Whats the effing point?

[Hawkeye]

Whats the point of having materia such as "haste" "slow" or "stop" if you change the ATB to wait?

[Camanche]

'Wait' just means it waits for you to select the commands. Without haste, your ATB gage fills up slower, meaning you'll have to wait longer in order to attack, which gives the monsters more opportunities to attack.

[SeeDRankLou]

Wait simply pauses the ATB while you are in a sub-menu. It doesn't affect the speed of the ATB. If you put it on active, then the ATB keeps going while you are making a selection in a sub-menu, again not affecting ATB speed. Basically, if you put it on wait you have all the time in the world to select a materia command or an item. But if it's on active, you have to make a quick selection because the enemy's ATB will continue to fill up and it will just attack while you are still making a selection.

[Weimar Pluto Knight VII]

Under Wait, accessing a submenu is essentially the equivalent of effectively casting stop on all targets, and it wears off once you select something. However, if you are not making selections, it makes a difference. On Wait with NO Stop status, the enemy will attack you while you are not selecting magic or whatever. On Wait WITH Stop status, the enemy will never attack you until Stop wears off.

[Captain Maxx Power]

Haste is the business. Always has been, always will be. If you want a spell that's guaranteed to increase your offensive/defensive capabilities, it's haste. To say it is useless is to say a more powerful engine is useless for a car.

[Sword]

Cast haste with regen and your health will go up quicker. Cast haste on an enemy with death sentence and the count will go down faster. For me haste has been one of the most useful spells in the game. Never underestimate the powers of the time materia.

[Destai]

I :<3: haste magic. I use it in every FF game.

[limallama]

so, i could effectively buy time by casting stop on my character with a death sentence (although s/he wouldnt be able to attack)

[DJZen]

Yes, unless you're immune to it.

[limallama]

but if you're immune to stop id say its likely that you'd be immune to death sentence...

so maybe my statement was pointless. who knows in this mad world we're a livin in

[UltimaLimit]

Status effects play a semi-serious role in FF7. Most of them aren't a big deal. But to address your post, I don't recall anything that allows you to block Stop and Death Sentence at the same time (except for a Ribbon, of course).

Of course, you could put Time + Added Effect in your armor...

[Sword]

This is a circumstance where time magic may com in handy. You're fighting one of those petrifying green dragons that appear in the same forest as Yuffie. One of them starts the petrifying countdown on lets say, Vincent. Cloud uses manipulate on it. While Cloud's ATB guage is filling up the other two kill the other dragon. Cloud then uses then uses the manipulate command to start the petrifying countdown on the dragon. Then lets say, Tifa uses haste on the enemy, which causes tha countdown to go down quicker than Vincents, and therefore not excluding him from earning any exp. (BTW this actually happened to me :D )

[DJZen]

Actually... Come to think of it... I'm not all that sure you can be immune to stop... Doesn't the game treat time magic as a different category? As in... Esuna won't get rid of stop or slow, right?

[RIP Dime]

Like above people said and I say something else, Stop and slow are very useful and I use them all the time, they make enemies much easier!

[Masamune·1600]

The Ribbon, if I recall correctly, does not protect against Slow or Stop. It does, of course, protect against Paralyze.

[Weimar Pluto Knight VII]

Just equip a Ribbon, go to the status menu, and see what you're immune from.

[eestlinc]

so, i could effectively buy time by casting stop on my character with a death sentence (although s/he wouldnt be able to attack)

I'd have to check but I'm pretty sure that does not work, although logically it should.