I appreciate the hell out of this content, so many of these "tier lists" are just "here is a minute of some vague reasoning without data as to why this goes there" and the fact you've fully laid out your reasons for placement is fantastic. I also appreciate differentiating support abilities away from the full class ranking or else Ninja would be grossly overtiered considering it's damn near useless aside from giving your Paladin two greatswords at once.
Just wanted to add to all of the praise in the comment section. You made an awesome video. So impressed with your quality of reasoning and it clearly shows that you do in fact have 1,500+ hours of experience playing this game. I too have spent a ridiculous amount of time playing this game. It’s probably my favorite FF game of all time. And while I knew a great deal of what you were talking about, I still managed to learn a few things. Like that you get a 2.25x multiplier for turbo MP with Spellblade techniques. Interesting. I wanted to add my 2 cents though on the Elementalist; I know you said a downside of it was that it had a total risk of the debuff moves actually landing (aside from the damage). I feel like it’s worth mentioning that it has a success rate that feels very similar to fusilier’s debuff success rate. Damn near feels like 60/40 in your favor. Perhaps there is confirmation bias on my part but Elementalist is one of my favorite Viera jobs leading up to red mage and double cast with blood price becoming available. Anyway, fantastic video man and I listened to the entire thing. You’ve got yourself another subscriber
To explain what the Flintlock does, it is pretty much strictly inferior to the Cannoneer due to Prime and its worse Ether Shell for some reason, but it's mainly a support unit (real shock). It can basically provide Shell and Regen to allies, provide Protect and Regen to allies, give 40 MP to allies, restore HP and Cleanse allies, and uniquely teleports a target close to the Flintlock. And then it has two skills that are basically "attack" and "attack with recoil damage". Probably would be in either C or B tier if it didn't need to Prime every time it uses a skill. Its main use atm is to not lose all of the range of the Fusilier (still lose 1) but still have overall better growths, with only Defense and HP being worse.
Two decent single target buffs at range is worth considering...kinda? Buff purging is everywhere in this game so I'm not entirely sold, but anything with "Do attack damage plus more damage" is worth looking at.
@@CruzaComplex yeah... It's really unfortunate that Flintlock is in the one Final Fantasy game that widely distributed Dispel. Oh, and I was wrong about the teleportation. It's not close to the Flintlock, it's RANDOM.
I just got into this game recently, being a childhood fan of FF Tactics and Tactics Advance. I gotta say, so far I'm ultra impressed. On Hard mode the game is actually pretty difficult so far and it feels like status conditions, buffs, debuffs, astra etc. that I never would have used in TA for the GBA are necessary to win a lot of battles. The new MP system is also great because it forces you to make some decisions about which spells to use, given that you can't just spam the highest damaging thing 24/7 without a thought. And it feels so much more open and nonlinear compared to the first two + some pretty compelling quests (like the House Bowen line). Great game, feels like not enough people played it or appreciated it because it did a lot of things right. Great tierlist mate.
Fantastic vid - it's been years since I played this game but glad to see a lot of my favourite classes are up there in A and S tier. I absolutely love Bangaas
Thanks for the video. Really helpful. I was going to make Adelle a Heritor/Blue Mage but I might make her something else. That Hume Illusionist Magick Frenzy strat sounds fun.
@@AkaiAzul I didn’t think it through when writing that, I meant I hope Square makes one last Final Fantasy Tactics Advance game and, by some miracle if they do, they put it on the switch lol.
I know this video is months old, but I liked it, so I thought I’d toss over some engagement. Mainly, I want to defend Adelle. Thief’s growths aren’t great, but neither are they atrocious. She’ll be a bit fragile, true, but not made of tissue paper. Starting thief also gets her into Ninja earlier (implying possibly a mage build rather than Parivir), and Ninja, even discounting Dual Wield, has the third-highest speed growth in the game behind only Assassin and Chocobo Knight. Heritor’s growths are unfortunately balanced and mediocre across the board, but if you want weapon attack *and* magic (which Humes really, really do) she’s good for that. I unfortunately can’t find any damage formulas for her abilities anywhere, but they’re all still useful, at least on paper (more on that). Heritor also has good move and jump. It feels weird to praise Fusilier for having typeless damage with status and then decry Heritor for the same thing, and her statuses are potent… the biggest issues are her lack of focus, and even more her lack of _range_ on her abilities. If not for that, she could easily fill a niche as a utility character with relatively unique tools rather than being forced to compete with other Hume jobs and the damage nukes they provide. I almost think that a Heritor of any other species could almost be considered A-tier. Also, giant lasers are really, really cool.
Thanks for the comment! I'm pretty tired so apologies in advance if this reply isn't as coherent as I'd like. I think Heritor's problem is that it comes on a Hume. (Just finished reading your comment, looks like we agree lol.) If any other race had Heritor access I'd be over the moon, but Humes have such outstanding abilities already it's hard to justify using Heritor when Parivir is in the game. Yes, you can use Heritor/Parivir, but as you'll be using flair every turn your primary class is essentially just a weapon with no skills. I can count on one hand the number of times I've wanted to use Wermut over a flair skill. Wind Slash gets damage amp from Geomancy; Heritor skills do not. Fair point well made on speed growths though. I'm like 70% sure Heritor skills scale on Attack, but the fact that you couldn't find damage calcs for them doesn't bode well IMO. Most everything good has numerical documentation around the internet-- hell, I even know the niche interaction of Turbo MP + Spellblade arts gives 2.2x damage instead of 2x. Again, I don't think it's bad, I just think it's super underwhelming compared to what Hume can do natively. RE "Getting to Ninja earlier": I find the bottleneck into Ninja is getting the skill knives in the first place, not so much the AP cost. Even when I'm trying to rush them with auction house shenanigans it feels like all my other classes hit their benchmarks around the same time. I double checked the statuses Heritor gets to make sure I'm not missing anything...there's slow, addle, confuse, and charm. The first three are coupled with damage, charm does not. So, I think Fusilier is the "good" status because it has 2-8x the range of Heritor's statuses and it gets access to stop. Slow is nice but when the opportunity cost is quartering my damage for that round I'm never taking the trade. I'd rather run a fusilier that can do similar damage and inflict stop over slow. The charm is single tile range and has no accuracy buffs, so it's just a worse cupid or charmshot. If a hume can get adjacent to an enemy, they should be using flair unless the build is trying to be cute. Addle is useful but in my experience it just doesn't ever land and confuse is worse charm. --All this to say I think Wermut is the only decent debuff and it's almost entirely outshone by Geomancy + Wind Slash or unboosted Stopshot. Also probably briefly worth mentioning that Heritor skills don't combo with magick frenzy and it makes me sad :c I really wish the line nukes on sage and heritor weren't so terrible. They're my favorite skills visually. TL;DR: I don't think the class is bad, I think it's outshone by what Humes get natively and the niche it's trying to fill is better done by other races, so it's just meh.
