Revision 1: 2018-03-16
Revision 2: 2018-03-29
Revision 3: 2018-04-10
Revision 4: 2018-06-09
As the most difficult content available to us now and for a long time to come, Magicite bosses and how to effectively defeat them are going to occupy a sizable chunk of our FFRK headspace.
The game provides us with a Janken mechanic we can access if we’re able to kill at least a single one of the Magicite bosses. Once we do so, we have a foot in the door and can start accumulating, wait for it… Magicite! Using these Magicite we can better equip ourselves to tackle the next boss in line, and clockwise around the circle we go.
The progression is as follows, using Maliris as the arbitrary starting point since she’s at the top of the circle:
Maliris (Fire) > Isgebind (Ice) > Tiamat (Wind) > Midgardsormr (Earth) > Ixion (Lightning) > Kraken (Water) > Maliris (Fire)
Siren (Holy) > Hades (Dark) > Siren (Holy)
What this article is going to dive into is good strategies for utilizing Magicite on your way around the circle. The best Magicite for you to use is dependent on you, what you have, what you accomplished with your 3* Magicite, and what you have to inherit. I can’t know those things so I’m casting a much larger blanket that will provide a great baseline to learn from.
My aim here is to provide a solid list that’s resistant to the worst part of Magicites: leveling them. There will also be a weight toward offensive output as opposed to defensive due to the timed nature of the fights, with an added section on defensive options should you require them for completions or just know you have the damage output and would like to make your run more consistent.
Sections Explained
Initial Group: This is where I give a quick look at what I believe a solid Magicite build is for the boss, for conserving experience, and for a good spread moving forward into the future for non-Magicite content and eventual inheritance into 5* Magicites. If there is a particularly good 3* Magicite for a fight, I’ll default to using them even if they’re of the defensive variety because you’re much more likely to have one of them leveled and ready to go. That means one less 4* to level which is a huge benefit moving forward.
Optimization Options: In this section I go over how you could potentially modify the initial group in order to squeeze out more damage. This will usually be used to toss out defensive choices that were used in the initial group. Best used when you have a safe but lower damage team.
Defensive Options: Defensive options are a good choice if you have the offense required for achieving a low time but you can’t seem to keep yourself alive long enough to make it to the end.
Conclusion
Please understand; these lists are probably not the absolute best Magicite builds you can run. While they will certainly be solid enough to achieve low times for every boss, they are intentionally generic and you can make changes to them that would benefit you personally more than it would for another player.
Also, don’t feel like you’re required to assemble a full build for every Magicite. If you feel like you have a safe and consistent sub30 on a particular boss, cut bait and move on. The biggest general bottleneck for getting good times on these bosses is having well leveled Magicite and devoting experience to these XP vacuums for a boss you no longer need to improve only hurts yourself. Once you’re finished getting your times on all of the bosses, it’s time to work on getting them ready for the future. Get a nice spread of max level passives ready to be dumped into 5* Magicite when the time comes. It was a huge help during the jump from 3* to 4* and that’ll be no different for the next transition.
I made these to offer an instructional view on stacking passives and dodging diminishing returns when possible. If you go: “Oh, using these particular Magicites like this make sense.” and then proceed to mangle the build for your own devices, I’d consider that a grand victory.
Inheritance Guide
Inheriting passives to Magicite is difficult due to their large experience requirements and the best way to go about it at the moment is to sacrifice your unused 3* Magicite. Beyond that, the Inheritance Guide is only there to help if you absolutely can’t achieve your sub30 runs without the help of inheriting 4* into 4*. If you can, then I suggest moving on and never considering it. You’ll gain far more value keeping those 4* Magicite for the future to inherit into 5*.
As to what you should inherit, it’s really more simple than it seems. You’re really just trying to cover the weaknesses of the squad you’ve put together.
The physical Fire team, for example, uses Maliris as an offensive magicite. This covers you for Deadly Strikes so we look to the other two beneficial passives to physical teams, Precise Strikes and Fast Act, as our inheritances.
