More Final Fantasy

[System Error]

Okay, now that I'm sufficiently ready enough, let's do this! Right here right now!!

Unlike the previous superbosses I've fought though, Omega is undoubtedly overdesigned. Its Encircle counter is incredibly obstructive to a solo character - the ones that can hit the thing, anyway. Its 95% evasion prevents many classes from practically being able to do damage to him, and those that do need to contend with 190 defense. Compounding things is the machine's inherent Reflect and Shell status to make magic users' lives miserable as well, and 150 magic defense on top of that. There are several ways for a regular party to fight through - no need to be horribly overleveled or decked out in the best gear and abilities ever - but solos often run into trouble here.

Because of this, not every solo class is capable of making it through Omega. But there's several that can, and I intend to suffer show it. Actually no, suffer.


Obviously we need to take inspiration from the Terminator franchise for the name here. John Connor it is. As usual, there's no holds barred for the superbosses. As long as we're following the rules of a solo job class (e.g. no using the status bug to give a magic job Bone Mail protection), the job can do anything in its power to defeat the robot, including using said status bug, overleveling, and dirty tactics.

Overleveling in particular. The objective here is to see if a solo class can beat the superboss at all here (end of a solo run that includes the bonus dungeon?) - Omega is that bad. This also adds an element of protecting against Encircle, with the robot's cheated level of 117 making getting through things ordinarily problematic. Because this thing is so much suited to fighting it with a full party, I'll also give brief thoughts on how each does in such a setting - the purpose of which will become more apparent later on.

Let's get right to it. Here I'll be doing it in a "what can best defeat it" tier type format, just coincidentally because it works best for this report. These first few - if they have what they need - can get the job done with little to no trouble. Regardless of this thing being overdesigned, or what they need to get it done. If you go in prepared and play right, it's toast.
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The Cannoneer:

Like I said in my solo report of this, this job can handle Omega just as well as Shinryu at normal levels. !Combine may be able to be seen as a more balanced version of !Mix, but both commands allow their job to get a win over superbosses under reasonable circumstances.


Cannoneer has three advantages over Chemist. The first being Slow status, a nasty gamechanger easily inflicted. This allowed John Connor two turns for every turn Omega received. This meant firing off an attack and healing before it could move again. The second is Aegis Shield, which can negate certain attacks from Omega occasionally.


Finally, there's the counterattack quirk - if you use any status-inflicting !Combine on Omega that doesn't affect it, it won't counterattack (note that it does counterattack Slow when it hits). If you do this and combine it with the status bug for immunity to Blaster, this fight becomes ridiculously easy with the Cannoneer - although it's more than possible to do it without, as I've done it. This aside, Spark Cannon does healthy damage at a normal level, and as long as you block or avoid Encircles, you're good to go.


The first of more than you might expect! I put this one just above Chemist due to a few factors, but as far as killing Omega is concerned, they're top class for a solo.

Cannoneer is also very good in a party setting for this thing - especially for the easy inflicting of slow status.
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The Chemist:

No surprise. But then again I am on GBA, so nonsense in getting all the way to level 255 via mixtures is out the door. At least there's no Level 3 Flare to embarass myself with here...


Chemist's big advantage is of course its myriad of mixtures. The trickiest part is getting them up. Of course Chemist needs to wear Reflect Ring to protect against Delta Attack, though I suppose praying it doesn't show up is an option. But even with Haste status, I found that Omega was occasionally getting two turns to John Connor's one. Might be able to avoid that by shedding some equipment to reduce weight.


Once buffed sufficiently, Chemist has a few avenunes of attack. Shadowflares work if you've farmed Dark Matters. Split Shell/Turtle Soup can reduce its magic defense after which the robot can be kissed to death. And due to knives halving an enemy's evasion, it's more than possible for Chemist to use a strategy based around the Chicken Knife. One thing to watch out for if you are using that or kisses, though - if Omega uses Delta Attack and damages itself, it will counter. Got owned by some untimely Mustard Bombs a few times when going for the win here. Shadowflare of course doesn't suffer from this.


