About to rip my eyes out (Chapter 10 spoilers)

[Spawn of Sephiroth]

Okay, so I'm at the Cid Raines fight in Ch. 10. I can't beat this guy. I follow everything that this horrible strategy guide tells me to do. Its not working. I died like twice the whole game so far until I fought him. Any extra tips outside the strategy guide that could help me finish this jerk off?

[Shattered Dreamer]

I just beat him a couple of hours ago after him bitch slapping me around the place 5 or 6 times. The 2 key roles to use in beating him are the Sentinel & the Saboteur. With the Sentinel's Provoke, Challenge & Mediguard abilities Cid will focus all his attacking on your Sentinel all you gotta do is heal them & keep them alive.

Then the Saboteur is also very important. The abilities Imperil, Slow, Poison, Deprotect & Deshell are very handy for evening the odds a little but the most important of all is Dispel given Cid casts Haste, Protect, Shell & Vigilance on himself & if you can't get rid of those buffs he becomes very hard to kill.

After that you gotta just hit him with everything you got to get that stagger bar filled!

The medic, commando, medic paradigm is also very helpful to heal fast & to keep the stagger meter up whilst he is in Guard.

[FFIX Choco Boy]

I never got to stagger him, and I just finished the fight for the 2nd time. I used Lightning, Fang, and Vanille and kept the Com/Sen/Med or Com/Sen/Rav para up while he was attacking, and when he guards I switched to Com/Sab/Sab to get his buffs off then hopefully slap slow and deprotect on him. It's really slow going, but I still beat the recommended time by 3 min. If you're really well developed on the crystarium though you could use Rav/Com/Rav with this character setup and speed up the kill a bit. And just a little friendly advice: Syns are overrated if you were using one.

[VeloZer0]

I beat him first time using just RAV/COM/MED. Only time I ever changed paradigms was to go RAV/RAV/RAV to build up the chain gauge. I had to use Renew once when he hit me with some big attack, but he was dead before I could even stagger him.

[eestlinc]

Use sentinel. This is one of the most enjoyable boss fights (at least so far for me, I am in Chap. 11 after Vanille's Eidolon battle).

[Shadowdust]

I just focused on switching between Ravager/Commando/Saboteur and Ravager/Commando/Ravager for my offensive side of the strategy. For the defensive side, I used Medic/Sentinel/Medic and Ravager/Commando/Medic. I chose Lightning, Fang, and Vanille for these roles. Using that combination helped me survive the battle with relative ease.

[Loony BoB]

I think (it's been a while) I used MED/SYN/SEN for defensive and COM/RAV/SAB for offensive. It was a long battle... but after five or so deaths, I just decided to be patient. I think being patient was hugely key to this battle, too. The last two times I died it was due to me pushing the characters too far instead of playing it safe when it came to health bars.

[Wolf Kanno]

Start the battle with SEN/SAB/SYN and simply buff/debuff what needs to be done. Then alternate between RAV/RAV/RAV, SEN/COM/RAV, and SEN/MED/COM when your sentinel starts taking too much damage or Cid's attacks start nailing other weaker characters.

Once you break the SOB switch to RAV/COM/COM and be sure to time your attacks so Cid is left in the air constantly and is taking constant damage. Its pretty easy to max his stagger gauge and basically murder the SOB, it just takes some time to get the rhythm of the earlier part of the fight and like BoB said it involves patience. You mostly need to just make proper use of Sentinel Class. It should be a constant use until you stagger him.

[Future Esthar]

I beat him without using SAB

[Karifean]

I beat him without using SAB

ditto. I usually put Lightning, Sazh and Snow into my party = no SAB. I guess I just like doing extreme damage (Lightning), being able to Haste my party (Sazh) and having a verrry nice Sentinel (Snow, prefer him over Fang as Sentinel).

All I actually did was staying in COM RAV RAV mode to build up stagger and heal with MED COM SEN when lower on HP. I hardly bothered to buff myself up ever since I found out his special attack in the second phase dispells the party and Cid himself. I died once, but I didn't think the battle was really hard.

[No.78]

Just a bit of advice, strategy guides aren't always law.

It could just be that you're underlevelled, too. The Ark is a great place to train so take advantage of it. You can't go back.