This was something I didn't understand when I got some final weapons in FF7 as a kid. Why am I doing only 500 damage at level 70 with the Ultima Weapon? I guess the enemies are getting really tough! In actuality, there was a unique damage formula built in to each ultimate weapon. In the case of Cloud and Cait Siths' weapon, the amount of damage you could do was proportionate to what percentage of HP you were at. At full health you did regular damage, and if you had less HP, you were doing less damage, down to almost nothing if you were near death. Cramping my fucking style, there, Ultima Weapon.
For Red XIII and Cid, your damage was proportionate to your percentage of MP, making them crappy if you were planning on using them as dual melee wizard characters. Tifa was also crippled as a melee character: Her damage was proportionate to the percentage of her Limit Guage. Her damage would be all over the place. Barret's damage depended on how much AP his materia had, meaning he sucks without materia that might affect his stats. Vincent was the worst. Just make him your wizard and give him Flash. Don't even ask. Just don't even ask. Score 10,000 kills. Nope. Fuck no. You fucking fuck.
This is why I use Yuffie. Her final weapon, the Conformer, is the best. Besides having the long range benefit, the unique formula for her damage was that it used the level of her enemy as a multiplier. All weapons used the level of the user as a multiplier for damage, but Yuffie's Conformer conformed to her enemies level instead. That was the gimmick. It's the most reliable and most consistent. This is also the only weapon in the game to use a regular damage formula when using the Morph command.
The other reason why the final weapons suck in FF7, no AP growth. I guess the designers didn't want me using these weapons except for boss battles. With a crippling feature like that, you will almost never use these weapons outside of boss battles. You need to get AP. You WANT to get AP. Using final weapons is a waste of AP.
Here's how you solve the problem:
- Use Yuffie for melee. Farm Power Sources (very easy to do).
- Cloud is a wizard now. Deal with it.
- Cait Sith is a wizard. You probably didn't use him anyway.
- Red XIII and Cid are either melee fighters or wizards, not both. Cid is good at melee and bad at magic so whateves, but Red XIII had potential to be both. I had a childhood friend who used them both, go figure.
- Get used to knowing that you're wasting some of your best materia on Barret that might mess with his attack, vitality, and HP stats.
- Vincent is wasted as a wizard since his specialty is transforming into a 2 trick berserk monster, so build him around his limits breaks.
- Give Tifa a mastered cover Materia and stack up to 8 counter materias on her. Never use her limit breaks. Have her defend every turn. Or giver her the Fury Ring so she's always in berserk.
- Aeris is dead.
