Which of the basic jobs is the worst in your opinion and why?
monk
ONLY because i was an idiot and gave him nunchuk lol
Well Monk probably is the worst starter. You always get one though because they're badass at the end.
I would say that this is the order they suck the most as solo starting characters, from most horrible to most recommended - I will also assume that they never do any Class Change:
Thief
White Mage
Black Belt
Black Mage
Red Mage
Fighter
Thief stays fairly weak the whole time, and only gets somewhat decent strength when he gets the Dragon and Coral swords, which are probably his best weapons and also allow him to kill dragons and water enemies more effectively - but he is still pretty much helpless on his own at that point, and has to rely a lot on spamming magic items for better damage delivery.
White Mage may be able to heal himself a lot, but he will struggle to actually damage anyone.
His physical attacks suck hardcore, and he will need to rely a lot on Harm attacks against undead enemies, or, like Thief, on magic items.
Black Belt at least has access to very high damage, which is nice - however, he will also die very easily, which is not nice.
At least he can rely on pure physical strength and the much-needed HEALs and Heal Staffs etc to plow through most dungeons a few steps at a time.
He also doesn't need that much equipment, which makes him fairly cheap to maintain.
Black Mage can kill lots of things very quickly, which is definitely a great advantage.
This guy can probably survive for a pretty long time if you make sure to increase his number of spells as much as possible, although he is even weaker than Black Belt, so watch your step.
Red Mage is a jack-of-all-trades, but acually pretty good at everything.
He does a decent job as a fighter, and he can use many different types of spells both for healing and attacking.
Yes, he is obviously much more limited in terms of spells, but make sure that you get the truly useful things (CUR3, FIR2, INVS etc) and that's alright - although some of those spells can be used from items later on.
Fighter is the optimal solo character to start with, this dude can take tons of damage and also kill a lot of regular enemies in one or two hits.
I cannot really think of any dissadvantages, other than the lack of magic, but that hardly mattter since his physical attacks and defense are so great, and he gets access to healing items later on anyway.
Monk I'd say is the worst starter. End game it may be the Theif, or Red Mage. Red Mages start strong but die out later on late game.
Thief. What their strong in (Agility, Evasion & a greater ability to run from battle) are all bugged in the original version. They're low-end Fighters until they class change, then their pretty good.