Musing on FF5 job balance

[Dark Holy Elf]

So after years of doing fiestas I wanted to try an in-depth look at this. What I'm going to do is take a look at how every job does, SCC-style, against every required boss. Why SCC? While cross-classing is interesting, it makes thing more difficult to rate, and hey some fiesta modes (earlygame with anything but FF1-style, much of the game with Upgrade) resembles an SCC. Why required bosses? Because they're the only things you have to fight. Anything else can be avoided either by luck or choice, by escaping or just not doing them. At first you might think "but this will underrate status-using jobs" but it's FF5 so it probably won't. Maybe Bard some, we'll see. I may try to incorporate randoms at some later point, but bosses give me enough to chew for now.

Some ground rules for ranking:
-Beating a boss more easily and more reliably matters. Obviously, this rewards simple strategies which kill the boss quickly. It also means that if one job has to count HP carefully and one doesn't, that matters.
-Being able to beat a boss at a lower level matters, to some extent. I'm not assuming a LLG here, but I am going to try to consider a few levels on each side of what I consider "normal" (see Tonfa's boss stat topic here for a rough gauge of normalcy and a good reference in general).
-Beating a boss while consuming fewer resources matters (in particular: phoenix downs, ethers, elixirs, rare mix ingredients, rod breaking).
-The investment needed to beat this boss matters, though less than the above. This is the price of buying any needed equipment and spells. It's usually not too big a deal; I will consider it more highly if this boss is the only reason to make that investment, or if the investment is very expensive (e.g. world 1 flame rings). This also includes things like time spent gathering blue spells.

I am not putting a heavy emphasis on beating things quickly for speed’s sake, except insofar as faster wins are frequently safer and easier. This is not a speedrun analysis.

Weighting all this isn't an exact science. Anyway, on with the show. I expect (and encourage!) different takes on rankings as such.


Karlabos

Karlabos can paralyze, inflict HP-1 with Tailscrew, or hit for weaksauce damage. Potions let someone survive a hit after a poke so there's no real danger of losing.

Black Mage can reliably two-round, and sometimes even one-round. Monk will two- or three-round, depending on luck. Knight is probably more of a four-round. Thief is worse still, the Dagger-user is similar to Knight but the Knife users will kinda suck, so probably 5-6 turns. Blue Mage either one-rounds with Goblin Punch if they're Level 5, or has sub-Knight damage with Aero... but they also have Vampire which fully heals its user and does damage. Hard to say.

White Mage has hideous damage, probably kills in 9 or 10 turns of solid attacking, yuck. But on the other hand, unlike Knight/Thief, they won't likely have to use any potions, because Cure should last long enough to heal up anyone hit by Tailscrew (or who falls to low enough HP to need it anyway).

1. Black Mage
2. Monk
3. Blue Mage
4. White Mage
5. Knight
6. Thief

There's room to quibble here. You could argue Blue Mage lower because they're the only one who needs any out-of-the-way effort against this easy foe (though not below Thief, since magicless Blue Mage is comparable to them at worst), or quibble the relative costs of the weapons/spells they need to function against this boss. (This could push Monk up slightly.) But this feels right.


Siren

Siren can actually win with her damage occasionally. She shifts between a physical-weak form and a magic-weak form after taking three actions in each, while being highly resistant to the other. Everyone can damage the magic-weak form with potions since it's undead, but they're not great offence or anything. She starts in the physical-weak form which matters!

Monk can punch her in the face and will usually kill her before she transforms (unless she uses Haste + Protect). If they let her transform then hopefully they can finish her off with a few potions, but they'd really rather not. Actually, they can probably use Focus to outrace Protect, even.

Knight probably won't be so lucky. Still, at worst, they can spam Guard against her undead form, since it's all physical. Thief, meanwhile, just has to kinda suck. Their offence will be VERY bad if they didn't get some rare-drop daggers from skeletons; if they got three, they're actually about knight-level now!

Blue Mage hits both defences well (Goblin Punch, Aero) and can hang in the back row and have Vampire against form 1. They're fine. Again, their only downside is whatever you dock them for needing these spells.

Black Mage kinda sits and stares blankly at the first form, but it shouldn't kill them (sleep is somewhat annoying, but they can poke each other to heal it). Once the undead form appears they can blow it up with fire from the back row in two rounds. There's a chance they may have to use a potion I guess.

White Mage is similar to Black Mage except their Cure offence is way lower than Black Mage's Fire. They can Cure each other at least! They also have a Flail so one of them can kiinda damage form 1 but not really.

1. Monk
2. Black Mage
3. White Mage
4. Blue Mage
5. Knight
6. Thief

Not really certain here either. Only Knight/Thief are in any danger of losing and it's still not great, and nobody should really spend too many resources. I swapped White/Blue from Karlabos because white's offence is somewhat better here, but that's one that could go either way.


Magissa and Forza

Magissa uses L1 spells on odd-numbered turns, not very strong. On even-numbered turns, her damage is better, including a 1/3 risk of Drain which can potentially OHKO and also heals her a bunch. When below 46% HP, she'll use a turn to summon Forza, placing herself in the back row; Forza hits for 2HKO damage to the front row and is a little bulkier than the frail Magissa. It's possible to bypass this limit summon.

One can't really do better than Monk here. They use Focus and kill Magissa before her second turn, the end.

Knights can dodge the summon if they're crafty about their damage, but it's easy to accidentally hit her into the limit turn 1 then have trouble finishing her off before her next turn which could be drain. Guard/Cover combo annihilates Forza once they have Magissa down, though.

Thief... poor Thief, they're bad here. Gonna be seeing that limit, Drain is scary, Forza is scary since they want to be in the front row for their damage... last again.

White Mage has a bunch of cool tricks here, but the damage is wretched (like 30HKO Forza with their one Flail). Still, they can kinda lock down Magissa with Silence and Protect + back row mostly deals with Forza. That said, this fight has more potential to go south for them than the previous, since Silence doesn't stop Magissa's Aero, and if she breaks out of it at a bad time Drain could OHKO.

Blue Mage and Black Mage both can break a frost rod to instantly end this fight if they deem it an adequate threat. (Said rod is semi-hidden, reasonably valuable, and it's the only one they get for this + the next boss, so score this as you will.) Still, Black Mage is pretty good here anyway because they can put Forza to sleep. Magissa's Drain is a concern for sure but honestly their damage to Magissa is good enough they may well not see it. Blue Mage is the same, 4x Aero should first knock her into the limit then kill her, and they can recover with Vampire from there, or use Flash if they got it (requires using an ether). Feels like less of a total lockdown than sleep, though.

1. Monk
2. Black Mage
3. Blue Mage
4. Knight
5. White Mage
6. Thief


Garula

Above 2/3 HP he's a wuss. Below, he can counter every hit twice with physicals, some of which add Sap.

Blue Mage can turn him into a frog, lol. Yes, he can change himself back. No, this isn't saving him from four people who can spam it right back in his face. They can also blind him. Or break that frost rod if they really want.

Black Mage can break that frost rod as well and probably want to. Otherwise, they'll trigger a bunch of counters. At least they're in the back row? Might want to just cast Blizzard with that one Frost Rod. On average they'll probably have to use a few potions to be safe.

