Final Fantasy Tactics Efficiency Tier List

[Radiant Dragon]

Job Tree Chart

Summoner needs 2 Time Mage, 2 Wizard, 2 Chemist. The PSP version has higher requirements, but I don't know if the Japanese version affects anything.

Edit: Ninja'd. 349 JP isn't a lot though, considering units start with 100 - 199 JP in all jobs (once they're unlocked).

Edited July 4, 2011 by Radiant Kitty

[eclipse]

I remember that one of the notable Japanese differences was Wiegraf's Speed in the solo fight. Not sure what other differences there are, whether they got ported, etc.

Still, that means an additional 400 JP to unlock Summoner, 200 of which is in a horrid class. Will this affect the Summoner's placement?

[Dark Sage]

Time Mage isn't a bad class. It has really good abilities and it has pretty good MA and MP. It doesn't have Rods, but ah well. You can't have them all.

[Radiant Dragon]

I wouldn't call Time Mage a 'horrid' class just because they can't equip rods. Sure, this makes them worse than Wizards and Summoners, but it's far from 'horrid'.

Edit: Ninja'd AGAIN. Ugh.

Edited July 4, 2011 by Radiant Kitty

[eclipse]

The upside to Time Mage is that being smacked by a staff hurts. That's it. I'd rather take the stupid-high MA of the Wizard class, and the fact that I WANT to gain JP in that class (hello Magic Attack Up).

[Dark Sage]

Just because it's worse than the Wizard and Summoner doesn't mean it's a bad class though.

[eclipse]

Horrid for my purposes, at least. I really need the ability to chew through things, and my Time Mage doesn't quite do that.

[Aquilae]

In the original Japanese version, the job requirements were job level 3 instead of job level 2, and some of the JP costs were higher as well (Fly was higher, IIRC). They made it easier in the U.S. job release, like quite a few other games (Persona 1 =P) The PSP version went off the Japanese version requirements, so it's different.

I'd imagine the extra JP is a negative, but Time Mage can still do respectable damage with Black Magic, and your JP can be funneled towards going Short Charge, so it's not really that bad of a situation. Summoner would probably be down 1 or 2 places, but it's not changed much otherwise. I think we should stick to discussing the U.S. version.

I'd also like to dispute the ranking on Calculator. Calculator has bad stats, however you can get Math Skill easily through Propositions without ever needing to enter combat with a Calculator. The JP you get from Propositions is substantial, and by Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 there will be a lot of propositions to do for extra JP. I'd imagine you can get Math Skill by early Chapter 4, by then everything is destroyed by CT5Holy.

I'd put it just below Thief, in Low Tier, because the thing that differentiates it from the scrubs in Bottom is that it's skillset is devastating, even if the class itself is underwhelming. It's availability counts against it, but the other classes basically suffer from the same problem, or have little utility from start to finish, so I don't see a problem putting it above them.

Red Chocobos shouldn't be that high. At lower levels, Choco Meteor does underwhelming damage, and it only catches up at higher levels. Chocobos also lack in versatility compared to other classes, being restricted to only 3 attacks and no support in the form of healing / revival. They also can't equip Reactions or Supports, and their damage and flexibility is limited. I would place them at the top of Lower Mid, as their flexibility and damage options are limited, and they need to be a higher level to outdamage most other classes.

[grandjackal]

I'd imagine the extra JP is a negative, but Time Mage can still do respectable damage with Black Magic, and your JP can be funneled towards going Short Charge, so it's not really that bad of a situation. Summoner would probably be down 1 or 2 places, but it's not changed much otherwise. I think we should stick to discussing the U.S. version.

While it's true that Short Charge is undisputably awesome, I would contest the respectable damage part. I remember when I was deciding to change a Time Mage back to a Wizard for a mission, and I noticed that Wizard with it's higher magic and rods can do basically twice as much damage as Time Mages. There are times I can OHKO things with such spells (can kill Knights with Bolt 2 when t rains, which is not a simple task).You could argue I could have used Ramuh instead, but we can see that Time Mage in a way would have hurt my efficiency. You could argue t was weather as well, but outside of weather maes it all the more noticeable. Out of weather, we're talking the difference of 75 to 35. That's if we're talking around the Execution Site battle of things, at which point I wouldn't call 35 respectable damage.

I'd also like to dispute the ranking on Calculator. Calculator has bad stats, however you can get Math Skill easily through Propositions without ever needing to enter combat with a Calculator. The JP you get from Propositions is substantial, and by Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 there will be a lot of propositions to do for extra JP. I'd imagine you can get Math Skill by early Chapter 4, by then everything is destroyed by CT5Holy.

Well, Propositions are those things you get at the bars right? I'm supposing you'd just change a random scrub to Calc, have it do a proposition, and have that JP spread out among the rest of your troop? Or just use that random scrub solely as your Calc?