Either way, this too can easily clean out Omega. Chemist gives up Slow in exchange for immunity to a lot of things with Dragon's Kiss. It's far from the only one who can pull this win off.

Chemist's Dragon Kisses are of course excellent in a full-party setting, too.
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The Mystic Knight:

I think the thing I learned most from my solo fiesta some years ago is that this is a damn good class. Sure it sucks at multi-targetting, but when it's one-on-one, like most boss fights, it handles itself spectacularly.


There are several keys that go into Mystic Knight being able to successfully defeat Omega. The first of these is how knives halve a target's evasion. This allows it to connect with Thundaga Spellbladed Chicken Knife strikes for 9999 damage. The second of these is Genji Armor to resist the confusion from the incoming Rocket Punches. Very important to get and wear.


Finally, setting up its HP to activate Shell status early into the fight will help guard against nasty things like Maelstrom and Encircle. For further protection, the status bug can be used to definitively protect against Blaster, too. With all this, the Mystic Knight has what it takes to get it done.


And at a reasonable level, too! That being 65, like the above. With reasonable luck, too. Really, this class is most indicative of one small change to FF5 it would take to make Omega possible for several classes: a lightning-elemental knife of decent endgame power. Add that and several classes could at least show up to play. No such luck, though. Of course a hypothetical weapon like that it won't be as overkill as what Mystic Knight does here...

It's just as solid in a full party, too. Mystic Knight is one of my favorite classes to get in a four job fiesta setting because of all its advantages.
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The Ranger

This class had severe troubles against Gil Turtle due to low vitality. It also ran into trouble against Shinryu due to circumstances. Here we finally come to a superboss where it can perform decently enough.


Ranger brings the offense to Omega in spades: !Rapid Fire will absolutely tear through it - over 16000 at max level, and still well over 10000 at more reasonable ones. The big-ass downside is that this provokes a double counterattack. This includes Rocket Punch, which will almost definitely inflict confusion. Heavy armor classes can equip the Genji Armor to combat this. Those who can equip mage armor can use a Lamia's Tiara. Ranger can only equip light armor, so gets stuck with Bone Mail. That means rolling the dice with Assassin's Dagger to heal. Of course if you want you can also just use the status bug and Elixirs...


When doing it without that bug and due to the front row requirement, the Ranger will want to !Aim at Omega with the Assassin's Dagger. This guarantees a hit, doesn't involve the Ranger hitting itself, and the Death spell if it triggers will bounce right off and onto the Ranger.

The good news is that this fight doesn't take long, one way or another. The strategy is to try for a preemptive, get off a !Rapid Fire, survive, and start stalling. To really make it easier, prep the Magic Lamp for Carbuncle. Use it when possible - but not too early. The Ranger can get several free shots in after Search is bounced. And of course once it's in kill range, you can just go for the throat (??) on the next turn.


If all goes well, the Ranger at high levels can kill Omega before its script loops. Lower to more reasonably leveled ones should be able to do it too (and will definitely want the status bug for breathing room), but Encircle will be more obstructive at those lower levels. Delta Attack too - strangely, only Ribbon and Aegis grant immunity to it. Probably another additional thing FF5 could've used. Though I didn't know of it when I did this one, learning of the status bug made me move it up here.

Of course, the classic Spellblade Rapid Fire works well on Omega - if you're prepared for the counters. But there's better base jobs, even though it has some excellent commands to use on it, including !Aim.
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The Dancer:

Oh god not anothe-wait, excuse me? I know I said it's fascinating how a job that does poorly against one superboss might be just fine against another, but EXCUSE ME? Bad vitality?! Hello?!?!!