Knight can totally shut Garula down. Equipping the max def possible at this point (requires King Tycoon's helmet) will null his damage. So will Guard spam while covering at least one low-HP ally. Sap can still go through this so there might be one or two potions needed but it's pretty safe.

White Mage hangs out in the back row with Protect making the counters pretty weak and only attacks with the Flail. Slow, but works and requires no resources beyond the relatively inexpensive spells.

Monk faces a slight problem here: dual attacks (including their punches) trigger two counters. So, four counters, here. On a front row class. Uh oh! Good news, though, they have Counter, and counters don't trigger counters. It takes some time since counter is 50% but it's pretty safe, they probably won't need to heal. Especially since they Focus can finish by taking off about the last quarter of his HP. Heck, they can probably use that to withstand the counters and win, it's just riskier.

Thief as always has the worst hand here, even if they snag one or more Mithril Knife steals from this dungeon. Front row weapons, need to trigger lots of counters, need to burn lots of potions.

1. Blue Mage
2. Black Mage
3. Monk
4. White Mage
5. Knight
6. Thief


Jobs by average rank, so far:
1t. Black Mage 1.75
1t. Monk 1.75
3. Blue Mage 2.75
4. White Mage 4
5. Knight 4.5
6. Thief 6

Looking at this, my first thought based on personal experience is that Knight and WM probably should swap, which suggests that maybe I should reward speed more. Some of this is just how much easier a time Knight has with randoms at this point, and that does matter because it allows them to gain exp/gil far more easily. I may revisit this ranking system. Am I rewarding WM's safety too much? The rest of the order intuitively looks right to me, as someone who has done every single one of these "SCCs".

[Dark Holy Elf]

Liquid Flame

A lot of things have changed. We now have eleven job options, and every job has gained new equipment/spells since Garula. Also Liquid Flame is far scarier than any previous boss for pretty much every team.

He's a weirdo. The short version is that he counters constantly based on his form, and two of those counters (a nasty ST Fira, and MT 4HKO Blaze) are bad in different ways. His starting form can use Blaze on his own turns, another is harmless aside from healing itself, another has paralysis and some weak damage. Should be noted that the counter-Fira form is immune to all elements and gravity, while the others are weak to ice. For the first time, potions really aren't going to save you here. You can burn a LOT during his trips to his own healing form (after running it out of MP), if you want.


Mages:

Breaking two frost rods here will work though there's a 50% chance he goes into an ice-immnue form in the middle, and then likely KOs someone. Still, aside from lost ABP this won't end the world as there's a recovery point right after, so the five jobs which can break rods all look good. That does eat 1500 gil so other options still matter.

Black Mage Blizzara will kill in four hits probably, which means up to three appearances of the hand form (average 1.5), and an average of 1.5 Blaze counters as well. The slightly weaker Shiva might be 5 hits (and also has the negative of requiring a sidequest). Red Mage Blizzara is somewhere in the middle, but Red Mage is clearly better because they can use Cura to heal up from Blaze and Raise to recover from Fira. In fact they're almost certainly top for that.

Blue Mage is weirdly underwhelming here if they aren't breaking rods. One thing they have going for them is that you can have the most injured one try to Vampire up to survive anything, but they really want to be high-enough level to not be OHKOed by Fira, and since only one of them can Vampire at a time, Blaze into hand form is bad. Expect to use Phoenix Downs.

White Mage offence is ugu, but they have Cura for safety, and hey Liquid Flame will only OHKO them three times. But their offence is terrible and Blazes could seriously wear down their healing supply, they can expect to see it about 20-25 times. Their MP supply, supplemented by Heal Staff, could be tested but should be okayish, may need to burn an elixir or phoenix down.

Time Mage has gravity! Pretty much means they save an Ice Rod if they go that route. Or they can use Haste and Regen and Healing Staff but Fira counters are still bad. If they aren't willing to break a rod they lack a good way to finish and will likely need about 6 hits (Gravity then a finishing frost rod physical), plus the extra ones to get past the hand form. Notably even this is debatable with Summoner/Black Mage because of staff access.


Fighters:

Unlike mages they usually aren't OHKOed by Fira (maybe Thief). On the other hand they can't heal and their offence is worse and they get worn down. Liquid Flame averages around 17% evade which isn't accounted for in the figures below, since it hurts them all equally.

Mystic Knight, after buffing, kills in around 5-6 hits but also has to get rid of the ice immune form with weaker pokes. So about 7 hits on average.

Knight kills in about 7 or 14 hits, depending on if they have Two-Handed yet. (I generally don't, but it could go either way.) They're slower than MK anyway.

Monk kills in 12 attacks or so. Focus halves that, so 6! This makes them slower but each hit resets Liquid Flame's ATB so slowness isn't as big a deal as it could be, keeping down the counters is what matters. They can also kill the hand form with counters, which is great. Potions can keep up with that if necessary. They're... actually probably better than MK here despite no ice damage, surprising, and compare pretty well to some of the mages.

Thief and Berserker are horrible, get used to this. Berserker will usually lose at reasonable levels, since they need 10-11 hits (and miss a bunch), which is a decent chance of drawing 4 Blazes = death for sure. (And they can't stagger out their attacks so there's a far greater chance of Blaze on Liquid Flame's own turns.) Their choices are to reset a bunch or grind. Thief is better because they can heal but on the other hand they need like 20 hits from their one Moonring Blade, which is grotesque. The only good news? They can steal Hi-Potions from Poltergeists in this very dungeon. They will need them.


1. Red Mage
2. Time Mage
3. Black Mage
4. Summoner
5. Monk
6. Blue Mage
7. White Mage
8. Mystic Knight
9. Knight
10. Thief
11. Berserker


Will Red Mage continue to reign at the top? Will Thief continue to be mediocre? Will Berserker be the worst job for every single boss?

The answers are: No, yes, and "no, but in many ways the truth is worse".

[hinode]

So uh, how much are we going to penalize White Mage for needing to overlevel like hell for Byblos? Or even more for Atomos? <_<

[Dark Holy Elf]

At the moment I'm not yet worried about about an overall score, but yeah they will be ranked appropriately for those fights.

[Yakumo]

Interesting.  I'll look at this in more depth later but as a kneejerk I'm having trouble parsing exactly how much you are or aren't punishing blue mages for needing to get their magic.  The first couple fights it feels like you're hitting them kinda hard for it, but two of those early spells are useful for the entire game.  On the other hand, you put them at #1 for Garula ahead of Knight on the basis of Frog Song, which I never felt was as useful overall as Goblin Punch or Vampire so I'd hit them harder for having to go out of the way for it.  Maybe I'm just not quite parsing how you're weighting things, I really should have been asleep hours ago.  <_< 

[Dark Holy Elf]

They can also OHKO Garula with a Frost Rod, and even the possibility of getting Pond's Chorus should put them ahead of the other class that can do so. That said, looking back I'm not sure how happy I am with the Garula rankings. It's a weird balance between very different strategies. Knight probably should be higher, potions are dirt cheap and "may have to use a potion or two, and will have to buy at least one Iron Armor" isn't really much of a negative.

