Physical vs Magic attacks?

[Lazerface]

When it's come to playing any Final Fantasy game have you ever had a preference to use Magic attacks or physical attacks? Especially when it came to FFVI through FFVIII when desperation attacks and Limit breaks came into the equation. I honestly think depending on the characters Limit break or desperation attack they can be potentially stronger than some of the strongest magic attacks. Kinda like asking who'd win a fight a Black Mage or a Monk? But that aside, what is your preference?

[Ayen]

Depends on the game. In FFVII I found magic attacks to be extremely helpful, and preferred them to physical attacks. VIII was the polar opposite of that.

[Formalhaut]

FFVIII made magic attacks mostly useless (outside of junctions, of course), and later games also give magic rather dubious distinctions. FFX was pretty good though. Lulu could be your most powerful damage dealer, alongside Auron, with her ability to target elemental weaknesses, though of course, by endgame, Quick Hit is the best way to deal damage and items to heal.

In FFXII, magic was useful enough for support and damage, but due to the way magic queued up in the field, using more powerful spells resulted in lots of lag. Physical attacks were just way more efficient.

Really, in games where magic is useful, it's either mostly for a support role or loses usefulness towards the end where you get incredibly powerful weapons. I still love using magic though, and that won't stop me using it.

[Pumpkin]

Generally prefer magic

[Lazerface]

Depends on the game. In FFVII I found magic attacks to be extremely helpful, and preferred them to physical attacks. VIII was the polar opposite of that.
Yeah especially in FFVII if you have Knights of the Round or Flare then it'd be no sweat to take down Sephiroth but I will say that usually enemies that are resistant against magic are not immune to physicals and vice versa. I think in more Final Fantasy games I found more enemies being immune to magic attacks since a lot deal elemental damage and physical attacks don't really deal elemental. But I quote one person saying magic in FFVI being overpowered.

[Lazerface]

Oh yeah. Off topic but the FFXII International zodiac job system was a bit inaccurate. I don't see Capricorn as a black mage. Seems like it'd be suited to a physical job. woop woop woop woop. Overall in the series I usually take physical attacks.

[Jessweeee♪]

I only use attacking magic in games where it's useful. Most of the time it's only when an enemy has an elemental weakness, but FFX was cool because Lulu usually had just enough MP between save points to use magic every turn. Magic classes in FFXIV are pretty amazing too. Black Mage for life :love:

[Lazerface]

I only use attacking magic in games where it's useful. Most of the time it's only when an enemy has an elemental weakness, but FFX was cool because Lulu usually had just enough MP between save points to use magic every turn. Magic classes in FFXIV are pretty amazing too. Black Mage for life :love:
Oh, may I ask which Final Fantasy games do you find Magic to be most useful in? From personal experience I would say FFV and FFVI.

[Galuf]

im just going to say that in IX Physical attacks do massive compared to magical late game. but thats mostly since you dont get lvl 3 spells til like 3 quarters in disc 3

[Jessweeee♪]

I only use attacking magic in games where it's useful. Most of the time it's only when an enemy has an elemental weakness, but FFX was cool because Lulu usually had just enough MP between save points to use magic every turn. Magic classes in FFXIV are pretty amazing too. Black Mage for life :love:
Oh, may I ask which Final Fantasy games do you find Magic to be most useful in? From personal experience I would say FFV and FFVI.

FFX probably had the least amount of useless attack spells, followed by FFVIII. FFVIII gets a special mention for actually having useful status ailment inflicting magic. Enough enemies were vulnerable to make it worthwhile and there were some pretty neat combinations you could do. Angel Wing is pretty awesome too. It doesn't actually consume Rinoa's stock so her stats are unaffected and her spell power is multiplied by five (even for Demi, so it can potentially be a 1-hit kill). Also, she's immune to confuse, silence, and berserk. Junction so her magic stat is 255, keep only the most powerful attack magic in her stock and she's unstoppable. The only thing is as cool as it all is, it's just as effective to have everyone just do regular attacks, junction to status-attack/element-attack or abuse Duel/Shot so you don't need to ever cast magic in battle.

I just decided to play FFVIII again :v

[Lazerface]

I only use attacking magic in games where it's useful. Most of the time it's only when an enemy has an elemental weakness, but FFX was cool because Lulu usually had just enough MP between save points to use magic every turn. Magic classes in FFXIV are pretty amazing too. Black Mage for life :love:
Oh, may I ask which Final Fantasy games do you find Magic to be most useful in? From personal experience I would say FFV and FFVI.

FFX probably had the least amount of useless attack spells, followed by FFVIII. FFVIII gets a special mention for actually having useful status ailment inflicting magic. Enough enemies were vulnerable to make it worthwhile and there were some pretty neat combinations you could do. Angel Wing is pretty awesome too. It doesn't actually consume Rinoa's stock so her stats are unaffected and her spell power is multiplied by five (even for Demi, so it can potentially be a 1-hit kill). Also, she's immune to confuse, silence, and berserk. Junction so her magic stat is 255, keep only the most powerful attack magic in her stock and she's unstoppable. The only thing is as cool as it all is, it's just as effective to have everyone just do regular attacks, junction to status-attack/element-attack or abuse Duel/Shot so you don't need to ever cast magic in battle.

I just decided to play FFVIII again :v
Ahh I liked FFVIII. The only thing I couldn't really like about it was the story. It got confusing half in but I caught on, though that wasn't the reason why I didn't like that story. It was Rinoa and Squall's relationship feeling like it was the main thing of the entire FFVIII story. It just felt to lovey dovey (I couldn't find a better way to say it lol) and I'm not really into love stories unless it was really meant to be a love story. But other than that I liked FFVIII, Junctioning was complicated at first but I caught on. But along with Magic I think Guardians also get a good mention here since they rely on magic, but I don't like spamming em too much.

