Carbuncle and Reflect - Useless?

Scarlet

Scarlet

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I always thought Carbuncle was a useless summon. Carbuncle was at its best in FFIX. With equipping Eiko Diamond, Emerald, and moonstone to get different effects. Other than that Carbuncle only cast reflection on the entire party. Although in FFIX equipping those stones made a difference, there were much more important accessory items to equip on Eiko. Stones didn't add plus status or any other bonus effects besides effecting Carbuncle's summon magic.

Other than FFIX Carbuncle was the same in every game. (I'm not sure about FFXI.) Carbuncle would only cast reflect. It was only beneficial in FFVI so you can learn spells from the esper. Also in FFVIII, learning abilities.

I'm not a fan of reflect. I thought the spell was a waste, the spell caused more a disturbance during boss fights. Reflect would reflects all spells including healing ones. I did not like wasting potions and most healing items aren't as good as cure. I would rather save elixirs for major bosses and the final boss.

Casting reflect on your party and on the boss your fighting at the moment, so healing spells can bounce on to you was is annoying. It seems it a waste of time and MP. Also you have to keep reminding yourself who has relfect. Not to mention reflect didn't help with some 'magic casting' bosses and enemies. There was always that one attack that did not reflect or that one physical attack.

So what is your thought on Carbuncle and Reflect?
 
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I'm just going to copypasta from our IM conversation because I'm lazy:

I'd much rather have say, a pumice piece on Eiko so she can absorb Doomsday than an emerald for Carbuncle so it can cast float or whatever the hell. And reflect isn't useful all the time...like if you need to cast Cure or something, you're fucked.

Also, to add something, beneficial statuses were a pain in the ass in IX. They would never stay on your party members for a set amount of turns and they'd fade away sooner on some than others, so you constantly had to look to see who had what. That can be a HUGE problem when you're trying to cast Reflectx2 and someone you thought had Reflect suddenly has it disappear on you. Another frequent scenario I had with that is that a boss would cast a spell, and just ONE party member would lose his reflect and I wouldn't know it, so the spell would reflect off my members, but bounce off at both the boss and party member without reflect. Ghey.

All in all, Carbuncle and reflect are wastes of time.
 
I never really found reflect to be all that useful either. And in IX, it only lasts for like 10 seconds so it's really pointless.

I thought Carbuncle was cute but I never really used him because he only casts reflect.

One of the few times, I actually used reflect, it backfired. I was playing FF7 and I had reflect on one of my party members (it may have been a reflect ring they were wearing). I forgot about it and cast regen on the party; it reflected off of said party member and onto the proud clod. >_<
 
Carbuncle and reflect were both pointless really.
In a boss battle, if the boss cast a certain kind of magic on you, I found that 9 times out of 10 they were either immune to that magic, or they absorbed it!
Yes, it looked cute; but so did Rinoa, and she wasn't much use either to be honest.
The best part about it was the ability to cast magic onto an enemy that had cast reflect onto themselves. Just cast the magic on a party member, and the boss can't reflect it back; wooo ^ _ ^
 
Reflect is really good against enemies who use alot of magic. I like the reflect spell but hate it when you have used it and you start fighting some thing that attacks you, you then use white magic and it reflects, grrrr I always make that mistake.
 
I think that IX had the easiest to use and most efficient Reflect. Carbuncle is really fun to use. Protect + Reflect with the full animation + Vivi with Reflect x2 + Water = instant 9999. I can use it about two-three times before it wears off. Even if it does, using the reflect-for-more-damage mechanic on x2 Vivi still gives 9999....

Healing doesn't matter. In FFIX, most characters had Auto-Regan anyway, and if you die, use Phoenix :P

But for other games it was a pain in the arse.
 
I only found reflect to be fun on FF6 in that magic tower something. since the enemies there have reflect I used that spell to the whole party and then bounce back my spells on them. also I use cure spells on enemies so that it'll bounce back. it was a nice challenge once in a while. about carbuncle it was the part where I made a good use of it. in FF9 I never really used carbuncle on serious battles.
 
