Theorycrafting! (Because I like competitive metagames too much)

[TigerKnee]

I know what you mean. One thing I'm having trouble getting used to those patches is that after LFT I absolutely can't stand the standard progression for JP in FFT anymore, but just about every fanpatch uses Vanilla FFT for JP costs.

Speaking of the spontaneous list project thing, I honestly found it funny that Squire is like 5th to be banned. I mean, I know Move + 1 and Gained JP up is great and... actually, yeah, they're basically what you slap into your support and movement slot 24/7. Nevermind. Still, it's funny because the Squire skillset is just so terrible.

[metroid composite]

So...to recap, the banned classes so far are...

1. Calculator
2. Summoner
3. Wizard
4. Chemist
5. Squire
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Samurai
9. Lancer
10. Priest

So what do things look like now?

One thing I want to talk a little about is unique roles.  Monk is now the only class with revival left; does that mean they'll be centralizing; that everyone will need to have Punch Art secondary?  Well...not necessarily, in the same way that Haste from Time Mage wasn't centralizing even though every party wants it; you don't need it on every character.  Similarly, Monk is some of the only healing--is this centralizing?  Well...no, because it's mostly self-healing due to 0 vertical tolerance and range 1 on a 3-move class; and as far as self-healing goes it needs to compete with Life Drain from Oracle.  As far as healing others...Bard makes a decent claim at being better than Monk with Life Song (and Life Song is really not that good).  Ice healing setups also provide some competition, although also not very good competition.

Earlygame: Knight and Archer are pretty top tier here.  I guess Thief has the best skillset with Steal Heart?

Midgame: With all the other strong midgame options gone, Geomancer starts standing out from the crowd for Elemental with Chapter 2 mage equips.  The only decent competition for that is like...Mediator with Charge+3, which deals slightly more damage (54) at a decent range bonus, but never statuses and never hits AoE.  Oracle is gamebreaking in a small number of situations (Silence Song against mages; Life Drain against Queklain) and stick damage is now the gamebest damage.  You can get Move+2 if you don't care about having a skillset, but ehh....

Lategame: I've already written about Monk reaching 140ish Earth Slash damage with Attack Up and PA boosting.  What I didn't do a good job of exploring was optimized gun setups.  Mithral Gun + Attack Up + Charge+4 = 128 damage.  Oracles are good, and still crush a few specific battles, but aren't dominant; their physical damage slips.  Dancers are...good, I'm not quite sure how good probably similar to Oracles in that they status one, maybe two people per turn?  Move+2 is cool, but a lot of the best setups don't really need it--like guns and dancers.

Endgame: You know, the more I think about it, elemental guns are ridiculous.  Not the best damage or anything, but close enough.  Combine with Equip Shield elemental shields for the best healing.  And Mediators have other selling points here, like they can invite Hydras and breed Tiamats.  That's going to be better than most of the human setups with the remaining legal classes.  (There's a slim possibility for something like Cockatrice in Chapter 3, too).

Yeah, so...guns.  They keep pace with Earth Slash, except their range is way, way, more practical.  And Mediators can do other stuff too.


1. Calculator
2. Summoner
3. Wizard
4. Chemist
5. Squire
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Samurai
9. Lancer
10. Priest
11. Mediator

_____________________________

Now what?

Earlygame still favours classes that become irrelevant fast so can't really centralize anything.  Well...except maybe Archer.  With guns gone we should probably actually take bows seriously.

Earlygame: bows are range.  It's like a 4 WP bow, so like...24 damage, or 36 with a charge.
Midgame: 6 WP bow, and a bit of boosting equipment, so 42 damage, or 60 with a charge.
Lategame: 8 WP bow, and a bunch of boosting equipment, so 72 damage, or 96 with a charge.
Endgame: 10 WP bow, and about the same amount of boosting equipment, but higher stats, so 110 damage, or 140 with a charge.  There's also the super-Crossbow, that's like...150 damage, 180 with a charge.

Granted, these don't use Attack Up like I did for guns, which would be a 33% bonus, but Archers probably want Concentrate anyway, what with longbows having extra accuracy penalties.

And...yeah, honestly, I'll take Earth Slash.  Especially with bows not fixing Earth Slashes big weakness (can't reach enemies above you).

Anyway...Midgame is looking more and more dominant for Elemental Geomancer because Chapter 2 mage equips are just that good, but like Knight from earlygame it...just doesn't go anywhere.  Oracle is still gamebest midgame damage, of course.

Lategame the strong classes are Oracle, Dancer, Monk.

Endgame is...probably dominated by Oracle, who turns into Batman.  Excalibur Knight with Yin Yang, and boosted Brave/Faith sounds like the easy single best unit.  No other class makes particularly good use of Excalibur Knight (Monk hates the loss of PA and loss of Attack Up.  Dancer doesn't care about the speed bonus, but might hop into Knight just for the HP).

It's looking like Oracle, but let's pause and talk about some R/S/M, first.  Move+2 is still completely rocking face.  There aren't a lot of situations where you wouldn't use it.  Dancer doesn't really need it, but also gets most of the way there just from unlocking Dancer so probably gets it anyway.  They might also consider Fly, though, as it can break some fights to fly where the enemies can't reach and dance.  Oracle might get Move-MP-Up instead--it's cheaper for them--but they're certainly the only setup that gives a damn about MP healing.  Move+3 exists, and might go into some endgame setups because 6300 JP is a lot to play with (it's only like...2000 JP to unlock and grab Move+3).

Support abilities: Attack Up is starting to get pretty centralizing, although it does have competition from Concentrate for non-Monk builds.  But...there's also Defense Up as similarly very good, and if you have an Oracle on the team (which you should) then everyone gets Defense Up automatically.  Hm, that's probably fine for now.

Reaction abilities...Arrow Guard and Counter Flood are two that catch my eye now as actually quite good because they give the middle finger to enemy Archers.  Hammedo is the highest quality reaction, but a huge investment; not before endgame and not through spillover.  HP Restore is solid.

Hm, the only really centralizing one of these is Move+2.

I should also mention Monks: they've generally got game-best damage...even long-range their damage is noteworthy.  High damage is something you really want to take out bosses...but I mean, Oracles with Life Drain are still in-play so high damage is not yet the prioirty.  (And Oracle is pretty scary for damage, too).  Long range is good against standard enemies, but so is status (and long range + status is Dancer...).

Okay, so...let's narrow this down a little; what are the long-term setups that might be targetted?

Oracle Knight w/ Excalibur
Yin Yang Magic
Hammedo/whatever
Defence Up (makes more sense if you're planning to YYM more than attack)
Move-MP Up/Move+2 (I think MP probably wins here, because Haste means you can keep up with movement, and you can always Pray Faith yourself when out of range, and Knight is not a super-high MP class--in fact you might even consider Reflect Mail which gives you major MP woes.

Defencive Dancer
Defence Up
Move HP-Up
P-Bag
etc

(Could be a variety of classes; Monk for Revive, Oracle for the ability to whip out damage via sticks and Life Drain, Knight or Geomancer for equipment--notably the more HP you have the better regen and Move HP-Up become so Knight and Geo are quite solid here).

Monk
Yin Yang Magic
Hammedo/whatever
Attack Up
Move+2

You know, Yin Yang Magic is considered one of Monks' best secondary options under normal circumstances.  It's really the obvious secondary here.  I mean, what are the other options?  Elemental?  Steal Heart?  I mean, barring like...Equip Armor P-Bag Dance Monk, which is a totally different style of setup.

There is one other decent option, though:

Monk
Sing
(reaction, Attack Up, Move+2)

Notably, Battle Song is pretty good on a team with a bunch of Monks.  The big downside, of course, is that just the act of unlocking Bard provides a lot of bad PA growth.

Another setup:

Mime

In...a format where Dance and Sing aren't jokes, where the best movement ability is Move+2, where there aren't any great reaction abilities that you'd be missing out on, Mime is...worth a look.  They tend to be solid with Monk abilities too.  Still have the worst HP in the game, the worst movement (when everyone else has Move+2), no reaction ability, and a lower PA mult than Monk before we consider equipment.

So...hmm, I don't have any major conclusions from the above analysis, other than Move+2 doesn't seem opressively centralizing, when YYM and Dance both go for something else, and it's wasted on a Mime.  Hmm...what's the best mook-clearing?  I'm...inclined to say Dance right now; Punch Art just gets thwarted by some maps, YYM is really good, but doesn't have the same range and range can just break some fights.  What's the best boss smashing?  Life Drain.  Not especially close.

The one weird thing is how much the metagame is generally tipped towards physical, which means Dance is in some ways going to be an atypical setup, because it means female, and Yin-Yang is in some ways going to be an atypical setup, because it means high faith.

That said, towards the lategame/endgame, every unit that doesn't have terrible faith should know Life Drain; it's an inexpensive 350 JP--no reason not to get it with everyone--and it crushes some fights that...none of the remaining classes handle particularly well (like Dyceamelk, which nobody else can really reach on his high platform).  And in general, no matter what your class, a dip into Yin Yang for something cheap like Paralyze or Silence Song will up your versatility a lot.  What secondaries pre Dance-Sing would you take over this?  Punch Art is ok, but Punch Art costs a lot of JP, and if you're sinking a lot of JP into PA, why aren't you a dedicated Monk?  (I guess there's an argument for Punch Art Archer because of bows).  Elemental is ok, but the damage is poor outside of Geo, so it's mostly status, where YYM will do better.  Steal Heart is worse than YYM due to being singletarget, and having poor accuracy.

So...it seems like there's a bit of a Phoenix-Down-lite scenario here, where everyone, regardless of tech path, probably has YYM secondary for a lot of the game, because it's cheap and effective regardless of stats.  That sounds OP!  Note that this hasn't been an issue until recently, what with Talk Skill providing an alternative (and a tempting alternative at that--one where you can run like...20 faith which is more attractive to the generally physical metagame).

1. Calculator
2. Summoner
3. Wizard
4. Chemist
5. Squire
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Samurai
9. Lancer
10. Priest
11. Mediator
12. Oracle

_____________________________

So...support abilities; Attack Up is becoming kind-of a big deal.  Well...it's a big deal for Monk, anyway.  Other classes would probably settle for Concentrate.  Dancer naturally gravitates to Equip Armor given Defence Up is off the table.

In the absense of Oracle, the boss-smash role now falls on Monk.  Or...Geomancer is also solid for the run-up-and-smash.  Or, specifically for zodiacs and not human bosses, Speed Break Archers might be worth a look.  Particularly against all the bosses where bows have much more range than Punch Art (Zalera, Altima).  That...yeah, sounds more effective than killing Zalera with bow damage; 10 hits to kill either way, but you start doubleturning before he's speed-dead.  On the other hand, he has support, so dropping his HP to 0 means his support can't hit you anymore so...ehhh.  Probably worth-it against Altima, though.  Adramelk...hmm...actually screw speed break against him: block petrify and Magic Break him twice.  That I'm pretty sure is more effective than a damage blitz.  Hashmallum...if you can catch him charging, Monk damage will be fantastic, but Monks can't wear Thief Hats so that's actually non-trivial if he doesn't pull out Meteor.  Decent Magic Break candidate, though: Magic Break + Black Costume; now he's got like...only Slow and physical attacks.

Even against someone like Rofel, who is more of the "get lots of damage and win"...there's now a good argument for Weapon Break Rofel, and Dance to nuke his support.

Wow, suddenly Knight is relevant and...while not quite centralizing (it's just a good alternative) it does make a class seem non-centralizing.  How the hell did that happen?

Well boss smashing has a bit of a meta to it, what about mook-smashing?  Dancer.  Seriously, Dancer.  Holy crap nothing is close to Dancer mook-smash right now.

1. Calculator
2. Summoner
3. Wizard
4. Chemist
5. Squire
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Samurai
9. Lancer
10. Priest
11. Mediator
12. Oracle
13. Dancer

_____________________________

So...Dancer going suddenly breaks things in several ways--like everyone wants Move+2, there aren't really any setups now that care about Move-HP-Up.  But the big one to me is that...Punch Art is basically the only skillset.  Yes, other skillsets are passable, maybe even have strong niche moments like Elemental in Chapter 2 or Battle Skill against bosses.  But Punch Art is pretty much it for general purpose bring this into any fight skills.  I guess Sing is kinda cool too, but the main reason to use Sing is excellent PA buffs for Punch Art.


1. Calculator
2. Summoner
3. Wizard
4. Chemist
5. Squire
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Samurai
9. Lancer
10. Priest
11. Mediator
12. Oracle
13. Dancer
14. Monk

_____________________________

With Monk gone, suddenly I need damage numbers for Elemental, because this might become very relevant.

Midgame: 6ish PA, 5ish MA, use +2 PA, +3 MA equips.  40 damage
Lategame: 7ish PA, 5ish MA, use +3 PA, +3 MA equips.  48 damage
Endgame: 10ish PA, 7ish MA, use uhh...+2 PA, +7 MA equips.  98 damage

So...consistently less than uncharged longbow shots with Concentrate from a character wearing high-HP speed boosting gear instead of like...Wizard Robe Twist Headband in Chapter 4.  Not that Archer is completely dominant here--Elemental can status and multitarget, and geos get a damn good melee attack.  Geo melees don't completely leave other classes in the dust, though--Knight is...worse, overall, but better at some points in the game like Chapter 1 and...actually I'm not sure about Chapter 4; they're competitive in Chapter 4 anyway.  Actually, they're competitive in Chapter 2, too--not enough PA boosting for Geos to really get an advantage.

Skillsets...Elemental, Charge, Sing, and Battle Skill all have serious applications, with...I guess Sing being the strongest?  A Cheer Song Archer Squad certainly sounds nasty.

Supports...with Monk gone, Attack Up vs Concentrate feels less one-sided, because no one set exclusively favours one or the other; might switch depending on the fight.

Reaction abilities...Arrow Guard and Counter Flood; they're both good.

Movement: Move+2.  Such a big deal when your only available classes are like...Knight and Geomancer.  Dominant in the midgame and lategame, with Move+3 providing some competition in the endgame.  It's not like you're missing out on skills by bee-lining to Move+2 either; most Knight/Archer/Geo skills are fairly inexpensive; the only thing you might miss out on is bee-lineing to Bard.

Anything else Thief does?  Hmm...well...Poach is fairly useless for these classes due to the lack of Invitation, but you can and probably do attempt to steal Meliadoul's Chantage (one female is not a big reduction of damage early on, especially when longbows and elemental are often going to be the damage of choice).  And...for all that on paper Steal is the least standout of these skillsets, Steal Heart is probably going to spend quite a bit of time in the secondary slot.  It adds more variety to Archers than Elemental, and except in a small number of fights it outclasses Battle Skill on Archer.  On Geomancers, in the fights before their physical becomes good, it fits their game-plan better than Charge.  No reason not to learn it, either; it doesn't cost a lot of JP.

