More Final Fantasy

[Sullla]

We're getting close to the end now. Only a few classes left to go.

Tier 5

The classes in this group sit at the bottom of the tier list, the weakest of the lot for a solo game. Most of these classes are very solid choices in a normal party setting and only fall apart when asked to shoulder the load of a solo venture. These jobs are intended to provide utility skills and defensive abilities, not offensive output. Only the craziest individuals would be foolish enough to try using them for a single character, single class challenge. These jobs experience immense difficulties making it through the full length of a solo run, repeatedly running into roadblock boss obstacles and requiring herculean feats of experience/item grinding to continue onwards. In fact, several of these classes are so weak that they can't even fight random encounters consistently, and are forced to raise levels in special areas suited to their abilities. These classes often get past difficult bosses by running them out of magic points, spending hours on end slowly wearing down their opponents in marathon sessions. These are simply the worst options possible for a solo game - save one special job ranked even lower.



Thief
Overall Ranking: 22/26 [Tier 5, Rank 1]
Innate Command: Steal
Stats: Strength +1, Agility +16, Vitality: +2, Magic Power -6
Equipment: Daggers, Ninja/Thief weapons, Medium armor set
Abilities: See Passages (10 ABP), !Escape (20 ABP), Dash (30 ABP), !Steal (50 ABP), Caution (75 ABP), !Capture (150 ABP), Agility (300 ABP)
Total ABP to Master: 635 points

The Thief is a utility class in FF5, with a whole bunch of useful abilities unrelated to combat. The signature Thief ability is "Steal", which uses a round of combat in an attempt to pilfer some kind of item from an opponent of the player's choice. Nearly every enemy in the game has a stealable item of some kind, and in fact the vast majority of them actually have two stealable items, a "Common" steal (96% odds) and a "Rare" steal (4% odds). There's no way to get a Rare steal other than trying over and over again while hoping to get lucky, and only one item can be stolen from each opponent in each battle. The base chance for a successful steal is 40%, with a unique accessory called the Thief Glove doubling this to 80%. Despite a lot of misinformation out there on the Internet, nothing else affects the chance to steal in any way. With more levels in the job Thieves can open up the Capture command, which is a combined Attack + Steal together, very nice for not having to waste a round of action purely on stealing without dealing damage. As far as what can be stolen, there's all sorts of miscellaneous gear out there that the Thief can pick up, often getting certain items earlier than they would otherwise be available. A handful of rare items can only be obtained via Steal, with the Genji equipment held by Gilgamesh being the most famous example. The solo Thief suffers here from the innate restrictions of the class: most of the really good stuff that the Thief can swipe isn't equippable by the Thief class, including all of the Genji gear. (This is the pathos of the solo Thief.) When I played out this solo run, my character spent most of his time stealing Hi Potions and Elixirs in the first world before they became readily available. The best steal is the Double Lance in the basement of Bal Castle, one of the few Thief/Ninja weapons and a very strong option throughout the second world. Generally speaking though, the Steal command isn't as good as it might sound for a solo Thief.

The other Thief abilities are mostly unrelated to combat. "See Passages" does what the name indicates, making hidden passages visible on the screen. This is pointless for an experienced player who already knows where they're all located. "Escape" can be pretty handy, providing a guaranteed run from random encounters. This is useful in a number of places with difficult opponents that the party doesn't want to fight. "Dash" lets the Thief move faster on the overworld map screen, which is nearly useless considering that emulator Fast Forward has the same effect. The Gameboy Advance port made Dashing an innate feature of the game always available to everyone, and the Thief ability a super-fast version that's almost too rapid to control. This also doesn't do anything to help win battles. "Caution" blocks the Thief from ever getting Back Attacks, again a nice utility feature to have but nothing to write home about. "Agility" isn't an ability at all, simply the name that the game provides for mastering the job and passing on its stats to the Bare/Mimic jobs. This probably should have been "Equip Thief weapons" if this class followed the pattern of most other jobs. In any case, it's useless for a solo Thief who always has the innate Thief stats regardless.