Chocobo Knight is like a Monkey's Paw fever dream for me. On paper and concept: Moogle riding chcocobos, referencing Choco-Mog materia from FF7, the series' two mascots joined together as one! Execution: Shite job. They should have done something that the knight gains riding experience based on the chocobo it rides, Yellow, White, Green, Blue, Black, Red (and more if they wanted to make 'em). Mastering a color allows you to transfer skills between birds. Finally, allow them to use secondary abilities! Maybe tweak the stat growths, too.
FFTA2 is an amazing game. I completed every mission and spent 300+ hours in it. I havent played it in years... I might see if there are any cool hacked mods or something.
Wow. Was listening to music from this game and happened to see this video in the suggestions. Surprised to see a recent (and well done!) tier list video for this game. A couple thoughts: -Moogle time mages can use Hastega turn 1 with the MP Channeling clan privilege. I usually went for bonus AP instead, but it's probably worth considering. (Especially when Moogles typically have higher speed than Nu Mou.) -I'm surprised to see Templar ranked high. The equipment is nice as a primary class, but I like to have more movement with a short range weapon. (3 move means you can't wrap around to the back of an enemy that attacked your face.) That said, I never used Astra much, so I probably overlooked a good ability there. Haste is obviously nice too. -For the toughest battles in the game, I think Evade Magick is the best reaction ability by a pretty wide margin. Not every race gets that, so I think that's a significant consideration in some cases. Overall, nice job on the list! The placements/discussion generally looks good to me.
“Moogle can’t cheat” Jugglers with their infinite turn Smile Toss Combo: “are we a joke to you?” Still love your opinions though. Edit: Moogle fusiliers have access to Ether Shot a weaker version of Ether Shell. (40 MP instead of 60)
My favorite combo is always gonna be parivir with pugilism for range and multi-targeting attacks. Love those huge damage numbers. Paladin with pugilism is also one I find pretty good. Also, being fair to moogle knight, they have access to astra for free (moogle shield) which I definitely think should at least make it a little more worthwhile to be a juggler's secondary for when they don't need to be quickening
I have to difer a lot in the positioning of animist + moogle knight. I may be a little of a psychopath, but I use the moogle knight with animist abilities and it was an essential ass-saver to me in multiple battles. You can use the moogle knight with 100% Wool to tank insane damage, plus use stuff like Tail Wag to save your ass when you're battling against overleveled enemies. I almost won against those Grass' guardians in the tower battle for the first attemp using Tail Wag, I just had to have more luck, and maybe put another troop with charm to see how those op monsters kill themselves. Important to mention that the reaction ability of critical haste is a great support to spam either Tail Wag, Ultima Charge or Moogle Rush.
Moogle knight is just a bad pick because moogles have terrible physical stats. But if you need tankiness then knight is your only choice, issue is, you don't build moogles to tank. Animist is very versatile, with some nasty debuffs and a full heal you can use every 3 turns. But random summons are worse than gadgeteer's gimmick and Chocobo rush is magical so you're not getting damage out of that if you are a knight. The combo is being carried by animist being so verstile, and even then you only get a mediocre meelee combatant. However, i DO like their reliability at being a fairly self-sufficient debuffer.
@@rompevuevitos222 nah, moogle knight is a great tank too. I mean, I can't deny my experience playing luck with those Grass Tower guardians tanking like 10 turns with the moogle knight alone, even when I was 10 levels below.
picking this game back up because i found my ds from when i was 5, unlocking new jobs is gonna be one hell of a struggle(unless i am overestimating how hard it is, i never got super far when i played this game years ago)
Nah, not hard at all. The Lanista job is a bitch but the rest aren't bad. You can tell which missions could unlock new jobs because those missions can't be dispatched.
Another small thing that in listening I don't think came up but is worth mentioning Nu Mou and Moogles can't enter the water without a accessory, making some maps entirely untraversable with them. For Nu Mou this is excusable, either you're a Illusionist and can hit the entire map anyway, or you're a time mage and exist to buff the party so you're within the range of your party because spell distance is so long. Moogles that aren't Fusilers have map issues in a few maps. It's niche, but it's something. Edit: Secondary thing as more a note to self but other people might find it fun, A Meltdown Defender with an Angel Ring on a team that already needs a green mage to Tranq might be a fun combo.
What a great video, thank you for putting all this together! When I played FFTA2 as a kid it felt like a secret magical world for me to adventure in, partly because the expansive amount of missions to complete, and partly because nobody else I knew played the game. I have a real soft spot for it. Upon replaying the game years later I found it to be a bit trivial from around the mid-point onward, even in hard mode. Do you have any suggestions for self-imposed challenges that would add in a bit more challenge? I have been thinking about trying a hard mode '-1' run, where I use 1 less unit than the maximum allowed for each encounter. Another thought I had would be to restrict certain high power high cheese jobs or abilities (of course, the trouble is that the strong stuff tends to be fun to use as well, I'm partial to physically focused hume builds that deliver through magick frenzy). As someone who has played so much FFTA2, I would imagine you have tried playing with self imposed restrictions before to spice things up, and I'd highly value hearing your perspective about this.
