a fourth Ultra with a Brave ability; the Ultra deals dual-elemental damage, cuts casting time of all actions, and his Brave ability charges with usages of Spellblade abilities.
  • Squall's Legend Materia to give him a chance to dualcast all Spellblade abilities, which is also all of his Burst abilities. Using it in tandem with his Bursts lets him charge up three stacks of Junctioning with just two turns.
  • Squall's Awakening Fatal Frost then made Steely Blade not only more viable than ever, but it's even better than his Ultras. It gives Squall Awoken Ice, which are the typical Awakening benefits of infinite ability hones, automatic dualcasting, and raised damage cap. This means that Squall will automatically dualcast Draw & Junction and his Legend Materia can trigger to let him triplecast it, letting him reach a full charge in one turn. Then he will do the same with Löwen Roar, dealing a guaranteed 14 hits of Ice-elemental damage that can each go up to 19,999 damage, and he has a chance to trigger another 7 hits of the same on top of it — with one turn of charge, Squall can deal over 400,000 damage in a single turn, and can do so every turn until his Burst runs out, and as a bonus, when the Awakening finally runs out, it also has a finisher that deals up to 10 Ice attacks and a single cap-breaking attack, tacking on an easy additional 200,000 damage on his target thanks to the finisher attacks' high damage multipliers. Then of course he got a second Awakening End of Flame, which is pretty much just a Fire version of Fatal Frost, including the finisher combo, but it also gives Squall a 30% Fire damage buff at the start.
  • Squall has two Sync Soul Breaks, Cross Your Heart for Ice and Fated Flame for Fire. Cross Your Heart's Sync abilities are a six-hit attack and a three-hit group attack, and both boost the damage of Squall's Spellblades for his next attack. He also follows up every second Spellblade with another attack that, depending on which Sync ability triggered it, is a single hit single-target that can break the damage cap or a four-hit group attack, and both give him High Quickcast for Spellblades. Meanwhile with Fated Flame, its second Sync ability is a three-hit attack that boosts Squall's Fire damage by 50% for one turn and gives him "Red Aura", which is meant for his first Sync ability, a six-hit single target attack that deals ten hits and removes cast time from his next ability if he has Red Aura and removes the status. And just to boost his DPS a bit more, Fated Flame gives Squall "Revived Lion's Soul" mode: the first time he falls to critical health, Squall's ATB gauge will instantly, he gains Red Aura and his next command will execute instantly. And to go with both there's his Hero Ability Renzokuken, a five-hit Ice/Fire Spellblade that hits all enemies and gets a damage boost if there's only one target. Either Sync makes Squall a terrific DPS in their element and great at both single targets and crowd control, which is very nifty when facing Shiva and Valefor, since their mechanics include spawning other enemies.
• Zidane Tribal is Cloud's rival for best Wind DPS in the game, going for quantity over quality in his damage output.
  • Zidane's Legend Materia triggers at low HP to heal him, increases every of his stats by 15%, and all his Thief abilities cast instantly. He also has a Legend Materia to dualcast Thief abilities.
  • His second Ultra Gale Unbound grants Infused Wind, rank boost for Thief abilities, and a hidden status where 15 seconds later (or if Zidane recasts Gale Unbound to reset the status), Zidane uses Thievery, dealing 8, 12, or 16 hits depending on the number of Thief abilities he used while it was active. His first Ultra Grand Lethal lowers the Wind resistance of enemies and Zidane follows up Thief abilities with another Wind hit that has a chance to lower Wind resistance.
  • His Awakening Reverse Gaia gives him Wind Infusion, Awoken Thief, and increases the Soul Break gauge he gains from usage of Thief abilities by 25%. In tandem with his Trance Materia, Zidane can quickly build up gauge to keep his momentum going, including putting it towards his Glint Aerial Ace, which deals six Wind hits and gives him Empowered Infusion for Wind, boosting his damage even more. Since his Trance lets him cast Thief abilities instantly, his Awakening dualcasts them automatically and he also gains more Soul Break gauge during it, he can combine his Awakening with his second Ultra while he's Tranced, quickly max out the necessary Thief ability uses for a fully-powered Thievery and recast the Ultra again, allowing him to deal an additional 16 powerful hits that can easily do 19999 damage each and thanks to his Thief instacast, repeat it a second time before the Awakening runs out. This allows him to easily deal massive amounts of damage compareable to even Cloud.
  • His Sync Not Alone grants him the usual lv3 Wind Infusion, a 6 hit command and an increased damage cap, but it also includes 2 noteworthy things that further push his DPS capabilities to increasingly ridiculous heights: using the Sync grants him his Trance which, as stated above, increases his stats and lets him cast all thief school abilities instantly, letting you avoid having to trigger it manually, and it also grants him three extra turns, so he can immediately combo his Sync with his other Soul Breaks or spam the Sync abilities repeatedly. However, this is where Loophole Abuse makes him truly absurd — Zidane's Awakening works for Thief abilities, but his Sync works for Wind. This means with non-Thief Wind abilities (namely, Celerity), Zidane can combo his Sync and Awakening together, giving him the ability to dualcast his Sync commands and follow them up with a Celerity command like Ripping Storm, dealing a minimum of 18 hits every turn that can go up to 29,999 damage each, and the extra turns are also extremely helpful in maxing out the thief ability use count for his second USB even quicker and letting it deal even higher damage per hit when your recast it to force the finisher.
• Tidus is one of the most powerful Water DPSes around, due to being a Lightning Bruiser who can attack ridiculously fast with a lot of power behind his strikes.
  • Tidus' first Ultra, Day to Remember, deals ten Water/NE hits, grants him Water Infusion, Instant Cast for one turn, and puts him into Ace EX Mode, which increases his ATK by 30% and gives him a 6-hit Water/NE Chase for Sharpshooter attacks. His Glint, Ace Form, gives him Empowered Water Infusion and Quickcast 2. His Brave Ultra, Quick Rush, exchanges the Instacast and EX Mode for a constant Quickcast and an Overstrike Brave Command, "Drive Shot". Tidus is also the owner of the first Water Chain, A Fleeting Dream, which deals 11 Water hits and grants Quickcast 2 to the party. He also happens to be one of the first owners of an Arcane Overstrike Soul Break, Slash & Splash, which is a 21-hit Arcane.
  • His Awakening Rising Dream deals 15 Water/NE hits, puts Tidus into Awoken Sharpshooter and gives him the Overstrike Chase Ace Shot after three Sharpshooter uses, dealing Overstrike damage to one target. When combined with his other tools, such as his first Ultra and LM2, it makes Tidus a force of nature in his element.
  • His Legend Materia allows for Dualcast of any Water-elemental attack, his Legend Relic lets him start with Water Infusion, and his second gives him a chance to be granted Quickcast 1 when using Water attacks.
• Shantotto, the mistress of black magic unsurprising finds herself here.
  • Her Legend Materia is a low HP trance type materia which buffs her magic but debuffs her Defense & Resistance and grants her high quickcast. Which nullfies the long cast time of Witch abilities which is her speciality.
  • She has a Legend Materia Relic that gives her a 10% to triplecast Witch abilities.
  • Her Ultra A Thousand Suns deals ten lightning/ice/fire attacks, grants her Lighting Infusion, and gives her the Twinstrike EX Mode, which boosts her Magic and and Witch ability double. Witch abilities generally deal an average of six hits so you'll be doing twelve hits at the minimum.
