Same as the other thread, what do you consider to be the worst version of each famous class seen in the series?
Printable View
Same as the other thread, what do you consider to be the worst version of each famous class seen in the series?
Welp, I guess I better get this started then. I'll fill in the reasons later. Like last time, I'm ignoring sub-job or job changing custom shenanigans like Junctioning.
Knight: FFIII (Famicom) - Not necessarily a bad class per se, but Knights fall into boring and practical territory, and unlike their FFI or DS Upgrade, they don't get access to white magic for versatility. They can take a beating and they hit things hard. Occasionally they'll cover and take a hit for a weakened ally, but overall the Knight has little thrills to speak of. Despite that, most players will likely keep one in their party for most of the game.
Black Mage: FF (NES) - Changed my mind on this one. Black Mage is probably the worst off in the buggy NES version. In addition to having five of their spells not even work, the game also ignores their Intelligence when dealing with magic. Meaning the class's best stat is useless and just leaves you a weak punching bag to use.
White Mage: FFTactics Advance A2 - Oof, this is a terrible class. Stripped of their defensive spells, the class is stuck with just pure healing and status magic. Then even nerfed Esuna just so they could add a better version to give them an extra spell. MP Turbo is also an awful skill in it's own game since all mages start with 0mp at the start of battle. Terrible class not helped by several more versatile classes having healing options. Level it until you get Seer and then never look back.
Thief: FFI - I hate this class and I still feel it's the worst class in the original including the broken black mage I just trashed talk above. Ho-hum stats, terrible equipment options, and no real skills to speak of. Thief really has nothing to offer the party that couldn't be handled by a better class. The only point of the class is to drag it around long enough to acquire its Ninja upgrade and even then, I'd argue you're better off with a Monk or another warrior.
Monk: Tifa (PS1) - Controversial choice I know. Originally I was going to do Amarant, but he doesn't fit the class mold very well and he's a hybrid class anyway. I also thought about throwing Snow under the bus here, but the paradigm system put a wrench in that plan. The more I thought about it, the more it just pointed to her. Tifa is a ho-hum monk, lacking the stats of her counterparts. She's third tier overall in strength and has surprisingly low HP growth making her a rather fragile monk. She shines when you get her the right weapons but that means she's only good during certain parts of the game instead of being overall useful. Her limit is the only one that can miss, and while it can be incredibly powerful in the early game, it loses its luster compared to other characters by endgame until you acquire her ultimate weapon. She's too situational and requires too many outside elements to be good, whereas the general appeal of the Monk class has always been their low maintenance.
Red Mage: FFV - After trivializing White and Black Mages for two entries, it;s amusing how the Sub-job mechanic does this finally to the Red Mage. The main issue here is the class is finally balanced for once and lives up to its Master of None shtick. It can only use a meager amount of both black and white magic spells and loses out on some of the best ones from both classes. To add insult to injury, they are statistically gears more of melee combat, but a poor equipment pool makes them mediocre fighters at best and they can't even use shields. they do get the ungodly Doublecast ability which gives them some help but other classes can use that ability better. For once the Jack of All class can't find a niche or itself.
Dragoon: FFIII (Famicom) - Not a bad class, but hardly the game breaker it becomes in later installments. Like Knight, this is less about the class being terrible and more about the class just not having as many perks as later incarnations do.
Summoner: Garnet - Despite being central for a large part of the plot, summons are pretty terrible in IX. Exacerbated by storytelling getting in the way for Garnet as well as just a lazy solution to the "summon animations take too damn long" complaint from the other PS1 entries. Garnet is pretty much nerfed for half the game with her summons, and even when she finally gets access to them, they hand them to her all at once like Rydia except in this case, we have a competent black mage also on the team who will largely trivialize the basic summons. Most players likely just learn Bahamut and not bother with the rest except to say they learned them. The short animation mechanic also happens to nerf the summon power making these summons do low damage compared to most of their incarnations across the series. I'm sure the fan whining about all this is why the next installment ran to the other side of the spectrum and made the summons overpowered as all hell.
Blue Mage: Kimarhi - Oof, as has already been stated in this thread, making Blue Magic a limit break is a terrible idea. Giving them a lackluster spell set makes it even worse. Kimarhi runs into the same issue as Quistis of having a skill set that fails to compare to the party of game breakers at your disposal. Where Kimarhi suffers a bit more and finds his way on the bottom is that there are some real arguments for why Quistis' Blue Magic is still practical even though its underwhelming, whereas Kimarhi doesn't get this option. Making matters more painful here is that Kimarhi has the smallest spell selection of any Blue Mage in the series with only 11 spells overall. Even the FFTA series, which often limits classes to 9 abilities per class, give their incarnation a whopping 20 spells to choose from. About the only thing anyone would agree that Kimarhi does better for the class is that Lancet is an easier means of acquiring Blue Magic than other classes. I may have no love for X-2, but at least they fixed Blue Mages with the Gun Mage class, even if they too share some of Kimarhi's crappier abilities.
