Support unit with decent stat breaks, several imperils, and a 30% party mitigation buff.
Unfortunately, his dual-stat breaks are split the wrong way-- ATK/DEF and MAG/SPR, rather than ATK/MAG and DEF/SPR, which means you need a second breaker to survive the first turn anyways.
His LB is a tad more powerful than his on-demand breaks, but only when maxed, which may not be worth the investment.
Innate dual wield and varied weapon selection make her easy to gear.
Her primary chaining move, Offensive Heal Combo, has unique chaining frames which means the chains may break depending on various factors. She's best paired with herself.
Decent physical lightning/light chainer and a competent mana battery.
Thunder Clap is Bran's chaining skill, dealing AoE Light and Lightning damage, while imperiling those two elements. The damage is fairly low by today's standards, but AoE physical chainers are relatively rare.
She can chain with either Aileen or Tidus, both of whom are extremely powerful, making her a good budget option for players who don't have a good chainer of their own and want to pair up with a stronger friend.
Without her ability awakenings, Charlotte is an average physical-based cover tank with some additional utility (AoE MP regen), but her stats are a bit too low for her to safely soak up large amounts of damage.
Her enhancements aren't a massive upgrade, but they do slightly improve on every aspect of her.
Prior to ability awakenings, is an awful unit that should not be used for any reason.
With awakened Flash Barrage, he becomes a competent solo damage dealer.
Unfortunately, he has a passive that can cause him to suicide by covering female units, which is especially problematic if you're using a female tank like Mystea or Ozetta.
Without his ability awakenings, Demon Rain is terrible and should not be used.
With his ability awakenings, he has the ability to draw attacks and mitigate damage which, when coupled with his boosted enhanced passives, allow him to tank much more effectively.
His counters are even more effective with boosted attack passives and damage modifiers.
However, if you gear him for ATK, his survivability may suffer to the point that he'll have trouble surviving, so his counters are primarily useful for the LB and esper crystals they generate.
Learns 4 different "Spark" skills which debuff two stats at a time, but the most useful combinations (ATK/MAG and DEF/SPR, available from other units) are glaringly missing. His atypical combos are slightly useful in specific trials, but are generally a lot worse.
With his ability awakenings, he can consistently imbue allies with lightning, but this is typically not useful enough to be worth bringing an otherwise useless team member.
Her actual healing output is lower than that of most other healers, but she can grant mitigation to specific units while healing, which helps to make up the difference if most of the damage is concentrated on a single unit (like a cover tank).
Has access to single-target reraise. Also, her LB grants a large stat buff to all allies and cures breaks.
A mix between a breaker, provoke tank and counter-based DPS. Unfortunately, she does not excel at any of those roles.
The lack of mitigation on her provoke means that she'll typically die to harder-hitting bosses unless she is extremely well geared, and even that may not be enough.
Her ST breaks provide a dispel and are serviceable at best, but due to the low turn duration on her provoke skills she won't have that many turns to use them. Clever Smile has special mention here as it breaks both offensive stats while also having a provoke attached to it, rendering most of her other breaks null.
Note that the dispel attached to her single-stat breaks will dispel other breaks, which typically means that they're a very bad idea unless you have another unit to reapply an ATK/MAG break.
Solo fire magical damage dealer who takes many turns to get going, but deals very high damage once he gets there.
Fire From Below increases in damage with each use up to a cap, reaching its maximum potential after nine uses.
Control is a massive MAG buff and SPR break, but also reduces the SPR of your own units, which may get them killed if you don't have a way to deal with it.
Great physical chainer. She's best off using earth weapons so that she can elemental chain with regular Aileen and take advantage of her imperil. Unless you have TDH gear, give her dual wield, rather than using her innate doublehand.
She's a walking chainer, which means that her chains may break on some enemies depending on where the game has them positioned.
Has excellent utility in the form of a 50% ATK/MAG break.
For a starting healer she is quite serviceable with Curaga, Raise and Superior Healing (which can cleanse most ailments). She can provide additional utility with Entrust.
She can equip her exclusive equipment which provide decent stats, but more importantly a steady source of MP regeneration.
Her enhancements aren't particularly necessary, and it may be better not to spend the crysts and gil on such minor upgrades.
As you begin to move into endgame content, she falls off in effectiveness, and you'll want to look for other, better healers.
Prior to enhancements, she's an average healer/summoner combo. She has access to the basic Curaga and Raise. She does extra damage when evoking espers, which can help to one-shot bosses from certain thresholds when used to cap a chain.
