And so we're onto World 2! First of all, I'm skipping a couple bosses. The first is Abductor 1, a solo fight you can lose, which essentially makes him optional and certainly irrelevant (you get an ether if you win, OMG). The second is Gilgamesh 1, another solo who is pretty much designed such that any class easily beats him. Thief outslugs him without needing to heal! As such, there's nothing to compare there. Plus, we already have quite enough bosses in this short section of the game. Thus, we move onto...
Gilgamesh (Big Bridge)
In some ways perhaps this is the real final boss of World 1, because you still haven't seen a world 2 shop yet and thus are fighting with the same things we fought the last few bosses with. At least we have a full party this time? Anyway, Gilgamesh has a reasonable stock of HP and a relatively weak array of attacks (the most dangerous being MT attack weaker than Manticore's which is used once every 12 turns). When he drops to about 1/3 HP remaining, though, he counters by casting Haste/Protect/Shell, buffing his durability and doubling his speed, and gains access to Jump, a physical attack which hits quite hard (2HKO most) and ignores both row and evade, which he uses 1/3 of the time. He also has the same 10% evade which several bosses have and it's still a pain in the ass.
One other important thing I should add about Gilgamesh is that he's vulnerable to silence... in the SNES/PSX version. This was very useful as it allowed his limit triplecast buff to be disabled, since everyone but Monk has access to silence (via Mage Masher at worst). In GBA and more recent versions, he gained immunity to this. I'll be analysing the GBA version here.
Knight has a trick here in the Ancient Sword, which has about a 30% chance to inflict Old. While Gilgamesh's magic power is (like most FF5 enemies in worlds 1-2) already at the minimum possible, this does lower his attack, making his basic physicals tink (important, since he uses them a lot) and drops his speed from notably above average to notably below. Anyway, Knight needs 5 rounds to win (maybe 6 with evade), so Gilgamesh will probably get four turns above the limit phase and two below, IF the Knights count HP carefully and don't knock him into the limit at a bad time. This will allow him to output about ~1100 damage before the limit and uhh ~1500 after, which is enough likely win. I don't see a good way to do this without Elixirs, which will tilt things their way. I will also note they really want to be Level 21, at which point Jump stops 2HKOing them, making heal-by-Elixir far more effective.
Monk's funny. Chakra comes out to play again, as Gilgamesh above half HP has bad enough offence that Chakra will likely keep up with it, unless he focuses on one Monk repeatedly (and even then they can toss Potions). Meanwhile, since he uess physicals so often (9/12), they can kill by counters, and dodge the limit entirely. It's not a perfect strategy but it will usually work.
The final fight where Thief has a unique advantage with Hi-Potions, and boy will they need them. They'll need about 62 attacks to win, Potions aren't good enough. Hi-Potions would get them through this, but then Jump 2HKOs and he doubleturns always in form 2. It's unlikely he'll kill one (1/36 chance every round that he uses Jump twice and hits the same person) but if he does they're in a lot of trouble. If not they can probably get through this with 20 Hi-Potions or so. If he does... Phoenix Down + Hi-Potion works. At least they're fast enough to not worry about being tripleturned, some jobs aren't so lucky.
Dragoons do their usual jumping thing, but their offence is wretched here too so they risk being worn down, though being in the back row helps. They'd need around 10 rounds to win. Again, they'll probably need to pull out an Elixir or two, and no ability to inflict Old makes them notably worse than Knight. But... probably better than Thief.
Ninja has Image! Which stops Jump. And indeed most of the rest of what Gilgamesh does. He still has SOME magic offence, enough to make ninjas pull out scrolls, although weirdly once they make it to the limit they're basically home free as he loses everything but an incredibly weak spell called Electrocute then. So... they can probably get by with plenty of normal physicals too, how many scrolls depends on how often he uses magic, probably just 2 or 3 at most. A totally safe win and relatively inexpensive.
Samurai uses Zeninage three times and wins, 3000 gil. Nah, that's excessive. One Zeninage can pretty much avoid almost all the limit phase. 2000 gil is certainly safe, 1000 gil could work if Gilgamesh doesn't use anything scary in the early going.
Berserker is a waste of space as usual, they need 6 rounds and are really slow so Gilgamesh has a 4-3. They can win with a lot of evasion/AI luck but they'll need it.
Ranger being in the back row with healing easily sees them through to the second stage of the fight, but that part is still tricky due to the doubleturning and Jump's 2HKOing. They'll need quite a few rounds, Nightingale CAN pull them through it but it's certainly a dicy affair and the Phoenix Downs may certainly have to come out. One thing that would help a bit is getting a Dark Bow (rare drop in Ronka) which can blind him, but it's not a necessity.
Mystic Knight really wishes I was giving them credit for Silence Spellblade since it'd be pretty great here. Instead... well, like Knight, they have Old via the Ancient Sword. But otherwise their offence is worse than Dragoon and they need to be in the front row. I'm inclined to say they're still above Thief since they're more damaging, durable, and evasive, and Phoenix Downs can somewhat suffice here especially once Old kicks in and only magic/Jump is a threat, but no Hi-Potion steals make it debatable.
Beastmaster REALLY wants to stock up on catches for this fight, they can't afford a drawn-out slugfest any more than Mystic Knight can. Three Sand Bears will remove most of his HP, and so if they soften him up a bit with physicals first that'll do. Another interesting option is to catch a Tarantula which can inflict slow when released, which overwrites his Haste, but it can miss so probably not worth it. Or Treants, which have the advantage of being super-plentiful and thus easy to catch, but they'll need to do about 2000 damage first to soften him up enough and that... actually is fine, they won't lose before then in the three rounds it takes. That's certainly more prep than Samurai, and probably ranks below Monk as well, though above Knight.
