Family stuff and the holidays has slowed down my PSP playthrough of Final Fantasy Tactics. I also ended up spending way more time than planned outlining the first 6 jobs in the game.
Instead of waiting another day or two and releasing a super long installment of my playthrough, I'm going to release part 1 of my Job System overview as a standalone "intermission" part. I will return to my story playthrough later this week.
If you have zero interest in reading what I think about Final Fantasy Tactics' job system, feel free to skip this. Hopefully someone will find the info interesting/useful though!
A Brief Introduction to the Job System Pt1 – Mechanics and Basic Classes
I have briefly commented on the job system in part 1 of my playthrough, mainly focusing on the basics of learning and equipping skills. In this installment, I want to delve a bit deeper into the job system, and look at the basic classes/jobs you will be using in the beginning of the game.
Jobs in Final Fantasy Tactics affect all aspects of your characters, including: available active skills, most raw stats (HP, MP, Physical/Magical Attack, Speed, Move, Jump, and Evade %), and the pool of equipment that can be used.
When you switch jobs, you will notice that your character’s statistics are adjusted up or down depending on the stat and job. For Instance, switching from a squire to a black mage will drop your character’s HP, but raise their MP.
In addition to changing your base stats, different jobs offer different stat growths for five major stats (HP, MP, Physical/Magical Attack, and Speed) when gaining experience levels. All jobs will raise all five of these stats, but some will raise a particular stat quicker than others.
Now let’s take a look at the basic classes in Final Fantasy Tactics. In this section, I am defining basic classes as jobs that are either opened by default (Squire and Chemist), or are directly opened by hitting level 2 in one of those jobs (Knight, Archer, Black Mage, and White Mage). If you prefer, you can think of the Squire/Chemist as tier 1 jobs, while the other four are tier 2 jobs. There are also intermediate classes (tier 3 and 4) and advanced classes (that require more than one pre-requisite job), but I will cover these in later installments. Some special units will have a unique class that replaces their Squire job. I will touch on a few of these as they come up. Ramza is in fact a special unit, and his squire class can be thought of as a super squire (with more abilities and higher base stats/stat growth than normal squires).
Note 1: HP/MP/Atk/Speed attributes and stat growths for each class are rated on a rough 5-point scale. Two classes that have a 3 rating for a particular statistics (say HP) may have slight differences. Ratings are just to give you a rough idea of the Job’s strengths and weaknesses.
Note 2: Move refers to the horizontal distance a unit can traverse in a turn, while Jump is the maximum height barrier they can clear. For instance, if jump is 3, your unit can move from a 4h tile to a 7h tile, but not to a 8h tile. Evade modifies an enemy’s chance to hit when they attack your unit.
Note 3: It goes without saying that the comments for each class are my personal opinion!
Enough basics, here are the jobs!
Squire
Code:
HP MP P.Atk M.Atk Speed
Job Attributes 3 2 3 2 3
Stat Growth 3 2 2 1 1
Move: 4 tiles Jump: 3 Evade: 5%
Weapons: swords, axes, knives, flails
Protection: clothes, hats
Active Skill Set: Fundaments
I covered the useful squire skills in part 1 of this playthrough, so I won’t spend much time repeating myself here. In general, squires have several very useful skills that you should pick up at the start of the game. Specifically focus, JP Boost, Move+1, and maybe throw stone (which can come in handy if a near dead enemy is out of reach of melee attacks).
As you can see above, squires have fairly average attributes, with average to poor stat growths. As such, you shouldn’t let your characters spend too much time in this class early in the game (especially if you have the best skills). Ramza’s squire special class has better stats, so he is a bit of an exception.
Squires can use a wide variety of equipment, but lack the ability to use the armor or knight swords of full knights. Squires have good movement, but poor evade.
