Theorycrafting! (Because I like competitive metagames too much)

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Whoops, none of the lists I had had Utvara Hellkite, so added that in, removed Sarkhan Vol (he's only really in for the ult, and that's a bad reason to include a planeswalker).

Also put in Distainful Stroke since I happened to find one while going through my cards, and that abstractly is a good EDH card.  (Took out Ray of Revelation).

Played a proxied version today; it performed ok, but ultimately lost to leviathan tribal.  Which answers one question I had been worried about (no: it probably won't be too strong a deck).  Which means I'm going to order the reasonably priced cards (some cards I'll wait till after rotation).

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Hearthstone:

Mech Rogue

I've been revisiting this recently, partially because I just opened an Iron Sensei (which is apparently one of the draws of the deck).

I'm actually finding Iron Sensei to be pretty high variance; sometimes it's awful.  A few cards are really pulling this deck together, though:

1. Dark Iron Skulker -- this is a pretty good top end.  Rogue can out-tempo all the other classes from turns 1-4ish, though free cards like backstab.  But then they run out of cards (while hopefully still having a board advantage).  Around turn 5 is when a lot of other decks are finishing emptying their hand.  If Dark Iron Skulker helps keep the board clear and maintain tempo for another round that's actually a pretty big deal.

2. The fact that the core mech cards includes cheap cards is a big deal, because it means I can trigger combo easier for stuff like SI7 agent and Defias Ringleader.  Spare parts help too.  Mechwarper turning 2 drops into 1 drops helps too.  I'm running the full 4 mech one drops.

It's a tempo board control deck, so I am running saps, deadly poison....

Rounding out the deck is Dr. Boom.  which is more just a nod to the fact that I sometimes run out of gas (and I lost to it once when playing against another tempo deck).


But yeah...the mech core of creatures = lots of tempo.  The rogue tempo spells = lots of tempo.  Dark Iron Skulker helps you hold on to tempo.  When it's easy to trigger combo that's pretty cool.  I don't own Eviscerates, which would probably make the deck a fair bit better, but it's already doing quite well.

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MtG:

So...I've been thinking a little bit more about the Dragon EDH deck, why it worked out and felt balanced....

Yes, the cards are on average stronger than other decks I've run.  But...no I'm not doing anything terribly exploitative with them.

Let me explain.

In Prossh, I could go

1. Primal Vigor
2. Prossh
3. Hellion Eruption

And have 26 hellion tokens (4/4).

In Raksha, I could equip Raksha with...usually two pieces of equipment, and deal 22 unblockable commander damage (always with vigilance, sometimes with lifelink, so counterswings were not as good).

In Marath, I would combine pings, often multitarget pings with deathtouch to have creature kills.  Even with that, I didn't usually win unless I drew Cathar's Crusade, another combo.



By comparison, the dragon deck is not a combo deck, it's a control deck, with most of the dragons drawing cards or removing threats.  Yeah, it has tribal synergy, but this is just synergy.

Side note, people seem cool with Chromanticore as a commander, which means there's a few creatures I could use to combo with it.

Cold-Eyed Selkie I will probably run, because it's good enough on its own as a 3 mana card drawing engine.

Celaphid Constable is useless without a chromanticore bestow, and oppressive with it.  Probably not.

Needle Specter I would run Nicol Bolas first.

So...I think Cold-Eyed Selkie comes in.  (In exchange for either Phyrexian Arena if I decide I don't want to spend $10 on that card, or Dark Tutelage for being a card that killed me last time we played).

I think Amulet of Vigor comes out.  It's good for ramping into dragons one turn earlier; the deck is a control deck, though; it can wait a turn.  Sub in one more of some other category (thinking Back to Nature or Ray of Revelation).

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Magic The Gathering -- Three Card Blind

This is a really really interesting match that I'm not sure if I win with the deck I submitted, so much so that I spent a few hours figuring it out, as there's a lot of options on both sides.

http://kaitlyn-burnell.tumblr.com/post/118269021073/a-three-card-blind-match-for-the-ages

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Magic the Gathering - Commander Dragon Deck

Ummmm....so I won my last four straight games with this deck.  I don't want to turn this into an arms race, so I asked them what I should tone down about the deck.  The answer I got back?  Chromanticore (the commander).

Turns out Chromanticore is really good, especially when on a dragon that deals some kind of extra damage (most of them).

The rest of the 5 colour commanders have approximately zero synergy with me.  I'm going to try Sliver Hivelord.  Reasoning being: the one thing dragons have proven really bad at is blocking.  Like...dragons are a lot of 4/4 and 5/5s, usually with some kind of utility that makes me not want to lose them.  EDH is all 6/6 and 7/7.  I basically never want to block with dragons (and nearly always want to attack, because attacking triggers cool stuff).  Sliver Hivelord can block, which is nice; it fills a niche that the deck lacks.

(Of course, with Chromanticore bestowing something the deck was fantastic at blocking, but that's a different story).

Without the Chromanticore lifegain I'm going to remove Dark Tutelage.  I mean, the card did lead me to one loss even with Chromanticore due to self damage, and inflicting that much self damage doesn't make sense when my commander doesn't lifegain.

Replace with Temur Ascendancy.  I really like the card, it has very little money cost, and it fits the deck fantastically since most of the deck is 4+ power creatures.

I had been thinking about Cold-eyed selkie, but that was when I had Chromanticore; it doesn't really combo with anything now.

I will think about swapping Back to Nature back to Ray of Revelation.  Without Dark Tutelage it's going to be rare that I want to kill my own enchantment.  Back to Nature does have a ton of power when it kills multiple enchantments though, and I only have like...five enchantments in my own deck?

I think I'm going to take out Patriarch's Bidding.  It's the only 3+ mana card in the deck that breaks my rule of "not having Dragon" on the card.  Swap for Kokusho--when there's no lifegain on my Commander, suddenly I care about this card.

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Hearthstone:

So I started thinking about how goood a creature needs to be to get played at each mana cost.  Like...if you add up its power and toughness, what stats does it need to be actually played in current Standard decks.

Some notes:

Adding is great and all, but 1 power is very bad, 0 power is incredibly bad, and 1 health is...pretty sketchy due to the pings.

0 mana: ?

It's pretty hard to swing this without 0-1 power, so no matter what, a 0 mana card will be sketchy.  Wisp gets played occasionally thanks to hobgoblin.

1 mana: 4 total stats.

I think 1 mana for a vanilla 2/2 is probably fair, and would probably get played?  It's hard to say because none exists; there's 1 mana for a 2/3 with a downside.  There's multiple 1 mana for a 3/2 with a downside.  1 mana for a 2/2 with no upside or downside is probably ok?

2 mana: 6 total stats.

2 mana is filled with 5 total stats creatures: 2/3s and 3/2s with strong abilities.  An abilityless 3/3 would be pretty good, because it would trade profitably with 2/3s.  An abilityless 2/4 would be pretty good because it would trade with 3/2s.  An abilityless 4/2...welldirewolf alpha was orininally played because it was "effectively 4/2".

3 mana: 8 total stats

So...this is an interesting slot, where people do play Spider Tank (3/4 mech for 3), but only in heavy mech decks.  Outside of that...there's a non-mech that is a 4/4 for 3 with a spare part IF you've got mechs.  There's a non-dragon that's a 3/5 for 4 IF you've got dragons.  These are both considered reasonable (although not auto-include) in mech/dragon decks.  And I'm positive that a 5/3 for 3 would be fine, probably not even particularly exciting.

