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In general
- Turn manipulation entails moving the party's turns around so that they can act before the enemy does, even if they were normally supposed to act after the enemy's turn. This is an incredibly powerful utility to have, and gives the characters with access to it (Noctis, Onion Knight, Ignis, Keiss, Ashe, Aphmau, Raines, Leila, Jessie) plenty of value on the team.
- The summons' Divine upgrades, with an increased level cap of 40, confer incredible benefits when summoned, gaining a potent HP attack and boosting the HP damage cap by 10%.
- Divine Ramuh inflicts Judgment Bolt on all enemies, acting as a framed 1 turn Paralyze that bypasses enemies' Paralyze immunity if they have it, giving your party considerable breathing room even after the summoning ends.
- Divine Diabolos strips all enemies' buffs.
- Divine Alexander fully restores the party's HP.
- The Divine Brothers delay all enemies a turn.
- Divine Pandemonium forces all enemies to be launched on the party's next attack.
- Divine Shiva inflicts Diamond Dust on all enemies, preventing them from gaining any BRV for a turn.
- Divine Ifrit grants the Hellfire buff to the party for 2 turns, amplifying HP damage dealt, increasing the BRV damage cap, and further increasing the HP damage cap by 20%.
- Divine Leviathan grants the Tsunami buff to the party for 2 turns, restoring BRV based on 50% of the total HP damage they dealt.
- Divine Bahamut grants the Megaflare buff to the party, boosting all non-elemental damage by 100%, and not only instantly fills the party's EX gauges, but also allows them to use their EX Ability up to three times consecutively, thanks to the character who initiates the summon getting an extra turn of the buff the use of the summon grants.
- Force Echoes, when used correctly, can increase the damage potential of any given Force Time a massive amount: if everyone in your party can use Force Echoes and you choose to blow all your Force ability uses on a single Force Time, you essentially not only increase its duration by another 5 turns, but on every one of those 5 turns, you'll deal massive amounts of extra damage as well as increase the Force multiplier by around 90% or more if the Echo triggers all the conditions for the initially chosen Force Time. Non-damaging Forces naturally don't deal damage when used, but they make up for it by being able to increase the multiplier by up to 140%+.
- Crystal Abilities are a Purposefully Overpowered version of this by their nature since getting them early requires noticeable amounts of Bribing Your Way to Victory due to the low amount of Sparkles available each week, several of them destroy the game balance even further since using them doesn't use up your turn and you always start every battle with a full amount of Crystal Points required to use them on top of their strong effects: Attack deals a decent chunk of fixed extra damage to all enemies without using up a Force turn although using it reduces the current multiplier by -50% points, Speed grants the character using it 3 extra turns and free skill uses for those turns and consumes the next 3 turns from one of the other 2 characters, which can also further help characters that benefit from getting less turns such as counter tanks and Dominate instantly reduces the HP of all enemies by 20%, which helps a ton in Shinryu fights with their massive HP totals.
Early Lv. 50 and 35 CP weapons era
- Before recruiting Galuf, you must fight a Manikin of him, giving you a taste of his power. He has Blade Block, which massively increases his Dodge for two turns, and can use it a minimum of 3 times. You do need a fair number of Green Mini-Crystals to unlock this, but once you do, he's invincible against a lot of attacks, but only against any physical ones as magic-based moves still hit him as normal. Now imagine once you deck him out with his equipment, some good artifact passives and especially when his Awakening had hit....
- Laguna can throw a Grenade right out of the box. It's one of the few BRV attacks that hits all targets on screen, and can be leveled to the point that it inflicts BRV Break on almost anything and instantly adds a ton of BRV to all your characters' meters. When it comes to quickly charging up for HP damage, Laguna is largely unmatched, especially in the Awakening era and/or early game; this is also accounting for its defense and speed debuff applied in just one turn to the whole enemy party, which also allows them to take more BRV damage for the duration in a sense. Note that this was before his rework, where he ended up being average at best due to the newfound power curve of all the other characters.
- Some characters have Golden-Level Weapons that are almost required to make them viable, such as Yuna's which turns her single-target Esuna into a full-party status heal that gives everyone a lot of bonus BRV, or Eiko's which turns her 6-turn HP Regen into a 12-turn Regen that also grants a 12-turn damage boost and Max-BRV boost.
- Sazh took the cake by having his 35CP release much earlier in the GL version compared to the JP version in the summer of 2018. As a result, the extra buffs provided by his new Attack Boost became a do-or-die for much of the GL content around October 2018, since he literally buffed other characters very hard to the point where much of the hard content seemed to be designed around whether someone pulled for Sazh's weapons or not (along with having a fully-decked out Sephiroth or King in tandem with Sazh's insane power). Though thanks to the eventual power creep with the near beginning of the Awakening era, Sazh soon started to fall off.
Early Lv. 60 era
- When the early Level 60 awakenings and EX weapons have been launched in the respective Japanese and Global versions of the game, they seriously boosted a few characters into overpowered and overused status with certain reworks via quality-of-life patches making them even more insane. It was even to the point that in the Japanese version, the aforementioned optional COSMOS difficulty was added just to give players who invested into such powerful characters a strategical challenge (as not even the EX difficulty seemed to be enough when the later broken characters added onwards). However, prior early-released characters to be on par with the new difficulty, ended up being reworked to have better up-to-date longevity and power curves.
- As soon as he was awakened, Layle became the best chase/launch setter in order to burst-down event bosses in the least amount of turns possible if you had both him fully awakened + his 35CP weapon and/or another support Layle to pair with him; this was despite the fact that Layle mainly targets the enemy's hidden chase HP value with both his skills' effects as opposed to launching them 100% (more chase HP reduced by attacking the target, the sooner they'll be launched). Layle's awakening managed to gift him with both a party-wide Force debuff on his Field Burst and a turn delay on his Energy Gain, which allowed him to set back enemy turns just for your team to have more room to followup on. On top of that, Energy Gain was also a BRV+HP Attack, allowing for increased HP damage with his 35CP granting BRV battery to his party members (enabling them to HP damage dump as often as possible). But the one thing that held Layle back was his low ability counts (having around only 6 chances to launch), thus prompting the need to have a 5-turn Layle support in hand. This was partially why the COSMOS difficulty was added. Nowadays with his EX and Lv. 70, Layle still sees use in COSMOS, but other picks are fairly viable.
