Recommended MIrage Team?

[Zerro0713]

Greetings,

I am at chapter 9, have captured every possible Pokemon (errr Mirages) that I could get and I am running into the same problem that i run into with Pokemon and that is:

1. Who should be in my party an who should be sidelined?
2. Which Mirages are worth investing experience into and which should be permanently sidelined?
3. Transfiguration looks awesome however it seems to increase the size of my Mirages, thus causing me to lose the stack spot.
4. Is it better to be in Giant form or Tiny form? This plays a factor in whether or not I bring more Mediums or more Larges.

Thanks for the feedback.

[rcfox]

I haven't finished the game yet, but here's my experience so far:

Mandragora and Moogle have held their spots in my stacks for the most part. (Remember, when you unlock a linked mirage board, you can invest in it without changing to that new mirage. Any spaces without the white border will transfer.) Mimics seem to have a lot of utility as well.

I have similar feelings about transfiguration. It looks like a nice power step until you realize you need to put the monster in a new slot. It's still worth looking into transferable skills though!

From what I've seen so far, large monsters seem to have better stats, but many medium monsters have very useful abilities. So really, it depends on the situation. At some point in the story, you can start to unlock jewels that give your humans some bonuses while in small form.

Don't forget to look back at monsters you captured and immediately sidelined. Some of them will have jewels you can unlock and you might be able to carry them around in higher-level areas to get enough points to unlock them.

[Nommers]

I'm trying to figure this out myself. Like rcfox said, I've been going through and looking at creatures I've never played with and I'm leveling them and checking out their stats. What I've found is that it doesn't seem to matter what mirages you pick. If you build a stack that you like and level them up, max their grids out... you're almost always going to stomp the competition. That's the fun of it though, you can mix and match as you see fit and pick the things you like. I've spent a lot of time looking through all the mirages I have and their skill boards to determine which ones I found useful and who I would pair them with.

That being said, I do play in chibi mode more often because I like a lot of the S and L mirages and not as many of the M sized ones. I will agree that a lot of the M sized creatures seem to have a lot of the better abilities, but I find that a really sturdy L mirage and a great support S mirage is a better team. The golems and the electric/fire/ice mirages from the Nether Nebula have ALL stayed in my main party for pretty much the whole game. The flying eyes have a lot of great abilities that helped me capture other mirages, so I used them for a long time as well.

[Zerro0713]

I've been in Giant form but I think I'm going to convert some of my Ms to Ls and switch to Tiny form.

I am nearly done with the game with no party optimization whatsoever. That being said, I do wish I knew which Mirages to primarily focus on for the party.

[TheForestSpirit]

I used Topaz Carbuncle and Tama from start to finish with Lann (mostly) and White Moogle with Reynn along with Shiva. Once I acquired Carbuncle (the blue one) I replaced Topaz Carbuncle with him.

[MaceX]

Also a good idea to try to keep 1 in your party that has the specific skills that deal with obstacles. The other thing is to know what you will be facing then bring 1 or 2 that has resistance to that element.

[Raven]

I keep Drahmut, glow moogle, white dragon in my party just for utility. Small heroes, I use Ifreeta (L), Shiva (L), Magic pot (s), Zapt (s). For the large heroes, I use carbuncle (m), devil wolf (m), and same small ones. I give the two small types curaga, then focused on raising magic/agility/evasion in that order, while I added 1 coverage move/resist weakness to the others, while kitting out Lann and Rein with boosts and equipping snow jewel and Y'shtola (great for defense boosts). The main downside of this setup is the suuuuuper weakness to darkness but...I haven't really had many issues regarding that. Oh, of course I keep Tama around to ride on and cus she's the mascot and important story character, but I don't have too many times I use her in battle. I also keep a bahamut/XG for my XL units but I don't use them too often, although Bahamut has been quite useful capturing some mirages.

Edit: Ifreeta is just my preference, but Ifreet is probably better since unlike Ifreeta, he can use his counter/flame spikes (why did they take that away from Ifreeta? she's the only one they did that to..). Also if you're just interested in farming/grinding, I would suggest trading out the L mirages for magitek armors, since those are quite good and have a recharge function

[Reformatio]

I finished the regular game with a Gravity setup :

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2709148666
Sand Worm counters with gravity and Death Searcher can cast it for 10 AP. For the middle row I do not care so much, I love the kids because they can summon.
Gravity works against a surprisingly large amount of mirages in comparison to other FF games. Especially good in boss fights.

My build for endgame content is a Crit Stack:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2709149104
You have to put crit ++ seeds in the empty slots.
I was able to finish the entire coliseum, the 4 EX dungeons and XG with this.
I did not play it against Immortal Dragon King and Garland yet however.
There is a similar stack with Master Tonberry and Tonberry King that uses Sharpened Knife and loads of accuracy seeds. But from your question I can see that you will not own a Master Tonberry anytime soon ^^

One of my favourites is a non-elemental speed build:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2709♥♥♥♥90
It can topple stacks and eradicate large groups of enemies.
It is not good in defeating single strong enemies fast however.

For PvP I found this combination:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2709148470
Good damage and toppling potential, I will edit the post once I have more experience with this one.

P.S.
• Whenever you have the kids with you you can summon as many Behemonsters as you want. This thing is strong and unlike Bahamuth it carries over to NG+.

• Shiva is very strong - As you fight the dark versions of the Pleiads you can nullify their respective element. In general I advise against building for a single boss as this costs lots of time farming. You can raise a strong thunder mirage if you want to, lots of strong enemies have thunder weakness.
Don't forget the leveling process starts as you reach the end of EX dungeon 4.

• In addition I would advise you to rather use items instead of healing mirages. I loved Mist Dragon in the beginning but the faster you can finish a fight they less damage you take. Use your AP for offense instead of defense.

• Check the wiki for New Game Plus. ★ mirages do not carry over and are weaker in the endgame than their counterparts you raised yourself.