I've now played this game through to the final boss. I can see many places where people might have difficulties so I wanted to share some insight into the characters and strategy I used to get me through. I would love to know what people are doing with their characters and how they are producing the big numbers I love to see.
My MVPs throughout the game were Laka, Elina, Vahn, Jasmine, Vera, and Ami, I am not discounting anyone else or saying they aren't good or have no value at all. There so many characters in this game that everybody has their shining moments and ability to shine.
Laka - As the thief of the game, most of the best items at any point of the story are Boss Steals. While her damage output is decently low throughout the game, she has a few spikes with some good dagger weapons, and her status effects can really change the tide of battle. With her insane speed she always went first for me in battle, which let her use items/utility magic immediately. Hastaga can put your medium speed characters ahead of the enemies, and since she goes first, she can bump them up to have priority before an enemy attack and change the pace completely. Steal first, do whatever the party needs after. I can't stress how much steal is one of the most useful skills in the game. Random enemies, absolutely everything, always steal. Finding shards and gear early fixes money problems quickly. The only time she ever came out of the party was if I knew I was fighting a mark or something that had nothing to steal.
Elina - Early to midgame her aoe healing is just hard to go without. Some bosses throw out insane amounts of damage, and her spamming her highest cure on the party can just make you ignore most things and keep on bashing away. She does get a few items that allow her to get some dps spells in the mid game opening her up but her damage is always low tier and she excels at magic defense and the white magic. In the mid game for me I found other healing on character abilities so I could swap her out for a higher dps class and keep the aoe healing.
Ami - She is a little bit dependent on Laka early on to get her abilities. While they can be dropped by enemies, its very rare at the moment, and a lot them can be stolen off enemies. If you are the Gygas Arena ahead of your level/story, you can obtain a bunch of her incredibly strong abilities earlier in the story and she becomes capable of carrying the party. She gets one of the best toolkits out of any character with her range of elemental aoe abilities and the ability to heal/buff the party as well. The only thing bad about Ami is you only get 4 slots in your party and she was a 5th place member for me at the end.
Jasmine - Who doesn't love a good monk with anger issues? I spent A good deal investing in her with the nethercite and leveling to raise her vigor as much as possible. The item that breaks her is the sniper scope. By making her attacks unmissable, her Pummel becomes an auto 5 hit bash scaling on her vigor, which can then crit as well. I did not built into crit but just built straight into vigor. She is an absolute glass cannon that was the first character to break into new damage heights for me and took the crown of hardest hitter for most of my game. She did not start this way and had to have the right investments. You can do the moogle hunt 50 times to purchase the combat sash for her which gives +80 vigor, and at the Dojo you can purchase a Juzu that will double her vigor. Behemoth Mask +75. Sniper Scope and +Vigor% accessories. End of game she has about 1500 for me, does 4k damage per pummel and can crit 10-11k on each hit. (normal armor enemies)
Vera - If this game had crowns, I think I'd call Vera the Queen. While she doesn't really get her abilities until the mid to late game, theres a reason for that. Most of her skills are just absurdly broken. She single-handedly handled -most- random encounters in my mid to late playthrough, as she was consistently the highest aoe damage out of any character I had. Earlier on she doesn't have many options to rotate around to for abilities, but she still hits like truck. Once she gets her Ifrit/Ramuh, she becomes random encounters worst nightmares. Push harder in world one and you can get Leviathan whos on another level, and Bahamut is exactly what you expect him to be. She works great with MP reduction cost and really need a large MP pool to not have to chug potions constantly. fortunately ethers are in near infinite supply in this game, so you can just pay to win and offset her weakness by chugging a potion every few battles while she just makes everyone else watch. Ultimately, she can AOE Haste, AOE Heal with 2 different summons, Do Fire/Ice/Thunder/Holy/Water/Non-elemental Damage in aoe form and scales super hard off her magic stat. Odin can beat alot of the Gygas Arena battles before your party is technically capable of them. Whatever the problem is, Vera has the element or solution to it generally.
Vahn - Oh boy, He's the star of the show for a reason. This guy can do it all. He gets the main character treatment and wears the crown for a reason. Consistently one of the highest damage Non MP based Jump early on is just great damage and awesome evasion. Leaves your party hanging out to dry but oh hell its almost always worth it. Later on he gain's Reis's Wind, which is one of the best healing spells in the entire game. Its always Half or more of the partys maximum HP values throughout the game, and its only 16 MP so with a few miracle fruits Vahn can just cast for days. This was the reason I didn't need Elina anymore, and Vahn was able to cover that role easily with the ability while dishing out insane damage every other turn. He consistently gets high damage lances throughout the game. Gets heavy armor with shield, and is generally tanky/strong against most anything. At my end game hes my single hardest character consistently, 2nd fastest character to Laka, and Heals for 4k AOE on the party if not more. His two best skills are Holy Based and Physical Based, so he always has one or the other as an answer to maintain his high damage.
Shout out to------ Coral! While she is not the best in combat, she has some very useful moments when she can prevent your party from taking debuffs....Or the enemy from getting theirs. Her Pharmacology ability works out of combat regardless of if she is in your top 4, so you can use ethers/potions out of combat with the triple effectiveness. Considering how plentiful items are in the game, this became the most efficient way for me to just run and gun. Mega-potions/Hyper ethers out of combat were my portable tents, so I could just go all out offense, take a few hits, pop some potions and keep on moving.
Throughout the game I rotated people in and out to test them, but once I found my squad I pretty much stuck with them the whole time. Seigfried and Darius had some good power spike times with weapons and abilities that were useful. Sometimes I had to bring someone like them just to tank hits and not have a super low hp/squishy party. Oalston had a really good spike when he got his lvl 2/3 spells. He could tap weakness's and clear entire fields, but when I had conflicting weakness enemies on the field, Vera just out-performed with Unicorn/Leviathan/Odin. My end game Oalston is up to almost 2k magic, so I will have to go test him a little bit.
I do love how many characters there are in this game, with the way the story flows, it spikes very much at times with difficulty so I had a hard time rotating and figuring out builds/abilities because I was already comfortable with my crew and setup. If you took the time to reach I hope you enjoyed and maybe learned something. Happy to help out the community in anyway I can. I've enjoyed this game greatly so far and am glad for all the efforts the creator put into making it.