A general rule of thumb I use is having three Empowers, three Attack/Magic Boons, and two Dampens. Then, if you’re not hitting your target time with that squad, it’s time to start filling in the blanks with passives. I like to stick to offensive passives inherited onto offensive magicite, and vise versa for defensive. Using the Fire team again as an example, Precise Strikes and Fast act on the two Malirises, and inheriting a second Dampen Ice onto Firemane.
Once I have my Empower/Boon/Dampen passives taken care of, I follow a general flow of usefulness. Diminishing returns on passives means you only benefit so much past the first, stacking more than one of the secondary passives isn’t advised if you can avoid it. Because of the nature of critical chance sources these may differ from team to team and person to person. If you have no critical chance buff then Precise Strikes always wins. My rule of thumb is that at equal levels(Level 8 vs Level 8 or 4 vs 4, etc), I’ll only prefer Deadly Strikes if my primary damage dealer has 75% critical chance or above. Cloud, Orlandeau, and Jecht immediately come to mind, but there’s others due to additional critical chance being found on Monk and Samurai abilities.
Physical: Precise Strikes > Fast Act > Deadly Strikes
Magical: Fast Act
Defensive: Blade/Spell Ward(depends on the fight) > Health Boon > Defense/Resistance Boon(depends on the fight)
Using these guidelines, let’s go back to the Fire team and assemble a full power physical squad to take down Isgebind:
1x Mom Bomb 3* (Empower Fire / Attack Boon)
– Inherit Empower Fire
1x Maliris (Empower Fire / Attack Boon / Deadly Strikes)
– Inherit Precise Strikes
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
– Inherit Fast Act and Health Boon
1x Firemane (Dampen Blizzard / Resistance Boon / Spell Ward)
– Inherit Dampen Blizzard
Since we’re going to Fast Act an Evrae and the Maliris comes ready with Deadly Strikes, that means Precise Strikes is the choice for those her. Finally, as is the case with every magicite team, only one Dampen magicite is needed per element because you can just inherit another Dampen on them to get your two.
I hope you see what I mean in that inheriting effectively is simpler than it looks, but more importantly I hope you only inherit if you absolutely must. It’s a whole lot of experience to sink into a magicite for only a single passive worth of benefit.
Physical Water vs. Maliris
2x Kraken (Empower Water / Attack Boon / Blade Ward) [Primary]
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Gizamaluke (Dampen Fire / Resistance Boon / Spell Ward)
Magical Water vs. Maliris
1x Kraken (Empower Water / Attack Boon / Blade Ward) [Primary]
1x Octomammoth (Empower Water / Magic Boon / Health Boon)
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Gizamaluke (Dampen Fire / Resistance Boon / Spell Ward)
Defensive Options
Physical & Magical: Use Bismarck as your main magicite to blink one of the two Savage Firagas in the later parts of the fight.
Conclusion
Maliris’s main difficulty involves the scripted double Savage Firaga magical attack that she does after reaching 40% health. I suggest Bismarck here because using 3* is great for your leveling agenda, and his instantly castable Fire Blink Ultra Skill will allow you to dodge one of those two nukes, more or less removing what makes Maliris worthy of being called a 4* Magicite.
Physical vs. Isgebind
1x Mom Bomb 3* (Empower Fire / Attack Boon) [Primary]
1x Maliris (Empower Fire / Attack Boon / Deadly Strikes)
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Firemane (Dampen Blizzard / Resistance Boon / Spell Ward)
Magical vs. Isgebind
2x King Bomb (Empower Fire / Magic Boon / Health Boon) [Primary]
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Firemane (Dampen Blizzard / Resistance Boon / Spell Ward)
Defensive Options
Physical & Magical: Use Unicorn as your main magicite to defend against Isgebind’s paralyze.
Conclusion
While using Krystas with inherited Dampen Blizzard is technically more effective than Firemane, I wouldn’t suggest doing this. It costs you four Krystas since you have to inherit Dampen Blizzards onto them for this to even work, which is a worthless inherit for the Tiamat fight. If, for some reason, you’re having a harder time on Isgebind than Tiamat(unlikely), you could use your Dampen Blizzard Krystas on Tiamat with the worthless inherited passive.