  • Her Awakening Federation Demon deals fifteen lightning/non-elemental hits, grants her awoken witch mode, which grants her infinite Witch hones, 100% dualcast witch abilities, cap break level 1, and ranked hone witch boost for 15 seconds. She also automatically goes into trance mode as mentioned above.
  • It wouldn't be until she got Sync Chain Thunder Play that she's up there with the likes of Cloud, Zidane, Rem etc. It deals fifteen lightning/non-elemental attacks, grants her sync mode, level 3 lightning infusion stack, cap break level 1, trance mode, and most importantly Federation Blackblood Mode. It grants her a damage reduction barrier that if broken, automatically fills up her ATB bar and she can do it for up to five times. She can constantly deal damage on a daily basis if timed right. Her attack command is a 7 lightning/non-elemental attack that links to witch abilities and her Heroic Ability Play Rough deals 7 lightning attacks for up to 14 hits per turn. You can combine it with her awakening to deal a max of 29999 per hit contantly. And that's not including the chance of her triplecast legend materia also activating dealing a maximum of 28 hits.
• If Terra is Fire mage supreme, Ashe fits the bill for everything Lightning-related.
  • Her Ultra, Empyrean's Edict, deals ten Lightning/NE hits, grants her Lightning Infusion, buffs her Magic and Resistance and giving her a Rank-dependent Chase that deals up to six more hits on Lightning attacks. Her second Ultra Inspiring Flash causes her Lightning abilities to grant High Quickcast for magic attacks to the back row, which will include Ashe herself if she's back there, and every third Lightning ability boosts the party's Lightning damage by one rank, making her a boon on pretty much any Lightning team, not just magical ones. Ashe also has access to her Dusk Mote Glint, which grants her Empowered Lightning Infusion and High Quick Cast 2, and her three-hit Arcane, Lodestar's Gleam.
  • Then of course she got her Awakening Northswain's Bolt, which gives her Lightning Infusion, Awoken Lightning, and every third Lightning ability triggers Sundering Bolt, an Overstrike attack. Much like Terra can use Loophole Abuse to dualcast Meltdown for Earth and Wind-weak enemies, Ashe can use her Awakening with Voltech, a Lightning/Water/Ice spell, to be competent as a Water and Ice DPS, and she also has Fire and Ice through Valigarmanda.
• Larsa is the game's supreme status healer beyond anyone else, even Elarra — if you're facing a boss that prominently uses status ailments, Larsa is the best healer you could ask for.
  • To start, Larsa is one of the few healers with Support 5, letting him use Wrath to charge his Soul Break gauge — with Ace Striker or Battleforged to boost the charging rate, and the fact he has instant-casting Soul Breaks, he doesn't even need a White Magic healing command, he can just spam Wrath and Soul Breaks.
  • His Ultra Potions Aplenty casts instantly to heal the party, cast Esuna on them, grant them High Regen, and he gives them the Astra status, blocking one Status attack. His second Ultra Scintillating Potion also casts instantly to heal the party, gives them two turns of High Quickcast, and he chases White Magic and Support with a 1,000 HP heal to all allies and casting Esuna on them. He also has a Glint that casts Esuna and Astra on the party.
  • He not only has a Legend Materia to dualcast White Magic, but two Legend Relic Materia — one has a chance to give an ally Astra when using a single-target White Magic on them, the other has the same trigger but grants Astra to Larsa himself.
  • Finally there's his Awakening, Unlimited Potions, which is basically his two Ultras combined and made better — casts instantly to heal the party, including reviving anyone KO'd with max HP, grants them Haste, Last Stand, Astra, casts Esuna on them, and his Awoken mode boosts the casting speed of White Magic abilities 2-3x faster depending on rank, and he chases White Magic with a party-wide 1,500 HP heal and Esuna.
• Lightning has become Cloud's lightning Element equivalent with the Feasts of Glory fest. She can use Spellblade and Celerity for skills with the lightning element with the latter letting her use up to 6 stars including Flash Disaster which is Instant cast, allowing her to build up her soulbreak gauge. She can use various weapons like swords, spears, and guns. She also has a secondary element in holy which she can use Knight up to 6*.
  • She gets Instant Cast 3 as her Legend Materia at the end of her Legend Dive which she can use to quickly build up her soulbreak gauge as well as a dualcast Lighting Legend Materia relic. Along with a dualcast Holy relic as well.
  • Her first Ultra Army of One deals 10 lightning/non-elemental attacks and grants her En-Lightning and Blinding EX Mode, which raises her attack and grants quickcast everytime she uses a lightning ability which racks up the damage a lot and helps build the chain gauge.
  • Her Awakening Army of One Evolved deals 15 lightning/non-elemental attacks and gives her Lightning Awaken mode^note  Dualcast Lightning, infinite lightning hones, and lightning rank ability boost. and a chase that that initially deals 5 hits after every two lightning abilities with the hits increasing the more times she uses it, doubling the hitcount every time it's triggered up to 20 hits. Combining it with a quickcast source like Elarra's ultra or even her own Ultra means any lightning weak enemy will die quickly.
  • The December 2019 fest gave her a very powerful Synchro Soul Break that's compared to Cloud's Ultra during the Ultra period. Her Synchro Gestalt Drive deals 15 lightning/non-elemental ranged hits, grants her En-Lightning up to level 3, Sync mode, and removes delay of ATB gauge for one turn, meaning she can select another ability to use right after using it. Her Defend command deals 3 lighting/non-elemental attacks, gives her Lightning Garb, and the ability has reduced delay. Her Attack command deals 5 lightning/non-elemental attacks, 10 hits under Lightning Garb, removes Lightning Garb and removes the delay of the ATB gauge once. By alternating Defend -> Attack -> Defend -> Attack, she essentially gains double turns for as long as her Sync lasts. To further help with this, a newly released 6* Celerity ability, Running Start acts as an upgrade to Powerchain^note the 2 hit ability that grants Instant Cast 1 that does Lightning and Wind damage instead. By using Ripping Plasma in the first slot and Running Start in the second slot, she can make the Attack command cast instantly every time, meaning everything weak to Lightning is absolutely trivialized to a tee, including the Water 6* Magicite Leviathan. If you have both her Awakening and Sync, you can also combine the two to increase the damage cap further, make use of the Awakening's lightning rank boost, have her doublecast the Sync commands instead of linking them with abilies for potentially more damage and most importantly, use the double turns from Sync to max out the hitcount from Awakening's chase much faster than normal and trigger multiple 20 hit chases, something that's much harder if not downright impossible to do with just the Awakening itself, although doing this does deny you the ability to have persistent instant cast time on the first Sync command, and potentially, might cost you some double turns in the long run, although if the enemy is dead far long before it happens, it doesn't really matter.
  • And to add insult to injury, her Arcane Soulbreak Blaze Slash is a 20 hit + 1 Break damage limit attack, which means that you can combine it with her Awakening and Synchro soulbreaks to deal even more massive damage.
• Cid Raines ended up becoming one of the standout Dark mages, with a good variety of tools to use. He can run Holy as well, but he is nowhere as proficient with that element.
  • His ability pool is varied. His main school is Darkness, but his dive allows him to use White Magic just as fine, as well as Support 4*, which enables him to use Wrath, allowing him to build himself the gauge for his multiple Soul Break strategy.
