I love this franchise, but one thing I really hate are the status spells. In every single one all the enemies I would want to cast the spells on are always immune to them and all the enemies that can be hit by them are always just regular enemies. Its so frustrating when I have this toolkit and it always ends up being a wasted turn 😣
It sucks because Death always has SICK animations in the 3D games, but instant death on weak mooks is always so not worth it, having a long animation for that just makes it worse. I feel bad for the spell animation team on that one, cause they do a bang up job with them every time.
@@minokimakina832 For sure, X's Death is amazing in how goddamn creepy it is. I wish that was a Mudo animation in Shin Megami Tensei so I'd actually see it more.
So, LOK2 in FF1 had the same problem as Focus Energy in gen 1 pokemon where, due to a coding error, it had the opposite of the intended effect. (For those who don't know, in Gen 1 pokemon (red/blue/yellow) the move Focus energy was meant to multiply the chance of a critical hit by 4, but instead it divided the crit chance by 4.
Which, funnily enough, was EXTREMELY useful in boosting stats in Gen 1. When you Crit in Gen 1, it works as you expect, dealing x2 normal damage, ignoring debuffs on the user and buffs on the target. However, due to programming errors, this also meant the user's buffs weren't calculated as well, nor target debuffs. So for those who know the code super well, critting is NOT a good thing with you have a Slobro who is Amnesia'd up, as you'd do less damage than intended. Being maxed out on Special (not including Badge Boosts, cuz Gen 1 is Gen 1 Jank), you'd normally hit for well over 4x damage without a crit, but only do x2 damage on an actual crit. Thus, for a very fast Pokemon that DOES learn stat boosting moves AND also learns Focus Energy, this is actually a win/win for maximum DPS, on paper. In practical terms, it's still a waste of a move slot. And probably a waste of a Pokemon.
The rule that the boss will always be immune to status effects made me miss out on FF7Remake actually having bosses susceptible to things like Stop, sleep, or Poison more often than not.
In the original Final Fantasy, Pure was a fairly useless spell, not because it didn't work, but because for the amount of money it took to purchase it you could buy more pure potions than you would likely need in an average playthrough.
Plus grinding enough to rake in that much money you'd likely be leveled up enough to get by without it 😂 That game is so satisfying, every few battles you get a huge parade of level-ups in all your stats, way quicker than any other FF it seems
@@ZenMonkeyGod leveling was fast in ff1? were you playing with some sort of xp boosting cheat or something? i mean its not horribly slow, but 'every few battles' is just not true at all
@Riftweaver1981 I didn't cheat at all. It's mostly getting to like level 15 or so, so I don't mean it's the whole game. But when you start the game and start grinding, I just felt like it didn't take me long to level up. I'm not even some expert player or anything, and believe me the game gets super hard about halfway through and leveling takes far longer.
Even in the remakes nearly all but the Cure Petrify spells are crap the only reason Cure Stone/Petrify isn't crap is because of the high cost of the items that cure it.
@@Riftweaver1981 Yeah, it was super fast. Due to the way enemies encounters spawned on the map, in Pravoka, you could fight end game zombie bulls, ice wolves and nuke them with fire for massive level gains. 1 fight, go back and rest at inn. When I was a kid playing on the NES, I always fought in that area early game for quick levels.
Yeah. Most FF games have one or two bosses that are susceptible to one or more status ailments, but they are so few and far between that you'd never think to try unless you had a guide.
Or maybe we need less potent status effects, so that it's more feasible a boss can be hit by them. Or convoluted ways to get them to work, like with Level modifiers and the Lv X spells.
For FFX, rather than casting death, you were much better off just modding deathstrike onto one of your weapons. If you did it to your tamer weapons, you could easily gather large numbers of fiends for the arena. Same for stonestrike.
Seeing Physic pop up on the screen really put a smile on my face. It's hilarious how little it does, and I'm certain something like a Max Potion would heal more, uses no MP, and doesn't cost whoever uses it a GCD
At least up until recently it had an incredibly niche use of proccing divine veil in the event that absolutely nobody else was a better choice to do the job. Now it doesn't even do that.
Theres a super niche application i suppose. In 14 healing someone below 20% gives a ton of limit, summoners could spam heals to build limit i suppose@Aquilenne
It honestly should be changed to something like Physickia, where it instead is just an applicable regen with a 20 second duration and a 60 cool down. It scales with Int rather than mind, and is a 250 potency cure effect. That should make it where it heals like 3000 per tick for six ticks, or about 25% of someone's health bar. This equals a potion. Better for soloing or assisting a tank/healer in time of need, but not really diverting off the focus it has. It even combos with Phoenix.
I literally never used Lulu's death spell on any enemy. It either does absolutely nothing and wastes your magic, or you don't get an overkill. And a lot of enemies are immune to it by the time you get it. Deathstrike makes sense, at least you're doing damage with the weapon too.
Uh, if you don't think Deodorize had a purpose, you didn't play FF11.... There was shit that was blind that Deodorant or the Deodorize spell was the only way to get past them when necessary. Also, original FF11 you absolutely could not escape an enemy until you zoned out to another area. You used Deodorize to avoid enemies that tracked by scent primarily. Paired with Sneak and Invis it was the only way through shit.
The funny thing about Sight in FF3 is that even though now we have World Map buttons (which...is weird they even did this at all when FF1 had a world map cheat code essentially) Sight actually does something different from the World Map button. Sight gives you access to the entire area's location markers. The World Map, however, only shows what you've been to before. And because 3 is not so much non-linear as it is a more open map to explore by the mid-game, it's more useful to have effectively a toggle between where you have and haven't been yet to have an idea of where to go next. Naturally, this concept is already made redundant by just looking up a map online, but the effort is appreciated for at least giving me a reason to not just alt-tab out of the game to look up a map the instant I'm not sure where to go next.
YES! So happy Physick was included. I am pretty sure I was one of the commenters on the other vid pointing it out lol. It’s so silly. Great list! Keep up the good work
I'm playing ff5 on the gba right now, so I went to the spellbook to see if they were any useless spells. The one that stood out to me was Mute. It silences all allies and enemies. Not very handy if it silences your own party. Although I guess you could negate this by just wearing silence immunity gear, but also there probably aren't many fights if any where this spells is too helpful. Plus it's a time mage only spell. Probably not a top 10 useless spell, but worth mentioning I guess.
FF5 actually has the fewest examples of truly useless spells from what I remember. Its magic system is fun to utilize because anything severely hampers the party in some way often has some way to either be completely negated or made inconsequential via different gameplay strategies. Even the typically useless spells all had at least one specific boss fight they could shine in. Mute, for example, works great if the main “mage” is a chemist or otherwise using Mix. It doesn’t prevent things like Mix or other skills from achieving the same results as magic by different methods so a party of physical attackers and a chemist can use Mute to shut down lots of problematic encounters.
Monsters being monsters, a lot of their dangerous abilities aren't magic so being muted doesn't even weaken them. In addition to that, I believe the spell casts successfully in most battles even if the enemy has a specific immunity to mute. In both cases you lose access to spells with no upside. If FF5 has one weakness it's that you can't see why your status spells don't work mid-battle. Status immunity? Magic Evasion? Spell failure rate? Nope, just MISS. I love the Remora summon, but it's a dual-ailment spell and spells that inflict multiple ailments fail if the enemy is immune to _one_ of those ailments. And a lot of enemies are immune to Sap or Paralysis. It's a great game regardless, but that's what I'd change if I could.
@@Evan.13239 This is my first time playing it since I was a kid, I'm really enjoying the vast customization. I'll play around with the builds more, and see if I can find some fun uses for mute.
@@chadd990 I really hope you have a fantastic time playing the game, man! There are so many ways to play that game, and there's a ton of replay value with foreknowledge of what you'll be up against if you ever feel the itch for that sort of thing.
Pretty sure this is a personal problem I have but I just never find myself using spells like Mini, Pig or Toad, I know they have their uses but I just find them too unreliable
In Final Fantasy VII, the only reason I use the Transform Materia is because you can master it fairly quickly and then the sell it for all the money you'll ever need.
Via the change staff is one of the few ways I found those useful, aside from when needing to cure myself of those debuffs as those spells cure said debuffs as well.
Agree I simply see this as like "poisona" for the status itself as that's the only time I'll ever use them - I did recently play ff6 however and when accidentally casting you do notice some strong enemies are funnily weak to this but due to how easy it is to become OP in this game anyway it's that which reduces the need for status ailments.
@daviddalrymple2284 once i have Vincent and the added effect materia, i always put "transform/added effect" on his gun. I wouldn't waste a turn just using the spell, but its fairly effective added on to his attack
Its actually an issue with status effects in most RPGs of all types is having most important/dangerous enemies being immune to all status effects. Or the status effects have such a high chance of failing that its not worth trying to use them. So most RPG players never use status effects simply because they can't be used(Or fail) in 99% of fights that you would want to use them. Then in the 1% of fights you can you don't think to use them because they can't be used(Or are too unreliable) in every other fight in the game.
