Kuja

Assassin

Though proficient in sorcery, Kuja is no pushover up close. Not only that, he can employ the metaphysical powers of Discarnate Chorus to bestow boons upon nearby allies. Keep changing your angle of attack, and your foes will get the hook.

Original Appearance: FINAL FANTASY IX

Year: 2000

Role: Kuja is an egotistical sorcerer with deep ambitions. While under the command of his master, Garland, Kuja learns of the mythical beasts known as Eidolons, creatures manifested from the memories and mythologies of peoples past. Kuja decides to harness the power of Eidolons in order to achieve his goal of ruling the planet.

Other Noteworthy Appearances: DISSIDIA FINAL FANTASY (2009), DISSIDIA 012 FINAL FANTASY (2011), Theatrhythm FINAL FANTASY (2012)

Arsenal

Bravery Attacks

HP Attacks

EX Skills

Bravery Attack Breakdown

Astral Onslaught

Kuja flings his holy orbs three times in succession at a nearby foe, sending them past mid-range.

While Kuja uses different elemental magic for his grounded and airborne neutral  attacks, they’re essentially the same attack, sharing identical damage and range properties and only differing aesthetically.

As a sorcerer, Kuja uses ranged attacks, but since he’s classified as an assassin, his attacks are primarily designed for use within melee distance. This makes him a unique type of assassin—you don’t have to fully commit into point-blank range to inflict Bravery damage on your opponents.

Astral Onslaught and Infernal Whip lack vertical tracking, but they’re fast projectiles you can use to follow up on team combos, wall pins, or to simply tag nearby foes and knock them away past mid-range. Most of Kuja’s orb attacks have a strafing property, allowing you to move while casting. In conjunction with its “force combo” ability on its second input, you can move freely while throwing out the first two orbs. This is effective for throwing out preemptive “feeler” hits against enemies just outside your range, and if they hit, you can complete the combo.

Eruption

Kuja blasts the enemy with two far-reaching Flare spells.

Eruption is a close- to mid-range attack that covers more horizontal distance than Astral Onslaught while also boasting better vertical tracking, and with only a slight disadvantage in speed.

This is your main attack for most ground-based skirmishes, thanks to its reach and relative safety. Kuja can fire his flare orbs upward at a 45-degree angle (around one jump height), so it’s a versatile, non-committal attack for both a ground-to-ground and ground-to-air assault.

Flarestorm

Kuja launches high into the air with the aid of the Flare spell, devastating foes in his flight path.

While this unique Bravery Attack offers no horizontal range, it makes for an excellent mobility option and anti-air attack against foes above you.

As an assassin, Kuja’s greatest strengths are speed and mobility, and Flarestorm augments these strengths well. It can be considered a “super jump,” replacing your normal jump while retaining your ability to double- and triple-jump when airborne. And because Kuja is an excellent aerial fighter with Bravery Attacks explicitly designed for air-to-air and air-to-ground use, Flarestorm is a crucial tool in his arsenal.

Flarestorm can be charged by holding  to extend your jump height. After about a full second of charge, you can double your jump height, from where you can get a bird’s-eye view of the battlefield.

Angelic Advance

Kuja, clad in his holy orbs, charges headfirst and crashes into his foe, knocking them past mid-range.

Angelic Advance is a linear horizontal attack, prime for chasing down fleeing enemies on the ground. However, it offers no vertical tracking, so it’s strictly for use as a dashing ground-to-ground engagement, with a reach that extends slightly beyond that of Eruption. However, if your target is airborne around jump height, Eruption becomes a better option.

Angelic Advance and Igneous Zeal (dashing airborne ) are excellent wall-pinning attacks but cannot be dash canceled (although they can be evasion canceled).

Infernal Whip

While airborne, Kuja unleashes a swift three-hit combo with his flare spheres on a nearby foe.

Infernal Whip is the airborne version of Astral Onslaught, with flare spheres instead of holy orbs. Both are used for the same purpose: to follow up team combos and wall pins and to quickly strike enemies within melee range.

As you can move while casting the entire sequence, you can slightly adjust the range of the second and third attacks. This makes it possible to miss the third hit even if you hit with the second, so be mindful of your movement while firing off Infernal Whip and Astral Onslaught. To guarantee the third hit, you can move forward while casting.

Most of Kuja’s orb attacks, like Astral Onslaught and Infernal Whip, can be used to hold foes in place, allowing for team combo follow-ups. Instead of executing the complete three-input sequence, you can stop after the second hit to allow a teammate to capitalize on your opening, as the enemy is left stunned for a short duration.

Sublime Ascension

Kuja sends his holy orbs at a steep upward angle, plucking enemies out of the air and hurling them away.

