Quote Originally Posted by Dejnov View Post
-- This is actually the really big appeal of phantom weapons and their grid capabilities. Even with a couple of off-element weapons (provided their maxed) you can easily match the expected damage of an on-element non-phantom grid while upping your party's hitpoints by about 25-35% (depending on you amount of defender). --
Eerrrhhh? This sounds like massive bullshit, and _might_ only hold water with Lance Grids. Even then only for one off-element Lance. Maybe.

There is no way that adding off-element weapons will do you ANY good past extremely early game when you don't have on-element weapons yet. I'd like to link my damage calcs again, but sadly, neither of them have support for such details when it comes to survival like HP increase from Phantom weapons.

In any event, don't underestimate just how much 10% constant Assault or Defender is for your team. It easily surpasses Base Atk or HP gains. Also, here's some stats from my teams:
Fire: W: 1742 HP, 24727 Atk (Phantom), E: 3549 HP, 13703 Atk
Water: W: 1937 HP, 30084 Atk (Phantom), E: 3641 HP, 14496 Atk
Wind: W: 1393 HP, 24141 Atk, E: 3924 HP, 14457 Atk
Thunder: W: 2764 HP, 34490 Atk (Phantom), E: 3894 HP, 15255 Atk
The point here is, the majority of your HP is going to come from Eidolons. Even if you focus solely on Atk and thus get use the little HP ones, and even if you run a Phantom Grid with full +99 weapons (like my Thunder).

So, I'll say it again: As soon as you get a full MLB set of Eidolons, HP shouldn't be an issue. If it is, you're going to need to wait for Assault/HP double-skill weapon to really make a difference.