Shoutout to dragon warrior 1 sleep spell!! Best status spell I’ve ever seen in a jrpg. Good chance to sleep, good chance to not wake on hit, balanced by how important your MP resource is.
The only problem with Sleep in a Dragon quest game are the TOO MANY ways to actually cause it making the actual spell worthless in fact theirs 0 MP cost SKILLS in Dragon Quest 7 that cause sleep and theirs like 4 to 5 of those sleep causing moves + the Sleep rod itself buyable during the Dharma Temple/Alltrades Abby scenario of DQ7 as well. But if the FF games I almost NEVER use it in the games after the first one.
@@veghesther3204 It's so funny how much Final Fantasy taints someone's view of offensive status ailment spells, or anything beyond basic damage and healing, really. You can give and take a lot of ailments in Dragon Quest and if you even attempt to play ANY Megami Tensei game without buffs (Persona included naturally), you're signing a death warrant.
@@UltimaKeyMasterAdmittedly BUFFS are usually good in Final Fantasy, you want Protect/Shell/Haste in vast majority of boss fights, since they are cheap, save money on healing and generally last either a while or just for the entire fight. FF9 is about the only exception due to just how screwed buffs are in that game, the devs dropped the ball on that one. It's negative effects, aside from maybe Slow, along with Dispel that get the shaft. I'm glad that FF13 went the SMT route of "use buffs/debuffs or die horribly".
You had to zone out of the area to lose aggro from a monster in ff11. They will chase you until either you are dead or they are. Basically, if the mob got on you and you didn't get out of a zone, you were screwed. You can't just run a little bit away from a mob. You had to apply all sneak, invis, and deodorize before going through a dangerous area. You can attempt to cast spell when they are on you but the spells have a high chance of failing when you are being hit.
If the monster doesn't track by scent, it would lose track eventually and deaggro. And is there a point to pre-casting deoderize? It doesn't keep you from getting aggro and wears off if something takes a swing at you. I guess it might have a very niche edge case where you get spotted but keep out of range of any attempted attacks by a monster with no ranged abilities, but that isn't much of a contingency.
@ztdk Apparently, they changed how mob leashes worked. This wasn't the case initially. When the game started, the mobs were relentless. That's where the famous /sh train to zone Inc started.
@@Vidious808 Even playing on private servers, it still feels ridiculous beyond belief the range their aggro zones are. It's like Xenoblade X levels of ridiculous zones.
FFXI context for Deodorize. Initially in the game mobs would chmace you across the entire zone never losing aggro. Onlybway to lose aggro is for YOU to either die or leave the zone completely through loading screen and loading into a new zone. Depending on the zone you could be being chased for 5 - 10 mins lol. Deodorize was a way to lose aggro early IF it tracked by smell. But many many maaaaaaany years later the put enemies on leashes so they stayed in their "area" and if you left the area they camped they would lose aggro. Making Deodorize even more useless
The extreme punishment of aggro in XI was hilarious. And getting sent to jail by GMs for creating trains was utter chaos and sometimes worth PKing campers. Not the proudest of times lol
I loved when they removed Sustain from the SMN spell pool, while maintaining Physick as MND scaling only (for that small period of time). Your summons still took full single target damage, so if they were tanking they weren't very good at it.
Despite Physick not healing enough as Summoner in FF14, I still kept it on my hotkey. Two reasons: - Just for having fun around. Doing 200 heals on someone with 100000 HP feels that much more hilarious. - The spell is still a very good spell in low level sync. Typically you just leave the job to a Healer, but when the Healer is dead or you somehow don't even have a healer, this still offers good healing. In particular, this lets you get through early Palace of the Dead floors very safely, which is a big advantage over other DPS classes.
I'd like to defend FF8's Float spell. Quake is a less common spell in FF8, and it is also a powerful spell for Junctioning. Junctioning Quake to Elemental Defense is kind of a waste, when you could Junction it to something like Strength for a more consistently useful effect. Granted, Float has always been kinda niche, as it only helps against Earth based attacks.
I think that in the final fantasy franchise most of the spells that grant negative states to enemies are useless most of the time, often the effects don't take the effect the first time that spell is used and the player has to use multiple rounds of the same spell to get the enemy to take effect, where It often doesn't make much difference in the battle and only lasts a short time. This is if the monster is not immune, often requiring a scan-type ability to identify the enemy's weaknesses and immunity. In other words, it is more worthwhile to use positive state magic on characters and use offensive attacks than to waste time with this type of magic .
Absolutely true. With some (rare) exceptions, attack magic, healing magic, and enhancing magic are all much, much more practical than enfeebling magic.
Demi was nerfed the hardest in FFX. You acquired it late, and damn near everything with high HP totals that even 1 casting would be useful against (boss, miniboss, or arena fiend) were ALL IMMUNE.
I really hope they go back to the basics- I loved figuring out combos, cures, and easy deaths with the manual systems. Death, FFX: I believe there is a sphere that can jump you to anyone’s position, possibly another one that can move you as long as it was unlocked. There is so much more to do with damage, weapons, and equipment in this game for power, overkill, and defense. FF9: You can learn White Wind pretty early with Quina
Eh, it's alright so long as you're aware you're getting diminishing returns. Of course I didn't really know when to stop when I was a kid, so I overused it.
I think my favorite moment when using a mediocre spell like poison was in final fantasy 13-2 vs Yomi. It actually felt like a neat new route to defeat it yet it isn’t a way to kill it in two seconds. You still had to survive to win the battle
I loved that battle. It's frustrating when you get back luck with poison not sticking, but it's so satisfying when it does go down. And that tight strategy made it fun to keep fighting Yomi dozens of times in order to get rare drops for weapon crafting.
FF has a problem with magic. When you fet a spell, if leveling with the story, the monsters become immune so quickly or it is so useless that the enemy is easier to kill with physical attacks.
The FF4 Sight spell is actually useful in the Pixel Remaster if you're achievement hunting. You have to visit all optional areas, defeat every creature, and obtain every item and chest. And Sight served as a checklist to where you've been and what you've gotten. It was also doubly important when you realized that there were a handful of areas that you could only visit once. So Sight helped ease a lot of heartache trying to 100% the game.
Death has always been a stupid spell in my opinion. If it works, it's a 1 hit kill and that's boring. If it doesn't work(which is a high percentage of the time), then it's a wasted turn.
Words I actually have said though: "I don't need Sneak, I have movement speed." You CAN hypothetically outrun mobs, at least nowadays, since most lose interest if they don't get to hit you for a certain amount of time... but base player speed has been boosted 25% or so from the launch level, and mobs are STILL pretty much exactly as fast as players, so... it's mostly only viable on casters that don't have Stun, Bind, Gravity, or Sleep. Unless you're trying to pull a whole room full of monsters to kill en masse. Then they'll despawn at the drop of a hat just to spite you.
Agreed, lol. Those words might have been spoken before, but not by anyone who seriously played FFXI. Here’s what running away from aggro enemies in FFXI ACTUALLY gets you: 1) probably dead, killed by the enemy that initially found you 2) definitely dead, killed by the horde of enemies that have the “linking” trait (meaning they join in the chase if an aggro enemy passes nearby) 3) a bunch of hate mail from other players, even if you somehow managed to flee, because now there’s a cluster of enemies piled up near a main road or chokepoint
I don’t recall if it had been mentioned before, but in FF XIV, Astrologian’s “Undraw” skill is absolutely useless. It removes a drawn card from the slot. Nothing else. You would be better off just holding the card until Draw comes back up, and replace the card that way.
Death is super usefull in FFX! Not the spell, the deathstrike ability you can put on a capture weapon. It makes getting aurons sigil so much easier. Mix it up with stone strike on another character's capture weapon.
That's exactly what makes it useless as a spell. You will get access to deathstrike/deathtouch long before you actually get access to the spell itself. The status effect is situationally useful, the spell itself is not.
@@veghesther3204 Honestly I forgot the break spell even existed in FFX until just now. 😆 Yeah, you can get stone strike on Wakka's weapons ridiculously early just like Lulu's deathtouch.
@@JebAlert You probably forgot because Break only exists in one fight. Seymour Natus uses it and the Mortibody tries to follow up with a strike on the petrified victims. Otherwise, Break isn't accessible
It's been a while since I played FFXI so I might be wrong, but I thought Deodorise was useful because if you were sneaking around enemies while invisible, they would still detect your scent. It made getting around high-level areas or just avoiding fights while getting around much easier.
No mobs can only aggro to one or more of sight, sound, low hp, magic or ability use... deodorise was used if you could sleep or bind a mob then run far enough away to ensure it can't chase beyond sound and sight ranges
Biggest problem with FF14 is how bloated the skill list is for every character with either niche or useless spells and abilities. I swear they should all be cut in half, and you'd literally see no change in gameplay
I believe it was either FF6 or FF7, but there was an exploit that made the death spell a garenteed hit. You simply cast invisibility on the enemies/boss first. Invisibility would make any spell cast on the invisible target a garenteed hit.