1. Calculator
2. Summoner
3. Wizard
4. Chemist
5. Squire
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Samurai
9. Lancer
10. Priest
11. Mediator
12. Oracle
13. Dancer
14. Monk
15. Thief

_____________________________

So, what now?

Earlygame: Knight and Archer fill different roles.

Midgame: Archer and Geomancer both have powerful ranged attacks.  Melee attacks kind-of suck (dealing not much more than the ranged attacks).  Concentrate is gettable; Attack Up is...just out of reach JP-wise (and that's even assuming you hop into Geo and don't learn a single elemental).

Lategame: Archer damage continues to improve; Geomancer range stays stagnant, but melee spikes way up to like...110 before Attack Up, 140 after Attack Up.  Hm, right, swords are still kinda bad.  Bows don't match that on their own, but bow+Charge ends up in a similar ballpark.  (To be fair, Geos can use charge too).  The first Ice Healing comes online, with Ice Bow into Ice Shield.  At the same time, Bard: it's a thing.  Cheer Song is...really good at this point in the game, actually (more or less speed+1 to entire party as it goes off twice a turn, which...you'll gain back the turn you spent on it fairly quickly, and that's assuming you could have spent that turn on something more productive).  As an added bonus, speed-based weapons are kind-of awesome right now.  Harp Bard deals like...78 damage (parasitic).  Harp Bard with Charge+4 deals like...130 damage (parasitic).  BattleSkill Archer is kicking around somewhere, while the game obliges by providing zero fights where Battle Skill is worth using.

Endgame: Ice Healing goes into overdrive, with both Knight and Geo having high damage ice physicals, and nearly every class having access to shields (Bard only with Equip Shield, Mime...lol Mime).  Harp Bard damage doesn't change at all--still 78, and Charge+4 to 130 or so; you could mix in Attack Up I guess.  Geo physicals are oh...210 with Rune Blade before Attack Up and assuming Thief Hat.  (238 with Twist Headband instead of Thief).  Black Robe Ice Brand Knights are 221 (plus randocast Ice 2 damage) but they don't get Thief Hat.  Alternatively, Excalibur deals 210; 231 with a bit of brave boosting.  All of these numbers are without Attack Up.

Ice Healing, if it's the path of choice, has some interesting consequences.  Like...it increases the value of Concentrate to avoid dodging the healing.  It also makes Arrow Guard the obvious choice over Counter Flood, because it doesn't stop Ice Healing (and because Elemental only deals non-garbage damage if you're using Rune Blade Ageis Shield).  It also raises the value of Sing--partially because Sing takes away your dodge, but also because if you can keep a party alive while Singing Cheer Song for five turns, then you just...win.

And then there's Move+3.  It's...well, it's gone from "usually not worth it--you can get something almost as good" to pretty much the only movement ability.  (Well...no, Jump+1 is worth using, it's just...Archer has better skills so you won't usually get it until mid-lategame).  I can't really picture a credible endgame setup that doesn't benefit a lot from Move+3.  Bard stat growth be damned; we're talking about +3 movement for classes that care a lot about positioning.  The counterargument would be the "calc effect"--that you need to be temporarily weak to grind for it, which well...I haven't put a lot of thought into how unlocking Bard works now (propositions?  Can you use the class only until you've completed the JP requirements and not in difficult fights?) but Bard itself is fine--look at Charge Harp in lategame--it has a legitimate claim at being the best setup.

Wow, we seem to be careening towards Bard being the class to ban.  Hm, is there no counterargument to this--no argument that maybe you shouldn't go Bard?

Actually...there kind of is.  While Cheer Song pays for itself reasonably quickly, early turns are just worth more than later turns, because you can die, enemies can die.  Instead of sitting around singing, why don't you blitz the enemy with your choice of Attack Up/Concentrate and Longbows?  Or, in the case of some zodiacs, blitz them with Battle Skill?  While boosting your speed improves your turn ratio, killing enemies also increases your turn ratio, because dead enemies get fewer turns.  And blitzing has a lot of heavy JP requirements.  You want to be able to switch everyone to Counter Flood Elemental focused Geomancers against physical walls like Elmdor and Rofel.  If you're going to battle skill blitz a boss, you need everyone to learn the relevant break (as Battle Skill is bad if not stacked).  You want Attack Up and Concentrate and Arrow Guard and Speed Save (switching depending on the fight).  You want all the relevant Charges.  This adds up to almost the 6300 JP alotment.  (Relevant charges is 1000 JP or so; relevant Battle Skills is 500-1000 JP depending on if you put any value into Weapon Break; relevant Elementals is probably also 500-1000 JP or so; Support abilities is another 1000ish JP; Reaction abilities...the full suite is 1500 JP).  So...4500-5500 JP if you want to be able to switch your party to laser-focus down each fight.  Going Bard, getting a few songs and Move+3 is like...3000 JP.  You would need to cut corners for Move+3 if you wanted to keep an adaptable team.  It's still a tempting option, being freaking Move+3, but not mandatory, especially when Archer strategy is often "shoot, take one step back to manipulate AI into taking one step forward, and repeat".

So, ok, if it's not Bard, then which class?  Probably Archer.  Charge is just the "slap this on everything" skillset--Geos and Bards use it; Knight probably prefers Geomancy, but will sometimes consider Charge if, say, the plan is "smash with Excalibur".  Battle Skill, when it gets used, obviously leans on the Archer class giving it range and accuracy.  The best plan for smashing mooks is honestly probably bows at most points--better ranged damage than Elemental by a good margin.  Arrow Guard is a huge swing in some fights--I can't really imagine not learning it.  While you'll switch between Concentrate and Attack Up depending on the fight, Concentrate will probably be favoured in most fights just because everyone's using Charge (and this goes back to something Elfboy wrote years ago--charged damage moves + inaccuracy is a bad combination, because you can't predict how many attacks you need to lock on to a high priority target to make sure they'll end up dead.  Like...on a Wizard SCC, if someone has a 25% dodge mantle, do you hit them with two spells?  Three?  Four?).

To be honest, a lot of stuff feels centralizing to a degree with this few classes.  Like...I can't imagine not learning Attack Up for, say, Velius.  But the obvious correct Velius setup is longbows with Attack Up.  Which class gets the credit--Geo or Archer?  Or, for instance, let's say the best way to beat Wiegraf is Geomancer (for the Chameleon Robe) with Equip Crossbow (to avoid counters and deal more than Elemental, particularly with Charge) oh and Speed Save as it's the most relevant reaction.  Again, which class gets credit?  Geo class, with three Archer abilities....

We're getting to the point that this is around SCC difficulty, and just thinking about how I would tackle it...well it's story time.  On the Geomancer SCC I mostly ditched the Ice Brand Ice Shield setup in favour of higher Elemental damage and counter-flood (with the exception of a small number of endurance fights).  Sniping enemies from a distance more effectively, and having a reaction ability that deals with those damn enemy Archers just made things easier than having the option to use my turn for healing.  Similarly, I think my priorities are going to be Arrow Guard, Counter Flood, Concentrate, Attack Up, and enough Charges and Elementals to be functional depending on what the map calls for.  And I think I'd be using mostly bows over Elemental due to higher damage, but hey: there's bosses with Arrow Guard and levels like Yardow where three enemies tend to line up in a perfect Elemental formation.  But overall I suspect Bow Damage is correct in 70% of fights, Elemental damage is correct in 20% of fights, 5% want melee blitz, and 5% want Battle Skill Blitz (using bows).  Unlocking Bard would...not be my priority, and if I did it would maybe be one or two characters--not the entire party (For all that I haven't worked out the exact details of how unlocking will work; but my gut instinct is that it's both a short term power drop, and a long stretch where you're falling behind the party due to 1500 unspendable JP in the unlock process).  I wouldn't necessarily use Bard in the "obvious" way of buff->kill, either.  I'd be more inclined to blitz first, and then Life Song after half the enemy team is dead and I want to keep a couple of teammates from dropping.

Yeah, everything is being used now, basically every runthrough.  But...if I had to pick one class that things seem to revolve around more heavily, it would be Archer.


1. Calculator
2. Summoner
3. Wizard
4. Chemist
5. Squire
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Samurai
9. Lancer
10. Priest
11. Mediator
12. Oracle
13. Dancer
14. Monk
15. Thief
16. Archer

_____________________________

And with Archer gone, the next to go becomes mind-numbingly obvious.

Your support ability is Attack Up.  Period.  Your reaction ability is Counter Flood.  Err...fairly often.  (Well...you might occasionally use MA-save, and might use Weapon Guard initially because you can pick it up for free, and will probably sub in one of these if you're ice healing, but CF is just so good in this field).  Your secondary is Elemental.  Even if you go for a Sing+Ice Healing combo, you will be in the Geomancer class.  If you decide to Battle Skill...you might think about using Bard over Geomancer because of their 3 range...but they have so many downsides, like awful HP, worse movement, no shields.  Bard is...still worth considering in these situations, though, because you don't have to clump up to battle skill.  And...honestly if you're Battle Skilling you don't need attack up, so you could invest in Equip Armor or Equip Shield.

But Move+3 also jumps up a lot in how centralizing it is.  Notably, with Archer, you didn't need Move+3 to blitz--if you want to have four people attack Velius, you just shoot him with four arrows (and happily spread out to avoid AoE).  With melee classes, if you want everyone to run in and smash...you kinda need the movement.  Without it, just...chances are you will only hit from two or three sides, reducing party damage.

Well...but it's not like there are no range attacks; there's still elemental, and still Harps.  Can range blitz surface as a viable alternative to Attack Up?  Probably not--let me cover harps first.  The idea of range blitz is that the enemies run forward to the point that they'll be able to run up and attack you next turn, and then you take one step back, so the enemy AI repeats the same algorithm and takes one step forward.  If the enemy is 3 movement, they stop at 4 range.  If the enemy is 4 movement, they stop at 5 range.  Harps have 3 range--which is damn near useless, to be honest.  So...it's really just Elemental that carries the range-blitz torch.  And Elemental...has times when it's competitive damage, and times when it's...just weak.

On the other hand, melee blitz is a thing.  It's the way people generally play Move+2 Concentrate Ninjas.  But what it reminds me of most is tank heavy strategies in Advance Wars.  Basically, you keep your melee units away from the enemy...away from the enemy...away from the enemy, and then all of the sudden you smell blood, move them all into one area at once, and kill everything (hopefully still out of range of the other enemy clumps).  Same idea with Zergling counterattacks in Starcraft.  In turn based games like Advance Wars and FFT, though, it only works well if your threat range is higher than the enemy.

Another thing to note, I didn't go into a lot of detail on this in the Archer vs Bard discussion, but one reason Cheer Song isn't the greatest strategy when Archer was active is that you probably have a few units with Charge, and they probably don't want their speed randomly scrambled--means they can't keep in time with the enemies and hit them with a big Charge.  That's no longer really the case--and in fact, in the absence of Move+3, doubleturns are another good way to do a melee blitz.  (The important part is "you move in, and the enemy dies" instead of "you close the distance, hurt the front row which you can only reach with one unit, and then they surround you and hurt you back more").

The important question, though, is what's better.  In lategame (chapter 3) where Elemental is kinda sad, is it better to Cheer Song and give your party +1 speed on average...or is it better to just hit something with Elemental?  (Because you're almost always in range to elemental something).  Well...let's calculate.

Five elementals will generally take down a target.
Five people using Cheer Song will get you...well...actually...probably only 0.5 per Cheer Song because they're going to make each other too fast.  So...6 or 7 speed goes up to 8.5-9.5; so around a 40% increase.  With high power attacks you worry about this less, because you probably kill two enemies a turn: 6 enemies->4 enemies->2 enemies; a 50% turn advantage increase at first, 100% next, and then you win.  But when you only kill one enemy a round?  Suddenly it's 6 enemies->5 enemies->4 enemies->3 enemies->2 enemies->1 enemies.  Suddenly your first three turn increases are 20%, 25%, 33%, and the 40% increase is...looking quite sexy.

So...it looks something like...

Earlygame: Knight!!!

Midgame: Elemental!!! Probably with Weapon Guard because it's basically free and lets you pursue other slots in Geo.

Lategame: Cheer Song!  Geo's probably the class you want to be in right now, but with harps at by far their peak Bard's kinda cool too; drain harp!

Endgame: Melee Blitz, which leans on Attack Up and Move+3, with...Move+3 being the more important of the two.  (Compare "Attack Up + Germinas Boots" to "Move+3 + Bracer"--and I've certainly heard Germinas Boots called "mandatory" on, say, the Knight SCC.  If M+3 means four people can melee blitz instead of two then it does double damage output--better than 33% increase.  Also, if you plan to Battle Skill blitz, then Move+3 and harps make it way, way more practical).

Well...I guess there is an argument for endgame should be played as range blitz, because Rune Blade makes Elemental damage good again.  But...Attack Up doesn't help pure-Elemental strategies, and Move+3 does, even if range strategies don't need movement as badly.

1. Calculator
2. Summoner
3. Wizard
4. Chemist
5. Squire
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Samurai
9. Lancer
10. Priest
11. Mediator
12. Oracle
13. Dancer
14. Monk
15. Thief
16. Archer
17. Bard

_____________________________

Well then.

Earlygame: Knight

Midgame: Geomancer elemental is hax.

Lategame: Geomancer equips are hax; stupid power sleeve.  Also Attack Up is hax.

Endgame: Attack Up is still hax, and so is Thief Hat.  Excalibur is more hax, but there's only one.


1. Calculator
2. Summoner
3. Wizard
4. Chemist
5. Squire
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Samurai
9. Lancer
10. Priest
11. Mediator
12. Oracle
13. Dancer
14. Monk
15. Thief
16. Archer
17. Bard
18. Geomancer

_____________________________

Yeah, you thought that last one was bad?

Earlygame: Knight dominates
Midgame: Knight dominates
Lategame: Knight dominates (only due to lack of competition, because Knight in chapter 3 is claw-your-eyes-out-awful!)
Endgame: Knight probably dominates.  Mime struggles because it can't wear shields.