- Relm, of all people, is also this in her way for a reason a little similar to how Laguna was good when he first came out: her first ability allows her to sketch your currently-attached summon. You trigger a fixed-damage summon call which inflicts brave damage on all targets, and then she does a teamwide HP attack split among the targets. And since she sketches your summon, you can customize its damage type. And since it's her first ability, so long as you do her event, you get the weapon which boosts it for free. Put together, it makes Relm the best wave-clearer in DFFOO by miles and miles, as you can just pick a summon the majority of your targets are weak to and have her press a single button, with no set up, to slap an entire enemy wave for upwards of 4,000 HP damage right as your turn begins. The end result is that Relm more or less trivializes the entire game if enemies are below level 70 or so - you just press a button and most everything melts. It's only around the EX level that you need to begin using your whole team again to clear waves. And by the time her LC was released in JP with her rework tweaking her and her EX being available for pulling (along with being made ready for Aphmau's event), she arguably became even better.
- As a support unit, Quistis when fully decked out with at least her 35CP was a monster. Degenerator Whip Extend can battery the whole party up before its BRV-hit portion, has high BRV damage potency, has 200% Max BRV Overflow, and with her 35CP passive could delay targets hit for 3 turns. With only 3 total possible uses of this ability for a quest, Quistis when paired with your own or by herself only as a support for vital battles was invaluable for a long majority of the way ever since her awakening and EX.
Later Lv. 60 era/Early Lv. 70 era AKA COSMOS era
- Warrior of Light while still polarizing at best (and not too game-breaking), became insanely useful with his rework being part of the first Lv. 70 awakening batch, where he now has a loaded-unique-framed-buff, revised crystal level 54 and 58 passives that improve him massively, party-wide-shielding+BRV battery on a single turn, and with his EX+, he's a prime solid pick for eventual CHAOS stages. It goes to show that since that day, his rework set him in line to have very good longevity and is one of the best investments of the game yet.
- It was safe to say that ever since he was reworked, Noctis turned into the best ranged-DPT unit there was for a large majority of the COSMOS era, due to his unique-framed-debuff and his increased overall potencies giving him frequent x2 BRV+HP damage in one turn. However, bosses immune to all forms of debuffs will give Noctis a lot of trouble.
- Via one of the last characters to be featured with a standard EX, Sherlotta is by far one of the most amazing BRV batteries to have ever hit the scene. Not only does she increase the HP damage inflicted based on current BRV amount for all allies and herself, but because of her being able to steal away percentage BRV with her EX while also having her own unique-framed-debuff acting as a sap, she can easily allow others to shave very hard. On top of that, her Skill 2 Extend's mechanics are a massive sight to behold when you let her rip during a Summon with the highest amount of Max BRV possible for the whole party. Still to this day, she's a powerful friend unit even in the CHAOS era.
- Ever since he was reworked with his EX first appearing in his Lost Chapter, Leonhart is by far, one of the most notable characters to cheese A TON of fights with, especially if they are littered with non-elemental-damage bosses. On top of much needed overflow on his abilities, he also gets an overloaded framed-buff on his EX ability, allowing him to forcefully turn his enemies non-elemental attacks into dark attribute, and allowing the whole team to be able to absorb those said attacks for BRV with a darkness-absorption aura. This made his sustain even stronger, on top of completely trivializing a number of BRV+HP spamming bosses in general even in CHAOS. Even if he doesn't have an EX+ yet, Leonhart so far has provided solid results when played and managed right with his EX and his rework.
CHAOS/EX+ era
- Ever since the additions of EX+ weapons, Krile's rework and her EX finally dropped as of Feb 2018 in the JP version....only for her to pretty much be able to decimate units with her reworked abilities and her EX+ alone. It was to the point where to only be remotely challenged, you have to play her in a Chaos difficulty stage as she'll only trivialize a Cosmos stage run. Right now, not even the best BRV battery in the game, Sherlotta, can match up to her power. On top of that, Krile's EX+ when at 2 notches of being Limit Broken, grants her a unique trait of being able to use the EX ability at the start of the quest! On top of having a fast charge time, you can see how Krile rocketed up the tier lists on the JP side nowadays on anything not resistant to thunder element. And of course, ditto for any other EX+ to be released as Krile herself is arguably the start of such a trend. However, her major downside tends to be her low base Attack stat at 2/5; if your Krile isn't decked out with solid party-wide buffs, good artifacts and/or the boss is immune/resistant to thunder, she won't be doing so well.
- Ultimecia is by far, one of the best magic AoE DPT's in the game. Her EX ability Apocalypse grants her two free turns, which she can use to spam her Protean Sword and Hell's Judgment abilities to recharge it and cast her EX again on her next turn. And when her EX+ is MLB'd, for her first turn after using it her attack consumes no ability charges. This allows her to rack up ridiculous damage without increasing the turn count or expending ability charges.
- Tifa as soon as her EX+ was released along with her rework, turning into a monster so brutal, that she easily became the best CHAOS difficulty launcher akin to the old days of Layle; with the way her max-limit-broken EX+ works via two BRV+HP Attacks in one, insane buffs to her potencies, her EX+ being able to delay a turn and her Fever Time framed-buff increasing her crit rate and damage. Thus, she on her own can do so much damage with her skills and her EX. But pair her EX with solid BRV batteries, and she'll be launching with her teammates for much-needed-insane chunks of damage on nearly any CHAOS-level boss.
- The Emperor's trap gimmick as a playable character suffice to say, rewards him with a lot of one-turn damage-per-turn with multiple BRV+HP Attacks in one go despite their potencies. However, the only thing that will hold him back are any bosses immune to all forms of debuffs.