On the subject of those character stats, the Thief has the highest Agility in the game and it's very noticeable while playing that this class is a bit faster than everyone else. Oftentimes the Thief can get in one more attack before a boss acts, or move faster than an opponent who normally goes first. Unfortunately that's about the only positive thing that can be said about the stats of this class. Strength is simply awful for a class that has no magical spells and must do all damage via melee weapons. Vitality is also quite low, especially for a class that has to spend much of its time in the front row to deal damage. Even Magic Power is bad, not that this class really needs that last stat though. The low Strength and Vitality combine to create a serious problem for the Thief, and I spent much of the game doing everything possible with gear to raise that Strength number a bit higher. Thieves have access to the unique Thief/Ninja weapons like the Full Moon and the Rising Sun, which can be used from the back row and can be helpful at times in the solo run. More often the class will be using the standard daggers though, since there are so few weapons that fall into the previous category. The Double Lance is definitely the strongest of the Thief/Ninja weapons and helps drag this class through the second world. By far the best weapon for the Thief is the Chicken Knife, which can avoid the Flee effect by using Capture and finally takes this class up to respectable status on damage. However, for much of the solo run the Thief is forced to make due with subpar weapons, and lack of access to shields causes a lot of deaths against the final endgame bosses. White Hole took out my solo Thief 47 different times, and that was despite a ridiculously high character level of 68.

The solo Thief struggles again and again to make progress in a solo run, largely because the class has terribly low Strength and zero abilities that boost damage in any way. The solo Thief has no choice but to run Byblos out of magic points, and unlike the Bard (who can Hide) and the White Mage (who has Armor status and plenty of healing capabilities), the Thief simply has to tank the damage and guzzle down endless stolen healing items. From my notes on the battle, my solo Thief had to inflict almost 8000 total points of damage at under 30 damage per attack, while drinking 10 Elixirs and 87 Hi Potions for more than 50,000 total HP restored. And that didn't even count the amount of time needed to Steal those Hi Potions and Elixirs one at a time in preparation for the battle. This is a class that had such low offensive output that Crayclaw was a difficult opponent, needing to attack the steel lobster 18 times at an average damage of 110 per round to prevail. My solo Thief also needed 15 Elixirs to defeat Sol Cannon, 30 Hi Potions to get past Archaeoavis, and needed to land the Mute spell via the Mage Masher to avoid dying against Gilgamesh on the Big Bridge. Atomos mandated gaining 25 levels - up to Level 64! - before my solo Thief had enough health to survive the Comet barrage and enough offensive damage to defeat the thing. Frankly, if that leveling hadn't been done against Atomos, it probably would have been needed against Exdeath at the end of the second world, another extremely difficult battle for a low-offense character. The third world was much easier with the Chicken Knife, but even there, the solo Thief struggled against Necrophobia and the Exdeath Tree form. If my character had been the standard Level 55 instead of Level 68 at the end of the game, his damage would be been rather pedestrian. Much as I may have liked my solo Thief, this was one of the slowest and most difficult character paths to complete the solo run.

Therefore the Thief has the dubious honor of being the best of the classes here in this bottom tier. Upon obtaining the Chicken Knife 80% of the way through the solo run, this becomes an above average class that traverses most of the endgame areas without too much trouble. However, the path to reach that point is among the hardest of any solo classes. This is a game where crime doesn't pay.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Crime may not pay in FF5 solo runs, but music and healing magic are even worse ways to earn a living!     

It's been a while since I used Thieves in FF5, so I forgot how weak they were.  Square must have learned their lesson when making the Bravely series version of the class.  Bravely Thieves have bows that use their high DEX stat, can drain health from enemies when they attack for a low MP cost.  Their Godspeed Strike can hit the damage cap earlier than other single hit attacks thanks to its Physical Defense ignoring properties.

The solo Thief suffers here from the innate restrictions of the class: most of the really good stuff that the Thief can swipe isn't equippable by the Thief class, including all of the Genji gear. (This is the pathos of the solo Thief.)

