Urgh, so this has probably been made tons already but google is useless so...

I'm finding Orphan really difficult. Heck, i find barth difficult, its such a pain having to keep fighting him haha. All of my characters have maxxed out on their main options on their boards, and ive maxxed my three characters (light, hope and fang) out second weapons, and yet i really can't do this. I own the official guide too, and in the screenshots in that all the characters have like 20k hp, and yet mine only have around 6500hp?

So i'm wondering what my stats are meant to be, and how to make them that way... Because I didn't really want to spend lots of CP on extra routes that im not gunna use?

Urgh, so this has probably been made tons already but google is useless so...

I'm finding Orphan really difficult. Heck, i find barth difficult, its such a pain having to keep fighting him haha. All of my characters have maxxed out on their main options on their boards, and ive maxxed my three characters (light, hope and fang) out second weapons, and yet i really can't do this. I own the official guide too, and in the screenshots in that all the characters have like 20k hp, and yet mine only have around 6500hp?

So i'm wondering what my stats are meant to be, and how to make them that way... Because I didn't really want to spend lots of CP on extra routes that im not gunna use?

Honestly you should be good to go; I never maxed out my characters on all three of their main classes and I still manage to beat him (almost easily). And I never used their maxed weapons..

Describe your strategy: what paradigms are you using? Who is your controllable character? Do you enter the battle with Ethersol, etc? Are you de-buffing him?

I know that I use the same team as you, only with Orphan, I have Lightning controllable. Once I stagger, I spam Lightning's Army of One ability to get the stagger up to 999X (I think that's the right number). Also when Lightning is using this power, if your health is low, you can switch to a healing paradigm and then switch back while Light is still using AOO to heal up and maintain your main assault.

One important paradigm that is almost a requirement for my victory is Mystic Tower (Sen, Rav, Rav).

Well i'm basically following what the official guide is telling me for him, which is to use protection until ive got like 6 buffs on each character, and then relentless assault him switching to combat clinic when lightnings in the yellow... just the problem is, its like her (using lightning btw) hp is too low. when he uses his horrible attack, err yano the one where he changes between light and dark, thats what kills me. i switch to combat clinic before he attacks, but she still dies occassionally. its like im on combat clinic constantly

is using a sentinel good for this battle? he seems to just attack everyone no matter what haha. just seems so hard! :(

I've never used protection in the battle.. Instead I used Syn, Healer, Commando (Hope, Light, Fang) to get my buffs up and the stagger rate. Sometimes I would switch to Syn, Healer, Sab just so that I could get two things done at once... Sabs do keep the stagger rate up too. I think that in the second part the sentinel does attract some attacks to them, relieving pressure off of your controllable.

By the way are you attaching Hypno Crowns (or whatever) to everyone; it lowers the chance of death. Because Orphan casts death pretty often as well.

The guide says to use Relentless Assault and for whatever reason that works on the hybrid form of Orphan. I mean it chewed it to nothing when it looked to me like it would have taken 11 or 12 cycles to down it with Tri-Disaster and Aggression (which worked for me flawlessly up to that point).

I don't understand why there's such a difference. Makes no logical sense to me.

Yeah, I bought three hypno whatever crowns for light for when he goes all insta-death

thanks guys, i'll try switching my parygygyms about laters :D

There's rumors on TVTropes saying that spamming poison on him during the first battle helps, and on the final battle, a stagger + death does wonders. Thus you may definitely want Vanille in your party as the playable character. And you'll definitely want to have Vanille learn death beforehand.

(Yeah, this theorical party runs on Vanille + Sazh + Light, although theorically if your crysterium is maxxed you can use Vanille + two random party members)

First round, have a sab + syn + med. Let the syn cast buffs on the party while you focus on debuffing Orphan.
Switch to rav + rav + com. Drive Orphan to stagger
Switch back to sab + syn + med (if you want, sab + rav + med or sab + com + med. Can't take chances). Spam poison before stagger bar zeroes.
Rinse and repeat.
No specific hints for second round.
Final round start out the same. Stagger Orphan again, but instead of poisoning, cast death this time.

