help me choose weapon for lightning plz ((

[{FP$}Alexeyka]

hello again everyone! I am on a chapter 11 now and it is time to choose weapon to upgrade but I can not decide witch weapo is best for lightining. I want her to be both ravager and commando (and even medic sometime), but i dunno witch weapon is best (blazefire or gladius or carbine or axis). I decide to upgrade axis but now i m starting to regret because it require a lot of exp while the bonuse and stats are weak (furthemore to unlock its full potential it require other accesories with speed bonuse equiped on u, what prevents u to equip defensive accessories)
What do u guys thinks about it?
p.s. ff games became so hard in the end wich makes me to stop playing because of wrong choices i made.,, that kinda sad((( Are the games so hard or am i so stupid?(((
p.s.s by the way, when characters attack with ruin and sparkstrike (or aqua - doesnt matter) -- which damage is dealing -- by strentgh or by magic?

[☂Aqua☂]

Gladius,Axis Blade or wait until beggining of Chapter 12 to get a Lionheart in a chest.

[Watt]

Gladius is a bit of a poor choice since it gimps her magical output and gives no passives on it's own, but I do recommend what the guy above me said otherwise. Ruin deals NON-elemental magical damage, strikes deal ELEMENTAL physical damage. Also a lot of monsters on Gran Pulse are too strong for somebody who's just reached this point, so you can either do some early sidequest and some grinding, or go follow the plot and enter the mines where enemies are relatively easy. You ain't supposed to do everything this early on.

[{FP$}Alexeyka]

Thnx guys, u helped me out, really)
still, i do not understand why do u think that axis blade is one of the best when it is twice as worse then blazefire? Is the bonus so strong?

[Watt]

Because when upgraded to it's second form and above, it pretty much let's you act immedeatly after your previous action, this is especially true for Lightning's special ability Army of One which you get at the end of Chapter 11, because it hits 11!!! times charging your ATB for each hit.
Honestly I prefer Lionheart though, because it lets you stagger enemies easier, especially bosses, and it has better stats and it synthesises Random:Instant Chain, thus letting you utterly destroy bosses.

[PanicButton]

FFXIII weapons[finalfantasy.wikia.com]

You can see all the weapons here and make a decision. General rule is: The better MAG/STR bonus, the worse the extra penalty/bonus.

I maxed out Lionheart (FF8 ftw), The quick stagger can mean 1-2 less turns to stagger some tough enemies, but in the late game it won't really matter when you'll no longer going to use COM/RAV/RAV to fill the chain gauge, and just gonna use RAV/RAV/RAV to go crazy...but still...it has it's uses. It's also a nice balanced weapon MAG/STR-wise. You just have to wait for it to become available.

[NightDreamer]

Originally posted by HYPER MEGA GIGA TURBO ♥♥♥♥♥♥:

Gladius is a bit of a poor choice since it gimps her magical output and gives no passives on it's own, but I do recommend what the guy above me said otherwise. Ruin deals NON-elemental magical damage, strikes deal ELEMENTAL physical damage. Also a lot of monsters on Gran Pulse are too strong for somebody who's just reached this point, so you can either do some early sidequest and some grinding, or go follow the plot and enter the mines where enemies are relatively easy. You ain't supposed to do everything this early on.

Very true, i just started chapter 11 and the enemies are like 60% unbeatable which frustates me.

I'm thinkin skippin all crazy monster and just continue with main story. I'm using gladius lvl 16, i dont' know whether i can upgrade other weapons as i don't have too much time grinding. :(

[Watt]

Gladius is really only useful in the early chapters. Also you only really have to upgrade weapons to the second tier(for their upgraded passives) to have a relatively easy time beating the story. Personally I recommend doing the first 20 or so marks on Gran Pulse so you have access to Chocobos and some much needed stats. Other than a bit of a spoiler, YOU CAN COME BACK IN CHAPTER 13 to grind, so just do plot related stuff and low grade marks near your path.
Gran Pulse is the post-game area anyways.

[talgaby]

Frankly, since weapon stats start to fall off after a while compared to main role crystarium bonuses, I found that I prefer Axis blade. With sprint shoes it gives +60% ATB rate for a minute, which with the ATB charge bonus more than doubles your speed, more than enough to compensate for the -15-25% damage.

[Kepler]

Don't worry about stats so much. In general, it is better to go for secondary/passive bonuses. Stagger maintenance, Chain bonus, Improved Debuffing, etc.

