The RPG Duelling League
Social Forums => Discussion => Topic started by: Dark Holy Elf on July 01, 2016, 08:50:55 PM
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So after years of doing fiestas I wanted to try an in-depth look at this. What I'm going to do is take a look at how every job does, SCC-style, against every required boss. Why SCC? While cross-classing is interesting, it makes thing more difficult to rate, and hey some fiesta modes (earlygame with anything but FF1-style, much of the game with Upgrade) resembles an SCC. Why required bosses? Because they're the only things you have to fight. Anything else can be avoided either by luck or choice, by escaping or just not doing them. At first you might think "but this will underrate status-using jobs" but it's FF5 so it probably won't. Maybe Bard some, we'll see. I may try to incorporate randoms at some later point, but bosses give me enough to chew for now.
Some ground rules for ranking:
-Beating a boss more easily and more reliably matters. Obviously, this rewards simple strategies which kill the boss quickly. It also means that if one job has to count HP carefully and one doesn't, that matters.
-Being able to beat a boss at a lower level matters, to some extent. I'm not assuming a LLG here, but I am going to try to consider a few levels on each side of what I consider "normal" (see Tonfa's boss stat topic here (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=39.0) for a rough gauge of normalcy and a good reference in general).
-Beating a boss while consuming fewer resources matters (in particular: phoenix downs, ethers, elixirs, rare mix ingredients, rod breaking).
-The investment needed to beat this boss matters, though less than the above. This is the price of buying any needed equipment and spells. It's usually not too big a deal; I will consider it more highly if this boss is the only reason to make that investment, or if the investment is very expensive (e.g. world 1 flame rings). This also includes things like time spent gathering blue spells.
I am not putting a heavy emphasis on beating things quickly for speed’s sake, except insofar as faster wins are frequently safer and easier. This is not a speedrun analysis.
Weighting all this isn't an exact science. Anyway, on with the show. I expect (and encourage!) different takes on rankings as such.
Karlabos
Karlabos can paralyze, inflict HP-1 with Tailscrew, or hit for weaksauce damage. Potions let someone survive a hit after a poke so there's no real danger of losing.
Black Mage can reliably two-round, and sometimes even one-round. Monk will two- or three-round, depending on luck. Knight is probably more of a four-round. Thief is worse still, the Dagger-user is similar to Knight but the Knife users will kinda suck, so probably 5-6 turns. Blue Mage either one-rounds with Goblin Punch if they're Level 5, or has sub-Knight damage with Aero... but they also have Vampire which fully heals its user and does damage. Hard to say.
White Mage has hideous damage, probably kills in 9 or 10 turns of solid attacking, yuck. But on the other hand, unlike Knight/Thief, they won't likely have to use any potions, because Cure should last long enough to heal up anyone hit by Tailscrew (or who falls to low enough HP to need it anyway).
1. Black Mage
2. Monk
3. Blue Mage
4. White Mage
5. Knight
6. Thief
There's room to quibble here. You could argue Blue Mage lower because they're the only one who needs any out-of-the-way effort against this easy foe (though not below Thief, since magicless Blue Mage is comparable to them at worst), or quibble the relative costs of the weapons/spells they need to function against this boss. (This could push Monk up slightly.) But this feels right.
Siren
Siren can actually win with her damage occasionally. She shifts between a physical-weak form and a magic-weak form after taking three actions in each, while being highly resistant to the other. Everyone can damage the magic-weak form with potions since it's undead, but they're not great offence or anything. She starts in the physical-weak form which matters!
Monk can punch her in the face and will usually kill her before she transforms (unless she uses Haste + Protect). If they let her transform then hopefully they can finish her off with a few potions, but they'd really rather not. Actually, they can probably use Focus to outrace Protect, even.
Knight probably won't be so lucky. Still, at worst, they can spam Guard against her undead form, since it's all physical. Thief, meanwhile, just has to kinda suck. Their offence will be VERY bad if they didn't get some rare-drop daggers from skeletons; if they got three, they're actually about knight-level now!
Blue Mage hits both defences well (Goblin Punch, Aero) and can hang in the back row and have Vampire against form 1. They're fine. Again, their only downside is whatever you dock them for needing these spells.
Black Mage kinda sits and stares blankly at the first form, but it shouldn't kill them (sleep is somewhat annoying, but they can poke each other to heal it). Once the undead form appears they can blow it up with fire from the back row in two rounds. There's a chance they may have to use a potion I guess.
White Mage is similar to Black Mage except their Cure offence is way lower than Black Mage's Fire. They can Cure each other at least! They also have a Flail so one of them can kiinda damage form 1 but not really.
1. Monk
2. Black Mage
3. White Mage
4. Blue Mage
5. Knight
6. Thief
Not really certain here either. Only Knight/Thief are in any danger of losing and it's still not great, and nobody should really spend too many resources. I swapped White/Blue from Karlabos because white's offence is somewhat better here, but that's one that could go either way.
Magissa and Forza
Magissa uses L1 spells on odd-numbered turns, not very strong. On even-numbered turns, her damage is better, including a 1/3 risk of Drain which can potentially OHKO and also heals her a bunch. When below 46% HP, she'll use a turn to summon Forza, placing herself in the back row; Forza hits for 2HKO damage to the front row and is a little bulkier than the frail Magissa. It's possible to bypass this limit summon.
One can't really do better than Monk here. They use Focus and kill Magissa before her second turn, the end.
Knights can dodge the summon if they're crafty about their damage, but it's easy to accidentally hit her into the limit turn 1 then have trouble finishing her off before her next turn which could be drain. Guard/Cover combo annihilates Forza once they have Magissa down, though.
Thief... poor Thief, they're bad here. Gonna be seeing that limit, Drain is scary, Forza is scary since they want to be in the front row for their damage... last again.
White Mage has a bunch of cool tricks here, but the damage is wretched (like 30HKO Forza with their one Flail). Still, they can kinda lock down Magissa with Silence and Protect + back row mostly deals with Forza. That said, this fight has more potential to go south for them than the previous, since Silence doesn't stop Magissa's Aero, and if she breaks out of it at a bad time Drain could OHKO.
Blue Mage and Black Mage both can break a frost rod to instantly end this fight if they deem it an adequate threat. (Said rod is semi-hidden, reasonably valuable, and it's the only one they get for this + the next boss, so score this as you will.) Still, Black Mage is pretty good here anyway because they can put Forza to sleep. Magissa's Drain is a concern for sure but honestly their damage to Magissa is good enough they may well not see it. Blue Mage is the same, 4x Aero should first knock her into the limit then kill her, and they can recover with Vampire from there, or use Flash if they got it (requires using an ether). Feels like less of a total lockdown than sleep, though.
1. Monk
2. Black Mage
3. Blue Mage
4. Knight
5. White Mage
6. Thief
Garula
Above 2/3 HP he's a wuss. Below, he can counter every hit twice with physicals, some of which add Sap.
Blue Mage can turn him into a frog, lol. Yes, he can change himself back. No, this isn't saving him from four people who can spam it right back in his face. They can also blind him. Or break that frost rod if they really want.
Black Mage can break that frost rod as well and probably want to. Otherwise, they'll trigger a bunch of counters. At least they're in the back row? Might want to just cast Blizzard with that one Frost Rod. On average they'll probably have to use a few potions to be safe.
Knight can totally shut Garula down. Equipping the max def possible at this point (requires King Tycoon's helmet) will null his damage. So will Guard spam while covering at least one low-HP ally. Sap can still go through this so there might be one or two potions needed but it's pretty safe.
White Mage hangs out in the back row with Protect making the counters pretty weak and only attacks with the Flail. Slow, but works and requires no resources beyond the relatively inexpensive spells.
Monk faces a slight problem here: dual attacks (including their punches) trigger two counters. So, four counters, here. On a front row class. Uh oh! Good news, though, they have Counter, and counters don't trigger counters. It takes some time since counter is 50% but it's pretty safe, they probably won't need to heal. Especially since they Focus can finish by taking off about the last quarter of his HP. Heck, they can probably use that to withstand the counters and win, it's just riskier.
Thief as always has the worst hand here, even if they snag one or more Mithril Knife steals from this dungeon. Front row weapons, need to trigger lots of counters, need to burn lots of potions.
1. Blue Mage
2. Black Mage
3. Monk
4. White Mage
5. Knight
6. Thief
Jobs by average rank, so far:
1t. Black Mage 1.75
1t. Monk 1.75
3. Blue Mage 2.75
4. White Mage 4
5. Knight 4.5
6. Thief 6
Looking at this, my first thought based on personal experience is that Knight and WM probably should swap, which suggests that maybe I should reward speed more. Some of this is just how much easier a time Knight has with randoms at this point, and that does matter because it allows them to gain exp/gil far more easily. I may revisit this ranking system. Am I rewarding WM's safety too much? The rest of the order intuitively looks right to me, as someone who has done every single one of these "SCCs".
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Liquid Flame
A lot of things have changed. We now have eleven job options, and every job has gained new equipment/spells since Garula. Also Liquid Flame is far scarier than any previous boss for pretty much every team.
He's a weirdo. The short version is that he counters constantly based on his form, and two of those counters (a nasty ST Fira, and MT 4HKO Blaze) are bad in different ways. His starting form can use Blaze on his own turns, another is harmless aside from healing itself, another has paralysis and some weak damage. Should be noted that the counter-Fira form is immune to all elements and gravity, while the others are weak to ice. For the first time, potions really aren't going to save you here. You can burn a LOT during his trips to his own healing form (after running it out of MP), if you want.
Mages:
Breaking two frost rods here will work though there's a 50% chance he goes into an ice-immnue form in the middle, and then likely KOs someone. Still, aside from lost ABP this won't end the world as there's a recovery point right after, so the five jobs which can break rods all look good. That does eat 1500 gil so other options still matter.
Black Mage Blizzara will kill in four hits probably, which means up to three appearances of the hand form (average 1.5), and an average of 1.5 Blaze counters as well. The slightly weaker Shiva might be 5 hits (and also has the negative of requiring a sidequest). Red Mage Blizzara is somewhere in the middle, but Red Mage is clearly better because they can use Cura to heal up from Blaze and Raise to recover from Fira. In fact they're almost certainly top for that.
Blue Mage is weirdly underwhelming here if they aren't breaking rods. One thing they have going for them is that you can have the most injured one try to Vampire up to survive anything, but they really want to be high-enough level to not be OHKOed by Fira, and since only one of them can Vampire at a time, Blaze into hand form is bad. Expect to use Phoenix Downs.
White Mage offence is ugu, but they have Cura for safety, and hey Liquid Flame will only OHKO them three times. But their offence is terrible and Blazes could seriously wear down their healing supply, they can expect to see it about 20-25 times. Their MP supply, supplemented by Heal Staff, could be tested but should be okayish, may need to burn an elixir or phoenix down.
Time Mage has gravity! Pretty much means they save an Ice Rod if they go that route. Or they can use Haste and Regen and Healing Staff but Fira counters are still bad. If they aren't willing to break a rod they lack a good way to finish and will likely need about 6 hits (Gravity then a finishing frost rod physical), plus the extra ones to get past the hand form. Notably even this is debatable with Summoner/Black Mage because of staff access.
Fighters:
Unlike mages they usually aren't OHKOed by Fira (maybe Thief). On the other hand they can't heal and their offence is worse and they get worn down. Liquid Flame averages around 17% evade which isn't accounted for in the figures below, since it hurts them all equally.
Mystic Knight, after buffing, kills in around 5-6 hits but also has to get rid of the ice immune form with weaker pokes. So about 7 hits on average.
Knight kills in about 7 or 14 hits, depending on if they have Two-Handed yet. (I generally don't, but it could go either way.) They're slower than MK anyway.
Monk kills in 12 attacks or so. Focus halves that, so 6! This makes them slower but each hit resets Liquid Flame's ATB so slowness isn't as big a deal as it could be, keeping down the counters is what matters. They can also kill the hand form with counters, which is great. Potions can keep up with that if necessary. They're... actually probably better than MK here despite no ice damage, surprising, and compare pretty well to some of the mages.
Thief and Berserker are horrible, get used to this. Berserker will usually lose at reasonable levels, since they need 10-11 hits (and miss a bunch), which is a decent chance of drawing 4 Blazes = death for sure. (And they can't stagger out their attacks so there's a far greater chance of Blaze on Liquid Flame's own turns.) Their choices are to reset a bunch or grind. Thief is better because they can heal but on the other hand they need like 20 hits from their one Moonring Blade, which is grotesque. The only good news? They can steal Hi-Potions from Poltergeists in this very dungeon. They will need them.
1. Red Mage
2. Time Mage
3. Black Mage
4. Summoner
5. Monk
6. Blue Mage
7. White Mage
8. Mystic Knight
9. Knight
10. Thief
11. Berserker
Will Red Mage continue to reign at the top? Will Thief continue to be mediocre? Will Berserker be the worst job for every single boss?
The answers are: No, yes, and "no, but in many ways the truth is worse".
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So uh, how much are we going to penalize White Mage for needing to overlevel like hell for Byblos? Or even more for Atomos? <_<
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At the moment I'm not yet worried about about an overall score, but yeah they will be ranked appropriately for those fights.
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Interesting. I'll look at this in more depth later but as a kneejerk I'm having trouble parsing exactly how much you are or aren't punishing blue mages for needing to get their magic. The first couple fights it feels like you're hitting them kinda hard for it, but two of those early spells are useful for the entire game. On the other hand, you put them at #1 for Garula ahead of Knight on the basis of Frog Song, which I never felt was as useful overall as Goblin Punch or Vampire so I'd hit them harder for having to go out of the way for it. Maybe I'm just not quite parsing how you're weighting things, I really should have been asleep hours ago. <_<
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They can also OHKO Garula with a Frost Rod, and even the possibility of getting Pond's Chorus should put them ahead of the other class that can do so. That said, looking back I'm not sure how happy I am with the Garula rankings. It's a weird balance between very different strategies. Knight probably should be higher, potions are dirt cheap and "may have to use a potion or two, and will have to buy at least one Iron Armor" isn't really much of a negative.
EDIT: Actually did some research on Sap. I'd assumed it was less pathetic early in the game. (It is... relatively!) It does about 55 damage over a little under 2 rounds before wearing off. Uh yeah that doesn't threaten invinciknight at all, seeing as they'll only trigger it a couple times on average. So that makes their strategy even safer and easy to pull off and I'll probably push them up to #1.
I actually feel I generally haven't been hitting them too hard for blue magic accession, I've been trying to mostly just use it as a tiebreak. Against Karlabos and Siren, the jobs above them also have fast, reliable wins, after all (and in many cases outright outperform them).
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Well, in fairness to the Blue Mage thing, if you're doing a Blue Mage SCC or even just get Blue Mage as one of your 4 Jobs for Fiesta, you're likely getting all relevant Blue Magic ASAP anyway. It doesn't seem like that much of a drawback except in a speed run?
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Also FFV outside like early Flash, White Wind and Big Guard you don't have to go so far out your way to learn stuff much. Like Frog Song there is literally just let a frog in the dungeon with Garula live a few turns by itself?
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That's right, yeah. There are a few other kinda annoying ones if you insist on getting them at the earliest possible time (Death Claw from a time limit optional mini-boss, Off-Guard/1000 Needles in W1 both need Control, L3 Flare from either of its W2 sources is annoying).
Blue spells which need Control/Confuse will be a bridge I'll have to cross in these analyses when I get there.
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Oh yeah as a thought I had that you probably already have in mind but I want to brain dump anyway.
I think the SCC format focus is giving pretty solid results so far, but I think the more you progress the more it is going to mess with how group dynamics work in 4JF comparatively. I think it only really impacts White Mage (of the top of my head?) because of how one dimensional it is, but that support based skill set is one that is really hurt by SCC where in 4JF it mostly signals cruise control. Everything else I think gets off relatively cleanly off the top of my head? Like even Time Mage as the other super support style Mage has enough breadth that it isn't toooo hurt by being over centralised like SCC focus gives it.
In solution though yeah it's painful and garbagey like pre Water Crystal 4JF shows.
Edit - On reflection I guess Berserker is getting a bit more hyper focused than they are in a 4JF but that is just because more Berserkers is even more garbage than just one is.
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I don't have any experience with 4JF but a lot with SCCs, and there are a couple of spots where a rigid adherence to SCC can make a boss's difficulty unrecognizable compared to normal. Omniscient in Fork Tower would be a prime example (though I just remembered that's optional), or Byblos/Atomos for White Mage. Or Berserker for Sand Worm.
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Ifrit
<Bartz "Wily" Klauser> You know how, every time we hit Liquid Flame, he counters with something obnoxious and sometimes starts nulling elements? What if that didn't happen?
Seriously, that's Ifrit in a nutshell. Same key attacks, no counters or tricks, smash him with ice and he dies. Of course those attacks can still wear down a team which can't exploit his weaknesses.
Frost Rods are still great, a 2HKO which he can't stop. But they still cost 1500 gil. Black Mage doesn't care, a round of Blizzaras and he's toast. Summoner Shiva may well be strong enough to pull this off too, though it will need Frost Rods on everyone and the Shiva sidequest. Same with Red Mage; again, needs more Frost Rods than black but should still work. (They also might die to Fira... but have Raise.)
Time Mage can't use Gravity, so their options outside breaking a Frost Rod is limited. Haste/Slow both work very well here, and even Stop can buy some time though it wears off quickly, and Healing Staff can turtle through most of what he does, but isn't as safe as it could be.
White Mage is slow and grindy. They'll want enough HP to survive Fira, but assuming they have it, they're in good shape. Cura after each Blaze, Heal Staff smack after each Fira (or ST Cura if the person with said staff gets paralysed), will probably take 35 rounds or so but they have the resources for that! Or they can confuse him and wait until he runs out of MP healing himself with fire spells. Choose your poison, but at least you win.
Blue Mage finally has their own -ra spell after being hung out to dry against Liquid Flame, as well as Aqua Breath. Three rounds should probably suffice if they aren't breaking frost rods. Vampire lets them recover as always, Ifrit's MEvasion means it's not perfectly reliable but whatever.
Mystic Knights are... decent here, but not mage good. They can blitz him down by using Blizzara Spellblade but his 20% evasion puts the reliable 2-round out of reach, and their healing is bad if it comes to that, still. They'll win, but some people could die and that will cost Phoenix Downs and/or require an exit from the dungeon as there's another fixed fight before the next save point.
Knight would need three rounds, but evasion might make it 4, and same caveats apply. They'll almost surely survive Blaze + Fira, but 2x Blaze + Fira is still going to be fatal at any reasonable level.
Monk is finally falling off here as Ifrit's modest defence drops their damage quite a bit. The estimate here is 5 rounds of pure offence after evasion. Focus might speed it up some. Chakra can be used to heal off Blaze if they have it (it's over twice as good as a potion) so that's something, but it interferes with using Focus which speeds their offence somewhat. I dunno.
Thief has Hi-Potions! And if they were able to steal Mage Mashers from the Karnak escape (they're common, so this is legit) they have... still terrible offence, but sometimes silencing Ifrit and thus preventing Fira is nice, even if it wears off fast. They'll also want to use the Moonring Blade and Main Gauche which are stronger, especially against Ifrit's defence. They probably need about 7 rounds after evasion but they're fast and they do have unreilable silence and good healing if they need it... holy crap they might not be last among controllable jobs here.
Ninja is a thief without hi-potions or mage mashers (but their storebought kunais hit just as hard, and they too have the Moonring and Main Gauche) but they hit twice which obviously greatly speeds things along. They're knight trading HP for speed. Also they can throw things. Mythril Swords will 6HKO in ITE fashion, and cost slightly more than Frost Rods. So obviously they aren't as good as the mages. Compared to Mystic Knights, it's somewhat of a push. If both scrimp on cash, MK looks slightly better on average (better HP, faster win), but Ninja can ensure a safer victory if things go against them by throwing some swords or anything else lying around they can't use (Ashura, Shuriken... Shuriken in particular hits really hard and they have two by now).
Berserkers are Knights with shields and worse speed. Since Knight has little need to heal here anyway, this actually isn't too bad! Still worse, not being able to Phoenix Down away bad luck is a problem, but kinda competitive.
Geomancer in this dungeon uses nothing but fire magic. This is good... except against Ifrit. Bells are useless here since they hit Ifrit's decent MDef, so knives it is! This is like Thief with less speed and no Hi-Potions or Moonring Blade or Mage Masher and dear god, we have our last place finisher.
Beastmaster is weird, in this and every other fight. Releasing three Page 128s from this dungeon is a win, and they are reasonably bulky (i.e. easier to catch) and right here in this dungeon. Whip's paralysis can land here (about 30-40% in practice probably), so while the weapon is bad at damage it can ensure a near-lockdown if used properly. But it's not super-reliable so I don't think this can do any better than MK/Ninja-level alone.
I guess I need to settle how to rate the difficulty of Release versus other resources. Rods cost 750 gil, which is slightly more than what you get per Wild Nakk fight. Catching a Page 128 is a bit more effort, but not dramatically: they also appear in 100% of fights in some areas, but those fights take longer than a few weak dogs. Maybe for now we'll just say that closes the price difference. So... Beastmaster can't beat the rod-breakers here, and probably loses to Ninja/MK too, but is competitive enough.
1. Black Mage
2. Red Mage
3. Summoner
4. Blue Mage
5. Time Mage
6. Ninja
7. Mystic Knight
8. Beastmaster
9. White Mage
10. Monk
11. Knight
12. Berserker
13. Thief
14. Geomancer
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White Mage is slow and grindy. ... Choose your poison, but at least you win.
FUCKING BULLSHIT YOU CAN'T PICK POISON.
THIS IS ME RIGHT NOW
(http://static.super-shop.com/121651/485127/l/tech-deck-fingerboard-flip-sk8shop-bonus-pack-01.jpg)
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Byblos
Like Ifrit, he has decent def/evade and a big elemental weakness (albeit a different one). He has an array of attacks, the most dangerous of which is a MT 2HKO Wind Slash. Much more notable are his counters. He has a 1/3 chance to counter magic with Toad (not a big deal), and a 1/3 chance to counter everything else with Protect (which IS a big deal). Below 800 HP he has a 2/3 chance to counter anything with a 200-HP Drain. This is really scary to anyone who can't deal 150+ after Protect.
As usual, rod-breakers look good here. Two Flame Rod will suffice, oh no he might counter with Protect. Black Mage can one-round with boosted Fira, Summoner with boosted Ifrit (no longer with any possible penalty for being missable!), Red Mage may miss a one-round but are as usual set up well for a slightly longer fight anyway. If Blue Mage has Death Claw, that's also a nice option (only hits about half the time, but one hit is a win); if they don't, they'll settle for Aqua Breath if they want to save money. It's costly so they'll need to save it for low HP but they can get there with a little help from Vampire, Flash, and Goblin Punch. Time Mage will use Haste/Slow then lob Gravity spells until a Flame Rod poke will win. Getting past Drain at the end is still a pain if you don't crack that rod, though should be possible with some persistence.
Ninja has a new fancy trick: flame scrolls! They have a guaranteed one from Ifrit, and possibly more (one of Liquid Flame's forms drops one if it's the one killed, and they're a rare drop in the Ship Graveyard of all places). One Flame Scroll's enough to bypass the entire Drain phase, anyway; having more is just gravy which can make this fight end real fast. Shuriken also really hurt. Ninja basic physicals aren't too hot here and it'll be a slog to reach the Flame Scroll death phase if they aren't willing to throw things, but a manageable one.
Fira Spellblade isn't super-impressive after Protect, but it's good enough to punch through Drain. Still, staying healed from Wind Slash and the likes isn't too fun, and even if they always hit and don't take any turns off to heal MKs will still likely need 4 rounds to win this. That said, this is far better than what other fighters will do...
Beastmaster can either catch Page 128 again for Strong Fight, but only half that after Protect. Still good enough to punch through the final phase. Or they can catch Page 32, which uses Banish, instant death which hits about 1/3 of the time. Four of them gives an 80% chance of victory, and they can still slug things out with whips otherwise, because whips paralyse, and paralysis means no counters. Not a sure thing by any means, they'd really rather not rely on this, but they can.
Geomancer, mercifully, has a useful Terrain this time. Ignus Fatuus is really random but averages an 11HKO here (9HKO if they're Level 16+), and doesn't worry about the Protect counters it triggers. It's good enough to go through Drain at the end, too.
Everyone else here suuuuucks. Five fighters who run into Protect/Drain counters and cry, this guy walls all these SCCs to varying degrees. There are two strategies here: hope to see as few Drains as possible (it's only 2/3 after all, and MEvade can reduce its rate some) and punch through (maybe even not seeing Protect, though that's very unlikely) or run Byblos out of MP. He has 1000, Drain costs 13 (various other things he uses cost 3-4).
Monk probably has it best. Chakra allows them to turtle... somewhat. Two will be needed to overcome Wind Slash, but Monk does have extra HP in the bank and Wind Slash can't be used on consecutive turns. Meanwhile, they can use counter! Which doesn't trigger counters itself. Roughly 16-17 successful counters (so 32-34 non-fatal physicals) and Byblos is dead. Unfortunately, Byblos has a bunch of other annoying moves: Confuse (monks are bad at deconfusing each other, since they can't unequip their weapon... back row's a thought) and Dischord (halves level, really bad on Monks).
Knight really wants to hit Level 16 for a strength benchmark, then they can probably punch through Drain with a lot of luck and/or Elixirs. They'll need to grind for those most likely, since unless they get really lucky they could be rolling the dice a lot. Berserker does similar damage (berserk + better weapons vs. Two-Handed) but can't heal and is slow. Lack of control is also bad because Dischord will make that berserker suck, but still attack and trigger counters.
Thief has Hi-Potions, but the damage is just anemic. Their best bet is to run Byblos out of MP, he can only cast Drain 76 times, and they can have 99 Hi-Potions! Except Byblos also has Wind Slash, so they might need to farm Elixirs on top of that. Kill me now. This is probably worse than Berserker but I'm not certain.
White Mage is also going to run Byblos out of MP. They have a Healing Staff so that's potentially endless resources, but Wind Slash is too much and they'll need to heal from that using Cura most likely. So they'll need to farm Elixirs as well. But... they're probably better set up than thieves, Cura + Healing Staff > Hi-Potions considering Elixirs restore the MP supply. A horrid comparison to be sure, if hinode or anyone else more familiar with FF5 SCCs wants to fill me in on minimum levels/resources each needs I'm all ears!
1. Black Mage
2. Summoner
3. Red Mage
4. Blue Mage
5. Time Mage
6. Ninja
7. Beastmaster
8. Geomancer
9. Mystic Knight
10. Monk
11. Knight
ALL IS LOST
12. Berserker
ALL IS LOST
13. White Mage
ALL IS LOST
14. Thief
ALL IS LOST
Next up: A boss where rod breaking actually isn't that great! The introduction of Bard! And Berserker's brief stay at third-from-the-bottom comes to a crashing halt. Stay tuned!
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Sandworm
3000 HP, always in the back row (due to a bug?). He pops in and out of three holes. Hit the two unoccupied holes with anything except magic (be it MT or ST) and you get a Gravity counter, otherwise he uses a relatively weak physical and weaker MT ITD magic which sets Sap.
Breaking rods is unimpressive here, because they're MT (splitting damage) and trigger Gravity counters. You'll still win with them, most likely, but at a notable gil cost and some minor risk if Quicksand + sap + Gravity counters hit you in a bad way. The only job who actually wants to consider using them is Time Mage, probably, and even then it's kind of a time vs. safety tradeoff.
Blue Mage has a trick called Aqua Breath here, it will likely one-shot him since he's a desert creature and takes 8x from it. Other boosted magic (-ara spells, Ifrit/Ramuh) take him out cleanly and quickly enough (two rounds) that he's unlikely to do anything scary first, so the three main attacking mages are all pretty much equal here (Red Mage might be low enough level to miss the two-round I guess, same with Summoner if they skipped Ramuh; all I have). Time Mage is worse off for sure, none of its tricks really work, although Haste + Heal Staff + Regen means their slow victory against Sandworm's cruddy offence is ensured. It'll be real slow though.
Sandworm is weak to water as well as the strangely non-elemental Aqua Breath, so Ninja can step up to the plate with the now storebought scrolls. Three water scrolls probably does him in, four will for sure, there will be a bunch of gravity counters but who cares? 600-800 gil, same as one rod and a better result than them, not bad.
Beastmster can use Aqua Breath too, via a caught Dhorme Chimera. It doesn't quite OHKO but it comes pretty close. Whip physicals are long-range so will do competently enough even past that. Or they can catch two if they really want. ST releases are a terrible idea here because they hit random targets. Speaking of long-range physicals, Ranger is the new kid on the block here, and they do well enough. If you've gained 15 ABP since getting them (slightly out of your way probably, but possible) they have some access to healing, too, but it also randomly uses a weak attack which can trigger Gravity counters instead. Whatever, they shouldn't need that anyway.
Onto some back row fighters. Knight hits the hardest and is thus probably the best, a three-round is possible here with their shiny new Coral Swords, and with their good HP they're in little danger before then. Similar to Ranger, actually, but bulkier. Monk is less damaging, but Counter is free damage and they have Chakra (Focus is a bad choice here) if it somehow becomes necessary (it... more likely won't). Mystic Knight has no real tricks here, but good stats and shields is something. Compared to Time Mage... well, Haste makes the latter actually have similar/better offence, and Heal Staff makes up for any stat difference, for all that I think both lose to Knight/Ranger/Monk.
White Mage's physical is long-range, baby! It's still a 70HKO or something, but Heal Staff + Cura + Protect sets them up well to turtle! Compared to MK... well, MK could get into real trouble here since once you're worn down it's hard to recover against this boss (Quicksand picks off revived targets easily), especially at lower levels. WM's victory is far safer because even one Cura easily offsets a Sandworm turn, and their resources will last easily long enough for them to win.
Thief has Hi-Potions and a single Moonring Blade for Monk-level damage. Everyone else will be bad. Yay? Well this is better than the other knife-users. Sure, Geomancer could pull out Gaia, but they'll randomly get a useless ID move and Sandstorm triggers two counters while doing less than 2 physicals' worth of damage, pass. Bells continue to be so hilariously bad that not even being back row OK makes them keep up with Mage Mashers. -_- Bard, the other new kid, sadly slides in with this group too. Mighty March lets them regen about 18 HP a turn... don't laugh, that's over a quarter of Sandworm's MT! It's better than Geomancer's HP advantage, probably... but not better than the combination of Geomancer's HP and Strength advantage. I feel bad for Bard, a number of bosses will be hit by their statuses giving them some use, but this isn't one, so they get to debut in last pl-
oh no. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX4KZez1wPw)
Berserker. Row-reliant. Hits random targets. Testing has shown that while this should yield a 1/3 chance to hit the right target, it actually seems to be 1/6 in practice, possibly because there are technically six enemies in this fight the way it's programmed. I don't know. All I know is they can't stop to heal, every miss triggers a counter, and thus while they 13HKO or so they need ~20 rounds to do this on average, triggering some unholy number of Gravity counters first. And thus dying to MT damage + Sap long, long before this. You need to probably overlevel like mad AND get crazy lucky here. (The above video, described as "low level" for the SCC, was 36.)
(And no, for the record, I will not be assuming Berserker is endgame level for every subsequent boss.)
1. Blue Mage
2. Black Mage
3. Summoner
4. Red Mage
5. Ninja
6. Beastmaster
7. Knight
8. Ranger
9. Monk
10. Time Mage
11. White Mage
12. Mystic Knight
13. Thief
14. Geomancer
15. Bard
what the hell am I supposed to-
16. Berserker
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Cray Claw
Offensively largely a joke, he has weak physicals, Slow+Sap (turn 3 only, which is a problem because he doesn't live that long), and HP-1; all ST. Defensively he's got good defences but bad HP, and a lightning weakness (all weakness hits are ITD in FF5) which makes him die super-fast if you have that.
Breaking a rod may OHKO, but this guy's such a sap anyway why would we do that? Black Mage 2HKOs, so does Summoner if they have Ramuh (otherwise they'll need two rounds! And have paralysis to nail him with), as does Knight, as does Ninja (at the cost of 400 gil, not a big deal). Red Mage 3HKOs, Ranger 4HKOs, Mystic Knight probably does too (without using Spellblade, mind!). Since Cray Claw never ever does anything dangerous with one turn, these jobs are all roughly equivalent and attempts to tiebreak here are mostly pointless, all I can really do is reward the ones that do it at the lowest levels or with least investment.
Blue Mage can two-round with either Aqua Breath or Coral Sword hits, and Vampire is a nasty counter to his one trick (though can fail). Or they can explode Thunder Rods at him, or Dark Spark twice then L5 Death (unreliable, but a possible one-round). Time Mage will probably use Thunder Rod physicals. And hit him with Slow/Stop because it's funny. Or break rods again. Beastmaster has to go to a bit more trouble, but a single released Sand Bear (from the desert after Sandworm, conveniently) is a OHKO, or they can use Blitz Whip physicals to do decent damage while regular whips lock him down with paralysis.
That leaves the six jobs without any lightning access. Monks can take him out in three rounds, though a Tailscrew is annoying since a followup physical will kill unless Potion+Chakra is used. Bard has very poor damage here, but Alluring Air inflicts confuse and that's good enough for a slow win with regen backup in case somehow confuse misses four times in a row (which, granted, his high level makes not... impossible). Berserker, assuming they have gathered some Death Sickles, can hope for some luck with its random ID. Failing that they'll probably two-round, though hey someone MIGHT die... too bad you have a recovery point after.
Terrain trolls Geomancer here, as the airship still counts as a boat IIRC and will run the water/gravity terrain, neither of which work on the sky lobster. So they're one of the worst jobs here, basic physicals slowly tickling him to death. I mean they'll still probably win but they actually have some difficulty. Thief is the same except they have a second real weapon and Hi-Potions so they're somewhat better off.
That leaves White Mage! Flails pierce Def so hey they're actually as effective as "real" weapons here (which is to say not), they can use Confuse, and Protect+back row means they can actually survive a physical after Tailscrew, not that they need to with their healing.
1t. Black Mage, Knight, Ninja, Red Mage, Summoner
6. Spell Fencer
7. Ranger
8. Blue Mage
9. Time Mage
10. Beastmaster
11. Monk
12. White Mage
13. Bard
14. Berserker
15. Thief
16. Geomancer
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I don't really think all of this is good at evaluating which jobs are good in FF5 but it's still fun to read. More plz
Poor geos!
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Adamantoise
Like Cray Claw, he has good defence and bad HP, and an unfortunate elemental weakness. However he backs up his defence with Protect/Shell, which bolsters his durability considerably. While he has a bunch of status holes, it also means it's difficult to get status to land on him. Meanwhile, he punches 1-2 times per turn for damage which 2HKOs the front row, not too bad though very spoilable since he's all physical.
Black Mage still one-rounds from the back row. Red Mage and Summoner needs two rounds, probably (unless their level is quite high or they break rods), though in Red Mage's case they may well outspeed Adamantoise and thus kill him before his second turn anyway (or can use Protect if they feel like digging in). Blue Mage can cast L5 Death for an instant win, and if they don't have that breaking 2 Frost Rods will suffice (Death Claw/Missile also work, sometimes). Time Mage certainly has the worst lot of the rod-users, though again 1500 gil is a win, and the usual Slow/Haste/Heal Staff/back row offence should also take care of things albeit more slowly.
Ranger can chill in the back row, outspeeds, and two-rounds if they're willing to buy a bunch of Frost Bows (otherwise they'll suck at offence, though Nightingale healing should get 'em through if they feel like being stingy). Cray Claw just dropped one, so that's nice. The only other job with ice is Mystic Knight. They outspeed and kill in three rounds with Blizarra Spellblade, though they do need to be in the front row to do that.
Ninja outspeeds, spends 600-800 gil, and kills in 1-2 rounds from the back row. Or, they use Image, and slowly poke him to death while being basically completely safe, resetting Image whenever they're in danger. Beastmaster can throw a Sand Bear for a 2HKO (I wasn't sure if Protect affects this, apparently it does, else it would OHKO). So that takes some preparation, certainly more than buying rods. Otherwise they can uh 7-round from the back row or so, not really acceptable. Needing to get two Sand Bears is enough to drop them below every other job mentioned so far, I think. As well as...
Knight has a free win here with Guard, the only difficulty is making sure that Adamantoise doesn't punch past everyone's low-HP phase. Or they can withstand three turns from Adamantoise and three-round? That could work too. But yeah, even if they don't try for it it's easy to accidentally end up with low-HP allies you can cover, so the combination Guard and that will win, which I'd put above anyone except the jobs with a free one-round.
Geomancer's Gaia will use either Ignus Fatuus (20HKO damage, assuming Level 16+) or Stalactite (6HKO). This roughly three-rounds if they spam it, which is acceptable offence for a back-row job.
Berserkers can three-round from the front row if they have Death Sickles, four-round if they don't. They have a chance to proc death! Not very good, 8% or so, but it adds up. This is still much worse than Mystic Knight due to worse speed and obviously no item bailout if a revive is needed.
White Mage needs 36 rounds of straight attacking to win. That's bad. But... hey, with Protect + back row should reduce his damage to be quite bad, easily outpaced by Heal Staff alone.
For the first time, Monk is just really bad. As in, "needs 7 rounds to kill from the front row" bad which is completely unacceptable given his level of offence. Charkra can't really keep up. They could go to the back row and need 14 rounds but now at least Chakra is semi-viable, but each physical will still need two Chakras to recover from, not terribly acceptable when he can toss out two per round and potentially overwhelm. Counter does help, but not enough.
Thief is awful. Best to park in the back row where only the Moonring does anything approaching real damage and burn Hi-Potions like they're going out of style (enjoy manually stealing each one, as always). And this still beats Bard, whose two statuses are blocked. Bard physicals are like 70-75HKO here from the front row, half that from the back. OR they can buy Silver Harps which are 1/16 gravity (they hit about a quarter of the time, so it's really more like 1/64) which ACTUALLY OUTPACES THE KNIVES HERE at the start of the fight good lord.
1. Black Mage
2. Red Mage
3. Blue Mage
4. Knight
5. Summoner
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Ranger
9. Mystic Knight
10. Geomancer
11. Beastmaster
12. White Mage
13. Berserker
14. Monk
15. Thief
16. Bard
Beastmaster is really hard to pin down, but I'm okay with this placement for them.
