Overview
Rem is one of the earliest characters in the game, the initial trio with WoL and Vivi. All three of them have relatively simple kit to start with and fit into one role each: WoL being the tank, Vivi being the DPS and Rem being the healer and support.
While being the oldest character in game, Rem is probably also the most benched character, as for early content, you don’t really need a healer, and later on Eiko comes into the game with her powerful brv regen and buffs.
With the buffs she received with LC4 as well as her 35cp and awakening on her way, Rem might finally be seeing some spotlight.
Since Rem is one of the early awakening characters (in the same batch as Squall and Zidane), and awakening is just around the corner, I’ll try to cover Rem’s awakening and EX weapon as well. I’ll also try to structure the evaluation differently by talking about Rem’s basic kit, then her buffs, followed by her 35cp and awakening and finally her EX weapon.
TL; DR
Rem is a character who’s constantly getting better. Her initially kit is niche, but her buffs and 35cp adds more functionality to her kit. However, other supports/healer such as Eiko and Lenna are still better. Rem’s awakening makes her a qualified buffer and she’s capable of handling hard content such as Chapter11 hard mode, LC5 or Noctis EX (which she’s also a synergy character). With Selphie and Cait Sith being the meta support, Rem will get benched again until her EX weapon, which makes her one of the best supports in the game.
Table of Contents
Rem’s initial kit
Rem’s initial kit is very simply:
Cure: heals a given target twice, one based on max hp and one based Rem’s atk.
Swap turns: allows a teammate to act immediately and raises Rem’s brv. Swap turns also consumes one turn.
The problem with Rem’s initial kit is that:
While she heals a lot, other characters do it better. Instead of healing 3k every time an ally has taken ~1k hp damage, it’s better to use hp regen and heal them up slowly. If you really need massive healing, Aerith does it so much better and her heal is AOE.
Swap turns still consume’s one turn count. Instead of giving your teammate a turn to shave enemy brv, why not shave brv yourself?
Rem provides nothing else to the party, no buffs, no brv battery while other supports have way more to offer.
Skill uses are limited and she becomes almost useless when she runs out of Swap turns.
Rem’s buffs
Rem just recently got buffed with LC5, her buffs are as following:
Increase use of cure by 2, grants self 40% atk buff.
Increase use of swap turns by 2, grants self and target 30% max brv up buff for three turns and raise’s brv and Rem and target by 75% of Rem’s atk.
Rem’s buffs provides her two things she needed most:
More skill uses
The ability to buff her teammate and provide them with brv
However, the vanilla effect of Swap turns can not compete with what other supports are able to offer. The buff duration is not long enough and the brv gain is mediocre unless you have the 40% atk up buff from cue.
Rem’s 35cp
Rem’s 35cp improves swap turns and makes her a lot better:
The brv gain from Swap turns becomes 120% of Rem’s atk.
The max brv buff becomes 60% and the duration is extended to 5 turns
Grants target and self 5 turn speed up
Lowers action delay for Swap turns
Rem’s 35cp is a very good weapon in my opinion, because:
5 turn 60% max brv up is almost the same as what Sazh can offer in terms of max brv
The speed up buff makes Rem one of the four characters able to increase speed for teammates, the other two being Hope with 35cp, Penelo and Fujin with 15cp passive (thanks to the comments for pointing this out). With harder content and multiple bosses, speed is very important. Tidus is still used a lot for his speed debuff, so having a speed up buff for the team can make life a lot easier.
She becomes a qualified brv battery. Let’s do some math here. Rem’s max atk at 50/50 is 1646 according to dissidiadb.com (I assume that’s without artifacts and let’s ignore artifacts for now). With the 40% self atk buff from cure, it goes to 16461.4 = 2304. The brv granted to a party member and self would be 23041.2 = 2765. This is comparable with what other brv batteries has to offer.
Rem with 35cp still suffers from problems due to her initial kit:
Lack of brv shaving ability. If you want to shave brv and it’s Rem’s turn, the best you can do is to swap turns with ally and let them handle that. I’ve tried using my 15cp Rem for Sabin LC, and most of the time I’m forced to swap turns to control enemy brv and Rem ends up sitting at max brv unable to hp attack. The speed up buff and high turn rate from 35cp will alleviate this problem, but Eiko and Lenna still has the advantage over Rem due to their brv shaving. Another problem is that, if your teammate is not high on skill uses, they might run out of juice too fast.
No efficient way to dump her brv which could mean low turn efficiency.