The best way to artificially increase difficulty would be fewer units on the field, prohibiting blood price and/or ultima skills, and restricting clan privileges.
Hi! Loved the video. This is one of my favorite games ever. I haven't play it for about 10 years. I think I am gonna start a run soon! I wanted to ask you if a magic Luso build(Magick Frenzy/Illusionist) is viable, or he spends too much time being a soldier and his stats are too trash. Would he make a good blue mage? I am tired of always making him and Adelle a Parivir.
Hey! Glad you liked my waffling, lol. Unless you're trying to min-max, a magic-based Luso won't be "ruined." Starting class does matter, but for all but the toughest optional content in the game (Brightmoon Tor and a couple of the last tourneys) it's not really going to matter. Blue Mage is a bit odd in that you don't really need magic attack to make the class work, nor do you really need any more than 30 MP. Blue Mage has like one skill that scales on magic and it is definitely not worth using just for Quake. I personally think Blue Mage is a secondary job for a physical or mixed unit, like an early game Fighter or Paladin. It's useful utility for melee-focused units on turns where they can't get adjacent to a target. Plus your melee jobs tend to have higher HP pools, which feeds White Wind harder. If you want something new, try doing Hunter/Blue Mage on Luso and run Halve MP plus whatever reaction skill suits you. You can fire off ultima every other turn and have some support options for when you don't do that.
@@CruzaComplex Ty for the swift reply! I think I am leaning towards doing a Paladin/Blue mage for Luso, while getting levels on ninja while not learning abilities to offset the awful Luso Paladin speed. And I think I will do the Illusionist/magick frenzy with Adelle. On that same note. If doing the Illusionist/Magic frenzy stuff, is it worth just going full Parivir for the physical damage, or is it worth doing like a 50/50 Parivir/black mage. I am assuming your magick damage is so small that is not worth dipping into magick attack and just focusing on melee damage. The magick frenzy would be just to be able to attack everything with the illusion magick.
I’m playing this game after attempting to 100% FFTA and fucking up recruiting Babus because I didn’t know about the glitch. I love putting the blood MP ability on an assassin and a double cast summoner combo and just throw out so much ultima’s and healing. I’m excited to finally 100% this game.
Amazing vid, but you massively undervalue white mages: All the hardest fights in the game can be done with Random crap + 3 thiefs/whiteMages (my go to team comp because i always wanne finish the bazaar and its funny). Arise revives AND heals 999, even the team with multiple tonberry kings will get robbed blind by these white mages. (Cant savegame though..) You are also usign whitemages in an (imo) ineffective way. Arise cant be doublecast, and costs 10 with half MP sono need for blood price. Reraise is... eh. you come back with 50 hp and die in one hit..Angelrings do that aswell and i use them anyway. And with half mp reraise can be cast once those wear out IF you need that. Time+WhiteMage is an autowin because early you haste, later you arise. Arise wont win fights fast, but nothing in this game makes such a difference as Arise. An equivalent damage ability would have to deal 999 damage with 100% accuracy and only Tonberries can do that. The only way one could argue that all 3 white mages are not S, is if your goal is to win quickly, because they will win every battle ever. Also paravir stat growth is good but not that great(except atk), i think you mixed something up. Overall i think you undervalue speed growth. Other than that, very insightful vid!
I retract my comment on parivir. I pasted all jobs into a .csv and sorted by combined value and parivir was #18/60 overall but #2 for Hume, so amazing to level as.
One defense I'll make for Heritor is that it has really strong balanced growths making it an excellent magick frenzy user, especially combined with it's excellent equipment pool. Does that make the job itself good? Lord no, but it's probably my favorite way to us her.
Black mages are not commonly resisted if you know what spell to cast on what enemy to exploit their particular elemental weakness. Not all of them have the weakness but majority do, so if you know what you are doing then its a non issue. I'm just annoyed that black mages are not getting much love these days in FFT in particular. PS: Most people say that FFTA2 is probably the weakest of all FFT titles that exist, I'm impressed you've been playing it all this time, great vid.
I'm compelled to disagree with support-abilities not being a factor. While it IS true that you don't need to BE that job to use its support abilities, you still only have access to said support-abilities because of the job they come from. Still though, I largely agree with your rankings.
I agree with a lot of your opinions here! I'd be interested to see you build some unique units and show off/explain the builds. Maybe even some challenges. (Solo Luso finally?) 😮
Spellblade skills are also weapon range, so if you give the skills to say a Sniper, it can do very nice dmg+debuff at long range. This doesn't make the Spellblade class itself any better, but just something worth pointing out. You can't use Parivir skills with a bow. Oh you actually talk about that later on, when talking about the Sniper.
Strong disagree on the assassin class. They are probably the best unit in the game. With blood price, they are the only ultima user that can use ultima every turn, and that too at range 8 with gastrophetes (or 7 with seventh heaven). I hear your point about weak magic growths, but note their insane speed growth. You could easily alternate between summoner/red mage and assassin/summoner to end with a unit with high magic and high speed (which does not gimp your gameplay considering summoner/red mage is the other contender for best unit in the game). Finally, they have access to ribbons - which no other good ultima user has access to. This opens up the possibility of builds like adele blue mage night user (sleeps the whole field) or allows gadgeteer to actually be useful. I beat the final quest with a boring (but I think close to optimal) team which included 4 vieras that switched between summoner/red mage and assassin throughout their levels, and the assassins were OHKOing most units with their ultima mashers. Besides this, only minor disagreements on moogle time mage (which can be pretty good paired with juggler, as they can smile toss on the off-hastega turns) and gadgeteer (which is mostly shit, but can do amazing things when the whole party wears ribbons). Regardless, great and thorough list!
