22 Universal Classes and 11 Special Classes (technically 12 if you count Ramza's Squire Class) Rank them all from best to worst and why. No groaning, just do it. :mad2:
FFTactics Job List
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22 Universal Classes and 11 Special Classes (technically 12 if you count Ramza's Squire Class) Rank them all from best to worst and why. No groaning, just do it. :mad2:
FFTactics Job List
1. Sword Saint
I was expecting more of a ranking for all of the classes Colonel... :wcanoe:
33. Mime
Only 31 more to go. :p
I'll only do the Universal classes sans the Dark Knight, because screw doing 33 individual rankings :p
1. Samurai: Decent all-around stats, Iaido gives the capability of powerful damage, healing and buffing while differentiating friend and foe. The most useful ability however is Shirahadori, which has a very high chance of blocking physical AND ranged attacks, despite stating that ranged is excluded. The success rate is equal to bravery, so a character with 97 Bravery (the highest unboosted amount you can have) has a virtually guaranteed chance of blocking. The Samurai is a very broken class.
2. Monk: Arguably the best early-ish job you can get. Pre-packaged with physical and vital healing moves like Chakra which also restores MP, and becomes an absolute beast with a high bravery count. Should be Ramza's main job class for a good chunk of the game.
3. Time Mage: While the Black Mage is probably better as your equipped class, the Time Mage brings some very interesting things to the table that benefits everyone. The magick abilities are good, especially Haste, Quick and Immobilize. But it is the two support abilities that are worth mentioning: Swiftness, which reduces charge time, Mana Shield, which can help block damage to HP, and Teleport. It is Teleport that is arguably the best movement ability, effectively negating the Jump stat, and making movement so much easier. No longer can you be blocked by enemies, just teleport past them! It can fail, but as long as you don't attempt to teleport too far, it has a very good chance, and is worth using.
4. Ninja: Very fast movement speed, and can naturally equip two weapons at once, providing added damage. However, is very fragile and the 'throw' command is nothing to write home about. Learning Dual Wield is vital for the success of the class's transferability.
5. Black Mage: The Black Mage is the best magical unit, and possesses the highest base magick of any universal job. This makes them the magician of choice later in the game. The Black Mage spells suffer again from charging, but can create horrific levels of damage if targeting a weakness. The Black Mage can also grant Arcane Strength, a useful support. Really, the Black Mage is best with Arithmeticks as a secondary with all spells learned, as they basically become a master of all magick.
6. Chemist: Has very poor stat growth, but is a much better healer than the White Mage, and you will need healing. Can only heal one party member at a time however, and is not a strong combatant.
7. Arithmetician: Is only really this high because of the command ability you can pinch off them. As a job class, they're actually pretty weak: low magick among magical classes and the slowest speed in the game. The best thing to do is to nab the secondary command and move on. The support abilities are iffy except for Soulbind, so there's no need getting them.
8. Summoner: The Summoner brings some interesting cards to the table. Those infuriated with friendly fire will enjoy the Summoner's discretionary summons, who bring a wide variety of effects. The summons they have are flashy and fun, and can target a range of weaknesses. Earthen Wall in particular is a great defensive ability. They're not the best magicians, but they are worth considering until you have mastered other magical classes which can make the Black Mage truly shine.
9. Dragoon: Is sort of a beefier Knight. I actually find the Dragoon fairly boring in some respects because the only unique skill they can do is their Jump Command, which is basically a reaaally long range attack. It does good damage, particularly if a polearm is used (you are using one, right?), and the Dragoon can be made more 'exciting' with secondary abilities.
10. Knight: Your first physical job class. Dependable, if not stellar, offensive coupled with useful rending abilities. The job is rather flexible, and many roles can be co-adopted by the Knight. Throw Items/Items as secondary ability can make the Knight a decent front-line medic and Iaido or Monk abilities can help the Knight become more well-rounded.
11. Oracle: A decent support class, with the primary aim of debuffing enemies. However, the Black Mage also has a few ailments, as is a stronger magick user. Again, the Oracle's abilities are best used in conjunction with Arithmeticks or as a secondary ability. In anything, the most useful parts of the Oracle are the support skills: Manafont is great as MP is sometimes a rare commodity. Defence Boost raises physical defence by 33%, a decent amount.
