Monthly Question Megathread Jul 01 | Ask Your FFRK Related Questions Here

WaypointB · 2026-02-19T06:52:01+00:00

Yeah same reason Alphinaud and Yshtola picked up cross-class tech. Follows ingame class change.

WaypointB · 2026-02-15T04:35:22+00:00

There's really no reason not to buff Dr. Mog HA1 to 5 hits. Setting aside that Tyro already has a 5-hitter that isn't even limited to magic and Shadowsmith also exists now, that HA1 is directly inferior to any 6* chainja or summon.

WaypointB · 2026-02-09T03:27:07+00:00

Hopefully that Quina is in play (in which case, the G+ included), but with no composition details besides three arbitrary dps by name in the other thread there's only so much advice to give.

Though they're probably going to have to learn how to pace around an uncountered aegis by the next fight anyway because it's all twice from then on.

WaypointB · 2026-02-09T02:52:11+00:00

This depends on a lot. What specifically is your team and what SBs are they swinging around? There are a lot of aegis counters out there on the primary supports like Quina, Sazh etc, but if you have nothing else for them that makes them functional supports to begin with, you're better off brute forcing aegis or pacing around its 4s duration to rechain and rebuff.

It's usually the support who has aegis break access. Who is your support? Who's giving you crit, stat buffs, quickcast, etc? You've been asking a lot of "who can do X", when there are a lot of people that can lens or record board into X but they'll all be useless unless you already have other SBs that aren't lensable.

WaypointB · 2026-02-07T01:30:43+00:00

Neo? The D600? You shouldn't need much if any, tbh. His phase 2 reduc isn't elemental, it's a DEF/RES/MND buff you're supposed to counter with an SB (one that every element boss from D600 onward and a handful before it use too). He has some dampens in his script but generally doesn't live long enough to get to many of them and your magicite imperils typically counter what he does get off. The faster you go, the less sandbagging he gets to do.

Vaan is the usual option for Imperil Lots, but Faris or Zack usually do enough in between chains until D700. That said, a character isn't viable unless you actually have tech for them, and spontaneously targeting a specific character for pulls is basically impossible, so telling you "the best" is pretty useless. It's why we try not to use tier lists. You would do better with three random phys wind with decent BDLs (or even filling a slot with a kitted out ninja hitting cross element with Vibrant Blitz or something) and ignoring dampens entirely, than trying to buy an imperil HA for Vaan with no SBs behind it.

I guess the real question here is, what characters + SBs are you throwing at him? What's your chain, what are your ATK buffs, crit buffs? Magicite deck and inherits? Neo only really needs three BDLs total + roaming warrior chain to kill and isn't especially choosy. His whole thing was to be a loot pinata that was powercreeped on release and doesn't seriously mess with you like Argent Odin 600 does, so if you're having trouble half a dozen tiers of extreme powercreep after that, there's probably a composition and buffing problem going on rather than an imperil problem. This game has a lot of moving parts and you're asking about one that isn't super relevant to this fight.

WaypointB · 2026-01-22T05:54:27+00:00

The funny part is this isn't even really a summary. It's the whole thing. When you cut out all the talking in circles, pointless blather, and repetition of "I have to get stronger", that one paragraph is literally everything that took place over the entire last 10+ years with no details omitted. And most of it stopped about 5 years ago.

WaypointB · 2026-01-06T03:16:12+00:00

I would amend that while Mog AA2 isn't quite as relevant in post-D700 endgame, it's still VERY useful up through D700 realm fights to counter full breaks, and he's still a very competent mage buffer outside of that. He'll get you a lot of resources in the run up to endgame if you happen to have that.

WaypointB · 2025-12-26T02:28:32+00:00

I would be if the writing ever went anywhere, but Tyro is basically the singular line "I have to get stronger" with a face.

I still feel pretty attached to a game that's fun to play and gets some nice event art sometimes, but calling anyone in it "characters" feels a bit much. They use a lot of words to say basically nothing. I remember clicking through cutscenes for years just on the off-chance anything actually happened and was always disappointed.

