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With all the status affects and status changes around in the Final Fantasy worlds, I've been curious about how many people actually use them and find them useful in any way. Except for Final Fantasy Tactics, I almost never use status changing spells/effects, unless it happens to be on a weapon I'm using or is a side-effect from a useful spell.

Share your opinion!

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--sbq92 <><

Most of the time status changing spells/weapons/etc. are fairly useless, but their are some exceptions such as

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using Hades/Stop on Ruby Weapon in FF VII; attaching the Contain Materia to one of your characters weapons in FF VII, junctioning status effect spells in FF VIII

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Don't worry, I'm not going to garrote you.

from one POV, rather useless to me. theres not much benefit in any attacking ones, and the helpful ones just give a mild boost.

but from another POV, they're verry effective at thier role: annoying you. we've all been angered by Poison, stop, or something affecting our characters. Thusly, in any online FF,

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

The only one I find useful is Haste.

This post has been edited by Zephir on 11th June 2004 17:36

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~Status Report~

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I rarely use status problems.
the only time I needed to use them if I needed to.
like stop on Ruby, Sleep on some pokemon inorder to catch them, Zombie to make curing spells hurt the enemy instead of healling them, and a few others.
but the status I'll ever used alot is in pokemon where I use a combo with a Swords dance and a hyper beam to cause heavy damage.
a charged up hyper beam or 2 or 3 can be deadly and powerful!


This post has been edited by Mewmon on 11th June 2004 21:18

I find somehat effective, mainly I use time magic-like spelsl alot (i.e., haste, slow), that is just about it.

They're useful. But I don't use them that often.
The most useful are the auto- ones in FFVIII and FFIX.
Second goes to FFIV. Those Jelly things that can't be hurt by attacking can be if you turn them into toads. Status Ailments are extremely useful if you use Edward's harps right.

Edit

Mostly, though, it depends on the game

This post has been edited by Dark Paladin on 11th June 2004 23:25

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"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

I find it somewhat effective... it doesn't work that ofeten... I really have the most trouble with stop. Poison usually works ok but spells like stop don't work for crap, and even if they do work on the creature you're fighting you have to cast it multiple times before you actually hit them.

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles

In some games they were, sometimes not. In FFX, status effects were brutally powerful especially poison. A lot of bosses were not immune to poison.

In other FFs, they were not as good. FF6 had Vanish, which allowed for degenerate plays. FF7 had Stop Effects which, were good. Other FF games had Zombie, which can be good under certain circumstances.

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It's more than a game, it's a religion.

Get the pulp beaten out of you to beat the pulp out of enemies.
-Blue Mage's Oath

IMO, battles never seem to last long enough for status effects to be useful, and the ones that do last a long time are the boss fights and they are almost always immune to most if not all bad status. I will occasionally use Haste, Slow, Protect, Shell, Reflect, etc. Those kinds of spells, if necessary, but for the most part, I just wait for the item or ability that gives me those for free (Guard Ring, Marvel Shoes, Auto-Regen). As for the negative status being effective on your own characters, I think it seems worse because a) it's your own guys, and the effects often last longer than just the battle.

In FFT, however, the battles generally last pretty long, so status effects on enemies can work quite well. Actually, I find status effects in FFT almost reverse of normal FF games, usefulness-wise. Since status effects don't last after battle, you don't have to worry as much about your own guys being poisoned or silenced or darknessed.

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--sbq92 <><

In FF X bio was really effective in the battles against

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Maestor Seymour

While they are effective in some games like FFX they are a joke in others. For instance slow, poison, or break spells rarely worked in games like FFIV, FFV, and FFVI (the good games by the way). I find them useless and even when they do work they are still not as good as good ole fighting.

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It's not that completely useless.... In ffvi , posion and such were horros, and in ffxi, everything was bad i thouht it was quite effective :/

I never found status effect spells to be very useful. I think they would be a lot better if you could cast one status effect spell without taking up a turn. Or perhaps there could be a variety of attacks that inflict status ailments to opponents. This would add a new element of strategy that's actually worth taking advantage of. Otherwise it's simply not worth consuming a whole turn, because the battles are usually very short.