12. Thief: A poor man's ninja, but with a great command: Steal. The ability to steal equipment will be helpful on many occasions, allowing you access to equipment you wouldn't be able to obtain until later. The Thief also allows the Move +2 and Jump +2 abilities, making all your units more mobile.
13. White Mage: The main problem with all magic is the charge time. In critical situations, you sometimes cannot afford to wait a few turns charging a healing spell, which is where the Chemist is better. What the White Mage does better is in group healing and buffing, though again, these can be achieved through other means. In all, the White Mage is good at first, but becomes more obsolete as better healing options become available.
14. Orator: Not very useful in combat. In certain situations, they can be used to good effect but they're so situational, you wouldn't want to keep them around constantly. For the purposes of raising bravery, faith and recruiting monsters they are helpful, but you would not have them in any other situation. The 'Equip Guns' ability you can learn is very useful for your Chemist, who otherwise are lacking in any offensive potential.
15. Archer: Good, long-range attacks but I never find the Archer to be particularly powerful. The Aim abilities are decent but you can never use the higher Aims unless you have a target immobilised: because of this, Time Magic on either the Archer or an ally can be useful. Even then, using Aim makes you vulnerable. The support abilities are nothing mentioning, with only Concentrate which is useful. Where the Archer shines however is the use of the Arts of War secondary ability, making the Archer a very capable debuffer from afar, crippling foes before they can even draw near.
16. Mime: I frankly found the Mime hard to handle, to be honest. They require careful planning to be effective, and effectively just copy the last action. I actually found them most useful in mimicking the Dancer/Bard abilities, making those abilities far more effective, though it does use up two members. In all, I just found them unwieldy.
19. Dancer: Not great. The charge time of their repeating dances are markedly high, forcing you to use the earlier abilities with a faster charge rate. Forbidden Dance is kinda useful at times, as is Mincing Minuet, but most of the status inflicting dances have a questionable hit rate. Really, the Dancer becomes more useful the more enemies there are, as they have a greater chance of affecting more creatures. Better than the bard, though.
17. Bard: With only five maximum members on your squad, it is debatable whether you want to effectively make one of them a totem pole. The idea behind the Bard is good: buffing your allies and healing them from a great distance, but the execution is poor. The chance rate is often shoddy, at best, particularly for the buffing songs.
18. Squire: Is fairly useless by itself, but unlocks very fundamental, and important, abilities like JP Boost and Focus.
19. Geomancer: I never found the Geomancer to be useful. It does have a toy box of various tricks which have a wide array of effects, but they are rather situational. It was just never a good class for me.
??. Onion Knight: They can't use any abilities? That seems... crap.
??. Dark Knight: Never used them. They seem powerful though.
Can I just say a Maste Black Mage with full Arithmeticks and knowing all other arithmetickable spells is pretty much the only Mage I'll ever need?
Oh, and the Dark Knight is the best regular offensive class, no contest. It helps that the stupid requirements make him learn so many useful skills.
Yeah, I don't exactly have the time and energy to do the full ranking :exdee:
That was kinda what I was going for. I only put Time Mage as higher because of just how damn useful Teleport is. Seriously, I have it on all my characters.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fynn
The Summoner is a great stand-in for the Black Mage before you've learned all the Arithmetickable skills, though. I still use the Summoner sometimes just because I like the summon animations.
I'll do the special classes next weekend.
Ninja
The ninja is a powerful unit when used in a conventional role, but becomes insane when you start twinking them. By removing their swords and using fists you get to use the higly abusable unarmed weapon stat multipliers, and unlike the Monk you have a head equipment slot to get even more PA boosts. When you have a class doing 300+ damage a hit by midway though chapter 3 you know you have a winner.
Dark Knight
The real thing to write home about is the 100% hit rate on all the skills.
Black Mage
Black magic can be highly powerful if you use it right, but what is so special about the black mage is that it has the highest magic stat, making it a perfect place to park a character once you have all the abilities you want them to use.
White Mage
Healing magic does loose out later in the game, but Holy is an amazing spell. Not only is it powerful, it is fast (for a spell of it's calliber) and can't be blocked/avoided.
Summoner
It's unfortunate that speed cripples this class later in the game. Both in terms of spell charging speed and the actual Summoner class itself having low speed. The odds of ever getting a high level summon off are low, but the lower level ones still pack quite a punch.
Monk
It's unfortunate that the monk's skillset can't take advanage of the boosts from Brave and the exponential increase from PA. Also unfortunate that you can't take advantage of the stat boosts from a head equipment slot. As good as a monk is, if you take a Ninja and build them as a monk they are quite a bit better at it.
