Magic Materia suck

[Raistlin]

Enemy Skills beat the hell out of magic materia. And Ultima is the crappiest spell in the game.

Discuss.

[-N-]

Ultima > Fire. Therefore, it can't be the crappiest spell.

But it is pretty worthless. I prefer the Contain magics, m'self.

E. Skill > Magic, but that doesn't make Magic worthless. Plus, casting Contain magic is freaking cool.

Is there an E. Skill that revives members? I don't think so. Therefore, Life Magic is useful. And don't give me bullshit about how you're so good you don't need to cast Life, because that's borderline lame.

[Jolts]

The E. Skill Angel Whisper revives a downed ally to maximum HP. It even works if they're not KOed, and it removes most, if not all, status ailments. It only works on one target though.

[Linus J]

contain+added effect is basicly what I use magic materia for.

[BG-57]

Advantages of E-skills:

All spells are on one materia; magic materia are on more than twenty materia (until you get master materia).

Many of the best E-skills affect all allies and opponents. Magic materia has to be paired with All.

Trine is better than Bolt.

Beta is better than Fire.

White Wind is very useful.

Big Guard combines the effects of Haste, Barrier and MBarrier.


Disadvantages of E-skills:

Life2 with All is better than Angel Whisper.

Demi3 with All works more often than Level 4 Suicide.

E-skills do not include Regen.


Bottom line: I use both, but as the game progressed I shifted away from Magic materia more toward E-skills.

[Ultima Shadow]

Cure magic=very usefull.
Barrier magic=very usefull.
Time magic= very usefull.
Life= very usefull.
Contain= good.
Comet=good.
...most of the other magic materias are crap.

[Jolts]

Life2 with All is better than Angel Whisper.

Not necessarily. Life2 won't work on living allies, and it won't cure any statuses, other than KO.


Demi3 with All works more often than Level 4 Suicide.

Laser is the same as Demi2, and a lot less costly. It just might take a little longer to get the desired effect.

White Wind sucks if all your characters are at critical health (yellow), and you can't get Angel Whisper until the final dungeon (heaven forbid I remember the name to something like that :rolleyes2 ). Big Guard costs too much at first. Flamethrower is never any good. Matra Magic is helpful at low levels, but becomes obsolete against stronger enemies. Laser means instant death to anything that is weak to gravity (unless it has more than 9999 HP, but I don't think any gravity weak creatures do).

P.S. For those of you who might not know, L4 Suicide works on the Ghost Ship. Very handy when getting that Guidebook before he tosses your morpher ;).

[SeeDRankLou]

Enemy Skills beat the hell out of magic materia. And Ultima is the crappiest spell in the game.

Discuss.

Enemy Skills: Yes, that is rather true. But by the time you can get enough enemy skills to not use magic materia at all, and by the time you can get a set of three or four, you're in the later part of disc 2, which kind of sucks. So magic materia has it's place, but I personally use the Enemy Skills instead of magic materia as soon as I have a good arsenal of them.

Ultima: The only cool Ultima spell that has ever existed is the one from FFIX.

[Jolts]

Ultima is in FFIX? I'm sorry, but it's been forever since I've played that game :lol:. Why do you say it's the coolest?

[Raistlin]

Ultima > Fire. Therefore, it can't be the crappiest spell.

But it is pretty worthless. I prefer the Contain magics, m'self.

E. Skill > Magic, but that doesn't make Magic worthless. Plus, casting Contain magic is freaking cool.

Is there an E. Skill that revives members? I don't think so. Therefore, Life Magic is useful. And don't give me bullshit about how you're so good you don't need to cast Life, because that's borderline lame.
First off, please don't put words in my mouth, because that IS lame.

And no, Ultima is not better than Fire, because it uses 4587435890 times the MP. I would rather have a Fire materia equipped than Ultima. Because Fire may have some uses if you want to do minor damage, and doesn't cost a whole lot of MP. Ultima causes crap damage, and uses a ton of MP. Remember how useful Trine is in disc 1? It's doesn't cause a whole lot of damage, but it only costs 10 MP.