Prayer to the Eidolons and her LB (coupled with her innate High Tide) allow her to build the esper gauge quickly (and without your units needing to attack).
After enhancements her Raise turns into a Full-Life (essentially) and her Curaga receives a slight boost in effectiveness. Her summoning damage is also boosted considerably.
Unfortunately, he has no utility, and the 3* and 4* physical cover tanks are usually a better option.
He does have some damaging moves, but if you gear him for ATK, he has trouble surviving, and if you gear him for survivability, his damage will be awful.
Has some good utility. AoE break immunity, several elemental resist buffs, a DEF/SPR buff, single-target reraise, and a handful of AoE ailment immunities.
His damage will skyrocket if you have access to True Doublehand gear, putting him on par with some 7* units. Without that gear, though, dual wield may be preferable-- it does very slightly less damage, but cuts his MP consumption in half.
Unusual support unit able to turn any ally into an AoE physical cover tank, although whoever he picks will be significantly less durable than a "normal" tank.
Can break ATK/MAG by 45% (50% with ability awakenings).
He works best with provoke tanks and particularly durable non-tank units, such as Zargabaath.
He can dualcast most of his abilities.
His LB grants two stacks of AoE mirage, as well as HP and MP regen over 3 turns.
Her actual skills are pretty good, but she periodically has to spend a turn to unlock the ability to dualcast them, and taking a turn off from healing can get your units killed.
MP costs are quite high, causing her to run dry very quickly.
Without ability awakenings, a mediocre damage dealer. With them, he's an excellent physical lightning chainer.
His limit burst is one of the strongest ATK/MAG breaks in the game and will drastically reduce the damage of bosses who are not immune to it. He also has a much weaker on-demand break for those two stats.
He gets a massive amount of %ATK from his passives post-enhancements, which makes him quite strong even with minimal gear.
With her latent abilities, she can provide good buffs and elemental resistances via W-Ability, although the low healing on the turns that she refreshes these effects might be a problem.
Extremely powerful support unit with access to a wide range of potent abilities.
Can massively buff all stats, regenerate HP/MP for the party, provide mitigation, buff elemental resistances, and cure breaks. Almost all of his abilities can be dualcast via Linked Stance.
Burns through a lot of MP, so try to give him gear that will help to sustain his usage.
With his latent abilities, he can provide 50% mitigation on most turns.
Can dualcast his abilities, but this causes him to burn through his MP very quickly.
Can AoE break ATK/MAG by 50% (65% with ability awakenings), imperil several different elements, break DEF by 45% (70% with ability awakenings), and raise allies.
Easy to gear and has innate dual wield, but has lackluster damage output.
He doesn't chain, and he doesn't work well as a solo damage dealer, so he will sit on the bench for almost every endgame trial unless you're severely lacking in options.
His damage relies heavily on his limit burst, which takes a long time to fill.
Is absolutely awful until you awaken his abilities, particularly Hero's Rhyme. Once you do, though...
Can provide powerful stat buffs and restore HP/MP to the entire party while singing, making him one of the best support units in the game.
He can also break the enemy's ATK and MAG by 60%, drastically reducing their damage, although these two breaks are on separate skills and he can't use them (or anything else) while singing.
Unusual support unit able to turn any ally into a provoke tank or AoE physical cover tank, although whoever she picks will be significantly less durable than a "normal" tank.
Can provide AoE Mirage, restore MP, chain, and heal.
Support unit with powerful buffs and breaks on turn 1.
However, he cannot maintain the breaks at that magnitude past turn 5, and is best paired with another unit who can take over that job later on in the fight.
Support unit focusing exclusively on defensive buffs.
Can provide significant DEF/SPR buffs, all three types of mitigation, and some minor barriers.
Unfortunately, his physical/magical mitigation buffs cannot be dualcast, which means he cannot provide much in the way of HP/MP restoration while maintaining those.
Snow serves as an object lesson in how there's more to being a provoke tank than just making the boss attack you-- you have to be able to survive.
Has terrible defensive stats and poor equipment selection. Also, he doesn't have mitigation, which leads to him taking a dirt nap if he tries to tank harder bosses.
Has a decent counter chance, so if he somehow survives the onslaught (spoiler: he won't), he'll generate some LB and esper crystals for your party.
In addition to providing breaks, has strong AoE healing, AoE MP recovery, can grant a physical water Aureole Ray chaining move to allies and herself, can imbue allies with water (although this may also charm them), buffs water resistance, imperils several elements, and buffs LB fill rate.
