Vaan: Uhlan/Machinist
Balthier: Shikari/Foebreaker
Fran: Monk/Black Mage
Basch: Knight/Bushi
Ashe: Time Mage/White Mage
Penelo: Red Mage/Black Mage
Tons of magic, good synergy, and the jobs with combo weapons (Shikari, Monk, Bushi) are all on characters with fast animations.
Hardest characters to figure out was Vaan. Partly because I don't want to use him, and the other 5 cover everything else I want doing. Ended up just giving him unused jobs so I can make use of spears and guns.
Not sure if you've locked it, but you can not actually edit the above link.
Not my file, and I forgot to mention you need to make a copy of it before you can use it. That's the original sheet everyone makes their personal copies from.
The license board strategy regarding Quickenings comes from the fact that each tile that teaches a Quickening also has some licenses behind it. Meaning that you'd need to learn the Quickening from that license tile to reach the licenses behind it. But you can only ever learn 3 Quickenings, and your two license boards have more than 3 Quickening licenses on them. This means that you can't get all the tiles on your license board; you have to choose which paths to open up.
Just for clarification since I wasn't sure about it myself until I unlocked my second job boards: Each Quickening slot you buy unlocks that slot on BOTH boards, ie if you unlock the 50lp slot on your first board it will unlock it on the second as well. Each board should have 4 Quickening slots total, but you should take both boards into account before you unlock the slots to make sure you're opening up the slots you want.
Anything super-neat or unique locked behind those slots?
A few jobs have important things behind those slots:
Shikari: ALL of their Ninja Sword licenses are behind Quickenings. This means you can't get all of them, you need to pick one to do without.
Monk: Q2 unlocks Bravery, Curaja
Knight: Q4 unlocks Exalibur
We decided to start with an approach of who we felt the character was (or who we wanted them to be), mostly getting a single job from that, then using synergy analysis to optimize the rest. I need to give it another sanity check to verify good allocation of Swiftness and key required Espers in the pairings, but at the very least each individual combo makes some sense.
Vaan - YoRHa Warrior Uhlan / Time Battlemage
The downside of this combo is that it doubles-up on heavy armor. That's pretty much the full extent of the downside. Uhlan gives some serious offensive firepower in melee, and Time Battlemage provides the excellent Crossbow option to complement this to make Vaan deadly both close and at distance while also making up for the Uhlan's slow speed with its full 3 Swiftness nodes. The support buffs from Time and Green magic give him something to do other than attack, which will help take the load off of anyone he's paired with. That's perfect for Vaan, who's ostensibly the main character.
Penelo - Sanctified Samurai Knight / Bushi
Anyone who's been reading up in Zodiac Age optimization knows about this combo. It's widely considered the best overall pairing; the Knight boosts the Bushi's lackluster physical power while the Bushi provides an excellent magical buff to the Knight's late-game array of Esper-granted white magic. Whether you're wielding katanas with extra oomph or working Excalibur + White Robes to mow down the undead, this is potentially the most powerful melee build in the game. Having a bunch of powerful healing spells is just icing on the cake. Penelo isn't as effective at the katana side as the male characters due to longer animations when optimizing combos, but her higher Magic Power will boost her spellcasting when in heavy armor, and she'll wreck with the Excalibur due to having no trouble reaching max 99 attack power in late game. Also there's something gratifying about making this unassuming orphan the most powerful warrior in Ivalice.
Ashe - Revenant of Dalmasca Monk / Black Mage
No individual job wrecks as much face in melee combat as the Monk, having the game's largest collection of 16 Battle Lores, and no individual job wrecks as much face in ranged combat as the Black Mage, having the game's largest collection of 16 Magic Lores. Put them together and you get a character that will demolish almost anything in nearly any situation. Ashe can destroy enemies with low Magic Defense in multiple ways, and resistant enemies will simply fall before her brawler onslaught instead. Now that there's no queue for late-game magic effects, it remains to be seen exactly where the Black Mage will fall in terms of overall power. If it's super strong, the Monk will be largely inconsequential beyond HP boosts, but if it falls behind, the Monk will pick up the slack. Speed is about the only issue here.
Basch - Master of Defense Foebreaker / Shikari
First things first: Shikari's Main Gauche combined with Foebreaker's shields means this build can be rendered nearly impervious to many attacks. Toss on a Decoy and watch the show. Can't manage any serious offense with that setup? That's what the 4 stat-breaking skills are for. They work on everything, and Shikari gives the speed and additional survivability to ensure that they can all get applied. This build dominates defense both in terms of supplying it for your party and demolishing the enemy's. And when all that isn't necessary, a dagger+shield speed-slash combo or ninja sword assault will do nicely, though admittedly this build lacks options for boosting the ninja sword's dark damage. That's really only important for Yiazmat, so not a big deal.
