More Final Fantasy

[T-hawk]

You get used to the luck factors when you play a lot. It only takes a few seconds for each attempt at a fight like Exdeath. It became natural to condense that to a simple summary for the reports.

Sullla has a few reports of FF4 on his site. I don't have any real desire to do anything FF related at the moment. If I did, it'd probably be FF Legend 2, which is the RPG that I played most as a kid but haven't come back to since. I tried FF3 very briefly but it felt like too much of a step back from 5 to be fun.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I played 3 before 5, which I guess was for the best. I've got the whole series through X on Steam, intending to play through them in order, but I stalled out on 5.

It was Sullla's reports, showing the possibilities of the Job system, that brought me back to 5. I've since finished 6 and am blazing through 7.

Speaking of, I'm looking forward to the next tier, when he gets that written up.

[Sullla]

This thread became a bit overwhelming with multiple conversations going on at once, and the tier list was getting lost in the shuffle. I decided to stop posting for a few days to let those conversations run their course and come back to the list when things died down a bit. Now that we seem to have hit that point, here's the next tier:

Tier 4

This tier is the beginning of the classes that are underpowered compared to the rest of the list, jobs that I consider to be "below average" for a solo game. This group contains classes that have weaker or more niche abilities, underwhelming equipment selections, or poor character statistics. These are the jobs that don't benefit from a smooth path through the solo run, instead encountering frequent obstacles or serious roadblock opponents. Some of these classes required a lot of trial and error to defeat the game's most difficult bosses, and they are not recommended for anyone trying their hand at a solo game for the first time.

Tier 1: Samurai, Ninja, Chemist
Tier 2: Cannoneer, Gladiator, Mystic Knight, Knight, Blue Mage
Tier 3: Dragoon, Hunter, Black Mage, Summoner, Necromancer, Time Mage, Bare/Freelancer, Red Mage

I have five classes in this tier if you want to try guessing which ones. Recall that there are five total tiers, plus a special bottom tier for everyone's favorite solo class.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

This thread became a bit overwhelming with multiple conversations going on at once, and the tier list was getting lost in the shuffle. I decided to stop posting for a few days to let those conversations run their course and come back to the list when things died down a bit. Now that we seem to have hit that point, here's the next tier:

Tier 4

This tier is the beginning of the classes that are underpowered compared to the rest of the list, jobs that I consider to be "below average" for a solo game. This group contains classes that have weaker or more niche abilities, underwhelming equipment selections, or poor character statistics. These are the jobs that don't benefit from a smooth path through the solo run, instead encountering frequent obstacles or serious roadblock opponents. Some of these classes required a lot of trial and error to defeat the game's most difficult bosses, and they are not recommended for anyone trying their hand at a solo game for the first time.

Tier 1: Samurai, Ninja, Chemist
Tier 2: Cannoneer, Gladiator, Mystic Knight, Knight, Blue Mage
Tier 3: Dragoon, Hunter, Black Mage, Summoner, Necromancer, Time Mage, Bare/Freelancer, Red Mage

I have five classes in this tier if you want to try guessing which ones. Recall that there are five total tiers, plus a special bottom tier for everyone's favorite solo class.

Might as well take a guess.  *Looks over Sulla's site*


My guesses for Tier 4 are:

Monk
Mimic
Oracle
Dancer
Beastmaster

Not necessarily in that order.  You didn't list your original solo class yet, Mimic is a worse Freelancer except for free items, and the "Insanity Challenges" list (White Mage, Bard, Thief) is a giveaway for Tier 5.  I remember you hating Geomancer a lot too because of its weakness and random attacks, so that's probably Tier 5 too.

[Sullla]

Score one correct for Herman:



Monk
Overall Ranking: 17/26 [Tier 4, Rank 1]
Innate Command: Kick
Stats: Strength +26, Agility +1, Vitality: +26, Magic Power -23
Equipment: Medium Armor set
Abilities: !Buildup (15 ABP), Brawl (30 ABP), !Mantra (45 ABP), Counter (60 ABP), HP +10% (100 ABP), HP +20% (150 ABP), HP +30% (300 ABP)
Total ABP to Master: 700 points