  • His Burst, Metamorphose, hits six times for Holy and Dark (having a better multiplier if he is Doomed), and increases his party's DEF and MAG by 30%. His first Burst Command hits four times while granting him Instacast for his next magic attack, while the second gives two hits and bargains his RES for another stack of 30% MAG. This can be combined with Memento Mori (which would be used to cause Raines to be doomed anyways) to increase his MAG even further, making him a Magic Darkness powerhouse for his following moves. A bug in JP (which got fixed after a week) made this Burst even more powerful by making his LM2 check individually for Holy and Dark rather than check for just one of them, which in turn made possible to triplecast his Burst commands.
  • His first Ultra, True Miracle, deals ten Dark/Holy hits (also working better under Doom), gives him +30% MAG and RES (which stacks with the increase from his Burst Command), Dooms him in case he's still not Doomed, gives him Instacast 1, and finally, gives him the "Seraph-Wing Buffet" Chase for Holy or Dark-elemental attacks. Needless to say, when used in conjunction to his Burst and Memento Mori, Raines can get an obscene quadruple 30% MAG boost for himself, making him able to trample just about anything weak to Dark.
  • His second Ultra, Wings of Despair, fixates him into doing Dark damage and can substitute for his BSB just fine: ten Dark/Holy hits, Dark Infusion, and Ability Double for Darkness. While this Ultra doesn't mix very well with his Burst, it mixes with his other Ultra, allowing Raines to be a deadly Dark mage.
  • The "Last Tears" event for Lightning and Snow also gave Raines something to play with: his AASB, Angel of Death. 15 Dark/Holy/NE hits, and grants him Dark Infusion, Awoken Darkness and the "Wings of Doom" Chase, which deals five Dark/Holy/NE hits (ten if he's Doomed) every two uses of Dark-elemental abilities. He also gets his Glint, Dark Shift, which is an instant 30% boost to MAG and RES with constant Hi-Quickcast for Darkness commands.
  • Raines' Dive allows him to Dualcast Holy and Dark-elemental abilities with no worries, a thing further enhanced by his USB2, and while his LMR1 is junk, his LMR2 gives him Dark Infusion by the start of the battle, making him much more powerful from the start.
• Y'shtola stands out among the game's healers from time to time, for a good reason.
  • Her Unique Stoneskin II, like Tyro's Sentinel's Grimoire, gives a 200% boost to the party's DEF and RES, and was once considered the go-to mitigation tool. With the Acolyte Archives, which gives this Soul Break if you choose to, and Tyro's own Unique being given for free at the second book, summed up to his Divine Veil Grimoire being a much more preferrable Soul Break to use, this one has lost its use. Her other tools are equally simple, with Asylum, her BSB, only granting the party a 30% Stoneskin along with the healing.
  • Y'shtola fell heavily out of favor as the Power Creep came for healers, with Elarra and Aerith becoming huge, undefeatable competition. The Glory Feast Festival gave her a second Ultra, Secret of the Lily, which is basically Aerith's USB2 for mages, granting the party Magic High Quickcast 3, and a twist: the Last Stand is in her Brave Command, being accessible only at Lv.3 onwards. While this would be seen as a bad idea normally, Global got a massive buff to Brave Ultras in that Brave Commands now start at Lv.2, allowing Y'shtola to trigger her Last Stand command after a single action and giving her time to perform a second one after a few turns. This alone bounces her back from the scrappy position she was in and puts her in direct competition with Aerith and Elarra.
  • The promotional banner for the Shadowbringers expansion saw Y'shtola get powerful toys. Her Awakening Pulse of Life is a monstrosity, healing instantly and giving the party 30% Stoneskin and Last Stand. Her Awoken White Magic allows for Ability Double and chases it with 30% to 70% Stoneskin depending on the ability's rank, making this one far surpassing Lenna's Awakening in utility, and even blowing Maxwu out of the water as she can merely spam Stoneskins. Y'sh also gets a second LMR that follows White Magic abilities with a Medica, and a Superglint, Stoneskin III, which is basically a pocket Stoneskin II. Now that is a bounce into competition for the top healer position.
  • She's at least lucky when it comes to Legend Materias, with her LM2 being a Dualcast, and her LMR granting anyone healed with her White Magic a chance of receiving Esuna as well.
• Before the 2018 Year End Festival on JP, Noctis was treated as underwhelming due to being one of the last characters to not have an elemental focus... until he got three. And even then, Noctis was already dangerous:
  • Noctis' ability pool is quite varied even before his overhaul. He already was 5* in Combat, Dragoon and Celerity, making him useful at the very least on getting gauge and Chain counts on Wind and Lightning teams. The coming of his AASB solidified his Lightning game and made the latter two schools crucial for a very speedy Noctis. His overhaul then gave him 5* Heavy and Samurai to go with his new elements, making Noctis an extremely versatile fighter, even if he still can't dualcast those abilities via Legend Materia.
    • As an extra, in the same balance update, DeNA also finally fixed Dragoon coding so that dualcasting those abilities were made finally possible without causing some bizarre bug. With the Impulse Drive 6* Dragoon ability that came with it, Noctis has now become deadly as a Lightning DPS.
  • It all starts with his SSB, Gladiolus Link. It deals six NE hits, but casts instantly and gives the whole party Instant Cast 1. It's one of the main reasons why people still prefer Noctis around in a team, even if he can't deal half the damage the rest of his party does: He can basically overclock his party.
  • His second Ultra, Airstride, patches his NE game by dealing 10 NE hits, boosting his NE damage by 50% and giving him an EX Mode that increases his ATK by 30%, grants him Quickcast, and follows Combat and Celerity attacks with a five-hit combo that never misses. While this is still miles away from the elemental meta DeNA imposed over the game, note that a Lightning-oriented Noctis can still make use of this Ultra to follow Ripper Bolt/Plasma with extra DPS. His first Arcane, Critical Link, deals three always-critical hits, which is further boosted by his USB2. Artifact Weapons can make this Arcane even more powerful, to the point it's not uncommon in JP seeing an RW Noctis ramming past 800 ATK who can one-shot D120 bosses. Really.
  • And then we finally get to his Créme de la Créme: His second Arcane, Rush Link, which is a 21-hit Earth/Lightning/Fire Arcane, and Kingly Duties, his Awakened Arcane. 15 Earth/Lightning/Fire hits, 100% Critfix, Overflow Lv.1, Awoken Lucian King (For Earth, Lightning and Fire attacks), and Royal Mode, which endows him with Hi-Quickcast for the duration of the Awakening and finishes it with "Melee Shift Break", a massive Overflow Earth/Lightning/Fire attack. All of this in a single pack that makes Noctis fit like a glove in any of three different elemental teams. He also has a second Glint, Warp Factor, which increases his Critical damage by 50% and gives him Quickcast 2, speeding his following actions. Get Noctis' gauge fed by someone like Shelke and watch as he alone tears Magicites apart.
    • What makes this Awakening insane is that Noctis' method of dealing Earth damage is through Heavy abilities, a school not suited for Dualcast just as Dragoon once was. The trick to it resides on Gigant Swing: Noctis only needs a single turn to get Heavy Charge to 2 under Awakening, causing the first cast to land eight hits. While the second cast is an uncharged one, it also has a better multiplier than the fully charged one, increasing his DPS.