EDIT: Actually did some research on Sap. I'd assumed it was less pathetic early in the game. (It is... relatively!) It does about 55 damage over a little under 2 rounds before wearing off. Uh yeah that doesn't threaten invinciknight at all, seeing as they'll only trigger it a couple times on average. So that makes their strategy even safer and easy to pull off and I'll probably push them up to #1.

I actually feel I generally haven't been hitting them too hard for blue magic accession, I've been trying to mostly just use it as a tiebreak. Against Karlabos and Siren, the jobs above them also have fast, reliable wins, after all (and in many cases outright outperform them).

[DjinnAndTonic]

Well, in fairness to the Blue Mage thing, if you're doing a Blue Mage SCC or even just get Blue Mage as one of your 4 Jobs for Fiesta, you're likely getting all relevant Blue Magic ASAP anyway. It doesn't seem like that much of a drawback except in a speed run?

[Grefter]

Also FFV outside like early Flash, White Wind and Big Guard you don't have to go so far out your way to learn stuff much.  Like Frog Song there is literally just let a frog in the dungeon with Garula live a few turns by itself?

[Dark Holy Elf]

That's right, yeah. There are a few other kinda annoying ones if you insist on getting them at the earliest possible time (Death Claw from a time limit optional mini-boss, Off-Guard/1000 Needles in W1 both need Control, L3 Flare from either of its W2 sources is annoying).

Blue spells which need Control/Confuse will be a bridge I'll have to cross in these analyses when I get there.

[Grefter]

Oh yeah as a thought I had that you probably already have in mind but I want to brain dump anyway.

I think the SCC format focus is giving pretty solid results so far, but I think the more you progress the more it is going to mess with how group dynamics work in 4JF comparatively.  I think it only really impacts White Mage (of the top of my head?) because of how one dimensional it is, but that support based skill set is one that is really hurt by SCC where in 4JF it mostly signals cruise control. Everything else I think gets off relatively cleanly off the top of my head?  Like even Time Mage as the other super support style Mage has enough breadth that it isn't toooo hurt by being over centralised like SCC focus gives it.

In solution though yeah it's painful and garbagey like pre Water Crystal 4JF shows.

Edit - On reflection I guess Berserker is getting a bit more hyper focused than they are in a 4JF but that is just because more Berserkers is even more garbage than just one is.

[hinode]

I don't have any experience with 4JF but a lot with SCCs, and there are a couple of spots where a rigid adherence to SCC can make a boss's difficulty unrecognizable compared to normal. Omniscient in Fork Tower would be a prime example (though I just remembered that's optional), or Byblos/Atomos for White Mage. Or Berserker for Sand Worm.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Ifrit

<Bartz "Wily" Klauser> You know how, every time we hit Liquid Flame, he counters with something obnoxious and sometimes starts nulling elements? What if that didn't happen?

Seriously, that's Ifrit in a nutshell. Same key attacks, no counters or tricks, smash him with ice and he dies. Of course those attacks can still wear down a team which can't exploit his weaknesses.


Frost Rods are still great, a 2HKO which he can't stop. But they still cost 1500 gil. Black Mage doesn't care, a round of Blizzaras and he's toast. Summoner Shiva may well be strong enough to pull this off too, though it will need Frost Rods on everyone and the Shiva sidequest. Same with Red Mage; again, needs more Frost Rods than black but should still work. (They also might die to Fira... but have Raise.)

Time Mage can't use Gravity, so their options outside breaking a Frost Rod is limited. Haste/Slow both work very well here, and even Stop can buy some time though it wears off quickly, and Healing Staff can turtle through most of what he does, but isn't as safe as it could be.

White Mage is slow and grindy. They'll want enough HP to survive Fira, but assuming they have it, they're in good shape. Cura after each Blaze, Heal Staff smack after each Fira (or ST Cura if the person with said staff gets paralysed), will probably take 35 rounds or so but they have the resources for that! Or they can confuse him and wait until he runs out of MP healing himself with fire spells. Choose your poison, but at least you win.

Blue Mage finally has their own -ra spell after being hung out to dry against Liquid Flame, as well as Aqua Breath. Three rounds should probably suffice if they aren't breaking frost rods. Vampire lets them recover as always, Ifrit's MEvasion means it's not perfectly reliable but whatever.

Mystic Knights are... decent here, but not mage good. They can blitz him down by using Blizzara Spellblade but his 20% evasion puts the reliable 2-round out of reach, and their healing is bad if it comes to that, still. They'll win, but some people could die and that will cost Phoenix Downs and/or require an exit from the dungeon as there's another fixed fight before the next save point.

Knight would need three rounds, but evasion might make it 4, and same caveats apply. They'll almost surely survive Blaze + Fira, but 2x Blaze + Fira is still going to be fatal at any reasonable level.

Monk is finally falling off here as Ifrit's modest defence drops their damage quite a bit. The estimate here is 5 rounds of pure offence after evasion. Focus might speed it up some. Chakra can be used to heal off Blaze if they have it (it's over twice as good as a potion) so that's something, but it interferes with using Focus which speeds their offence somewhat. I dunno.

Thief has Hi-Potions! And if they were able to steal Mage Mashers from the Karnak escape (they're common, so this is legit) they have... still terrible offence, but sometimes silencing Ifrit and thus preventing Fira is nice, even if it wears off fast. They'll also want to use the Moonring Blade and Main Gauche which are stronger, especially against Ifrit's defence. They probably need about 7 rounds after evasion but they're fast and they do have unreilable silence and good healing if they need it... holy crap they might not be last among controllable jobs here.

Ninja is a thief without hi-potions or mage mashers (but their storebought kunais hit just as hard, and they too have the Moonring and Main Gauche) but they hit twice which obviously greatly speeds things along. They're knight trading HP for speed. Also they can throw things. Mythril Swords will 6HKO in ITE fashion, and cost slightly more than Frost Rods. So obviously they aren't as good as the mages. Compared to Mystic Knights, it's somewhat of a push. If both scrimp on cash, MK looks slightly better on average (better HP, faster win), but Ninja can ensure a safer victory if things go against them by throwing some swords or anything else lying around they can't use (Ashura, Shuriken... Shuriken in particular hits really hard and they have two by now).

Berserkers are Knights with shields and worse speed. Since Knight has little need to heal here anyway, this actually isn't too bad! Still worse, not being able to Phoenix Down away bad luck is a problem, but kinda competitive.

Geomancer in this dungeon uses nothing but fire magic. This is good... except against Ifrit. Bells are useless here since they hit Ifrit's decent MDef, so knives it is! This is like Thief with less speed and no Hi-Potions or Moonring Blade or Mage Masher and dear god, we have our last place finisher.

Beastmaster is weird, in this and every other fight. Releasing three Page 128s from this dungeon is a win, and they are reasonably bulky (i.e. easier to catch) and right here in this dungeon. Whip's paralysis can land here (about 30-40% in practice probably), so while the weapon is bad at damage it can ensure a near-lockdown if used properly. But it's not super-reliable so I don't think this can do any better than MK/Ninja-level alone.

I guess I need to settle how to rate the difficulty of Release versus other resources. Rods cost 750 gil, which is slightly more than what you get per Wild Nakk fight. Catching a Page 128 is a bit more effort, but not dramatically: they also appear in 100% of fights in some areas, but those fights take longer than a few weak dogs. Maybe for now we'll just say that closes the price difference. So... Beastmaster can't beat the rod-breakers here, and probably loses to Ninja/MK too, but is competitive enough.

