Hello everyone! First off, thanks for watching! I'm glad this video got decent attention, it's good to know my effort wasn't wasted. It's great to hear from other JRPG experts about stuff that I missed. And speaking of, I'm gonna use this comment to pin some important info we neglected to talk about during the video, that you guys have informed me of. 1. We just straight up did not talk about Barehanded from Monk, when that ability singlehandedly allows mages to keep up in damage while both not making you spend more gil on weapons, and lets them save MP for more dangerous encounters. The main issue is that mages are still very frail, having low stamina and light armor, so having a front row Barehanded mage still poses a risk. Still, an incredibly valuable ability. 2. (Thanks to @chrisschumacher8553) Time Mage has a bunch of non-time related magic because the literal translation of the class refers to time/space or spacetime. 3. (Thanks to @thegreatgario3478) Quick is actually more broken than I thought it was: If you inflict a status buff or debuff with the first action of Quick, enemies still won't attack you while you're choosing the second action, but time-based effects like Sap/Poison/Regen still occur, letting you instakill any enemy vulnerable to them, or healing to full every turn. 4. (Thanks to @Zapdos7471) While I still don't think they're good, Self Destruct and ???? aren't reflectable , so with the right setup (mostly meaning HP+30%) they CAN have some kind of niche. 5. (Thanks to @SwordsDanceQwilfish) Monk's Counter actually can't be re-countered by enemies, but it DOES conflict with Mimic strats, if you're one of the few players that optimally uses it. Won't be an issue for 99% of players, but it IS still the only inherited passive that is potentially bad. 6. (Thanks to @GaIeforce) Bards only need to take damage form a physical hit to stop singing, not die. This includes the beneficial Healing Staff (which also un-confuses people if you hit them). Finally, I looked up stuff about the GBA classes, so here's a variation on my reply to @jorgepachi9627 about them: Gladiator - Another pretty plain pure damage class, but the random attack skill makes it a more interesting !Dance. The fact that it can use a lot of weapon types, including bows, is also notable. I'm mostly confused on why the 9999 damage attack is can do is elemental. Probably just for flavor, but still, weird; same thing with that one !Mix result that does fixed Fire, Ice AND Lightning damage all at once. Bladeblitz is apparently an actually-learnable !Kick; I feel like they would have been better off just making !Kick learnable instead of making a whole new job for it, but maybe this way it makes logical sense: Classes that aren't Monks aren't going to kick. Oracle - The pseudo-random element of the class is cool, and all the effects you can get are similarly neat. Plus, the fact that it has the new highest magic stat means you have an incentive to try it out. Unfortunately figuring out the method of the spells falls under our "too much effort" umbrella when, again, Time Mage exists. Getting ABP Up is also super helpful for grinding; I forgot these classes give grinding-related abilities. Cannoneer - After looking through the !Combine list, it looks like a weird combination of Chemist and Spellblade. You've got the item combining fused with elemental damage/status inflicting. So I think this class would go straight into the "way too much effort" pile, cool as it is conceptually. Necromancer - Blue Mage If It Was Designed Better. A really cool concept that's held back by when you get it: at the literal end of the post game. The magic effects themselves are cool too, basically being high MP costing "damage+debuff" moves.
I love it when a game is clearly designed to be replayed for its mechanics. The cutscenes are mostly brief and unintrusive, so you really can just play the game for the game.
My 2 cents…I’m pretty sure Ninja was intended to be an “upgrade” of Thief job. After all, in the original FF1, the Thief would become a ninja at Bahamut’s class change.
Although "Time Mage" is a pretty decent translation, the name of the school of magic in Japanese is "Jikku", which literally translates as Time/Space or Spacetime, which explains the presence of the space-based spells like teleport, comet, meteor, etc.
Later games have used "tokimadoushi," which just means "time mage." "Jikuu" is the name of the menu command in which the spells are accessed. I suspect the English translation of FF Tactics had something to do with the somewhat retroactive use of "time mage" in FF5 as well.
Dual-wield spellblade osmose rapid fire is not an efficient tactic, but it is a hilarious way to shut down spellcasting bosses. As long as they don't have enough MP that the first few hits get lowered by the damage cap, eight hits of robbing 1/3 of their remaining MP tends to eat 96% of their entire reserve. Watching bosses like Calofisteri and Azulmagia desperately bring out the "not enough MP" message while you leisurely smack them around is always such a fun flex.
Berserker is actually stronger than advertised, because the auto attack is faster ATB wise than mashing A. With a good amount of Time magic shenanigans, you get a lot of hits in
Plus there's the 25% boost to attack on top of that, so yeah the DPS is definitely there with the right setup. But since axes/hammers suck major ass, you either need to rely on daggers (which are unremarkable until the Chicken Knife/legendary knife), or give him Equip Swords or something similar.
@@Suprapika you could also give then the artful dodger skill from thief so they have thief speed and agi making them go from the slowest atb class to the fastest + haste making them a dps monster
fun fact: if you cast quick then break a bio rod you can kill every single enemy in the game by waiting on your second turn, since the HP drain status effect will enact while time is stopped waiting for your second action of course this will take a while for endgame bosses, but it's still a game breaking instakill you can also full heal from quick by casting regen on your first turn, based on the same principle also on the blue mage i can confirm you can kill every single boss in the game with level 5 death, except for carbunkle and omega (due to reflect - it reflects level 5 death), and killing some bosses with it fucks up the AI all sorts of ways for some bosses (like the tree exdeath form)
also vampire is *amazing* since it's based on total missing HP, not magic, so it can hit *very* hard for 2 MP (especially on the GBA), don't sleep on that shit
So Quick is even more insanely broken than I originally thought, good to know. I always forget that Bio inflicts a status; when I played FF4 as a kid, I thought Bio, Flare and Meteor were supposed to be the "nonelemental spell trio" even though that doesn't make sense, so it still infests my brain today.
@@Suprapikaenthusiast would be a good word choice to avoid weird passive aggressive comments in the future while meaning more or less the same thing lol.
Blue Mage is my favorite class. I love doing things in unnecessarily complicated ways. I'm current doing a run with no physical classes and no elemental black magic, just so that I'm forced to come up with the weirdest possible solutions to every encounter.
I think once you optimize the class, the biggest problem with it is that some spells are so insanely more powerful than others. Obviously that's true of all the mages, but the level magic and death claw (and white wind/mighty guard if you bother to get it) kinda overshadow most of it.
Blue Magic is the absolute bomb but it requires you to have a pretty good knowledge of the games mechanics. You have Dark Spark (halves enemies level, great for stealing), 1000 Needles, Aqua Breath (actually non-elemental damage which is what makes it useful), Goblin Punch (full melee damage from back row and unique damage formula for high defense enemies), White Wind/Might Guard, ???? Is actually very useful again for high defense enemies. The point of 1000 Needles is it always does 1000 regardless of enemy defence and state too. The only problem is you have to know how and where to get it but if you ask me finding it is the funnest part.
Blue Mage is full of unique spells, and the method of finding the spells can be a fun scavenger hunt, but it's also filled with a lot of junk. White Wind/Mighty Guard/Dark Spark/the Level magic are the big winners for me, but good luck getting half of those without the internet.
The red mage comes on second crystal so you can give up in both white and black mage for a moment and try more classes. It's just there to make changing easier cause you don't lose either, healing or element casts, which as a new player, you will otherwise feel very uncomfortable moving away from. By crystal 3, you hopefully learned that most classes are cool and you can do without any specific class if you need to
Blue Magic is fun but yeah it does require knowing about the game inside and out some. Still slapping something like Atmos with level 5 death cause you turned his level 41 ass into level 20 is great. I like how Strago and Quina learn it tbh.
The fact that TASes use a combination of Old and Level 5 Death for basically everything is indicative that !Blue is far too powerful for our mortal minds
@@ClintonKE finally someone praises Strago... He's got some staying power for being 70. May be weak in battle, but I've got some respect for a guy willing to risk his life in a Flame Eater-infested house for an adoptive Pictomancer granddaughter with a serious attitude issue. All while trusting complete strangers to help him.
I tend to play Four Job Fiesta, or a sort of Drafting System when playing with friends. The game definitely changes when you lose access to mostly everything. If you don't have access to White Mage as an example, that's where you hope to get Blue Mage for the early Vampire or a Thief to easily fund and accumulate healing items. Not that I'm disregarding your discussion, considering that when talking about the job system as a whole, comparisons are necessary. But I appreciate that with the variety, it makes the Four Job Fiesta or Draft Runs very possible as a means to spice up gameplay.
FJF runs are my main way to play, so the variety definitely makes it worth it. My disdain for the Blue Mage is mostly from me getting the class in multiple FJF runs, and it's just a pace killer having to wait around to get any of the spells.
4:10 that's why every time I play this game, I always start with training monk on all four characters until I learn barehanded. That way I can have barehanded black mage, white mage, etc. all doing higher damage than a knight throughout half of world 1, then when I get access to throw and the very first airship, I make everyone a Ninja (with !black equipped) until throw is learned, then finally use rod-boosted fire / lightning scrolls for pretty much the entire rest of the game.
I always neglect barehanded for some reason even though it is a great ability; not having to worry about weapon expenses for a while is nice. I didn't know that the rods boosted the elemental scrolls though, that's pretty sweet.
@@Suprapika I also recently found out that monk makes a surprising return toward end game (at least on Nintendo switch, not sure about SNES or gba). In particular, Rapid Fire + kaiser knuckle + 3 (or 4?) dragon power potions on a monk allows eight times 6100 damage on Gogo, which kills him instantly before he can even cast meteor. You also get the AP on monk too. Magic pot can be killed similarly, though requires a speed shake (turtle shell + something?) so can act twice in a row without the Pot healing itself. This is at mid-40s levels, and AFAIK not even dual-handed flare spellsword rapidfire is that good
Is there unique dialogue for killing either of them? I didn't even think it was possible, but it's cool to know that monk has a weird niche in the endgame... even if he needs the chemist's help to do it.
@@Suprapikanope, no dialog at all for killing either of them. Also I believe the key to monk's rapid fire power is that unlike weapons, its damage per hit does not seem to be halved. I'll need to double check that however
@@xdavidliu If that's true, that's pretty sick. Still pretty niche, since so many of the endgame weapons are obviously gimmick-heavy as well as super powerful, but Monk is always gonna be a solid choice. I just wish !Kick wasn't the innate ability.
I think Dragoon suffers a lot from spears being bad. While jump dodges some attacks it also dodges a lot of group heals. And group Curas don't increase in power the less people you have to heal (when it really should imo). Past games had the blood lance which had good stats and with the 2x effect of jump it could very easily recover most of your HP so the dragoon was self sufficient. But that doesn't exist in FFV. In general spears are pretty bad, you need meta knowledge and get a rare steal off a sand bear in the first world to give dragoon a head start (and it's still not that good so is it really worth the trouble?). In the final world you're stuck with partisans until you get worse excalib-I mean holy lance, and then one of the bosses you have to fight w/ physical absorbs holy so you have to swap back to garbage partisans. In the rift you can labor for more rare steals for a good lance but honestly I don't know why you'd bother (outside of specific challenges) when rapidfire chicken knife deletes Shinryu. Conclusion: Sell us the Blood Lance in the phantom village instead of Partisans please.
Spears should also benefit from two-handed, no idea why they don't here. I followed the book's guide on Lance, gave it to a high mag character and it was still trash. Dragoons would really benefit from having an alternative command to jump, since only jumping is kind of boring on top as being ineffective. (I feel like all physical skills suffer when put next to X-Fight/Rapidfire, it pretty much beats everything with how many perks it has) As a side note I feel like IV's jumps are cooler than V's since Kain sort of lands in a V shape instead of flying straight down.
The whole "have the tanky armored class jump into the air so your other less tanky party mates can take more hits" is also funny design. I recently watched a FF16 dragoon boss fight and the dragoon has something called a mirage dive where he spawns a ton of clones/illusions and they all start falling from the sky. What if you gave that to V dragoons so after jumping he leaves an afterimage of sorts that can be targeted?
gil toss is such a funny ability - in my first playthru I remember assuming something was wrong with the game when using it, was in disbelief how much damage it does (would later beat exdeath with a samurai and 3 mimics using it)
With how easy it is to farm gil (I just incidentally farm it if I ever Objet d'Art grind), it's not like gil is a super valuable resource, either. If I ever get Samurai in a FJF, I opt out of using gil toss.
@@theodorescontras5569 I've not gotten to Samurai yet, but FFVI has the nearest equivalent to Zeninage: Gil Toss. Setzer became quite dangerous for me with the Genji Glove, Coin Toss, and twin Viper Darts. There's so much Gil in WoR dungeons you'd be crazy not to use Gil Toss, and ABP grinding is absolutely broken with it on the Veldt. The Viper Darts' instant kill property is available pre-Ichigeki, so even if Shadow dies it's there (not that any *sane* person would kill him (Kefka: "Did someone call for me?")) and having two is almost a 50% (I think it's around 41%) proc rate that for me rivals the Fixed Dice.
Being new to the FF series and having just beaten 5, this video is extremely entertaining. I know I'm late at this point, but I'd love to see more from a "2 JRPG experts talk about" series.
It's funny you say that, because I did actually want to turn this into a series, but we kinda struggled to think of games that both of us are familiar enough with to talk about, and also the games themselves would have to BE worth talking about. Like, we both like the Tales series, but there's not a lot like 5's job system that has interesting "talking points" in that series. I think Disgaea 1 is the most qualified game in that case, I hope we can make a video about it eventually, but I dunno when.
@@Suprapika I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a JPRG "expert", but they're my favorite genre, so I'd definitely love to see any more in-depth analysis. I plan on making videos about myself getting through the FF series, so maybe we can even collaborate sometime in the future. I sure as shit have a ton to say about the Xenoblade games, for better or for worse...
@@gavinislightning The only Xenoblade I care about is the first one; Kingdom Hearts, Xenoblade, and Final Fantasy are serieses where I only care about like, 1 game in the series and nothing else. FF is more like 5 games because the series is so god damn big, but still.
A correction on the Bard's Sing ability. You can actually get Bards to stop singing if they simply just get hit with a physical attack. You can do this with bare fists, or my favorite, bonking Bards with a Heal staff to heal their HP. (which bypasses things like Image status that they might have, and apprently counts as a physical attack even though it casts a spell) Knowing this, you can control bards a lot more, and they don't have to die to stop singing.
Yeah, you're right; I actually discovered that while trying to get footage of the Zombie Bard "glitch", but then forgot to put in the correction in the video. I didn't think about using the Heal Staff for that purpose though, even though it works the same for Confusion, so that's cool.
