I'm of the opinion that should a remake be made, Cid should remain untouched. All of your criticisms of him are valid. He is in a tier of his own & that is why he is memorable. I look back at all the games I've played in my life and as age catches up to you as it has me, very few games are memorable. Cid is one of those characters that I look back on fondly on. From a min/max gameplay perspective, yeah hes probably OP & I can see why some would want him nerfed. From a narrative story telling perspective, the message is clear. He truly is Thundergod Cid & that is how I will always remember him.
While I agree the lore also states that zalbag is his equal and sorry that just doesn't pan out. Granted you only fight with zalbag in one battle but I was hugely disappointed with his lack of power compared to Cid. So if they due nerf Cid it actually would make lore sense.
I don't think he should be nerfed but he should be the last character you get or completely overhaul meliadoul, she gets done so dirty by being the last main story character you get and being instantly invalidated by him
@@WreakHvok nah he needs a nerf. He's already insanely strong just for having all the sword skills. He would still be the strongest character in the game if his stats were lower, which they should be.
@@TitaniumLegman its a freaking single player game dude. besides, pretty much any character can become as good as him, including agrias, also, even though he is OP, i can make the argument that balthier can be even more broken due to his 4x damage. or ramza with his ability to speed/power boost infinitely. then there's the fact mimics and mathimatician class exist. CID is meant to be OP. that's the whole point. besides how would they even nerf him? the only thing they could do is take away his dark knight powers, in which case he would just become a copy of agrias. and again, you could reach the same power cid has with agrias by making her a dark knight anyways. so no, CID should not be nerfed.
I feel Cid should be buffed. Him being on the battlefield should be an instant win because the enemy army would take one look at him and just book it back home.
Beowulf 100% belongs in A. I can see the argument for S, but the main reason why he's A is because he is just the Mystic Class but with Physical damage instead of magic. He's only really S in Midlight's Deep because his version of Foxbird is insanely busted for getting your Brave lowered faster for the rare items, but he's A everywhere else. He's good for his debuffs, but his Physical damage is kind of lackluster compared to other classes.
Beowulf is absolutely S-Tier, no question in my mind. His versions of the Oracle spells are all longer range, instant speed and possess a higher base accuracy than the originals. That is all to compensate for their lack of AoE. Foxbird is busted, sure, but equally powerful are his Petrify (best in class for its effect), Sleep and Confusion. And none of these magically stop being relevant once you're outside of Midlight's Deep. The redundancy in CC effects is desireable because each one has its own use case in addition to letting Beowulf sidestep the immunities enemies may have in the late game. (also, Foxbird won't always chicken the target in one cast due to variance in starting Brave values for all generic NPC units being above 60, so it's not unusual for Beowulf to reach for a different CC effect to take them out of the fight) On top of all of that, Beowulf has a vastly superior gear selection and stat growths compared to Mystic, so he holds up just fine compared to all other (non Orlandu) unique Jobs in end game. One other major benefit that tends to go understated is the immense benefit of instant-speed spells. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of how charge times and turn order works, high speed casters tend to leave themselves open to that 50% extra damage and zero evasion vulnerable status when Charging on the first turn. Instant speed casting completely bypasses this weakness. This makes Auto-Haste more valuable for Beowulf than any regular Caster, and oh look! He has access to Excalibur in his equips. Finally, he has much more reliable boss-killing potential with Drain, in the event he needs to fight something that is hard-coded immune to all of his spells' CC. In fact, the only place where he is actually useless is vs Faithless targets, which doesn't really happen outside of PvP (which is an unplayable, busted mess as it is). If Orlandu (and Calculator) didn't exist, he would be near the top of the best units in the game, period. Just because he can reliably eliminate/cripple an enemy every turn or two regardless of what they are.
@@atmosdwagon4656 That last point doesn't really work. He can only reliably kill units if you max him out to level 99. Prior to that, his damage is between subpar and above average. At 99, he's a monster, but it takes an insane amount of work to get him there. Yes, he has Drain, but you will almost never need to use it when you have other staple members like Ramza, Cid and Meliadoul already 1 shotting pretty much everything with or without Beowulf's debuffs. His instant speed spells are great, but you will either be using him to deal damage (if you build him that way), or as a support. You can try to do both but it's not as effective or optimal as making him fully one or the other. He has good bulk, and decent scaling, but takes a lot of work to make him optimal in either path. Yes, he gets access to Excalibur, but you will never be taking it off of Cid unless you don't plan on using him for a cake-walk file. Even if you do take it off, you will almost never give it to Beowulf because Meliadoul exists. Her skills are incredibly broken with auto haste and have more use than Beowulf's do in most cases because of large damage and gear destruction. If you're not using her, then you're likely still using Agrias who is still sort of better than him by way of her versatility. There are a lot of factors to take into consideration with Beowulf, but ultimately he is 100% A tier and there's no way around it. He's a great character no matter what direction you take with him, but he's not super busted.
@@JohnWick-uq1su he definitely is not Cid tier. Nobody is Cid tier other than Cid himself. Beowulf is a very good unit who can be built and used in 1 of 3 ways: Tanky Support - Given the maxed out gear to make him as bulky as possible, that way he can't die, and used strictly for his status effects and debuffs to make fights easier. This is usually the best way to use him as his damage falls off late game, unless you train him to level 99. Damage Tank - Still building him bulky, but leaning into his damage capabilities rather than Support. As mentioned before, his damage is between alright and great depending on how much you've leveled him. Yes, he can sit there and use Drain to chunk things for 1/4 of their HP, but this can be evaded by late game human enemies, since most have the highest grade of mantle accessories available. Better to use him for his other damage spells and basic attacks. Damage-Dealing Support - This is a good way to use him, but is much harder than the other 2 because you're using him based on the situation he's in during battle. Due to how amazing his supportive capabilities are in comparison to his damage dealing capabilities, it's almost always better to focus on making him a support rather than one of your main heavy hitters. He can still hit hard, but needs to be vastly overleveled to do it. His scaling isn't good enough for you to take him to the end of the game as just the level 50-60 needed for the final dungeon Gauntlet in Murond. He needs to be at least level 85 if you plan on using him as one of your main DPS characters, and level 90 if you plan on using him as this Hybrid build character. As Support, he can be any level you want him to be and he will work
I feel like Beowulf needs to be at least A. Yeah, he's not much of a damage dealer, but he is so good at what he does do, and what he does (i.e. Chicken, Break) is REALLY nasty. Beowulf is a mainstay in my endgame party, unlike the other characters you put in B. He's the CC-er while everyone else dishes the damage.
@@patrickmcathey7081 I think rafa is better since she joins the party with about 35 bravery and you'd probably want to boost beowulfs bravery for some good reaction ability, unless you're simply not using him.
I would move Agrias to S tier. She drops a bit in Chapter 3 and at the beginning of Chapter 4, she has a huge comeback when you start getting Knight Swords and perfumes. Worker 8 at best A tier. He hits a ton, but you need to babysit his HP with an extra character in tougher battles. Also, he's really slow. Beowulf is a solid A, spamming Petrify and Chicken is broken in most battles as most enemies cannot cure Petrify. It's better than a kill.
I agree with Agrias being S tier, in part because you get her real early but this is about her class cannot really hang in s tier with its mediocre stats, lack of clothes and 3 base moves. In fact once you learn her skills your better off switching to regular knight unless there is a secondary skill you really want her to have.
@@Prinygod yeah. Knight for the Stat growth, with icebrand and black robe for the damage boost, and the tynour rouge for more damage and tanking. She's still pretty good but needs a bit more work to get going without abusing level degeneration trap.
Reis does have one large advantage: her stat growth is *the* best in the game - more HP and magic attack growth than a mime, near the same physical attack growth of a mime, nearly as good of MP growth as a wizard or summoner, and positive speed growth (most classes do not have any speed growth). Her abilities are *okay*, but if you level her up she will have the stats to do anything you want in the game, and do it better than everyone else. Might still be a B tier character since that takes some investment, but invest and she will pay you back a great deal.
@@TheGreatGario Holy breath is similar to rafa and Malak. Because of what you mentioned, and even her innates, she should definitely be at least higher than them. Also, not only the growth she actually has high multipliers in her base class as well. She’s as fast as a ninja.
He is ranking the jobs solo. No extra abilities. In that regard Reis is very mid. Now on a more personal note, I agree, she has amazing status, and if you invest in her it will be well rewarded, but...she comes so late in the game that at that point I have already invested in my main characters, and they are already wrecking everything, Reis will NOT make or break my game in any way. So to be honest, I ignore her nowadays in most of my playthroughs. Beowulf is different because he is more linear, so he is more useful without having to "invest" on him.
she also has free two-sword for unarmed in base class, making her the best unit in the game to toss "martial arts" on. Arguably you could also just learn two sword from ninja and then make a monk for similar results and better active skills, but youd get worse stats.
yeah. I heard his criticism about her and agree with it, but I really don't think Luso and Meliadoul should be above her. Meliadoul has no AoE, this is quite a big drawback (and don't get me started on PS1 Meliadoul, completely useless against monsters and Lucavis). As for Luso I don't need a Ramza clone, I already have Ramza and that Squire class really isn't that good anyway. Ultima sucks, and having to waste turns to buff yourself or others is quite the drawback when the others, Agrias included, can just immediately annihilate the opposition. What do you have with Ramza / Luso when you're ready to attack? Sword swings, Throw Stone, Dash and the crappy Ultima lol.
@@armorvil I agree Ultima spell is too weak for it to be a secret spell. In any other game it's stronger than meteor or is used by insanely powerful enemies. Probably could use a significant damage boost and reduced charge time while ignoring faith and the athiest and faith buffs.
Beowulf has the best utility in the game. You bring him every time you need to do something that's not just steamrolling the battle. Need to steal from enemies? Beowulf can chicken/put them to sleep. Need to move find all the items in the map? Beowulf. Need to grind jp? Beowulf. Need blind/reduce ninja damage so you can catch weapons? Beowulf. I argue he's even Cid levels in terms of utility. Not everything is damage
Not a bad ranking. I woukd changr beowolf to at krast A tier. His ability to turn units into stone is slept on. The last time i played it was on avg about 75 percent of the time. There were enemies that he could one shot when olandu was outside of one hit kills. Agrias gets her birthday present, and that should bump her up to S tier.
Beowulf deserves A-teir or better, hear me out. His "break" ability can petrify enemies and the hit rate on it is insane usually above a 70% chance everytime. Always a fun add to the party one of my favorite characters to play around with
It's interesting that Cid is two tiers above Agrias when in the post-game there are definitely times where you go "This is a bit too tough for Orlandu, I think we need Agrias for this." That probably speaks more to how strong (and almost necessary at times) ribbons and perfumes are for the hard levels. And I realize we're judging the job and not the character here =] A female Orlandu would be even more broken than he is! (I think I just accidentally spoiled the plot to Orlando by Virginia Woolf.)
exactly. not only that but the only real diference between them is that cid comes with dark sword techniques by default. which agrias can get by making her a dark knight anyways. and she has access to ribbons like you said, which might even make her the superior of the 2. i said this in a diferent post, but agrias should be cid tier.
Mustadio's usefulness is in his support abilities while you are grinding. If you whittle the enemy down to one and habe Mustadio spam Stop Move and Stop Act you can Accumulate to your hearts content and gain a couple job levels in a single battle.
Cloud and Beowulf in the same tier? Nah. You either have to bump up Beowulf, which I would prefer as he is about as useful as Agrias. Or bump down Cloud. Just the fact that he needs special equipment to be half as competent as Agrias should bump him down already
@@TitaniumLegman it trends to hit since his skills have very high base accuracy (10 - 15% additively higher than their Oracle spell counterparts). If you want to properly amp Beowulfs accuracy, raise his Faith to around 80, or whack him with Faith status. His Petrify hit rates will be over 80% vs most targets outside of Bad Zodiac comparability.
I think Beowulf belongs in his own tier. He's not TG Cid but he breaks the game in other ways, not just the chicken stuff but raising and lowering brave and faith. Also Cloud is C tier at best... maybe lower. Yeah you can raise him to be an okay unit, but you could also just use an ordinary Monk, Samurai, Black Mage, etc and have have better results than even a trained Cloud.