Its FF6 PS1/SNES version only + the Rhodox rage on those 2 versions to kill Intangirs instantly without seeing its Meteo counters ALMOST any spell the useless Ragnarok Esper effect does NOT = 100% chances on the SNES/PS1 version if you vanish the target before summoning it so the Esper itself even WITHOUT the Vanish and Doom bug is still worthless since it almost NEVER works.
I thought I remembered the original SNES release of FFIV (aka FF2 lol) just sort of zooming out the screen slightly when Sight was cast, which was really only useful prior to getting the airship. I'm second guessing myself now though 😅
Your memory is correct; that's exactly how it worked in the SNES version. It was marginally useful for avoiding dead ends on the way to Fabul Castle from Mt. Hobs, but that was it.
Barrier only has Reflect and the physical and spell barrier spells but even on Wait mode FASTEST battle speed Big Guard is still useless it won't even last then for even 1 minute and most NON boss fights in FF7 don't even LAST that long once Big Guard can be used especially with all the PS4 remaster cheats ie infinite HP/MP/Limit breaks and the 3x speed cheat.
I wish the FF14 devs would just make Physick scale off of INT or MND, whichever was higher. That way, Summoner could cast a useful heal in a pinch if needed, kinda like how Elemental Shaman in WoW used to be able to toss out a Healing Wave or a Chain Heal that wasn't complete garbage.
FFXI enemies could aggro based on sight, sound, magic *and* blood (low hp) and for the longest time the effect time of invisible, sneak and deodorize was random. It was only much much later they were given a solid 10min timer. A lot of times these effects would start wearing off almost instantly after being cast. This is why party members were often encouraged by white mages etc to bring their own items (sneak oils and prism powders) so the whm didn't have to constantly be casting in dangerous situation.
I am not going to repeat my reasons, but Doomsday was very limited in utility, especially since it can be made deadly to a party, even one with Shadow Absorbing gear, if Vivi has the ability Element Null, and especially if both Elem-Null and Reflect Null are equipped. I get the reason behind Esuna, but Doomsday is just given too late to even get much of a chance to utilize it. Edited for the reason that I said the wrong spell name.
I love it in fact when Kuja final dungeon loves to spam like 3000+ damage Flare stars EVERY TURN at lv 75+ and I NEVER had it miss the best way to recover from that damage is via Doomsday the actual CURE 3 spells when used on a entire lv 75+ party restores LESS HP then his Flare star does.
Think uve underestimated how bad SMN Physick is, it stops being noticeable healing around 35, not to mention u never rly need it there anyway. Its kinda stuck at 350-400 hp restored all the way to lvl90, where jobs have 80-90k hp, Tanks even reach 130k, a 500hp heal wont make a dent
You would think that with the SMN rebalance with Endwalker, they would have split it into a DPS version and Healer version. They did it for Energy Drain! SMN and SCH both still get it, but its effects are different, and the tool tip even differentiates them! Sure, making SMN physick scale off of intelligence would bring it in line with Vercure for RDM, but if you're in a situation where you need to use Vercure, something has likely gone HORRIBLY wrong.
@@rainfallen7574 I tend to use Vercure if a fight ends and I have a dangling dualcast stack. I fling it at the tank or healer, just because I want rid of it. The only other time I use Vercure in a party is if I'm trying to prime Verraise.
To be fair the jobs that COULD cast Deodorize were those that had access to ways to prevent the monster from moving. Things like Gravity, Sleep, Repose and Bind. All of which would allow you to cast the spell and reapply sneak/invis and move on. Deoderize was nice cause you didn't get risked bopped again while traveling through dangerous territory. Of course no one really knew what was going on back then and what monsters even tracked my scent.
Physick at least has use cases in non-standard content. I kept a RPR alive in BA with it after the healer got clipped by a cleave and died during the Ozma fight. It's not the worst thing to have in deep dungeons when you step on a mine or open a trap chest. The issue with it is that it scales of Mind instead of Int like Red Mage's Vercure does so it heals for almost nothing in regular content. It's never left my tertiary bar though as it has fringe use cases and up until about level 40 duties, it's a solid heal in a panic situation.
To add a bit of a burn on Physick for Summoners is that they just this expansion completely reworked the job. Changed essentially the whole kit, and left in the useless version of Physick.
I would say Physic and Cure 1 suffer the same problem, but you can't really just not have them on your hot bar because if you go back to older content, like dungeon roulettes, you will still need it because you will lose access to your other spells. It does make it kind of wierd though that White Mage pretty much stops using Cure I when they get access to Cure II
The Death spell isn't even the best use of instant death attacks in FFX. Things like Deathtouch/Deathstrike, Stonetouch/Stonestrike, or even Zanmato (which can instakill any enemy in the game, even the ultimate superbosses), were far better or more useful instantdeath attacks.
If we are allowed to use Blue magic, then perhaps 1000 needles is one of weak ones... At least when enemy starts go over 5000 hp and enemy starts having deadlier spells or skills. Another could be ff9 Zidane's lucky seven since it has very random damage, not to mention there are spells that actually do more damage later on.
In FFXI, deodorize was used before they fixed or changed how aggro would work. Before a mob would not lose aggro so easily. A whole party would wipe in the dunes from someone aggroing a mob. If any of the players would pull any aggro onto themselves such as: a WHM tossing a cure spell onto the player who initially got aggroed, the whm now has generated hate onto himself. If the mob did not turn and engage on the whm, it would be able to deodorize and run out of visual range to remove any hate it had generated and thus deaggroing... Once this mechanic got patched, the use of deodorize had no use. Mobs deaggroed much faster, and they dissapear once it deagroed, before they would walk the whole map till they arrived at their spawn point, causing chaos and destruction along the way for any other poor party that took 3 hours to form and quickly disband 😅
I didn't know you could use float on the Brothers to negate something lol~ but yes that spell was pretty much inly useful during that part if the game where there's hardly a way to avoid their earth abilities~
Scathe for BLM in FFXIV is the most useless damage dealing ability. It is also one of, if not the ONLY DD ability left in the game from 2.0 which has not seen a single change in its function or potency, only a change in MP cost to fit the new MP system. 100 potency with a 20% chance of double potency, no cast time costing 800MP. In comparison with Fire IV which will deal the most damage over a fight, Scathe does on average 1/5th of the damage. And in comparison to the weakest ability commonly used, a 30% weakened Blizzard III while in Astral Fire 3, it does half the damage. It only has a single use. If you have run out of swiftcast/triplecast/other instant cast abilities or procs, you MIGHT use it. Even then, any good player will never use it and most average and bad players will most likely forget to use it, because if you're able to cast literally any other damage spell, that will do more damage instead. If you use it while in the Astral Fire stance, it will make you lose out on DPS by not being able to cast 6 Fire IV in a normal rotation and forcing you into the Umbral Ice stance faster. As a BLM main who does all and any end-game content, the amount of times I have used Scathe the entirety of the Endwalker expansion, I could probably count on one hand. Even then I don't remember why I would even use it, as the only way is that I must've messed something royally up. I have to go back to Heavensward and the Alexander Savage raids to remember an actual use for it. A7S and the magic hammer mechanic comes to mind, because BLM only had Swiftcast and random procs for instant cast damage spells, other than Scathe.
I see this take all the time but I don't agree with it at all. I love Scathe at low levels. I used it constantly to finish off enemies that would die before I finished another cast. It's also just a neat little utility spell for tagging enemies while you're running around before grouping them up. In unsynched duties where you're one-shotting things anyway, it's also helpful. Especially if you're with other players that would make it a complete waste of time starting casts on anything. Yeah, it's pretty useless in endgame content. But without scathe I'd be having a miserable time trying to tag any low HP mobs in a busy FATE.
Given this is a Commenter video about more niche examples, I'm willing to bet the main video had that as the peak example. Since other than FF1 NES' litany of bugs, that's the most infamous spell of the entire franchise.
Pretty much every version of bio or a similar poison spell. Most bosses are immune to them and regular enemies are way easier to take down with other more useful spells.
Bio is legitimately amazing in FF4 though. Literally nothing in the game is immune to it, and it inflicts a bunch of damage on top of causing its status, *and* it has an instant cast time in a game where almost every other spell takes time after inputting the command to actually cast.
Cast poison and haste on an enemy and defend every turn till you think it is near death and love tap to victory. Mostly used for low level runs of the game.
Sight was in the game in FF1, but not as a spell players cast. It's a 'spell' you learn from a riddle given by Matoya's brooms. Tceles B sserp - if I'm not mistsken.
I'll never forget the day I solo'd more than half of Fenrir's health as Black Mage by keeping myself alive with cross class Physic. But it still belongs here.
Status spells in FFX were almost entirely useless on their own, but status touch/strike weapons (and Wakka's status attacks, really) are where the application shined. The physically weaker characters could become power players with the right setup. Even if you were just rotating them in for EXP, having them attack and ruin a fiend's day with a Deathstrike at least gave them some utility when they weren't needed for their regular roles (like white/black magic). Defending is faster for rotating people in, yes, but I always preferred my party to do something useful.