[Aquilae]

While it's true that Short Charge is undisputably awesome, I would contest the respectable damage part. I remember when I was deciding to change a Time Mage back to a Wizard for a mission, and I noticed that Wizard with it's higher magic and rods can do basically twice as much damage as Time Mages. There are times I can OHKO things with such spells (can kill Knights with Bolt 2 when t rains, which is not a simple task).You could argue I could have used Ramuh instead, but we can see that Time Mage in a way would have hurt my efficiency. You could argue t was weather as well, but outside of weather maes it all the more noticeable. Out of weather, we're talking the difference of 75 to 35. That's if we're talking around the Execution Site battle of things, at which point I wouldn't call 35 respectable damage.

If you actually do the calcs, Time Mage has only 1 MA less than Wizard at every point in the game. (6 vs. 7, or 7 vs. 8). Rods also give only a 25% boost to damage, which may be lost due to truncation. Taking Bolt2 with weather boost, and assuming 65 vs. 55 Fa and neutral compat,

Wizards' damage = ((8 * 5/4 ) * 18 * (0.65 * 0.55)) * 5/4 = ~80 damage

Time Mages' damage = (7 * 18 * (0.65 * 0.55)) * 5/4 = ~56 damage

I think it is ridiculous to say that Wizards do twice as much damage as Time Mages. You can see that they do only 30% less damage, and that is at an advantageous MA number for Wizards (8, which gives them a +2 MA boost due to no truncation). Time Mages 2HKO moderately squishy units like Monks or Archers, which Wizards can one-shot, but they can generally perform just as well against armored units or mages as they are 2HKOed.

I agree that Time Mage is not as good for Black Magic nuking, however you only need to gain 100 JP in the class at most, then you can jump back out to Summoner. It is hardly a negative considering you can build all of that JP in 2 or 3 battles. If you're unlocking Summoner in Chapter 2, good for you. You can send your mage on a prop that will almost assuredly give 100 JP, and you can get the 350 JP required quite easily.

Well, Propositions are those things you get at the bars right? I'm supposing you'd just change a random scrub to Calc, have it do a proposition, and have that JP spread out among the rest of your troop? Or just use that random scrub solely as your Calc?

I am obviously talking about sending a unit you intend to use as a Calculator on Props to build JP. It doesn't have to be a "random scrub", you can send someone from your main team to build JP as a Calc without directly entering battles.

[Espinosa]

I'm in agreement with AquiIae on most things, but I would just like to bring up my doubt concerning the efficiency of sending your units to propositions. You need to walk around the map waiting for the dispatched unit to return, getting into several undesirable random battles in the process. There are some towns adjacent to other towns where this could be avoided, but not all of them.

[Radiant Dragon]

Aren't the propositions the same in every town, though?

[Espinosa]

I don't believe they are, but I think that is the case with FFTA.

[Aquilae]

Props vary from town to town, and new ones may appear after every story checkpoint (list of them here: http://project-yvalice.wikispaces.com/Tact_Equip_Check). Props give more JP if you choose a longer duration, and have a higher chance of success if you send more people. You have to return to the bar to retrieve your units.

[Dark Sage]

I was given permission by the mods to update this tier list.

The following changes:

-Summoner moved to the top of the list.

-Ninja > Squire (Ramza) due to the former's move advantage, high speed, and excellent damage output. They're just so good when they're there.

-Holy Swordsman moved down to top of High, his availability hurts too much.

-Red Chocobo and Lancer down to Low Mid. Red Chocobos have offense issues early on and durability issues later while Lancers are basically knights who come later but use Spears instead of swords.

-Priest and Chemist moved to High tier

-Knight down to bottom of Low Mid, their abilities are meh and they have mobility issues and their ability to use Knightswords comes with an opportunity cost.

-Archer up a tier, their range and damage are good since they can typically 2HKO enemies like Summoners and Wizards, but can do so earlier than classes like Knights and Monks, especially if they're at high elevation. Lightning Bows can keep their offense afloat right through Part 2 and then they sort of taper off. Their early game contributions are underrated.

-Black Chocobo down to low tier, it's one of the squishiest units in the game and it's Choco Ball attack is fairly underwhelming.

[Espinosa]

Calculator probably should be Top Tier, seeing how the game's fastest speed run time relies on math skill almost exclusively throughout. Propositions are irrelevant in the argument seeing how they aren't available for a while; when they do become available, it's difficult to trigger them without wasting time running into random encounter battles, but what's important is that by grinding JP quickly (doesn't take nearly as long as you'd think if you kill all enemies and leave one weakened, causing him to hide away) you save yourself a lot of time, since the game eventually becomes text skipping + using math skill once you're done.

