[DFFOO JP][Divine Ifrit Lufenia+]FFXIII run: The Guardian and his protégé (Caius and Noel) w/ Snow
11Scuffed recording because I forgot to press the button lol, so around 2-3 minutes of the run at the beginning was skipped. Nothing eventful, just putting debuffs on calling Machina.
This run is before the Machina run and I did not realize the strict 4 debuff rule, so not the best optimized but it still works regardless, just a bit slower especially when Noel is missing his +3 on BT.
Caius:
The main draws of Caius to this fight are inflicting debuffs, forced rebreaks, and doom to ensure the boss does not get too hyper with his BRV after recasts. Even should the boss gain BRV and dooms have run out, the poison sap will still keep the boss in check. 4 framed debuffs mean you can potentially use two buff only characters for the 4 debuff rule (which did not happen here because I only realized that in this run). Ironically he and Serah and pair up together and 8 framed debuff the boss (Serah can frame her debuffs now through the newly reworked LD board) so negating the need for dispeller. That would mean Snow will live on Serah's aura though lol. Or she can be an alternative to Caius, forming a nice party reunion with Noel and Snow.
On the other hand, Caius has naturally high mBRV and overflow on skills, so even under that fire aura he can dish out damage as if he is unaffected. I have seen his S1 hitting full damage with only 44K mBRV left today. He also has self-regen and self-resurrection from Heart of Chaos, thus there is no need to worry about him dying at all lol. From the perspective of needing less help instead of help boosting the party to deal damage, he can be considered a role in this fight.
Caius and Noel:
Caius specializes in breaks, rebreaks and break bonuses. Naturally his protégé followed his suit and is also break specialist. While Noel does not have the debuffs, he has 1/5 or perfect gravity for breaking the target, so he has less reliance on forced breaks (in the event that bosses are immune to force breaks and gain a large amount of BRV like the ones in Sazh Lufenia+ or Gladio LC, Noel edges out a lot).
Since they both break and rebreak alot, naturally Noel synergizes with the break bonus and BRV damage up from Caius BT, and Caius can enjoy the mBRV cap up, BRV / HP dmg Up from Noel BT. Noel himself also comes with mBRV up aura, so they work well together.
There is a little bummer however, that since whatever Caius hits breaks again during his BT phase, it will require planning to pull off Noel's Fear Siphon++ into c65+c88 into a EX spam combo. When Noel is in his own BT however, just spam away, use the EX, S2 then EX again until your c65/c88 runs out. If there is only one boss with no locked turns in a fight, you will never see him on the turn order queue again.
Also, I can see that Noel has no problem doing 1 mil EX spam attacks. Mine isn't even maxed on armor and BT+, so even without ultima weapon he can easily reach that with a Machina BT boosting the mBRV cap. He wouldn't have much trouble outside of synergy either, because Meteor Javelin+ ignores defence. When I BT+3 him I am just gonna slap that ultima weapon on and take full advantage of that.
On a side note, I also did a Vayne + Noel + Caius test run in Guy's Lufenia+, that team just utilized all the bonuses from the rebreaks it is kind of unfair to the alligators.
This setup can certainly be optimized in regards to gear and the 4 debuff rule, but I feel like have spent probably too much time in this fight already. Time to move on to other characters.