FFRK Character Review - Sazh

Sazh - The Pulse L'Cie

Ive been on a trip the past few weeks and forgot to make Sazh's review in advance so this is going to be a shorter review! Sorry!

Stats, Equipment & Abilities

27th highest Attack (93)

Behind Fran, Wakka, Irvine

23rd highest Defense (71)

Tied with Josef, Balthier

30th highest HP (3082)

Behind Celes, Irvine

Equipment: Dagger, Gun | Hat, Light Armor, Armor, Bracer

Abilities: 2* Combat, 5* Support, 3* Black Magic, 3* White Magic

Soulbreak: Bravery - Increase an ally's Attack (Same as Boost?) | Boon - Grants Haste and Shell to all party members.

Comparing

Like I said, I don't have time to make a full review so I'll just be listing pros and cons for Sazh!

Pros:

• 5* Support gives access to all Support skills, which includes the very important Breakdowns.

• 3* Black AND White is very uncommon for physical characters, however it is very nice as he can use the status effect Black Magic including 3* Stop and Gravity as well as status removal White Magic including 3* Berserk and Reflect

• We now have three 5* and three 3* Guns. There are 8 Thrown Weapons and two of them are Magic based, and 14 Bows but half of them are under 3* and most of us just throw those ones out. This makes Guns only slightly less common than Bows and Thrown. Since we have gotten two sets of Guns that we can combine up to 4* from two recent events, a lot of us should have a ranged Weapon for Sazh.

• Can equip both Light Armor and Armor unlike Irvine and Fran who can only equip Light Armor and some Caster gear.

• Only Support who actually has a Default SB THAT SUPPORTS! Bravery works great with Retaliate and frees up an ability spot where you would have needed Boost!

• 2* Combat basically means Double Cut, which Fran, Terra and Quistis all don't have. He can't use any of the 3* Breaks but makes up for it obviously as he can use the Breakdowns and Full Break.

• Significantly beats Fran, Irvine and Wakka in terms of their Second SB as all three of them have damage dealing SBs that all were good back when Vit0 was a thing but kinda suck now. Quistis and Terra have magic based SBs which do a LOT of damage and does make them better than the other physical supports, but Sazh's Shell+Haste is simply awesome and only Tyro and Red XIII (Who doesn't have a MC for some odd reason) have SBs that compare with Boon currently.

Cons:

• Like most Supports, Sazh has average/below average stats.

• Even if they gave him 1* Black and 4* White he would have been such a better character as being limited to 3* White means he cannot use Slowga, Protectga, Silencega and Shellga. In FF13 Sazh could learn the best skills from basically every role to make up for his lower stats, so a buff for Sazh in the future which lets him use 4* White Magic would actually makes sense.

• Can't equip Helms like Terra and Wakka. His other Armor options do make up for this.

• Although Guns are becoming more common, Sazh is still stuck with only two weapon types unlike Fran, Wakka, Terra and Quistis who all have more than 3 weapon choices.

• Can't compete with the magic damage Caster Supports like Terra, Quistis, and even Red XIII can pump out.

Conclusion:

3.5/4 Support

Has 5* Support as well as a supportive Default SB unlike all our other current Supports who have damaging SBs with crappy multipliers. Terra still won't have her MC for a while, but Quistis is already out and a lot of us have already seen the power Caster Supports have as they can Breakdown and then cast heavy damage dealing -aga and -ja Black Magic spells and Sazh cannot compete at all with that. His own White and Black Magic which is mainly used for status effects or even triggering boss vulnerabilities, as well as Double Cut does raise his rating.

Aerith is coming back next week! Thanks for reading!

Edit: I RARELY talk about Second SBs for the obvious reasons and only wanted to in this review because Sazh has a one of a kind SB at this point in our version (not sure what's up with these crazy OP SBs they started making in Japan) so I shouldn't have even brought up those other characters.

That said, I didn't factor in Boon while rating him. I gave him a high rating because his Default SB is the best out of the Supports, his equipment, while it isn't the best, is still fine considering ALL OF US have at least one 4* Gun and he can still use a Dagger which is what I myself usually give my Supports unless I'm going against a ranged or a full physical boss, and his abilities give him everything a Support needs (at least 4* Support and Double Cut) plus 3* White AND Black magic which none of the other current Supports except Terra have!