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Thief has Hi-Potions, but the damage is just anemic. Their best bet is to run Byblos out of MP, he can only cast Drain 76 times, and they can have 99 Hi-Potions! Except Byblos also has Wind Slash, so they might need to farm Elixirs on top of that. Kill me now. This is probably worse than Berserker but I'm not certain.
White Mage is also going to run Byblos out of MP. They have a Healing Staff so that's potentially endless resources, but Wind Slash is too much and they'll need to heal from that using Cura most likely. So they'll need to farm Elixirs as well. But... they're probably better set up than thieves, Cura + Healing Staff > Hi-Potions considering Elixirs restore the MP supply. A horrid comparison to be sure, if hinode or anyone else more familiar with FF5 SCCs wants to fill me in on minimum levels/resources each needs I'm all ears!
Took me a while to dig up some old saved gamefaqs SSC threads, but it's actually possible for thieves, with significant overlevelling and an insane amount of luck, to beat Byblos w/o running him out of MP if Drain misses enough times. Someone did it with an L24 party, mo Sonic Waves, and 3 consecutive missed Drains. I guess it miiight be possible at lower levels if an even larger number of Drains missed, but at that point it would verge on a minor miracle.
First person in the gfaqs threads to beat Byblos with White Mages did so at L26. Wouldn't surprise me if it'd possible at lower levels, but psychologically the toll of a failed attempt at stalling out Byblos' MP is so painful that I suspect most people would rather overlevel than risk wasting hours on a futile attempt.
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Thanks for that, and yeah that makes sense.
I don't really think all of this is good at evaluating which jobs are good in FF5 but it's still fun to read. More plz
Poor geos!
It's definitely not going to tell you in isolation what jobs are good, though it does shed some light onto things. Most obviously it gives some low-damage jobs a bit of an artificial weakness (especially White Mage and Bard who have cool skillsets) since it's easy to get damage to at least Monk-level with Barehanded, !Black, !Summon, !Blue, etc. in most situations. It also ignores randoms entirely (devaluing bard further...). But once you control for those biases it does do a pretty good job of showing which jobs are good / considered strong draws for Fiesta, etc. (That is, the mages are all good, Ninja is generally ahead of other physical jobs, etc.)
Poor Geos indeed, this post isn't going to make them feel any better.
Soul Cannon
On turns 7, 12, and every 4 thereafter, it fires a beam which does MT MHP/2 damage and adds Sap. That's a little better than it sounds because Soul Cannon has a LOT of HP (12500) and is fast (140% speed or so) but still not good. Complicating things are the Launchers, which have only 800 HP but fire missiles which half current HP and set Old, which ruins your core stats (i.e. damage and speed) if not cured quickly.
Lightning damage is the way to go! If you want to go with breaking Thunder Rods, though, it's pretty costly; you'll likely need two to nuke the Launchers (important!) then another four or so to win the fight. Of course, you really shouldn't need to use the remaining four, because there's zero reason to kill Soul Cannon in two turns when he can't possibly win until you've had 8. So not that costly if you're just after a turn 1 Launcher KO.
Ramuh will also two-shot the Launchers then easily take out Soul Cannon in three rounds or so. There's the cost of getting Ramuh, sure... but honestly Ifrit suffices here anyway, it does the same to the Launchers and then may well outrace Soul Cannon's second turn anyway, though it could be dicy at some levels. They can at worst break one Thunder Rod to be certain of victory. Black Mage should be able to two-shot the Launchers with ST Thundaras, then win very easily from there. MT might work, but due to the way split damage works in FF5 (half attack rather than half damage, which is worse) there's a chance they may survive. Red Mage in some ways has an even easier time, because Cura makes a mockery of this fight anyway, so even if things get gummed up and Old strikes the PCs, it really doesn't matter. For that matter,
Coral Swords are a beatdown move. Knights can three round the main cannon, and should 2HKO the Launchers. Even if they somehow fail to and one PC gets hit with Old, not a big deal at all. Mystic Knight has a bit of a dicier situation since they WILL see one PC get hit with Old due to a lack of Two-Handed. The fight will be long enough that once the Launchers are dead they probably should spend a turn to buff their weakness hits to 3x instead of 2x. In total they'll need 7 rounds here, one to kill each Launcher, one to buff, four to smite. One PC may get olded which could make things a little dicy, but their good speed should make up for it. Ranger is a lot like Mystic Knight, as they'll get one PC hit with old but have lightning weapons and good speed, but they also have Nightingale, which fully heals a Wave Cannon. Forest friends save the day!
Ninjas can throw Thunder Scrolls. Two will kill the Launchers, while the boss dies in three rounds to them. If they want to save money they can switch to physicals once the Launchers are dead and still outrace, probably. 400 gil for a super-safe and easy fight is hard to beat if you aren't Red Mage.
Sadly for Beastmaster, their gravity move would be great here, except it's wind which Soul Cannon spoils. They can still use Sand Bears and hope to OHKO the Launchers but that's rather RNG-based of course. Or they can one-round each Launcher with physicals, accept that one PC gets hit with Old, and then... actually have some issues from there because they only have one Blitz Whip, that's not really good enough. They may actually need to go farm several Sand Bears to have a safe win here (three will probably be enough) but that's not good.
Oh right there are more mages. Blue Mage has L5 Death! If they have that, dead Launchers, use Vampire after Soul Cannon fires if they're worried about failing to win a damage race (they'll likely use Flame Thrower, kills in seven turns or so, so probably good enough). If they don't have L5 Death they should fire off Aqua Breaths which still one-round the Launchers, so... yeah they're looking pretty good. Time Mage meanwhile, as usual has bad damage, but both Haste and Slow work. They really will want to break two Thunder Rods to kill the Launchers fast, but past that they can use Haste/Slow to make the turnsplit just silly and poke away, then use the Heal Staff + Regen to recover. Finally, White Mage has a trump card for everything here, Esuna immediately after each missile hits and Cura spam to recover from Wave Cannons. Needing to use Esuna quickly puts them in a worse situation than some jobs, though, and the missiles halving HP (i.e. making them bait for Wave Cannon) is also a problem. Still, they should manage, since missiles will miss a bunch and the only need to heal up prior to Wave Cannon, and once the Launchers die their victory is pretty much guaranteed.
Chakra is good enough healing here, although Monk's bad HP is a problem so they'll need to use it 3-4 times after each Wave Cannon most likely. That... actually isn't good enough, never mind. To make matters worse they can't reliably 2HKO the Launchers so one of them is probably going to land Old. Maybe they're better off going for damage? After a round and a bit to kill the Launchers, they should start using Focus, five rounds of Focusing may well win and six definitely will, even with one PC crippled by Old. So uh... effectively 8-9 turns total. Again, that's... not good enough, really. Yikes? A few extra levels will make up the difference here, and honestly Chakra/Potions may suffice to just buy them (except the one hit by an opening missile) enough time to survive the second beam and finish from there but ugh.
And if Monk has that problem you know it's worse for the other fighters. Thief, mercifully, has Hi-Potions, and four of those buy them the time to survive another beam. Of course they... can't even one-round a Launcher, what the fuck, which means up to three PCs get hit by Old (average is closer to 2). And that's awful, even with two PCs olded and the other two using the two gaod Thief weapons, that ends up being 25 rounds of attacking or so they'll need to win, and once they're into four-round cycles where Soul Cannon 4-3s (almost), they heal once and attack twice, that means like 40-50 Hi-Potions. Actually it's a bit better since the aged PCs can do all the healing but still terrible.
Or what about Geomancer? Their Gaia for Ronka is great, strong MT wind damage! OH HAHA THESE BOSSES IMMUNE WIND FOR NO REASON what the fuck game, stop trolling Geo plz. Good news is they can, unlike Thief, one-round the Launchers due to better strength. The bad news is they still get one hit with Old and then have to deal with killing the boss in like 10 turns. Potions aren't cutting it. They're farming Elixirs from rare drops.
Berserkers are, somehow, worse. Two Wave Cannons = they're dead. A Valiant Attack means the first Wave Cannon kills, too. Even if they get lucky and kill both Launchers first turn after they miss with Valiant Attack (yes, Berserker is the only job slower than the Launchers) they get only six more turns and on average they need 7-8 rounds to win. And that requires unrealistic luck already, since they have a 15% miss rate and need to hit each Launcher twice (and not Soul Cannon) and anyone hit with Old will first suck and then die early. So they're going to be grinding a bunch of levels. (Y'know, if they hadn't already had to do so for Sandworm.)
And that leaves Bard. lol Bard, like Geomancers only with worse damage... BUT WAIT! This is very, very, silly. but Bard has Hide. And Wave Cannon is a called shot. So they can hide, return after each Wave Cannon is fired, poke, then retreat. The big problem that most of them will probably get hit with Old, but even at minimum speed they can slowly pull this strategy off. Just for their sanity's sake they will want to reset until some PCs aren't hit by Old (at least 1 or 2, fortunately they have MEvade), but this probably takes less time than farming up 30+ Hi-Potions anyway.
1. Red Mage
2. Ninja
3. Black Mage
4. Summoner
5. Knight
6. Blue Mage
7. Ranger
8. Time Mage
9. Mystic Knight
10. White Mage
11. Beastmaster
12. Monk
13. Bard
14. Thief
15. Geomancer
16. Berserker
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All I'm hearing so far is that Bard sounds like the most fun SSC to watch a speedrunner slam their willpower against.
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Archeoaevis
Essentially the final boss of world 1 (though there are three after him), he has five forms with shifting defences. The physical defence starts high and gets lower with each form; magical defence is the opposite (and he piles on a bevy of elemental immunities for the last one). Meanwhile, he uses a different ST status attack and MT damage move (the second form is by far the most dangerous) in each form, with the last form having a wide array of attacks which includes MT HP-1 (on a boss who also has access to MT Sap). The one good news is his ATB resets whenever you kill a form, and they all have relatively low HP, so good offence makes him unhappy.
For a change, I'll start out with the fighters. The fight gets steadily easier for them as it goes along. Knight will need two rounds to deal with each of the first two forms, maybe form 3 as well. Against form 4 and 5 their Coral Swords stop working, so they'll need to pull out Mythril again, but this only offsets the dropping defence. Still, this gives most forms at least one turn (maybe not 3 or 4), and they'll have to time their finishing blows well to keep things down that low, AND keep those Mythril Swords around. It's annoying and dangerous and even perfect play can lead to a loss if the boss uses its MT every turn. Rough, but quite doable.
Monk can do something rather cheesy in this fight: Counter! Archeoaevis uses physicals 2/3 of the time in form 1, so after softening him up a little they can defend and rely on counters. And, when a counter kills a form, boom, no subsequent form. Battle over in 1600 damage. Kinda cheap, but we don't deduct points for that in these analyses. :)
Berserkers can ignore defence, so that's something. Unfortunately they can't abuse his turn shifting and they're outsped, so they'll give him 5-7 turns probably depending on what weapon they have. That's inviting some serious trouble, though this isn't a bad fight for them relatively!
Mystic Knights are like Knights, somewhat, without Two-Handed. Spellblade is mostly useless here due to Archeoaevis' lack of elemental weaknesses or status holes. They only good thing is that they can always use a status spellblade to deal with form 4-5. But their offence at the start of the fight is just wretched. They'll need five rounds just to drop the first form, and the second with its Frost attack is a disaster waiting to happen. Potion so don't cut it any more, so overall I think they're behind Berserkers, unless they want to farm lots of Elixirs.
Ranger is like the swordsmen in that it struggles with the high defence then gets annoyed by elemental immunities (they'll have to fall back on the Main Gache and either Mage Mashers or Silver Bows for the final phase). However, Nightingale is amazing here, ~50% chance of some major healing (more than offsetting even the boss' strongest attack). It never gets better than this.
Good news for thief: they have a second Moonring Blade! Three real weapons! The bad news: uh this is the same level of weapon they've had since Karnak, yikes. Their damage against form 1 is terrible, it'll take like 12 rounds. Then it starts improving but this is still really bad, they'll just need to burn Hi-Potions constantly and bad. I don't really want to run an estimate. At least they're a common steal in this dungeon.
Ninja is really good! They're fast so all they need to do is one-round every form. Water Scroll spam will destroy every form save the last, which still gets two-rounded i.e. one turn total. This costs about 3000 gil or so but that's really not too bad. If they want to save money they can probably afford to mix in more physicals from form 3 on and use Image to dig in.
Black Mage has no real problems with the first four forms, it can one-round all of them. Then the last form... is going to give them a bad time. It nulls the big three elements, They can switch to knives and... actually kill in six rounds if they're in the front row, but 1/3 Maelstrom every two turns is just too much, they're going to get worn down badly. The first fight where they're bad! Will this be true for the other mages?
Not really. Summoner is similar, until the last form, where they can pull out... Chocobo. Yes, Chocobo. It's based off their magic, but hits defence. It'll take them 3-4 rounds (i.e. three boss turns) to kill the last form. If the opening turn is Maelstrom that sucks and every PC hit should probably burn an Elixir, but seeing as this is the first fight which has given them a glimmer of a problem at least they can be assured they can do that.
Blue Mage... well, if they've gotten 1000 Needles, this is holy shit EZ MODO because that 2HKOs each form and 3HKOs the last, instant win. Failing that, they can use a mix of easy-to-obtain skills to deal with each form: one's weak to wind (Aera), two are vulnerable to gravity. Unboosted Aera against form 3 isn't too great, but it should only get one turn. Form 5 poses the most danger except lol L5 Death vulnerability. If you want to assume they don't have that, Vampire does its thing in a longer slog. They also potentially (not SCC style, again), have White Wind for more good healing. I dunno, even their worst case scenario is pretty good and their best is total domination.
Time Mage can slow each form, haste themselves, use regen, and use Heal Staff. With four turns to every one of the boss, that lets them offset anything it does. They can crack some rods to speed along the first four forms, against the last they'll just have to poke away with knives like black mages, except the turnsplit and healing makes that far more palatable. Slow, but a win's a win.
Red Mage's versatility really shines here, needless to say. While they don't have BM offence so every form should get a turn, they can use Cura to recover from whatever it does, and once the elemental walling comes out, they switch to swords/knives and take advantage of the low def while still having healing and Protect. Clean and easy, don't have to worry about landing anything through MEvade or burning resources.
White Mage has Protect/Cura/Heal Staff as well, but the usual bad offence, so we have to consider if this will grind out their resources. Well, the short answer is... maybe? They'll need about 12-18 rounds to deal with each of the first four forms (60 total), and will need to put down a Cura after each MT attack, or two after Frost, and those come 1/3 of the time. (Heal Staff should deal with the rest.) So 25 uses or so. And then against the last form, they'll need two Curas after Maelstrom as well, and about 17 turns or so... maybe another 10 Curas? Depends on paralysis somewhat. Actually, huh, their resources survive this easily enough. Go them! Slow but a pretty good showing. The type of marathon fight where they shine (no counters to troll them horribly, and flails partly ignore his gimmick).
Beastmaster will want to stock up on releases for sure. Even with four this isn't their favourite fight. Ronkan Knight releases will OHKO each of the first four forms or pretty close (Sand Bears are stronger but more annoying to get). They'll probably want to throw them at every form except three, actually, which is the last form vulnerable to the Blitz Whip. Whips never miss Archeoaevis so this is a three-round at worst, so they eat two turns here and then maybe one against the final form and that's... probably manageable, depending on their HP and the attacks the boss uses. A bit dicy and obviously needing to farm resources is bad.
Geomancer finally gets some decent luck! Gaia will uses nothing but Wind Slash here (maybe the very rare gravity move, depending on form... but that's not always bad anyway). This one-rounds every form until the last, which nulls wind. At that point, they can fall back on their kinda okay physicals. They're actually virtually identical to Summoner, but hey their stats are slightly better! ... no wait they need to be in the front row for the last phase, which makes them slightly worse. Still, how often will we be able to put Geomancer and Summoner side-by-side in these things?
That leaves Bard I guess to rot in last, regen isn't nearly enough and the bad offence means they'll need to farm elixirs, again.
1. Monk
2. Red Mage
3. Ninja
4. Blue Mage
5. Ranger
6. Time Mage
7. White Mage
8. Summoner
9. Geomancer
10. Knight
11. Beastmaster
12. Berserker
13. Thief
14. Mystic Knight
15. Black Mage
16. Bard
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Monk can do something rather cheesy in this fight: Counter! Archeoaevis uses physicals 2/3 of the time in form 1, so after softening him up a little they can defend and rely on counters. And, when a counter kills a form, boom, no subsequent form. Battle over in 1600 damage. Kinda cheap, but we don't deduct points for that in these analyses. :)
This strikes me as a little TOO cheesy, like, bug-level cheesy. You can skip NeoExdeath entirely with similar tricks (Berserk, HP leak) that cut off the event trigger to start the fight, but it's pretty unfulfilling, and can lead to some weird rankings where classes that happen to have legal access to a "skip the fight" bug get hugely inflated.
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Eh this one I definitely don't think is over any lines. Monk can run into it entirely by accident just by there passives.
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NEB doing what NEB does best. moar pls.
Monk can do something rather cheesy in this fight: Counter! Archeoaevis uses physicals 2/3 of the time in form 1, so after softening him up a little they can defend and rely on counters. And, when a counter kills a form, boom, no subsequent form. Battle over in 1600 damage. Kinda cheap, but we don't deduct points for that in these analyses. :)
This strikes me as a little TOO cheesy, like, bug-level cheesy. You can skip NeoExdeath entirely with similar tricks (Berserk, HP leak) that cut off the event trigger to start the fight, but it's pretty unfulfilling, and can lead to some weird rankings where classes that happen to have legal access to a "skip the fight" bug get hugely inflated.
yeah i mean it's not intended but if you're doing a SCC or fiesta you're probably going to use it, and as grefter said you can easily run into this on accident.
I mean FFS if this were an analysis of SNES FF6 characters, you wouldn't ignore the fact that their MEvade accounts for their physical evade as well just because it's a bug.
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Exdeath is much harder to do this to in the GBA version of the game (in SNES/PSX, you can mix Blessed Kiss, but they closed that loophole), and anyway this was inspired by Fiesta where the end goal is a shot of Neo Exdeath disintegrating, so I probably won't be counting that.
Against Archeoaevis I can see going either way but to some extent it's yeah, what Zenny/Grefter said. While I'm all for ignoring obvious bugs which can be ignored (Vanish/Doom) it's harder to ignore things which inevitably affect gameplay (FF6 MBlock). This particular one falls somewhat in the middle. It is a logical consequence of a very consistent convention (counters do not trigger counters), just not ones the developers may have considered, kinda like how spamming the "switch turn" button in FF8 gives you a re-roll for a limit.
EDIT: If you're curious, though, Monk playing "fair" is probably around Knight-level, maybe a bit lower? They have less damage, but Focus lets them dodge form 2 at least... for all that with their high HP, the other forms' special attacks aren't that different.
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Makkotah: FF6 Mevade is cooked into the game a lot more deeply. This feels closer to Vanish/Doom to me; regardless of how legal you see it or not, it makes boss analysis less interesting if taken into account. All WoR bosses that you can Vanish / Doom instantly become trash. Sure, fine, but then there's a not a lot to say other than "use the cheesy trick."
Elf: Fair enough, it certainly is borderline. Perhaps HP leak is a better example: the ability to inflict this is generally *trash* if you're playing normally, but it can screw up some counter scripts, and it's an instant win with wait mode if you are incredibly lame and wait for 20 minutes. A ranking that cooked in assuming you would do this whenever possible inflates the value of HP leak vs. "normal" play. At least Monk's Counter deserves some hype in vanilla play, though.
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I was under the impression you needed to use Quick to claim the instant win with Sap/HP Leak? If you can do it just by opening the menu in Wait mode that's pretty silly. Regardless, yeah, I won't be considering either strategy.
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The last three bosses of World 1 can be fought in any order. There are no randoms between them and nothing gained from any of them that can be used against each other, except the summon spell Titan, so I'll assume Titan is fought first for the purpose of ranking Summoner (only place it matters). You have only three PCs for these fights.
Titan
Titan may have only 2500 HP, which is sad at this point, but he can give you a really bad time. Every even-numbered turn he has a 1/3 chance to use Earth Shaker, which is strong MT damage: 2HKO everyone at least, OHKO some lower-HP jobs depending on level. Okay, okay, you kill him before that, sure... except that he also uses it as a death counter. Ouch! It's not easy to block or reduce earth magic attacks at this point, though there are ways...
Let's take a look at the new kids first! Samurai has Zeninage. For just 1000 gil or so (varies by level), they win instantly if they're level 17+. They can try to win without spending this but it relies on some luck with critical hits so nah. Dragoon, meanwhile, is also a bit better than you might think, because Jump can be used to dodge the even-numbered turns AND even the death counter (and it's ITE!). In fact Dragoon is always a bit inflated if you consider the entire team to have Jump, hmm.
Chemist doesn't have Mix yet so they're pretty mediocre. Their offence sucks, they'd need 5-6 rounds if they all attack and that won't be happening, so they need to turtle. They have Drink but... drink's weird right now, since the items aren't storebought, but dropped, mostly from non-repeatable encounters. To sum up: they have around 7 Goliath Tonics (double HP) from Gigases in the Karnak escape. They have an Iron Draft from Byblos and a Hero Cocktail from Archeoaevis. And finally, they have 0-8 Iron Drafts and 0-8 Speed Shakes from the cannons guarding the Ronka Ruins, average of 4 each. Speed Shakes are what they really want. With three of those, they can turtle through this fight (preferably with Goliath Tonics too). Four Heal Staff hits and a few potions will let them recover from an Earth Shaker every two rounds, and they probably won't need that. On the other hand, without Speed Shakes they can't really do well and risk being overwhelmed. They really want Speed Shakes for both this fight and at least one other before they're storebought, so it's hairy. At worst, they can always grind up 45 ABP for Mix but that would put them far down the list if they do have to retreat to that. But honestly, I think just hasting the Heal Staff user is enough? It puts them in a bit behind every time he uses Earth Shaker but they should slowly gain ground otherwise. Two should ensure it. So... I think this gets a kinda okay score maybe.
Dancer, meanwhile, has access to the more underhanded way to beat Titan, and they will absolutely have to do it because their HP is wretched. This is to head to North Mountain and confuse a Gaelicat (they're extremely common, so no worries there) and have it cast Float on them. Takes some time for the cat to hit everyone (not all jobs need to hit everyone, Dancer will probably want to) but once they have it, they can walk into the Titan fight immune to his tricks unless they drop from his physicals. Hopefully with Jitterbug's draining and the back row, that won't be an issue, and potions can recover from the rest if HP starts to drop.
Knight can certainly two-round, though it's a bit of luck as to whether they beat out Titan's second turn (random variance on speed order favours Knight but it's close, and Titan's 10% evade could also make a mess of things). As long as they do, they win. If they don't and he uses Earth Shaker, they lose (or burn some Elixirs). Pretty good, but could be better. Monk sets Focus, three uses of that and Titan is dead unless he gets some luck with dodges... doesn't need an unreasonable amount either, depends a bit on level and Monks' crit rate, I'm not calcing that. But overall this is safer than Knight I think, since a counter could push things over the top, and that's 50%.
Thief... by Thief standards this could be worse! At Level 19 they'll avoid a OHKO and can just spam Hi-Potions after an Earth Shaker, they'll probably only need to use about 8 to 10 on average! And hey this takes less time than grinding 45 ABP, compared to Chemist (though likely more than a Gaelicat expedition), so that's something.. but having both a level requirement and a stealing requirement means they're probably last. Ninja, meanwhile can fire off scrolls and win before turn 2. The bigger issue is needing to be Level 19 to survive Earth Shaker reliably. I'd generally say that's probable but not a given, and if they aren't they pretty much just have to level up. Where you score Ninja definitely depends a bit on how you feel about levels, here.
Sticking with lower-HP fighters, Ranger. Ranger would like to be Level 20 to be safe (19 is YOLO, someone will usually survive). They're fast and 3-round at base, but can use Nightingale if necessary, so it's really just that HP check. Geomancer's kinda in this boat too, though a bit better off. With robes they have more MDef and can afford to be a bit lower (Level 18 is likely safe), and they're... probably fast enough to outspeed and will on average two-round, though again it's not a sure thing. Similar to Knight, the slightly better speed makes me favour them though you could hold the level requirement against them.
Berserkers probably 2-3 round depending on accuracy. If he uses Earth Shaker on his second turn they lose. If not they... probably win unless they have bad luck hitting which is always possible. How you want to weigh a ~40% chance of losing against the grinding some other jobs need to do is hard to say. I guess it beats Thief. Mystic Knight does less damage but is faster, they might kill in 3 rounds but probably 4, but hey it still lets them beat the second Earth Shaker. It's pretty similar to Berserker except they can use Elixirs if they really want.
Okay, mage time. Most of the mages have some underhanded trick here. First of all, Red Mage and White Mage can repeat the Dancer strategy of confusing a Gaelicat. Out of the way for sure, but they're better at it because their confuse is more reliable and hey they have much better healing, too. Red Mage can survive without doing this at Level 20-21 if they stay healed, although they'll want to break rods to kill him before the turn-2 Earth Shaker since they don't want to try recovering from that. White Mage definitely wants to use Float, since while they can heal after Earth Shakers, they risk taxing their resources too much, while float is very safe. Both even have Protect which is nice!
Summoner and Time Mage have it easier. Titan can be stopped and paralysed (Remora, a L1 summon), and this prevents him from using his death counter if he's killed right after. Status him, break rods, collect victory. His low level and MEvade makes these moves 100%. If they want to save money, Summoners can get by with two Remoras and four Ramuhs, most likely. TM can dig in with Haste/Slow and get 8 turns between potential Earth Shakers, but they'll need to survive one if they go this route, or pull off a deft stop-lock. So eh probably should break rods instead, more costly than Samurai.
Blue Mage and Black Mage aren't so lucky in terms of having tricks. Sure, they can win fast with rod breaks or 1000 Needles (Black Mage can try to two-round with spells, but it's a risky race for turn 2). But neither can do anything about Earth Shaker, really. Black Mage will want to be Level 19, Blue Mage Level 18.
BOTH of Bard's status tricks are relevant here: Stop to grind Titan to a halt and Confuse to gain float. Hooray! This is honestly one of their best fights despite being OHKOed by Earth Shaker. They fit in with the Red/Time tier of generally tearing this fight apart but needing some effort (rods, Gaelicats, timing Stop properly) to do so, but they have multiple advantages.
Beastmaster can control Gaelicats (faster than confusing them) and then use paralysis from whips, which is only 50% but spamming it gets the job done. Or they can throw heavy damage at the boss. I dunno, they're pretty good. Needing to do some prep (either catch or control) is their only drawback, since whips aren't reliable enough to win alone.
1. Summoner
2. Samurai
3. Dragoon
4. Time Mage
5. Beastmaster
6. Bard
7. Red Mage
8. Blue Mage
9. Ninja
10. Black Mage
11. Monk
12. White Mage
13. Ranger
14. Geomancer
15. Knight
16. Dancer
17. Chemist
18. Mystic Knight
19. Berserker
20. Thief
Tough, tough group to rank. It's hard to weigh the "needs to be Level X" against "needs some luck hitting through evade / not seeing Earth Shaker" and against "needs to take a trip to North Mountain or do other prep". This list looks very different depending on what levels one assumes as normal. A lower-level playstyle would hurt jobs which have an absolute level requirement (Ninja, Black Mage, Ranger, etc.) and a higher-level one helps them relatively. Oh well, let's focus on what's important: Bard in the upper half!
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You undersell this elf. Bard is just shy of top 25%! This is some of the best Team Tallychu can hope for innit?
Also WM above Chemist, Knight and Mystic Knight all! What a crazy time to be.
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Actually I don't want to promise anything now but I think this might be the start of a run of three bosses in a row where Bard is roughly this high!
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Manticore
Manticore is rather like Titan: same evade/def and (lack of) MEvade, crappy HP, and a lot of multitarget damage. While nothing hits as hard as Earth Shaker, his elements can't be nulled, and he uses them more often: he alternates between a 1/3 chance and a 100% chance of using MT attacks which are over half as strong as Earth Shaker, so he's actually even better at wearing you down over time. No death counter, though. And still has some status holes.
Okay there's one other big problem with Manticore: he's fairly speedy. So you need to pump out damage fast. What's fast enough? Why, rod breaks of course! Three of them and he's dead, so for 2250 gil any rod-user claims a win here. Of course, some can do better. Manticore is vulnerable to Stop (and isn't Heavy, so it lasts a while), so Time Mage can lock him down forever with that while they poke him to death if they want to save money. If he somehow lucks out and sees a turn, Heal Staff/Haste/Slow make it easy to recover. Summoner has Titan which 5HKOs, so if Manticore foolishly opens with a weak physical (2/3 chance) they can just kill him with that, they only need to break out the rods if they get hit with Aqua Breath (and even then they can probably get away with just two). Blue Mage licks their lips and faces a boss with no MEvade or OHKO/status so they can just Vampire to victory. 1000 Needles almost one-rounds to boot. They're worse if they don't have those, and Vampire alone CAN go wrong if they get doubleturned in a long fight, but that's not likely. Only Black Mage has no tricks here; they'll need to spend that cash probably, though again they can cut down on rod breaks if he opens with a physical, one will suffice then.
I lied, Red Mage's rod breaks are weaker and don't quite one-round. But... they don't care. They have Cura, and two of those heal off his damage. So... they don't even need to rod break, they can use Cura x2 + L2 and kill in 7 rounds at worst, probably less. White Mage can do this too, except that their damage is awful (nothing new here) and they're slower, so Manticore will doubleturn them every 10 rounds or so. Two Aqua Breaths and they're toast if they're below Level 20. So... be Level 20 (21 would be safer because of Sap/random variance) I guess. And even then... mmf. It's just a big hit to their MP. Every MT attack means two Curas and one attack, everything else means one Heal staff and two attacks. So every two rounds they use ~24 MP and get in three attacks, and they need 50 rounds to win. So they'll probably need 1-3 elixirs.
Speaking of Time Mage's stop, how about bard? They also have a braindead easy stop lockdown, since theirs is even more accurate! So yeah, Romeo's Ballad + other two bards poking away = collect victory. If they wanted, they could also hide for about 80 turns until Manticore runs out of MP, but thankfully they don't need to!
Onto the fighters. Knight is 3HKOed and can two-round... but only if they all hit (90% accuracy). Otherwise... well, they'll still probably win unless he always uses magic. Overall there's over a 90% chance they'll win this fight. Weigh that against Black Mage needing an average of 1250 gil to get through this... eh, I favour fewer resets. Monk can focus three times then attack three times for an effective two-round as well, and doesn't actually need everything to hit, just most (and criticals can offset misses), so that's a bit better. Berserker will usually need three rounds and this could sink to 4 (which would be very bad). But they also have about a 30% chance per swing to land ID if they have the relevant axe, shich goes a ways towards making up the odds. Obviously needing those is going to push them below Knight/Monk though.
Samurai throws money at their problems. 1000 gil and a few pokes means they win. Going without that money is a bad plan. So they use more money on average than Summoner but less than Black Mage, easy to rank! Ninja also throws money at their problems. Being faster than Manticore is good because they need to two-round... but they barely don't, oops. So.. whatever, if Manticore opens with magic, they throw a Shuriken. Otherwise they can three-round. Average gil spent? 2100 or so.
Dragoons can jump and shit, and dodging the even-numbered turns helps a lot. I think I'm fine with giving them credit for dodging MT attacks since that's a relative advantage even one Dragoon has. Less fine with giving them credit for dodging ST since those get redirected if you don't have a full dragoon team. Anyway dodge the even turns. Jump still takes three rounds to kill (uh really) but it's ITE at least. If they get hit by three turns of magic in a row on odd turns they lose, but the odds of that are very poor, albeit existant enough to drop them below Samurai/Ninja.
Thief is terrible! 2HKOed so Hi-Potion x3 after every spell = 12 hi-potions and 6 attacks every 8 rounds, plus 6 opening/ending attacks, they need about 19 but they might double so call it 18 I guess, so around two dozen hi-potions to get past this guy? Ugh. At Level 21 they barely avoid being 2HKOed by two Aqua Breaths on average, but it still happens if their luck is bad. Maybe get to 22, they'll cut down on the number some. You still suck, thieves.
For Ranger, forest friends to the rescue again! Well hopefully. Two Aqua Beaths in a row kill if they don't get cute birds to the rescue, and at Level 20 there's a 14% chance of that each round. Of course there's only a 33% chance of consecutive MT attacks, so overall it's more like a 5% chance of death every round after the first. They only actually need about four of these healing rounds since they all attack first round and last so overall an ~80% chance of victory.
Mystic Knight outspeeds but needs 5 rounds to kill if everyone hits (though they can afford a couple misses). That's bad because it means Manticore gets two 100% MT attacks and only needs to get lucky on one more. They can also spend a turn on VENOM SWORD and give up a little damage for several turns of poison which is totally a winning trade, but they still probably don't kill in four turns on average, though they have a chance. It'll be dicy but at least they can pull out elixirs if they want. MK may want L4 spells more than the mages do...
Beastmaster can release stuff to kill. In some versions of the game (not GBA) they can stop him with Calm, in GBA he immunes it, and I'm generally assuming GBA so too bad. One Sand Bear lets them win on average (slightly safer than Knight), two lets them win 100%. Whatever you please.
This is another fight Chemist badly wants Haste for, since otherwise I can't see how they can heal fast enough. With two PCs hasted, though, they can smack two PCs wth a Heal Staff to heal from MT and toss in potions to help the other, leaving a little time for offence regardless, if more or less only on turns when he doesn't use MT. So as long as you didn't get unlucky on fighting the mini-bosses who drop them (faced them at least 2/4, 69% chance) you should be able to drag them through this. If you got less, hard to see how you'd survive this without getting Mix, and that's... well, not Thief level grinding at least (and pays off for all this set of bosses). Yeah whatever they can go above Mystic Knight again, 69% > MK's chance of winning this battle.
Geomancer three-rounds with Gaia on average. They can barely tank two Aqua Breaths, so they probably win unless they see three (1/9 chance) or fail to get at least four Stalactites/Wind Slashes (~25% chance * 5/9 of at least one MT = 14%). A bit worse than Ranger.
And finally, Dancer. They bad? They bad. The offence isn't nearly good enough seeing as they're 2HKOed by MT, though the random Jitterbugs will extend their life a bit. This is still a bad strategy. So... grinding time? Yep! If they can get 25 ABP (they can fight the other two bosses first then a few randoms) they learn Flirt, which is a 50% chance of turn cancel. That's... okay not actually that worthwhile, 1/8 chance of a wasted turn for 1.25 bonus attacks per attempt. If a helpful thief got them a Lamia's Tiara rare steal it's 100% and they win. Otherwise... ew. They can still win with YOLO Sword Dance/Jitterbug procs, of course, but the odds look very poor. Especially since Manticore's decent MDef, which doesn't dent other things too badly, hurts Jitterbug's draining quite a lot. And that probably means last place, though I can see arguing thief.
1. Red Mage
2. Bard
3. Time Mage
4. Blue Mage
5. Summoner
6. Samurai
7. Black Mage
8. Ninja
9. Beastmaster
10. Dragoon
11. Monk
12. Knight
13. Ranger
14. Geomancer
15. Chemist
16. Mystic Knight
17. Berserker
18. White Mage
19. Thief
20. Dancer
Safe wins that are effectively free > safe wins that require blue magic > safe wins that cost money > not so safe wins > wins that need grinding
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Purabolos (x6)
And to end of the first world, we get a weird one. Defensively, their thing is that if you kill one, it fully revives all its dead allies as a death counter. Offensively, they sit there doing nothing for a while, then on turn 3 they all act, with a 1/3 chance of blowing up for CHP damage, which is a hell of a lot if they aren't badly hurt. Otherwise they use physicals. Then repeat.
So the strategies are essentially this:
1. Kill them with MT. If they all die at once, they can't save each other.
2. Status them out. Almost everything works, and many statuses prevent counters.
3. Let them blow up one at a time, they don't counter if they commit suicide. The problem is that if several blow up at once you might die, so you want to weaken them as much as possible before they act. You can try to sneak in a Phoenix Down between their turns, but it's not reliable. If 3 or more self-destruct for fatal damage (~1/3 chance if they're all healthy), you lose. You can improve the odds by weakening them.
So let's start with Knight. Knight can 2HKO them, but that's... not actually useful. They should instead try to weaken all of them. If they act quickly they should beat them to the punch for third turn, so that's nine attacks. The Ancient Sword-user can hit three of them, the others can gang up preferably with two attacks which don't KO but come close (e.g. one Coral Sword and one Mythril Sword, hopefully you still have those from Archeoaevis). This will make their third round not very scary overall. It COULD go badly if the three higher-HP ones all blow up and it does take some careful damage estimating ahead of time to pull this off, so this isn't an amazing strategy, but it works.
Monk has KICK! Which would be great, except it's row-subject. Still, there are four bombs in the front row, so kicking all of those to death works. The other two can be further weakened by kicks and even if both were to blow up for OHKOs you'd still win.
Thief is obviously bad, what else is new? They can't even adequately weaken TWO bombs before they start blowing up, so they should just settle for killing one, and then hoping they survive, reviving, and finishing from there. On the one hand they can probably do this without grinding Hi-Potions, so that's nice? Regular potions and a few phoenix downs will likely suffice, if they don't die.
Dragoons can jump to avoid the damage, but, as I said earlier, I'm not really inclined to hype them avoiding ST damage. On the other hand, even a single jumping dragoon would avoid getting your entire party wiped by Self-Destruct, so it'd just be a matter of using Phoenix Downs at worst. Anyway, Jump shenanigans aside, they can weaken two of them before they start blowing up, which is less than they'd like. And before anyone asks: no, the bombs will not self-destruct if they have no legal target.
Ninjas are great. Throw scrolls! Three of them, collect victory. 600 gil.
Samurai can also throw MT for a win. But... that's 6000 gil down the toilet, which is a lot for one (not terribly difficult) fight. They can also use physicals. Weaken three bombs to near death (the slowest, Bartz, should use a Main Gauche so he doesn't accidentally critical the third blow and kill them), and just hope to survive the three strong bombs and three weak ones. They probably do but it's not a lock.