In my opinion, Esuna still has some help to you in FF9, Break on other hand... yeah it petrifies the enemy, but also, almost every boss is immune against petrify, and even if you encounter a difficult enemy, it's better to use stop or death, cause you gain no EXP or Gil after using break on the enemy.
Jewel from FFIX. Harvesting ore from a single enemy? Ore just so common as drop in that game, what's the point? The amount of ore increases the damage your summons does based a certain calculation, but it's really not that helpful since the damage is capped at 9,999 and this game has no multi-hits. So, by the time Eiko gets this spell, yeah, it's not good. Even the wiki points out how useless this spell is.
I think one of the few times death magic has been useful was Sukoden 1. Granting the main character this magic just worked so well. As a forced party member one didn't sacrifice customization to include the death spell user, and his death magic often worked to skip through mobs as you made your way to the boss.
Physick is particularly annoying because you can't really remove it from your hotbar.. if you're in a lower level synced dungeon, that's the only healing spell you have available as a Scholar - outside of your Fairy assistant anyway.. which may or may not be ideal all the time.
I always thaught that bosses shouldn't be immune to status effects, but just more resistant. Like dark reducing their chance to hit by 10% rather than 100% for regular enemies or silence only lasting 1 turn no matter the source. As long as bosses were built with this in mind nothing would need to become too easy, the fights would just end up becoming more involved and interesting imo.
It's been years since I played FFXI, but I'm WHM main and I'm preeeeeeety sure Deoderize's duration isn't a static 10 min. It actually is predetermined when it's cast on the target and can last a variable amount of time. You only know when it's running out when you get an in-game message indicating it's wearing off.
There are actually buff timers available in the vanilla game now, so you can see how long you've got left. But yeah, Sneak, Invisible, and Deodorize are randomized a bit. To make things "fun" and "interesting".
Physick is quite baffling, because in pretty much every other case where the stat scaling problem would arise, the game has compensated for it. Vercure for Red Mages, Clemency for Paladins and even Rekindle for Summoners themselves scale off of more relevant attributes, and those are just the most directly comparable spells.
Eh. For FF14 free trial players, up until the recent expansion was made available to us, Summoner's healing options filled a niche that allowed for a DPS class to have healing capabilities whenever the dedicated healers would mess up or get overwhelmed. Having access to Physic, Sleep, and Raise with the benefit of an instacast has helped me save otherwise failed encounters while leveling or doing hunts. Even if it does fall off passed level 50, I'll definitely say that being able to pick your party back up and give them another chance to win the fight is anything but useless.
sleep in ffxiv is pretty useless when enemies will wake up after a single attack. the only possible use i can think of is against a tough enemy next to a destination where you need to “use” it for 5 seconds to trigger a cutscene or some crap
This is less "sleep is useless" and more "FF14 doesn't give you any opportunities/reasons to take advantage of crowd control spells". Sleep in FF11 has the same mechanics but is incredibly important because it's necessary to lower the pressure on the party in tougher encounters, at least during its heyday.
It's very useful for removing certain enemies from a fight that aren't a priority to kill right away but still make things difficult. Like if you're fighting a group that has a lot of party roles covered, you can sleep the healer to focus on the DPS or vice versa. It suits methodical parties. Some bosses have a mechanic where two enemies must be kept a good distance apart, so you can sleep one and pull the other away instead of having someone take over tank duties on the second.
@@yoso378 That's definitely down to how 14 is designed. 11 is an old-ass MMO where 1v1 fights can manage to be deadly if you're not prepared, so it's so much more useful back then. 14...you're either running around kinda pointlessly open zones that you're already perfectly or over leveled to, or it's a hallway dungeon where the only enemies you fight are in like packs of 5 everyone mows down with AOE damage cause they're all focused on a tank that's constantly topped off by the healer that from certain class mechanics have effectively infinite MP for a mob fight. It's extra useless now when it's *only* Magic DPS classes and no more cross class skills. And one of those classes unlocks at *Level 50* , so you *really* don't need to be running from enemies by the time you get them.
Physick is also pretty useless in FFXIV even on healers. I'm a SCH main and I can't remember the last time I cast that spell, it takes a whole cast action over your endless supply of cheap, OGCD healing spells. I believe all the other healers are in the same boat and have much better options to use their action on. There are also actually very few dungeons in the early game that could take even a new tank player low enough that, when Physick is your main healing spell, you'd need to actually heal them. The way early game dungeons work is that they are so easy healers are typically just spamming their main attack spell.
As a Summoner main in FFXIV I just removed Physick from my hotbar (except for a few occassions when I'm playing with friends and I want to "help" the healers as a joke).
Imo, deodorize is an incredibly useful utility spell. Bind/Sleep allows it to go off without any problems, usually. There are many times where running to a zone isn't a viable option, but bind/sneak/invisible/deodorize will drop the aggro and allow you to continue doing what you are doing without moving very far. There also could be places where there is no water to drop aggro with
Dishonorable mention to Sabin's later blitzes because unless you know from outside info, you'll *never* realize they're "spells" (based on magic) and build him as a physical user.
In FFXI you could use deodorize to stay at low HP near undead that would blood aggro (detect low HP). BUT the MAIN use of deodorize was to cast it on stinky Galkas.
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I love this franchise, but one thing I really hate are the status spells. In every single one all the enemies I would want to cast the spells on are always immune to them and all the enemies that can be hit by them are always just regular enemies. Its so frustrating when I have this toolkit and it always ends up being a wasted turn 😣
Trust me,its working on alot of bosses too,it depends. They just sometimes have higher resist,only because it says „miss“,dosnt mean,hes immune
Using Sleep on Edea in FF8 is the only Boss I remember that It Works.
@@80sForever29 poison on Seymour on gagazet is a big one too. also tent on gizamaluke in ff9
FF4 and 5 have more than a few bosses who are weak to specific ailments which is nice. You kind of have to know ahead of time though
Ff13 series is an exception where status effects are super useful
Using Wakka's face for the thumbnail was a good choice.
XD
I'm just saying, brudda. An spell that only targets Al-Bhed would be might useful, ya?-Grand Wizard Wakka
got me
Wakka:HMmm...!🤨🤨
I was expecting osmose to pop up tbh
The fact that I did not know Death had that animation in FFX says a lot about how useful it is.
It sucks because Death always has SICK animations in the 3D games, but instant death on weak mooks is always so not worth it, having a long animation for that just makes it worse.
I feel bad for the spell animation team on that one, cause they do a bang up job with them every time.
It's probably the best death animation too, which is the real shame
@@minokimakina832 For sure, X's Death is amazing in how goddamn creepy it is.
I wish that was a Mudo animation in Shin Megami Tensei so I'd actually see it more.
Death is used against you a lot
So, LOK2 in FF1 had the same problem as Focus Energy in gen 1 pokemon where, due to a coding error, it had the opposite of the intended effect. (For those who don't know, in Gen 1 pokemon (red/blue/yellow) the move Focus energy was meant to multiply the chance of a critical hit by 4, but instead it divided the crit chance by 4.
Which, funnily enough, was EXTREMELY useful in boosting stats in Gen 1. When you Crit in Gen 1, it works as you expect, dealing x2 normal damage, ignoring debuffs on the user and buffs on the target. However, due to programming errors, this also meant the user's buffs weren't calculated as well, nor target debuffs. So for those who know the code super well, critting is NOT a good thing with you have a Slobro who is Amnesia'd up, as you'd do less damage than intended. Being maxed out on Special (not including Badge Boosts, cuz Gen 1 is Gen 1 Jank), you'd normally hit for well over 4x damage without a crit, but only do x2 damage on an actual crit.
Thus, for a very fast Pokemon that DOES learn stat boosting moves AND also learns Focus Energy, this is actually a win/win for maximum DPS, on paper. In practical terms, it's still a waste of a move slot. And probably a waste of a Pokemon.
The rule that the boss will always be immune to status effects made me miss out on FF7Remake actually having bosses susceptible to things like Stop, sleep, or Poison more often than not.
Yeah, learning I could just Stop the Behemoth was nice.
Cast stop as they hit stagger:)
me too
In the original Final Fantasy, Pure was a fairly useless spell, not because it didn't work, but because for the amount of money it took to purchase it you could buy more pure potions than you would likely need in an average playthrough.
Plus grinding enough to rake in that much money you'd likely be leveled up enough to get by without it 😂 That game is so satisfying, every few battles you get a huge parade of level-ups in all your stats, way quicker than any other FF it seems
@@ZenMonkeyGod leveling was fast in ff1? were you playing with some sort of xp boosting cheat or something? i mean its not horribly slow, but 'every few battles' is just not true at all
@Riftweaver1981 I didn't cheat at all. It's mostly getting to like level 15 or so, so I don't mean it's the whole game. But when you start the game and start grinding, I just felt like it didn't take me long to level up. I'm not even some expert player or anything, and believe me the game gets super hard about halfway through and leveling takes far longer.
