More Final Fantasy

[Sullla]

The Oracle is not a strong class at all; if my report suggested otherwise, I failed in the writeup. I would think the whole part about "needed to farm up a dozen Light Staff drops" and "needed to use an Elixir every other turn to reset MP total" would have conveyed that. Anyway, next class:



Time Mage
Overall Ranking: 14/26 [Tier 3, Rank 6]
Innate Command: Time magic
Stats: Strength -5, Agility +2, Vitality: -3, Magic Power +24
Equipment: Daggers, Rods, Staffs, Light Armor set
Abilities: !Time 1 (10 ABP), !Time 2 (20 ABP), !Time 3 (30 ABP), !Time 4 (50 ABP), !Time 5 (70 ABP), !Time 6 (100 ABP), Equip Rod (250 ABP)
Total ABP to Master: 530 points

The Time Mage is my favorite class that I've ever done for a solo game in FF5. The Dimensional magic that Time Mages employ makes them the king of buffs and debuffs in this game, controlling the battlefield through various indirect forms of attack. The Haste and Slow spells alone are arguably the best two spells in the game, and mastery of this pair is enough to make the Time Mage a formidable opponent all on their own. I wrote in my solo Time Mage report that the first world has to be done with little more than Haste and Slow... and that pair was plenty to get the job done. Haste lets the player take twice as many actions as normal, while Slow similarly reduces the enemy to half speed. Stack them together and even normally fearsome opponents like Byblos wither away into helplessness. Speed is everythinig in FF5, and with enough of an advantage in it the player can work miracles.

There are plenty of other useful Dimensional spells beyond Haste and Slow. Regen is a cheap way to get health back in fights, and I used it constantly with my solo Time Mage because battles tended to be extended affairs. Float comes in handy against Titan and Catastrophe, while Old takes down Omniscient's speed and regeneration. The Demi and Quarter spells will remove huge chunks of enemy health, and they work against more bosses than one would think, most notably Byblos, the Crystal seals, and some of the Archaeoavis forms. Void (locks out magic usage) and Reset (restart battles over again from the beginning) are weird spells that were not continued in future Final Fantasy games, largely due to their abusive potential. One of the weaknesses of Dimensional magic is the lack of direct damage spells, with the only two candidates being Comet and Meteor. Both of them roll a random number between 50 and 200, then multiply that number by the spell's multiplier (M = 8 for Comet, M = 14 for Meteor). Meteor is much stronger since it carries out that calculation four times in a row, at the tradeoff of costing a hefty 42 MP. The damage from the four Meteor hits is also applied randomly to enemies, which can be awkward in situations where the player wants targeted damage. Both spells deal damage completely indepedent of character level or Magic Power stat, handy against monsters packing Sonic Wave / Dischord. Finally, the unique Quick spell grants two consecutive free actions to the Time Mage immediately after casting, with Quick/Meteor/Meteor being the standard lategame max damage combo. I found that this would do roughly 10,000 damage when used against most foes, although the magic point cost was astronomical for anything other than boss fights. (77 MP for Quick plus 42 MP per Meteor adds up to 161 MP per combo - consider equipping a Gold Hairpin!) It's an unusual group of spells with a lot of fun applications over the course of a solo run.

As much as I love this class, the Time Mage is a slow and plodding warrior prior to gaining access to Meteor near the end of the game. The class has a low Strength value, and melee attacks with daggers don't impress the monsters very much. That's not to say that a Time Mage is necessarily threatened very much though, even as a solo character with miniscule Vitality. In most boss fights, my Time Mage would stack the Haste/Slow/Regen buffs and quickly reach a state where he was unkillable, particularly with the Healing Staff on hand for endless self-healing. However, it took an extended time to defeat anything that had the Heavy flag in the code and couldn't be hit with Demi/Quarter. I wrote down that it took about 180 rounds of combat to defeat the Adamantium turtle at 11 damage per attack, which isn't an experience I would want to inflict on anyone else. Slow and steady won that race... eventually. While the Time Mage does have an answer for nearly all situations, I can't describe this in good faith as anything resembling a power class.