1. Black Mage
2. Red Mage
3. Summoner
4. Blue Mage
5. Time Mage
6. Ninja
7. Mystic Knight
8. Beastmaster
9. White Mage
10. Monk
11. Knight
12. Berserker
13. Thief
14. Geomancer

[Grefter]

White Mage is slow and grindy. ... Choose your poison, but at least you win.

FUCKING BULLSHIT YOU CAN'T PICK POISON. 
THIS IS ME RIGHT NOW

[Dark Holy Elf]

Byblos

Like Ifrit, he has decent def/evade and a big elemental weakness (albeit a different one). He has an array of attacks, the most dangerous of which is a MT 2HKO Wind Slash. Much more notable are his counters. He has a 1/3 chance to counter magic with Toad (not a big deal), and a 1/3 chance to counter everything else with Protect (which IS a big deal). Below 800 HP he has a 2/3 chance to counter anything with a 200-HP Drain. This is really scary to anyone who can't deal 150+ after Protect.


As usual, rod-breakers look good here. Two Flame Rod will suffice, oh no he might counter with Protect. Black Mage can one-round with boosted Fira, Summoner with boosted Ifrit (no longer with any possible penalty for being missable!), Red Mage may miss a one-round but are as usual set up well for a slightly longer fight anyway. If Blue Mage has Death Claw, that's also a nice option (only hits about half the time, but one hit is a win); if they don't, they'll settle for Aqua Breath if they want to save money. It's costly so they'll need to save it for low HP but they can get there with a little help from Vampire, Flash, and Goblin Punch. Time Mage will use Haste/Slow then lob Gravity spells until a Flame Rod poke will win. Getting past Drain at the end is still a pain if you don't crack that rod, though should be possible with some persistence.

Ninja has a new fancy trick: flame scrolls! They have a guaranteed one from Ifrit, and possibly more (one of Liquid Flame's forms drops one if it's the one killed, and they're a rare drop in the Ship Graveyard of all places). One Flame Scroll's enough to bypass the entire Drain phase, anyway; having more is just gravy which can make this fight end real fast. Shuriken also really hurt. Ninja basic physicals aren't too hot here and it'll be a slog to reach the Flame Scroll death phase if they aren't willing to throw things, but a manageable one.

Fira Spellblade isn't super-impressive after Protect, but it's good enough to punch through Drain. Still, staying healed from Wind Slash and the likes isn't too fun, and even if they always hit and don't take any turns off to heal MKs will still likely need 4 rounds to win this. That said, this is far better than what other fighters will do...

Beastmaster can either catch Page 128 again for Strong Fight, but only half that after Protect. Still good enough to punch through the final phase. Or they can catch Page 32, which uses Banish, instant death which hits about 1/3 of the time. Four of them gives an 80% chance of victory, and they can still slug things out with whips otherwise, because whips paralyse, and paralysis means no counters. Not a sure thing by any means, they'd really rather not rely on this, but they can.

Geomancer, mercifully, has a useful Terrain this time. Ignus Fatuus is really random but averages an 11HKO here (9HKO if they're Level 16+), and doesn't worry about the Protect counters it triggers. It's good enough to go through Drain at the end, too.


Everyone else here suuuuucks. Five fighters who run into Protect/Drain counters and cry, this guy walls all these SCCs to varying degrees. There are two strategies here: hope to see as few Drains as possible (it's only 2/3 after all, and MEvade can reduce its rate some) and punch through (maybe even not seeing Protect, though that's very unlikely) or run Byblos out of MP. He has 1000, Drain costs 13 (various other things he uses cost 3-4).

Monk probably has it best. Chakra allows them to turtle... somewhat. Two will be needed to overcome Wind Slash, but Monk does have extra HP in the bank and Wind Slash can't be used on consecutive turns. Meanwhile, they can use counter! Which doesn't trigger counters itself. Roughly 16-17 successful counters (so 32-34 non-fatal physicals) and Byblos is dead. Unfortunately, Byblos has a bunch of other annoying moves: Confuse (monks are bad at deconfusing each other, since they can't unequip their weapon... back row's a thought) and Dischord (halves level, really bad on Monks).

Knight really wants to hit Level 16 for a strength benchmark, then they can probably punch through Drain with a lot of luck and/or Elixirs. They'll need to grind for those most likely, since unless they get really lucky they could be rolling the dice a lot. Berserker does similar damage (berserk + better weapons vs. Two-Handed) but can't heal and is slow. Lack of control is also bad because Dischord will make that berserker suck, but still attack and trigger counters.

Thief has Hi-Potions, but the damage is just anemic. Their best bet is to run Byblos out of MP, he can only cast Drain 76 times, and they can have 99 Hi-Potions! Except Byblos also has Wind Slash, so they might need to farm Elixirs on top of that. Kill me now. This is probably worse than Berserker but I'm not certain.

White Mage is also going to run Byblos out of MP. They have a Healing Staff so that's potentially endless resources, but Wind Slash is too much and they'll need to heal from that using Cura most likely. So they'll need to farm Elixirs as well. But... they're probably better set up than thieves, Cura + Healing Staff > Hi-Potions considering Elixirs restore the MP supply. A horrid comparison to be sure, if hinode or anyone else more familiar with FF5 SCCs wants to fill me in on minimum levels/resources each needs I'm all ears!


1. Black Mage
2. Summoner
3. Red Mage
4. Blue Mage
5. Time Mage
6. Ninja
7. Beastmaster
8. Geomancer
9. Mystic Knight
10. Monk
11. Knight
ALL IS LOST
12. Berserker
ALL IS LOST
13. White Mage
ALL IS LOST
14. Thief
ALL IS LOST


Next up: A boss where rod breaking actually isn't that great! The introduction of Bard! And Berserker's brief stay at third-from-the-bottom comes to a crashing halt. Stay tuned!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Sandworm

3000 HP, always in the back row (due to a bug?). He pops in and out of three holes. Hit the two unoccupied holes with anything except magic (be it MT or ST) and you get a Gravity counter, otherwise he uses a relatively weak physical and weaker MT ITD magic which sets Sap.

Breaking rods is unimpressive here, because they're MT (splitting damage) and trigger Gravity counters. You'll still win with them, most likely, but at a notable gil cost and some minor risk if Quicksand + sap + Gravity counters hit you in a bad way. The only job who actually wants to consider using them is Time Mage, probably, and even then it's kind of a time vs. safety tradeoff.

Blue Mage has a trick called Aqua Breath here, it will likely one-shot him since he's a desert creature and takes 8x from it. Other boosted magic (-ara spells, Ifrit/Ramuh) take him out cleanly and quickly enough (two rounds) that he's unlikely to do anything scary first, so the three main attacking mages are all pretty much equal here (Red Mage might be low enough level to miss the two-round I guess, same with Summoner if they skipped Ramuh; all I have). Time Mage is worse off for sure, none of its tricks really work, although Haste + Heal Staff + Regen means their slow victory against Sandworm's cruddy offence is ensured. It'll be real slow though.