Even in the remakes nearly all but the Cure Petrify spells are crap the only reason Cure Stone/Petrify isn't crap is because of the high cost of the items that cure it.
@@Riftweaver1981 Yeah, it was super fast. Due to the way enemies encounters spawned on the map, in Pravoka, you could fight end game zombie bulls, ice wolves and nuke them with fire for massive level gains. 1 fight, go back and rest at inn. When I was a kid playing on the NES, I always fought in that area early game for quick levels.
If more enemies were legitimately susceptible to status the status spells could add so much versatility
Yeah. Most FF games have one or two bosses that are susceptible to one or more status ailments, but they are so few and far between that you'd never think to try unless you had a guide.
@@daviddalrymple2284 yea and not better than good ol’ “attack” or a variety of high or mid level spells
I often used Poison in Crisis Core, because it allowed me to distance myself from dangerous enemies yet still wittle their health down.
Or maybe we need less potent status effects, so that it's more feasible a boss can be hit by them. Or convoluted ways to get them to work, like with Level modifiers and the Lv X spells.
Could at least deal a small amount of damage with status spells. That way it might not be ENTIRELY wasted.
For FFX, rather than casting death, you were much better off just modding deathstrike onto one of your weapons. If you did it to your tamer weapons, you could easily gather large numbers of fiends for the arena. Same for stonestrike.
Yeah exactly, rather than casting it, better off using status atk works way better imo spell casting was such a pain in the ass in ffix
Boy...I wish I'd thought of that.
There was a mob in Final Fantasy XI that aggroed by scent. It was the Leech in Aht Urhgan expansion. It threw a lot of players for a loop at first.
Didn’t know this
Seeing Physic pop up on the screen really put a smile on my face. It's hilarious how little it does, and I'm certain something like a Max Potion would heal more, uses no MP, and doesn't cost whoever uses it a GCD
I personally think Summoners version of Physick should upgrade to something else to make it more useful. Maybe a strong regen effect, like Aurora.
There was also a point in the beginning where black mages could use it via cross class which was hilarious
At least up until recently it had an incredibly niche use of proccing divine veil in the event that absolutely nobody else was a better choice to do the job. Now it doesn't even do that.
Theres a super niche application i suppose. In 14 healing someone below 20% gives a ton of limit, summoners could spam heals to build limit i suppose@Aquilenne
It honestly should be changed to something like Physickia, where it instead is just an applicable regen with a 20 second duration and a 60 cool down. It scales with Int rather than mind, and is a 250 potency cure effect. That should make it where it heals like 3000 per tick for six ticks, or about 25% of someone's health bar. This equals a potion. Better for soloing or assisting a tank/healer in time of need, but not really diverting off the focus it has. It even combos with Phoenix.
I literally never used Lulu's death spell on any enemy. It either does absolutely nothing and wastes your magic, or you don't get an overkill. And a lot of enemies are immune to it by the time you get it.
Deathstrike makes sense, at least you're doing damage with the weapon too.
Deathstrike was great for capturing enemies.
Uh, if you don't think Deodorize had a purpose, you didn't play FF11.... There was shit that was blind that Deodorant or the Deodorize spell was the only way to get past them when necessary. Also, original FF11 you absolutely could not escape an enemy until you zoned out to another area. You used Deodorize to avoid enemies that tracked by scent primarily. Paired with Sneak and Invis it was the only way through shit.
This.
The funny thing about Sight in FF3 is that even though now we have World Map buttons (which...is weird they even did this at all when FF1 had a world map cheat code essentially) Sight actually does something different from the World Map button.
Sight gives you access to the entire area's location markers. The World Map, however, only shows what you've been to before. And because 3 is not so much non-linear as it is a more open map to explore by the mid-game, it's more useful to have effectively a toggle between where you have and haven't been yet to have an idea of where to go next.
Naturally, this concept is already made redundant by just looking up a map online, but the effort is appreciated for at least giving me a reason to not just alt-tab out of the game to look up a map the instant I'm not sure where to go next.
YES! So happy Physick was included. I am pretty sure I was one of the commenters on the other vid pointing it out lol. It’s so silly.
Great list! Keep up the good work
I'm playing ff5 on the gba right now, so I went to the spellbook to see if they were any useless spells.
The one that stood out to me was Mute. It silences all allies and enemies. Not very handy if it silences your own party. Although I guess you could negate this by just wearing silence immunity gear, but also there probably aren't many fights if any where this spells is too helpful. Plus it's a time mage only spell.
Probably not a top 10 useless spell, but worth mentioning I guess.
FF5 actually has the fewest examples of truly useless spells from what I remember. Its magic system is fun to utilize because anything severely hampers the party in some way often has some way to either be completely negated or made inconsequential via different gameplay strategies. Even the typically useless spells all had at least one specific boss fight they could shine in.
Mute, for example, works great if the main “mage” is a chemist or otherwise using Mix. It doesn’t prevent things like Mix or other skills from achieving the same results as magic by different methods so a party of physical attackers and a chemist can use Mute to shut down lots of problematic encounters.
Monsters being monsters, a lot of their dangerous abilities aren't magic so being muted doesn't even weaken them. In addition to that, I believe the spell casts successfully in most battles even if the enemy has a specific immunity to mute. In both cases you lose access to spells with no upside.
If FF5 has one weakness it's that you can't see why your status spells don't work mid-battle. Status immunity? Magic Evasion? Spell failure rate? Nope, just MISS.
I love the Remora summon, but it's a dual-ailment spell and spells that inflict multiple ailments fail if the enemy is immune to _one_ of those ailments. And a lot of enemies are immune to Sap or Paralysis. It's a great game regardless, but that's what I'd change if I could.
@@Evan.13239 This is my first time playing it since I was a kid, I'm really enjoying the vast customization.
I'll play around with the builds more, and see if I can find some fun uses for mute.
@@chadd990 I really hope you have a fantastic time playing the game, man! There are so many ways to play that game, and there's a ton of replay value with foreknowledge of what you'll be up against if you ever feel the itch for that sort of thing.
I was under the impression mute was bugged so it only affects the party
Pretty sure this is a personal problem I have but I just never find myself using spells like Mini, Pig or Toad, I know they have their uses but I just find them too unreliable
In Final Fantasy VII, the only reason I use the Transform Materia is because you can master it fairly quickly and then the sell it for all the money you'll ever need.
Via the change staff is one of the few ways I found those useful, aside from when needing to cure myself of those debuffs as those spells cure said debuffs as well.
Agree I simply see this as like "poisona" for the status itself as that's the only time I'll ever use them - I did recently play ff6 however and when accidentally casting you do notice some strong enemies are funnily weak to this but due to how easy it is to become OP in this game anyway it's that which reduces the need for status ailments.
@daviddalrymple2284 once i have Vincent and the added effect materia, i always put "transform/added effect" on his gun. I wouldn't waste a turn just using the spell, but its fairly effective added on to his attack
Its actually an issue with status effects in most RPGs of all types is having most important/dangerous enemies being immune to all status effects. Or the status effects have such a high chance of failing that its not worth trying to use them.
So most RPG players never use status effects simply because they can't be used(Or fail) in 99% of fights that you would want to use them. Then in the 1% of fights you can you don't think to use them because they can't be used(Or are too unreliable) in every other fight in the game.
Esuna in IX is even more useless too because Angel's Snack is so good.
Preach brother!!!!!
Yes, of course.
This spell can save party in any situation
Especialy fight Ozma.
that and you can just equip skill to negate most effect.
Wow!!!
@@KPX01 no effect skill to negate mini and frog.
Ozma has Curse to make inflict poison, slow, confuse, mini, darkness
Shoutout to dragon warrior 1 sleep spell!! Best status spell I’ve ever seen in a jrpg. Good chance to sleep, good chance to not wake on hit, balanced by how important your MP resource is.
Definitely used sleep on a few late game bosses in DW4 too.
The only problem with Sleep in a Dragon quest game are the TOO MANY ways to actually cause it making the actual spell worthless in fact theirs 0 MP cost SKILLS in Dragon Quest 7 that cause sleep and theirs like 4 to 5 of those sleep causing moves + the Sleep rod itself buyable during the Dharma Temple/Alltrades Abby scenario of DQ7 as well.
But if the FF games I almost NEVER use it in the games after the first one.
@@veghesther3204 It's so funny how much Final Fantasy taints someone's view of offensive status ailment spells, or anything beyond basic damage and healing, really.
You can give and take a lot of ailments in Dragon Quest and if you even attempt to play ANY Megami Tensei game without buffs (Persona included naturally), you're signing a death warrant.
@@UltimaKeyMasterAdmittedly BUFFS are usually good in Final Fantasy, you want Protect/Shell/Haste in vast majority of boss fights, since they are cheap, save money on healing and generally last either a while or just for the entire fight. FF9 is about the only exception due to just how screwed buffs are in that game, the devs dropped the ball on that one.
It's negative effects, aside from maybe Slow, along with Dispel that get the shaft. I'm glad that FF13 went the SMT route of "use buffs/debuffs or die horribly".