The only game I’ve ever bought on my phone. FFT was what I played growing up. FFT WOTL was the great update to get some of the beautiful cutscenes and Easter Egg characters. I can’t tell you the amount of hours and playthroughs I have throughout the years, but I’ve truly mastered it. What a beautiful genre and game. Agree with Cid Orlandu as well. Love him. Balthier as well is busted with a ninja x spear x sky pirate combo.
Ramza's undoubtedly powerful but comparing him to Cid is like comparing a summoner to a ninja. Sure you can take several turns setting up a powerful effect with Ramza/summoner... or you can just kill them all in three turns with Cid.
@@FerrumCido I can't believe how much shade summoners get. They're so busted. If you think they're weak because it takes forever to charge up Bahamut or whatever; you're doing it wrong. The first 3 summons are insanely fast, don't cause friendly fire, do massive damage in a huge area, and cover elemental weaknesses while abusing elemental staff buffs. They're literally the class I avoided using on repeat playthroughs because they made things too easy.
@@AT-qm8gv They're totally the best mage class. Shiva does the damage of Ice 3 with the AoE of Ice 4 and the speed of Ice 1. And it won't hurt your own team. And they have healing, golem, and carbuncle for support. The bigger summons are just showboating if you get a chance to land them.
@@FerrumCidoyou underestimate stackable permanent speed buff. Ramza can easily buff his speed to the point he'll be getting 2 turns in a row. With thief's save speed ability almost every turn will be Ramza's turn. Cid is not even close. Also, summoner sucks, wizard is better.
Beowulf should be higher, and it's not for his combat prowess so much as his metagame prowess. His ability to turn targets into chickens is the most effortlessly reliable way to stall a battle, which makes him a skeleton key for unlocking opportunities to move-find or wait for enemy crystals and chests. That stuff is so much more annoying before you get Beowulf. Honestly I'd put Beowulf in S because every other character's combat prowess is fundamentally redundant with Cid in a way that Beowulf's chicken nonsense isn't.
@@pedropimenta896 Dancer is a physical attack based job so she’s not really better than any other unit from what I recall. The magic attack thing is just notable because even among unique jobs, most of them have the exact same magic attack growth
How do you miss the point of the video when it's literally in the title? It says "unique class." It's not just about the unit, it's about the class. Dragoner is awful.
@@Hotobu Dragoner is the class that gives her the busted magic growth though…how do you miss the point of the comment so badly? I know you ultimately swap her to something else but the fact remains that in a game where almost every class has the same magic growth, her class divisor is better than mime’s- 38 compared to 40 for mime and 50 for basically every other class.
@@Phase4TheProphet Way to reply to a comment about missing a point WHILE STILL MISSING THE POINT. *You don't get to swap* The point of the video is playing AS THAT SPECIFIC CLASS. You missed the point twice, are you going to for three times?
I always wondered why Barington went through all that trouble to aquire Rafa and Marachs' useless skills when he has all those far superior ninja at his command. Those two as assassins? Made me laugh out loud as a kid when first encountered them.
I'm not a huge fan of effects that require you to have damage on your character, as you either need to wait for the enemy to do something you can't rely on them doing, or you need to do that damage yourself, neither of which are optimal.
You mentioned that Reis has middling stats, outside HP, but that's inaccurate? Dragokin has the highest HP, MP and MA growth in the game, and a higher PA and Speed stat than Sword Saint. The greatest drawback being a move/jump range of 3, but that can be overcome with move +2/+3 (have to grind out a Dark Knight, but its still feasible). A high PA paired with innate dual wield, no charge elemental attacks paired to the high MA stat, and with Iaido or Black Magick as secondary, Arcane Strength as support (magic build) or Brawler for DracoMonk, with a ribbon and perfumes/tynar rouge and you have an absoukte damage dealing tank. Added to this, her ability to recruit dragons and the tiamats has additional utility in the late game. She really deserves better than B.
Agrias is pretty OP if you give her the knight sword Cid comes with Excalibur I think, gets that haste and improved damage if I remember correctly. It's been a long time since I've played, it's an amazing game!
Rapha also has the benefit of being one of the best Treasure Hunter chemist ability users as she has one of the lowest base bravery scores in the game. Even generics tend to minimum have 40 brave and she starts in the low 30s. Makes her far better than her brother in those terms as well.
When it comes to raw KO potential, Beowulf's 95-100% stone has better ranged KO potential than everyone here sans TG Cid and specific Agrias and Balthier set ups. Vs Lucavi, Drain should put out higher damage than TG Cid even. So vs generics, Beowulf is a ranged OHKO machine, and vs big bosses, he's basically a 2nd Cid.
I feel, without a doubt that Ramza is the best character in the game because of Accumulate (early game) then Yell (late game). He could easily raise his speed beyond ANY character with haste on them. and at that point he can one-shot anyone. when playing through out the game I always have Guts in an ability slot, from there I've mastered almost any job in a single battle.
Beowulf needs a bump up. Once you're already bringing Cid and Balthier to tear through enemies, Beowulf is much better with his chicken or stone or silence abilities to neutralize units outside of OTK range. I found him more useful than just bringing a lesser version of Cid like Agrias or Meliadoul.
He is awesome, even better in War of the Lions due to dark knight being available giving him not only the best CC in the game but also some ranged damage skills one that steals hp and does damage and the other mp which hits so hard it will just lay waste to any magic characters mana pool making them essentially useless.
@@DustinDonald-cz9ot. By the time you get Beowulf I surely grinded with any other character to be a Dark Knight if any. Or by that time the game is almost finished
Overall I agree with a lot on this list outside of a select few. I am with a lot of comments here in saying Beowolf is criminally under-rated on this list for reasons already explained. I was expecting S or at lowest a High A but instead he is on the same tier as Cloud? Cloud requires an insane amount of work to get working (as you mentioned) and in the end we all know that we just use him to spam finishing touch as it is probably the only worthwhile limit to use. Admittedly, this strat is very powerful but Beowulf does the same job of crippling enemies and more and has a much easier time of it. Personally I'd move Balthier to Cid Tier, Beowulf to S tier, Meliadoul down to A, construct down to A or B, and Reis up to A (insane stat growth though her equipment is limited to female only).
I would have argued a few things, more so technicalities than anything, on the rando character classes, but yeah, spot on with this one, as everyone's state of way overpowered or under powered unique class is rather obvious. One thing I love about Ramza's unique squire class, is being able to use knight swords, along with it's other traits. Give him two defender swords, and he's almost untouchable physically while dishing out a good bit of damage. Give him a defender and another I can't recall that has magic evade, and the right cape, and he's substantially hard to hit in general without guaranteed 100% accuracy attacks.
I think Beowulf should be A Tier for just how useful he is especially in Midlilights Deep. And Cloud is right there with Malach. Coming in at Level 1, how useless his Limit Breaks are, and what a pain it is to even get him up and running isn't worth it. But, solid list otherwise. Nice stuff.
Forgot to mention how Reis tame monster easily with second hit, because she has 2 attacks, you can easily make her 999 HP in other job or put the knight sword ability to equip 2 chaos blade on her, i pretty much love doing that plus a perfume.
You have misrepresented t.g. Cid. He doesn't have the abilities of the holy swordsman, His class IS the holy swordsman, renamed to sword saint. His class does NOT have all the divine knight class abilities. He has knight, holy knight, and dark knight. Distinctly missing is heaven knight and hell knight, which are classes you gain access to via unique characters.
Another thing that's really nice about Worker No. 8 is his Faith of 0, which makes him completely immune to magic. This does make healing him difficult, but it also means enemy spellcasters can't do dick to him. At least, that's the case in the original PlayStation version of the game. I don't know if that's changed in the remakes.
orlandu was super strong because he has possesed libra stone, no doubt he titled TG CID and broken as hell with full crystal equipment also excalibur (buffed auto haste)... well entire enemies in the game is very lucky he was joined us only with 3rd tier gear, i cant imagine if he equipped with maximilian, escutcheon and chaos blade at the first time in our party... the only one below him as "holy swordsman skill family" is dycedarg then wiegraf and delita, his job (lune knight/rune knight) almost powerful as orlandu at skill level, unfortunately we can play him only via cheat codes, even agrias cant compete with dycedarg or wiegraf in terms power output of her sword skill so he dont need to be nerf because in story he is the goat, he is game changer in perspective story chapter 4... and that the fact we know with our eyes or from alazlam narrative even developer
A lot of mods completely neuter Cid and Calculator and I am okay with that. But I am also okay with them being left alone. I am not one to say how someone plays their single player game. If you nerf them you have to nerf Balthier and his Barrage just sayin no favorites.
what i dont get is, why even nerf him anyways? agrias can do what he does, but better since she has access to ribbons and perfumes. the only real diference between them is that cid comes with dark sword by default, which agrias can get by becoming a dark knight anyways.
Great video! I wanted to let you know you can actually add your own images to even other peoples tier lists on tiermaker for videos like this! There's a setting at the bottom that lets you add them on just for your browser tab of the tier list so it can help if its missing a character you wanted to add like this video
I agree with pretty much everything here, I'd jump Cloud up to A however since he can equip the female-only accessories, and some of those are super busted.
If availability matters, Agrias (and Ramza) should be way higher. I think it's entirely backward to worry about a unit "falling off" in the lategame if that unit gets to exist for more of the game prior to that. Like imagine if you got a Cid-level character before Dorter and then they're available all the way to the end of Chapter 2 and leave the party forever. Is this character awful because they stop existing later, or are they godlike because you get Cid-tier power in the early game when your generics are underdeveloped? SRPGs tend to be harder in the early game when your options are limited and synergistic builds that have massively greater impact than the sum of their parts aren't finished yet. Having someone you can always rely on will make it easier to get established in the game, and by the time they leave, other uniques will be around to take their place. Such a character probably couldn't be any lower than A tier. Agrias isn't quite like that, but she's one of the earliest uniques to join and if you're going to dock her for falling off later in the game it's only fair to credit her for existing earlier in the game when everybody else doesn't (let alone how overpowered she is relative to her join time). Also, as has been argued, Agrias doesn't really even fall off that much due to being female for equipment options and having access to Knight Swords. I don't think weird stats is even that much of a problem, outside maybe HP, because the game isn't difficult enough for that to matter and she's still carried by her overpowered skills. The fact she has AoE and much more availability means she has to be better than Meliadoul, even if WotL Meliadoul is better at her peak. The only reason I wouldn't argue her over Cid is that Cid's availability is actually quite high. It's a bit like getting FE7 Athos halfway through the game.
I like Luso and played him heavily in WotL other than his auto poach which is useful he doesnt bring anything to the table that ramza doesnt. I feel if they wouldnt have made Ramza a requirement for all story battles more people may have used him
Rafa is your Item Finder too Mustadio, whom I love and you need to get one of the best female only accessories, is just completely outclassed by Balthier
Reis is definitely higher than B. Her stat growth is busted. One of the highest in the game. Higher than cid. Not just ok. If you give her martial arts she has innate two swords and hits very hard. She’s also amazing with magic support. And she also can use ribbon and perfume. Females are more busted because of chantage. Give her speed save and she’s nuts
@@TitaniumLegman monk, ninja, and reis are the only ones that can dual wield with martial arts. And you’re probably not doing it on monk or ninja. So that actually is specific of her as she has innate two swords. Only ninja has it otherwise. She also has higher physical attack growth than every job except for mime. And better speed growth than everything but ninja and thief. The highest magic growth. The highest hp growth. And mp growth higher than all but summoner. Her stats are broken
Yeah, I remember in the original game on the first PlayStation, I turned her into a Monk and she ended up having 25 PATK, so she did 625 damage with a regular punch. She also had around 1500 HP, which was 2-3x the HP of anyone else in my army. She's the only reason I even knew HP didn't cap at 999. I don't know if they've changed anything about her in the rereleases, but she was just a beast in the original version. I think those ridiculous stats actually put her on par with Cid. His skills were indeed amazing, but her raw power was on a whole other level. But, yeah, that was as a Monk, not as her base job (which is what Tom's grading here). One of the things that held her back as a Dragoner (and the whole reason I made her a Monk) was that regardless of her current job, she was restricted to using only that special female-only gear. This meant purses were the only weapon she could equip, so her damage was random. Making her a Monk seemed like her best use, because then her unique gear restrictions wouldn't really matter. I just didn't know she'd be *that* amazing at it.