[VeloZer0]

Given that:
a) I really like swords and to a lesser extent other weapons
b) I tend to favour a very conservative approach with resource management

it tends to gravitate towards physical rather strongly.

[Lazerface]

The good thing about Magic is it can strike multiple opponents all at one time and possibly end the fight faster.

[Shiva95]

It depends of the characters because some are better with Magic and some are better with Physical attacks, but I usually prefer Magic.

[Lazerface]

It depends of the characters because some are better with Magic and some are better with Physical attacks, but I usually prefer Magic.
Yeah. It might also depend on the game too. In some of the Final Fantasy games Magic can be overpowered or underpowered. But in the case of FFIII physical attacks had magic outclassed by the end of the game against Cloud of Darkness. Though it did have it's uses against one of her tentacles since one was vulnerable against magic attacks so at that point I threw a bunch of Black Magic and some offensive white magic against it. And afterwards I opened up a can if whoop ass on the body with shurikens and Luneth as ninja using dual wield and Arc as my Black Belt hitting it with boost enhanced physical attacks. In the case of FFIV I think Magic got a lot more power than physicals.

[metagloria]

Use MP or don't use MP?

Don't use MP.

Not strong enough without MP?

Level up!

[Depression Moon]

Use MP or don't use MP?

Don't use MP.

Not strong enough without MP?

Level up!

I don't see how this is plausible with characters like Yuna, Vivi, and Rydia.

[metagloria]

Use MP or don't use MP?

Don't use MP.

Not strong enough without MP?

Level up!

I don't see how this is plausible with characters like Yuna, Vivi, and Rydia.

Defend, or use weak physical attacks while everyone else does all the work. : )

My philosophy with MP (and items) is: Never use them, because you might need them later!

"But is it ever later?"

Yes. The final boss battle.

[Pumpkin]

But considering MP restores at Inns just like HP, isn't it a wasted resource if you don't use it, especially when just grinding or whatever? I have very very rarely run out of HP on my mages, like Vivi and Lulu

[Depression Moon]

For me it depends on the game and character. In games where people have specific classes I play according to the class. In games with switchable job classes I keep a balance between magic and physical users unless a specific boss or dungeon calls for something different. In VII I think I went almost all physical with the occasional summon, but I had Aeris act as a white mage and tried to make Cait Sith a blue mage, but it was difficult and with blue mages I most of the time just end up using their physical attacks majority of the time. In VIII just about everyone was physical. I had Selphie and Rinoa as my magic casters though. Selphie seems to be pretty weak in physical attacks.

[Loony BoB]

If I could get away with physical attacks, I'd opt for physical attacks. In most FF's (the obvious exception that springs to mind being FFXIII, where MP doesn't exist), MP is consumable and physical attacks are not and I hate running out of MP, bop pow bam worked for me just fine.

The exception to this is, of course, FFXIII where magic did not consume MP and magic/physical attacks were pretty well balanced because of this, just with different general effects.

[Depression Moon]

Which FFs are physical attacks consumable? Pokemon is the only RPG where I've found that to be true.

[Formalhaut]

I hardly ever used Auron's various breaks, because they all cost MP and he really doesn't have much to be playing around with.

[Lazerface]

For me it depends on the game and character. In games where people have specific classes I play according to the class. In games with switchable job classes I keep a balance between magic and physical users unless a specific boss or dungeon calls for something different. In VII I think I went almost all physical with the occasional summon, but I had Aeris act as a white mage and tried to make Cait Sith a blue mage, but it was difficult and with blue mages I most of the time just end up using their physical attacks majority of the time. In VIII just about everyone was physical. I had Selphie and Rinoa as my magic casters though. Selphie seems to be pretty weak in physical attacks.
I've found that to be somewhat true in some of the Final Fantasy games after FFVI. Especially when limit breaks and desperation attacks were thrown into the equation and rendered them just as good to use than magic but they took a long time to charge or they'd only work when you're on your last sliver of health. Now as for the best physical attacks on her I will say it has to be some of the monks abilities and Cloud's Omnislash. Sabin when he uses Phantom rush is straight up overpowered on the highest levels and Tifa when she uses all of her limit breaks plus Final Heaven. Overall physical is more powerful but it's time consuming and only strikes one enemy at a time. Unless that Monk is using kick like in FFV.

[Lazerface]

One thing I didn't get was FFXII International zodiac job system. I liked it, but I felt it was inaccurate.

[Loony BoB]

Which FFs are physical attacks consumable? Pokemon is the only RPG where I've found that to be true.
Fixed my post, I saw how it probably made you think that's what I meant. xD

[Lazerface]

If I wanted to say which would one up the other then I should look at FFVI and compare the damage from Sabin's Phantom Rush to Ultima and Omnislash to Ultima and Flare and I'll leave summons out of that. From there I'd see which would do the most damage in the long run then. Though you could hit many more times with physicals in a combo sort of way.

[Bubba]

It would obviously depend on the enemy you face as to which to use. If I had a preference though, I much prefer physical attacks. I love overpowering enemies with sheer force, especially when it doesn't use MP or anything.

[Dat Matt]

As said before, it depends on the game. I tend to favor magic users, however

For example, in FFXIV I play mages/ranged because I like distance.
In FFIX, the physical attackers physically attack, magic users use magic attacks
In FFVII and FFXIII where any character can fill any role, they mostly physically attack is it's more hassle for them to go into magic which is ususally sub-optimal to hitting them with a large blunt object.