You had to zone out of the area to lose aggro from a monster in ff11. They will chase you until either you are dead or they are. Basically, if the mob got on you and you didn't get out of a zone, you were screwed. You can't just run a little bit away from a mob. You had to apply all sneak, invis, and deodorize before going through a dangerous area. You can attempt to cast spell when they are on you but the spells have a high chance of failing when you are being hit.
If the monster doesn't track by scent, it would lose track eventually and deaggro. And is there a point to pre-casting deoderize? It doesn't keep you from getting aggro and wears off if something takes a swing at you. I guess it might have a very niche edge case where you get spotted but keep out of range of any attempted attacks by a monster with no ranged abilities, but that isn't much of a contingency.
@ztdk Apparently, they changed how mob leashes worked. This wasn't the case initially. When the game started, the mobs were relentless. That's where the famous /sh train to zone Inc started.
@@Vidious808 Even playing on private servers, it still feels ridiculous beyond belief the range their aggro zones are. It's like Xenoblade X levels of ridiculous zones.
Lol
‘Train inc’
Everyone groans
Good times
FFXI context for Deodorize. Initially in the game mobs would chmace you across the entire zone never losing aggro. Onlybway to lose aggro is for YOU to either die or leave the zone completely through loading screen and loading into a new zone. Depending on the zone you could be being chased for 5 - 10 mins lol. Deodorize was a way to lose aggro early IF it tracked by smell. But many many maaaaaaany years later the put enemies on leashes so they stayed in their "area" and if you left the area they camped they would lose aggro. Making Deodorize even more useless
The extreme punishment of aggro in XI was hilarious. And getting sent to jail by GMs for creating trains was utter chaos and sometimes worth PKing campers. Not the proudest of times lol
I loved when they removed Sustain from the SMN spell pool, while maintaining Physick as MND scaling only (for that small period of time). Your summons still took full single target damage, so if they were tanking they weren't very good at it.
Wish they'd find a way to make Physick scale off of the higher of MND and INT. Or just let SMN get a replacement that scales from INT.
Despite Physick not healing enough as Summoner in FF14, I still kept it on my hotkey. Two reasons:
- Just for having fun around. Doing 200 heals on someone with 100000 HP feels that much more hilarious.
- The spell is still a very good spell in low level sync. Typically you just leave the job to a Healer, but when the Healer is dead or you somehow don't even have a healer, this still offers good healing. In particular, this lets you get through early Palace of the Dead floors very safely, which is a big advantage over other DPS classes.
I wasn't expecting to see my comment in the intro but I'm stoked it's there 🎉
I'd like to defend FF8's Float spell.
Quake is a less common spell in FF8, and it is also a powerful spell for Junctioning. Junctioning Quake to Elemental Defense is kind of a waste, when you could Junction it to something like Strength for a more consistently useful effect.
Granted, Float has always been kinda niche, as it only helps against Earth based attacks.
i remember only using it against the brothers gf battle
I think that in the final fantasy franchise most of the spells that grant negative states to enemies are useless most of the time, often the effects don't take the effect the first time that spell is used and the player has to use multiple rounds of the same spell to get the enemy to take effect, where It often doesn't make much difference in the battle and only lasts a short time. This is if the monster is not immune, often requiring a scan-type ability to identify the enemy's weaknesses and immunity. In other words, it is more worthwhile to use positive state magic on characters and use offensive attacks than to waste time with this type of magic .
Absolutely true. With some (rare) exceptions, attack magic, healing magic, and enhancing magic are all much, much more practical than enfeebling magic.
Demi was nerfed the hardest in FFX. You acquired it late, and damn near everything with high HP totals that even 1 casting would be useful against (boss, miniboss, or arena fiend) were ALL IMMUNE.
I really hope they go back to the basics- I loved figuring out combos, cures, and easy deaths with the manual systems.
Death, FFX: I believe there is a sphere that can jump you to anyone’s position, possibly another one that can move you as long as it was unlocked. There is so much more to do with damage, weapons, and equipment in this game for power, overkill, and defense.
FF9: You can learn White Wind pretty early with Quina
Me at 8 years old *25 percent? Gravity is the best spell ever….. wait a minute…*
Demi vs Diablo is about the only time I used it lol
Eh, it's alright so long as you're aware you're getting diminishing returns. Of course I didn't really know when to stop when I was a kid, so I overused it.
I used it in FFTA.
Its actually a badass spell, when enemy hp is above 40k, lol. But i definitely feel ya here, maths was harder as a kid, lol.
It’s good for maybe 2 casts but after that’s it’s better to just use holy or meteor
I think my favorite moment when using a mediocre spell like poison was in final fantasy 13-2 vs Yomi. It actually felt like a neat new route to defeat it yet it isn’t a way to kill it in two seconds. You still had to survive to win the battle
I loved that battle. It's frustrating when you get back luck with poison not sticking, but it's so satisfying when it does go down. And that tight strategy made it fun to keep fighting Yomi dozens of times in order to get rare drops for weapon crafting.
It isn't final fantasy if I don't have 100 spells, but only use nuke.
Physick is an arcanist skill. It used to have a usecase for summoners back in the days when pets had HP.
FF has a problem with magic. When you fet a spell, if leveling with the story, the monsters become immune so quickly or it is so useless that the enemy is easier to kill with physical attacks.
The FF4 Sight spell is actually useful in the Pixel Remaster if you're achievement hunting. You have to visit all optional areas, defeat every creature, and obtain every item and chest. And Sight served as a checklist to where you've been and what you've gotten. It was also doubly important when you realized that there were a handful of areas that you could only visit once. So Sight helped ease a lot of heartache trying to 100% the game.
2:54 getting 11 of something with lulus overdrive crazy
Physik is Paw Patrol Bandaid for SMN.
Video Idea:
Spells/Abilities that people thought were useless but were actually overpowered.
Example: Mix from FF X. Math from FFT. etc.
That 12 on death fury blew my mind
Death has always been a stupid spell in my opinion. If it works, it's a 1 hit kill and that's boring. If it doesn't work(which is a high percentage of the time), then it's a wasted turn.
"in final fantasy 11 you can just keep running until you escape"
words that no one has said in the history of time 😂
Words I actually have said though: "I don't need Sneak, I have movement speed."
You CAN hypothetically outrun mobs, at least nowadays, since most lose interest if they don't get to hit you for a certain amount of time... but base player speed has been boosted 25% or so from the launch level, and mobs are STILL pretty much exactly as fast as players, so... it's mostly only viable on casters that don't have Stun, Bind, Gravity, or Sleep.
Unless you're trying to pull a whole room full of monsters to kill en masse. Then they'll despawn at the drop of a hat just to spite you.
Agreed, lol. Those words might have been spoken before, but not by anyone who seriously played FFXI.
Here’s what running away from aggro enemies in FFXI ACTUALLY gets you:
1) probably dead, killed by the enemy that initially found you
2) definitely dead, killed by the horde of enemies that have the “linking” trait (meaning they join in the chase if an aggro enemy passes nearby)
3) a bunch of hate mail from other players, even if you somehow managed to flee, because now there’s a cluster of enemies piled up near a main road or chokepoint
When they added despawning, I knew the game was over. Inconvenience and chaos is FFXI 😂
I don’t recall if it had been mentioned before, but in FF XIV, Astrologian’s “Undraw” skill is absolutely useless. It removes a drawn card from the slot. Nothing else. You would be better off just holding the card until Draw comes back up, and replace the card that way.
Death is super usefull in FFX! Not the spell, the deathstrike ability you can put on a capture weapon. It makes getting aurons sigil so much easier. Mix it up with stone strike on another character's capture weapon.
That's exactly what makes it useless as a spell. You will get access to deathstrike/deathtouch long before you actually get access to the spell itself. The status effect is situationally useful, the spell itself is not.
@JebAlert thank you, Timon.
Same with Petrify strike I believe that skill can be used in FFX BEFORE the actual Break spell can be used and the break spell is still crap.
@@veghesther3204 Honestly I forgot the break spell even existed in FFX until just now. 😆 Yeah, you can get stone strike on Wakka's weapons ridiculously early just like Lulu's deathtouch.
@@JebAlert You probably forgot because Break only exists in one fight. Seymour Natus uses it and the Mortibody tries to follow up with a strike on the petrified victims. Otherwise, Break isn't accessible
Huh just learned about the physick thing with summoners. Good thing I just leveled one and was using it in dungeons...
It's been a while since I played FFXI so I might be wrong, but I thought Deodorise was useful because if you were sneaking around enemies while invisible, they would still detect your scent. It made getting around high-level areas or just avoiding fights while getting around much easier.
Yea most of the time you used all 3.
No mobs can only aggro to one or more of sight, sound, low hp, magic or ability use... deodorise was used if you could sleep or bind a mob then run far enough away to ensure it can't chase beyond sound and sight ranges
Biggest problem with FF14 is how bloated the skill list is for every character with either niche or useless spells and abilities.