4 mana: 10 total stats

This is where it gets interesting.  The one 4 mana card that people are willing to run without any particular synergy is Piloted Shredder.  But what effective stats does piloted shredder have?  Obviously 4/3 on the outside, and then the average minion that pops out has 1.88 attack and 2.45 health.  Obviously many of those have abilities, so I'm going to round this up to 2/3.  So......do we just add 4/3 to 2/3 and get 6/6?  No, not exactly, because creatures that are small for the turn when they show up (the 2/3) get inefficient trades.  For example: piloted shredder vs a 5/5 would over two turns trade evenly.  6/6 vs a 5/5 would be a profitable trade for the 6/6.  Realistically, Piloted shredder feels like a 4/6 or so--it has 4 power, and it does take about 6 total damage to kill it.  And a 4/6 does trade evenly with a 5/5.

5 mana: 13 total stats

This is where things start getting hard.  almost all of the 5 mana cards that people actually play have a bunch of abilities and low stats.  Sludge Belcher is a 3/5 with three abilities.  Azure Drake is a 4/4 with two abilities.  Antique Healbot is a 3/3 with one large scale ability.  Loatheb is a 5/5 with a pretty big ability.  Fel Reaver is an occasionally played 8/8 with a negative ability.  The only one I can think of that is mostly stats is Blackwing corruptor: 5/4, if you're holding a dragon battlecry deal 3 damage.  This is kind-of like a 5/4 that summons a 3/3...although more like a 3/1 with charge (which is better than a 3/3...although probably not as good as a 3/4).  Can we just add these together?  Total stats 8/7 for...15?  Mmm...probably not.  For an extreme case, blackwing corruptor trades evenly with a 4/6, whereas an 8/7 would not.  It does trade well with a Piloted Shredder, though--survives as a 5/2.  Realistically, the stats you would need to do this normally are 5/8.  Let's go with that, then--13 total?

6 mana: 15 total stats

Well...so if "deal 3 damage battlecry" is +4 stats, then Fire Elemental is on that shit with 15 total stats.  But the better stat comparison is Piloted Sky Golem.  (Or Cairne, who is effectively a 4/10 for 14 total, but nobody plays him anymore).  Using the same logic as piloted shredder, Sky Golem is kind-of like a 6/8 or 6/9 (14-15 total).

7 mana: 19 total stats

Alright, so doctor boom...the body is 14.  Add...one for the body of each boom bot, and 2 for the deathrattle?  20 total.  Rend Blackhand is an 8/4 (body is 12), kills something, probably a Loatheb or Thaussian--if we accept the fire elemental battlecry being like 4 stats, then killing a 5 health thing is like 6-7 stats, putting Rend at 18-19.

8 mana: 23 total stats

Umm...well I guess there's Sneed's Old Shredder.  This gets a bit messy compared to previous shredders, however, because we were always assuming that the body that popped out would be obsolete by the time it hits the field.  Usually not the case with Sneeds, which pops out plenty of 8/8s.  So I guess take that as the main body, and add the 7 health on Sneeds for effective 8/15.  23 total stats?  ish?

9-10 mana

I got nothing; there's no real easy comparisons here.


Anyway, the interesting thing here is how it's a pretty smooth curve and spikes up.  Realistically 6 mana should probably be listed higher (Fire Elemental's battlecry is a lot better than Blackwing Corruptor's).  But if we adjust for that then it starts looking pretty smooth, going...

4, 6, 8, 10, 13, 16, 19, 23

The interesting spike here is that at some point it stops being +2, and starts being +3.  The value of tempo forces these numbers higher.  Dr Boom is still maybe a bit too good for its cost, but only barely--boom still needs most of those stats to be a viable 7 drop.



The other thing that's interesting is what common abilities change these values:

Creature type -- is often worth one stat when it's a relevant creature type (mostly mech, although in the past some really vanilla beasts showed up in dominant hunter decks, like River Crocolisk)

Taunt -- is worth a loooooot.  Ancient of War is 15 total stats plus taunt, and considered a high quality 7 drop.  3/5 is worth it at 3 mana, and worth it at 4 mana with taunt  Sludge belcher looks a lot like shredder if you remove taunt.  I think "add a full mana for taunt" is actually probably pretty accurate--provided the creature can soak up a lot of damage.

Windfury -- is worth surprisingly little (unless it has charge, then it's insane).  Like...maybe 1 stat, and probably not even that.  Look at whirling Zap-o-matic.  People don't run it unless they're doing a very specific deck.

Divine Shield -- is worth a lot.  Like...probably a full mana, if not slightly more (annoy-o-tron is much better than its 1 mana equivalent).

Charge -- Worth...closer to 2 mana, actually.  See: druid of the Claw as a charging 4/4.  See charging 3/1 being worth playing for 3 (when a 3/1 without charge would be like...1 mana ish).  This also still reveals King Crush as bad--minus two mana for him is 7 mana...and 16 total stats is still bad at 7 mana.

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Cookie Clicker

A few notes....

So for a while I had trouble keeping buildings at the right cost ratio, mentally recalculating each time.  That said, each building grows by 15% for each time they are purchased, so actually it's pretty simple.  Once you get them in-sync it becomes always roughly correct to just buy one of each building.  This will keep them roughly in-sync.

How do upgrades mix into all of this?  Most upgrades double, which doubles the cost-efficiency, so when you buy a doubling upgrade, buy 5 of that building.  Why 5?  because 1.5^5 = 2.011.

To get the ratios right at the start, fortunately there's a wiki with relative building efficiencies, ex:

Cursor production per megacookie: 6,667
Grandma production per megacookie: 5,000
Farm production per megacookie: 8,000
Factory production per megacookie: 3,333
Mine production per megacookie: 4,000

So like...a typical earlygame breakdown might look like...

Cursor: 5
Grandma: 3
Farm: 7
Factory: 1
Mine: 2

And it's cost-efficient to add 1 to each of these (and then mix in the higher tech buildings when those become more cost-efficient than buying an existing building).

Heavenly Chips, obviously these are the lategame.  But they have an interesting lack of stacking effect.  There's lots of upgrades (cookie types) that say "cookie production multiplier +X%".  These are additive, not multiplicative, and Heavenly Chips add to the same value.  This does mean these upgrades become pretty trash when resetting with a lot of heavenly chips.  It also makes me dubious of guides that encourage people to prestige super early.  Like...prestiging with 50 heavenly chips adds +100%, which is nice, but that just means you went from probably x2.35 to x3.35.

(Side observation--in the mid-late game, the actually important upgrades are like...Kittens and Prism x2 upgrades, as these actually double your output.  Everything else is kind-of minor).

Seasons:

Christmas is the obvious starting season once you have the season switcher.  Doesn't require the grandmapocalypse to get unlocks.  Has the "Santa's Bottomless Bag", which makes all the other seasons less painful.  The important stuff isn't based off of random drops.  But like...actually, most of the upgrades are pretty trashy.  Cookie production multipliers (not too relevant given that you need 5,000 heavenly chips for the season switcher, so you have at least +10,000% that you're adding onto).

Cost reductions on buildings...ok, let's talk about these.  a 1% cost reduction on buildings...what does this do?  Well...what would a 15% cost reduction do?  Given that it's typical to have about 100+ so prisms, this would get you about 1 more prism, so...a 1% production increase.  So...that was a 15% cost reduction.  A 1% cost reduction gets you like...a 0.1% increase.  Upgrade cost reduction...there's not even a clear measure here; gets you some key upgrades a bit earlier, so that's nice.