It's way more MP costly, but the best !Time spell, Quick, let's you do 2 actions back to back, no matter what they are. I think that's the next best thing, especially once you get them a Gold Hairpin.
@@SuprapikaYeah, I could go all in on the spell spam gimmick and use dualcast, time, and blue on the mime class during end game. I’ve been using the hairpin on them anyways due to the good blue spells being really expensive. Thanks for the advice!
I think the reason blue can't be dualcast it's because it's not like the other magic divided by levels and skills to each level, you get !blue and instantly can use everything and maybe thats why it also can be used even if you are silenced
Final Fantasy V is my favorite FF game! I lost the count on how many times I finished this amazing game. I wish it could have more Job based system games like this!
Thanks! I wish that we could get more job system games similar to FF5, but the evolution of the concept throughout the series is at least indicative that they want to keep changing it, which I respect.
@@DontStopCornPop I own the X duology on Switch but I haven't played it yet; from what I understand the job system looks really good. I'll hopefully play it sometime in the future.
Berserker is massively slept on, and you put out flat out misinformation about the Rune Axe sucking. Axes and Hammers ignore 75% of enemy defense, and the rune axe uses 5 MP to do a critical hit. It also adds the Berserker's magic stat into the damage formula. Also shitting on Blue Mage and using the word expert in the title.
I admit I didn't know about the magic stat of the berserker going into the rune axe, but I can't picture that mattering a ton since he has the biggest magic penalty. I stand by Berserker weapons sucking because they miss so much and their damage is all over the place, though. Also, like I've mentioned to others, we know Blue Mage is really good, but it's incredibly annoying to use to maximum efficiency.
@@Suprapika Berserk is also a 50% boost to weapon damage. Passing on critical hits is a weird thing considering only the Samurai's katanas have guaranteed crit chances. There are a few weapons in other classes here and there like the Yoichi's Bow that have crit chances but a guaranteed crit as long as the user has MP is too good to pass up. Defense reduction only comes from other places such as the Chemist's split shell mix, and the Hunter's rapid fire which ignores defense. On the other hand the Berserker is always ignoring 75% of physical defense. On average these guys tend to hit really, really hard. The earth hammer and Thor's hammer are also long range weapons which allows players to toss them from the back row with no penalty to damage.
I swear that Berserk was only a 25% increase in attack; I read it somewhere prior to making this video, but I guess it was incorrect. But yeah, I'll definitely give you that between the guaranteed crit, defense down, and other factors like using !Summon to give the berserker a great magic attack (or the thornlet if you don't mind the sap for the underflow glitch), or the Thief agility ability, the damage potential is definitely there. And the earthquake hammer is a cool novelty like we talked about in the video. I know I'm repeating myself a bunch here, but the random damage and accuracy really does prevent me from actually enjoying it. But I won't deny that it DOES have some stuff.
ff5? im sorry you misspelled peak my favorite part about ff5 is that you always have the tools to do pretty much everything, you just have to be creative
If there's anything I can say negatively about it, it's that sometimes the tools you have are TOO strong. Like kneecapping Atomos with sleep, instakilling a couple bosses that don't have heavy flags, using Level 5 Death on some other bosses, using Reflect on the Fork Tower mage boss, etc. But finding stuff like that out, and it actually working, is way more of a positive for experimentation, than it is a negative for fulfilling boss design. There's like 50+ bosses in the game, too, so a couple throwaway ones aren't too bad.
These guys have noted in comments and replies that we (the FF Community) have proven the biggest beauty of the Job System, you can tailor your party to your playstyle and experiment to try something new.
I'm halfway through and just like to point out about comet and gravity being seemingly not time related. Actually they are. For gravity, the two main theories are Newtonian gravity where gravity is an instantaneous force of attraction between a pair of masses, and Einstein's general theory of relativity where gravity is due to the warpage of space time. Gravity is closely tied to time in modern technologies, for example, satelites being further from Earth experiences a weaker gravity pull than us and therefore from our perspective they experience time faster. The satelites used in GPS always need to have their clocks correct for time dilation for their clock to sync with ours on the Earth surface due to difference in gravity. For comet, my guess is that it could be due to its speed of travel. For objects travelling at close to light speed, time starts to slow down around them. This is Einstein's special relativity.
Blue mage sprite atk animations would’ve been cool if they did a monster effect based on the move set, very similar to LoL Udyr when he goes thru his different beast forms where he embodies some animalistic characteristics and you get a nice transparent silhouette of the monster he’s channeling. Would’ve been a neat sprite animation
Assuming no repeats (because 4 Berserkers is definitely worse), that's definitely a contributor to worst team. Silver linings: you get Equip ribbons to help everyone's damage, you don't need to worry about gold hairpins because !Gaia is free, no back attacks ever because of thief (plus being able to steal some good shit), it's not all bad. But it is pretty bad.
@@Suprapika I tried it, and I got stuck at the Sandwurm fight. The big issue is that your required berserker attacks at random and triggers the counter attacks from the pits almost every time, causing way too much damage to the entire party. Since it's a gravity attack, leveling doesn't really help either. Gaia also has the same issue, forcing one to rely on the much weak physical attacks. I also tried deliberately knocking out the berserker before hand, but then you are stuck doing a tough fight without a party member.
@@michaelmills8205 Ah, yeah, the Sandworm always screws over the Berserker teams. Although I didn't really think about Gaia screwing over things too, plus I think you can only have 1 bell at that point. So your best damage options are that one bell, and the boomerang you get from the Fire Ship... pretty bad. If you ever manage to get past that point, I'd be curious to hear about it.
@@Suprapika With Equip Axes you can have death sickles, which might be better than your other options at that point, though it isn't really a hard fight if you just stick to physicals and don't come in with your Berserker alive to attack the holes Edit: If you're stuck with a Berserker in a fiesta, Equip Axes can be worth putting on something with worse strength if you don't have anything better to use the ability slot for even if you're not going to use axes or hammers purely for the strength boost, which if you have Thief and Geomancer for Sandworm, you don't
I think Time Mage is more meant to be like a "space mage" or "Spacetime Mage" but because of character limitations they just called it Time mage since for most spells it has it makes sense
Dude . Rune axe and rune blade are pretty good... Give it to a summoner/oracle mastered Freelancer Or give Berserker/gladiator the summon skill.. and for just 5/8 mp, it'll give the chicken knife a pretty good contender.. It can even proc while doing rapid fire..
What I can't seem to find any info on is whether the magic stat, or any other stat for that matter, has any effect on the odds for status effects landing on enemies. Are the odds of status effects landing just fixed?
I'm pretty sure that the Magic Evasion stat is the only stat that effects the accuracy of debuff magic. I might be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works. One of the Omegas or Shinryus has over 100% Magic Evasion, and I have no idea why.
I know where to find it, but I spent 20-30 minutes in that spot trying to get it, and it just didn't appear, ever. Ironically in my level 1 run of PR, it spawned almost immediately, so I don't know if my luck was bad, or if they buffed the spawn rate in PR.
My overall strategy in a play-through is to build 2 melee characters (Bartz and Faris), one white/time/buffing mage (Galuf), and one black/summoner/offense mage (Lenna). My melee characters go barehanded Thieves in the early game for extra fun. As I get to the endgame, I work to master everything with everyone.
Is there a place in the endgame where you can farm ABP really quickly? I played this game a lot but have never finished it, so I'm playing through again hopefully to see it to the end.
I usually do one dedicated support character (like white mage with time) one mixed offense and support (samurai/ninja with time) one strict physical heavy hitter (monk/knight/samurai with an ability that complements the job) and one magic attacker (black mage, summoner, geomancer) But I trade jobs out as needed to master and level up. Ideally each character would get mastery over each of these classes so you get late game freelancers/mimes with good stats.
@@DontStopCornPop I'm on my first playthrough and just stumbled upon a great grind. I'm in the merged world and finished getting the legendary weapons. I'm trying to level up my Red Mage quick because I need the dualcast. I have it equipped with Magus Rod to boost elemental damage, gold hairpin to conserve MP, and Hermes Sandals to ensure I go first. Then I equip !black and spam Thundaga on the Objet d'Art in the basement of Galuf's castle in that room with the sealed door. It OHKOs them instantly. Even on spread and even if 5 of them show up. Between 4 and 8 AP per battle and each battle only lasts long enough for me to menu down to Thundaga and over to select all enemies. Without the boosting items you might need 2 casters, but make sure you get the sandals so they move first. Plus, there's a save circle just up the stairs so you can save periodically and use a cottage to restore MP.
It's funny you say that, because my most recent FFV video about the best jobs has me talk about it at one point. I'm definitely super excited for it, and I hope the port doesn't suck ass. 120 fps for a Tales game is crazy, especially for the best one.
Knight / Monk are the physical jobs that directly, passively enhance themselves (attack harder, HP tank better), which is strangely uncommon for most jobs. They are simple, strong, and easy to use. Monk’s HP plus ended up being useful for Self Destruct blue magic because its damage can’t be reflected or reduced. It hits omega weapon hard with minimal blowback. Thief / Geomancer add the dungeoneering elements that make FFV unique. I think it’s ok for some jobs to exist to only add a new dimension to gameplay. Blue Mage / Chemist exist to reward replays. Not every job needs to be first or second play friendly imo. Berserker definitely exists to be mixed with other physical jobs since it has only 2 levels and more downsides than ability slots. It is literally Status Effect: The Job. I’ve found use cases for almost all jobs by doing a bunch of challenge runs and IMO the only complete whiffs in FFV are Dragoon and Ranger. X-Attack is nice and has some fun glitches in the SNES version, but it doesn’t justify the job existing. Something I love about FFV is that EVERY version has different glitches, content, and patches. There is no definitive version.
I mentioned this in the video, but it really does confuse me why Dragoon is so plain. Last crystal job, not even the best physical class in the same crystal; !Jump is extremely underwhelming, and !Lance just feels like a waste of an ability slot most of the time. I'm definitely with you on that last part. SNES FFV has that "no cutscenes" mod and multiplayer, which by itself justifies its existence. Although I wouldn't really recommend the PS1 version except to look at the really bad translation.
@@Suprapika 😂 yeah, we don’t talk about PS1 FFV, the black sheep. This is a super secret, undocumented bit of niche info, but the X-Attack / Spellblade glitch behaves differently between the SNES and GBA versions. In the OG game, an enemy killed by an instant death X-Attack is immediately removed from the target list, meaning you are guaranteed to hit 4 different targets (and kill them). In GBA enemies are removed from the target list after each action, allowing for redundant attacks. There are other differences that make me prefer the SNES version, but it’s a pretty significant difference… one I haven’t seen documented anywhere. Also, his name is Butz. You said you were experts! 😆
@@Zapdos7471 I feel like I subconsciously knew that X-Attack difference, but probably in a "wait, I thought it did this" kind of way; didn't really think about it being a version thing. At least now I know. And despite my legitimacy of expertise being in question, I am firmly on the "Bartz" train, purely because Dissidia was the first game I played with Bartz in it. I'm also pro-Krile (instead of Cara), but I never see anyone call her Cara, so that's probably not debated too much.
@@Suprapika I jest, I jest, but it is good to hear thoughts on the game that aren’t the usual “it’s under appreciated, it’s the best!” I think it really sets itself apart for allowing unique player choice without punishing “wrong” choices. There could be very different tier lists for each player and I think that’s neat! (Well… maybe using four berserkers would be playing it wrong 😅)
For sure. The fact that it came out on the SNES makes it even more impressive; there are modern job-centric games that struggle to have the replayability and fun factor of FFV.
The thing I did for monk was to get everyone barehanded and so when I made them a mage of some sort I would give them that. That way they would be able to just hit for similar dmg as their spells without using mp.
The fact that many people have mentioned Barehanded at this point indicates that I missed a very crucial strategy in my many playthroughs of this game. I guess I like magic too much.
Honestly it could have been a lot worse considering it is the first version of the class, but it's been a lot better ever since then. Stranger of Paradise has a great version of the Blue Mage's "learn enemy skills" thing, and that was before they added in the Blue Mage as a DLC class.
If I'm playing through the game without any kind of ruleset, I like to have my Thief/Ninja invest a tiny bit into Monk until it learns Focus. Didn't know equipping Charge would up their STR/STA, but that would make the high damage make more sense. My intention for getting Charge was just to let them do good damage in the early game and bypass the run from the chicken knife in the latter half. Also my Monk>Thief>Ninja choice is Faris, because pirate. It just makes the most sense.
Is Barehanded called Charge on one of the translations? I don't think I've heard that before. Also yeah, Faris usually ends up either being my secondary attacker with Barts in regular runs, or whichever class is the fastest in FJFs (because she has the highest Agility).
@@Suprapika I meant Focus, sorry. I maybe misunderstood the conversation, but it sounded like equipping a skill from a job gave that jobs stats, so Focus being from Monk should give STR/STA, right?
@@Pickleton Sometimes, but not always; Monk in this case will only give its Strength stat from Barehanded, and even then ONLY if you actually go barehanded (so unfortunately, until you master Monk for Freelancer/Mime, you can only have that Strength stat with your fists). Equip [Weapon] skills, like Equip Swords or Equip Axes will give the Knight/Berserker Strength stat, and !Black or !White will give you the Black/White Mages Magic stat, for example, but stuff like !Focus, !Cover, Equip Shields, !Gaia, etc. do NOT give stats. I don't have a comprehensive list of everything, my best suggestion is to either do the stat comparisons in-game yourself, or to check the FF Wiki. Not everything there is 100% accurate, but it's mostly correct about things.
@@Suprapika Ah that's unfortunate. I misunderstood what was being said to be that equipping any skill from a job in the secondary slot would give that job's stats, rather than any specific skill. I still stand by my choice of Focus/Buildup on a Thief, though. I seem to remember my Thief doing similar numbers to a Knight with sword, with more utility at the cost of tankiness.
To be honest, I'm not 100% sure. After I uploaded this I also thought "wait, is that even true?" but I left it in just in case. Followup edit: Counter can't trigger counterattacks, but it CAN fuck up Mimic chains, if you're using that tactic. So it CAN be potentially detrimental, but won't be for most players.
