Final Fantasy 7: Limit Break Damage

Which characters do the most damage with their limit breaks at maxed level?

Andrew Natoli had the fundamental concept down (more hits = more damage), but here's the actual list, in order of maximum potential damage:

1. 18 hits: Barrett's Angermax/Ungarmax and Cid's Highwind
2. 15 hits: Cloud's Omnislash and Yuffie's Doom of the Living
3. 13 hits: Cait Sith's Slots; Bar/Bar/Bar has a very small chance to summon Knights of the Round
4. 10 hits: Barrett's Catastrophe, Red XIII's Starburst Ray, and Yuffie's Bloodfest
5. 8 hits: Cid's Big Brawl
6. 7 hits: Tifa's Final Heaven (assuming you're lucky)
7. 6 hits: Cloud's Meteorain and Cid's Dragon Dive
8. 5 hits: Red XIII's Earth Rave and Vincent's Hell Masker (Splattercombo)
9. 3 hits: Cloud's Cross-slash

Notes:

• Since Tifa's limit breaks build on each other, she can hit for 1-7 times.
• All other limit breaks only hit once (or not at all, in the case of Aeris's Limit Breaks).
• Most of the multi-hit limit breaks hit multiple targets, so for maximum damage against one target, only one target should be alive.
• Limit breaks, especially the multi-hit ones, have a modifier so each hit does less than the maximum potential damage. But maximum potential damage isn't affected by the damage cap (that is, the damage an attack does gets rounded down to 9,999 after all modifiers are applied), so a fully-powered character can have each hit in the limit break hit for 9,999. Otherwise, consult this wiki page for information about the damage multipliers that'll affect each limit break.

When you begin to reach the ridiculously high levels for your characters, then you are best off by using limit breaks that hit multiple times.

The reason for this is that each hit caps at 9999 damage, so for example, Cloud's Omnislash hits repeatedly for 9999 each hit, which is clearly much better than hitting once for 9999 with, for argument's sake, Braver. (heck, 2x Attack would do more damage!)

So once you reach the 9999 damage cap, look for limit breaks which hit repeatedly, like Omnislash, and Cid's Highwind.

Hope this helps!

Assuming you're tricked out to get 9999 damage per hit, Barret and Cid have the best limit breaks with 18 hits apiece. Cloud and Yuffie tie for third with 15 hits apiece.

If you're getting less than maximum damage per hit, you may consider using someone with fewer hits at a higher damage percentage.

Character   Limit Break          Hits    Damage Multiplier
Barret      Ungarmax              18     .5
Cid         Highwind              18     .6875
Cloud       Omnislash             15     .75 (special: always crits)
Yuffie      Doom of the Living    15     .625
Red XIII    Stardust Ray          10     .625
Vincent     Splattercombo         5      .5