Balthier - The Leading Yuna Machinist / White Mage
Not too much to say about this common, Yuna-inspired build. It's a full-time healer that uses guns to make up for the otherwise lack of offensive power prior to Holy. Post-Holy, Machinist is mostly supplying the 3 Swiftness. I'm a little hesitant about stacking so many item buffs onto the white mage instead of spreading it out a bit, and I regret not managing a Measures+Shields gimmick combo, but frankly we didn't want to put Machinist on anyone else. The white mage is a busy job anyway and needs few distractions please, thanks.
Fran - Stereotypical Elf Archer / Red Battlemage
Again, a fairly unimaginative but effective combination that matches the character's intent in the game's fiction while faltering a bit in statistics. Everyone knows, Fran is the worst archer, and she's only a middling mage. I wanted to take advantage of her VIT with something like Foebreaker, but alas, this is how the jobs aligned this time. All that said, this is a potent combination that should have little difficulty being important and relevant for the whole game. Archer is a somewhat middling job overall, but that's just fine when paired with Red Battlemage, an extraordinarily busy job that has no time for double-dipping shenanigans. Archer provides the speed and a ranged physical option for when magic is ineffective and maces are dangerous, which is nice in the early game. Late game, though, it offers the Burning Bow to Red Battlemage's Ardor, making this one of only two combinations that permits boosting that powerful spell's elemental prowess (the other being the excessively double-dipping Black Mage / Red Battlemage).
This game looks and sounds fantastic, and I love the fast-forward already. I'm still at the beginning bit (Sunstone) because I spent so long planning everyone's jobs, but it was time well spent (entertaining!). Starting out with Vaan and Penelo as Uhlan and Knight is already giving me an experience I've never had with this game (think I've always done the first few hours exactly the same every play).
Also saw those invisible weapons mentioned earlier. They're ultra-rare gimmicky items (there's even an invisible shield), and they're all so powerful that they essentially break the game completely. Feels like a NG- survival tool or a joke more than anything else. Avoid them if you want to engage with the game's mechanics. The bow in particular will one-shot practically anything and has silly long range on top of high evasion, as an example of how nuts these things are.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
The license board strategy regarding Quickenings comes from the fact that each tile that teaches a Quickening also has some licenses behind it. Meaning that you'd need to learn the Quickening from that license tile to reach the licenses behind it. But you can only ever learn 3 Quickenings, and your two license boards have more than 3 Quickening licenses on them. This means that you can't get all the tiles on your license board; you have to choose which paths to open up.
So this means I probably shouldn't grab the quickening on the machinist board that's in a dead end by itself?
The license board strategy regarding Quickenings comes from the fact that each tile that teaches a Quickening also has some licenses behind it. Meaning that you'd need to learn the Quickening from that license tile to reach the licenses behind it. But you can only ever learn 3 Quickenings, and your two license boards have more than 3 Quickening licenses on them. This means that you can't get all the tiles on your license board; you have to choose which paths to open up.
So this means I probably shouldn't grab the quickening on the machinist board that's in a dead end by itself?
That depends on what other job you plan to give your Machinist. Apparently, taking a Quickening on one job will also unlock the Quickening tile with that same LP cost on the other job. It may be a dead end on Machinist, but perhaps it unlocks something good on another job.
We decided to start with an approach of who we felt the character was (or who we wanted them to be), mostly getting a single job from that, then using synergy analysis to optimize the rest. I need to give it another sanity check to verify good allocation of Swiftness and key required Espers in the pairings, but at the very least each individual combo makes some sense.
Vaan - YoRHa Warrior Uhlan / Time Battlemage
The downside of this combo is that it doubles-up on heavy armor. That's pretty much the full extent of the downside. Uhlan gives some serious offensive firepower in melee, and Time Battlemage provides the excellent Crossbow option to complement this to make Vaan deadly both close and at distance while also making up for the Uhlan's slow speed with its full 3 Swiftness nodes. The support buffs from Time and Green magic give him something to do other than attack, which will help take the load off of anyone he's paired with. That's perfect for Vaan, who's ostensibly the main character.