Ugh, Carbuncle bugs me. On FFVIII, he was cute alright, but I found him useless. Actually, I find Reflect generally useless, to be honest. Sometimes, it even confuses me, lol. Like say, I cast reflect on my characters...and foes would use magic. Sweet, right? But when I have to cure myself, I think I had to cast reflect on the foes first in order for the cure to bounce back to me...or something like that. I don't remember. =/ But yeah, it confuses me sometimes because when reflect is in use, I always forget that curing my characters would actually cure the foes instead...

So I just stopped using it overall. Meh, easier to just kill than toy around anyway.
 
Reflect itself never bothered me at all. For the most part, I only ever had to heal one character at a time - rather than the entire group (whole party attacks are rare in a lot of FFs). In IX, well, loved Reflect. Mainly due to the fact I permanently had Dagger break through the reflect effect, though that meant the cost of, say, Regen... which casting Curaga repeatedly more than made up for. This applies for most of the other games too really.

Carbuncle?







.... get out.
 
I never liked using reflect in any of them as it could either help or hurt you depending on when it’s in place, or… you forget it’s in place. >.< However, I didn’t find Carbuncle completely useless as he had some pretty useful - learned juntionable abilities (VIII). Anyway, I did find reflect useless for the most part and Carbuncle somewhat useless… Other then some of his useful abilities, I don’t recall ever summonsing him for use in battle.
 
Yup, he was as useful as a piece of shit

I hardly used reflect without Carbunkle, however he had a few good junctions in FFVIII
 
the only tie that reflect (the spell) is usefull i my opinion, is in FFVII (7) fighting the weapons,
since demi, at lvl 1, with NO xp causes 9999 dmg.

if you have reflect ring, Xmagic on "all" on yourself.
you cast 3 x 2 spells on the weapon,
resunlting in

2x spells * 3x reflected = 6 spells

6 spells + 9999dmg eatch spell = 59994.

its not mutch compared to Omnislash, and Knights of the round

but combining these.
taht made the call
 
I never used Carbuncle. Didn't he cast reflect on the whole party? There were occasions when I manually casted reflect on one character at a time for the "bounce off" extra damage, but I never casted it on the whole party. I always rely on white magic when my characters are in critical condition, so reflect just nullifies your healing efforts. =S
 
In IX, if using the full animation, he would also cast Protect on your party. Handy :P
 
Grand Lethal said:
In IX, if using the full animation, he would also cast Protect on your party. Handy :P
Click to expand...

Everytime I summoned Carbuncle in IX, it was the full animation. I just assumed there was no short animation for it. :monster:

Come to think of it, Carbuncle did come in handy this time around when I was leveling characters on Terra. Those Ring Leaders were always casting status effects. So I used Carbuncle at the beginning of the fight and the would usually end up casting Silence on themselves. ^_^
 
I thought he would only use protect if you had a stone equipped? Bleh, the beneficial status was so under powered. It was nerfed in FFIX. >_< Spells like protect, shell, reflect last you about three rounds.
 
It would've helped if he dealt damage or something to some percentage on the monsters but noooo....just reflect on your entire party.

Needless to say, he was pretty useless and I never used him in anything, to be quite honest.
 
Cerridwen said:
I thought he would only use protect if you had a stone equipped? Bleh, the beneficial status was so under powered. It was nerfed in FFIX. >_< Spells like protect, shell, reflect last you about three rounds.
Click to expand...

I'm positive it goes like this:

Normal: Protect + Reflect
Emerald equipped: Protect + Haste
Moonstone equipped: Protect + Shell
Diamond equipped: Protect + Vanish

I tried the Emerald version once. Was very useful :P
 
Useless, in FFVIII I think I used him once just to see the animation and what he did and that's all. Since FFVIII was my first FF, I leaned from it and never used him again in any of the other FF where he's on the repertoire.
 
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