???

Profit!

I say theorical because I'm not sure if this is going to work myself, I've made virtually no progress save for getting Hope's Eidolon on entering Chapter 11. But I trust TVTropes. So, yeah. Good luck!

I did it! I actually ended up using Snow instead, and going back and grinding a little more. Found med/med/med to be pretty useful. Sen is pretty useful when hes about to use his big nasty attack, but its hard to time it :/
thanks for the help guys :)

gjgj!

Salvation is indeed great times. If you're controlling him, Snow is a great medic, in my humble opinion. Has Cure, Cura, Curasa, and Esuna. You can use Phoenix Downs in place of Raise.

Ahaha yeah, I was only using him with cure and cura as well... The only thing about snow is unless hes defending, his defence is really weak. His hp was near 10k (think it was just under) and when he did his big opening move he had less than 100hp left >>; Was a little scary :B

Hybrid from of Orphan is just that way. His defense is actually pretty top notch. Many times have I yelled at Hope or Vanille to raise Sazh when they're wasting time healing me.

I understand the logic, heal the leader so it won't be GAME OVAH, but seriously kids, RAISE SAZH, I HAVE OVER 10K HP :mad:

Rob has heard this complaint a trillion times, at this point.

I didn't get it though cuz when i used lightning as my main character, even though she only had 6500hp, when she was hit it would go down to 700hp, when snows would go to 100 >>;

Oh geez its so annoying when they won't use raise, and are just spamming cure on someone with high hp >> suppose you can't expect much from cpu :B HOORAY for pheonix downs

I don't think his attack when he changes forms can actually kill you, itself. I think it's a gravity style attack.

The trouble people have is that it puts you so low on HP, that if you are poisoned (and you frequently are), when he does it, the poison kills you before you regain control of your team (making it look like the attack itself did it).

So you must ensure that when you think he likely to change, your team leader at least is not poisoned.

The only other point of concern is Progenitor's Wrath (his death spell), which is an outragously unfair attack. Even with upgraded protection, you can't be completely safe from it. If he casts it on your leader, and it happens to work, you lose, simple as that.

It's particularly annoying, because he starts casting it like crazy near the end of the fight. (Even the guide admits that this stage of the fight is a complete lottery - there simply is no sure way to gurantee he won't just win).

That's when you really need to think about putting debuffs on him, to speed the fight up. It's not easy, because he has a high resistance to debuffs, but it does pay off. Incidentally, this is a good idea against Barthandelus too, making him much easier in all 3 of the battles you have against him.

But returning to Orphan, I found him a real pain. The first time I faced him, I killed him easily, with no protection against Death whatsoever (I didn't even know PW was a Death spell, as it didn't work against anyone in the whole fight!)

And my team was pretty ordinary. Lightning as leader, Sazh and Fang, fully levelled up in the Crystarium, but with barely any upgrades to their equipment (Lightning was at the max limit of the 2nd tier of Gladius - which was renamed Helter Skelter, Fang was at the max limit of Tier 1 of her Bladed Lance, Sazh had no upgrades at all).

So I beat Orphan and thought 'Wow, that was easy'.

But when I played again, taking the time to select weapons that best suited my playing style, upgrading all kinds of equipment and equipping Crowns to protect from death... I just couldn't do it for ages!

He kept killing Lightning with PW, every time. I'd get him right down to the last dregs of health, but he kept spamming that death spell until he eventually got her.

Incredibly frustrating, because like I say, my vastly inferior first team brushed him aside like he was an utter joke.

If there's one thing I absolutely HATE in gaming, it's getting stuck on a part you used to be able to do without even breaking a sweat or realising was hard in any way.

Drives... me... MAD!