- Y'shtola, formerly a lackluster healer with a potentially powerful EX with a slow charge time, was buffed massively with the release of her EX+, which, when upgraded all the way, gives her a powerful HP++ attack that first batteries her own BRV and then batteries other party members' BRV by half the HP damage she deals, gives her a powerful BRV regen buff that she starts the battle with, lets her start the battle with her EX fully charged up, increases the charge speed of her EX, lets her act again after using the EX, makes the EX not take up a turn when used, and gives her the ability to survive a lethal hit at 1 HP if she has at least 50% HP remaining. As for the EX itself? It fully heals the party, revives them at full HP, maxes out their BRV completely and restores 1 use to both of her abilities, which consist of Stone, a BRV attack with a high turn rate that always delays the target's turn by 1 which turns into a 2 hit BRV+HP attack that first batteries her if she currently has at least 30% of her maximum BRV and Medica II, which is another effective party battery buff. In summary, she can heal and revive the party to full in a single move that gives her another turn afterwards, is extremely effective at batterying the party, can delay enemy turns extremely effectively and if she also breaks the enemy with Stone, she'll push them back by 2 turns and even in case of a Total Party Wipe, she'll still live and can revive everyone afterwards if her EX is charged up and even if it isn't, chances are she can gain enough EX charge and delay the enemy's next turn by spamming Stone, although this'll still count against your total score.
- Aranea, the second global-first character, made quite an impact on her arrival. Her first ability Dragoon Dive is a 6 hit BRV+HP attack that grants her the Magitek Armament status (boosts BRV, ATK, SPD, and gives BRV Regen), while Highwind is a 6 hit BRV+HP attack that inflicts Vitalcrusher (framed debuff that makes all BRV attacks automatic critical hits regardless of whether the enemy is broken or not and increases critical damage by 50%) and deals 50% HP damage to enemies other than her target, and when either ability inflicts Break, it grants Aranea Overclock status (boosts ATK and the amount stolen BRV can exceed max by 30% each). Inflicting Break to get Overclock going is no problem because of her 55 CP passive, which causes Highwind to remove the target's Break status before inflicting damage, pretty much ensuring it'll Break them. With Overlock active, her BRV and HP attack become High-Speed Lance and Boost Lance, the first is up to a five-hit BRV combo that boosts her BRV prior to the BRV attacks and has a high turn rate, the other is a 3-hit group-BRV-to-single-target-HP attack that deals up to 50% damage to non-targets. Her other abilities become + variants, with Dragoon Dive+ delaying the target 2 turns and Highwind+ dealing 80% HP damage to enemies other than her target. Finally there is her EX, Air Superiority, which grants Aranea 3 turns of the status High-Speed Maneuver and also extends her active Overlock duration or grants it if breaking a target. While High-Speed Maneuver is active, Aranea's critical BRV hits deal increased damage and whenever she inflicts Break, she gets a free turn that doesn't count towards the turn count, and if you're willing to sacrifice an use of her Awakening Ability for it, she can get a second free turn in a row in an emergency by using it after gaining the first free turn. This makes for a character that can combine Delays and forced Breaks to stall the opponent's turn quite a bit, can give herself free turns, deals massive amounts of damage and increases other characters' damage by a significant degree, and can handle groups of enemies as well as single targets.
LUFENIA/Lv. 80 era
- Paladin Cecil is widely regarded to be one of the best supports in the game thanks to his LD Ability, Luminous Shard, which greatly heals the party, deals good damage, and grants the party a very potent buff for 12 turns, that greatly boosts BRV and HP damage dealt, provides HP regeneration, and boosts overflow from stealing BRV. He's so powerful and versatile, that he even sees use in fights that absorb Light, as all he has to do is serve as an aurabot while letting more powerful damage dealers do the work. If you manage to get his BT weapon, he becomes even better with support, as his Burst effect also increases the damage cap dealt with HP attacks.
- The affectionately dubbed Square Enix Airlines, consisting of Keiss, Dark Knight Cecil, Cloud, Ramza, and Pandemonium is an incredibly powerful team composition that primarily abuses Keiss's ability to greatly boost damage dealt when launching enemies, combined with Cecil's potent HP damage debuff on his LD, and his ability to initiate launches on demand, which is either supplemented by Cloud and his incredibly high damage output, or Ramza with his own LD Ability that batteries the party and launches enemies instantly, with all of this damage being further boosted by Pandemonium's aura. With the right skills, boss fights can be ended very quickly with the sheer damage pumped out. Notably, some Lufenia boss fights take measures to completely neuter this team composition by making the bosses immune to launching.
- Garland stands out as an incredibly powerful damage dealer who also packs impressive utility. With his base skillset and his LD, he can dish out great damage while simultaneously delaying the enemy every time he attacks, with his LD effect passively reducing the enemies' defense and speed up to 50% whenever he deals HP damage. With his BT weapon, however, is when Garland goes from "great" to "ungodly powerful". In his Burst phase, he's basically guaranteed to delay the enemy by six turns at most, and his Burst effect is infamous for being one of the most potent in the game. For every action taken by Garland or an ally, the effect increases in potency, maxing out at 5 stacks, in which it boosts BRV damage dealt by 50%, its cap increased by 40%, HP damage dealt is boosted by 30%, and the overflow from stealing BRV is increased by 40%. While all these effects reset to 1 stack when the enemy gets a turn, it's mostly trivial if you pair Garland alongside characters who can steal turns very efficiently (e.g. Lightning, Terra, Tifa), letting them easily take advantage of this potent damage boost.
- The team combination of Terra and Yang is one of the fastest ways to blitz through boss fights. Yang's LD Ability, Oboro Strike, grants him a buff that makes him perform a follow up attack whenever anyone, ally or enemy, performs an action (and we mean ANY action). Terra's LD Ability, Chaos Wave, deals heavy damage to all enemies, is an instant turn, and grants her a buff that gives her four free actions and unlimited usage of her spells for the buff's duration. So for every spell Terra casts, Yang unleashes a follow up attack for as long as his LD buff lasts, which adds up incredibly fast over the fight. And if Terra uses her Burst phase, Yang still pumps out follow-up attacks during its duration! Pair them up with a powerful damage support, and you can even melt down some Lufenia bosses fairly quickly.