Nevermind the issues of "I can't be bothered spending a bunch of time training in classes I'm not allowed to use".  Let's say I had five characters who went straight Knight, and two more who got Mime unlocked.  Would I field the Mimes?  Characters with 1/2 the HP (not an exaggeration), no shield evade, no weapon guard, and no way for me to heal them?  In a party that tends to win fights slowly?  Characters who deal oh...33% less damage with their mimed Ice Brands due to a combination of getting job level 8 in terrible PA growth classes like Squire and Chemist, and lacking equipment like Black Robe?  Which, mind you, is still better than the 50% less they deal with their fists....

Which...actually...isn't that bad.  If Mime gets in position to hit an enemy who doesn't move before the Knights do, they have like...triple the melee damage of an individual Knight (all with 100% accuracy).  Hopefully this enemy doesn't have Counter, but yeah.  And on paper, triple the damage for half the durability is a trade I would take.  And...worst case scenario you can always park the mime anywhere beside a damaged teammate; they'll mimic an ice-hit.  The problem is just how much it...doesn't fit the playstyle.  Take an SCC that wins very slowly.  Toss them a party member with zero durability that they can't heal.  You're going to get a crystalization reset half the time you try it.

Although...maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way around.  What about one Excalibur Knight, four Mimes?  You've now got a fast, mobile, accurate, damaging party.  I mean, frailer than Ninjas.  You wouldn't even consider this when Geo was still an option (Geo having Thief Hat and 4 move, which counter the fast, mobile part).

Well...ok, let's break this down:

Against Zodiac bosses: Some are made to be blitzed (Hashmallum, Velius) some are tanky (Zalera, Adramelk, Altima).  The tanky ones are just going to favour Ice Healing.  The blitzing ones...tend to have an additinal stipulation that speed is ultra-important to survivability because it changes whether you can be charged on.  Movement is also big to hit bosses mid-charge.  I would say this category leans Knight, though--more tank bosses, and Concentrate doesn't add much.

Against human assassinations: Heavily Mime--especially with a lot of them in lategame being Shrine Knights that literally can't hurt Mimes.  And Elmdor...actually wait, Eldmor deals...*looks up stat topic*...160 damage; ok, Mimes aren't OHKOed--really damn close, but not OHKOed, and yeah they get through his shield and get multiple chances.  Balk 1/2 are the big exceptions, in this category, where shields are just the hotness.  And there's certainly some bosses with Counter (although not that many in Chapter 4).  But overall these fights favours heavy-Mime compositions.

Against mooks...well...setting asside Ice Healing for a moment, there's a funny little setup I've seen advocated for the Knight SCC against mooks by a small minority: which is to say screw ice healing: Crystal Shield, Feather Mantle, Weapon Guard, Reflect Mail, mooks now can't hurt you.  (We're talking 70% dodge rate to physical, reflect and low faith against magical, more than doubble Mime HP).  Now it's not just double the damage vs double the HP, there's also 1/3 the damage taken.  Yeah, you have no movement, but you can just let the enemies walk up to you and attack you, and then hit them back.  Granted, a lot of players do dismiss this as less effective than ice healing, but it's an easier comparison to Mime parties--and frankly it...sounds better on-paper.  But what about fights with mooks who have unblockable damage (like the church exterior, with gun-wielding Mediators and Summoners and Geomancers in high positions)?  Surely the hardcore evade plan is weak there...?  Yes it is, but...To be honest, I'm definitely not sold on Mimes in that specific map either--a bunch of game-worst HP units getting shot up from a high ground that they can't easily access; honestly what you want there is Ice Healing so that you can survive the approach.  There's probably some deep dungeon fights with evasion ignoring too, but my first thought there is like...Red Chocobos, and no, you don't want to be fighting Red Chocobos with gameworst HP, 4 move, no range, and no healing.  Most other monster skills are dodgeable.  I mean, Tiamat isn't, but the way to beat those is Flame Shield Rubber Shoes.  ...Hmm, well there's Cockatoris--but I think you're more worried about their dodgeable stuff (which rips Mimes to shreds).  Their undodgeable Feather Bomb is more of a finisher.  And...oh god, I just remembered that monsters all have counter--yeah, nevermind, Mime is terrible against all of them as it deals lots of light hits, each of which get countered.  So...yes, mooks would seem to favour Knights.

Good hustle Mime--you actually made me pause and think, you proved to me that there's a decent number of fights where a heavy Mime composition would be ideal.  But...5 Knights, 0 Mimes is still the better setup for...more than half of the endgame fights.

1. Calculator
2. Summoner
3. Wizard
4. Chemist
5. Squire
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Samurai
9. Lancer
10. Priest
11. Mediator
12. Oracle
13. Dancer
14. Monk
15. Thief
16. Archer
17. Bard
18. Geomancer
19. Knight

_____________________________

Mime?  Mime Mime!  Mime Mime Mime Mime...Mime Mime?  Miiiiiiiime.

1. Calculator
2. Summoner
3. Wizard
4. Chemist
5. Squire
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Samurai
9. Lancer
10. Priest
11. Mediator
12. Oracle
13. Dancer
14. Monk
15. Thief
16. Archer
17. Bard
18. Geomancer
19. Knight
20. Mime

[Dark Holy Elf]

And with Archer gone, the next to go becomes mind-numbingly obvious.

I agree, but somehow we came up with a different #17.

I'll be honest with you: with those last four remaining classes I would basically play it as a Geomancer SCC. A 1900 JP investment Move+3 is barely a blip on the radar.

I'm also not especially convinced by the arguments that took out Mediator, Dancer, and Thief as early as they did. Perhaps Archer too; Concentrate is cool, but it feels in the same general ballpark as Attack Up for overall worth and Geomancer pulls ahead in other aspects, especially after Monk is removed (see the SCCs: ice healing off decent move/speed and a good mix of melee and range). In general I kinda feel the analyses don't really acknowledge that melee sometimes has a place above ranged and the fact that you focused on comparing bows/guns vs. Elemental and then basically ignoring that one of those setups can go in and melee things for extra damage seemed to be missing the mark to me.

I haven't thought about it nearly as in depth as you, but for me, the bottom 10 should look closer to:

11. Oracle (overcentralised boss-killer with an answer for mooks too)
12. Monk (I'm too used to going "eh whatever" at Monks but with that near-monopoly on healing/revival they start to look good. Not bad otherwise)
13. Geomancer (overcentralised damage/healing at this point)
14-16. Mediator/Archer/Dancer (at this point things get hazy, but these three feel like they'd go before...)
17. Thief (eh sure Move+2)
18. Knight (last remnant of damage and durability)
19. Bard (all that JP spent climbing through a DEAD magic tree now)
20. Mime (lulz)

Pretty much agree with the top 10 on the other hand.

[metroid composite]

Hmm...my gut instinct is that in-battle versatility isn't as important as between-battle versatility.  Like...to make a Magic the Gathering comparison, Shatter gets only slightly less tournament play than Disenchant, even though one of those says "destroy target artifact" and the other says "destroy target artifact or enchantment".

Similarly in FFT, if the best way to smash a fight is with range, then you optimize your range damage.  If the best way to tackle the next fight is melee, then you class switch and optimize your melee.

And notably Geomancer is not Monk: you can't optimize both.  An Ice Brand Ice Shield PA boosted Geomancer deals like...50 damage with elemental; half of optimum.

I can get behind 11 Oracle, 12 Monk.  Those were decisions I struggled with.  13 Geomancer just seems crazy, though.  Elemental Gun healing is miles better than Ice Brand Healing at endgame.  Inviting a Hydra or Cockatoris is more centralizing for damage than Geo.  And back to healing, even bard has some healing advantages over Geo, like you don't need to lock in two, sometimes three (Rubber Shoes) pieces of equipment.

Geo over Dancer I lean against, but I wouldn't mind more input on it from people who've done Dancer SCCs.  My instincts tell me that Nameless Dance is just brutally unfair in 50% of fights, and combining that with the specialization stuff I mentioned above, I'm inclined to put Dance moderately high.  Not like...Life Drain high because Dance is a big investment, but if we're doing Oracle 11, Monk 12, Mediator 13, say, then Dance is what I'd call the last "serious skillset".  In that...what's your secondary?  If you didn't answer Dance then your secondary sucks; just FYI.  ...Seems kinda centralizing.

Archer above Thief I can get behind.  In fact, as I was working through the Geo/Bard/Archer/Knight group, realizing how much it focused on range tactics and usually not melee, I started to feel like I probably made a mistake putting Thief over Archer.

Geo above Archer I could get behind.  It was my first instinct just...all the stars were aligned behind Archer for the abilities left.  Bows get their choice of Attack Up or Concentrate.  Bows get charge.  Bows get Battle Skill in the few fights where it's relevant.  One of the few half-decent skillsets remaining boosts speed as what it does.  And...even Archer abilities seemed to have stars aligned behind them.  With Charge being highly relevant, Concentrate is a lot more valuable than it normally would be.  Arrow Guard may or may not be better than Counter Flood in the abstract, but a number of factors push it ahead here.  Even with all those advantages, yeah, there's a case for Geo over Archer.  Better in the midgame.  If you favor Ice Healing over pure range focused strategies, better in the endgame.  Done.

Bard...is just a headache to place.  I'm not sure how to handle the dead magic tree thing other than the obvious "that's 1400 JP you spend on nothing" and "have some bad stat growth".  If it's just those two, however, Bard is certainly worth-it.  Sing is...almost a real skillset.  Not really, but almost.  Can provide healing.  If you can't safely move in to range, it has the accumulate stamp of "this is something to do when out-of-range", except unlike accumulate it's powerful enough to be better than waiting.  And Move+3 is a huge upgrade over "no movement".

Still a pain to place; I'm ok with placing Geo over Bard; again, decision I wrestled with.  Knight over Bard...if it came down to those two for me...well honestly Bloody Strings matches Knight damage in the lategame.  Endgame...everyone should have Move+3, and I can still see sometimes using the Bard class over Knight.  Balk (Equip Shield lets you use Thief Hat with that Flame Shield) various zodiacs (Black Costume, and if you plan to Battle Skill a zodiac then Harps are the way to go).  I think you spend most of the time in Chapter 4 as Ice Knights, granted, but probably play very different from a Knight SCC (In that Sing would be your most common action, ice healing used only to not die before you're 13 speed...which takes, what, two turns?  One with Mimes?)  It's a weird symbiotic relationship, where Bard/Knight is a lot better in endgame than either class is on its own.  My feeling is that Bard brings more to the table at endgame, and certainly brings more to the table at lategame (because lol Chapter 3 Knights).

There's still the issue of Knight has the first two game sections to itself, but I'm not inclined to weigh that too heavily.  If the two last classes left were Knight and Samurai, I hope I'd pick Samurai as the more centralizing class, even though I'd totally use the Knight class for their sweet, sweet Rune Blades and Shields and HP.

[Dark Holy Elf]

My instincts tell me that Nameless Dance is just brutally unfair in 50% of fights

Well. Four uses of it are anyway. Of course, it takes a fair bit of effort to unlock Dancer on four people. Also, females are generally looking worse than males now with all the MA-based skillsets stripped out: males are about 20% better at being attack-Geomancers and Knights, and about 10% better at being Thieves and Archers. Elemental is roughly a wash. I could still very easily see Dancers as #14 mind.

Elemental Gun healing is miles better than Ice Brand Healing at endgame

Okay, elemental gun antihype time! There are two elemental guns available outside rare randoms and the DD, and both of those come at a significant opportunity cost. Getting the colliery takes four totally unnecessary battles. Stealing from Balk involves sinking JP into an otherwise-useless skill and dragging out a potentially challenging battle. There's more if you're willing to locate a rare random but that's even later, and annoying/random to locate. An efficient playthrough is going to ignore most, if not all of these elemental guns. To make matters even worse for them, they are now literally the only reason to not be running 40 faith, and they're not an especially compelling one given their lateness and accession issues.

The classes and abilities that let you steamroll the game without stopping to do extra time investments will always rank as more centralising. I'd be more moved by arguments that one of Thief/Mediator needs to go because they're unlocking the Chantage, but between the effort involved, the fact that the metagame is biasing male, and the fact that we already know that the Geomancer SCC gets through the game with relative ease even -without- its current support from Dance and Move+2, I see little reason to hype this until we're down to classes whose performance is far more poor. Note that after my proposed #12, Geomancer is very clearly the last remaining class considered to have an easy SCC (top ten certainly).

And notably Geomancer is not Monk: you can't optimize both.  An Ice Brand Ice Shield PA boosted Geomancer deals like...50 damage with elemental; half of optimum.

Well obviously if you are optimising both you wouldn't use Ice Brand! Rune Blade/Aegis Shield/[whatever works for PA/MA/speed as needed] is the standard if you decide you don't care about healing, since Rune Blade even outperforms on physical damage (or is at worst equal). And in general, I think that's the larger decision, from having played that SCC: you don't think about optimising melee vs. range, you think about needing healing vs. needing damage. For melee against ranged, that really is more of an in-battle thing thing. In general, if you can kill an enemy with higher damage, you'll use the physicals, but if you're out of range (e.g. turn 1), can get multiple people with Elemental, or want the status over an out-of-reach kill, you'll go for the ranged option. Being able to do both is a big deal. It's also why Oracle SCC is fairly easy once it gets rolling. It's why Ninja is the easiest physical SCC (of course their melee is the best, but Throw is good too). It's a big part of why Archer and Squire are much harder.

EDIT: Of course you use Ice Brand over Rune Blade in the 7-battle stretch where only one exists, but then you aren't losing out on a weapon slot dedicated to Elemental damage anyway.

[metroid composite]

Reasonable points about the elemental guns.  Mostly, I wanted a checkpoint for "lategame stuff" like poaching, like brave/faith modification, like breeding Tiamats, like Bracer (I deliberately put my "lategame" cutoff before Yardow to avoid "can you afford Bracer?" headachess), like Mime, like Knight Swords.

Arguably, maybe I need a fifth "in-between" checkpoint between "lategame" and "endgame".  A "chapter 4 without the bullshit" checkpoint, to go along with the "chapter 4 with the bullshit" checkpoint.

But regardless, I feel that once you're at the level-of-effort needed to have 6300 JP (unlocking Mime), Elemental Guns are pretty reasonable.

On Geo being the easiest SCC left...well first of all part of that is that Geo has a little of everything: Geo can hit Velius physically while he's charging, and then turn around and hit Rofel with magic-based Elemental.  A class that specializes in one thing grows in value compared to their SCC.  (Wizard, for instance, is the highest damage in the game, but a lousy SCC).  So I'm not inclined to just take SCC numbers at face value.