Sandworm is weak to water as well as the strangely non-elemental Aqua Breath, so Ninja can step up to the plate with the now storebought scrolls. Three water scrolls probably does him in, four will for sure, there will be a bunch of gravity counters but who cares? 600-800 gil, same as one rod and a better result than them, not bad.

Beastmster can use Aqua Breath too, via a caught Dhorme Chimera. It doesn't quite OHKO but it comes pretty close. Whip physicals are long-range so will do competently enough even past that. Or they can catch two if they really want. ST releases are a terrible idea here because they hit random targets. Speaking of long-range physicals, Ranger is the new kid on the block here, and they do well enough. If you've gained 15 ABP since getting them (slightly out of your way probably, but possible) they have some access to healing, too, but it also randomly uses a weak attack which can trigger Gravity counters instead. Whatever, they shouldn't need that anyway.

Onto some back row fighters. Knight hits the hardest and is thus probably the best, a three-round is possible here with their shiny new Coral Swords, and with their good HP they're in little danger before then. Similar to Ranger, actually, but bulkier. Monk is less damaging, but Counter is free damage and they have Chakra (Focus is a bad choice here) if it somehow becomes necessary (it... more likely won't). Mystic Knight has no real tricks here, but good stats and shields is something. Compared to Time Mage... well, Haste makes the latter actually have similar/better offence, and Heal Staff makes up for any stat difference, for all that I think both lose to Knight/Ranger/Monk.

White Mage's physical is long-range, baby! It's still a 70HKO or something, but Heal Staff + Cura + Protect sets them up well to turtle! Compared to MK... well, MK could get into real trouble here since once you're worn down it's hard to recover against this boss (Quicksand picks off revived targets easily), especially at lower levels. WM's victory is far safer because even one Cura easily offsets a Sandworm turn, and their resources will last easily long enough for them to win.

Thief has Hi-Potions and a single Moonring Blade for Monk-level damage. Everyone else will be bad. Yay? Well this is better than the other knife-users. Sure, Geomancer could pull out Gaia, but they'll randomly get a useless ID move and Sandstorm triggers two counters while doing less than 2 physicals' worth of damage, pass. Bells continue to be so hilariously bad that not even being back row OK makes them keep up with Mage Mashers. -_- Bard, the other new kid, sadly slides in with this group too. Mighty March lets them regen about 18 HP a turn... don't laugh, that's over a quarter of Sandworm's MT! It's better than Geomancer's HP advantage, probably... but not better than the combination of Geomancer's HP and Strength advantage. I feel bad for Bard, a number of bosses will be hit by their statuses giving them some use, but this isn't one, so they get to debut in last pl-

oh no. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Berserker. Row-reliant. Hits random targets. Testing has shown that while this should yield a 1/3 chance to hit the right target, it actually seems to be 1/6 in practice, possibly because there are technically six enemies in this fight the way it's programmed. I don't know. All I know is they can't stop to heal, every miss triggers a counter, and thus while they 13HKO or so they need ~20 rounds to do this on average, triggering some unholy number of Gravity counters first. And thus dying to MT damage + Sap long, long before this. You need to probably overlevel like mad AND get crazy lucky here. (The above video, described as "low level" for the SCC, was 36.)

(And no, for the record, I will not be assuming Berserker is endgame level for every subsequent boss.)


1. Blue Mage
2. Black Mage
3. Summoner
4. Red Mage
5. Ninja
6. Beastmaster
7. Knight
8. Ranger
9. Monk
10. Time Mage
11. White Mage
12. Mystic Knight
13. Thief
14. Geomancer
15. Bard
what the hell am I supposed to-
16. Berserker

[Dark Holy Elf]

Cray Claw

Offensively largely a joke, he has weak physicals, Slow+Sap (turn 3 only, which is a problem because he doesn't live that long), and HP-1; all ST. Defensively he's got good defences but bad HP, and a lightning weakness (all weakness hits are ITD in FF5) which makes him die super-fast if you have that.


Breaking a rod may OHKO, but this guy's such a sap anyway why would we do that? Black Mage 2HKOs, so does Summoner if they have Ramuh (otherwise they'll need two rounds! And have paralysis to nail him with), as does Knight, as does Ninja (at the cost of 400 gil, not a big deal). Red Mage 3HKOs, Ranger 4HKOs, Mystic Knight probably does too (without using Spellblade, mind!). Since Cray Claw never ever does anything dangerous with one turn, these jobs are all roughly equivalent and attempts to tiebreak here are mostly pointless, all I can really do is reward the ones that do it at the lowest levels or with least investment.

Blue Mage can two-round with either Aqua Breath or Coral Sword hits, and Vampire is a nasty counter to his one trick (though can fail). Or they can explode Thunder Rods at him, or Dark Spark twice then L5 Death (unreliable, but a possible one-round). Time Mage will probably use Thunder Rod physicals. And hit him with Slow/Stop because it's funny. Or break rods again. Beastmaster has to go to a bit more trouble, but a single released Sand Bear (from the desert after Sandworm, conveniently) is a OHKO, or they can use Blitz Whip physicals to do decent damage while regular whips lock him down with paralysis.

That leaves the six jobs without any lightning access. Monks can take him out in three rounds, though a Tailscrew is annoying since a followup physical will kill unless Potion+Chakra is used. Bard has very poor damage here, but Alluring Air inflicts confuse and that's good enough for a slow win with regen backup in case somehow confuse misses four times in a row (which, granted, his high level makes not... impossible). Berserker, assuming they have gathered some Death Sickles, can hope for some luck with its random ID. Failing that they'll probably two-round, though hey someone MIGHT die... too bad you have a recovery point after.

Terrain trolls Geomancer here, as the airship still counts as a boat IIRC and will run the water/gravity terrain, neither of which work on the sky lobster. So they're one of the worst jobs here, basic physicals slowly tickling him to death. I mean they'll still probably win but they actually have some difficulty. Thief is the same except they have a second real weapon and Hi-Potions so they're somewhat better off.

That leaves White Mage! Flails pierce Def so hey they're actually as effective as "real" weapons here (which is to say not), they can use Confuse, and Protect+back row means they can actually survive a physical after Tailscrew, not that they need to with their healing.

1t. Black Mage, Knight, Ninja, Red Mage, Summoner
6. Spell Fencer
7. Ranger
8. Blue Mage
9. Time Mage
10. Beastmaster
11. Monk
12. White Mage
13. Bard
14. Berserker
15. Thief
16. Geomancer

[Fenrir]

I don't really think all of this is good at evaluating which jobs are good in FF5 but it's still fun to read. More plz
Poor geos!

[Dark Holy Elf]

Adamantoise

Like Cray Claw, he has good defence and bad HP, and an unfortunate elemental weakness. However he backs up his defence with Protect/Shell, which bolsters his durability considerably. While he has a bunch of status holes, it also means it's difficult to get status to land on him. Meanwhile, he punches 1-2 times per turn for damage which 2HKOs the front row, not too bad though very spoilable since he's all physical.


Black Mage still one-rounds from the back row. Red Mage and Summoner needs two rounds, probably (unless their level is quite high or they break rods), though in Red Mage's case they may well outspeed Adamantoise and thus kill him before his second turn anyway (or can use Protect if they feel like digging in). Blue Mage can cast L5 Death for an instant win, and if they don't have that breaking 2 Frost Rods will suffice (Death Claw/Missile also work, sometimes). Time Mage certainly has the worst lot of the rod-users, though again 1500 gil is a win, and the usual Slow/Haste/Heal Staff/back row offence should also take care of things albeit more slowly.