The knight in FF1 is about as interesting as the other classes. It can use low level white magic. They gave the knight more identity in later games but it ended up being able to do less than in FF1. Although only 4 spells the knight can learn in FF1 are of any use so it basically is the powerful equip everything class. With lots of health. I know you already pre-empted the comments about how later games improved on the job system but the warrior in FFX-2 did such an amazing job making every class expansive. Still my fave job system to this day. They managed to make warrior and berserker cool. In FF1 the ninja can use low level black magic. The monk can literally do nothing except attack. But it’s special gimmick is that when it doesn’t have a weapon equipped its attack is its level x2. And while it has no armor equipped its defence is = to its level. So as you get higher level you should remove weapons and armor. The knight is an upgraded warrior, ninja is upgraded thief (warrior and thief can do nothing except attack in that game), and the monk upgrades to master which literally gives him nothing new. White mage is the best class in FF1. That’s one thing that will never change. Red mage makes more sense in FF1 since you pick classes for your 4 characters and those never change. Red mage is a superior black mage since offensive magic isn’t useful late game. And the red mage can learn white magic and has better physicals. In Japanese time mage is jiku mage which is space-time mage, not just time. So that’s why it has random space themed spells. Should’ve included the gba/mobile/old steam ver exclusive jobs. They’re too often neglected. I know they’re useless because of how late they’re obtained but still.
With regard to the diagram at the start, it might've made more sense to have one of the axis be either offence vs defence or magic vs physical attacks, since your axes basically measure the same thing twice (how "controllable" and therefore useful the job is).
I enjoyed this, thank you! I really like how the Freelancer can equip anything with no requirements. Gives the job a theme in the early game, where your gear can be just as valuable as an ability. Once you have all the jobs there's never a reason to not be learning _something,_ so the equipment freedom doesn't matter until you've finished a build. It's coincidental, but it's a good flow. Time Mage's Mute is wacky. It's an unblockable Mute to the whole battle, that doesn't work at all in specific battles. Mute specifically seals _White/Black/Time/Summon/MgcSwrd/Sing,_ which 99% of enemy magics *aren't.* So it's about as useful as Roulette. Berserker can be fun to use EqWhip on, carries over the Beastmaster agility stat and whips are back-row okay with consistent damage and some special properties. EqBow is the same except bows miss a lot. EqHarp _also_ carries agility, but Berserk doesn't affect magic damage (harps) so agility is all you're getting. Ranger getting EqAxes or Berserk is also pretty okay as a damage boost. And if a Fiesta run sticks you with a Berserker+Blue Mage/Geomancer, EqAxes can open up strategies. Blue Mage with a Titan Axe doing Goblin Punches backed by a Berserker's strength stat. Geomancer swinging the Gaia Hammer for a more consistent element. Just silly fun stuff.
Thank you! It's kinda funny that Time Mage has 2 useless spells, and still manages to be the best job in the game. Also, the Equip Harp thing is interesting, but the only harp that actually does damage is the last one, so it kinda feels like a waste of an ability slot. Could make the Rune Axe better, at least.
@@Suprapika Haste is just too good! Hermes' Sandals are probably the best piece of equipment in the game. Unlike in FF9, where I'd swear that being hasted lowers the duration of being hasted. :P
@@Jikkuryuu Time Mage is the best job for a reason, after all. Hermes Sandals are S-tier to be sure, but they're also kinda useless if you have a Time Mage, Chemist, or Samurai in your party to free up the accessory slot. But in FJFs, they're a godsend to be sure.
a little glitch thing i found out once was vs Odin. i didnt know that Odin was vulnerable to petrification. so Bartz was my mystic knight, had dual wield, cast break blade, then rapid fire. first hit landed then he immediately did 7 super fast attacking animations (no slashes on Odin), then Odin just died.
Vampire is actually a pretty good blue Magic, because deals damage equal of your missing HP meaning that a single cast of it restores all your HP (only in GBA heals all as the other versions of the game it heals half of your missing HP)
I have limited knowledge of them, and RJ has no experience with them, but basically: Gladiator - another pretty plain pure damage class, but the random attack skill makes it a more interesting !Dance. The fact that it can use a lot of weapon types, including bows, is also notable. Oracle - the pseudo-random element of the class is cool, and all the effects you can get are similarly neat. Plus, the fact that it has the new highest magic stat means you have an incentive to try it out. Unfortunately figuring out the method of the spells falls under our "too much effort" umbrella when, again, Time Mage exists. Cannoneer - honestly don't know what to think. It's kind of weird that it's a less complicated and more damage focused chemist, but that IS something. Necromancer - Blue Mage If It Was Designed Better. A really cool concept that's held back by when you get it: at the literal end of the post game.
Spellblade is just Element-J and Status-J but in combat. No wonder FF8 is so broken, its main character spams Spell Blade Rapid Fire the entire game. Heck, everyone there is a spellblare for free.
You guys should try out the Pixel Freemaster mod. It adds the Super Custom Classes mod and improves Berserker through a patch. Very curious how you guys look t the classes through this mod.
I actually looked through it a bit, I thought it was just cosmetic QoL stuff but immediately noticed a bunch of equipment changes. Someday I might try it out for real, because it looks cool, but not for now.
It seems like in the GBA version giving Summon to a Black Mage doesn't boost the magic stat at all. Tried giving a brand new black mage level 3 summon but the magic stat is 59 both with and without Summon equipped. It does work for other jobs like giving Monk summon though. Maybe I need to master Summoner first?
This is something I should have specified in the video, but you only get the corresponding Magic stat once you've mastered the class. This is an example taken from the FF Wiki: Level 1 !Summon increases your magic by 17 (if your class doesn't already have 17 or more magic), whereas Level 5 !Summon gives the full 33 magic, with the inbetween levels giving 21, 25, and 29. Black Mage has 31 Magic, so you wouldn't see any stat changes until you have a maxed out !Summon command. My bad for not clarifying in the video.
Yeah, you're right there. But I do think they're spaced out weirdly, and I think the weirdest song is the only missable one at the Merged World Library; you have a very small window to get that one.
Blue Mage & Alchemist are actually among the most butt broken overpowered classes in the game, fyi. The buffs of Alchemist can make your stats reach to the maximum of 255, can kill Neo-ExDeath in 1 turn, etc. Blue Mage if you know which mosters to copy there are really strong spells like Aero 3, or Water magic that is unique to that job class. Many people underestimate those classes. End game: Freelancer (physical characters) Mime (magic users).
Believe me, I'm aware that those 2 classes are two of the strongest in the game when used optimally. My point is moreso that I don't really like "metagame" classes that you basically need a guide to use properly, because that's basically what they are.
@@Suprapika yea yea i heard the whole argument i watched the whole video, check the statistics if u dont believe me. doesnt take that much to look it up nowadays tho ngl. Chemist deserves to be the strongest due to the deeper difficulty curve.
Given your expertise of the genre, I'd be interested in seeing how you'd rank the Bravely Default Jobs. Especially because BD's system feels like a direct evolution of FFV.
I think it's been literally a decade since I played BD, so I'd have to replay it to remember everything. All I can recall right now are the jobs that enhance the White/Black Mage jobs, which is a really cool idea.
FFX did a good job on the learning aspect of Blue Magic. Kimari just has to use Lancet on certain enemies to gain his Overdrives, and you can pretty easily just use Lancet on basically every enemy in the game once you capture them for the monster arena. You could do a similar thing in the structure of FFV by just making Lancet a Blue Magic spell that you get for free right at the beginning.
An interesting take on it, although I feel like that kinda goes too far in the opposite direction and makes it too simple. But I'd still take that over what it is now.
Someone else recommended it, and I looked it up. It looks interesting, and maybe I'll try it out if it goes on sale, but there's some stuff that just seems like I wouldn't enjoy it so much. The main thing that comes to mind is the platforming.
Red Mage style is still alive and kicking in FF14 :) was my main until Pictomancer came along, i love seeing my 6 foot 6 Fem Roe get lifted off the ground with Magic Hammer.
Berserker is awesome!! Sure, it involves a little luck for getting lots of hits, but it doesn’t even *need* to hit many times to do crazy overall damage in a fight! (And as others mention, you always want to haste them.)
Footwork just gives any class the Thief's Agility stat, but the Freelancer/Mime would inherit that even if it wasn't a dedicated ability. Agility only does 2 things: It effects how fast your ATB gauge fills, and it makes certain weapons do more damage (but that's only really relevant to the Chicken Knife, because it's the only weapon in the game that uses your full Agility stat).
I'm doing a modified four job fiesta where each character gets a job chosen but can swap later, and i got 2 Monks (the Tycoon sisters), 1 Blue Mage (Galuf! Higest base Stanima...) and Bartz got Thief. I had a friend of mine choose a random number from 1-5 for each character. Got the short end of the stick with no White/Black Mage though...
@@Suprapika I actually had to KO Lenna and Faris to get access to Vampire, Aero, and Goblin Punch since the Counters were instant death based on damage. Thief is pretty much a necessity to get Shiva early (Ice Soldiers + Thief + 4 Blue Mages = OP Mythril sluggers (pre-Karnak Mythril Swords!) where Lv 11 GP (Goblin Punch) is the main attack with Aero and Vampire as support. Just pour damage into Shiva, MT Aero, and Vampire the Ice Commanders. Swapped Bartz to Blue Mage + Find Passages, Lenna as Knight + Focus, Galuf as White Mage + Learning, and Faris as Thief + Focus. Still, it was fun to off Karlabos before he could Tail Screw me... As for some of my later setups, will Berserker + Magic Shell actually do anything? I'm thinking it will go like this: Berserker hits Critical status, Beserker Auto-Shells, White/Blue Mage heals, Beserker keeps Auto-Shell, repeat. It's more of a longevity booster/redline strat. Also, I personally don't bash Thief because of Locke from FFVI/FFVIA and the existence of the heavenly power that is !Time. Gravity is fixed damage, right? So slap !Time on Thief, get some Elven Mantles/Main Gauches, and let the Indignation begin (couldn't help a Tales ref).
Auto-Shell is always good, but it's one of those abilities I forget about until it happens. If you don't have something like dual wield or 2 handed, giving the Berserker a magic skill is good late game because the Rune Axe adds your magic stat into the damage formula, so if you give them !Blue, they'll have the Blue Mages magic stat. And yes, Gravity halves an enemy's HP, and Graviga reduces it by 7/8ths (Missile, the Blue spell, does 3/4th HP). It doesn't work on most bosses though, and Death Claw the blue mage spell is usually a better choice against anything that isn't Heavy because it reduces them to single digit HP. Also I appreciate any Tales references around here.
@@Suprapika Call me crazy, but I'm entering the Exdeath/Neo Exdeath battle with 4 Blue Mages. I've worked out a set of 4 rough setups (named after shades of blue) for the Chosen Warriors (credit to Djibrel, who made the definitive FFVA guide for GameFAQs): Bartz (or Roxas in my run (KH2/KH Days ref): Indigo Mage This is my "Warrior Mage" setup. Heaviest armor available, Excalibur (through Equip Swords) or Main Gauche and Excalibur through Dual Wield. Obviously slinging Aeroga and Vampire to stay alive. Lenna: Aqua (or Cerulean; love me some Pokemon Yellow) Mage This one's my "Technician Mage" (ref to a unique Ability, Technician, which boosts moves of 60 or less base power). I'm thinking some light to mid weight armor, Equip Bows or Bladeblitz/Spellblade 6, Sasuke's Bow or the sealed Sword (name eludes me rn), ???, Goblin Punch, and White Wind. Krile: Teal Mage From my knowledge, Krile has one of the best (if not the best) Magic stats in the game. Still, she'll be best as my healer/guardian, with !Mix or !White Lv 6, White Wind, and Mighty Guard. Not sure about equipment though... Obviously a good shield (Aegis?) Faris: Cobalt Mage The Paladin (move aside Cecil 😏) of the group, this former swashbuckler will be wearing heavy armor not used by Bartz, using Cover as her support ability, and making heavy use of Mighty Guard and White Wind. If Krile doesn't get the Aegis Shield, Faris will. I'm also thinking of moving Bartz and Lenna to the front and keeping Krile and Faris (gasp!) in the back. Faris is mainly meant for defense, so the back row assignment is actually good: if I mess up and miss Guard, the back row placement (hopefully) will halve damage from Covering.
If you've got spells like mighty guard and white wind, you could honestly beat neo exdeath with just blue magic, so anything on top of that is icing on the cake. Only thing, I wouldnt bother with bows, Shields are seriously great and bows aren't good enough to give up the offhand slot, plus Blue Mages have a strength penalty of -7.
hearing you mention Paladin reminds me that i distinctly remember reading that in Japan the big playground rumor about this game when it came out was that you could enter the moai head under the ocean if you hit the right requirements and then you could fight the Cloud of Darkness or Enuo or whatever and unlock Paladin and Sage as the secret ultimate jobs that had some ridiculous benefits like barrage on normal attack or all magic on a single command or something. obviously ended up incorporated into the gba bonus dungeon but "paladin in ff5" reminded me of that part
@@Suprapika also makes sense because FF3 had Sage and Ninja as the ultimate kind-of-hidden endgame jobs that completely outclass everything else, and unlocking them and suddenly being able to just run over everything in the game is one of the most satisfying parts of that game, so i can totally understand being a dumb kid and being disappointed you dont get that same power-trip moment this time even though that obviously runs completely counter to how ff5 designs its jobs
@@porygonlover322 That kind of thinking does SORT OF apply to 5, where (at least to me) it feels like Freelancer is supposed to be the ultimate physical job, and Mime the ultimate magic job. But obviously you have to put in the work to get them to that point, instead of just getting these amazing jobs.
@@Suprapika plus if youre a kid its likely you wont ever think to switch back to freelancer, so its really just mime which is relatively underwhelming compared to the insane power jump of the Eureka jobs
Interesting tier lists. I think geomancer is an unleashed beast. Out of combat are terrain inmune and in combat have free magic which rarely is a bad one. Equip a geomancer with Summon (highest magic stat) and nice clothing and weapons to boost their Mag and their elemental damage and these guys are very solid magic damage dealers which doesn't care about MP
In my experience they don't even really need Summon, an Air Knife and Gaia Gear work even better, since it seems most of their magic is wind and earth.
@@Suprapika that is correct, but why choosing between them when you can do both things? : ) Magus rod in the endgame is also very powerful in the hands of a capable geomancer.
I'm surprised you don't mention Dragon Lance and Dragon's Whisker for Spear and Whips. They deal double on Dragon types and there is a mix to make anything in the game a Dragon type. Absolutely slept on. Used Dragon's Whiskers to put Shinryu in the hospital on turn 1.
In my level 1 run, I did use dragon lances to wipe Shinryu out, but I'm not really convinced that using a whip against him would be worth it. You can use it from the back row, but he does so much damage that row feels kinda meaningless sometimes. You're right though, that is a good strategy.