Dancer's advantages are pushed to the forefront here. Sword Dance ignores accuracy checks while doing insane damage, and this boss is purely magical so row makes no difference. Due to its nature, it comboed with Chicken Knife tears through the machine's defense. Its equipment disregards a lot of the things Omega can do: Blaster, Delta Attack, Rocket Punch confusion...the two biggest threats that remain are Encircle of course, and Maelstrom. For the former, you simply need to pray it doesn't show up and hit. For the latter, it could be recovered from depending on whether John Connor's turn was active and how much HP he was left with.


Timing in attacking is critical when facing Omega with Dancer due to its low HP. Some with higher health numbers may be able to get away with more, but Dancer's is low enough so that Mustard Bomb can kill after a Wave Cannon, and Atomic Ray comes very close.


I rank it in this group because it has more than enough tools to get the job done without relying on luck overly much Even long strings of Jitterbugs and Mystery Waltzs won't matter too much. There is the SLIGHT catch that it wants as many levels as possible, though it still fits how I defined this grouping once it has it. And unlike some of the other jobs - it can still do very heavy damage at these high levels. This is somehow even more insane to me than Berserker killing Shinryu when others could not...

Dancer's equipment is probably more desirable for use against Omega than Dancer itself, though just using it itself with Sword Dance is an option (fiesta settings where you get it with Mystic Knight?)
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If not using the status bug, then drop Ranger down to the list below. The jobs that can defeat the robot even though it is overdesigned, but have more trouble with it for various reasons. The odds might be very low for some of them, but all can get it done. Those will be next time.

[Sullla]

Another day, another class for the solo tier list:



Dragoon
Overall Ranking: 9/26 [Tier 3, Rank 1]
Innate Command: Jump
Stats: Strength +18, Agility +5, Vitality: +15, Magic Power -12
Equipment: Daggers, Spears, Shields, Heavy Armor set
Abilities: !Jump (50 ABP), !DragonSword (150 ABP), EquipSpear (400 ABP)
Total ABP to Master: 600 points

The Dragoon is one of the most basic classes in FF5. It has only three total abilities, and one of them is simply the innate "Equip Spears" that comes along naturally with the job. The Dragoon's signature ability is "Jump", which causes the class to leap up into the air and become untargetable, then land and deal double damage after a delay. The amount of time spent up in the air is exactly the amount of time needed for the action bar to fill back up again, lasting shorter when a Dragoon is in Haste status and longer when a Dragoon is in Slow status. The bonus damage from using Jump doubles the multiplier M and not the Dragoon's attack value, and it should be pointed out that this benefit only kicks in when using a spear, not any other type of weapon. Because of the delay inherent in jumping, the Dragoon is not an especially fast character and this class combos very poorly with other jobs in normal casual play. This is a tanky class and if your tank is up in the air, then it's not taking for the party, is it? However, the Dragoon is much better for a solo class game where none of that matters, and the chance to become untargetable is very useful indeed for dodging all sorts of dangerous enemy attacks. Sol Cannon's Surge Beam, Exdeath's Condemn, Neo Exdeath's Grand Cross - they are all avoidable with the right timing. Jump is a versatile ability and quite handy for a solo game.

The other class ability is Dragon Sword, an attack wherein the Dragoon gets a free use of the combined Drain and Psych (Osmose) spells. Dragon Sword is literally identical to those two spells, the only difference being the cool-looking graphical effect wherein a glowing blue dragon appears on screen. Dragon Sword works well in the earlier portions of the game for keeping the health of the Dragoon topped off via the Drain component, and the Psych aspect can defeat certain bosses by stealing away all of their magic points, most notably Byblos. Unfortunately, the terribly low Magic Power stat on the Dragoon class means that damage from Dragon Sword will barely increase over the course of the solo run, and that makes this ability virtually useless over time. It would be awesome on a mage class but it's pretty sad in this context.

