There's been a lot of misguidance and misinformation being spread about what Orlandu does and what he needs to be top tier. When people say things like "Orlandu needs Dual Wield and two Excaliburs", not only does he not need that, but it's also suboptimal if you consider what would be the best setup for him. As a matter of fact, almost everyone seems to be confusing "What he needs" with "What would be best for him" and I want to straighten some of that out.

Before I start, I want to say this: DO NOT expect to pull him unless you're willing to spend hundreds, maybe thousands of you're unlucky. I even warn against seriously pulling because the rest of his banner is really bad. If you pull but don't get him, you're probably going to get a lot of trash that you would never use. However, if you do get him, you will get the unquestionable best DPS for the next 6 months, and will be a mainstay in your party until 7 star units are released (if/when they are). He's that good.

HERE is his wiki page, so you can follow along with my logic.

Now, let's begin by going over what he has:

• Top tier (155) base attack. Unless I missed someone, nobody has higher base attack except for Onion Knight. Units like DKC, Tidus, and Eileen have similar/the same base attack and Noctis has higher ATK (158). Compare this to Luneth's 146 and Lightning's 145 and you can see there's a big difference, especially when you start considering passive attack bonuses.

• 100% Blind/Sleep/Paralyze resist. It's unfortunate that petrify isn't one of these, but those status ailments are all common and annoying so the resist is really nice.

• 30% ATK and 40% ATK when equipped with a Greatsword. He gets a total of 70% ATK bonus, which is high compared to Luneth's 50% with sword and Lightning's 30%. Add that to his naturally higher base ATK and he comes out far ahead.

• Hellcry Punch, which applies a 40% ATK and MAG break. For some trials like the Dark Espers, you want to split your breaks (Ifrit goes into a rage if you DEF/SPR break him). This isn't as useful as something like WoL's Arms Eraser, but if your team can't fit in a breaker, the ATK/MAG portion is much better than the DEF/SPR portion. Assuming that a boss has only base stats (no bonus), a 40% offensive break reduces their damage to 36% of normal damage. I never use this ability because I have WoL but it can be useful.

• Duskblade, which is like a physical Osmose. With this, you will never have any mana problems ever. You spam Holy Explosion until you're out and then use this ability once to get back to full and then repeat until the boss is dead. With this and his natural MP regen, you never need a mana battery for him.

• Finally, his bread and butter, Holy Explosion. This is an effective 400% mod ability that reduces Holy resist by 50% (so the damage goes to 600% if you have a weapon that does Holy damage). I shouldn't have to say much about this, but I will say that one Holy Explosion at 600% damage is more damage than DW Crushing Blow (540%, 648% if you hit the lightning weakness but there aren't any good lightning weapons) and slightly less than DW Cut Through (667%). This skill also has insane chaining potential, something that those other skills lack. Think about Edgar's chainsaw but then imagine that it actually does a ton of damage as well.

Now, I'll go over some myths about him:

• "Orlandu needs Dual Wield" - SLIGHTLY TRUE

Orlandu needs dual wield as much as any other physical DPS that doesn't have it built in. In fact, he might need it less because Holy Explosion does almost as much as Luneth and Lightning's best ability when Dual Wielded. I don't see how this is considered a negative against him, though.

• "Orlandu needs TWO Excaliburs" - FALSE

Even if he did need one Excalibur (which I'll go over in the next bullet), two Excalibur's is just wrong. First, elemental damage "bleeds" over into both attacks, so one Holy elemental weapon is just fine. Second, two Greatswords is a waste since the 40% doesn't trigger twoce. If you're considering BIS, you'll look at a katana (like the free one from Gilgamesh's trial) and Blade Mastery, but that's going into whale territory and isn't "needed".

• "Orlandu needs Excalibur" - FALSE

Excalibur is and will be BIS for him, but to say that it's needed is just wrong. If you look at his skills, he needs two things: A Greatsword and Holy elemental damage. Luckily, his banner comes with a FFT event with Durandal, a Holy elemental Greatsword with 74 ATK. That weapon is great on him and solves both his needs. The difference between Excalibur and Durandal is noticable but not enough to make Excalibur required. And if you reroll for Orlandu and can't get Durandal or you start after that event, there's another option that is extremely overlooked: the Rune Blade. Even though it only has 27 ATK, it's still a Holy element Greatsword and as such will outclass any other non-elemental Greatsword by a mile (you probably want DW if you use this). In my comment history is a comparison, but I'm not going to link it because this is already incredibly long. Here's my comparison, second comment has the numbers. Please do not downvote the person I was talking with, it sparked discussion which was good.

• Added by me: "Orlandu really wants an AoE attack" - TRUE

One thing that Orlandu is missing is an AoE attack outside of his LB (which is worse than Bladeblitz because it doesn't work with Dual Wield). Luckily, the Odin Esper comes with Bladeblitz as an ability and the Gilgamesh trial gives a nice AoE physical dispel ability. This isn't needed but I like AoE attacks (for Arena, etc...).

I could type more, but it's late for me and I need to wake up early tomorrow. I might not be able to respond to most comments since I'll be on a cruise (with limited/no internet) for about a week, so sorry about that.

Thank you for reading and I hope this cleared things up for at least some of you.