I wrote above that these are not classes to pick when trying a solo game for the first time, and of course, here's the one that I chose for my own first solo venture. Well, the Monk may be a bit of an exception to that rule. This is one of the game's premier physical fighting classes, with many of the same mechanics carried over from the Black Belt in the original Final Fantasy. Monks never equip any weapons and fight with their fists, with damage increasing purely as a function of their level. The base attack value for the Monk is double the character level, which theoretically makes Monks a bit stronger in a solo venture (where the character level is higher) as opposed to a normal party setting. In practice though, the inability of Monks to equip any weapons largely cancels this out, and their damage output is roughly comparable to the other physical fighting classes. Since Monks are never tied to the finding of new weapons in treasure chests or stores, their damage goes up unrelated to anything taking place in the plot of the game. This can be both a blessing and a curse at times: there's no sudden jump from reaching the Chicken Knife or a similarly powerful tool, but it's also always possible for the Monk to level their way past a challenging opponent. This does mean that enemy attacks that reduce character level, like Sonic Wave / Dischord or Dark Shock, pose a special problem for the Monk. Even the Antlion miniboss can be tricky to defeat. On the other hand (heh), Monk punching attacks always have an 8% chance to critically strike, and that can be a big help in many situations.

Monks have the highest Strength and Vitality in the game paired along with average speed and abysmally low Magic Power. This class ends up with ludicrous amounts of health and that proves to be one of the biggest advantages of playing as a Monk. They can increase their health even further by adopting the "HP +10/20/30%" abilities, and the HP +30% ability tends to be the best choice for general endgame situations on this class. My solo Monk ended up with more than 9000 HP at the end of the game and I didn't understand at the time why Almagest was even a threat, since that Neo Exdeath attack was tickling my character for about 1600 damage with each use. The Monk innate command is Kick, which deals a low amount of damage to all opponents on the screen at once. It's useful in a few situations such as the Puroboros and the Hiryuu Flowers, but too weak to see general use. The Monk typically does better by concentrating punching damage against one enemy at a time. "Mantra" provides a weak self-heal that scales horribly into the later portions of the game because it's based off of the terribly low Magic Power stat. It's only useful in the very early stages of the game. "BuildUp" lets the Monk pause for one round of attack, then attack at double strength (literally M = M * 2 on the multiplier) in the next round. BuildUp came in surprisingly handy in some situations to work around scripted AI behavior, like getting a double strength BuildUp attack against Byblos before he could cast the Armor spell, or using BuildUp to hit Gilgamesh on the Big Bridge before the boss went into his buffing spells. BuildUp attacks also retain the normal 8% chance to critically strike, and the solo Monk can therefore increase the variability in a battle by using BuildUp and hoping to get crits, much like a Dancer hoping to get lucky and pull Sword Dances. My solo Monk ended up defeating a number of the game's worst bosses by repeating the fights until BuildUp crits appeared at opportune moments.

The Monk ability that has the biggest effect on the gameplay is Counter. This grants the Monk 50% odds to respond with an attack when hit by physical damage from an opponent. In a number of situations, the best option is to defend or use healing items while sitting back and waiting for Counter to kick in. One thing that I didn't fully appreciate the first time that I played through the game is that Counter doesn't trigger scripted AI responses. For example, I defeated LiquidFlame by having my solo Monk defend and rely on Counter for damage against the Hand form of the boss. These Counter attacks never triggered any of the form shifts from the boss, and an experienced player can manipulate the AI scripting in several situations by making use of this. On the other hand, Counter ALWAYS activates half of the time when taking physical damage, even in situations where the player might not want it to do so. This makes some encounters much more difficult, in particular the Neo Exdeath battle where it essentially forces the Monk to defeat the physical Part #3 first since Counter will eventually kill that part regardless. Generally speaking though, Counter adds a lot of extra damage and is one of the best parts of the class.

With all that said, I've still placed the Monk here at the top of the "below average" tier, and I believe there's a clear gap between this class and the ones in the tier above it. The biggest reason is the inability for Monks to equip any weapons at all. This is a crippling disadvantage that severely limits the class. It's not just the lack of damage that the best weapons provide, although that's a problem as well. The Monk also lacks the chance to make use of weapons that function as spells, or inflict any kind of elemental damage whatsoever (outside of weak damage from the Magic Lamp). Even classes that have nothing but daggers can still use the Guardian / Main Gauche for physical evade, the Mage Masher to Mute enemy targets, the Chicken Knife for endgame damage, and so on. The Monk gets nothing, forever. Obviously this class also cannot use shields, and it gets tied to the Medium armor set. Monks are always a sitting duck throughout the whole game for status ailments and instant death attacks, which often render the huge HP totals of this class irrelevant.