Dark Knight: Cecil (SNES) -Ugh, I really didn't want to put him here. I almost cheated and said Leon but that seemed unfair. So I'll cheat in a more practical way and cite the awful version we got in the bowdlerized SNES version known in NA as FFII. He's largely the same except he lost his Darkness ability. Making Cecil just a basic knight with lower HP and no magic defense. He's much better in the OG version and has honestly been beefed up more in later spin-off titles.
Berserker: FFX-2 - Similar to one of the core issues with Tifa, the X-2 incarnation takes a class known for simplicity and makes it overly complicated. Most Berserkers are pretty powerful out of the box, but X-2's leveling mechanics means it's going to be awhile before this class starts to shine. Mainly after you learn all of their counter moves and their debuffing instinct skills. Yet I feel like there are better classes for debuffing. The other issue is that counter moves are not so great if an attack actually lands on them since their defense and magic defense are terrible. The class practically needs a support class to buff and heal them to keep them going. Berserkers are about letting go of control to have one unit that murders things quickly, and while the X-2 incarnation holds true to this concept on paper, it does so in a very roundabout way that's less satisfying. It's not a bad class, but I find the FFV incarnation and Umaro to be more fun to use.
Time Mage: Tactics A2 - Researched this a bit more and decided the TA2 incarnation has more issues. Like a lot of the TA series, the main issue with the mage classes is their skill sets were stripped down to be given to other mage classes. Time Mage is a pure buff/debuff class with all of it's offensive capability stripped away from it. Likewise, unlike it's TA1 counterpart, it's stat growth isn't as great either. TA1 lost the Meteor class spells, TA2 loses it's gravity spells. Instead they gain a skill that extends the duration for status magic longer and one that rewinds time to restore a character HP/MP which are not bad skills. Still, I miss the versatility.
Samurai: X-2 - Like a few on this list, I don't dislike this class. Of anything my memory of it is really foggy. I remember only using it for a dungeon before dropping it for the better Dark Knight class. On paper this class looks pretty neat, just takes too long to upgrade to get all the neat abilities. I think the weirdest aspect of the class is that traditionally Samurai is duelist style class that works best against bosses, but this one seems better tailored for crowd control.
Bard: FFTactics - This class is here for one very important reason. Despite being a great buffing class in theory, the fact the songs have only a 50% success rate makes this class better on paper than execution. Great for leveling, terribly for everything else. At least Move +3 is awesome....
Dancer: FFTactics - Same deal as above. On paper the class looks great but the low accuracy of their Dance moves leaves much to be desired.
Archer/Ranger: FFIII (DS) Class sounds better than it really is. Barrage is an okay skill for taking on groups but sadly the damage output for bosses is not worth the arrow cost for the bow. You could do more damage with a bow attacking separately four time more often than using Barrage unless extremely high level and using a top tier bow and arrow set. If the class wasn't such a money pit, I'd probably like it more.
Chemist: Salve Maker - 4 Heroes of Light is a weird game with a high number of support classes. This game is all about buffing and debuffing your way to victory. Salve Maker is the Chemist class and it leaves much to be desired. It's best skill is it's starting skill that allows them to use items without losing them. Which is great considering you can only carry a limit amount of items on your person. The other skills are not bad, but situational at best an require some planning and of course the jewels needed to upgrade the crown high enough to access them. They have middling stats as usual and no weapon proficiency though so they are not terribly useful for non-boss fights. Their lone offense skill doesn't even work on bosses. Not an awful class but considering how more useful magic is in this game, you're better off with a white mage, especially once the Lux spell is acquired.
Beastmaster: Relm - Pictomancer my ass, Relm is the Beastmaster through and through. She's just awful because monster stats are terrible in this game and control is only useful for gaining Lores for Strago. Relm's best attributes involve the Esper system and magic, her actual skill set is pretty one-note and mostly fun for it's gimmicky appeal. The FFV incanration is hardly a powerhouse and yet they nerfed it with her for some reason.
Mime: Tactics - Oof, this class is a headache. If this class was in a more traditional entry, it would be great and pretty powerful, but the SRPG grid based format makes this class a headache since you now have to factor in positioning. The class is potent with aesome stat growth, which is kind of odd since mimes are traditionally masters of none in that department, but the lack of abilities and the high level of planning required to make them good makes this class an experts only class. I do love their outfits though...
