In my previous judgement of FF Job classes, I barely scraped the top of the barrel of the vast number of jobs out there. Some of them are really great useful skills that let you kick the crap out of the comptuer. Some make you suck more than Rafa and Malak. Well maybe that's a stretch, but you can come damn close. Here I take on some more jobs encountered thoughout the Final Fantasy series.

More Final Fantasy Job Classes

Thief
One of the basic 'old skool' Final Fantasy jobs, thief has been around for a long time. This doesn't make him good or special in any way, it's just a really old idea. Now the problem with theieves is the fact that you usually HAVE to have one. Whether it's in the form of some character (Locke) or some quality they possess (dashing in FFV, stealing in FFT), they seem to always show up to be a thorn in your ass. It wouldn't suck so much if they were consistantly useful, but they do mediocre damage at best, and their skills are more of a "long term investment"... This means there's a possibility you'll kick yourself if you don't use one. Good thing is they're not abolutely necessary so if you swing that way you can leave them on the benches. Or dual-class them to all hell. Of course, the items you can steal are nice, so they get bonus.
Verdict:   Two and one half stoves
Black Mage
Why yes, I think I will! Black mages always seem to bee the epitome of cheap damage for bosses. For bosses, and not normal enemies, because you get buttloads of normal enemies and only a few bosses. This sucks because their power is very limited by their MP which runs out fast unless you cast just basic 'fire'. And it's not even useful to cast low-level spells on enemies because your fighters are always churning out 3x the damage anyways. So who cares?! Well when you get to those bosses, they start getting useful. Nothing like shooting Fire3 (or firaga if it's your pleasure) up bosses' asses. Too bad they suck the rest of the time. On a side note, magic users in FF8 suck ALL the time, unless they're using support magic (meltdown, haste, aura). But FF8 is grossly disproportioned on damage anyways (Zell/Squall).
Verdict:   Three and 1/2 stoves
Samurai
Now we're talking! These guys are the all around badasses. When you get right down to it, no matter what skills they have, they kick so much all around ass that it's unfunny. In FFV they had the insanely useful talent, CoinToss (or GPToss or $Toss or whatever the hell your shitty translation says). It can kill almost any group of enemies in one round. And since money becomes obsolete, it doesn't really matter if you use it on normal enemies or not. You can get so many freaking JP in the Cleft of Dimensions this way, fighting those stupid mind flayers. That's not to say that in FFT, which is completely different, that they suck any less. On the contrary, they teach you two hands (which is +++) and draw out skills, which are insanely useful as well. A combination of area-effects for both healing and damage? Count me in! The only problem is their freaking swords are so hard to come by, especially the later and cooler ones. And they possibly break, meaning you need many in stock.
Verdict:   Four and 1/2 stoves
Ninja
Now on the flip side of Samurai are the ninjas. Once again, these guys are just the shit. No really, they kick more ass than anyone else I know. Two swords does it all. Pop two weapons in these guys, you get double damage! What else do they need?! Oh yeah, they can throw stuff too, but that's only moderately useful at best. Unless you have a chef's knife laying around (or SPOON as it is in FF4), who cares. But if you're in FFT, take two swords and switch jobs! Hell yeah!
Verdict:   Four and 1/2 stoves
Calculators
This is a tough one. Calculators only appear in FF Tactics, but that's okay. The only problem is that Math Skill is a really useful skill. I mean REALLY useful. But calculators suck. I dunno, they look okay (kinda dorky in a new sorta way), and their weapon selection isn't the reason you'd choose them... but they're SO GODDAMNED SLOW. I think they have a speed base of 4 while everyone else has around 8. This means it takes twice as long for the calculators to get ANYTHING done. Which makes gaining JP hard. Which makes learning Math Skill hard. And Math Skill is only really awesome if you learn ALL of it. Plus other Calculator skills are really useful (but hard to get), i.e. Damage Split.
Verdict:   Two and one half stove
Geomancers
What.... what the hell?! Why? People seem to really like these guys, but they just suck! No two ways about it, they are almost the most useless job class ever. Their only high point is that they have a high attack power. But so do knights so why bother? Geomancer skills are utterly useless, doing massive double-digit damage. Sign me up for that! Oh wait, I forgot! They have about a one in thousand chance of doing a status ailment! Woohoo! I can do 86 damage AND cast dark on my enemy!? Great! They sucked only slightly less in FFV and dressed only slightly better than trainers. Like some rejects from the ski club if you ask me.
Verdict:   One Half stoves

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Written by WrexSoul and posted on 12-09-99.
This article is ©2000 Nick Hammer.
WrexSoul@salamando.net