@@biffwellington6144 the purses are pretty terrible. That’s why I give her martial arts as dragonkin. So she punches twice because of the innate dual wield. Dragonkin also has really high stat mods on top of the high growth. It’s as fast as ninja. It’s magic multiplier isn’t as high as some of the other mages but it’s same as priest. With her ridiculous stats and her innates it’s crazy to me she’s rated lower than Rafa and Malak. Who are arguably similar since holy breath is her strongest attack.
wrong, you actually get 2 of him. and the best part is, the other one you get earlier, and is technically stronger than him. im talking about agrias. just make her a dark knight, and because she can equip ribbons and perfume, she is the superior of the 2.
Tom, have you considered making FFT build videos? Because for one it never occurred to me to make agrias learn magic, I made her a chemist and left her like all the way to the end game when she maxed holy knight
Cid is good but by the time you get him you can easily have a Calculator (Arithmetician) with Holy, Frog, Haste, Cure 3, Esuna and Wall which you've turned into a Summoner/Geomancer. That generic can solo 99% of the game content, especially if it's a female with Tynar Rouge. For me that makes Cid not very desirable because it's not very fun to grind late game when the random encounters are much harder and more annoying. Balthier and Reis are almost as broken and fun to use, but also come a bit late and are annoying to grind. Nobody else is really worth using over generics.
I don't believe Cid needs to be touched at all in a game like this. You can just not use him, you have Agrias and later Meliadoul (who I use as a Cid replacement). The main reason for that, is that there's story significance for Cid joining your group even if it's not addressed in the game's story. Thunder God Cid, arguably one of the best swordsmen of all time in this era of Ivalice, joining you after being disgraced and having his death faked is a huge deal. As a player you see his kit and you understand he's a big deal, but not only that, you pick up in some lore drippings about how legendary of a leader he is. If you nerf him down to where he's on par with Agrias or Meliadoul you take a lot of the wind out of the sails of him getting added to the party. What I would like instead is to have the remake play him up a bit more in the story before you recruit him. Add optional battles like WoTL did for Delita where he just takes on squads of enemies, give him some cutscenes to really sell the point of him being a legend. This is someone who soldiers like Ramza aspire to be, and his presence instills courage into the group's ventures. Personally I don't know about putting Beowulf in the same bracket as Cloud. Beowulf is a solid A, and Cloud I think belongs in C as his Limit skill is so impractical to use. Easily 2/3rds of his options you will never get to use. Beowulf is great, not because of chicken, but because of Stone. He can take out anything that isn't wearing stone protection and that isn't a boss in one shot, with an extremely high reliability once you have his faith up; and at exceedingly great range and they will never recover unless acted upon by an Ensuna, Gold Needle, or Purify. You sell Cid as a character that will solo the game, but Beowulf can largely do that as well before any enemy reaches him outside of bosses. And for those characters he can alternate Drain and Vengeance pretty reliably and sustain himself, again at impressive range. Reis is a bit of a weird case. Her personal class is lacking in it's direct capability, but it has excellent magic growth; if I remember it's the best growth of any class. So there's validity in leveling her up in her Dragon class and the fielding her as a black mage. This doesn't help her personal class standing, but it's a meta thing you can do to end up with a better spellcaster potentially. The problem with that is that you get your hands on her so late in the game, and I'm not sure if those additional levels carry over her innate growth if she's not active in your party. Construct 8 I rarely ever use, but he's a great use case in synergy for running Chemist as a main healer, but that's true for any low faith unit. Personally I hate low faith builds, I think they restrict you greatly in what classes you're allowed to use or your party uses. Never cared for that meta.
Mustiado is def C tier at the end of the game. His Arm and Leg shots become worthless against enemies because of the Thief Hat which blocks both immobilized and disable. Rapha and Malek got buffed too. Their spells have a much better weighted variance. Granted they still suck, but least it’s better.
I will never know what they were thinking giving you Cid like that, it'd be like giving the player Mewtwo for free after like, the sixth gym of a Pokemon game. The worst part is, he overshadows so many cool characters! Heck, he has Meliadol's skills *before* you even get a chance to recruit her. I just feel like he trivializes what should be the climax of the game, but I've never really been a fan of overtly overpowered characters in general (for example, I don't use legadary Pokemon in playthroughs of those games either)
I see a lot of people here defending Reis, and rightfully so! But let's not overlook her knuckle sandwiches: she dual-wields fists by default and recruits monsters by punching them! Nothing like dropping and enemy and converting them to your side at the same time.
I think that beowolf would be a tier at least. He may not have the physical attack range of a mystic, but he can equip heavy armor, or robes, along with shields. You put the oricle class as s tier.
How to handle Cid is that rather then nerfing him, just make him insanely hard to get. The fact he just joins the party just by doing the story and has some of the best skills and gear without the player having to do any work for them is the issue I feel.
That's honestly a very good workaround. If they leave his recruitment the same he HAS to be nerfed, but if they introduced more Tactics Ogre style recruitment and such, he could be like an Ozma level recruitment. That would be a good balance.
Im assuming you are ranking just based on their class only, because I feel Beowulf is low, he can be a great debuffer, Drain is pretty effective with him
@@koltira515 it's pretty much just job, and of course the rankings are all compared to each other. I don't feel that Beowulf compared to the S ranks that I have here.
cid should NOT be nerf. he IS the strongest character, hands down, noone will dispute that. but, he NEED to be OP. the guy is talked about as a legend the entire game. and its not like he is the only thing OP in the game either. with dark knights, pretty much anyone can reach his level of power. besides, even though he is the strongest character, he is still not the strongest in the game, if you know how to build. i would understand the argument to make him a complex sidequest reward, like cloud. but he should not be nerfed in any other way besides that.
So, for my own Tier List: S-Tier: Cid, Agrias A-Tier: Beowulf, Balthier B-Tier: Reis, Meliadoul (WotL) C-Tier: Luso, Mustadio, Meliadoul (Classic) D-Tier: Cloud, Worker 8 F-Tier: Rafa, Malak Justification: S-TIER: Both characters have VERY strong equipment options: Knight Swords and busted ass skills that directly abuse them. Lightning Stab is just way too good on its own merits, and one of those universal "Why nobody really uses normal physical attacks in late game". While Cid greatly outclasses Agrias in raw stat gains, the lady knight can do one thing the Thunder God can't: Become Immortal. (at least, without the busted Rendevouz-only items) Chantage+Ribbon is god-mode, and Agrias sacrifices basically nothing to get it and for that reason alone, she is S-Tier and the only thing that comes close to Cid in raw power (besides Math Skill from the generic) A-TIER: Beowulf and Balthier are only just behind the power-duo at the top, each for very different reasons. Balthier is the King of Speed, and unlike Ninja, he doesn't gut his HP and MP for the privilege. This lets him abuse all kinds of abilities keyed off of Speed in ways other characters can only dream of. (Jump Balthier makes him practically unkillable) Additionally, Balthier's Sky Pirate has THE BEST equipment selection in the game (better than Cid even) and a personal skill to abuse it with in Barrage. He is the only character besides his distant relative (Mustadio) who can realistically make good use of Bows, as he has all of Musty's skills and then some. Beowulf is OP in a unique manner: He's the one character whose power comes from winning without just doing dump trucks of damage. Magic Sword (Spellsword) are the Oracle's (Mystic's) spells, only single target and requiring a sword or knight sword to cast. To compensate for these drawbacks, his spells have increased range, noticeably higher base accuracy, and instant-speed casting. Having access to Chicken and Petrify alone would make him a rock-star among units, but how about adding high-accuracy Drain for boss-killing and sustain? Or Sleep for combos, Confusion for protection, Don't Act (Disable) for stalling and so on? He has in-kit synergy with a lot of stuff. Ironically, the one spell in his list unique to him (Shock) is the worst of the bunch, though you could do some cheeky snipe-plays using it since it has an enormous range. He is the walking proof of how "Damage is not everything" and anyone complaining about Beowulf's spell accuracy clearly hasn't done the most sensible thing upon recruiting him and had a Mediator boost his permanent Faith stat up (80 - 84 is what I aim for, to keep the annoying warning message away). Without getting into the heavy mechanics of why, a small change in Faith yields large improvements in his spell accuracy. On top of that, he has the Faith spell to inflict others with the status, should he desire to set-up his own combos. (CONTINUED BELOW)
B-Tier: Reis and Meliadoul (WOTL). Meliadoul is basically Agrias without AoE attacks, which is to say, she's strong and reliable in her WOTL improvement. Beyond that, there's not much to say: Breaking equipment is neat, but fairly immaterial by the time you get her since you will have Cid and his disgusting damage output before then anyway. Reis's Dragoner (Dragonkin) is an odd Job, with innate dual-wield, innate-tame, a dragon-themed kit that is strong on paper, but of limited range and with very limited equipment choices. However, it also has the best stat-growths in the game, beating even Cid. Her Magic Attack Growth is MONSTROUS, and because she joins so late (around level 30-40) it will be primed for transfer into any MA job ability-set which she will EXCEL at. Beyond the usual magic skills, she's incredible with Iaido (Draw-Out), but arguably even better, with Geomancy; which lets her melt enemies from halfway across the map. C-Tier: Luso is a clone of Ramza with innate Poach (Secret Hunt). Literally, that is all. Yell is busted as it's always been, but the main reason he's here instead of A or S-Tier, is because Yell's turn-by-turn effectiveness relies on stalling which uh...becomes harder to do the higher the enemy's levels become. (Speed stat inflation is real in end-game, especially with Thief Hats, Flash Hats all over the place) O.G. Vanilla FFT's Meliadoul is much worse than her WOTL buffed counterpart since her Mighty Sword Skills can't hit monsters. (they have no equipment) This means she's fantastic for the remaining story missions, but far less useful for most of the random encounters going forward as over half of the enemies you will face on average are monsters. Funnily enough, Meliadoul's Divine Knight Job gets Spears AND Crossbows in vanilla FFT, while sporting a really good Physical Attack growth. This makes her the one and only unit I have EVER unironically used the Equip Change support skill on. Mustadio's placement here is really contingent on two things: The existence/absence of Balthier (who is a vastly upgraded clone of Musty...or rather, a distant relative, of Mustadio as the two share the same last name) and Musty's very limited equipment selection. One the bright side, he gets Guns and is the original intended Gun Specialist of the game. Guns are good, but the best Guns scale off of Magic Attack and Musty doesn't get much of that in his default Job. Regular guns do fixed damage, modified only by certain status effects and Zodiac Compatability so they scale quite poorly after mid-game in the original FFT. (the Ras Algethi gun Balthier comes with in WOTL is solid enough end game, especially with Barrage. But the high tier Bows are usually better with Barrage anyway...key word, 'usually') Mustadio's other abilities, thankfully, don't rely on dealing direct damage, but rather aim to cripple the enemy. Their accuracy scales off of Speed, and Engineer has above average Speed growth, so he's actually not all that bad even in late game. (Thief Hat spammage notwithstanding, which blocks both of his main disabling moves' effects) Pairing the Knight's Battle Skill with his Gun access or switching him over to Archer is also a solid idea for different reasons; Chemist is also a popular choice, though you really want to avoid leveling him up as one since their stat-growths are awful. Ideally, he gets into Ninja and kinda stays there as long as he can to soak up Speed and slightly improved PA growths since it's a fantastic class for him. The low-HP growth sucks, but he's going to be sniping most of the time anyway so...eh. Lancer (Dragoon) is also a solid Job choice for him once he's leveled up his Speed enough since Jump's reliability directly scales with the user's Speed stat, and Spears do large amounts of bonus damage via Jumps (in addition to being really strong weapons in general) Really though, Balthier straight up outmodes Mustadio, doing literally everything Musty does and then some. Just don't dismiss Mustadio until you have Cloud, because Musty's presence is still required to start basically all but one of the sidequests in Act IV.