The Axis Blade is great because it charges the ATB guage with each hit. It is even better with Sprint Shoes and Aurora Scarfs for even more speed.

However, I would still wait until Chapter 12 and get the Lionheart (Quick Stagger). I say that because the benefits of Axis blade are somewhat diminished if you are using the ATB Refresh technique (changing Paradigms every 2 turns for instant refill). Either is good though.

Lightning is a balanced character in the end. Early game she is your hard hitter but once Fang and Snow join the party in Chapter 7, Lightning will be in a Ravenger working on stagger gauges most of the time.

If you want to try a stats build, I would choose the Edged Carbine. It will push an AI controlled Lightning to using magic more often. Lightning's casting speed is very fast. Elemental spells as a Ravenger and Ruin/Ruinga as a Commando.

[tiornys]

If you actually do a strict analysis of the weapons, Gladius and Edged Carbine are Lightning's best weapons. Ideally, you should upgrade both. (It's only slightly more expensive to max both Gladius and Edged Carbine as it is to max Axis Blade at both T1 and T2. Also, you can take either Gladius or Edged Carbine to max T3 and the other to max T2 for less than it takes to raise Axis Blade to max T3.)

Originally posted by talgaby:

Frankly, since weapon stats start to fall off after a while compared to main role crystarium bonuses, I found that I prefer Axis blade. With sprint shoes it gives +60% ATB rate for a minute, which with the ATB charge bonus more than doubles your speed, more than enough to compensate for the -15-25% damage.

Axis Blade looks great on paper, but ATB refreshes exist. This, plus the various Siphon abilities, negate a lot of Axis Blade's benefits. Given those, in a straight DPS test, upgraded Axis Blade loses to upgraded Edged Carbine even if you stack every other variable in favor of Axis Blade.

A lot of this stems from the fact that Axis Blade isn't really doubling your speed. It may double the speed at which your ATB charges, which reduces the wait time in between attack rounds, but the attack rounds themselves will still happen at the same speed. On top of that, the hard cap on the effectiveness of the ATB recharging is lower than it might appear thanks to menu lag; if you manage to get Axis Blade into an ideal situation where it fully recharges the ATB gauge during attacks, you still can't make use of that ATB for a couple of seconds. You have to wait for the menu to come back up and you have to reenter an attack sequence. That means that completely refilling the ATB gauge during attacks isn't any better than filling it 50-60% of the way during attacks.

Also worth noting, if you're fighting battles where Sprint Shoes are good, you're almost certainly fighting battles where Aurora Scarf is also good. Sprint Shoes + Aurora Scarf gives the Edged Carbine/Gladius user the same +10% ATB Rate as Sprint Shoes + Axis Blade. Granted, Axis Blade + Aurora Scarf + Sprint Shoes is +15%, but now the comparative benefit is more than halved (because increases to speed do not apply linearly).

Lionheart is even worse than Axis Blade. In 99% of battles, Quick Stagger does effectively nothing. Attack: ATB Recharge is a good ability worth giving up some stats for; it just happens that the stats given up by Axis Blade are too much. Quick Stagger is a bad ability that isn't actually worth giving up stats for. Frankly, the "hidden" ability of Gladius and Edged Carbine to unbalance Lightning's stats and make her AI more likely to stick to all physical or all magical attacks is worth more than Quick Stagger.

[{FP$}Alexeyka]

Originally posted by tiornys:

If you actually do a strict analysis of the weapons, Gladius and Edged Carbine are Lightning's best weapons. Ideally, you should upgrade both. (It's only slightly more expensive to max both Gladius and Edged Carbine as it is to max Axis Blade at both T1 and T2. Also, you can take either Gladius or Edged Carbine to max T3 and the other to max T2 for less than it takes to raise Axis Blade to max T3.)

Isn't it better to use blazefire instead both of those? It's cheaper to upgrade and pretty much universal by itself.

[talgaby]

It's better to use an unbalanced weapon on AI to influence its decisions.

[tiornys]

Originally posted by {FP$}Alexeyka:

Isn't it better to use blazefire instead both of those? It's cheaper to upgrade and pretty much universal by itself.

For one, this:

Originally posted by talgaby:

It's better to use an unbalanced weapon on AI to influence its decisions.

In addition, Blazefire maxes at +115/+115 at t1-*, +323/+323 at t2-*, and +620/+620 at t3-*. Edged Carbine maxes Magic at +170 at t1-*, +448 at t2-*, and +723 at t3-*. Gladius is similar for +Strength (175/448/723).