Berserker is the worst! Can't decide who to attack. Can't wait and let them kill themselves. Can't unequip their weapons to let them do it, because six full-HP bombs blowing up will be overkill. Can't use Phoenix Downs to recover from the Self-Destruct barrage. Needs to get pretty lucky to win, probably by running the bombs out of MP (each can only revive twice) and a mix of explosions at low-HP that don't hurt them too bad.
Ranger... go read the part about Samurai if they aren't willing to use Zeninage, since Ranger offence is similar. They've got similar durability (less HP and evade, but back row). They have Animals but the type of healing it offers isn't really great in this fight and the random attacks it generates could fuck up everything. So probably slightly below Samurai because Samurai DOES have a nice option if they're swimming in money.
Mystic Knight finally gets to use status on a boss! Sleep Spellblade, then hit each bomb once. Then hit each bomb twice in quick succession (sleep spellblade attacks actually toggle sleep, it's weird). Repeat on the ones in the back row. Then switch to Mute spellblade and kill them all and watch their counters fail. Ha HA! Kinda complicated (though you can be less rigid about the strategy, the important thing is to sleep them all ASAP) but it's clean, so I'll rank them above Knight.
And rounding out the no-750 club is Beastmaster. The release of choice here is a new one, the Stone Golem, but they're annoying to catch (durable mostly). The Earthquake they use on Release is a 3HKO, though, for a win. Though... wait a tick. Unlike almost every other boss, these guys can be CONTROLLED. It's only 40%, but having a bomb blow up on itself (or another controlled bomb) means no counter. Each beastmaster has about a 78% chance to control a bomb before it acts. That's... actually not wonderful, though as long as one Control hits in the first two turns they can use it to blow up a non-controlled bomb. And that at least will usually happen, so usually they can count on at least three under control. This is weirdly similar to Samurai. Even the time spent gathering 6000 gil is similar to the time spent gathering three Stone Golems if they go that route, probably. But I'm inclined to give the edge to Samurai, as thier strategy is a bit more reliable and they're more durable.
Mages have plenty of good MT of course. None better than Summoner, who 2HKO them with Titan. It's cute how they use Cura as a counter but it restores such a paltry amount, so who cares. It doesn't even stop Ifrit spam. Maybe Ifrit spam without Flame Rods. Who cares. Black Mage and Red Mage can do something similar with MT -ara spells (3 rounds for RM, 2 for BM, both are good enough). They can also use Sleep! But it's not really necessary. Blue Mage uses Aqua Breath, which 3HKOs. You can't even really hype them not having this, they literally just fought Manticore who probably used it, and if somehow he didn't they can go kill a Dhorme Chimera who is by now really easy. Honestly I'm not sure how to tier this, they're all up there as really good, even better than Monk. Red Mage could be in trouble if they're slow at entering commands and both them and Black Mage have a slim chance that due to random variance they might not all die at once, I can't really tiebreak the other two, they rule.
Time Mage can break three rods to one round. Otherwise they can try to lock them down with Stop and disrupt their turns with Slow, but their damage output is poor and they can't really stop them all, so they'll likely end up having to use Phoenix Downs... at which point breaking rods is cheaper anyway. Three of them, collect win.
White Mage... confuse is sadly one of the few statuses they immune, so all they can really do is hope they don't blow up at the same time and overwhelm them. If they survive, at least they save money by using Raise instead of Phoenix Downs? That's something. So they have a lower chance to survive than thieves, but use less money. Ehhh survival is the most important, thief is good at producing money at least.
Chemist continues to underwhelm, this will change eventually I promise. This is an excellent moment to use some of their Goliath Tonics, which will raise their HP to "survive a self-destruct after hitting a bomb twice", so use those, weaken three bombs a bit. This is overall a bit worse than Ranger because they're slower and even "slightly weakened bombs" do hit really hard, and the HP effect goes away if they die.
Geomancer has a pretty good way to weaken bombs with Gaia. One nice perk is that it will almost invariably blind all of them, so only Self-Destruct becomes a threat, and otherwise they'll get some random ST attacks. They do have to watch out a bit for killing off the bombs by accident while they do this, one is fine but once a second is near death (or if they get a rare Branch Spear at Level 21+) then they may need to switch to physicals. Still, high chances that most of the bombs are quite weak.
Dancer is terrible here, again confuse is blocked. Flirt, if they even have it, isn't worth it. Their offence is spiky and unreliable but overall is kinda okay, they just need to watch out for Sword Dance randomly killing a second bomb. Chances are they'll be able to weaken two of them, so they're similar to Dragoon but less reliable at it.
And lastly, Bard! MT STOP AGAINST NON-HEAVY TARGETS HOLY CRAP, Bard is secretly the best. It'll be 95+% accurate and lasts three turns, so it's almost impossible for a bomb to get a turn, ever. (Even at Level 18, it's about 1/1300 that any bomb gets ONE turn, with just one bard devoted to singing while the other two attack. So... they're tied for first too! Nice.
1. Bard, Blue Mage, Summoner (tie, treated as #2)
4. Black Mage
5. Red Mage
6. Monk
7. Ninja
8. Mystic Knight
9. Time Mage
10. Geomancer
11. Knight
12. Samurai
13. Beastmaster
14. Ranger
15. Chemist
16. Dragoon
17. Dancer
18. Thief
19. White Mage
20. Berserker
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Not praising Dragoons for avoiding ST damage with 4x jump sounds like not blaming white mage/bard for having no damage if you pick four of them because they were meant to compliment other classes?
It seems you're willing to blame a class for being worse in a SCC but not reward a class for being better in a SCC which seems inconsistent. I don't get it.
(It wouldn't help here though)
In any case, praise bards
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You should actually bump Berserker up some. The thing is, for Berserkers to even get past Sandworm and Sol Cannon without luck of the gods, they would have to be pretty high leveled by now. As such, they should have enough HP to tank plenty of Explosions.
I also disagree with your logic on Chemists in general at this point. If you are playing a Chemist SCC, you are grinding for Turtle Shells immediately, and you are learning Mix in the process. If you don't get the Shells now, they don't become available again until you have the Submarine in World 2. Turtle Shells are super important both for buffing and for Drain Kiss. Dark Matter is another story; you can pass on it and be fine throughout World 2.
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Eh, disagree on berserkers. If the only way they can get past two fights is to power level so absurdly that they can still feel it, then that shouldn't be reflected in only one fight. It especially should not be a reason to reward them in later fights. Honestly, treating a baseline level for all jobs and docking jobs for needing to be notably above it sounds like the better way to go.
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Excal already said my thoughts perfectly.
Also, keep in mind, this is not intended as a SCC analysis, it is a job analysis and I'm just using SCC as a lens through which to do it. It's inspired by fiestas if anything, and I've taken the viewpoint that broadly speaking, what works on the SCC works on the fiesta (at least in part). Advantages broadly translate. The "use 4x Jump to avoid ST attacks" is the first one that completely does not work, so I'm not inclined to hype it myself. Obviously I can see disagreeing so you can move Dragoon up periodically if you feel like it. However, this seemed like an easy fix to make.
I agree that fixing Bard/WM offence is also desirable and I will talk about it at length if I do any final ranking, since it's a relatively easy thing to do. But unlike "I'll just ignore this one strategy" it's far harder to reflect in this analysis moment-to-moment, partly because how much you can improve their offence is highly dependent on what other jobs you draw.
jsh: Grinding is bad. One of the most basic assumptions I make with these lists is that if you have to grind, you're worse than jobs which don't. I acknowledged in the very first post about them that grinding for Mix ASAP is an option if you draw Chemist. However, that's a big negative that the jobs above them don't have to do! So they're going to be lower down until they reach the point where they'd have it naturally. This seems rather inarguable, actually? If you disagree, how far would you move Chemist above on any of the three lists so far and why?
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I don't see how ignoring the fact that Berserker pretty much has to be overleveled by now makes any sense. If we're knocking Berserker for the Sand Worm fight being nigh impossible, that means we're playing an SCC (otherwise you can just kill the Berserker), which means the level gain realistically must have happened.
I agree that grinding sucks, and for nearly any other class I never bother, but near the library is actually one of the best places to do it for Chemist throughout the entire game, and you aren't taking proper advantage of the class without getting some supplies, so it's unrealistic to skip doing this. Turtle Shells + Elixirs (from Zu) doesn't have a rival until the grass near Mau with the same drops, but you get more out of Turtle Shells early in the game. It's true this makes Chemist an outlier out of the cast, but based on the prior Berserker/Sandworm/leveling situation, Berserker is also an outlier that is being considered.
If Chemist has Mix immediately upon beating Archeoavis (grinding for enough Shells to get through World 2 minimum) they should 1-2HKO Titan and Manticore with no risk of death. That would make me put them at the top of both of those lists. Not necessarily #1, but up there. Purablos isn't different, really. If you go up against Gilgamesh II without mix, you are going to have a really bad time. It's totally worth stocking up on Shells and getting Mix for that battle alone.
On that note, with Samurai I would absolutely just use Zeninage against Purablos. The only problem with spending money there is potentially getting past Gilgamesh if you run out of money, but aside from him it isn't important starting World 2 in my experience. (You're stuck with Ashura until Surgate, IIRC) They can easily skip Gold equipment and just buy some Holy Water and Hi Potions. You probably were able to hoard money until this point in the game too, especially with the early Healing Staff/Ashura/Geo Bell carrying you through the early game. Just my 2 cents on this.
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I don't see how ignoring the fact that Berserker pretty much has to be overleveled by now makes any sense. If we're knocking Berserker for the Sand Worm fight being nigh impossible, that means we're playing an SCC (otherwise you can just kill the Berserker), which means the level gain realistically must have happened.
Sure, on a fiesta you just kill the Berserker against Sandworm. Which is pretty much the most unhelpful a job can possibly be. They're last place there, we agree and move on. The disagreement comes thereafter.
What you're saying is that you think I should score them more highly for jobs after that because they're overlevelled in a SCC setting? But that's ridiculous. Let's do a thought experiment. Let's say that, at Level 99, Berserkers become controllable. Let's also say that Sandworm's Holes gained an additional counter, that whenever you hit one with a physical it fully heals the Sandworm. At this point the only way for Berserker to get past Sandworm would be to level to 99, but once they did, they would entirely curbstomp the rest of the game, being a controllable, powerful Level 99 fighter who can actually use phoenix downs etc. #1 or close to it in every fight from here on. Now, if we were to take the "average" score of Berserker in all fights this way the suggestion would be they are a strong job for an SCC/fiesta, when the opposite is true! So you can see why you can't treat a grinding requirement for one boss as a license to ignore all that terrible grinding but still reap the benefits in scores for future bosses.
I agree that grinding sucks, and for nearly any other class I never bother, but near the library is actually one of the best places to do it for Chemist throughout the entire game, and you aren't taking proper advantage of the class without getting some supplies, so it's unrealistic to skip doing this. Turtle Shells + Elixirs (from Zu) doesn't have a rival until the grass near Mau with the same drops, but you get more out of Turtle Shells early in the game.
If Chemist has Mix immediately upon beating Archeoavis (grinding for enough Shells to get through World 2 minimum) they should 1-2HKO Titan and Manticore with no risk of death. That would make me put them at the top of both of those lists. Not necessarily #1, but up there. Purablos isn't different, really. If you go up against Gilgamesh II without mix, you are going to have a really bad time. It's totally worth stocking up on Shells and getting Mix for that battle alone.
Needing to grind out an extra 45 ABP instantly disqualifies you from being near the top of the list for beating these bosses. I don't see how you can argue that they should be above Beastmaster against Manticore, as a random example. Beastmaster can catch Sand Bears for less effort than it takes to unlock Mix, and wreck the boss just as badly. I assume you think I've underrated Beastmaster too? Well, how about Ninja? A scroll/shuriken assault will kill with no problem, without as much grinding. A few rod breaks power black mage past. etc. For Manticore, there's simply no sane argument I can see that puts Chemist anywhere higher than #10. Titan has more weird variables depending on what level you assume for him, but broadly speaking the same thoughts apply.
On Chemists vs. Gilgamesh 2, I will go into more detail when I post the analysis, but I'll note that one Speed Shake, three Iron Drafts, and a Heal Staff should be enough to get Chemists past that fight.
On that note, with Samurai I would absolutely just use Zeninage against Purablos. The only problem with spending money there is potentially getting past Gilgamesh if you run out of money, but aside from him it isn't important starting World 2 in my experience. (You're stuck with Ashura until Surgate, IIRC) They can easily skip Gold equipment and just buy some Holy Water and Hi Potions. You probably were able to hoard money until this point in the game too, especially with the early Healing Staff/Ashura/Geo Bell carrying you through the early game. Just my 2 cents on this.
Yeah that's all pretty reasonable, looking at the numbers I'm pretty undecided as to whether they should toss that money or not. Regardless, they either have a middling performance without tossing money, or an easy one that requires a huge investment, and either way they end up around the same place ranking-wise, in the middle of the pack. You'll note I did use the presence of the money-throwing strat to tiebreak them above jobs with otherwise similar performances, e.g. Ranger.
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Well, I think everybody agrees about the practical effect of massive overleveling. Elf is right that gratuitous overleveling on one boss, + reflecting it on future bosses, makes a hash of *relative* rankings. However, I think jsh might have a point if there was some kind of "absolute" scale of difficulty, where you get points for relying on obscure or unreliable strats, item use, money expenditure, side trips, grinding, etc. You'd end up with something like:
Siren ease:
Monk: 2
Black Mage: 3
White Mage: 5 (slow win)
Blue Mage: 6 (req. fishing for Blue Magic win)
Knight: 10 (not reliable win)
Thief: 20 (req grinding rare drops or XP grinding)
Sandworm ease:
Most classes: 2-6
Thief: 10
Geomancer: 15
Bard: 16
Berserker: 1000
(Bosses later than Sandworm)
Berserker: 0 (lol Level 50 smash)
Most classes: 0-10
So yeah, that'd accuratley reflect overleveled Berserkers crushing puny bosses, but also make Berserkers look beyond terrible in an overall score, since the point penalty for having to overlevel over par on Sandworm is so gigantic. (Especially to overlevel before the game gives you really really good grinding spots!) Since this style might be kind of annoying to do, I think Elf's compromise of assuming par-level Berserkers is fine, especially since this is closer to the non-SCC experience.
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It is easy. Elf penalises for previous grinding reqs as well.
Yes berserker has an easier time on X for being essentially a Disgaea character. Berserker spent an extra 20 hours prepping for it.
Bottom of the list forever berserker.
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It is easy. Elf penalises for previous grinding reqs as well.
Yes berserker has an easier time on X for being essentially a Disgaea character. Berserker spent an extra 20 hours prepping for it.
Bottom of the list forever berserker.
OK, I can get behind that logic.
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Sandworm is, amazingly enough, actually not the hardest mandatory boss in the game for Berserker SCC. There's one that's actually far worse, even at L99.
Elfboy and jsh at least should know immediately which one I'm referring to.
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I believe that one's a little less bad in GBA onwards at least, but yeaaaaahhh.
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Excal already said my thoughts perfectly.
Also, keep in mind, this is not intended as a SCC analysis, it is a job analysis and I'm just using SCC as a lens through which to do it. It's inspired by fiestas if anything, and I've taken the viewpoint that broadly speaking, what works on the SCC works on the fiesta (at least in part). Advantages broadly translate. The "use 4x Jump to avoid ST attacks" is the first one that completely does not work, so I'm not inclined to hype it myself. Obviously I can see disagreeing so you can move Dragoon up periodically if you feel like it. However, this seemed like an easy fix to make.
I agree that fixing Bard/WM offence is also desirable and I will talk about it at length if I do any final ranking, since it's a relatively easy thing to do. But unlike "I'll just ignore this one strategy" it's far harder to reflect in this analysis moment-to-moment, partly because how much you can improve their offence is highly dependent on what other jobs you draw.
jsh: Grinding is bad. One of the most basic assumptions I make with these lists is that if you have to grind, you're worse than jobs which don't. I acknowledged in the very first post about them that grinding for Mix ASAP is an option if you draw Chemist. However, that's a big negative that the jobs above them don't have to do! So they're going to be lower down until they reach the point where they'd have it naturally. This seems rather inarguable, actually? If you disagree, how far would you move Chemist above on any of the three lists so far and why?
I generally agree with finding it odd to dock WM so much for being a support character when getting it in a Fiesta would be pretty great assuming you have a decent draw of offence focused Fire/Water/Earth crystal jobs (though yes would be terrible up until you get the WC jobs), but honestly the analysis for this is much more interesting than it would be otherwise (they heal. This offsets the amount of healing other jobs have to do. #EveryPostUntilTheEnd). As long as the final rankings don't really reflect this I don't terribly mind it as a thought experiment.
What I would like to see, though, at least in the final rankings, is the jobs grouped / ranked by crystal. I think this would also be interesting to include in the current rankings as well, since party composition is by necessity going to have you take one job from each in a Fiesta. Some notes on utility synergies (Theives helping steal Mix materials/earn Gil for Samurai, getting rare steals for other classes they could potentially be paired with, Control helping blue mages get skills, etc) would be nice, though, and aren't being reflected at all currently because while this was inspired by the fiesta format, in practice you are focusing solely on the SCC aspect of things. It doesn't generally matter for overall rankings, but the extra commentary would be interesting.
Also, on #BerserkerBottomForever, the fact that the strategy for a party with Berserker is semi-frequently gonna be "Kill the Berserker to have them not trigger counters" is the other side of the coin of "Overlevel them to 20+ in fuckin Karnak" is just sad. They did not think that job through all that well when designing it.
Last question, in the scope of taking everything as an SCC, how exactly do Blue Mages get 1000 needles in W1? Don't you need to control a Lamia in order to get them to use it?
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That's right, SCC Blue Mages can't get it at all until world 3 (by which point it's not good for much besides Omega). I largely have been assuming they don't have it, so far, but I'll point it out anyway because IF you draw Beastmaster as well (or are just doing something silly like a normal playthrough) they can.
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Fortunately, Blue Mages don't need 1000 Needles by any means. It's just really nice to have.
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You've already mentioned 1000 Needles for both Titan and Manticore, which is why I was pointing it out and confused about it coming up when otherwise the analyses (EDIT: In practice, if not in intention) have been SCC focused.
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Yeah, I tried to communicate that having that was a big "if" but I realise I didn't do a good job of that, re-reading, for all that it was my intention (and the rankings at the end certainly reflected this, because Blue Mage with 1000 Needles is #1 all day every day against Archeoaevis since it bypasses all his defensive bullshit).
Mental note for something else I should so: take note of how often each blue spell gets brought up in these things. (Will it end up being Mighty Guard just because every Rift boss will be "Mighty Guard means you win, of course"? Stay tuned!)
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And so we're onto World 2! First of all, I'm skipping a couple bosses. The first is Abductor 1, a solo fight you can lose, which essentially makes him optional and certainly irrelevant (you get an ether if you win, OMG). The second is Gilgamesh 1, another solo who is pretty much designed such that any class easily beats him. Thief outslugs him without needing to heal! As such, there's nothing to compare there. Plus, we already have quite enough bosses in this short section of the game. Thus, we move onto...
Gilgamesh (Big Bridge)
In some ways perhaps this is the real final boss of World 1, because you still haven't seen a world 2 shop yet and thus are fighting with the same things we fought the last few bosses with. At least we have a full party this time? Anyway, Gilgamesh has a reasonable stock of HP and a relatively weak array of attacks (the most dangerous being MT attack weaker than Manticore's which is used once every 12 turns). When he drops to about 1/3 HP remaining, though, he counters by casting Haste/Protect/Shell, buffing his durability and doubling his speed, and gains access to Jump, a physical attack which hits quite hard (2HKO most) and ignores both row and evade, which he uses 1/3 of the time. He also has the same 10% evade which several bosses have and it's still a pain in the ass.
One other important thing I should add about Gilgamesh is that he's vulnerable to silence... in the SNES/PSX version. This was very useful as it allowed his limit triplecast buff to be disabled, since everyone but Monk has access to silence (via Mage Masher at worst). In GBA and more recent versions, he gained immunity to this. I'll be analysing the GBA version here.
Knight has a trick here in the Ancient Sword, which has about a 30% chance to inflict Old. While Gilgamesh's magic power is (like most FF5 enemies in worlds 1-2) already at the minimum possible, this does lower his attack, making his basic physicals tink (important, since he uses them a lot) and drops his speed from notably above average to notably below. Anyway, Knight needs 5 rounds to win (maybe 6 with evade), so Gilgamesh will probably get four turns above the limit phase and two below, IF the Knights count HP carefully and don't knock him into the limit at a bad time. This will allow him to output about ~1100 damage before the limit and uhh ~1500 after, which is enough likely win. I don't see a good way to do this without Elixirs, which will tilt things their way. I will also note they really want to be Level 21, at which point Jump stops 2HKOing them, making heal-by-Elixir far more effective.
Monk's funny. Chakra comes out to play again, as Gilgamesh above half HP has bad enough offence that Chakra will likely keep up with it, unless he focuses on one Monk repeatedly (and even then they can toss Potions). Meanwhile, since he uess physicals so often (9/12), they can kill by counters, and dodge the limit entirely. It's not a perfect strategy but it will usually work.
The final fight where Thief has a unique advantage with Hi-Potions, and boy will they need them. They'll need about 62 attacks to win, Potions aren't good enough. Hi-Potions would get them through this, but then Jump 2HKOs and he doubleturns always in form 2. It's unlikely he'll kill one (1/36 chance every round that he uses Jump twice and hits the same person) but if he does they're in a lot of trouble. If not they can probably get through this with 20 Hi-Potions or so. If he does... Phoenix Down + Hi-Potion works. At least they're fast enough to not worry about being tripleturned, some jobs aren't so lucky.
Dragoons do their usual jumping thing, but their offence is wretched here too so they risk being worn down, though being in the back row helps. They'd need around 10 rounds to win. Again, they'll probably need to pull out an Elixir or two, and no ability to inflict Old makes them notably worse than Knight. But... probably better than Thief.
Ninja has Image! Which stops Jump. And indeed most of the rest of what Gilgamesh does. He still has SOME magic offence, enough to make ninjas pull out scrolls, although weirdly once they make it to the limit they're basically home free as he loses everything but an incredibly weak spell called Electrocute then. So... they can probably get by with plenty of normal physicals too, how many scrolls depends on how often he uses magic, probably just 2 or 3 at most. A totally safe win and relatively inexpensive.
Samurai uses Zeninage three times and wins, 3000 gil. Nah, that's excessive. One Zeninage can pretty much avoid almost all the limit phase. 2000 gil is certainly safe, 1000 gil could work if Gilgamesh doesn't use anything scary in the early going.
Berserker is a waste of space as usual, they need 6 rounds and are really slow so Gilgamesh has a 4-3. They can win with a lot of evasion/AI luck but they'll need it.
Ranger being in the back row with healing easily sees them through to the second stage of the fight, but that part is still tricky due to the doubleturning and Jump's 2HKOing. They'll need quite a few rounds, Nightingale CAN pull them through it but it's certainly a dicy affair and the Phoenix Downs may certainly have to come out. One thing that would help a bit is getting a Dark Bow (rare drop in Ronka) which can blind him, but it's not a necessity.
Mystic Knight really wishes I was giving them credit for Silence Spellblade since it'd be pretty great here. Instead... well, like Knight, they have Old via the Ancient Sword. But otherwise their offence is worse than Dragoon and they need to be in the front row. I'm inclined to say they're still above Thief since they're more damaging, durable, and evasive, and Phoenix Downs can somewhat suffice here especially once Old kicks in and only magic/Jump is a threat, but no Hi-Potion steals make it debatable.
Beastmaster REALLY wants to stock up on catches for this fight, they can't afford a drawn-out slugfest any more than Mystic Knight can. Three Sand Bears will remove most of his HP, and so if they soften him up a bit with physicals first that'll do. Another interesting option is to catch a Tarantula which can inflict slow when released, which overwrites his Haste, but it can miss so probably not worth it. Or Treants, which have the advantage of being super-plentiful and thus easy to catch, but they'll need to do about 2000 damage first to soften him up enough and that... actually is fine, they won't lose before then in the three rounds it takes. That's certainly more prep than Samurai, and probably ranks below Monk as well, though above Knight.
Like with Arcehoaevis, this is a marathon boss where White Mage's ability to just plain survive reaises it above many. One use of the Heal Staff repairs everything Gilgamesh does except for Wind Slash (one Cura takes care of that) and Jump. And after they cast Protect on everyone, even Jump enters a territory where one Heal Staff use recovers from it. So... they're in no danger and don't even have to spend MP often, they win slowly as always but win they do. Red Mage, of course, is simliar, except they kill faster, so less danger of screwing something up (White Mage does need like... 80 rounds).
Black Mage has it harder, though they do kill reliably in four rounds. That's better than Knight except they have notably less HP, so they actually get into slightly more trouble on average, especially since they don't have Old. But they can break rods, and should. This is the last time rods will do more than double their base damage! Their best strategy is probably to cast around 6-7 ara spells, wait for the start of the next round, then break 3-4 rods. This results in them taking only three Gilgamesh attacks plus the unavoidable Jump counter and while it's still a bit dicy, it should get the job done. Compared to Beastmaster, they're... actually very similar? The Getting this amount of gil strikes me as slightly less bad than the catching Beastmaster has to do.
Time Mage could also break rods, but they really don't have to. Gilgamesh can be slowed, which is great to start with, but when he casts Haste? Yeah, Slowing him at that point is pretty much the ultimate counter, it quarters his speed again. It's a little annoying to land through Shell. Alternatively, they can cast Mute. For those not familiar with this little-used spell, it's essentially FF5's Silent Lake: silences everyone, immunity be damned. The downside is that in most battles, there is a flag which prevents it from being used. This isn't one! So once they've set up Haste/Slow/Regen on everyone appropriate, they can use Mute and not have to worry about Gilgamesh's buffing. Jump is still painful, but with constant quadraturns and a Heal Staff, it's nothing they can't easily recover from while they poke him to death with knives. Or if they're impatient they can break rods.
Summoner will kill in three rounds. Limit in the middle is kinda bad but they can minimise it by letting him take a third turn and then blitzing him. No resources, but unlike White Mage up there is SOME risk.
Blue Mage... man I dunno. 1000 Needles is amazing if they have it, but to be clear, they probably shouldn't. Otherwise they're basically Black Mage (Flame Thrower instead of Fira, rod breaks still an option) with lower damage (maybe) but a lot more options. They can use Flash to blind him, or hit him with the Ancient Sword, if they want, and Vampire is quite useful before his limit, hitting over 90% of the time (or 100%, if they can land a Dark Spark). Once he activates his limit, though, they run into a lot of problems, because now Vampire will miss half the time and the doubles can overwhelm them, though with old/blind set they may be able to get by since only Jump is threatening. If things start going south they can break out the rods though, one round of that will mostly punch through his limit phase. So... they're a lot like Samurai, with a few more tricks to avoid spending money but will spend more if they do.
Back to the stallers, with Chemist! First of all, I'll note that with the three W1 bosses and the extra World 2 randoms now in the books, grinding for Mix becomes more feasible, though would still be a negative which would drop them a fair bit. That said, the only reason Chemist should have to do that is if they're out of Speed Shakes. Otherwise, this is the fight for them to use the Iron Drafts (Protect!) which I haven't hyped them using yet, they're virtually certain to have at least 3. With that, all of Gilgamesh's damage can be repaired by a Heal Staff. They'll want to haste the Heal Staff user but once that's in place, they should honestly cruise. Compared to White Mage there's a chance they'll have a bad hand and need to do some grinding, but it's not too large of one so sure I'll put them above Summoner.
Geomancer can output some... kinda okay damage with Gaia, somewhat weaker than boosted -ara spells on average. Unlike black mage, though, there's no rod breaking to fall back on, so they're quite a bit worse. They need 5-6 rounds to close the deal, like Knight without the HP/old or Ranger without healing.
Dancer has similar offence to Dragoon but front row / no shield / way less HP lol. Or Mystic Knight with more offence and some weak draining (which gets really bad after Shell) but no shield and way less HP. This is just bad. Thief honestly rates higher, I think Dancer would just need too many Elixirs/Phoenix Downs to win... actually Phoenix Downs don't work well in the limit phase where he can kill two PCs a round, ugh. So elixir farm like crazy? Level a lot? Hope to get real lucky with Gilgamesh's AI/evasion? I dunno, it's bad.
And finally, Bard. Sigh, you had a good run, Bard. But it's back to being terrible. Regen just isn't enough, the other songs don't work. They'll need to farm Elixirs, they have substantially worse offence than Dancer even. The ONE thing they have over Dancer is that, if they use Hide, they can literally turtle until Gilgamesh runs out of MP. He uses Aera once every 12 turns on average and he needs to use it 100 times to run out. So 1200 rounds. That... no, that's gonna take two hours and arguably shouldn't be hyped and even then they're not much better than the worst. So I think they're last.
1. Red Mage
2. Time Mage
3. Ninja
4. White Mage
5. Chemist
6. Summoner
7. Samurai
8. Blue Mage
9. Monk
10. Black Mage
11. Beastmaster
12. Knight
13. Ranger
14. Geomancer
15. Dragoon
16. Mystic Knight
17. Thief
18. Berserker
19. Dancer
20. Bard
Next up: isn't it nice how Red Mage was #1? Because that isn't happening ever again, as we enter the mythical land of "level 4 spells" and in general we get a bunch of major upgrades, the most important of which is storebought Hi-Potions.
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Tyrannosaur
He's undead, has 5000 HP, weak to fire/gravity. On his own turns he hits things modestly. He's all about ??? counters, which he uses 1/3 of the time against physicals and just overkills single targets. He's totally non-threatening since you can just revive from that, and anyway mages don't face it at all while they blow him up with fire. Or you can just use Phoenix Downs on him, they'll hit around 2/3 of the time so you can expect to use 1.5 and win with ~1500 gil spent, FF5 enemies can't counter attacks which miss them so this is perfectly safe.
Honestly that leaves little to say. All physical jobs which do damage for free (i.e. not Samurai/Ninja) need at least 7 hits to beat him so they'll need to use at least two Phoenix Downs recovering from counters anyway, so they just toss Phoenix Downs on him. The only exception is Mystic Knight which 4HKOs so will only have to use one Phoenix Down on average and is thus slightly better!
Chemist can hit him with Berserk via Mix which shuts off his counters and lets them win with Heal Staff from there. His physicals get kinda legit from there especially if they used Blessed Kiss which hastes him, but Heal Staff + a speed shake on the Heal Staff user will keep up, hell they can use Iron Drafts too if they want, it still costs less than a Phoenix Down in total.
Mages meanwhile use Flame Thrower/Fira/Ifrit/Raise/Comet and kill him in a few attacks that don't trigger counters while being safe in the back row.
Berserker can't use Phoenix Downs and sucks as usual. Better unequip those Death Sickles because their random ID fully heals him! They'll provoke an average of 3 ??? counters so they... probably win but it's not certain. Last place but even they're not TOO bad...
So overall this is mages > Chemist > Mystic Knight > other fighters > Berserker. I probably won't count this up for official ranking though because the spread is so low, oh no the worse jobs spend 1500 gil more than the better.
One interesting note about this fight is that in the Mobile/Steam version, Tyrannosaur got a buff: he now counters magic with Poison Breath, closing the hole he had there. (In SNES/PSX/GBA, he only countered earth/wind/poison/holy magic, which you weren't going to use anyway because he's weak to fire.) Poison Breath does heavilly random damage but averages around a low 3HKO to most mages, MT. White/Red Mage get around it by just casting Raise, which he doesn't counter. Time Mage gets around it by using Haste/Slow and healing it off with a Heal Staff as usual. Blue Mage, IF they have White Wind, can do something similar. Otherwise, Blue/Black/Summon will probably all just retreat to Phoenix Down tossing, so they'd fall back to the fighter pack.
I lied, I guess Red Mage is still #1.
Next up: another boss which I am debating whether I should count or not.
EDIT: ??? is a blue magic spell which does damage equal to the caster's missing HP, it is three question marks, it shows up as an emoticon here and I'm going to leave it that way because it amuses me.
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Abductor (Bal Castle)
He's technically a boss, but with 2500 HP and 0 in all defences/evasions he drops fast. 2/3 of the time he uses weak physicals. On odd-numbered turns he may use Hurricane (HP-1), on even-numbered turns he may use Vampire, which is the only scary thing about him. Vampire heals him to full via draining, killing someone if he's been hurt. He's above average speed, but the fastest jobs will go before him.
Broadly speaking, here are the strategies:
a) Kill him in one round: Knight, Monk, Berserker, Ninja, Black Mage, Time Mage, Summoner
b) Kill him in two rounds and outspeed: Thief*, Ranger, Mystic Knight
c) Wait for him to pass two turns, then kill him two rounds. If he he uses Hurricane round 1, use a Hi-Potion: Dragoon, Samurai, Blue Mage*, Red Mage (use Cura instead), Beastmaster, Chemist (use Heal Staff to heal, and speed shakes to enable a blitz), Geomancer, Dancer
d) Lock him down with Stop lol: Bard
*Blue Mage can try to save themselves a Hi-Potion by using Missile, it hits around 70% of the time and if it does in the first two tries they can one-round, otherwise no big. If they have 1000 Needles or White Wind (from other jobs' help) they win 100% with no expenditures too.
*Thief deserves special note here for a couple reasons. One, their two-round is reliant on the Dancing Dagger not fucking up and using Mystery Waltz (confuse is fine, since it hits Abductor!). Two, they have a big opportunity here which they may want to take: they can steal Twin Lances from randoms which can be fought in Bal Castle before the boss. This is a pain because it's a 3% chance to steal one, and most of the rest of the time they get a Hi-Potion instead. So getting one of these is a long, painful process, and they do want 4. This is a major grinding cost (it'll probably take about 16-20 encounters to safely get one, since they may wish to run from the 5-Objet D'Art fights so I will try to look at Thief both with and without it, from here on. The positive effect of this investment will last until after Melusine, though (~9 boss fights). I'll try to scale accordingly. Anyway it makes little difference against Abductor, because he sucks.
White Mage has the worst time here because they can't really avoid seeing Vampire, although they have tricks to reduce it: Shell halves its hit rate, and they can confuse/deconfuse Abductor: while confused he won't do anything and they can't damage him without breaking confuse. Confuse has about a 70% hit rate so over a long fight this could go wrong and if so they have to start again.
Anyway, to sum up: White Mage is the worst here (though still not terrible), while Dragoon/Samurai/Beastmaster/Geomancer/Dancer are the next worst... by which I mean they spend approximately 120 gil on average getting through this fight. I have a hard time caring. This is even worse than Tyrannosaur, honestly, so once again, no official ranking.
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Dragon Pod
Dragon Pod does nothing but summon 3 to 5 Dragon Flowers, which in turn do nothing but use ITD/ITE physicals which add various status: old, blind, confuse, poison, and paralyse. The damage is weak but it can't be reduced by defence and adds up. The flowers, however, have incredibly bad durability, so it's easy to kill them with MT. About the only thing that doesn't is something you'd intuitively think would work well: MT Fira (as well as the rest of L1-3 black magic) doesn't break their decent MDef. The flowers also have decent MEvade, but no status resistances at all, while Dragon Pod has a few holes of its own.
If you have MT, you win. Even more easily than against the bombs.
Kick, strengthened MT Bio, Titan, and Aqua Breath all OHKO the flowers, so just use that. Monk, Black Mage, Summoner, and Blue Mage can meanwhile use their other turns to kill the boss. Any damage works fine, for Blue Mage the best tool is Missile, which they're nearly certain to have. Dragon Pod has no gravity resistance whatsoever and the first Missile will take off 9000 of its 12000 HP, haha. All of these jobs basically rule here.
For Knight, though, say, things are tougher. ... well somewhat. They can try to cut down the flowers, since on turn 1-3 it only summons three so you can kill them and still have an attack left over. On turn 4 it summons all five, so kill the most dangerous four (all but blind, probably). From there on Dragon Pod only summons every six turns, or if it's alone. So don't leave it alone and beat the crap out of it. You'll need to use a few Eye Drops but the damage is nothing so whatever, you win, and Eye Drops cost 20 gil each. One of them can also equip the Silver Specs and another the Bone Mail, to get two people immune to the status if you wish.
Thief has a similar battle plan, with about a third the offence. Unless they have Twin Lances, then they have closer to three quarters of the offence! That said. Lower offence means more time to screw things up when he resummons and more eye drops / Hi-Potions used but uh honestly it still won't be that many. They can use four sets of Silver Specs if they took the trouble to steal them back in W1, they're common steals from a common enemy, but at 40% I still can't consider this free. Not sure where to rank them.
Dragoon's jump shenanigans are useless here, they don't want to give the boss more time to summon. They have more damage than thieves, though less speed, but the comparison works out in their favour, excluding any Silver Spec considerations.
Ninja can pull the same game as Knight, except they also have Image, so any turns the poor little darkness flower sneaks in are useless anyway. They can also throw scrolls, although that means spending like... something approaching real gil in this fight. Maybe. They'll probably "need" 4 if they don't turtle behind Image.
Samurai can use Zeninage but it's a huge waste of money to clear out the flowers. If anything it's best used when all the flowers are dead, since then it 3HKOs the boss for only ~1200 gil a shot. But that's still too expensive for what a sap this guy is. Otherwise they do slightly more damage than Dragoon.
Berserker sucks because they can hit the wrong flowers if they are unlucky and paralyse/old/blind are both pretty annoying (they immune confuse). The Bone Mail can block everything except paralysis. The Death Sickle can ID the boss, sometimes, so that's nice, but isn't saving them from last.
Ranger has more offence than Samurai and their attacks have an 8% chance to ID the boss, which isn't high enough to really hype but helps them be better than Berserker at the one thing Berserker does well, and in the end that's kind of like winning. Speed's nice too.
Dancer can also be thrown in with the random fighters. They have a ribbon to immune a few statuses but otherwise don't compare very well with Dragoon. They can use Flirt for coinflip turn-cancel on the boss... actually this is much better than against Manticore, since flowers sneaking through isn't that bad, they just OHKO them and go back to flirting, or do the usual thing of leaving the blind one alive (which doesn't even prevent flirt). I think this tactic may push them past Dragoon at least.
Mystic Knight can use Drain Spellblade and thus never have to worry about damage ever. They'll probably want to leave the poison flower alive so they always hit, even though their damage is worse this way (the poison flower puts the boss in the back row), and then drain will heal off any damage they take. This is pretty weak offence but it's good enough and they can't die ever, just kill the non-poison flowers if the boss resummons them.