Milk being 5% more powerful...ok, that's probably a big deal.  That's the other big deal for Christmas (besides the Santa bag, and just Reindeer being a pure upside).

Easter, though, is the real deal.  Easter has a bunch of eggs that say "global production multiplier +1%"--this is apparently different from "production multiplier +1%", and actually stacks.  Then easter has "Wrinklers produce 5% more cookies", which is basically a 5% increase.  And Chocolate Egg which just adds about 5% to your produced this game right before you presige.

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Cookie Clicker

So...something was bugging me about my building calculation--specifically cursors.  Well...not cursors in particular, but the fact that buying any buliding that is not cursors buffs cursors.

So...total production from cursors is like...

C*N*1,532.6 + 0.8

Where C is number of cursors, N is non-cursors.  Or actually a smaller multiplier than 1,532 for normal plebs like me, but the concept remains the same.  So ok, can work with this.  I'm in a fairly typical endgame right now, about 2,000 total buildings, 250 cursors (1750 non-cursors).  This means that when I buy a cursor, my CPS from cursors goes up by

1750*whatever

And when I buy a non-cursor, my CPS goes up by

250*whatever

This means, in particular, that all of the cheap buildings should be bought up to the point that they cost about 1/7 what the next cursor purchace costs.  In theory this would cause some weird math with buildings that are very close to that line beforehand.  In practice it seemed to mostly come up for portals--all the other low buildings have pretty negligible production multipliers compared to 1/7th of a cursor.

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So...this is a pretty cool GDC talk from one of the people who worked on League of Legends.  (Haven't played either LoL or WoW, so I can't really speak to how accurate these examples are, but it sounds like good design lessons):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DePjQJaZpqg

Alright, enough with the interesting stuff, let's talk about some complete trash...

Cookie Clicker

Let's talk about Wrath cookies vs Golden cookies.

For a 1 hour period, with Wrath you get Wrinklers, so just on top of everything that's times 6.275.  So just idling that whole time you get

18990 seconds worth of extra production.

The wrath cookies...

Ruin (28% of the time) Lose 10 minutes of production

-600 seconds of production

Lucky (28% of the time) Gain 20 minutes of production

+1200 seconds of production

Clot (28% of the time) Half production for 132 seconds (affects Wrinklers)

-414 seconds of production

Elder Frenzy (6%) production x666 for 12 seconds (affects Wrinlkers)

+50074 seconds of production

Click Frenzy (2%) Makes clicks do x777 for 26 seconds (with alt+shift+numlock you can click about 10x per second using the numpad; I'm not quite sure how the cursors stack up, but the final result seems to be about 9.6% of CPS per click.  I'll just round this to 10% since I'm guesstimating how many times you can click in a second).

+20202 seconds of production

Cookie chain (6%) Does...stuff.  This is a mess because it's quantized.  Reward is somewhere between 3 hours of production, and 3/10 hours of production.  Except when it fails, which it can from either dexterity failure, or just 1% failure chance coded into the game.

+1080-10800 seconds of production...barring a failure, in which case it does basically nothing.


Overall: The three most common modes basically cancel each other out, and it's mostly about the Elder Frenzy.

Also worth noting, the rare case of a Reindeer during an Elder Frenzy is 79920, but this is pretty rare due to the short duration of Elder Frenzy, and for the most part Wrath cookies synergize porly with reindeer.

Over the period of an hour, you'll get about 30 Wrath cookies, so about 1.5 Elder Frenzies, 1.5 Cookie Chains, 0.2 click frenzies

Net average gain from an hour of active paying attention:

~101,412

So...an overall x6 or so on just ignoring the damn thing and letting it idle for the full hour.

Golden Cookies

So ok, buy an elder pledge, get some golden cookies, what's this look like?

Lucky (48%) 20 minutes of production.

+1200
+8400 with Frenzy (Active about 50% of the time)

Frenzy (48%) Production x7 for 154 seconds

+924

Click Frenzy (3.3%) (Makes clicks do x777 for 26 seconds--see above for more details)

+20202 seconds of production
+141414 seconds with Frenzy (active about 50% of the time)

Cookie Chain (1%) (it's a mess, described above)

+1080-10800 seconds of production...barring a failure, in which case it does basically nothing.
(x7 with Frenzy, theoretically, but there's so many failure cases like the Frenzy ending before the cookie chain does)

So...in an hour you'll get about 30 of these.

You'll get a minimum of 1k from all of them, so that's 30k.  You'll get about 8 boosted Luckys, so that's another 58k or so.  And then there's probably a Click Frenzy in there, getting...well...on average 80k

So...168k bonus overall.  This is slightly better than the Wrath cookies which were at 120k


Hybrid

So Hybrid is an interesting idea where you stop after One Mind and before Communal Brainsweep.  It means taking a hit on Grandma production.  (In my current game, base Grandma Cps is at 5.8.  Could be at 20.8).  This is roughly a 5% overall production multiplier penalty.  (Grandmas being the third most important building after Prisms and Antimater Condensers)

There's also various intangible problems with Wrinklers spawning at 1/3 the rate (clearing Easter is slower, Wrinklers take longer to spawn which is a penalty any time you need to access the contents).  But it gives access to Lucky Cookies while there are wrinklers.

It also allows Frenzy to chain into Wrath cookies which...doesn't do much because Frenzy doesn't chain with Elder Frenzy.

So...the big difference is that every Frenzy also benefits from wrinklers.  Which means every Frenzy gets an extra 5,686 cookies

So...overall it's

Frenzy (31%)
+6,610

Lucky (41%)

+1200
+8400 with Frenzy (Active about 1/3 of the time)

Ruin (10% of the time) Lose 10 minutes of production

-600 seconds of production
-4200 with Frenzy (active about 1/3 of the time)

Clot (10% of the time) Half production for 132 seconds

-414 seconds of production

Click Frenzy (2.9%) (Makes clicks do x777 for 26 seconds--see above for more details)

+20202 seconds of production
+141414 seconds with Frenzy (active about 1/3 of the time)

Elder Frenzy (2%) production x666 for 12 seconds (affects Wrinlkers)

+50074 seconds of production

Cookie Chain (2.5%) (it's a mess, described above)

+1080-10800 seconds of production...barring a failure, in which case it does basically nothing.

Ok I don't have a mental shortcut for all of these...just running these through a spreadsheet I get that an average hybrid cookie is worth about 6229.  30 of them over the course of an hour are worth 186,892.  And of course, just having Wrinklers is worth 19k per hour, so that pushes this a little over 200k.

Is it worth it?  Well...so the 5% reduction reduces this lead from 200k to more like 190k.  Still good.  But if I have maybe one hour when I can actively click, because I'm writing a long analytical forum post...followed by 23 hours when I can't click...well...519,570 from the other 23 hours, where 5% of that is 25k.  Which is to say...actually yes, still worth it, barely.

What about the common case of I'm mostly doing something else (playing an online PC game like Starcraft or Heroes of the Storm) and just tab during load times?  So...like maybe 2-4 cookie clicks per hour.  For starters, Elder Pledge not even really a consideration here, so it's Wrath Cookies vs Hybrid Cookies

So...in an hour there's the 22590 from idling with Wrinklers, and then +6229*2 = 35048.  By comparison, Wrath cookies are worth about 4000, so +4000*2 = 30590.  So a good 15-20% improvement, outweighs the 5% loss.