Unicorn is recommended here because of Isgebind’s run stopping Paralyze that can land when he uses AOE Sheet of Ice, as well as a single target ability that can do the same. If you have an Astra from another source, like Larsa’s BSB, or you simply don’t mind braving the stormy RNG seas then feel free to stick with Mom Bomb for the extra damage output.
Physical vs. Tiamat
1x Wendigo 3* (Empower Ice / Magic Boon) [Primary]
1x Isgebind (Empower Ice / Attack Boon / Precise Strikes)
1x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Krysta (Dampen Wind / Defense Boon / Blade Ward)
1x Gizamaluke (Dampen Fire / Resistance Boon / Spell Ward)
Magical vs. Tiamat
1x Wendigo 3* (Empower Ice / Magic Boon) [Primary]
1x Dullahan (Empower Ice / Magic Boon / Spell Ward)
1x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Krysta (Dampen Wind / Defense Boon / Blade Ward)
1x Gizamaluke (Dampen Fire / Resistance Boon / Spell Ward)
Defensive Options
Physical & Magical: Use Bismarck as your main magicite to help defend against Savage Jet Fire.
Conclusion
Tiamat sucks. She’s a monster and I absolutely recommend sticking with both Krysta and Gizamaluke here for their Dampens. The Dampen Wind is obviously useful, and the Dampen Fire is to soften those Jet Fires, since you’ll be defending against Wind here so they’ll do Fire damage instead.
Since there are scripted Savage Jet Fires, one thing you can do is use Bismarck as Primary and Fire Blink one to make the fight more manageable. Only recommended if your damage output is high(Hello, Squall BSB2!), since the longer this fight takes the more likely you are to get melted.
Physical vs. Midgardsormr
1x Tiamat (Empower Wind / Magic Boon / Blade Ward) [Primary]
1x Silver Dragon (Empower Wind / Attack Boon / Precise Strikes)
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Sylph (Dampen Earth / Mind Boon / Fast Act)
Magical vs. Midgardsormr
2x Tiamat (Empower Wind / Magic Boon / Blade Ward) [Primary]
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Sylph (Dampen Earth / Mind Boon / Fast Act)
Defensive Options
Physical & Magical: Use Unicorn as your main magicite to defend against Midgardsormr’s slows.
Conclusion
Slows are generally one of the most frustrating statuses in the game, so unless you have a counter to them by way of Astra or alternate forms of Haste, Unicorn is the way to go here.
Tiamat is the only offensive Primary option and with her being a Magic Boon Magicite I don’t really recommend going down that route for physical teams.
Physical vs. Ixion
1x Shell Dragon 3* (Empower Earth / Defense Boon) [Primary]
1x Catastrophe (Empower Earth / Attack Boon / Deadly Strikes)
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Earth Guardian (Dampen Lightning / Defense Boon / Health Boon)
Magical vs. Ixion
2x Midgardsormr (Empower Earth / Magic Boon / Fast Act) [Primary]
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Earth Guardian (Dampen Lightning / Defense Boon / Health Boon)
Defensive Options
Physical & Magical: Use Fenrir as your main magicite to physical blink one of Ixion’s mass dispels.
Conclusion
Ixion is an interesting boss, in that he’s quite tame other than his Dispelling capability. There are two avenues you can take with your Magicite to counter this, but I suggest leaving that to Physical Blink or Hastega Soul Breaks and going hard on damage with your Magicite build instead. Those two avenues are using Fenrir as a Physical Blink, or Silver Dragon to apply Hastega, if you choose to go there.
Physical vs. Kraken
1x Hydra 3* (Dampen Lightning / Resistance Boon) [Primary]
1x Mimic Queen (Empower Lightning / Attack Boon / Precise Strikes)
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Ixion (Dampen Water / Defense Boon / Deadly Strikes)
Magical vs. Kraken
2x Garuda (Empower Lightning / Magic Boon / Fast Act) [Primary]
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Ixion (Dampen Water / Defense Boon / Deadly Strikes)
Defensive Options
Physical & Magical: The defensive options for this fight are poor. You could use a Fenrir to try and blink one of those vicious Savage Legs. Mimic Queen also works but her Water Blink can get removed by Kraken’s weaker magical attacks so there’s a less chance of success.