One of the advantages of the Time Mage is the ability to equip staffs as well as rods and the standard daggers. The Healing Staff provides the most useful such example in this category, and my solo Time Mage never had to use a single healing item for the rest of the first world after grabbing it in Tycoon Castle. Access to the Chicken Knife, Assassin Dagger, Wizard Rod, Wonder Rod, and Sage Staff provides decent flexibility in the latter stages of the game. However, the Time Mage still can't use a shield and remains stuck with the Light armor set common to most mages. No Bone Mail for this class either. Other weaknesses of the class come in the beginning and ending stages of the game. Like the Summoner, the Time Mage is forced to make it through the first three dungeons without any spells on a class with terrible Strength and Vitality. Defeating Karlabos and Siren with a dagger and a bucket full of Elixirs is not a fun task. The Time Mage's lack of direct damage also forces some rod and staff breaking at times, necessary to get past the Puroboros and Exdeath at the end of the first and second worlds respectively. And even though it pains me to admit it, the Time Mage struggles to deal with the final Neo Exdeath fight. There's no defense against White Hole in the Tree phase of the battle, and the untargetable nature of Meteor makes it unreliable against the four parts in the second phase. I was forced to have my solo Time Mage move into the front row and hack away with the Chicken Knife, which required nearly a dozen retries until I could get everything to line up correctly.

Therefore the Time Mage can't be classified as one of the truly powerful jobs in FF5. I have it grouped in with most of the other mage classes in the "average" tier, a great and fun class that suffers from some noticeable weaknesses. This was most similar to my Iron Fists variant group from the original Final Fantasy, a setup with low offensive power that made a living through defense and buffing abilities. That group didn't have the Quick and Meteor spells to play around with at the end of the game though.

[Trasson]

You're leaving the most important part out of your rankings.

Style.

Nobody's beating the Time Mage in the fashion department.

[System Error]

This is the cheapest thing ever so it doesn't count but I want to show you:

(video)

Heh, discovered that on my own too. Early preview...

_____

The Time Mage

I lied. This one is the dumbest thing ever.


Meteor is just barely able to do damage to Omega. The most important thing to note here is what may be a GBA oddity, I dunno. If the first or fourth hit of Meteor (or Comet, or anything else) hits Omega, it will literally transcend time itself to make a counterattack. Confuse immunity through the Lamia's is required here - the status trick will let you have it while still putting on the Gold Hairpin. Same for Sage's Surplice/silence immunity.

Aside, it's because of this one that I looked into and found out about the status bug's true nature. I was able to inflict Regen just fine on my first attempt, but after I couldn't on my second after refining my strategy, I got an inkling of the cause, and sure enough.


Time Mage has an important benefit - it's able to use the Reflect Ring to protect against several dangerous attacks of Omega. Of course, it will also bounce Atomic Ray too, and that heals Omega for 1500 each time. A little less for Flamethrowers after a bounced Search. It can still use Haste by bouncing it off Omega, as well as getting Shell and inflicting Slow (though it may take several attempts). Quick lets it lock down the fight of course, and with Regen, any damage taken can be healed without using Elixirs which will have to go into restoring MP. This takes a long time, so better get ready to wait a lot.


Or...just wait. Longer, I mean. When watching HP values, I noticed that for whatever reason, Omega's HP leak just wasn't stopping. Might been an oddity of Quick or something - John Connor's was running out. My suspicion is that, since it eventually did stop as I continued the fight, ATB time needs to pass on a target for a status to wear off. You can have it hit itself with Rainbow Wind after a bounced Search and just sit there waiting for hours for it to die. Hey, I said no mercy.

At least it doesn't HAVE to do this - just needs to get lucky with Encircle never getting it and Omega self-healing not showing up too often.

[T-hawk]

The Time Mage's lack of direct damage also forces some rod and staff breaking at times, necessary to get past the Puroboros and Exdeath at the end of the first and second worlds respectively.

This made me think: Why do we attach any stigma to rod breaking?  We think of it as an easy cheese option, but why?