The Beastmaster release of choice here is Aquathorn, which gives a 70+% chance of death if the boss is the only target. Get one on your slowest character (with Kornago's Gourd, this is quite easy, only rating as a slight detour at most), and have the other three kill flowers, then give it a try. If it doesn't work, their offence sits around Dragoon/Samurai level. You can also pull some turn shenanigans to try to get other Aquathorn shots off if you want, but this is really getting into "more prep than this boss deserves" land.
White Mage, like Ninja, can basically shut down the flowers offensively with image. However, they're real bad at killing them (usually 2HKO, 70% accuracy). But wait! They don't have to! They can hit the flowers with Confuse and then Image (... yes) so they'll just waste turns attacking each other and failing. Reset Image every on a flower every time it goes away, then slowly beat down the boss. It's... annoying as hell because you have to keep track of enemy Images yourself and getting confuse to land in the first place is really annoying. This is honestly purely to save time, though, you could just keep Image up on your own PCs and win slowly that way, too.
Time Mage can also try to status out the flowers, but slow is their only permanent one and resetting Stop against the flowers' 30 MEvade is a bit dicy. But they can one-shot flowers with knives (or Comet 91% of the time if they don't want to buy knives), and have Haste to do so before they ever act. They have no reason not to leave the blind one alive if it comes to that, and can use Gravity on the boss to weaken him really fast compared to fighters. ... oh and they can stop the boss, who doesn't have MEvade or Heavy status to resist this. Yeaaah.
If Time Mage can do it, so can Bard! As an added bonus they will stop any flowers who sneak through with this sometimes, and whatever they can one-shot the flowers with even bard physicals anyway. Not as good as Time Mage because they can't Haste, and in theory they are a bit vulnerable to a run of bad luck though uh that just reduces them to the same situation as the vanilla fighters.
Red Mage is annoyed that its MT damage doesn't work, but they still have Sleep, the absolute best status to lock the flowers down with since it never wears off. When used MT, sleep will strike them a little under 30% of the time (double that for ST) so they'll get all the flowers locked down soon enough. A few may sneak in attacks this way although the most dangerous ones (old? confuse?) can always be one-shotted by physicals if sleep misses them. Like Bard they're a bit vulnerable to setting this up, and of course they can't stop the boss from summoning.
Chemist can Death Potion the boss for an instant win. Of course this boss sucks far too much for that (Death Potion requires a Dark Matter, which you only have one of so far unless you fought Prototypes, a W1 super-random). They can haste up and knife down any flowers who sneak through, though, similar to Time Mage without the whole "stop the boss" thing. Honestly this is probably the way to go, no need to waste resources or ingredients here beyond the small amount of gil on Speed Shakes.
Finally, Geomancer. Gaia is pretty good here! They have about a 40% chance to proc Earthquake, which MT OHKOs the flowers and does solid damage to the boss. They also have a 20% chance of Cave-In, which does Meteor-ish damage to 4 random targets (almost always OHKOing any flowers hit). The other 40% is a wasted turn. Still, that's pretty good, even once the boss starts summoning 5 per turn they are virtually certain (over 90%) to keep any flowers from getting turns while simultaneously outputting decent damage against the boss. And if they get the flowers dead and draw Cave-In against the boss, that 3HKOs him.
1t. Monk, Black Mage, Summoner, Blue Mage
5. Time Mage
6. Ninja
7. Mystic Knight
8. Geomancer
9. Chemist
10. Bard
11. Red Mage
12. Knight
13. Thief
14. Ranger
15. Beastmaster
16. Samurai
17. Dancer
18. Dragoon
19. White Mage
20. Berserker
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I did not know that specific flowers did specific status. Huh.
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Well yeah because normally the fight is
Dragon Pod does nothing but summon 3 to 5 Dragon Flowers, which in turn do nothing
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Gilgamesh & Enkidu
The first competent boss since... the last time you fought Gilgamesh. Not bad for a comic relief villain.
He'll use physicals and the odd ST gravity move (Missile or Death Claw, which also paralyses). The scary part of the battle comes once he loess a third of his HP: he'll summon Enkidu who immediately heals him to (probably) full. Enkidu only has 4000 HP, which is rahter paltry, but hides in the back row and has a bunch of annoying or dangerous moves: White Wind (potentially huge healing), Vampire (huge self-healing which OHKOs), and Wind Slash (2-3HKO MT). He also has Web (slow), Missile, Dischord, and Aera. Both are quite speedy, and both act basically randomly, though no one non-physical move can be spammed. Once Enkidu is down you're basically set.
Knight can probably two-round Enkidu... I say probably because they need 6-7 hits depending on level and he has 20% evade, so it's a bit dicy. If they screw up they might see Vampire/Wind Slash and things can get hairy. They can mostly neuter Gilgamesh by once again hitting him with the Ancient Sword's old (he'll still be able to land gravity moves, but their hit rate drops).
Monk is weaker. A lot weaker, three-rounding may be hard, even. (A little easier with Focus.) Otherwise the same set of concerns apply, and they can't use Old. They do have high HP so that Wind Slash is relatively not very good against them. This is probably the first fight where Chakra just can't keep up at all.
Thief, predictably, is bad, even though they can steal a Genji Glove here!!1 The one thing they have going for him is that their two Moonring Blades are back-row OK, unfortunately it'll take like 20 attacks from that to kill, and more from anything else except Twin Lances, which will need closer to 13-14 or so (so only somewhat worse than Monk!). As usual they have good speed for a fighter, but way less HP, and this overall doesn't work out in their favour, as even one Wind Slash puts them in huge trouble.
Dragon has Jump which ignores row and evade, both useful here. In fact, one round of Jumps will kill Enkidu, if you stocked up on Heavy Lances from Suragte. That's pretty good, since again the rest of the fight is easy.
Ninja gonna throw stuff. Two rounds of scrolls for around 1400 gil is the cheapest still-safe option. Their physicals aren't too bad here (especially the Moonring Blade user) so they can mix in some of those and save a little more money. They'll want to. Before Enkidu shows up they can set up Image to feel safer if they wish. Past that, it's interesting to compare them with, say, Dragoon. Their offence is higher so they'll use less Hi-Potions, but it relies on scrolls so they don't really end up any better on cash, and in fact probably worse, considering Dragoon does have an HP lead. Close though. Obviously both do fine.
Samurai will want to throw money when Enkidu shows up. That's roughly 2500 gil down the hole, but it one-shots him (and does a bunch to Gilgamesh besides). Beyond that their physicals will suffice the rest of the way. I'm not sure how I feel about them vs Knight, who spends less money on average but lacks this bailout option and COULD get into trouble if they have bad luck. Mm, safety is good I think.
Berserker can't decide who to hit, but this is still one of their better fights, as both Gilgamesh and Enkidu can be IDed, and IDing Gilgamesh before Enkidu shows up is a great way to win. It's still RNG and requires farming rare drops, so there are limits to how much I want to hype this. At best, four Death Sickles from the back row gives them a ~97% chance to kill Gilgamesh before he can summon, with only a slim chance he'll pull a gravity-KO on anyone before then. Fewer Death Sickles... actually isn't too bad, they just unequip everyone else to do as little damage as possible. Compared to Thief, Death Sickles are faster to get than Twin Lances and win this fight more effectively. Compared to Monk, they actually win more safely, unless they have zero Death Sickles in which case they're much worse. But it's not too hard to get at least one and the impact is spread over many fights, so... sure.
Ranger having a back-row ITE weapon is great, they two-round Enkidu safely. Even better, their attacks have 8% ID, and well, see above. Animal spam can save a little money on items but they shouldn't bother while Enkidu is around, much too risky. They're similar overall to Dragoon but the perks push them over the top, I think speed/healing/ID trumps HP/shields.
Mystic Knight, like Knight, can try to drop Old on Gilgamesh early in the fight. Besides that, though, they should set Drain Spellblade and hack away. This... generally works for surviving (the evade rate both have puts a damper on it), but Vampire can eat them alive still, and their damage is sub-Monk so seeing it is a risk. This is a rare case where a class may want to just attack Gilgamesh even after Enkidu appears so Vampire isn't a thing, they recover from everything else pretty well. Prepare to curse at White Wind though, and various things do poke holes in this a bit (a bad run of missing, doubleturns from the bosses, Death Claw/Thread/Dischord).
Beastmaster is once again best-off throwing Aquathorns at Gilgamesh, each has a 72% chance to land ID, so throwing 3-4 almost always works. Aquathorns are a 100% encounter on the map and you have Kornago's Gourd now, so this actually isn't too much prep... but Samurai can still likely claim their own money represents less of an investment.
White Mage hates Vampire so much, erasing all their progress with OHKO damage. It's used on average every 7.5 turns, and even with Shell to half its hit rate that's really bad when WM has an effective 75HKO. They could get lucky? Going after Gilgamesh doesn't work either since White Wind will heal Gilgamesh for 4000, it's used half as often but always works, and Gilgamesh's defence is higher. So here's what they're gonna do: cast Protect/Shell/Image, and wait for Enkidu to run out of his 1000 MP. This only takes... *calcs* a little over 300 rounds. ... :( During that time they can expect to be hit by about 43 gravity attacks, about 40 Wind Slashes, and see 350 physicals head their way (Elf Mantles will help, but this still means recasting Image about 130 times). Most of the rest they can hopefully use a Heal Staff to recover from, but they may need to occasionally pull out Cura (if say two gravity attacks hit at once), and anyway even using Image that many times will require an Elixir or two.
Black Mage uses Bio and easily one-rounds Enkidu (probably 3HKOs). Oh yeah and then they two-round Gilgamesh after that anyway. God I don't even think of their offence as THAT special at this point but no it's really dumb.
Summoner would be just as dumb, except that Titan only hits Gilgamesh, not Enkidu. Unfortunate! They can still two-round Enkidu with Ramuh if they play their cards right... still requires some effort. No more than Ranger, I suppose, so they trade Ranger's random ID and healing along with some stats for the ability to kill Gilgamesh way faster after? Mmm, actually I think that's a loss. Compared to Dragoon... yeah again killing Gilgamesh faster just isn't worth that much, since Enkidu is the threat. Weird.
Time Mage can hit either boss with Slow, or thanks to Haste they blitz Enkidu super-well with a Comet barrage (kill in 4-5 hits but with haste that's a simple one-round) so no need to even bother there. Compared to Black Mage... it's basically a tie, but yeah the ability to heal an injured TM after a Death Claw/Missile with a Heal Staff wards off the small chance Black Mage has of needing to use a Hi-Potion or Phoenix Down, which is all the tiebreak I need for these two OP picks for this fight. Top!
Blue Mage... depends on spells available. The best way, if they have it, is Dark Spark -> Level 5 Death on Gilgamesh, no limit 4 u. If they don't have that, 1000 Needles is an instant one-round on Enkidu. If they don't have that, Missile shaves off 75% of Enkidu's HP with 55-60 accuracy, and until it hits he can't use fatal Vampires, and then once it does two Aqua Breaths/Flame Throwers will kill him. Meanwhile they can use Vampire themselves if they get hurt. Ha-HA! This feels better than all but the two "our effective offence is so high we win instantly" mages, since the best-case scenario is uber and the worst-case is still pretty good.
Red Mage is starting to feel their lack of L4 spells. Still, they do barely two-round Enkidu, and Cura/Heal Staff/Protect/Ancient Sword are all nice utility options here. So... obviously better than Knight, probably everything up to at least Ninja as well. Versus Summoner, they have less offence (even L2s vs Ramuh), but they do have a few extra tricks... I don't think the tricks are good enough but it's close.
Chemist... mm. No, they really want Enkidu dead, the slow turtle option does not work well as White Mage showed. They can Death Potion him or even Gilgamesh, instantly winning the fight but costing the only pre-Atomos Dark Matter... still, hard to argue this isn't the best use (the main competition is the second seal guardian). Or they can use three Turtle Shells to kill Enkidu with Succubus Kiss, then cruise the rest of the way with Heal Staff / maaaybe the occasional Hi-Potion to ward off anything Gilgamesh does. As far as resources go, you can debate them vs. Samurai, but I'll tiebreak for 'em for now since they have both options. If it turns out that they really want two Dark Matters for the seal guardians I'll move them down one, maybe. If I remember.
Geomancer... hm. Gaia gives them around 40% weak MT, 40% HP-1 (only works on Enkidu, targets him 50% of the time and misses 25%), 20% pretty good MT. That's not really very reliable for not just running headlong into Vampire, but the alternative is knives against the back row, ew. So... all told they kill in around 2-3 rounds on average (relying on a lucky Whirlpool HP-1 mostly, though damage may work too). Compared to Monk they probably kill slightly faster on average, but have less HP... on the other hand thier gameplan isn't screwed up by Vampire as bad (since they can still fish for HP-1). So sure, better than Monk.
Bard... neither status is useful. :( Same problem White Mage has. Yes, like the previous Gilgamesh they can hide and then go away until Enkidu runs out of MP and... okay this is obviously better than what White Mage does during this time at least, and Enkidu does run out 4x faster than Gilgamesh 2 did. That said since even Thief can beat this fight with decent reliability if they spam Hi-Potions / Phoenix Downs until Enkidu doesn't use Vampire, so it's hard to argue that Bard isn't second worst.
Lastly, Dancer. Flirt hits Enkidu, so that can lock him down mostly while the other dancers fish for Sword Dance/Jitterbug on him. Even if that happens their offence still beats Thief. With that strategy... mph. The problem is Gilgamesh will wail on them during this time and they're fragile enough that's a problem, so I think Monk looks better.
Yaaay first boss meriting actual interesting analysis in a while.
1. Time Mage
2. Black Mage
3. Blue Mage
4. Ranger
5. Dragoon
6. Summoner
7. Red Mage
8. Ninja
9. Chemist
10. Samurai
11. Beastmaster
12. Knight
13. Mystic Knight
14. Berserker
15. Geomancer
16. Monk
17. Dancer
18. Thief
19. Bard
20. White Mage
Next up: a boss who sucks. And if you don't have sleep, makes it suck to be you.
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A few days ago I stumbled upon this (http://"https://www.reddit.com/r/ff5fjf/comments/4o65ex/quadzerker_tips_for_this_who_need_to_do_it/") post about Berserkers in SCC conditions. Apparantly the mobile/steam ports made zerks always target whatever the cursor defaults to instead of random enemies, which makes Sandworm a lot less painful (worm counting as frontrow instead of back also helps). On the other hand, Necrophobe becomes a lot worse, since they won't target the two back barriers and you have to resort to the ultra roundabout strategy of zombie Berserkers with Death Sickles equipped + Reflect Rings on your living party members to bounce the random Deaths.
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A few days ago I stumbled upon this (http://"https://www.reddit.com/r/ff5fjf/comments/4o65ex/quadzerker_tips_for_this_who_need_to_do_it/") post about Berserkers in SCC conditions. Apparantly the mobile/steam ports made zerks always target whatever the cursor defaults to instead of random enemies, which makes Sandworm a lot less painful (worm counting as frontrow instead of back also helps). On the other hand, Necrophobe becomes a lot worse, since they won't target the two back barriers and you have to resort to the ultra roundabout strategy of zombie Berserkers with Death Sickles equipped + Reflect Rings on your living party members to bounce the random Deaths.
Yeah, and in theory, Neo Ex-Death is a lot easier too since the problem there is often getting the Berserkers to focus on one target. You do need Zombified Berserkers to survive the long haul, but at least this is more consistent.
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On the other hand they're guaranteed to leave the last target alive for a long, long time which is bad. It'll certainly be easier than SNES/PSX with its dummy targets, but I dunno about GBA.
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Atomos
Atomos is one of FF5's more bizarre boss ideas. While all PCs are alive, he is an offensive god, casting Comet 0-2 (1.33 on average) times per turn, at something like 225% average speed. Comet is random but each has a reasonable chance at a OHKO depending on the target's HP. Once anyone is dead, he'll instead pull them towards him. After a certain number of pulls he will eat them, removing from the battlefield, and thus reactivating his "all PCs are alive" AI. Very rarely he'll mix in other actions with Pull, of which the only really dangerous one is a 1/3 chance of Slowga on the fourth turn someone is dead.
Anyway the core strategies for Atomos are one of the following:
1. Put him to sleep. An unintuitive weakness but by far the most valuable for stopping his game.
2. Revive people periodically while unloading damage as fast as possible. He can eat someone after five pulls in GBA but round-robin revival can still fend him off somewhat, and making him pull someone else for a few turns gives you some grace period to finish him off. Sadly he's quite bulky for an FF5 boss (respectable defences and 20k HP).
3. Cry a lot. If your offence is bad and you can't inflict sleep, you're gonna have a bad time.
Let's break this down into a few groups:
A. Sleep-inducers: Knight, Mystic Knight, Black Mage, Blue Mage, Red Mage
Red Mage and Black Mage cast Sleep at about 60% accuracy, then pelt him to death with magic. Red Mage even has Raise to recover from the people he killed, while Black Mage has far more damage, so aren't in danger of running out of MP. (SCC-style Red Mage probably isn't either, but since this isn't a pure SCC analysis I'll note that on fiestas this is definitely an issue.) Mystic Knight can use Sleep Spellblade. It's not a total lock if you aren't careful, since sleep spellblade actually toggles sleep in practice, but as long as you know this there's no issue, since it's 100% accurate and sleep resets the turn gauge (Atomos has no evade).
Knight and Blue Mage need to rely on the Sleep Blade, which has about a 30% chance to inflict it. Once this is done, Blue Mage can toss magic at him until he dies (Flame Thrower, while the same strength as Fira, is much cheaper, and Blue Mage has more MP). Blue Mage also has access to Dark Spark + Level 5 Death for a quick kill, if they have those (Dark Spark is about 40% accurate). Knight's the worst because their only way to damage him involves waking him up, but they do hit hard at least. They're still pretty much better than anyone who lacks the status, as a result.
B. (Situationally) high-offence jobs: Ninja, Samurai, Time Mage, Summoner, Beastmaster, Chemist
Samurai's Zeninage is one of the traditional recommended ways to get past this roadblock. Atomos' sturdy defence keeps it from wrecking him entirely, but he's still going down in about 6 shots and 8000 gil or so. Of course you can mix in some physicals, but not too many, as Phoenix Downs cost almost as much as a Zeninage so you don't want to get trapped into spamming those.
Ninja can throw around 12 shuriken which costs 30000 gil, ugh. They can retreat to physicals and they do have good speed and base physical damage so this isn't awful, but still like a 28HKO. With wise revival use they should still be able to get through the fight this way, but it'll need a whole bunch of Phoenix Downs, the exact number is hard to predict but could get up to around 10. The risk factor makes me put them slightly below Samurai.
For Beastmaster, sadly there is no release which inflicts sleep at this point. What there is are Yellow Dragons, which when released do 25% of the target's max HP. Four of them exist in this tower, in the form of two monster-in-a-box fights with two yellows each, although each box has a 50% chance to have a red dragon instead (you can run from the fight in order to re-roll to get the yellows). Yellow Dragons are actually very easy to catch as they can be controlled and use Hurricance (HP-1) which they're vulnerable to, and you want to fight these box monsters anyway so the only real downside is the loss of time from running and the lost exp/gil/chance of Coral Ring drops. The average amount of money lost alone (assuming the sell price of Coral Rings) actually probably exceeds what Samurai would spend, though.
Time Mage can haste up and then pelt Atomos with Comets. They also have Return for those rare times where Atomos kills two people with his opening turn, and can recast Haste to remove Slowga, both nice perks other classes lack. Anyway this kills considerably faster than Ninja, though not as fast as Samurai/Beastmaster, but of course doesn't require the setup or money they do. I think the perks add up.
Chemist can also haste up and use pretty good offence, in the form of Succubus Kiss. They can expect to blow around 13 Turtle Shells on this, as well as the Speed Shakes and a few Phoenix Downs as usual. Less safe than Samurai/Beastmaster, though, and requires at least as large an investment, but still notably safer than Ninja so their placement is obvious.
Finally, Summoner. Nothing exciting here, their damage is similar to Turtle Shell!Chemist but no haste and no resources lost, which... honestly works out in their favour, they're still in the same zone of "one revival is good enough" like Time Mage, but without TM's perks. I have a hard time saying where they go compared to Samurai and Beastmaster so I'll split the difference and put them in the middle.
C. Uh oh.
To be honest on fiestas you rely heavilly on jobs from the above two categories. Past here, things get bad. Of the remaining jobs, Monk has the best offence, especially with Focus. It's pretty similar to Ninja outside of the fact that they're slower... but some of that is offset by good HP often buying them an extra turn here or there. Of course they can't retreat to throwing things if they need an extra offensive push, so they are worse.
From there on, we can kinda count down the offence. Everyone from here on has serious trouble outracing Atomos eating the entire party. It's not impossible depending on his move choice and how well Comet kills people but it'll need some luck. Dragoon does around 473 (Jump is useless), Ranger around 418, Thief does 700 with Twin Lances and 232 otherwise, Geomancer around 380 (randomised due to Gaia luck), Dancer around 400 (randomised). Some of these figures rise a bit with the one Dancing Dagger, I'm not mathing that.
Ranger notes that it can grind for Rapidfire to more than double its damage (getting it out of this hellhole), Thief notes that its offence with Twin Lances is reasonable enough and this actually takes less grinding than getting Rapidfire this early. Dancer notes that if you get a Lamia's Tiara via a rare steal their offence goes a lot, but Thief laughs at the idea of raising them up for that compared to them.
Berserkers do more damage than this group pre-twinking (but less than Twin Lance Thief, Monk, etc.). However, they can't revive to stall Atomos' game, so in practice yeah they suck and will probably lose at this level. That speed is awful too, even though the HP may make up for it a... little? Nah probably not.
Bards have worse offence still, but they CAN Hide until Atomos runs out of MP casting Comet. He only needs to cast it 1428 times! This will probably take a few hours. During this time most of the other classes can grind a bunch and/or reroll for the 1/8 Dancing Dagger Sword Dance a few times.
Finally there's White Mage! They have Shell. This reduces Comet to merely 440 damage, which one Heal Staff can mostly offset. Atomos still averages around 3 Comets per round so uh yeah this is ugly but... they can stall somewhat! Since they kill in 350-400 attacks or so they'll have to. The good news is they have and can cast Cura over 100 times before needing an Elixir, each of which grants them around 20 or 40 more Curas. The bad news is that sometimes Atomos will cast over 4 Comets a round (if he gets a tripleturn and some luck) and more often he will doublecast Comet on one character, which will kill them more often than not (11% chance for this focused doublecast, total chance of death probably slightly lower). So that draws a Phoenix Down or pricy Raise. He'll run himself out of Comets in slighlty more time than it takes to kill him, probably, but it's close. Of course this means that once again, White Mage sadly just has a worse version of the Bard strategy. Oh well. Last battle where White Mage is this offensively inept, I promise!
1. Mystic Knight
2. Black Mage
3. Blue Mage
4. Red Mage
5. Knight
6. Time Mage
7. Samurai
8. Summoner
9. Beastmaster
10. Chemist
11. Ninja
12. Monk
13. Thief
14. Ranger
15. Dragoon
16. Dancer
17. Geomancer
18. Berserker
19. Bard
20. White Mage
-
Seal Guardians
There are four of them, each with 7777 HP. At first they use nothing but weak physicals (though they are quite fast, ranging from 115 to 145% speed or so), but if you knock one below 3000 HP, it starts spamming a powerful MT magic attack of its element (wind, water, earth, fire... although water's Aqua Breath is technically non-elemental since FF5 is drunk). Even one of them using a MT attack while the other three use physicals is scary; two or more using them at once is bad news indeed and should be avoided. 3000 HP isn't that hard to dodge if you count carefully, but not trivial either.
It's worth noting that each one absorbs one of fire/earth/water/wind while reacting to the others normally, while the other four elements are all nulled.
Reflect Rings (1/16 drop in Barrier Tower) can block the fire/wind attacks, Flame Shield (one optionally available in this dungeon, but it means no Aegis Shield) or Flame Rings (super expensive in W1) can absorb fire and somewhat trivialize the fight.
Knights hit hard, which is helpful. In fact, they should be able to two-round a crystal, with the first round not dropping them into a limit, so if they sync up and smash they can avoid any problems. They might need to throw in a Hi-Potion or two but this should work, though it might not at somewhat higher or lower levels.
Monks don't hit as hard, but Focus dodges limits really well. They have to be a little careful about Counter and criticals triggering the limit too soon, but they should manage well enough. More HP to count though.
Thief can't dodge limits very well even with Twin Lances, and is hopeless without them. So they'll have to withstand at least one MT attack, possibly two in a row, as they blitz the enemies down. Two in a row is a huge problem. Reflect Rings can help a bit but ugh.
Dragoons can store up a lot of damage at once and kill with a round of Jumps to avoid limits. They can also hang in the back row and keep shields (more def actually help a lot in this fight because the guardians are high-multiplier but low-atk), so they... actually outperform Knight? Yeah, speed ices it. Strange.
Ninja does similar damage to Knight, again might need to do some annoying HP counting. Faster, less HP. But they also have Image (can mostly shut down the guardians outside their dodgeable limits), or Throw if they'd like a little extra push e.g. at lower levels.
Samurai can throw money, and at Level 26-31 (which is very likely) they two-shot the guardians with no limit triggered. Boom. This costs 11-12k gil, though, which is rather steep. Otherwise their physicals suck, better than no-Twin Lance thief but that's about it. It's good enough that if they count HP well they'll only need to see one limit turn in a row, and they do have more HP than thief, and potentially a Flame Shield. I'm not really sure how to rate this, somewhere between Knight and Berserker.
Berserker once again wants to hide in the back row and pull out any Death Sickles they have. It will proc around 8% of the time which is pretty bad, there's a real risk that even in the back row they'll knock a crystal into its limit first, since they do around 8% of a crystal's non-limit-phase HP per swing even in the back. Reflect Rings do help but overall their odds suck.
Ranger has the Killer Bow to do the ID thing, and this time they get to choose who they're hitting and hey it's even just as accurate. It's still shoddy odds to ID one this way, so they have a few options: they can toss Hi-Potions to heal the enemy crystal (... yeah), switch to another target and try to ID that one, or just go for a blitz, but uh they're bad at that (similar to Samurai). They do have Dark Bows to blind the crystals, and can try to use Animals for healing, although it can also throw out some random damage so it makes HP counting a pain.
Mystic Knight has Drain Spellblade to heal off any physicals they deal with, and even can probably slug through a MT attack with it, especially the weaker ones and especially since they have so much def. Fire crystal's a touch scary even so, but as long as they leave it for second to last (air's in the back row) they should have no issues. No counting shenanigans needed.
Beastmaster... Aquathorn ID still exists, but it's no longer very accurate (27% or so). Alternatively they can catch Ironbacks, which hit incredibly hard (6k) so they can just weaken the four crystals a bit then throw out four of those. Boom, dead. The problem is that Ironbacks are a pain to catch with their high def; it's possible via controlling them, but it's a slog. Other releases... well, they can try to catch Kuza Beasts instead (easier, but only do about 2400 or so), get the crystals all to just over 3000, then release one and followup on the target with finisher physicals. This is ugly. I feel confident in saying they're below Samurai and above Berserker.
White Mage finally, finally has a damage upgrade! Sure, it's just one Morning Star, but it does real damage. Protect + back row reduces the seal guardian damage to just plain pathetic, Heal Staff probably keeps up just fine. Shell makes the MT attacks not too bad, two Curas at most will keep up with them while you kill. Reflect's also a fun option for fire/wind since they can kill their buddies for you. All things considered this is... pretty good! Not having to worry about counting HP, lots of options, it's slow but you win easily.
Black Mage has -aga spells, bow before your new god. Firaga literally one-rounds a crystal, except fire. Sadly the fire crystal is a huge problem for them, they'll just have to pull out Air Knives and hit it to death. It's quite sad how they just get wrekced by Firaga, but short of grinding for a Flame Ring they can't really avoid seeing at least two in a row and that's very difficult to deal with. Strange with how well they kill three of 'em, but the last one just presents too big a wall.
Time Mage has both Hastega and Slowga which work here. They can fish with Graviga to lower a crystal to near death then finish with Comets, or just try their luck busting through with random damage. Graviga is probably the way to go but it doesn't matter much, haste/slow tilts this ridiculously in their favour compared to almost any other job. Oh yeah and of course they can heal.
Summoner, unlike black mage, does in fact have multiple elements which work here, and Titan is great as always. There is still HP counting because if you screw up you'll see three limits at once but it's extremely easy not to since they hit harder than even Knight (never mind the number of targets). They can cast Golem to protect themselves in the meantime, and then deal with the earth crystal. Which is actually kinda annoying, they can either use Ifrit and count HP carefully (they'll still see one Earth Shaker) or break a couple Flame Rods (first serious use for rod breaking in a while!).
Blue Mage... well, they can use Death Claw, which is super-inaccurate but as soon as it hits one more poke kills. Alternatively they can get Aeroga (it's a pain to get before this fight, though easy to get from this fight! ... which doesn't help) which horribly blitzes down all but the air crystal, who can be finished either safely with Flame Rod breaks or 1000 Needles or in more risky fashion with Flame Thrower. If they have neither of those, or want to kill the air crystal after using Aeroga, 1000 Needles of course works well if they have it. Flame Thrower or breaking fire rods can finish the air crystal, though you'll take a bunch of damage doing it. Weird case where the best-case scenario is pretty good but their worst-case is fairly low. Still, honestly, they probably have Death Claw by now (so many places to learn it).
Red Mage is like White Mage... without Shell or Reflect. They have more damage but it's no longer much more, and no Shell makes them significantly worse. They really need to spam Cura (at least three) to keep up with a MT attack, more for the fire crystal, and that's not terribly acceptable with the speed split.
Chemist can buff with various drinks. Mix Levisalve will make a mockery of the earth crystal, Resist Fire (requires an ether for each) means you win because of fire absorption and the fire crystal being the strongest; costs over 6000 gil though. Lower-cost efforts exist with drinks + Hi-Potions + air knife beatdown (use the Dark Matter from Atomos to kill off the wind crystal if you want). Also probably in that "hard to say but probably worse than Knight due to the extra effort/cost" group, but likely the best of the bunch?
Geomancer... Gaia is kinda okay damage but can't blitz down any crystal worth a damn (and backfires against air, which is a double penalty since of course air knives do too), so yeah it's all about killing with physicals. Uh this is strictly worse than Red Mage, and could well compete with Berserker for ineptitude. They'll want to resort to grinding for reflect rings maybe but that has its own host of problems like making it hard to finish off the last crystal because it will start healing itself. Somehow this seems more annoying than resetting until Berserker procs ID enough.
Bard can buff speed like crazy while the crystals are using weak physicals, which helps their blitzing power later in the fight. They can get up to over 3x average speed which actually lets them blitz pretty well! They'll need to use various Hi-Potions while setting this up but it works.
And Dancer... well, they can try to use Flirt to lock down whichever crystal they're in the process of blitzing, though the speed makes that kinda scary. Otherwise they're a frail front-row job, ew, so yeah even the physicals add up. They blitz better than Geomancer at least? Significantly at that.
1. Time Mage
2. Mystic Knight
3. White Mage
4. Blue Mage
5. Summoner
6. Ninja
7. Dragoon
8. Knight
9. Chemist
10. Monk
11. Samurai
12. Bard
13. Ranger
14. Beastmaster
15. Black Mage
16. Thief
17. Red Mage
18. Dancer
19. Berserker
20. Geomancer
-
Exdeath
Exdeath is your everyday major boss. All of his stats are solid, and he has a big varied skillset which can do plenty of stuff. Above half HP he runs a ten-turn cycle which includes Doom (kills in 6.5 Exdeath turns) on turn 1, Reverse Polarity (switches rows, MEvade-subject) on turn 2, Earth Shaker on turn 5, Hurricane (ST HP-1) on turn 7, and the most dangerous, Zombie Breath on turn 8, which is highly random but averages out to a low 2HKO MT (and can OHKO lower HP) and changes people into zombies. Finaly on turn 10 he can fire off Level 3 Flare which is brutal if your level is divisible by 3. All of these moves have a 2/3 chance of happening, otherwise he'll mix in basic physicals and Vacuum Wave, the latter of which is borderline OHKO to the front row.
Below half HP he just doubleacts using only physicals, Vacuum Wave, and -aga spells, which are solid 2HKO to one target if not resisted (there is an Ice Shield and optional Flame Shield for absorption, and various diamond gear which halves lightning). At all times in the battle, he has a 1/3 chance to counter with Dispel on a random target. He doesn't counter magic in this way. You can grind for Reflect Rings in Barrier Tower (rare drops) which go a long way to crippling the second phase, but it's generally not necessary.
Knight needs about 16 hits to hack through the first phase. They'll burn plenty of Hi-Potions doing this, and being front-row + no shield isn't great (although they can do shenanigans involving a mix of back row healers with shields and front row 2H attackers) though the HP to tank Vacuum Wave is nice. I feel fairly confident that that'll usually win but they'll need to burn plenty of Hi-Potions and Phoenix Downs.
Monk does significantly less damage and has no shield option, though Counter does add up. Thief is faster but much more fragile and less damaging than even Monk even with those Twin Lances (without, lol. At least they have one for sure now, there's a chest in this dungeon with one).
Dragoon can dodge a few of the key bad moves (Earth Shaker, Zombie Breath) with Jump, and hang out in the back row with shields which is nice. Their offence is super-awful however.
Ninja finally has a Twin Lance of their own, so they can hit pretty hard with that. They also have Image which goes a long way in surviving Exdeath's physical game which is far scarier than that of most bosses, but its utility is weakened by the random Dispel counters (which Ninja triggers twice per attack. Like Knight they'll probably want to use a mix of rows, with at least one dedicated attacker with the Twin Lance and Image in the front. They can also throw things for an extra offensive push, as always.
Samurai can spend about 20k gil throwing money at Exdeath, and obviously it gives them a relatively safe and easy win, as with back row + shields they'll only need to use a relatively small number of items on top of this. They suck if they try to fight this with basic physicals, though. Compared to Dragoon they're certainly much simpler but they do spend a lot of money, a lot more than Dragoon if they know which turns to dodge. Could go either way there.
Berserker sucks. This is a long fight where healing with Hi-Potions/Phoenix Downs gets you through. Meanwhile they need 40 attacks to kill and probably aren't living that long, though with Reflect Rings they and some RNG luck I'll acknowledge they have a chance.
Ranger can toss out evade-ignoring attacks from the back row, though only the Hayate Bow user does worthwhile damage so everyone else will probably just take up Hi-Potion duty or maybe even fish for Nightingale. They can also grind for Rapid Fire which will give them extremely good offence. It's no longer especially far out of reach since Exdeath Castle pays out so much ABP.
If in the front row, Mystic Knight can heal slightly less than a Hi-Potion with their physicals, which is neat. Though they do miss 10% of the time, and honestly this really only offsets how much harder some of the other jobs can hit. They are pretty fast at least to cut down on those doubleturns.
Beastmaster... well, Yellow Dragons are back as a random. Release four and you win. They're still really easy to catch (control, use HP-1), and two of them are a 35% encounter on the upper floors. As far as kill buttons go this is both faster and easier to set up than Samurai's, and honestly probably beats out every other physical job too.
White Mage has a whole bunch of stuff which shuts Exdeath down: Protect, Blink, Shell. Once he's below half HP they can also set up Reflect and watch Exdeath kill himself. They can also take advantage of his "Level 3 Flare every 10 turns 2/3 of the time" and nuke him for 4000 damage (since yes, L3 Flare is reflectable and his level is 66). Otherwise the only thing he has that poses a remote threat to White Mages is Doom which forces them to revive every so often. They can attack him if they want, but the Dispel counters may make those not worth it. They can also grind for rare drop Judgement Staves and break those but this is annoying; still, those will hit very hard. So the reflect strat is the way to go, if they know his AI well enough to know when to do it.
Black Mage just hits like a truck, three-rounding Exdeath (if you have Reflect Rings, they two-round instead). This is a ball lightning fight and you can get into some trouble despite this, although if you slow down a little to heal or recover from Reverse Polarity before triggering the limit you should cruise, as Exdeath does nothing in his first four turns above half HP which is that scary.
Hastega slants things incredibly in Time Mage's direction, and their offence doesn't trigger Dispel, so even though it's not super-awesome it cuts through Exdeath really well. They may need to use a few Hi-Potions, as eell as a Phoenix Down to recover from Doom (or possibly a focused doublecast below half health), but this is still better than the various fighters.
Summoner for once is a defensive class, as Golem/Carbuncle makes a mockery of pretty much this entire fight. Earth Shaker is the one big thing which goes through this that they're likely to see, and one attack just isn't enough. Might need to use a Phoenix Down on Doom, though. Although Exdeath doesn't give ABP so uh maybe don't even bother...? Yeah whatever, the ease of use puts them above anyone else so far. Only thing you can hold against them is that they have to fight Carbuncle. (Although honestly they can survive with just Golem if they really wanted, just burns more Hi-Potions.)
Blue Mage has some decent offence here in the form of Aeroga, behind only Black Mage. They have all the perks of fighter jobs otherwise (shields + lightning resistance). White Wind, if they snagged it via the Dancing Dagger in this dungeon, works well at repairing damage and saves them on Hi-Potions as well as turns, while Level 2 Old (used once every 12 turns by a common random here) wrecks Exdeath's speed and physical damage (his magic is still fine though, so White Wind is more important). For extra silly bonus points Level 2 Old and Level 5 Death can be comboed into an instant kill. It takes some timing but with four blue mages to do it you can just brute force said timing. Anyway, White Wind alone probably propels them into the top spot, and that's easier to get than Carbuncle honestly, never mind what the rest of their tricks do.
Red Mage damage here remains just sad. Good news is it's magical so it doesn't trigger counters which would remove their Protect, which is a nice thing they have that, say, Thief, doesn't. And there is still Cura, or rod breaking (although the latter does trigger Dispel, and isn't that much stronger than say, a Knight physical, at this point, though it is evade/row-ignoring). I'm inclined to put them below all the (non-berserker) shield users, although their various utility probably does beat out Ranger and those below.
Chemist can haste up and double their HP, and Hi-Potions still heal 1000. Their preferred method of offence would be to farm a bunch of Dragon Fangs for Holy Breath which will probably 8-9HKO him or so. If they want to go more slowly, they can, but again either way the annoying thing is Dispel removing Haste (and Protect if they get hit by that) so honestly Dragon Fangs are the way to go. This is probably less resource intensive than Samurai's strategy, and safer too, but it's still pretty darn costly, and it is more resource-intensive than catching four Yellow Dragons.
