Full Throttle (and friends)

It may not be the most showy of skills, but you can't argue that those feathers would come sharp.

These four abilities are lumped together here because, well, they're the same. They make up Full Throttle's four core elemental attacks, all executed immediately and with a physical wing slice. The recovery is slightly longer than a normal attack, but against the right enemies, it's well worth it. Free MP cost, too. Just try to remember which name corresponds to which element: Aestus is Fire; Winterkill, Ice; Whelmen, Water; Levin, Thunder.

A nifty gravity-based physical move which quarters the victim's remaining HP while still remaining as (relatively) quick and easy as the elemental attacks. As can be seen from the screenshot to the left, Gravity is useful against pretty much everything which isn't immune to it...

An essential replacement for the standard physical attack. It's non-elemental and takes ever so slightly longer to recover from, but it guarantees a critical hit for double damage, meaning a whopping 80% increase (do the maths) in destruction per minute.

"Deeth" is, of course, Scottish for "death," and that's exactly what you get here. A physical hit with the traditional no-charge no-MP attributes, followed by a fairly high chance of the target just dissolving into pyreflies on the spot. Naturally it's not effective against the tough fiends, but against everything else it's one hit kill. Nice.

The final elemental hit in Full Throttle's arsenal, and as is traditional it's Holy. With a longer recovery time than the others it's not a useful general-purpose attack, but against the more evil enemies it's well worth the investment. Of 0MP.

An unusual choice, this one, dealing not inconsiderable damage and also inflicting Confusion on the poor victim. In addition it also delays their action, but this is of questionable tactical use when the skill itself takes an age to charge up.

As one of the few hit-all skills available to Full Throttle, Sword Dance attempts to make up for it by hitting twice with a nasty blade eruption holding the enemy in place for a showstopping explosion.

Provide a little helping hand by boosting the Strength of the entire dressphere by two levels. If that's still not enough, string together a few Feathers for the effect to accumulate.

Full Throttle's downside is its slightly lethargic approach to battle combined with its relatively weak healing powers which can cause unwanted yellow HP side effects. A few Diamond Feathers will help there, boosting Defence by two levels each time.

Bring out the pacifist in the enemy party by handing out White Feathers, reducing their strength by two levels and ensuring they don't have any war stories to tell their grandchildren. The effect continues even after changing dresspheres.

If your strength isn't the problem, then it must be their defence. Drop two levels of every enemy on the field to increase the effectiveness of all of your own physical attacks.

Full Throttle is not the best of friends with magic users. All that metal may well offer protection from the jaws and claws of the local wildlife, but it's awfully good at conducting electricity and heat to and from Paine's vulnerable body, and rusting up when wet and going all squeaky. Stop the spells by reducing the enemy party's collective magic stats by 2 levels with Cloudy Feather.

Completing the set, Pointed Feather reduces the enemies' magic defence by two levels. This may sound fairly useless at first, but Dextral Wing's attacks count as magic so... it's really only slightly useless.

It's expensive at 38MP, but Pumice Feather casts Haste on each part of the dressphere. This simple act at the start of battle radically reduces Full Throttle's ATB times and results in a much happier Paine. Relatively speaking.

Bring a bit of ancient Egyptian soul-searching to modern Spira and find out just what the enemy has been hiding. Dead handy, Ma'at's Feather is just the Full Throttle equivalent of Scan. Quick, cheap, and it will tell you everything you need to know about the target's weaknesses and current status.

The only thing in the Full Throttle arsenal that can heal, Stamina does a fairly good job when it comes to replacing lost HP. Both wings are capable of using it, so staying alive is a surprisingly easy affair.

Full Throttle's wings chew through MP at a fair pace, and after a Pumice Feather and a couple of Dextral Arts the magic supply can look a little weak. Mettle recovers one quarter of the target's supply, helping them get back on track. Mettle is also a very good way of restoring Full Throttle's low MP count, which greatly helps Paine when she changes back to a more traditional dressphere.

Sometimes you just can't protect yourself well enough and before you know it, a wing has fallen and hangs loose by your side. In those situations, hope that the other wing has enough time to charge up and Reboot it, reviving it with a healthy dose of backup HP.

The Dextral Wing has eight special attacks, but they all behave in the same way. Each is a magical attack on one enemy which carries an additional status ailment payload:

• Venom Wing: Poison
• Blind Wing: Darkness
• Mute Wing: Silence
• Rock Wing: Petrification
• Lazy Wing: Sleep
• Violent Wing: Berserk
• Still Wing: Stop
• Crazy Wing: Confusion

It's a Ribbon, it protects against nearly all status ailments simultaneously, and it comes free for the body and wings as part of the dressphere. Rejoice, and try not to tear it on all those spinning swords.

A very handy auto-ability that can be learned independently on each part of the dressphere. Double HP is always a welcome choice and will soon see Paine hitting the 9999 cap.

Sadly not cumulative with its prerequisite, Triple HP nevertheless makes it much easier to survive those boss encounters. Note that to get the most out of this ability, you will also need Break HP Limit and a lot of levels under your belt.

The HP limit is harder to reach in FFX-2 than its prequel, but there is still plenty of reason to want to smash through the four digit maximum. With this ability learned, the new theoretical limit becomes a staggering 99,999HP — but you won't get that high.

Now one is talking. Soak up the levels, max out Paine's strength, and learn this ability to start dishing out serious damage up to 99,999 points per hit. Sword Dance, anyone?