Diabolic Variant Hard Mode Guide

Diabolic Variant is a boss in Chapter 11: The Long Shadow of Shinra of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth (FF7 Rebirth). Learn how to beat Diabolic Variant on Hard Mode and normal difficulties, its weaknesses and resistances, and a list of its moves and attack patterns in this guide!

Diabolic Variant Weaknesses and Stats

Stats

	Easy	Normal	Hard
HP	?	22191	?

Weakness and Resistances

Weaknesses	Lesser Resistances	Greater Resistances
Ice	-	-
Absorbed Elements	Immunities
-	Proportional Damage Slow Poison Silence Sleep Stone Petrify Morphable Items

Changes When Staggered

Weakness / Effective	Resistance
-	-

How to Pressure Diabolic Variant

How to Pressure

Destroy Diabolic Variant's Right Arm

You can only pressure the Diabolic Variant by destroying its Right Arm. You can destroy it quickly by attacking it using Ice.
How to Pressure and Stagger Enemies

Diabolic Variant Best Party and Builds

Notice from Game8	This section is for players who are playing on Easy and Normal difficulties. To check out the best builds and tips for Hard Mode, jump to our Hard Mode Guide section, below!

Fixed Party Setup

Recommended Party Setup
Cloud	・Punish the boss with strong abilities like Infinity's End and Braver once it's staggered. ・Pull out different combos once the enemy is pressured or staggered.
Yuffie	・Damage the boss from a distance using Ice Ninjutsu ・Use Doppelganger to summon a copy to deal additional damage and heal
Tifa	・Use Unfettered Fury to stagger the boss quickly ・Punish the boss with powerful abilities like Focused Strike once it's staggered.

Best Materia to Use

You can use the same Materia for all three characters in this boss fight. The main priorities to obtain are Ice, Chakra, Hp Up, Healing, and Shiva. These Materia should keep you up in battle while inflicting decent damage on the boss.

You can add more Materia that can boost their stats, like Luck Up, MP Up, Magnify, and Level Boost, to help you with the fight if you have some Materia Slots left. Some optional Materia could be Item Master, Steadfast Block, and Precision Defense Focus for additional support.

Materia List and How to Get All Materia

Recommended Materia for Cloud

Weapon: Umbral Blade	Armor: Garm Bangle
Ice Level Boost HP Up Chakra Steadfast Block Precision Defense Focus	Healing Magnify Luck Up Barrier Item Master
Summon:	Shiva

Equip Umbral Blade and Garm Bangle to get the Materia Slots for the Materia above. You can get the Umbral Blade in Chapter 8 in the Dust Bowl and the Garm Bangle in the Vending Machines starting Chapter 11.

Recommended Materia for Yuffie

Weapon: Bird of Prey	Armor: Garm Bangle
Ice Level Boost HP Up Chakra	Healing Magnify Luck Up Steadfast Block Precision Defense Focus
Summon:	Shiva

Use Bird of Prey to learn Doppelganger and get several Materia Slots. Pair it up with a Garm Bangle to get more Materia Slots and defense for Yuffie.

Recommended Materia for Tifa

Weapon: Crystal Gloves	Armor: Garm Bangle
Ice Level Boost HP Up Chakra Luck Up Steadfast Block	Healing Magnify Item Master MP Up Precision Defense Focus
Summon:	Shiva

Crystal Gloves is the best weapon for Tifa in Chapter 11 as it has the highest Materia Slots and boosts Magic considerably. It will allow Tifa to deal more damage when casting Ice spells against the boss.

For additional Materia Slots and more defense, equip the Garm Bangle that you can get from Chapter 11's Vending Machines.

How to Beat Diabolic Variant (Normal)

Diabolic Variant Boss Fight Tips
Use Ice to Exploit Weakness Destroy Right Arm to Pressure Equip Chakra Materia on All Characters Avoid Ensnare Dodge Toxic Mire Boss's Clone Shares the Same HP

Use Ice to Exploit Weakness

Hit Diabolic Variant using Ice magic for increased damage. You can use Yuffie's Ice Ninjutsu to deal damage from a distance and equip Ice Materia to cast Ice spells.

You can also summon Shiva after staggering the boss to help you inflict additional ice damage on the boss!

Destroy Right Arm to Pressure

You can pressure the Diabolic Variant by destroying its Right Arm. It has the same weakness as the main body so you can also use Ice to destroy the arm.

Aside from pressuring Diabolic Variant, it will also render its tentacle attacks useless once the Right Arm is destroyed.

How to Pressure and Stagger Enemies

Equip Chakra Materia on All Characters

The Diabolic Variant will blast out toxic fumes from its body to attack during the boss fight. Equip Chakra Materia on all characters to heal up and cure poison.

In the second phase, it will spread poisonous fog around the arena that cannot be dispelled. You can still use Chakra to recover the damage you've taken from the poison!

How to Get the Chakra Materia

Bring Antidote as an Alternative

You can bring several Antidotes to cure poison, at least for the first half of the boss fight. It will be a waste to use in the second half, as the poison will only run through your characters again!
Antidote Effects and How to Get

Avoid Ensnare

Ensnare is the Diabolic Variant's skill that binds and poisons your characters if they get caught. The range of Ensnare doesn't reach that far, meaning you can avoid it as long as you don't get too close once you see the attack prompt!

Dodge Toxic Mire

Toxic Mire is one of Diabolic Variant's poisonous attacks that can cover a large area. It is guaranteed to inflict poison if your characters get caught up by it, so run away quickly once you see the attack on the screen.

