What is the best strategy to defeat Cid Raines?

I'm trying to beat Cid Raines in Final Fantasy 13. He's the boss in the Fifth Ark. I've been really struggling to get a good strategy around his attacks, without much success.

Usually, I sentry myself until I get all of the upgrades, attack him till I need healed, then heal myself. After that, he typically is guarding himself, making himself a real pain to attack.

What can I do to beat him? Thanks!

4 Answers

I found party composition to be a major MAJOR issue with fighting Cid. I tried it at first with Hope, Vanille and Lightning and Cid mopped the floor with me. I tried again with Lighting, Fang and Sazh and had much better luck. Standard assault paradigm with Com/Rav/Rav, but be sure to have a medical paradigm to heal, and BE SURE to make use of Fang's saboteur skills and Sazh's synergist skills. Those alone should make the fight super easy. I beat him in like (seriously) less than 7 minutes.

Suggested paradigms are:

L-Lightning, F-Fang, S-Sazh

L-Rav F-Com S-Rav :: L-Med F-Sab S-Syn :: L-Med F-Sen S-Syn

Those three are paramount, everything else is gravy. If you've given Sazh any medic skills a fourth paradigm with L and S as medics and F as a sentinel would be helpful for those Oh ****! moments.

3

Personally, I did not change my tactics for Cid, but that did make him a very tough fight that took me a few attempts to win.

My regular tactic was to use COM/RAV/RAV to raise the stagger gauge and then RAV/RAV/RAV while the enemy was staggered to do as much damage as possible, with a MED paradigm thrown in for healing.

However, in the fight I managed to win, I did have to use potions a couple of times to heal and I lucked out as he concentrated most of his firepower on my teammates instead of me. When they died, I summoned Lightning's Eidolon, which revived my party and allowed me to finish the fight.

You may also want to review the strategies here, to see if those help you out.

A good strategy for any RPG is to level up if you are having difficulty passing. I suggest that if you are having problems, work on leveling up your guys for a bit, and come back and see what you can do.

For me I used Lightning, Fang, and Sazh. I did RAV/RAV/COM, MED/SYN/SAB,and COM/COM/MED