The only time I've ever found status ailments to be very useful is when having 1 vs 1 battles via the Gameboy link cable in Pokemon. Each battle is long and challenging. Every enemy Pokemon is significant and takes a long time to kill (faint), so by screwing them up you can gain a good advantage. FF battles are typically short and easy. If you could have 1 vs 1 battles in an FF game with two real people, suddenly those status ailment spells would become very useful. You'd always be using them. Long hard battles with top notch AI would also warrant the use of these spells. FF games are so story driven though, and people don't want long battles.

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FFXI (Siren server)
Tauu the Windurstian Tarutaru!
White Mage & Paladin

Really depends on the game, and the circumstances. In FF8, status effects were very easy to use (junctioning) and could really dessimate some enemies. In FF7, I remember that frog song was a very common use for me early on in the game. Also, in most games Bad Breath is outstanding. Other than that though, a placed silence here, or random sleep there just seems like a waste of a turn for me. FF8 was the only time I really used them extensively.


Oh, and if your including defensive status effects, I found haste (hastega in FFX!), protect/shell fairly useful AKA Big Guard. What a great blue magic spell.

This post has been edited by Tidu-who on 14th June 2004 02:37

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And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

Depends on the game. In FFTA, I had my Time Mage constantly running around casting Haste/Slow/Stop on me/the baddies, and my Alchemist's Bio attack and Blue Mage's Bad Breath spell were great. Most of the time, though, status effects - especially the negative ones - seem to work a heck of a lot better on your party than they do on the enemy.

I voted extremely effective, but yes I agree with the majority that it depends on the game. Nonetheless, I think just about every FF game has some great status affects.

FF5 had some Blue Magic spell that lowered enemies' levels. Vanish worked well in FF6. FF7 had Hades as both a great summon and a status addition to your weapon with Added Effect Materia. FF8 had the spell Pain that inflicted tons of ailments on a single target, and Doomtrain which totally rocked the statuses. FF9 new affects, and FFX and FFX2 had some butt kicking poison as mentioned by you guys.

Time spells (haste/slow/stop) have always been awesome. The reason they were extra uber in FFX is that the game didn't have Active Time Battle. It didn't take any extra game-time to search through your spells and decide on what to do while monsters are whooping you. In FFX, you're presented with a group of enemies, you take your time deciding that you want to caste Haste/Hastega and/or Slow/Slowga, and you instantly see that you now have twice the amount of turns as your enemies. In ATB FF's, you might waste your turns while deciding that, and the battle goes the same anyway. Since it is possible to simply select Time spells quickly in ATB FF's, I think Time is the best status affect altogether, so because of Time alone we have an ultra affective status technique in most FF games.

In short, Time really clinches my choice in the poll.

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Get me off this Disciplinary Committee so I can play any FF except for FF8!!!

Couldnt live without 'em. I use status-type spells more than regular, in ALL ff games.

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For me it really depends on the game. Aside from in 7 and8, I don't think i ever used status effects other than haste, but in 7 and 8, you can build them into your weapons.

put 100 drains to status-attack on a FF8 character with counter and high attack, and you are invincible. Give another character sleep, and wth timeing, the entire game becomes cake. In 7 and 8, status effects rule. In the others, not so much.

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As with most games, most Status effects seem to work pathetically or not at all when I use them, often and flawlessly when a bad guy uses them. Bleh.

In FF Tactics, I ended up using status attacks as a result of them being a bonus to a characters special attacks (Holy Sword, Byblos), and they worked okay. Otherwise, positive status I would obtain via equipment. The Bard and Dancer usually got something to work on someone, but it rarely ever helped that much.

In FF1, I mainly used haste on either my warrior/knight or monk/master, and that worked wonders.

So, in playing, I don't realy use status effects cuz they generally don't seem to help me. Plus, its more honorable to beat the snot out of someone without making them weaker than you first. Yep. So much better to have four Red Chocobos surround your opponent and Choco-Meteor him to death before he even gets the chance to move! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

This post has been edited by sharkerbob on 3rd July 2004 20:39

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