Kuja’s toolkit includes two unique high-verticality attacks that reach high above and well below him. These attacks are primarily meant to give you a strong advantage in aerial dogfights, with great reach in either direction.

Mastering the use of both of these airborne attacks (+  and + ) is vital to optimizing your damage output as an assassin. With an arsenal that includes Flarestorm, his triple-jump, and these two angled attacks, Kuja makes for an incredibly powerful aerial assassin.

Use Sublime Ascension to strike enemies above you—it reaches up to roughly double-jump distance.

Crusade

From an aerial advantage, Kuja throws out three lashes of his holy orbs below him, knocking opponents out of the air.

Crusade is a complementary attack to Sublime Ascension and is your main tool for aggressing upon grounded enemies while you’re airborne.

Since much of your time is spent in the air, this is one of your best attacks, giving you a distinct advantage against grounded foes (particularly ones who don’t have strong verticality attacks).

Igneous Zeal

Kuja charges toward an enemy, slamming them with his flare orbs and hurling them away past mid-range.

Igneous Zeal is a melee-engagement attack with slight vertical tracking, effective for chasing airborne foes. Like Angelic Advance, it covers more horizontal distance than most of your projectile attacks, giving you more reach at the risk of putting you into the melee range of the enemy.

Use Igneous Zeal to quickly close in on targets from a dash cancel technique. For instance, as a follow-up to wall-pinning an opponent with Infernal Whip, or to capitalize on an ally’s stunning ranged attack.

HP Attack Breakdown

Flare Star

Kuja conjures a star of large mystic orbs around his target, instantly stunning them before imploding.

Flare Star is a swift close-range HP Attack that deals moderate Bravery damage almost instantaneously. It allows you to be extremely aggressive within melee range and gives you an unguardable option against foes who are inclined to put up their guard barrier.

While it has an incredibly fast start-up time, it lacks in verticality, so it’s important to stay level with your target to accurately place your Flare Star on them.

Seraphic Star

Kuja releases a holy-based projectile that quickly evolves into a radiant energy, drawing in nearby foes before detonating them into orbit.

Although Kuja fires off a small projectile at his target, the projectile cannot hit enemies on its own. It transforms into a black hole-like energy that pulls your opponents within its radius before dealing HP damage to them.

Seraphic Star can be charged by holding , increasing its maximum range before transformation. It’s an exceptional mid-range area-of-effect attack, potentially devastating multiple opponents.

This attack covers a substantial amount of horizontal range (especially charged), with moderate vertical tracking upon release. At around jump height, it can hunt grounded enemies from past mid-range, and it’s particularly effective against clumps of foes, thanks to its draw-in effect and large effective area.

Symphonic Force

Kuja swiftly slashes at an enemy in front of him with the power of both Holy and Flare, then causes a devastating detonation that hurls his victim past mid-range.

Symphonic Force is a high-damage, high-speed melee attack. Its reach is severely restricted to essentially point-blank melee range, but it’s his fastest HP Attack by far.

Select Symphonic Force if you want to play a hyperaggressive assassin style. Mix up your opponents in close-quarters combat with Astral Onslaught, Infernal Whip, and Symphonic Force, forcing them to guess between guarding your quick Bravery Attacks and evading your speedy unguardable HP Attack.

Ultima

Kuja casts his own version of the iconic Ultima spell, causing a pouring rain of spears of light to crash down on his foe.

Ultima has a relatively long cast time but dishes out a plethora of Bravery-damaging projectiles that stun enemies in place before the attack finishes with its HP-damage hit.

As a mid-range threat called down from above, Ultima can be cast on any foe within range, regardless of their positioning. However, it’s a relatively difficult ability to successfully connect with without properly setting it up, since foes can simply move away from beneath the portal. Thus, its main strength is that it gives you a ranged ability that reaches farther than any of your other attacks, allowing you to follow up on team attacks from a distance.

EX Skill Breakdown

Discarnate Chorus / soul resonance

Kuja uses his sorcery to augment his nearby allies’ power, speed, and defense.

Discarnate Chorus, Trance, and Soul Resonance are the components that make up Kuja’s unique EX Skill mechanic.

There are three levels of Discarnate Chorus, with each subsequent cast having a stronger effect, a longer buff duration, and additional applied buffs (chosen randomly between damage, defense, and speed). After the third cast, you gain Trance. When you use Discarnate Chorus while Tranced, it becomes Soul Resonance (essentially, a maxed-out version of Discarnate Chorus). Additionally, every version of Discarnate Chorus applies an EX Skill gauge regeneration buff that applies only to you, increasing your passive EX Skill regeneration rate while attacking.