Chemist
Code:
HP MP P.Atk M.Atk Speed
Job Attributes 2 2 2 2 3
Stat Growth 2 2 1 1 1
Move: 3 tiles Jump: 3 Evade: 5%
Weapons: knives, guns
Protection: clothes, hats
Active Skill Set: Items
Chemists have below average attributes and poor stat growths. Their utility comes from the fact that they are the gateway to consumable items.
If you want to use potions, phoenix downs, echo herbs, etc in Final Fantasy Tactics, you will have to learn them as a Chemist, via their items skill set.
In addition to learning how to use items, chemists have two additional skills to learn that can come in useful. Their reflexive skill is auto-potion. As the name suggests, when an enemy attack triggers this skill, your unit will automatically use a potion to heal themselves (without taking a turn to do so). I believe that they will use the weakest potion in your inventory (that they have the skill to use), so you will want to clear out the lower tier potions later in the game if you want to use this skill to its fullest effect.
Treasure hunter will occasionally find items as you move around battle maps. Your chances of finding something good depend on your bravery I believe. Low bravery = better stuff (presumably, cowards spend their time in battle hiding in the grass and mud). This skill is needed to unlock at least one side quest line. I may or may not get to that later.
Chemists are the only class that can throw items (3 or 4 spaces, I forget which). If you have the item active skill set equipped as your secondary skillset as a knight, you will only be able to heal units adjacent to you. They have a passive skill creatively called “throw item” that will allow other units to throw potions, but there are much better passive skills out there to equip.
Chemists have a poor selection of equipment, but are one of the few classes that can use guns when they become available in the middle portion of the game. Guns lack the ability to shoot over barriers like bows, but are powerful and have large ranges.
Overall, chemists have limited utility outside of learning how to use a few of the more useful items, and maybe auto potion. White Mages fill the same support role, and are superior in most aspects.
That covers the two starter classes. The tier 2 physical jobs, knight and archer, will open up once a unit reaches job level 2 of the squire class. Let’s take a look at each of those now:
Knight
Code:
HP MP P.Atk M.Atk Speed
Job Attributes 4 2 4 2 3
Stat Growth 4 2 4 1 1
Move: 4 tiles Jump: 3 Evade: 10%
Weapons: swords, knight swords
Protection: armor, helms, robes, shields
Active Skill Set: Arts of War
Knights are the first physical tank units you will encounter in the game. Since they are able to equip armor and helms, they end up with high HP pools relative to their level, and shields aid in evading attacks.
The knight’s active skill set focuses on the equipment (and skills) of the enemy. Knights can lower attack power, speed, or MP pool. They can also break equipment, effectively lowering an enemy’s maximum HP. These skills have their uses, but often miss on more powerful enemies. As such, I wouldn’t spend a ton of time mastering all of them (unless you are trying to unlock the Black Knight in the WotL version).
If you are looking for a reflexive skill, the knight’s ability to parry can reduce the damage your character takes in the early sections of the game. The most useful knight skills for non-knights are the equip sword and equip armor skills. This allows you to address some of the weaknesses in more advanced physical units.
Knights have good HP and Physical Attack stat growth, and can make use of powerful knight swords later in the game. However, expect the knight to slowly become obsolete as you open more advanced jobs, and gain access to story characters from specialized knight classes.
Archer
Code:
HP MP P.Atk M.Atk Speed
Job Attributes 3 2 4 2 3
Stat Growth 3 2 4 1 1
Move: 3 tiles Jump: 3 Evade: 10%
Weapons: bows, crossbows
Protection: clothes, hats, shields
Active Skill Set: Aim
Archers are ranged units (surprise surprise), whose attacks become more powerful the higher they are positioned.
All of the archer’s active skills are basically the same thing. An archer can use aim to charge their attack, leading to higher attack power at the cost of a queue time. The higher the version of aim you cast, the more powerful your attack will be, and the longer you will wait to perform that attack.
Archers have two reaction skills, the ability to dodge arrows, and a skill that boosts speed when attack. I find that both are fairly limited in their utility, but you could experiment with a tank unit that gets progressively faster in a battle.