Enemy Skills kick the hell out of Magic. Trine, Big Guard, White Wind, Magic Breath, White Wind, and Pandora's Box effectively null and void any use for all magic materia with the exceptions of Destruct, Revive and Contain. Well, and Shield and Seal, but who uses those anyway?

The Enemy Skill Magic Breath does similar damage(maybe slightly less) as Ultima, costs half the MP, and is available earlier in the game. What's not to like? Ultima is so anti-climatic to get. I pity the poor sod who didn't stop the train and actually paid for that piece of crap.

Also, you could easily live without the Revive materia once you get the Phoenix materia. How often exactly do you die in battle, anyway? But anyway, so Revive might be a worthwhile magic materia to have. So there's three half-decent ones(Revive, Destruct, and Contain). The rest suck. And Enemy Skills rock.

[Jolts]

Trine costs 20MP.

[SeeDRankLou]

Ultima is in FFIX? I'm sorry, but it's been forever since I've played that game :lol:. Why do you say it's the coolest?
The Ultima spell has always been this anti-climatic blast of green energy, and it's been that way since I can recall, too many FF games. I mean it's not like Fire, where you would expect some kind of flame in the spell, it can be whatever they want it to be, but it's always a blast of green energy, green, why green? And Ultima just has the connotation of being this ultra-super-mega-kill anything-powerful ability, and the blast of green energy just doesn't do it for me. In FFIX however, Ultima is Kuja's trance attack. So he performs Ultima, and I'm happy to see the color change to red. Anway, so these streams of red energy just blast out of Kuja and just start destroying everything. The blast is so powerful he destroys the entire planet of Terra, now that's a ultra-super-mega-kill anything-powerful ability if there ever was one. That's why I like it.

[Ultima Shadow]

Well, in FFVI Ultima was blue or something...
Anyway, Raistlin... the time magic Haste and the berrier spells are also usefull... until you get Big Guard.
Also, Cure can be usefull at times.

[Raistlin]

Well, in FFVI Ultima was blue or something...
Anyway, Raistlin... the time magic Haste and the berrier spells are also usefull... until you get Big Guard.
The only thing being that you can get Big Guard before either Time or Barrier.


Trine costs 20MP.
Whatever. I haven't played in years. :P
The point being it doesn't cost much MP at all.


Also, Cure can be usefull at times.
Yeah, before you get White Wind or decent healing items, both of which come early in disc 1.

[Ultima Shadow]

The only thing being that you can get Big Guard before either Time or Barrier.

Oh, yea... I forgot! But where on disc1 do you get White Wind?

[Raistlin]

You can get it from those winged monsters outside of Fort Condor. I'm horrible with names; someone help me out here.

So you can get it pretty early in disc 1.

[Ouch!]

Zemlezets or something like that have white wind.

Simply put, I agree with Raistlin. I still use other materia as well, however.

[Dragonfire]

get Beta and White Wind early in Disc 1 and you're set for quite awhile.

[mr. anderson]

yeah enemy skills are way better than magic materia because enemy skills dont lowers stats. on my new file i didnt pick up the enemy skill right after you meet red xii so i dont know where to get one :cry:

[Raistlin]

yeah enemy skills are way better than magic materia because enemy skills dont lowers stats. on my new file i didnt pick up the enemy skill right after you meet red xii so i dont know where to get one :cry:
There's four Enemy Skill materia in the game, and at least two of them are available as soon as disc 1, and at least one of them as late as disc 3. So don't worry about it.

[Trumpet Thief]

choas: Really, I use both of them. I never really chose one over the other, but used Enemy Skill more frequently 'cause some very useful abilities came out quite a low MP cost.

Rubedo: It also felt fun and rewarding to use Enemy Skill. Magic felt rather boring really.

[Ouch!]

Four? I can only think of three. The one after the boss in the Shinra Lab, the one in the house on the right side of the City of Ancients and then the one you get for talking to the green chocobo at the Chocobo Sage's house on the northern continent. Where's the fourth?

[Raistlin]

I'm pretty sure there's four. *thinks*

Isn't there one in Junon? *goes to look it up*

EDIT: Yep. There's one in the Junon shops that you first go by dressed up as an MP.

[Storm]

Enemy Skills beat the hell out of magic materia. And Ultima is the crappiest spell in the game.