Its area of effect reaches up to the second minimap circle, so be mindful of where your teammates are on the minimap before you commit to using Discarnate Chorus/Soul Resonance.

For details, see the following Trance and Soul Resonance sidebar.

Trance and Soul Resonance

Kuja’s unique Trance mechanic is activated after you cast his unique EX Skill, Discarnate Chorus, three times in a match without being incapacitated.

Trance is a complementary buff that, on its own, doesn’t affect your stats. Trance simply signifies your ability to cast Soul Resonance (instead of Discarnate Chorus) the next time you use your unique EX Skill. Soul Resonance increases all three attributes of nearby allies by 25% for 15 seconds, giving your team a dramatically inordinate combat advantage.

Kuja’s Trance buff is lost when you’re defeated, resetting your Discarnate Chorus stacks and forcing you to start the process over.

Battle Plan

Assassins are generally tasked with utilizing their speed to take down vulnerable enemy targets. Kuja’s sorcery-based ranged attacks and support-heavy utilities make him a particularly unique assassin, emphasizing team coordination and buffing your squad’s combat abilities.

Kuja offers support, not only through empowering his allies with Discarnate Chorus and Soul Resonance, but many of his attacks serve as exceptional team combo openers. For instance, his grounded and airborne neutral  (Astral Onslaught and Infernal Whip) are swift three-hit orb combos that briefly lock enemies in place. With these attacks, you can stop the combo at two hits (> ) to give your teammates time to come in and capitalize on your victim with Bravery and HP combos of their own.

As you and your squad play a distanced standoff game (normally at the start of a match), your aggressive options are limited (unless you have Ultima or Seraphic Star equipped). Thus, you should play around your own marksman, following up on their attacks with your grounded and airborne dashing  rush attacks (Angelic Advance and Igneous Zeal).

In close-quarters skirmishes, your main advantage combat-wise is your air superiority. As a spell-based assassin, you can utilize airborne +  (Crusade) to exploit a kind of “high-ground” advantage, as this attack has an explicit downward attack angle designed to tag opponents beneath you. Kuja’s vertical mobility is further enhanced thanks to his Flarestorm attack. While it’s not an easy attack to land on its own, it doubles as a high jump, replacing your normal ground jump to allow you to launch high into the sky for a better bird’s-eye view of the battleground. Airborne +  (Sublime Ascension) is a situationally effective attack for taking out foes above you. The first two hits of Crusade and Sublime Ascension have a draw-in effect; on hit, your holy orbs pull the opponent toward you, allowing for a combo finish—or, ideally, you can opt to leave the enemy stunned in front of you for a potential team combo.

Kuja’s most essential tool is his unique EX Skill, Discarnate Chorus and Soul Resonance. This mechanic encourages safe play, since the stacking effect of casting Discarnate Chorus successively requires staying alive, which makes survival crucial. Kuja’s plethora of ranged attacks complements this style of play. One of your main goals as Kuja is to use Discarnate Chorus as many times as possible, affecting as many teammates as possible. The first two levels randomly apply one of the three combat attributes (damage, defense, speed) to teammates in range, while the third and fourth (Soul Resonance) apply all three. Furthermore, the power increase of each is incrementally augmented. For example, Discarnate Chorus Level 1 damage boost increases damage by 6%, while Soul Resonance increases damage dealt by 25%. Essentially, your overall team performance and efficiency scale drastically with subsequent casts, so playing around your unique EX Skill is key.

All this makes Kuja a highly skill-dependent character that excels in the late game. It takes Kuja half the length of a match to reach maximum Soul Resonance potential, so if he dies prematurely, he may never get the opportunity to utilize one of his best assets. Trance form also turns Kuja into a giant glowing beacon, as the opposing team is even further incentivized to take him out. Kuja’s team can play around this fact by posturing defensively and taking advantage of bloodthirsty opponents.

Kuja’s varied set of HP Attacks allows for distinct styles of play, ranging from hyperaggression with Symphonic Force and Flare Star, to a support- and control-centric style with Seraphic Star and Ultima. Although they’re close-range attacks, Flare Star and Symphonic Force are excellent follow-ups for wall pins and team combos, thanks to their speed. To emphasize support and supplement a Trance-based playstyle, Ultima and Seraphic Star are versatile mid- to long-range attacks you can use to force out enemy mistakes from a safe distance.

Although Kuja is classified as an assassin, his main strengths are in his support-style toolkit. His EX Skill bolsters the entire party’s attributes, and his attacks are speedy spells designed to set up team combos, thanks to their draw-in and lockdown effects. Kuja is heavily reliant on knocking opponents into surfaces. His attacks tend to send the target flying away, so he does not have very much solo-combo potential without a nearby wall.

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Appearance

Weapons