Penelo - Sanctified Samurai Knight / Bushi
Anyone who's been reading up in Zodiac Age optimization knows about this combo. It's widely considered the best overall pairing; the Knight boosts the Bushi's lackluster physical power while the Bushi provides an excellent magical buff to the Knight's late-game array of Esper-granted white magic. Whether you're wielding katanas with extra oomph or working Excalibur + White Robes to mow down the undead, this is potentially the most powerful melee build in the game. Having a bunch of powerful healing spells is just icing on the cake. Penelo isn't as effective at the katana side as the male characters due to longer animations when optimizing combos, but her higher Magic Power will boost her spellcasting when in heavy armor, and she'll wreck with the Excalibur due to having no trouble reaching max 99 attack power in late game. Also there's something gratifying about making this unassuming orphan the most powerful warrior in Ivalice.
Ashe - Revenant of Dalmasca Monk / Black Mage
No individual job wrecks as much face in melee combat as the Monk, having the game's largest collection of 16 Battle Lores, and no individual job wrecks as much face in ranged combat as the Black Mage, having the game's largest collection of 16 Magic Lores. Put them together and you get a character that will demolish almost anything in nearly any situation. Ashe can destroy enemies with low Magic Defense in multiple ways, and resistant enemies will simply fall before her brawler onslaught instead. Now that there's no queue for late-game magic effects, it remains to be seen exactly where the Black Mage will fall in terms of overall power. If it's super strong, the Monk will be largely inconsequential beyond HP boosts, but if it falls behind, the Monk will pick up the slack. Speed is about the only issue here.
Basch - Master of Defense Foebreaker / Shikari
First things first: Shikari's Main Gauche combined with Foebreaker's shields means this build can be rendered nearly impervious to many attacks. Toss on a Decoy and watch the show. Can't manage any serious offense with that setup? That's what the 4 stat-breaking skills are for. They work on everything, and Shikari gives the speed and additional survivability to ensure that they can all get applied. This build dominates defense both in terms of supplying it for your party and demolishing the enemy's. And when all that isn't necessary, a dagger+shield speed-slash combo or ninja sword assault will do nicely, though admittedly this build lacks options for boosting the ninja sword's dark damage. That's really only important for Yiazmat, so not a big deal.
Balthier - The Leading Yuna Machinist / White Mage
Not too much to say about this common, Yuna-inspired build. It's a full-time healer that uses guns to make up for the otherwise lack of offensive power prior to Holy. Post-Holy, Machinist is mostly supplying the 3 Swiftness. I'm a little hesitant about stacking so many item buffs onto the white mage instead of spreading it out a bit, and I regret not managing a Measures+Shields gimmick combo, but frankly we didn't want to put Machinist on anyone else. The white mage is a busy job anyway and needs few distractions please, thanks.
Fran - Stereotypical Elf Archer / Red Battlemage
Again, a fairly unimaginative but effective combination that matches the character's intent in the game's fiction while faltering a bit in statistics. Everyone knows, Fran is the worst archer, and she's only a middling mage. I wanted to take advantage of her VIT with something like Foebreaker, but alas, this is how the jobs aligned this time. All that said, this is a potent combination that should have little difficulty being important and relevant for the whole game. Archer is a somewhat middling job overall, but that's just fine when paired with Red Battlemage, an extraordinarily busy job that has no time for double-dipping shenanigans. Archer provides the speed and a ranged physical option for when magic is ineffective and maces are dangerous, which is nice in the early game. Late game, though, it offers the Burning Bow to Red Battlemage's Ardor, making this one of only two combinations that permits boosting that powerful spell's elemental prowess (the other being the excessively double-dipping Black Mage / Red Battlemage).
This game looks and sounds fantastic, and I love the fast-forward already. I'm still at the beginning bit (Sunstone) because I spent so long planning everyone's jobs, but it was time well spent (entertaining!). Starting out with Vaan and Penelo as Uhlan and Knight is already giving me an experience I've never had with this game (think I've always done the first few hours exactly the same every play).
Also saw those invisible weapons mentioned earlier. They're ultra-rare gimmicky items (there's even an invisible shield), and they're all so powerful that they essentially break the game completely. Feels like a NG- survival tool or a joke more than anything else. Avoid them if you want to engage with the game's mechanics. The bow in particular will one-shot practically anything and has silly long range on top of high evasion, as an example of how nuts these things are.
That setup sounds cool. I dunno if I'll change my own job combos, but I think now I want to make Ashe the BLM/MNK instead of Penelo. Our vengeful princess is gonna bust some heads.
You can break boss stats and the damage cap in TZA. When will animation speed for their weapons ever realistically shackle you?
