By some miracle I beat Aeronite again (with Limit Break enabled). It took me several Turbo Ethers, a Nektar Omega, and an Elixir to do it though, so I'm clearly not strong enough.
My strategy usually consists of Overclocking and just chucking Elementa at him until he Staggers, heal, then chuck more spells at him, then once he's down slap him with some debuffs and start poking him with Artemis Arrows until he tries getting back up (not easy to do by the way, he can still hit you with spells even when he's down). It takes a long time even WITH Limit Break enabled. Yeesh.
Next time I fight him, once he's staggered I'm slapping him with a maxed out Disaster Spell (about the equivalent of the spell Chaos from the Requiem DLC from FFXIII-2).
After that, I started hunting down the last of the monsters and taking care of what's left of the side quests.
Now it's 4:30 a.m. and I'm patrolling the backroads for Meonektons.
It seems that even in Hard Mode it's possible to farm these things for extended periods if you:
1. Get yourself the rare Synth ability Victory Rush (I use it on Blitz/Charge Attack on two schemata).
2. Hit all the Chaos Infusions you come across (because of the EP bonus they generate).
Not only does Chaos-infused Meonektons give you a ton of Gil (20,000 Gil a pair, and the value goes up the more days you spend farming them, I don't know the max value on Day 12/13 yet), but they're relatively easier to kill on the roads compared to fighting in Etro's Temple, and after a few fights you'll have maxed out EP even on hard mode, and maxed EP means easier to heal (heck even if you accidentally get killed, so long as you have 3 EP you can cast Arise).
On top of that they give you some really great spells and items (which you don't have to really work for since they're already Chaos Infused and can easily NOT be considered rare drops since you are farming a ton of them for Gil and not really worried about items).
Eventually I maxed out my Ability Inventory and had to sell/synthesize my remaining stock. This method makes it very easy to synthesize Grand Wizard for Ruinga (not to mention the Max ATB boosts) since you'll have a lot of them to work with with the same innate auto-abilities at Level 5.
What I did was:
since most Ruinga they drop are Level 4, you want something that costs 50 ATB to start, so max that out first, THEN level it up (the cost will go down to 42 ATB)... then do the same for another Ruinga (ideally the same ability and SAME ATB cost), and repeat until you have a bunch of Ruinga with the same ability at Level 5 with 42 ATB.
Then just save before you start synthing, and eventually you'll get Grand Wizard and won't have to worry about it falling under 40 ATB in cost (unless you want it to, but with Grand Wizard I avoid it since I want to have a constant Vigilance+Faith buff no matter what I'm casting).
So now I can use Grand Wizard + Elementa at any time along with either Soul of Minwu (Soul of Thamasa upgraded) and Sniper Gloves to pour on the damage.
Grand Wizard (on Equilibrium +) and Committal (on Soldier of Peace) is a very deadly combination, breaks/staggers nearly everything, then just use a Sentinel for healing (I use SOLDIER 1st Class due to Slayer and Mediguard with Standby ATB Charge).
At this point though, I'm not sure what weapon works best when staggering. I boosted Chaos' Revenge (Quickstagger) Magic stat, but it doesn't seem to work well on monsters with high stagger threshholds. I might try and upgrade Fang's spear (with Overclock Manual) and use that for spell staggers and see if it works any better.
Right now, I still have quite a few weapons on my wishlist, but I managed to upgrade some of my favorite Ultimates after buying them. And I'm also tempted to buy them three times over (for different upgrade routes).
It seems that upgrading Ultimate rank weapons a certain way makes them stronger than any other weapon if you focus on certain stats and not others. I maxed out Heaven's Cloud and Masaumune and compared them, and while they both have Heavy Hitter Level 3... Heaven's Cloud seems to have a higher Strength Stat even when upgraded.
That goes for other peculiar ultimate weapons too... like Hades' Fang stagger stat compared to the Overclock Manual Spear or Endless Paradox spears you get from Noel.
Depending on whether or not these Meonektons go extinct, I may farm the heck out of them until the clock hits 6 am (and the price/difficulty increases by the day, so once I get stronger I may be able to farm for gil on the last day easily).
Oh yeah, and fighting Last Ones in Hard Mode is the best way to get weapon upgrade materials (Holy Forgefires/Demonic Forgefires, etc), I maxed out Buster Sword already though I haven't tried it much.
I'm still trying to figure out how I want my ideal setups to be since I'm sick of using my current OP setup and want to give Heaven's Bridge double blade a try.
I've been stocking up on Soul Seeds, since every cycle gives you a chance to pick up an Elixir if you grab enough of them. I now have 2 to spend on my next fight with Ereshkigal (1 more upgrade to go and I'll get my Crystal Matinee Necklace). I just wish more people spread the Turbo Ether love (newbies and their X-potions, lol).
another reason for me to be angry, its stupid for them to just "forget" about an important thing like that.
