Right that is exactly what I hate about ailment turns. Because you apply a status, they cure themselves, but then you have to apply that shit again and then they cure it again, and then at what point are you damaging them? And then this repeats for every fucking fight? I'ma play on easy and overlevel shit, fuck that noise.
Thing is, you have 4 party members, so 4 turns. Regular enemies get 1 turn each, but most of them aren't enough of a threat to really bother with (de)buffs unless you're playing really dumb.
But not bosses. Bosses get 2 turns, and they very much are a threat. Most of them also have a rather cheap ability they can use once per round where they sacrifice 1 turn to get 2-4 extra turns. Letting bosses get multiple turns on you is really really bad. But all bosses have pattenrs where they'll prioritize certain moves before anything else. Like removing a debuff, or a status. Or if they're a boss with adds, respawn those adds. So you slap a debuff on them with one party member and use AoE spells with the other 3 to damage the boss while also killing his adds. Next turn, boss will probably heal his debuff and spawn more adds. His 2 turns are effectively wasted.
Some have really strong magic, but no way of healing the SMT equivalent of Silence. So you slap that on them and now all they do is physical attacks. Which still hurt, but usually only hit one party member. It might also miss, and in SMT any miss costs you 2 turns, not just the turn you used for that attack. There's ways of making misses more likely, like lowering enemy hit rate, buffing party evasion, or the blind status.
Some bosses can fuck you up so badly with only a few turns, that it is totally worth it to spend 3 of your 4 turns just giving them busywork.
LMAO!!!!