I'm not saying I'm being reasonable, here. :P
@Raiden333, is concern about the animation speed here not addressed by the FastForward option?
No.
The speed play speeds up the entire world. The exact same game is playing out, just sped up.
Balthier's gun DPS is exactly the same. It's just that the seconds are twice as fast.
You can also change it to four times as fast in the options menu. It's pretty amazing, and will probably cut 20 hours of "playtime" off of a run. As an adult with more responsibilities and less game time this is the best feature ever.
You can break boss stats and the damage cap in TZA. When will animation speed for their weapons ever realistically shackle you?
I'm not saying I'm being reasonable, here. :P
Raiden333, is concern about the animation speed here not addressed by the FastForward option?
No.
The speed play speeds up the entire world. The exact same game is playing out, just sped up.
Balthier's gun DPS is exactly the same. It's just that the seconds are twice as fast.
You can also change it to four times as fast in the options menu. It's pretty amazing, and will probably cut 20 hours of "playtime" off of a run. As an adult with more responsibilities and less game time this is the best feature ever.
I am going to be VERY interested to see where this game is in terms of speedrunning next year.
I get the feeling that speed running rules for this game will either have the speed feature disabled or clock "in-game" time instead of real time.
Like, it feels to me like the idea of using an emulator with a similar speed-up function to speedrun Zelda: A Link to the Past.
It doesn't really matter what features are used, it's all about consistency. If people like sped-up runs more (runners and watchers), then that will become the new standard. Or, at least, a new category.
That said, I don't think I've ever even heard about a FFXII speedrun. Anything X or later seems to be rare to speedrun, or perhaps I'm watching the wrong streams :P
I think there's enough depth in 4x speed to make it viable.
It's FAST, so fast there's an actual element of skill in being able to do things like move around Rabanastre without bumping into walls or even staying in melee range of enemies that like to move around.
A 4x mode speedrun would also bring the entire run time down from "JRPG scale" to "easily watchable."
Speed runs of RPG's are... weird. I've watched a few, and I certainly do like them. But it feels like they're... cheating. They're obviously not, and the memorization skills needed to remember all that RNG manipulation they do is voodoo magic. But RNG manipulation just... feels like cheating to me. Or at the very least "not cricket" as the brits would put it. But that's just me and I otherwise don't really give a hoot either way.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
I've watched quite a few and I definitely prefer the ones that don't try to constrain how much game state manipulation they're going to attempt and go straight into exploiting the shit out of glitches like FFIV Die Hard%, Earthbound stairs glitch, or Zelda LttP swordless (any% or all dungeons).
I'm the opposite. I do not enjoy speed runs that use exploits. I prefer speed runs that do it fast but also do it "the right way."
Like... at least year's Games Done Quick, they cleared all of Oblivion in like 5 minutes or something. That isn't even playing the game. Why even bother. An exploit that lets you skip straight to the end of the game is not really even speed running in my book. Different strokes and all that. I know there are people who enjoy watching that. I'm just not one of them. I'm more impressed when someone can do something very fast and efficiently while still staying within the confines of the vision and intent of the game developers.
Example: Super Mario 1. I'm not interested in a speed run that uses the glitches, warp pipes, and all of that to skip 85% of the game. But show me a guy that can run all levels back to back, skipping nothing at all, and do it fast, and that impresses me.
Well that all escalated quickly. . .also this is not the game to play without subtitles.
"Get the hell out of me" - [ex]girlfriend
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pyromaniac221this just might bean interestin YTRegistered Userregular
The only time so far where I've had trouble hearing and understanding the dialogue has been (~5 hours in after the fourth permanent party member joins)
when you're getting on Baltheir's airship for the first time and that CG cutscene plays, I caught exactly zero of what Balthier and Basch were saying to each other. Just drowned in the music.
I thought I had settled on my party, but now I'm hit with indecision again. It really comes down to Ashe. Basch is defintely getting Knight/Bushin and Balthier Machinist/White Mage, so if I don't want to double up that leaves Uhlan/Time Battlemage for Ashe. If I don't care, Knight/Time Battlemage for Ashe sounds really good and gives me a strong second support character. I wouldn't hurt myself any by skipping Uhlan, right?
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So now that I've played a few hours of FFXII, does the combat ever...pick up at all? Even setting aside the fact that the gambit system encourages automation, it just feels like nothing is happening in combat. Abilities seem to be very few and far in between, and the few people who even can cast spells don't have the mana for me to do it with any regularity. It's...kind of boring? I have to do most normal combat on 2X just so I'm not sitting around watching characters auto attack.