Discuss.
Casting Ultima played a key role in my single defeat of the Emerald Weapon (I didn't have Knights of the Round). Also, with Magic Materia you can counterattack. I'm not sure if you can do this with the Enemy Skill Materia. However, I will agree the Enemy Skill Materia has much more useful spells.

[Dragonfire]

Ultima + Quadra Magic.... poor man's KotR

[Storm]

Ultima + Quadra Magic.... poor man's KotR

Ultima+Quadra Magic=Not going through the hell of breeding Chocobos

[Dragonfire]

yeah chocobo breeding is hell.....

[Raistlin]

But why Ultima? Bahamut ZERO is more powerful and only costs 50 more MP. Use that with Quadra Magic.



Ultima+Quadra Magic=Not going through the hell of breeding Chocobos
Um...did you cheat to get Quadra Magic then?

[Jolts]

Chocobo breeding isn't hell, just takes time and patience.
I started breeding two days ago, and last night, I got my gold :D.

Little tip, Sylkis Greens boost all stats, yes, but so do Tantal Greens, and for only a small fraction of the price. The downside, they don't boost stats as much. I just used Tantal Greens for everything until I got my gold chocobo, then I sold all of my MASTERed All materia for over 5mil, then I fed 99 Sylkis Greens to my gold chocobo, and he still had some pretty good stats.

[Storm]

Um...did you cheat to get Quadra Magic then?
Actually, I just used the Counter Magic Materia and Ultima. I didn't get Quadra Magic until the end.

[Ultima Shadow]

But why Ultima? Bahamut ZERO is more powerful and only costs 50 more MP. Use that with Quadra Magic.

That's rigth. Even Neo Bahamut is more powerfull and Bahamut equall to Ultima + the Bahamuts ignores def. Only thing that's better with Ultima is that it takes less time to do.

[Jolts]

Time is of no importance, unless you have a time limit (like when you're getting Corel's Huge Materia, but you won't have Ultima or Bahamut ZERO at that point). Besides, Bahamut ZERO is pretty friggin' awesome, I like watching :D.

[Ultima Shadow]

Besides, Bahamut ZERO is pretty friggin' awesome, I like watching :D.
Yea, but it gets kinda boring after the 484th quadra-summoning.

[Jolts]

Myabe, but it would take a while for me to get bored of it. I like the Bahamut summon in FFVIII the most, though. It just plain...well...it's the best :lol:.

Bahamut, a total badass, and he knows it ;). Heck, in FFX(-2), he just stands there with his arms crossed, and when he's hit, he barely flinches :laugh:.

[Polaris]

I like the magic system of FF7 and I think it's best than FF8, at FF8 you need more summons (G.Fs) and Magic and you don't have MP, so FF7 is more excitble!

[Jolts]

Where'd that come from? I was specifically talking about Bahamut :lol:.

---EDIT---
Nevermind, I realized you were staying on topic, sorry.

[Storm]

That's rigth. Even Neo Bahamut is more powerfull and Bahamut equall to Ultima + the Bahamuts ignores def. Only thing that's better with Ultima is that it takes less time to do.

If you don't have all the stars on the materia full, then you cannot summon Bahamut infinite times. And yes, Ultima takes much less time to cast, which is an important factor to me. I cannot stand those long summons.

[Max]

I like Hades

[Ultima Shadow]

Myabe, but it would take a while for me to get bored of it. I like the Bahamut summon in FFVIII the most, though. It just plain...well...it's the best :lol:.

Bahamut, a total badass, and he knows it ;). Heck, in FFX(-2), he just stands there with his arms crossed, and when he's hit, he barely flinches :laugh:.
Yea... Bahamut the greatest summon there ever was! ;) and it actually TOOK 484 quadra summonings before I got bored.:D
And NOTHING beats the FMVs with him in FFIX. They'r just to beautiful... :love:

ps: vote in the summoning tournaments in the "General FF"!!! Vote BAHAMUT!!!!!

If you don't have all the stars on the materia full, then you cannot summon Bahamut infinite times. And yes, Ultima takes much less time to cast, which is an important factor to me. I cannot stand those long summons.
Well, well, well... but I would prefere Comet2 since it cost less MP + if you have enough in the magic stats, then it can do more than 9999 dammage.

