Question about Ethers

[Shiva_]

XII has this kind of mysteries. While King bomb and Elder Wyrm were extremely easy to me, they seem to get a lot of people in trouble. To me my nemesis was the Marilith, which very few people have trouble with.

When I fought the Elder Wyrm the first time, I beat him on my first try, and I don't recall struggling during that battle. When I was re-doing my first playthrough (redid it because I opened the forbidden chests & missed the Zodiac Spear, etc.), it took me three tries to beat him, and I was struggling. I think I was 4 levels higher when I beat him the first time, and I had also spent tons of time getting enough gil for the top armor/weapons for my guys beforehand. When I was re-doing my playthrough, I was trying to get through things faster, so I was running from fights a little more and didn't care as much about getting the best armor/weapons for my guys.

I don't recall having trouble with Marilith on my original file. I did that mark fairly late in the game.
However, on my power-level file, I did have a bit of trouble and barely scraped a victory. I did this mark with Larsa in my party. The average level of my characters was 39, and Larsa was level 43. I decided to do the mark pretty much right after Larsa joined.
The reason I had trouble was that my armor was just lousy. The armor I had was the best I could get at the point of the game when I decided to do this mark. My weapons were great, though; Zodiac Spear and two Deathbringers. Also, my rank wasn't quite high enough at the time to get Bubble or Bubble Belts.
Larsa had to throw X-Potions a lot, but he couldn't keep up all the time since he was dying a lot.

On my original file, I did King Bomb after stilshrine w/ my guys at level 25. I wanted to go for the Zodiac Spear. I just used two quickening chains; 1st one was 9-hits for around 11500 damage. 2nd one was 16-hits (w/ Black Hole concurrence ) for around 38500 HP of damage. It took BK out. The 2nd quickening chain just by itself could've taken him out in one shot. BK took me several tries before I got him w/ those successful chains.
On my power-level file, I beat him right after getting the dawn shard. My guys were average of level 39. They badly needed armor upgrades, though. I had to silence him towards the end because he kept spamming Fira over and over again. I didn't use any quickenings this time.

The Belias method for fighting the BK at lower levels/after getting the dawn shard didn't work out too well for me due to lack of Ethers and Elixers.