FF XII: Players how where your characters specced.

[eXo]

By this i mean who did you have as your blackmage /whitemage. Paladin etc etc.

And also is it just me or does going thief suck?

[Saner]

yeah thief is pretty tough. I basically make everyone a master of
the important stuff. wield swords and shields or katanas.
all can use white magic and green magic. stuff like that.

oh ya and bows are handy if you don't wanna bother with black
magic. but blackmagic gets pretty powerful and cool later on.
I mostly use it to auto-gambit like firaga and stuff against
flying enemies.

axes are randomly useful. spears, especialyl zodiac spears are
pretty lethal. staves are ninja swords are pretty useless IMo,
though they look cool.

I eventually made everyone masters of magic and stuff cause
overall its more flexible cause if your main healer is down, your
team will have alternatives to recover and get back on track.

and overall, sword+shields, katanas and spears are some of
the best weapons to use. and bows for sky enemies.

[Monochrome]

I had Ashe wielding a sword (for good damage/good hit %) and the other two, mostly Vaan and Penelo wielding axes (great damage/bad hit % but still worth it most of the time). The only sucky thing is the flying enemies, which you have to manually reset your characters to a bow/gun until you get the FLYING: gambit ability. Or manually cast magic. either gets old. I mostly avoid flying enemies if i can. Not typically worth the hassle. I never stole from an enemy once in the game. Is it just me or does the Viera (what's-her-name) seem to keel over really easily?

[Tact]

Currently, I have this setup:

Vaan: Main Tank (Heavy Armor, Melee Weapons)
Balthier: Ranged (Guns)
Fran: Ranged (Bows)
Basch: Off Tank (Also Heavy Armor and Melee)
Ashe: White Mage/Healer (Staves)
Penelo: Black Mage/Offensive Magic (Rods)

My main battle party is Vaan, Balthier, and Fran. As Vaan, I try to get up into the enemy's face and make sure they attack me (I don't have Decoy yet, so it's sort of tough). Balthier and Fran are ranged damage. Fran also is the group healer. Why, you ask? Basch, Ashe, and Penelo are still around level 15. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_wacko.gif I know that eventually I'll level them up, but not until I have to for some plot event or until I'm almost at the end of the game and there's not much else to do.

Of course, once I get enough License Points, everybody will be registered superheroes who can do everything.

[Shadowpawn]

My party setup was this:

Vann: Soilder (High attack and speed using Spear or Rod weapons)
Balther: Archer (Guns or Bow)/ Kinght (High attack and moderate defense with katana)
Fran: Archer
Basch: Kinght with katana
Penelo: Red Mage
Ashe: Paladin (Moderate attack capability with advanced Healing Magic)

Oddly enough this setup helped me power through the game. I can't say that for the extra dungeon though.

[DizzyDi]

Vaan: Paladin type character. S&S, white magic, heavy/light armor. Also have a steal: enemy hp = 100% and at least one other person in my party has target: party leader's target

Panelo: White mage wielding a bow and sometimes a staff.

Fran: A little bit of everything

Balthier: Guns, Daggers, Bowguns, & Poles. Whichever will suit be better at the time

Ashe: Katanas/Staff with mage/heavy armor (katana damage is dependent on magic attack+physical attack) also casting black magics.

Basch: Heavy armor and axes.

Vaan and Basch both cast decoy on themselves to act as tanks, Vaan with a bubble belt and Basch casting Bubble on himself.




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DizzyDi on 2008-01-09 18:24 ]</font>

[Shadowpawn]

I never found decoy useful. The effects never last that long with me, (Then again Haste prolly had something to do with that.)

[DizzyDi]

Decoy+Reverse is a pretty amazing combo. And true, decoy never lasts that long but it does the job well enough for me.

[Monochrome]

Am I the only lazy one who just hacked my way through the whole game with 2 axes/1 sword? I think I used all of 2 summon spells in the whole game. Both got killed by enemies on the field. lol

[Shadowpawn]

On 2008-01-09 18:28, Monochrome wrote:
Am I the only lazy one who just hacked my way through the whole game with 2 axes/1 sword? I think I used all of 2 summon spells in the whole game. Both got killed by enemies on the field. lol



I'm guessing you didn't do the bounties. Can't do that with them, buddy.

[Monochrome]

I did the first few. I suppose I was in a hurry to beat the game. Played through the last 3 hours without even saving and ended with about 45-ish hours total. I've been meaning to get back to XII and play through all the quest stuff I skipped. The game is strangely addictive (just didn't find the story/characters compelling). o_O

[Kent]

The problem with Decoy, is that the game considers it a negative status effect, and therefore, increased Stamina will reduce the time it lasts on a character, in addition to reducing the chance it will work on a character... And your tank, which usually has heavy armor (which adds Stamina), usually has pretty high Stamina.

For the most part, I just used a team of Ashe, Vaan, and Penelo.

Ashe is set up with heavy armor (with one piece of mage armor that I found, that had really high magic defense), all Magicks (started off with Black/White sort of Red Magey setup), sword and shield, and tanks like a true Paladin. Being that Ashe is the actual main character of the game, I used her as the primary character/party leader, and therefore tank.

Vaan was set up to be more like a Monk. Light armor adds agility and HP, so he ended up getting fast attacks and a lot of HP... However, hand-to-hand fighting is basically worthless in the game except in that one fight where wearing metal equipment severely hinders you, in which cast I just stowed his weapon and had him pummel the enemy, which made it pay off, if only for one fight. So, I got him training in a couple different weapons - namely, Poles (not Staves or Rods) and Ninja Swords. Ninja Swords are fast, and provide a good bit of damage, and have the highest combo rate of any weapon in the game - since they also factor the character's speed into the damage calculation, they were a good fit.

Poles, on the other hand, also have a high combo rate, but have one other, very important distinction - they do not use an enemy's Defense in their damage calculation, using their Magic Defense instead. This provides a means for a constant and good amount of physical damage dealt to enemies with very high physical defense. I guess it kinda fits with the Monk thing, too.

Then there's Penelo. For most of the game, I just had Penelo act as a healer, conserving her precious MP for just keeping everyone not dead. After mastering all of the White and Green Magick there is, however, I started making her learn other types... And some nuking capabilities came up. Paired with the mage armor, she ended up with very high magick attack...

So I got the idea to give her a Mace and a shield. I went with Mace+Shield instead of Katana because the shield provides blocking chance... Which is always good for survival, and at this point, I was pretty much just learning extra stuff, so I had a reason for getting those shield bonus spots on the license board.

Both Maces and Katana take into account the user's Magick Attack instead of Strength when calculating damage, so they're a good fit for Penelo... And I was pleasantly surprised at how much melee damage she ended up doing. She was putting Vaan to shame, simply due to how high her Magick Attack was, and actually became my most powerful offensive character, though Vaan and especially Ashe are a lot more durable.

So she kinda went from White Mage to Ultimate Beater of Asses. Kinda funny how that worked out.

I did use Basch for a good while, and had a good setup for him, as well... Including a great Gambit setup.

Essentially, Basch wore heavy armor, and used Spears and Greatswords, and then Black and Arcane magick. Basically, he was a Dark Knight, except instead of sucking like they normally do (eg. FFXI), he was very useful (and simultaneously non-emo).

Balthier was... A gunner. His MP was pretty much only used for Raising people, as his cures were very weak, however, he was very good with items and knew basically every Technick there was. Fran, naturally, was a Red Mage/Samurai, with good skills with Katana and Bows.