No party-wide atk buff. While Rem has a very nice 40% atk buff with cure, that’s only for herself, which means for characters who don’t have self atk buff such as Kuja or Sephiroth, they’ll be able to do more damage with Eiko instead of Rem.
On a side note, there’s one character who would work very well with Rem, and that is her Type 0 classmate King.King has a high number of skill uses as well as a 40% self atk buff from rapid bullets. His max brv buff is a framed buff with trigger-happy so he can fully enjoy the max brv buff Rem is able to provide.
Rem’s awakening
Rem’s awakening further improved among her strengths and addressed some of the her weaknesses:
Swap turns now grants a 80% max brv buff and the brv gain is 130% of Rem’s atk
Cure now grants the atk buff to the entire party, which means 40% atk buff for all team member for 5 turns. While 60/60 Ramza has higher atk buffs, but what 60/60 Rem has to offer is already very good.
After using Swap turns, hp attack becomes hp+. Rem’s hp+ is actually my favorite type of hp+ in the game, it converts half of the hp damage to ally’s brv, which makes it no longer a waste of turn to hp attack for Rem as her hp+ is now a brv battery. Let’s also do some math here. As indicated by dissidiadb, Rem’s max brv at 60/60 is 8221 (I’m not sure if that’s with her EX weapon or not). With the 80% max brv up buff from swap turns, it becomes 8221*1.8 = 14798. If Rem is hp attacking at max brv, the brv gain to teammates will be 7399, which is very impressive.
Rem’s EX weapon
The only one issue remaining with Rem is her lack of brv shaving ability and her EX skill addressed that perfectly. Let’s break down her EX skill:
2 hit aoe brv+hp attack, 100% hp damage to all targets.
This grants the brv shaving ability Rem needed, and what’s better, it’s aoe brv shaving. Also, 100% hp damage is esp. good against multiple enemies.
recover all members’ hp based on hp damage dealt up to 20% of their max hp.If the healing amount exceeds the target’s Max HP, the excess is converted to brv.
Firion and Maria’s str 50 passive allows them to convert hp heal into brv, and now Rem’s EX skill can do the same thing, which makes her better at her role of being a healer and brv battery.
moderately raises attack for 5 turns.
The self atk buff is 60%, which means better brv gain with swap turns. Also, if your teammates have their own atk buff, you no longer need to use cure just for buffing purposes.
grants Siphon for 1 turn. Siphon nullifies ability cost (0 ability use cost).
This is the best part about Rem’s EX. The next skill she used won’t consume any skill count. As I said before, Rem’s pretty useless when she’s out of Swap turn uses. However, with the Siphon buff, that is very unlikely to happen.
Weaknesses
With her EX weapon, Rem becomes the go-to support. She can buff, she can heal, she can brv battery and she can DPS. As a support, she work well with almost everybody. However, she’s not without problems.
Rem’s biggest problem is that her str54 and str58 passives does not provide much to her. This is the problem of most early-awakened characters.
str 54: raises atk by 10% when brv is below int brv.
str 58: raises atk by 20% then hp is over 50%.
Rem’s battery and cure is based on her atk, so having passives that boost her atk is not a bad thing. However, with the current buffs and high potency of EX skills, the hp damage one can do is generally limited by one’s max brv. While Rem has the highest raw max brv value in the game and a good 80% max brv buff, she doesn’t have any passives boosting her max brv. As a result, her max brv is still relatively low.
Also, the newer support characters often have aura type passive, which moderately raises stats of the whole party. These invisible buffs are becoming more and more important. If you look at Altema’s ranking of buff characters, the highest ranking ones all provide invisible buffs to the party.
If Rem were to have her awakening redone, her str 54 would probably moderately raise her own atk and max brv while buffed, and her str 58 could potentially raise speed and atk for the whole party.
However, since Rem has such a good EX weapon which makes her still viable for current hard content in JP (her EX weapon was released 4 months ago, so her longevity is quite impressive), they might not buff her. Well, we’ll need to wait until Noctis LC to know for sure.
Should I pull
There are two things you need to know if you are planning on making Rem you main:
Rem needs her EX weapon to be viable for hard content
Rem will be featured on a number of future banners: her awakening banner with Squall and Zidane, the Noctis event banner and then her own EX weapon banner for Chapter 2.1 which is the banner you really want to pull on.
So, unless you also want to get Zell or Cid’s weapon or just cannot wait to use Rem, I’d suggest skipping this banner.
Special credit: ComputeVision