The concentration skill raises a unit’s hit percentage to 100%. This is particularly useful against enemies with high evade. In addition to this, archers have a movement skill that increases their jump by 1. It’s mildly useful for getting to high elevations, but there are much better movement skills (including a Dragoon ability that lets you jump to any height. More on that down the road!).
Personally, I’m not a big fan of archers. They have decent HP and physical attack stats/growth, and having ranged attackers is useful. However, bows aren’t all that powerful, and they are limited to clothes and hats. As you get the special story characters in mid and late game, you will have better options for ranged attackers. Aim can be a useful secondary skill for any physical class though, since the shorter duration charge skills can offer a nearly free attack boost depending on the turn order of friendly and enemy units.
The tier 2 magical jobs, black mage and white mage, will open up once a unit reaches job level 2 of the chemist class. I have talked a bit about the black mage in previous parts of this playthrough, but let’s take a more detailed look at it and the white mage class:
Black Mage (Wizard in PS1 version)
Code:
HP MP P.Atk M.Atk Speed
Job Attributes 2 5 2 4 3
Stat Growth 2 5 2 1 1
Move: 3 tiles Jump: 3 Evade: 5%
Weapons: rods
Protection: clothes, hats, robes
Active Skill Set: Black Magic
Black Mages are elemental, AOE spellcasters. They are masters of the Fire/Ice/and Thunder branches of Final Fantasy magic.
As I pointed on in the previous part of this play through, many monsters are weak to one type of elemental magic. Goblins, for instance, take heavy damage from ice magic, making black magic a very useful skill to have.
In addition to their elemental magic, black mages have access to a few status effect spells (poison, frog, and death), as well as the non-elemental Flare spell.
Because they have such a large cost involved in mastering their active skills, black mages only have a couple other skills. Magick counter allows the mage to cast back whatever magic attack they are hit with. Arcane Strength boosts the damage of any spells cast. While I typically keep JP boost active for the first half of the game, Arcane Strength is a great choice for your mage’s passive skill later on.
Black Mages are useful for the entire game. Early on, before you start getting special units, black magic is extremely powerful, and is the only way to target multiple units at once. Black Mages have excellent MP stats/growth, and have high magic attack. As you might expect, their physical stats (including HP) leave something to be desired. One of my favourite hybrid classes in late game is a black mage with the Arithmetician’s active skill set. If your mage has dabbled in the other magic branches by that point, they become a magical super unit without the huge speed penalty of an Arithmetician (an advanced class, I will cover down the road).
White Mage (Priest in PS1 version)
Code:
HP MP P.Atk M.Atk Speed
Job Attributes 2 5 3 3 4
Stat Growth 4 4 3 1 1
Move: 3 tiles Jump: 3 Evade: 5%
Weapons: staves
Protection: clothes, hats, robes
Active Skill Set: White Magic
Like every Final Fantasy game, the white mage is the healing profession in Final Fantasy Tactics.
Aside from recovering HP (cure, cura, etc), White mages can revive unconscious units (as long as their timers haven’t run out), boost physical and magical defenses (protect and shell), heal status effects (esuna), and bestow a HP regeneration buff. White mages also have a very powerful attack spell called holy. However, given the MP cost, you won’t be using this spell for awhile.
White mages have a reflexive skill that auto-casts regen when hit. They also have a passive skill that boosts magic defence (arcane defense). Auto-regen can be useful, but there are much better passive skills than arcane defense.
If you don’t have an actual white mage, you will probably want a unit with a secondary white magic skill set in every battle. As such, white magic training will be a must for at least one of your units. Luckily, white mages have pretty good stats. They have high HP and speed, and have pretty good attack stats for a magic class. While HP continues to be a weak point in the mage classes, white mages actually have great HP gains on levelling up.
That wraps up part 1 of my examination of the Job system. I will probably cover the intermediate jobs in a follow up segment after I finish Chapter 1 of the campaign. I think I have 4 maps left before then.
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