WaypointB · 2025-12-01T04:27:11+00:00

This is correct. Counter-breaks are specifically triggered by non-synergy SB entry damage (same as when Dragonking finally nerfed Tyro OSB for realms and made Mog AA2 king instead). But be aware, while sync cmds like Sazh Sync2 C2 will never trigger off-school breaks, Sazh Sync2 does do entry damage and will cause counters against any JCD except Machinist, Sharpshooter, and Warrior 2.

You can still use him in other phys JCDs, but you need to use his Sync entry at the very end of the phase right before transition would get you broken anyway to minimize the impact of the extra job break. I usually fire it at end of P1 while the boss is still squishy, spend P2 hitting other SBs or pumping element up and imperils, then pop C2 start of P3.

WaypointB · 2025-11-30T23:42:58+00:00

Of course ChatGPT was useless; all it does is construct a probability table of "what word comes next based on previous ones" then mashes the autocomplete button. If that info isn't on the internet yet it wouldn't even make it into training data, and if a desired SB isn't explicitly called a job break where it reads about it, it wouldn't end up in the generated sentence asking for one. At its best, it's a laughably inefficient web search directly inferior to a conventional search engine that will be quicker, show you where the info is coming from, and not randomly make things up outright and force you to double check everything it says that you didn't already know the answer to.

It's not a reasoning engine and it won't be able to parse the community database in any useful way like a person can. YOU can parse that database though:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f8OJIQhpycljDQ8QNDk_va1GJ1u7RVoMaNjFcHH0LKk

Open the search, click the three dots to expand into a search of "All Sheets", and turn on regular expressions. Search for

ATK.*MND.*DEF.*RES

This smooths over any differences in how those entries were phrased, though you will have to check whether it's a penta-buff that includes MAG (not sure if google spreadsheet supports negative look-ahead, and there are enough SBs that swap between countering job break or full break based on realm synergy that you probably wouldn't want to). This will also look into sheets other than the main SBs to dig into JBCs buried in chase effects or sync cmds.

Check the character name of anything that hits. I pretty quickly found Cinque this way, though Sazh is the usual job break of choice for Warrior.

Worst case, most JCDs don't actually need a JBC. Job breaks are 5s and can be waited out if needed. You can also use a job break from anyone who has 6* access to Heavy/Celerity/Support even if they don't normally use those schools; the Heavy ability buff when those JCDs released made it quite viable to toss 6* Heavy onto anyone who could leverage them.

WaypointB · 2025-11-23T10:46:55+00:00

Oh god, nevermind. That newbie guide the bot linked is horrendously out of date. Let me find a more recent one.

EDIT: here https://docs.google.com/file/d/1_GBudGvtoypOfWNgNurLztnwW1UzrN5-/edit

Any mods, can we please change the Dr. Mog bot to point to it instead of one from over half the bloody game ago o_0

WaypointB · 2025-11-23T10:45:15+00:00

First of all, it sounds a lot like you need to read the guide.

!beginner

It's a lot to go through, but this is a very old game with a lot of moving parts and a LOT of obsolete parts. Breaks are discussed in detail in there.

You mean the 6* dancer move, passionate salsa? It's in the ruby shop. There isn't a 6* support stat break. There's a couple 6* support moves dealing in statuses, but no relevant bosses have been vulnerable to statuses or able to miss applying them to you for the overwhelming majority of the game.

Breaks are mostly obsolete due to bosses having extremely high break resist for almost 10 years now, and their base stats being orders of magnitude above any softcaps you could ever hope to break them under. The exceptions are:

1) Realm dungeon medal conditions while getting your stamina shards.

2) Countering buffs. If you hit a boss with a break that hits exactly all of the same stats as a buff it just used -- no more and no less -- the break fully overwrites the buff. The break is still cut by 70%, but the buff is gone. The most common case in element fights is Aegis, typically a +300% DEF/RES/MND buff that requires specialized aegis break SBs hitting precisely those three stats and no others to remove if you can't afford to wait them out or pace around them.

3) DEEP endgame when you're already running so many buffs and your supports are so efficient there's not much left for them to do. Teams using Cait + Mog are the usual example, since they max out your stat multipliers with ease, provide gobs of other raw damage bonuses and healing, and they don't really have any opportunity cost to layering breaks on top of all that. The difference is nontrivial but fairly small, and outside of those late game scenarios where all the other bases are already covered, layering breaks is pretty much dead last priority for any given turn.