  • The other thing is that Noctis' AASB-level tools were made to benefit from his dive, which is a Haste + Instacast 3. Noctis can easily cram three Lifesiphons at the start of the fight to make gauge and just unleash hell from there. His first LMR is junk (Combat Dualcast, which Firion has as well, and a reason why people revile Cloud's Record Dive), but his second increases all physical damage by 20% when using swords, which further helps Noctis wreak havoc in battle.
• Ramza is one of the most versatile support attackers in the game thanks to an insanely varied pool of abilities and Soul Breaks.
  • His SSB Shout is considered one of FFRK's first game-breakers, with its Hastega and 50% boost to the party's Attack. While Power Creep knocked it off the radar, his second BSB Battle Cry gives all the same benefits, plus Holy Infusion, a Soul Break gauge-charging command that doesn't increase ATK like Wrath (thus allowing to keep the ATK boost on himself), and a five-hit Holy combo, which doesn't fill gauge, but can be dualcasted via his second LMR.
  • Even his Unique SBs have surprising utility: Tailwind casts Protectga and heals allies for 40% their max HP, and Chant boosts their critical hit damage and grants a damage-negating barrier equal to 30% of their max HP.
  • His USB History's Truth, meanwhile, not only boosts the party's Attack, Magic and Defense by 30%, but also removes charge time from their next action. This goes for the user as well, so Ramza can immediately cast another Soul Break if possible. What makes this Ultra even more tempting is that it stacks with Shout/Battle Cry, allowing the party to benefit from a 95% bonus to ATK^note 30% bonus to an ATK already at 150%, which results on a 45% bonus, as well as a boost to MAG and DEF, which will also stack with any Wall in effect. This makes Ramza able to easily abuse the revised softcaps for ATK and MAG with the right setup. The only downside to this Ultra is that the lack of a Hastega effect stops it from being a full-blown "Party Starter" like his Super and Burst.
  • To top all that, he possesses the second Holy-elemental Chain Soul Break, Flutegrass Memories, which boosts the party's Attack by 50% and their Holy damage by another 50%. With his access to 5✩ Knight abilities, he can easily help a Knight team rack up hits. He also gained an offensive Ultra Soul Break, Seeker of Truth, that deals 10 physical Holy/NE attacks, gives him Holy Infusion, allows him to cast his Holy abilities at triple speed and lets him chase them with four extra Holy hits, and to go along with it, another Legend Materia Relic that allows him to dualcast Holy abilities at 25% rate, allowing him to double as a competent Holy DPS when his buffs aren't required.
  • Finally, he has a Relic Legend Materia that lets him start every round with a full ATB gauge, and no charge time for his very first action in a battle. With Mako Might or Dr. Mog's Teachings, Ramza can begin any battle by immediately casting a Soul Break to suit the player's needs, or can immediately summon a Roaming Warrior.
  • The FFT event "The Hidden Truth" sees Ramza getting new toys to play with. Ramza is finally solidified into DPS range with an Arcane Soul Break of his own, Pride of the Order, and for his Support side he gets a Glint, Mettle, which gives him Empowered Holy Infusion and a 30% Stoneskin to the party.
• Orlandeau's release event invoked this by having him join at Level 50 in his debut event. He remains one of the game's most versatile physical attackers thanks to great stats, Soul Breaks, and abilities.
  • As mentioned below, his RM 99 is "Gathering Storm", which lets its user start with the Thunder God's Might buff, which is otherwise given by only his Overstrike or his Awakening. This Record Materia gives unlimited High Quick Cast for 25 seconds, which in some cases may be more than enough to clear Magicites. It's one of the very few Record Materia that sees frequent use outside those that increase damage or SB gauge input.
  • Aside from the aforementioned "Thunder God's Might" buff, Thunder God also happens to be the strongest Overstrike Soul Break in the game, and unlike the rest of his set, it hits for Holy/Lightning damage. This alone causes people to resort to him to run strategies against Water Magicites, to the point entire strategies are dedicated to belt-feeding him SB gauge in order to make him spam his Overstrike, and it works on Kraken. The worst part? Not even Famfrit, the Physical-demanding 5* Water Magicite, is safe from this.
  • He has good Defense, Speed and HP, the second-highest Attack in the game, shy of the top-ranked Sephiroth by one point, and Rarity 5 access to Combat, Celerity, Spellblade, Knight, Samurai, and Darkness.
  • His Burst Soul Break Swordplay deals ten Holy/Dark attacks to random targets with chance to One-Hit KO them and buffs his Attack and Defense, and his Burst commands are a four-hit, ATK/DEF-lowering Holy combo, and a two-hit life-draining Dark combo.
  • His Ultra Soul Break Sword Saint deals twelve always-critical Dark/Holy hits, buffs his Attack, gives him 100% critical hit rate, and gives him Ability Double for Knight and Darkness abilities ^note Ability Double always doublecast abilities at the cost of an extra hone of said ability.
  • His Legend Materia Relic gives him a 25% chance to dualcast Knight and Darkness abilities, which will stack with his Ability Double from USB or AASB. His other Legend Materia increases all his physical damage, and lets him start battle with a Haste that doesn't wear off (but can still be removed) and removes casting time of his first three actions.
  • Orlandeau started to fall behind as more characters got access to Arcane Soul Breaks (despite his own playstyle still being powerful enough to stand his ground even outside his natural abilities), but the FFT event "The Hidden Truth" instantly made him catch up to the game's current Power Creep. While his new LMR, which increases physical damage by 20% with a sword equipped, isn't anything to write home about due to his old LMR being a Dualcast and his LM2 being much more useful, Orlandeau finally got his 21-hit AOSB Ultimate Swordplay, the Sword Saint's Pride Glint which gives him a 50% boost on his Critical damage and Instacast 1, and, most importantly, his own Awakening Soul Break, Sword Saint Divine Arts. His Awoken Mode for Knight and Darkness is fittingly called Awoken Thunder God. It mixes everything his other main Soul Breaks give to him: the 100% Critical chance and Ability Double from his Ultra (with the bonus from Awoken Mode where he does not consume hones), the Thunder God Mode from his Overstrike, and like usual, it gives Rank Boost to Knight and Darkness abilities and doubles the damage cap of his attacks. This Awakened Arcane alone makes Orlandeau one of the most dangerous physical attackers in the game, bouncing him back HARD from the Power Creep.
• Rem Tokimiya got designed from the start to be a super-aggressive White Mage made to mow down enemies with Holy magic.
  • Her BSB Siphon Delta hits for eight Holy/Dark hits, grants her Holy Infusion and resotres one ability use, with commands dedicated to absorb HP from the enemy and boosting her damage. Her Manalchemy USB deals ten Holy/Dark hits, gives her Holy Infusion and an EX Mode that boosts her MND in exchange for a small drain on her defenses, and Quickcast Cycle upon hitting an enemy's elemental weakness. Rem is also the first White Mage to get an Overstrike Soul Break, Cleansing Flame. And along with her Dualcast dive, she also has an LMR that gives her a follow-up attack for any White Magic she uses. The Jack event gives her a new Soul Break, Live Another Day, which gives Haste, Shell, Astra, and Reraise to the party.
  • The Cater/Eight event brought Rem to the new powercreep. She gets a 21-Hit Arcane Soul Break, and a Holy Infusion LMR. She also gets her AASB, Seraphim Strike, which gives her Awoken Holy and High Quickcast every time she casts a Holy attack. But the real kicker is her Glint: a self-refunding source of Empowered Holy Infusion, which means that Rem can quickly go into full stack in two or three turns while not losing rhythym into preparing her more powerful Soul Breaks. This makes Rem by far the most powerful Holy DPS, with only Orlandeau having managed to catch up to her in the Power Creep.
