Defaith is a magic spell in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. It is the second spell provided by Disempowerment Materia. It inflicts the
Defaith effect, which reduces the
Magic Attack of the target, thus reducing their magic damage output.
The spell is opposed to Faith, which applies the Faith effect that boosts magic damage attributes. As such, casting it on a target with faith will remove faith rather than apply defaith. The spell also has a physical damage equivalent, Debrave.
Use[]
Defaith costs 10 MP to cast. It inflicts a negative status that reduces the magic damage attributes of a target for its generation. As such, the spell has use against enemies and bosses who mostly rely on magical damage output, either from casting spells themselves or using magic-based abilities.
Defaith has a somewhat similar purpose to both the Manaward and Shell spells, both of which protect a party from magic damage by granting them resistance to it as opposed to reducing an enemy's damage output. In each case however, only by pairing them with Magnify Materia can the spells be cast on the entire party at once, meaning Defaith may be more ATB-efficient to reduce harm to an entire party from one enemy.
Because defaith is opposed to faith, casting defaith will remove a faith effect but not apply defaith to replace it. This is cheaper to do than casting Dispel, though dispel can remove multiple statuses at once.
Defaith can be applied to a group of enemies at once when disempowerment materia is paired with magnify, but this is an inefficient use of the materia. Defaith can last longer or be cheaper to cast when disempowerment is paired with Magic Focus Materia or
Magic Efficiency Materia respectively, though this again is inefficient compared to other use cases for these materia.