Dragoons have the typical stat assortment of melee fighters, with excellent Strength and Vitality to go along with the aforementioned weak Magic Power. Dragoons are a little bit faster than Knights and slightly less strong/tanky to compensate. Dragoons use spears for their weapons along with the standard daggers, and spears are pretty solid overall . The advantage of spears is having two excellent choices for the lategame, the Holy Spear with its holy element property, and the Dragoon Spear, which deals double damage against dragon opponents in addition to having 119 (!) attack value. These are both great weapons and let the Dragoon torch the ending portions of the game. However, the disadvantage of spears is that there are very few of them in the early stages of the game, and only one available at all in the whole first world. Since the Dragoon class doesn't unlock normally until defeating Archaeoavis, the designers only put one of them (the Trident) in the first world. That means a solo run has to go a long way using daggers alone, which do not get the doubled damage property from Jumping. This is a major setback for the class that knocks them down a tier from a lot of the other melee-oriented jobs that I have ranked higher. My solo Dragoon was forced to run Byblos out of magic points using Dragon Sword to get past him, and Archaeoavis was almost as bad. Fortunately the Dragoon class does get to use shields and the Heavy armor set, both of which are always excellent options.

One other thing I'll mention about this class is that it benefits enormously from Haste status, even more so than the other solo jobs. The addition of the Running Shoes lets the solo Dragoon time his/her Jumps with much more precision, since the total time spent in the air gets cut in half. That's a good thing, not a bad thing, and it makes it easy to leap over incoming attacks. Groups of monsters generally tend to attack at the same time when their invisible action bars are full, and with a little practice I was able to time it so that my solo Dragoon consistently avoided nearly every attack. It's impossible to lose at the game if you never get touched. This along with good stats and a strong equipment selection were enough to boost the Dragoon to the top of this particular tier, even as the weaker early game and poor initial selection of spears kept it from reaching a higher one.

[System Error]

Fair reasons for ranking it lower. Didn't really get the impression that ArcheoAevis was really rough for Dragoon from your report, though - Trident's element aside. I also preferred to look at Byblos as Dragoon getting to run it out of MP instead of being forced to push through it with luck or stalling until it does - like some of the other unfortunate melee classes. Definitely is a later bloomer than most classes, though is no slouch before that either. And probably one of the higher skillcap jobs to use effectively due to all the Jump timing.

(Also remember to fix the Bone Mail/Blue Mage thing when you post it on your site, in case you didn't see it)

[Fenn]

It's not quite true that the Trident is the first spear you can obtain: after the Karnak castle escape, the new merchant in the weapon shop sells Mythril Spears. You can of course get the Trident just after the next dungeon, but it's there. Makes you wonder if the Dragoon was supposed to be a Fire Crystal job.

[Sullla]

One of the most popular classes finally appears.



Hunter
Overall Ranking: 10/26 [Tier 3, Rank 2]
Innate Command: Aim
Stats: Strength +16, Agility +12, Vitality: +1, Magic Power -5
Equipment: Daggers, Bows, Medium Armor set
Abilities: !Animals (15 ABP), !Aim (45 ABP), EquipBow (135 ABP), !X-Fight (405 ABP)
Total ABP to Master: 600 points

The Hunter class finds itself in the opposite situation from the Dragoon class, a job that functions much better in a typical party setting than it does on a solo run. The Hunter is the fighting class that uses bows for a weapon, and it ends up with a different stat and equipment distribution than most of the other melee classes. Hunters have good Strength and excellent Agility, tying with Ninjas for second place in the latter category and outdone only by the Thief. However, the tradeoff is a poor Vitality stat that leaves them with little health and practically forces the Hunter into the back row, where bows fortunately do work with full effectiveness. The bows themselves are very good weapons, with a wide selection of different types to choose between offering different elements and status-affecting properties. The Fire/Ice/Thunder Bows all pop up during the first world, while the Darkness Bow offers one of the few ways to inflict a useful status ailment against enemies. Bows are one of the very rare weapon types that have a chance to critically strike and deal huge damage. Unfortunately, because the Hunter is not one of the game's starting classes, no bows at all are available until halfway through the first world, and it can be challenging to navigate through the game with a frail class like this until they show up. Making matters worse, the two-handed nature of bows rules out the chance to equip a shield, which makes things much more complicated for the Hunter class in the lategame. The lack of Aegis Shield protection is very noticeable for the final boss.