Geomancer does less damage than Thief with less speed and no lightning resistance. They can do full damage from the back row at least but I don't think that makes up for it.
Bard can go for maximum speed again, which helps their healing game, but this time they don't have a limit boss to stall against, so they'll need to heal a lot, and with their low HP they're extre vulnerable to things like high-variance zombie breath. So... once they have their speed buffed, they have an easier time surviving than many other jobs, but until then the awful HP really hurts and with their law offence I doubt they end up saving much in terms of healing items.
Dancer has even less HP than Bard, and no healing beyond unreliable Jitterbugs which suffer against Exdeath's mdef. They're still better than Berserker but only because everyone is.
Mage domination is go.
1. Blue Mage
2. Summoner
3. Black Mage
4. White Mage
5. Time Mage
6. Beastmaster
7. Chemist
8. Ninja
9. Knight
10. Samurai
11. Mystic Knight
12. Dragoon
13. Red Mage
14. Ranger
15. Monk
16. Thief
17. Geomancer
18. Bard
19. Dancer
20. Berserker
-
Antlion
Another scrub boss. Antlion can be annoying with Dischord, which halves your level, but aside from that its best damage is around 300-350 with a front-row physical, less than half that to back row targets. It can also occasionally use a really weak ITD magic attack which sets Sap for a while. He's kinda fast and has a little evade I guess? You fight him with only two PCs, Bartz and Krile.
Knights take Antlion out in probably four rounds or so, maybe five. There's a slim chance they'll need to use a single Hi-Potion if he focuses on one person and hits every time, and/or the knights run into some bad accuracy luck. They can also try to hit him with the Sleep Blade, this probably isn't worth it but the option is there.
Monks need a few more hits and Dischord hits them harder, although Counter is neat and helps a bit. Three rounds of Focus will probably do it (i.e. 4.5 rounds or so), which actually isn't too different from Knight aside from the extra Dischord vulnerability.
Thief is ensured to have at least 50% of their party with Twin Lances, that's something. Still has notably lower offence/durability than Monk.
Dragoon has back row and shields, Dischord may slow their offence but their durability is very good, Antlion probably like 9HKOs them on a good day. Compared to Knight, they're pretty similar overall if you don't hype Jump avoiding entire ST turns, but quite a bit better if you do, and the later you get in the game the more having Jump on your entire team is reasonable, especially against this two-person boss.
Ninja has Image which shuts down Antlion utterly beyond the weak Digestive Acid every four turns. They can also use Water Scrolls, which he's weak to, but honestly why spend the money when physicals work just fine?
Three shots of Zeninage send Antlion running. They can also just chip away at him slowly. Having shields and Shiradori makes Antlion particularly inept at killing them, but the offence is too low and front-row only to impress on a level of Dragoon or Knight.
Berserker hits... hardish, with shields and all that fun stuff. Better than Samurai since this fight is so damn simple. They still don't hit as hard as Knight, though, and having shields is offset by worse speed and lack of ability to heal if somehow anything DOES go wrong.
Ranger has reasonable back-row offence, especially with the one Hayate Bow and its 25% chance of Rapidfire. They're Dragoons but with more offence and less durability. Less offence if Jump is hyped as total invinicibility though.
Mystic Knight has Sleep Spellblade. Uhhh the 10% evade means that Antlion might occasionally do something useful? Yeah not really, not win Drain Spellblade is also a thing in this fight.
Beastmaster isn't getting any hype for Release here with how easily everyone wins, fortunately they have back-row offence. It kinda sucks though. Probably puts them a little ahead of Thief? If Thief goes back row then Beastmaster is better in every way, front row Thief has more offence by quite a lot but a lot more fragile and I don't think the speed difference quite makes up for this.
White Mage uses Berserk + Blink, collects victory. Next.
Black Mage 3HKOs. Oh yeah and they have sleep if they want to use it.
Time Mage can use Hastega/Slow/Old, but hey if all the status misses they might... yeah no, this is still silly easy.
Summoner shuts down the fight outside of Digestive Acid with Golem, but their offence is poor because Antlion nulls earth. Ramuh's decent enough offence, kills in 7-8 rounds so uh they'll only see two Digestive Acids so uh they win 100% of the time too.
Blue Mage as always depends what they have, but Aeroga is basically a guarantee and that puts them into "haha blow you up with too much offence" tier along with Black Mage, though slightly weaker. I should also mention Time Slip (sleep + old) wrecks this guy if they have it.
Red Mage has sleep then can cast weak -ara spells, they'll need close to 20 but that's not an issue. Sleep can miss of course but it only needs to land once.
Chemist doesn't really have any specifically great options here unless they want to waste rare things (and they don't). But Heal Staff hits offset Antlion offence pretty well and their own Air Knives get the job done. Worse than those who have Image or other lockdown moves but better than the rest due to saving a small amount of money.
Geomancer has back-row offence with Gaia which is actually pretty solid, Ignus Fatuus sucks but the other two things (Stalactite and Wind Slash) hit for low four-digit damage, and they can do this from the back row. THis ends up pretty similar to Ranger, but I think the worse speed pushes them just behind.
Bard offence is very bad so Antlion can slowly grind them down. Their Regen does put a dent in his offence at least! They'll win this with no trouble and they're still probably the worst job here, which says everything you need to know about Antlion.
Dancer has a lot more offence than Bard but less than Thief, not much to say past that.
Here's the list I came up with, which is more than I bothered to do for Abductor. That said, I wouldn't really put too much stock in this ranking, because this fight is so easy. Like Tyrannosaur/Abductor, everyone wins and we're just quibbling over what small amount of money or time is spend on winning.
1. Black Mage
2. Blue Mage
3. White Mage
4. Summoner
5. Time Mage
6. Red Mage
7. Mystic Knight
8. Ninja
9. Chemist
10. Dragoon
11. Ranger
12. Geomancer
13. Knight
14. Berserker
15. Samurai
16. Monk
17. Beastmaster
18. Thief
19. Dancer
20. Bard
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Gargoyles
They're like a crappy version of the Purabolos from two worlds ago. There are two of them, and if one ever gets a turn while the other is dead, it will revive it to full. Otherwise they use physical attacks similar to Antlion's (but at least there are two of them?) and each one is about half as durable as Antlion. Uh huh. 1/3 of the time every 5 rounds a gargoyle may use Transfusion to fully heal the other and sacrifice itself, of course hopint to be revived a moment later. They have a lot of status holes even by FF5 boss standards, though decent MEvade protects them a little. One Gargoyle is in the back row, which trolls physical fighters somewhat. (Of course that means its own physicals suck that much more.)
Knights drop them in four hits, or roughly twice that many to the back row one. So that's four rounds if two hit the back one and one hits the front one, though 10% evasion can mess with your plans, as can Transfusion if that comes out. If you have the Brave Blade (which is a detour at this point) then that can really wreck a Gargoyle, 2HKOing the front one and 3HKOing the back, though you'll still need to be careful to kill them both at once. In four rounds the gargoyles could scare the Knights a bit, but only if they hit a lot and focus somewhat.
Monk is similar only Counter is better than before due to all the physicals which get thrown your way. Criticals are actually a bad thing here, and the lower offence means you're more likely to see Transfusion. Thief has lower offence still, as well as lower durability meaning it's more likely they'll need to heal.
Dragoon offence remains bad and Jump increases the chance you see Transfusion. They remain very tanky, though (if less so than against Antlion, since Gargoyles have higher attack but a lower multiplier), so they can afford that to happen a time or two.
Ninja's Image totally shuts down the Gargoyles once again. Throw is a reliable finisher if they need it. Still, this is very safe and easy.
Samurai 2HKOs here for 6000 gil. Or they slug away with physicals slowly, but they do have loads of evade so they'll probably be fine.
Berserker, after a decent showing against Antlion, is back to being terrible here since of course they can't reliably kill one Gargoyle over the other. They pretty much just have to get lucky with Death procs, but against their MEvade the chances are poor. They could lose! A bad thing to say about a job in this fight.
Ranger has ITE and can ignore row so that's pretty nice, although their damage is flaky with the random procs off their weapons. Should be fine, just put the Hayate Bow on the fastest so the other two can finish. They... probably win before Transfusion has any chance to be used, unless they get quite unlucky or they get a weird badly-timed Rapidfire or crit. Even if it does happen they're in the back row so quite safe.
Mystic Knight uses Sleep Spellblade, puts both to sleep, and does that fun sleep-toggling thing until they win. 10% evade COULD screw this up but it's pretty unlikely.
Beastmaster can catch a couple Triffids, lower each Gargoyle to about half HP, and release 'em. Or they can just whip the gargoyles to death; as a bonus, they can be paralysed! Doesn't last long but it helps. They'll want to alternate hits of course.
White Mage has a few strategies, but the most fun is to turtle behind Blink until one uses Transfusion, then immediately Berserk the other, preventing it from using revival. If they don't want to wait for that they can always berserk both and start hacking away, but this feels like the fastest. Compared to Ninja they are pretty similar but having a guaranteed way past the revival at the end puts them slightly ahead.
Black Mage can use MT aga spells which 4HKO both, so uh they get hit by a few physicals? Nothing that can kill them even fully focused though. Summoner is similar, Titan works fine here so kaboom. Blue Mage splits Aeroga but basically accomplishes the same thing, still depending on level they might fail to two-round with bad luck. They have loads of other options like Level 3 Flare (if they got it), Time Slip, White Wind to survive a few extra rounds while killing more slowly... yeah whatever they're also on the top tier.
Time Mage can slow them down with Slowga or Old and of course Haste up themselves then barrage them with Comets, just hitting whichever one has taken less damage. They have it tougher than the above, but it's still pretty easy, 12 Comets still does it on average and Hastega gives them loads of time.
Red Mage puts both to sleep then hits them with spells until they die, like Mystic Knight without the toggling thing. Sleep's accuracy leaves something to be desired (50-60%) but that's good enough.
Chemist can also wait for Transfusion then use Berserk, although their berserk-inducing either needs a Turtle Shell or also sets Haste. Still, a hasted healer of their own takes care of that if they go that route.
The only useful thing Geomancer gets out of Gaia here is Poison Mist, which can poison them both... admittedly that's not a bad idea. But their offence is pretty bad even with that considered and they have no way to stop Transfusion.
Bard can inflict Romeo's Ballad to stop them, although it wears off fast and fails around 35-40% of the time so it's best viewed as a way to mess with their offence. Still, it buys them more time for regen, and they can buff speed too if they wish. They probably should, because the faster they get the easier it will be to lock one of them down after a Transfusion or when trying to finish.
Dancer has their tricks nulled so they're not going to be very scary here. If they go grab the Chicken Knife and it's reasonably powered up then it has a pretty potent Dance, so that's something.
This fight is more of a real one than the previous so is probably more worth counting, but is still pretty easy.
1t. Black Mage, Summoner, Blue Mage
4. Time Mage
5. Red Mage
6. Mystic Knight
7. White Mage
8. Ninja
9. Ranger
10. Chemist
11. Knight
12. Samurai
13. Bard
14. Monk
15. Dragoon
16. Beastmaster
17. Thief
18. Dancer
19. Geomancer
20. Berserker
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I'll be getting back to this soon, but for now, here are some stats! Essentially, I tried to figure out the average performance of each job, by assigning each job a score out of 100 for each boss and averaging all the scores each job got over the course of each world. This method is far from perfect, even if you assume the rankings so far are 100% accurate (which they aren't, as per previous discussion), because boiling everything down to ranking ignores that (a) some bosses are more challenging / more important than others, and (b) all gaps are not created equal. So don't put too much stock in this. However, I thought the trends were interesting to see.
Methodology for anyone who cares:
When 20 jobs are present, I assigned last place 5 points, then 5 more points for every rank above that.
With 16 or 14 jobs, I did the same, except that last place started with 15 and 20 points respectively, thus keeping the average the same, i.e. 52.2.
With 11 jobs, I assigned last place 23 points, then 6 more points for every rank above that, so the average is still 53.
With 6 jobs, I assigned last place 38 points, then 10 more points for every rank above that, so the average is still 53.
Anyway, have some numbers~
World 1 (15 bosses)
1. Red Mage, 82.1
2. Summoner, 77.3
3. Black Mage, 71.9
(Samurai, 71.7)
4. Ninja, 70.5
5. Blue Mage, 69.0
6. Time Mage, 65.2
(Dragoon, 56.7)
7. Monk, 55.1
8. Ranger, 51.9
9. Beastmaster, 51.5
10. Knight, 50.5
11. Bard, 46.9
12. Mystic Knight, 42.8
13. White Mage, 38.9
14. Geomancer, 35.0
(Chemist, 26.7)
15. Thief, 22.7
16. Berserker, 21.6
(Dancer, 16.7)
The earth crystal jobs are only around for 3 bosses, hence them being in parentheses.
World 2 (6 bosses, Tyrannosaur/Abductor excluded)
1. Time Mage, 88.3
2. Blue Mage, 87.0
3. Summoner, 80.4
4. Black Mage, 76.2
5. Ninja, 70.0
6. Chemist, 64.1
7. Mystic Knight, 63.3
8. Red Mage, 60.8
9. Knight, 56.6
10. Samurai, 54.1
11. Monk, 51.2
12. Beastmaster, 50.0
13. White Mage, 46.6
14t. Dragoon, 45.0
14t. Ranger, 45.0
16. Geomancer, 29.1
17. Thief, 27.5
18. Bard, 23.3
19. Dancer, 16.6
20. Berserker, 14.1
Y'know, people often talk about how Red Mage and Monk get really bad in World 2, but that seems somewhat exaggerated...?
Everything so far (23 bosses)
1. Summoner, 79.6
2. Blue Mage, 76.0
3. Black Mage, 75.2
4. Red Mage, 74.9
5. Time Mage, 74.3
6. Ninja, 69.7
7. Samurai, 55.9
8. Chemist, 52.7
9. Ranger, 52.4
10. Monk, 51.9
11. Knight, 51.6
12. Ranger, 49.7
13. Beastmaster, 47.8
14. Dragoon, 47.7
15. White Mage, 44.5
16. Bard, 35.0
17. Geomancer, 32.2
18. Thief, 23.5
19. Berserker, 19.1
20. Dancer, 15.9
I wouldn't take Berserker > Dancer too seriously; the way I drew up these scores makes it so that being near the bottom among 11-16 jobs isn't as bad as being near the bottom when there are 20, so Berserker benefitted a bit from that. Both suck.
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Melusine
Melusine is a barrier-change boss: she is weak to one of fire/ice/lightning and nulls or absorbs every other element while having super-high defence. She can also shift to being weak to physicals, where she now blocks every element and has super-high MDef/MEvade. She'll shift on her own turn in addition to another action: her actions include weak physicals and stronger -aga spells. Interestingly she'll never use the damage type she's currently weak to. She also uses Charm the turn she shifts away from the physical form but that's easily dealt with by a team. She's fast (the last boss I will praise for this unless I cover the superbosses) but skips turns sometimes.
Her game would is pretty neat but it would be a lot more effective if she didn't always start in the fire-weak form and if she couldn't be put to sleep.
The sleep-inducers get top billing here once again. Sleep from Red/Black Magic will land over 80% of the time, and her fire weakness means Fira will defeat her relatively easily, let alone Firaga which is a high 4HKO. (She'll never use Barrier Change in her first three turns.) Mystic Knight also has a reliable sleep, but taking advantage of it is annoying. Firaga Spellblade will let them hit hard, though, so they can mix up Firaga and Sleep to largely perfect her, though her 10% evade may make a slight mess of things.
Knight and Blue Mage inflict sleep via the Sleep Blade which isn't nearly as effective (it lands about 38% of the time). Knight will want to set up with two of those and one Flametongue, which admittedly hits like a truck (6HKO the boss). It's a little unreliable but it should get the job done, and if she does switch to another form, well, swords have all her weaknesses covered. Blue Mage is better off since once they do land sleep, they win, via Flame Thrower at worst.
Onto jobs which don't have sleep, starting with the fighters. If you rely on non-elemental physicals, well, you pretty much have to wait for her to go to a physical-weak form. Melusine will enter her physical-weak form 1/3 of the time when she switches, and on average uses just over two spells and just under 2 physicals before then, so triple those numbers on average before she switches. Melusine won't OHKO typically, but the spells do merit 1-2 Hi-Potions and the physicals may merit 1 as well.
Monk will need six rounds of physicals to win, or three rounds of Focus (4.5 rounds total), once she adopts the physical-weak form. That's disregarding any healing they will need to do in the middle. She'll often switch away before this occurs, so this pretty much doubles the healing they need to do from the above.
Thief hits almost as hard with a Twin Lance as Monk physicals do, needing 6-7 rounds. If they have a Chicken Knife and have run away at least ~115 times it does similar damage with Mug, so potentially much more if you've really grinded up your escapes. For any people who don't have these, they'll be quite a bit weaker, as Air Knives aren't an option here and Orichalcum Knives hit about a third as hard as a Twin Lance. One neat perk they do have is the ability to use the Mage Masher while she's immune to physicals, though: it has a ~23% chance of silencing her for about half a round, so can ward off some of her better damage; better than sitting around doing nothing. Still, I don't think this offsets Monk's advantages of not needing to grind and much more HP.
Dragoon has access to elemental shields, now, which takes a bite out of Melusine's offence. They also have Lance! This hithereto worthless ability does some very modest magical damage, but it's way better than doing nothing while waiting the ~18 rounds it typically takes. It even drains so can remove the need for healing. Once she does go physical-weak they can hit her... less hard than Monk does, but certainly all their other advantages more than offset that.
Ninja can throw Flame Scrolls, needing 5-6 rounds of these to win. She may shift forms before this, at which point some experimentation is needed; they can try physicals, then try a thunder scroll, then cry at their lack of ice damage and wait. Of course they can also just wait for the physical-weak form and attack a bunch; the person with the Twin Lance will hit really hard and everyone else is similar enough to Monk offensively. They'll spend more money than Dragoon regardless of their strategy, though.
Samurai can do like Dragoon and use shields, but they lacks Lance. Once she goes physical-weak they can use Zeninage 3 times and then toss in a few finisher physicals; 3 Zeninages costs slightly more than just surviving a cycle of form-shifting but is safer, and anyway Samurai takes less damage than non-shield users in the meantime.
Berserker, surprisingly, can actually break Melusine's defence, since axes are piercing. They still need 12 rounds to win on average (a bit less if she goes physical-weak), and can't heal, though having shields is nice for just surviving. It's a bit sketchy, though, and usually one PC will die before they can kill, which of course can enter into a vicious spiral until they lose.
If Ranger kept a full complement of Flame, Frost, and Lightning Bows from world 1, those will pay dividends here, since they can destroy any form that Melusine may turn to. Seven rounds of offence or so will take her down, though obviously they'll need to stop and heal a bunch. If they have Rapidfire by now they can totally wreck her, since that doubles their offence compared to Aim. For my sanity I'm going to ignore both Rapidfire and the annoyance of keeping 9 W1 bows around and assume those cancel out. Compared to ninja they take slightly longer but can't be walled by the ice-weak form, which strikes me as a winning trade.
White Mage can turtle with Protect/Shell... there's Reflect but it heals Melusine (she'll never use a spell she's weak to) so nah. She can be confused but this is pointless since she'll either tink or heal herself... but fortunately Morning Star deals damage at all times since it pierces defence, and after Shell, Healing Staff can patch up any one of her attacks, leaving only her doubleturns as a concern, and they don't come often enough to offset her skipped turns and the fact that the WMs can always break out Cura if they want. This probably beats out Knight which can get into trouble with a run of bad luck more easily than them, but not the other sleep-inducers.
Time Mage can inflict both Slow along with their usual Hastega (last time Hastega is getting hype). They'll need to reapply Slow whenever she shifts but this isn't a big deal especially since Comet works on all her forms except physical-weak. So they'll very likely kill her before the first shift, have the Healing Staff to repair any damage she does, and really only the physical-weak form is annoying for them and even then it's not that bad.
Summoner has all three relevant elements here, although they're weak at this point... five rounds of offence will suffice, unless she goes physical-weak (even then, Chocobo still manages okay). They can also cast Golem/Carbuncle; she'll heal herself via Reflect but Summoners outpace that and now they will just never take damage, ever.
Beastmaster can release some Triffids for some bonus damage, but nothing really more potent than that? They also have a sleep release but no way to exploit it. Otherwise they play the "wait for physical-weak form". It'll take 10-11 rounds in that form along, which is bad, but they can also hurt the lightning-weak form if it shows up with the Blitz Whip, and they do have some bonus damage with Releases... still, this certainly plays as far worse than Monk, and probably worse than Thief too honestly, who has speed + the Twin Lance to offset any Release hype.
Chemist can win with Succubus Kisses, but again it takes a lot of Turtle Shells do that. They can also dig in with a Hasted Heal Staff user, and have a Morning Star to do damage at all points. They're similar to White Mage. Comparing them... they have Haste but no Shell, which are of roughly comparable value. Chemist does have better speed/durability and lightning resistance, though, so they're probably ahead.
Geomancer's Gaia here is a mix of wind damage (nulled, though it inflicts blind which is a nice perk) and physical damage, one weak and one strong. The strong one actually does damage to all forms, and quite good damage to the physical-weak, but not enough to make the overall offence of this move that great. They're certainly worse than Monk overall, and don't have the lightning resistance of Thief/Beastmaster, but they do hit harder than Beastmaster at all times outside of Releases which meh aren't decisive enough to offset blind.
Both of Bard's status effects work, but neither as well as they'd like; Stop wears off fast and confuse can't lead to any self-damage (and can lead to Melusine healing). However, they buy time for something important: Speed Song! With two bards trying to just tie up Melusine as best they can, one can run Speed Song until the bards are super-fast. They'll still need to stall through all her turns until she goes physical-weak, but once she does they'll... actually their offence still sucks even with all that speed. Oh well.
And finally, Dancer. Lamia's Tiaras are 1/16 drops from Lamias in the previous dungeon. Unfortunately non-elemental knives still suck at this point (barring a powered-up Chicken Knife). A 50% Swords Dance from the Dancing Dagger will certainly be solid enough offence once she drops her defence (and can even do a little, sometimes draining, the rest of the time). But this is more annoying to get than Twin Lances. They do drain 25% of the time, at least, and confuse isn't totally a waste if they don't have Lamia's Tiaras.
1. Black Mage
2. Red Mage
3. Summoner
4. Mystic Knight
5. Blue Mage
6. Time Mage
7. Chemist
8. White Mage
9. Knight
10. Dragoon
11. Ranger
12. Ninja
13. Samurai
14. Monk
15. Thief
16. Dancer
17. Geomancer
18. Beastmaster
19. Bard
20. Berserker
Next up: Legendary weapons, Level 6 spells, and Hermes Sandals, oh my!
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Melusine is the last boss who absolutely must be fought before going to the final dungeon. Everything else in World 3 is optional. However, despite my earlier comment about skipping optional bosses, I am going to do three more before the final dungeon: the bosses of the Island Shrine and Fork Tower. My reasoning, if you're curious, is that while these bosses are optional, there is a lot of useful stuff they guard: the Defender, Wonder Wand, Titan's Axe, Aegis Shield, Artemis Bow, and the spells Flare, Holy, and Meteor, among others. So... most playthroughs have a reason to at least be tempted by this. To say nothing of non-challenge runs where you'll want more legendary weapons and Mime, again unlocked by getting through Fork Tower.
Every other World 3 boss offers far less reason to fight them: Odin, Leviathan, and Bahamut are only of interest to Summoners, so will be skipped just as Catoblepas and Carbuncle were; the boss of the Great Trench is similarly only of interest to Time Mages (and those who insist on getting all twelve legendary weapons).
Anyway, a lot of new stuff is available now. The most important is the Hermes Sandals, which grant Auto-Haste, a huge power boost to the party. Level 6 spells (except Flare/Holy/Meteor) are also available now. Also storebought are Elixirs, though they're pricy certainly. The party can grab three legendary weapons, too. On a fiesta, you'll pretty much always get all the ones you really need right away (barring a very weird team like Knight/Dragoon/Samurai/Berserker I guess), since you don't need the Sage Staff until the second set and the Magus Rod, while convenient, doesn't really do anything that other rods + Air Knife don't. You can also pick up the Magic Lamp, which allows any job to cast each summon once each against a boss (although you must return to the world map to "recharge" it, so this is of limited utility in the final dungeon), and the Mirage Vest, which blocks one physical attack per battle. There's a bug which makes the Mirage Vest really powerful (you can reset the image by changing your weapon) and I probably won't be considering it, but I feel that it is worth noting. Finally, there's the Thief Knife, which gives every job (except monk and white mage) access to stealing.
On with the show!
Wendigo
The fourth boss in a row vulnerable to sleep. Seriously, FF5, you're drunk.
Anyway if you don't have sleep he's a weird gimmick. There are four of him, and every time you damage him, he'll body jump; three of the targets will be immune to all damage, while a random fourth is vulnerable (they share on HP pool). On average you'll take 2.5 tries to hit the right one each time, which essentially boosts his effective HP from 20000 (not too great) to 50000 (reasonably solid). Multitarget, you say? It works, but it will trigger three Frost counters which do around 750 damage total, MT. That won't generally one-round, but ouch!
On his own turns, Wendigo only has a 1/3 chance of using an attack... but there are four of them, so that means 0 to 4 attacks, average of 1.33. He'll use weak physicals, a weak Mind Blast (which would paralyse, but Hermes Sandals say lol), Confuse (the more magey jobs can block this with a storebought Lamia's Tiara), and Hurricane (HP-1). His status attacks are inaccurate because of his low level. Pretty wussy all told, but it's a bit unpredictable and spiky.
Knight hits damn hard now. They have Excalibur, potentially a Brave Blade, and potentially an Enhancer from a dip into the final dungeon if you really want. Excalibur kills in 6 successful hits, so about 15 on average. Since Wendigo's first three turns can't realistically kill (unless he gets super-lucky with focusing a bunch of attacks) this is pretty damn good. They can also fish for Sleep with the Sleep Blade but by this point this is too weak to be worth it.
Monk has at last fallen off in damage as most other physical jobs get cool weapons and they don't. They need around 20 successful hits, or about 54 attempts. Ew. They can do a bit better with Focus/Counter as always but this is still bad, so they'll need to break out some Hi-Potions, especially after Hurricanes. They also don't have a good way to heal themselves of Confuse (they can hit each other, but will do seriously nasty damage with a critical), nor a way to block it (beyond Bone Mail which is unacceptable).
Thief... also doesn't have a weapon upgrade, beyond the fact that Twin Lances are now storebought, so any small penalty they may have taken for that is gone! It's their best against all but the highest-Def enemies, which Wendigo isn't. They hit slightly less hard than Monks and have much less durability... but they can deconfuse more easily and are faster. Honestly I suspect confuse is just too annoying for monks, Thief wins this.
Dragoon's Jump hits almost as hard as a Knight's two-hand attack, though unlike Knight they have only one really good weapon and there's a large dropoff after that. So they're less good offensively, though they do have access to the back row... Hurricane's still the biggest thing making them heal, though, so I doubt it makes much difference.
Storebought Twin Lances help Ninja a lot, since they hit damn hard with those. They'll kill in about eight attacks, or about 22 on average. More than Knight, certainly. They can also use Image to protect themselves but this is double-edged since it makes it hard to heal confuse, so it probably isn't worth it. They're notably more fragile than Knight/Dragoon too.
Samurai can win this by the comedy option of equipping Ice Shields on two people and spamming Zeninage, letting the other two die to the Frost counters. That said due to there being four targets this is very expensive, and inelegant, but it is funny. Otherwise they can slug it out. Masamune's a pretty powerful weapon and the storebought Kikuichimonji isn't too bad either. They hit harder than Monk, now, and have shields/durability/etc. They need about 16 hits, or 43 on average.
Berserker can use a mix of their new axes and knives. They kill in about 14-15 successful hits... and since they target randomly, this means they hit 25% of the time instead of learning from their misses, and thus need around 55 hits or so. So... a similar length of time to Monk, but no Focus/HP-boosters and slower. Shields are nice, but not really enough. They're immune to confuse but Hurricane suuucks for them.
Ranger has the Yoichi's Bow which is pretty great, and can common-steal Aevis Killers in this dungeon which are a decent backup. They'll need around 18 hits, but are ITE, so this is around 43.5 in practice. So they're like Thieves, except they can hang out in the back row and have more offence anyway. They could also have Rapid Fire now, especially if they've done Phoenix Tower, but due to its random targetting it doesn't actually help much in this fight.
Mystic Knight can put all four Wendigos to sleep. They'll have to wake them up by attacking them, and this will trigger a body-swap counter, but they can reapply sleep immediately barring bad luck with evasion, and hunt for the target that way. Very safe. Their best weapon at this point is an Enhancer from the final dungeon, otherwise it's an Assassin Dagger, Thief Knife, and Great Sword, which isn't too hot a mix (their damage is actually one of the worst now, sub-Thief). But it doesn't matter much here, the sleep strategy is quite effective.
The final fighter job is Beastmaster. Their shiny new top is the Fire Lash, which has a 33% chance to toss a Firaga in after its attack. Otherwise they'll use various knives. So their overall physical game is rather similar to Mystic Knight's, i.e. not very good. Their saving grace here, though, is that the first attack of the battle will always hit the real Wendigo (it's weird plotwise, but mechanically the whole gimmick is based off counters and thus doesn't kick in until after the first attack) so they should make that one count! A single Shadow Dancer caught in this very dungeon is just the ticket, doing well over 5000 damage, a quarter of your work done immediately! If you want you can take a trip over to Phoenix Tower and grab a Cherie instead, which will do over 7000, but this is out of the way certainly. Further damage releases aren't worth it because they have only a 1/4 chance to strike their target. Anyway, it'll take around 17 successful hits after the opening Shadow Dancer, or 41 overall. Similar to Ranger, but Rangers can hang in the back row and are faster.
White Mage can block confuse, and Protect/Shell makes all the damage rather mockable and Hurricane won't hit too often (and it doesn't really matter if it does). Their attacks are weak (using either the Sage's Staff or storebought Morning Stars, the damage is about equal) and it'll take something like 160-170 attack attempts to win, but they're in zero danager and won't run out of resources (hell, they'll barely spend MP at all most likely).
Black Mage and Red Mage both have Sleep! Black has great offence but they don't even need it. Put all the Wendigos to sleep and then unload with whatever; sleeping Wendigos can't do the whole body-swap nonsense, kill one and you win. Red Mage of course has a similar tactic. They'll need roughly 57 -ara spells to finish the job, but they still can't really lose. Running out of MP's a concern in a fiesta setting, same as Atomos (unboosted -ara spells are much weaker); that's the only knock on them though.
Haste is no longer an advantage for Time Mage, so suddenly their effective offence isn't so good. They can try to Slow the various Wendigos which is helpful, though you kinda want to keep them all around the same speed so they can't use Hurricane + something else at the same time. Still Slow will hit 90% of the time so this isn't too difficult to pull off. 24 hits, 58 total attacks, but unlike fighters they block Confuse, can sit in the back row, and have Regen + a Heal Staff.
Summoners hate Wendigo's counters to MT, which is almost everything they have. Their one single-target attack useful here (if they got it) is Odin's Gungnir, which will strike a random target. Fortunately it hits damn hard, you only need 7 hits to connect which means 22-25 total, depending on if you count and then use a finishing Syldra or not. MP's a concern here, as each Odin casting eats 48 (24 with one of two Gold Hairpins you can have now), so you can only cast about 32 with said two Hairpins at normal levels. Golem/Carbuncle can totally protect you, but at the cost of more MP, so it's probably safer to just use Golem once and then use Hi-Potions after any Hurricanes that land and self-attacks after any Confuses.
Blue Mage can pull out Sleep Blades and put the Wendigos to sleep; it'll land around 40% of the time. Once it does, they can find the real target using MT then blast it away with Aeroga (or whatever). They may wish to wait until they learn Mind Blast first! Anyway they aren't quite as fast to inflict sleep as red mage but they have a lot more offence and tricks besides.
Chemist offence beats White Mage but not much else. None of their tricks are really worth it here, Dragon Kiss can block Hurricane but it's not worth four Dragon Fangs, etc. They can hit each other with the Heal Staff and slowly drag this out, or they can go for offence with Turtle Shells but it'll need a crazy number, no thanks. So at the end of the day this becomes "how much do you value the Heal Staff saving you some Hi-Potions" and well hey they do block confuse so they're in less danger of losing than a lot of jobs anyway.
Geomancer's Gaia will trigger either MT attacks or gravity, nope not gonna happen. So... physicals I guess. Assassin Dagger is the best option, along with any Rune Chimes they may have ground for from the early parts of the final dungeon (they're rare drops). Rune Chimes deal about Ranger-level offence, a purely knife-powered offence will be less than half of that. They immune confuse, unlike Monk, and can heal, unlike Berserker, so they probably beat those two I guess.
Bard now has all the songs, and that means they can boost their own level and strength. So while their offence may start bad, a max-str/level Assassin Dagger hit is gonna do 6k. (They can also boost magic, which helps the Apollo's Harp, and speed.) I'm not sure exactly what the optimum amount of time to sing before switching over to bashing is, and their low HP means they're in some danger, so I don't want to hype them too much.
Finally, Dancer is new and improved; they have Lamia's Tiaras, and up to four Ribbons. If they took a trip to Phoenix Tower they can common-steal Rainbow Fresses and use both those AND Ribbons to immune virtually all status (only zombie sneaks through) and have a 50% Sword Dance rate. Anyway, Lamia's Tiara is all they really need here, though Ribbon is nice for stat boosts. Sword Dances, when they land, will do around Black Mage-level damage, so kill in 7 hits, probably around 33 attempts needed. Faster than Ranger, but with worse stats and in the front row, though immune to confuse with rare self-healing.
1. Black Mage
2. Blue Mage
3. Mystic Knight
4. Red Mage
5. Knight
6. White Mage
7. Dragoon
8. Summoner
9. Ninja
10. Time Mage
11. Samurai
12. Chemist
13. Ranger
14. Dancer
15. Beastmaster
16. Bard
17. Thief
18. Geomancer
19. Monk
20. Berserker
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Fork Tower: for those of you who don't know, you get to divide your party here, sending either 2 to each tower or a 3/1 split. At the top of each tower you'll fight Minotaur and Omniscient, back-to-back. I'm treating these as separate fights for ranking purposes but of course they're closely tied together. One particular thing to note here is that winning the fight with fewer PCs is a major boon: if you can defeat one of the bosses solo, then it frees up a third PC for the other, so that will earn a lot of points.
Minotaur
Minotaur is a Fire Embelm character. Each turn, he uses a physical attack, and he will counter anything with a physical attack as well. There's just one catch: he wants you to play by his rules too, so he fights in an anti-magic field: Mute is set. This means you can't use any MP-costing skillsets in thie fight (including !Blue, which is not normally the case for silence), nor Sing, nor bell attacks (if you cared).
He's remarkably straightforward otherwise: no defences or evasion, no status holes (in FF5! I think he's the only such boss), the only other special property of note is that he nulls or absorbs a few oddball elements, including Holy.
Knight against a pure fighter! Guard/Cover with a critical ally is a win, as always. There's some difficulty setting this up, but if you do it's a 100% chance of victory. Knight has another perk: their new Defender can itemcast Protect, to make 'em even more durable and have an easier time setting up the critical ally (in fact, if you use back row + Protect, Minotaur can't possibly bypass this range). As a riskier move, they can go solo and 5HKO with the Brave Blade (if they've ecaped 17 times or less) after setting up Protect. They'll only need to use a few Hi-Potions this way, probably 3-4.
Monk has Focus, but it (along with Monk's normal attacks) triggers two counters. This won't kill you at full HP but it hurts like crazy. Alternatively they can use items and defend, and rely on their own 50% counters. Slower, but effective; you'll ultimately need to use about one Hi-Potion per counter (slightly less), but no reason not to do this solo. Expect to use about 15 Hi-Potions.
Thief should count themselves lucky Twin Lances don't mean twin counters. Still, uh, they get 2HKOed in the front row. They'll probably want a second Thief in the back with a Main Gauche to throw a Hi-Potion right after each counter, and even then they lose some ground each time, and of course need to heal after Minotaur's own turns. They do doubleturn always with Haste, but that's still one attack and 2 Hi-Potions for every Minotaur turn. Since they kill in 18-19 hits or so, that's around 35 Hi-Potions. Maybe a bit less if they get some dodge luck.
Dragoon can Jump from the back, but holy being blocked means they're stuck using Partisans. Oh well, still a 12HKO and they can actually use shields too. Alternatively, there's Lance! The draining will more than offset one Minotaur attack if they're in the back row, and with Main Gauche + Crystal Shield they have about 60% evade, so they can just auto-battle through this barring a run of really bad luck (which can happen, and this fight is slow, so better stay awake and be ready to break out the odd Hi-Potion if needed).
Ninja has Image! Use that and one weapon, and they can solo this. (One weapon means only one counter, important.) Just alternate Image and attack and you win. For hilarity they can also throw the Assassin Dagger, which is an instant kill in this fight and this fight only, I dunno why either.
Samurai has loads of physical protection here: shields, Shiradori, and they can even go Elf Mantle and get Haste from Masamune: over 70% evade overall. Minotaur will 3HKO on a hit, but that's nothing a Hi-Potion can't take care of. So they can solo this if they want, just healing whenever they take damage, which won't happen too often, probably about once for every two attacks they make (they need 11).
Berserker also 11HKOs or so... and may just avoid being 3HKOed back, and has that evade, so on average they'll die in 7 attacks. If it weren't for counters they'd win this slugfest! But counters are a thing. Sadface. A better bet might be to use the Gaia Hammer; it'll miss 40% of the time (partly due to trying to cast Earthquakes which Minotaur immunes) and only 17HKOs when it hits, but they can use it in the back row and now they die in... about 13 hits on average. So still totally unacceptable. Oh well.
I'm assuming Ranger has Rapidfire from here on. They kill in 6 hits, from the back row. They get 4HKOed back so will probably need to heal around 4 times.
Mystic Knight gets their gimmick blocked, so they're a pure fighter. Compared to Thief, they hit a little harder (or a little less hard if they don't have an Enhancer), have more HP, and crucially, a shield, which will roughly half their Hi-Potion use. Soloing is a bad idea, though.