So...once the setup is done it's probably better in most situations?  The slower wrinkler respawn rate is pretty painful, though.

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Fuck it, let's do some FFT.

So a few years back I posted an ordering of class quality (for vanilla, not LFT), assuming you played optimally, but also assuming you didn't mess around and grind for hours and become overleveled.  LFT's iterative balancing has shown that I was wrong about my assumptions.  Like...pretty much every single Move+X ability overperformed my initial estimates and needed to get a JP nerf in LFT (or get it's competitor buffed).  Time to do a revised list.  I'm also going to be counting down from the top, because I'm sort of writing this as I go.

1. Summoner

Let's be clear, it's in between this and Wizard.  A few quick notes: Summoner SCC is easier than Wizard SCC.  Playing a game without Summoner compared to playing a game without Wizard...The no-Wizard game would have a noticeable power drop for a small section of chapter 1, and a noticeable power drop for the optimized Mathskill setup (not that said setup needs a whole lot of help) but have more power in most of the midgame.

Bottom line, Shiva/Ramuh/Ifrit are crazy, crazy good abilities.  Their MP efficiency is really good.  Their CT is crazy.  Their JP is 200.  They ignore evade.  Their AoE is good.  They are probably what you will use as your secondary for a large segment of the game.

2. Wizard

You know, Black Magic is considered """"Bad"""" but if you're playing optimally, it's probably going to be your third most-used skillset; maaaybe 4th.  Obviously Summon Magic and Math Skill are better, but before that time...It rolls in Chapter 1 before you get Summon.  Even after you get Summon you'll often use Black Magic secondary so that you have things to do after spending your Summon MP.  You might also start grinding to Mathskill or something like that before skipping into Summon, and then you'll also probably be using Black Magic.  Item has a case for taking that 3rd place spot, but there is definitely a good argument for Black Magic.

And Black Magic is the weakest part of the Wizard package.  The stats are ridiculous, the equipment is very good--basically Wizard represents roughly a 25% damage boost on whatever move you were planning on using.  Magic Attack Up is also ridiculous, and represents a 33% bonus on whatever move you were planning on using.  (Admittedly, all Support slots need to compete with the omnipresent Gained JP Up).  The common saying went that Bolt 1 on the Wizard SCC dealt about as much damage as Ramuh on the Summoner SCC.  14*4/3 = 18.66.  18.66*1.25 = 23.3.  Ramuh was still better, of course, because it ignored evade, which was often a big deal later on, and had wider AoE but still. 

The amount of power Wizard adds to basically any strategy is pretty ridiculous.

3. Calculator

CT 5 Holy only costs about 1550 JP, and it invalidates pretty much everything else at that point.  Are there arguments that Calculator should be higher than this?  Oh definitely.  But...look, Mathskill is definitely better than say, Wizards with Magic Attack Up, Summon Magic, and Autopotion, but said setup is already good enough to smash pretty much the entire game, and there is a genuine cost to going calculator; you're gonna suck for a while.  And like...yeah, CT5 Holy is amazing, but actually if you're doing CT5Holy without Wizard MA or Magic Attack Up, suddenly the damage is similar to Ramuh with wizard MA and Magic Attack Up.  (Still better, of course, thanks to infinite range, instant, no MP cost, absorption on your party, etc).  Point is, dropping either Summoner or Wizard represents a lot of lost earlygame and midgame power.  Dropping Calc represents quite a bit of lost endgame power, but Wizard+Summoner can still put together a monstrocity with similar evasion-ignoring large AoE damage.

Math Skill, granted, is one of the most nerfed skills in LFT (damage gets cut by 1/4 for instance--a lot of the utility is still there), but that's because we want variety in endgame setups and a lot of classes to be balanced with each other in the late game.  Vanilla FFT makes no attempt at such balance, though.  It's also noteworthy that Calculator as a class is heavily buffed in LFT (innate Teleport 2 and Non-Charge) so that gaining Mathskill JP isn't painful the way it is in vanilla.

4. ?

OK, OK let's think about this.

The rest of the big 7 are Chemist, Ninja, Time Mage, Squire.

Squire's Gained JP Up breaks the game to the point that we actually just gave it to every class innately.  (And obviously this isn't strictly a balance issue--even if we reduced the bonus to, say, 10% more JP instead of 50%, people would still use that in the majority of battles, because not using it makes you feel penalized.  Move+1 also has a huge gold star.  We moved it to Knight, because you get Squire JP for free from guests, which approximately doubles its cost.  And then we gave it competiton with Ignore Height at equal cost.  And then they both got bumped to 300 JP.  And then Move+1 got bumped to 400 JP because it was still disproportionately getting chosen over Ignore Height.  And Move+1 is the """""bad""""" ability from Squire when compared to Gained JP Up.

Chemist...Item is broken, in that Item with 90 JP (which you have automatically) is better than roughly half of complete mastered skillsets.  I remember my first time through the game being advised (by Excal) to make Ramza a Monk, and when I was done with that being advised (by Elfboy) to make Ramza a Samurai and...using Item over a basically mastered Punch Art.  The ability to stop death timers with 100% reliability is just important.  Phoenix Down's JP cost was increased by almost 300%, and several other abilities were added to compete with it (Ramza's Wish now revives.  Raise in Priest was almost cut in half for JP cost).  Auto Potion is also really good, as you can see from the fact that it was nerfed from 400 JP to 1000 JP.

Ninjas are Mushrooms

Time Mage...you know, honestly, Time Mages dropped a fair bit in my estimation of them.  Short Charge literally got buffed.  Teleport initially was jacked way up in price, but got buffed back to the point where it's only double its initial cost (smaller price increase than Move+1, only slightly larger price increase than Move+2, except ).  Haste is theoretically amazing, but spellcasters often don't want it because it puts them ahead of opponents in timing, and Calculators often don't want it because it messes up their CT shenanigans.  Meteor got buffed (not really a surprise, but it's certainly a not bad endgame setup when combined with Short Charge).

Hmm...will have to think about this (although I think Time Mage is probably the worst of these).

[metroid composite]

4. continued...

So...it's not Time Mage.  I don't think it's Ninja.  Ninja is an interesting alternate setup that actually uses physical attacks instead of spells (le gasp!  In vanilla FFT?)  But like...it's not essential; you can decide to never unlock Ninja on any of your characters and still break the game just as quickly and get the most powerful setups.

Let's talk about Squire vs Chemist.

Chemist is the bigger power spike initially, as literally every class uses item no matter what at first.

Then Gained JP Up takes over, and Summon generally supplants item as the secondary of choice.  There's a short window where Squire is quite a bit better due to getting Summon earlier, but then the two setups are similarly powerful for a while, cause you only need 200 JP in Summon to be similarly powerful.  So there's approximately a tie for a while, until the Squire setup picks up a big power spike (like a Teleport or Math Skill or something).  So...the Squire setup will be better for a while until eventually Math Skill kicks in for both parties, at which point yes, Math Skill with Auto Potion is slightly more powerful than Math Skill with item.

So...I feel like a game that doesn't use anything from Squire will be lower power at a larger number of points in the game than a game that doesn't use anything from Chemist.  Which means...

4. Squire

And by extension

5. Chemist

The last class with massive nerfs.  The easiest SCC...