I can totally picture the makers of this game making Al-Cid the way he is so there could be a bad review about Al-Cid. (They did this for character game review color)
Chocobo Knights weirdly have access to so many weapon types. Axes, Hammers, all swords, rapiers, spears, all bludgeoning weapons meaning staves and maces on a moogle. Game was rushed is completely right. We also lost the epic potential of the Transmuter in the crunch. smh
So unless I'm looking at the wrong data, the soldier's stat growth have higher attack and speed than a paladin, so circumstantially, you'll get better stat growth from a soldier if you're looking for that? I might be thinking about this the wrong way, I'm looking to make Luso someone who hits hard and is fast, and I don't have fighter unlocked yet.
Yeah, soldier has deceptively decent stat growths and fighters are kind of mediocre stat-wise but have far better skills. The real answer is level as Parivir. You can ignore side missions until you get that class if you're so inclined.
The only thing I have to say/add is about Gadgeteer/Tinker. Without a supporting team composition it is without a doubt a very bad class. There is one way to use it however where its abilities can be promising, which is if you somehow have the ability to give your party immunity to the debuff of a given Tinker ability. That way, if you roll poorly, your party will be unaffected even if the turn is wasted. This is especially potent on the more debilitating debuffs like Sleep. The positive effect ones are basically completely bunk if you roll poorly, like, the entire enemy team getting Haste is basically a death sentence for you a lot of the time, but the healing ability Golden Battery can be situationally useful if the benefit of healing your units is worth the risk of potentially healing the enemy composition, for whatever reason. Now, I'm not saying it's secretly good, but in A1 it was easy to find and buy status immunity items. In A2 it's trickier for certain, and it takes an accessory slot on a character as well. There is also the ability Astra to consider if you were forced to use a Gadgeteer for some reason, too, and even a bad roll on buffs can be cleared potentially by a Blue Mage with Roar if you roll poorly. The thing is, you can get a Haste on every party member for only 8 mana if it lands. In fact, all Gadgeteer abilities are only 8 mana. Again, I don't think it's an amazing class or anything. But with the right setup I think it beats out even some of the C tier classes, especially if we're ranking classes like Juggler and Green Mage highly purely based on utility. Growths-wise it's also not that bad, not amazing (Speed especially is weak), but it has a very good magic res growth (11) and solid bulk stats all around (7HP, 9Def). It's just a class you have to think very hard about when using and can't just throw into any composition, which is certainly a weakness as well.
I didn't play it for 3 reasons. 1) I was too attached to the original cast 2) it took too long to come out and I lost interest 3) DS emulation wasn't very good back then
I put timestamps on these so each video section includes the class name in the video's progress bar. I think I also try to say the name of the class when I start talking about it, but this was filmed like a year ago so forgive my memory.
Just curious do people not know that there is a clan privilege the that halves mp cost and it stacks with the passive skill half mp if you do that ultima cost only 8 mp (there is another version of that clan privilege that instead makes it so you get 20 mp instead of 10 mp)
@@Zhot93 Let me rephrase this: "I could either make Vaan a viable damage dealing unit, or I could play half an entire playthrough without grinding." Do you think I've been playing the same game file for 15 years? Steal actions are like +4 damage to LoC if you're successful. Steal chances degrade with each successful hit. You need additional Stop-status actions to make one attempt a guaranteed hit. Roughly six enemies per mission is 42 missions' worth of enemies. If we're generous and say a mission with full steals is 30 minutes that's at least 21 hours of grinding for a single unit. Fuck that noise. I'd rather eat sand.
@@CruzaComplex it being grindy doesn't change the fact that it is one of the biggest damage output skills in the game. Which, going back to my original message, means the statement 'Vaan does no damage' is not true.
The main quest just kind of stops and at least one class had assets in the game but wasn't fully implemented. Also all the moogle stuff, chocobo knight not having animations for using secondary abilities so they just disabled them, unique moogles like hurdy and monty not having chocobo knight animations at all, and Al-Cid...speaks for himself.
The algorithm must know that I'm playing FFTA2 in 2023. Great vid!
kekw same
Started FFTA, but yeah I'll jump to FFTA2 pretty soon.
I haven't played FFTA2 for over a decade. I will be watching this entire video anyway.
I appreciate the hell out of this content, so many of these "tier lists" are just "here is a minute of some vague reasoning without data as to why this goes there" and the fact you've fully laid out your reasons for placement is fantastic. I also appreciate differentiating support abilities away from the full class ranking or else Ninja would be grossly overtiered considering it's damn near useless aside from giving your Paladin two greatswords at once.
I can't believe someone made this video. Finally a tierlist video I can get behind. Big ups to you.
Glad to see a fellow FFTA2 enthusiast
Just wanted to add to all of the praise in the comment section. You made an awesome video. So impressed with your quality of reasoning and it clearly shows that you do in fact have 1,500+ hours of experience playing this game. I too have spent a ridiculous amount of time playing this game. It’s probably my favorite FF game of all time. And while I knew a great deal of what you were talking about, I still managed to learn a few things. Like that you get a 2.25x multiplier for turbo MP with Spellblade techniques. Interesting. I wanted to add my 2 cents though on the Elementalist; I know you said a downside of it was that it had a total risk of the debuff moves actually landing (aside from the damage). I feel like it’s worth mentioning that it has a success rate that feels very similar to fusilier’s debuff success rate. Damn near feels like 60/40 in your favor. Perhaps there is confirmation bias on my part but Elementalist is one of my favorite Viera jobs leading up to red mage and double cast with blood price becoming available. Anyway, fantastic video man and I listened to the entire thing. You’ve got yourself another subscriber
Loved this game. Really fun to see a deep dive into it.
To explain what the Flintlock does, it is pretty much strictly inferior to the Cannoneer due to Prime and its worse Ether Shell for some reason, but it's mainly a support unit (real shock).
It can basically provide Shell and Regen to allies, provide Protect and Regen to allies, give 40 MP to allies, restore HP and Cleanse allies, and uniquely teleports a target close to the Flintlock. And then it has two skills that are basically "attack" and "attack with recoil damage".
