Final Fantasy XIII

Class: A
HP: 1,111,111

As mentioned above, Gigantuar is a very tough fight. It only has one attack called “10,000 Needles” but this attack is devastating. It deals 10,000 damage and has a chance of inflicting Pain and Fog. It also has a chance of removing several of your party member’s status buffs.

Before we get to the tactics, it's important to note that your party members are going to need to be able to survive this attack. If they are getting instantly KO’d by it then your party members are too low leveled for this encounter. You should also equip your party members with Pain Dampener (for physical damage dealers) and White Cape (for magic users) to reduce the likelihood of your party members not being able to attack or cast spells.

The best strategy to utilize is to take advantage of the fact that, while Gigantuar is immune to almost all negative status effects, it is not immune to Daze. This status effect will prevent Gigantuar from taking any actions until the effect is broken which will allow you to freeze it at the beginning of the fight while you buff up your party and prepare for an all-out offensive.

Start off the fight in the Perseverance paradigm which will have Fang in her Saboteur role with Lightning and Hope as Medics. Don’t use Auto-hinder, and instead manually select the Daze ability 5 times. As soon as you see the status up and active on Gigantuar press the Button to cancel your remaining casts so you don’t accidentally knock off the debuff. While Gigantuar is Dazed, fully buff up your party members using the Rapid Growth paradigm.

Your buff priority should include manually casting Protectra on all three team members. This will override Protect if it has been cast but this will prove beneficial. Protectra doesn’t last as long as Protect but it provides more damage reduction and this fight will be over very quickly. Also make sure that one of your party members gets Enfire active as this will greatly increase the amount of damage dealt to Gigantuar. You should also try to get both Faithra and Bravera active as well.

Once you have all of your buffs active switch, switch over to “Tireless Charge” paradigm which will have both Fang and Lightning in their Commando role with Hope healing as much as he can. The goal now is to try to take out Gigantuar before the damage overwhelms your party. Consider using some shrouds if you’re struggling (Aegisol or Fortisol).