Hey, I'm always down to discuss, that's partly what this video's for. Getting other people's perspectives on such a modular game like this is part of the fun!
I read about that yesterday actually, I'll give it up to Vampire to being better than I thought. When we made this video, I was unaware that Vampire was based on missing health, I just thought it was ungodly weak. And to an extent, I don't blame myself for thinking that. It's one of the first Blue Magics you can get, so it's not gonna be doing more than like, 20 damage at a time; I would never assume it's based on missing HP.
You might like the Bravely Default series, where the job system that started in FFIII that was streamlined in FFV was further streamlined for this specific IP. All characters can dual wield ALL weapons, with caviats. Your weapon physical attack for each hand is halved when both hands have a weapon unless you equip Ninja's dual wield ability, which takes away that problem. And there is a proficiency system as well, where the higher a class's proficiency with weapon types, the more damage you deal depending on the weapon type equipped. A weapon used with proficiency of S will essentially double the damage. And there is the Brave and Default Battle System, where a good party will have a BP(Brave Point) generator to allow for the spamming of powerful attacks that cost BP. BP give you exta actions you can spend in one turn without consequence. Normally, you build up BP by Defaulting, which is the standard way to reduce damage while generating BP. So guarding is more useful. Some of the best ways to make a BP Generator is to either use Red Mage passive BP increase abilities and fulfill the conditions for them, or simply use the Time Mage's Hasten World to generate extra BP every turn for everything in the battle screen, including enemies. And get this, in BD2(which is the third game in the series), some of the classes that sucked are actually good. For example, the Berserker can have the max attack, but the berserk state included is an option. AAAND the Beast master is so broken, especially when you unlock its second specialty, which boosts the class's stats depending on how many monsters you've captured. Most of the monsters used for the unleash ability still suck though. You can use up to 5 passive abilities at once per character depending on how many AP each passive you unlock costs. And you can equip an extra command set fromm any othet job to your current job and have access to whatever you unlocked at the time. And as a fun twist, to get new jobs, you havs to beat bosses that start with those jobs to get them for yourself. Only problem with the first game is the repetition of the boss party builds for a while can be quite a turnoff and often makes new players wonder why the game had yet to present a final boss and credits. And while they are there, it can be a slog to get to that point. But only the first game has that narrative problem.
I have actually played the first Bravely Default, and I disliked it so much I didn't bother to follow up on the sequels. The gameplay I had no problems with, because yeah, it's a really good evolution of the FF job system; it was mostly the story that irritated me, and weirdly enough the speedup battles/disable random encounter switches. It felt like the game wasn't even trying to hide that that shit is annoying, but they put it in anyways. Fantastic soundtrack, though.
@@Suprapika I get that. The story in the direct sequal wasn't nearly as bad. For one thing, you only explore thewhole world map twice. AND there are other new dungeons/locations besides the final dungeon. There's even a bit in the final form of the final boss where they do the same thing done in that Gamecube horror game where they gaslight you into thinking your saves are being destroyed. They also added in some new jobs, got rid of some old ones, and put features of the axed jobs onto both new and returning jobs. THERE IS A CLASS THAT USES RIFLES!!! But its poor sales despite upping its narrative chops a bit prevented them from delivering on the sequel bait they put in. Finally, the newest installment took place in a whole new world that you only have to fully explore once, with asterisk collection being mandatory for progressing the plot. Which is a shame, since the only two optional ones are the returning salvemaker, and the gambler(which is the anti Setzer in that it SUCKS! save for some passives that actually help with item collection). There are very few physical attacks that don't cost HP to use. Heck there are some spells that cost HP. And finally, after getting to the final chapter in the story, which requires seeing the two bad endings first, you unlock portals that give you asterisk boss groupings that give you one guaranteed unlocking the last abilities of their respective jobs, and a possible chance to steal/get as a drop their weapons, which equip all nonspecialty passives of the weapons' jobs while equipped. Some passives can even be stacked that way.
I greatly enjoy this sort of long form discussion, I will say though I was pretty bothered by the use of the R-slur. it makes me pretty uncomfortable. That being said, I look forward to more videos like this as well as to binging the rest of your content
Yeah with Darkshock, if it's an odd number level on an enemy it rounds down, you can totally use it to get them to the right level for blue mage level magic, I think Atomos can be killed with level 5 death this way.
I love any game with a job system...ff5 on gba and ff tactics on psp introduced me to it and to dnd and ive fallen in love ever since...will yall(in the far future i dont expect another super indepth discussion right after this) ever cover ff tactics/war of the lions?
I generally do like job system games (I've recently been playing Strangers of Paradise, and the job system in that is awesome), but sometimes they're a miss for me, like Xenoblade 3. Neither of us have played Tactics 1 enough to make a video on it (I've only played it for like 3 hours), but Tactics A2 I've played the shit out of, so maybe that could be a thing in the future.
You mentioned that certain skills like equip sword gave other classes the enhanced stats of the class that gave the skill. Barehanded from monk does this as well (dat +26 strength baby). So you can give that weakling white mage barehanded and suddenly s/he is punching just as hard as your dedicated monk. Quickly (it takes like 10-15 minutes) grind out that skill for every character outside the wind shrine and you've turned the early game into a complete joke, and it stays relevant for pretty much the rest of the game if you want it to. edit - oh....people already mentioned it. Maybe I should look at the post date for the video next time :P
Both as a kid and now with the now unbuyable FFV my favorite class is Bard. Sing takes a lot but stop and confuse with high accuracy and no cost is useful through the whole game. Damaging undead is great for grinding as well. I don't like the super late game sing skills because keeping enemies frozen or confused is more useful unless it's a boss. Vs bosses I still rather them set up Regen and then use whatever second skill I gave them.
I think a simple fix for Blue mage, that would make it casually viable is if the learnable attacks had obvious blue animations. Also making it so that the no blue attacks were only used with control (even if you would have to use control to make the enemies use buffs and heals on you).
That would help a bit, especially since all the schools of magic have their own animations for your party. Although I think it's fine to have some spells be only learnable with !Control, the issue is that you probably won't find MOST of the great ones without it.
@@brynjarjohannesson5685 I will say, if we were to take your suggestion of giving it an animation to signify it can be learned, there's a cool potential moment. if you got ALL THE WAY to the end of the game, fought Shinryu, and he used Mighty Guard - a spell you probably haven't seen up to this point - the revelation that there's a spell that gives you 3 buffs at once would be pretty sick. However, it's still undermined by the one enemy in the game that gives it, is insanely rare and hard to find.
Probably, but it would also make the game much less interesting. I think the jobs, as-is, are fine, because having every class be Chemist or Time Mage level would be extremely destructive for the game. And having every job be, like, Dragoon level would make for a very boring game.
I have been informed on some corrections of the things we said during this video, and I've tried to compile most of them into my pinned comment. Is there anything else? Because I'm all for adding to that comment, if needed.
Speaking of Thief in FF3, in the DS version, i actually used one all way up to the end, and he was the stable combat unit since he never changed away from thief, he was the best fighter as he had accumulated the most levels in a single job, and Thief weapon choices in FF3 DS aren't bad, you get a really powerful dagger and boomerang weapon, so the damage isn't half bad, stealing is nice, and its a good crutch to help others during their new job grinding.
I think mechanically, Blue Mages need something that makes them stand out from other casters. Since the Blue Mage needs to tank enemy magic, a simple change to help with this would be to make it so that Blue Mages have a provoke effect that makes enemies 4x more likely to target them with spells, and on top of that, give Blue Mages a 50% damage resistance from magic. For status magic, give them a 50% negative status resistance, and make it so that they will always survive instant death spells with 1 HP remaining. One more thing that could really make Blue Mages an S-Tier class would be to give them a spell damage/status rate multiplier depending on how much HP is missing, going up to 2.5x magic power at critical HP.
I think giving Blue Mage, or any job really, some sort of "provoke" skill would definitely alleviate some of the frustration. Although I'm not sure about making them basically a tank mage, the main problem with blue magic is finding it in the first place, not necessarily surviving it. Giving a class essentially perma-Shell seems a bit of excessive to me, but the other suggestions are definitely interesting.
@@Suprapika See, when you solve the problem of finding Blue Magic spells and getting those spells to hit the BM, it creates the problem of the Blue Mage soaking a LOT more magic hits. It also would kind of give a kind of symmetry with the classes that can tank physical hits. Maybe 50% damage/status reduction might be too much, maybe 25% reduction in damage and status rate might work a bit better.
@@EclipsianVanadis Fair point. Assuming Provoke goes to the Blue Mage then 25% would be more reasonable, but if not then hell, maybe they could give Provoke to the Berserker. Might make mastering the class worth it?
An unlockable !Provoke command would be good, but not anything else. If you want a tankier Blue Mage, then give it HP+30% from the Monk, if you want a Blue resistant to ailments then give it Equip Ribbons from the Dancer. The one big change I'd make to FFV's Blue Mage system is allowing characters to learn Blue Magic cast by other Blue Mages. I understand conceptually why it isn't allowed, but certain spells can be painful for a full party to get. Even if it had to be an unlockable passive skill.
A lot of classes that are weird are extremely powerful once you completely understand the mechanics of the game. For example, Red Mage is fine in World 1, and then completely sucks until Dualcast. But you also are able to break rods with them. Time Mage is insanely powerful until you get to the endgame (and postgame if you're play the GBA version), but its damage is inconsistent and you rely on other Jobs to deal your damage. Blue Mage and Chemist are ABISMAL if you are playing for the first time, but Blue Magic can literally win about half of the games fights by itself, and Chemist is able to raise your effective level. Anyway, guy really sat there and railed my favorite class at every opportunity. XP RIP Blue Magic, you're the reason this is my favorite game.
I wonder if the whole effective against undead could be an Edward thing? His dead wife showing up to help him? Otherwise, it could be because in dnd they are counted as a druid which is basically a nature Cleric or White Mage. At least adnd a Bard is the combination of a Fighter, Thief, and a Druid. The strength, the speed, and the ability to cast limited clerical magic.
@Suprapika another I didn't say because it was too close for the Dnd reason, but it could also be that music can technically heal or be a positive thing. So because healing magic harms undead, music, which is usually seen as soothing to the living, can also be harmful for the dead. Also, bards play Requiems for the dead. Dealing more damage. Sorry for the Ted talk~ 'u';
I was actually thinking something similar, because I remembered sending from FFX (not exactly the same thing, because it's dancing, but... y'know), and the flute thing from XB3. I'm sure there's more examples, too, ideally before the release of FFV and not several decades afterwards.
Hello everyone! First off, thanks for watching! I'm glad this video got decent attention, it's good to know my effort wasn't wasted. It's great to hear from other JRPG experts about stuff that I missed. And speaking of, I'm gonna use this comment to pin some important info we neglected to talk about during the video, that you guys have informed me of.
1. We just straight up did not talk about Barehanded from Monk, when that ability singlehandedly allows mages to keep up in damage while both not making you spend more gil on weapons, and lets them save MP for more dangerous encounters. The main issue is that mages are still very frail, having low stamina and light armor, so having a front row Barehanded mage still poses a risk. Still, an incredibly valuable ability.
2. (Thanks to @chrisschumacher8553) Time Mage has a bunch of non-time related magic because the literal translation of the class refers to time/space or spacetime.
3. (Thanks to @thegreatgario3478) Quick is actually more broken than I thought it was: If you inflict a status buff or debuff with the first action of Quick, enemies still won't attack you while you're choosing the second action, but time-based effects like Sap/Poison/Regen still occur, letting you instakill any enemy vulnerable to them, or healing to full every turn.
4. (Thanks to @Zapdos7471) While I still don't think they're good, Self Destruct and ???? aren't reflectable , so with the right setup (mostly meaning HP+30%) they CAN have some kind of niche.
5. (Thanks to @SwordsDanceQwilfish) Monk's Counter actually can't be re-countered by enemies, but it DOES conflict with Mimic strats, if you're one of the few players that optimally uses it. Won't be an issue for 99% of players, but it IS still the only inherited passive that is potentially bad.
6. (Thanks to @GaIeforce) Bards only need to take damage form a physical hit to stop singing, not die. This includes the beneficial Healing Staff (which also un-confuses people if you hit them).
Finally, I looked up stuff about the GBA classes, so here's a variation on my reply to @jorgepachi9627 about them:
Gladiator - Another pretty plain pure damage class, but the random attack skill makes it a more interesting !Dance. The fact that it can use a lot of weapon types, including bows, is also notable. I'm mostly confused on why the 9999 damage attack is can do is elemental. Probably just for flavor, but still, weird; same thing with that one !Mix result that does fixed Fire, Ice AND Lightning damage all at once. Bladeblitz is apparently an actually-learnable !Kick; I feel like they would have been better off just making !Kick learnable instead of making a whole new job for it, but maybe this way it makes logical sense: Classes that aren't Monks aren't going to kick.
Oracle - The pseudo-random element of the class is cool, and all the effects you can get are similarly neat. Plus, the fact that it has the new highest magic stat means you have an incentive to try it out. Unfortunately figuring out the method of the spells falls under our "too much effort" umbrella when, again, Time Mage exists. Getting ABP Up is also super helpful for grinding; I forgot these classes give grinding-related abilities.
Cannoneer - After looking through the !Combine list, it looks like a weird combination of Chemist and Spellblade. You've got the item combining fused with elemental damage/status inflicting. So I think this class would go straight into the "way too much effort" pile, cool as it is conceptually.
Necromancer - Blue Mage If It Was Designed Better. A really cool concept that's held back by when you get it: at the literal end of the post game. The magic effects themselves are cool too, basically being high MP costing "damage+debuff" moves.
I love it when a game is clearly designed to be replayed for its mechanics. The cutscenes are mostly brief and unintrusive, so you really can just play the game for the game.
And there's always Project Demi (and an equivalent mod for PR) if you want the cutscenes COMPLETELY gone.
@@SuprapikaOh?
This is the kind of deep nerd lore shit I like to see show up in my recommendations
Not only do you get the nerd lore from us, but you can see even more of it in the comments!
Same
Based.
This is probably the most important conversation in human history.
Finally, someone said it
My 2 cents…I’m pretty sure Ninja was intended to be an “upgrade” of Thief job. After all, in the original FF1, the Thief would become a ninja at Bahamut’s class change.
Makes sense. It's like a fusion of thief and knight, in a way.
Although "Time Mage" is a pretty decent translation, the name of the school of magic in Japanese is "Jikku", which literally translates as Time/Space or Spacetime, which explains the presence of the space-based spells like teleport, comet, meteor, etc.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense, thanks!