The "pathos of the solo Thief" was worth the wait for the Thief ranking.  I'm imagining Jesse brooding in a smoky room in a black and white movie asking himself something like "Was it really worth it?" while holding his useless Genji equipment.



I can't wait for the Bard ranking.  According to Sullla's report:


It took 90 minutes of running the game on Fast Forward mode to see them run out, which equated to 20 hours of in-game time. TWENTY HOURS! Note to anyone reading: do not try a solo Bard run on an actual Super Famicom system. Trust me on this.

[System Error]

Agility IS an ability - equip it and its speed will be passed onto the job you're using rather than just the classes that inherit it. Really lame unless there's no other options (fiestas?), in which case you can find fancy uses for it (fiestas where you're stuck with a Berserker or other classes without much better slot options?).

Not sure if you should mention the Atomos leveling as a mark against Thief besides the context with ExDeath - the standard solo options taken for getting by (killing off one at a time) would've worked. Trying to defeat it legit was entirely your choice, and most jobs need to gain insane levels to do that. :P

[English Language]

I remember one past Fiesta run with a Berserker who was VERY happy to get Agility equipped later on.

[Sullla]

The Bard is the next in line as requested:



Bard
Overall Ranking: 23/26 [Tier 5, Rank 2]
Innate Command: Sing
Stats: Strength -8, Agility +8, Vitality: -9, Magic Power +11
Equipment: Daggers, Harps, Light armor set
Abilities: !Hide (25 ABP), Equip Harp (50 ABP), !Sing (100 ABP)
Total ABP to Master: 175 points

Bards have traditionally been somewhat of a joke class in the Final Fantasy universe, and although they're better in this game than poor Gordon and Edward from earlier entries in the series, Bards would never be considered the type of class that should strike out on a solo venture. The signature Bard ability is "Sing", which uses one of eight different songs with their own unique mechanics. Four of the songs have an immediate effect of some kind: the Love Song puts enemies into Stop status, while the Charm Song is a free use of the Charm spell. Both of these songs were highly useful at times during the solo Bard run, more so than I was expecting, and the Love Song is infamous for being the cheese way to defeat Omega. The Vitality Song puts the party into Regen status (also great for long boss battles) and Requiem functions as a "HARM" spell from the original Final Fantasy, dealing magic damage to all undead enemies. Bards are therefore outstanding at clearing the Great Trench dungeon since everything down there is undead, the opposite of most other classes who struggle in that area. The other four songs all function in the same fashion: the Bard will keep singing continuously until damaged by a physical attack, with the ongoing song slowly raising one stat for the party (including the Bard). The four options are the Speed Song (increases Agility), the Magic Song (increases Magic Power), the Power Song (increases Strength), and the Heroic Song (increases character level). The Gameboy Advance translation uses a bunch of excessively flowery names like "Mana's Paen" and "Sinewy Etude" that don't make it clear what these songs are doing - I'm not a fan. All of these songs are great options, and with enough time to buff up the individual stats, even a spoony Bard can become incredibly powerful. The Speed Song will take characters to an uncharted territory even faster than Haste status, the Magic Song will increase the damage from Requiem, the Power Song makes anyone a great physical attacker, and the Heroic Song just increases everything, since nearly all of the formulas in FF5 involve Level in some fashion. Unfortunately the stat-boosting songs don't become available until latter in the solo Bard run, with the Speed Song unlocking halfway through the game and the other three becoming available at about the 80% mark. Their presence would have been greatly appreciated earlier in the run.