- Tifa. The release of her LD weapon and her rework quickly turned everyone's favorite bartender/martial artist into one of the most powerful damage dealers in the game. Her Beat Rush is a 2 hit BRV + HP landed 3 times, but if she breaks the enemy, it becomes Beat Rush+, doubling the number of HP attacks to 6, for tons of damage. And she has ten uses of Beat Rush! Her Battle Cry, in addition to granting her her powerful buffs, now has an HP attack added to it, being as powerful as Beat Rush, and the skill itself still has an instant turn rate that doesn't add to the turn count, giving her more free damage. Her EX+, Dolphin Blow Combo, while being the weakest part of her kit damage-wise, gives Tifa some good utility for her team, as it both delays and launches the enemy for her allies to attack as well (which coincidentally, makes her a worthy contender for Square Enix Airlines listed above). Her LD, Meteor Crusher, is a big part of what makes Tifa so damn powerful. Six 3 hit BRV + HP attacks, each dealing colossal damage, very often reaching a total damage into the 700,000s, and lets Tifa use her basic BRV/HP attacks to grant her a free use of her abilities, which also includes her Additional Ability to recover a skill usage of Beat Rush. All of these things combine to make Tifa one absolute monster of a damage dealer with incredible longevity, and she is so powerful, that with the right calls and friend support, she can take on earlier Lufenia fights on her own and still win. And with all the damage she puts out, she's also considered the single best summon board farmer, easily dethroning Kuja, as she can easily take the eidolons out with only a single use of Meteor Crusher. Heck, Tifa's damage, prior to her level 90 upgrade, was high enough to last her until the early Lufenia+ era, where she was still considered strong enough that her level 90 upgrade only improved her EX Ability to be much more damaging.
- Ashe manages to rival Paladin Cecil with the incredible and versatile support she provides with her LD Ability, Nescience's Verdict. It grants a potent buff that enchants the party with Light and Thunder, and greatly boosts damage dealt when exploiting weaknesses to those elements (which Ashe imperils). But those pale in comparison to her HP Attack (Queen's Order), granted after using her LD. First, it moves the party's turns right next to Ashe's, then it grants them a very potent buff that massively boosts BRV and HP damage dealt by 30%, and lastly, it fully charges their EX gauges. Turn manipulation is already an incredibly overpowered tactic on its own, but also letting the party use their EX Ability on demand to boot just adds to how awesome it is. This makes Ashe synergize fantastically well with characters that have very slow charging EXs (Eald'narche, Iroha, Ignis, Nine), EXs with powerful effects (Ignis, Kadaj, Eald'narche, Y'shtola, Queen), or even just EXs that deal tons of damage (Garland, Noel, Iroha). She isn't even bothered if the enemy absorbs Light or Thunder (as long as they don't absorb both, of course), making her very versatile in almost every party.
- Porom, with the release of her LD, goes from a pure healer and supporter to a shockingly deadly Combat Medic with even better support power. Her LD Ability, Twincast Double Flare, greatly heals and batteries the party, with a big overflow on both, and unleashes two very powerful HP attacks on all enemies, granting the Twin Conviction buff. Twin Conviction is one of the most loaded buffs in the game, granting massive boosts to BRV overflow (50% stolen and 20% gained), a huge 20% boost to the party's max HP, further increasing the potential HP the party can have, HP regeneration, the ability to withstand fatal blows above 50% HP, and, if the party's HP is 100% and above, boosts BRV gains by 20%, which can significantly overcome the BRV gain reductions imposed by Lufenia. And that's not all! For every time Porom acts, she reduces all enemies' BRV by 100% of her HP, deals a powerful split AOE attack to all of them based on the party's total HP count (which, given the massive HP buffs Porom grants, is basically guaranteed to deal colossal damage), and then batteries the party based on 30% of the total damage dealt. Said follow-up attack also doesn't consume Porom's current BRV, keeping her safe from retaliation. And did we mention that Twin Conviction lasts for a good twelve turns? All of these things combine to make Porom an extremely powerful and versatile support.
- Sephiroth, with his rework, became a powerhouse melee attacker. Both of his abilities are BRV + HP attacks that hit twice and have 180% overflow, and both have some degree of splash damage; Fervent Blow's first BRV + HP hit is group-hitting, and Octaslash does 20% HP damage to non-targets. His EX skill, Black Materia, reduces the BRV of all enemies to 0, increases Sephiroth's BRV based on his ATK, and deals full HP damage to all enemies, which altogether makes it a 100% Gravity skill that will usually hit the damage cap. His LD Scintilla is a group-hitting BRV + HP attack that inflicts the Cellular Erosion status on enemies, and with his LD board it grants Sephiroth the Bringer of Despair status. Cellular Erosion is a gold-framed debuff that Saps the enemy and increases the BRV damage they take, and Bringer of Despair gives Sephiroth a hefty boost to his HP damage, BRV steal, ATK, max BRV, initial BRV, and overflow. And to top it off is his Burst, Heaven's Light, which has the effect of setting the BRV of all enemies to 1 for three of Sephiroth's turns. While this is a shorter duration than most Burst effects, the player can combo it with characters who can give themselves free turns (Terra, Ultimecia, Lightning, Yda, etc.) and/or have off-turn damage (Garnet, Kain, Yang, Cloud of Darkness, etc.) to get much more mileage out of it and Break enemies over and over and over — if you can control the Lufenia orb on top of this, the boss will likely never get a turn before the quest ends unless it has a way to manipulate its own turn.
LUFENIA+/Lv. 90 era
- Cid Raines brings new life to the launch setups with a smattering of buffs that increase the Party's HP Damage during Chases and his own even moreso, hitting up to 60% HP Damage Dealt Up during a Chase just from his own buffs, with the Pandemonium Summon blessing and a support character easily pushing it past 100%. Whenever Raines initiates a chase sequence he will end it a 3 Defense Ignoring BRV Attack + HP Attack 3 times. Oh, and one of Raines' self buffs is making all his attacks trigger Chase Sequences. And then there's his EX, Seraphic Ray which lives up to its That One Attack reputation from his home game by dispelling all party debuffs and enemy buffs in addition to dealing two 3-hit AOE BRV + ST HP attacks and a third 5-hit BRV + ST HP attack, while delaying all targets and, like everything in Raines' kit, initiating a launch. Raines' S2 also allows him to move a single party member's turn to right after his, with his LD (a three 6-hit BRV + HP Attack that batteries the party) moving the entire party's turn after him, also giving him a turn manipulation niche. This has Lufenia and even Lufenia+ clears that don't allow the enemy even a single turn when Raines is used in conjunction with Aphmau listed below. Raines was so powerful that many future Lufenia+ quests were designed specifically to neuter him, whether it's preventing launching outright, or drastically reducing the damage dealt when launching the enemy.
