Earth Crystal jobs. Is it really worth the effort?

[Electroshock Therapy]

Long explanation coming up. If you want to skip it, go to where I use Caps Lock.

I just beat the game for the first time, and I upgraded all my jobs to Earth Crystal jobs. I upgraded from a Thief, Monk, White Mage, and Black Mage to a Ninja, Black Belt, Devout, and Summoner.

To be honest, I kinda wish I hadn't. The only reason I didn't switch back was because Thief and Monk stopped getting good armour and I was worried how difficult the final areas were. I already knew the Black Belt needed longer training to be worth anything, but Ninja? Summoner? They were doing pitiful damage until extremely high levels. The amount of grinding, even using the "Guard" trick, was downright insane. Boring. Tedious. A real stopper in the Fun Factor.

Once I finally got up to ridiculously high levels, then they finally started to perform at least as well as my Thief and Monk. And I breezed through the rest of the game and had next to no problems beating the final bosses. But I'm thinking I should have stuck to my other jobs.

Devout is awesome though. You only need to pass the transition phase and you're good to go.

SO MY QUESTION IS: Do you think switching jobs at the final moments of the game is truly worth it? They do pitiful damage, and Square somehow expects you to level them up to appropriate levels whereas it took you all game to get your previous party up to good standing. Ninja, Summoner, Magus, Black Belt, Sage, is it really worth it?

Edit: I realize there is A LOT of job threads, but none of them had the answers I wished for.

[Gamblet]

I just go with the flow. Upgraded jobs look cooler anyway.

[VeloZer0]

I kind of agree with you. I really never got anything to match the damage that my Knight and Dragoon were bringing to the table. With job levels contributing so much to the strength of a character introducing classes this late in the game really makes it hard to justify switching.

[sir helix]

I beat the game using knight, ninja, devout, magus. It's been awhile but I don't remember grinding or even having any difficulty once I got the earth jobs I just breezed on through