Probably would be in either C or B tier if it didn't need to Prime every time it uses a skill. Its main use atm is to not lose all of the range of the Fusilier (still lose 1) but still have overall better growths, with only Defense and HP being worse.
Two decent single target buffs at range is worth considering...kinda? Buff purging is everywhere in this game so I'm not entirely sold, but anything with "Do attack damage plus more damage" is worth looking at.
@@CruzaComplex yeah... It's really unfortunate that Flintlock is in the one Final Fantasy game that widely distributed Dispel.
Oh, and I was wrong about the teleportation. It's not close to the Flintlock, it's RANDOM.
I just got into this game recently, being a childhood fan of FF Tactics and Tactics Advance. I gotta say, so far I'm ultra impressed. On Hard mode the game is actually pretty difficult so far and it feels like status conditions, buffs, debuffs, astra etc. that I never would have used in TA for the GBA are necessary to win a lot of battles. The new MP system is also great because it forces you to make some decisions about which spells to use, given that you can't just spam the highest damaging thing 24/7 without a thought. And it feels so much more open and nonlinear compared to the first two + some pretty compelling quests (like the House Bowen line). Great game, feels like not enough people played it or appreciated it because it did a lot of things right.
Great tierlist mate.
Fantastic vid - it's been years since I played this game but glad to see a lot of my favourite classes are up there in A and S tier. I absolutely love Bangaas
Appreciate this video about obscure content that's way too long
This video is awesome, loved the succinct reasoning for each class’s placement eg Blue Mage being a Roarbot. Do the other FFTs!
Gotta love Parivir/Seer+Dual Wield with Replenish MP and Magic Frenzy, gotta be one of my favorite genders
this made me want to play this game again x)
it has been so long omg o_o
Thanks for the video. Really helpful. I was going to make Adelle a Heritor/Blue Mage but I might make her something else. That Hume Illusionist Magick Frenzy strat sounds fun.
The most comprehensive guide like this I've seen. Awesome video
I know Square Enix won’t do it, but I hope one they they decide to make one final fantasy tactics advance game and place it on the Nintendo switch lol
NSO one day?
@@AkaiAzul I didn’t think it through when writing that, I meant I hope Square makes one last Final Fantasy Tactics Advance game and, by some miracle if they do, they put it on the switch lol.
Or better, they put it on Steam so the game isn't dragged down by the terrible hardware
I know this video is months old, but I liked it, so I thought I’d toss over some engagement.
Mainly, I want to defend Adelle. Thief’s growths aren’t great, but neither are they atrocious. She’ll be a bit fragile, true, but not made of tissue paper. Starting thief also gets her into Ninja earlier (implying possibly a mage build rather than Parivir), and Ninja, even discounting Dual Wield, has the third-highest speed growth in the game behind only Assassin and Chocobo Knight. Heritor’s growths are unfortunately balanced and mediocre across the board, but if you want weapon attack *and* magic (which Humes really, really do) she’s good for that. I unfortunately can’t find any damage formulas for her abilities anywhere, but they’re all still useful, at least on paper (more on that). Heritor also has good move and jump.
It feels weird to praise Fusilier for having typeless damage with status and then decry Heritor for the same thing, and her statuses are potent… the biggest issues are her lack of focus, and even more her lack of _range_ on her abilities. If not for that, she could easily fill a niche as a utility character with relatively unique tools rather than being forced to compete with other Hume jobs and the damage nukes they provide. I almost think that a Heritor of any other species could almost be considered A-tier.
Also, giant lasers are really, really cool.
Thanks for the comment! I'm pretty tired so apologies in advance if this reply isn't as coherent as I'd like.
I think Heritor's problem is that it comes on a Hume. (Just finished reading your comment, looks like we agree lol.) If any other race had Heritor access I'd be over the moon, but Humes have such outstanding abilities already it's hard to justify using Heritor when Parivir is in the game. Yes, you can use Heritor/Parivir, but as you'll be using flair every turn your primary class is essentially just a weapon with no skills. I can count on one hand the number of times I've wanted to use Wermut over a flair skill. Wind Slash gets damage amp from Geomancy; Heritor skills do not. Fair point well made on speed growths though.
I'm like 70% sure Heritor skills scale on Attack, but the fact that you couldn't find damage calcs for them doesn't bode well IMO. Most everything good has numerical documentation around the internet-- hell, I even know the niche interaction of Turbo MP + Spellblade arts gives 2.2x damage instead of 2x. Again, I don't think it's bad, I just think it's super underwhelming compared to what Hume can do natively.
RE "Getting to Ninja earlier": I find the bottleneck into Ninja is getting the skill knives in the first place, not so much the AP cost. Even when I'm trying to rush them with auction house shenanigans it feels like all my other classes hit their benchmarks around the same time.
I double checked the statuses Heritor gets to make sure I'm not missing anything...there's slow, addle, confuse, and charm. The first three are coupled with damage, charm does not. So, I think Fusilier is the "good" status because it has 2-8x the range of Heritor's statuses and it gets access to stop. Slow is nice but when the opportunity cost is quartering my damage for that round I'm never taking the trade. I'd rather run a fusilier that can do similar damage and inflict stop over slow. The charm is single tile range and has no accuracy buffs, so it's just a worse cupid or charmshot. If a hume can get adjacent to an enemy, they should be using flair unless the build is trying to be cute. Addle is useful but in my experience it just doesn't ever land and confuse is worse charm. --All this to say I think Wermut is the only decent debuff and it's almost entirely outshone by Geomancy + Wind Slash or unboosted Stopshot.
Also probably briefly worth mentioning that Heritor skills don't combo with magick frenzy and it makes me sad :c I really wish the line nukes on sage and heritor weren't so terrible. They're my favorite skills visually.