Good evoke water/light evoke chainer with excellent utility.
Can grant ailment/break/charm/stop resistance to allies, buff water/light resistance, buff stats, AoE recover LB, buff LB fillrate, and imbue allies with light (which may charm them).
Can provide typed mitigation, stat buffs, ailment immunity, break immunity, and massive elemental resistances.
Can grant physical or chaining moves to allies (Bolting Strike and Absolute Mirror of Equity options for both types), and imbue allies with several different elements.
Prior to ability awakenings, Tidus is a solid physical water chainer with decent damage modifiers, a strong imperil, and some utility (MP Refresh, Entrust).
His ability awakenings boost his damage into the stratosphere, leaving him as one of the strongest physical damage dealers in the game.
His water imperil is attached to his LB, but his innate High Tide effect means that it only takes a turn or two to charge up.
Has powerful AoE mitigation on his LB, AoE earth resistance, and 20% AoE mitigation.
His survivability is on the low end for physical cover tanks, so survival may be a problem when going up against harder hitting bosses.
He *can* provoke but usually shouldn't, since it lacks mitigation and will probably get him killed.
With ability awakenings, his survivability is drastically improved and his provoke gains mitigation, allowing him to serve as both a physical cover tank and a provoke tank at the same time, making him into a very powerful tank.
A subpar solo damage dealer who can use a wide variety of elements.
His strongest move is only usable at random as a counter unlock, and his other attacks are quite weak.
He learns 4 "Axe" skills that can lower resistance (-50%) to fire, wind, earth or dark. Fire is preferred, since he can also lower fire resistance (-100%) via counter.
His ability awakenings increase his damage, but not by enough to make him particularly relevant.
Puns aside, he's not good. He has a halfway decent chaining move, a good wind imperil on his LB, and absorbs wind damage. Sadly, that's not enough to make him a worthwhile unit.
His ability awakenings focus on his terrible jump attacks and do not making him any less niche.
Solid hybrid light chainer, but unfortunately suffers from being restricted to a single element, one that tends to be resisted quite often.
Her stats and modifiers are a bit on the low side, which means she falls short of doing top tier damage.
Has innate dualwield (guns, throwing weapons) as well as a light imperil to boost her own damage. Her LB has special mention as it is an extremely powerful DEF/SPR break, nearly quadrupling her damage output.
One of the very few AoE chainers in the game.
Her ability awakenings improve her damage output by quite a bit, making her one of the strongest AoE damage dealers in the game. Unfortunately, she is still locked into dealing light damage and has no other chaining partners.
A serviceable healer with access to Curaga, Raise and Esunaga. While she does have an innate dualcast this is locked behind using a particular skill, meaning it will not be available turn 1. Also worth mentioning is an unlockable AoE full break in the same vein as Dualcast.
She's better off using an external source of Dualcast rather than wasting turns to temporarily unlock it.
Her ability awakenings make her Dualcast unlock last for 20 turns and give her some largely irrelevant utility, which makes her a decent budget option for brand new players, but she falls of quickly later on and probably isn't worth the investment.
Noel is the most durable provoke tank in the game by a wide margin. Ignore the magic damage aspects of his kit and focus on his survivability-- he will pull all single-target attacks to himself and simply refuses to die no matter what happens.
His unique mitigation stacks with "universal" mitigation (e.g. Rikku's Hyper NulAll)
Damage spells and counters are negligible in boss fights, although his ability to imperil can occasionally be relevant.
Excellent and versatile support unit with a diverse set of skills. Stat buffs, mitigation, single-target HP/MP recovery, elemental resistances, and AoE immunity to certain ailments.
His MP restoration is massive but single-target, so sustaining the entire party may be rough as he has to rotate through each ally.
He burns through quite a bit of MP. He can self-cast Rejuvenate to keep himself going, but if you gear him for MP regen, it helps to free up his actions to do other things.
With his ability awakenings, he can also provide single-target reraise with Rejuvenate. They also significantly improve his stat and mitigation buffs.
Terrible physical chainer with equally terrible utility.
His strongest moves are locked behind 3 turn setups, but they're much too weak to be worth the time.
He has a 60% full break, but it only lasts for two turns and he can only use it after three turns spent unlocking it, which means it's basically useless.
His modifiers are all garbage, aside from moves that are locked behind setup moves. Said attacks either have a chance to fail or to hit your own units.