6. Ninja

A genuinely competitive setup that takes...more training than a Summoner, but less than Math Skill.  Yeah, sure, sounds reasonable enough.  Notably, though, without Item, WTF do you use as your secondary?  Notably if you're given a choice between dropping Ninja or dropping Squire...you have Math Skill in...1550 JP, compared to...Umm...let's see here...ok, first let's make sure I remember how the 1550 was calculated.  Two 550 unlock requirements, and two 350 unlock requirements and a 200 unlock requirement, but you start with an average of 150 in each class...but you tend to overshoot requirements a little so let's pretend you start with 100 in each.  So...100+450x2+250x2+350 = 1850.  Ah, well, I was probably starting the jobs off with 150 before, but let's roll with this method.  Ok, so 1850 to get CT and 5 from Math Skill; 1900 to get Holy as well.  Ninja...100+250x2+450+100x2 = 1250.  Now, would I rather play without Ninja, or rather play without Squire...?  1250 without Gained JP Up is more like 1875, so...yeah, gimme that Squire.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Is this list still going to be based on assuming the classes already ranked higher are "banned", or is it just attempting to show each class's contributions to a hypothetical strong team?

[metroid composite]

7. ?

OK, so now it's a question of whether Time Mage is even 7th.  Like...don't get me wrong, second easiest SCC, they have a lot of good abilities, and Teleport is genuinely OP (proof: even though we buffed it back to some degree, it's still a 2x JP nerf, and part of the reason we buffed it back was we knew it was powerful, but it's also fun to use and we wanted people using it).

Well...what's the competition?

Thief brings Move+2 mostly, and I guess Secret Hunt.  It's noteworthy that we buffed Secret Hunt a lot to make it less of a painful grind.  But yeah, whatever, Teleport > Move+2.

Priest brings the best Mathskill spells; all of them.  Not just Holy, having done a spellcalc SCC run, Raise is very good (and as shown by LFT, revival skills on Mathskill are so powerful that not just Raise but also Reraise got made into a non Mathskillable move.  Multitarget revival is crazy powerful in any form). 

Outside of Mathskill...Holy's not bad--the best spell for assassination missions that aren't zodiac bosses, and perfectly fine for zodiac bosses as well.  "But you could use Demi from Time Magic for zodiacs..." yeah, you...could, if you don't mind the miss percentage; Holy will almost always deal more than 1/4 of their health, so it's probably better if you happen to have it.

Not that I want to put too much weight onto Mathskill for classes outside of Mathskill necessarily, but it does pull me towards certain spells and abilities; I'm more likely to have Holy trained than if it was non-mathskillable.

OK, so let's say you already have the first six classes, and you're looking to add a 7th that will get you the most power.  (And note that my ruling is that Mathskill without priest would have some way to access Holy still, you just wouldn't be able to cast it from White Magic).  Hmm...neither feel amazing, it's nice to have Holy pre-mathskill I guess, but not essential since most bosses get murdered by Summons just the same.  Teleport is cool I guess.

Let's say the top 6 classes are banned, and you're looking to ban a 7th...well this gets kind-of weird, because now Samurai is suddenly pretty cool...and desperately wants Teleport.  Also, Time Magic with Short Charge Meteor becomes arguably the most powerful thing you can do (and sure, Draw Out secondary, and probably Blade Grasp).

Both of these feel like they're leaning towards time mage.

7. Time Mage

Alright, so

8. ?

So I've been looking at this two different ways--one is "pick the 7 classes you will use, and now pick one more", the other is "ban the big 7 classes".  The banning method makes Samurai actually look pretty cool right now.  The picking method--meh, they take about as much setup as Mathskill for less output.  Then again, don't think too hard about the banning stuff, cause if Chemist was banned, everyone would flock to Raise on Priest, and LOL Raise.  (In LFT we trippled its competition's JP in Phoenix Down, and cut its JP in half down to 100.  Phoenix Down is still used more pretty sure).

Alright, let's look at it this way: who's left in LFT that got big Nerfs?  Priest Holy went from 600 JP to 800 JP, and a small mana increase.  Thief Move+2 went from 600 JP to 900 JP.  (And actually, might have even been higher than 900 at some point, but we got feedback that people had more fun when they had lots of movement).  That said, the 900 JP is less painful to grind because Thief has innate Two Swords in LFT, whereas Thief in vanilla was trash.

8. Priest

And I think that means that

9. Thief

I have a lot of respect for Oracle, but basically nothing in Oracle got nerfed (I think maybe a couple of statuses became non-mathskillable, but Pray Faith is still Mathskillable, and in Vanilla that was the most mathskilled Oracle spell; probably in LFT too).  I believe last time I had Mediator and Thief near each other for Invite+poaching shenanigans (specifically inviting a Uribo in Chapter 2).  And probably Mediator higher because you just need to enter that battle with Talk Skill, and worry about Poaching later if you happen to get the 33% chance of a Uribo.  And you know, that actually did get nerfed (the best you can get from the Uribo line now is Setiemson, not Chantage, and BTW Chantage was nerfed to not have always:Regen).  Everything else about poaching got buffed, though.  But let's be clear, the invite+poach thing comes up in 33% of games, assuming you even bother to bring a Mediator to that fight.  Move+2 is always good, and part of a very relevant setup.

Is this list still going to be based on assuming the classes already ranked higher are "banned", or is it just attempting to show each class's contributions to a hypothetical strong team?

I think I'll look at it from both angles a little bit, but as mentioned the "banned" thing gets messy so I'll take it with a grain of salt.  Cause yeah, like...if all three of Priest and Chemist and Calculator are banned, suddenly Monk becomes pretty important for Revive, and Revive is trash and not actually what anyone cares about from Monk.  (It's a nice-to-have extra on a Mastered Monk).

[Dark Holy Elf]

I think you're overthinking the nerf to Move+2. The good movement abilities got increased JP costs across the board, and the reason for this isn't so much that they were too good but because Laggy wanted you to consider other movement abilities besides just "buff your move" (that is, Move+X and Teleport). The best evidence of this is that the JP cost of Move+3 was actually increased, and nobody would consider that ability to be too good in vanilla (it has virtually zero non-aftergame use as far as I'm concerned).

Flipside, Thief has loads of weaknesses which LFT addressed in a big way, by literally doubling its damage output (sometimes even more; yeah I know they took a PA hit, but knives improved substantially) and giving them Quick Attack to improve the value of Steal as a secondary. Arguably no class got a bigger buff than Thief did. That speaks to them being a pretty bad class in vanilla, which they are. One of the tougher SCCs (in particular: one of the very few in which level-grinding is strongly suggested), doesn't have a good chapter 1 like knight, one of the single most unpleasant jobs to be in (low PA, low MA, bad weapons) with Move+2 about the only useful thing about the job outside some weird item acquisition utility. I've written in this space before that they deserve little credit for Chantage poaching even in a metagame which is restricted to "bad" jobs, let alone normally where you shouldn't care at all.

There is no way they are better than Monk, Geomancer, or Lancer as far as physical jobs go (Thief vs. Knight or Archer is more interesting, although intuitively I still am not favouring Thief). Nor Oracle of course.

[metroid composite]

Ok, so I'm searching through to see what else is actually left that got nerfed in LFT.

There's Attack Up in Geomancer which is now 500 JP.

There's Oracle's...MP...multiplier?  Down to 90 from 110.  (While other mages like Time Mage and Summoner got MP buffed).