The other class ability is "Hide", a cowardly ability where the Bard runs offscreen and becomes untargetable until selecting "Return". This is a guaranteed run in battles where running is allowed, and a place to escape injury in boss battles. Some of the worst enemy attacks can be dodged in this way, like Sol Cannon's Surge Beam and Neo Exdeath's Grand Cross, and it functions a bit like a slower non-damaging version of the Dragoon's Jump. Unlike the Jump ability, the Bard can remain in untargetable Hide mode indefinitely and simply wait until enemy bosses use up all of their magic points. This is very tedious even with Fast Forward mode running (don't ever try a solo Bard run on a non-emulator), however it does work and forms the core of the Bard strategy for getting past most difficult opponents. Hide takes the worst bite out of a lot of ugly bosses: no Drain from Byblos, no Condemn from Exdeath, no White Hole, nothing from all-magic Apocalypse, and so on. However, Hide is not a panacea for all troubles: there are many boss attacks that are classified as "abilities" and never require MP to use. Hiding does nothing to stop these threats. Hiding is also helpless to prevent physical damage, and many of the toughest fights for the Bard come against physical opponents. Most of the other weakling physical classes have some kind of method to heal themselves, whether through magic or the Healing Staff or some other ability. Not the Bard! Even a normally trivial foe like the Adamantium turtle required the drinking of 13 Elixirs to win, a classic example of a situation where Hide was useless.

Like many of the other classes near the bottom of the tier list, the Bard has both poor character stats and a paltry equipment selection. The penalties to both Strength and Vitality are absolutely crushing, with this being a class that has to spend most of the game attacking physically to get past obstacles. The Bard has the second-lowest Vitality in the game behind only the Dancer and without the Strength (or ability to equip Ribbons) to match. The bonus to Magic Power is mostly wasted because this affects exactly one thing: the damage from the Requiem song, nothing else. At least Bards are pretty fast, clocking in at well above average. In terms of equipment, they have the class-specific weapon of harps and the standard daggers, which pretty much means that they get the standard daggers. Harps are strange weapons that deal percentage-based damage and don't work against opponents who have the Heavy flag. This makes them useless against most bosses (they simply miss on attack rolls) and also a weak option for random encounters, since who wants to be dealing 1/4 of current HP damage to some random mook? It would take forever to kill anything that way. That limits Bards to daggers alone, and with a laughably awful Strength score, Bards don't strike fear in anyone with their little knives. Prior to getting the Chicken Knife in the third world it takes an ungodly long time to kill anything. This is yet another class that has the Light armor set and can't equip the Bone Mail, which helps contribute to making a low health class even more vulnerable.

It's hard to overstate how fragile and physically weak the solo Bard is. This is a class that needed to go back and farm additional Elixirs to defeat Magisa and Forza, a class that had to drink 99 Potions and take 30 minutes to defeat Galura - freaking Galura! - a class who needed 100 dagger attacks to get past Adamantium, and someone who still had to drink 11 Elixirs to defeat Byblos AFTER running the evil book out of magic points. Good grief. The class actually gets stronger as the game goes along, doing better in the second world than in the first world, and much better in the third world than in the second. This is mostly tied to the power of the Bard songs, with the stat-boosting songs in particular helping a great deal to overcome the shortcomings of this class. It takes a long setup to max out Agility with the Speed Song, but once that happens, the Bard becomes a semi-decent class. I'm not sure that it's a positive thing to point out that the only way the Bard becomes "good" is to use songs to increase all its stats to something that no longer resembles the Bard class. And even with the songs in place, the Bard is still reduced to Hiding until the endgame bosses run themselves out of MP, followed by a lengthy process of buffing their own stats. Anyway, this is definitely among the weakest classes in the game and deserves its spot in this tier.

[T-hawk]

There's one other use of Magic Power for the Bard: it affects the damage from Apollo's Harp, which is a normal weapon not percentage-based. A solo bard doesn't really have a need to use that over the Chicken Knife, but it is the second-best weapon for the class.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Will T-Hawk be writing the White Mage ranking?

Weak job variants are where Final Fantasy 5 differs from the spiritual successor Bravely games.  In those, you can at least throw Bomb Arms for 1500 damage if your attack stats are terrible.  All classes can equip everything, but a Knight would get bigger defense bonuses from a shield than a Black Mage, for example.   