[eclipse]

Calculator probably should be Top Tier, seeing how the game's fastest speed run time relies on math skill almost exclusively throughout. Propositions are irrelevant in the argument seeing how they aren't available for a while; when they do become available, it's difficult to trigger them without wasting time running into random encounter battles, but what's important is that by grinding JP quickly (doesn't take nearly as long as you'd think if you kill all enemies and leave one weakened, causing him to hide away) you save yourself a lot of time, since the game eventually becomes text skipping + using math skill once you're done.

I suspect the problem is getting to Calculator in the first place, then getting the required math skills for it to be effective.

[Espinosa]

Grinding JP up doesn't take nearly as long as the time Math Skill saves you. Ramza literally ends most of the storyline maps in one single Math Skill action.

As displayed by the speed run found here, Math Skill is THE efficient way to play the game:

http://speeddemosarchive.com/FinalFantasyTactics.html

Not admitting that Calculator is at the top of efficiency play is much like discrediting FE7 Marcus for 'hogging experience', it's something you have to do to be efficient, which is what the tier is all about. The only difference is that using Marcus is a must in the first three quarters of HHM, while Calculator is a must in the last three fourths of FFT. Try speedrunning the game without Math Skill and tell me what time you'll have at the end. I can guarantee Ninja, Wizards, Summoners and Orlandu waste a lot more time taking out one enemy at a time (or occasionally small groups) than what you could've saved by training one single Calculator in Ramza.

[eclipse]

Speedrunning is not efficiency. What you linked is the former. Efficiency doesn't require a bunch of Chemists to punch the enemy Chemist in the first Gariland battle, for example.

EDIT: And it does not require the JP Scroll Glitch, either.

Edited June 20, 2012 by eclipse

[Espinosa]

You will still need to perform grinding actions if you want to unlock good jobs or skills, only difference is how much you do it, how you do it (I can think of plenty unnecessarily time-consuming ways to JP grind) and what you're investing this time into. Spending time on unlocking Bard or Dancer is pretty much the FFT equivalent of training Bors or Rebecca. Raising a Calculator, on the other hand, changes the time spent on storyline maps drastically, once unlocked, and there's no other way to match the sort of domination Math Skill does with a handful of other skills from other magical jobs.

Since there are no 'turns' (in FE sense) to speak of in FFT, the 'turns' part of 'efficiency' can only be replaced by the concept of time, hence I would say it's not a stretch to state efficiency equals time, or speedrunning as you put it, in FFT. And there's no faster way of completing the game than to turn Ramza into a Calculator at an earliest convenience.

JP Scroll Glitch wasn't used on chessjerk's earlier speedrun iirc, and Calculator was still by far his most efficient long-term investment. There, found it:

http://archive.org/details/FinalFantasyTactics_519

Even with the glitch though, you need to do a lot of manual ability grinding to unlock everything you need until the end of the game.

Can you match the time of 5:20 without Calculator?

[grandjackal]

I think the one reason that people are trying to talk you down from it is because you are basically killing any and all discussion. Seriously, if that's all it takes (for example, you haven't thought of how annoyingly difficult it is to grind a Calculator, and your assumption you need to grind at all). I would actually say that his time is not exactly that huge a change. Sure it's a lot more braindead to accomplish that time with a calc, but I'm not exactly spending a half hour on every battle.

[eclipse]

IIRC, efficiency and grinding don't go hand-in-hand.

[grandjackal]

IIRC, efficiency and grinding don't go hand-in-hand.

His argument is more that at first it's grinding, but the thing you're rewarded with supposedly saves more time overall than just going straight through. My argument is more that it doesn't really save that much time if at all. First you need the proper calc abilities which takes years on it's own since hte calc just...Sucks. Then you need the proper spells like Holy etc to make use of them, of which is also expensive on it's own. Ramza's Yell helps speed up this process sure, but it still takes a good amount of time. Then lastly, the game is not as long as he makes it out to be. It's not that hard in the later parts regardless if you have a command that automatically wins the map.

[Espinosa]

I don't want to discourage discussion, it's the opposite really - I want to provoke more thinking by expressing a strong opinion. Just feel like when we discuss efficiency, we just establish some sort of ideal efficient playthrough to which everything else should be measured, and criteria should be clear-cut and agreed upon. For example, is it time or reliability? Because what's quicker and more reliable than an instantly cast Holy against the entire enemy party that cannot be blocked or reflected?

I've done one playthrough where I avoided all random encounters and just tried to clear each map as quickly as possible, without doing any grinding. It still took quite long to finish, and I didn't enjoy having to use jobs like Thief and Archer to get to my planned destination for jobs unlocked and ready to go.