I swear they should all be cut in half, and you'd literally see no change in gameplay
I believe it was either FF6 or FF7, but there was an exploit that made the death spell a garenteed hit. You simply cast invisibility on the enemies/boss first. Invisibility would make any spell cast on the invisible target a garenteed hit.
Its FF6 PS1/SNES version only + the Rhodox rage on those 2 versions to kill Intangirs instantly without seeing its Meteo counters ALMOST any spell the useless Ragnarok Esper effect does NOT = 100% chances on the SNES/PS1 version if you vanish the target before summoning it so the Esper itself even WITHOUT the Vanish and Doom bug is still worthless since it almost NEVER works.
I thought I remembered the original SNES release of FFIV (aka FF2 lol) just sort of zooming out the screen slightly when Sight was cast, which was really only useful prior to getting the airship. I'm second guessing myself now though 😅
Your memory is correct; that's exactly how it worked in the SNES version. It was marginally useful for avoiding dead ends on the way to Fabul Castle from Mt. Hobs, but that was it.
All the spells on the barrier materia in ff 7 since you'd have the big guard enemy skill long before then
Only if you knew where to get it, prior to the Internet that wasn't a given
Tbh the Barrier materia also has Reflect, for what it's worth. And Shield.... thogh that might be its own materia and not on Barrier.
Barrier only has Reflect and the physical and spell barrier spells but even on Wait mode FASTEST battle speed Big Guard is still useless it won't even last then for even 1 minute and most NON boss fights in FF7 don't even LAST that long once Big Guard can be used especially with all the PS4 remaster cheats ie infinite HP/MP/Limit breaks and the 3x speed cheat.
Big Guard also provides Haste, don't forget that. And cheats are generally not counted since they are... cheats. Nothing can hurt you if you cheat.
@@Kruggov Dude, it's veghesther. Don't take him seriously, he's got mental issues and has been doing this for 20+ years.
Next: the skill that makes all the other skills useless. And that's Math Skill from FF Tactics.
It's somewhat balanced by the fact you have to learn those abilities first. Takes a long time to train up a math skill user.
@@rustyjones7908
I can master all character jobs in less than 2 hours.
I wish the FF14 devs would just make Physick scale off of INT or MND, whichever was higher. That way, Summoner could cast a useful heal in a pinch if needed, kinda like how Elemental Shaman in WoW used to be able to toss out a Healing Wave or a Chain Heal that wasn't complete garbage.
FFXI enemies could aggro based on sight, sound, magic *and* blood (low hp) and for the longest time the effect time of invisible, sneak and deodorize was random. It was only much much later they were given a solid 10min timer. A lot of times these effects would start wearing off almost instantly after being cast. This is why party members were often encouraged by white mages etc to bring their own items (sneak oils and prism powders) so the whm didn't have to constantly be casting in dangerous situation.
Keep up the high quality works! 👍👍👍 (Writing AND video editing!!! 👍👍👍)
To be fair physik is pretty much near useless on SCH too. Unless shit hits the fan you've got so many other tools to use..
Physick is good up until like. 60 at Best. Using it at 90 def means shit hit the fan 😂 you're totally right, cuz we got so much other stuff in our kit
I am not going to repeat my reasons, but Doomsday was very limited in utility, especially since it can be made deadly to a party, even one with Shadow Absorbing gear, if Vivi has the ability Element Null, and especially if both Elem-Null and Reflect Null are equipped. I get the reason behind Esuna, but Doomsday is just given too late to even get much of a chance to utilize it.
Edited for the reason that I said the wrong spell name.
I've played ffix more times than I can even remember at this point and I agree. I never used doomsday.
I love it in fact when Kuja final dungeon loves to spam like 3000+ damage Flare stars EVERY TURN at lv 75+ and I NEVER had it miss the best way to recover from that damage is via Doomsday the actual CURE 3 spells when used on a entire lv 75+ party restores LESS HP then his Flare star does.
Think uve underestimated how bad SMN Physick is, it stops being noticeable healing around 35, not to mention u never rly need it there anyway. Its kinda stuck at 350-400 hp restored all the way to lvl90, where jobs have 80-90k hp, Tanks even reach 130k, a 500hp heal wont make a dent
You would think that with the SMN rebalance with Endwalker, they would have split it into a DPS version and Healer version. They did it for Energy Drain! SMN and SCH both still get it, but its effects are different, and the tool tip even differentiates them! Sure, making SMN physick scale off of intelligence would bring it in line with Vercure for RDM, but if you're in a situation where you need to use Vercure, something has likely gone HORRIBLY wrong.
I vercure myself because I'm usually right after my burst and I'm a dumb dumb and probably ate a raidwide
@@rainfallen7574 I tend to use Vercure if a fight ends and I have a dangling dualcast stack. I fling it at the tank or healer, just because I want rid of it. The only other time I use Vercure in a party is if I'm trying to prime Verraise.
To be fair the jobs that COULD cast Deodorize were those that had access to ways to prevent the monster from moving. Things like Gravity, Sleep, Repose and Bind. All of which would allow you to cast the spell and reapply sneak/invis and move on. Deoderize was nice cause you didn't get risked bopped again while traveling through dangerous territory. Of course no one really knew what was going on back then and what monsters even tracked my scent.
I hated how useless bio became in ff7 against bosses, most of them were either jenova, or a robot who were immune to poison…
Physick at least has use cases in non-standard content. I kept a RPR alive in BA with it after the healer got clipped by a cleave and died during the Ozma fight. It's not the worst thing to have in deep dungeons when you step on a mine or open a trap chest. The issue with it is that it scales of Mind instead of Int like Red Mage's Vercure does so it heals for almost nothing in regular content.
It's never left my tertiary bar though as it has fringe use cases and up until about level 40 duties, it's a solid heal in a panic situation.
I remember junctioning "Death" to squal's sword in FF8 and it would kill everything. It was actually really useful.
To add a bit of a burn on Physick for Summoners is that they just this expansion completely reworked the job. Changed essentially the whole kit, and left in the useless version of Physick.
I would say Physic and Cure 1 suffer the same problem, but you can't really just not have them on your hot bar because if you go back to older content, like dungeon roulettes, you will still need it because you will lose access to your other spells.
It does make it kind of wierd though that White Mage pretty much stops using Cure I when they get access to Cure II
Deodorize may not have been that useful, but it was always good to use on that one Galka that smelled bad after hours of partying!
That was the true purpose of it - insulting your party members.
I'll have you know, I used Physic as a Black Mage to keep my party alive after a healer DC in a dungeon way back when cross-class skills were a thing.
The Death spell isn't even the best use of instant death attacks in FFX. Things like Deathtouch/Deathstrike, Stonetouch/Stonestrike, or even Zanmato (which can instakill any enemy in the game, even the ultimate superbosses), were far better or more useful instantdeath attacks.
If we are allowed to use Blue magic, then perhaps 1000 needles is one of weak ones... At least when enemy starts go over 5000 hp and enemy starts having deadlier spells or skills.
Another could be ff9 Zidane's lucky seven since it has very random damage, not to mention there are spells that actually do more damage later on.
If we're counting bugs then FFIXs thunder slash should be in there, although I suppose that might not count as a spell.
Was surprised to see Maelstrom wasn’t on either list representing FF8
In FFXI, deodorize was used before they fixed or changed how aggro would work. Before a mob would not lose aggro so easily. A whole party would wipe in the dunes from someone aggroing a mob. If any of the players would pull any aggro onto themselves such as: a WHM tossing a cure spell onto the player who initially got aggroed, the whm now has generated hate onto himself. If the mob did not turn and engage on the whm, it would be able to deodorize and run out of visual range to remove any hate it had generated and thus deaggroing...
Once this mechanic got patched, the use of deodorize had no use. Mobs deaggroed much faster, and they dissapear once it deagroed, before they would walk the whole map till they arrived at their spawn point, causing chaos and destruction along the way for any other poor party that took 3 hours to form and quickly disband 😅
The words ‘dune wipe’ are straight PTSD man. Could you censor that for public health?
I didn't know you could use float on the Brothers to negate something lol~ but yes that spell was pretty much inly useful during that part if the game where there's hardly a way to avoid their earth abilities~
Scathe for BLM in FFXIV is the most useless damage dealing ability. It is also one of, if not the ONLY DD ability left in the game from 2.0 which has not seen a single change in its function or potency, only a change in MP cost to fit the new MP system.
100 potency with a 20% chance of double potency, no cast time costing 800MP. In comparison with Fire IV which will deal the most damage over a fight, Scathe does on average 1/5th of the damage. And in comparison to the weakest ability commonly used, a 30% weakened Blizzard III while in Astral Fire 3, it does half the damage. It only has a single use. If you have run out of swiftcast/triplecast/other instant cast abilities or procs, you MIGHT use it. Even then, any good player will never use it and most average and bad players will most likely forget to use it, because if you're able to cast literally any other damage spell, that will do more damage instead. If you use it while in the Astral Fire stance, it will make you lose out on DPS by not being able to cast 6 Fire IV in a normal rotation and forcing you into the Umbral Ice stance faster.