There's Bard and Dancer which have Move+3 nerfed to 1500 JP (well...I guess just Bard since Dancer didn't have Move+3) from 1000 JP.  But this is a bit of a red herring, because Bards don't suck now, and also have much more lenient unlock requirements.

And then there's Invitation...which had its JP doubled, its hit rate nerfed, and its most powerful use case (early Chantages) nerfed.

10. Mediator

And yeah, they get the guns + robes thing too, which I suppose is worth mentioning for Elemental guns.

11. ?

So...the remaining classes with nerfs are pretty mild (500 JP Attack Up is counteracted by the fact that Geomancer stats are higher, and Elemental all costs 100, and Geomancer is easier to unlock--several important buffs).  Oralce had an MP nerf.  Samurai had an HP and an MP and a PA and a speed nerf, but also gained innate Two Hands and Concentrate (and a buff to their most important stat MA) oh wait, hold on: Draw Out.

Kikuichimoji in LFT: 6 range, MA*12
Kikuichimoji in FFT: 8 range, MA*16

Like...everything else about Draw Out is pretty similar overall; Koutetsu is MA*11 instead of MA*12, but adds slow, for instance--that's a fair trade probably.  But yeah, Kikuichimoji is a big nerf.  I'm also fairly sure this exists so that Draw Out as a whole actually has weaknesses, instead of being "this monster close range skillset, that is also able to hit from range 8."

11. Samurai

I think you're overthinking the nerf to Move+2. The good movement abilities got increased JP costs across the board, and the reason for this isn't so much that they were too good but because Laggy wanted you to consider other movement abilities besides just "buff your move" (that is, Move+X and Teleport). The best evidence of this is that the JP cost of Move+3 was actually increased, and nobody would consider that ability to be too good in vanilla (it has virtually zero non-aftergame use as far as I'm concerned).

Flipside, Thief has loads of weaknesses which LFT addressed in a big way, by literally doubling its damage output (sometimes even more; yeah I know they took a PA hit, but knives improved substantially) and giving them Quick Attack to improve the value of Steal as a secondary. Arguably no class got a bigger buff than Thief did. That speaks to them being a pretty bad class in vanilla, which they are. One of the tougher SCCs (in particular: one of the very few in which level-grinding is strongly suggested), doesn't have a good chapter 1 like knight, one of the single most unpleasant jobs to be in (low PA, low MA, bad weapons) with Move+2 about the only useful thing about the job outside some weird item acquisition utility. I've written in this space before that they deserve little credit for Chantage poaching even in a metagame which is restricted to "bad" jobs, let alone normally where you shouldn't care at all.

There is no way they are better than Monk, Geomancer, or Lancer as far as physical jobs go (Thief vs. Knight or Archer is more interesting, although intuitively I still am not favouring Thief). Nor Oracle of course.

To be fair, this isn't an SCC comparison.  I have Wizard like...5 places above Time Mage, for instance.  (And Squire outside of the bottom 5).

And Move+2 is good in Vanilla FFT, because it fits perfectly into the Ninja plan, costing...approximately the cost of unlocking Ninja; how convenient.  You will basically always use move+2 on Ninja.  Your support might vary (Concentrate, Attack Up, Martial Arts, all good stuff).  Your reaction ought to be Auto Potion if you're not too lazy to get it.  And Move+2 does a lot for Ninja--among other things it buffs Throw, but it also just lets you get in range.  (And you know, high speed + Item is also a really good combo, and also benefits a lot from movement buffing).

(Actually quick correction: Move+2 is 520 JP in vanilla, not 600 as I claimed above, so it's a bigger JP nerf than I thought.  Steal Weapon is 600 LOLOLOL).

Yes, you will be weak while you're a Thief on the road to unlocking Ninja, but the same applies to Calculators.  The way you handle this is by having party members who are strong.  (And for what it's worth, you'll be weak when you're a Monk on the road to unlocking Ninja too, since you won't have any skills).  Basically the entire road to Ninja you're going to be fairly Trashy while your party members are going to be dropping Summons.  What this means is that...while Ninja is a fine and acceptable setup, you'll never do a party full of 5 Ninjas; you'll do like...One Ninja, maybe two.

As for Geomancer and Monk, they are both classes that got mild buffs in several areas (and a mild nerf to Attack Up).  Oracle...maybe; I want to say last time I did this I probably had Oracle above Priest.  Oracle has a lot of stuff it can do that's...kinda balanced, and certainly useful, but not much that's really gamebreaking (other than Silence Song in a few select fights).

[metroid composite]

Speaking of which...

12. Oracle

They got a mild MP nerf...not entirely sure why, and got a few spells essentially added to their spell list.  (Charm Song is new.  Technically Zombie is not new, but for practical purposes it might as well be--hit rate more than doubled, JP cost cut in half, CT lowered, AoE now).  But for the most part Oracles were not changed.  None of their key spells had their JP cost jacked up (a few JP costs were lowered).

13. ?

Ok, so here's where it gets kind-of interesting.  We're literally out of magic jobs (including Samurai) so it's going to be a job on the physical side of the tree, and probably something that has some level of synergy with Ninja.

Monk provides Martial Arts, Archer provides Concentrate, Geomancer provides Attack Up.  Monk might also provide Counter, and Punch Art Ninja is a viable alternative to Item Ninja, so there's that as an option.  Equip Sword Ninja is also hypothetically competitive damage wise with these options, but this would involve getting 400 Knight JP.

Hmm...what other utility do these add...?

Geomancer is a carrier, and if LFT has taught me anything it's that move is more valuable than I thought, so 4 move carrier is relevant.  To be fair though, LFT nerfed Wizard by 7%, and buffed Geomancer by 10%-15%.  Still though, Geo Agrias and Geo with Draw Out are real.

Knight sometimes provides Weapon Guard to mages from spillover JP.

Archer sometimes provides Charge to Chemist (or Ninja in an assassination mission).

Equip Sword for Knight is relevant for special classes.  Knight Swords also have some niche use (Mathskill Knight with Excalibur is a genuine competitor for Wizard if none of your special characters want the Excalibur).

Attack Up is super relevant for most of the special characters (Agrias, Orlandu).

Lancers are Mushrooms.

I think in the end the thing I'm looking at is the last remaining ability to get nerfed is Attack Up.  (That, and Geos still being a fairly relevant carrier despite Ninja and Wizard stealing a lot of thunder).

13. Geomancer

So...

14. Monk

Well...Martial Arts ninja is real, and actually Martial Arts Ninja in particular did get nerfed in LFT by the drop in Ninja PA.  Then again, Concentrate Ninja is actually usually thought of as the go-to over Martial Arts I believe?  It buffs both Throw and attacks, and if you're going into Melee range, you want to be 100% certain that the enemy is going to be dead.  But Archers do very little outside of that (a little bit of Charge on Chemists, that's about it).  If we look at the amount of buffs these classes got...Monks got 4 innate move, which is cool, and pretty much all their abilities cost less JP now.  But Archers...yeah, pretty much everything about the class was buffed.  Monk can be more than just Martial Arts/Counter and ditch the class in Vanilla.  Archer...nah.

15. Knight

So...the choice here is between Archer and Knight I think.  Archer provides Concentrate to Ninjas, and sometimes a couple charge abilities to Chemist.  Knight often gives Mages Weapon Guard for free from spillover, have Equip Sword which some characters like Agrias want, are a decent endgame carrier with Excalibur for Agrias or a generic with Mathskill (not relevant every playthrough).  Notably Weapon Guard was arguably nerfed, by being moved to Oracle where it's not the only ability you care about in the entire class.