So now that I've played a few hours of FFXII, does the combat ever...pick up at all? Even setting aside the fact that the gambit system encourages automation, it just feels like nothing is happening in combat. Abilities seem to be very few and far in between, and the few people who even can cast spells don't have the mana for me to do it with any regularity. It's...kind of boring? I have to do most normal combat on 2X just so I'm not sitting around watching characters auto attack.
In a small number of sections maybe, but overall no, not very much. If you want a more active gameplay experience, run with few if any gambits, and run the game on Active (so the game doesn't stop when choosing actions)
Man I'm pretty sure I'm near the end of FFXV. Both glad and sad... I'd love to go back and do some of the other content that I missed (lots of fun hunts and stuff) but I have Horizon sitting there unopened as well as Final Fantasy 12 HD.
More thoughts on FFXV (as I know you guys LOVE reading about the game)
I actually really like the game but the tonal change was so very abrupt that it was very jarring. I feel like they could have really eased into it but they didn't. Seriously one minute it's "Okay let's head to this port town and meet up with Luna and do awesome stuff this is great! I've never left the continent before!" and the next it's "Luna's dead. Ignis is blind. Prompto is missing. Everyone is dying. Night is longer, more Daemons, the Chancellor is a dick. Kill yourself.
I thought I had settled on my party, but now I'm hit with indecision again. It really comes down to Ashe. Basch is defintely getting Knight/Bushin and Balthier Machinist/White Mage, so if I don't want to double up that leaves Uhlan/Time Battlemage for Ashe. If I don't care, Knight/Time Battlemage for Ashe sounds really good and gives me a strong second support character. I wouldn't hurt myself any by skipping Uhlan, right?
Both Uhlan and Knight should combo quite effectively with a Time Battlemage. I'm using Uhlan/Time myself, but there's nothing wrong with doubling up on Knight. The one downside is that you can only unlock high-end White Magic for one of your Knights, and with a Knight/Bushi and Knight/Time that's actually a really hard decision for who should get it. But that's a good problem to have.
So now that I've played a few hours of FFXII, does the combat ever...pick up at all? Even setting aside the fact that the gambit system encourages automation, it just feels like nothing is happening in combat. Abilities seem to be very few and far in between, and the few people who even can cast spells don't have the mana for me to do it with any regularity. It's...kind of boring? I have to do most normal combat on 2X just so I'm not sitting around watching characters auto attack.
With respect to the stuff you're saying here, yes it picks up. There are an assortment of abilities that grant additional MP for doing all sorts of things (getting hit, hitting enemies, killing enemies, etc). Then there's the Charge ability you'll get which just straight up gives you MP, though it has a chance of failing (and failing empties all your MP). So you only use it when you're basically out and need to to continue casting. You'll also unlock Channeling abilities that give passive reductions to MP costs.
Boss battles will become quite hectic actually with all the sorts of strategy you're used to in Final Fantasy games (plus some extra positioning elements that only XII and the MMOs can really offer). Some dungeons will too, as you'll occasionally be beset by hordes of foes and dangerous enemies with powerful abilities.
All that said, you can automate a good deal of the game, and you can of course power-level to the point where very little is challenging. And you can power-level with 4x speed to make it even less of an investment.
In the end the level of engagement is fairly similar to lots of past entries, only instead of having to repeatedly select "Attack" for your dudes and occasionally "Cure," you can set that up to be mostly automatic. The game certainly isn't as engaging in combat as XIII, but the forethought strategy of advanced automation capabilities combined with battles existing on the normal map screens adds some new dimensions to the overall experience that may or may not be to your tastes. At the very least it should be as overall engaging as something like VI or VII, with the early-game being about as straightforward as those earlier titles. Early-game engagement is mostly limited to Steal (which can't be very effectively automated, though its utility decreases later as access to money and good equipment is more open).
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
So now that I've played a few hours of FFXII, does the combat ever...pick up at all? Even setting aside the fact that the gambit system encourages automation, it just feels like nothing is happening in combat. Abilities seem to be very few and far in between, and the few people who even can cast spells don't have the mana for me to do it with any regularity. It's...kind of boring? I have to do most normal combat on 2X just so I'm not sitting around watching characters auto attack.
Abilities are slow to trickle in in the beginning, as well as enemies that do more than just smack on you. The game picks up certainly in terms of threat (there are boss fights that will wreck you if you're not prepared for it - I'm thinking of an earlier one in particular), but it's unlikely that you will die in the game if you're familiar at all with the systems at work.