Boss's Clone Shares the Same HP

The clone of the Diabolic Variant shares the same HP as the original, meaning they will receive the same damage from your attacks. You don't have to worry about knowing the original body and target any of them until they are defeated!

It also applies to the stagger meter, which means both of them will stagger at the same time.

Diabolic Variant Hard Mode Guide

Diabolic Variant Hard Mode Tips
★ Best Hard Mode Builds for Diabolic Variant ★
Use Doppelganger and Faith at the Start Use Cloud to Cast Blizzaga on the Right Arm Use Tifa to Stagger and Increase Multiplier Finish With Ice Spells from Yuffie and Cloud Fight Should End Under Two Minutes

Diabolic Variant Hard Mode Builds

Notice from Game8	The builds featured in this Hard Mode section are at Weapon Levels 7~8. If you find that you don't have enough Materia slots to complete the setup, consider getting all the possible Manuscripts on Normal, first.

Build Notes:

• You can use the Genji Gloves as an alternative accessory on Cloud to increase the damage of Blizzaga past 9,999.
• Despite Yuffie having lower magic damage than Cloud, she can match the damage through the use of Doppelganger from the Bird of Prey weapon.

Use Doppelganger and Faith at the Start

Immediately cast Yuffie's Doppelganger to further speed up her ATB charge rate. Afterward, swap to Tifa and build ATB to cast Faith on both Yuffie and Cloud.

Cloud's role during the first few seconds of the fight is to attack the Right Arm of the Diabolic Variant to pressure it.

Use Cloud to Cast Blizzaga on the Right Arm

Use Cloud to cast Blizzaga on the Right Arm to deal massive damage and pressure the Diabolic Variant faster. This should be able to reach the 9,999 damage threshold if Cloud has the Faith buff from Tifa.

Additional Note: You can equip the Genji Gloves on Cloud to further increase the damage of Blizzaga past the 9,999 cap.

Use Tifa to Stagger and Increase Multiplier

Swap to Tifa and use Focused Strike once the Diabolic Variant is Pressured to stagger it. Then unleash Rise and Fall, Omnistrike, and Whirling Uppercut to increase the damage multiplier.

The stagger damage multiplier will further increase the damage for Ice spells on the Diabolic Variant, opening it up for a finisher.

Finish With Ice Spells from Yuffie and Cloud

Yuffie should already have one ATB charge and her Doppelganger active during this phase. Build up one more ATB gauge to doublecast Blizzaga with the Doppelganger.

Quickly swap to Cloud and cast another Blizzaga to finish off the Diabolic Variant.

Note: The Faith buff from Tifa should still be active during this time.

Fight Should End Under Two Minutes

Following these tips, our team was able to beat the Diabolic Variant in under two minutes.

Diabolic Variant Rewards and Details

Rewards

Diabolic Variant Rewards
Easy/Normal						Hard Mode
・3600 EXP ・50 Party EXP ・10 AP ・1800 Gil						・6500 EXP ・30 AP ・3250 Gil ・Fortunes Untold Vol. X
Items Dropped						Rare Items Dropped
None						None
Stealable Items						Morphable Items
None						None

Basic Information and Details

Diabolic Variant
Location	Chapter Unlocked
Nibelheim Reactor	Chapter 11
Species	Movement
Artificial	Grounded
Details
A man-made monstrosity created by Shinra's R&D Division. It has since been disposed of for its disobedient and cannibalic nature, but some specimens escaped the research facility and have undergone a unique evolution in the wild. Destroying the tentacles on its right arm will pressure it. It will summon a clone once it has taken enough damage.

FF7 Rebirth Related Guides

Boss Fight Guide and List of All Bosses

Story Bosses

All Major Story Bosses
Chapter 1	Materia Guardian
Chapter 2	Midgardsormr
Chapter 3	Rude and Elena Mythril Golem
Chapter 4	Terror of the Deep Roche
Chapter 5	Jenova Emergent
Chapter 6	Grasptropod
Chapter 7	Custom Valkyrie Gigatrice
Chapter 8	Dyne Anuran Suppressor
Chapter 9	Specimen H1024 Crimson Mare Mk. II
Chapter 10	Gi Nattak
Chapter 11	Diabolic Variant Yin and Yang Forgotten Specimen Galian Beast Roche
Chapter 12	Abzu Rude and Elena Rufus
Chapter 13	Red Dragon Ironclad Reno and Rude Tseng and Elena Moss-Grown Adamantoise Demon Gate
Chapter 14	Jenova Lifeclinger Sephiroth Reborn

Optional Bosses

Grasslands
Summon	Titan
Classified Intel	Quetzalcoatl
Side Quests	White Terror
Junon
Summon	Phoenix
Classified Intel	Mindflayer
Side Quests	White Mousse Hell Rider II Sandstorm Drake
Corel
Summon	Alexander
Classified Intel	Tonberry King
Side Quests	Dark Claw Joker
Minigame	Test 0
Gongaga
Summon	Kujata
Classified Intel	Great Malboro
Side Quests	Levridon Mastodon Gorgon Mane Gigantoad
Cosmo Canyon
Summon	Bahamut Arisen
Classified Intel	Jabberwock
Side Quests	Irasceros Gigaworm
Nibel
Summon	Odin
Classified Intel	King Zu
Side Quests	Queen Bee Dranabarga
Meridian Ocean
Gilgamesh's Island	Gilgamesh Titan and Bahamut Arisen Phoenix and Kujata Alexander and Odin
Pirate King's Treasure	Ogre Raider Brineborn Demon Hueyacoatl Sea Dragon