Second, I sort-of have a counterpoint to them being the easiest remaining SCC.  I'm pretty sure my gamesharked-to-level-1 Mediator SCC had fewer resets than my normal-levelled Geo SCC.  And sure, I grinded for half an hour to get Elemental Guns once the random opened up (because Speed 6 Mediators are too slow to persuade-lock Altima), but even before then there were noteworthy advantages.  Level 15-16 Geomancers struggle with both Wiegraf and Velius (because they don't have 7 innate speed).  Mediators smash those fights just fine at the lower speed.  Geos struggle with Altima in spite of healing.  I haven't done the persuade lock, but elemental gun mediators completely smash Altima.  (And then we factor in that Mediators don't have RSM in the SCC and gain it here, and gain a lot more from secondaries than Geo).  So...there's that.

On Nameless Dance being good when there's four of them...Nameless Dance is unlike other Dances in that it has a negative feedback loop.  When you do four slow dances, the fourth one is the best, has the biggest impact.  When you do four Namelesss Dances, the first one is the best: can't un-frog, can't whiff because one target is already sleeping.  Can't poison a confused enemy.  Can't stop a poisoned enemy.  Which is to say, the average output per action of 1x Nameless Dance is actually higher than the average output per action of 4x Nameless Dance.

Other quick note about Dance: in Chapter 3 Wiznaibus is roughly 40 damage to all enemies (when Elemental is like...60 to one-two enemies).  And Wiznaibus is usually considered pretty underpowered by dance standards.

On being female...it's not a 20% damage penalty for, say, Geo physicals.  A decent amount of your damage comes from equipment.  More like 10%-15% of male damage depending on setup.  (And more like 7% for Archer...except after Charge it's more like 5%).  And as long as Thief is in play, Meliadoul's chantage is not an unreasonable goal, and Salty Rage doesn't sound too crazy (common poach off of a Dragon).  Female is a downside now, don't get me wrong, but it's a fairly mild downside.  Mostly affects you in earlygame and midgame...and...actually maybe not even midgame because you can just go to elemental if you want to be competent.

On unlocking Dancer...the thing is it's not really out-of-the-way.  You're probably getting something Move+2, and probably doing something in Geo like getting Attack Up, even if you plan to go to Archer or Mediator or whatever, which means the only part of the unlock process you probably weren't already planning on was the dead Lancer class.

[Luther Lansfeld]

(Please keep arguing, I read it but I am far too unknowledgeable to input! I love this! It makes me happy! Haha.)

[Dark Holy Elf]

Personally I had more trouble with normal-levelled Mediators than normal-levelled Geos by quite a bit, including at Wiegraf/Velius (which IIRC I beat with Geo first try. Not resetting upon getting in a random means you hit 18 there pretty easy). blah blah blah personal experience but I'm pretty sure Mediator being in the bottom half for SCC ease was very much a common opinion. Maybe there was some collective trick we were missing but I'm a bit skeptical? (EDIT: Focusing on Mediator here since I'm pretty sure this is where the difference comes from.)

Point about Nameless Dance, 4 is certainly less than 4x as good as 1. My main point was only that one Nameless Dance is hardly a "battle wrecked" type thing. Big help, certainly... Dance is obviously one of the best if not the best skillset at this point. I'm just not sold on its level of centralisation.

And Wiznaibus is usually considered pretty underpowered by dance standards.

According to whom? <_< It's probably the second best dance at that point! And yes, I never questioned Dance > Elemental.

But regardless, I feel that once you're at the level-of-effort needed to have 6300 JP (unlocking Mime), Elemental Guns are pretty reasonable.

Well sure, elemental guns are more reasonable than Mime. Mime is pretty much auto-bottom because every other setup in the game looks and it and says "well at least I don't take THAT much trouble to unlock" (for at worst comparable results). That doesn't mean that other inefficient or difficult-to-access setups shouldn't take a penalty. It really depends what our goal is here; do we view, say, completion of the deep dungeon as a worthwhile task, or are we just trying to beat the game with a minimum of (some combination of time, effort, resets, turns etc.)? If the latter (which is generally how I feel), while I am happy to consider poaches and other rare things, I generally feel that a class that can perform comparably without them is going to be at a large advantage no matter what JP thresholds we set. (This sorta speaks to the need for soft JP caps in general... if a certain setup needs 2500 JP then obviously it scores points compared to one that takes 4000, even though both fall within the same "cap bracket" to you.)

By the way, since I'm not sure we stated this previously, what are we assuming "dead" classes look like? Obviously we don't get to use any of their skills, but I'm sorta assuming we don't get full benefit of their stats/equipment either, or we'd have Ninja still finding a use, and Wizard long after it is banned. Do we assume their mults are magically capped at 100 and they lose the benefit of any weapons more useful than knives, or something? Could matter for an in-depth analysis of where Bard ends up.

it's not a 20% damage penalty for, say, Geo physicals

Just to be clear, that's not what I said; I said males had a 20% bonus. So I was already moving down from the full effect, though possibly not enough, yeah. (On the other hand I wasn't mentioning the ~2% HP bonus!)


Oh, I suppose I should continue the main thrust of the debate:

A class that specializes in one thing grows in value compared to their SCC.  (Wizard, for instance, is the highest damage in the game, but a lousy SCC).

Oh, to be sure, I absolutely agree. You'll notice at no point have I claimed Geomancers needed to go in the top ten, and I haven't voiced the smallest complaint about wizard being in the top three. However, once down to the weaker set of classes, it feels like the large number of small things that make their challenge fairly easy start to shine.

I mean, let's look at the bottom ten metagame after the banning of Oracle and Monk. Geomancers have...

1. The second highest durability of any class (with significant advantages over #1 which mean you'd rarely pick it)
2. The highest raw damage against a single target for a majority of the game, before considering support abilities.
3. One of two classes that can equip swords, which enable what is probably your best form of healing. Notably better than the other.
4. Even if we opt for an elemental gun strategy, it's one of three classes that can equip shields without using up a support ability.
5. One of two classes with 4 move excluding mime (and the other one is way worse at points 1 through 4)
6. The source of what is almost certainly the game's best support ability (Concentrate surpasses it in pretty specific circumstances, such as Murond Gate/UBS4/maybe a few other battles dominated by shields, but generally, AU is ahead.)
7. The source of what is possibly the game's best reaction ability (although a few other things are in the running here).
8. Elemental, the second best skillset to set for chippy ranged damage without sacrificing a good melee, and the best if you're male.

I have a hard time looking at that list and not going "WTFban". Geomancer feels incredibly overcentralising and I have a hard time envisioning someone playing a version of "Bottom 8 classes FFT" without using it. Dancer and Mediator both feel much easier to just ignore.

Note that the above list is -incredibly- reliant on the bottom 8 being what it is. Just letting Monk back into the fray endangers or reduces the value of points #2, 3, 4, 7, and 8. Possibly even #6.

[metroid composite]

Hmm...I'm writing from a cell phone so I'll tackle this piece by piece.  I think somewhere I have my Mediator resets recorded, which would be better than working from 7-year-old memory.

Totally remember your Mediator vs Wiegraf/Velius, though.  It happened at about 2am, and had I think 4 resets on Wiegraf where you were trying something silly like Death Sentence before you went "oh, wait, duh: shoot him and run away" (which with Sprint Shoes and Green Beret you could do at speed 9 and...yeah, it was a slaughter).

Oh, one thing to consider: if not going elemental guns, how much do you value dropping faith to 10-20?  Basically doubles your durability in some fights and, more importantly, doesn't use up a valuable RSM slot (unlike, say, MDU).

Anyway, I'll tackle the list for the moment...

1. Assuming you get half your HP from clothing...it beats Archer by 5% on HP, Thief by 10%, and Mediator by 15%.  I don't really consider the Archer/Geomancer durability gap to be too noteworthy, especially as both have shields.  (Well...between Geo/Archer robes are sometimes a big deal).
2. Singletarget damage...Not in earlygame.  Tied with Knight in midgame.  Yes in lategame.  Technically no in endgame (Mime wins, technically...).  But...also in endgame Excalibur Knight is more damage in-practice, and...pre Thief Hat, Geo and Knight are...basically tied (Twist Headband+Power Sleeve puts Geo...1 PA ahead of Knight?)
3. I'm not really sure it is better healing than Bard.  In that...if I could have gone Sing Secondary on the Geo SCC, I so would have, which would give me healing without sacrificing damage.
4. Well, there's four options for elemental gun healing (the fourth being Equip Shield Mediator).  And of the four, Geo's skillset brings the least to the table by far.  I'd probably be chilling in Mediator gradually raising my faith to 90, and as long as I'm using Talk Skill, I might as well get innate Monster Talk.  Archer would be my second choice; they don't get Robes, but 108 gems can sub, and maybe I want more Charge skills (being the only thing that boosts elemental gun damage anymore).  Knight you might use for training...wait, no you wouldn't.  Elemental guns > breaks in every situation I can think of, barring like...trying to invite a monster.
5. Yep, 4 move is there and it's cool.  But I mean...most of the power moves are still ranged.  You don't need 4 move.  And...Move+2 is super centralizing (with the difference between 5 move and 6 move being not a huge deal: you need 7 move to swing around the back of an AI Knight who cautiously positioned itself 3 panels away from you...unless he positioned himself at an angle in which case 5 will suffice).
6. I really don't agree that AU is ahead of Concentrate.  Regardless of setup, even if you're doing basically a Geo SCC, your secondary is almost certainly Charge (Dance is an exception).  And when your secondary is Charge, Concentrate becomes the obvious support, because you can Charge on someone and know that you'll finish them off and don't need to throw any extra attacks their way.  This makes concentrate more desireable than charge in most fights.  One big exception being assassination missions, where you're only going to charge attacks on one unit anyway, in which case the question becomes "does the target have 25% evade or more?"  (25% being the break-even point where Concentrate starts to outdamage Attack Up on average).  And also...being an assassination mission, you should run some calculations and see if you need luck to one-round the target.  If not, then you probably use Concentrate even if the target has worse-than-25% evade.
7. Counter Flood just is not centralizing.  If you use any setup but Geo then the damage sucks.  If you use Geo Ice Healing then you don't use CF anyway.  The more I think about it, Weapon Guard has a better claim to be centralizing than CF.  There's nothing better to spend Knigt JP on, and all of the WG toys are potentially in play (Defender, Main Gauche, Carpets, Nagnarock).  And yeah, Arrow Guard is still sexy.
8. Hmm...how would I rate the remaining skillsets assuming available JP...probably something like...
Dance > Talk Skill > Charge > Elemental > Sing > Steal > Battle Skill > lolmimejustlol
With...most of those moveable by a few spots.  But anyway, if you're training in Knight and want some range, say, well...Dance rules, Mimic Daravon is also fantastic with Threaten/Solution being decent offence/defence, Steal Heart is a fine option, and so is Elemental, and Sing would also give you something to do when out of range, although not strictly a ranged attack.  Even if you're looking for specifically ranged chipping, you don't have to get that from a skillset: bows and guns exist, as do equip gun and equip crossbow.  Which isn't to say that you wouldn't use elemental, it's just more of a "you could" than a "you must".

Which is how I feel about most of the Geo stuff.  You could do an ice healing setup, but I don't feel like you must use ice healing or your party sucks.  You could use the Geo class, but you could also use the Archer or Mediator class, and these are arguably often better.  The one place I do feel a "You Must" is Attack Up: it's not always the best option, but you absolutely want it learned for fights like Velius.

But AU does...not feel like the worst such offender.  Move+2: if you don't have it on pretty much everyone, you're doing it wrong.  Faith: unless you're planning on elemental guns you'd better Solution yourself to 20 or less Faith.  And to a degree: Nameless Dance--outside of assassination missions it's probably better than whatever action you were going to take, and any class can use it effectively as a secondary (...except Bard...and Mime but they suck).

[metroid composite]

Ok, proposal for what "dead" classes look like.

1. You can only use the class until you have the necessary JP for an unlock you're actually getting.  So...no Ninja, no Calc, no Samurai, and unless you're actually going to Bard/Mime, no Wizard/TM/Summoner.  And so on.

2. As long as you're currently in the class, you can use skillsets, stats, and weapons from the class that aren't remotely centralizing.  So...if you're grinding to Mime in Squire, you can use Dash, Throw Stone, Heal, Accumulate.  But when grinding Wizard you can't use Wizard MA.  If Mediator gets banned in large part due to guns, then you can't equip guns in that class.


I realize that this creates some ambiguity, but I'd like to give it a shot as it feels kind-of "realistic".  I think common sense will usually work: like...Time Mage with a Rainbow Staff and Don't Move learned in Chapter 2?  Doesn't sound like it's any better than, say Knight with Steal Heart, so...I'd allow it.  Time Mage with Haste?  Yeah, no: bad, don't do that.

[metroid composite]

On what the intended goal is (Deep Dungeon vs beating in minimal turns)

I was kind-of thinking a mixture, sort-of as a recognition that my playstyle isn't the only playstyle out there, and that balance is based on more than one playstyle.

Hmm...as an example...let's say Calc took 4000 JP to unlock instead of 1400 JP.  I'd still tend to drift in that direction as a long-term plan.  It's kind-of...where you want to end up eventually.  (Same way in LFT, eventually people tend to drift towards Non-Charge when they can't think of other ways to make their character better).

Sometimes this isn't a problem.  Like...when people drift towards something that is legitimately weak early on (like Thief) that's fine: they're sacrificing early power for late power.  The problem comes when you have something like Math or Summon that becomes dominant fast and stays dominant forever; why choose a different tech path, ever?


And I feel like this applies to non-JP tech paths too.  I tend to dismiss poaching, for example, but I think a big part of that is that there are much faster and more powerful ways to break the game.  If poaching is the only way to break the game, then suddenly most parties will adjust, if only slightly.  Probably keep a Monster Talker Inviter in the party "just in case".  Maybe have one person with Secret Hunt set most of the time (the same way you might have one person in Calc while the rest of the party is in midgame level setups).

So...going back to the group of 8, the above scenario sounds reasonable.  It's only the sign of a problem if stuff like Secret Hunt and Monster Talker are powerful early on.  Person with Secret Hunt...sucks.  But Monster Talker?  Monster Talker gets to use guns; guns with Charge.  That...is actually pretty damn good at the time.  This is where my warning sirens go off.

Just an example (there isn't much out there worth poaching for the remaining classes; the usual "Chantage 33% of the time"), but...yeah, that's roughly the kind of behavior I'm trying to capture with the "Endgame" category.  Which is to say I'm not trying to analyze, say, optimal speed runs, more sort-of modelling how people play.  (Speed runs tend to grind to something uber in Chapter 1, and then change nothing but equipment for the rest of the game, not learning any new skills.  People tend to work towards goals, and when they reach that goal they set a bigger goal.  People will say "no Deep Dungeon planned this run" and then sometimes end up doing DD anyway).

