[dappa]

Equip the ribbon accessory as it renders most of the status's given by the slot machine useless unless it stops on "accessory broken"

Lots of counter materia is quite helpful.

You could go for maximum stats for cloud and then deliberately choose all the worst status's from the slot machine "all materia broken" is the best one to deliberately choose. The reason for this is you get massive battle points and the sooner you get omnislash the better I say.