All three female characters start with Cure, so it's fine. I'm going all-in with physical jobs for my first set, leaving the magic for later.
The official guide even suggests waiting until access to your second job to select any jobs, so you can save there and use that save in future playthroughs with different job combinations for everyone.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Yea, yuck. What a "tip." The first quarter or fifth of the game isn't that long that I'd want to slog my way through it with starting gear/abilities/health. This is from someone who has now done it 3 times. Add, that if the goal is to see how the different combo's work, there's a good chunk of fighting in between that you're missing out on testing it with.
ok, so I picked TZA up last night, should be downloaded by the time I get home. I played the original but hated the lost items from opening early chests....so stupid. I refuse to play a game a second time when it's as long as this one. That said, I don't want to miss stuff, it really hits my completionist OCD. I understand they removed the chest limits. But are there other things I need to be googling so that I don't miss them?
I read the bit earlier about board lockouts, I can deal with that because it's a choice.
ok, so I picked TZA up last night, should be downloaded by the time I get home. I played the original but hated the lost items from opening early chests....so stupid. I refuse to play a game a second time when it's as long as this one. That said, I don't want to miss stuff, it really hits my completionist OCD. I understand they removed the chest limits. But are there other things I need to be googling so that I don't miss them?
I read the bit earlier about board lockouts, I can deal with that because it's a choice.
Also, Vaan hate...just...yea.
No. None of that stuff is in the game.
As for Vaan. . .he's still in the game. As an everyman I like the fellow, though it's a bit obnoxious that they clearly overstat him so that people actually use the "main character."
Yea, yuck. What a "tip." The first quarter or fifth of the game isn't that long that I'd want to slog my way through it with starting gear/abilities/health. This is from someone who has now done it 3 times. Add, that if the goal is to see how the different combo's work, there's a good chunk of fighting in between that you're missing out on testing it with.
It's a qualified tip. They're clear that parts will be a bit rough (but they're there to help if you go that route), that it's not for everyone, and also here's a recommended assignment for all characters if you don't even want to deal with it. Basically, advice for all types of players. It's a great guide!
I'm wondering how well FFT-style Single Class Challenges will work now.
I'd love a Four Job Fiesta for this game! That allows for all 6 combinations of the 4 jobs, so each character gets a unique build with no combinations left out.
Lots of ugly combos there, though, particularly where a dearth of healing is concerned. Wonder how tolerable this game's mechanics are to such things without so many exploitable mechanics that FF5 offered (excluding for a moment the invisible weapons, which would have to be banned from such events). I'd guess pretty tolerable given the existence of NG- as an actual thing.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
I feel like a fiesta-type run for TZA would be six jobs instead, to stick with the one-per-character theme.
And you could have variants of the run. The most obvious is whether or not you allow for duplicate rolls (Ashe and Balthier both rolling Monk, for example)
Posts
Not my file, and I forgot to mention you need to make a copy of it before you can use it. That's the original sheet everyone makes their personal copies from.
A few jobs have important things behind those slots:
Shikari: ALL of their Ninja Sword licenses are behind Quickenings. This means you can't get all of them, you need to pick one to do without.
Monk: Q2 unlocks Bravery, Curaja
Knight: Q4 unlocks Exalibur
Vaan - YoRHa Warrior
Uhlan / Time Battlemage
The downside of this combo is that it doubles-up on heavy armor. That's pretty much the full extent of the downside. Uhlan gives some serious offensive firepower in melee, and Time Battlemage provides the excellent Crossbow option to complement this to make Vaan deadly both close and at distance while also making up for the Uhlan's slow speed with its full 3 Swiftness nodes. The support buffs from Time and Green magic give him something to do other than attack, which will help take the load off of anyone he's paired with. That's perfect for Vaan, who's ostensibly the main character.
Penelo - Sanctified Samurai
Knight / Bushi
Anyone who's been reading up in Zodiac Age optimization knows about this combo. It's widely considered the best overall pairing; the Knight boosts the Bushi's lackluster physical power while the Bushi provides an excellent magical buff to the Knight's late-game array of Esper-granted white magic. Whether you're wielding katanas with extra oomph or working Excalibur + White Robes to mow down the undead, this is potentially the most powerful melee build in the game. Having a bunch of powerful healing spells is just icing on the cake. Penelo isn't as effective at the katana side as the male characters due to longer animations when optimizing combos, but her higher Magic Power will boost her spellcasting when in heavy armor, and she'll wreck with the Excalibur due to having no trouble reaching max 99 attack power in late game. Also there's something gratifying about making this unassuming orphan the most powerful warrior in Ivalice.