Like with Arcehoaevis, this is a marathon boss where White Mage's ability to just plain survive reaises it above many. One use of the Heal Staff repairs everything Gilgamesh does except for Wind Slash (one Cura takes care of that) and Jump. And after they cast Protect on everyone, even Jump enters a territory where one Heal Staff use recovers from it. So... they're in no danger and don't even have to spend MP often, they win slowly as always but win they do. Red Mage, of course, is simliar, except they kill faster, so less danger of screwing something up (White Mage does need like... 80 rounds).
Black Mage has it harder, though they do kill reliably in four rounds. That's better than Knight except they have notably less HP, so they actually get into slightly more trouble on average, especially since they don't have Old. But they can break rods, and should. This is the last time rods will do more than double their base damage! Their best strategy is probably to cast around 6-7 ara spells, wait for the start of the next round, then break 3-4 rods. This results in them taking only three Gilgamesh attacks plus the unavoidable Jump counter and while it's still a bit dicy, it should get the job done. Compared to Beastmaster, they're... actually very similar? The Getting this amount of gil strikes me as slightly less bad than the catching Beastmaster has to do.
Time Mage could also break rods, but they really don't have to. Gilgamesh can be slowed, which is great to start with, but when he casts Haste? Yeah, Slowing him at that point is pretty much the ultimate counter, it quarters his speed again. It's a little annoying to land through Shell. Alternatively, they can cast Mute. For those not familiar with this little-used spell, it's essentially FF5's Silent Lake: silences everyone, immunity be damned. The downside is that in most battles, there is a flag which prevents it from being used. This isn't one! So once they've set up Haste/Slow/Regen on everyone appropriate, they can use Mute and not have to worry about Gilgamesh's buffing. Jump is still painful, but with constant quadraturns and a Heal Staff, it's nothing they can't easily recover from while they poke him to death with knives. Or if they're impatient they can break rods.
Summoner will kill in three rounds. Limit in the middle is kinda bad but they can minimise it by letting him take a third turn and then blitzing him. No resources, but unlike White Mage up there is SOME risk.
Blue Mage... man I dunno. 1000 Needles is amazing if they have it, but to be clear, they probably shouldn't. Otherwise they're basically Black Mage (Flame Thrower instead of Fira, rod breaks still an option) with lower damage (maybe) but a lot more options. They can use Flash to blind him, or hit him with the Ancient Sword, if they want, and Vampire is quite useful before his limit, hitting over 90% of the time (or 100%, if they can land a Dark Spark). Once he activates his limit, though, they run into a lot of problems, because now Vampire will miss half the time and the doubles can overwhelm them, though with old/blind set they may be able to get by since only Jump is threatening. If things start going south they can break out the rods though, one round of that will mostly punch through his limit phase. So... they're a lot like Samurai, with a few more tricks to avoid spending money but will spend more if they do.
Back to the stallers, with Chemist! First of all, I'll note that with the three W1 bosses and the extra World 2 randoms now in the books, grinding for Mix becomes more feasible, though would still be a negative which would drop them a fair bit. That said, the only reason Chemist should have to do that is if they're out of Speed Shakes. Otherwise, this is the fight for them to use the Iron Drafts (Protect!) which I haven't hyped them using yet, they're virtually certain to have at least 3. With that, all of Gilgamesh's damage can be repaired by a Heal Staff. They'll want to haste the Heal Staff user but once that's in place, they should honestly cruise. Compared to White Mage there's a chance they'll have a bad hand and need to do some grinding, but it's not too large of one so sure I'll put them above Summoner.
Geomancer can output some... kinda okay damage with Gaia, somewhat weaker than boosted -ara spells on average. Unlike black mage, though, there's no rod breaking to fall back on, so they're quite a bit worse. They need 5-6 rounds to close the deal, like Knight without the HP/old or Ranger without healing.
Dancer has similar offence to Dragoon but front row / no shield / way less HP lol. Or Mystic Knight with more offence and some weak draining (which gets really bad after Shell) but no shield and way less HP. This is just bad. Thief honestly rates higher, I think Dancer would just need too many Elixirs/Phoenix Downs to win... actually Phoenix Downs don't work well in the limit phase where he can kill two PCs a round, ugh. So elixir farm like crazy? Level a lot? Hope to get real lucky with Gilgamesh's AI/evasion? I dunno, it's bad.
And finally, Bard. Sigh, you had a good run, Bard. But it's back to being terrible. Regen just isn't enough, the other songs don't work. They'll need to farm Elixirs, they have substantially worse offence than Dancer even. The ONE thing they have over Dancer is that, if they use Hide, they can literally turtle until Gilgamesh runs out of MP. He uses Aera once every 12 turns on average and he needs to use it 100 times to run out. So 1200 rounds. That... no, that's gonna take two hours and arguably shouldn't be hyped and even then they're not much better than the worst. So I think they're last.
1. Red Mage
2. Time Mage
3. Ninja
4. White Mage
5. Chemist
6. Summoner
7. Samurai
8. Blue Mage
9. Monk
10. Black Mage
11. Beastmaster
12. Knight
13. Ranger
14. Geomancer
15. Dragoon
16. Mystic Knight
17. Thief
18. Berserker
19. Dancer
20. Bard
Next up: isn't it nice how Red Mage was #1? Because that isn't happening ever again, as we enter the mythical land of "level 4 spells" and in general we get a bunch of major upgrades, the most important of which is storebought Hi-Potions.
