Final Fantasy spells/abilities you never, EVER use

[AnansiThePersona]

So I've been on a Final Fantasy kick recently and just started 5 after completing 4. In 4, I had a goddamn laundry list of spells Rydia had, but were completely goddamn useless in almost every scenario. But one sticks out in particular as exceptionally useless.

The Toad spell. Who is actually using this spell for anything? It only ever gets used on YOU. Same goes for the dumbass Pig spell also in 4.

I also strongly dislike the Steal ability in most games (often just misses and wastes a turn) and the Blue Mage type characters for the most part (except for Quistis. Her Blue Mage spells were incredible).

What abilities and spells from Final Fantasy do you never use or just plain hate?

 

[DecoReturns]

Toad spell in Final Fantasy II is great for a secret mini game.

Also how that game works in leveling up. Easy to reach max level super early on lol.

Okay. Spells I never actually use. I'm gonna say Silence or what it called mute?. Don't know why, I just rather heal then take away their magic casting abilities.

 

[Deleted member 426]

Pretty much any buffs. I don't need buffs, I've been squelching caterpillars for 20 hours in the first dungeon I'm overlevelled to fuck. THAT's my buff.

 

[Ramsiege]

Death. It costs too much to use on normal enemies and most bosses are immune to it.

 

[nsilvias]

buffs, they are completely useless.

 

[djplaeskool]

I always feel like in FF games, by the time mage-types start getting Gravity spells (Gravity/Demi, Gravija, etc), there are always better damage options available. Almost no need for percentage based damage.

 

[JoeNut]

Demi. I never understood it. Also aero, frog and reflect

 

[Kaseoki]

buffs, they are completely useless.

Click to shrink...

They are near mandatory in FFXII endgame no?

 

[DiipuSurotu]

Have you guys never played FF Tactics or something? Frog is the bomb in that game.

 

[AnansiThePersona]

Pretty much any buffs. I don't need buffs, I've been squelching caterpillars for 20 hours in the first dungeon I'm overlevelled to fuck. THAT's my buff.

Click to shrink...

buffs, they are completely useless.

Click to shrink...

Even Haste and Protect/Shell? Those are game changing buffs.

 

[McScroggz]

Toad and Mini are spells I only really use just for fun against random enemies, and not often. Death is one that I also rarely use although occasionally it's one of the best ways to deal with an enemy.

 

[Toth]

Demi. I never understood it. Also aero, frog and reflect

Click to shrink...

Demi is very powerful in FFX. Buffs have been very useful in 12 and 13.

 

[DecoReturns]

Also. Element resistance boosting spells from Final Fantasy 1. They don't do squat.

I still take the same amount of Fire/Ice/thunder magic damage.

 

[Glio]

Status effects in most Final Fantasy are tremendously useless compared to other RPGs.

 

[djplaeskool]

buffs, they are completely useless.

Click to shrink...

Haste is that good shit though

 

[McScroggz]

Even Haste and Protect/Shell? Those are game changing buffs.

Click to shrink...

There are some encounters where certain buffs are basically mandatory.

 

[Subomie]

Any status other than like Haste or Shell.

 

[Lumination]

Status effects in most Final Fantasy are tremendously useless compared to other RPGs.

Click to shrink...

One of the things XIII did right was make them all useful.

 

[BasilZero]

Pretty much any buffs. I don't need buffs, I've been squelching caterpillars for 20 hours in the first dungeon I'm overlevelled to fuck. THAT's my buff.

Click to shrink...

buffs, they are completely useless.

Click to shrink...

When I first played the series, I would overgrind to the point it was the same.


But nowadays, especially with the older FF games, buffs help a ton.

For an example Haste + Temper in FF1 makes Warriors/Knights and Monks/Masters OP.

Status effects in most Final Fantasy are tremendously useless compared to other RPGs.

Click to shrink...

FFXIII is the one that status effects helped a ton - I managed to kill the final boss with Poison lol.

 

[Aly]

I dunno how people get through endgame fights without haste, shell, and protect at least.

 

[Lua]

Outside of the vanish+doom trick in ffvi, vanish(or invisible) is something i never used.

 

[Glio]

One of the things XIII did right was make them all useful.

Click to shrink...

Final Fantasy XIII has a good combat system. The problem is that it is not necessary to use it barely.

 

[Deleted member 426]

Even Haste and Protect/Shell? Those are game changing buffs.

Click to shrink...

Being serious, in FF6-10, buffs weren't that effective so I often didn't need to use them. Since XI that's not been the case to be fair

 

[BasilZero]

I dunno how people get through endgame fights without haste, shell, and protect at least.

Click to shrink...

Grinding.

Nowadays I dont do much grinding - its all about strategy with what you got in your arsenal.

 

[The Last One]

Usually people mention blue magic in general but there are actually some pretty OP spells like for example Mighty Guard, which you can even obtain really early in FF IX.

 

[FRS1987]

They are almost all useless. At least in SMT games they can mean life or death, especially buffs.

 

[Robin64]

Don't underestimate Blue Mages. With a little bit of work, most of the FFs with a good true Blue Mage character (or ability) can be trivialised with a good selection of spells.

 

[snausages]

Steal is extremely useful in a lot of FFs to get equipment earlier

I almost never use status effect stuff. One thing about junctioning which was good was how you could turn those spells into passive abilities for your attack.

 

[antitrop]

I never use any of the Barrier spells in FF7, which I've always found amusing because the developers thought they were important enough to add 2 entire bars per character for both physical and magic barriers in the battle menu.

The New Threat mod changes all that, but you don't need the barriers in the original game.