As a BLM main who does all and any end-game content, the amount of times I have used Scathe the entirety of the Endwalker expansion, I could probably count on one hand. Even then I don't remember why I would even use it, as the only way is that I must've messed something royally up.
I have to go back to Heavensward and the Alexander Savage raids to remember an actual use for it. A7S and the magic hammer mechanic comes to mind, because BLM only had Swiftcast and random procs for instant cast damage spells, other than Scathe.
I see this take all the time but I don't agree with it at all. I love Scathe at low levels. I used it constantly to finish off enemies that would die before I finished another cast. It's also just a neat little utility spell for tagging enemies while you're running around before grouping them up. In unsynched duties where you're one-shotting things anyway, it's also helpful. Especially if you're with other players that would make it a complete waste of time starting casts on anything.
Yeah, it's pretty useless in endgame content. But without scathe I'd be having a miserable time trying to tag any low HP mobs in a busy FATE.
Scathe is nice when you haven't upgraded to Black Mage yet so you don't need to wait for one last spell cast to get an overworld exp bump.
It's been a longtime. Also, that Wakka face. LOL 😆
What about Ultima from Final Fantasy II?
he mentioned it in the first video
Given this is a Commenter video about more niche examples, I'm willing to bet the main video had that as the peak example. Since other than FF1 NES' litany of bugs, that's the most infamous spell of the entire franchise.
Yeah, Quina's 'Angel Snack' blue magic is INSANE and trivializes the final boss battle. Making Esuna especially obsolete.
Float was very useful for certain battles in FF9.
Oh i never thought of junctioning quake for that.
Pretty much every version of bio or a similar poison spell.
Most bosses are immune to them and regular enemies are way easier to take down with other more useful spells.
Bio is legitimately amazing in FF4 though. Literally nothing in the game is immune to it, and it inflicts a bunch of damage on top of causing its status, *and* it has an instant cast time in a game where almost every other spell takes time after inputting the command to actually cast.
Cast poison and haste on an enemy and defend every turn till you think it is near death and love tap to victory.
Mostly used for low level runs of the game.
I call hax on that Lulu clip, getting a full 13 on overdrive? I dont think so xD
Isn't it stat-bases? Or am I remembering wrong...
@@Ramsey276one It's based on the rotation of the joystick, never heard of stats affecting it.
Sight was in the game in FF1, but not as a spell players cast. It's a 'spell' you learn from a riddle given by Matoya's brooms.
Tceles B sserp - if I'm not mistsken.
I'll never forget the day I solo'd more than half of Fenrir's health as Black Mage by keeping myself alive with cross class Physic. But it still belongs here.
Status spells in FFX were almost entirely useless on their own, but status touch/strike weapons (and Wakka's status attacks, really) are where the application shined. The physically weaker characters could become power players with the right setup. Even if you were just rotating them in for EXP, having them attack and ruin a fiend's day with a Deathstrike at least gave them some utility when they weren't needed for their regular roles (like white/black magic). Defending is faster for rotating people in, yes, but I always preferred my party to do something useful.
In my opinion, Esuna still has some help to you in FF9, Break on other hand... yeah it petrifies the enemy, but also, almost every boss is immune against petrify, and even if you encounter a difficult enemy, it's better to use stop or death, cause you gain no EXP or Gil after using break on the enemy.
Jewel from FFIX. Harvesting ore from a single enemy? Ore just so common as drop in that game, what's the point? The amount of ore increases the damage your summons does based a certain calculation, but it's really not that helpful since the damage is capped at 9,999 and this game has no multi-hits. So, by the time Eiko gets this spell, yeah, it's not good. Even the wiki points out how useless this spell is.
That was in the original video
I think one of the few times death magic has been useful was Sukoden 1. Granting the main character this magic just worked so well. As a forced party member one didn't sacrifice customization to include the death spell user, and his death magic often worked to skip through mobs as you made your way to the boss.
Physick is particularly annoying because you can't really remove it from your hotbar.. if you're in a lower level synced dungeon, that's the only healing spell you have available as a Scholar - outside of your Fairy assistant anyway.. which may or may not be ideal all the time.
I always thaught that bosses shouldn't be immune to status effects, but just more resistant. Like dark reducing their chance to hit by 10% rather than 100% for regular enemies or silence only lasting 1 turn no matter the source. As long as bosses were built with this in mind nothing would need to become too easy, the fights would just end up becoming more involved and interesting imo.
I have Physick on my SMN bar. Take that!
Why?
@@CirnoFairyMemes mostly but I've also used it as a latency test between pulls if I'm noticing lag.
It's been years since I played FFXI, but I'm WHM main and I'm preeeeeeety sure Deoderize's duration isn't a static 10 min. It actually is predetermined when it's cast on the target and can last a variable amount of time. You only know when it's running out when you get an in-game message indicating it's wearing off.
There are actually buff timers available in the vanilla game now, so you can see how long you've got left. But yeah, Sneak, Invisible, and Deodorize are randomized a bit. To make things "fun" and "interesting".
I always put Deathstrike on my capture weapons in FFX, it speeds up maxing out the monster arena.
You think that's bad? I tried to sell ice to Eskimos.
* casually drops a (1) physics to that DPS with less than 10% on alliance raid *
" youre welcome"
Physick is quite baffling, because in pretty much every other case where the stat scaling problem would arise, the game has compensated for it. Vercure for Red Mages, Clemency for Paladins and even Rekindle for Summoners themselves scale off of more relevant attributes, and those are just the most directly comparable spells.
Respect for covering XI
Eh. For FF14 free trial players, up until the recent expansion was made available to us, Summoner's healing options filled a niche that allowed for a DPS class to have healing capabilities whenever the dedicated healers would mess up or get overwhelmed. Having access to Physic, Sleep, and Raise with the benefit of an instacast has helped me save otherwise failed encounters while leveling or doing hunts. Even if it does fall off passed level 50, I'll definitely say that being able to pick your party back up and give them another chance to win the fight is anything but useless.
If you ever do a "almost completely useless skills" list, then Aim+20 from FFT totally deserves to be on it.
sleep in ffxiv is pretty useless when enemies will wake up after a single attack. the only possible use i can think of is against a tough enemy next to a destination where you need to “use” it for 5 seconds to trigger a cutscene or some crap
This is less "sleep is useless" and more "FF14 doesn't give you any opportunities/reasons to take advantage of crowd control spells".
Sleep in FF11 has the same mechanics but is incredibly important because it's necessary to lower the pressure on the party in tougher encounters, at least during its heyday.
It's very useful for removing certain enemies from a fight that aren't a priority to kill right away but still make things difficult. Like if you're fighting a group that has a lot of party roles covered, you can sleep the healer to focus on the DPS or vice versa. It suits methodical parties.
Some bosses have a mechanic where two enemies must be kept a good distance apart, so you can sleep one and pull the other away instead of having someone take over tank duties on the second.
@@yoso378 That's definitely down to how 14 is designed. 11 is an old-ass MMO where 1v1 fights can manage to be deadly if you're not prepared, so it's so much more useful back then.
14...you're either running around kinda pointlessly open zones that you're already perfectly or over leveled to, or it's a hallway dungeon where the only enemies you fight are in like packs of 5 everyone mows down with AOE damage cause they're all focused on a tank that's constantly topped off by the healer that from certain class mechanics have effectively infinite MP for a mob fight.
It's extra useless now when it's *only* Magic DPS classes and no more cross class skills. And one of those classes unlocks at *Level 50* , so you *really* don't need to be running from enemies by the time you get them.
Physick is also pretty useless in FFXIV even on healers. I'm a SCH main and I can't remember the last time I cast that spell, it takes a whole cast action over your endless supply of cheap, OGCD healing spells. I believe all the other healers are in the same boat and have much better options to use their action on. There are also actually very few dungeons in the early game that could take even a new tank player low enough that, when Physick is your main healing spell, you'd need to actually heal them. The way early game dungeons work is that they are so easy healers are typically just spamming their main attack spell.
As a Summoner main in FFXIV I just removed Physick from my hotbar (except for a few occassions when I'm playing with friends and I want to "help" the healers as a joke).
Imo, deodorize is an incredibly useful utility spell. Bind/Sleep allows it to go off without any problems, usually. There are many times where running to a zone isn't a viable option, but bind/sneak/invisible/deodorize will drop the aggro and allow you to continue doing what you are doing without moving very far. There also could be places where there is no water to drop aggro with
Really Physick is what 14 players think is the most useless. Repose literally has done nothing since 2013 and it's still in the game.
7:34 What is that party??!!!
I’m pretty sure that’s the Pig status effect.
Which in FF4 is nearly as useless if YOUR NOT the enemies are using it.
Dishonorable mention to Sabin's later blitzes because unless you know from outside info, you'll *never* realize they're "spells" (based on magic) and build him as a physical user.
In FFXI you could use deodorize to stay at low HP near undead that would blood aggro (detect low HP). BUT the MAIN use of deodorize was to cast it on stinky Galkas.
I befriended one Galka in my many years of playing FFXI. Their plight is regrettable