Is it buying consumables that's the problem?  No, we're fine with the Ninja buying scrolls and shurikens, and we love the Samurai directly throwing money.  Is it abuse to gain access to a spell that a class like the Time or Blue Mage shouldn't have?  No, we're fine with doing that with anything else like the Wonder Rod and Magic Lamp.  Are they hard to grind?  No, they're cheap, just buy them.  Are they obscure like Chemistry mixes?  No, it's one simple command with obvious results.  Is it that the same answer repeats across many classes?  No, again we're fine with the Wonder Rod and Magic Lamp and things like the Guardian Dagger and Chicken Knife that everybody uses.

Rods exist to be used, why do we look down on them and nothing else?

[System Error]

The Time Mage's lack of direct damage also forces some rod and staff breaking at times, necessary to get past the Puroboros and Exdeath at the end of the first and second worlds respectively.

This made me think: Why do we attach any stigma to rod breaking?  We think of it as an easy cheese option, but why?

Is it buying consumables that's the problem?  No, we're fine with the Ninja buying scrolls and shurikens, and we love the Samurai directly throwing money.  Is it abuse to gain access to a spell that a class like the Time or Blue Mage shouldn't have?  No, we're fine with doing that with anything else like the Wonder Rod and Magic Lamp.  Are they hard to grind?  No, they're cheap, just buy them.  Are they obscure like Chemistry mixes?  No, it's one simple command with obvious results.  Is it that the same answer repeats across many classes?  No, again we're fine with the Wonder Rod and Magic Lamp and things like the Guardian Dagger and Chicken Knife that everybody uses.

Rods exist to be used, why do we look down on them and nothing else?

A very good thought. Kinda realized this myself. Truth is, there is no good reason to dismiss rod breaking. I guess it's oft seen as a "noob option" so to speak, because it's one the strongest and straightforward means of attack accessible relative to the point of the game it's found in and is often recommended by guides, hence the negative stigma attached to it. If you avoid rod breaking, you're just limiting yourself, kind of creating a sort of onion layer variant. This isn't to say it or any other use of resources shouldn't be seen as a negative, or that avoiding it doesn't make things more interesting (except when it is). But the former shouldn't be that bad (especially for just 650) and the latter shouldn't be considered when grading jobs at all, really...

This is also pretty much why my vs. superboss reports have no restrictions at all besides solo context ones - like Shinryu was made vulnerable to Berserk by the game designers. There's nothing wrong with using the status against it - or in a similar vein, Sing/Stop against Omega like Sofis used on his version of the Berserkers/Nanny variant. No cheaper than exploiting any other status vulnerability on any other boss, or just using Chemist. They're all just different ways of tackling problems in FF5, like it often gives you so many ways to do. There's no need to limit yourself arbitrarily, especially when it comes to those guys. Only a want to.

[Sullla]

I disagree with T-Hawk and there's a completely good reason why rod breaking is considered a cheese option: it's qualitatively easier and more powerful than the other non-class options that we discuss. Leave aside the class-specific things like Ninja throwing weapons and Chemist mixes, since they're part of their respective classes and intended to be used. Among the non-class options, breaking rods allows any class that can equip rods to get castings of Fire/Ice/Bolt 3 as early as Karnak, enormously earlier than those spells unlock normally. These spells have more than triple the power of the contemporary Fire/Ice/Bolt 2 options and they can easily blow away the bosses throughout the rest of the first world. None of the other non-class options that T-Hawk mentioned have the same kind of power level. The Dancing Dagger appears in the second world and has a finnicky, low-odds chance to pull Sword Dance as one of four potential options. It's a tool of desperation for variant characters, not strength. The Magic Lamp and the Wonder Rod both appear midway in the third world, when the game is nearly over and the spells that they unlock are at the same power level as what's generally available to everyone. Pulling Bahamut or Syldra out of the Magic Lamp isn't a big deal because all of the other endgame power options are in play by the third world.