Later games have used "tokimadoushi," which just means "time mage." "Jikuu" is the name of the menu command in which the spells are accessed.
I suspect the English translation of FF Tactics had something to do with the somewhat retroactive use of "time mage" in FF5 as well.
Yeah as the SNES fan translation called it Dimen, Short for Dimensional
@@grouch_gaming Guess I never put 2 and 2 together on that one, either.
I always figured theyre more spacetime than just time
Any Mage + Barefisted ☕
Dual-wield spellblade osmose rapid fire is not an efficient tactic, but it is a hilarious way to shut down spellcasting bosses. As long as they don't have enough MP that the first few hits get lowered by the damage cap, eight hits of robbing 1/3 of their remaining MP tends to eat 96% of their entire reserve. Watching bosses like Calofisteri and Azulmagia desperately bring out the "not enough MP" message while you leisurely smack them around is always such a fun flex.
The ability to humiliate bosses is just about as valuable as the ability to turn them to dust
Based & Osmose-Pilled
Berserker is actually stronger than advertised, because the auto attack is faster ATB wise than mashing A. With a good amount of Time magic shenanigans, you get a lot of hits in
Plus there's the 25% boost to attack on top of that, so yeah the DPS is definitely there with the right setup. But since axes/hammers suck major ass, you either need to rely on daggers (which are unremarkable until the Chicken Knife/legendary knife), or give him Equip Swords or something similar.
@@Suprapika Barehanded is a nice solution to that problem, I found out ^^
@@nchastan Oh yeah. With how many comments have mentioned it, I really should have put 2 and 2 together there.
@@Suprapika you could also give then the artful dodger skill from thief so they have thief speed and agi making them go from the slowest atb class to the fastest + haste making them a dps monster
@@arkanol Good point, Berserker having a negative agility sucks a lot, but at least it can be mitigated in some way.
Love this game and finally got a nice video about it that satisfies my current obsession with it
Hopefully it works as one of those "put it on while I'm doing something else" kind of videos.
@@Suprapika it worked well, i was doing german homework while watching
You say Knight is half Paladin, but here's the thing: Knight IS Paladin. Literally. Like the XIV Paladin is ナイト in JP.
fun fact: if you cast quick then break a bio rod you can kill every single enemy in the game by waiting on your second turn, since the HP drain status effect will enact while time is stopped waiting for your second action
of course this will take a while for endgame bosses, but it's still a game breaking instakill
you can also full heal from quick by casting regen on your first turn, based on the same principle
also on the blue mage i can confirm you can kill every single boss in the game with level 5 death, except for carbunkle and omega (due to reflect - it reflects level 5 death), and killing some bosses with it fucks up the AI all sorts of ways for some bosses (like the tree exdeath form)
also vampire is *amazing* since it's based on total missing HP, not magic, so it can hit *very* hard for 2 MP (especially on the GBA), don't sleep on that shit
So Quick is even more insanely broken than I originally thought, good to know. I always forget that Bio inflicts a status; when I played FF4 as a kid, I thought Bio, Flare and Meteor were supposed to be the "nonelemental spell trio" even though that doesn't make sense, so it still infests my brain today.
Editing in reference pics/clips and updating the text to go along with this was a really nice touch.
Thanks! The video gathering was the biggest time sink to making this video, and I think the presentation turned out pretty good.
Oh. Yeah. Lot of fun to listen to. @@Suprapika
I’m also a jrpg expert, because I declare I am.
I mean, who am I to argue?
And so am I
@@Suprapikaenthusiast would be a good word choice to avoid weird passive aggressive comments in the future while meaning more or less the same thing lol.
@@SDREHXC Hey, I gotta be able to take it if I'm gonna dish out the clickbait terms, right?
what's your favorite fiend
Blue Mage is my favorite class. I love doing things in unnecessarily complicated ways. I'm current doing a run with no physical classes and no elemental black magic, just so that I'm forced to come up with the weirdest possible solutions to every encounter.
I think once you optimize the class, the biggest problem with it is that some spells are so insanely more powerful than others. Obviously that's true of all the mages, but the level magic and death claw (and white wind/mighty guard if you bother to get it) kinda overshadow most of it.
Blue Magic is the absolute bomb but it requires you to have a pretty good knowledge of the games mechanics. You have Dark Spark (halves enemies level, great for stealing), 1000 Needles, Aqua Breath (actually non-elemental damage which is what makes it useful), Goblin Punch (full melee damage from back row and unique damage formula for high defense enemies), White Wind/Might Guard, ???? Is actually very useful again for high defense enemies. The point of 1000 Needles is it always does 1000 regardless of enemy defence and state too.
The only problem is you have to know how and where to get it but if you ask me finding it is the funnest part.
Blue Mage is full of unique spells, and the method of finding the spells can be a fun scavenger hunt, but it's also filled with a lot of junk. White Wind/Mighty Guard/Dark Spark/the Level magic are the big winners for me, but good luck getting half of those without the internet.
The red mage comes on second crystal so you can give up in both white and black mage for a moment and try more classes. It's just there to make changing easier cause you don't lose either, healing or element casts, which as a new player, you will otherwise feel very uncomfortable moving away from.
By crystal 3, you hopefully learned that most classes are cool and you can do without any specific class if you need to
Right. If Red Mage were part of the first crystal, there wouldn't be much reason to use White/Black Mage until you get the -agas.
Blue Magic is fun but yeah it does require knowing about the game inside and out some. Still slapping something like Atmos with level 5 death cause you turned his level 41 ass into level 20 is great. I like how Strago and Quina learn it tbh.
The fact that TASes use a combination of Old and Level 5 Death for basically everything is indicative that !Blue is far too powerful for our mortal minds
"Blue Magic is terrible...." Proceeds to list a massive list of useful and versatile and unique spells for five minutes.
@@ClintonKE finally someone praises Strago... He's got some staying power for being 70. May be weak in battle, but I've got some respect for a guy willing to risk his life in a Flame Eater-infested house for an adoptive Pictomancer granddaughter with a serious attitude issue. All while trusting complete strangers to help him.
@@wamyc Blue Magic is extremely good, I just hate the acquisition methods.
I'd say only a third of the blue spells are good
I tend to play Four Job Fiesta, or a sort of Drafting System when playing with friends. The game definitely changes when you lose access to mostly everything. If you don't have access to White Mage as an example, that's where you hope to get Blue Mage for the early Vampire or a Thief to easily fund and accumulate healing items.
Not that I'm disregarding your discussion, considering that when talking about the job system as a whole, comparisons are necessary. But I appreciate that with the variety, it makes the Four Job Fiesta or Draft Runs very possible as a means to spice up gameplay.
FJF runs are my main way to play, so the variety definitely makes it worth it. My disdain for the Blue Mage is mostly from me getting the class in multiple FJF runs, and it's just a pace killer having to wait around to get any of the spells.
4:10 that's why every time I play this game, I always start with training monk on all four characters until I learn barehanded. That way I can have barehanded black mage, white mage, etc. all doing higher damage than a knight throughout half of world 1, then when I get access to throw and the very first airship, I make everyone a Ninja (with !black equipped) until throw is learned, then finally use rod-boosted fire / lightning scrolls for pretty much the entire rest of the game.
I always neglect barehanded for some reason even though it is a great ability; not having to worry about weapon expenses for a while is nice. I didn't know that the rods boosted the elemental scrolls though, that's pretty sweet.
@@Suprapika I also recently found out that monk makes a surprising return toward end game (at least on Nintendo switch, not sure about SNES or gba). In particular, Rapid Fire + kaiser knuckle + 3 (or 4?) dragon power potions on a monk allows eight times 6100 damage on Gogo, which kills him instantly before he can even cast meteor. You also get the AP on monk too. Magic pot can be killed similarly, though requires a speed shake (turtle shell + something?) so can act twice in a row without the Pot healing itself. This is at mid-40s levels, and AFAIK not even dual-handed flare spellsword rapidfire is that good
Is there unique dialogue for killing either of them? I didn't even think it was possible, but it's cool to know that monk has a weird niche in the endgame... even if he needs the chemist's help to do it.
@@Suprapikanope, no dialog at all for killing either of them. Also I believe the key to monk's rapid fire power is that unlike weapons, its damage per hit does not seem to be halved. I'll need to double check that however
@@xdavidliu If that's true, that's pretty sick. Still pretty niche, since so many of the endgame weapons are obviously gimmick-heavy as well as super powerful, but Monk is always gonna be a solid choice. I just wish !Kick wasn't the innate ability.
I genuinely had a great time listening to this.
Glad to hear it!
I think Dragoon suffers a lot from spears being bad. While jump dodges some attacks it also dodges a lot of group heals. And group Curas don't increase in power the less people you have to heal (when it really should imo). Past games had the blood lance which had good stats and with the 2x effect of jump it could very easily recover most of your HP so the dragoon was self sufficient. But that doesn't exist in FFV. In general spears are pretty bad, you need meta knowledge and get a rare steal off a sand bear in the first world to give dragoon a head start (and it's still not that good so is it really worth the trouble?). In the final world you're stuck with partisans until you get worse excalib-I mean holy lance, and then one of the bosses you have to fight w/ physical absorbs holy so you have to swap back to garbage partisans. In the rift you can labor for more rare steals for a good lance but honestly I don't know why you'd bother (outside of specific challenges) when rapidfire chicken knife deletes Shinryu.
Conclusion: Sell us the Blood Lance in the phantom village instead of Partisans please.
Spears should also benefit from two-handed, no idea why they don't here.
I followed the book's guide on Lance, gave it to a high mag character and it was still trash. Dragoons would really benefit from having an alternative command to jump, since only jumping is kind of boring on top as being ineffective.
(I feel like all physical skills suffer when put next to X-Fight/Rapidfire, it pretty much beats everything with how many perks it has)
As a side note I feel like IV's jumps are cooler than V's since Kain sort of lands in a V shape instead of flying straight down.
The whole "have the tanky armored class jump into the air so your other less tanky party mates can take more hits" is also funny design. I recently watched a FF16 dragoon boss fight and the dragoon has something called a mirage dive where he spawns a ton of clones/illusions and they all start falling from the sky. What if you gave that to V dragoons so after jumping he leaves an afterimage of sorts that can be targeted?
great video! snes-wise i played a ton of 4/6 but only dabbled in 5 and there’s a lot of great insight here making me want to go back
It's a great game, and this is coming from someone who doesn't generally like turn-based RPGs.
Because time and space are intrinsically linked. That's why Time Mage can do space stuff.
gil toss is such a funny ability - in my first playthru I remember assuming something was wrong with the game when using it, was in disbelief how much damage it does (would later beat exdeath with a samurai and 3 mimics using it)
With how easy it is to farm gil (I just incidentally farm it if I ever Objet d'Art grind), it's not like gil is a super valuable resource, either. If I ever get Samurai in a FJF, I opt out of using gil toss.
@@theodorescontras5569 I've not gotten to Samurai yet, but FFVI has the nearest equivalent to Zeninage: Gil Toss. Setzer became quite dangerous for me with the Genji Glove, Coin Toss, and twin Viper Darts. There's so much Gil in WoR dungeons you'd be crazy not to use Gil Toss, and ABP grinding is absolutely broken with it on the Veldt. The Viper Darts' instant kill property is available pre-Ichigeki, so even if Shadow dies it's there (not that any *sane* person would kill him (Kefka: "Did someone call for me?")) and having two is almost a 50% (I think it's around 41%) proc rate that for me rivals the Fixed Dice.
Samurai: "toss money at your problems and they'll just fade away!"
Cool analysis of FFV Jobs! My all-time favorite in the FF series.
Enemy encounters are just 1 button toss away!
My sis went quad samurai like that...
Being new to the FF series and having just beaten 5, this video is extremely entertaining.
I know I'm late at this point, but I'd love to see more from a "2 JRPG experts talk about" series.
It's funny you say that, because I did actually want to turn this into a series, but we kinda struggled to think of games that both of us are familiar enough with to talk about, and also the games themselves would have to BE worth talking about. Like, we both like the Tales series, but there's not a lot like 5's job system that has interesting "talking points" in that series. I think Disgaea 1 is the most qualified game in that case, I hope we can make a video about it eventually, but I dunno when.
@@Suprapika I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a JPRG "expert", but they're my favorite genre, so I'd definitely love to see any more in-depth analysis.
I plan on making videos about myself getting through the FF series, so maybe we can even collaborate sometime in the future. I sure as shit have a ton to say about the Xenoblade games, for better or for worse...
@@gavinislightning The only Xenoblade I care about is the first one; Kingdom Hearts, Xenoblade, and Final Fantasy are serieses where I only care about like, 1 game in the series and nothing else. FF is more like 5 games because the series is so god damn big, but still.
A correction on the Bard's Sing ability.
You can actually get Bards to stop singing if they simply just get hit with a physical attack. You can do this with bare fists, or my favorite, bonking Bards with a Heal staff to heal their HP. (which bypasses things like Image status that they might have, and apprently counts as a physical attack even though it casts a spell)
Knowing this, you can control bards a lot more, and they don't have to die to stop singing.
Yeah, you're right; I actually discovered that while trying to get footage of the Zombie Bard "glitch", but then forgot to put in the correction in the video. I didn't think about using the Heal Staff for that purpose though, even though it works the same for Confusion, so that's cool.
Shit, you can’t dualcast blue magic? One of my party members was being entirely built around that! Any way for me to salvage the build?
It's way more MP costly, but the best !Time spell, Quick, let's you do 2 actions back to back, no matter what they are. I think that's the next best thing, especially once you get them a Gold Hairpin.
@@SuprapikaYeah, I could go all in on the spell spam gimmick and use dualcast, time, and blue on the mime class during end game. I’ve been using the hairpin on them anyways due to the good blue spells being really expensive. Thanks for the advice!
I think the reason blue can't be dualcast it's because it's not like the other magic divided by levels and skills to each level, you get !blue and instantly can use everything and maybe thats why it also can be used even if you are silenced
Final Fantasy V is my favorite FF game! I lost the count on how many times I finished this amazing game. I wish it could have more Job based system games like this!
wonderful discussion. FFV battle system has a surprising amount of depth. feels like they scaled back some aspects for FFVI.
Thanks! I wish that we could get more job system games similar to FF5, but the evolution of the concept throughout the series is at least indicative that they want to keep changing it, which I respect.
@Suprapika Have you tried FF X-2 and if so, did you like how they implemented the job system in that game?
@@DontStopCornPop I own the X duology on Switch but I haven't played it yet; from what I understand the job system looks really good. I'll hopefully play it sometime in the future.
