barret is practically unkillable once you set him up right lol he's like by far the best guy in there if you want to never die lol. i ended up letting my other party members die and went solo against nemesis i think it was.....simply because barret is a god-level tank. everybody else would die immediately compared to him. i hope 1.5 didn't ruin that for me lol. but basically i had him running grav+elem on def, enemy skill using
? for its gravity based dmg, which auto heals exactly how much dmg he's taken and bypasses touph ring's restore/half clause. then of course boosted his vit and spr as much as i could, had him using hades/added effect for a time on def....which now that i have a certain materia i can just toss resist on him.....i think i tended to give him the best gender-neutral armor stat-wise.
basically what ends up happening is nearly nothing in the game can do nearly enough damage to put him in any danger UNLESS its a specific kind of attack that does set dmg.....and there's not many of those around. at this point i have him running contain added effect on his ult weapon....so that's fun lol. oh yeah even the final materia cave boss couldn't do enough damage to be any serious problem for barret. everybody else however....lol