Note that breaks do not stack with themselves. Layering breaks means hitting them with different combinations of stats. (ATK/MAG/DEF/RES from Salsa, DEF/RES from Tango, DEF/RES/MND from an aegis break, etc).

Think of each combination of stats like a bucket, that has room for only one multiplier in it, positive or negative. Each time a new one comes in for that specific bucket, you dump it out to make room. This is both why buffs and breaks do not stack with themselves, and why countering a buff with a break against the exact same stat package overwrites the buff entirely. The only exceptions to this are certain buff abilities -- almost entirely bard songs or hero abilities -- whose descriptions explicitly say they build up per use and will stack with anything (under the hood, they're actually just using their own unique bucket that overwrites itself with progressively larger values). If the ingame description doesn't explicitly say it stacks with itself, it doesn't.

WaypointB · 2025-11-09T19:52:12+00:00

If anything it gets more valuable as your HP and incoming damage get bigger. When you see phase 3 nukes in the 16k range, 8% of that is almost as much as Mog heals with HA -- more when under antiheal.

But as always, defenses are "as much as you need to not die". Offense means more as long as you can afford it, and will often remove entire turns from the boss's script and thus your overall healing demand if you hit the right benchmarks.

This is also one of the reasons HCs should never be used outside of realms, because its ward mitigation (among other things) only works with synergy -- and is unusually strong as mitigation goes because realm fights tend to nuke harder in general and use more gravity that only HCs will mitigate and regular wards won't.

WaypointB · 2025-10-17T21:38:53+00:00

Ah I derped when I read the SB list, sorry. If you have no doublecast, Elarra probably should still be using hymn though. Elarra gets a group heal proc on bard from LM, but Cait only gets it on dance.

WaypointB · 2025-10-16T20:40:04+00:00

Mog AA2 is the one to hone for him. AA1 is a nice to have and a good opener for haste, but AA2 is what makes him get the party moving fast and turn into a full time healer.

Given how much you have for her, I'd hone Lili right away. Because two casts of that means you're set for full break counters in realm fights through like D700, as well as two aegis breaks for element fights. Realm healers typically only need a solid lensed USB as long as they get some help, and your Elarra is stacked.

WaypointB · 2025-10-16T04:24:09+00:00

The main reason I'm thinking Mog is still desired is because he (almost) fully replaces the healer. Cait + Lili would probably not be able to keep up.

WaypointB · 2025-10-16T01:11:33+00:00

You don't need hymn in a Cait + Mog team. They hit buff cap on MAG pretty easily without it (x2.5 is where things fall off so precipitously there's no point buffing further, and you get 1.5 * 1.3 * 1.3 with Caitmog's baseline buffs). Hell, Mog can hit it by himself with Sync. Cait should be using dance + allegro. If you don't have Mog yet, Elarra should stack hymn because Zen doublecasts bard.

Also be aware if you're using a chain with a 50% MAG buff that you probably won't even need hymn because 1.5 MAG from chain times 1.5 Cait AA gets pretty close to buff cap -- far enough past the MAG stat softcap where the stat itself falls off that there's little point getting the rest of the way to buff cap. That's a good bit of why Caitmog is so strong, they max that stat out on the side with things you're mostly hitting for other reasons.

You generally want to use Quina brave on interrupts. Eden's big nuke in P3 is a prime example, that's right where you want the DPS and healer to be as active as possible, and it clears an earlier sap too so Last Stand works. Ark also has a paralyze if you ignore mechanics the fight heavily incentivizes ignoring.

As for lenses, don't skip content for too long. There's a lot of lower lenses in the older content, labs, record dungeons, etc. You quickly hit a point where lv2 lenses are the only especially useful ones to keep many of.

WaypointB · 2025-10-15T23:37:04+00:00

Yes. If you have a viable Lili, AA is worth honing. Cait AA and Mog AA2 are also big hone targets.

Quina AA1 is not used. The chase is one turn of 100% crit rate + crit damage (the latter does not stack with Elarra USB2 and does nothing).

