Final Fantasy XIII: How to beat Orphan

Boss Battle: Orphan

Well you made it to the end and now must face the toughest boss of them all. Orphan is probably the hardest boss you’ll encounter, and like many bosses you have to defeat Orphan twice. By now you should have decent characters, but even so, you’re going to be heavily tested in this battle, and you really need a high HP to have any chance of succeeding.

General Strategy to beat Orphan

Battle 1 (Form 1)

• Start of by being defensive – you’re going to need a lot of healing, so any of the decent healing paradigms is useful – get everyone back to a high HP level – the higher the better and then you can start thinking about attacking.
• Buff, buff and more buff – you’re going to be switching to healing paradigms quite often as you buff your characters – without the buffs you’ll have no chance. You must use shell, protect and haste at least, and probably should use faith and bravery – the more buffs the better.
• Try to debuff Orphan while buffing up – deshell and deprotect at least. This isn’t easy, but it does really help.
• Once buffed and healed, go on the offensive with relentless assault – the aim of course is to build the chain gauge.  
• Keep an eye on HP constantly and switch to diversity to heal.
• Eventually you’ll fill the chain gauge, so now is the time to throw everything at Orphan – use tri-disaster paradigm to do most damage.
• Keep you HP very high – but try and keep up the offensive – the more damage you do quickly the better.
• Orphan will alternate between two forms and he will use a merciless judgment attack before changing form. This is a very dangerous attack and you really need to ensure you are fully healed and buffed – you should also switch to a strong healing paradigm while this attack is being used.
• In the second form (consummate darkness) Orphan will heal himself, so you’re probably best re-buffing and healing yourself and waiting for the first form (consummate light) to concentrate on attack.
• Later on Orphan will be able to heal and attack at the same time – just keep up the attacks as per the above instructions and you’ll slowly wear Orphan down – like before you must watch your HP and not let it slip too low – use Diversity where necessary.
• Make sure you use potions and items wisely – at times you will be poisoned or silenced and not only will you have to get rid of these ‘effects’ but you’ll also have to rebuff and probably heal yourself.
• Be as offensive as possible but make sure to keep your buffs and HP high – even if you have Orphan staggered, you may need to use this as an opportunity to rebuff etc.
• Be patient, this is a long arduous battle but not too difficult.

So keep everyone’s HP in the green, go full offence when you can, and try to maintain your buffs. Go hell for leather when you stagger Orphan, and you should win out fine. On a final note, Orphan will not attack while staggered, so if you’re in bad shape or your buffs are running out, you may want to pass up the opportunity for damage to heal your party instead.