Ashe - Revenant of Dalmasca
Monk / Black Mage
No individual job wrecks as much face in melee combat as the Monk, having the game's largest collection of 16 Battle Lores, and no individual job wrecks as much face in ranged combat as the Black Mage, having the game's largest collection of 16 Magic Lores. Put them together and you get a character that will demolish almost anything in nearly any situation. Ashe can destroy enemies with low Magic Defense in multiple ways, and resistant enemies will simply fall before her brawler onslaught instead. Now that there's no queue for late-game magic effects, it remains to be seen exactly where the Black Mage will fall in terms of overall power. If it's super strong, the Monk will be largely inconsequential beyond HP boosts, but if it falls behind, the Monk will pick up the slack. Speed is about the only issue here.
Basch - Master of Defense
Foebreaker / Shikari
First things first: Shikari's Main Gauche combined with Foebreaker's shields means this build can be rendered nearly impervious to many attacks. Toss on a Decoy and watch the show. Can't manage any serious offense with that setup? That's what the 4 stat-breaking skills are for. They work on everything, and Shikari gives the speed and additional survivability to ensure that they can all get applied. This build dominates defense both in terms of supplying it for your party and demolishing the enemy's. And when all that isn't necessary, a dagger+shield speed-slash combo or ninja sword assault will do nicely, though admittedly this build lacks options for boosting the ninja sword's dark damage. That's really only important for Yiazmat, so not a big deal.
Balthier - The Leading Yuna
Machinist / White Mage
Not too much to say about this common, Yuna-inspired build. It's a full-time healer that uses guns to make up for the otherwise lack of offensive power prior to Holy. Post-Holy, Machinist is mostly supplying the 3 Swiftness. I'm a little hesitant about stacking so many item buffs onto the white mage instead of spreading it out a bit, and I regret not managing a Measures+Shields gimmick combo, but frankly we didn't want to put Machinist on anyone else. The white mage is a busy job anyway and needs few distractions please, thanks.
Fran - Stereotypical Elf
Archer / Red Battlemage
Again, a fairly unimaginative but effective combination that matches the character's intent in the game's fiction while faltering a bit in statistics. Everyone knows, Fran is the worst archer, and she's only a middling mage. I wanted to take advantage of her VIT with something like Foebreaker, but alas, this is how the jobs aligned this time. All that said, this is a potent combination that should have little difficulty being important and relevant for the whole game. Archer is a somewhat middling job overall, but that's just fine when paired with Red Battlemage, an extraordinarily busy job that has no time for double-dipping shenanigans. Archer provides the speed and a ranged physical option for when magic is ineffective and maces are dangerous, which is nice in the early game. Late game, though, it offers the Burning Bow to Red Battlemage's Ardor, making this one of only two combinations that permits boosting that powerful spell's elemental prowess (the other being the excessively double-dipping Black Mage / Red Battlemage).
Also saw those invisible weapons mentioned earlier. They're ultra-rare gimmicky items (there's even an invisible shield), and they're all so powerful that they essentially break the game completely. Feels like a NG- survival tool or a joke more than anything else. Avoid them if you want to engage with the game's mechanics. The bow in particular will one-shot practically anything and has silly long range on top of high evasion, as an example of how nuts these things are.
So this means I probably shouldn't grab the quickening on the machinist board that's in a dead end by itself?
That depends on what other job you plan to give your Machinist. Apparently, taking a Quickening on one job will also unlock the Quickening tile with that same LP cost on the other job. It may be a dead end on Machinist, but perhaps it unlocks something good on another job.
@Raiden333, is concern about the animation speed here not addressed by the FastForward option?
No.
The speed play speeds up the entire world. The exact same game is playing out, just sped up.
Balthier's gun DPS is exactly the same. It's just that the seconds are twice as fast.
That setup sounds cool. I dunno if I'll change my own job combos, but I think now I want to make Ashe the BLM/MNK instead of Penelo. Our vengeful princess is gonna bust some heads.
You can also change it to four times as fast in the options menu. It's pretty amazing, and will probably cut 20 hours of "playtime" off of a run. As an adult with more responsibilities and less game time this is the best feature ever.
I am going to be VERY interested to see where this game is in terms of speedrunning next year.
Like, it feels to me like the idea of using an emulator with a similar speed-up function to speedrun Zelda: A Link to the Past.
It doesn't really matter what features are used, it's all about consistency. If people like sped-up runs more (runners and watchers), then that will become the new standard. Or, at least, a new category.