Ranger can chill in the back row, outspeeds, and two-rounds if they're willing to buy a bunch of Frost Bows (otherwise they'll suck at offence, though Nightingale healing should get 'em through if they feel like being stingy). Cray Claw just dropped one, so that's nice. The only other job with ice is Mystic Knight. They outspeed and kill in three rounds with Blizarra Spellblade, though they do need to be in the front row to do that.

Ninja outspeeds, spends 600-800 gil, and kills in 1-2 rounds from the back row. Or, they use Image, and slowly poke him to death while being basically completely safe, resetting Image whenever they're in danger. Beastmaster can throw a Sand Bear for a 2HKO (I wasn't sure if Protect affects this, apparently it does, else it would OHKO). So that takes some preparation, certainly more than buying rods. Otherwise they can uh 7-round from the back row or so, not really acceptable. Needing to get two Sand Bears is enough to drop them below every other job mentioned so far, I think. As well as...

Knight has a free win here with Guard, the only difficulty is making sure that Adamantoise doesn't punch past everyone's low-HP phase. Or they can withstand three turns from Adamantoise and three-round? That could work too. But yeah, even if they don't try for it it's easy to accidentally end up with low-HP allies you can cover, so the combination Guard and that will win, which I'd put above anyone except the jobs with a free one-round.

Geomancer's Gaia will use either Ignus Fatuus (20HKO damage, assuming Level 16+) or Stalactite (6HKO). This roughly three-rounds if they spam it, which is acceptable offence for a back-row job.

Berserkers can three-round from the front row if they have Death Sickles, four-round if they don't. They have a chance to proc death! Not very good, 8% or so, but it adds up. This is still much worse than Mystic Knight due to worse speed and obviously no item bailout if a revive is needed.

White Mage needs 36 rounds of straight attacking to win. That's bad. But... hey, with Protect + back row should reduce his damage to be quite bad, easily outpaced by Heal Staff alone.

For the first time, Monk is just really bad. As in, "needs 7 rounds to kill from the front row" bad which is completely unacceptable given his level of offence. Charkra can't really keep up. They could go to the back row and need 14 rounds but now at least Chakra is semi-viable, but each physical will still need two Chakras to recover from, not terribly acceptable when he can toss out two per round and potentially overwhelm. Counter does help, but not enough.

Thief is awful. Best to park in the back row where only the Moonring does anything approaching real damage and burn Hi-Potions like they're going out of style (enjoy manually stealing each one, as always). And this still beats Bard, whose two statuses are blocked. Bard physicals are like 70-75HKO here from the front row, half that from the back. OR they can buy Silver Harps which are 1/16 gravity (they hit about a quarter of the time, so it's really more like 1/64) which ACTUALLY OUTPACES THE KNIVES HERE at the start of the fight good lord.

1. Black Mage
2. Red Mage
3. Blue Mage
4. Knight
5. Summoner
6. Ninja
7. Time Mage
8. Ranger
9. Mystic Knight
10. Geomancer
11. Beastmaster
12. White Mage
13. Berserker
14. Monk
15. Thief
16. Bard

Beastmaster is really hard to pin down, but I'm okay with this placement for them.

[hinode]

Thief has Hi-Potions, but the damage is just anemic. Their best bet is to run Byblos out of MP, he can only cast Drain 76 times, and they can have 99 Hi-Potions! Except Byblos also has Wind Slash, so they might need to farm Elixirs on top of that. Kill me now. This is probably worse than Berserker but I'm not certain.

White Mage is also going to run Byblos out of MP. They have a Healing Staff so that's potentially endless resources, but Wind Slash is too much and they'll need to heal from that using Cura most likely. So they'll need to farm Elixirs as well. But... they're probably better set up than thieves, Cura + Healing Staff > Hi-Potions considering Elixirs restore the MP supply. A horrid comparison to be sure, if hinode or anyone else more familiar with FF5 SCCs wants to fill me in on minimum levels/resources each needs I'm all ears!

Took me a while to dig up some old saved gamefaqs SSC threads, but it's actually possible for thieves, with significant overlevelling and an insane amount of luck, to beat Byblos w/o running him out of MP if Drain misses enough times. Someone did it with an L24 party, mo Sonic Waves, and 3 consecutive missed Drains. I guess it miiight be possible at lower levels if an even larger number of Drains missed, but at that point it would verge on a minor miracle.

First person in the gfaqs threads to beat Byblos with White Mages did so at L26. Wouldn't surprise me if it'd possible at lower levels, but psychologically the toll of a failed attempt at stalling out Byblos' MP is so painful that I suspect most people would rather overlevel than risk wasting hours on a futile attempt.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Thanks for that, and yeah that makes sense.

I don't really think all of this is good at evaluating which jobs are good in FF5 but it's still fun to read. More plz
Poor geos!

It's definitely not going to tell you in isolation what jobs are good, though it does shed some light onto things. Most obviously it gives some low-damage jobs a bit of an artificial weakness (especially White Mage and Bard who have cool skillsets) since it's easy to get damage to at least Monk-level with Barehanded, !Black, !Summon, !Blue, etc. in most situations. It also ignores randoms entirely (devaluing bard further...). But once you control for those biases it does do a pretty good job of showing which jobs are good / considered strong draws for Fiesta, etc. (That is, the mages are all good, Ninja is generally ahead of other physical jobs, etc.)

Poor Geos indeed, this post isn't going to make them feel any better.


Soul Cannon

On turns 7, 12, and every 4 thereafter, it fires a beam which does MT MHP/2 damage and adds Sap. That's a little better than it sounds because Soul Cannon has a LOT of HP (12500) and is fast (140% speed or so) but still not good. Complicating things are the Launchers, which have only 800 HP but fire missiles which half current HP and set Old, which ruins your core stats (i.e. damage and speed) if not cured quickly.


Lightning damage is the way to go! If you want to go with breaking Thunder Rods, though, it's pretty costly; you'll likely need two to nuke the Launchers (important!) then another four or so to win the fight. Of course, you really shouldn't need to use the remaining four, because there's zero reason to kill Soul Cannon in two turns when he can't possibly win until you've had 8. So not that costly if you're just after a turn 1 Launcher KO.

Ramuh will also two-shot the Launchers then easily take out Soul Cannon in three rounds or so. There's the cost of getting Ramuh, sure... but honestly Ifrit suffices here anyway, it does the same to the Launchers and then may well outrace Soul Cannon's second turn anyway, though it could be dicy at some levels. They can at worst break one Thunder Rod to be certain of victory. Black Mage should be able to two-shot the Launchers with ST Thundaras, then win very easily from there. MT might work, but due to the way split damage works in FF5 (half attack rather than half damage, which is worse) there's a chance they may survive. Red Mage in some ways has an even easier time, because Cura makes a mockery of this fight anyway, so even if things get gummed up and Old strikes the PCs, it really doesn't matter. For that matter,

Coral Swords are a beatdown move. Knights can three round the main cannon, and should 2HKO the Launchers. Even if they somehow fail to and one PC gets hit with Old, not a big deal at all. Mystic Knight has a bit of a dicier situation since they WILL see one PC get hit with Old due to a lack of Two-Handed. The fight will be long enough that once the Launchers are dead they probably should spend a turn to buff their weakness hits to 3x instead of 2x. In total they'll need 7 rounds here, one to kill each Launcher, one to buff, four to smite. One PC may get olded which could make things a little dicy, but their good speed should make up for it. Ranger is a lot like Mystic Knight, as they'll get one PC hit with old but have lightning weapons and good speed, but they also have Nightingale, which fully heals a Wave Cannon. Forest friends save the day!