D-TIER: Two gimmick characters with their own odd weaknesses holding them back. Worker 8 is definitely the most unique and gimmicky of the bunch, so I'll start with 'him'. (it?) In any case, Worker 8 is classified as a Monster rather than a regular unit, but not just any monster, but a 'Big monster'. This means he has the elusive ability to be used as a stepladder to help other characters with low Jump reach higher ground on squares he stands next to, as if he were connecting terrain. (this mechanic is rarely used, but the one place it's useful is acquiring the broken Javelin II and Gold Escutcheon items) Mr. Roboto has 4 abilities on paper, but only two of them are really worth using. Also, using any of his abilities requires him paying a portion of his own HP. Dispose is his bread and butter, with a massive 8 squares of range and pretty strong undodgeable single target damage. The other skills are melee only and functionally similar too each other in that they all cause damage or death. Then there's its other unique trait: Permanent Innocence. This sets his Faith to 0 at all times, making him immune to anything keyed as a magic effect, be it positive or negative. If not for his self-damage gimmick, he would actually be a very strong magic-immune late game unit (albeit, a bit slow). Due to its limitations, it basically needs Ramza or Luso using Yell on it constantly to boost its Speed all while refueling its HP with Potions, WIsh and/or Chakra (non-magic Healing effects). Next up is Cloud, of FF7 fame. Normally, crossover characters get special treatment, rolling out with a variety of busted abilities. Cloud has...abilities but while they're not exactly bad, most of them aren't great either. Also: He starts at level 1...at the tail end of Act IV. His stat-growths are slightly above average (except in WOTL, where his MA growth was nerfed to average for no good reason). As a callback to an infamous early-game sequence in the original FF7, Cloud can equip Female-Only items, which is a bigger boon than you might think. So, besides his mediocre stats and crap level, what else is holding him back? He needs his weapon, the Materia Blade, in order to use ANY of his skills. And yes, it must be that specific sword so don't lose it! The Material Blade itself is mediocre at best, so you will almost never use it as a weapon anyway. His Limit abilities are basically 'spells' without MP costs that targets PANELS and not enemy units. Unlike two other gimmicky characters below, Limits always hit whatever is in their area of effect, so at least there's that. Because they're classified as spells, Short Charge (Swiftness) helps him out immensely. This is the real issue with Cloud: Most of his Limit attacks are okay, but not great. Finishing Touch is the best of the lot by far, and Climhazzard can be circumstantially useful for finishing off weakened enemies. But the rest of them are ...niche or odd. Meteorain is okay since it has long range and an AoE, but it badly needs Short Charge to be usable. Cherry Blossom and Omnislash are quite strong, but absurdly slow, even with Short Charge. (Beowulf can help combo off with Sleep here which is usually enough damage to ensure a kill or two) The rest are just kind of not worth it. Braver is okay for power leveling since it can't miss, won't trigger counter-attacks and won't do too much damage, I guess? Cloud can be made into a solid performer, but man, it takes a loooot of effort. Way more than everyone else above him in tier, which is why he's here.
F-Tier: Rafa and Malak The wonder twins share effectively the same ability kit, only with different gimmicks. First, the gimmick their spells share: They randomly trigger 1-6 times (1-10 times in War of the Lions) upon casting, targeting random squares within their range each time. This gives them, theoretically, the highest potential damage per turn in the game. However, note that the spells target random SQUARES and not UNITS within those squares. This means they can miss what you're aiming at entirely unless you manage to confine the spell's range to the single square their intended victim is standing on. (their high vertical tolerance is a bane in this case) So..yeah. They're also potentially the LEAST reliable spells in the game. Also, while they take time to charge they don't cost MP. Short Charge is your best option if you feel like gambling with them. They're usable but...well, regular magic is just better, to say nothing of the awesome units still awaiting acquisition down the line. The other thing that separates Rafa and Malak's spells are their "karma" gimmicks. This manifests in the form of Faith based shenanigans. Rafa's spells ignore the Faith stat entirely, making them hit consistently hard. Malak's spells INVERT the normal Faith mechanic, inflicting higher damage to LOWER Faith targets. Counter-intuitively, Faith and Innocent still work normally for both types of spells, so setting Faith status on either Rafa or Malak will cause their (potential) damage to skyrocket while setting Innocence will nullify damage as normal. IMO, the best part of their jobs is their ability to equip Sticks (Staves/Poles) which are dreadfully underused (and underrated) weapons, being effectively "Magic Spears" that scale off of Magic Attack instead of Physical Attack. Their HP growth is also quite good (not extraordinary, but solid), so they're in theory, fairly sturdy as spellcasters go. Of course, Reis outlcasses both of them, even at their own gimmick. (Holy Breath has the same gimmick as the Wundertwin's Spells) One final note: Rafa is routinely used as an item-finder for the Deep Dungeon (Midlight's Deep) part of the game due to her naturally low Bravery stat of 31. Like most maps in the game, there are many Trap panels in the Deep Dungeon which will activate UNLESS the character stepping on them has the Move-Find Item ability equipped. If they do, the game will randomly give them an item from that panel (only works once! Revisiting the map does NOT reset the item!), which most of the time, is a random chance between a "rare" or "common" item. For the Deep Dungeon, all 'Common' items are Phoenix Down, while the Rare items are (mostly) unique, top-tier equipment you (usually) can't get anywhere else. The %chance of getting the Rare item is equal to 100 - Bravery. So HIGH Brave characters will almost always get the Phoenix Down, while LOW bravery cowards find the stuff you actually want, and since half the point of doing the Deep Dungeon is getting that phat loot, your team will want a Low Brave Gopher. Rafa starts with 31 Bravery and is largely useless elsewhere, which makes her unusually qualified for the job.
Love tactics! Have you ever played Valkryie profile: Covenant of the plume on the ds? odd game but I fell in love with it! It was the first grid based tactics game that I thought might outweigh my love of tactics. Both GEMS
The one character I'd almost be willing to try that with is a female Ninja with Dance, Counter, and Ignore Height. But I'm sure there are battles that even she couldn't solo.
Agrias availability from very early PLUS being able to use perfumes should be enough to rank her up. Also you rated Oracles high but beowulf a B? Come on now, he's almost Cid tier
I would put beowulf in A (but still below Agrias) mostly because of Shock, good equips, and being able to instanty remove units with sleep and break. He's tragically stuck to hitting things one at a time, so hes still not as good as Agrias but i'd have him in A. I would still have cloud in B tier, but i think there's a bit too much downplaying here. The materia blade having 10 WP isnt a huge deal, because you want to use limit which is a bunch of magic attacks anyway. You also dont really need swiftness, because his lower-level limits are largely the ones that you want to use anyway. Its also not as hard to level him as gets made out, the level-based exp formula means catching him up really isnt a problem. My spiciest take is probably that mustadio deserves a D tier. He has a (very) slight speed multiplier boost, but otherwise isnt actually that fast. Seal Evil is awesome in about 4 maps, but othereise its a dead skill, and the rest of his skillset is disabled by every enemy that randomly has the resistance accessory or wears a thief hat later in the game. And since guns dont care about your stats, he can still do his gun thing in every other class with the equip options. Realistically Mustadio is better off in chemist than in his base class, and the game eventuslly reaches a point where snipe isnt even offering more than actually having squire would. Its a shame because mustadio is cool, but fortunately chemist isna sick class so you can just use him as a chemist.
Oh, and one other minor thing ive noticedba few times: the male/female stat difference in FFT isnt +/-1. Its a difference in their starting base stats, and both the growth and current class modifiers are multipliers to this base value. So both as you gain levels *and* when you set a character to a class that has a higher active multiplier the PA/MA gap widens, and it can end up making a pretty big difference.
Cloud can equip female only gear including ribbons and perfume. That makes him an interesting choice for people who have poached up some of the better versions of that gear.
This FFT material reminds me of ridiculously gameshark-able the original was. IIRC, it was possible to go and change individual letters in words if you had far too much patience and were willing to dedicate a boot to basically changing a few words.
as for cid here is the thing if they do a remake he should have really good stats when you get him BUT his stat growth should be ass meaning you meet the man the myth the legend and he's SUPER strong when you meet him BUT the further along you go he would be less usefull in terms of strength and speed he would still have the utility of being a swordmaster with all his skills but in strength late game he would be lacking (and thus you keep his lore of being a kick ass warrior while hinting his age is getting to him)
@@patrickmcathey7081 he has the best stats in the game and all the best skills in the game. Excalibur is just the cherry on top of a disgustingly overpowered character.
Cid has always been Square's way of saying sorry to 10 year old me after making me restart the game after being softlock in riovanes castle. If you know you know why.
Don't get the whole argument of "it needs to be nerfed" or "it shouldn't exist", no one is making you pick a specific class/skill in a single player game. While I do agree they're busted, calling them to be nerfed/shouldn't exist is kinda a moot point. Just don't use them if you don't want to break the game, simple. There's a reason all of these are unique characters
I'm a super fan of fielding Beo and Reis. Yeah they aren't the best, but they are very good in their roles. In particular, if you boost Reis' magic stat, her breaths hit quite hard, and she has the HP to sit on the front lines without any real concern. Also helps that one of the hardest fights is against dragons, which she can tame. I also like Meliadoul, who is very powerful... But needs opponents to have gear. If they do? She hits brutally hard and deletes their gear, making most opponents a joke. Too bad most of the scary stuff doesn't use gear.
I'm of the opinion that should a remake be made, Cid should remain untouched. All of your criticisms of him are valid. He is in a tier of his own & that is why he is memorable. I look back at all the games I've played in my life and as age catches up to you as it has me, very few games are memorable. Cid is one of those characters that I look back on fondly on. From a min/max gameplay perspective, yeah hes probably OP & I can see why some would want him nerfed. From a narrative story telling perspective, the message is clear. He truly is Thundergod Cid & that is how I will always remember him.
Amen!
While I agree the lore also states that zalbag is his equal and sorry that just doesn't pan out. Granted you only fight with zalbag in one battle but I was hugely disappointed with his lack of power compared to Cid. So if they due nerf Cid it actually would make lore sense.
100% agreed
@@joshhowe3551. Still shouldn't be nerfed.
If people find him too strong then just use another character.
I don't think he should be nerfed but he should be the last character you get or completely overhaul meliadoul, she gets done so dirty by being the last main story character you get and being instantly invalidated by him
Never nerf CID your bugging… he’s literally famous throughout all Ivalice!
He has the title god and is true to his name.
100% No nerf Cid. It's a single player game nerfs are not needed. He works as intended.
@@WreakHvok nah he needs a nerf. He's already insanely strong just for having all the sword skills. He would still be the strongest character in the game if his stats were lower, which they should be.
@@TitaniumLegman its a freaking single player game dude. besides, pretty much any character can become as good as him, including agrias, also, even though he is OP, i can make the argument that balthier can be even more broken due to his 4x damage. or ramza with his ability to speed/power boost infinitely.
then there's the fact mimics and mathimatician class exist.
CID is meant to be OP. that's the whole point. besides how would they even nerf him? the only thing they could do is take away his dark knight powers, in which case he would just become a copy of agrias. and again, you could reach the same power cid has with agrias by making her a dark knight anyways.
so no, CID should not be nerfed.
I feel Cid should be buffed. Him being on the battlefield should be an instant win because the enemy army would take one look at him and just book it back home.
Cid makes you wonder how busted Barbaneth was
Beowolf not being in S Tier minimum is ridiculous.
Beowulf 100% belongs in A. I can see the argument for S, but the main reason why he's A is because he is just the Mystic Class but with Physical damage instead of magic. He's only really S in Midlight's Deep because his version of Foxbird is insanely busted for getting your Brave lowered faster for the rare items, but he's A everywhere else. He's good for his debuffs, but his Physical damage is kind of lackluster compared to other classes.
Beowulf is absolutely S-Tier, no question in my mind.
His versions of the Oracle spells are all longer range, instant speed and possess a higher base accuracy than the originals. That is all to compensate for their lack of AoE. Foxbird is busted, sure, but equally powerful are his Petrify (best in class for its effect), Sleep and Confusion.
And none of these magically stop being relevant once you're outside of Midlight's Deep.
The redundancy in CC effects is desireable because each one has its own use case in addition to letting Beowulf sidestep the immunities enemies may have in the late game. (also, Foxbird won't always chicken the target in one cast due to variance in starting Brave values for all generic NPC units being above 60, so it's not unusual for Beowulf to reach for a different CC effect to take them out of the fight)
On top of all of that, Beowulf has a vastly superior gear selection and stat growths compared to Mystic, so he holds up just fine compared to all other (non Orlandu) unique Jobs in end game.
One other major benefit that tends to go understated is the immense benefit of instant-speed spells.
Without getting into the nitty-gritty of how charge times and turn order works, high speed casters tend to leave themselves open to that 50% extra damage and zero evasion vulnerable status when Charging on the first turn.