Not sure if this makes sense, just trying to put intuition into words here.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Warning: This post is somewhat stream-of-consciousness and not necessarily made in the best order. Should e easy enough to follow anyway.

Totally remember your Mediator vs Wiegraf/Velius, though.  It happened at about 2am, and had I think 4 resets on Wiegraf where you were trying something silly like Death Sentence before you went "oh, wait, duh: shoot him and run away" (which with Sprint Shoes and Green Beret you could do at speed 9 and...yeah, it was a slaughter).

Totally remember that, yes. Was the Velius battle a slaughter, though? I actually don't recall but I don't see why it would be. Geomancers just subject him to curbstomp since with PA+7 equips and Attack Up they hit 324 on him without charging, a 3HKO once you factor in that there's an elemental or two to finish him off if he rolled well on HP, and before factoring in zodiac (though to be fair someone will probably need Boots to get behind him? I forget).

I don't really consider the Archer/Geomancer durability gap to be too noteworthy, especially as both have shields.

Archer doesn't have shields if using longbows, and aside from the ability to equip longbows I'm not especially sold on Archer. I guess the argument is "Equip elemental Gun, and you can get Charge + a secondary" which is... reasonable, but I'd usually call the loss of the accessory slot more important than the loss of secondary, never mind Geo's +1 move and +5% HP.

2. Singletarget damage...Not in earlygame.  Tied with Knight in midgame.  Yes in lategame.  Technically no in endgame (Mime wins, technically...).

Just as a note, I think it's a bit weird to call Chapter 2 the midgame when the game's midpoint is quite clearly in chapter 3. But that aside... Knight beats Geomancer in damage until Level 6, at which point they're tied... and then Headgear shows up and Geomancer eithers win or is tied with Knight for all of chapter 2. Then they win chapter 3 and chapter 4. So they lose to Knight in, generously, 6 battles when both exist, and Geomancer has wins in about... 35? Yeah.

(Also uh Geo smashes Mime at raw ST damage. Attack Up? Equipment? Unless you were factoring in Mimic in some way. Regardless, lol Mime.)

4. Well, there's four options for elemental gun healing (the fourth being Equip Shield Mediator).

Remember: it's quite unlikely you have more than 1-2 of these elemental guns. Everyone not using a gun itself is going to want Attack Up and to do something physical, so... probably be in Geomancer! Archer would have to use lolcrossbows (or non-Attack Up Mithril Guns), Mediator is again non-Attack Up Mithril Gun, Knight is just Geo minus.

Yep, 4 move is there and it's cool.  But I mean...most of the power moves are still ranged.

Especially later on, it feels like the "power move" is Geomancer's physical to me, so I can't agree with that sentiment. I mean, before Attack Up and Charge...

Mithril Gun: 64
Level 40 Archer with Windslash/Thief/Power/Gems: 104
Level 40 Archer with Gastrifitis/Thief/Power/Bracer: 150
Level 40 Geomancer with Thief/Power/Bracer: 210
Level 40 Geomancer with Twist/Power/Bracer: 238 (+42 damage, +1 move vs. knight, for the record)

Smash. (EDIT: See below for more damage comparisons and why I think they're the crux of why Geomancer is clearly the best class remaining at this point.)

I really don't agree that AU is ahead of Concentrate.

Yeah, very good points about Charge, there. I will point out that AU is hilariously ahead for what is probably the best non-Geomancer strategy for damage (guns... just not much respect for either type of bow). Attack Up does turn a lot of 2HKOs into OHKOs, though (and just to be clear, I mean before Charge); we aren't facing things with infinite HP, so while, say, an enemy with a Wizard Mantle may feel like a close fight between the two (1.33x vs. 1.22x), if there's a OHKO line to worry about, it may not be.

Weapon Guard has a better claim to be centralizing than CF.

Unshockingly I disagree, I was thinking or Arrow Guard and perhaps even PA Save (since Speed Save is overpriced and can be disruptive to clocktick counting strategies) as CF's competition. Nagrarock is... what? Defender seems unlikely to be in play to me, similarly, although at least it's not a joke. Carpets... I've always loved carpet WG in principle but it's not efficient; it means your Dancer is meleeing things instead of dancing and while fun, it's not a good idea (You need to get back in Geomancer with a shield, far better physical/HP, and real reaction!). Main Gauche is a brief crutch while you're Thief picking up Move + 2 and... probably Weapon Guard's best claim to fame. But yeah, no respect there.

But yes, no reaction is centralising in the slightest, there's no obvious choice.

The one place I do feel a "You Must" is Attack Up: it's not always the best option, but you absolutely want it learned for fights like Velius.

This is fair. For everything else, Geo isn't "you must", but it is probably the best option for... almost everything. It's virtually impossible to make a party that doesn't rely on something from Geomancer without going "okay this is clearly sub-optimum". On the other hand, could I see ignoring Dancer and Mediator entirely? Yeah, you bet. If Dancers could be male you could argue me into saying no Dance = stupid choice, but as is I don't think it's unreasonable. Mediator's tricks feel highly ignorable to me (we haven't yet reached the point where the game is hard enough to justify wasting time with, say, brave raising and poaching). The only other "You must" choice is possibly Thief, buuut hilariously Bard is actually giving it some competition. In fact, I'm going to argue Geomancer's move as more important than Move + 2! Let's see what happens when we remove Thief/Geo from the game.

Basically, there are three stages of the game: Before you get M+2, before you get M+3, and after getting M+3 (you may or may not reach all stages with each character, but you get the idea).

In stage 1, Geo has 4 move, while all other classes (excluding the unpleasant thief, which is probably the #5 carrier) has 3. As you have already alluded to, 4 move is a big deal: you can walk behind a knight with this. Remove Geo and you're -1 move. Remove thief and... no change (I'm assuming you switch to knight/etc.).

In stage 2, Geo has 4 move, while Thief is giving its +2 to other classes so they can have 5. Now, 4->5 isn't as big a deal, but it's still 1 move, and this section lasts a while.

In stage 3, Thief is no longer doing anything useful, while Geomancer still has 7 move to everyone else's 6 (except females I guess, but if you're using one it's for Dance so whatever at them being still stuck at 4).

It's really a question of how long each stage lasts. If we assume the game is split 25%/50%/25% for these stages, then it's a tie... but a tie I'll break in Geo's favour because of 3->4 being a more important boost than anyone else. I could still see arguing Move + 2 over Geomancer's movement, mind. But it's actually close enough that everything else Geo brings to the table is making for an obvious win (whereas thief is bringing... almost nothing! +1 speed sometimes and a possible grab at trinkets I suspect aren't worth the JP/time investment).

How'd I get on that tangent? Oh well.

But AU does...not feel like the worst such offender.  Move+2: if you don't have it on pretty much everyone, you're doing it wrong.  Faith: unless you're planning on elemental guns you'd better Solution yourself to 20 or less Faith.

Hilarious fact: Lowering faith notably below 40 actually starts making the game harder again. Sure, you wall magic EVEN HARDER (it doesn't do well against 40) but very quickly guys like Velius and Adramelk start moving over to their status which makes them scarier (especially since our ability to heal status is uh... not actually existant. Black Chocobo hype?). Now, I'm sure lowering Ramza's faith in particular is useful (and if you're optimising, 40 faith isn't perfect... probably closer to 30-35), but I'm not seeing it as terribly overcentralising. Certainly feels less centralising than having a third more damage than the strongest hat-wearing non-Geomancer setup lategame (which is... Equip Sword Archer, I believe?)

That said, no. The combination of Geomancer + Attack Up is the most centralising thing in the current metagame. Want melee damage? Remove Geomancer and your best bet while still equipping a hat is Equip Sword Archer... Geomancer has 33% more damage. Want gun damage? Geomancer's Attack Up is adding 33% to that as well. Want a melee fighter with concentrate? Geomancer is ahead of everyone else by... like double. I mean Charge Goncentrate Geomancer can actually pull ITE OHKOs with some reliability, something no other setup can manage. (Obviously this setup speaks highly of Archer too, but it definitely needs both.) There's no way to ignore Geomancer without losing considerable damage in the second half of the game.

[metroid composite]

Totally remember that, yes. Was the Velius battle a slaughter, though? I actually don't recall but I don't see why it would be. Geomancers just subject him to curbstomp since with PA+7 equips and Attack Up they hit 324 on him without charging, a 3HKO once you factor in that there's an elemental or two to finish him off if he rolled well on HP, and before factoring in zodiac (though to be fair someone will probably need Boots to get behind him? I forget).

PA+7 equips?  You could afford multiple Bracers at that point?

I know I had three or four resets on the Velius part of that fight with Geos myself.  Needed speed boosting equips because he's not fightable at 6 speed.  So...I'm calculating at best 168 damage before charging?  (Side note, I think you meant to say 324 "with charging" rather than "without charging").

I still need to look up my Mediator resets, but I think I beat Velius the first attempt.  Sprint Shoes, Green Beret, shoot 5x while charging (96x5) and then run away.  Repeat next turn.

The problem with running forward to hit Velius physically (with speed 7 Geomancers) is that if Velius doesn't die, then all those Geos are dead.  They're in perfect formation to be AoE'd by Velius (which he can instacast because you're speed 7).  Decent odds you also just got three Dark Holies dropped on you, too.  None of this is an issue when you have 8 range.  Hell, with 8 range you could even handle 7 speed fairly gracefully if you had to (shoot and wait on spot with most characters so that he can't instacast next turn).

Archer doesn't have shields if using longbows, and aside from the ability to equip longbows I'm not especially sold on Archer. I guess the argument is "Equip elemental Gun, and you can get Charge + a secondary" which is... reasonable, but I'd usually call the loss of the accessory slot more important than the loss of secondary, never mind Geo's +1 move and +5% HP.

Hm, yeah, that's fair I guess.  Adding to that, Charge is kind-of lame at that point.  Wow, if you Charge+4 then you increase your effective WP from 22 to 26, (an 18% increase).  In exchange, you now need to successfully charge in Chapter 4 with something slower than Short Charge Meteor (C+4 has 8ctr).  And...going back to the whole "Concentrate is really good when you're using Charge because you want consistency so that you can predict if an enemy will die" argument...the inconsistency of Fire1/Fire2/Fire3 is going to lower the value of Charge, because oftentimes it will be better to just attack with your elemental gun so that you immediately know how much damage you've dealt, and then plan accordingly.

I'm still seeing Equip Shield Mediators as probably the primary way to use elemental gun healing, though; Equip Shield costs less than Equip Gun.  Talk Skill is pretty cool by that point (if you're using Angel Rings, and you probably are, then Death Sentence is the closest thing you have to Phoenix Down; notably, you can Death Sentence yourself the moment you revive from Angel Ring).

Just as a note, I think it's a bit weird to call Chapter 2 the midgame when the game's midpoint is quite clearly in chapter 3. But that aside... Knight beats Geomancer in damage until Level 6, at which point they're tied... and then Headgear shows up and Geomancer eithers win or is tied with Knight for all of chapter 2. Then they win chapter 3 and chapter 4. So they lose to Knight in, generously, 6 battles when both exist, and Geomancer has wins in about... 35? Yeah.

35 doesn't sound right to me--there's plenty of ties/very small wins and I'm not sure quite what to do with brave-raised Excalibur (which is obviously Knight favoured, but only on one character).  I feel like it's more along the lines of: Knight and Geo are close to tied in 30 battles (sometimes favouring Knight, sometimes Geo, but usually a 1 PA gap), and Geo has a strong advantage in 15 battles (basically Chapter 3).

(Also uh Geo smashes Mime at raw ST damage. Attack Up? Equipment? Unless you were factoring in Mimic in some way. Regardless, lol Mime.)

I was factoring in Mimic, yes.  Let's say your plan is to run up and physical-blitz Hashmallum, melee attacking with all your characters.  Mime will have more damage than any other class here.  Sure, equipment and supports will give you twice the effective PA of Mime, but if the Mime gets in four mimics plus their own physical they'll still be dealing double the damage of any other class.

Not to say that Mime is good, because Mimes are still awful.  Just...I'm skeptical about stuff that measures strictly damage over, say, 8 range.

Remember: it's quite unlikely you have more than 1-2 of these elemental guns. Everyone not using a gun itself is going to want Attack Up and to do something physical, so... probably be in Geomancer! Archer would have to use lolcrossbows (or non-Attack Up Mithril Guns), Mediator is again non-Attack Up Mithril Gun, Knight is just Geo minus.

Ahh, you were talking about a mixed party of some elemental some regular party members.  That's fair.  The only way I've used elemental guns is "farm the random after Zalera", which gets 5x elenental guns reasonably quickly, but maybe you go stealing from Balk or whatever.

In that event...you will presumably use one Excalibur Knight because it's Excalibur.  Which leaves two slots to fill.

As for "lolcrossbows", if you have elemental guns, then you have Gastrafitis.  (Ok, that's not strictly true, but pretty close).  Gastrafitis is 71% of the damage of Rune Blade in exchange for 4 range.

Especially later on, it feels like the "power move" is Geomancer's physical to me, so I can't agree with that sentiment. I mean, before Attack Up and Charge...

Mithril Gun: 64
Level 40 Archer with Windslash/Thief/Power/Gems: 104
Level 40 Archer with Gastrifitis/Thief/Power/Bracer: 150
Level 40 Geomancer with Thief/Power/Bracer: 210
Level 40 Geomancer with Twist/Power/Bracer: 238 (+42 damage, +1 move vs. knight, for the record)

Smash. (EDIT: See below for more damage comparisons and why I think they're the crux of why Geomancer is clearly the best class remaining at this point.)

Some notes:

*I've been assuming Archer can get Ultimus Bow; they tend to swing that on their SCC.  Hell, they can sometimes get Yoichi bows on the SCC.  And this is when they're not likely to have someone with Invitation in the party to make getting Ultimus Bows fairly easy.
*Twist Headband setups make me skeptical.  As does picking Bracer over Angel Ring.
*Umm..."(+42 damage, +1 move vs. knight, for the record)" why on earth are you equipping a Rune Blade on that Knight setup?  Ice Brand+Black Robe+Bracer deals 221 for the sword hit, and if the spell casts then another 25 damage from the spell assuming 40 faith (about double that if you're Ramza and left your faith at 70, of course).  So the damage gap is more like +12.
*(FYI Geo deals slightly more physical damage on average with the Ice Brand+Black Robe  than Rune Blade+Power Sleeve if you're actually going to wear a Bracer--at least if you haven't dropped your faith significantly below 40.  Not a big deal either way, though--the debate is healing vs elemental damage).