Berserker is massively slept on, and you put out flat out misinformation about the Rune Axe sucking. Axes and Hammers ignore 75% of enemy defense, and the rune axe uses 5 MP to do a critical hit. It also adds the Berserker's magic stat into the damage formula. Also shitting on Blue Mage and using the word expert in the title.
I admit I didn't know about the magic stat of the berserker going into the rune axe, but I can't picture that mattering a ton since he has the biggest magic penalty. I stand by Berserker weapons sucking because they miss so much and their damage is all over the place, though.
Also, like I've mentioned to others, we know Blue Mage is really good, but it's incredibly annoying to use to maximum efficiency.
@@Suprapika Berserk is also a 50% boost to weapon damage. Passing on critical hits is a weird thing considering only the Samurai's katanas have guaranteed crit chances. There are a few weapons in other classes here and there like the Yoichi's Bow that have crit chances but a guaranteed crit as long as the user has MP is too good to pass up. Defense reduction only comes from other places such as the Chemist's split shell mix, and the Hunter's rapid fire which ignores defense. On the other hand the Berserker is always ignoring 75% of physical defense. On average these guys tend to hit really, really hard. The earth hammer and Thor's hammer are also long range weapons which allows players to toss them from the back row with no penalty to damage.
I swear that Berserk was only a 25% increase in attack; I read it somewhere prior to making this video, but I guess it was incorrect. But yeah, I'll definitely give you that between the guaranteed crit, defense down, and other factors like using !Summon to give the berserker a great magic attack (or the thornlet if you don't mind the sap for the underflow glitch), or the Thief agility ability, the damage potential is definitely there. And the earthquake hammer is a cool novelty like we talked about in the video.
I know I'm repeating myself a bunch here, but the random damage and accuracy really does prevent me from actually enjoying it. But I won't deny that it DOES have some stuff.
ff5? im sorry you misspelled peak
my favorite part about ff5 is that you always have the tools to do pretty much everything, you just have to be creative
If there's anything I can say negatively about it, it's that sometimes the tools you have are TOO strong. Like kneecapping Atomos with sleep, instakilling a couple bosses that don't have heavy flags, using Level 5 Death on some other bosses, using Reflect on the Fork Tower mage boss, etc.
But finding stuff like that out, and it actually working, is way more of a positive for experimentation, than it is a negative for fulfilling boss design. There's like 50+ bosses in the game, too, so a couple throwaway ones aren't too bad.
These guys have noted in comments and replies that we (the FF Community) have proven the biggest beauty of the Job System, you can tailor your party to your playstyle and experiment to try something new.
I just picked up ff5 for the first time a couple days ago. And yes, I thought Galuf was supposed to fight with fists, so I gave him Monk right off.
I'm halfway through and just like to point out about comet and gravity being seemingly not time related. Actually they are. For gravity, the two main theories are Newtonian gravity where gravity is an instantaneous force of attraction between a pair of masses, and Einstein's general theory of relativity where gravity is due to the warpage of space time. Gravity is closely tied to time in modern technologies, for example, satelites being further from Earth experiences a weaker gravity pull than us and therefore from our perspective they experience time faster. The satelites used in GPS always need to have their clocks correct for time dilation for their clock to sync with ours on the Earth surface due to difference in gravity. For comet, my guess is that it could be due to its speed of travel. For objects travelling at close to light speed, time starts to slow down around them. This is Einstein's special relativity.
You sound like you know what you're talking about, so I'll assume it's true. Didn't expect to get a science lesson on a Final Fantasy video.
Blue mage sprite atk animations would’ve been cool if they did a monster effect based on the move set, very similar to LoL Udyr when he goes thru his different beast forms where he embodies some animalistic characteristics and you get a nice transparent silhouette of the monster he’s channeling. Would’ve been a neat sprite animation
Reminds me of Beast from Tales Of.
Is this the worst possible 4 job fiesta?
Thief
Berseker
Geomancer
Dancer
Assuming no repeats (because 4 Berserkers is definitely worse), that's definitely a contributor to worst team. Silver linings: you get Equip ribbons to help everyone's damage, you don't need to worry about gold hairpins because !Gaia is free, no back attacks ever because of thief (plus being able to steal some good shit), it's not all bad. But it is pretty bad.
@@Suprapika
I tried it, and I got stuck at the Sandwurm fight. The big issue is that your required berserker attacks at random and triggers the counter attacks from the pits almost every time, causing way too much damage to the entire party. Since it's a gravity attack, leveling doesn't really help either. Gaia also has the same issue, forcing one to rely on the much weak physical attacks. I also tried deliberately knocking out the berserker before hand, but then you are stuck doing a tough fight without a party member.
@@michaelmills8205 Ah, yeah, the Sandworm always screws over the Berserker teams. Although I didn't really think about Gaia screwing over things too, plus I think you can only have 1 bell at that point. So your best damage options are that one bell, and the boomerang you get from the Fire Ship... pretty bad.
If you ever manage to get past that point, I'd be curious to hear about it.
@@Suprapika With Equip Axes you can have death sickles, which might be better than your other options at that point, though it isn't really a hard fight if you just stick to physicals and don't come in with your Berserker alive to attack the holes
Edit: If you're stuck with a Berserker in a fiesta, Equip Axes can be worth putting on something with worse strength if you don't have anything better to use the ability slot for even if you're not going to use axes or hammers purely for the strength boost, which if you have Thief and Geomancer for Sandworm, you don't
I think Time Mage is more meant to be like a "space mage" or "Spacetime Mage" but because of character limitations they just called it Time mage since for most spells it has it makes sense
Dude . Rune axe and rune blade are pretty good... Give it to a summoner/oracle mastered Freelancer
Or give Berserker/gladiator the summon skill.. and for just 5/8 mp, it'll give the chicken knife a pretty good contender..
It can even proc while doing rapid fire..
What I can't seem to find any info on is whether the magic stat, or any other stat for that matter, has any effect on the odds for status effects landing on enemies. Are the odds of status effects landing just fixed?
I'm pretty sure that the Magic Evasion stat is the only stat that effects the accuracy of debuff magic. I might be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works. One of the Omegas or Shinryus has over 100% Magic Evasion, and I have no idea why.
I dont know anything but that footage of exploder shows some peak spell design.
36:37 "what the Quick spell does again?"
I CAST THE QUICK SPELL, WHICH ALLOWS ME TO TAKE TWO EXTRA ACTIONS ON MY TURN.
@@mauricesteel4995 "My Mage has no pathetic spells, Exdeath!"
25:08 The Stingray is easy to find: above the sunken Walse Tower using a boat to move around about 8 or 12 spots on the Merged World.
I know where to find it, but I spent 20-30 minutes in that spot trying to get it, and it just didn't appear, ever. Ironically in my level 1 run of PR, it spawned almost immediately, so I don't know if my luck was bad, or if they buffed the spawn rate in PR.
My overall strategy in a play-through is to build 2 melee characters (Bartz and Faris), one white/time/buffing mage (Galuf), and one black/summoner/offense mage (Lenna). My melee characters go barehanded Thieves in the early game for extra fun. As I get to the endgame, I work to master everything with everyone.
Is there a place in the endgame where you can farm ABP really quickly? I played this game a lot but have never finished it, so I'm playing through again hopefully to see it to the end.
I usually do one dedicated support character (like white mage with time) one mixed offense and support (samurai/ninja with time) one strict physical heavy hitter (monk/knight/samurai with an ability that complements the job) and one magic attacker (black mage, summoner, geomancer)
But I trade jobs out as needed to master and level up. Ideally each character would get mastery over each of these classes so you get late game freelancers/mimes with good stats.
@@DontStopCornPop I'm on my first playthrough and just stumbled upon a great grind. I'm in the merged world and finished getting the legendary weapons.
I'm trying to level up my Red Mage quick because I need the dualcast.
I have it equipped with Magus Rod to boost elemental damage, gold hairpin to conserve MP, and Hermes Sandals to ensure I go first.
Then I equip !black and spam Thundaga on the Objet d'Art in the basement of Galuf's castle in that room with the sealed door.
It OHKOs them instantly. Even on spread and even if 5 of them show up. Between 4 and 8 AP per battle and each battle only lasts long enough for me to menu down to Thundaga and over to select all enemies.
Without the boosting items you might need 2 casters, but make sure you get the sandals so they move first. Plus, there's a save circle just up the stairs so you can save periodically and use a cottage to restore MP.
I'm happy you mentioned the Tales Of series, did you see the Graces F Remaster announcement? My personal favorite in the series.
It's funny you say that, because my most recent FFV video about the best jobs has me talk about it at one point. I'm definitely super excited for it, and I hope the port doesn't suck ass. 120 fps for a Tales game is crazy, especially for the best one.
I love this VDO !! ❤️
I found content is very useful 👍
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Knight / Monk are the physical jobs that directly, passively enhance themselves (attack harder, HP tank better), which is strangely uncommon for most jobs. They are simple, strong, and easy to use.
Monk’s HP plus ended up being useful for Self Destruct blue magic because its damage can’t be reflected or reduced. It hits omega weapon hard with minimal blowback.
Thief / Geomancer add the dungeoneering elements that make FFV unique. I think it’s ok for some jobs to exist to only add a new dimension to gameplay.
Blue Mage / Chemist exist to reward replays. Not every job needs to be first or second play friendly imo.
Berserker definitely exists to be mixed with other physical jobs since it has only 2 levels and more downsides than ability slots. It is literally Status Effect: The Job.
I’ve found use cases for almost all jobs by doing a bunch of challenge runs and IMO the only complete whiffs in FFV are Dragoon and Ranger. X-Attack is nice and has some fun glitches in the SNES version, but it doesn’t justify the job existing.
Something I love about FFV is that EVERY version has different glitches, content, and patches. There is no definitive version.
I mentioned this in the video, but it really does confuse me why Dragoon is so plain. Last crystal job, not even the best physical class in the same crystal; !Jump is extremely underwhelming, and !Lance just feels like a waste of an ability slot most of the time.
I'm definitely with you on that last part. SNES FFV has that "no cutscenes" mod and multiplayer, which by itself justifies its existence. Although I wouldn't really recommend the PS1 version except to look at the really bad translation.
@@Suprapika 😂 yeah, we don’t talk about PS1 FFV, the black sheep.
This is a super secret, undocumented bit of niche info, but the X-Attack / Spellblade glitch behaves differently between the SNES and GBA versions. In the OG game, an enemy killed by an instant death X-Attack is immediately removed from the target list, meaning you are guaranteed to hit 4 different targets (and kill them). In GBA enemies are removed from the target list after each action, allowing for redundant attacks. There are other differences that make me prefer the SNES version, but it’s a pretty significant difference… one I haven’t seen documented anywhere.
Also, his name is Butz. You said you were experts! 😆
@@Zapdos7471 I feel like I subconsciously knew that X-Attack difference, but probably in a "wait, I thought it did this" kind of way; didn't really think about it being a version thing. At least now I know.
And despite my legitimacy of expertise being in question, I am firmly on the "Bartz" train, purely because Dissidia was the first game I played with Bartz in it. I'm also pro-Krile (instead of Cara), but I never see anyone call her Cara, so that's probably not debated too much.
@@Suprapika I jest, I jest, but it is good to hear thoughts on the game that aren’t the usual “it’s under appreciated, it’s the best!” I think it really sets itself apart for allowing unique player choice without punishing “wrong” choices. There could be very different tier lists for each player and I think that’s neat!
(Well… maybe using four berserkers would be playing it wrong 😅)
For sure. The fact that it came out on the SNES makes it even more impressive; there are modern job-centric games that struggle to have the replayability and fun factor of FFV.
This video has made me finally start playing the original FF5. Great analysis! Would love to see you discuss more things to death from classic JRPGS.
Great to hear! I've got some more ideas for videos like this, although it'll probably be a while before they get made.
The thing I did for monk was to get everyone barehanded and so when I made them a mage of some sort I would give them that. That way they would be able to just hit for similar dmg as their spells without using mp.
The fact that many people have mentioned Barehanded at this point indicates that I missed a very crucial strategy in my many playthroughs of this game. I guess I like magic too much.
Can you give equip sword to ranger and actually have blood sword be useful?
Either that, or give !Aim to Knight instead. Or Drain Spellblade, either or really.
Blue Mage is such a mess... was this the first iteration of an enemy skill class?
A tier for metagaming
F tier for a 1st time player
Honestly it could have been a lot worse considering it is the first version of the class, but it's been a lot better ever since then. Stranger of Paradise has a great version of the Blue Mage's "learn enemy skills" thing, and that was before they added in the Blue Mage as a DLC class.
I hate anyone who don't pick advance version or the mobile who has the fixed bugs for some classes.
If I'm playing through the game without any kind of ruleset, I like to have my Thief/Ninja invest a tiny bit into Monk until it learns Focus. Didn't know equipping Charge would up their STR/STA, but that would make the high damage make more sense. My intention for getting Charge was just to let them do good damage in the early game and bypass the run from the chicken knife in the latter half.
Also my Monk>Thief>Ninja choice is Faris, because pirate. It just makes the most sense.
Is Barehanded called Charge on one of the translations? I don't think I've heard that before.
Also yeah, Faris usually ends up either being my secondary attacker with Barts in regular runs, or whichever class is the fastest in FJFs (because she has the highest Agility).
@@Suprapika I meant Focus, sorry. I maybe misunderstood the conversation, but it sounded like equipping a skill from a job gave that jobs stats, so Focus being from Monk should give STR/STA, right?
@@Pickleton Sometimes, but not always; Monk in this case will only give its Strength stat from Barehanded, and even then ONLY if you actually go barehanded (so unfortunately, until you master Monk for Freelancer/Mime, you can only have that Strength stat with your fists). Equip [Weapon] skills, like Equip Swords or Equip Axes will give the Knight/Berserker Strength stat, and !Black or !White will give you the Black/White Mages Magic stat, for example, but stuff like !Focus, !Cover, Equip Shields, !Gaia, etc. do NOT give stats.
I don't have a comprehensive list of everything, my best suggestion is to either do the stat comparisons in-game yourself, or to check the FF Wiki. Not everything there is 100% accurate, but it's mostly correct about things.
@@Suprapika Ah that's unfortunate. I misunderstood what was being said to be that equipping any skill from a job in the secondary slot would give that job's stats, rather than any specific skill. I still stand by my choice of Focus/Buildup on a Thief, though. I seem to remember my Thief doing similar numbers to a Knight with sword, with more utility at the cost of tankiness.
Can counter attacks even trigger counter attacks? Its been forever since I played the SNES version but at least in GBA and PR i don't think they do.