The innate class ability is "Aim", which increases the to-hit rate of the Hunter to 100%. The intention is to use this with bows, which are otherwise inaccurate weapons, but Aim can be used with anything that the Hunter can equip. The use of Aim cancels out the Flee effect of the Chicken Knight (which is keyed to the use of the "Fight" command) and it's great for dealing with evasive opponents like the Ninjas in the Dimensional Castle. Early in the game the Hunter can make due with "Animals", an amusing ability where the class can "Call upon our forest friends" for assistance. Animals uses a formula based around rolling a random number between zero and the Hunter's current level, with a number of different effects ranging from single target damage via "Squirrel" to self-healing restoration via "Nightingale". The low damage and random nature of the Animals ability makes it impractical as soon as the Hunter gains access to a bow, although it is one of the funniest abilities in the game to use.

The Hunter's signature ability is "X-Fight" (Rapidfire), on the very short list of the best abilities in the whole game. X-Fight lets the Hunter attack four times with the multiplier cut in half (M = M / 2). Like Aim, X-Fight always hits the target and it ignores the Defense stat of the enemy being hit. It will also never trigger the Flee effect from the Chicken Knife, and with the Hunter having such high Strength and Agility stats, the Chicken Knife + X-Fight + Running Shoes combination makes this class an unstoppable killing machine. My solo Hunter was getting off two X-Fights before the monsters even got to act, dealing out roughly 20,000 damage before their turns began. They, uh, rarely survived long enough to do anything. The traditional endgame boss gauntlet fared little better and were carved up one after another. You really need to see the lategame Hunter in action at some point - it is downright TERRIFYING to watch.

So why is this class only ranked as the tenth best then? For starters, most of that lategame power doesn't arrive until near the end of the solo run. When using a normal bow and not the Chicken Knife earlier on, X-Fight is only an excellent ability and not a gamebreaking one. For that matter, X-Fight requires a lot of ability points to unlock, and it wouldn't have arrived until well into the second world if I hadn't been forced to do a lot of grinding to unlock it earlier. The Hunter class also consistently struggles with a number of difficult bosses in a way that stronger classes can avoid. Animals is a slow and unreliable way of defeating opponents in the early game, and Byblos can't be defeated at all without setting up a Fire Bow drop from the Tornado form of Liquid Flame. The Puroboros were a huge obstacle for this class, forcing my solo Hunter to grind out about 100 extra ability points just to have X-Fight on hand, and even then it was still a heavily luck-based endeavor to get past the little death balloons. The low Vitality on the Hunter class had my solo character in constant danger of being wiped out.

And I still haven't mentioned the biggest flaw of X-Fight: the four attacks are distributed randomly amongst the Hunter's opponents. You cannot control where the damage goes. That's fine against most bosses because there's only one thing to target, but it causes major problems in certain places. Stalker's multiple images, the piggy trio in the Great Trench, the four Barriers at the start of the Necrophobia battle, and most importantly, the four Neo Exdeath parts are all places where X-Fight's uncontrolled damage causes serious issues. Most of the time the Hunter is doing so much damage via X-Fight that it doesn't matter. In places where the class needs precision though, X-Fight has to be given up in favor of Aim, and that converts the Hunter back into a moderately strong ranged fighter instead of an insane death god. I had to use the Yoichi Bow for the Neo Exdeath battle for this very reason, and that was slow going (1700 damage on normal hits and a hair under 5000 on critical hits). As a result, this is a very binary class overall, reminiscent of someone who would put all of their skill points into a single category in Diablo 2. Your all-fire sorcie would annihilate anything not immune to fire, and then stand around looking helpless against anything that was immune. Similarly, the lategame Hunter can kill anything with ease so long as it doesn't matter where the damage goes, only to look much more pedestrian in the situations where it does. Add in the low Vitality, lack of shields, and weak early portions of the gameplay, and even one of the game's best abilities can only get the Hunter to the higher end of the "average" tier.