So...adjusting these calculations for Angel Ring etc...

Mithril Gun: 64 (perfect accuracy)
Level 40 Archer with Ultimus/Thief/Power/Ring: 110
Level 40 Archer with Gastrifitis/Thief/Power/Ring: 120
Level 40 Geo with Rune/Thief/Power/Ring: 168
Level 40 Knight with Ice/Black/Ring: 169 (+25 sometimes) (8 speed = they suck)
Level 40 Knight with some brave raising, Excalibur/Ring: 189 (12 speed = they RULE)
Level 40 Mediator with some faith raising, E-Gun/Thief/Black/Ring: 213

Hmm...just thinking on this mixed party some more...I don't think having shields on everyone actually matters...much at all.  All the people who aren't weilding elemental guns probably have 20 faith anyway.  And they're not going to be a priority for faith raising (that would be your elemental gun users until they're 94 faith).  The elemental gun people should be attacking, not healing.

Yeah, very good points about Charge, there. I will point out that AU is hilariously ahead for what is probably the best non-Geomancer strategy for damage (guns... just not much respect for either type of bow).

I hadn't thought of that.  When I was seriously doing the AU vs Charge comparison, I had already removed guns from the equation.  Yeah, that's a big point in AU's favour.

Attack Up does turn a lot of 2HKOs into OHKOs, though (and just to be clear, I mean before Charge); we aren't facing things with infinite HP, so while, say, an enemy with a Wizard Mantle may feel like a close fight between the two (1.33x vs. 1.22x), if there's a OHKO line to worry about, it may not be.

If you're OHKOing using AU without Charge, then Concentrate+Charge will guarantee a OHKO.

The one place I do feel a "You Must" is Attack Up: it's not always the best option, but you absolutely want it learned for fights like Velius.

This is fair. For everything else, Geo isn't "you must", but it is probably the best option for... almost everything. It's virtually impossible to make a party that doesn't rely on something from Geomancer without going "okay this is clearly sub-optimum".

Concentrate Archers rarely do (only occasionally using Attack Up) and that's one of the better Archer setups.  Although...yeah, I guess it's hard to take Concentrate Archers too seriously when they're competing with Attack Up Mediators (who also never miss).  What else...

Elemental Gun Mediators use nothing from Geo, but that's just at the end of the game.

Dance setups use nothing from Geo--if anything the optimum Dance setup is something like Equip Armor, P-Bag, sit around tanking for your party while Nameless Dance does horrible things.

"Get a Chantage(s) and crush the rest of the game" strategies are Thief and sometimes Mediator.  Once you have a Chantage, the Chantage user can do whatever, and everyone else should do their best to stay healthy (keep at very long range--guns and Dance are good for this--and keep at high durability to be a low-priority target, so...drop faith, Equip Armor/Equip Shield, Arrow Guard).

Invite some Tiamats doesn't involve using anything from Geomancer.

On the other hand, could I see ignoring Dancer and Mediator entirely? Yeah, you bet. If Dancers could be male you could argue me into saying no Dance = stupid choice, but as is I don't think it's unreasonable.

Hm, one thing I hadn't thought of--with Mediator still in the mix, that raises the value of Dancer a lot.  All this arguing over "female is such a penalty!!!" can be completely ignored by going for guns (which are pretty competitive as a physical).  And the 33% chance of Zigolis Swamp Uribo also makes females quite attractive.

Mediator's tricks feel highly ignorable to me (we haven't yet reached the point where the game is hard enough to justify wasting time with, say, brave raising and poaching).

Faith Lowering: it takes 5 actions to lower your faith from 40 to 20.  And these aren't BS actions that you'd only take after you're guaranteed to win and just screwing around with the fight--these are often productive in-battle actions.

Invitation: If you don't have this in Zigolis Swamp, you're doing it wrong.  We're also reaching the point where using monsters in the party is probably optimal.  I mean, let's see...level 40 you say?  Bearing in mind the damage numbers a few quotes up (humans cap out around 200, and only at close range)...

Tiamat: Triple Flame deals 285 per hit on average (actually...probably slightly more due to random monster stats compounding with Tiamat formulae).  They have 443 HP (Knights can match this, but it's high).  They have 9 speed (juuust barely below their 10 speed point) which puts them slightly below average.
Red Chocobo: Choco Meteor deals 128 per hit on average.  Choco Ball...still sucks.  HP/speed are similar enough to Tiamat (same speed, less HP but not lots less).
Cocatoris: Melee attack is 192 (with brave raised to 75-80 range).  Their Petrify is about 70%.  Speed's about the same as Tiamat/Red Chocobo.  HP is trash (214 or so.  Mime-level garbage).
Vampire: is like Cocatoris without the damage or movement, but with 3-range Petrify...except that it sometimes adds Stop instead of Petrify.
Dark Behemoth: Melee attack is 414 with good brave.  A decent amount slower than the other monsters (for all that it's still 9 speed at this level).  HP is...440; less than Tiamats already, huh >_>.

Hm...yeah, ok, Tiamat aside, these suck.  Red Chocobo you might as well use Attack Up Charge Mediator.  Cocatoris you might as well use Move+2 Geomancer.  Dark Behemoth...well if you really care about damage output more than range, then yes, Dark Behemoth is pretty good.  I don't know; maybe they're better as PC monsters than they are as enemy monsters?  Because as enemies they're generally less threatening than Red Chocobos and Cocatorises.  Probably a moot point, though, as Dark Behemoths show up at the same time as Tiamats (start of Chapter 4) and if it's a choice between these two, Tiamat is the obvious answer.

Tiamats, though, Tiamats are good.  Are they centralizingly good?  Hmm...certainly 285 matches the best Bracer+Attack Up melees, but it's at range, and can easily hit three times given the right map (making it dwarf human damage).  Triple Bracelet is revoltingly good against zodiacs; like...better than Life Drain.

Speaking of, monsters do offer some utility.  If you come across some Ghouls/Gusts early, it's probably worth inviting them to breed 4x Revenants to just auto-win against Zodiacs.  And umm...I guess nothing else from the monster camp is worth noting at all (the monster revival is a monster skill, so that's out.  Taiju has some cheap imitations of Kiyomori, but they're SO BAD).

So...hmm, yeah, pretty good argument that you're being sub-optimal if you don't keep an inviter in your party at all times in case you run across a Tiamat family or Revenant family.

And...I suppose guns are never mandatory, they're just...really good.

The only other "You must" choice is possibly Thief

Archer deserves a mention here.  You will be using Charge, especially on assassination missions.  Doesn't really matter if your class is Geo, Archer, or Mediator here--if your plan A is to physically attack, you really ought to be using Charge.

If you want to argue that Archer isn't a "you must" you basically have to argue that physical attacks are not plan A.  And that's possible in some fights (Dance, Talk Skill, Battle Skill, Elemental, and Tiamats can be plan A).  But even in these situations you'll often STILL be using Charge.  If you're a Chapter 2 Geomancer taking advantage of Ch2 mage equips, Charge is probably still your secondary.  If your job is to Talk Skill, you probably still have a gun, and because you have a gun, charge.  If you're a Dancer...frankly Dancer can use any class, but Archer is at least a strong option; good HP, good PA, you care little about the loss of shields from equipping longbows, you like the longbow speed formula, and you get Charge for when you switch to damage mode on sleeping frogs, whereas no other Dancer setup gives you Charge.  Battle Skill...is good in like 3 fights, ever.  Tiamats are endgame.

buuut hilariously Bard is actually giving it some competition. In fact, I'm going to argue Geomancer's move as more important than Move + 2! Let's see what happens when we remove Thief/Geo from the game.

Basically, there are three stages of the game: Before you get M+2, before you get M+3, and after getting M+3 (you may or may not reach all stages with each character, but you get the idea).

In stage 1, Geo has 4 move, while all other classes (excluding the unpleasant thief, which is probably the #5 carrier) has 3. As you have already alluded to, 4 move is a big deal: you can walk behind a knight with this. Remove Geo and you're -1 move. Remove thief and... no change (I'm assuming you switch to knight/etc.).

In stage 2, Geo has 4 move, while Thief is giving its +2 to other classes so they can have 5. Now, 4->5 isn't as big a deal, but it's still 1 move, and this section lasts a while.

In stage 3, Thief is no longer doing anything useful, while Geomancer still has 7 move to everyone else's 6 (except females I guess, but if you're using one it's for Dance so whatever at them being still stuck at 4).

It's really a question of how long each stage lasts. If we assume the game is split 25%/50%/25% for these stages, then it's a tie... but a tie I'll break in Geo's favour because of 3->4 being a more important boost than anyone else. I could still see arguing Move + 2 over Geomancer's movement, mind. But it's actually close enough that everything else Geo brings to the table is making for an obvious win (whereas thief is bringing... almost nothing! +1 speed sometimes and a possible grab at trinkets I suspect aren't worth the JP/time investment).

How'd I get on that tangent? Oh well.

Interesting...but I really can't agree with the 25%/50%/25% split.  It takes ~450 JP to unlock Geomancer.  It takes ~620 JP to unlock Move+2.  It's actually pretty close--they basically unlock at the same time.  And note that it's not like FFT without bannings--that 350 Monk JP can't be used anything ever--it's basically just 350 JP that you're "spending" on unlocking Geomancer.  So...they're not far off as unlocks.

And I similarly don't agree with using Move+3 for 25% of the game.  This assumes not female, and not a Tiamat.  This assumes that you're willing to kill your PA growth (granted, the PA growth loss isn't that bad--makes you like...half way between a female and a male, but that's still like trading 1 PA for 1 Move, which...when your move is already 5-6...that's marginal).  And it's still a good 2500 JP, and you'd still be very weird if you bee-lined for M+3 out of the gate; you presumably want to get quite a few skills first.  It's also noteworthy that...with Squire gone, spillover JP is literally half your JP, and unless you're going to Bard or Mime en-masse, you get minimal help with spillover (only Mediator contributes/benefits from your spillover).  So...take that 2500 JP.  If only one party member goes Bard, it's now more-like 4500 JP.  If two go Bard it's more-like 3700 JP.  Three is like 3150 JP.  Four, 2800 JP.  Five, 2500 JP.

Basically, you need to send at least three characters to Bard or the JP cost is oppressive, and sending three people to Bard just sounds weak to me.  The trade (+1 Move for -1 PA) is marginal anyway.  And such a marginal boost looks awful when you might be trading some powerful abilities for it.  If you get lucky at Zigolis Swamp, you'll probably be dropping those recruits for level 1 females anyway.  If you get lucky in Chapter 4, you'll probably be dropping those recruits for Tiamats.

Just...wow, Move+3 is so bad in this meta.  I'm having a hard time imagining a setup that goes Move+3 which I don't consider sub-optimal.

Hilarious fact: Lowering faith notably below 40 actually starts making the game harder again. Sure, you wall magic EVEN HARDER (it doesn't do well against 40) but very quickly guys like Velius and Adramelk start moving over to their status which makes them scarier (especially since our ability to heal status is uh... not actually existant. Black Chocobo hype?). Now, I'm sure lowering Ramza's faith in particular is useful (and if you're optimising, 40 faith isn't perfect... probably closer to 30-35), but I'm not seeing it as terribly overcentralising.

It...really only makes two fights harder (Velius and Adramelk).  If Zalera uses Nightmare all day, you're happy.  If Hashmallum does nothing but Death Cold and physical attacks, you're probably fine with that (especially because you can Threaten him).  Altima actually already has an AI tag that prevents her from using All-Ultima more than once every five or so turns.  Balk people will literally bait into using arm-aim leg-aim over attacking (via shields).  And even against Velius/Adramelk, having one person at 50 faith to bait them into charging, and everyone else at 10 faith is overall better than mass 40-faith.  These bosses have, AoE and all that.  If you're really in the mood, you can just murder these two specific fights anyway (Sing Ramza rapes them both due to free setup time).

And other than those two fights, super-low faith is like...Arrow Guard; tanking one type of damage really hard does actually make a significant difference to your overall durability.  And even if you have one or two high-faith members as your "Velius/Adramelk bait", you can safely be aggressive and run forward with your low-faith units, and force enemy mages into any position you want with your high faith units.

That said, no. The combination of Geomancer + Attack Up is the most centralising thing in the current metagame. Want melee damage? Remove Geomancer and your best bet while still equipping a hat is Equip Sword Archer... Geomancer has 33% more damage. Want gun damage? Geomancer's Attack Up is adding 33% to that as well. Want a melee fighter with concentrate? Geomancer is ahead of everyone else by... like double. I mean Charge Goncentrate Geomancer can actually pull ITE OHKOs with some reliability, something no other setup can manage. (Obviously this setup speaks highly of Archer too, but it definitely needs both.) There's no way to ignore Geomancer without losing considerable damage in the second half of the game.

Want melee damage?  Frankly, I don't.  Melee damage gets you countered.  Melee damage means moving into range of the enemies, which is bad when you have no healing or revival.

I appreciate damage, sure, but it doesn't have to be Melee.  For instance, for most of Chapter 3, Attack Up Mithral Gun is about the same as Concentrate Sword.  (Concentrate Sword goes 81, 90, 110, 132 whereas Attack Up Mithral Gun stays steady at 80...but Mediator can also be expected to be 1-2 speed faster, so that's actually the equivalent of 93-106).  In Chapter 2, the story is similar (Concentrate Sword comes out at 56.  Attack Up Gun is 48, but with the speed advantage can be the equivalent of 56).  Which is to say, my range 8 attacker is dealing almost as much damage as my melee attacker.  Geo pulls ahead in damage at the start of Chapter 4/end of Chapter 3, but then falls behind again if you get any supertoys (Elemental Guns/Tiamats/Excalibur).

Yeah, basically all damage optimizing setups use Attack Up (or Concentrate).  But all damage optimizing setups use Charge, too.  And if using guns, I'd prioritize getting at least a few charges before Attack Up (Attack Up is the equivalent of Charge+2 on both Mithral and Romanda guns.  Charge+3/+4/+5 are much cheaper on the JP than Attack Up AND they deal more damage).  Eventually I will want both, of course.