- Aphmau. Her LD allows her to designate another party member as a recipient of the Tactics Switch buff, which allows them to move after Aphmau performs any action while increasing their HP Damage Dealt and EX Charge Speed. This combined with turn manipulators like the aforementioned Raines allowed the a constant back and forth between the two, allowing Raines or any other high DPT units to hog turns and unleash millions of damage far more often than they would otherwise. Allowing Aphmau and her chosen partner to hog turns also prevents any buffs on their third member from expiring, which is especially useful for limited buffs such as BT effects and Call LD effect. Aphmau's biggest drawback is her lack of firepower, she's only a gamebreaker based on who she's supporting (as stated in the aforementioned Cid Raines combo).
- Machina. Despite being the last character in the lv80 cap to get a new Burst, he still gives lv90 characters a run for their money: his LD buff is updated to give him the same +80% BRV damage and +30% BRV gain buffs that most lv90 characters get from their lv85 passive that upgrades their EX ability, and his Burst buff not only increases the party's HP damage and maximum HP damage caps by up to +30%, it changes his HP+ into Furious Blades (Burst), which is a 2 hit BRV+HP attack repeated 7 times with 20% cumulative HP damage battery between each HP dump, which is then followed up by an additional 4 hit AoE BRV+HP attack with split damage from his Spiral's Lynchpin debuff: by itself, this attack can easily deal a million HP damage or more, but when combined with someone like Selphie whose LD debuff makes it so that any enemy inflicted with it will be automatically launched every time someone inflicts BRV or HP damage on them and Machina using his Burst Mode with enough turns with his Burst buff left to last through all of it from using his Burst finisher first, he can spam the attack for the entire duration of the Burst Mode and deal 1.5-2 million HP damage or more every Burst turn, taking off a huge chunk of any Lufenia+ boss' HP and still be left with another 8 turns of his Burst mode to keep spamming the attack, by which point they'll be long dead.
- Locke is the first beneficiary of the latest change to the rules as to who obtains a BT comes in with a very potent rework as well as an extremely powerful BT aura. Part of his rework is his C85 Passive which upgrades his otherwise dated EX into four 3-hit BRV + HP attacks, in addition to giving him the ability to turn his basic HP attack in 8 2-hit BRV + HP attacks when he has the Genji Glove and Master's Scroll buffs active at the same time, which can easily deal over a million HP damage in a single use. And what makes it easily possible is his LD, which in addition to being 4 3-hit AOE BRV + AOE HP attacks also grants him (and allows him to start a battle with) a new buff that boosts his BRV gain from BRV attacks by a whopping 40% and his HP Damage Dealt and Maximum Overflow by 20% each as well as reducing the BRV consumed by HP attacks by 40%. And to top of his this series of upgrades is his BT effect, which prevents the party from breaking, increases their BRV damage dealt, BRV damage cap and maximum BRV Overflow by 30%, automatically heals any party member that drops below 50% max HP by 50% of their max HP, and allows the entire party to Ignore Defense, all for 10 turns. With also this Locke is not only one of the top DPT units as of the time of this writing but can also significantly boost the damage output of any party member while his BT effect his active.
- Eiko brings some great support and the power to cheat death even against Lufenia countdowns. Her LD allows her to enchant the party with Holy damage which pairs strongly with her ability to reduce enemy resistance to Holy, in addition to boosting Party BRV Damage and HP Damage dealt by 20%, but the real star of her LD effect is its stack effects. With every cast of her LD she gains 3 stacks of Phoenix Pinion. So long as the stacks are at at least 1, whenever a party member is reduced to under 50% health she will counter with Rebirth Flame, three 4-hit AOE BRV + AOE HP attacks that deal full damage that also heals all party members. The kicker? It also revives any KO'd party member and even activates when Eiko herself is KO'd. With 3 casts available for a total of 9 stacks of pinion feathers, Eiko can give the party up to 9 get out of death free cards, all the while boosting party damage with her buffs and dealing respectable damage with her reworked Smite and Terra Homing abilities.
- Garnet. Thanks to her early lv90 rework and global-exclusive Burst, she's gone from a twin elemental support character to a combination of a support and a competent AoE DPS with few equals: her normal skills now have 2 and 3 HP dumps, respectively, her EX heals the party to full and maxes out their BRV, her LD has 4 HP dumps and her followup now has 3 HP dumps and still deals full damage to all enemies. However, what makes her shine is her Burst: when maxed out, the Burst buff increases the party's Attack, BRV gains, BRV damage, lets party members regain 30% of their BRV after their turn based on HP damage done and as well as increasing party's maximum HP damage by 30%, and once the buff expires, it triggers a finisher attack that maxes out the party's BRV, removes everyone's debuffs and deals 4 HP dumps with further increased maximum HP and BRV damage for the attack as well as granting everyone with an unique gold-framed buff that copies the Burst buff's most important effects, potentially doubling the effect of her Burst buff if she uses the Burst finisher first and follows it up with the normal Burst Mode once her Burst buff initially expires, or letting the party enjoy the Burst buff's effects for an extended perioid of time. In short, she's essentially a better version of Bartz with much stronger skills, offturn damage and potent healing on top of what Bartz already has with her only downside being that her elemental imperils are based on an unframed buff that can be resisted or pushed off instead of an aura like what Bartz has.
- Leila is a truly ridiculous evasion tank who offers a wide array of utility. One of her main claims to fame is her Swashbuckling overhead buff, which grants her a 100% evasion rate, allows her to withstand fatal damage, buffs her damage output, reduces the party's HP damage taken, and carries a very unique Lock aura, which forces enemies to target her even if they're immune to Lock. But what makes Leila absolutely bonkers is her counter move from her LD buff whenever she evades an attack. She immediately takes a turn, greatly heals and batteries the party, and warps their turns next to her, with said turns being free turns that don't eat into your turn count. If you thought Noctis's Warpstep was already ridiculously good, Leila elevates it to a whole new level, and only a handful of fights can actually truly counter her power with guaranteed hit attacks. And even then, guaranteed hits don't do too much to dissuade Leila's power, as she can provide massive HP damage reduction to the party with her overhead and Additional Ability, still keeping them safe from harm. Really, Leila's one downside is that her High Armor is the Attack Keystone despite her not being meant to be a DPS unit. But in spite of that, Leila basically renders whatever's left of Lufenia+ moot and smashes it to pieces.