  • The 2020 Summer Fest, brought Rem to Cloud & Sephiroth's level of gamebreaking with her Sync, Saintly Huntcraft. It deals 15 Holy or Non-Elemental attacks, gives her the usual Sync buffs, and Quick ATB for 15 seconds. This drastically speeds up her DPS, and it becomes far more deadly if you have her AASB which gives High Quickcast. This means she can do a minimum of 12 hits with a maximum damage of 29,999 per hit constantly throughout the battle. Especially if you get her Heroic Ability Siphon Sphere, a 6 hit Holy Attack that restores 1 ability use per second use of it which has a higher multiplier than her 6 hit Holy Sync attack command Dagger Dia.
• Elarra is the ultimate White Mage, leaving very little actual competition to her healing abilities.
  • Elarra's ability gamut is scary. Aside from White Magic fare, she has access to Bard, Dance and Summoning at 5*. This means she can pull at any given time the job of DPS with Holy magic or Summons to contribute to Chain, pull numerous buffs with Bard abilities (including one of the few Critical boosts you can access outside Soul Breaks), or use Dances to nullify specific buffs done by bosses, granting her massive versatility.
  • Her Burst Soul Break heals the party, gives them Last Stand, and her Burst commands give her a boost to Mind and two charges of Quickcast, and she has the standard Medica party-heal. Her second USB, Magika Orare, heals, raises the party's Critical damage by 50% and gives her constant Quickcast.
  • Her first Ultra Soul Break, Magika Album, casts instantly, greatly heals the party, gives them two charges of universal High Quickcast, and a short-lived Regenga that periodically heals the party for 2000 HP up to 5 or 6 times in total if her Mind is high enough. Elarra can basically quickly and efficiently heal the party to max and supercharge their actions at the same time. Not only that, unlike Aerith's USB2, Elarra's accelerates her own actions as well, allowing her to build her gauge for another USB much quicker. Her only real weakness is the fact that Regenga counts as an enhanced Regen status, meaning that if the enemy can inflict Poison or Sap on your party, it overwrites Regenga and greatly cuts into her healing potential.
  • Besides the usual dualcast fare on her dive LM, her Legend Materia Relic also gives her a 25% chance to heal the party when she uses a Bard ability, meaning that she can get away with constantly buffing the party with no other sources of healing besides her USB. She can even use this as an excuse to speed a mage team even more with Allegro con Moto while still healing the team at the same time.
• While Bartz is unparalleled, Sora acts as a Fire, Ice, Lightning variant, being able to emulate a good chunk of Bartz' game. He can easily slip into any team as a spellblade for Fire, Ice or Lightning and bring damage output equal to Bartz and Squall.
  • His Legend Materia let him start off the battle with Haste and an Elemental Infusion for one of his three elements. His Relic Legend Materia gives him a 25% chance to dualcast Spellblade abilities, and his Glints grant an extra infusion stack and reduce his action time for two turns.
  • His BSB Ars Arcanum works like Squall's Steely Blade (see above on his entry), and boosts Sora's attack and defense by 30%. His USB Strike Raid acts like Bartz's Chosen Traveler, but his boosts are a critical hit buff, an Attack buff, and his follow-up command deals four hits.
  • The second Kingdom Hearts event brought Sora his Awakening Soul Break Master Hearts — and appropriately, it's pretty much a copy of Bartz's Awakening, just for Fire/Ice/Lightning instead of Fire/Water/Earth/Wind, but with the same elemental and Spellblade boosts but with the difference of his chase being 10 hits instead of Bartz's 8 and requiring an additional spellblade ability use to trigger. This makes Sora a dominant force in three elements. It also allows Sora to emulate Squall's Awakening/Burst maneuver with the help of his LMR, in three elements rather than Squall's Ice.

Abilities and Record Materia

• Retaliate is a major Disc-One Nuke - once activated, the user will block and counter every physical attack directed at them. But you can attack said character with your own party, and they will attack the enemy instead. Not only does Retaliate deal good damage, but characters who'd otherwise just stay idle until needed (like your dedicated healer) will become useful by activating Retaliate. And if you Double Cut your retaliator, they'll counter twice.
  • Even more effective if you combine it with a Roaming Warrior Luneth with the Advance unique SB.^* 250% damage boost at the cost of 50% defense—not a problem, since Retaliate blocks physical attacks
  • Tyro, Basch, Auron, and Gilgamesh can learn both Retaliate and Draw Fire, allowing them to draw in every incoming enemy attack, block the damage and counter it.
  • Cloud, with 5* Samurai, also can do that as his dive allows him to access 3* Knight abilities, and thus Draw Fire.
• Lifesiphon and Wrath, a 4✩ Combat ability and Support ability, respectively. Lifesiphon does damage with a solid 2x multiplier and charges the Soul Break gauge 150 points, while Wrath gives a very small Attack boost and charges the gauge 180 points. In summary, it makes charging the Soul Break gauge much faster. On many teams it's quite common for the entire party to be equipped with Lifesiphon or Wrath, and a character's usefulness can be heavily impacted just by being able to use one of the two abilities or not.
• Ace Striker and Battleforged, which cause a character to generate 50% more Soul Break gauge when attacking or using abilities. The above Lifesiphon and Wrath are compatible with this; Lifesiphon charges 225 points and Wrath charges 270, which means that it only takes a character two turns to charge up a Soul Break.
  • In the same vein, Lionheart grants 50% more SB gauge for taking damage, making it ideal for bosses with a tendency to hit fast, like some 5* Magicites. Knight's Charge strikes a balance and grants a 25% bonus for both attacking and taking damage.
• Gathering Storm, given by Orlandeau's Level 99 Record Materia, lets the user begin battle with the status "Thunder God's Might". It cuts the execution time of any and all actions to 33%, for 25 seconds. At this speed, Soul Breaks will cast quicker than normal attacks, and if combined with some form of Quickcast, the character will execute their commands pretty much instantly. For timed buffs from Soul Breaks, like Burst Modes, EX Modes, Brave Modes, and Awakening Modes, Thunder God's Might speed boost lets the character get far more mileage out of their Super Mode and in many cases will more than make up the difference in DPS lost from some sort of damage-boosting Materia. For healers, they can often keep up with enemy attacks with normal curative spells, especially if they can dualcast, and their healing Soul Breaks become much more reliable with the reduced casting speed.
• Entrust is a 5✩ Support ability that gives all of your Soul Break points to another ally. Combine it with Wrath or Lifesiphon and especially Ace Striker or Battleforged, and you can have you best DPS chaacter spamming Soul Breaks constantly while an ally keeps their gauge charged. On high difficulty content it's common to have a character designated as an "Entrust Bot" to constantly Wrath and Entrust to charge up the rest of the party's Soul Breaks.
• Ninjas; the Rank 5 Ninja abilities are simply absurd, and the reason to blame for "Ninja meta" being a thing. A character with Rank 5 Ninja can utilize a variety of elemental attacks both physical and magical and bring considerable DPS in any of them, and they don't really need any Soul Breaks or Materia to help them do it; those just make them better at it.