But there's a bigger question.  Why damage?  Are you trying to kill mooks?  Nameless Dance is probably better.  Are you trying to kill high-HP bosses who can't be killed in one round of unblockable ranged attacks?  Have you considered cheesing them out?  Speed Break beats most Zodiacs in 1.5 turns (1.5 because they get half a round after the average -6 speed from your first round).  Gravity's still out there if you get lucky with your invites/breeding.  Hashmallum becomes completely helpless after 3x Threaten, 3x Solution, which you can nearly swing in one round.  Balk II can't handle Equip Shield Nameless Dance.  Velius dislikes Singing Ramzas being silly.

So...basically, I question your premises.  I don't at all see why optimizing melee damage is important, when range 8 damage is often competitive.  And I'm thinking that optimizing damage isn't the most powerful path.  Among other things, even if you're not trying to optimize damage, you'll be able to pump out a decent amount (Charge+3 is practically free.  Attack Up is on the way to Dancer).  So...even in a party built around non-damage stuff like Dance, Breaks, Sing, and Talk Skill, you can probably pull out some acceptable damage at a moment's notice (Charge+3 Mediators require, what, a 200 JP skill and a class unlock you probably had anyway given the style of this party?)

[metroid composite]

Actually...hm, I have a proposal for the best party in the round of 8.

4 female Mediators alternating between Dance and Charge (and on rare occasions Battle Skill).  Maybe Ramza goes Bard for the lulz...well...ok no, probably not.

In Chapter 2, you're unlocking Dancer, which means you get to use Chapter 2 Elemental with Wizard Robe, which is pretty damn nice.
In Chapter 3, 4x Dance is murder, and in the few fights where it's not ideal, 5x Charge AU Gun kind-of wins.
In Chapter 4, maybe you'll hit the invite lottery and pick up Tiamats or Elemental Guns or poached Chantages (you will if you take any time to grind).  If you don't...4x Dance, with 1x Ramza Ice Heal for mooks.  Guns+Battle Skill for most of the zodiacs.  Human bosses...honestly still die to 5x guns+AU+Charge, although you can do slightly better with Concentrate+Ultimus Bow if you get one, and might want to mix in some Concentrate Melee--probably not on all five characters due to surround issues and females, though.  Anti-physical bosses like Rofel and Elmdor probably call for Elemental (or Red Chocobo if Boco bred).

Just...feels like you get access to the best stuff.  Elemental when it's good.  4x Dance.  Mass AU Charge Guns.  Well-positioned to break the game in any number of Mediator ways (via Tiamat/Elemental Gun/4x Chantage).  If you don't get a singe Game-break, 4x Dance 1x Ice Healer sounds fairly optimal for killing most of Chapter 4 (and some of these dancers can be backup ice healers if desired).  Most of the remaining fights die to 5x Battle Skill Gun, or are fairly easily blitzed via Guns/Bows/Swords/Elemental.

This has some weaknesses--the damage is bad in Chapter 1.  If you miss every single Invite lottery, and need to damage blitz, and AU Charge Mithral guns aren't enough, then it's about 15% below a male party damage in chapter 4.  And even there, it probably has the edge in most other Chapter 4 fights due to having 4x Nameless Dance + healing.  On the other hand, it's more or less up to par on damage in Chapters 2-3 (Elemental+Guns from females is equal to the male performance, and in their respective chapters these are arguably the most useful damage overall).




There's definitely setups that could get an early edge on this party, but would fall rapidly behind once it starts coming online.  And I'm really struggling to think of a party with a better long-term plan than this party (in the 33% event of Zigolis Swamp Uribo, it outperforms parties with less than 4 females.  Parties with an equal number of females would seem foolish to not get Dance on all of them, and not get a good gun setup on all of them.  And it loses basically nothing in the event that you pick up Tiamats or Elemental Guns.  If none of the crazy stuff happens, I'm just not picturing male parties keeping up with 4x Nameless Dance from units that can match them in some of their best damage).



Now, as to which class this recommends, I'm not sure.  It uses lots of Mediator/Geo/Dancer/Archer pretty much every time (being the four classes that lose the least from being female...not to mention the four most standout classes to begin with).  Well...actually, no, I'm being silly: if the best party uses max females, then it's probably time to boot Dancer....

[Dark Holy Elf]

PA+7 equips?  You could afford multiple Bracers at that point?

At least three? Yeah. Your "don't fight randoms ever" strategy is biting you here! As if the levels weren't sign enough. <_<

Though honestly, if you thought you were going to be short of gil for Velius (who you have way more respect for than me, and even for me he's a "plan SCCs around" type fight), uh, propositions. Goland/Lesalia. A bit of lost time but really not much. Get shiny gil. It feels like even 6 speed should let you win if you have Bracers, but eh, don't really care to argue that any more; this is tangenty enough.

The problem with running forward to hit Velius physically (with speed 7 Geomancers) is that if Velius doesn't die, then all those Geos are dead. 

And if Hashmalum's HP survives 2000 HP worth of damage, lots of strategies against him might fail too.

Neither is going to happen. You don't miss charging opponents, you can calc out all your damage, you can and will kill him every time. You can have at least one Taurus/Capricorn generic you can't get your Elemental chipping damage high enough; whatever it takes. I think this thought process is why I have less trouble with Velius than you do*; the dude is so predictable and while good, you can plan for him before you even start the playthrough.

*(This statement isn't meant to be arrogant, because I'm well aware there are several FFT battles I have way more trouble with than you on average. I just find the difference interesting, and your own posts seem to kinda shed light on the reason to me.)

35 doesn't sound right to me--there's plenty of ties/very small wins and I'm not sure quite what to do with brave-raised Excalibur (which is obviously Knight favoured, but only on one character).

I was ignoring Excalibur, let alone post-brave twinkery Excalibur, since you have at most one. Yes that is good and you'll probably use it (although extra speed isn't always good or needed, and blargh at -1 move and Battle Skill), but we have four other characters.

I feel like it's more along the lines of: Knight and Geo are close to tied in 30 battles (sometimes favouring Knight, sometimes Geo, but usually a 1 PA gap), and Geo has a strong advantage in 15 battles (basically Chapter 3).

Geo also has a large advantage on non-Excalibur users as the chapter goes on and speed-boosting gets both more practical (to maintain good HP) and sometimes even necessary.

I'm skeptical about stuff that measures strictly damage over, say, 8 range.

*shrug* When the damage gap is high enough, it works better. I'd take a skillsetless Geomancer SCC over a skillsetless Mediator SCC any day, even waiving the part of the game before guns. I don't have quite the same high opinion of guns that you do, and possibly range in general. (It just happens that in unbanned FFT, lots of ranged options are really powerful ANYWAY... and even can strike many enemies at once.)

As for "lolcrossbows", if you have elemental guns, then you have Gastrafitis.  (Ok, that's not strictly true, but pretty close).  Gastrafitis is 71% of the damage of Rune Blade in exchange for 4 range.

See, I don't see how that's not an obvious losing trade, given how clunky 3-4 line of sight range only is (and you lose 1 off your effective range due to archer move anyway). I'm really just arguing personal experience here at this point, I'll grant. lolcrossbows also of course applies any time before Gastrifitis exists, while sword progression is fairly linear aside from a bit of a stall in mid chapter 2.

*I've been assuming Archer can get Ultimus Bow; they tend to swing that on their SCC.  Hell, they can sometimes get Yoichi bows on the SCC.  And this is when they're not likely to have someone with Invitation in the party to make getting Ultimus Bows fairly easy.

what

You're basically hyping a 12.5% random drop at the sluice and again at Germinas Peak (you do NOT stall Poeskas Lake). And you lose the 108 Gems anyway so it's not even much of an upgrade... Yoichi acquisition on an SCC is all kinds of wrong; you get one shot at that in UBS4 unless we're seriously suggesting doing eight floors of the Deep Dungeon.

That's on the SCC of course. Non-SCC it's a bit more reasonable (Invitation/theft and all) though I still would never bother; they get bow damage up a bit but it's still nowhere near competitive.

If you're OHKOing using AU without Charge, then Concentrate+Charge will guarantee a OHKO.

Sure, but Charge isn't always practical. In order to match Attack Up provided you have 12 PA already, you need Charge+4... an 8 CT attack. If your speed is only 8 due to it being a Twist Headband fight, and there are enemies who are speed 10, this is already untenable; the best you'll manage is Charge+3, and that drops to Charge+2 against enemies who move-wait first turn (which is usually the case for melee enemies). And then there's charging enemies (which includes several bosses) who just need to be killed right away, usually.

Dance setups use nothing from Geo--if anything the optimum Dance setup is something like Equip Armor, P-Bag, sit around tanking for your party while Nameless Dance does horrible things.

The thing is, even as you noted before, Nameless Dance has diminishing returns, and you have one guaranteed non-Dancer even if we're going for four of them. So no matter what, you're reliant on something from the Geomancer tree to have a maximum-killing-power fighter running around dealing with the things which escape status and can threaten your party. (I guarantee you the Dancer SCC would be waaay easier with this!)

Archer deserves a mention here.  You will be using Charge, especially on assassination missions.  Doesn't really matter if your class is Geo, Archer, or Mediator here--if your plan A is to physically attack, you really ought to be using Charge.

So are you arguing that the #13 is archer? I'm not really convinced; Attack Up damage already gets pretty high, and Charge/Concentrate are both kinda situational in different ways, unlike AU which is a strict improvement, always, and Geo still has a much better carrier (bows still suck).

(Still, to spoil things for the bottom of the post, I'm beginning to think it's the best competition. And that is a weird thing to confront.)

Interesting...but I really can't agree with the 25%/50%/25% split.

Yeah, fair. (Although I don't think Move+2 is worth beelining to because there are other important things I need to grab... in jobs that don't have 40-70% of Geomancer damage at various points in the game. And under your definition of a dead job, it's still better to be in Monk than in Thief.)

Regardless, my general point was of course that this whole innate 4 move thing, an afterthought in Geo's bag of tricks, holds up remarkably well to Thief's best attribute. Elfboy just hatin' on FFT thieves as usual!

And even if you have one or two high-faith members as your "Velius/Adramelk bait", you can safely be aggressive and run forward with your low-faith units, and force enemy mages into any position you want with your high faith units.

All of this stuff is pretty fair.

Want melee damage?  Frankly, I don't.  Melee damage gets you countered.  Melee damage means moving into range of the enemies, which is bad when you have no healing or revival.

Countered by.. what exactly? Enemies hardly ever have it besides monsters (only need to be targeted in four, extremely easy, fights) and a few bosses (who, once you are attacking at melee, you are generally killing).

Enemies move into your range easily enough. Obviously range has value, but when we're talking about double the damage? Not that much value. If it were, Archer SCC wouldn't be hard. Sure, they have range, one of the hyped AU/Charge duo and ignore evade! From everything you've hyped they should have an easy time, but they... don't. And "lack of ice healing" (besides ice bow + ice shield!) isn't the reason why Ninja/Geomancer crush them (and would even if throw/elemental were banned). It's the fights they have trouble blitzing, or trouble cleaning up before the timer expires, because of lower offence.

For instance, for most of Chapter 3, Attack Up Mithral Gun is about the same as Concentrate Sword.  (Concentrate Sword goes 81, 90, 110, 132 whereas Attack Up Mithral Gun stays steady at 80...but Mediator can also be expected to be 1-2 speed faster, so that's actually the equivalent of 93-106).

I have a lot of objections here.

-Attack Up being factored in for guns is a silent testament to what Geomancer is doing. You'll notice I have no trouble ignoring the sum total of Mediator's contributions to the game (faith lowering is the cool, but hardly necessary); the fact that you're having trouble doing the same for Geomancer strikes me as evidence for which class is overcentralising.
-You don't have Mithril for Goland (or Ancient Swords barring an ill-advised detour, granted). You only have Mithril for Zalmo on at most two people, and only at a cost to your performance in Goland.
-This gun limit remains until after Grog Hill unless you take a massive, inefficient detour (risks 8 randoms) when Mithril Guns show up in Goug.
-Swords only need Concentrate for about half the fights in the chapter; the other half they want AU for a damage boost.
-Getting 1-2 speed faster isn't very useful for the most part here, given that chapter 3 enemies are rarely if ever more than 1 above even unboosted speed. And as usual, if Geomancer desperately needs that point of speed, they can grab it; Mediator has no such recourse for a damage boost.

So...basically, I question your premises.  I don't at all see why optimizing melee damage is important, when range 8 damage is often competitive.  And I'm thinking that optimizing damage isn't the most powerful path.

I would contend that it is. All manner of inoffensive tactics at this point are suspect; they can miss (Dance, Battle Skill, much of Talk Skill) and they tend to lead to longer battles which, with our crappy to non-existant healing, we'd like to avoid. Damage optimisation is literally the only sane tactic for some fights (such as Velius) and is at worst a very strong option. I'm not so much optimising melee damage as I am damage in general; it just so happens that, at most points, melee is too far ahead to consider and ranged must be relegated to a role of backup (which Geomancer conveniently provides!). But of course, the fact that the best ranged option is reliant on Attack Up only cements the Geomancer lead. Only spellguns really break its hold (and Excalibur for one person, though even that will want AU sometimes), and then, only for the last 11 battles, and only by fighting potentially many randoms and incurring potentially many resets looking for 'em.

It's hard to say which of us is right on the best thing to optimise, but my personal experience drawn from a variety of challenges I've done (including all the relevant SCCs in question), is that high damage is the best ward against being overwhelmed, especially when you lack healing and revival. Even Yin Yang Magic, the (non-Math) king of debilitation, would be substantially worse without an instant-kill status (effectively the same as damage) for speeding up fights in an emergency, and of course the immensely damageing Life Drain to deal with bosses.


Proposed party:

Hm, I'll readilly admit that digesting an "optimum party" for a current counter-proposal is currently out of my reach, so... I'll just critique the given one.

My main concern with that party is bosses, certainly, as well as any fight where you can get blitzed quickly (e.g. a Yardow Ninja getting off a stupidly good throw on good compat or whatever) and lose a person. You just don't have the offence to come back from this. You can be all "but I can turn people into frogs and lower their speed" but none of this matters because you lack revival and a first-round death requires at worst a 4-round victory (5 after Angel Rings, granted). Mediator HP is even a little shaky (and has either no shields or even worse damage) so this isn't that hard to see happening. I also kneejerk that party not liking many zodiac demons much since again, poor damage, and even with low faith, if any annoying combination of status (Loss, etc.), support, or the boss' physical attacks (maybe even a crit) down a PC, you're SOL even if you have the zodiac down to 3 speed by this point most likely (ohnoes, Mithril Guns and no Charge because you opted for Battle Skill).