Dragoon
Like a knight, but with longer range and the ability to fly back and possibly insta kill casters in the back.
Samurai
This class is solid if just taking all the classes 'as is', but starts to lag when builds start being made to take use of abilities from other classes. No shield inhibits defence and there is an inability to equip stat boosting items. Draw out has decent utility, until you see what it can do in the hands of a Black Mage with full +MA equipment.
Geomancer
Like a knight, but with the ability to equip status boosting armor and perform ranged attacks. I find this class to be very useful, just not something that can be boosted to increadibly good.
Chemist
Thanks to guns the chemist has good utility in many roles. However the chemist also doesn't really have anything that makes them shine. At the end of the game +150 HP is just too little, but it does have the advantage of being instant.
Time Mage
I'm not that much of a fan of the time mage, while haste is nice the other spells never spoke to me. Most of the time direct damage is preferable to a chance to inflict a status effect. I can plan arround damage, I can't plan arround a status effect that may or may not happen in a couple turns. Swiftness and Teleport are increadibly useful though.
Knight
Low mobility, can't equip stat boosting armor.
Archer
Without the Concentrate skill this class is almost a lost cause. You want to keep them safe and on high ground, which almost always necessitates attacking from the front. Also the damage doesn't keep up with a physical attack and since bows split between Spd and PA you can't increase the damage all that well.
Oracle
The magic isn't all that helpful but what is helpful is the amount of damage the poles do, especialy with +MA equipment. Seriously, for most of the game they can be your strongest melee attackers.
Squire
Knight does it all better, and I've already said there are classes that can do everything the knight can do but better.
Theif
Only useful for getting rare gear and for Move +2, which is the bread and butter of my units for most of the game.
Mediator
Only useful for raising Faith and if you happen to want to recruit a monster. (Though you are better off equiping the skill set on a class with higher MA)
Calculator
Calculator is stat wise the worst in the game, by far. However Math Skill is the most powerful ability in the game, by far. Obviously having it on a Black Mage is quite broken, and more importantly an extremely un-fun way to play. Thus this sits at the bottom.
Bard
Dancer
They both aren't all that useful. Even at higher levels the dances are slower than the characters naural speed and they are loosing out on exp/jp by using them! Bard is higher because you can learn the Move +3 ability, which IMO is more often useful than Teleport.
Mime
...
Didin't realize I forgot to do this. From worst to best.
Mime: While the class has incredibly high stats and great stat growth, the weird mime mechanics and the insufferable requirements for unlocking make this class a bragging rights reward more than anything. Fun for players seeking another challenge, but hardly practical for causal play.
Onion Knight: Similar to the Mime, while the class is easy to acquire, the requirements for fully unlocking it's potential are incredibly time consuming and not worth the effort. The inability to equip skills makes this one of the more boring classes to use, even with full mastery, and trying to unlock the Onion Gear in multiplayer is a bit of a hassle. The class is still more user-friendly than Mime, but will likely be a class most players will unlock and then quickly ignore.
Dancer: A class that would have been better served earlier in the game. Dancer's have some great skills to farm for female units and their Dance skills can be pretty fun and snazzy in battles, but iffy accuracy, high requirements in melee classes that will likely do more good for a female units attack scores than the skills this class offer don't help. Jump +3 is also not nearly as useful as it sounds barring getting maybe three or four unique items. The best use of the class is as a secondary job to help raise JP for slower classes.
Bard: Similar to the Dancer, Move +3 is what largely makes this class more useful though the mage skills can useful as well for late mage builds. Still, considering the requirements to unlock, this class probably should have been an early bird job instead of a late game one. Like Dancer, the class's skills used as secondary ability can help accumulate JP faster for slow jobs like Calculator.
Calculator/Arithmetician: Math Skills will break the game, but barring that, the rest of their skills are worthless beyond novelty. Their stats are also abysmal, their equipment is terrible and they are the slowest unit making their survivability in battle a serious headache. Granted Math Skills break the game under better classes.
