Talking about Adamantoises - and I probably upgraded my weapons wrong is why - just upgraded the cheapest since it made the early game a breeze, but now it's a huge grind to get decent weapons ready for Toises.
Tried all the strategies - and can't get them in a single stagger with maxed Gaian Rings on and all 3 primary classes maxed with 1 secondary maxed on each char. Even doing it the Highwind method. Need two staggers and sometimes I get hit by a Stomp + Quake that kills the party before a heal can go off during the second attempt to stagger.
[Death of course works, but it ain't reliable]
That's why I've got to do Summons to be reliable since it basically makes the first stagger "free" then I can get the second off with it debuffed.
Replaying my pre-endgame save to get to the early Adamantoise and just gonna grind on him a while before moving on - seems easier since Summon is so mandatory for me and it's easy to remax TP there.