FF2 Event +++ battle down. Reaaaaally touch and go fight, honestly made harder than it would have been otherwise due to constantly getting hit with MT slow and having to wait for Terra to cast Dispel before getting damage in. Final party definitely could have been tweaked to be more effective but I didn't really feel like doing that today. That said this setup worked mostly by luck, as I had run out of gas in the winning run and just stumbled across the finish line like a goddamn QWOP player. Had to hone Magic BD to R4 and Shellga to R3 thanks to slow effectively lowering the duration of those quite a lot.
Seph - R4Indoor Spell, R5Reta, Katana 1.2x damage
Terra - R4Dispel , R4Strongwater, Start: Haste
Faris - R4Magic Breakdown, R1Full Break, Double hit RM
Aeris - R3Shellga, R3Curaga, Staff -> Mind UP
Zack - R4Drain Blade, R4 Tempo Flurry, HP Down -> ATK UP
SG RW
Frionel's Record Materia, unlike almost every other HP Down -> Record Materia, is actually really good!... if you put it on a Drain Blade user. Hey, it's a niche, and a very good one at that. WoS buffed Zack could recover almost to full in one hit and was dealing 8K+ when The Emperor didn't have Barrier up. Dispel was 100% necessary, Barrier reduces your damage too much and Hasted Emperor + Slowed Party is very potentially a game over in the late stages of the fight. SG charges, unlike how I use it most of the time were an emergency OH SHIT button for the last half of the fight to buy time until Aerith's SB recharged. Some real touch and go moments there, motherfucker loves spamming Thundaga and Meteo when he gets to low health.
So, with this fight I'm ready to say I've outgrown the Reta Meta and honestly at the end it was just taking up a valuable skill slot. The only thing it really did was help Faris contribute in between applying breaks, and once I ran out of Strong Waters for Seph it actually wasn't that useful even with her having Double Hit on.
A few obvious simple improvements, ditch Full Break for Armor BD. Even at R2 that would have improved my damage enough to not run out of gas even with no other improvements. I also could have tried to wait until Quistis' SSB popped up for an RW. I trade being able to get rid of Slow and get Regen for not having emergency breaks for when things got too dangerous. Not sure if that's actually better or not. I could have also swapped out Terra for Mog, but I kept her in for her L80 superior durability and the fact that his regen SB isn't really that good here. The Emperor's threatening moves were all magic.
I looked at a couple of the Elemental Gigas videos and meh I don't think I can beat it. I'm gonna try to get Ramza up to 65 Sunday in anticipation for his MC2 so I at least have a L80 Support character (Finally) and maaaaaybe try the fight then, but tbh I think it just comes down to my magic hones not being good enough. I only have R3 Firaja/Blizzaja and R4 Waterja. I could maybe make Meteo and then spend mythril until I have enough charges to YOLO my way through but my mythril's kinda tight and after doing last week's FF9 Divine fight I kinda don't care anyway.
In other news, I just realized that not needing to spend my blank MC2 on Fran for a L80 Support character means I can level up Cloud and get his RM3 instead. Or maybe loserface. Or both, since another blank MC2 is dropping with the X-2 event.