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How to Pressure & Stagger Enemies in FF7 Rebirth

A big part of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth‘s appeal is the fast-paced action RPG combat. There are tons of skills and spells at your disposal, and you need to know how to use them effectively. Here’s how to Pressure and Stagger enemies in FF7 Rebirth.

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Pressuring Enemies in FF7 Rebirth

Before you can Stagger an enemy in FF7 Rebirth, you’ll first need to build up that Stagger bar, and this is easily done by Pressuring them. There are a variety of ways to Pressure an enemy, and we’ve listed them down below:

  • By hitting their elemental weaknesses
  • By guarding against their attacks or blocking perfectly
  • By perfectly dodging their attacks

The most important thing here is to keep hitting an enemy’s elemental weakness. This will help get an enemy into a Pressured state much faster, and the effect will be compounded by you dodging and blocking them as well. The best way to hit an enemy’s weakness is by equipping the Assess Materia on one of your party members, and using it to scan them to see what their weaknesses and resistances are.

pressuring enemies in ff7 rebirth

Some enemies don’t have any weaknesses, making them harder to Pressure, but most of them do. Once you’ve identified their weakness, keep hitting them with that element and they’ll eventually get to a Pressured state.

What Does Pressure Do in FF7 Rebirth?

In all that excitement, I nearly forgot to talk about what Pressure actually does in FF7 Rebirth. To put things simply, once an enemy is Pressured, their Stagger bar will fill up much faster as you deal damage to them.

And needless to say, the faster you’re able to Stagger them, the more damage you’ll do. It’s not necessary to Pressure an enemy in order to Stagger them, but it’s helpful, and will make you much more efficient in battle.

How to Stagger Enemies

Finally, we get to the fun bit. Staggering enemies is very straightforward, and all you have to do is build up the Stagger bar, located right below an enemy’s HP bar. Once the bar is full, the enemy will enter a Staggered state. They’ll be left stunned and unable to move, allowing you to deal more damage to them.

While in this state, they also take 160% damage, so you’ll want to make good use of this opportunity and unleash all your strongest spells and abilities on them, including Summons.

There are also certain abilities that will help build up an enemy’s Stagger bar faster, such as Cloud’s Focused Thrust. So if you’re playing as Cloud, ideally you’ll want to get an enemy into Pressured state, use Focused Thrust to build up the bar and Stagger them, then use an ability like Braver to deal a ton of damage.

And that’s how to Pressure and Stagger enemies in FF7 Rebirth.


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Author
Zhiqing Wan
Zhiqing is a History undergrad from the National University of Singapore. She started playing video games in 1996 when her dad introduced her to Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, and Resident Evil -- and the rest, as they say, is history. When she's not obsessing over Elden Ring and Dark Souls lore theories, you can find her singing along loudly and badly to Taylor Swift's latest bops. Formerly the Reviews Editor at Twinfinite, she joined the Escapist team in 2024. You can reach her at [email protected].