- Ramza was already considered to be quite broken when his LD and BT weapons were first released, but his BT+ and level 90 upgrade ramp up his supportive capabilities to insane levels. His BT+ effect is on par with Garnet's for being ridiculously loaded, now increasing the HP damage cap by up to 36% for every buff the party has. Combined with his maxed out High Armor that also increases the HP damage cap by 15%, he can achieve a truly ridiculous 51% increase in the party's damage cap. And the best part? There's nothing stopping you from pairing him up with Garnet and her own broken BT+ effect, combining to create an utterly obscene 91% HP DAMAGE CAP. Ramza turns the party into total beasts just by being there, and is an amazingly powerful investment even into the Shinryu era.
- Selphie is another incredibly busted support with her level 90 upgrade. Alongside her very strong healing and battery power, Selphie's Rapture debuff from her LD Ability no longer ticks down when attacking the enemy, which means the enemy is going to get launched over and over and over again with no end in sight when combined with speedy attackers and turn manipulators. Her value only goes up even into the Shinryu era, where her instant turn rate Wall and Aura abilities allow her to quickly fill up the Force Gauge.
SHINRYU/Force era
- The Force Time mechanic as a whole allows characters who have access to it to enable themselves and their party to deal a whole new astronomical level of damage output. As long as you can fulfill the mechanic's conditions depending on the character who uses it, it's incredibly common to reach a damage output of 15 to 20 million per turn, with even more damage if launches are added to the mix. With the right setup, it's also not uncommon for BT+ characters to reach upwards of 200 million and above damage in a single Burst phase! This humongous damage potential outright invalidates any past difficulty fights before Force Time arrived, and needless to say, the Shinryu difficulty fights are aware of this by jacking up bosses' HP bars to really make good use of this mechanic.
- Kam'lanaut, the fourth character to receive a FR weapon has already become ridiculously broken with both his FR and BT weapons. His FR gained infamy because of one of his gauge increase requirements. It gives a 20% boost for each character that attacks an enemy inflicted with a debuff that prevents them from taking a turn with launches increasing the boost for every character participating in one (the original intention for the developers was to only count both boosts once per character turn, and by the time they noticed their mistake, it was too late to fix it) and another 20% boost for dealing ice BRV on that character's turn. Combine it with Selphie/Raines or his call and you can rack up the damage boost to a ridiculous degree, nearly being able to hit the maximum HP damage boost cap of +999% on its own. And then there his BT's effect Bondage from Antiquity which acts like a paralyze/confusion debuff that's reapplied on every party turn for as long as the Burst buff is up, and every time an enemy attempts to act, the debuff warps the next ally to the front of the turn order.
- Tidus, after being considered one of the worst characters in the game rose up to become an absolutely devastating beast in the FR era. His FR's conditions are incredibly easy to fulfill as they simply require the enemy to be debuffed (which a decently built Tidus already inflicts at the start of battle) or an Instant Turn Rate ability to be used which is most of Tidus's moves, so you'll already be hitting up to 600%+ damage easily within the 10 turns, especially with his Shot followup. That's not even getting into his BT which allows his followups to trigger twice in a row, allowing him to activate Jecht Shot even more frequently. As a bonus, his Burst finisher is also one of the strongest ones in the game, making it the perfect way to end his Force.
- Lunafreya might have been overshadowed by the GL-exclusive Garnet burst and as a result, she might not be as offensively oriented as Garnet is or possess her gold buff or the useful BRV refund effect, but she more than makes up for it in a number of ways. To start with, she's a far better burst healer than Garnet is thanks to her first skill healing the party for a massive 80% of their maximum HP, and since it has an instant turn rate, she can spam it to quickly fill the Force gauge. However, her main attraction is her LD skill, Awakening and her overhead stacks that're tied to it: upon use, she grants her party members either the Quick or Heavy Prayer buff depending on their party position, with the former granting them instant turns and increased damage for its short duration and the latter granting them even stronger damage buffs along with a max BRV-based extra HP hit effect similar to Leo's LD effect. This lets her greatly power up the party on command, and she can also grant both effects to a single character of her choice with her changed BRV and HP attack commands when her overhead has maxed stacks.
- Tifa continues to shine even in Shinryu era thanks to her new Burst which takes her damage output to yet another level by allowing her to follow up all her attacks with Waterkick and Somersault while the Burst buff is active, adding another 6 HP dumps worth of damage to her already massive damage potential, essentially doubling it and making her the undisputed queen of single target damage.
- Rinoa essentially becomes a magical AoE version of Tifa with her Burst, which grants her 6 uses of the limited use HP attack Ultima that deals up to 9 HP dumps worth of damage to all enemies, far more than any other character in the game. On top of this, she also grants the party significant buffs and can heal both passively and on command, letting her double as a support character to enable other damage dealers in the party.
- Cid Raines, yet again, can match and potentially even surpass Tifa's damage output thanks to his new Burst both greatly upgrading his launch followup attack as well as increasing the party's maximum HP damage cap during launches up to 50%, which also applies to his upgraded launch followup.
- Hope is a support character and a healer that's also exceptionally good at protecting the party from both BRV and HP damage: with his Additional Ability buff up and enough party buffs active to give his overhead buff the maximum 5 stacks, he lowers all HP damage done to the party by over 80%, meaning that they're nearly immune to HP damage as long as the enemy doesn't have any effects that nullifies HP damage reduction effects, and even if they do, he's also able to overheal the party to further protect them. He also functions as a Force charger with his own Force Time, and thanks to him possessing instant turn rate abilities and his Force Time conditions being customized around batterying the party, he can massively pump up the damage multiplier up to +125% at a time by spamming said abilities as much as the situation calls for, including being able to max out the multiplier with 3 turns left, and then passing his turn to another character.