16. Archer

Concentrate!

[metroid composite]

17. ?

So...this is worth thinking about I think.  The remaining three classes are Lancer, Dancer, and Bard.  (OK, there's four remaining classes, but spoiler alert, last place is not up for debate).

Lancer is actually pretty a strong SCC for the first few chapters, it just doesn't really play nice with other setups.  (Although...Ninja with mastered Jump is pretty good.  The weapons you need to use for that are dubious, though--either Equip Spear which negates Two Hands, or a Flail).

Bard...well Bard/Dancer both have this thing where they're actually quite good for levelling up calculators, since songs and dances go every 6 clockticks regardless of the caster's speed.  Bard is probably better for this because it's on the same side of the job tree as Calculator.  Also, Bard Ramza is pretty legit.  And...if you have a party full of spellcasters (which you should because Summon OP) Angel Song actually restores a ton of MP (60-90 every round to your entire party from infinite range; go ahead and spam Meteor every turn).  The unlocks aren't bad at all (Ramza has to spend some time in Summoner?  Oh noes.  He needs to be a Mediator for a bit?  That hurts a bit more, but you probably want a Mediator for at least one fight in Chapter 2, might as well be Ramza).

I feel like this is pointing at Bard.

17. Bard

Which means that next up...

18. Lancer

This is between Lancer and Dancer.  So...what do I think is more implausible...going to Lancer first, staying in the class while it is pretty good in Chapter 2/3, and then taking Jump to Ninja (or Samurai just as Jump is a good training secondary for Samurai--gives them a range move).  Or...unlocking Dancer so that you can have Dance as an overall good skillset and training secondary (pretty good training secondary for both Samurai and Calc--gives Samurai something to do while at range.  They'd be kinda OP if they had some long range move...).  Hmm...I feel like it's a massive detour for Calc.  I think if you have a Samurai, it's probably going to be Ramza, who can't dance.  And you're more likely to have a Ninja anyway.

19. Dancer

Dancers are a huge pet class of mine, I love using them, but yeah, the time they take to unlock makes them very not min-max (more unlock requirements than bards in vanilla!  Actually...more than Calcs in vanilla!  Granted, they're useful immediately after unlocking, unlike calcs).  Not much really needed to be changed about them in LFT, other than lowering their unlock requirements by about 700 JP, and nerfing Math Skill pretty hard, but these are fairly important changes.

(Granted, various things about them did get buffed in LFT just because; innate Attack Up, and carpets giving PA).

20. Mime

Mimes are so hillariously bad.  Oh my god.

So like...know how their unlock requirements in LFT are Squire JL4 Chemist JL4?  In FFT they're...Squire JL8, Chemist JL8, Lancer JL4, Geomancer JL4, Summoner JL4, Mediator JL4.  So........that's 2000+2000+100x6+250x2+450x4 = 5900.  Like...for all practical purposes they don't exist.

And if you do unlock them they...provide no abilities you can stick on other classes, and having a Mime is not useful because their stats don't really compensate for their lack of equipment (they have similar stats to no-equipment Monks).  Oh, and they can't use secondaries or R/S/M abilities, and 5900 JP into the game you probably have some pretty good abilities.

[metroid composite]

OK, so post list adjustment thought--maybe Samurai should be higher.  I had forgotten how much Kikuichimoji got nerfed in LFT.  (It's...probably a bigger nerf than Holy, Move+2, Invitation, or Teleport got).  Granted, it's locked into being a late Chapter 4 thing only because you can't buy them till Bethla, and in Vanilla, anything super lategame competed with Math Skill, so there's that.

[metroid composite]

Actually, another thought:

I hadn't really made up my mind what I was doing with this list at first (doing stuff like "ban the top x classes" which turns out to not work very well), but towards the end of the list I had settled significantly on "how nerfed or buffed is it in LFT?  And how nerfed or buffed is the competition in LFT?"

Which brings me to Calculator: should it be #1?  (It's definitely the most-nerfed).

[Dark Holy Elf]

If you want to focus exclusively on the very best setups then yes Move+2 is more likely to be on a high-end setup than Monk/Geomancer/Lancer stuff. If you want to rate classes only by the very best thing they offer then Thief at #9 is fine. But if you want to take into account the whole picture more, and I am strongly inclined to, then Thief is a bad FFT job. I don't really want to fall back on arguing ad populum here but it is tempting to point out that Thief got bad scores across the board when we rated FFT generics in the in-game use thread, so if you're using criteria that somehow gets them as high as ninth you should clearly state what those criteria are and understand that they aren't the norm.


Mediator strikes me as somewhat too high (again you continue to greatly overrate the C3 Chantage strategy IMO) but they're close enough to a bunch of other jobs you have just below them that I can see the argument. The main one I'd contest them above is Oracle. I think Life Drain is the boss-killer and that strikes me as more important than Invitation. I know Lich/Demi replace it, but there's an analog there of Steal to Invitation. We can debate the specifics here but I feel that Oracle's "rest of the package" (Sleep, Silence, Defence Up, Move-MP Up) is considerably better than Mediator's (Equip Gun, faith modifying, Gun + robe).


As time goes on I definitely increasingly feel that Samurai is kinda overrated.

MA Up Kiku = ~21 power
MA Up Muramasa = ~24 power, but only range 2
Short Charge Bahamut, 70/60 Faith = ~19 power, 5 CT, huge AoE
Short Charge Cyclops, 70/60 Faith = ~21 power, 5 CT, hits more targets than Draw Out
Utility stuff you can debate, Moogle/Fairy/Golem vs. Murasame/Kiyomori, though my gut feeling is Lich tilts this towards Summon as well.
And if 9-10 CT is viable, or faith raising is something you feel up to doing, or you're fighting a boss who always has high Faith Summon gets even better.

Draw Out doesn't really outperform Summon even at endgame. (Aftergame, it pushes way ahead as charge times become a bigger deal and potentially you get the last two katanas.) This is an issue because at every earlier point this is kind of a curbstomp; Samurai is annoying to access and a weak job to be in. I think we tend to overrate endgame performers a bit. There's a very real argument that Samurai is worse than the likes of Knight, who also have a point in the game where they're pretty good if still inferior to the top classes (C1) but unlike Samurai you can drop them in the part of the game where they're bad. I don't think I buy this argument myself, but it's there, and the more seriously you take Math Skill crushing the game from C2 on the better this argument looks.

[metroid composite]

There's a very real argument that Samurai is worse than the likes of Knight, who also have a point in the game where they're pretty good if still inferior to the top classes (C1) but unlike Samurai you can drop them in the part of the game where they're bad. I don't think I buy this argument myself, but it's there, and the more seriously you take Math Skill crushing the game from C2 on the better this argument looks.

Oh don't get me wrong, last time I made this list, I'm pretty sure I did use the "obsoleted by Mathskill" argument, and jammed Samurai in at something like 18th place.  Like...taking a hard line on that argument is perfectly viable, and I've gone that route before.  I'm thinking I want to take a slightly different approach here.

so if you're using criteria that somehow gets them as high as ninth you should clearly state what those criteria are and understand that they aren't the norm.

Oh for sure, I'm just still working out exactly what I want those criteria to be this time.