[T-hawk]

the Flee effect of the Chicken Knight

Nice typo

Of course, X-Fight is such a signature ability not for just a solo Hunter, but what it does with normal unrestricted use of the job system. X-Fight multiplies with all the other big hitters like Double Grip, Dual Wield, Spellblade. 20,000 damage is peanuts at that point. Same goes for the Red Mage's X-Magic later on, that's not broken with two red spells, but gets into the ridiculous multiplicativeness with bigger spells and particularly Quick. I sometimes wish the game had some targets worthy of stacking up all that power; even the bonus dungeon and extra superbosses are more about gimmick immunities and status inflictions.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Here's a video I found amusing; it's actually possible to take out Necrophobia with a solo Berserker without emulator: 

[RFS-81]

The Ninja class ranks second in my solo rankings behind only the Samurai. With those being the best two jobs, it's almost like this game was made in Japan or something.

That phenomenon actually predates the very existence of Final Fantasy, though, since Samurai and especially Ninjas are also traditionally top-tier in Wizardry, which came out in 1981.  In those days, that was an American game; these days, it's all Japanese releases, though the Japanese don't seem to think the original Wizardry series is much good past the first game.

I have a different opinion -- my user name here comes from the last two American Wizardry releases. 

Same

I went through a retro CRPG phase a few years ago. I think 7 and 8 still hold up, 6 too if you don't mind drawing maps. I don't see why anyone would think the first one is better...but I used to have a similar opinion regarding MOO 1 and 2, so what do I know?

I think it's safe to say that there is some Wizardry DNA in FF5, since switching character classes plays a big part in both games.

[System Error]

Can appreciate that solo Berserker vs. Necro video - Assassin'a Dagger bounced Bone Mail healing hype. Berserker can actually hold up its end of the bargain in many situations - only the lack of control really holds it back, really fatally sometimes as a solo unfortunately. Reminds me that I should try to get Berserker vs. Shinryu on tape. Like I mentioned, it is completely insane that if not for being able to run from it, Berserker would be one of the best solos for fighting the thing.

It's not quite true that the Trident is the first spear you can obtain: after the Karnak castle escape, the new merchant in the weapon shop sells Mythril Spears. You can of course get the Trident just after the next dungeon, but it's there. Makes you wonder if the Dragoon was supposed to be a Fire Crystal job.

Heh. Always forget about this merchant. He's pretty obscure, but handy to know about if his goods are relevant.

[Sullla]

That Berserker battle against Necrophobia is essentially impossible without use of emulator save states. How many times does a reflected Doom spell out of the Assassin dagger appear just in time to prevent a defeat - five times? Six times? Then there's the Doom spell from Necrophobia appearing at exactly the right moment for another health refill in the second half of the battle, plus every use of Maelstrom missing or being blocked by the Aegis Shield. There's no way someone could pull that off if they were forced to walk from the previous save point in the Dimensional Castle after every attempt. As I've said many times, I don't use save states for my solo characters (outside of the one exception with the Bard and its Hide ability).

