Black Belts suck

[DJZen]

Hmmmmmm... I dunno, I think it's possible that a BB might actually take out a BM..... But a Master taking out a BW? Probably not. Flare is like being hit with a Mack truck full of pain and kittens. If the pain doesn't get ya, the kittens will....

[Rei]

I didn't think the Black Belt was all that bad. I'm not obsessive over my games, so I don't know things exactly, but I remember being satisfied with his and my Fighter's power, and being super pissed at Thief for being a pansy. I don't know what level I was at when my Master grew stronger than my Knight (maybe he didn't?), but I don't think it was high. Even if he was a little weaker than a Fighter, it's really boring to get two of the same classes.

But the Black Mage does suck. During the extended dungeon excursions and whatnot, he needs to save his magic, so he hits for insignificant damage. I think it's better to have a guy who can kill things all the time, with his FISTS no less, than a guy who can obliterate a few things, but is then useless. Even the Red Mage can kill things with some ability when he runs out of ass-kickin' magic. And the White Mage is useful only if you can't kill things fast enough, and with a Fighter, Black Belt, and Red Mage in the party, when is that a problem? Potions are sufficient, anyhow.

[TasteyPies]

sorry but BB suck

It doesnt matter how much M.defense or damage you can deal out if A Boss decides to smack your BB around and your RM ran out of magic casting offensive/defensive spells. having all the OK magic and half the spell points makes the RM sucky so matching your BB with your RM is just realy realy sad.

[Rei]

You have the Red Mage so you don't need to use magic except on the bosses, because he can kill things just fine without it. And you only need to put the essentials like Life, Cure, Haste, and the elemental spells on the Red Mage; the rest is just, well, novelty.

Sure, Black Belts get smacked up more often, but, uh...they're fun.

[Leeza]

I like BB and I always have him in my party.

[Del Murder]

I took my BB's armor off and he had better defense. Does that mean he's best with nothing at all?

[Leeza]

BB is better without armour unless the armour is at a higher defense rating than the number of the BB's level. At level 50, BB would have a 50 defense, but if you gave him armour with a 10 defense rating, then BB would go down to 10...or something.

[Del Murder]

Cool, thank you.

[DJZen]

It's a bug that they removed in later revisions of the game. Anyway, I'm starting to want to start a BB/BB/RM/RM game. Or maybe a BB/BB/BB/RM game. I wonder how far I'd make it without dying once...

[Dark Jaguar]

Not exactly, the glitch is that you can stack the armor's defense WITH the BB/Monk's natural defense. That was fixed, so if you don't use the glitch or play later games, it goes as it was meant to, that is, either set at the armor's defense stat, OR at the BB/Monk's current level (only when armor is bare).

Anyway, I picked up a lot looking around the net about stats in general, and about the BB/Monk too. Aside from the fact that armorless is better than anything else (explaining why the class has such poor armor selection), seems there really IS one, ONE, upgrade when the BB/Monk class is updated. Natural built-in magic resistance at +3 per level is the generally quoted formula. Also, it would seem that level ups don't have a set stat increase and can vary, sometimes pretty wildly. The BB/Monk in particular seems to have a pretty significant gap for max and min power stat. Now, my personal annoyance at probability in things like this aside, I think that's likely why so many could get "defective" monks. The class just has poor chances of getting a really high power, even though the POTENTIAL is there. So, sometimes a BB/Monk is a good class to take (and that magic defense thing really is what evens it out making the class worthwhile in those cases), sometimes it's not, all depending on luck, and that sucks. I tend to go for the sure thing over the gamble in my gaming, so that means I will generally not take that sort of character when I play, but ya know, sometimes I will just for the fun of it.

[desh]

I don't know why all the hate for BB, so he doesn't need any weapons, I think that's kind of cool. After level 10, BB is a great class, he was always keeping up with my fighter/knight; the only reason the fighter/knight would pull ahead was with the new weapon he got, but BB would catch up. After Xcalibur, BB catches up to the Knight in attack power (probably around level 30 or so), and surpasses him.

As for a 1v1 with BW, BB would own him; at higher levels, BB starts doing 1000+ damage consistently, sometimes even doing 2000+, also, he's the only character in the game that can kill Chaos in 2 rounds, he might even be able to kill WarMech in one round. But I guess that's what makes him useless.

Oh, yah, i also wanted to mention that if you equip BB with the Opal bracelet, Ribbon, and ProRing he has an Absorb of 43, plus you get the added bonus of having Ribbon's increased magic defense and ProRing's resistance towards instant-death attacks. And the equip bug for BB is this: everytime he levels up, the game automatically sets his damage = 2*level and his absorb = level, however if you have armor/weapons equipped on the character, and you go to the appropriate equip screen, and the check his stats, you'll see that the damage/absorb will go back to what the weapons/armor are naturally giving him. For example, if you have Opal brace, Ribbon, and ProRing equipped, his absorb should be 43, but if you level up to say level 31, his absorb goes down to 31, you should then go to the Armor equip screen, then check his stats again, and his absorb is now 43 again. This also works well when you get to levels above 43, cause you can have the ribbon/proring equipped to give you their special properties, but still have the high absorb that would be equal to his current level. Wow, i hope that makes sense.

[Sword Chucks]

Black Belt requires much time invested and can save you money by not having to equip much of anything. He is-- by far --one of the best choices for a team. Not exactly exciting, unless you find doing 8 hits a turn exciting and doing more damage than a knight.