Musing on FF5 job balance

[Cotigo]

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

[Dark Holy Elf]

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.

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?

[Fenrir]

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

[Tide]

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?

[Dark Holy Elf]

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.

[Grefter]

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.

[hinode]

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.

[Dark Holy Elf]

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