Instant speed casting completely bypasses this weakness. This makes Auto-Haste more valuable for Beowulf than any regular Caster, and oh look! He has access to Excalibur in his equips.
Finally, he has much more reliable boss-killing potential with Drain, in the event he needs to fight something that is hard-coded immune to all of his spells' CC. In fact, the only place where he is actually useless is vs Faithless targets, which doesn't really happen outside of PvP (which is an unplayable, busted mess as it is).
If Orlandu (and Calculator) didn't exist, he would be near the top of the best units in the game, period. Just because he can reliably eliminate/cripple an enemy every turn or two regardless of what they are.
@@atmosdwagon4656 That last point doesn't really work. He can only reliably kill units if you max him out to level 99. Prior to that, his damage is between subpar and above average. At 99, he's a monster, but it takes an insane amount of work to get him there.
Yes, he has Drain, but you will almost never need to use it when you have other staple members like Ramza, Cid and Meliadoul already 1 shotting pretty much everything with or without Beowulf's debuffs.
His instant speed spells are great, but you will either be using him to deal damage (if you build him that way), or as a support. You can try to do both but it's not as effective or optimal as making him fully one or the other. He has good bulk, and decent scaling, but takes a lot of work to make him optimal in either path. Yes, he gets access to Excalibur, but you will never be taking it off of Cid unless you don't plan on using him for a cake-walk file. Even if you do take it off, you will almost never give it to Beowulf because Meliadoul exists. Her skills are incredibly broken with auto haste and have more use than Beowulf's do in most cases because of large damage and gear destruction. If you're not using her, then you're likely still using Agrias who is still sort of better than him by way of her versatility.
There are a lot of factors to take into consideration with Beowulf, but ultimately he is 100% A tier and there's no way around it. He's a great character no matter what direction you take with him, but he's not super busted.
Fuck that he’s up there with thunder god. None of you clearly know how to use him
@@JohnWick-uq1su he definitely is not Cid tier. Nobody is Cid tier other than Cid himself. Beowulf is a very good unit who can be built and used in 1 of 3 ways:
Tanky Support - Given the maxed out gear to make him as bulky as possible, that way he can't die, and used strictly for his status effects and debuffs to make fights easier. This is usually the best way to use him as his damage falls off late game, unless you train him to level 99.
Damage Tank - Still building him bulky, but leaning into his damage capabilities rather than Support. As mentioned before, his damage is between alright and great depending on how much you've leveled him. Yes, he can sit there and use Drain to chunk things for 1/4 of their HP, but this can be evaded by late game human enemies, since most have the highest grade of mantle accessories available. Better to use him for his other damage spells and basic attacks.
Damage-Dealing Support - This is a good way to use him, but is much harder than the other 2 because you're using him based on the situation he's in during battle. Due to how amazing his supportive capabilities are in comparison to his damage dealing capabilities, it's almost always better to focus on making him a support rather than one of your main heavy hitters. He can still hit hard, but needs to be vastly overleveled to do it. His scaling isn't good enough for you to take him to the end of the game as just the level 50-60 needed for the final dungeon Gauntlet in Murond. He needs to be at least level 85 if you plan on using him as one of your main DPS characters, and level 90 if you plan on using him as this Hybrid build character. As Support, he can be any level you want him to be and he will work
I feel like Beowulf needs to be at least A. Yeah, he's not much of a damage dealer, but he is so good at what he does do, and what he does (i.e. Chicken, Break) is REALLY nasty. Beowulf is a mainstay in my endgame party, unlike the other characters you put in B. He's the CC-er while everyone else dishes the damage.
He also great when item hunting because you want your move find item person with as little brave as possible
@@patrickmcathey7081 I think rafa is better since she joins the party with about 35 bravery and you'd probably want to boost beowulfs bravery for some good reaction ability, unless you're simply not using him.
I would move Agrias to S tier. She drops a bit in Chapter 3 and at the beginning of Chapter 4, she has a huge comeback when you start getting Knight Swords and perfumes. Worker 8 at best A tier. He hits a ton, but you need to babysit his HP with an extra character in tougher battles. Also, he's really slow. Beowulf is a solid A, spamming Petrify and Chicken is broken in most battles as most enemies cannot cure Petrify. It's better than a kill.
I agree with Agrias being S tier, in part because you get her real early but this is about her class cannot really hang in s tier with its mediocre stats, lack of clothes and 3 base moves. In fact once you learn her skills your better off switching to regular knight unless there is a secondary skill you really want her to have.
Exactly this
Agrias is basicaly cid tier in all honesty. since you can literaly turn her into cid by making her a dark knight anyways.
Agrias has a quasi hidden bonus she can use chantage. Might not be at cid but still a good party add.
@@Prinygod yeah. Knight for the Stat growth, with icebrand and black robe for the damage boost, and the tynour rouge for more damage and tanking. She's still pretty good but needs a bit more work to get going without abusing level degeneration trap.
Reis does have one large advantage: her stat growth is *the* best in the game - more HP and magic attack growth than a mime, near the same physical attack growth of a mime, nearly as good of MP growth as a wizard or summoner, and positive speed growth (most classes do not have any speed growth).
Her abilities are *okay*, but if you level her up she will have the stats to do anything you want in the game, and do it better than everyone else. Might still be a B tier character since that takes some investment, but invest and she will pay you back a great deal.
@@TheGreatGario Holy breath is similar to rafa and Malak. Because of what you mentioned, and even her innates, she should definitely be at least higher than them. Also, not only the growth she actually has high multipliers in her base class as well. She’s as fast as a ninja.
Give Reis Iaido. Her Magick stat being so high means that everything around her is just gone.
He is ranking the jobs solo. No extra abilities. In that regard Reis is very mid.
Now on a more personal note, I agree, she has amazing status, and if you invest in her it will be well rewarded, but...she comes so late in the game that at that point I have already invested in my main characters, and they are already wrecking everything, Reis will NOT make or break my game in any way.
So to be honest, I ignore her nowadays in most of my playthroughs. Beowulf is different because he is more linear, so he is more useful without having to "invest" on him.
she also has free two-sword for unarmed in base class, making her the best unit in the game to toss "martial arts" on. Arguably you could also just learn two sword from ninja and then make a monk for similar results and better active skills, but youd get worse stats.
Reis is similar to Geomancer, average on their own but a great 'carrier' class once you put other things on her.
I completely agree Cid is in his own tier but disagree that he needs to be nerfed. I'm definitely in the camp as if it bothers you don't use him
Same here.
Agrias Oaks with chaos blades and lipstick is super good
yeah. I heard his criticism about her and agree with it, but I really don't think Luso and Meliadoul should be above her. Meliadoul has no AoE, this is quite a big drawback (and don't get me started on PS1 Meliadoul, completely useless against monsters and Lucavis). As for Luso I don't need a Ramza clone, I already have Ramza and that Squire class really isn't that good anyway. Ultima sucks, and having to waste turns to buff yourself or others is quite the drawback when the others, Agrias included, can just immediately annihilate the opposition. What do you have with Ramza / Luso when you're ready to attack? Sword swings, Throw Stone, Dash and the crappy Ultima lol.
@@armorvil I agree Ultima spell is too weak for it to be a secret spell. In any other game it's stronger than meteor or is used by insanely powerful enemies. Probably could use a significant damage boost and reduced charge time while ignoring faith and the athiest and faith buffs.
Beowulf has the best utility in the game. You bring him every time you need to do something that's not just steamrolling the battle. Need to steal from enemies? Beowulf can chicken/put them to sleep. Need to move find all the items in the map? Beowulf. Need to grind jp? Beowulf. Need blind/reduce ninja damage so you can catch weapons? Beowulf. I argue he's even Cid levels in terms of utility. Not everything is damage
Not a bad ranking.
I woukd changr beowolf to at krast A tier. His ability to turn units into stone is slept on. The last time i played it was on avg about 75 percent of the time. There were enemies that he could one shot when olandu was outside of one hit kills.
Agrias gets her birthday present, and that should bump her up to S tier.
Beowulf deserves A-teir or better, hear me out. His "break" ability can petrify enemies and the hit rate on it is insane usually above a 70% chance everytime. Always a fun add to the party one of my favorite characters to play around with
he's the Haborym (tactics ogre) of FFT. you either overlook him/dont understand how to use him or quickly figure out how busted he is.
No Ramza Ubersquire? Its easy S tier high stats and flexible command ability
He grouped Ramza in with Luso, since they're basically the same character/special class. (Minus Luso's inherent poach.)
@@tiradegrandmarshal Ah okay thanks for the heads up!
It's interesting that Cid is two tiers above Agrias when in the post-game there are definitely times where you go "This is a bit too tough for Orlandu, I think we need Agrias for this." That probably speaks more to how strong (and almost necessary at times) ribbons and perfumes are for the hard levels. And I realize we're judging the job and not the character here =] A female Orlandu would be even more broken than he is! (I think I just accidentally spoiled the plot to Orlando by Virginia Woolf.)
exactly. not only that but the only real diference between them is that cid comes with dark sword techniques by default. which agrias can get by making her a dark knight anyways. and she has access to ribbons like you said, which might even make her the superior of the 2.
i said this in a diferent post, but agrias should be cid tier.
Mustadio's usefulness is in his support abilities while you are grinding. If you whittle the enemy down to one and habe Mustadio spam Stop Move and Stop Act you can Accumulate to your hearts content and gain a couple job levels in a single battle.
Beowulfs Break ability (stone) can destroy nearly anything, especially the last boss
Cloud and Beowulf in the same tier? Nah. You either have to bump up Beowulf, which I would prefer as he is about as useful as Agrias. Or bump down Cloud. Just the fact that he needs special equipment to be half as competent as Agrias should bump him down already
Beowulf is A tier on his chicken skill alone. Brave -50 basically knocks one enemy per turn of combat (
Rafa should be in C tier, and Marik should be in his own "Marik tier" cause of how bad he is.
Beowulf in the same tier as cloud, is just nonsense. Very poor tier list, sorry.
It's okay, you're wrong, but I respect your opinion nonetheless. :)
I gotta agree with him Beowulf should have been A. Did you forget about shock because you didn’t mention it at all when going over his skill suite.
Also weird that cloud in a lot of ways is a 0 mp black mage and you rated them S, though I think that’s more overrating blm than underrating cloud.
Yeah Cloud should be in C. He’s very bad. And even when “online” still doesn’t beat a lot of the other uniques.
Beowulf B tier? Muhahahaha turning enemies into chickens, turning them stone, drain. Bro Beowulf is bonkers.
Yeah he on one for that call.
Beowolf is S tier, stellar range, great stats, utility, Stone is a 1 shot kills at huge range
So long as it hits
@@TitaniumLegman it trends to hit since his skills have very high base accuracy (10 - 15% additively higher than their Oracle spell counterparts).
If you want to properly amp Beowulfs accuracy, raise his Faith to around 80, or whack him with Faith status. His Petrify hit rates will be over 80% vs most targets outside of Bad Zodiac comparability.
Im so happy there is still content being made for this absolute legend of a game.
I think Beowulf belongs in his own tier. He's not TG Cid but he breaks the game in other ways, not just the chicken stuff but raising and lowering brave and faith. Also Cloud is C tier at best... maybe lower. Yeah you can raise him to be an okay unit, but you could also just use an ordinary Monk, Samurai, Black Mage, etc and have have better results than even a trained Cloud.
The only game I’ve ever bought on my phone. FFT was what I played growing up. FFT WOTL was the great update to get some of the beautiful cutscenes and Easter Egg characters.
I can’t tell you the amount of hours and playthroughs I have throughout the years, but I’ve truly mastered it. What a beautiful genre and game.
Agree with Cid Orlandu as well. Love him. Balthier as well is busted with a ninja x spear x sky pirate combo.
Cid tier? More like Ramza tier. His ability to stack up speed alone is game breaking. Not to mention permanent brave buff
Ramza's undoubtedly powerful but comparing him to Cid is like comparing a summoner to a ninja. Sure you can take several turns setting up a powerful effect with Ramza/summoner... or you can just kill them all in three turns with Cid.