This is a class that needed to go back and farm additional Elixirs to defeat Magisa and Forza, a class that had to drink 99 Potions and take 30 minutes to defeat Galura - freaking Galura! - a class who needed 100 dagger attacks to get past Adamantium, and someone who still had to drink 11 Elixirs to defeat Byblos AFTER running the evil book out of magic points.

Did System Error do a solo Edward for FF4 earlier in this thread?  I'm curious to see if everyone's favorite spoony bard would fare as badly as the FF5 job.


Square has a long tradition of sucky bard characters dotted throughout their previous games. FF2 (the original Japanese version) served up Gordon, a weak and irritating bard, FF4 gave us Edward, who was also weak and irritating, and the Bard job in FF3 was... umm, weak and irritating?


I never played the Famicom FF3, but I used a Bard when I played the DS remake.  It's a useful buffing class, though keep in mind that you need different harps equipped to play different songs.

[greenline]

Ranking thief over bard also seems strange; it only shines in a couple battles like garula and the blue turtle where there's nothing to do but fight; but Hide makes almost everything else significantly easier for the Bard. Especially Neo Exdeath

[System Error]

Did System Error do a solo Edward for FF4 earlier in this thread?  I'm curious to see if everyone's favorite spoony bard would fare as badly as the FF5 job.

That was somebody else, though I did start one off-camera! Think I lost the save though so I need to start over, though wasn't very far in anyway. And ironically no - Edward gets godlike stat growths post-70. And if you dive into the postgame, he gets Loki's Lute, which does quadruple damage against almost anything with an enemy type. He's a freaking beast, and is generally okay even before that. Reminds me though that I need to get back on solo Cecil on the 3D version.

Both of these songs were highly useful at times during the solo Bard run, more so than I was expecting, and the Love Song is infamous for being the cheese way to defeat Omega.

So I've a curious question pertaining to this. What defines what is "cheese" in your opinion when it comes to defeating a boss? Using strong abilities? Overleveling? Exploiting instant death? Exploiting a weakness? The latter seems to be what this specific example falls under the definition of. But at what point does not using those options go from not being cheap to purposefully gimping yourself?

It's rare to see an eye batted at the likes of lamping the back part of NeoExdeath or other cases of exploiting status weaknesses/lack of Heavy flag. What makes using Stop/Song against Omega cheap and specifically worth your mentioning here? Especially in this case - it's the only other way besides Mix to assuredly avoid the Encircle counters. If you don't do either, it's up to Shell and luck.

Speaking of cheese, let's resume the Dumbest Variant Ever. Changing my persona to that of my other self again...!

############


I ran into some really annoying enemies on the overworld. These stupid Bio Soldiers could cast Bio. They actually killed me several times! Second in the nearby cave I could run into these Skull Eaters that did crazy damage. I tried attacking the latter but it did no damage, so I just broke rods when they didn't run away right away for some reason. I got a strong new weapon out of going into the cave though, called the Blitz Whip, so it was a plus.


The nearby town had a lot of cool new equipment. I wanted to get some, but I had no money. So I went to a better grinding spot I heard of, some Black Flames on an island somewhere. But I kept missing them! I decided to go back to the dogs after this cause I wasn't getting that much more fighting the Black Flames. I just decided to proceed with the plot from here.


The Sandworm took very little damage from my broken rods. Furthermore, this triggered several counterattacks from the holes that reduced my characters' HP. Still with it being my strongest attacking option, I persistently kept at it.


I won on the first try cause it never did anything to really hurt me.


After a bit more plot (and running into another stupid Dhrome Chimera who died to another broken rod) I was brought to Crayclaw. I was a bit worried cause my rod stock was running low, but it only took a single Thunder Rods to bring it down.


I was able to head to Tycoon Castle after this and pick up a powerful new weapon for random encounters. I was also able to buy two more of these for my other party members. It was just as strong as the Blitz Whip, so there was no need to get a full set for everyone.


At this point I decided to do some cash grinding. I wanted to be absol-positively-sure I had enough in stock for the next world. I ended up with 50 rods of each type plus about 20k the bank. This all helped level up my characters too!
__________


Another one of these small breaks where I'm back to being me, you get a slightly different cutscene of the ruins rising up if you approach on foot rather than by airship. You can just land near the town and walk up to it.