Beastmaster can catch monsters here which they can release for a little over a third of Minotaur's health each. Not bad, but obviously really proportional to how many Beastmasters you have. Their Fire Lash kills in about 13 hits from the back row. Soloing is kinda painful as usual for someone with no evade or counters of their own, but with two things are quite simple, taking out 2/3 of the boss HP then having a simple back row heal-and-hurt.
Chemist can buff themselves with Protect. If they want they can do Elf Mantle + buff themselves with Haste, too. Their damage remains poor barring expensive Mixes, but Morning Star attacks work well enough. They can recover well with the Healing Staff too, and in fact with Protect + that + back row it's really a simple matter of when, not if, they win.
Geomancer's Gaia does in fact beat out the physical damage of many jobs, here! Similar enough to Thief's. Sometimes they'll try to pull a gravity move instead but that will just fail and trigger no counter. They can hang out in the back row, which is cool. Can't really solo and the lack of shield + worse stats offsets their back row compatibility compared to Mystic Knight.
Finally, there is Dancer. Sadly for them, Minotaur counters all dances, not just the ones which hit hard. Which is a shame because successful Sword Dance procs will 5-shot (so on average, they need 10 hits). Minotaur, however, 2HKOs the front row back so this is a major pain, like it was for Thief, and they should employ the same basic strategy (second Dancer in back with Main Gauche and healing). They're pretty close to Geomancer, but I think this works out in their favour.
And finally... those who really, really hate Mute and shouldn't really be here if they can avoid it. The good news is that yes, mages can still win this fight. They have physicals too after all, and mimicking the same strategy that Thieves employ will get them all through it (so yes, they're still better than Berserker at the anti-magic boss... good job berserker). Rod breaks also still work, as does the Healing Staff, so they do have options besides!
Let's talk about the Healing Staff first. Even off the weakest mage who can use it (Red), it more than offsets one hit from Minotaur in the back row. So they can slowly employ the Chemist strategy to win, although without Protect doing this solo is, while possible, too obnoxious to really consider. With the extra turns from two, though, it's fine. They all do similar physical damage (White/Time with Sage Staff, Red with Morning Star) and have similar speed/durability (Red's a little faster and a little frailer). Red's healing is notably worse though. Time Mage can break rods if they get impatient, for a tiebreak with White.
Black Mage, Blue Mage, and Summoner (no, Call doesn't work) can pull out rod breaks for... possibly the first time since in about half the game. They are unboosted -aga spells. It'll take around 9 to kill. They could use physicals instead, but they're so much weaker and trigger so many more counters they'll spend far more on healing anyway. Regardless, it takes around one Hi-Potion to make up for an attack (a bit less, so around 9 rods and 15ish Hi-Potions should get the job done. This is going to run around 12k gil... actually pretty similar to Thief, but without their speed. Blue Mage can get away with less, though, because they have shields and those are obviously great here. Black Mage/Summoner are basically tied.
That leaves one final mage, one with neither staves nor rods... yes, it's Bard! The best thing you can say about Bard is that "at least they CAN heal". And hey Apollo's Harp isn't too awful a weapon, and weirdly it does work.
1. Ninja
2. Knight
3. Dragoon
4. Chemist
5. Ranger
6. Samurai
7. Monk
8. Time Mage
9. White Mage
10. Red Mage
11. Beastmaster
12. Mystic Knight
13. Dancer
14. Geomancer
15. Blue Mage
16. Thief
17t. Black Mage, Summoner
19. Bard
20. Berserker
The top seven jobs are notably better than the rest because they can reasonably solo this fight. And I'm not sure what it says about Dancer, Geomancer, Thief, and Berserker that they lost to a half or more of the jobs who get their skillset sealed in this fight.
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Omniscient
Unlike Minotaur, Omniscient makes no attempt to shut off everything physical with a field effect. Instead, he just counters anything that isn't magic by casting Return, restarting the battle. Note that "anything that isn't magic" means almost everything: the only things which sneak through are the MP-costing magical skillsets. Stuff like Gaia and itemcasts still get countered. So if you're not a mage, the only way to defeat him is either to run him out of MP (he has 30k) or take advantage of certain status holes.
He's weak to Wind, but has Auto-Protect/Shell. He casts various magic, most of it not too scary. He'll heal himself occasionally with Cura or Drain, the latter also being his only offensive tool to go through Reflect. He has Slow, Stop, and Mini (Hermes Sandals block the first two, the latter can be healed by an item). His most damaging move by far normally is Bio, which does around 900 or so damage (half that to him), pretty decent; it's used only 1/24 of the time though and everything else is less than half as strong. Below 4000 HP he'll start spamming -aga spells which really hurt (probably OHKO damage) and he has Flare as a death counter, which hurts even more.
Reflect Rings are a tempting option here for some jobs, so I'll talk about them now. They're either a rare drop back in Barrier Tower, or more easily now are available as a common steal from a random in the Phoenix Tower. Not trivial to get, but it could be worse.
Let's start with the mages, since this fight is obviously designed for them. White Mage, sadly, doesn't have Holy yet, even though Minotaur was guarding it. They'll deal. They can hit Omniscient with Berserk. This gives him OHKO damage against the back row, but that's really not that bad, I promise... because White Mages have Blink. So set that up first, then cast Berserk, then recast Blink whenever it wears off. This will be very annoying for a solo but due to Haste you still win easily even then, with more white mages it goes more smoothly. Oh yeah, they can also Dispel him at the start of the fight to remove Protect/Shell and speed this up.
Black Mage has offence, certainly; the problem is surviving -aga spells and Flare at the end. The brute force way is to count HP carefully and then unleash a barrage of -agas to dodge his limit entirely (with Haste, this is very doable), and get one Black Mage ganked by Flare and win with the other. That's probably simplest, and in fact they do it so quickly that Omniscient should only get two turns, neither of which he can do anything useful with. If they snagged a Reflect Ring, they can solo this easily enough, since now nothing he has is scary.
Time Mage has Comet spam, which is really weak against Shell, but still works. They can also apply Slow, giving them a colossal turnsplit with which to try to dodge the limit with... though honestly unless there's three of them they'll still have problems! But whatever, with the turnsplit even him OHKOing someone isn't that bad, revive and move on. You'll need two for this to work, or a Reflect Ring. Notably they can also cast Stop if they need a brief window to attack without counters; this is more useful if they're paired with a fighter job.
Summoner can cast Carbuncle, giving them a Reflect Ring without a Reflect Ring. And Syldra hits Omni's wind weakness, essentially cancelling out Shell. Like White Mage this is quite safe, but since it's way way faster there's less chance of screwing things up.
Blue Mage can cast Mighty Guard to survive Omni's limit (even Flare, probably, though it depends on level), and Aeroga wrecks him real bad anyway, worse than Black Mage does. They won't do too well solo though, since Vampire will miss a lot due to Shell and they will still be 2HKOed by the limit they can't possibly dodge. But with two PCs, they're like Black Mage but better in every way.
And finally there is Red Mage: they are like White Mage without Berserk/Shell, or Black Mage without offence. Which is... pretty bad, they'll be eaten alive by that limit unless they want to play the Phoenix Down game for a while (granted, it'll work). With Reflect Rings things will go more smoothly, still need to slowly hack him down to that range though, which will take about 45 boosted -ara spells. Kinda icky given the MP limits of 1-3 PCs, but it's a better version of the strategy outlined for fighters below. They can also cast Silence and then break out physical attacks or rod breaks while it lasts.
Mystic Knight may not have magic, but they something even better: 100% silence via Spellblade. You cast that, then you tape down your A button and win.
Bard similarly has status shenanigans via Stop. Thanks to Shell it'll miss a bunch, but the animation tells you when it hits, and as long as you have a second Bard handy, you can thwack him with the Air Knife right after. Repeat if necessary. You can make the whole process smoother if you buff stats first, though this does need two bards as Omni will never hit you out of a song, so you have to do it yourself.
Chemist, like White Mage, has access to Berserk (costs 1 Turtle Shell). Unlike White Mage, they don't have Blink. They can apply Blind via Dark Matters (may take a few tries due to Shell), which reduces his hit rate to 25%, and Drink to get Protect on themselves so that he doesn't OHKO when he does hit. Two Heal Staff hits should take care of the rest. This strategy is a bit dicy for a solo but should work well enough with two PCs, one to heal and one to try to apply blind. Obviously rather resource-intensive, but better than Red Mage's plan I think.
The last job with a good way of winning this is Beastmaster, who can track down a pair of Zus, a W1 random which still exists in a certain section of the world map. Obscure but we'll take it. The Zu release is Breath Wing, which ignores Shell and does wind-elemental damage equal to 25% of the target's HP... 50% in Omniscient's case! Two of those is a win. He'll counter the first with Return, so the solution is to bring two Beastmasters, and try to silence him with a Mage Masher. It only works about 9% of the time, but every failed attempt earns you a Return... so you'll succeed after a bit. Once you do, the second Beastmaster immediately follows with a released Zu, then the next turn, the first Beastmaster uses their own. Collect victory. Similar enough to Chemist, but both safer and faster.
Fighters pretty much all have the same basic strategy. Have at least two, grind out two Reflect Rings somewhere, and have some Mage Mashers handy. As mentioned, it only inflicts Silence 9% of the time. BUT, you can attack your party members without triggering Return counters, and bounce the random Silence procs onto Omni. When one hits, the other fighters can immediately lay into him. Then repeat. Super annoying because you have to outrace Omni's regen and healing spell use (also Drain, though with a Reflect Ring you can put Bone Mail on one fighter to absorb that... not an option for Geomancer), but it works if you can equip Knives.
From this point, you can more or less rank the fighters by how fast/powerful they are, which indicates how much advantage they can take of each silence. Ninja is probably best, because dual Mage Mashers doubles your chance to proc silence (in fact, ninjas might even be able to do this without Reflect Rings). Working down, they're followed by Knight, Ranger, Dancer, (gap) Samurai, Dragoon, Geomancer, Thief. If you're curious why Dancer is that high, it's because they aren't suffering for their weaker weapon here; Air Knife Sword Dances hurt. I'll move Thief a little above the three jobs above them because hey, the easiest way to get Reflect Rings is by stealing and they're notably better than that, plus the three jobs above them only barely have more damage anyway (they're all using Air Knives, just have higher strength).
That leaves the walk of shame. Monk can't equip knives. All they can do is grab one or more Reflect Rings and do one of two things. They can wait for Omni to bounce Silence/Stop onto HIMSELF, then hit him. Or they can go Reflect Ring + Bone Mail and leave the game on for hours and hours and hours until he runs out of MP. (You can skip 2/3 of his 30k by using an Ether on him the first time he silences/stops himself, but it still takes forever.) And finally, Berserker can't even do this whole "waiting" thing, so their only hope is to give their fastest member a Mage Masher and hope its 9% chance kicks in every time while the slightly slower Berserkers use Air Knives. Or seriously, use a better class.
1. Mystic Knight
2. Summoner
3. White Mage
4. Blue Mage
5. Black Mage
6. Time Mage
7. Bard
8. Beastmaster
9. Chemist
10. Ninja
11. Red Mage
12. Knight
13. Ranger
14. Dancer
15. Thief
16. Samurai
17. Dragoon
18. Geomancer
19. Monk
20. Berserker
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Final dungeon time! As a note, I'm going to be assuming Island Shrine and Fork Tower were done. Taking points off for requiring something from these would mostly hurt White Mage, and I feel that these rankings have undersold White Mage for long enough in their pre-Holy phase. I may put in a slight penalty for Time Mage needing to do a whole other useless dungeon for Meteor, though. You can also grab a bunch of other items in dungeons at this point; I'll largely assume the party has.
Calofisteri
She'll use various spells, including Reflect. Once reflected, she'll bounce spells off of herself and onto you, including Reflect. If one of your PCs is reflected, she'll bounce buffs and healing off you. It all sounds really clever, until you realise that (a) she hardly ever uses attack spells, just status moves like Old, Stop, and Poison; Bio is the only attack spell and she only uses it if reflected, and (b) the "there's a reflected ally" AI takes priority. So uh if you have a Reflect Ring on, she'll never use any offensice spells ever.
Well, not quite. She does have the highest physical defence sported by any boss in the maingame (except Melusine, who wasn't wearing clothing either...) and counters any damage with Drain, which is pretty weak, but could annoy some weaker classes anyway? Especially once she gets Protect/Shell up, which she will sooner or later if your offence is bad (sooner rather than later if you go in with reflect up yourself).
Let's start with the mages. White Mage first. Calofisteri will only use Stop, Old, and Reflect at first. White Mage is immune to the first, has Esuna for the second, and Dispel for the third. Oh yeah and they have freaking Holy now, not that they need it. (Their MDef, MEvade, and Shell would power them past Drain nicely regardless.) They win.
Black Mage can two-round Calofisteri, but if her opening turn is Reflect, well, that's the end of that! Then she could get on a bad run, casting Bio and Old a lot or something. Not too likely but y'never know! They can also bring in a Reflect Ring and the worst she'll do is cast Shell on turn 2 but that's yeah not soon enough. Drain counters could pile up on one target I guess, but it's not likely.
If Time Mage has Meteor, they wreck the boss so hard. If they don't have Meteor, then they can still use Slow, Old, and Comet to get the job done, though obviously Drain is more of an issue now (still not much of one against mage MDef, and Old eventually wrecks its accuracy down to like 30%). Meteor's enough of a hit to drop them belo Black Mage I think.
Summoner can unleash Syldra which again does huge damage, and will two-round with it. It's hard to even care about the "but but what if all the Drains focus" because Phoenix. Uh Holy costs less MP and is stronger on the one person who strengthens it?
Blue Mage has Aeroga... which is excellent but runs into Reflect. Oh well, just bring in a Reflect Ring, same thing works, just a bit weaker. Level 2 Old might be worth a turn? Maybe? Same situation as Black Mage, otherwise, just with worse damage.
Red Mage offence is way, way worse, but it doesn't matter. They have POIZN. And Silence. They hit around 60% and 40% of the time respectively. So poison her, and try to keep her silenced as much as possible. She might be able to pull a Reflect/Reflect/Esuna chain to heal herself, but even if she does you can wait for Reflect to wear off and do it again. (Poison kills in 16 turns.)
Okay, I'm gonna talk about two more notable strategies at this point. One, Bone Mail kinda mocks this boss; it nulls every status she can apply except Stop (and Hermes Sandals null that), as well as absorbs Drain and Bio, her only damage moves. So uh if you have it, you win, and it's just a matter of when. Of course the other PCs may die but you can always revive 'em at the end.
Additionally, you can run her out of MP. She has 1000, so if you sit there with a Reflect Ring long enough, she'll bounce buffs and healing off you until she's out. Then you can attack her safely without fear of Drain.
Everyone except Black/White/Time Mage and Summoner (who wreck the boss) can use Bone Mail, except Bard and Geomancer. Everyone except Berserker can use the "wait her out of MP" strategy.
Speaking of Berserker, they do decently enough here thanks to axes cutting through her defence. Drain could still focus onto someone and kill them but the Bone Mail user can't die. Anyone stuck with a non-endgame axe isn't even in bad shape, since the Poison Axe may poison her.
As for Bard, they can buff all their stats until they hit... actually still not that hard because they run into her defence in an annoying way, but easily enough to punch way past Drain. I guess they might use some Hi-Potions. And Geomancer... yeah I dunno. They're probably last.
Fighters just hit her; the order is something like Ranger > Dancer and Knight > Samurai > Dragoon > Ninja > Thief > Monk. Ninja and Monk are lower than you might expect due to Dual-Wield/fists triggering two counters. Monk may actually want to pull out Kaiser Knuckles to overcome her defence, despite losing Haste. Ranger's really good, actually; the Artemis Bow hits a weakness and Rapidfire is ITD in general, it's entirely possible they might one-round (probably not) but two at worst, and I don't think Drain can possibly focus to a kill in the meantime.
Mystic Knight goes Flare Sword and that gives them high ITD damage. Or they can go Silence Sword on 1-2 PCs (she has 10% evade) and make a total mockery of the fight that way.
Beastmaster has the Beast Killer whip (possibly more if they want to steal 'em, they're rare steals in the Great Trench) which also hits a weakness, but their other weapons will be weak here. They could catch some things to help out but this boss is basically a joke so who cares.
And finally there's Chemist. They can poison her with a Dark Matter and hope she doesn't heal herself, resetting it if she does. (They'll need to do this at least once on average.) They can also try to silence her with Mage Mashers in the meantime; since these don't break her defence, she doesn't counter! The rate's crappy, though (around 12%)... still might be enough. Or y'know, they can Bone Mail auto-battle through this. Whatever, this boss sucks.
1. Ranger
2. White Mage
3. Summoner
4. Mystic Knight
5. Black Mage
6. Blue Mage
7. Time Mage
8. Red Mage
9. Knight
10. Dancer
11. Beastmaster
12. Samurai
13. Dragoon
14. Chemist
15. Berserker
16. Ninja
17. Thief
18. Bard
19. Monk
20. Geomancer
I bothered to make a list, but I'm not really sure I'll count it up in any final tallies I do. This boss is terrible, anyone with Bone Mail literally can't lose (which is almost everyone), and it's certainly down there with Tyrannosaur and Abductor. When the worst case scenario for anyone but Geomancer is "um you revive three people when the fight ends" and really almost the entire list is quibbling over the use of 0-2000 gil, you know things are dumb.
Besides it's not like we lack bosses to throw our endgame team against! Next up: the endgame version of Byblos. Is all lost this time? Probably not.
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This is pretty late, but I feel that rod breaking in world 2 deserves a major asterisk since you have to buy all your Fire/Ice/Thunder Rods ahead of time. If you didn't get enough of them, too bad, you're stuck with breaking Venom Rods instead as your only option, which is significantly weaker. This really only matters for... Red Mage I think, everyone else stops caring about rod breaking after Gilgamesh 2, and it's easy enough to stock up enough for the very first W2 boss.
Also Gargoyles are entirely capable of suiciding via consecutive Fusions, at least in the SNES version. Dunno if they fixed that in later versions, but it made me laugh when I saw it happen. I'd throw them out personallly, you fight them multiple times throughout W3 and they're basically a joke for everyone except Berserkers.
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In theory I'd imagine they still could (at least in GBA; later versions changed the core engine), but I also imagine it's based on the ever-so-slight randomness of initial ATB... the turns would have to come at the same clocktick from what I understand? Otherwise the slightly slower Gargoyle's "alone" AI would kick in. Good to note, but for the most part since we're talking reliable strategies I'd generally tend towards assuming better-case scenarios for the boss (hence for instance my focus on assuming Titan actually does fire off Earth Shaker on its second turn 2, should it live that long).
As for skipping them in counts... maybe? I mean they're not Calofisteri/Tyrannosaur/Abductor bad, but they're certainly mediocre. One thing I was thinking of doing either when I have time is to try to rank all the bosses by difficulty based on the median job's difficulty of defeating them, and then I could try to do something crazy like weight harder bosses more. Because yeah performance against Antlion or Gargoyles means a lot less than performance against Atomos or the final boss.
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Once you're done, you think an offbeat ranking for the remaining optional bosses on World 3 would be too much work to do? This is a really interesting read in general and I'd like to see how the jobs fare in the non-forced content of note in general.
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There aren't really too many of them, but I could. Odin, Leviathan, and Bahamut are at least potentially interesting; the pigs pretty much get Magic Lamp-Odin'd by everyone. And Odin depends a lot on a real-life timer so I'd probably need to dig up a save which hasn't fought Odin yet and test how that goes. And then finally there's Omega and Shinryu, of course.
We'll see how I feel when I get to the end of this, there are still a surprising number of bosses left to go.
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My main interest lies in the remaining summons, yes. Three little piggies are skippable. Omega and Shinryu would be funny, at least, though not sure how practical they are.
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Apanda
He's shockingly close to "Byblos, scaled to endgame". He's weak to fire (neutral to everything else, unlike Byblos), and has exactly the same AI, which includes a decent physical and a 2-3HKO Wind Slash which can show up every even-numbered turn, along with Dischord, Web, and Confuse as filler moves. He still counters physicals with Protect and magic with Toad 1/3 of the time. Drain, instead of being 2/3 at low HP, is now 1/3 at any HP (so overall he has only a 1/3 chance to not counter).
He's obviously a worse boss than Byblos, because Hermes Sandals exist to double your speed and block his slow status. And his damage is a little worse for the time, too, especially against mages, because your MDef is higher (his higher magic multiplier mostly compensates for your higher HP). But otherwise it's amazing how much he just feels like a scaled-up version of that boss.
The winner here is Summoner, because Apanda has a special counter for Ifrit: instead of using Toad/Drain, he'll cower in fear and skip his next turn, and also be unable to counter until said skipped turn. So lob an Ifrit and then spam Syldra while he's cowering. Or just spam Ifrits, whatever you fancy.
Black Mage certainly 4HKOs with Firaga, so that's a one-rounding. There's a slight risk that Byblos' Drain counters focus enough to kill someone... actually no, there isn't, not with high-MDef equips, unless your level is quite low. Toad could stop the one-rounding I guess, forcing you to live through one turn! You might get Magic Hammered.
White Mage can fire off Holy. They'll need around 7 to win? Pretty easy. Same as Black Mage just with a higher chance of being Magic Hammered I guess. They can also use a Berserk/Blink strategy to avoid counters if they wish.
Time Mage can one-round with Meteor. If they fail to they can cast Return, should you care about losing your MP or something.
Ranger... well, Artemis Bow hits weakness again! Of course it will trigger a potential Protect counter, but the opening Artemis Rapidfire does crazy amounts of damage, almost a third of his HP. Open with that, follow up with a few other Rapidfires... you'll kill on your third round probably, though a few Drain counters could come out to play before then and maybe force you to heal.
Knight can also hit pretty hard, as both the Flametongue and Brave Blade do similar, competent damage here. They could kill in 2 rounds if they're lucky, but 4 if they aren't (evade, Protect counter coming early) which would give Apanda two turns including a Wind Slash, along with the counters they'll trigger.
Monk is pretty bad! Apanda has everything they hate: decent defence and their attacks trigger two counters. This is a another fight where Kaiser Knuckles are a decent idea, since they roughly double damage here in exchange for half as many turns (and half as many counters) which is a good trade; however they only have one unless they've farmed rare drops. Focus Kaiser Knuckles 6HKO, or 11HKO after Protect, but those come really slowly so they'll want to throw in some other Focuses probably. Apanda's going to get quite a few turns regardless of strategy, lots of time for him to use Confuse (bad for Monks, see Wendigo) or Dischord, or slow anyone with Kaiser Knuckles, as well as hit them with Wind Slashes and decent physicals a lot.
Thief... well, the good news is that unlike against Byblos, they do notably outpace Drain on average, even after Protect. The bad news is... it's still not by all that much, one Drain (1/3 chance) erases about 1.5 Thief attacks or so. Dischord will make this worse with time, too! In theory it's possible that enough Dischords will make this fight unwinnable short of running him out of MP, so this is ugly.
Dragoon only has one PC who can do real damage, that being the one with the Holy Lance. Other spears don't break defence very well at this point, though will still overcome Drain on average at least. They can also use Jump to avoid the even-numbered turns, which avoids Wind Slash and Dischord entirely, leaving only Apanda's physical and the Drain counters they need to care about. They don't have the kind of offence Knight/Ranger have to cut through this, but this strategy should serve to keep the fight under control; they'll still need to use a bunch of Hi-Potions erasing all the Drain counters.
Ninja, fittingly, returns to Flame Scrolls for one last time. They trigger physical counters but go through Protect, evade, row, everything, and kill in four rounds or so. Still enough to give Apanda two turns and force a little healing, but only a little and they win pretty easily.
Samurai as always can make the Zeninage choice; it kills in 7 shots and costs 13000 gil or so. Or they can use physicals... which will be a bad time (not too different from Monk).
Berserker hits somewhat hard; they'll win in roughly 32 hits or so, depending on which weapon lands them and what counters they see. This will give Apanda about 6 turns and about 10 Drains (though a few of those might bounce of an Aegis Shield). This feels very coinflippy for if they win or not, it really depends on how many Wind Slashes Apanda uses and how many Drains. Feels a bit better than Thief's situation? The extra HP and shields help. Neither is good, obviously.
Mystic Knight activates Firaga Sword and goes to town. Two rounds of attacks should very likely suffice thereafter, though of course it's not a sure thing thanks to Apanda's evade. They could also have one or two try for Silence Spellblade which seals off the Drain/Protect counters but does draw out the battle increasing the chance of seeing Wind Slashes.
Okay, back to mages. Blue Mage kills in three rounds, maybe triggering around 3 Drains and 3 Toads, with of course a risk of Magic Hammer in there. They can use Mighty Guard to halve the hit rate of Toad/Drain/Magic Hammer and laugh off all damage, too. It's not as decisive as White Mage but safer than the jobs who have to go toe-to-toe with Apanda's evasion.
Red Mage has a decent toolkit for this fight, especially if they have Dualcast. Silence is about a 37% chance to stop his counters (60% if twice) for a time, and Fira does respectable enough damage (similar to a Flame Scroll)... outright good if cast twice, killing in two rounds. They're in a pretty similar situation to Mystic Knight... worse stats and damage (though better with Dualcast after Protect) but worry less about evasion. Dualcast being not quite a given makes me tiebreak for MK though.
Beastmaster likes that their legendary weapon is fire, it makes it quite potent here. It's only one, though (for all that Beast Killer is a respectable backup) and not as powerful as, say, Knight's attacks. They can also release Great Dragons; the first does around 9999 (Protect may soften later ones) and those are available right before this boss.
Puny Morning Star or Sage Staff hits from Chemist aren't a very tempting way to fight this, what with Drain counters and all. The other extreme is to double their HP then fire off Dragon Breaths, which hits Apanda's fire weakness and 4HKOs. This will use eight Dragon Fangs, which can be farmed with the Sage's Staff in Drakenvale, or stolen from Great Dragons near where Apanda is fought. Alternatively, they can berserk and blind Apanda (using a Turtle Shell and then ~2 Dark Matters) then try to turtle through counter-free with the Heal Staff. This is extremely similar to Samurai in terms of resource cost; Chemist having mage equips to go with their doubled HP makes me favour them slightly, though.
Geomancer... well, Gaia will use Ignus Fatuus, which is no longer as potent as it used to be even against a fire weakness; 34HKO or so before Drain which largely offsets one use. It ignores Protect and evade and row, so this is certainly still better than their physicals! Various mage advantages (confuse immunity, more MEvade) make them better than Monk, but no more.
Bard can buff to overcome Drain, but they have no answer to Apanda's own turns in the meanwhile; Discord will be annoying, and Wind Slash hurts and draws out a lot of healing. Apollo's Harp is certainly the thing to buff since it's magic and ignores but that's a lot of turtling during which they may have to heal a whole bunch. Probably worse than Geomancer, better than the weak fighters.
Dancer blocks confuse and their offence is certainly better than Monk's. But it's still not in a great place; once Protect lands they... still have better offence than Geomancer, but have to be in the front row with less HP (and no Main Gauches). Given how often Apanda uses (respectable) physicals, I think that's a win for Geomancer.
1. Summoner
2. Time Mage
3. Black Mage
4. White Mage
5. Ranger
6. Blue Mage
7. Mystic Knight
8. Red Mage
9. Knight
10. Beastmaster
11. Ninja
12. Dragoon
13. Chemist
14. Samurai
15. Geomancer
16. Dancer
17. Bard
18. Monk
19. Berserker
20. Thief
Next up: some blue mage with a stupidly large skillset and the highest MDef of any maingame boss. Will it stop the offensive mages from being really good? Probably not.
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It's worth noting that at endgame, you're swimming in money. I'm not quite sure it's too hard of a choice for samurai as to whether or not to throw some gil at this point?
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You can certainly run out in the final dungeon if you aren't somewhat careful (13000 gil would take ~7 randoms to replenish, though as you noted you come in with far more), so it's generally worth deciding whether a boss (or random, for that matter) presents an adequate threat to justify it. Apanda may well, but for instance, Calostiferi and (spoilers) Azulmagia do not.
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Do you actually have all that much left over after you buy your Hermes Sandals? I seem to remember having just barely enough for those.
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Re: Namagomi's point, eh, the classes that have been chronically spending a bunch of money are going to have a lot less in the bank than those that aren't, and Reiska brings up a good point that they're going to have a harder time buying Hermes Sandals ASAP without grinding. Penalizing them for this still seems in line with the spirit of the rankings if you ask me.
Moving on, as interesting as the analysis was, similar to how only Summoner cares about Odin/Levi/Bahamut, I think it's kind of an important note that unless your Wind Crystal job is either WM or BM, you have no reason whatsoever to do the Fork Tower, as nobody except those two can cast Flare/Holy. Which really doesn't give a pass at all to the Water/Fire/Earth jobs, but honestly including Omniscient in the rankings for Knight/Monk/Thief and Minotaur for Blue Mage in the context of a Fiesta (much less an SCC!) seems a little unfair in practice.
Of course, I may be misremembering, and please correct me if I am. Are there even any worthwhile drops/chests that those jobs care about? It doesn't look like it.
Also, out of curiosity, will you be including Necrophobe in the ratings? That fight can basically be skipped by all classes if you fought Gilgamesh 4 right? Or skipped entirely if you don't care about getting that save point.
Another note, wow it really does seem like your Wind Crystal job is your most important one by far. Get Black Mage, Knight, or Blue Mage? You're safe. White Mage? Lots of trouble early game but a good roll on Water crystal will fix that. Monk? Great earlygame, going to suck shit lategame ( 1/White Mage = Monk confirmed, please submit your thesis paper to your advisor so that you may defend it for your PHD in FF5ology). Thief? Cry and then cry some more.
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Yeah, to be clear, I can see having the extra gil stash in a casual run where you might have been grinding a job or two, but in the Fiesta setting I typically find myself just barely affording four pairs of sandals (and that's considering the fact that most fiestas see me grinding for Reflect Rings in Barrier Tower). And as Zenny noted, a lot of fiesta teams/SCCs will go straight to the void after getting Lenna back because they have nothing to gain from the other tablet dungeons; Leviathan/Bahamut aren't really worth the pickup even if you DO have Summoner, you have little reason to do Fork Tower without WM or BM (though doesn't it unlock something else? I don't recall for sure), and the Fiesta team that needs more than, or even can USE more than, 3 legendary weapons is fairly rare.
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Reiska: Well unless you dive straight into the final dungeon (which I'm generally not assuming), you'll collect a bunch more between when you buy stuff in Phantom Village and when you enter the final dungeon (doing any/all of Island Shrine, Fork Tower, Phoenix Tower, Waterfall, and the Great Trench). Finances can be pretty hard to predict depending on how much stuff you want to buy, how much stuff you're willing to sell, and of course how often you defeat enemies versus running from fights.
I think it's kind of an important note that unless your Wind Crystal job is either WM or BM, you have no reason whatsoever to do the Fork Tower, as nobody except those two can cast Flare/Holy. Which really doesn't give a pass at all to the Water/Fire/Earth jobs, but honestly including Omniscient in the rankings for Knight/Monk/Thief and Minotaur for Blue Mage in the context of a Fiesta (much less an SCC!) seems a little unfair in practice.
Well, Fork Tower is the prerequisite to two other dungeons (the Great Trench and the Waterfall, which require the submarine which Cid/Mid refurbish after you rescue them from Fork Tower), and the total amount of stuff stashed away in all three does add up to the point where a lot of fiestas would be interested in doing it. It's not uniform, though, so you're right that some parties might want to skip it, and you could certainly argue that some jobs maybe deserve a bonus for not relying on such things? Dunno. For reference, here's a summary of what each job gets out of Fork Tower:
Knight: Defender (Protect itemcast, also a 99 power weapon with the Main Gauche property), second Aegis Shield.
Monk: Kaiser Knuckles (which really aren't great unless you have another source of Haste because they kick out the Hermes Sandals)
Thief: Yeah, not much
White Mage: Holy
Black Mage: Flare, Wonder Wand (itemcasts Return... and also will cast every white/black spell in a fixed cycle which has some applications)
Blue Mage: Second Aegis Shield, Wonder Wand
Berserker: Titan's Axe (their strongest weapon by raw damage), second Aegis Shield
Mystic Knight: Flare/Holy Spellblade, second Enhancer (only lategame sword they can use), second Aegis Shield
Red Mage: Second Enhancer, Wonder Wand
Time Mage: Meteor, Wonder Wand
Summoner: Wonder Wand
Ninja: Not much, really
Geomancer: As above
Bard: As above... yeah the fire crystal jobs don't have much reason
Beastmaster: Access to Beast Killer rare steals, I suppose.
Ranger: Artemis Bow (one of the two strongest bows, hits weakness on certain species)
Samurai: Second Aegis Shield
Dragoon: Second Aegis Shield
Chemist: Not much
Dancer: Access to Man-Eater rare steals... it's their best weapon (you get one in the final dungeon too) but it's also annoying as fuck to get because it's a rare steal guarded by a common from a 23% encounter.
Everyone: A free Reflect Ring and Flame Ring, and a bunch of money/stuff to sell.
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Okay yeah that list includes a lot more things than I remembered, and I forgot that Mystic Knight probably reaaaaally wants the last two spellblades.
Wait, Meteor is locked behind the Fork Tower? How exactly do you get that again? I don't really remember.
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You get it when you obtain the tablet found in the Great Trench, which requires the submarine, which requires you to rescue Cid and Mid who are trapped underneath Fork Tower.
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For Calofisteri, for whatever it's worth, while I kind of like the "YOU ARE FF5 EXPERT" angle to make rankings consistent & more objective, if a boss goes completely haywire to a certain strat, I think it's legit to bake in some amount of not knowing what's going on. After all, if Reflect Ring = win, then all classes sorta tie under the expertise assumption, so might as well assume you're going in blind and not cheesing the fight to have a useful ranking at all.
For Red Mage & Dualcast hype vs. Apanda - wait, is Dualcast really questionable at this point? In a normal casual run, perhaps, because you've been doing lots of swapping of classes. In some kind of Talaysen-approved LLG of a Fiesta, sure. But... in a Fiesta, will you really be missing Dualcast this late? And certainly in a solo-class challenge which this seems to be assuming, you should absolutely have it. Am I forgetting something about the skill curve of FF5? I certainly had X-Magic by World 3 in my totally casual, build up lots of classes run of FF5, and didn't feel I was particularly grinding for it... it's slow to get, yes, but not THAT slow. (Of course, I'd assume you do all the optional subquests before the final dungeon, too, which might account for a little bit of the difference - doing the Trench and so on. But not that much?)
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You'll have Dualcast for sure if you've done Phoenix Tower. You might not if you didn't.
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I'd generally agree that you have Dualcast then, yeah, but I've read about enough playthroughs where people don't (due to running a lot and/or beelining to the final dungeon) that I felt it was at least worth a mention.
I did find a way to tiebreak Calostiferi pretty well! I mean if nothing else, you might not have that Reflect Ring, so yeah reflecting the non-cheese strategies felt easy enough.
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Azulmagia is optional; he guards a save point. However, the idea of having to go all the way back to the first third of the final dungeon if you lose in the last area probably isn't a very tempting one for all but the most confident of players, so he will generally be fought. Besides, he's a bit of a wuss, unless your level is divisible by 5. If your level is divisible by 5, you should either bring a lot of offence (by being from the top ~9 jobs on the list at the bottom of this post) or go muck around in this section of the dungeon until your level is one higher, because seriously Level 5 Death is bullshit.
Azulmagia
He has a huge skillset which makes him very random. He'll run a six-turn cycle, going through 18 blue magic spells 1/3 of the time each. Most of these aren't too scary; the most notable are Doom/Roulette/Level 2 Old on turn 2, Level 5 Death/Mighty Guard on turn 3, ??? (the damage = missing HP spell) on turn 4, and White Wind on turn 6. He doesn't have Moon Flute, Vampire, Aeroga, or Aqua Breath which would have been potentially bad for the party.
Otherwise, he's notable mostly for high magic defence which slows down some forms of offence pretty significantly. His physical defence is above average too, but not exceptional. He's noteworthy for being a rare boss with no meaningful status holes (just blind, but he has no physical).
Knight takes this guy out in three rounds. So y'know, he gets one turn. With which the only remotely scary thing he can do is Dark Spark. He miight live to turn 2 but it won't really matter if he does.
Monk probably takes him out with about four rounds of Focus, which is before his fourth turn (depends a bit on evade luck). It's possible some of his actions might buy him some more time, and Roulette or a turn 4 ??? can kill, but even with his ability to destroy monk damage via level reduction it probably won't be enough to get him to turn 6 and the healing.
Thief, now, their offence is bad; the defence slows them down to the point where they need 12 rounds of solid attacking. So yeah they have to potentially deal with anything in his skillset, maybe forcing some revival and healing, and Level 2 Old if they're vulnerable is a serious pain. It... says something about how little offence Azulmagia has that even then I doubt Thieves will need to use more than one Phoenix Down and a few Hi-Potions.
Dragoon needs about 10 rounds of straight attacks. They can Jump to avoid some key ones if they want, but this only speeds up things like seeing White Wind so I dunno. They do have Aegis Shields which Monk lacks but I think their offence is too much worse for this to matter.
Ninja needs 4-5 rounds of attacking, or they can throw things to speed this up... but there's little compelling reason to do that. So Azulmagia gets two turns and maybe Roulettes someone but that's about it.
Samurai can throw money but this guy is a loser, so no, physical attacks it is. 6-7 rounds does it, so maybe Azulmagia lives to turn 4 and maybe not. Similar to Monk, but they fear delevelling less and have the Aegis Shields to block some things.
Berserker needs about 5 rounds! They can't stop to heal but they don't really have to since this guy doesn't use much damage, just means that a Roulette kill is something that slows them down. So again they kill before the fourth turn, probably, and have Aegis Shields. The inability to revive drops them a bit below Samurai/Monk who have similar offence, but probably no further. Nice to have a boss against whom their victory is nearly certain.
Ranger needs three rounds and is ITE. Like Knight but more reliable.
Mystic Knight has Bio Spellblade, since this guy is, rather randomly, weak to poison! Use that, then six attacks win it, which will happen before his second turn unless he has loads of evade luck. Pretty much identical to Knight actually, but with shields I guess.