To be honest, I'm not 100% sure. After I uploaded this I also thought "wait, is that even true?" but I left it in just in case.
Followup edit: Counter can't trigger counterattacks, but it CAN fuck up Mimic chains, if you're using that tactic. So it CAN be potentially detrimental, but won't be for most players.
The knight in FF1 is about as interesting as the other classes. It can use low level white magic.
They gave the knight more identity in later games but it ended up being able to do less than in FF1. Although only 4 spells the knight can learn in FF1 are of any use so it basically is the powerful equip everything class. With lots of health.
I know you already pre-empted the comments about how later games improved on the job system but the warrior in FFX-2 did such an amazing job making every class expansive. Still my fave job system to this day. They managed to make warrior and berserker cool.
In FF1 the ninja can use low level black magic. The monk can literally do nothing except attack. But it’s special gimmick is that when it doesn’t have a weapon equipped its attack is its level x2. And while it has no armor equipped its defence is = to its level. So as you get higher level you should remove weapons and armor. The knight is an upgraded warrior, ninja is upgraded thief (warrior and thief can do nothing except attack in that game), and the monk upgrades to master which literally gives him nothing new.
White mage is the best class in FF1. That’s one thing that will never change. Red mage makes more sense in FF1 since you pick classes for your 4 characters and those never change. Red mage is a superior black mage since offensive magic isn’t useful late game. And the red mage can learn white magic and has better physicals.
In Japanese time mage is jiku mage which is space-time mage, not just time. So that’s why it has random space themed spells.
Should’ve included the gba/mobile/old steam ver exclusive jobs. They’re too often neglected. I know they’re useless because of how late they’re obtained but still.
We actually did talk about the Advance jobs, but we had nothing notable to say so I omitted it. I talk about the jobs in an upcoming video, though.
Red mage was much better in FF1 and FF3, it was nerfed in FF5 for sure. Still my favorite.
Always with the top tier outfit, though
@@Suprapika Especially in the FFTA series with the Viera, and the concept art of FF12 IZJS with Red Mage Fran cleaning her sword.
With regard to the diagram at the start, it might've made more sense to have one of the axis be either offence vs defence or magic vs physical attacks, since your axes basically measure the same thing twice (how "controllable" and therefore useful the job is).
I am curious how that alignment chart would look now, that axis makes sense.
unexpectedly neat content
I enjoyed this, thank you!
I really like how the Freelancer can equip anything with no requirements. Gives the job a theme in the early game, where your gear can be just as valuable as an ability. Once you have all the jobs there's never a reason to not be learning _something,_ so the equipment freedom doesn't matter until you've finished a build.
It's coincidental, but it's a good flow.
Time Mage's Mute is wacky. It's an unblockable Mute to the whole battle, that doesn't work at all in specific battles. Mute specifically seals _White/Black/Time/Summon/MgcSwrd/Sing,_ which 99% of enemy magics *aren't.* So it's about as useful as Roulette.
Berserker can be fun to use EqWhip on, carries over the Beastmaster agility stat and whips are back-row okay with consistent damage and some special properties. EqBow is the same except bows miss a lot. EqHarp _also_ carries agility, but Berserk doesn't affect magic damage (harps) so agility is all you're getting.
Ranger getting EqAxes or Berserk is also pretty okay as a damage boost.
And if a Fiesta run sticks you with a Berserker+Blue Mage/Geomancer, EqAxes can open up strategies. Blue Mage with a Titan Axe doing Goblin Punches backed by a Berserker's strength stat. Geomancer swinging the Gaia Hammer for a more consistent element. Just silly fun stuff.
Thank you! It's kinda funny that Time Mage has 2 useless spells, and still manages to be the best job in the game. Also, the Equip Harp thing is interesting, but the only harp that actually does damage is the last one, so it kinda feels like a waste of an ability slot. Could make the Rune Axe better, at least.
@@Suprapika Haste is just too good! Hermes' Sandals are probably the best piece of equipment in the game.
Unlike in FF9, where I'd swear that being hasted lowers the duration of being hasted. :P
@@Jikkuryuu Time Mage is the best job for a reason, after all. Hermes Sandals are S-tier to be sure, but they're also kinda useless if you have a Time Mage, Chemist, or Samurai in your party to free up the accessory slot. But in FJFs, they're a godsend to be sure.
a little glitch thing i found out once was vs Odin. i didnt know that Odin was vulnerable to petrification. so Bartz was my mystic knight, had dual wield, cast break blade, then rapid fire. first hit landed then he immediately did 7 super fast attacking animations (no slashes on Odin), then Odin just died.
Yeah, Rapidfire going ham on enemies that can't be hurt (for whatever reason) is pretty funny to watch.
Vampire is actually a pretty good blue Magic, because deals damage equal of your missing HP meaning that a single cast of it restores all your HP (only in GBA heals all as the other versions of the game it heals half of your missing HP)
Yeah I'm more familiar with a lot of the Blue Magic spells now, when I made this I didn't know it worked like that.
I would like to know your opinion on the 4 extra jobs in the GBA version
I have limited knowledge of them, and RJ has no experience with them, but basically:
Gladiator - another pretty plain pure damage class, but the random attack skill makes it a more interesting !Dance. The fact that it can use a lot of weapon types, including bows, is also notable.
Oracle - the pseudo-random element of the class is cool, and all the effects you can get are similarly neat. Plus, the fact that it has the new highest magic stat means you have an incentive to try it out. Unfortunately figuring out the method of the spells falls under our "too much effort" umbrella when, again, Time Mage exists.
Cannoneer - honestly don't know what to think. It's kind of weird that it's a less complicated and more damage focused chemist, but that IS something.
Necromancer - Blue Mage If It Was Designed Better. A really cool concept that's held back by when you get it: at the literal end of the post game.
@@SuprapikaCannoneer is fun, you have all elemental attacks even holy and dark.
@@jorgeroblesreyes9254 Oh, sick
You guys should do the same thing for final fantasy tactics
I think neither of us have interest in that game, so it's unlikely. I do like the Calculator job, though.
Ahh thats sad but fair. Anyway loved your ffv videos. Hope to see more stuff like this.
Spellblade is just Element-J and Status-J but in combat.
No wonder FF8 is so broken, its main character spams Spell Blade Rapid Fire the entire game.
Heck, everyone there is a spellblare for free.
You guys should try out the Pixel Freemaster mod. It adds the Super Custom Classes mod and improves Berserker through a patch.
Very curious how you guys look t the classes through this mod.
I actually looked through it a bit, I thought it was just cosmetic QoL stuff but immediately noticed a bunch of equipment changes. Someday I might try it out for real, because it looks cool, but not for now.
Omg you also think FFV AND Symphonia is swag too? Great tastes
We just generally love the Tales series.
It seems like in the GBA version giving Summon to a Black Mage doesn't boost the magic stat at all. Tried giving a brand new black mage level 3 summon but the magic stat is 59 both with and without Summon equipped. It does work for other jobs like giving Monk summon though. Maybe I need to master Summoner first?
This is something I should have specified in the video, but you only get the corresponding Magic stat once you've mastered the class.
This is an example taken from the FF Wiki: Level 1 !Summon increases your magic by 17 (if your class doesn't already have 17 or more magic), whereas Level 5 !Summon gives the full 33 magic, with the inbetween levels giving 21, 25, and 29.
Black Mage has 31 Magic, so you wouldn't see any stat changes until you have a maxed out !Summon command. My bad for not clarifying in the video.
Getting songs isn't that hard if you're the kind of player that likes to explore villages and talk to NPCs :)
Yeah, you're right there. But I do think they're spaced out weirdly, and I think the weirdest song is the only missable one at the Merged World Library; you have a very small window to get that one.
@@Suprapika Yes, true! Most players who aren't following a guide will miss that one.
Blue Mage & Alchemist are actually among the most butt broken overpowered classes in the game, fyi.
The buffs of Alchemist can make your stats reach to the maximum of 255, can kill Neo-ExDeath in 1 turn, etc. Blue Mage if you know which mosters to copy there are really strong spells like Aero 3, or Water magic that is unique to that job class. Many people underestimate those classes. End game: Freelancer (physical characters) Mime (magic users).
Believe me, I'm aware that those 2 classes are two of the strongest in the game when used optimally. My point is moreso that I don't really like "metagame" classes that you basically need a guide to use properly, because that's basically what they are.
@@Suprapika yea yea i heard the whole argument i watched the whole video, check the statistics if u dont believe me. doesnt take that much to look it up nowadays tho ngl. Chemist deserves to be the strongest due to the deeper difficulty curve.
Given your expertise of the genre, I'd be interested in seeing how you'd rank the Bravely Default Jobs. Especially because BD's system feels like a direct evolution of FFV.
I think it's been literally a decade since I played BD, so I'd have to replay it to remember everything. All I can recall right now are the jobs that enhance the White/Black Mage jobs, which is a really cool idea.
FFX did a good job on the learning aspect of Blue Magic. Kimari just has to use Lancet on certain enemies to gain his Overdrives, and you can pretty easily just use Lancet on basically every enemy in the game once you capture them for the monster arena.
You could do a similar thing in the structure of FFV by just making Lancet a Blue Magic spell that you get for free right at the beginning.
An interesting take on it, although I feel like that kinda goes too far in the opposite direction and makes it too simple. But I'd still take that over what it is now.
Ever played Crystal Project? Literally the only FFV like I've played but there were some things I wasn't super into with the jobs
Someone else recommended it, and I looked it up. It looks interesting, and maybe I'll try it out if it goes on sale, but there's some stuff that just seems like I wouldn't enjoy it so much. The main thing that comes to mind is the platforming.
Red Mage style is still alive and kicking in FF14 :) was my main until Pictomancer came along, i love seeing my 6 foot 6 Fem Roe get lifted off the ground with Magic Hammer.
Berserker is awesome!! Sure, it involves a little luck for getting lots of hits, but it doesn’t even *need* to hit many times to do crazy overall damage in a fight! (And as others mention, you always want to haste them.)
One of my favorite things in FFV is Break Blade, because instead of turning enemies into stone sometimes it just instakills everything except bosses.
It's interesting that they give you Instant Death Sword way before you get the Death spell.
The Thief has Footwork, which I think also carries over to freelance, and greatly improves evade, right?
Footwork just gives any class the Thief's Agility stat, but the Freelancer/Mime would inherit that even if it wasn't a dedicated ability. Agility only does 2 things: It effects how fast your ATB gauge fills, and it makes certain weapons do more damage (but that's only really relevant to the Chicken Knife, because it's the only weapon in the game that uses your full Agility stat).
I'm doing a modified four job fiesta where each character gets a job chosen but can swap later, and i got 2 Monks (the Tycoon sisters), 1 Blue Mage (Galuf! Higest base Stanima...) and Bartz got Thief. I had a friend of mine choose a random number from 1-5 for each character. Got the short end of the stick with no White/Black Mage though...
My condolences.
@@Suprapika I actually had to KO Lenna and Faris to get access to Vampire, Aero, and Goblin Punch since the Counters were instant death based on damage. Thief is pretty much a necessity to get Shiva early (Ice Soldiers + Thief + 4 Blue Mages = OP Mythril sluggers (pre-Karnak Mythril Swords!) where Lv 11 GP (Goblin Punch) is the main attack with Aero and Vampire as support. Just pour damage into Shiva, MT Aero, and Vampire the Ice Commanders. Swapped Bartz to Blue Mage + Find Passages, Lenna as Knight + Focus, Galuf as White Mage + Learning, and Faris as Thief + Focus. Still, it was fun to off Karlabos before he could Tail Screw me...
As for some of my later setups, will Berserker + Magic Shell actually do anything? I'm thinking it will go like this: Berserker hits Critical status, Beserker Auto-Shells, White/Blue Mage heals, Beserker keeps Auto-Shell, repeat. It's more of a longevity booster/redline strat.
Also, I personally don't bash Thief because of Locke from FFVI/FFVIA and the existence of the heavenly power that is !Time. Gravity is fixed damage, right? So slap !Time on Thief, get some Elven Mantles/Main Gauches, and let the Indignation begin (couldn't help a Tales ref).
Auto-Shell is always good, but it's one of those abilities I forget about until it happens. If you don't have something like dual wield or 2 handed, giving the Berserker a magic skill is good late game because the Rune Axe adds your magic stat into the damage formula, so if you give them !Blue, they'll have the Blue Mages magic stat.
And yes, Gravity halves an enemy's HP, and Graviga reduces it by 7/8ths (Missile, the Blue spell, does 3/4th HP). It doesn't work on most bosses though, and Death Claw the blue mage spell is usually a better choice against anything that isn't Heavy because it reduces them to single digit HP.
Also I appreciate any Tales references around here.
@@Suprapika Call me crazy, but I'm entering the Exdeath/Neo Exdeath battle with 4 Blue Mages. I've worked out a set of 4 rough setups (named after shades of blue) for the Chosen Warriors (credit to Djibrel, who made the definitive FFVA guide for GameFAQs):
Bartz (or Roxas in my run (KH2/KH Days ref): Indigo Mage
This is my "Warrior Mage" setup. Heaviest armor available, Excalibur (through Equip Swords) or Main Gauche and Excalibur through Dual Wield. Obviously slinging Aeroga and Vampire to stay alive.
Lenna: Aqua (or Cerulean; love me some Pokemon Yellow) Mage
This one's my "Technician Mage" (ref to a unique Ability, Technician, which boosts moves of 60 or less base power). I'm thinking some light to mid weight armor, Equip Bows or Bladeblitz/Spellblade 6, Sasuke's Bow or the sealed Sword (name eludes me rn), ???, Goblin Punch, and White Wind.
Krile: Teal Mage
From my knowledge, Krile has one of the best (if not the best) Magic stats in the game. Still, she'll be best as my healer/guardian, with !Mix or !White Lv 6, White Wind, and Mighty Guard. Not sure about equipment though... Obviously a good shield (Aegis?)
Faris: Cobalt Mage
The Paladin (move aside Cecil 😏) of the group, this former swashbuckler will be wearing heavy armor not used by Bartz, using Cover as her support ability, and making heavy use of Mighty Guard and White Wind. If Krile doesn't get the Aegis Shield, Faris will.
I'm also thinking of moving Bartz and Lenna to the front and keeping Krile and Faris (gasp!) in the back. Faris is mainly meant for defense, so the back row assignment is actually good: if I mess up and miss Guard, the back row placement (hopefully) will halve damage from Covering.