Ninjas can throw Thunder Scrolls. Two will kill the Launchers, while the boss dies in three rounds to them. If they want to save money they can switch to physicals once the Launchers are dead and still outrace, probably. 400 gil for a super-safe and easy fight is hard to beat if you aren't Red Mage.

Sadly for Beastmaster, their gravity move would be great here, except it's wind which Soul Cannon spoils. They can still use Sand Bears and hope to OHKO the Launchers but that's rather RNG-based of course. Or they can one-round each Launcher with physicals, accept that one PC gets hit with Old, and then... actually have some issues from there because they only have one Blitz Whip, that's not really good enough. They may actually need to go farm several Sand Bears to have a safe win here (three will probably be enough) but that's not good.

Oh right there are more mages. Blue Mage has L5 Death! If they have that, dead Launchers, use Vampire after Soul Cannon fires if they're worried about failing to win a damage race (they'll likely use Flame Thrower, kills in seven turns or so, so probably good enough). If they don't have L5 Death they should fire off Aqua Breaths which still one-round the Launchers, so... yeah they're looking pretty good. Time Mage meanwhile, as usual has bad damage, but both Haste and Slow work. They really will want to break two Thunder Rods to kill the Launchers fast, but past that they can use Haste/Slow to make the turnsplit just silly and poke away, then use the Heal Staff + Regen to recover. Finally, White Mage has a trump card for everything here, Esuna immediately after each missile hits and Cura spam to recover from Wave Cannons. Needing to use Esuna quickly puts them in a worse situation than some jobs, though, and the missiles halving HP (i.e. making them bait for Wave Cannon) is also a problem. Still, they should manage, since missiles will miss a bunch and the only need to heal up prior to Wave Cannon, and once the Launchers die their victory is pretty much guaranteed.

Chakra is good enough healing here, although Monk's bad HP is a problem so they'll need to use it 3-4 times after each Wave Cannon most likely. That... actually isn't good enough, never mind. To make matters worse they can't reliably 2HKO the Launchers so one of them is probably going to land Old. Maybe they're better off going for damage? After a round and a bit to kill the Launchers, they should start using Focus, five rounds of Focusing may well win and six definitely will, even with one PC crippled by Old. So uh... effectively 8-9 turns total. Again, that's... not good enough, really. Yikes? A few extra levels will make up the difference here, and honestly Chakra/Potions may suffice to just buy them (except the one hit by an opening missile) enough time to survive the second beam and finish from there but ugh.

And if Monk has that problem you know it's worse for the other fighters. Thief, mercifully, has Hi-Potions, and four of those buy them the time to survive another beam. Of course they... can't even one-round a Launcher, what the fuck, which means up to three PCs get hit by Old (average is closer to 2). And that's awful, even with two PCs olded and the other two using the two gaod Thief weapons, that ends up being 25 rounds of attacking or so they'll need to win, and once they're into four-round cycles where Soul Cannon 4-3s (almost), they heal once and attack twice, that means like 40-50 Hi-Potions. Actually it's a bit better since the aged PCs can do all the healing but still terrible.

Or what about Geomancer? Their Gaia for Ronka is great, strong MT wind damage! OH HAHA THESE BOSSES IMMUNE WIND FOR NO REASON what the fuck game, stop trolling Geo plz. Good news is they can, unlike Thief, one-round the Launchers due to better strength. The bad news is they still get one hit with Old and then have to deal with killing the boss in like 10 turns. Potions aren't cutting it. They're farming Elixirs from rare drops.

Berserkers are, somehow, worse. Two Wave Cannons = they're dead. A Valiant Attack means the first Wave Cannon kills, too. Even if they get lucky and kill both Launchers first turn after they miss with Valiant Attack (yes, Berserker is the only job slower than the Launchers) they get only six more turns and on average they need 7-8 rounds to win. And that requires unrealistic luck already, since they have a 15% miss rate and need to hit each Launcher twice (and not Soul Cannon) and anyone hit with Old will first suck and then die early. So they're going to be grinding a bunch of levels. (Y'know, if they hadn't already had to do so for Sandworm.)

And that leaves Bard. lol Bard, like Geomancers only with worse damage... BUT WAIT! This is very, very, silly. but Bard has Hide. And Wave Cannon is a called shot. So they can hide, return after each Wave Cannon is fired, poke, then retreat. The big problem that most of them will probably get hit with Old, but even at minimum speed they can slowly pull this strategy off. Just for their sanity's sake they will want to reset until some PCs aren't hit by Old (at least 1 or 2, fortunately they have MEvade), but this probably takes less time than farming up 30+ Hi-Potions anyway.

1. Red Mage
2. Ninja
3. Black Mage
4. Summoner
5. Knight
6. Blue Mage
7. Ranger
8. Time Mage
9. Mystic Knight
10. White Mage
11. Beastmaster
12. Monk
13. Bard
14. Thief
15. Geomancer
16. Berserker

[DjinnAndTonic]

All I'm hearing so far is that Bard sounds like the most fun SSC to watch a speedrunner slam their willpower against.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Archeoaevis

Essentially the final boss of world 1 (though there are three after him), he has five forms with shifting defences. The physical defence starts high and gets lower with each form; magical defence is the opposite (and he piles on a bevy of elemental immunities for the last one). Meanwhile, he uses a different ST status attack and MT damage move (the second form is by far the most dangerous) in each form, with the last form having a wide array of attacks which includes MT HP-1 (on a boss who also has access to MT Sap). The one good news is his ATB resets whenever you kill a form, and they all have relatively low HP, so good offence makes him unhappy.


For a change, I'll start out with the fighters. The fight gets steadily easier for them as it goes along. Knight will need two rounds to deal with each of the first two forms, maybe form 3 as well. Against form 4 and 5 their Coral Swords stop working, so they'll need to pull out Mythril again, but this only offsets the dropping defence. Still, this gives most forms at least one turn (maybe not 3 or 4), and they'll have to time their finishing blows well to keep things down that low, AND keep those Mythril Swords around. It's annoying and dangerous and even perfect play can lead to a loss if the boss uses its MT every turn. Rough, but quite doable.

Monk can do something rather cheesy in this fight: Counter! Archeoaevis uses physicals 2/3 of the time in form 1, so after softening him up a little they can defend and rely on counters. And, when a counter kills a form, boom, no subsequent form. Battle over in 1600 damage. Kinda cheap, but we don't deduct points for that in these analyses.

Berserkers can ignore defence, so that's something. Unfortunately they can't abuse his turn shifting and they're outsped, so they'll give him 5-7 turns probably depending on what weapon they have. That's inviting some serious trouble, though this isn't a bad fight for them relatively!

