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FFXII: The Zodiac Age
Gambit Guide
Here's a guide on how to best use gambits in FFXII: The Zodiac Age. Examples of the use of gambits are listed below with a tips section.
White Mage Gambits
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White Mage Guide
1. A gambit for Protect, especially on boss fights, will help keep your characters alive during fights. It will also save your White Mage's mp with less damage taken. When a character is revived, Protect will automatically be cast on them when set as a gambit. You would just need to set the Protect gambit at a lower priority than your healing.
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2. It is usually better to have a different caster than your White Mage cast your Bubble spells. When a character is killed, and you then resurrect and heal them, and then your White Mage takes the time to reapply a new Bubble spell, many times, your character will be dead before you even finish casting Bubble. I highly recommend using a different mage to cast Bubble such as a Red Mage, Black Mage, or Time Battlemage to keep your White Mage healing.
3. The amount of health required to cast Curaja will change throughout the game so don't be afraid to change it up, as needed, for the harder fights. The sixty percent hp Curaja gambit shown above is set rather high for the final stage of trial mode.
4. Remedies are much better to use than the Esuna spell when curing negative status effects. Remedies have a much faster cast rate than Esuna, can be used by other characters to keep your White Mage healing, and will save your healer's mp.
5. To cure Disease use a Serum, a Cleanse, or a Remedy (with Remedy Lore 3 unlocked) and place it near the top of your White Mage's priority list as curing it is significantly more important than healing.
Black Mage Gambits
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Black Mage Guide
1. The gambit "Foe: status reflect->Attack" keeps you from having strong spells reflected back at your party. It might just save you when there is a random monster or boss that puts up Reflect during a difficult fight.
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2. All of your characters can have a Raise, Phoenix Down, or Arise gambit so don't worry about having a resurrection gambit on multiple characters, the gambit system will only have one of your characters attempt to resurrect.
3. The order for gambits targeting elemental weaknesses doesn't matter because enemies can only have one elemental weakness. Whether "Foe: ice-weak->Blizzaga" or "Foe: lightning-weak-> Thundaga" is first, the gambit will always cast the spell that the enemy is weak to. Order does however matter when using elemental vulnerability gambits such as "Foe: fire-vulnerable->Firaga" because monsters can be vulnerable to multiple elements.
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4. For Black Mage's elemental spell gambits always target enemy weaknesses. Elemental weaknesses give a two times damage increase for the spell. Elemental staves will increase the damage by another fifty percent.
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5. Scathe is the strongest spell for hitting multiple enemies that do not have an elemental weakness. It does however have a longer cast animation which is why the Shock spell is recommended for single target with no elemental weaknesses.
Monk/Time Battlemage Gambits
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Monk/Time Battlemage Guide
1. Monk/Time Battlemage is kind of a jack of all trades similar to Red Mage. They have all four weakening technicks, similar to Foebreaker, Haste and Float early on, Curaja and Arise, Green Magicks like Bubble, the ability to hit flying mobs with poles, the hp and damage of a Monk, and all 3 swiftness licenses.
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2. A great gambit for Time Battlemage or Foebreaker is "Foe: HP>100,000->Addle" or the weakening technick of choice such as Wither, Expose, or Shear. The "HP>100,000" part of the gambit will keep you from using weaken technicks on the weaker mobs with less hp. When you have the maximum effect of a weakening technick, you can change the gambit to a different weakening technick.
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3. When an ally has the negative status effect Slow, a common status effect, instead of using an item or Esuna to cure it, you can cast Haste on your character and replace the Slow with the beneficial status effect Haste.
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4. "Self: Bravery" increases your character's physical damage by thirty percent. When "Self: Bravery" is set as a gambit, Bravery will almost always be active for your character while you are fighting.
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5. Shades of Black allows you to cast a random black magic spell including some of the most powerful spells in the game. Shades of Black can be used early on in the game for some really great damage. In the late game Shades of Black is a tool to reach mobs that you can't attack. Monk can hit flying mobs, but Shades of Black can be used on the somewhat rare fights where attack is disabled.
Knight/Bushi Gambits
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Knight/Bushi Guide
1. Knight/Bushi can cast Bravery (physical damage increased by 30%) on your melee and Faith (magical damage increased by 30%) on your mages if you want to save your mages some mp. You can choose the characters you want to give Faith to and set a gambit to have it cast on them by name. The gambit shown above casts Faith on Ashe, the Black Mage of the party. You can also set gambits to cast Bravery on specific melee if they do not have access to Bravery.
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2. Shades of Black can be your go to early on for dealing with flying mobs and fights where your attack is disabled. Further into the game, however, Telekinesis will do much higher damage than Shades of Black.
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3. You can set a gambit to use Telekinesis to attack flying mobs if you unlock the licenses for it. Telekinesis can also be used for fights where your characters' attacks are disabled. Telekinesis can be unlocked on Knight/Bushi with the Esper Ultima.
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3. "Ally: status=Sap->Regen" can be useful for when a character has only the Sap status effect. Setting this gambit will replace Sap with Regen. If there are multiple negative status effects on your character at one time, you should use a Remedy or Esuna instead.
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4. "Foe: lowest HP->Attack" is sometimes useful to finish off the weakest targets in boss fights.
Red Mage Gambits
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Red Mage Guide
1. Red Mage is kind of a jack of all trades, and because of this, they do not have enough room for gambits with only twelve slots. If you would like Red Mage to fill the role of a Black Mage then you should remove some of the defensive gambits and use more offensive ones. I prefer Red Mage as a secondary healer/buffer followed by using Red Mage's strongest spells for damage.
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2. If using Yagyu Darkblade with Black Robes you can set a "Foe: dark-vulnerable->attack" gambit which does great damage for dark vulnerable enemies like Yiazmat. This will keep you from healing dark absorb enemies which are quite common late in the game. This also works when using different elemental weapons and ammunition.
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3. The order for elemental weakness gambits doesn't matter because enemies can only have one elemental weakness. Whether "Foe: dark-weak->Darkga" or "Foe: fire-weak-> Ardor" is first it will always cast the spell that the enemy is weak to. Order does however matter when using vulnerability gambits such as "Foe: fire-vulnerable->Ardor" as mobs can be vulnerable to more than one elements.
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4. The Bubble gambit can be set to "Ally: any->Bubble" during boss fights but, the example above shows "Ally: HP<100%->Bubble." This is just a quality of life improvement for the open world so that you aren't spending mp on casting Bubble when you're not fighting.
And that's all for the Gambit Guide. You're welcome to check out the other sections of the site for more on Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age.
Weak Mode Tips Bazaar Super Weapons Weak Mode Jobs
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