Geomancer - FFIII (Famicom) - The original incarnation of this class is a serious crap shoot. While it's damage is good and the free no mp cost abilities look great on paper, this class is here for the awful Backlash weakness it possesses as a counter to all of it's perks. Basically, if the class fails when using geomancy, you instead use the Backfire ability that deals 25% of the characters MAX HP as damage against them. Not their current HP, their Max HP. Meaning if you don't have a class healing heavily every round, this class will die within two to four rounds depending on how aggressive the enemy is against them.
I’d say worst blue mage is a tie between Kimahri and Quistis. Any blue mage that has their blue magic relegated to limit break gets a no from me.
Quistis at least has some good Blue spells off the bat and throughout the game. She's easily overshadowed by the rest of the team but in comparison to Kimarhi, her spell list is better and Crisis Level makes her incarnation of spells like Mighty Guard way more useful (Max Crisis Level has it cast Protect, Shell, Haste, Regen, Float, and Aura) not to mention Quistis doesn't have Rikku's Mix command undermining her skill set like Kimarhi does. Kimarhi is pretty bottom tier.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fynn
I really like it, it looks very cool!
For being so great, FF Tactics sure had some terrible versions of the job classes. Their Time Mage was the best though.
I'm trying to think of one job that FFXI did the worst... nope, they were all pretty good. :D
Wrong. It has a second point: To run away :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno
I agree with you about Tifa, she's definitely the poorest Monk. OG FFVII in general is kind of homogenous when it comes to job classes anyway, but even if you spec her with some Monk specific materia like Counter and maybe D.Blow, it's still not great. The Monk options are severely lacking. She's a lot better in the Remake and I like where they took the character variety in that version.
I also think Snow is more of a Knight in role than a Monk, putting aside his love of hand to hand combat, as he performs more the role of a tank and I think he's very good at that.
Surely the worst bard is OG Edward?
I also notice you didn't have Geomancer on your list and I wanted to congratulate you. Geomancers are of course perfect and flawless in every way.
OG Edward isn’t half that bad really. Some of his songs are pretty great, even though they’re random, and his stats skyrocket at later levels
They're not bad for what they are really designed for. The issue is that other variations don't have the same hang ups or have different specializations, The exception being the TA variations where the skill pool is stretched a wee too thin for my taste.Quote:
Originally Posted by Del Murder
What if you count the pre-patched versions? :DQuote:
I'm trying to think of one job that FFXI did the worst... nope, they were all pretty good. :D
It's tough to rank the MMO ones due the fact that what issues they may have gets fixed one way or the other eventually. Not to mention there are some mechanical issues that make it hard to rank them when you look at the class without some of those mechanics.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PsychoticWrong. It has a second point: To run away :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno
Yeah, she's certainly more interesting in the remake version. She's still a bit frail for usual for the class but the skill set and mechanics of her class make her a real powerhouse without relying on situational elements. Mechanically, I'd say she's the most improved character in the remake.Quote:
I agree with you about Tifa, she's definitely the poorest Monk. OG FFVII in general is kind of homogenous when it comes to job classes anyway, but even if you spec her with some Monk specific materia like Counter and maybe D.Blow, it's still not great. The Monk options are severely lacking. She's a lot better in the Remake and I like where they took the character variety in that version.
He's really a knight/monk hybrid when it comes down to it since he also gains all of the counter moves associated with the Monk class. Like Amarant, he's a hybrid class whose classes don't really fit the traditional molds terribly well, which is why I couldn't in good conscience throw him under the bus. I certainly hate XIII's class system the most, but under the rules of it's own mechanics, they all function well except when dealing with the poor A.I. of the Sentinel and Synergist classes.Quote:
I also think Snow is more of a Knight in role than a Monk, putting aside his love of hand to hand combat, as he performs more the role of a tank and I think he's very good at that.
Edward is surprisingly useful for the portion of the game he is available. His Sing ability is more effective than people give it credit and the confusion effect of his Harp actually makes battles way more manageable. Salve depends on the game as it's crummy in the OG but is actually very useful in the DS versions and some later installments it shows up in. Hide is annoying unless you exploit the bug associated with it.Quote:
Surely the worst bard is OG Edward?
That one just slipped my mind. I'll rectify this in a bit.Quote:
I also notice you didn't have Geomancer on your list and I wanted to congratulate you. Geomancers are of course perfect and flawless in every way.
Geomancers are amazing in every instance except their first outing.
Yeah Quistis's blue magic was game breaking in a super broken game with 1000x more ways of breaking it. 4 of the other 5 limit breaks were much better for cheesing.
Trepe Groupies Rise Up!
A Memoir About the Best Blue Mage
Coming Soon
Attachment 77467