Mystic Knights are like Knights, somewhat, without Two-Handed. Spellblade is mostly useless here due to Archeoaevis' lack of elemental weaknesses or status holes. They only good thing is that they can always use a status spellblade to deal with form 4-5. But their offence at the start of the fight is just wretched. They'll need five rounds just to drop the first form, and the second with its Frost attack is a disaster waiting to happen. Potion so don't cut it any more, so overall I think they're behind Berserkers, unless they want to farm lots of Elixirs.

Ranger is like the swordsmen in that it struggles with the high defence then gets annoyed by elemental immunities (they'll have to fall back on the Main Gache and either Mage Mashers or Silver Bows for the final phase). However, Nightingale is amazing here, ~50% chance of some major healing (more than offsetting even the boss' strongest attack). It never gets better than this.

Good news for thief: they have a second Moonring Blade! Three real weapons! The bad news: uh this is the same level of weapon they've had since Karnak, yikes. Their damage against form 1 is terrible, it'll take like 12 rounds. Then it starts improving but this is still really bad, they'll just need to burn Hi-Potions constantly and bad. I don't really want to run an estimate. At least they're a common steal in this dungeon.

Ninja is really good! They're fast so all they need to do is one-round every form. Water Scroll spam will destroy every form save the last, which still gets two-rounded i.e. one turn total. This costs about 3000 gil or so but that's really not too bad. If they want to save money they can probably afford to mix in more physicals from form 3 on and use Image to dig in.

Black Mage has no real problems with the first four forms, it can one-round all of them. Then the last form... is going to give them a bad time. It nulls the big three elements, They can switch to knives and... actually kill in six rounds if they're in the front row, but 1/3 Maelstrom every two turns is just too much, they're going to get worn down badly. The first fight where they're bad! Will this be true for the other mages?

Not really. Summoner is similar, until the last form, where they can pull out... Chocobo. Yes, Chocobo. It's based off their magic, but hits defence. It'll take them 3-4 rounds (i.e. three boss turns) to kill the last form. If the opening turn is Maelstrom that sucks and every PC hit should probably burn an Elixir, but seeing as this is the first fight which has given them a glimmer of a problem at least they can be assured they can do that.

Blue Mage... well, if they've gotten 1000 Needles, this is holy shit EZ MODO because that 2HKOs each form and 3HKOs the last, instant win. Failing that, they can use a mix of easy-to-obtain skills to deal with each form: one's weak to wind (Aera), two are vulnerable to gravity. Unboosted Aera against form 3 isn't too great, but it should only get one turn. Form 5 poses the most danger except lol L5 Death vulnerability. If you want to assume they don't have that, Vampire does its thing in a longer slog. They also potentially (not SCC style, again), have White Wind for more good healing. I dunno, even their worst case scenario is pretty good and their best is total domination.

Time Mage can slow each form, haste themselves, use regen, and use Heal Staff. With four turns to every one of the boss, that lets them offset anything it does. They can crack some rods to speed along the first four forms, against the last they'll just have to poke away with knives like black mages, except the turnsplit and healing makes that far more palatable. Slow, but a win's a win.

Red Mage's versatility really shines here, needless to say. While they don't have BM offence so every form should get a turn, they can use Cura to recover from whatever it does, and once the elemental walling comes out, they switch to swords/knives and take advantage of the low def while still having healing and Protect. Clean and easy, don't have to worry about landing anything through MEvade or burning resources.

White Mage has Protect/Cura/Heal Staff as well, but the usual bad offence, so we have to consider if this will grind out their resources. Well, the short answer is... maybe? They'll need about 12-18 rounds to deal with each of the first four forms (60 total), and will need to put down a Cura after each MT attack, or two after Frost, and those come 1/3 of the time. (Heal Staff should deal with the rest.) So 25 uses or so. And then against the last form, they'll need two Curas after Maelstrom as well, and about 17 turns or so... maybe another 10 Curas? Depends on paralysis somewhat. Actually, huh, their resources survive this easily enough. Go them! Slow but a pretty good showing. The type of marathon fight where they shine (no counters to troll them horribly, and flails partly ignore his gimmick).

Beastmaster will want to stock up on releases for sure. Even with four this isn't their favourite fight. Ronkan Knight releases will OHKO each of the first four forms or pretty close (Sand Bears are stronger but more annoying to get). They'll probably want to throw them at every form except three, actually, which is the last form vulnerable to the Blitz Whip. Whips never miss Archeoaevis so this is a three-round at worst, so they eat two turns here and then maybe one against the final form and that's... probably manageable, depending on their HP and the attacks the boss uses. A bit dicy and obviously needing to farm resources is bad.

Geomancer finally gets some decent luck! Gaia will uses nothing but Wind Slash here (maybe the very rare gravity move, depending on form... but that's not always bad anyway). This one-rounds every form until the last, which nulls wind. At that point, they can fall back on their kinda okay physicals. They're actually virtually identical to Summoner, but hey their stats are slightly better! ... no wait they need to be in the front row for the last phase, which makes them slightly worse. Still, how often will we be able to put Geomancer and Summoner side-by-side in these things?

That leaves Bard I guess to rot in last, regen isn't nearly enough and the bad offence means they'll need to farm elixirs, again.

1. Monk
2. Red Mage
3. Ninja
4. Blue Mage
5. Ranger
6. Time Mage
7. White Mage
8. Summoner
9. Geomancer
10. Knight
11. Beastmaster
12. Berserker
13. Thief
14. Mystic Knight
15. Black Mage
16. Bard

[SnowFire]

Monk can do something rather cheesy in this fight: Counter! Archeoaevis uses physicals 2/3 of the time in form 1, so after softening him up a little they can defend and rely on counters. And, when a counter kills a form, boom, no subsequent form. Battle over in 1600 damage. Kinda cheap, but we don't deduct points for that in these analyses.

This strikes me as a little TOO cheesy, like, bug-level cheesy.  You can skip NeoExdeath entirely with similar tricks (Berserk, HP leak) that cut off the event trigger to start the fight, but it's pretty unfulfilling, and can lead to some weird rankings where classes that happen to have legal access to a "skip the fight" bug get hugely inflated.

[Grefter]

Eh this one I definitely don't think is over any lines.  Monk can run into it entirely by accident just by there passives.

[Cotigo]

NEB doing what NEB does best. moar pls.

Monk can do something rather cheesy in this fight: Counter! Archeoaevis uses physicals 2/3 of the time in form 1, so after softening him up a little they can defend and rely on counters. And, when a counter kills a form, boom, no subsequent form. Battle over in 1600 damage. Kinda cheap, but we don't deduct points for that in these analyses.

This strikes me as a little TOO cheesy, like, bug-level cheesy.  You can skip NeoExdeath entirely with similar tricks (Berserk, HP leak) that cut off the event trigger to start the fight, but it's pretty unfulfilling, and can lead to some weird rankings where classes that happen to have legal access to a "skip the fight" bug get hugely inflated.

yeah i mean it's not intended but if you're doing a SCC or fiesta you're probably going to use it, and as grefter said you can easily run into this on accident.

I mean FFS if this were an analysis of SNES FF6 characters, you wouldn't ignore the fact that their MEvade accounts for their physical evade as well just because it's a bug.