I think Life Drain is the boss-killer and that strikes me as more important than Invitation. I know Lich/Demi replace it, but there's an analog there of Steal to Invitation. We can debate the specifics here but I feel that Oracle's "rest of the package" (Sleep, Silence, Defence Up, Move-MP Up) is considerably better than Mediator's (Equip Gun, faith modifying, Gun + robe).

Ehh...

Life Drain is 350 JP, Demi is 250 JP

Life Drain is 160+MA to hit, Demi is 190+MA to hit

Life Drain has range 4, Demi can hit from range 5 (thanks to AoE).

Life Drain is not math skillable, Demi is Math skillable (which doesn't matter too much, but might tip the balance in terms of which one you learn).


Like...Life Drain's advantages are that it ignores evade (good property, but not relevant on Zodiac monsters) and that it has 2 CTR instead of 6 (actually this is relevant, especially if the battle lasts for more than one round) and that it heals (super useful in the SCC, and in solo challenges, but not a big deal for a team nuking a boss), and that it has a lower MP cost (not too relevant in a nuke-assassination fight, good in a battle of attrition).

I mean, it's functional for sure, but in terms of "some inexpensive ability that can blitz down this Zodiac boss" Demi costs less JP, hits more often from longer range, and stays relevant because it's mathskillable.

Notable exceptions for Solo challenges, of course, where I've used setups like "Ubersquire with Yin Yang Magic secondary" even though Mathskill was an option.  But solo challenges tend to be more of a "grind down this boss" and less of a "blitz down this boss".

Draw Out doesn't really outperform Summon even at endgame.

Well...yeah.  Like...when the FFT board rated skillsets, I believe it went something like...

1. Mathskill
2. Summon Magic
3. Time Magic
4. Draw Out

With All Swordskill somewhere in the middle of these (between Summon and Time maybe?)  And the board wasn't rating with JP costs in mind, they were just rating skillsets.

And yeah, there's an argument to be made of "it's 4th and shows up after Mathskill, you'll never use it."  And...granted, yes, you have to operate under the assumption that someone is doing a non-Mathskill playthrough for this kind of setup to make any sense.  But like...Time Mage or Summoner with Draw Out secondary is pretty good.  You have a mixture of abilities that cost MP and have charge time, and abilities that don't cost MP or have charge time, and that's actually a really strong mix (and makes a case for being a better endgame setup than Wizard with Summon).

And the rest of the just raw mastered skillsets according to the FFT board was something like...

5th: Yin-Yang
6th: White
7th: Jump
8th: Dance
9th: Punch Art
10th: Item
11th: Black Magic
12th: Sing
13th-19th: Not much to write home about in most fights--some niche uses of course (Basic Skill, Steal, Charge, Talk Skill, Elemental, Throw, Break).
20th: "..."

Maybe not in that order; I only remember the top 4 that the board voted on.  And this sort-of demonstrates the folly of ignoring JP costs and assuming mastered jobs, because lol Item and Black Magic are pretty good actually.  But anyway.

The further down you get on this list, and the less they synergize with good setups, the more dubious these become as "ultimate lategame setups".  Yin-Yang and Item have earlygame use--they do fine.  White gets a bit of a free ride from Math Skill, because you probably want Raise and Holy at some point anyway.  But Jump/Dance/Punch Art have a bit of "so...what class are you putting this on and why?"  Probably Ninja for some of them, but Ninja often just wants Item and attack command, and isn't too worried about investing 2000 JP into a physical skillset.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Demi's a bit better than I thought it was (was thinking 7 CT and 160 hit for some reason). Clearly my memory of FFT is getting rusty, must replay it. That does knock Oracle down a little in my mind. Probably not below Mediator to me but into that debatable zone with Monk and Geomancer, sure.


Jump is, once you get it going (which does take a lot of JP), deals high damage (in ITE fashion which matters a fair deal for abilities with charge times) from range 8, and can be used to great effect by either characters with high HP or high speed as needed. It's also a great skillset for durability, since not only can you use it with high-HP jobs, but it can be used to avoid spells which enemies lock onto you. It's obviously rendered more or less completely obsolete by Math Skill, but otherwise carves out a niche well enough.

Punch Art's an easy way to raise the ranged damage of your Ninja (or other physical jobs, for all that only a few with high PA can use it well), and you get some limited multitarget, ITE (while still having Martial Arts instead of Concentrate) and you get some crappy revival and healing along with the ride. Is Ninja + Punch Art worse than Ninja + Item? Possible, but that's debatable.

Obviously neither is great, but they carve out their niches somewhat. Draw Out doesn't feel that far from them. It's better than they are generally, but with higher costs (gil, JP if you want to have more than a very minimal set), and Samurai itself is worse and gained later.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I guess that Samurai and Lancer are too far apart? I dunno. To be honest this thought was mostly a response to your comment thinking that maybe you were underrating Samurai, when I tend to think the opposite is closer to true these days. (I say all this as someone who still enjoys the class quite a bit and will make use of it pretty often.)

[metroid composite]

Punch Art's an easy way to raise the ranged damage of your Ninja (or other physical jobs, for all that only a few with high PA can use it well), and you get some limited multitarget, ITE (while still having Martial Arts instead of Concentrate) and you get some crappy revival and healing along with the ride. Is Ninja + Punch Art worse than Ninja + Item? Possible, but that's debatable.

I would certainly argue that Ninja+mastered Punch Art is better than Ninja+mastered Item.  It's mostly the JP cost of Punch Art holding it back.  Well...that and the whole "ideal play probably doesn't involve more than 1-2 Ninjas".  And the whole "you can't use this job while in Summoner/Time Mage/Wizard".  But in that particular scenario, if you have it mastered or close enough, yeah, it's probably better.


But regardless, I certainly think I talked myself into moving Oracle up, when I was like "so Draw Out is like the 4th best skillset when mastered, and Yin Yang Magic is the 5th best skillset when mastered, and Yin Yang also has good utility early on."  (YYM, incidentally, is a viable Ninja secondary if you get decent spillover JP and are using high faith; several low JP low CT low MP spells).

Incidentally, I'm starting to think about this "Punch Art gives Ninja range"  Ninja should already have range 6-7 through Move+2.  Maybe it's more ranged damage?  Hmm...ok, let's see, level 30 male Ninja...speed 9, PA 9, throwing a Morning Star can be 160 damage pretty easy using any speed buffing.  Earth Slash...well if you have Twist Headband Power Sleeve it's...114 damage.  With Bracer as well it's 192.  So....actually kind-of not really for adding to the ranged damage; it makes the ranged damage not cost money, and sets up possible AoE, and ignores evade (ignoring evade you can get for Throw thorugh Concentrate if you wanted).

Now, Jump, yes, Jump adds ranged damage.  Morning Star + triple PA items is 256 damage.  Can do more than that with Equip Spear.  Can safely equip a Thief Hat without the damage dropping much.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I'd say going from 160 to 192 and simultaneously ditching the gil cost is a pretty big upgrade myself (the non-bracer numbers aren't even worth mentioning, if we want the accessory slot for defence then yeah we aren't using the ninja for pure offence any more anyway). And yeah, there's a possibility to hit two or more enemies. And Wave Fist does even more when your quarry is in range 2-3, though of course no ITE then. It's a fairly significant upgrade to your practical offence. Now, is it worth the JP cost? Very possibly not, but it's at least an option to consider.

[Grefter]

Am I safe in reading the cliff notes of this as

what class should Ramza be?

Monk

Samurai!

Hmmmmm

You should reaaaaaaaally be thinking about Samurai.