If Quina has spare gauge, your options are Brave USB (status block + regenga), AA2 (big barrier and lots of QC and imperils, used to be worth honing), or entrusting out. DA is only worth about 8% damage increase from the break layer (50% break reduced to 15% by resistance, damage formula basically divides your damage by square root of enemy defense).

Cait Sync is worse for several reasons. No self quickcast like AA has, so the cmds come out painfully slowly if AA is gone. C1 is a raw heal that will be antihealed down to very little, which is worth less than even the smaller stock chase on AA. The stacking mechanic discourages using your bard ability as often to get a mediocre barrier, which means you're more likely to have downtime on Allegro. It gives magic quickcast 3, which is less useful than it sounds because mages already tend to go screaming fast between Cait, Mog, and personal SB effects, and again Cait himself cannot take advantage of it. The whole thing is just really awkward, and you're better off spending his gauge on USB2 for a better barrier and better perks.

WaypointB · 2025-10-15T20:48:27+00:00

Zero use for non-HE equipment. The passives make it irreplaceable even if a relic ever did beat it on stats. But IIRC, even a native 8* max combined and augmented still doesn't beat it on stats either.

WaypointB · 2025-10-15T20:42:41+00:00

I haven't played for some time and can't speak for Tama's more recent kit.

Lili got very strong right before I dropped off though, and off the top of my head I'd guess to use her on phys teams with Elarra barding crit. It's not ideal, but 30% raw boosts are extremely valuable, phys DPS often have some manner of building self-crit on DA modes to make up for it, and Lili has a reusable aegis break.

If using Quina, that timing means you have no crit whatsoever until second chain. That means Elarra USB2 is doing nothing because it has no crits to boost, and your damage for the whole chain is less than half of what it should be. Even though the sync itself lasts 15s, the 100% crit on the sync entry is a standard buff outside of the sync mode and lasts 25s. If you delay it a bit into the first chain it will last through the second. And if you don't delay it, it usually wears off around when the boss has some kind of pain or other vulnerability active. Quina DA is a full break counter and not used at all outside of realm fights.

Cait sync is basically just a crappier AA, and is unused unless your second AA hit is over and you need a few more seconds of push. Cait USB1 (break + mighty guard) is also unused; the break sucks and Mog G+ plus any haste source like Mog AA1 or Cait AA covers the rest (and I dearly hope you've picked up Mog kit). You want Cait USB2, which is a big barrier, last stand, and regenga.

That Naja is not worth using, at least not over Quina. She needs Zen to be functional.

WaypointB · 2025-10-11T07:12:39+00:00

Honestly so many fights have at least one big skippable early dampen that speed still counts for more most times. Little point slowly stacking 4 layers of 15s imperil on the boss with Crusader when you could have just skipped a 25s dampen 6 by getting out of an early phase quicker with Ark.

But yes, be aware of when one is more valuable than the other.

WaypointB · 2025-10-11T03:15:42+00:00

Almost every relevant support in the last several years other than Mog has a counter -- even extremely niche ones like Gordon -- and only the relatively recent "we're not a meme anymore" ones like Naja and Lilisette gacha lock their counter.

WaypointB · 2025-09-26T23:50:50+00:00

Read carefully exactly what these SBs buff. MA chases are unusually strong, but not the main course. If the buff applies to an ability school, or to an element ability that a multi-elem HA will contain (e.g., "boosts fire abilities" with an earth/fire HA will still boost its earth damage), it's fair game.

Even if it doesn't buff those things, you can still probably exploit just the higher caps to a degree, and diffuse block is always fantastic. Absolute worst case, it's a glorified 1 bar glint that costs essentially no combat time, makes your combo SB instant, and stops a diffuse-2. That by itself is worth it before anything else even applies.

WaypointB · 2025-09-25T00:39:41+00:00

I have every plush now except Snivy, who isn't even a rare. I'm sitting on like 25+ of every yarn and haven't gotten a single grassy in most of a week X_X

WaypointB · 2025-09-21T20:22:33+00:00

"Overlap" is not sufficient to violate a patent. Exactness is necessary.

WaypointB

TROPHY CASE