The flick away is annoying, but it's not hard to get around either. As long as you are skilled enough, just make sure that cloud or whoever has the E. Skill materia deals the least ammount of damage per turn. The zolem flicks away the one who does the most, that's how it works. Since cloud is always Mr. One level higher than everyone else, it's pretty easy to see how he would deal more dammage than the other characters.

My advice is to have anyone else in the party use the e. skill materia, while cloud does his thing. One thing though, how good is Beta afterwards? i know it is priceless in defeating the final Wutai tower boss guy, since it cancells out however much he heals himself plus 1200 or so dammage. But at what point in disk two is this most awsome looking attack religated to the scrap heap?

Speaking of, i think i will be scrapping Shiva, Titan, Ramah, and Irift in favor of Kajt, Black dragon dude, and some other summons i got. Though that's just because the elementals are dealing about 600-1000 dammage to an enemy while a simple physical attack (for me) deals 800-1000 damage and without the loss of MP points. Should i sell them or not? i have some other materia i don't need too...mainly bolt and level 1 restores along with some other crappy ones i never use.