- Enna Kros once she receives her boost from her Lost Chapter release ends up having an absolutely devastating combo with the aforementioned Hope and Lunafreya, coupled with a Cait Sith LD Call, that can take Shinryu-level bosses from 100 to 0 in just three attacks. Lunafreya is mostly there just for Force Charge, as well as giving Enna both Quick Prayer (three turns in succession) and Heavy Prayer (bonus damage). Hope's Force Time is powerful on its own, but with Enna he can spam his Protect/Shell uses several times so that there is only three turns of his Force Time remaining while breaking 900% damage. At that point Enna can just spend the last three turns of Force Time to spam all three charges of her LD Ability, Astral Annihilation and drain literally tens of millions of HP taking any boss from near full health to death. What's more, this strategy is viable all the way until the end of Chapter 3, and even has some use beyond that as well. note
- Rubicante is easily able to solo any Shinryu fight that doesn't absorb fire damage or spam attacks with more than a single HP dump: he can supercharge Force and extends his own buffs while doing so with Absorb Blizzara, his Force Time effects include delaying his own actions so that the enemy are granted more turns that he can counter as well as letting him instantly recover his HP to 50% if it ever drops below that and the multiplier increase conditions are naturally focused around him taking BRV or HP damage or dealing fire BRV damage, and with his Burst buff up, he counters all enemy attacks with a total of 6 AoE HP dumps worth of damage each.
- Quina has a method of increasing party damage output that's as simple as it is effective: with their Burst buff up and as long as the party member isn't broken, all of their HP dumps will automatically deal the maximum amount of HP damage possible, regardless of how much BRV they have or how much HP damage reduction the enemy currently has active. On top of this, Quina can also enable other characters in different ways: they're one of the few characters who can persistently increase the party's EX charge rate, and if combined with a Selphie call, Ultimecia essentially gains infinite turns off her EX, and they also possess a powerful trap that can further contribute towards counter characters' damage. Finally, they also deal large amounts of damage for a support character, with their first base skill getting upgraded with their Burst buff to rival most DPS characters' damage output and with their "Frogs Caught" overhead buff maxed out, they automatically deal rainbow BRV damage with all their attacks.
- Iris initially seems like another support character who can supercharge the force on command and has an useful Burst effect that literally nullifies the enemy's offense and defenses by setting their ATK, DEF and maximum BRV to 0 for its duration, making it impossible for the enemy to do any kind of HP damage to the party without percentage-based attacks or a form of HP poison, but her true power comes from her EX ability, which copies the total HP damage the previous character dealt on their turn and deals that damage to all enemies before her normal HP dumps: since this damage isn't capped in any way, you can use it to deal Force Time-tier damage after Force Time has already ended, and since Iris also adds more HP damage on top of the copied damage AND the attack can launch, she can deal a minimum of 20% more damage with each use of her EX if she can launch every turn and is allowed to take multiple turns in a row. All of this can naturally be taken to its logical conclusion by using an Iris friend and a Bahamut summon to copy and multiply the damage back and forth thanks to the EX's ability to also manipulate the turn order and Bahamut summon's ability to grant multiple free EX uses to all characters, letting both Irises easily deal hundreds of millions of points of damage with every use of their EX.
- Aranea re-establishes her place as one of the top damage dealers thanks to her new Burst, which gives her instant launches for its duration as well as a launch followup mostly identical to Raines' described above: while she can't manipulate party turn order or battery them the way Raines does, she can still keep the other 2 party members available in each launch thanks to her extra turns and ability to unbreak the enemy with her every attack, and if you have one of the many ways available that batteries other 2 party members after her launches, she can greatly outdamage Raines thanks to having more sources of splash and AoE damage as well as vastly higher number of HP dump counts.
- Astos easily outdamages everyone in the game by several orders of magnitude with none of the characters released after him even coming close, which he accomplishes by outright ignoring multiple intergral gameplay mechanics: almost all his HP damage is based on his overhead which functions as a secondary BRV stat that keeps track of his current absolute maximum BRV, and when he deals HP damage, it doesn't consume his normal BRV or his overhead BRV. Up until this point, he comes off as an upgraded version of Exdeath, but where things get ridiculous is his Burst buff, which increases his maximum HP damage cap to the maximum possible 999k damage per HP dump, potentially letting him deal over 3 times the damage of the next strongest character on each HP dump and letting him be the first character who can deal over 1 billion damage during his Burst phase against sufficiently durable enemies. However, he still has weaknesses: hitting the HP damage cap requires a combination of sufficiently potent maximum BRV and HP damage boosts, he's mostly helpless against any enemy that reduces the HP damage inflicted on them by a large amount, and thanks to his main forms of damage being entirely reliant on his overhead, Quina does nothing for him, nor do any characters that raise the party's HP damage cap.
- Kelger is to dodge tanks what Rubicante is to normal tanks: while he can't deal with attacks that are guaranteed to hit as well as Rubicante can and can't heal the party, charge the Force Gauge on his own or enchant them with an element, he makes up for it by possessing an extra attack like Cor that triggers before the enemy turn, doesn't consume his BRV and triggers twice with his Burst Buff active on top of having a normal counter like Rubicante, allowing him to deal almost twice as much damage per enemy turn as Rubicante at the cost of less AoE damage. He also has one of the fastest Force Times to max out that doesn't have rare conditions to increase the multiplier like Balthier's requirement to dispel an enemy buff, with him gaining the same total +80% increase to the multiplier for every enemy attack he dodges with his Burst Buff active as Balthier does with the above requirement, his lack of element means that he's not locked out on fights that restrict Rubicante from being used and finally, since he's a dodge tank, he doesn't have to worry about enemy debuffs as long as they're not guaranteed.
- Yda may look like just another DPS character with a stronger-than-average LD ability, but she shines in any situation where she can Break an enemy on every turn, which can be accomplished in fights with 3 enemies by default or just by combining her with a Burst effect that makes the enemy breakable on every turn, which there are multiple examples of: if either of the above scenarios is true, she can first use her BRV+ to grant herself 2 free extra turns and then endlessly spam her HP+, which does the same while also dealing damage and extending her buffs, as for some reason, using her BRV+ before her HP+ also makes all her following HP+ extra turns free, while normally only every second one of them is, which adds up quickly when she's spamming her turns. Naturally, just doing this on its own will make any Shinryu fight take forever, which is why she's better used as a pseudo-Force charger, and once the Force gauge is full, she can put up her Burst buff, use her AA ability twice to max out its stacks to grant herself a massive HP damage increase and then proceed with a Force Time of your choice, spamming her powerful LD ability as much as possible, which can be further assisted by sacrificing most of a single Force turn's damage to use her HP+ to grant her extra turns to spam her LD ability on. Naturally, even though she's still one of the strongest AoE damage options in the game, she still needs the ability to break the enemy every turn to be able to spam free turns, which aren't that common overall.
