That was the fastest way to pull out combos and the most common used strategy. But if you had high enough speed + combo count, you could pull of insane combos even with high health. 

Heck, i've seen solo's of Yiazmat at full health doing 12 combos constantly XD

Me, I rather play it safe and do a full HP strategy :P Mainly because I always had bad luck with Cyclone. Even with the Wind reduction light armour (I think it was called Windcatcher), he would hit me for 3000-4000 with it when I was at low health >_>

Maaaaan

That changes everything. Now I want to look up the mechanics of how that works. Does Haste take one's speed over 99? Is Speed over 99 factored into the combo count?

I gotta tell my wife this stuff. Maybe I'll replay FFXII soon.

Yes, it brings you over 99 speed, but there's a cap, I think it was 150 or less, don't know for sure since I don't have access to the guide now. You can easily see the cap by comparing ATB speed between a non hasted 99 speed character and a hasted 99 speed character. The ATB difference is almost 1.5x faster. 

So in theory, if you couple a 99 Hasted + Masamune + Genji Gloves + Low HP = Insane ownage at the expense of always being around the death zone, especially against def capped Yiazmat (I really hate the def caps for superbosses, they didn't had enough HP already, nooooo, they had to cut down your damage too :P) 

I think the combo caps out at 12, so if you're that fast it may be pointless....

But if you're tthat fast, then your Strength is probably also pretty insane.

Then put BERSERK on them

Yessss

Yeah, 12 is the highest combo count, which if you're able to deal 9999 per hit, is pretty awesome by itself, ~120K damage XD 

There are tons of possibilities to maximize your damage output. Actually Yiazmat was a sort of proving ground for many strategies. I think the fastest anyone has ever defeated Yiazmat was on 53 minutes, which is 1M hp damage per minute xD
My fastest time was 2 hours and 5 minutes, and even that was pretty fast for me, first time around it took me 5 hours >_> 

I think my wife did it in like two and a half, but she did the near-death Masamune thing and used Decoy/Reverse on her healer

Eventually she said "screw it" and just wailed on him

Okay, taking hours to kill is WAY, WAAAY overboard in the HP department.

You can leave and save at any point, so it's not like you have to do it all in one sitting (though he starts healing if you wander off).

....no? You just need to kill him if you actually intend to kill him. The option to leave, save (which automatically heals you to full), and take a break is a pretty big deal.

But yeah he's kind of the ultimate optional boss in that sense. You're never forced to fight him, and even finding him isn't likely to happen unless you know where to go

But hoo boy