Now of course the main fix to this is to up your offence, and sometimes to up your durability, and you probably know where I'm going with this. Basically you'll want at least some of those Mediators to be Geomancers instead. And you may as well make them male, losing out on some Dance in order to gain some killing power. Sure, you "lose" to a rare party that successfully invites, breeds and poaches a Uribo (and be much worse in any fights that they do) by the time they get up to Chantage number... 3 or so but that seems like the least of my concerns; even one Chantage would probably let me break the game as badly. I'm more concerned with all the times that doesn't happen, by far. So yeah, now the setup is looking something like:

Males: Geomancer, AU/Concentrate, Charge/whatever
Females: Mediator, AU, Dance/Charge/Battle Skill

I'd generally estimate the split to be 3/2. Obviously it may vary battle to battle (our own biases on the value of range will push things back and forth there) and 2/3 is also possible. But regardless, there are two main setups. Geomancer is... the carrier of one, provides the support skill to another, and provides that same support skill to itself sometimes. Archer provides a support skill to one setup some of the time, and a skillset fairly often. Mediator is the carrier of one. Dancer provides the common skillset choice to one. Thief (maybe Bard) provides a common movement skill. Reactions are too much up to taste and situation.

Looks to me that Archer is the main competition to Geomancer for top value in this party. Dancer... I'm actually less convinced by than I was a post or two ago. It is literally just providing a skillset, and one that fails it up in some fights to boot (and can fail even when it should be good)... there's certainly an argument that Charge is at least on par with it, and Archer has Concentrate in the mix as well.

[metroid composite]

Just posting from a cell phone this time so I'll be brief but...

One thing I've been mulling over in my mind re: grinding is....:

If you're willing to take an average of two (quick) resets, you can get a Uribo from Zigolis Swamp 100% of the time.

I hadn't really considered this before (given that I've gone for Elemental Guns but not Chantages).  That's...a fairly small investment (2 resets; maybe 30 seconds each) for a big gain in power later on.

Which begs the question, do we expect 3+ resets later in the game given this set of 8 classes without Chantages?  Because if we do, then we should reset until Uribo every time.

[Grefter]

I really want to see one of you two play through with this Charlie's Angels team of dancing gunners and actually playtest this theorycrafting.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I volunteer Elfboy because I want to watch~

[Grefter]

Remember to keep it Classic Angels themed as that gives you more names to work with, two males and six females to work with in case you have to have more than just Ramza and your 4 primary recruits (Jill, Sabrina, Kelly and Kris)

[Dark Holy Elf]

I hadn't really considered this before (given that I've gone for Elemental Guns but not Chantages).  That's...a fairly small investment (2 resets; maybe 30 seconds each) for a big gain in power later on.

Which begs the question, do we expect 3+ resets later in the game given this set of 8 classes without Chantages?  Because if we do, then we should reset until Uribo every time.

Hmm. I'll start by saying that I've personally been assuming that 0 resets is possible and maybe even the goal at this point, though how bad a reset is needs to be weighed against raw time probably and I haven't decided on that.

But yeah, I don't... think I assume 3+ resets. Tell you what: I'm going to look through my SCC logs of Archer, Geomancer, Mediator, and Dancer, and pick out the second lowest of resets for each. Why second lowest? Well, "lowest" should generally be achievable, but I'm acknowledging that there's some luck in play. This is a pretty hand-wavy way to do it, but let's go. Starting with chapter 3 for obvious reasons, and only listing fights where the second lowest reset count exceeds 0...


Inside Riovanes: 2. Doesn't count, since Geomancer was 0 and we can easily emulate this strategy to win 100% of the time. Additionally, your claim is that my Mediator tally should be 0, too, anyway.

Riovanes Rooftop: 1. Doesn't count, Chantage wouldn't prevent this.

Bed Desert: 1. Interesting; I can't think of a surefire, "always win" strategy here given that none of these classes did, for me. I'd still not expect to have resets with a more balanced team (we can do things like Dance to thin numbers AND shields to resist ice AND damage to finish), but they're possible.

Bethla Sluice: 2. Possibly needs to be disqualified as an "Elfboy finds this battle harder than most" fight; it's one I don't "get". Still, regardless of out strategy here the usual SCC problem of "any death is unacceptable" rears its ugly head. Move+2 on Ramza probably helps a -lot- with making that less true, though...

Altima: 1. Certainly a fight that, with almost any strategy that lacks revival, I can see a reset on reasonably. On the other hand, it's probable that "Geomancer, now with Charge and Move+2/3!" pushes the offence over the top and in terms of reliably killing, the way Ninja already is.


So, looking at all of this, I guess it's... possible that Chantages would save us three resets? Far from certain though; it still seems at least possible to me that 0 is the goal. Hm, now I'm tempted to do a run of the game with this setup...

The real question is, though, if we do decide Chantages are worth it, what does it change? Thief/Mediator are getting joint credit for it (with Mediator being the better of the two otherwise). Removing Mediator removes Chantage as a strategy, but does this drive our reset count up significantly? Doesn't look like it. I suppose the argument is that Mediator is otherwise close enough to most overcentralising class for this to push it over the top (I don't agree, I think it's third at best right now).

[metroid composite]

Riovanes Rooftop: 1. Doesn't count, Chantage wouldn't prevent this.

Chantage lets you go in with no clothes/hats on several characters, guaranteeing that said characters will be targeted (guaranteed OHKO in the AI's mind--I don't think the AI considers Reraise in terms of high-priority targets).  Normally this would be a questionable tactic.

Bed Desert: 1. Interesting; I can't think of a surefire, "always win" strategy here given that none of these classes did, for me. I'd still not expect to have resets with a more balanced team (we can do things like Dance to thin numbers AND shields to resist ice AND damage to finish), but they're possible.

Yeah, Dance+Ice Shield+retreat into the corner sounds quite powerful to me.

Bethla Sluice: 2. Possibly needs to be disqualified as an "Elfboy finds this battle harder than most" fight; it's one I don't "get". Still, regardless of out strategy here the usual SCC problem of "any death is unacceptable" rears its ugly head. Move+2 on Ramza probably helps a -lot- with making that less true, though...

Sluice is a fight that...on regular-levelled SCCs I've only lost with...Geomancer (2 resets I think).  I'm not sure if level 1 Mediators lost here--they might have.  So...actually, yeah, while I 0-resetted with a lot of classes at the Sluice that I'd heard other SCCers complain about (Time Mages, Oracles) I'm not sure any of this group-of-8 classes really takes the Sluice.  (Also, complaining about Time Mages and Oracles in Chapter 4...including people like Ulti...yeah -_-).

Removing Mediator removes Chantage as a strategy, but does this drive our reset count up significantly? Doesn't look like it. I suppose the argument is that Mediator is otherwise close enough to most overcentralising class for this to push it over the top (I don't agree, I think it's third at best right now).

Well...to me the question isn't necessarily which class on removal drives the reset count up, and more looking for things that are format-warping.  In that...if you have the second best skillset and the second best stats and the second best reaction and the second best movement and the second best support...you probably shouldn't be banned--nothing you have sounds particularly centralizing.

The real question is, though, if we do decide Chantages are worth it, what does it change? Thief/Mediator are getting joint credit for it (with Mediator being the better of the two otherwise).

Chantage parties actually behave significantly differently.  The females can do...frankly anything they want.  They do want speed, because they want to revive often, and their accessory slot is locked in, but that's about it.  Everything else...they want to be able to finish things fast (damage), they want to make themselves tempting targets (low HP, high faith) and they want to be able to protect their men if an enemy gets the wrong idea (umm...Mimic Daravon, I guess?)

Males, though, are your more important setup--you have to optimize them to not die; you have to optimize them to not be targeted.  Which is to say...Knights!  Knights with 03 Faith!  Take your pick of Weapon Guard or Arrow Guard.  Oh, also, wear Chameleon Robes/Angel Rings and Death Sentence yourself a lot.  Equip Gun to occasionally take a potshot while you're running into a corner, I guess?  Ice Brand Ice Shield in Chapter 4, of course.  (But notably Ice Brand Ice Shield in Knight, not Geo.  You want more HP.  You want less speed so that you die slower if something goes wrong).  Notably, getting the males right is a lot more important than getting the females right; if you deal 30% more damage with a female setup, that's cool.  If you're not Death Sentencing yourself as a male and taking twice as much damage as a result, that's a huge problem--you'd need to deal twice as much damage with females to counterbalance that.

In theory you might need to worry about status, but in-practice...naaah.  Low HP, high faith, and enemies will nearly always try to kill the girls.  If Velius or Adramelk petrifies your males, then you thank them for the positive status.

Which is to say, yeah, optimal Chantage play is just...weird.  I want to say Death Sentence, Solution, Ice Healing, and the Knight class are your most highly valued abilities just because male survival matters a lot more than female effectiveness?  (Roughly in that order for importance).

[Dark Holy Elf]

For the record, I 0-resetting the sluice with TMs and Oracles as well! Just... didn't manage it with a single one of the 8 remaining classes. (Well, the six I've done.) <_<

I'm a bit baffled by Death Sentence hype. It's a "funny" strategy but rarely ever actually useful in my experience (excluding when the enemies do it to you, in which case, thanks for the free positive status)... and that's with Secret Fist. Talk Skill Death Sentence itself hits like... a third of the time. A bit better with good internal zodiac (still not likely breaking 50 except in rare cases of best compat or really suped-up MA, maybe for Elemental?) but still this is a terrible idea in anything except an act of desperation.

Not really interested in discussing this warped-around-Chantage metagame since that's just... not how the game is played. If you asked 20 skilled FFT players to play through the game using the eight classes we currently have, hardly any would like the situation you described, I'm pretty sure. You can argue it's "optimum" but I'm really not interested in its discussion anyway. At this point I'm more interested in how to keep that reset count down in the 0-2 range, since I'm pretty sure that's doable (and if it is, renders the Chantage metagame moot).

[metroid composite]

I'm a bit baffled by Death Sentence hype. It's a "funny" strategy but rarely ever actually useful in my experience (excluding when the enemies do it to you, in which case, thanks for the free positive status)... and that's with Secret Fist. Talk Skill Death Sentence itself hits like... a third of the time. A bit better with good internal zodiac (still not likely breaking 50 except in rare cases of best compat or really suped-up MA, maybe for Elemental?) but still this is a terrible idea in anything except an act of desperation.

Death Sentence is like a bad version of Phoenix Down.  It keeps your death counter under control, particularly on at-risk targets (like people who just reraised from their Angel Ring).  Which is to say, of course you don't use it on the Monk SCC: you have Revive, and Revive blows it out of the water (Revive being "a balanced version of phoenix down" rather than "a bad version of phoenix down").

Not really interested in discussing this warped-around-Chantage metagame

Well, yeah, that was kind-of my point.  Basically, your setup is "Chantage", the dominating strategy is "Chantage".  I don't feel we should overthink questions like "what class am I going to put my Chantage-user into?"  (Unless as a tiebreaker for "which class between Thief and Mediator get credit?")

[Dark Holy Elf]

Death Sentence is like a bad version of Phoenix Down.  It keeps your death counter under control, particularly on at-risk targets (like people who just reraised from their Angel Ring).  Which is to say, of course you don't use it on the Monk SCC: you have Revive, and Revive blows it out of the water (Revive being "a balanced version of phoenix down" rather than "a bad version of phoenix down").

Fair, but I certainly never used it on the Mediator SCC either! I guess the idea is... someone revives from their Angel Ring, you Death Sentence them to buy yourself some time? You'll tend to use 2-3 actions (and if they all miss, you just lost the battle) to apply this, and you hope you get those actions back in the future by the extension of the timer (if someone dies again this round because of your lack of doing much to the enemies, this probably goes to waste). I have a hard time seeing this being a good strategy especially often. It has some merit as an utter desperation tactic (and it's possible that, say, the Level 1 version of the challenge has more need of those), but that's about it, and we certainly aren't yet at the point where such desperation tactics feel necessary more than once in a blue moon.


Idly, I am currently playing through the game with only the 8 classes right now (up to Dorter) and the first thing I noticed is that, at the Igros checkpoint at least (no longbows, no Elemental), wow, females are a huge liability (-2 PA as a knight, although this shrinks at Level 3 granted... still, even -1 is quite notable when you have no healing so you have to outslug). This makes me strongly question the idea that four of them are optimum, though it's possible I'll be singing a different tune in a few battles of course, so take it with a grain of salt. Just... there's a lot of game to go before females actually pay off (mid-late C2).

[metroid composite]

Fair, but I certainly never used it on the Mediator SCC either!

I did occasionally, and...I seem to remember watching someone else doing a Mediator SCC using it too (which would presumably be you or Excal)?

I guess the idea is... someone revives from their Angel Ring, you Death Sentence them to buy yourself some time? You'll tend to use 2-3 actions (and if they all miss, you just lost the battle) to apply this, and you hope you get those actions back in the future by the extension of the timer (if someone dies again this round because of your lack of doing much to the enemies, this probably goes to waste).

It's situational.  You'll notice I haven't suggested that it's a noteworthy Mediator ability under normal circumstances.  The following calculations applying specifically more to the Mediator SCC...

Let's call it like...turn 3 when the crisis happens.  Turn 3 someone revives from Angel Ring and tries to Death Sentence themself (with good internal compatibility this is takes about two actions on average).  This is instead of going on the offence with their action (but they presumably would have died next turn being a low HP "kill me please Archer" target).  So it goes something like...

turn 3: -2 turns
turn 4: +1 turn (suppose for the sake of argument another character dies and uses up their reraise on turn 4)
turn 5: +1 turn
turn 6: +3 turns (all the people who aren't dead or didn't have their DS timer just end causing a skipped turn)
turn 7: (timer ends for character who dropped on turn 4)

Or, if you decide to DS both, you'll potentially get to about turn 9 or 10.



That said, this is...just flat out almost never relevant for the group of 8 classes.  Mediator with Attack Up and Charge deals about double the damage that a Mediator SCC normally deals, which means you will basically never find yourself running the numbers and thinking "I flat out don't have enough turns to kill all these enemies 64 damage at a time."  When it's 128 damage with guns (or more with other stuff) yeah, you will almost never need timer extensions from Death Sentence.

Idly, I am currently playing through the game with only the 8 classes right now (up to Dorter) and the first thing I noticed is that, at the Igros checkpoint at least (no longbows, no Elemental), wow, females are a huge liability (-2 PA as a knight, although this shrinks at Level 3 granted... still, even -1 is quite notable when you have no healing so you have to outslug). This makes me strongly question the idea that four of them are optimum, though it's possible I'll be singing a different tune in a few battles of course, so take it with a grain of salt. Just... there's a lot of game to go before females actually pay off (mid-late C2).

Cool, keep us updated.