Conclusion
Kraken is pretty simple, in that AOE magical Water damage, and AOE physical damage are your problems. Not much to see here. Hydra having no offensive traits(compared to, say, Shell Dragon’s Empower Earth, for instance) is the problem you have to deal with, when you would like to be using two defensive Magicite on such a high damage output boss.
Physical vs. Siren
1x Shadow Dragon 3* (Dampen Dark / Defense Boon) [Primary]
1x Hades (Empower Dark / Hand of Vengeance / Healing Damper)
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Necrophobe (Dampen Light / Defense Boon / Spell Ward)
Magical vs. Siren
1x Shadow Dragon 3* (Dampen Dark / Defense Boon) [Primary]
1x Hades (Empower Dark / Hand of Vengeance / Healing Damper)
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Necrophobe (Dampen Light / Defense Boon / Spell Ward)
Optimization Options
Only one Empower Dark in this build and no Magic Boon for the mage team. Would very much suggest filling those gaps with inherits from 3* magicite. Otherwise, you can just cut back on an Evrae to help out, like I did on Tiamat due to one more slot being devoted to defenses.
Defensive Options
Physical & Magical: A magical team might have problems with Siren’s nasty Silence spam so a Unicorn might be in order.
On another front, Shadow Dragon contributes a whole lot of nothing with its Dampen Dark, so yes by bringing Hades and buffing the team’s Dark damage you’re technically getting less benefit than the imperil, but this also gives you another Empower Dark. This frees up a magicite slot that can be used for Firemane or Earth Guardian for Dampen Ice and Lightning, respectively. Siren uses these elements in addition to Holy so they’re nice to defend against if you can make it work.
Conclusion
So this is interesting. Unlike the other 4* magicites, there is no Magic Boon option(indirect Cid Raines led Dark teams nerf!) and the Attack Boon option punishes you for using it. Zombie Dragon comes with Empower Dark, Attack Boon, and Damage Drive. It was going so well until Damage Drive, which reduces the amount of Soul Break points you generate during the fight. Pretty brutal unless you’re running ninjas like Edge, Yuffie, or Shadow who have a reduced need for the points anyway. Due to this dearth of good offensive magicite, the 3* Phantom is probably the best you’ve got here. I still featured a Hades on the team so you can have at least one level 15 Empower Dark and Hand of Vengeance, but aside from that I don’t see much need to use the other offensive spot on a newer 4*.
Magical is another matter entirely. Siren’s Silence stinks and wearing Silence resist instead of Holy resist is a good way to get OHKO, so Unicorn is probably necessary for most teams, and there’s is no Magic Boon + Empower Dark magicite. You’ll have to make your own using inheritance. The best is Hades but you also have the option of inheriting the Empower Dark onto some other 4* Magic Boon magicite like Garuda as well.
Physical vs. Hades
1x Unicorn 3* (Empower Holy/ Mind Boon) [Primary]
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Hades (Empower Dark / Hand of Vengeance / Healing Damper)
1x Seraph (Dampen Dark / Mind Boon / Health Boon)
Magical vs. Hades
1x Unicorn 3* (Empower Holy/ Mind Boon) [Primary]
2x Evrae (Empower Holy / Attack Boon / Hand of Vigor)
1x Siren (Empower Holy / Mind Boon / Healing Boon)
1x Seraph (Dampen Dark / Mind Boon / Health Boon)
Optimization Options
You can increase your Holy damage by using Siren as your primary. Do this at your own peril. You can be the one to decide whether it’s okay to lose that extra Astra from Unicorn here.
Defensive Options
Using Unicorn is the best course of action in this regard.
Conclusion
Evrae is awesome. Too bad about that Attack Boon for mage teams unless you’re running Mind mages like Rem, Minwu, and Arc. In which case there’s Mind Boons aplenty.
Physical teams get the magicite advantage here with Evrae, but Hades also includes Blind amongst his cocktail of negative statuses so that’s something of a balance.
Anyway, I don’t suggest using anything but Unicorn here as the Empower Holy actually being worth something in addition to the all powerful Astra Ultra Skill is too good to pass up.