TL;DR: I don't think the class is bad, I think it's outshone by what Humes get natively and the niche it's trying to fill is better done by other races, so it's just meh.
Oh great, I was just thinking about playing it again and I needed this kind of information.
Chocobo Knight is like a Monkey's Paw fever dream for me.
On paper and concept: Moogle riding chcocobos, referencing Choco-Mog materia from FF7, the series' two mascots joined together as one!
Execution: Shite job.
They should have done something that the knight gains riding experience based on the chocobo it rides, Yellow, White, Green, Blue, Black, Red (and more if they wanted to make 'em). Mastering a color allows you to transfer skills between birds. Finally, allow them to use secondary abilities! Maybe tweak the stat growths, too.
FFTA2 is an amazing game. I completed every mission and spent 300+ hours in it. I havent played it in years... I might see if there are any cool hacked mods or something.
God, Al-Cid should have had all the Hume jobs. Or Viera or Gria jobs bc Agent interacts so much with Women units.
Wow. Was listening to music from this game and happened to see this video in the suggestions. Surprised to see a recent (and well done!) tier list video for this game.
A couple thoughts:
-Moogle time mages can use Hastega turn 1 with the MP Channeling clan privilege. I usually went for bonus AP instead, but it's probably worth considering. (Especially when Moogles typically have higher speed than Nu Mou.)
-I'm surprised to see Templar ranked high. The equipment is nice as a primary class, but I like to have more movement with a short range weapon. (3 move means you can't wrap around to the back of an enemy that attacked your face.) That said, I never used Astra much, so I probably overlooked a good ability there. Haste is obviously nice too.
-For the toughest battles in the game, I think Evade Magick is the best reaction ability by a pretty wide margin. Not every race gets that, so I think that's a significant consideration in some cases.
Overall, nice job on the list! The placements/discussion generally looks good to me.
“Moogle can’t cheat”
Jugglers with their infinite turn Smile Toss Combo: “are we a joke to you?”
Still love your opinions though.
Edit: Moogle fusiliers have access to Ether Shot a weaker version of Ether Shell. (40 MP instead of 60)
^Somewhere in this video I say I'm ignoring red mage/juggler shenanigans. IMO that's an exploit.
yknow I rewatched it and I saw that part and I did a facepalm lol thank you for responding and clarifying though.
@@CruzaComplex
My favorite combo is always gonna be parivir with pugilism for range and multi-targeting attacks. Love those huge damage numbers. Paladin with pugilism is also one I find pretty good.
Also, being fair to moogle knight, they have access to astra for free (moogle shield) which I definitely think should at least make it a little more worthwhile to be a juggler's secondary for when they don't need to be quickening
I have to difer a lot in the positioning of animist + moogle knight. I may be a little of a psychopath, but I use the moogle knight with animist abilities and it was an essential ass-saver to me in multiple battles. You can use the moogle knight with 100% Wool to tank insane damage, plus use stuff like Tail Wag to save your ass when you're battling against overleveled enemies. I almost won against those Grass' guardians in the tower battle for the first attemp using Tail Wag, I just had to have more luck, and maybe put another troop with charm to see how those op monsters kill themselves.
Important to mention that the reaction ability of critical haste is a great support to spam either Tail Wag, Ultima Charge or Moogle Rush.
Moogle knight is just a bad pick because moogles have terrible physical stats.
But if you need tankiness then knight is your only choice, issue is, you don't build moogles to tank.
Animist is very versatile, with some nasty debuffs and a full heal you can use every 3 turns. But random summons are worse than gadgeteer's gimmick and Chocobo rush is magical so you're not getting damage out of that if you are a knight.
The combo is being carried by animist being so verstile, and even then you only get a mediocre meelee combatant.
However, i DO like their reliability at being a fairly self-sufficient debuffer.
@@rompevuevitos222 nah, moogle knight is a great tank too. I mean, I can't deny my experience playing luck with those Grass Tower guardians tanking like 10 turns with the moogle knight alone, even when I was 10 levels below.
@@eyeviewer7298They have an edge in resistance. But otherwise have poor HP and defense.
great video, i hope you find more reasons to make videos about FFTA2, i don't want to move on from the game! ^^'
If you have suggestions I'm not opposed if I feel like I have something to say
Awesome video.
just modded my 3ds so im all here for the guides on these classics lol im sure im not the only one revisiting games like this since store closure
picking this game back up because i found my ds from when i was 5, unlocking new jobs is gonna be one hell of a struggle(unless i am overestimating how hard it is, i never got super far when i played this game years ago)
Nah, not hard at all. The Lanista job is a bitch but the rest aren't bad. You can tell which missions could unlock new jobs because those missions can't be dispatched.
This is awesome. If an online comunity is made fornplayong online this will be usefull
You can play this game online?
Fighter GANG! 🎉 B tier lets goooo
1:00:30 on one run of the game i had 5 Viera Assassins in my team. Very scary
Another small thing that in listening I don't think came up but is worth mentioning
Nu Mou and Moogles can't enter the water without a accessory, making some maps entirely untraversable with them. For Nu Mou this is excusable, either you're a Illusionist and can hit the entire map anyway, or you're a time mage and exist to buff the party so you're within the range of your party because spell distance is so long. Moogles that aren't Fusilers have map issues in a few maps. It's niche, but it's something.
Edit: Secondary thing as more a note to self but other people might find it fun, A Meltdown Defender with an Angel Ring on a team that already needs a green mage to Tranq might be a fun combo.
White Mage.⚜️
Sage.🕊️
What a great video, thank you for putting all this together! When I played FFTA2 as a kid it felt like a secret magical world for me to adventure in, partly because the expansive amount of missions to complete, and partly because nobody else I knew played the game. I have a real soft spot for it.
Upon replaying the game years later I found it to be a bit trivial from around the mid-point onward, even in hard mode. Do you have any suggestions for self-imposed challenges that would add in a bit more challenge? I have been thinking about trying a hard mode '-1' run, where I use 1 less unit than the maximum allowed for each encounter. Another thought I had would be to restrict certain high power high cheese jobs or abilities (of course, the trouble is that the strong stuff tends to be fun to use as well, I'm partial to physically focused hume builds that deliver through magick frenzy).