Furthermore, precisely because the Monk is reliant solely on character level for damage, this is a class that has to undergo a ton of leveling to be effective. Most other solo classes are able to complete the game in the Level 55-60 range, with only a few of the weaker ones going much above that. For the Monk though, even at Level 60 the class is only doing a little over 3000 damage per round of attack (1500 damage per strike), and that really isn't too great for the lategame. Especially not for a supposed physical bruiser. With no weapons at all to use for assistance, I found that my solo Monks had to gain a whole bunch of extra levels to defeat the final bosses. My initial solo Monk beat the game at Level 75, which was certainly excessive, but then a few years later I revisited the solo Monk... and again didn't complete the game until Level 71. This is just a class that has to pile up lots of extra levels because of the way that the damage formula for their class works. The Kaiser Knuckle accessory is worth 25 levels worth of damage (+50 attack) and would be perfect for the Monk, however using it requires giving up the Running Shoes for Haste status, and of course that's not worth it. The Monk therefore ends up in this awkward status with vast amounts of health only to find that it's all nearly useless in the last battles because White Hole and Grand Cross don't care about a solo character's HP total. As a result, as much as I like this class I can't put it any higher than this spot at the top of the fourth tier. Although Monks are a ton of fun to play, they're far from being the best class for a solo game.

[T-hawk]

Of course, the Monk is perhaps the best class to master to transfer the skills back to Bare. You get the highest HP and the counters; the barehanded fighting is also innate and works with X-Fight; you can use Kaiser Knuckle if getting Haste from Masamune or somebody with Time magic; and level-up Chemistry multiplies bigtime with the barehanded damage formula. Monk has a great reputation thanks to all of that and it was a key part of my solo hardcore win. I know you're rating for the single-job solos, but the general perception of a class does depend on these other usages as well.

Nitpick: Kaiser Knuckle isn't exactly +25 levels, since it increases only attack but levels also increase the multiplier.

[System Error]

Sullla has a few reports of FF4 on his site.  I don't have any real desire to do anything FF related at the moment.  If I did, it'd probably be FF Legend 2, which is the RPG that I played most as a kid but haven't come back to since.  I tried FF3 very briefly but it felt like too much of a step back from 5 to be fun.

I'm the one to go to for FF4. :> Sofis did a solo Kain. FF3...has its flaws when it comes to soloing - even a solo in general and not class restricted. I'd say you might want to give the remake a try because it makes more classes distinct, but it in some respects makes that even worse.

I believe there are some exceptions to Counter triggering with Monk. I know Tree ExDeath is one of them.

[Sullla]

T-Hawk is absolutely correct, which is why I've tried to make it very clear that this ranking is only for solo games. Also, score another one correct for Herman:



Beastmaster
Overall Ranking: 18/26 [Tier 4, Rank 2]
Innate Command: Catch
Stats: Strength +13, Agility +1, Vitality: +8, Magic Power -3
Equipment: Daggers, Whips, Medium armor set
Abilities: !Tame (10 ABP), !Control (50 ABP), Equip Whip (100 ABP), !Catch (300 ABP)
Total ABP to Master: 460 points

The Beastmaster is a class based around catching and controlling monsters of all types, a sort of precursor to the Pokemon games from an era that predated even the Red and Blue versions. The default class ability is "Catch", which will literally suck up a single enemy when it reaches near-death status, after which it can be "Released" to do some sort of special attack. Almost every critter in the game can be caught in this fashion and has its own Release move, with the exception being anything that has the Heavy flag in the code. It can be tricky to Catch opponents at the start of the game because they must be taken below 1/8 of max HP in order for Catch to work. Using this ability at any other time on a monster simply does nothing. Fortunately there's an item called the Corna Jar that becomes available about halfway through the solo run in the second world, which enables Catch to function when enemies are below half health as opposed to below 1/8th health. Dealing with bosses for the Beastmaster class normally involves Catching an appropriate monster ahead of time and then Releasing it at an opportune moment. There's a good deal of variability in terms of what different foes will produce: physical damage Fight attacks, elemental damage of all types, status attacks like Darkness and petrification and instant death attacks, and so on. Some of the most useful enemies simply deal a percentage of max HP in damage, like the Breath Wing of the big Zuu birds with their 1/4 max health damage, since bosses generally tend to have large HP amounts to chew through. Unfortunately the Beastmaster can only have one enemy Caught at a time, and after it's been used against a boss, there's no way to get a second opportunity until the next random encounter.