Also at this point Other!Me had killed 1370 Wild Nakks. Excessive, much? Though then again a ton of solos do similar cash grinding for the Flame and Angel Rings...and I've even seen reports/suggestions to get all of those for everyone in some straight-up SCCs (all four one class, rather than just one one class)
__________


Adamantoise went down in two rod breaks.


The Flamethrowers and Rocket Launchers. I was trying not to use my rods at first since they were only midbosses at best. I managed to bring down one, but my characters' HP got really low. They could even confuse me.


Then I realized I can just break the rods and buy more, so take that! This wasn't guaranteed to kill them if I used them at the start of the battle, but two would do so.


Soul Cannon itself was even easier. It didn't get a chance to do anything, Aside, anyone know what's up with the second shot? I beat the Launchers so the next broken rod shouldn't have been doing that little damage. Oh well, not that it matters - it fixed itself and the thing went down before it could attack anyway.


I ran really low on rods after that, more than I was comfortable with, so it was back to the grind! Once I was restocked on rods and money I moved onto the dungeon.


Before that I decided to take this thing on cause I could. Nine Thunder Rods brought it down. Take that! It really wasn't worth it, though.


A lot of the enemies in the Ronka Ruins are really annoying! I'm trying not to run from battle at all by the way, cause of the Brave Blade. And cause Phoenix Downs cost 1000 each, that meant I needed to earn that money back! This is getting a bit silly even for me! But, if I don't do it now, I might regret it later.

This encounter in particular was really really bad. I was doing very little damage to the Ronkan Knights unless I critically hit them, I sometimes just missed them, and the fans could heal them! I eventually got so sick of it I just started breaking Flame Rods against them. It was really long, and I almost ran out of Potions. I actually had to run back to use a Tent cause I was so low and didn't wanna use my Hi Potions to heal.


I finally came to the boss. I broke four Flame Rods, then found they weren't working anymore. I started breaking Frost Rods from there and it died and revived. None of my rods worked at that point, so I had to switch to my weapons. It started off with Maelstrom, though! I had to use Hi-Potions to heal, and it's a good thing I did - I wouldn't had survived if I hadn't. But I did use them and did survive.


Even though I lost Galuf the next three bosses were easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. Two rods beat Titan. Three each for the Purobulos and Manticore


Between the money I had and the extra I earned by selling stuff I don't need, I was able to get up to 60 of each type of rod. Do need to be careful cause I can't restock on them until much later on. Like no breaking rods on annoying random encounters unless they're really really annoying! I spent what I had left getting all my Potions back.


With all my matters taken care of, it's off to Galuf's World. See you on the other side!

################################

So now a bit of the reasoning behind doing this variant is becoming clear. You can already see that rod-breaking ran into a weakness on the Sandworm, besides Archaeoaevis' immunity. It's not a one-stop shop for all your issues. But true to its nature it must push through with rods if possible no matter what. Also shown how dangerous some random encounters can be if you play recklessly. Certainly wasn't expecting Bio Soldiers to kill me. But that's the joy of being grindy and unafraid to break rods, you can just break'em if you see something you don't like. Though my alternate self is smart enough to know that he can't keep doing this in World 2.

Speaking of, I can forsee a few problems that I'm going to run into that I wouldn't have with proper planning. Things are definitely going to be interesting from now on.with an offense almost entirely consisting of broken rods. Look forward to it.

Also that Soul Cannon thing was probably a weird targetting related issue. Was using it when the Lauchers were still up so when Lenna's went off even though Roddy's killed it, it might've still thought they were there and therefore did the reduced damage.

[T-hawk]

What happened with the Launchers: They don't just have 800 HP, they don't just die when you deal 800 damage. They have 10,800 HP and do a self-destruct AI action when under 10,000 HP. They have to get a turn to do that, so before that they still exist as enemies so that the rod is forced into multi-targeting.