There's also a huge difference in terms of ease of use between standard rod breaking and the other tactics we're discussing here. Rod breaking has virtually no limits: you can theoretically get 99 uses of each of the Fire/Ice/Thunder Rods, enough that a solo character will essentially never run out. All of the other non-class options are limited in some fashion. The Magic Lamp provides exactly one casting of each Summon spell, in a preset order, then must be recharged at a specific location on the world map. The Wonder Rod casts each White and Black magic spell, but again only in a preset order, and due to the way it cycles through spells, at best a solo character will only be able to make use of a small handful of the available spells in any one encounter. You're never getting multiple casts of Shell in a single battle since it would require cycling through 35 other spells to make it back again. Even our infamous use of breaking Light Staffs is strictly limited by the fact that they only appear as a rare 1/16 drop from a single enemy in the whole game. Having to spend hours farming them up in extremely tedious fashion rules out casual use of the Light Staffs.

But the standard rod breaking isn't like that at all. They are laughably easy to use and relatively cheaply available from an early point in the game. A solo character could do nothing but break rods and clear essentially the whole game using nothing else, something that's not possible with the other non-class options. In other words, there really is a good reason why we view rod breaking as a cheese option, or at least why I do. (This is where T-Hawk and I have always parted ways; T-Hawk has always leaned towards optimization perfection while I lean towards finding underpowered variant solutions. Naturally both of us have done plenty of each over the years. )

[Sullla]

And we have another solo class for today:



Bare/Freelancer
Overall Ranking: 15/26 [Tier 3, Rank 7]
Innate Command: None
Stats: Strength +0, Agility +0, Vitality: +0, Magic Power +0
Equipment: Everything
Abilities: None
Total ABP to Master: 0 points

One of the interesting options about FF5's gameplay is that your characters are never required to adopt any jobs at all. The default Bare / Freelancer class has no abilities and gains no statistical advantages or disadvantages, compensating instead with one crucial edge: you can equip every weapon and armor in the game! This provides a vast array of flexibility and customization that no other job class proper can match, combining together the best gear from literally everything else. Excalibur? Check. Masamune? Check. Aegis Shield and Ribbon? Check. All the Genji gear? Check. You can even take your pick of the Brave Blade or Chicken Knife, either one can be used. And since the Bare job can equip everything, that means that all of the items that function as spells are also in play. You've got your Healing Staff for Cure 2, Defender Sword for Armor, Ancient Sword for Old, Darkness Bow for blind status, Doom Axe and Killer Bow for death spells, paralyzation status from whips, all the stuff that comes out of the Wonder Rod, not to mention the ability to break rods and staves to cast high-level attack magic. That also doesn't include all of the weapons that have elemental properties, like the Flame Bow (fire), Icebrand Sword (ice), Trident (lightning), Air Lancet (air), Venom Rod (poison), and Excalibur (holy). In other words, the Bare job doesn't really lack special abilities at all - it's overflowing with all sorts of crazy little tricks for the savvy player.

To provide a further sampling of how these equipment options functioned over the course of a run, I'll detail a few examples from my solo run with the Bare class. The Flail took care of the early bosses from the safety of the back row, then the Katana found in Tycoon Castle was a huge attack upgrade. The Ribbon hidden in the burning Karnak Castle sequence upgraded defenses and took care of most status ailments, while the Healing Staff addressed the need for life restoration. Guardian dagger + shields provided plenty of physical evade even before the Darkness Bow entered the mix. The Fire Bow, Ice Bow, and Coral Sword eliminated the bosses in the first world with elemental weaknesses, while the Ancient Sword and Sleep Sword inflicted critical status ailments. The Sleep Sword and broken Fire Rods combined together for a rare legitimate kill of Atomos in the second world. The Flame Tongue sword and the Flame Shield could heal for a lot of health in the second and third worlds, and then the floodgates truly began to open with all of the legendary weapons available. There was the Masamune for Haste status, Defender sword for Armor status, the Woden Rod and the Aegis Shield, breaking Venom Rods against Apocalypse's poison element weakness, the Dragoon Spear to attack dragon opponents, plus the Brave Blade to top it all off. There seemed to be a solution to every problem along the way with some kind of equipment combination.