White Mage: It's funny how different things are, I'm playing Tactics Ogre and a consistent magic healer is a constant in my party, to the point I'm kind of annoyed that I can't be too reckless and leave a dedicated healer on the sidelines. Not so in this game. While the class has some nice strengths with group healing and access to support skills like ReRaise and Protect, dabbling too much in Faith stats can leave this class hurting more than any other. Considering how easy it is to build units so strong that X-Potions and Chakra are more than enough healing makes this class quickly fall to the wayside for me. Becomes much better once Math Skills are unlocked, but you really don't need the class at that point.
Mediator/Orator: The best class for modifying units Bravery/Faith stats as well as recruiting both enemy humes and monsters. If you want to jump into some of the more meta-game elements or take a spin with unique party formations that use monsters or rely on poaching, this is the class you need. For regular play... not so useful outside of Equip Guns.
Oracle/Mystic: This class always surprises me. As VeloZer0 points out, their Poles weapons make them pretty effective fighters and skills like Stone/Break are incredibly useful against undead. Their ability to use spells that cast Faith, Aethiest, and lower Bravery are also quite useful. For mage builds, skills like Magic and Life drains as well as Manafont can be pretty useful as well when used with a secondary class or when this class uses other magic types as a secondary build. The one issue with the class is that they become all but obsolete once Beowulf shows up since his spellblade abilities are their skill set but with greater accuracy, access to a unique offensive spell, placed in a much sturdier unit. I still like them though.
Squire: Barring Ramza's broken variant on the job, Squire is a mixed bag. The stats are lackluster and you're better off jumping to a new class ASAP except... the class has some great skills. JP Boost is easily the most useful skill in the game for any player not exploiting glitches, and even Accumalate, Stone Throw, and Salve can stay pretty handy for long stretches of the game. Countertackle is a nice starting reaction skill, and Move +1 is invaluable as well. So chances are, it will help you in the long run to keep a character in this class until they learn the essentials.
Archer: Oh how the mighty have fallen from Tactics Ogre. Archers are not bad classes on any account, but lack the power and stats to back it up. Their only useful skill is Concentrate, and even then, there are more useful support skills. While the class never quite loses it's usefulness, it's never dominating either, and frankly I feel the enemy tends have more advantage in employing these units than the player. The Aim skills are insultingly useless.
Summoner: A combination of incredible costly and slow casting abilities combined with expensive skills makes this class a bit less useful on further analysis. Yes, Summons don't have to deal with friendly fire or being reflected by magic, but that's a small consolation for a class that requires a bit of work and several expensive support skills to make them functional on the field. Half MP is useful support skill but not as useful as Swiftness. It's not a bad class, but it's surprising to see how inefficient the class is against a well set-up Time Mage or Black Mage can be. They're better for end game use than the mid-game they appear in. On the brightside, I appreciate that they can learn all of their higher spells by simply having it cast on them despite the abysmal chances given.
Dragoon: More like quirky Knight. Dragoons require abusing the Turn Order in order to make them death machines. Their Jump commands are devastating hen they land, but it can be really tricky to do so without sacrificing power to use weaker Jump commands or deploying a support unit to immobilize the enemy for them. The Jump skills are a chore to unlock, but Dragonheart is pretty useful. The best part is the class being a pretty good powerhouse even without the use of their trademark skill set.
Geomancer: This is an odd class and one I ended up really liking in later playthroughs. They wear crappy gear, but make up for it with above average stats in most categories. Axes are funky weapons that are surprisingly useful despite the randomized damage and their signature Geomancy skill set can seriously turn the tide of battle for you. In fact, Nature's Wrath might be one of the most underrated Counter abilities in the game, especially since it can counter distance attacks from archers or gun users. What Geomancy lacks in damage output, it makes up for with it's high rate of inflicting debilitating status effects. You haven't lived until you've watched a unit single handily wipe out every unit by inflicting Stone on everything. It's a far better class than people give it credit for, but works better as a support unit or letting more durable classes inherit their skills.
Samurai: The Knights speedier, but less durable cousin. Samurai are an on odd class with an even stranger skill set. They are surprisingly decent front line fighters in term of damage, though less sturdier than the beef gate Knight or evasive Ninja. Their best strength is the sheer versatility their Draw Out Skill gives which gives them useful healing, buffing, and damage options the other classes can't compete with in their basic form. The drawback here of course is that the swords can break, making this an expensive and time consuming class to properly stock for, andDraw Out is better served on a Mage class. I also feel that Doublehand should have been a Knight skill like it was in FFV since it's very likely you'll unlock Ninja around the same time as this class and Duel-Wield is a far better support skill. On the flip side, Shirahadori (Blade Grasp) might be one of the best Reaction Skills in the game with a high enough Bravery stat. Sadly, the rest of the classes skills are not as useful.