If you've got spells like mighty guard and white wind, you could honestly beat neo exdeath with just blue magic, so anything on top of that is icing on the cake. Only thing, I wouldnt bother with bows, Shields are seriously great and bows aren't good enough to give up the offhand slot, plus Blue Mages have a strength penalty of -7.
hearing you mention Paladin reminds me that i distinctly remember reading that in Japan the big playground rumor about this game when it came out was that you could enter the moai head under the ocean if you hit the right requirements and then you could fight the Cloud of Darkness or Enuo or whatever and unlock Paladin and Sage as the secret ultimate jobs that had some ridiculous benefits like barrage on normal attack or all magic on a single command or something. obviously ended up incorporated into the gba bonus dungeon but "paladin in ff5" reminded me of that part
That's pretty interesting, I could for sure see "dude there's extra jobs in the game" as a common Mew Under The Truck-tier rumor.
@@Suprapika also makes sense because FF3 had Sage and Ninja as the ultimate kind-of-hidden endgame jobs that completely outclass everything else, and unlocking them and suddenly being able to just run over everything in the game is one of the most satisfying parts of that game, so i can totally understand being a dumb kid and being disappointed you dont get that same power-trip moment this time even though that obviously runs completely counter to how ff5 designs its jobs
@@porygonlover322 That kind of thinking does SORT OF apply to 5, where (at least to me) it feels like Freelancer is supposed to be the ultimate physical job, and Mime the ultimate magic job. But obviously you have to put in the work to get them to that point, instead of just getting these amazing jobs.
@@Suprapika plus if youre a kid its likely you wont ever think to switch back to freelancer, so its really just mime which is relatively underwhelming compared to the insane power jump of the Eureka jobs
Interesting tier lists. I think geomancer is an unleashed beast. Out of combat are terrain inmune and in combat have free magic which rarely is a bad one. Equip a geomancer with Summon (highest magic stat) and nice clothing and weapons to boost their Mag and their elemental damage and these guys are very solid magic damage dealers which doesn't care about MP
In my experience they don't even really need Summon, an Air Knife and Gaia Gear work even better, since it seems most of their magic is wind and earth.
@@Suprapika that is correct, but why choosing between them when you can do both things? : )
Magus rod in the endgame is also very powerful in the hands of a capable geomancer.
@@nekrosbelmont definitely true.
I'm surprised you don't mention Dragon Lance and Dragon's Whisker for Spear and Whips. They deal double on Dragon types and there is a mix to make anything in the game a Dragon type. Absolutely slept on. Used Dragon's Whiskers to put Shinryu in the hospital on turn 1.
In my level 1 run, I did use dragon lances to wipe Shinryu out, but I'm not really convinced that using a whip against him would be worth it. You can use it from the back row, but he does so much damage that row feels kinda meaningless sometimes. You're right though, that is a good strategy.
I disagree with 99% of what is being said, but I really enjoyed the discussion nonetheless.
Hey, I'm always down to discuss, that's partly what this video's for. Getting other people's perspectives on such a modular game like this is part of the fun!
Based
In gba version, the blue mages drain was a perfect heal
I read about that yesterday actually, I'll give it up to Vampire to being better than I thought. When we made this video, I was unaware that Vampire was based on missing health, I just thought it was ungodly weak.
And to an extent, I don't blame myself for thinking that. It's one of the first Blue Magics you can get, so it's not gonna be doing more than like, 20 damage at a time; I would never assume it's based on missing HP.
You might like the Bravely Default series, where the job system that started in FFIII that was streamlined in FFV was further streamlined for this specific IP. All characters can dual wield ALL weapons, with caviats. Your weapon physical attack for each hand is halved when both hands have a weapon unless you equip Ninja's dual wield ability, which takes away that problem. And there is a proficiency system as well, where the higher a class's proficiency with weapon types, the more damage you deal depending on the weapon type equipped. A weapon used with proficiency of S will essentially double the damage. And there is the Brave and Default Battle System, where a good party will have a BP(Brave Point) generator to allow for the spamming of powerful attacks that cost BP. BP give you exta actions you can spend in one turn without consequence. Normally, you build up BP by Defaulting, which is the standard way to reduce damage while generating BP. So guarding is more useful. Some of the best ways to make a BP Generator is to either use Red Mage passive BP increase abilities and fulfill the conditions for them, or simply use the Time Mage's Hasten World to generate extra BP every turn for everything in the battle screen, including enemies. And get this, in BD2(which is the third game in the series), some of the classes that sucked are actually good. For example, the Berserker can have the max attack, but the berserk state included is an option. AAAND the Beast master is so broken, especially when you unlock its second specialty, which boosts the class's stats depending on how many monsters you've captured. Most of the monsters used for the unleash ability still suck though. You can use up to 5 passive abilities at once per character depending on how many AP each passive you unlock costs. And you can equip an extra command set fromm any othet job to your current job and have access to whatever you unlocked at the time. And as a fun twist, to get new jobs, you havs to beat bosses that start with those jobs to get them for yourself. Only problem with the first game is the repetition of the boss party builds for a while can be quite a turnoff and often makes new players wonder why the game had yet to present a final boss and credits. And while they are there, it can be a slog to get to that point. But only the first game has that narrative problem.
I have actually played the first Bravely Default, and I disliked it so much I didn't bother to follow up on the sequels. The gameplay I had no problems with, because yeah, it's a really good evolution of the FF job system; it was mostly the story that irritated me, and weirdly enough the speedup battles/disable random encounter switches. It felt like the game wasn't even trying to hide that that shit is annoying, but they put it in anyways.
Fantastic soundtrack, though.
@@Suprapika I get that. The story in the direct sequal wasn't nearly as bad. For one thing, you only explore thewhole world map twice. AND there are other new dungeons/locations besides the final dungeon. There's even a bit in the final form of the final boss where they do the same thing done in that Gamecube horror game where they gaslight you into thinking your saves are being destroyed. They also added in some new jobs, got rid of some old ones, and put features of the axed jobs onto both new and returning jobs. THERE IS A CLASS THAT USES RIFLES!!! But its poor sales despite upping its narrative chops a bit prevented them from delivering on the sequel bait they put in. Finally, the newest installment took place in a whole new world that you only have to fully explore once, with asterisk collection being mandatory for progressing the plot. Which is a shame, since the only two optional ones are the returning salvemaker, and the gambler(which is the anti Setzer in that it SUCKS! save for some passives that actually help with item collection). There are very few physical attacks that don't cost HP to use. Heck there are some spells that cost HP. And finally, after getting to the final chapter in the story, which requires seeing the two bad endings first, you unlock portals that give you asterisk boss groupings that give you one guaranteed unlocking the last abilities of their respective jobs, and a possible chance to steal/get as a drop their weapons, which equip all nonspecialty passives of the weapons' jobs while equipped. Some passives can even be stacked that way.
@@patricklatham3897I love the classes in Bravely Second, they get so gimmicky but they’re so fun to use!
I greatly enjoy this sort of long form discussion, I will say though I was pretty bothered by the use of the R-slur. it makes me pretty uncomfortable. That being said, I look forward to more videos like this as well as to binging the rest of your content
Yeah with Darkshock, if it's an odd number level on an enemy it rounds down, you can totally use it to get them to the right level for blue mage level magic, I think Atomos can be killed with level 5 death this way.
I love any game with a job system...ff5 on gba and ff tactics on psp introduced me to it and to dnd and ive fallen in love ever since...will yall(in the far future i dont expect another super indepth discussion right after this) ever cover ff tactics/war of the lions?
I generally do like job system games (I've recently been playing Strangers of Paradise, and the job system in that is awesome), but sometimes they're a miss for me, like Xenoblade 3. Neither of us have played Tactics 1 enough to make a video on it (I've only played it for like 3 hours), but Tactics A2 I've played the shit out of, so maybe that could be a thing in the future.
I’m in the process of making a game utilizing a bunch of different RPG elements
Super cool insight here, gentlemen
Thanks!
You mentioned that certain skills like equip sword gave other classes the enhanced stats of the class that gave the skill. Barehanded from monk does this as well (dat +26 strength baby).
So you can give that weakling white mage barehanded and suddenly s/he is punching just as hard as your dedicated monk. Quickly (it takes like 10-15 minutes) grind out that skill for every character outside the wind shrine and you've turned the early game into a complete joke, and it stays relevant for pretty much the rest of the game if you want it to.
edit - oh....people already mentioned it. Maybe I should look at the post date for the video next time :P
Both as a kid and now with the now unbuyable FFV my favorite class is Bard. Sing takes a lot but stop and confuse with high accuracy and no cost is useful through the whole game. Damaging undead is great for grinding as well. I don't like the super late game sing skills because keeping enemies frozen or confused is more useful unless it's a boss. Vs bosses I still rather them set up Regen and then use whatever second skill I gave them.
Mad respect for saying Bard is your fav.
I think a simple fix for Blue mage, that would make it casually viable is if the learnable attacks had obvious blue animations. Also making it so that the no blue attacks were only used with control (even if you would have to use control to make the enemies use buffs and heals on you).
That would help a bit, especially since all the schools of magic have their own animations for your party. Although I think it's fine to have some spells be only learnable with !Control, the issue is that you probably won't find MOST of the great ones without it.
@@Suprapika Yeah, having to use control to learn something is fine. But having to use control to even know that it exist is too much.
@@brynjarjohannesson5685 I will say, if we were to take your suggestion of giving it an animation to signify it can be learned, there's a cool potential moment. if you got ALL THE WAY to the end of the game, fought Shinryu, and he used Mighty Guard - a spell you probably haven't seen up to this point - the revelation that there's a spell that gives you 3 buffs at once would be pretty sick. However, it's still undermined by the one enemy in the game that gives it, is insanely rare and hard to find.
So in other words, if every class was Rebalanced to fit closer towards the middle, they would all be equal?
Probably, but it would also make the game much less interesting. I think the jobs, as-is, are fine, because having every class be Chemist or Time Mage level would be extremely destructive for the game. And having every job be, like, Dragoon level would make for a very boring game.
There was a fair bit of incorrect info in this video. I duno if I would call yourselves experts lol
I have been informed on some corrections of the things we said during this video, and I've tried to compile most of them into my pinned comment. Is there anything else? Because I'm all for adding to that comment, if needed.
Speaking of Thief in FF3, in the DS version, i actually used one all way up to the end, and he was the stable combat unit since he never changed away from thief, he was the best fighter as he had accumulated the most levels in a single job, and Thief weapon choices in FF3 DS aren't bad, you get a really powerful dagger and boomerang weapon, so the damage isn't half bad, stealing is nice, and its a good crutch to help others during their new job grinding.
I think you're the only person to ever actually beat FF3, so I'm willing to take you at face value here.
I think mechanically, Blue Mages need something that makes them stand out from other casters. Since the Blue Mage needs to tank enemy magic, a simple change to help with this would be to make it so that Blue Mages have a provoke effect that makes enemies 4x more likely to target them with spells, and on top of that, give Blue Mages a 50% damage resistance from magic. For status magic, give them a 50% negative status resistance, and make it so that they will always survive instant death spells with 1 HP remaining. One more thing that could really make Blue Mages an S-Tier class would be to give them a spell damage/status rate multiplier depending on how much HP is missing, going up to 2.5x magic power at critical HP.
I think giving Blue Mage, or any job really, some sort of "provoke" skill would definitely alleviate some of the frustration. Although I'm not sure about making them basically a tank mage, the main problem with blue magic is finding it in the first place, not necessarily surviving it. Giving a class essentially perma-Shell seems a bit of excessive to me, but the other suggestions are definitely interesting.
@@Suprapika See, when you solve the problem of finding Blue Magic spells and getting those spells to hit the BM, it creates the problem of the Blue Mage soaking a LOT more magic hits.
It also would kind of give a kind of symmetry with the classes that can tank physical hits. Maybe 50% damage/status reduction might be too much, maybe 25% reduction in damage and status rate might work a bit better.
@@EclipsianVanadis Fair point. Assuming Provoke goes to the Blue Mage then 25% would be more reasonable, but if not then hell, maybe they could give Provoke to the Berserker. Might make mastering the class worth it?
@@Suprapika Yes, though I come from the school of thought that Pathfinder did Barbarians pretty well. And maybe Berzerkers can be modeled after that.
An unlockable !Provoke command would be good, but not anything else. If you want a tankier Blue Mage, then give it HP+30% from the Monk, if you want a Blue resistant to ailments then give it Equip Ribbons from the Dancer.
The one big change I'd make to FFV's Blue Mage system is allowing characters to learn Blue Magic cast by other Blue Mages. I understand conceptually why it isn't allowed, but certain spells can be painful for a full party to get. Even if it had to be an unlockable passive skill.
A lot of classes that are weird are extremely powerful once you completely understand the mechanics of the game. For example, Red Mage is fine in World 1, and then completely sucks until Dualcast. But you also are able to break rods with them. Time Mage is insanely powerful until you get to the endgame (and postgame if you're play the GBA version), but its damage is inconsistent and you rely on other Jobs to deal your damage. Blue Mage and Chemist are ABISMAL if you are playing for the first time, but Blue Magic can literally win about half of the games fights by itself, and Chemist is able to raise your effective level.
Anyway, guy really sat there and railed my favorite class at every opportunity. XP RIP Blue Magic, you're the reason this is my favorite game.
i still use beastmaster control to farm those omega prototype enemies in world 1 by making them use self destruct on themselves
Probably the best source of Dark Matter in the game, and the gil/EXP isn't too bad either.
Oh no, I fell into the Fire Emblem tier list rabbit hole... now youtube is sending me down another one.
The only FE I need is Final fantasy fivE
the japanese name for chemist is "doctor" which explains the weird recovery commands
Ah, that does make sense. It's like the "Space/Time Mage" thing again.
I wonder if the whole effective against undead could be an Edward thing? His dead wife showing up to help him?
Otherwise, it could be because in dnd they are counted as a druid which is basically a nature Cleric or White Mage. At least adnd a Bard is the combination of a Fighter, Thief, and a Druid. The strength, the speed, and the ability to cast limited clerical magic.
I'd accept either of those options, with most job-related weird stuff I'm inclined to assume "it's probably a DnD thing".
@Suprapika another I didn't say because it was too close for the Dnd reason, but it could also be that music can technically heal or be a positive thing. So because healing magic harms undead, music, which is usually seen as soothing to the living, can also be harmful for the dead. Also, bards play Requiems for the dead. Dealing more damage.
Sorry for the Ted talk~ 'u';
I was actually thinking something similar, because I remembered sending from FFX (not exactly the same thing, because it's dancing, but... y'know), and the flute thing from XB3. I'm sure there's more examples, too, ideally before the release of FFV and not several decades afterwards.
@Suprapika true.