 

[Jakisthe]

"Damage" or "one hit kill" type status effects. Damage stuff like poisons will do mixroscopic amounts of damage, whereas something like "death" or "eject" or whatever will miss on anything it'd be useful on.

 

[Crossing Eden]

One of the things XIII did right was make them all useful.

Click to shrink...

Some would say literally too useful because with debuffs and buffs abuse I can confirm that you can literally kill the final boss in less than a minute on your first try.

 

[Rotobit]

I'm playing as a Black Mage in FFXIV right now and I feel like only 2 Blizzard spells are actually worthwhile, since you'd typically want to swap back to cycling fire pretty quickly or re-up the thunder debuff. I'll admit I could be missing the "efficient" cycle though.

In the single player games though I'd say I barely touched Reflect since having access to cure spells was too much of a handy thing to sacrifice. It's very fun in the games where you can attack your own Reflected party members and deal double damage on the enemy, though. And yeah the gravity spells come too late to really matter (and tend to miss most bosses IIRC)

Steal is fine in the games that give you a bit more info on the percentage and if the enemy is even holding anything. Upgrading it to Mug is nice, too.

 

[PBalfredo]

Death. It costs too much to use on normal enemies and most bosses are immune to it.

Click to shrink...

Life is lowkey the better istadeath spell than Death.

 

[Andres]

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Level_5_Death

Once I obtain it, I never really think about using it.

 

[Spence]

A bigger issue is all the spells that you don't want to waste mana on in normal fights but which bosses are immune to making them worthless.

 

[TheShampion]

Poison is something I never used. It always felt like a waste. I'd use Bio on occasion though.

 

[Crossing Eden]

It's crazy how good magic feels to use in KH vs. FF tbh. The weirdest design decision was making FFXV's spells essentially nukes that also stunned your party who you have no control over when it comes to positioning.

 

[ArkhamFantasy]

Alot of JRPGs are really bad about normal battles just needing simple attack/offensive magic with the occasional cure and don't require buffs or debuffs, and then the bosses are usually immune to 95-100% of debuffs and it won't tell you which one's will work and which won't.

Very frustrating.

 

[plow]

Being serious, in FF6-10, buffs weren't that effective so I often didn't need to use them. Since XI that's not been the case to be fair

Click to shrink...

What? Hastega was the shit in FFX. Also that Angel buff that revived you as soon as you died.

As for the question:

FF7: Any Buffs/Debuffs
FF10: Any debuff that isn't slow
FF12: Espers. Seriously they were fun to get, but useless af.
FF15: Can't recall using any magic

 

[Bookkoo]

I wanted to use Blue Magic on this play though of FFIX until it missed every effing time

 

[super-famicom]

FFVI: I never use any of Cyan's sword techs past level 4, and 99% of the time I just use his level 1. Who has time to charge it up to the highest level, when I can just have Relm cast Ultima every turn for 1MP?

 

[Mexen]

They are near mandatory in FFXII endgame no?

Click to shrink...

I have to agree. With Gambit system, my party members were constantly targeting one another even before endgame.

 

[antitrop]

I'm playing as a Black Mage in FFXIV right now and I feel like only 2 Blizzard spells are actually worthwhile, since you'd typically want to swap back to cycling fire pretty quickly or re-up the thunder debuff. I'll admit I could be missing the "efficient" cycle though.

Click to shrink...

I can relate, I just started playing 14 with a black mage a few weeks ago and last night I was re-arranging my spells and I just don't see a need for Blizzard 2, lol.

I'm only level 64, but Blizzard 3, then Blizzard 4, then Fire 3, and a bunch of Fire 4s until you run out of MP and go back to Blizzard 3 seems good enough for now. I'm still not even sure if the Thunder spells are worth the cast time, Fire 4 is hitting for like 10K+ damage and Thunder 3 takes like 25 seconds to do a few thousand points.

 

[Haze]

They are near mandatory in FFXII endgame no?

Click to shrink...

Yeah good luck beating some of the end-game bosses without bubble, decoy, etc

 

[Eppcetera]

I almost never use any spells that cause status ailments, like Poison, Death, etc., since they never work on enemies against whom the spells would be useful. I don't use buff or debuff spells that often, either, although there are games in the series where these types of spells are at least useful or necessary (i.e., I used buffs all the time in Final Fantasy XII). The status ailment inflecting spells, though, are almost always garbage in Final Fantasy, as is the case in so many RPGs.

 

[Zaeia]

I always feel like in FF games, by the time mage-types start getting Gravity spells (Gravity/Demi, Gravija, etc), there are always better damage options available. Almost no need for percentage based damage.

Click to shrink...

I always thought those spells became valuable because then you could use them on weaker enemies if you needed to set up characters you didn't level to gain exp by kill, or for farming purposes with steal.

 

[fourfourfun]

In playing World Of Final Fantasy, I found myself in setups with loads of skills I wouldn't normally use. Became quite big on Doom for some weighty enemies.

On the Psone games, it was quicker to kill something than status it. FFVII was nearly to the point where pure physical attacks could get you through.

 

[saenima]

In Final Fantasy games i generally only use debuffs on bosses or when you get the target all variety. Otherwise they're useless and/or tedious.

 

[Sgt. Demblant]

That's why the FF5 Four Job Fiesta is so damn good. It forced me to discover how useful so many jobs and the spells associated with them are.
Geomancer for life.

 

[Kazuhira]

Poison,confusion,blind and all that kind of spells,they are useful in specific moments and bosses but for 90% of the game it's a waste of turns.
Wel,except on XV,poison is op as fuck in that game.