@@FerrumCido I can't believe how much shade summoners get. They're so busted. If you think they're weak because it takes forever to charge up Bahamut or whatever; you're doing it wrong. The first 3 summons are insanely fast, don't cause friendly fire, do massive damage in a huge area, and cover elemental weaknesses while abusing elemental staff buffs. They're literally the class I avoided using on repeat playthroughs because they made things too easy.
@@smithsmith6402he’s not doing it wrong. Summoner is a good class but not elite. It’s not even the best mage class.
@@AT-qm8gv They're totally the best mage class. Shiva does the damage of Ice 3 with the AoE of Ice 4 and the speed of Ice 1. And it won't hurt your own team. And they have healing, golem, and carbuncle for support. The bigger summons are just showboating if you get a chance to land them.
@@FerrumCidoyou underestimate stackable permanent speed buff. Ramza can easily buff his speed to the point he'll be getting 2 turns in a row. With thief's save speed ability almost every turn will be Ramza's turn. Cid is not even close.
Also, summoner sucks, wizard is better.
Meliadoul was always one of my favorite characters, and I’m glad WOTL made her even better.
Beowulf should be higher, and it's not for his combat prowess so much as his metagame prowess. His ability to turn targets into chickens is the most effortlessly reliable way to stall a battle, which makes him a skeleton key for unlocking opportunities to move-find or wait for enemy crystals and chests. That stuff is so much more annoying before you get Beowulf.
Honestly I'd put Beowulf in S because every other character's combat prowess is fundamentally redundant with Cid in a way that Beowulf's chicken nonsense isn't.
This is Byblos erasure! Justice for my weird purple Apanda recolor!
You do have a face! Great video. Here's hoping FF Tactics makes a comeback soon.
Reis being in B is wild, she has the best magic attack growth in the game and easily becomes the best magic user
Does she make for a good Dancer?
@@pedropimenta896 Dancer is a physical attack based job so she’s not really better than any other unit from what I recall. The magic attack thing is just notable because even among unique jobs, most of them have the exact same magic attack growth
How do you miss the point of the video when it's literally in the title? It says "unique class." It's not just about the unit, it's about the class. Dragoner is awful.
@@Hotobu Dragoner is the class that gives her the busted magic growth though…how do you miss the point of the comment so badly? I know you ultimately swap her to something else but the fact remains that in a game where almost every class has the same magic growth, her class divisor is better than mime’s- 38 compared to 40 for mime and 50 for basically every other class.
@@Phase4TheProphet Way to reply to a comment about missing a point WHILE STILL MISSING THE POINT.
*You don't get to swap* The point of the video is playing AS THAT SPECIFIC CLASS.
You missed the point twice, are you going to for three times?
I always wondered why Barington went through all that trouble to aquire Rafa and Marachs' useless skills when he has all those far superior ninja at his command.
Those two as assassins? Made me laugh out loud as a kid when first encountered them.
Do people not know about Beowulf's ability to do damage based on his loss health to anyone across the whole map or whatever?
I'm not a huge fan of effects that require you to have damage on your character, as you either need to wait for the enemy to do something you can't rely on them doing, or you need to do that damage yourself, neither of which are optimal.
You mentioned that Reis has middling stats, outside HP, but that's inaccurate? Dragokin has the highest HP, MP and MA growth in the game, and a higher PA and Speed stat than Sword Saint. The greatest drawback being a move/jump range of 3, but that can be overcome with move +2/+3 (have to grind out a Dark Knight, but its still feasible). A high PA paired with innate dual wield, no charge elemental attacks paired to the high MA stat, and with Iaido or Black Magick as secondary, Arcane Strength as support (magic build) or Brawler for DracoMonk, with a ribbon and perfumes/tynar rouge and you have an absoukte damage dealing tank. Added to this, her ability to recruit dragons and the tiamats has additional utility in the late game.
She really deserves better than B.
Agrias is pretty OP if you give her the knight sword Cid comes with Excalibur I think, gets that haste and improved damage if I remember correctly. It's been a long time since I've played, it's an amazing game!
Also just wanted to point out that on the scroll bar, Rafa's section is including Reis's section.
Rapha also has the benefit of being one of the best Treasure Hunter chemist ability users as she has one of the lowest base bravery scores in the game. Even generics tend to minimum have 40 brave and she starts in the low 30s. Makes her far better than her brother in those terms as well.
When it comes to raw KO potential, Beowulf's 95-100% stone has better ranged KO potential than everyone here sans TG Cid and specific Agrias and Balthier set ups. Vs Lucavi, Drain should put out higher damage than TG Cid even. So vs generics, Beowulf is a ranged OHKO machine, and vs big bosses, he's basically a 2nd Cid.
I feel, without a doubt that Ramza is the best character in the game because of Accumulate (early game) then Yell (late game). He could easily raise his speed beyond ANY character with haste on them. and at that point he can one-shot anyone. when playing through out the game I always have Guts in an ability slot, from there I've mastered almost any job in a single battle.
If the wiki is to be believe Reis' Dragonkin has the single greatest stat growth of any class in the game outside of a maxed onion knight.
Beowulf needs a bump up. Once you're already bringing Cid and Balthier to tear through enemies, Beowulf is much better with his chicken or stone or silence abilities to neutralize units outside of OTK range. I found him more useful than just bringing a lesser version of Cid like Agrias or Meliadoul.
He is awesome, even better in War of the Lions due to dark knight being available giving him not only the best CC in the game but also some ranged damage skills one that steals hp and does damage and the other mp which hits so hard it will just lay waste to any magic characters mana pool making them essentially useless.
@@DustinDonald-cz9ot. By the time you get Beowulf I surely grinded with any other character to be a Dark Knight if any.
Or by that time the game is almost finished
geomancer+holy knight agrias carried me through most of FFT
Overall I agree with a lot on this list outside of a select few. I am with a lot of comments here in saying Beowolf is criminally under-rated on this list for reasons already explained. I was expecting S or at lowest a High A but instead he is on the same tier as Cloud? Cloud requires an insane amount of work to get working (as you mentioned) and in the end we all know that we just use him to spam finishing touch as it is probably the only worthwhile limit to use. Admittedly, this strat is very powerful but Beowulf does the same job of crippling enemies and more and has a much easier time of it.
Personally I'd move Balthier to Cid Tier, Beowulf to S tier, Meliadoul down to A, construct down to A or B, and Reis up to A (insane stat growth though her equipment is limited to female only).
I would have argued a few things, more so technicalities than anything, on the rando character classes, but yeah, spot on with this one, as everyone's state of way overpowered or under powered unique class is rather obvious. One thing I love about Ramza's unique squire class, is being able to use knight swords, along with it's other traits. Give him two defender swords, and he's almost untouchable physically while dishing out a good bit of damage. Give him a defender and another I can't recall that has magic evade, and the right cape, and he's substantially hard to hit in general without guaranteed 100% accuracy attacks.
You left out Byblos.
I think Beowulf should be A Tier for just how useful he is especially in Midlilights Deep. And Cloud is right there with Malach. Coming in at Level 1, how useless his Limit Breaks are, and what a pain it is to even get him up and running isn't worth it. But, solid list otherwise. Nice stuff.
After my first playthrough with Cid, yeaaaaa I learned VERY QUICKLY why they called him the freaking THUNDER GOD, lol just holy shit man.
Instructions unclear: all blade grasp, two swords monks with maximized brave and minimized faith wearing earth clothes. 😂
Forgot to mention how Reis tame monster easily with second hit, because she has 2 attacks, you can easily make her 999 HP in other job or put the knight sword ability to equip 2 chaos blade on her, i pretty much love doing that plus a perfume.
You have misrepresented t.g. Cid. He doesn't have the abilities of the holy swordsman, His class IS the holy swordsman, renamed to sword saint.
His class does NOT have all the divine knight class abilities. He has knight, holy knight, and dark knight. Distinctly missing is heaven knight and hell knight, which are classes you gain access to via unique characters.
His sword skills include all the signature crush sword skills from Divine Knight, what are you talking about?
Cid is so strong that I freaked out in FF14 when he appeared as a boss and died a few too many times
Saying Cid should be nerfed was a brilliant way of tripling the comment count on this video lol
he could have tripled it again by pretending cloud was S tier :-p
You think Balthier is busted? Give him thiefs hat, mirage vest, excalibur, and jump. literal solo speedrun
Another thing that's really nice about Worker No. 8 is his Faith of 0, which makes him completely immune to magic. This does make healing him difficult, but it also means enemy spellcasters can't do dick to him.
At least, that's the case in the original PlayStation version of the game. I don't know if that's changed in the remakes.
orlandu was super strong because he has possesed libra stone, no doubt he titled TG CID and broken as hell with full crystal equipment also excalibur (buffed auto haste)... well entire enemies in the game is very lucky he was joined us only with 3rd tier gear, i cant imagine if he equipped with maximilian, escutcheon and chaos blade at the first time in our party... the only one below him as "holy swordsman skill family" is dycedarg then wiegraf and delita, his job (lune knight/rune knight) almost powerful as orlandu at skill level, unfortunately we can play him only via cheat codes, even agrias cant compete with dycedarg or wiegraf in terms power output of her sword skill
so he dont need to be nerf because in story he is the goat, he is game changer in perspective story chapter 4... and that the fact we know with our eyes or from alazlam narrative even developer
A lot of mods completely neuter Cid and Calculator and I am okay with that. But I am also okay with them being left alone. I am not one to say how someone plays their single player game. If you nerf them you have to nerf Balthier and his Barrage just sayin no favorites.
what i dont get is, why even nerf him anyways? agrias can do what he does, but better since she has access to ribbons and perfumes. the only real diference between them is that cid comes with dark sword by default, which agrias can get by becoming a dark knight anyways.
Great video! I wanted to let you know you can actually add your own images to even other peoples tier lists on tiermaker for videos like this! There's a setting at the bottom that lets you add them on just for your browser tab of the tier list so it can help if its missing a character you wanted to add like this video
I agree with pretty much everything here, I'd jump Cloud up to A however since he can equip the female-only accessories, and some of those are super busted.
If availability matters, Agrias (and Ramza) should be way higher. I think it's entirely backward to worry about a unit "falling off" in the lategame if that unit gets to exist for more of the game prior to that. Like imagine if you got a Cid-level character before Dorter and then they're available all the way to the end of Chapter 2 and leave the party forever. Is this character awful because they stop existing later, or are they godlike because you get Cid-tier power in the early game when your generics are underdeveloped? SRPGs tend to be harder in the early game when your options are limited and synergistic builds that have massively greater impact than the sum of their parts aren't finished yet. Having someone you can always rely on will make it easier to get established in the game, and by the time they leave, other uniques will be around to take their place. Such a character probably couldn't be any lower than A tier. Agrias isn't quite like that, but she's one of the earliest uniques to join and if you're going to dock her for falling off later in the game it's only fair to credit her for existing earlier in the game when everybody else doesn't (let alone how overpowered she is relative to her join time).
Also, as has been argued, Agrias doesn't really even fall off that much due to being female for equipment options and having access to Knight Swords. I don't think weird stats is even that much of a problem, outside maybe HP, because the game isn't difficult enough for that to matter and she's still carried by her overpowered skills. The fact she has AoE and much more availability means she has to be better than Meliadoul, even if WotL Meliadoul is better at her peak. The only reason I wouldn't argue her over Cid is that Cid's availability is actually quite high. It's a bit like getting FE7 Athos halfway through the game.
Ramza's custom squire (which has unique stat growths) is part of an infinite stats glitch making it calculator tier
I like Luso and played him heavily in WotL other than his auto poach which is useful he doesnt bring anything to the table that ramza doesnt. I feel if they wouldnt have made Ramza a requirement for all story battles more people may have used him
Rafa is your Item Finder too
Mustadio, whom I love and you need to get one of the best female only accessories, is just completely outclassed by Balthier
Reis is definitely higher than B. Her stat growth is busted. One of the highest in the game. Higher than cid. Not just ok. If you give her martial arts she has innate two swords and hits very hard. She’s also amazing with magic support. And she also can use ribbon and perfume. Females are more busted because of chantage. Give her speed save and she’s nuts
You can make a LOT of jobs busted with martial arts. That's not a boon of her specific job, which is the point of this list.
@@TitaniumLegman monk, ninja, and reis are the only ones that can dual wield with martial arts. And you’re probably not doing it on monk or ninja. So that actually is specific of her as she has innate two swords. Only ninja has it otherwise.