Anyway, next character up:



Black Mage
Overall Ranking: 11/26 [Tier 3, Rank 3]
Innate Command: Black magic
Stats: Strength -9, Agility +0, Vitality: -2, Magic Power +31
Equipment: Daggers, Light Armor set
Abilities: !Black 1 (10 ABP), !Black 2 (20 ABP), !Black 3 (30 ABP), !Black 4 (50 ABP), !Black 5 (70 ABP), !Black 6 (100 ABP), MP +30% (400 ABP)
Total ABP to Master: 600 points

The Black Mage is one of the classic jobs not just in FF5 but in the entire Final Fantasy series more broadly. Sporting pointy hats and hiding their faces in shadow, Black Mages have been one of the most popular features of the series dating back to the 1980s. In this particular incarnation, Black Mages are one of the strongest magic-using classes and a powerful offensive weapon throughout the run of a solo game. Black Mages have access to the three primary elements, fire/ice/lightning, at each of three different strengths. The tier 1 version of these spells has an attack value of 15, the tier 2 version has an attack value of 50, and the tier 3 version has an attack value of 185, each one being a bit more than three times stronger than the next. Many of the game's bosses have a weakness to one of these three elements, and the Black Mage is therefore able to skate past bosses like Byblos, Ifrit, and Sol Cannon which would otherwise cause serious problems. Black Mages are also able to acquire rods that grant their basic attack spells the "Magic Up" property from an early date, adding another 50% additional damage to their fire/ice/lightning blasts. This class can furthermore heal via a Flame Ring and self-castings of the three fire spells, and one good self-casted Fire 3 / Firaga is enough to max out HP in all but the worst of circumstances. One thing that the Black Mage class is never lacking is direct damage and multi-targeted spells.

In addition to their primary elemental attack magic, the Black Mage has a number of other useful spells that come along for the ride. Bio has a spell attack of 105 and slots in perfectly between the tier 2 and tier 3 elemental attack spells, granting access to poison for a fourth element and with its own Venom Rod to grant the Magic Up property. The Venom spell allows the Black Mage to inflict actual poison status, while Sleep and Toad open up two more useful status inflictions. Not that the Black Mage uses either of them very often; this class can simply blow away opponents with raw damage and doesn't need to resort to indirect status twinkery. Then there are the instant death spells: Break is one of the few ways to inflict petrification while Doom kills the unlucky recipient instantly. Drain will steal health from targets while Psych does the same thing for magic points. Finally, Flare is non-elemental and pierces enemy magic defense, although that's not as useful as it might sound and a Flame Rod-powered Fire 3 will do more damage in nearly all situations. This is an excellent spell selection and one of my favorite parts of the Black Mage class is how smooth it all feels. At every stage of the game, the Black Mage is upgrading from one powerful spell to the next, never really going through any period without something explosive to toss at enemies.

Of course, the Black Mage class suffers from serious weaknesses as well. The biggest problem comes against opponents who lack elemental weaknesses to exploit, or worse yet, the few bosses who are immune to the normal elements of fire/ice/lightning. Flare might be non-elemental in nature but it doesn't arrive on the scene until the final 15% of the solo run, and anything that's immune to elemental damage before that has to be conquered with physical attacks. The final form of Archaeoavis in particular causes major problems for the solo Black Mage, and even the Gilgamesh/Enkidou ship battle can be difficult because they have no elemental weaknesses to target. The Black Mage also shares the vulnerabilities common to nearly all of the casting classes, with poor stats and a weak equipment selection. While the Black Mage has awesome Magic Power, this class stinks in every other statistical category, and the horribly low Vitality means a dangerously weak health total. The equipment options are similarly poor, with only the standard daggers to go along with rods and the Light armor set. No Bone Mail for this class, and that's a real shame because self-healing with Fire 3 + Flame Ring + Bone Mail would be great. At least Black Mages do get a ton of use out of rods, between the Magic Up property on elemental damage and the Wonder Rod's versatility in the lategame. Still, even the one-time use of Shell status from the Wonder Rod only does so much to stop Exdeath's White Hole, and this class has no shields to rely on for physical evade or petrification defense.

The net total is that the Black Mage grades out as roughly average in terms of power for a solo class. It dominates many of the boss encounters but struggles at enough of them that it can't claim a ranking in the higher tiers. That said, this is another class that's a ton of fun to play on a solo run and I highly encourage anyone reading this to give it a try.