The other main ability of the class is "Control", which takes over an enemy and replaces the Beastmaster's normal command window with new commands associated with that opponent. The base chance for this to work is 40%, with the Coronet helmet raising this to 70% odds when equipped. Control tends to be a slow and unreliable ability to use; it misses a good chunk of the time and even when it succeeeds, the Beastmaster has to wait for the action bar to fill back up again before making use of the enemy skills. Naturally Control also doesn't work against anything with the Heavy flag in the code. It does still have its uses, however, with a number of the dragons in Exdeath's Castle and the Land Crawls in the desert portions of the third world open to being Controlled and then used to kill themselves. The Shield Dragons in Kuzar Castle are also vulnerable and can be farmed for huge amounts of gold and experience in the second world, if you're the kind of player who likes that sort of thing. Generally speaking, Control only sees occasional use during the solo Beastmaster run. "Tame" is an ability that attempts to inflict Stop status on the target, and for a solo Beastmaster there's almost no place worth using it. You give up your turn to stop the enemy from getting a turn, and the cycle repeats endlessly without making any progress. It's not worth dropping Control for this.

Beastmasters are strongly associated with whips, the only class able to use this weapon type. Whips are similar to bows in dealing full damage from the back row, and they also have a chance to inflict paralyzation status on a successful attack. Unfortunately most bosses are immune to paralyzation in FF5 and the effect wasn't as useful as I had hoped going into my solo Beastmaster game. Like spears and axes, there are relatively few whips in the game and the Beastmaster often must go for long stretches of time before getting a weapon upgrade. Whips are unusual in having three different weapons that all see use in the ending stages of a run: the Beastkiller (double damage against "beasts"), the Flame Whip (1/3 chance to cast Fire 3 on attack), and the Dragon Whip (double damage against "dragons"). None of these weapons are particularly strong though, with the Dragon Whip having the highest attack value of the lot at 92. That's significantly lower than the legendary weapons that most other classes get and contributes to the modest overall damage output of this class. Outside of whips, Beastmasters have the standard daggers and the Medium armor set. Much like the Hunter class they also don't get access to shields, but unlike the Hunter class there's no X-Fight awesomeness to fall back upon.

The monster cannon provided by Catch/Release works quite well throughout the first world before starting to lose steam in the second world. By the third world, it's only able to contribute a one-time damage boost and most of the heavy lifting must be done by the Beastmaster's physical attacks. The reality is that the Beastmaster is a gimped fighter with a kooky Catch/Release ability tacked onto it, and this becomes more and more apparent as the game progresses. While Strength and Vitality are both decent, neither one is particularly great for a physical attacker. The ability to use whips from the back row is also nice, but again it only helps so much. I repeatedly found myself running into difficult and dangerous roadblock bosses with my solo Beastmaster towards the end of the game. The Exdeath battle at the end of the second world was a nightmare, solved only through moving into the first row and gambling on getting Sword Dances out of the Dancing Dagger. Necrophobia and Neo Exdeath were also very tough obstacles for this class to overcome. For that matter, even defeating Sol Cannon required drinking 10 Elixirs at a very high level of 38. The Beastmaster just isn't that great of a class, badly overshadowed by most of the other physical damage dealers. It makes due for a while via creative Catch/Release options, and then tails off sharply as the game progresses.

[Gustaran]

This thread became a bit overwhelming with multiple conversations going on at once, and the tier list was getting lost in the shuffle. I decided to stop posting for a few days to let those conversations run their course and come back to the list when things died down a bit.

Maybe it would be a good idea to put the tier list & discussion in a separate thread? It looks like you put a lot of work into it and I am afraid a year from now it might simply get overlooked in this rather large general FF thread...

[Sullla]

Gustaran, the whole thing is going on my website so no worries about it being lost. I already have the list finished and I'm copying it from the HTML page into this forum thread. Also, score a third correct prediction for Herman:



Dancer
Overall Ranking: 19/26 [Tier 4, Rank 3]
Innate Command: Dance
Stats: Strength +5, Agility +5, Vitality: -10, Magic Power -5
Equipment: Daggers, Ribbons, Medium armor set
Abilities: !Flirt (25 ABP), !Dance (50 ABP), Equip Ribbon (325 ABP)
Total ABP to Master: 400 points