Beastmaster physical attacks are pretty wretched here, and there's no weakness for them to exploit. They can catch Ninjas and Dragon Aevises (the game spams both at you in the area between Apanda and this guy) and relase them for a quarter of the boss's HP or more, so that keeps them from the lower ranks. But against higher-offence (even Samurai/Monk-level), all these really save them is like, one Phoenix Down or so, which isn't enough.
White Mage kills in three rounds and mocks the first turn. Black Mage has Bio to hit a weakness with (hits harder than Flare or boosted Holy), so pretty much the same deal. Time Mage's Meteor also usually kills in three rounds, though of course it's a bit random; they need to do at least 75% of their average damage over 12 attempts. Usually works! Better than the evade-subject I imagine, especially since TM can always use Return/Quick for an extra push. Summoner also kills in three rounds (as long as they're Level 35 or have Odin). See Ranger for all of these. I give Ranger a slight nod due to not needing MP I suppose, but the gaps here are small.
Blue Mage doesn't have the offence, but they do have the hilarity. Azulmagia can learn a few blue spells he doesn't yet know, and once he does, will spam that at you for a few turns. On the list is Self-Destruct: use it on him and he'll use it on you. A bad idea when he's outnumbered! Two people miss out on AP. You can use Level 3 Flare to kill him faster, though this also causes him to learn the ability and he'll destroy you if your level is divisible by 3 so either make sure it isn't or teach him something else right before his turn (1000 Needles or Aqua Breath are the safest; Mighty Guard can soften the latter). Blue Mages can also kill him in four rounds with Aeroga so they'll face down a Roulette this way. So they're in the same boat as MK/Knight/Ninja where the worst-case scenario is one person dying, and there are clever ways to outdo that.
Red Mage's spells barely scratch Azulmagia and he nulls all their status and laughs at their Protect. So they're stuck using a physical game which betters Thief's but not much more; they'll kill in about 10 rounds, similar to Dragoon. Raise saves on Phoenix Downs I suppose.
Chemist can slowly clobber him to death with Morning Stars, reviving people after an unlucky Doom/Roulette/??? and healing Level 2 Old (if necessary) using Recover. This will need around 18 rounds if nothing slows them down, or about 10 Azulmagia turns. This... still doesn't use that many Phoenix Downs.
Geomancer's Gaia either hits magic defence or tries to use gravity here; both are a rather bad idea. So it's Geomancer physicals! Obviously loses to Thief, gross.
Bard isn't much better; the Apollo Harp is out, as is status, so they're killing this guy with their knives. Buffing level/strength will probably pull them past Geomancer but probably not Thief.
Dancer can Sword Dance away, at least this pierces defence and evade nicely. It's a coinfip as always, but around 5-6 rounds should do it, which slides them nicely into the gap between Ninja and Samurai. Which is good enough for the top half for the first time ever, and before they even get their hands on the Man-Eater, too!
1. Ranger
2. Black Mage
3. White Mage
4. Time Mage
5. Summoner
6. Blue Mage
7. Mystic Knight
8. Knight
9. Ninja
10. Dancer
11. Samurai
12. Monk
13. Beastmaster
14. Red Mage
15. Berserker
16. Dragoon
17. Chemist
18. Thief
19. Bard
20. Geomancer
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Catastrophe
Catastrophe is the owner of one of the strongest multitarget attacks in the game: an Earth Shaker which he can use every turn (2/3 chance) and does over 1000 damage (or a bit less to mages), 2HKOing most and even threatening OHKOs against the frail at some levels. This would be nasty as fuck if you didn't have Auto-Haste; as is you can kill him before his second turn or use a few other tactics. He also sometimes mixes in Demon Eye (petrify) or physicals. Like the other final dungeon bosses so far he has decent defences (this time mostly physical) and evasion.
He also really doesn't like Float, but aside from the three jobs who have direct access to that, the other way to get Float (confusing a Gaelicat) isn't really practical to keep so far into this dungeon, since any death or tent/cottage use removes it.
Knight will usually kill in three rounds. Around 8 hits, 85% chance for each. Three rounds is what they get before Catastrophe's second turn, so they're probably fine.
Monk is another matter. Against Catastrophe's defence they're going to need around 7 rounds, which gives him four turns, plenty of time to destroy Monks even if they can survive two Earth Shakers with HP+30%. Hi-Potions don't cut it here any more, Elixirs it may have to be.
Thief... oh no. Can you say 13 rounds? While being solidly 2HKOed MT? This is terrifying.
Dragoon can try Jump shenanigans but Catastrophe isn't Titan and Earth Shaker is permanently a nasty threat. They need 5 rounds and that's bad, since unlike Monk they can't rely on tanking two Earth Shakers, and they'll have trouble outracing even his third turn.
Ninja needs 5 rounds too, which is also very bad, though at least they are faster so they should beat his third turn. Of course, they can pull out some throws to speed this up. 12 Shuriken (30000 gil) will drop Catastrophe safely, and that's cheaper than pulling out Elixirs certainly. They can also mix in some other powerful weapons they may have lying around, though we'll see how many other bosses they'll want those for.
Samurai's in a tough spot. Catastrophe's defence is too high for Zeninage to be effective, it'll struggle to break 4 digits. Their physicals kill in six rounds. They can go for some Murasame or even Murakumo rare-steals but those are super-annoying to get (guarded by commons) and this is one of the only places left they actually meaningfully help, since nothing else left has defence this high. And they still only make it like... 4-5 rounds.
Berserker's damage piercing defence is good! They might even have the raw HP to avoid a 2HKO, though probably not. They'll win in four rounds (often five) and can't retreat to Elixirs, meaning they face 2-3 Catastrophe turns so this will take resets if they get greeted by two Earth Shakers in that time. I think I'd rather eat resets than deal with all the elixirs Thief has to eat.
Ranger has an ITE/ITD blitz which kills very easily before Catastrophe's second turn. They've definitely turned into a top-tier class for lategame bosses.
Mystic Knight doesn't have a weakness to exploit here. They can use Flare Spellblade and kill in about three rounds plus the initial setup round, unfortunately they can't outrace the second turn unless they land every single hit. They can try to get through this with Drain Spellblade but it doesn't work very well since Catastrophe's high defence and evade really put a huge damper on it.
Releases look good for Beastmaster here, given that this is a boss who certanly justifies them. Sword Dancers are the common enemy here and take off a third of Catastrophe's HP; get three of them and you win! Since catch is probably what they'll want to do to get through some of these enemies anyway on the way here, though if they threw some against Azulmagia they'll need to restock which is more annoying. Some of their whips can also briefly paralyze Catastrophe, which is fun.
White Mage kills in two rounds with Holy. Black Mage kills in two rounds with Flare. Summoner kills in two rounds with Syldra. White Mage gets an extra bonus that at lower levels, Shell allows them to survive Earth Shaker (Ranger gets OHKOed at Level 33 or below, for instance; the mages at 31).
Time Mage uses Float, and laughs. Catastrophe is smart enough to dispel it in response, but that still eats its turns. At this point it no longer matters what offence they use. Oh and they can Slow/Old him, if you care, though his level and MEvade makes that a pain. Best, of course.
Blue Mage also has Float, in the form of Mighty Guard. Of course it also puts them in Shell, which reduces his damage to crap even on his subsequent turns. Aeroga three-rounds him anyway (even allowing the turn on Mighty Guard) so most of this is just useless; if they don't have Mighty Guard they'll still outslug; they even have better durability than the other mages and Ranger.
Red Mage obviously is in a tougher spot. Offence isn't very good here, certainly. But wait! Two shots of Doublecast Cura can actually erase Catastrophe's damage. Doublecast Fira isn't too bad against his lower MDef, either; 17 or so shots of that will be enough. 34 Firas and about half that many Curas will see them through this fight. This consumes under 500 MP before considering any Gold Hairpins. Should be fine, at lower levels they might in slight risk of using an Elixir, or maybe being OHKOed by high variance at levels as high as 34.
Chemist can mix Levisalve, it takes only one floating PC to make Catastrophe use 100 Gs. They need around 66 attacks to win and probably around 11 Levisalves to live long enough to get them (cost: around 1000 gil, dirt cheap really). Or they can employ the comedy option: mix Levisalve but once on someone with a Reflect Ring, and watch Catastrophe do nothing but reflect 100 Gs off the person with it. Oops! So yeah the gil cost is tiny and this works at any level, although White Mage's works at any level I'd ever consider, so that's how high Chemist goes!
Geomancer will need around 10 rounds to kill with Gaia; it wastes nearly half its turns on gravity, but those it doesn't will accomplish something at least, and it's better than trying their puny physicals here. Anyway this is terrible, kinda like Thief.
Bard, um. The status is out and their HP is, well, Bard HP. They can be OHKOed at Level 35 or below. They need to use Elixirs to make progress after each Earth Shaker. If they get enough Speed Song up they might be able to get away with just Hi-Potions, so that's their goal, and I suppose it's something that say, Thief or Geomancer can't do. But while the song is going on they're down a healer, so honestly yeah they're even worse.
Dancer needs 4-5 rounds of attacks on average, though they could get really lucky and only need 3, which would be nice! They don't reliably prevent the second Earth Shaker and get exploded as a result. Hell, even one is bad news, since like Bard they need to be Level 36 to reliably avoid a OHKO (and yes, that's with equipping for MDef). This puts them in a similar space to Dragoon, and I think the level requirement hurts more than the slightly better offence helps.
1. Time Mage
2. Blue Mage
3. White Mage
4. Chemist
5. Summoner
6. Black Mage
7. Ranger
8. Knight
9. Red Mage
10. Beastmaster
11. Ninja
12. Mystic Knight
13. Monk
14. Samurai
15. Dragoon
16. Dancer
17. Berserker
18. Geomancer
19. Thief
20. Bard
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Halicarnassus
THE KING can do 9000 damage with Holy. What a badass!
He also only does it on turn 8. On turn 1 he'll turn the entire party into frogs (unless you frog yourself before the battle, then he'll heal them instead; at worst, though, you use four Maiden's Kisses and carry on). On all other turns he'll use either weak physicals or Reverse Polarity (even turns only), with a 1/3 chance of Haste on turn 5. After turn 8 he repeats the cycle.
With no evade and lower defences than most final dungeon bosses he isn't even living long enough to do his one good damage move, never mind it's not that hard to recover from if he does. Well whatever, let's get this over with.
Knight: Kills in three rounds at most, mocks any physicals in the meantime.
Monk: Kills in five or six rounds, maybe less with Focus. Isn't dying to physicals before then.
Thief: Kills in like nine rounds or so. This gives him time for... four, maybe five physical attacks? Not enough time to get a Holy off, but if he focuses on one PC a bunch he MAY force a Hi-Potion use.
Dragoon: Kills in like eight rounds or so, more durable than Thief.
Ninja: Kills in three rounds, has Image if it matters (it doesn't).
Samurai: Kills in six rounds, mocks physicals in general. Zeninage kills in two rounds but why bother, right?
Berserker: Okay, here's the one job that has issues here, because they get wrecked by toad! Once THE KING transforms them back, though, they will start to hurt him pretty bad, killing him in five rounds, potentially. If he hastes himself in the first cycle he might do okay and maybe has a chance? Alternatively, they can try to get a Fury (common random in this area) to toad one or more of them before the boss, though since they're berserkers such finesse isn't really their forte.
Ranger: Kills in three rounds.
Mystic Knight: Kills in a total of five rounds, with shields and durability blah blah blah.
White Mage: Kills in three rounds.
Black Mage: Can Toad themselves before the fight if they wish. Kills in three rounds.
Time Mage: Kills in two rounds. Potentially one with Quick I suppose.
Summoner: Okay Halicarnassus has this thing where he counters offensive summons with a OHKO move. Too bad Golem stops it, so you alternate Golem with Syldras (10 should do it) until he dies.
Blue Mage: Could Toad themselves before the fight but that's more trouble than it's worth since it has to be done in battle, kills in four rounds.
Red Mage: Can Toad themselves before the fight. Kills in eight rounds with either Enhancer or Dualcast Fira, maybe if he focuses on one front-row PC he can make them heal... with Cura...
Beastmaster: Kills in eight rounds. Can release stuff if they want to speed this along, but it probably won't be necessary.
Chemist: Kills in about 20 rounds. That means Halicarnassus lives long enough to get off a Holy! DRAWS A PHOENIX DOWN OR SOMETHING MORE VALUABLE YESSSS unless he hits a Reflect Ring or something shut up.
Geomancer: Kills in about 13 rounds. Might well see Holy.
Bard: Kills in about 17 rounds, might be able to change this slightly via Sing, I dunno. Will almost certainly see one Holy.
Dancer: Kills in about five rounds. Probably not even focused physicals take them down, their defence is decent.
Another boss too terrible to bother with a formal rating. Berserker is the worst, Chemist/Geomancer/Bard might use a Phoenix Down, Thief might use a Hi-Potion or two, Summoner uh has to use a fair amount of MP I suppose. Everyone else cruises. When Thief is "they might have to use a Hi-Potion" against you, you know you suck.
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Twintania
After a run of bosses who could be taken down with simple slugging with little issue (and Catastrophe, who at least required you to be good at it), Twintania can come as a bit of a rude surprise. He spams multitarget damage at you; the first two turns are either Ice Storm (~700 ice magic) or Atomic Ray (~320 fire magic) or a physical attack (~900 to the front row). Then you face a MT Mind Blast (~320 + some HP leak, paralyzes for just over one of his turns if you aren't using Hermes Sandals), then two turns of Wind Slash (~220). Much more dangerous are his brutal counters, used 1/3 of the time: Tidal Wave against physicals (~1000 MT water magic) and Mega Flare against magic (~1200 MT non-elemental reflectable magic). Those hurt! They probably won't OHKO but they can kill when combined with Twintania's own turn, or if you see two in a row.
He's weak to holy and water, but he's hard to blitz down with 50000 HP, and those counters are really nasty unless you have a way to deal with them. Coral Rings do exist to absorb water and provide fighters with an out, but of course they mean giving up haste and immunity to Mind Blast (you have one from a chest, more are really expensive).
The most important part, though, lies in what comes next. On his sixth turn, he'll secretly change forms; this form is faster than most hasted characters. The next turn it will announce that it is charging for Giga Flare, and the turn after that you will see, as promised, Giga Flare: over 3000 points of searing multitarget, non-elemental, unreflectable damage. Have a nice day!
This form provides a death sentence for many parties... but also for Twinania himself. See as soon as he changes forms, he gains the following vulnerabilities: instant death (both the heavy-type checking variety and the vanilla kind), petrify, toad (he'll recover when he transforms back, but this prevents Giga Flare), and stop (lasts a long time, since he's not heavy any more). He also becomes vulnerable to gravity and loses all his defences/magic evasion, so you can easily land whatever you want. And best of all, there are no counters. So one option is to wait until he adopts this form, then to unleash either some extreme violence or shady status attacks (the Assassin's Dagger provides an option for almost everyone; so does the Magic Lamp, for all that you want it for the final battle, and really don't want to leave the dungeon and come back in order to recharge it) in the time provided. Of course if you don't deal with him during this brief window, you'll probably be dead.
Knight can kill in three rounds, but those counters are an issue. If they equip for Coral Rings, though, they're... probably fine, since as long as they trigger one Tidal Wave per round (80% chance) they'll be fully healed, and even if they don't that might be okay depending on what moves Twintania uses (e.g. not Ice Storm). They hit him twice, get paralyzed, but recover fast enough to finish him before Giga Flare. Alternatively, if they don't have Coral Rings, they try for the Assassin's Dagger. They'll get in two shots (if they can figure out when he changes forms; the ATB gauges freeze for an instant when he does), each at 22.5% or so. That's... definitely not very good, but an option if Coral Rings aren't on the table. They can also equip Aegis Shields and hope to survive Giga Flare that way, it at least gives them another chance though burns a bunch of items.
Monk... argh. No Assassin Dagger. With the Coral Ring, outracing Giga Flare is hopeless. They do have a lot of HP to soak Twintania's attacks, but... argh, they even trigger two counters. The number of Elixirs they'd need to heal through all that is ludicrous, since they'll trigger around 11 counters in order to win (yes, even with Focus), and they'll use at least two elixirs per counter. They can also just flip the table and summon Odin, and redo the damn dungeon. Or grind to Level 42 where they can survive Giga Flare with HP+30%, at which point a Coral Ring strategy should see them through the rest of what he does. To be clear I consider both of these worse than going for Assassin's Dagger resets, but you could argue that.
Thief doesn't have Monk's HP or even damage so Assassin's Dagger is their only hope. If they time things well they might be fast enough to get off three attempts, which is nice.
Dragoon has Jump! So just use that when he charges. Holy Lance Jump even hurts a lot, which is cool. Otherwise they can use Flame/Ice Shields to try to reduce his normal damage. They'll still need to go through a bunch of Hi-Potions, unless they Coral Ring it.
Ninja, like Thief, might also be able to squeeze in three Assassin's Dagger hits, though they have a harder time doing so. Coral Rings... should let them just barely outrace Giga Flare, but it'll be a close thing (they can always throw things if they need to). Very close to Knight overall, a bit better at asssassination and a bit worse at blitzing? Fitting. Tiebreak for Knight since they can survive a failed assassination with the Aegis Shield at least.
Samurai gets to pull out a new trick: Iainuki! This instant death move will have around 95% accuracy and all four can use it. Goodbye! All they need to do is live long enough to use it, and with Flame/Ice Shields this is easy.
BER SER KER has four instant death weapons! Four times the chances for instant death! Well maybe, their bad speed and inability to wait means they'll probably only get four chances. They also absolutely need Coral Rings, because they can't avoid triggering counters. Is needing to buy Coral Rings worth the slightly higher chance to land instant death? Eh... they can use an Aegis Shield, so sure.
Ranger can hit weakness with the Artemis Bow so has Knight-level blitzing (as usual, Coral Rings required). They're also pretty good at assassinating: Killer Bows with Rapidfire have a 28% ID rate, and they can run four and get 2-3 shots with each, which is over a 90% chance of winning.
Mystic Knight is a lot like Samurai, use shields and so on to survive, then instagib Twintania when it charges, with either Break or Holy Spellblade. They have slightly less HP but their status is faster and even more accurate; you MIGHT mistime a Iainuki since it has a charge time, I guess.
Beastmaster physicals aren't great even though Beast Killer hits weakness, so forget the Coral Ring strategy. The perfect catch here is an Orukat; its Demon Eye has a 100% chance to petrify, so having one means you win. This is a bit of a backtrack, though, (they're fought before Apanda) unless you grabbed one and kept it patiently until now. Otherwise they can do the usual instant death thing with Assassin's Dagger.
The mages can't use Coral Rings, but on the other hand they don't really need to. To start with White Mage... Holy strikes a weakness. They can either two-round the second form and avoid counters that way (though they'd better time this right), or they can set up Reflect/Shell to just survive any Megaflare counters easily enough. Not like they don't have Curaga ready to go anyway; they could get by without either buff if they wanted.
Black Mage doesn't have the defensive tools, so they'll need to wait and then Death him. They get ~8 shots at ~90% accuracy so yeah that's a win. Compared to Mystic Knight or Samurai they might actually have to use some Hi-Potions to survive the first form.
Time Mage has Stop, so once Twintania changes forms they can use that to lock him down entirely while waiting for ~60% Banish to carry him away (or just damage if you prefer; Stop is 100% and thus total annihilation here). They have no trouble living long enough, either; they can Slow Twintania and use the ol' Healing Staff to turtle through his attacks even he chooses the good ones.
Summoner can use Catoblepas or Odin to send the charging form packing. Carbuncle also allows them to attack and bounce Megaflares (it also bounces Atomic Ray and Mindblast, though Ice Storm still presents a threat); Leviathan strikes a weakness and kills in 9 shots. If they don't have Carbuncle they're no better than Black Mage; if they don't have any of the optional summons they're kinda screwed (beyond the usual Assassin's Dagger strats) but that's not very realistic.
Blue Mage can use Level 5 Death to send the second form packing. If they don't have it, Pond's Chorus or Death Claw both work nicely as well. With White Wind and/or Mighty Guard they can easily turtle through the early stages.
Red Mage doesn't have the good healing or buffs of White, nor the fatal status of Black... but they do have Toad! It's 90% accurate and thus easily suffices to control Twintania's Gigaflare; meanwhile, their Dualcast Cura and Healing Staff should keep them afloat through his own turns. They can use the Assassin's Dagger to try to finish him off once Toad has landed; even if it fails one cycle, they can survive to try again on the next.
A round of Goliath Tonics lets Chemist survive the opening rounds easily... and in fact, can even let them tank a Giga Flare at Level 39 or above! Of course recovering from one isn't exactly a pretty thing to do (the X-Potion mix, which consumes an Ether, will probably be called for if they go that route) but they only need to do this if they're trying to survive after failing to land the Assasin's Dagger. If they'd prefer, they can just toss a Dark Matter at Twintania in the form of a Death Potion. The options here make them safer than Ranger and those relying on the Assassin's Dagger or Coral Rings, at least.
Geomancer... Gaia is useless against the first stage, so they'll need to just turtle through it using Hi-Potions as necessary. Then they can try for Assassin's Dagger hits... but they have another trick here; everyone else can use Gaia and hope for the ~25% chance that they draw Twister, which will lower Twintania to 1-9 HP so the next hit kills. Overall this has about a 90% chance to work.
Bard is... actually kinda awesome here! They don't worry about surviving the first five turns; they just hide. Once those are over, they reappear, and use Stop. Like with Time Mage, this is total lockdown forever, until they land the Assassin's Dagger. So... to be clear, they're Time Mage, except with no risk whatsoever in the early stages of the fight instead of very little.
Dancer also gets to pull out one of their obtuse tricks: Flirt! Now with the endgame Dancer equipment, it's 100% accurate, and locks down the non-heavy Twintania form forever, or, again, until the Assassin's Dagger can finish him off. There isn't even the risk of mistiming it! They only issue is that Dancer needs to actually heal and such through the first few forms; more than Black Mage does even, since their HP sucks.
Ninja in 16th! Bard and Dancer both in the top half! Don't see that every day. Also behold, the final time Berserker isn't a raging dumpster fire of Tide-approved trainwreck.
1. White Mage
2. Mystic Knight
3. Blue Mage
4. Bard
5. Time Mage
6. Summoner
7. Red Mage
8. Samurai
9. Black Mage
10. Dancer
11. Chemist
12. Ranger
13. Geomancer
14. Dragoon
15. Knight
16. Ninja
17. Beastmaster
18. Berserker
19. Thief
20. Monk
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Another optional boss; this one guards the save point right before the final boss. If you're confident in your lumberjacking skills, it's reasonable to skip this one, but again, I suspect enough players/teams will want to fight him anyway
Necrophobe
Necrophobe begins the battle invincible, protected by four barriers (two in the front row and two in the back, behind him). Necrophobe doens't act, but the barriers do. They're slow (the fastest jobs will tripleturn them with haste) but they have a fair bit of offence; they'll reflect Flare/Holy off themselves for around ~1000 damage, then reflect -aga spells off their whole team for 1 to 4 hits of around ~360 to random PCs. Of course there are as many actions as there are living barriers, so this can add up to quite a bit!
The barriers are reflective but have a few status holes and not THAT much HP, so they can be cut down. By the time one is left it isn't very threatening. Kill them all and then Necrophobe becomes vulnerable on his next turn, using Flash to try to blind the team.
For the rest of the fight, he'll doubleact, usually using relatively competent physicals (~1200 to the front row). 1/3 of the actions will be something stronger: usually Vacuum Wave (~2000 physical), but sometimes Death or Hurricane (sets HP to critical; only used as the first action first). It's a fair bit of offence, but mostly physical. He has excellent defences (ties Calostiferi for the highest of the final dungeon bosses) but he's weak to all elements, so most jobs have a way of punching through them (remember, almost everyone can use the Air Knife at worst). He has 44000 HP, though if you fought Gilgamesh way back in Exdeath's Castle, everyone's favourite comic relief villain will interrupt the battle with 10000 HP left to go, triggering a plot fight which ends in Necrophobe's death.
Knights can take out barriers in about three hits, so they can have one dead before their first turn, and three gone before their second, which will therefore be pretty harmless. If they wish they can even use this window to buff themselves with the Defender, greatly softening Necrophobe's physical game. Once he drops his barrier, they'll need to cure blind, but then just two rounds of attacks should send him packing, since they hit weakness with the Excalibur and any Flametongues/Ice Brands they have lying around. So Necrophobe gets all of one real turn; he could kill with a Hurricane/physical combo (1/12 chance roughly) but nothing else should do it.
Monks can also kill off one barrier before it gets a turn, and have enough HP to soak the Flares/Holy spells reasonably well. Their offence isn't as good as Knight, though, so they aren't as good at cutting them down from there, and will need some Hi-Potions or Elixirs to deal with what's coming their way. In the main Necrophobe fight, however, they have loads of problems. Their damage is poor, non-elemental, and front-row based, and they don't have access to Protect, so Necrophobe can do quite a lot of damage to them. They'll need about 10 rounds or so to deal with him.
Thief is completely wretched. They can't even kill one barrier before they start attacking (despite potentially tripleturning them), so that'll immediately force some heavy revival and healing. And then Necrophobe will take 8 rounds or so to bring down, from the front row (with Air Knives), where he doubleacts and 2HKOs them, or OHKOs with Vaccum Wave. Yeesh.
Dragoon... the barriers are so slow that they can probably avoid a lot of what they do with Jump, but even if they don't they can do respectably enough in this phase, if worse than Knight certainly. Against Necrophobe they just use Air Knives (and the only Holy Lance owns) and can kill in three rounds of Jump from the back row (and they don't care about blind).
Ninjas need around five hits to take out the barriers, but with a possible tripleturn they'll likely have two dead in round 1 anyway, so they compare well with Knight here. The Image status largely mocks Necrophobe proper, as only Death can go through that and he won't likely live long enough to use it (it's turn 4), while Dual Air Knives do their thing.
Samurais... getting one barrier down for them on round 1 is difficult, but possible (depends on criticals), and so on from there. At least they have Aegis/elemental shields, those help. They can also throw money at the barriers, killing them all immediately, but this does cost 30000 gil. Their huge amount of evasion will mostly see them through the Necrophobe stage as they Air Knife him to death over 5-6 rounds, but it's not a sure thing by any means. Compared to Dragoon... the Zeninage option is at least one to consider, and the evade helps make up for Dragoon's other advantages some, though it is close.
Ranger is up against many targets, and can't gun them down that reliably due to how Rapid Fire works (and the invincible Necrophobe is still a target for that, making it slightly worse). It's a tough choice whether to go for raw damage or Killer Bow (8% ID per hit). It'll probably take around 4 rounds to kill all the barriers, but the risk is that the damage unfocuses and they all get turns, taking huge chunks out of the party's HP. With instant death, they have about a 65% chance to land at least one instant death for every round of attacks, and they get 2-3, so overall that's an 88%/96% chance to take out at least one, but it gets harder and harder to instant death the remaining ones with time. Probably still the better move? Against Necrophobe, they need just three rounds and don't need to heal blind, so he gets just one turn against back row targets. Oh yeah and if they want they can blind him, the Dark Bow has about a 99% chance to do so.
Mystic Knight activates Break Spellblade, and says goodbye to all four barriers immediately. Alternatively, they kill three and then spend time changing over to any elemental spellblade so they're ready to immediately heal blind and start smashing Necrophobe, giving him just one turn, which against their shields isn't likely to kill, though conceivably could (Vacuum Wave is close to a OHKO depending on level, and two physicals would do it if both hit the same person). So their mastery over the second stage isn't as complete as Knight or Ninja, but they make up for it with how ruthlessly they take out the first phase.
Beastmaster hates the first stage of the fight, because their two best weapons (Fire Lash and Assassin's Dagger) both have added spells which they reflect and are thus really bad news. So their normal offence against the barriers is.. sub-Thief, meaning they get wrecked. They probably want to pull out four Dragon Aevises, which do 4HKO MT and thus kill off all the barriers immediately. This works very well; the problem is that there's a small trek after Twintania to pick them up, and a much larger one if they want to restock before fighting Neo Exdeath (spoilers: they do). So this is a pretty large opportunity cost. Against Necrophobe, the Fire Lash becomes a good thing again, as do Air Knives; they'll need around five rounds, though, and Necrophobe can certainly bash them around a bunch in the meantime. So they're the worst of the jobs so far except Thief in the first phase (due to the cost), and decidedly below average in the second, too.
White Mage isn't a fan of Reflect, but it's not a big deal. They can reflect one of their own and bounce Holy off though it's rather unreliable and leaves them unable to heal that PC reliably (though bouncing MT Curaga off the barriers isn't bad at it). Shell's gonna be handy here, greatly reducing the danger of the barriers' offence; might as well start with that on everyone. Of course if the reflected PC does drop due to bad luck or healing being wonky, they have Arise. So... they have some many tools at their disposal that they're in little danger. Necrophobe himself won't even get a (non-Flash) turn, as Holy striking a weakness is Not Very Nice.
Black Mage also needs to get around Reflect, and they have to do it by bringing in a Reflect Ring, which means no Haste on one PC. Death will take the barriers down quite nicely, it works around 2/3 of the time (minus any bounces that hit Necrophobe instead) so chances are only one Barrier will survive to get a turn, not bad at all. (Two is a risk, though.) Again, once those go down, they wreck face; -aga spells hitting a weakness are brutal and even down a PC offensively Necrophobe isn't getting a turn.
Two rounds of Meteors should mostly if not entirely kill the barriers; Quick and Return exist as bailouts if somehow things really aren't going there way. Necrophobe himself eats focused Meteor. Due to his MDef he's much more likely to get a turn than he was against the other mages, but his targets are in the back row so he isn't killing them short of either a Hurricane or a Vacuum Wave in which both moves target the same PC and hit through Main Gauche/MEvade (~8% chnace).
Summoner mocks this whole "multiple reflective targets" thing and three Syldras take them all out. Then Necrophobe tells them to taste his power and they easily two-round him before he gets a non-Flash turn. Oh yeah and if you care, Golem completely wrecks him anyway. Total annihilation.
Blue Mage... Aqua Breath is their main tool to go through Reflect, but it's not all that damaging so they'll all get turns, which is bad. Mighty Guard can make those turns not very scary, though. Once it's just Necrophobe, boosted Aeroga does its thing and he likely doesn't get a turn. The biggest problem here is MP; the strategy outline costs around 682 before Gold Hairpins. Four of them certainly have that much, but considering they had to go through a dungeon to get here, it may require burning some Ethers. Also actually getting Mighty Guard. So this probably knocks them below Knight.
Red Mages do not like those barriers at all, they all get turns. Offence not super-different than Thief after factoring in speed. At least Dualcast/Raise/Cura gives them ways to recover, which is something other low-end jobs can't do here although it's still not that great. Against Necrophobe they can buff with Protect and then Dualcast -aras actually only give him two rounds, so that's pretty nice.
Chemist probably wants to send the barriers packing with Death Potions; one Dark Matter each will send them off, no fuss no muss. If they want to avoid using those it's... actually gonna be tough to do so efficiently, even if Chemists double their HP that's a lot of offence they have to deal with since they have no fast way to neutralise the barriers otherwise. So should probably just use Death Potions. Necrophobe isn't too scary with doubled HP and Protect; Hurricane is still kind of a threat, and he certainly might live long enough to use Death too, though, so it could draw a few Phoenix Downs and healing away certainly, especially since they need to be in the front row. They remind me a lot of Samurai (Zeninage vs Death Potions kinda similar, both have poor offence but decent defences in stage 2) but generally somewhat worse.
Bard's interesting. The barriers are vulnerable to Stop, so they can spam Romeo's Ballad. It's ~85% accurate and only has a short duration, but multiple uses still will all but eliminate their turns, and if the odd one does sneak through on occasion it's nothing regen and the odd Hi-Potion can't take care of. It's good that this works, because they can weaken the enemies only slowly. They can (and probably should) buff strength or level, because otherwise they'll also be quite poor against Necrophobe... but with maxed strength he gets only one non-Flash turn, likely.
Dancer... three Sword Dance procs will take out a barrier (maybe two if they're both from the Man-Eater, but they only have one of those probably), so three get first turns, then only one gets a second, barring maybe revival shenanigans round 1. Against Necrophobe they switch to Air Knife dances and he probably only gets one non-Flash turn, though they're front row with bad HP so this hurts them more than it hurts many other jobs.
Geomancer... can use Gaia and fish for a ~25% of 6HKO MT damage, otherwise nothing (gravity attempts). That... gives all the barriers at least two turns unless they're lucky, ew. But their physicals here are just terrible since Assassin's Dagger is out, the Gaia Bell randomly does nothing (and sucks). Only the Rune Chime will be remotely worth using, and that's a rare drop. Against Necrophobe they pull out Air Knives like everyone else. But they're much worse than Thief here, clearly the worst of any-
Oh. Wait. We forgot someone. Berserker can't switch weapons to deal with the two phases of the fight, so they either use Air Knives which suck against the Barriers (9HKO the front row, 19HKO the back) but do better against Necrophobe, or they stick to axes which are better against the barriers (5-6HKO the front, and the one Thor's Hammer does ignore row at least) but only six-round Necrophobe on a good day. Regardless, their inability to focus-fire is terrible, and ensures all the barriers get turns; in fact they probably need around 7 rounds to kill any of them and are too slow to even get a 7-3, meaning they face potentially two rounds of Holy/Flare and one of -aga spells which destroy them. And that's with axes.
And if they make it through THAT, Necrophobe uses Flash, which isn't the trivial issue for them it is for everyone else, since blind is actually awful here! The only ways to prevent it are Silver Specs (which kick out Haste) or Bone Mail (which makes the wearer weak to Holy... very bad in the first stage!). Bone Mail on an Air Knife user is probably the way to go, but this is still bad. Necrophobe's own offence can certainly pile on any berserkers who have survived this long fast. This is a slugfest they're not going to win very often so they can expect many resets, and to make matters worse it's very far from the last save point... and to make matters worse they absolutely must get this save point because somehow this isn't Berserker's worst fight in world 3.
1. Summoner
2. White Mage
3. Mystic Knight
4. Time Mage
5. Ninja
6. Black Mage
7. Knight
8. Blue Mage
9. Bard
10. Ranger
11. Samurai
12. Chemist
13. Dragoon
14. Red Mage
15. Dancer
16. Monk
17. Beastmaster
18. Thief
19. Geomancer
20. Berserker
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It's worth noting that Holy Breath (damage = caster HP) hits weakness as normal, so offense isn't too bad as long as the Chemists have enough of a stock of Dragon Fangs to throw around, I think? Doesn't hurt with doubled HP, at the very least.
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Yeah, they could get through with about 5-6 Dragon Fangs, but that's a larger resource hit than the 0-3 Phoenix Downs I suspect they'd use just by hitting him with Air Knives, since nothing but very specific moves actually threatens them then.
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Also behold, the final time Berserker isn't a raging dumpster fire of Tide-approved trainwreck.
I like how I am now synonymous with horrible, horrible fights that require some really obtuse method of winning. I blame RICHARD and Laggy-chan.
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As bad as that Berserker vs Necrophobe fight is, it's still less of a trainwreck than the mobile/PC version where they will never target the two backrow Barriers and have to resort to the most convoluted FF5 strategy that I have ever heard of.
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Exdeath / Neo Exdeath
Exdeath the tree is yon standard final dungeon boss. He has respectable defences and evasion backed up by solid HP, and the usual "above average speed if you aren't hasted, but really slow if you are". He has three phases; generally speaking he hits really hard against a single target. In all three phases, he can sometimes skip a turn, because Square went through some weird phase where they thought it was funny to have final bosses do this, or something.
The first phase will use physicals which do around 1500 to the front (less against high-def types) / 700 to the back, or White Hole. White Hole inflicts both death and petrify, so curing it involves at least two actions (and probably a third to heal them, unless the revival was full). Pretty nasty; blocked by Shell/MEvade, and can be immuned entirely if you null even one of its statuses, so Aegis Shield and Ribbon both work (so does Bone Mail, but you don't want that).
Once he loses 40% of his health, he'll start using Flare and Holy. These probably KO in a single hit, unless your HP is very high. (At normal levels, requires HP+30% or a buff.) He can only use those once every four turns, though, starting with the first turn he drops into this HP threshold. On every fourth turn in this threshold, he can also use Doom. Otherwise it's more physicals and White Hole.
Once he loses 80% of his health, he'll adopt a simple but dangerous AI: 1/3 chance of nothing, 1/3 chance of a physical, and 1/3 chance of Meteor, which does 4 very random hits and is very dangeorus. You don't want to leave him in this stage for long, unless you have Shell or doubled HP. When he dies, Neo Exdeath will appear (unless you killed him via a couple sneaky methods, which I will not be assuming).
Neo Exdeath has four parts; three in the front row, and one in the back. The one in the front mainly uses physical attacks, slightly weaker than Exdeath's. It will throw in Vacuum Wave as well, similar to Necrophobe. 1/9 of the time he'll skip a turn, 1/9 of the time he'll use Dispel (starting from its third turn).
The one in the back uses various singletarget spells, which generally do around 1200-1700 damage. Delta Attack does less, but inflicts petrify. Flare and Holy hit harder, but are rarer, used only 1/3 on turn 3/4 on every four turns thereafter. It can also use physical attacks (same as the other part's, except that this one is in the back row) and Dispel, the latter being rare. Most of this doesn't matter, because this part is Heavy, which gives it a host of terrible status holes, the most easily exploitable of which is Odin. Cast from the Magic Lamp, Odin will always destroy the back part; the Summon version won't work until all other parts are dead. Since Neo Exdeath is more threatening than Twintania for most parties, they will want to save the Magic Lamp just for this.
Since the above two parts are entirely singletarget and one is easily dispatched, most challenge runs fear the middle two parts instead. First of all, the middle-top part has Grand Cross. It always hits, and has a random chance to infict one random FF5 status (HP-to-critical is an option as well). Four of these are blocked by Hermes Sandals. Lamia's Tiara, Aegis Shield, and various Genji equips can cover one or two more each. Ribbon makes this move a joke; only Zombie can sneak through then.