She also has higher physical attack growth than every job except for mime. And better speed growth than everything but ninja and thief. The highest magic growth. The highest hp growth. And mp growth higher than all but summoner. Her stats are broken
Yeah, I remember in the original game on the first PlayStation, I turned her into a Monk and she ended up having 25 PATK, so she did 625 damage with a regular punch. She also had around 1500 HP, which was 2-3x the HP of anyone else in my army. She's the only reason I even knew HP didn't cap at 999.
I don't know if they've changed anything about her in the rereleases, but she was just a beast in the original version. I think those ridiculous stats actually put her on par with Cid. His skills were indeed amazing, but her raw power was on a whole other level.
But, yeah, that was as a Monk, not as her base job (which is what Tom's grading here). One of the things that held her back as a Dragoner (and the whole reason I made her a Monk) was that regardless of her current job, she was restricted to using only that special female-only gear. This meant purses were the only weapon she could equip, so her damage was random. Making her a Monk seemed like her best use, because then her unique gear restrictions wouldn't really matter. I just didn't know she'd be *that* amazing at it.
@@biffwellington6144 the purses are pretty terrible. That’s why I give her martial arts as dragonkin. So she punches twice because of the innate dual wield.
Dragonkin also has really high stat mods on top of the high growth. It’s as fast as ninja. It’s magic multiplier isn’t as high as some of the other mages but it’s same as priest.
With her ridiculous stats and her innates it’s crazy to me she’s rated lower than Rafa and Malak. Who are arguably similar since holy breath is her strongest attack.
@@xAmerlioration Oh, I agree; she's awesome!
The only thing "balanced" about TG Cid is the fact that you can only have one of him. He is called "Thunder God" for a reason.
wrong, you actually get 2 of him. and the best part is, the other one you get earlier, and is technically stronger than him. im talking about agrias. just make her a dark knight, and because she can equip ribbons and perfume, she is the superior of the 2.
Tom, have you considered making FFT build videos? Because for one it never occurred to me to make agrias learn magic, I made her a chemist and left her like all the way to the end game when she maxed holy knight
The only thing that would wipe my party would be CID charmed or confused….. RIP black mage
Cid is good but by the time you get him you can easily have a Calculator (Arithmetician) with Holy, Frog, Haste, Cure 3, Esuna and Wall which you've turned into a Summoner/Geomancer. That generic can solo 99% of the game content, especially if it's a female with Tynar Rouge. For me that makes Cid not very desirable because it's not very fun to grind late game when the random encounters are much harder and more annoying. Balthier and Reis are almost as broken and fun to use, but also come a bit late and are annoying to grind. Nobody else is really worth using over generics.
I don't believe Cid needs to be touched at all in a game like this. You can just not use him, you have Agrias and later Meliadoul (who I use as a Cid replacement). The main reason for that, is that there's story significance for Cid joining your group even if it's not addressed in the game's story. Thunder God Cid, arguably one of the best swordsmen of all time in this era of Ivalice, joining you after being disgraced and having his death faked is a huge deal. As a player you see his kit and you understand he's a big deal, but not only that, you pick up in some lore drippings about how legendary of a leader he is. If you nerf him down to where he's on par with Agrias or Meliadoul you take a lot of the wind out of the sails of him getting added to the party.
What I would like instead is to have the remake play him up a bit more in the story before you recruit him. Add optional battles like WoTL did for Delita where he just takes on squads of enemies, give him some cutscenes to really sell the point of him being a legend. This is someone who soldiers like Ramza aspire to be, and his presence instills courage into the group's ventures.
Personally I don't know about putting Beowulf in the same bracket as Cloud. Beowulf is a solid A, and Cloud I think belongs in C as his Limit skill is so impractical to use. Easily 2/3rds of his options you will never get to use. Beowulf is great, not because of chicken, but because of Stone. He can take out anything that isn't wearing stone protection and that isn't a boss in one shot, with an extremely high reliability once you have his faith up; and at exceedingly great range and they will never recover unless acted upon by an Ensuna, Gold Needle, or Purify. You sell Cid as a character that will solo the game, but Beowulf can largely do that as well before any enemy reaches him outside of bosses. And for those characters he can alternate Drain and Vengeance pretty reliably and sustain himself, again at impressive range.
Reis is a bit of a weird case. Her personal class is lacking in it's direct capability, but it has excellent magic growth; if I remember it's the best growth of any class. So there's validity in leveling her up in her Dragon class and the fielding her as a black mage. This doesn't help her personal class standing, but it's a meta thing you can do to end up with a better spellcaster potentially. The problem with that is that you get your hands on her so late in the game, and I'm not sure if those additional levels carry over her innate growth if she's not active in your party.
Construct 8 I rarely ever use, but he's a great use case in synergy for running Chemist as a main healer, but that's true for any low faith unit. Personally I hate low faith builds, I think they restrict you greatly in what classes you're allowed to use or your party uses. Never cared for that meta.
having seen this guys class tier lists and now this one... i don't think he's very good at this game lol.
Mustiado is def C tier at the end of the game. His Arm and Leg shots become worthless against enemies because of the Thief Hat which blocks both immobilized and disable.
Rapha and Malek got buffed too. Their spells have a much better weighted variance. Granted they still suck, but least it’s better.
Cid and Balthier should be in their own SS tier above the rest and Cloud should be at the bottom in his own tier.
I will never know what they were thinking giving you Cid like that, it'd be like giving the player Mewtwo for free after like, the sixth gym of a Pokemon game. The worst part is, he overshadows so many cool characters! Heck, he has Meliadol's skills *before* you even get a chance to recruit her.
I just feel like he trivializes what should be the climax of the game, but I've never really been a fan of overtly overpowered characters in general (for example, I don't use legadary Pokemon in playthroughs of those games either)
I see a lot of people here defending Reis, and rightfully so! But let's not overlook her knuckle sandwiches: she dual-wields fists by default and recruits monsters by punching them! Nothing like dropping and enemy and converting them to your side at the same time.
I think that beowolf would be a tier at least. He may not have the physical attack range of a mystic, but he can equip heavy armor, or robes, along with shields. You put the oricle class as s tier.
Leg and arm snipe are goated in FFT. Change my mind.
It feels like at least a decade since I've played FFT (my favourite in the entire franchise). I am dying for a remake or a new port
Only playable unique jobs, was expecting a full unique tier
How to handle Cid is that rather then nerfing him, just make him insanely hard to get. The fact he just joins the party just by doing the story and has some of the best skills and gear without the player having to do any work for them is the issue I feel.
That's honestly a very good workaround. If they leave his recruitment the same he HAS to be nerfed, but if they introduced more Tactics Ogre style recruitment and such, he could be like an Ozma level recruitment. That would be a good balance.
@@TitaniumLegman. It's a single player game. He doesn't need any kind of nerf.
Nobody is forced to use him.
@@SeventhheavenDK They're not, but game balance is still important an outliers should be hammered down.
Im assuming you are ranking just based on their class only, because I feel Beowulf is low, he can be a great debuffer, Drain is pretty effective with him
@@koltira515 it's pretty much just job, and of course the rankings are all compared to each other. I don't feel that Beowulf compared to the S ranks that I have here.
16:54 - Which makes full sense to me.
@@Fenrisson big agree
cid should NOT be nerf. he IS the strongest character, hands down, noone will dispute that. but, he NEED to be OP. the guy is talked about as a legend the entire game. and its not like he is the only thing OP in the game either. with dark knights, pretty much anyone can reach his level of power. besides, even though he is the strongest character, he is still not the strongest in the game, if you know how to build.
i would understand the argument to make him a complex sidequest reward, like cloud. but he should not be nerfed in any other way besides that.
You can't nerf Cid! He's a freaking GOD. Like it's literally part of his name. Thunder God Cid. The whole point of his character is that he is busted.
he's not God lol
I only use Rafa as a move find item bot, due to her low af brave.
So, for my own Tier List:
S-Tier: Cid, Agrias
A-Tier: Beowulf, Balthier
B-Tier: Reis, Meliadoul (WotL)
C-Tier: Luso, Mustadio, Meliadoul (Classic)
D-Tier: Cloud, Worker 8
F-Tier: Rafa, Malak
Justification:
S-TIER: Both characters have VERY strong equipment options: Knight Swords and busted ass skills that directly abuse them. Lightning Stab is just way too good on its own merits, and one of those universal "Why nobody really uses normal physical attacks in late game".
While Cid greatly outclasses Agrias in raw stat gains, the lady knight can do one thing the Thunder God can't: Become Immortal. (at least, without the busted Rendevouz-only items)
Chantage+Ribbon is god-mode, and Agrias sacrifices basically nothing to get it and for that reason alone, she is S-Tier and the only thing that comes close to Cid in raw power (besides Math Skill from the generic)
A-TIER: Beowulf and Balthier are only just behind the power-duo at the top, each for very different reasons. Balthier is the King of Speed, and unlike Ninja, he doesn't gut his HP and MP for the privilege. This lets him abuse all kinds of abilities keyed off of Speed in ways other characters can only dream of. (Jump Balthier makes him practically unkillable)
Additionally, Balthier's Sky Pirate has THE BEST equipment selection in the game (better than Cid even) and a personal skill to abuse it with in Barrage. He is the only character besides his distant relative (Mustadio) who can realistically make good use of Bows, as he has all of Musty's skills and then some.
Beowulf is OP in a unique manner: He's the one character whose power comes from winning without just doing dump trucks of damage.
Magic Sword (Spellsword) are the Oracle's (Mystic's) spells, only single target and requiring a sword or knight sword to cast. To compensate for these drawbacks, his spells have increased range, noticeably higher base accuracy, and instant-speed casting.
Having access to Chicken and Petrify alone would make him a rock-star among units, but how about adding high-accuracy Drain for boss-killing and sustain? Or Sleep for combos, Confusion for protection, Don't Act (Disable) for stalling and so on? He has in-kit synergy with a lot of stuff. Ironically, the one spell in his list unique to him (Shock) is the worst of the bunch, though you could do some cheeky snipe-plays using it since it has an enormous range.
He is the walking proof of how "Damage is not everything" and anyone complaining about Beowulf's spell accuracy clearly hasn't done the most sensible thing upon recruiting him and had a Mediator boost his permanent Faith stat up (80 - 84 is what I aim for, to keep the annoying warning message away). Without getting into the heavy mechanics of why, a small change in Faith yields large improvements in his spell accuracy.
On top of that, he has the Faith spell to inflict others with the status, should he desire to set-up his own combos.
(CONTINUED BELOW)
B-Tier: Reis and Meliadoul (WOTL).
Meliadoul is basically Agrias without AoE attacks, which is to say, she's strong and reliable in her WOTL improvement. Beyond that, there's not much to say: Breaking equipment is neat, but fairly immaterial by the time you get her since you will have Cid and his disgusting damage output before then anyway.
Reis's Dragoner (Dragonkin) is an odd Job, with innate dual-wield, innate-tame, a dragon-themed kit that is strong on paper, but of limited range and with very limited equipment choices. However, it also has the best stat-growths in the game, beating even Cid. Her Magic Attack Growth is MONSTROUS, and because she joins so late (around level 30-40) it will be primed for transfer into any MA job ability-set which she will EXCEL at. Beyond the usual magic skills, she's incredible with Iaido (Draw-Out), but arguably even better, with Geomancy; which lets her melt enemies from halfway across the map.
C-Tier: Luso is a clone of Ramza with innate Poach (Secret Hunt). Literally, that is all. Yell is busted as it's always been, but the main reason he's here instead of A or S-Tier, is because Yell's turn-by-turn effectiveness relies on stalling which uh...becomes harder to do the higher the enemy's levels become. (Speed stat inflation is real in end-game, especially with Thief Hats, Flash Hats all over the place)
O.G. Vanilla FFT's Meliadoul is much worse than her WOTL buffed counterpart since her Mighty Sword Skills can't hit monsters. (they have no equipment) This means she's fantastic for the remaining story missions, but far less useful for most of the random encounters going forward as over half of the enemies you will face on average are monsters.
Funnily enough, Meliadoul's Divine Knight Job gets Spears AND Crossbows in vanilla FFT, while sporting a really good Physical Attack growth. This makes her the one and only unit I have EVER unironically used the Equip Change support skill on.