  • Smoldering Fire and Raging Storm deal two hits of magic Fire or Wind damage and ignore Resistance, allowing them to do several thousand damage even when their user has poor Magic. For physical blows, Ninjas get pairs of abilities, one that damages enemies twice and grants them Mirror Image and allows them to stack it twice, and another that deals three, five, or seven hits, depending on how many Mirror Image stacks they have. These types of abilities come in Dark, Water, and Earth variants. And in addition to all of this, all Ninja abilities have reduced casting time.
  • For specifics Ninjas; Edge, Shadow, Yuffie, and Thancred all have Legend Materia that gives a chance to dualcast Ninja abilities, and also have a Legend Materia that gives them a chance to gain a free stack of Blink after using any Ninja ability, letting them get the multi-hit command to max power with one usage of the Mirror Image one, and then the multi-hit command can recharge itself if a Blink is lost. Factoring in Soul Breaks that can give them Elemental Infusions only sweetens the deal further; Edge and Yuffie get Water, Shadow gets Dark, and Kelger and Thancred get Earth (though Thancred's BSB3 and Yuffie's BSB2 are Imperils, not Infusion).
• The Rank 5 Darkness abilities Dread Weapon and Dire Heal; Dread Weapon is physical and Dire Heal is magical. They deal four hits of Dark-elemental damage and are the highest-power Darkness abilities without needing the user to be afflicted with Doom or damaging the user. What really makes them game-changers is that they're Life Drain abilities that heal the user equal to 20% of the total damage dealt by the four hits. Characters equipped with Dread Weapon and Dire Heal can become almost entirely self-sustaining and never need a White Mage's help to stay alive, and if they can breach 8000 damage a hit with those abilities, they basically fully heal themselves every time they attack.

Defensive/Buffing Soul Breaks

• Tyro's Sentinel's Grimoire and Y'shtola's Stoneskin II, which have the exact same effects; boosting the party's Defense and Resistance a large amount. The critical factor is that it boosts the stats, not reducing damage like Protect and Shell. Thus the player can stack either of these Soul Breaks with Protectga and Shellga to make their party near impenetrable. The importance of this Soul Break is such that the Acolyte Archives gives you this one as the only possible option in the second book's Lucky Draw.
  • Tyro's USB3 from the 3rd Anniversary Carnival, Divine Veil Grimoire, one-ups even those by giving Sentinel's buff, then tacks on ProShellga and Hastega to make the absolute best defense/support Soul Break in the game.
  • The strength of this defensive buff had a major influence on the game's design after it was released. High-end fights, such as Magicite, almost always make a duplicate of Sentinel's Grimoire available as a special Roaming Warrior. That, or the fight will involve almost nothing but defense-piercing attacks, invalidating the buff. Cardia fights (which incentivize a team matching a game's realm) instead have the Sentinel's Grimoire effect automatically and permanently activate when the fight starts. Sentinel's Grimoire was such a powerful effect that it is now the assumed baseline for all parties.
• While full-party healing and revival Soul Breaks are very common, a few in particular stand out.
  • Arc's Word of Kindness may be a mere Super Soul Break, but it has got the moniker of "USB0" for a reason: it gives three good effects: it heals like a Curaga for the whole party, while giving physical Blink 1 and casting instantly. Now imagine this boy helping a team of ninjas (Edge, Yuffie, Shadow, Thancred, you name it) or other characters who are dependent of the Blink status to cause massive disorder to the enemy. You get the picture.
  • Vanille's Transcendent Dream casts instantly, heals massively, raises her Mind, and gives her Burst commands that include a party heal and a two-hit Holy ability that lowers Resistance, both of which are boosted on arrival thanks to the Mind increase.
  • Rosa's Benediction casts instantly to heal the whole party, gives them Magic Blink, and automatically heals up to 2000 HP of damage inflicted on them after the cast. What makes Rosa's Soul Breaks so valuable is that she has Wrath to recharge her Soul Gauge quickly, and by the time Magic Blink and the auto-heal are worn out, Benediction is ready to fire off again. With her other USB White Mage Wonder being a clone of Elarra's Magika Album, the only reason why Rosa can't beat Elarra is her own ability pool against Elarra's: Rosa has only Wrath to bolster her healing, while Elarra has Bard, Dancer and Summoner all at 5*, but then again, when you can just spam Regenga and High Quickcast while healing everyone at the same time, who actually needs that much versatility?
  • Minwu's Enduring Revival is the reason why he is nicknamed "Maxwu": it casts instantly, automatically heals 2000 HP of damage as they take damage, and grants each member a barrier negating 30% of their HP. With most characters having around 6000-8000 HP at Level 99, this works out to 2000+ point of damage absorbtion plus 2000 points of automatic healing. While Minwu doesn't have access to Support to easily charge his Soul Break, he can help keep the party fighting with Curada while an Entrust bot recharges him.
  • Lenna eventually got Essence of Water, a Regenga healing USB that casts instantly, finally fixing her Fatal Flaw as a healer, and grants the party a stackable 10% resistance to Ice and Water attacks, making her ideal for Water and Ice Magicite fights. She's also the first recipient of a healer Awakening Soul Break, Champion Of Life, which casts instantly, heals everyone alive and revives everyone dead at full HP, casts Haste, Dual Blink and Last Stand on the party and grants her Awoken Devotion, which triples her white magic cast speed and allows her to heal the party with every white magic spell she casts with the amount varying on the rank of the ability. This makes it the only healing Soul Break that's better used when things have gone south and people are dead as opposed to prevent them from dying in the first place, thanks to the combination of Dual Blink and Last Stand allowing the party to survive any 2 attacks even without any buffs, Haste allowing them to get back in action and Lenna's Awakening mode allowing her to keep her party easily healed up for as long as it lasts, even if she's using a turn recasting Protectga or Shellga on the revived party members instead of actively healing them. She also got her Tycoon Guard Superglint, which instantly gives Hastega and Pro/Shellga to the party at no cost.
• Rikku's Ultra Soul Break Hyper Mighty G casts Hastega, Protectga, and Shellga on the party, and boosts their Attack and Magic by 30%. This makes it one of the most versatile buffing Soul Breaks in the game, since it covers buffs both offensive and defensive, physical and magical, all at once. This made it the gold standard for many buffing Soul Breaks to come.
  • Quina got a variant of Rikku's Ultra with its own Ultra, Culinary Curiosity, which exchanges the 30% boost to Attack and Magic for boosting Attack by 50%, making it even better than Rikku's for purely physical teams. Basch, meanwhile, got Exemplar of Honor, which is plain and simple an exact copy of Hyper Mighty G.
  • Mog's Twilight Requiem gives the party Hastega, Protectga, and Shellga, but instead of buffing them, it debuffs enemies, inflicting "Hyper Break" on them to lower ATK, DEF, MAG, RES, and MND by 30%. Cait Sith got a variant, Danger Dice, which exchanges the MND debuff for the other four stats being debuffed by 40% instead of 30%.
  • Alma has Sacred Barrier, which buffs the party with Haste, Shell, Protect, Regen, Reraise, and gives them protection from one status ailment. Short of Last Stand or Blink, that's practically every defensive buff a party could possibly need. On the downside, though, since Alma is a White Mage it can be difficult to find time and Soul Break gauge to use this instead of a healing Soul Break.
• Galuf has two Soul Breaks, Unyielding Fist and Unshaken Resolve. They remove all buffs and debuffs from him and in return make him invulnerable to all damage and effects for a period of time. Proper usage of them lets Galuf No-Sell the worst attacks of even the strongest bosses.