- Angeal: While the Global side of the game never got Zack's mentor as a playable character, the Japanese release proved he could be a real beast. With launches and follow-up attacks he was already a decent physical attacker, however, Angeal's real strength came from his Overhead "Dreams and Honor" which has a stored value capped to 200% of Angeal's max health. This value goes up based on his abilities, as well as if he successfully Breaks a target, with that damage translating to bonus damage not just for himself, but the entire party. Bonus damage is unique in DFFOO because it cannot be resisted, and bypasses a lot of enemy effects that would otherwise reduce damage (unless an enemy strictly has a 'zero damage' effect, as opposed to say a percentage-based reduction), and Angeal gives this effect to everyone on the team as well as to their own follow-ups and off-turns (not including poison effects, obviously). In addition, Angeal's Burst Effect increases the cap from 200% of his health to the hard cap of 999,999 which can lead to devastating amounts of bonus damage for the entire party.
Calls
Introduced in the Lufenia era, character calls summon the aforementioned character to use one of their skills, and some of these calls have ridiculously great value.
- Aranea's base Call is Highwind, which rebreaks the enemy and inflicts the very potent Vitalcrusher debuff, increasing the damage dealt by critical BRV hits by 50%.
- Jack's LD Call instantly breaks the enemy and inflicts the very useful Katana Wounds debuff on all enemies, which reduces enemies' defenses and increases their BRV damage taken, increasing by 1 stack everytime they're attacked, and maxing out at 5 stacks, for a 50% defense debuff and 30% BRV damage received. Having him as a call can greatly boost your party's damage output in Lufenia, even as the boss starts becoming sturdier over the fight. As a bonus, his LD Call will also battery the ally who called him by 20% of their HP damage dealt.
- Kurasame's Calls, assuming you have his EX+, inflict 2 stacks of Hyoro on all enemies everytime he's called, which is a minimum of 4 stacks, boosting HP damage by 25%, and his Ice Blade Renzan call makes it 5 stacks on a single enemy, boosting HP damage by 30%. As another effect, his LD Call enchants the party with Ice, which he imperils from the get-go, and greatly boosts their damage dealt when dealing weakness damage. This is a massive damage boost with fantastic value for the whole fight even as the enemy gains more damage resistance, and continues to see lots of use all the way to Shinryu difficulty thanks to the fact that he contributes greatly to maximizing Kam'lanaut's force multiplier as described above.
- Faris's Calls have incredible value in difficult battles. Her base Call, Open Fire, inflicts potent framed debuffs on all enemies and dispels all of their buffs. She also inflicts Enchanting Dance, which forcibly drops the enemy's current BRV to 0 whenever they get a turn, allowing for easier Breaks.
- Amidatelion's LD Call is the powerful Crystal Idol, which reduces all enemies' BRV to 0, batteries the party, and deletes the enemies' turns for good measure. The gravity effect and turn deletion alone makes them very powerful and crucial for fights that require instant breaks or DPS races.
- Even when she isn't in the party, Tifa's LD Call is one of the best simply due to the fact that Meteor Crusher still deals colossal amounts of damage. As a bonus, it increases the caller's attack by 70%, and boosts the HP damage they deal by 20% for 3 turns, adding more value to the call.
- Raines's Calls have the same effect as his normal attacks, that being to shift the turn order, launch targets, and battery the party, and Raines will still join in the launch himself, so both calls deal high damage. However, his LD call in particular is noteworthy — it gives the caller two turns during which all of their attacks will inflict knock back. Put Raines on someone with a Burst and that buff will last the entire duration of it, and from that point you just need some means to battery the party between hits (of which there are several) to make those half a dozen launches count.
- Alisaie's LD Call is not only of the most potent single-character buffs in the game that can greatly increase anyone's damage potential prior to using Burst Mode, but it's also one of the few Calls that can still deal decent damage even against Lufenia+ bosses: the Call itself deals 6 BRV+HP attacks 3 times followed by 6 AoE BRV+HP attacks 3 times and thanks to Alisaie's LD buff effect that lets her gain 20% of her maximum BRV with every BRV hit, it bypasses the low damage potency issue most LD calls have. As for its buff effects, it imperils the enemy to 4 different elements, enchants the character using it with those same 4 elements, increases the BRV damage they deal by 40% and HP damage they deal by 20% and grants the character the same maximum BRV-based BRV gain on every BRV hit effect listed above, essentially giving the character a better version of Cait Sith's LD effect on top of potent increases to their BRV and HP damage unmatched by most other Calls.
- Shelke's LD Call offers some very strong benefits, namely, it cleanses the caller of all debuffs, strips all enemies' buffs, instantly fills their EX gauge, fully heals the caller, and batteries them to maximum BRV to boot. This is a very potent and versatile tool, and can either be used as a full heal on demand, or enable a stronger burst window.
- Cyan's LD Call is an Armor-Piercing Attack that hits 8 times for humongous damage and each hit also deals 20% splash damage to other enemies, which, thanks to all the HP damage up effects any party has running at any given time, hits almost as hard as the main attack, making it fantastically useful for some massive damage on demand, especially if it's used at the end of a Force. It's arguably more useful than using Cyan as a character, as he has to charge his Bushido stacks to 7 before he can use his LD Ability.
- Seymour's LD Call dispels all enemies, delays them 2 turns and inflicts a number of debuffs on the enemy, including his LD debuff, which increases HP damage as much as Kurasame's debuff at 49% enemy HP remaining and below, making it a superior option, especially if he's called with an enemy with 49% or less HP remaining present, which also triggers Seymour's LD followup after the initial call attack.
- Raijin's LD Call heals the party and inflicts all enemies with his LD debuff that reduces their Attack and HP damage done by 100%, prevents them from inflicting debuffs on your party and increases the HP damage the enemy takes by 20%. While it has a short 2 turn duration, it's extremely useful in protecting your party from enemy Force attacks by completely nullifying any damage they deal and any debuffs they might inflict as well as enemy counterattacks since neither of the above reduce its duration while also increasing the HP damage taken by the enemy.