Dark Knight: I mean what is there to say? It's an unlockable and frankly better version of Gafgarrion's Job Class. It gets the opposing movement abilities from Bard and Dancer for wichever gender you make them, some decent support skills, and despite their unique weapons being hidden behind multiplayer, they're actually a fun class to play without them unlike the Onion Knight. The only downside to them is their steep requirements to make them. Frankly, if you did everything needed to make one, chances are you don't need them. Also, like the Calculator ability, his class tends to make the rest of the game a bit too easy.
Thief: What the thief lacks in offensive might, it makes up for with excellent support and secondary functions. The various steal commands are far more useful than Knights Rend/Break variants since they weaken the enemy and fill your coffers when not snatching a rare piece of gear to make your army better. Poach is also needed for some of the really rare equipment as well as Catch for the late game stuff. The movement skills are excellent additions for any unit, and Steal Heart can honestly change the tide of battle more often than not, especially with a female thief. Frankly they are a class goldmine in terms of useful skills and only get sidelined by Balthier's better Plunder versions in the WotL edition. Frankly, while the class will quickly lose it's usefulness after the first chapter, it's skills set can serve you well until the end of the credits.
Time Mage: Like it's FFV version, Time Mage is great for both support and offensive purposes. Even with Meteor being a complete dud of a skill, Haste and Slow are game changers, Gravity is still useful, and the class learns Quick, Swiftness, and Critical Quick. Throw in the fact it can be a forced to be reckoned with any mage centric subjob, makes this a pretty awesome class overall. It's only downside is the high cost of most of these skills, but considering how useful so many of them are for other classes and characters, it makes it worth it in the end.
Black Mage: The surprisingly best Mage Class. Their elemental spell are quite powerful and with good builds, even low tier spells can stay useful for long stretches of time due to shorter casting times. They have great MA, and even better, they have the more versatile build for mage centric classes. As mentioned earlier, they utilize the Samurai Draw Out command better than they do and that combo makes them a far better support unit than a White Mage. Granted, their fourth tier spells are expensive and mostly useless due to casting times and incapatability with Math Skills, not to mention Math Skills kind of make them obsolete in the long run, but they are still one of the best mage classes that I tend to keep around until end game surprisingly.
Chemist: My main healing unit. I love them because they allow me to avoid the magic stat conundrum and there is no casting time to their skills. Auto -Potion is probably the second best Reaction skill behind Shirahadori. Move-Find Item is also a must have. Like Squire, this is a class that has a ton of useful skills that will carry you for most of the game. The fact they can equip guns makes them also more useful in battle than Squires. If they only had better stats...
Monk: You know, if they weren't som damn vulnerable, this would be my favorite class. As it stands, this class has easily the best skill set of any class in my opinion. Their broken unarmed mechanics also makes them one of the nastiest melee units in the game until Duel-Wield comes into play. Yet seriously, Chakra, Revive, Air Blast, Earth Render and even a status healing ability give this class way more versatility than they deserve.
Ninja: Skill-wise, Duel-Wield and Sunken State are probably the only great skills this class has going for it. The Throw command is kind of garbage compared to better alternatives and Ninja Blades are nowhere near as good as other bladed weapons. That's when you got to start really utilizing the skill slots and gear to make this the most powerful unit in the game bar none. While it has very little to contribute to other classes except the always overpowered Duel-wield, this is one of the more fun classes to play around with. The classes only downfall is their low health and lack of defensively powerful gear. You have to make them evasion masters in order to get around their glass connon state.
Knight: Despite being slow and their Rend and Equip Skills being useless Knights make up for everything with strong stats overall except speed, the useful Parry skill when combined with a shield, and being the most customizable class in the game. Like the FFV varient, this class doesn't teach anything useful but oh dear does it become a wrecking ball from using other class skills. I also consider this class kind of idito proof. As long as you keep them leveled and geared with the strongest stuff available, the class is surprisingly well rounded in any situation beyond range fighting, which iteself can be fixed with sub-jobs. This is the main reason I rank it higher than Ninja cause Ninja's strengths may not be as apparent to a newbie who will likely take Duel-Wield and Monk skills to build a unit that can easily destroy anything the game can throw at it that's isn't disgustingly overleveled.