• Edge's Eblan Doppelganger, like Arc's, is often called an Ultra Soul Break in a Super Soul Break's guise, both because it has 4 effects instead of the 3 SSBs usually have and because of its overall usefulness: it grants the party Haste, Last Stand and Physical Blink and casts instantly, all extremely useful properties to have, especially against enemies that use strong physical attacks early on. The only problem with it is the fact that Edge has no access to Lifesiphon, meaning that he needs someone to Entrust SB bars to him to spam it, but if you have someone in the party who can do that, he can easily keep the party standing on his own regardless of the enemy's damage output.
  • As an extra, the same event that took Rubicante out of the scrappy heap gave Edge a second USB, which deals ten Water/Poison hits and gives the exact same buffs as Eblan Doppelganger, allowing him to contribute to DPS in some cases. It also helps that Ultras are a bit more accessible on GL than Supers, as GL got screwed out of the Crystal Tower SSB selection banners.
  • On the same note, Raijin's Aura SSB gives the party Last Stand, High Regen and Instacast 1. While it's not instant like Edge's and still demands an Entruster dedicated to feeding him gauge, many a Magicite team have made abuses of this Super in particular due to the Instacast it gives, which helps speeding up the party against the almighty 5* Magicites.
• Cloud of Darkness' 0-Form Particle Beam is an offensive Burst Soul Break that functions as an Ultra Soul Break for Darkness teams. Aside from the magical Dark damage it does, it raises the party's Magic and Mind, casts Hastega, has strong Dark-elemental Burst Commands and gives the party Doom with a 30 second timer. This allows a Darkness team to forgo abilities and Materia that cast Doom on the user and go straight to spamming Darkness abilities that hit very hard when under the affects of Doom. You got 30 seconds to pull off a win, but the massive buff the Soul Break gives can make it worth it.
• Ignis' Stalwart Cook Burst Soul Break is considered the best Support Burst in the game. It casts Haste on the party, increases their ATK and RES by 30%, and gives Ignis the Burst commands "Royal Menu" and "Butler's Cooking", with the gimmick being that Royal Menu stacks "Ingredients" status on Ingis up to two times, and then when he uses Butler's Cooking on an ally it grants them a stat buff depending on how many stacks he has and consumes one stack after usage. What are those stat buffs? With two stacks of Ingredients he gives them 100% critical hit rate for 25 seconds, with one stack he heals them 30% of their max HP and gives them critical damage +50% for 25 seconds, and with no stacks it heals 40% their max HP and removes charge time from their next action. And don't worry, you'll have no problem stacking Ingredients — Iggy's Burst automatically gives him two stacks on entry, and Royal Cooking is compatible with his Legend Materia to dualcast and take him from zero to two stacks in one round. The result is that Ignis can turn any character into a Critical Hit Class in two turns, and then can either take a turn or two to recharge those buffs to give to someone else, or start throwing around Instant Cast charges every turn with support healing to boot.
• Cait Sith's Awakening Soul Break, Hit the Jackpot, is absolutely filthy and one of the most coveted Soul Breaks for magic teams. Jackpot grants Cait Sith Awoken Fortune Teller Mode (which gives him infinite Dancer and Bard abilities and allows him to act as a backup healer) and gives Haste, a large boon to Magic and Mind, a two-turn delay reduction for magic abilities, and most importantly, a massive 30% damage increase for all magic damage to all allies. Mages, historically, have suffered compared to physical damage dealers due to their inability to score critical hits, meaning they lack a significant damage multiplier that most endgame bosses are balanced around. The 30% bonus that Cait Sith provides rectifies this in a way no other Soul Break can, allowing even wimpy, lowly-statted characters to hit for the damage cap against Dreambreaker bosses. Indeed, Cait went from a mediocre buffer to a meta staple overnight just from this one ability, and it's very difficult to craft a magic team that would be better off without him.

Offensive Soul Breaks

• Ability Double Soul Breaks in general are some of the best in the game for the massive DPS they provide; a character under Ability Double will automatically dualcast abilities of the matching type at the cost of an extra ability hone. However, there are a few standouts.
  • All of the Black Magic Ability Double USBs (Vivi, Maria, Palom, and Ultimecia). All of them do 10, buff the user's MAG, and give them an Elemental Infusion (Fire, Earth, Lightning, and Wind respectively). Vivi, Palom and Ultimecia have Legend Materia that grants them dualcast and gets them a third cast in without using a hone, though Ultimecia can only triplecast Wind. What makes them so desirable is that, as Black Mages, they can use Ability Double with any offensive spell they can get their hands on, allowing them to provide powerful spellcasting in six of the game's nine elements.
  • Minwu's second USB Light of Mysidia does 10 ST WHT Magic Holy Attacks, boosts his MND, boosts his White Magic abilities and allows him to doublecast WHT spells, which allows him to both be an extremely effective healer as well as damage dealer with the Holy or De'Dia spells.
  • King's USB Endless Waltz does 12 ST Lightning/NE Attacks, grants him Lightning Infusion, boosts his attack, and gives him Machinist Double. Unlike most of the 5* skills, the DPS Machinist abilities deal 6 hits instead which allows King to do 12 hits per turn. His second Legend Materia is a Haste + Instacast 3, which allows him to quickly build up a Fire/Ice/Lightning chain. Many consider this the best Physical Lightning Soul Break in the game.

• Setzer is one of the game's standout debuffers. His Ultra Jokers Wild inflicts Hyper Beam (debuffs all main five stats), and Setzer will automatically follow up damaging Support abilities with Gambling Break, a two-hit attack that lowers a stat and reduces the charge time of Setzer's next action; Gambling Break will cycle through ATK, DEF, MAG, and RES debuffs, reducing them by an amount equal to the "Breakdown" series. For a bonus, his Legend Materia Fate-Defying Bet has a chance to trigger on Support abilities to lower ATK, MAG, and MND. With his Ultra and Legend Materia combined, Setzer just needs two turns to massively cripple the enemy with three stacks of debuffs, and if he's lucky he'll stack a fourth layer on top of them.
• Zack's Chain Soul Break Lucky Stars is considered one of the best first-generation Chains in the game. It comes with the standard effects of a boost to Wind damage, but it's the second effect that truly makes it impressive; it boosts critical hit damage by 50%. You can count on one hand how many Soul Breaks in the game grant this buff to the entire party, and when combined with a Soul Break to boost the party's critical hit rate (which there are several) it is a massive boost to DPS that can make or break a fight. "Second generation" Chains have a higher Chain count and damage boost than the first wave, but Zack's Gen 1 Wind Chain is so good that in many scenarios, it's just as good or even better than the Gen 2 Wind Chains.
• Edge's USB Chaotic Moon deals ten Water/Lightning attacks, cuts charge time of his Water skills and grants him the chase ability Lurking Shadow.^* Single-target Water/Lightning/Non-Elemental attack; can trigger up to two times, once per stack of physical Blink. Combining this, the two new ninja Water skills released with it, the Spirit of Eblan Legend Materia (chance to dualcast ninja skills) and the chase ability, Edge can deal up to sixteen hits with 0.275 seconds of charge time at every turn.