As someone who has played so much FFTA2, I would imagine you have tried playing with self imposed restrictions before to spice things up, and I'd highly value hearing your perspective about this.
The best way to artificially increase difficulty would be fewer units on the field, prohibiting blood price and/or ultima skills, and restricting clan privileges.
Hi! Loved the video. This is one of my favorite games ever. I haven't play it for about 10 years. I think I am gonna start a run soon!
I wanted to ask you if a magic Luso build(Magick Frenzy/Illusionist) is viable, or he spends too much time being a soldier and his stats are too trash. Would he make a good blue mage?
I am tired of always making him and Adelle a Parivir.
Hey! Glad you liked my waffling, lol. Unless you're trying to min-max, a magic-based Luso won't be "ruined." Starting class does matter, but for all but the toughest optional content in the game (Brightmoon Tor and a couple of the last tourneys) it's not really going to matter.
Blue Mage is a bit odd in that you don't really need magic attack to make the class work, nor do you really need any more than 30 MP. Blue Mage has like one skill that scales on magic and it is definitely not worth using just for Quake.
I personally think Blue Mage is a secondary job for a physical or mixed unit, like an early game Fighter or Paladin. It's useful utility for melee-focused units on turns where they can't get adjacent to a target. Plus your melee jobs tend to have higher HP pools, which feeds White Wind harder.
If you want something new, try doing Hunter/Blue Mage on Luso and run Halve MP plus whatever reaction skill suits you. You can fire off ultima every other turn and have some support options for when you don't do that.
@@CruzaComplex Ty for the swift reply! I think I am leaning towards doing a Paladin/Blue mage for Luso, while getting levels on ninja while not learning abilities to offset the awful Luso Paladin speed. And I think I will do the Illusionist/magick frenzy with Adelle.
On that same note. If doing the Illusionist/Magic frenzy stuff, is it worth just going full Parivir for the physical damage, or is it worth doing like a 50/50 Parivir/black mage. I am assuming your magick damage is so small that is not worth dipping into magick attack and just focusing on melee damage. The magick frenzy would be just to be able to attack everything with the illusion magick.
@@raulortega3104 IMO physical damage on hit is more valuable for illu/seer stuff, but your mileage may vary
I’m playing this game after attempting to 100% FFTA and fucking up recruiting Babus because I didn’t know about the glitch. I love putting the blood MP ability on an assassin and a double cast summoner combo and just throw out so much ultima’s and healing. I’m excited to finally 100% this game.
Amazing vid, but you massively undervalue white mages:
All the hardest fights in the game can be done with Random crap + 3 thiefs/whiteMages (my go to team comp because i always wanne finish the bazaar and its funny). Arise revives AND heals 999, even the team with multiple tonberry kings will get robbed blind by these white mages. (Cant savegame though..) You are also usign whitemages in an (imo) ineffective way. Arise cant be doublecast, and costs 10 with half MP sono need for blood price. Reraise is... eh. you come back with 50 hp and die in one hit..Angelrings do that aswell and i use them anyway. And with half mp reraise can be cast once those wear out IF you need that. Time+WhiteMage is an autowin because early you haste, later you arise. Arise wont win fights fast, but nothing in this game makes such a difference as Arise. An equivalent damage ability would have to deal 999 damage with 100% accuracy and only Tonberries can do that. The only way one could argue that all 3 white mages are not S, is if your goal is to win quickly, because they will win every battle ever.
Also paravir stat growth is good but not that great(except atk), i think you mixed something up. Overall i think you undervalue speed growth.
Other than that, very insightful vid!
I retract my comment on parivir. I pasted all jobs into a .csv and sorted by combined value and parivir was #18/60 overall but #2 for Hume, so amazing to level as.
Haha great video, now make a super in-depth 100% completion let’s play that I will play ffa2 tactics along to
One defense I'll make for Heritor is that it has really strong balanced growths making it an excellent magick frenzy user, especially combined with it's excellent equipment pool. Does that make the job itself good? Lord no, but it's probably my favorite way to us her.
Black mages are not commonly resisted if you know what spell to cast on what enemy to exploit their particular elemental weakness. Not all of them have the weakness but majority do, so if you know what you are doing then its a non issue. I'm just annoyed that black mages are not getting much love these days in FFT in particular.
PS: Most people say that FFTA2 is probably the weakest of all FFT titles that exist, I'm impressed you've been playing it all this time, great vid.
Seeing people talk about my favorite video game always puts a smile on my face
Excellent video
I'm compelled to disagree with support-abilities not being a factor. While it IS true that you don't need to BE that job to use its support abilities, you still only have access to said support-abilities because of the job they come from. Still though, I largely agree with your rankings.
2 hour tierlist video? Well there goes my evening.
Also I'm gonna get sad when moogles get bad grades at jobs 😢
You and me both buddy
I agree with a lot of your opinions here! I'd be interested to see you build some unique units and show off/explain the builds. Maybe even some challenges. (Solo Luso finally?) 😮
6:24 Fran pronounces it na moh in the cutscene after defeating Belias in XII. I think that's the only time it's said in a game.
Youre underestimating the fun factor of bonk ultimas lol
Spellblade skills are also weapon range, so if you give the skills to say a Sniper, it can do very nice dmg+debuff at long range.
This doesn't make the Spellblade class itself any better, but just something worth pointing out. You can't use Parivir skills with a bow.
Oh you actually talk about that later on, when talking about the Sniper.
How did youtube know I started playing this on my steamdeck....