[-N-]

First off, please don't put words in my mouth, because that IS lame.
I wouldn't expect it from you, but I would expect it from a lot of other people. So don't take it personally.

Even if your arguments are sound, I present the following.

1. Enemy Skills + Added Effect / Elemental = Nothing.
2. Magic Materia + Added Effect / Elemental = Something.
3. Something > Nothing => Magic Materia != useless.

I'm arguing they're not useless.

[UltimaLimit]

Many enemy skills rock (like the aforementioned Trine, Beta, Big Guard, etc.), but some can be missed, wheras with magic materia you just have to get them in the first place and then you're okay. Enemy Skills are easier to obtain if you know where to go, but some (Chocobuckle) are frustrating. With Magic Materia you just need patience, 2xGrowth weapons/armor, and a good spot to train. Bottom line, I use both Master Magic and E. Skill to kick ass. Use their strengths to cover each others weaknesses.

Raistlin, what's your take on FullCure and Shield? FullCure is just a 100MP X-Potion (almost useless), but Shield is unmatched, since Aeris is unavailable to use her Limits by disc 3. It's expensive and doesn't last long, though.

[Raistlin]

"Useless" is an obvious exagerration. My point is that Enemy Skills are many times better than magic materia from the very first point you get the Manipulate materia in disc 1 to the end of the game.

EDIT: whoops, missed the last post somehow.

Many magic materia suck too. And you can't just "get them in the first place and then you're okay" because you have to master them by keeping them equipped, whether they're useful or not, thus taking up valuable mastering space that could be used for summons, command materia, or other useful materia(such as All).

Many Enemy skills suck, too, you're right, and others are really tough to learn. One great thing about Enemy Skills is that you don't have to learn them all, because having all the Enemy Skills doesn't get you anything special(unlike magic materia with Master Magic), since all the Enemy Skills already come on one materia.

The only weakness in Enemy Skills that Magic helps override is the lack of Revive. That's it. And Magic materia can be equipped to an Added Effect materia, if you do that kind of thing(which I usually don't).

FullCure is the second-most overrated Magic materia in the game(Ultima being th emost). Shield is unmatched, but it costs a ton of MP and doesn't last long. I, personally, would rather just lose an extra turn with one character and heal, using up less MP.

[Jolts]

Well, E. Skills are also uneffected by W-Magic/W-Summon. Casting two sets of quadra-Comet2 is pretty nice :D. Or two sets of quadra-Bahamut ZERO.

[Del Murder]

Magics are good for the beginning, but once you get a full set of E.Skills they are pretty outmatched. I still like Shield, though. And Life2 is good since you don't get Angel Whisper until the last area. Plus Contain looks neat and I always pair it with Quadra because 4 Bahamut Zeros takes too long. I also use Comet2 when I first get it. Ultima sucks though.

Magics are also good for the battle arena if you get things like yellow/red materia break.

[UltimaLimit]

you can't just "get them in the first place and then you're okay"

Sorry, bad choice of words. I meant that once you had the Magic Materia, you didn't have to worry about missing them and could level them up at your leisure, wheras some enemy skills (like Trine, Pandora's Box, Shadow Flare--in other words many of the best offensive ones) can be missed and can be very frustrating to get, wheras with Magic Materia you just need AP and patience.

And I usually don't use Shield/FullCure/Added Effect either, but Added Effect and Elemental come in handy sometimes (like in the battle arena).

I rarely bother with summons (except MAYBE Phoenix or KotR if I'm lazy) because many are crappy and the good ones require insane amounts of AP to master. I prefer to use that time to master other materia for Master Magic and Master Command or gain Limit Breaks.

[Raistlin]

Sorry, bad choice of words. I meant that once you had the Magic Materia, you didn't have to worry about missing them and could level them up at your leisure, wheras some enemy skills (like Trine, Pandora's Box, Shadow Flare--in other words many of the best offensive ones) can be missed and can be very frustrating to get, wheras with Magic Materia you just need AP and patience.
True, but I think that disadvantage is nulled by the fact that you don't have to master Enemy Skills, can use them infinitely in battle, and they all come on one materia.