  • Thancred Waters initially wasn't much in the Ninja skills department, but he eventually caught up with Edge, Yuffie and Shadow and became the Earth equivalent for such skills. The event that comes with the FFXIV Torment gives him an instant-cast Brave Ultra that debuffs MAG and DEF by 50% and boosts all Ninja damage by 30%, with a Bravery Command that crushes ATK/DEF/RES and does 10 hits at max level, and you can also stack that with a lower-level Brave to massively reduce enemy DEF more than any other SB in the game.
• Marche's USB Divine Combo does 10 single target Holy/Non-Elemental attacks, and grants him Holy Infusion and the EX Mode Speed Combo, which buffs the user's ATK by 30% and gives Physical Quickcast 1 to the party every time the user launches a Knight ability. Having this USB means you can massively speed up any team that revolves around physical attacks.
• Cinque's USB Whirling Mace deals 10 single target Earth/Non-Elemental attacks, gives her Earth Infusion, Heavy Rank Boost, and Heavy Charge Booster, which causes her to gain 1 additional Heavy Charge from any action that gives her any Heavy Charges, while her second Legend Materia gives her a 50% chance to gain a Heavy Charge from any Heavy action. With both her USB and her LM2, this means that she'll gain 2 charges from the initial use of a Heavy ability that gives her a Heavy charge, and after she uses her charge-spending ability, she has a 50% chance to gain a charge, which the USB doubles, meaning that she can keep using the charge-spending Heavy attack either repeatedly or every second turn at worst. This is useful when using Stone/Evil Press, the only common ability capable of dealing Overflow damage, needed to break 5* Magicites out of their Savage Mode.
  • With that said, other three characters gained Ultras that grant them Heavy Charge Booster: Gladiolus for Earth, and Cloud and Gabranth for Dark. Gabranth is also unique in that he also has an LMR that allows him to Dualcast Dark-elemental abilities, Heavy included, allowing him to play not unlike Awoken Noctis.
• The banner that comes with the Revenge Event for Rubicante did the favor of finally making the Fiend a viable player by giving him his dive, which allows for Dualcast Fire, a Fire Infusion LMR, and finally his USB Point-Blank Flame Dragon, which deals 10 Fire/Dark hits and Imperil Fire 2 to the enemy while granting him Fire Infusion and Quickcast 3, and giving a Fire Radiant Shield to the party. This is basically the whole Fire kit rolled into a single Soul Break for an elemental mage, making Rubicante a very powerful mage of his type and putting him on the slot competition against the likes of Vivi and Terra.
  • Almost as if to make him a polar opposite of Rubicante, Josef, a Monk who had almost no redeeming qualities as an Ice Monk aside from his buffing Ultra, got his second USB during the Ice Fat Black Chocobo event. It gives ten Ice/NE hits and Imperil Ice, and grants Ice Infusion and Quickcast 3 to him and Ice Radiant Shield to his party. With it, Josef also got his Monk Dualcast LMR, and his Glint, a quite unique one at that, which gives him Empowered Ice Infusion, Instacast and Heroic Flurry Chase, which follows Ice attacks with four Ice/NE hits. Neeldess to say, these tools finally bring Josef out of the misery imposed upon him and his status as a memetic dead man for so long and puts him in direct competition with Eight and Snow.
• In gameplay Synchros and Awakenings don't play well as Synchros links with corrsponding abilities so both are activated in the same turn, and having an Awakening activated removes the link between the sync command and ability. However it's been discovered that certain characters with the right abilities have Awakenings and Synchros that don't break a Synchro's link. Mainly if the Awakening is school based while the Sync commands require an element.
  • The best two examples of this are Alphinaud's and Rydia's Sync and AASB. Their awakenings require Summon abilities while their syncs require Wind and Earth abilities respectively. And both have access to 6 star Black Magic. This means they can use they can use a 100% dualcasted 12 hit Synchro command followed by a Chain Tornado/Stoneja for a minimum of 17 hits with the max damage of each hit going up to 29999. They both have a dualcast summon Legend Materia in their record dives to add even more hits to it. Rydia's hoever get the edge as she has a 8 hit chase with her awakening after every 2 Earth, Water, and Holy abilities used while Alphinaud's is 1 overstrike hit.
• Cloud's first Ultra Soul Break, Ultra Cross Slash, had enormous impact on the game's community and design. It deals 5 Dark and Wind attacks to a single enemy, boosts his physical damage, gives him 100% critical hit chance, and raises his damage limit per hit to 99999, from a normal maximum of 9999. This had the effect of making Cloud's theoretical damage capability leages above any other character in the game, as each hit had 10 times the potential power output. And this USB came out at a time when Overstrike Soul Breaks were the only way of breaking the damage cap. Ultra Cross Slash quickly became a very popular Roaming Warrior option, as the buff would allow any physical DPS to have the same potential as Cloud; any other buff you could call in wasn't nearly as strong. It is assumed by players that this is what caused the development team to replace the Roaming Warrior system in many fights with a curated list of NPC soul breaks, to remove Ultra Cross Slash as an option. This was one of only *two* Soul Breaks to give a character this high of a dmage limit; the other one being Sephiroth's Zanshin, which only works on Dark-element attacks. The concept wouldn't be revisited until Awakenings were implemented. And most of those only raise the damage limit to 19999. Cloud still can get enormous use out of Ultra Cross Slash, to the point that his Awakenings are more for supporting its effects; the damage limit boost and critical hit effect will likely never be powercrept. Finally, because of Ultra Cross Slash, high-end fights where Wind is an effective element tend to be more difficult and harder to damage than other fights at the same level. Players have dubbed this the "Cloud tax".

Magicite

• Enkidu is one of the most widely used Magicites in almost any fight, due to its effect to cast instantly, heal the entire party, and cast Esuna on them, making its summon basically a Super Soul Break heal.
• Unicorn is the other most widely used Magicite for most fights. It casts Regen on the party and grants them immunity to one status ailment, which is already preferable to Enkidu in many fights for preventing a status rather than curing it. Then comes Unicorn's abilities — Cura, Curaja, and Esuna, and naturally it's got the Artificial Brilliance to only cast Esuna if a character has a status ailment, otherwise it'll be Cura or Curaja every turn. Having Unicorn as your Magicite is almost like having an invisible sixth party member as a designated White Mage.
• The Phantom Magicite enters battle by raising the party's Holy resistance and granting them immunity to one Holy-elemental attack. Its three attack its abilities are Death, Dark, and Banish, which makes one character immune to one Holy-elemental attack. The catches here are that Phantom is only scripted to cast Death against enemies vulnerable to it, and at Level 99 it only has a 10% chance to use Dark, the other 90 is split between Banish and Death. So against bosses, who naturally have Contractual Boss Immunity to Instant Death, Phantom will basically spend every turn casting Banish on characters. When facing a boss that predominantly relies on Holy attacks, Phantom makes you almost untouchable.
• Evrae and its successor Madeen are so powerful that the entire Magicite metagame centers on them. They come with the Surging Power ability, that gives everyone a boost to damage depending on their current HP. For the lowest baseline, everyone who isn't a Core Class has at least 5,000 HP at Level 99, and Surging Power turns that into a 7.5% damage boost — if they can get over 10,000 HP, they get a 15% boost. Keep in mind that this is with just one Madeen equipped, a second boosts the damage buff another 50%. Every Magicite deck has at least two Madeen in it and possibly even a third, because once you have the elemental empower and resistance effects you need, they're unquestionably the best fillers for the remaining slots.