Strong disagree on the assassin class. They are probably the best unit in the game. With blood price, they are the only ultima user that can use ultima every turn, and that too at range 8 with gastrophetes (or 7 with seventh heaven). I hear your point about weak magic growths, but note their insane speed growth. You could easily alternate between summoner/red mage and assassin/summoner to end with a unit with high magic and high speed (which does not gimp your gameplay considering summoner/red mage is the other contender for best unit in the game). Finally, they have access to ribbons - which no other good ultima user has access to. This opens up the possibility of builds like adele blue mage night user (sleeps the whole field) or allows gadgeteer to actually be useful. I beat the final quest with a boring (but I think close to optimal) team which included 4 vieras that switched between summoner/red mage and assassin throughout their levels, and the assassins were OHKOing most units with their ultima mashers.
Besides this, only minor disagreements on moogle time mage (which can be pretty good paired with juggler, as they can smile toss on the off-hastega turns) and gadgeteer (which is mostly shit, but can do amazing things when the whole party wears ribbons).
Regardless, great and thorough list!
I can totally picture the makers of this game making Al-Cid the way he is so there could be a bad review about Al-Cid. (They did this for character game review color)
We definetly need a new Final Fantasy tactics a (3?) game
Chocobo Knights weirdly have access to so many weapon types. Axes, Hammers, all swords, rapiers, spears, all bludgeoning weapons meaning staves and maces on a moogle.
Game was rushed is completely right.
We also lost the epic potential of the Transmuter in the crunch. smh
got to "we love women here" in the ravager section and brain off subscribed. me too man fr
So unless I'm looking at the wrong data, the soldier's stat growth have higher attack and speed than a paladin, so circumstantially, you'll get better stat growth from a soldier if you're looking for that? I might be thinking about this the wrong way, I'm looking to make Luso someone who hits hard and is fast, and I don't have fighter unlocked yet.
Yeah, soldier has deceptively decent stat growths and fighters are kind of mediocre stat-wise but have far better skills. The real answer is level as Parivir. You can ignore side missions until you get that class if you're so inclined.
The only thing I have to say/add is about Gadgeteer/Tinker. Without a supporting team composition it is without a doubt a very bad class. There is one way to use it however where its abilities can be promising, which is if you somehow have the ability to give your party immunity to the debuff of a given Tinker ability. That way, if you roll poorly, your party will be unaffected even if the turn is wasted. This is especially potent on the more debilitating debuffs like Sleep. The positive effect ones are basically completely bunk if you roll poorly, like, the entire enemy team getting Haste is basically a death sentence for you a lot of the time, but the healing ability Golden Battery can be situationally useful if the benefit of healing your units is worth the risk of potentially healing the enemy composition, for whatever reason. Now, I'm not saying it's secretly good, but in A1 it was easy to find and buy status immunity items. In A2 it's trickier for certain, and it takes an accessory slot on a character as well. There is also the ability Astra to consider if you were forced to use a Gadgeteer for some reason, too, and even a bad roll on buffs can be cleared potentially by a Blue Mage with Roar if you roll poorly. The thing is, you can get a Haste on every party member for only 8 mana if it lands. In fact, all Gadgeteer abilities are only 8 mana.
Again, I don't think it's an amazing class or anything. But with the right setup I think it beats out even some of the C tier classes, especially if we're ranking classes like Juggler and Green Mage highly purely based on utility. Growths-wise it's also not that bad, not amazing (Speed especially is weak), but it has a very good magic res growth (11) and solid bulk stats all around (7HP, 9Def). It's just a class you have to think very hard about when using and can't just throw into any composition, which is certainly a weakness as well.
ffta online when
I didn't play it for 3 reasons.
1) I was too attached to the original cast
2) it took too long to come out and I lost interest
3) DS emulation wasn't very good back then
The pictures are nice but I'm new so I dont know what jobs they are so I must watch the whole video taking notes 😢
I put timestamps on these so each video section includes the class name in the video's progress bar. I think I also try to say the name of the class when I start talking about it, but this was filmed like a year ago so forgive my memory.
Just curious do people not know that there is a clan privilege the that halves mp cost and it stacks with the passive skill half mp if you do that ultima cost only 8 mp (there is another version of that clan privilege that instead makes it so you get 20 mp instead of 10 mp)
IDK if people don't know it. +2 move is too convenient to not use for me. It halves most battle turns.
@@CruzaComplex fair enough
How I miss this game
Yeah, Tactics A2 is awesome
It's pronounced Pah-revere, but it's fine. Busted class
Definitely a hot take on the ninja 😅 but it's cool
Can we get a 10 min version? 2hrs???
I asked for this
White chocobo can be good to restore pm aoe
Why do you think Sky Pirate does no damage? Life of Crime does 999 damage each turn on weakened enemies, and 700+ on regular ones
Because this takes forever to grind out and I have no respect for mechanics designed to waste my time.
@@CruzaComplex it's not a long grind for a video claiming that has playtested the game for 15 years
@@Zhot93 Let me rephrase this: "I could either make Vaan a viable damage dealing unit, or I could play half an entire playthrough without grinding." Do you think I've been playing the same game file for 15 years?
Steal actions are like +4 damage to LoC if you're successful. Steal chances degrade with each successful hit. You need additional Stop-status actions to make one attempt a guaranteed hit. Roughly six enemies per mission is 42 missions' worth of enemies. If we're generous and say a mission with full steals is 30 minutes that's at least 21 hours of grinding for a single unit.
Fuck that noise. I'd rather eat sand.
@@CruzaComplex it being grindy doesn't change the fact that it is one of the biggest damage output skills in the game. Which, going back to my original message, means the statement 'Vaan does no damage' is not true.
why do you say ffta2 was a rushed game?
The main quest just kind of stops and at least one class had assets in the game but wasn't fully implemented. Also all the moogle stuff, chocobo knight not having animations for using secondary abilities so they just disabled them, unique moogles like hurdy and monty not having chocobo knight animations at all, and Al-Cid...speaks for himself.
Tinker?
Think I called them gadgeteer in this video. I think that was the FFTA 1 name.
Wouldn't the mid 2000's be 2500 ish