The Dancer is one of the most random classes in the game. It's also one of the most basic, with the whole setup entirely revolving around the Dance ability. This produces one of four different results at 25% odds for each selection. "Jitterbug Duet" is exactly the same as the Black magic spell Drain, stealing a modest amount of health away from the target and restoring it to the Dancer. It tends to be the second-best Dance result, although it backfires against undead opponents (healing them while hurting the Dancer) and can't be used reliably in those areas. "Mystery Waltz" does the same thing for magic points, imitating the Black magic spell Psych / Osmose. "Tempting Tango" duplicates yet another spell, the White magic spell Charm, and confuses the target if it lands successfully. The fourth and final result is "Sword Dance", which deals quadruple the normal damage of an attack (doubling both the multiplier M and the base attack value, one of the only abilities in the game to affect both). Sword Dance is overwhelmingly the most desired result for the Dancer, and the gameplay for this class typically consists of selecting the Dance command and praying for Sword Dances to appear at those 1 in 4 odds. There are a few pieces of Dancer-only equipment that appear in the third world which replace Tempting Tango and take Sword Dance up to 50% odds to appear from the Dance command, and these are awesome when they finally show up. Unfortunately the first 80% of the game has to be completed without any of them, and much of that journey is frustratingly random.

The only other active Dancer ability is "Flirt", which provides another chance to confuse opponents. (Amusingly, when this succceeds the text will print out a message that says "Throbbing!") Flirt doesn't work against anything with the Heavy flag in the code, and it's too weak even to qualify as variant material. Dancers do get the unique class ability of equipping Ribbons (and the related Dancer-only gear), which are very nice indeed. The Ribbon is the game's best helmet with high defense value and immunity to the following status ailments: Dead, Stone, Toad, Poison, Darkness, Aging, Berserk, and Mute. The Rainbow Dress equipment that replaces Tempting Tango with Sword Dance will eventually add an immunity to Charm/Confuse status as well, making the lategame Dancer almost immune to status ailments. 16 of the 18 possibilities from Grand Cross are blocked by the Dancer's equipment setup - this is the one class that has little to fear from that attack. Otherwise, the Dancer simply uses the standard daggers and the Medium armor set. Dancing ignores the Flee effect from the Chicken Knife, and Sword Dance puts out absolutely insane damage with it equipped: 9500 damage from the BACK ROW. With virtual status immunity and the upgraded 50% odds of pulling Sword Dance, the Dancer is actually among the better endgame classes.

Unfortunately, getting to the final portions of the solo run can be a real pain. The Dancer suffers from two gigantic flaws that drag it down the tier list. The first of these lies in the class stats: the Dancer has the worst Vitality score in the game at -10 points from the default. This results in an extremely low HP total and keeps the Dancer in serious danger at all times. With the Dancer being a physical damage class who wants to be in the front row, this is a very bad situation indeed. My solo Dancer spent much of the run one step ahead of disaster, with even normal random battles teetering on the edge of a game over solely because the class had such a tiny amount of HP. I was forced to go through excessive leveling mostly to get more health for boss battles, and as a result my solo Dancer didn't finish the first world until Level 39, and didn't complete the second world until Level 59. That's much higher than normal for solo characters and reflects the difficulty that this class experienced.

The other huge weakness of the Dancer class is the randomness. Oh my goodness gracious, the randomness of that Dance command. As you may well imagine, pinning the success or failure of each boss fight on an ability that has 1/4 odds of delivering the desired result causes a whole lot of repetition. There's almost no way around the need to repeat boss fights over and over again, as a string of "Mystery Waltz" and "Tempting Tango" results quickly lead to defeat. I also ran into exceedingly difficult roadblock bosses on multiple occasions with my solo Dancer, with the Puroboros and then Exdeath at the end of the second world requiring hours and hours of repeated attempts to get past. These battles already require repetition for most other classes because they need to avoid the worst boss abilities from showing up. The Dancer adds even more randomness, needing to dodge the killer boss moves while also hitting on the correct Dances at the same time. The best way I can think to describe this is through an analogy: imagine playing two different games of chance at the same time. You need to throw Snake Eyes with a pair of dice while at the same time hitting a straight draw in a game of poker. How many iterations of each game do you think you would need to run to land both at once? Yeah, that's what I thought. It drove me crazy at times while playing.

The Dancer therefore grades out as a below average class overall. The awesome endgame power of repeated Chicken Knife Sword Dances isn't enough to make up for the randomness and pitifully low health that the class suffers from during most of the solo run. Way too much of the gameplay for this class is outside the player's control.