Mustadio's placement here is really contingent on two things: The existence/absence of Balthier (who is a vastly upgraded clone of Musty...or rather, a distant relative, of Mustadio as the two share the same last name) and Musty's very limited equipment selection. One the bright side, he gets Guns and is the original intended Gun Specialist of the game. Guns are good, but the best Guns scale off of Magic Attack and Musty doesn't get much of that in his default Job. Regular guns do fixed damage, modified only by certain status effects and Zodiac Compatability so they scale quite poorly after mid-game in the original FFT. (the Ras Algethi gun Balthier comes with in WOTL is solid enough end game, especially with Barrage. But the high tier Bows are usually better with Barrage anyway...key word, 'usually')
Mustadio's other abilities, thankfully, don't rely on dealing direct damage, but rather aim to cripple the enemy. Their accuracy scales off of Speed, and Engineer has above average Speed growth, so he's actually not all that bad even in late game. (Thief Hat spammage notwithstanding, which blocks both of his main disabling moves' effects)
Pairing the Knight's Battle Skill with his Gun access or switching him over to Archer is also a solid idea for different reasons; Chemist is also a popular choice, though you really want to avoid leveling him up as one since their stat-growths are awful.
Ideally, he gets into Ninja and kinda stays there as long as he can to soak up Speed and slightly improved PA growths since it's a fantastic class for him. The low-HP growth sucks, but he's going to be sniping most of the time anyway so...eh. Lancer (Dragoon) is also a solid Job choice for him once he's leveled up his Speed enough since Jump's reliability directly scales with the user's Speed stat, and Spears do large amounts of bonus damage via Jumps (in addition to being really strong weapons in general)
Really though, Balthier straight up outmodes Mustadio, doing literally everything Musty does and then some. Just don't dismiss Mustadio until you have Cloud, because Musty's presence is still required to start basically all but one of the sidequests in Act IV.
D-TIER: Two gimmick characters with their own odd weaknesses holding them back.
Worker 8 is definitely the most unique and gimmicky of the bunch, so I'll start with 'him'. (it?)
In any case, Worker 8 is classified as a Monster rather than a regular unit, but not just any monster, but a 'Big monster'. This means he has the elusive ability to be used as a stepladder to help other characters with low Jump reach higher ground on squares he stands next to, as if he were connecting terrain. (this mechanic is rarely used, but the one place it's useful is acquiring the broken Javelin II and Gold Escutcheon items)
Mr. Roboto has 4 abilities on paper, but only two of them are really worth using. Also, using any of his abilities requires him paying a portion of his own HP. Dispose is his bread and butter, with a massive 8 squares of range and pretty strong undodgeable single target damage. The other skills are melee only and functionally similar too each other in that they all cause damage or death.
Then there's its other unique trait: Permanent Innocence. This sets his Faith to 0 at all times, making him immune to anything keyed as a magic effect, be it positive or negative. If not for his self-damage gimmick, he would actually be a very strong magic-immune late game unit (albeit, a bit slow).
Due to its limitations, it basically needs Ramza or Luso using Yell on it constantly to boost its Speed all while refueling its HP with Potions, WIsh and/or Chakra (non-magic Healing effects).
Next up is Cloud, of FF7 fame. Normally, crossover characters get special treatment, rolling out with a variety of busted abilities. Cloud has...abilities but while they're not exactly bad, most of them aren't great either.
Also: He starts at level 1...at the tail end of Act IV. His stat-growths are slightly above average (except in WOTL, where his MA growth was nerfed to average for no good reason). As a callback to an infamous early-game sequence in the original FF7, Cloud can equip Female-Only items, which is a bigger boon than you might think.
So, besides his mediocre stats and crap level, what else is holding him back? He needs his weapon, the Materia Blade, in order to use ANY of his skills. And yes, it must be that specific sword so don't lose it! The Material Blade itself is mediocre at best, so you will almost never use it as a weapon anyway.
His Limit abilities are basically 'spells' without MP costs that targets PANELS and not enemy units. Unlike two other gimmicky characters below, Limits always hit whatever is in their area of effect, so at least there's that. Because they're classified as spells, Short Charge (Swiftness) helps him out immensely. This is the real issue with Cloud: Most of his Limit attacks are okay, but not great. Finishing Touch is the best of the lot by far, and Climhazzard can be circumstantially useful for finishing off weakened enemies.
But the rest of them are ...niche or odd. Meteorain is okay since it has long range and an AoE, but it badly needs Short Charge to be usable.
Cherry Blossom and Omnislash are quite strong, but absurdly slow, even with Short Charge. (Beowulf can help combo off with Sleep here which is usually enough damage to ensure a kill or two)
The rest are just kind of not worth it. Braver is okay for power leveling since it can't miss, won't trigger counter-attacks and won't do too much damage, I guess?
Cloud can be made into a solid performer, but man, it takes a loooot of effort. Way more than everyone else above him in tier, which is why he's here.
F-Tier: Rafa and Malak
The wonder twins share effectively the same ability kit, only with different gimmicks.
First, the gimmick their spells share: They randomly trigger 1-6 times (1-10 times in War of the Lions) upon casting, targeting random squares within their range each time. This gives them, theoretically, the highest potential damage per turn in the game. However, note that the spells target random SQUARES and not UNITS within those squares. This means they can miss what you're aiming at entirely unless you manage to confine the spell's range to the single square their intended victim is standing on. (their high vertical tolerance is a bane in this case)
So..yeah. They're also potentially the LEAST reliable spells in the game. Also, while they take time to charge they don't cost MP.
Short Charge is your best option if you feel like gambling with them. They're usable but...well, regular magic is just better, to say nothing of the awesome units still awaiting acquisition down the line.
The other thing that separates Rafa and Malak's spells are their "karma" gimmicks. This manifests in the form of Faith based shenanigans.
Rafa's spells ignore the Faith stat entirely, making them hit consistently hard.
Malak's spells INVERT the normal Faith mechanic, inflicting higher damage to LOWER Faith targets.
Counter-intuitively, Faith and Innocent still work normally for both types of spells, so setting Faith status on either Rafa or Malak will cause their (potential) damage to skyrocket while setting Innocence will nullify damage as normal.
IMO, the best part of their jobs is their ability to equip Sticks (Staves/Poles) which are dreadfully underused (and underrated) weapons, being effectively "Magic Spears" that scale off of Magic Attack instead of Physical Attack. Their HP growth is also quite good (not extraordinary, but solid), so they're in theory, fairly sturdy as spellcasters go.
Of course, Reis outlcasses both of them, even at their own gimmick. (Holy Breath has the same gimmick as the Wundertwin's Spells)
One final note: Rafa is routinely used as an item-finder for the Deep Dungeon (Midlight's Deep) part of the game due to her naturally low Bravery stat of 31. Like most maps in the game, there are many Trap panels in the Deep Dungeon which will activate UNLESS the character stepping on them has the Move-Find Item ability equipped.
If they do, the game will randomly give them an item from that panel (only works once! Revisiting the map does NOT reset the item!), which most of the time, is a random chance between a "rare" or "common" item. For the Deep Dungeon, all 'Common' items are Phoenix Down, while the Rare items are (mostly) unique, top-tier equipment you (usually) can't get anywhere else.
The %chance of getting the Rare item is equal to 100 - Bravery. So HIGH Brave characters will almost always get the Phoenix Down, while LOW bravery cowards find the stuff you actually want, and since half the point of doing the Deep Dungeon is getting that phat loot, your team will want a Low Brave Gopher.
Rafa starts with 31 Bravery and is largely useless elsewhere, which makes her unusually qualified for the job.
Balthier is equal to Cid, arguably even better. Barrage + Ultimate Spear or Sagittarius Bow are two of the most broken combos in the game.
Never nerf cid, buff the things around him and make the game harder
Love tactics! Have you ever played Valkryie profile: Covenant of the plume on the ds? odd game but I fell in love with it! It was the first grid based tactics game that I thought might outweigh my love of tactics. Both GEMS
Tom, Cid can't solo the game, trust me on this I tried
The one character I'd almost be willing to try that with is a female Ninja with Dance, Counter, and Ignore Height. But I'm sure there are battles that even she couldn't solo.
Agrias availability from very early PLUS being able to use perfumes should be enough to rank her up.
Also you rated Oracles high but beowulf a B? Come on now, he's almost Cid tier
Balthier is pretty broken with barrage. I remember giving him a chaos blade and he was doing 999 or close damage per attack
I would put beowulf in A (but still below Agrias) mostly because of Shock, good equips, and being able to instanty remove units with sleep and break. He's tragically stuck to hitting things one at a time, so hes still not as good as Agrias but i'd have him in A.
I would still have cloud in B tier, but i think there's a bit too much downplaying here. The materia blade having 10 WP isnt a huge deal, because you want to use limit which is a bunch of magic attacks anyway. You also dont really need swiftness, because his lower-level limits are largely the ones that you want to use anyway. Its also not as hard to level him as gets made out, the level-based exp formula means catching him up really isnt a problem.
My spiciest take is probably that mustadio deserves a D tier. He has a (very) slight speed multiplier boost, but otherwise isnt actually that fast. Seal Evil is awesome in about 4 maps, but othereise its a dead skill, and the rest of his skillset is disabled by every enemy that randomly has the resistance accessory or wears a thief hat later in the game. And since guns dont care about your stats, he can still do his gun thing in every other class with the equip options. Realistically Mustadio is better off in chemist than in his base class, and the game eventuslly reaches a point where snipe isnt even offering more than actually having squire would. Its a shame because mustadio is cool, but fortunately chemist isna sick class so you can just use him as a chemist.
Oh, and one other minor thing ive noticedba few times: the male/female stat difference in FFT isnt +/-1. Its a difference in their starting base stats, and both the growth and current class modifiers are multipliers to this base value. So both as you gain levels *and* when you set a character to a class that has a higher active multiplier the PA/MA gap widens, and it can end up making a pretty big difference.
Cloud can equip female only gear including ribbons and perfume. That makes him an interesting choice for people who have poached up some of the better versions of that gear.
Cloud can only wear Ribbons. Not perfume.
This FFT material reminds me of ridiculously gameshark-able the original was. IIRC, it was possible to go and change individual letters in words if you had far too much patience and were willing to dedicate a boot to basically changing a few words.
as for cid here is the thing if they do a remake he should have really good stats when you get him BUT his stat growth should be ass meaning you meet the man the myth the legend and he's SUPER strong when you meet him BUT the further along you go he would be less usefull in terms of strength and speed he would still have the utility of being a swordmaster with all his skills but in strength late game he would be lacking (and thus you keep his lore of being a kick ass warrior while hinting his age is getting to him)
Cid isn't op it's his permanent haste sword.
@@patrickmcathey7081 he has the best stats in the game and all the best skills in the game. Excalibur is just the cherry on top of a disgustingly overpowered character.
Cid has always been Square's way of saying sorry to 10 year old me after making me restart the game after being softlock in riovanes castle.
If you know you know why.
But if you make Mustadio a chemist, he's the best chemist in the game.
So long as he spent enough time in machinist with his crazy speed growth, yes.
Don't get the whole argument of "it needs to be nerfed" or "it shouldn't exist", no one is making you pick a specific class/skill in a single player game. While I do agree they're busted, calling them to be nerfed/shouldn't exist is kinda a moot point. Just don't use them if you don't want to break the game, simple. There's a reason all of these are unique characters
Where would you place Byblos, the demon from Deep Dungeon?
@@ThirtyfourEC Right next to Beowulf, or maybe a tier down. He's essentially just more limited Beowulf, so.
I'm a super fan of fielding Beo and Reis. Yeah they aren't the best, but they are very good in their roles. In particular, if you boost Reis' magic stat, her breaths hit quite hard, and she has the HP to sit on the front lines without any real concern. Also helps that one of the hardest fights is against dragons, which she can tame.
I also like Meliadoul, who is very powerful... But needs opponents to have gear. If they do? She hits brutally hard and deletes their gear, making most opponents a joke. Too bad most of the scary stuff doesn't use gear.
In the remakes, Meliadoul can use her skills against foes who have no gear, which is why she ranked relatively high in this video I think
@@KirbyFrontier Huh. I never tried her in the remakes, only the OG.
@@uberpinkwarrior. Yeah, Meliadoul is greatly buffed in the PSP version.
How about monster tier list for ones you can recruit
I do like that idea.