Anyway, this part is weird. Grand Cross will at base be used on turn 3, then every 7 turns thereafter. Once it drops below just over half of its HP, this changes to "turn 2, then every 8 turns thereafter" but restarts the timer from the beginning. Below one quarter HP, the timer starts again, once again for turn 2. If it survives for three more turns after this it has a 1/3 chance to use Meteor every 3 turns. The short of this is that with high offence, it's entirely possible to keep this part from getting a turn, as you can restart the timer several times and conceivably it will spend 4 turns doing nothing at all. Otherwise, though, you can expect to see the odd Grand Cross. Probably not many, but each one is potentially deadly if you lack Ribbons.
Finally there is the bottom-middle part. Just as the top-middle part (almost) only uses Grand Cross, this part only uses Almagest. Almagest is straightforward, boring, but very effective, especially against lower-HP characters. It does 1620 defence-ignoring damage to everyone (720 if you have Shell, though, which makes this move kind of suck). Aegis Shield gives you a chance to block it. No HP limit nonsense here; it's turn 2 then every 4 turns thereafter. Both Almagest and Grand Cross have (separate) visual indications starting the round before they are used, so you know when each is coming.
Neo Exdeath has one final trick, which mostly serves to punish anyone who tries to focus-fire down one part at a time, and reward people who blast away with multitarget (did Summon really need to be better, Square?). Once any part is alone it will use, on its next turn, Meteor/Almagest/Vacuum Wave doubleacted with Comet/Vacuum Wave. If it gets another turn after that, it will repeat this, only even more dangerous as now Meteor/Almagest (the most dangerous moves) can be used on both parts of the double. And it continues doing so from there. The moral of the story is to not leave any one part alive for long!
The broad strategy to get around this is to either kill all the parts at once with multitarget, or to gun down two of the parts, which will generally be the back part with the Magic Lamp + whichever of Almagest or Grand Cross the party fears more. The Magic Lamp can also call a few other useful things, notably Golem, Catoblepas (5% chance to target and petrify the Almagest part), and some multitarget damage, if desired. Then, spread out damage against the remaining two, so that they die around the same time. You can be crafty by attacking the one you know has acted more recently towards the end, if you wish.
On with the show! I'll be doing this one a bit differently, just using point form for broadly how each job does. I'll also show the construction of the list at the bottom by comparing each job to every job ranked before it.
Knight:
-Aegis Shields can protect from White Hole, though come at the cost of being two-handed.
-Defender can be used to cast Protect and reduce some damage taken, although you'll need to reset it if the character with it dies due to Flare/Holy, etc.
-If Knights go for all out offence and don't get killed, they should be able to kill the tree only giving it two turns. If they want to leave Aegis Shields on two PCs to increase their survivability, make this three. Pretty good.
-Knights survive Almagest at Level 36 or higher, though of course they'll want to pull out the Elixirs after it is used. They'll want to survive a second.
-They can kill the Grand Cross part before it gets an action without much difficulty; this should be their plan of action if they can survive Almagest.
Overall ranking: Nothing to compare to yet! Pretty good though.
Monk:
-With HP+30%, they can survive Flare/Holy, but have no recourse against White Hole and risk seeing Meteor.
-Focus is probably the way to go. A round of Focuses + a round of physicals will mean no chance of Meteor, and generally helps out their offence in the rest of the fight.
-They survive Almagest easily; at Level 34 without HP+30% (Level 29 with).
-Their offence is relatively poor. They might still be able to blitz out Grand Cross with a barrage of Focus, but probably not due to turns spent on other things like healing from Almagest and using the lamp.
Overall ranking; Below Knight
Thief
-They have no tricks or anything which helps them against anything Exdeath or Neo Exdeath can do.
-They need to be Level 41 to survive Almagest, higher than I'd generally assume. If they aren't, their only recourse is to fish for a 5% petrify kill from the Magic Lamp.
-There's remarkably little to say, they're predictably bad.
Overall ranking: Below Monk
Dragoon
-Aegis Shields protect them from White Hole.
-They're very anti-physical with back row, high defence, and shields, so the common physicals in this fight don't do much to them.
-IF they stole Dragon Lances from Crystal Dragon (a big if, since it's a rare steal guarded by a common), that can do a crapload of damage to the Grand Cross part. (It also helps their damage a lot in general.)
-Jump can avoid Almagest! Or Grand Cross. Both is possible, even, depending on how the turns line up. Dragoons can take Almagest at Level 37 or higher.
-Their biggest failing is their generally poor offence, and the fact that stopping to heal isn't very compatible with Jump's defences, since the attacks just focus on whoever stops to heal. They risk seeing Meteor from the tree, for instance.
Overall ranking: Between Knight and Monk. Knight's ability to blitz things trumps their survivability, but Monk's offence, while still better, isn't nearly enough better.
Ninja
-They're quite vulnerable to the tree, but with their speed they can recover from anything it does, and they blitz away the Meteor phase very, very well, via throw at worst (but physicals likely work too).
-Without blitzing they'll give the tree around four turns or so, certainly worse than Knight.
-They need to be Level 41 to survive Almagest. That's bad.
-But they can blitz down the Almagest part before it gets a turn! They just need to throw about 9 Fumas. Random high-power weapons they don't need can substitute well.
Overall ranking: They win relatively safely, but at great cost. No shield and needing either front row or even heavier costs (shuriken?) makes them very fragile and worse than the tanky shield-users. Worse than Dragoon, better than Monk.
Samurai
-It takes about 22 Zeninages to kill the tree (cost: 44000 gil), if they go that route. Elixirs cost 50000, though, as a reminder, so this isn't as bad as it sounds! Tree gets around three turns this way, so it's better than killing slow.
-They have Aegis Shields to protect from White Hole.
-They need only 19 Zeninages to kill Neo Exdeath! (Yes, the lower defence matters.) If Odin is summoned first so there are only 3 targets, this costs around 114000 gil.
-This doesn't quite blitz the Almagest part, but it certainly blitzes Grand Cross. They'll need to tank one Almagest. They need to be Level 36 or get lucky with Aegis Shields.
Overall ranking: Them vs Knight is interesting. Essentially, Samurai spends around 160000 gil to avoid one more Almagest. And also have more survivability due to back row and shields. I'll go with Knight, though, because Samurai performance falls notably with level. Higher than anyone else though.
Ranger
-If things go their way, the tree gets only two turns. As usual, they blitz solos well.
-Back row, but no protection from White Hole.
-Being unable to target Rapidfire suuucks against Neo Exdeath, it ensures that all three parts live a while. They'll definitely see Grand Cross and probably two Almagests (though one is possible if they get lucky).
-The Darkness Bow makes a mockery of Neo's physicals if they equip that for a moment! Funny at least.
-It should be mentioned that Rapidfire is EVEN WORSE here in SNES/PSX, where the parts which govern Neo Exdeath's visuals but don't take turns count as (invincible) targets.
-They can also try to specifically blitz the Almagest part (Artemis Bow hits weakness which helps), but they'll still always see one.
-They need to be Level 41 to survive the Almgest they'll definitely see. 5% petrify or grind there, there's no ninja-like blitz option.
Overall ranking: They're not enough better against the tree than Monk to justify how much worse they are against Neo. "Be level 41 or 95% chance to lose" is unacceptable. Better than Thief of course.
Mystic Knight
-Aegis Shields are cool; you know the drill. Front row less cool.
-Use Flare Sword then beat the tree down; he'll get three turns or so and they avoid Meteor.
-Against Neo Exdeath, glorious Break Spellblade instantly slays the Almagest part (overall cost 3 turns to set it, then set Flare again after).
-Even with all that, they can possibly blitz out Grand Cross as well! A bit dicy if they're alternating between it and the front for targeting, though.
-If they wish, they can focus all their energy on it and lock down the back with Silence Spellblade (Delta Attack is a slight worry, Aegis Shields help), killing it only after killing everything else. Not sure if this is worth it.
Overall ranking: Obvious best so far. No Almagest, solid offence/durability otherwise.
White Mage
-Protect/Shell make everything the tree does survivable. White Hole will hit only 35% of the time and can be dealt with by two spells: Arise and Esuna. (You'll need to reset buffs, but you still come out ahead on turns.)
-Shell makes Almagest a joke. Curaga easily heals it and then some.
-Grand Cross part gets blitzed real bad. It doesn't get one off.
-Um yeah this job laughs at this fight and has no weaknesses nor even significant costs. You can still lose but you have to very actively screw up; White Mages can probably even survive the limit phase indefinitely if they need. They literally tank Double Almagest.
Overall ranking: Um yeah, the best.
Black Mage
-If they blitz the first form it only gets two turns.
-As is the default for mages: they're in the back row to soften physicals, get OHKOed by Flare/Holy if they see it, and can only resist White Hole with MEvade (30-35%).
-Against Tree, they'll probably be OHKOed by Almagest (unless Level 42+), but they can stop it with Break. Break only has around a 10% chance to land, but they get ~16 chances to land it (minus any Magic Lamp turns). Overall this has around an 80% chance of success.
-If they beat that part they're probably in the clear; they may face one Grand Cross as well as they MT-blitz the last two parts down.
-Another option is that they can prep the Wonder Wand to cast Shell on one PC right before Almgest hits, though this does require a bunch of setup. That PC will survive and can work on reviving others, though it's a bit dicy.
Overall ranking: Usually they'll kill with Break. The times that they don't are a concern since that'll basically mean a reset! They're good otherwise, but I'll generally side with safe wins... so below Ninja (the lowest of the relatively safe jobs) but above Monk.
Time Mage
-With Quick they can very easily kill the tree before it gets two turns... in fact doing it in one round is quite possible!
-They can cast Return if the tree's only action is a fatal one if they wish. Almost nobody deals with the first form better.
-Unfortunately they hate Almagest with a passion. Their best bet is to use Old. If they land it within their first 2-3 rounds, then the Almagest caster will lose enough of its level such that its Almagest becomes survivable at Level 40. If they land it right as the fight begins they can survive it at Level 38. Old has a 13% chance to land, but with Quick they get two shots. Overall they have a 90+% chance to survive this way, as high as 97% or so depending on how the turns fall.
-Once Old has landed, the part can be mostly disregarded thereafter, as its speed drops a lot and any future Almagests it does get off will be puny.
-Again, they have the Wonder Wand option. Quick makes them better at recovering, too.
-Quick/Meteor is a decent enough blitz option. It falls just short of reliably killing all of Neo Exdeath's parts before Almagest gets fired, but will completely crush the battle otherwise; Grand Cross shouldn't be much of a concern.
Overall ranking: Basically Black Mage but better in every way? Their strategy actually borders on reliable so I'm willing to push them up a little further, maybe above Dragoon but below Knight/Samurai.
Summoner
-Their performance against the tree similar to Black Mage. The main edge they have here is Phoenix (potentially) which is full revival and even restores MP, so easier to recover from any fatal hits or White Holes.
-Carbuncle/Golem is pretty awesome at walling any non-White Hole fatal hits, though! Also helps in the next stage.
-Another job whose best plan against Almagest is to try to land some sort of status! Catoblepas is the plan here; it's more accurate than Break and lands around 14% of the time, so around a 91% chance to land before Almagest fires.
-Carbuncle helps here another way; there's a slim (1/12) chance that the mage in the back fires Delta Attack and it reflects and petrifies the Almagest part.
-Wonder Wand strats work here again, Golem/Carbuncle/Phoenix make them safer than normal.
-Like Time Mage, Summoner is very close to being able to just blitz the fight with raw damage before Almagest hits, but they'll probably fall a bit short.
Overall ranking: Compared to Time Mage, they aren't quite as reliable though have more safety in some other ways (Golem/Carbuncle) and certainly consume less elixirs on a win. I think reliability trumps here. They still feel better than Dragoon due to the offence which is so much higher.
Blue Mage
-Oh look Mighty Guard. Almagest is not an issue, Flare/Holy/Meteor are not an issue.
-Aegis Shields as well!
-They give the tree thre (not very scary) turns and don't see Meteor, or fear it that much.
-Grand Cross part does not get to fire. Almagest part healed by White Wind.
-They have a bunch of cool status options here but they're too powerful to matter.
Overall ranking: The only knock on them is that they really want Mighty Guard, which isn't completely trivial to get. Otherwise they have all the tools to annihilate this fight, and none of the other blue spells they would use here are remotely obscure. Below White Mage only.
Red Mage
-Protect helps out against physicals, as does the back row. Having some MEvade reduces the hit rate of White Hole at least.
-Dualcast Raise+Cura is an improvement over Phoenix Downs, certainly.
-No shields, bad HP, and terrible damage makes them have issues with the tree though. They give the tree six turns minimum and at least one in the Meteor phase.
-Almagest sucks! They need to be Level 43-44 to survive it.
-Wonder Wand's Shell can as usual let them survive one, but unfortunately their blitzing is so bad they'll see at least one more, so better hope the shelled mage doesn't get dispelled or hit by certain status in the meantime.
-And of course they'll see lots of Grand Crosses regardless.
Overall ranking: Worse than Monk, better than Ranger.
Beastmaster
-Did I mention Mighty Guard rules? Because Beastmaster can get it too! It's a pain in the ass on SCC, but doable: find a Crystelle in the back row, be in the back row yourself, control it to cast Protect on itself, and then hit it with the Dancing Dagger... if it doesn't proc a fatal Dance, it'll have a chance to do 1-2 damage to its 3 HP. Get it down to 1 and you can catch it! Annoying but yeah it's worth it here.
-Better be careful about when you release it though since White Hole is still a bad time for getting rid of it (though nothing else in the first form is).
-Since they can't afford any offensive releases here, their offence against Exdeath is terrible. Like he's getting a dozen turns or so minimum, which is a lot of time for fatal nonsense. You burn through resources like crazy, and Meteor can certainly wreck you. Popping Mighty Guard when Meteor can first make its appearance is probably a good idea, since no more White Hole then, although Meteor CAN kill Shelled characters still if it focuses on them. Not much you can do about that.
-But with Shell up, they need not fear Almagest, barring the rare Dispels that can remove it.
-They can also release Dragon Aevises or Crystal Dragons which deal MT 9999, the other good use of their time. This can either skip the Meteor phase of the first fight, or unload as much damage as possible into the second.
-Actually they might even want to forgo Mighty Guard. The Beast Killer whip strikes weakness on the Almagest part, so they just might be able to get away with three released shots of 9999 and a Beast Killer blitz before Almagest hits. They'll need to rare-steal at least two of 'em, though, and even then things could go wrong if anyone dies due to the physical part while they do this, as they don't have much time to spare.
-They can also just survive Almagest at Level 39 or above.
Overall ranking: Man they're weird. Overall... pretty decent? Their MT 9999 shots and potential Mighty Guard can certainly bypass some problems. Probably better than Ninja with their extra HP and not needing crazy numbers of Fumas. They're a lot like Dragoon, pretty safe but the low offence can bite them. Probably worse due to no Aegis Shields.
Chemist
-So hey with everyone else using elixirs here (except the best of the best), chemist ingredients don't feel too pricy, do they?
-Lifeshield (costs a Phoenix Down) makes them immune to White Hole.
-Goliath Tonics double their HP, letting them survive all but the freakiest of focused Meteors.
-Either a Dragon Fang or two Turtle Shells will put them in Shell. Protect/Reflect/Regen as well.
-With all this in place they mock everything either Exdeath form can do except Grand Cross (and with Lifeshield / Hermes Sandals / Lamia's Tiara, a fair bit of Grand Cross too).
-If they want to blitz Grand Cross out, they can also buff their level to 255 with Hero Cocktails (costs around 10000 gil to do this to everyone). This gives them adequate offence to ensure it doesn't see a turn with Morning Star and Assassin Dagger beatdowns. They can probably get away with a bit less. Alternatively they can unload lots of Turtle Shell/Dragon Fangs into it.
Overall ranking: They win, very safely. They use less resources than Samurai, but more than Mystic Knight, who is slightly less safe but still safe. Ah what the hell, safety rules, and MK may need to use a elixirs anyway. Below only Blue/White Mage.
Geomancer
-Gaia uses nothing but Wind Slash here. Pretty much the best it could be reasonably be, since Air Knives enhance it into something similar to a boosted MT -aga.
-If they really count HP right they might be able to dodge Meteor, but they have to really be careful since the window is small. He gets at least four turns, likely five before any slowdowns for healing.
-Usual mage durability for White Hole, back row, etc.
-They survive Almagest at Level 40. Well, that's one thing they have over other mages.
-Wind Slash is a decent move for the final battle! It might even blitz out Grand Cross, wow. It helps that they have really high magic, so the Bahamut/Levithan/Syldra they can call out of the lamp really hurt.
Overall ranking: That... was actually way less bad than I was expecting! Sure, they need to be Level 40, which is a negative, and a lot of their strategy is a bit dicy even if they are. But... there's nothing really terribly wrong with them? Between Black Mage and Monk works.
Bard
-They can buff all their stats (level, str/spd/mag) to 99 at the start of the fight. Sure they'll need to recover from White Holes, but they can do that without going into elixirs (just a lot of Phoenix Downs, Hi-Potions, and Softs), and it gets easier the higher their speed gets.
-Once they get here, watch out! With their insane speed, they blitz out Exdeath's lower HP phases without it getting turns.
-Oh man, it gets worse. Their Bahamut/Syldra are MT 9999, their Leviathan around 8000.
-And with their crazy speed they easily blitz out everything else too. It takes them around 7-8 of their rounds to win this. During that time, only the front part of Neo Exdeath has any chance to get even a single turn.
Overall ranking: Fucking glorious. Deathbards conquer everything, the only issue is all the Phoenix Downs they'll use early on. But for a completely safe win that cost is tiny, compare them to Samurai. Below Chemist, but better than everyone else.
Dancer
-Man Eater Sword Dances hit weakness on Exdeath and do 9999, that's cool.
-Ribbon blocks White Hole.
-Exdeath probably gets around three turns. They... can often blitz the Meteor stage, but not reliably, due to the nature of Dance. (No, physicals aren't doing it.)
-Against Neo Exdeath, they're... gonna have a bad time.
-They need to be Level 45 to survive Almagest. Ugh.
-They COULD blitz out the Almagest part. But it'll take a lot of luck with drawing lots of Sword Dances. And it'd involve being in the front row with shit HP which the front part can take advantage of (even its physicals probably OHKO). So uh probably not. Either get a few extra levels or pray for a lot of luck with either Dance procs or Catoblepas working.
-Ribbon blocks Grand Cross! Man think how good Dancer might be in the second stage if they had a way to survive Almagest.
Overall ranking: It's Thief, only being Level 41 isn't good enough. So... worse than Thief, despite a bunch of advantages otherwise (Ribbon, more damage). God, the only damn boss the Man-Eater hits weakness on and it doesn't matter.
The one and only, the glorious Berserker
-You are levelling to 99 and are last place, but let's take a look anyway.
-Tree... could be worse! Might as well steal four Aegis Shields so you null White Hole. He'll get two turns against your mighty Level 99 warriors, and nothing he does will be too scary.
-It will take around 70 hits to defeat Neo Exdeath. Or around 18 rounds if nothing goes wrong. This means you will likely see three Grand Crosses and three Almagests. But hey, three Almagest only takes out around half of your 9999 HP (you probably lost a bit more elsewhere) and might be blocked by Aegis Shields, and maybe you get lucky on Grand Cross.
-But the real problem: there's that one target in the back row, lasting even longer than the rest. You can expect a few rounds of it alone. And every turn it gets, it could use Meteor, or worse, Maelstrom.
Overall ranking: Actually while it's boring as sin to get that high, Neo Exdeath isn't as CRAZY bad at Level 99 as he was in SNES/PSX, since those dummy targets are gone. You can certainly conceivably have enough good luck with evasion and Grand Cross misses to get through, not to mention the final part's ultimate AI. But... yeah obviously last.
1. White Mage
2. Blue Mage
3. Chemist
4. Bard
5. Mystic Knight
6. Knight
7. Samurai
8. Time Mage
9. Summoner
10. Dragoon
11. Beastmaster
12. Ninja
13. Black Mage
14. Geomancer
15. Monk
16. Red Mage
17. Ranger
18. Thief
19. Dancer
20. Berserker
We're done! I may try to throw something together later for some attempt at an overall performance but hey, that was fun and interesting to see. It was nice to see White Mage annihilating the Rift bosses after how much this format spat on them midgame.
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Again, that was so cool. Hope we'll get Omega/Shinryu too
Why isn't Mime in here?
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ff5 bard continues to prove to be its strongest appearance in the series
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Again, that was so cool. Hope we'll get Omega/Shinryu too
Why isn't Mime in here?
Years of being conditioned by Fiesta, mostly!
SCC-style Freelancer/Mime kinda misses the point of the jobs especially late in the game, but it might have been interesting to consider how they'd do at other points. At first you might think they're just shitty Knights (less HP/strength, no Double Grip, etc.) and largely they are, but being able to break rods, use the Heal Staff, use the Death Sickle, use Ribbons, etc., would give them versatility. So they'd rarely get too near the bottom I think? Could be fun to look at.
Mime would mostly be worse since they're basically Freelancer with worse weapon options (just rods/staves/knives). There are a few uses for Mimic that I can think of but not many in that setting, so yeah, really missing the point of the job.
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Again, that was so cool. Hope we'll get Omega/Shinryu too
---
it turns out that once again the white anglo-saxon protestant hegemony leaks through yet again in our nation's media
the ultimate party for defeating THE FLORA-AMERICAN MENACE THREATENING OUR WAY OF LIFE is 4 white christians in pointed white robes
uh-huh
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And here's an update to the project I started earlier, throwing together a ranking of the jobs just based on the raw numeric ranking each job received from each boss, and averaging their performance. You can find the methodology specifics back on page 3 if you really care. I've reposted the world 1 and world 2 averages for convenience.
World 1 (15 bosses)
1. Red Mage, 82.1
2. Summoner, 77.3
3. Black Mage, 71.9
(Samurai, 71.7)
4. Ninja, 70.5
5. Blue Mage, 69.0
6. Time Mage, 65.2
(Dragoon, 56.7)
7. Monk, 55.1
8. Ranger, 51.9
9. Beastmaster, 51.5
10. Knight, 50.5
11. Bard, 46.9
12. Mystic Knight, 42.8
13. White Mage, 38.9
14. Geomancer, 35.0
(Chemist, 26.7)
15. Thief, 22.7
16. Berserker, 21.6
(Dancer, 16.7)
The earth crystal jobs are only around for 3 bosses, hence them being in parentheses.
World 2 (6 bosses, Tyrannosaur/Abductor excluded)
1. Time Mage, 88.3
2. Blue Mage, 87.0
3. Summoner, 80.4
4. Black Mage, 76.2
5. Ninja, 70.0
6. Chemist, 64.1
7. Mystic Knight, 63.3
8. Red Mage, 60.8
9. Knight, 56.6
10. Samurai, 54.1
11. Monk, 51.2
12. Beastmaster, 50.0
13. White Mage, 46.6
14t. Dragoon, 45.0
14t. Ranger, 45.0
16. Geomancer, 29.1
17. Thief, 27.5
18. Bard, 23.3
19. Dancer, 16.6
20. Berserker, 14.1
Y'know, people often talk about how Red Mage and Monk get really bad in World 2, but that seems somewhat exaggerated...?
World 3 (12 bosses, Calofisteri/Halicarnassus excluded)
1. White Mage, 84.2
2. Blue Mage, 80.2
3. Summoner, 79.6
4. Time Mage, 78.8
5. Black Mage, 77.3
6. Mystic Knight, 76.3
7. Knight, 61.3
8. Red Mage, 60.8
9. Chemist, 58.8
10. Ninja, 58.3
11. Ranger, 57.5
12. Samurai, 47.5
13. Dragoon, 45.8
14. Beastmaster, 37.1
15. Bard, 35.4
16. Dancer, 30.0
17. Monk, 28.8
18. Geomancer, 22.9
19. Thief, 17.5
20. Berserker, 12.1
White Mage privilege owning the day, as Zenny alluded to. They aren't that special before Holy, but so ridiculous after. Mystic Knight also had quite a jump as it gained offence and a couple key glorious status moments. Monk had the expected tumble, though Red Mage held up decently.
Overall (33 bosses)
1. Summoner 78.9
2. Blue Mage, 76.4
3. Time Mage, 75.6
4. Black Mage, 74.6
5. Red Mage, 68.9
6. Ninja, 65.2
7. Mystic Knight, 60.9
8. White Mage, 56.8
9. Chemist, 55.7
10. Knight, 55.5
11t. Samurai, 52.9
11t. Ranger, 52.9
13. Dragoon, 47.1
14. Beastmaster, 45.0
15. Monk, 44.8
16. Bard, 36.2
17. Geomancer, 28.6
18. Dancer, 24.3
19. Thief, 21.7
20. Berserker, 16.1
And finally, the first attempt at a master list. Within the rules I assumed (which do hurt White Mage and Bard a bit, since normally other jobs can patch up their bad offence while keeping their good points), the results do feel largely intuitive to me, and line up fairly well with the results of the in-game use thread (http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php?topic=4634.msg134823#msg134823).
Perhaps the biggest surprises are Red Mage and Dragoon, both of which overperformed people's usual estimations of them (and I don't just mean people here... they aren't well-thought of by the fiesta community generally). These results suggest that Red Mage may be a better water job to draw for fiesta than Mystic Knight, and Dragoon isn't that much worse than Samurai/Chemist on the earth front (it's worse, sure, but not dramatically). Both have some issues in a normal playthrough not reflected here, of course: that being that dragoon offers little that knight/samurai don't (and its inability to use Double-handed is a problem), and red mage is basically outclassed by having both white and black on your team (which you will, because those are great). But on a fiesta? They're better than often advertised, IMO.
Comments?
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Considering how much effort they take to use well and how their worth lie in boss fights (= what this topic is all about), the real losers look like Chemist and especially Beastmaster to me
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Clearly the winner is Berserker. Why bother with all the planning and the logic and the cheese, when you can literally make the game play itself while you go out and do chores?
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Considering how much effort they take too use well and how their worth lie in boss fights (= what this topic is all avout), the real losers look like Chemist and especially Beastmaster to me
The kinder thing to say to those jobs is that they have options which are high-preparation, but high-reward, which pay off relatively more in harder fights. Chemist's lowest performances (aside from in W1, before they have Mix) came against relatively easy bosses like Apanda and Azulmagia; their best performances came against Gilgamesh (Bridge), Catastrophe, and Neo Exdeath, a much more competent set. Beastmaster is more swingy in their performances, but still manage at least competent ones against high-end bosses like Atomos and Neo Exdeath.
The less kind thing to say about them is that they're possibly kinda overrated due to being the sort of job which appeal to people who dive into guides and can find obscure things only they can do (never mind that other jobs tend to win more efficiently; "have a lot of damage/healing" is boring!). FF6 Gau and FE7 Nino are both arguably examples of this too, in different ways. But that may be a whole 'nother can of worms.
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Clearly the winner is Berserker. Why bother with all the planning and the logic and the cheese, when you can literally make the game play itself while you go out and do chores?
go out and do chores
tied do you even pro? play more other games. or do what beerkerker SCC did and play more copies of FF5 beerkerker SCC.
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Chemist has a reputation as one of the easist SCCs in FF5, for a couple of reasons:
1) If you gameshark all the classes in ASAP (which most SCCers tended to do, since they played on emulators) then Drain Kiss destroys every boss in World 1 from Karnak onwards.
2) Basically you can go farm for a ton of turtle shells ASAP with frameskip, then run from most randoms in the game and murder all the bosses at really low levels. I'm pretty sure Chemist SCC has by far the lowest min level for being the game, with Blue Mage probably second. White Mage SCC could curbstomp everything in the Rift at low levels, except they realistically need to grind to get past World 2 in the first place.
Obviously Elfboy's emphasis on resource consumption really hurts their rankings in comparison, as does an overall focus on efficiency over real life playing time (i.e. frameskip all the easy grinding). Still, thinking on it they're probably not nearly as good for Fiesta as in a pure SCC. Not running Drink+Mix on every PC makes their buffing shenanigans a lot less effective (especially at low levels), while mixed classes will almost certainly result in a party that's better suited for fighting randoms so you aren't as inclined to run from everything.
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Okay, bonus content time~
Omega
Omega is a superboss, far beyond what the maingame throws at you. He boasts nearly perfect physical defence and evasion (and excellent magic defence), speed comparable to an auto-hasted character, and of course plenty of damage. The good news is you can actually deal with a lot of said damage, at least, so let's look at what he does.
Flame Thrower and Atomic Ray are fire attacks. Absorbing fire via Flame Ring or Flame Shield works well. With decent magic defence Flame Thrower is survivable, Atomic Ray will probably need at least Shell. Reflect stops the latter, which is good because it's MT and thus will destroy the non-fire-resistant.
Wave Cannon deals damage equal to half the max HP of the party. It also sets Sap for a little. Won't kill by itself, but you can't stop it so it will force you to heal.
Delta Attack is reflectable and petrifies the target. It also does some nominal damage. Blaster is also reflectable and has an even chance of death or paralyse (Hermes Sandals can block the latter). Rainbow Wind is NOT reflectable, but only inflicts blind and silence. The former is irrelevant since Omega already has near-perfect evade. The latter can be stopped by the Sage's Surplice, and honestly you don't need your armour slot for much else...
Maelstrom sets everyone's HP to crtiical. Since you'll be in Sap when this lands, this is dangerous! This move is only used on a specific turn and if you're letting the fight go on long enough with him actually getting turns, you'll need to anticipate this and be ready with MT healing immediately. (Even then that might not work.)
Earthquake is brutal unreflectable death. Got float?
Search is a ST move which causes all moves used by Omega until the end of his next turn to target the person hit by Search. This is a waste of a turn to start with, but it gets worse: Search is reflectable! Sadly he won't use any move that can damage himself normally on his next turn; in fact he can heal himself a bit with fire moves.
Finally, if not Stopped, Omega will counter any damage with a mix of Rocket Punch (gravity), Encircle (remove target from the battle permanently), and Mustard Bomb (big ST damage). He'll use two counters, each is a 2/3 chance of Rocket Punch and a 1/3 chance of one of the other two. Encircle counters really suck if you aren't doing brutally high damage to him (if you are, no big). That said, if you reflect Search onto him and then attack him, he'll use his counters on himself! He's only vulnerable to Mustard Bomb, as his heavy flag stops the rest.
He has two big weaknesses: lightning and stop. Both will need to get through his evasion and innate Shell/Reflect status. However, Omega's evasion is specifically non-functional against songs. You can halt a killer robot with the power of love. Aside from his piles of defensive bullshit his HP is nothing special, similar to what Twintania or Exdeath had.
So the broad strategies are as follows.
1. Stop him.
Two hasted Bards with Romeo's Ballad can lock him down forever, if their turns are staggered. Two Beastmasters with Calm can do the same thing, but only on the GBA version, as his vulnerability to Calm is a bug (it's only supposed to work on Magic Beasts, but in GBA it works on non-Magic Beasts instead).
At that point you still need to be able to deal damage, which isn't trivial to access, but the worst-case scenario is that you can damage him with critical hits from fists. This is completely pathetic, but in theory it does work.
2. Massive damage of doom.
This one is rarely practical in a fiesta setting, although is the traditionally recommended way to beat him in an unrestricted file. The best way to do extremely high damage to Omega is with physicals (since he has Shell) which deal lightning damage, and ignore MEvade. Since lightning-elemental weapons top out at 40 power, the only way to deal high physical lightning damage is with Spellblade, so you'll need that and a way of ignoring evade, i.e. Ranger for Rapidfire, Dragoon for Jump, or Dancer for Dance. Augmenting this further with Doublegrip or Dual-wield is typically recommended, but you can't actually stack those with Spellblade + an ITE skill in fiesta. You can also reflect-bomb Thundaga onto him.
3. Quick, Sap, and go make a sandwich while his HP ticks down despite time being supposedly stopped.
This only applies to Time Mage, and is more hilarious than it is useful because it literally takes hours. I won't be hyping it too much, but it's there.
4. Tanking Omega's assault.
You'll need float for sure. You'll also need either fire immunity or reflect (both would be nice, since Flame Thrower sneaks through the latter and Delta Attack/Blaster sneak through the former, but this isn't necessary). You'll also need an effective way to heal from repeated Wave Cannons; White Wind is by far the best option since it's multitarget and ignores Reflect.
You can then reflect Search to deal damage to him, although you'll need some form of ITE non-elemental damage, no matter how weak. Since he does heal himself with reflected fire attacks, the amount of offence you have certainly matters.
Anyway, onto the class notes. I will not be assuming an SCC here, rather more explicitly looking at what they can offer a team. A lot of SCCs are just "nope" due to the way the fight is structured.
Knight: Knight doesn't offer much that's useful here, honestly. They can use Flame Shields, and they do have a weak lightning weapon in the Coral Sword.
Monk: Monk has nothing of value.
Thief: Thief has nothing of direct value, but if you're looking to get Flame Shields for your entire party, they speed up the process of stealing them?
Dragoon: Jump lets you ignore evade, and hey Tridents can do some okay damage (2500ish?). Unhasted dragoons can jump to avoid the most dangerous turn and land after he's used Search (provided you left at least one PC on the ground to reflect it). They can equip Flame Shields.
Ninja: Can throw Coral Swords for something approaching damage (over 4000), and it's evade-ignoring too.
Samurai: uhhh katanas at least have a crit rate, but no they're basically junk here. Zeninage does nothing to Omega's defence. They have shields, but no Coral Sword (or Equip Shield) puts them behind Knight.
Berserker: They're mostly junk, and terrible if you are trying to use a stall or mass-damage strategy. But they have a use: due to axes piercing defence they do decent damage if Omega is stopped. Of course if he's stopped, you've already won, but this might be more valuable than what Monk brings?
Ranger: Rapidfire provides a way to deal damage (potentially major damage if stacked with Spellblade... Enhancer Thundaga Rapidfire does 12000 damage, which is enough to give you a real chance to win even if you brave counters).
Mystic Knight: See above, plus shields... except that if you don't draw an ITE option, they're useless. There are only three. Still, I think shields push them over the top.
White Mage can use Cura to recover from Wave Cannons if reflect isn't up. Alternatively they can put Reflect up themselves, and Shell helps reduce the hit rate of Maelstrom and makes Flame Thrower / maybe even Atomic Ray survivable. They're not the best job for stallstrats but they aren't bad at it.
Black Mage: With reflect on one PC, Black Mage can do around 4000 damage with Thundaga. With reflect up on all PCs, double that. If reflect isn't up, but fire absorption is (and you're gonna have one most likely), then hey they're actually pretty good at healing. Ninja with a few more tricks.
Time Mage: They have Quick/Sap for cheesy wins. They have Float, both before the fight and in-battle if it needs to be reapplied. They have Haste, which they can bounce off Omega onto the PCs if you've opted for reflect rings, which isn't the best way to inflict haste but is still great. They have Regen, which is weirdly useful in a stall fight because of how Wave Cannon works; it lets you survive two in a row. They have Meteor which can deal damage to Omega (not much, granted, but enough to reliably trigger reflected Search counters), and Quick for doubleacting in general. This is good.
Summoner: If you aren't going for Reflect Rings, Carbuncle provides a way to get reflect up quickly and easily on everyone, which can be very useful. Otherwise they don't really offer much, although Odin/Ramuh can do some small, reliable damage.
Blue Mage: Terrific. Mighty Guard can set float; used in battle it also grants Shell (see white mage for why this is good). White Wind is pretty much the best, being the only reliable MT healing that can be used under Reflect. 1000 Needles provides a source of reliable damage. Compared to Time Mage... their float can't be reapplied if you're under reflect, so it's Shell/White Wind/more reliable damage vs. better float/Quick/Regen/Haste. Oh wait, Blue Mage can use flame shields. Yeah that pushes them ahead.
Red Mage: They provide Dualcast, which significantly buffs the utility of your other mages; Dualcast reflected Thundaga does 16000 damage, yikes. If you don't have one of those, though, they're basically junk, neither Cura nor Thundara are particularly good here. So a bit like mystic knight in that they need certain other jobs for help, but without the shields, and they don't really let the party do anything it couldn't before.
Chemist: Chemist does a lot of cool things here. Levisalve for float. They can set reflect, though they should probably just use Reflect Rings instead since reflect wears off. They can set Haste and Shell, through reflect. Dragon's Kiss makes them immune to (non-MHP-based) gravity, meaning no risk of death from Maelstrom, as well as no risk of removal due to Encircle, which allows Omega to be attacked safely. And they even have a mix to set fire absorption. They don't heal very well or do much damage, but they enable a heck of a lot of other strategies. Compared to Blue Mage... I think Haste/reflect-ignoring/Heavy trumps healing/damage? Sure.
Geomancer: They do literally nothing of value. At least Monk has more HP to tank fire attacks under Shell. They have... robes/MEvade I guess?
Dancer: Provides a high-power, ITE attack which works well on certain weapons, but ridiculously so with Spellblade. (Neat thing about Dance is failed attempts don't trigger counters.) But they need someone to provide stronger (or less defence-subject) weapons than knives for this to be useful. Just below Red Mage maybe?
Bard and Beastmaster: 100% Stop means you win, period; it's only a matter of time. Beastmaster even has a lightning weapon to speed up the process, while Bard's stop lock is more ironclad, partly because they can boost their own speed if need be. It's true that Bard has trouble if they literally don't draw any other job that can deal damage (to an Omega who can no longer evade), but... seriously almost everyone else can, so whatever (Dancer/Thief/Samurai/Monk/Geomancer are the main ones who have trouble, and even some of them have crits). So I'm happy with putting Bard first. I also like tiebreaking them over Beastmaster since yeah there are other versions of the game where Beastmaster kinda isn't as good here.
Beastmaster, non-GBA: Yellow Dragons are pretty damn rare in world 3, but whatever, it's Omega. You can release 'em for 9999. That's cool right? Won't win the battle by itself but certainly helps a blitz strategy. Great Dragons do almost as much anyway, and are literally fought right beside Omega. And they do have a Blitz Whip (maybe more than one but ugh, time-limited rare steal guarded by a common) for lightning damage even past that, though of course they need a way to get past his evade. For a pure cannon PC they... look better than Ninja but worse than Black Mage? Sure.
1. Bard
2. Beastmaster
3. Chemist
4. Blue Mage
5. Time Mage
6. Mystic Knight
7. Summoner
8. White Mage
9. Ranger
10. Dragoon
11. Black Mage
(alternate 11. Non-GBA Beastmaster)
12. Ninja
13. Red Mage
14. Dancer
15. Knight
16. Samurai
17. Thief
18. Berserker
19. Monk
20. Geomancer