That said, I don't think I've ever even heard about a FFXII speedrun. Anything X or later seems to be rare to speedrun, or perhaps I'm watching the wrong streams :P
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It's FAST, so fast there's an actual element of skill in being able to do things like move around Rabanastre without bumping into walls or even staying in melee range of enemies that like to move around.
A 4x mode speedrun would also bring the entire run time down from "JRPG scale" to "easily watchable."
Like... at least year's Games Done Quick, they cleared all of Oblivion in like 5 minutes or something. That isn't even playing the game. Why even bother. An exploit that lets you skip straight to the end of the game is not really even speed running in my book. Different strokes and all that. I know there are people who enjoy watching that. I'm just not one of them. I'm more impressed when someone can do something very fast and efficiently while still staying within the confines of the vision and intent of the game developers.
Example: Super Mario 1. I'm not interested in a speed run that uses the glitches, warp pipes, and all of that to skip 85% of the game. But show me a guy that can run all levels back to back, skipping nothing at all, and do it fast, and that impresses me.
Asking for a couple of friends.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
There's a couple different ways, including the shop at Phon Coast.
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The Japanese dialogue sounds like they might have retouched it a bit. It's really crisp and clear, but I'm not much of a fan of the Japanese dialogue.
Thanks, looks like Phon is the closest to where I am now.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
In a small number of sections maybe, but overall no, not very much. If you want a more active gameplay experience, run with few if any gambits, and run the game on Active (so the game doesn't stop when choosing actions)
More thoughts on FFXV (as I know you guys LOVE reading about the game)
With respect to the stuff you're saying here, yes it picks up. There are an assortment of abilities that grant additional MP for doing all sorts of things (getting hit, hitting enemies, killing enemies, etc). Then there's the Charge ability you'll get which just straight up gives you MP, though it has a chance of failing (and failing empties all your MP). So you only use it when you're basically out and need to to continue casting. You'll also unlock Channeling abilities that give passive reductions to MP costs.
Boss battles will become quite hectic actually with all the sorts of strategy you're used to in Final Fantasy games (plus some extra positioning elements that only XII and the MMOs can really offer). Some dungeons will too, as you'll occasionally be beset by hordes of foes and dangerous enemies with powerful abilities.
All that said, you can automate a good deal of the game, and you can of course power-level to the point where very little is challenging. And you can power-level with 4x speed to make it even less of an investment.
In the end the level of engagement is fairly similar to lots of past entries, only instead of having to repeatedly select "Attack" for your dudes and occasionally "Cure," you can set that up to be mostly automatic. The game certainly isn't as engaging in combat as XIII, but the forethought strategy of advanced automation capabilities combined with battles existing on the normal map screens adds some new dimensions to the overall experience that may or may not be to your tastes. At the very least it should be as overall engaging as something like VI or VII, with the early-game being about as straightforward as those earlier titles. Early-game engagement is mostly limited to Steal (which can't be very effectively automated, though its utility decreases later as access to money and good equipment is more open).
Abilities are slow to trickle in in the beginning, as well as enemies that do more than just smack on you. The game picks up certainly in terms of threat (there are boss fights that will wreck you if you're not prepared for it - I'm thinking of an earlier one in particular), but it's unlikely that you will die in the game if you're familiar at all with the systems at work.
Not very. You'll have Cure on I believe two or three characters regardless of job taken.
You'll be using a lot of potions. I tried using First Aid and it's pretty useless.
The official guide even suggests waiting until access to your second job to select any jobs, so you can save there and use that save in future playthroughs with different job combinations for everyone.
And in not waiting until Belias to get licenses.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I read the bit earlier about board lockouts, I can deal with that because it's a choice.
Also, Vaan hate...just...yea.
The whole team.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
No. None of that stuff is in the game.
As for Vaan. . .he's still in the game. As an everyman I like the fellow, though it's a bit obnoxious that they clearly overstat him so that people actually use the "main character."
I'd love a Four Job Fiesta for this game! That allows for all 6 combinations of the 4 jobs, so each character gets a unique build with no combinations left out.
Lots of ugly combos there, though, particularly where a dearth of healing is concerned. Wonder how tolerable this game's mechanics are to such things without so many exploitable mechanics that FF5 offered (excluding for a moment the invisible weapons, which would have to be banned from such events). I'd guess pretty tolerable given the existence of NG- as an actual thing.
And you could have variants of the run. The most obvious is whether or not you allow for duplicate rolls (Ashe and Balthier both rolling Monk, for example)