Deadliest Character: Lightning vs. Cloud. WHO IS DEADLIEST!?

[Laddy]

Speed Plus Materia only does so much

I agree raising a stat to 150% of it's original for each one is a very marginal effect.

Strength/HP only decreases from Magic and Summon Materia, of which HP Plus makes the strength trade off the only one of significance. Support, command and independent materia all have no adverse effects. With intelligent materia set up you only need a few pieces of magic & summon materia.

Still, though. A lot of independent materia, while useful, has limited use in a one-on-one fight. Cloud can definitely become very powerful, but if he wants to meet Lightnin's excellent ability to cover all the bases, his other stats are going to suffer. Making Cloud a jack-of-all-trades is very damn difficult, as being overloaded with Materia with no clear focus makes him incapable of being particular good at all of them.

Cloud could either be an effective specialist, which is awesome, or a limited Renaissance Man. Lightning is versatile, but making Cloud versatile (in my experiences) made him lose effectiveness.

EDIT: Seriously, Cloud is slow as smurf. How many slots do you have to build up a crucially important stat to match up someone who could very easily haste herself and slow you in no time flat? Cloud's Materia is potentially very powerful, but when you can literally swap classes depending on the situation, it become difficult to match up.