With all that said, the Bare class still lacks any abilities and has practically nothing in the way of stats. This class gets a score of 24 in everything, modified only by the small bonuses of each individual character (for example, Bartz gets +4 Strength, +1 Agility, +3 Vitality, and +1 Magic Power). The Bare class can also never do anything other than select the Fight and Item commands. Although that might seem boring to many people, I found that the limitation on abilities and character stats forced me to be more creative with the various equipment choices, still leading to an entertaining solo run. I couldn't place the Bare job any higher on the list because this class doesn't carry a lot in the way of raw power. Even with the maxed-out Brave Blade, physical attacks were only doing a little over 2000 damage with each swing to the final bosses. This was a class that had to rely on twinkery and creativity to deal with the game's various challenges. The Bare class also did have to fall back on breaking rods and staffs on several occasions to get past several bosses, another sign that this was a job with lower overall damage output. Nevertheless, the fact that taking no job at all could score this highly on the tier list is impressive. Having access to all equipment - with a final setup wielding the Brave Blade, Aegis Shield, Ribbon, Genji Armor, and Running Shoes - made for a character that was nigh-unkillable. This was one of those few solo classes that defeated the ending boss on the first try and was never truly threatened.

[RFS-81]

In a regular game, how powerful is it that you can mix and match two abilities from any previous jobs, together with any equipment? E.g., have a mage with a huge amount of defense.

I've got FF5 for the GBA, but I didn't ever finish it IIRC.

[System Error]

In a regular game, how powerful is it that you can mix and match two abilities from any previous jobs, together with any equipment? E.g., have a mage with a huge amount of defense.

Not that powerful surprisingly, since you can often do that on the jobs themselves and the any equipment perk only comes into play late. The real advantage comes when you master some jobs and can mix the two abilities and ability to equip anything with the highest stats of all mastered job class. Which, also only really comes into play late short of AP grinding.

I disagree with T-Hawk and there's a completely good reason why rod breaking is considered a cheese option: it's qualitatively easier and more powerful than the other non-class options that we discuss. Leave aside the class-specific things like Ninja throwing weapons and Chemist mixes, since they're part of their respective classes and intended to be used.

Well relative power (which I mentioned too) aside, rod breaking is there to be used as well. It's a feature of the game, and being able to equip rods is part of a character's class. Won't deny that it is cheese, but it shouldn't be seen in that different a light. That said it's most prominent early then falls off/starts to match other things later on.

(This is where T-Hawk and I have always parted ways; T-Hawk has always leaned towards optimization perfection while I lean towards finding underpowered variant solutions. Naturally both of us have done plenty of each over the years. )

Heh, that is true. He's even talked about it in some of his reports, particularly the early FF5 ones or most of the FF1 ones. It makes them have distinctly different styles from each other and therefore read differently. Same for mine - self-assessing, I kind of have a bold/flashy approach to things, equally likely to limit myself to style on things or overly optimize to crush them, also with a mix of ramming myself against walls. Or anyone else's, like ChaosEnigma's or English Language's.

It kind of gave me an idea a while back: put out a variant for everyone to try and make reports on, blind to anyone else's, and see how each report turns out. Only question is, what variant? Maybe FF5 Live off the Land/Live off your Wallet?

A solo character could do nothing but break rods and clear essentially the whole game using nothing else, something that's not possible with the other non-class options. In other words, there really is a good reason why we view rod breaking as a cheese option, or at least why I do.

Sounds like a fun experiment to try.

[English Language]

My style of playing variants is playing things other people have already done and copying their strategies verbatim .

Only exceptions being Oracle Solo, and me rocking the "farm a million Staves of Light" strat shows I tend to pick one strategy and grind it out until it works, an Kimahri Only in FFX, and even then I copied someone else for the most part(one later boss would have been incredibly difficult had I not since special preparations have to be taken for him which involve not raising your max HP above a certain point), and only the final boss was one where I had to figure things out for myself which took a few days.

Also, a bit of a vaguely related question. This wouldn't happen anytime in the near future, but if someone ran variants of Bravely Default and had a capture card to get screengrabs of it, would this be a thread to put them in, as it's basically a Final Fantasy game in all but name, and the Job system is almost identical to FF5's.