Really, a good way to describe Calculator using the FE universe is if you had an early game character, like Bors or Rebecca, whom you wouldn't really use in an efficient run, but all of a sudden, after being trained to promotion (a time-consuming and annoying task), that Bors actually became able to attack several times per turn, OHKO everyone and seize on the same first turn. Turns are very crucial in FE when we arrange options in terms of their efficiency, and so Bors would rank quite high if his performance really altered the game in this way. Indeed, looking at our turn counts, we would find that too much time is spent on getting Bors to 10/0 in order to promote, costing us turns in the earliest chapters (and don't we all want to achieve the lowest turn counts in those as well?), but once Bors does promote, he trivialises the rest of the game inexplicably. I feel that this is essentially what Calculator is in FFT, unless efficiency here means something completely unexpected to my imagination in this discussion.

As for your assumption that grinding isn't necessary... You're right, entirely so, it's not. In fact, you can dismiss using the rest of your team and ever reclassing Ramza to anything from his start as a Squire, and the game is very much beatable with complete disregard for unlocking any jobs and learning any non-Squire skills. However, even when Ramza isn't grinding, he's performing a multitude of tedious actions, not for the purpose of unlocking something but survival - such as Yelling himself until he can outspeed the opposition and then employ attack n' hide tactics to stay alive. You'll have to restart some maps of course, just because the enemies have all the wrong abilities that prevent you from winning, or luck doesn't like you this time (and maybe the next one too). The game is indeed beatable with no grinding at all, but it seems apparent that it is the choice to do no grinding that reduces the efficiency of a playthrough.

Then lastly, the game is not as long as he makes it out to be. It's not that hard in the later parts regardless if you have a command that automatically wins the map.

Path of Radiance is also an easy game, we say, and yet that doesn't encourage dumping Titania in Bottom Tier.

Edited June 20, 2012 by Espinosa

[grandjackal]

I don't want to discourage discussion, it's the opposite really - I want to provoke more thinking by expressing a strong opinion. Just feel like when we discuss efficiency, we just establish some sort of ideal efficient playthrough to which everything else should be measured, and criteria should be clear-cut and agreed upon. For example, is it time or reliability? Because what's quicker and more reliable than an instantly cast Holy against the entire enemy party that cannot be blocked or reflected?

Reliable? Sure. But I wouldn't sacrifice the time spent to have one unit do essentially nothing for a good amount of the game doing basically nothing, especially if it's highly unecessary.

I've done one playthrough where I avoided all random encounters and just tried to clear each map as quickly as possible, without doing any grinding. It still took quite long to finish, and I didn't enjoy having to use jobs like Thief and Archer to get to my planned destination for jobs unlocked and ready to go.

Well that depends, did you use Archer and Thief early? Cause that's where they're best anyways. If you wanna class that blows, use the Knight.

I did too by the way, and it didn't take that long, so...That's like...your opinion, man.

Really, a good way to describe Calculator using the FE universe is if you had an early game character, like Bors or Rebecca, whom you wouldn't really use in an efficient run, but all of a sudden, after being trained to promotion (a time-consuming and annoying task), that Bors actually became able to attack several times per turn, OHKO everyone and seize on the same first turn. Turns are very crucial in FE when we arrange options in terms of their efficiency, and so Bors would rank quite high if his performance really altered the game in this way. Indeed, looking at our turn counts, we would find that too much time is spent on getting Bors to 10/0 in order to promote, costing us turns in the earliest chapters (and don't we all want to achieve the lowest turn counts in those as well?), but once Bors does promote, he trivialises the rest of the game inexplicably. I feel that this is essentially what Calculator is in FFT, unless efficiency here means something completely unexpected to my imagination in this discussion.

You are ignoring the part where one asks "When does this magical promotion happen?" and "Once promoted, still takes work to fully set up". Godliness doesn't start with the calc. The calc takes a bunch of levels in specific classes, and then you need expensive abilities from said classes. By the time this happens, I probably don't care anyways. In fact, I would imagine that Calc is not happening super early without grinding, since I don't even think I had those classes until around the time you get Agrias fully intergrated into your team. By estimate, I would think that by the time you get fully set up, the game would at best be 2/3s done.

That or I can only imagine what the hell you were doing in your run.

As for your assumption that grinding isn't necessary... You're right, entirely so, it's not. In fact, you can dismiss using the rest of your team and ever reclassing Ramza to anything from his start as a Squire, and the game is very much beatable with complete disregard for unlocking any jobs and learning any non-Squire skills. However, even when Ramza isn't grinding, he's performing a multitude of tedious actions, not for the purpose of unlocking something but survival - such as Yelling himself until he can outspeed the opposition and then employ attack n' hide tactics to stay alive. You'll have to restart some maps of course, just because the enemies have all the wrong abilities that prevent you from winning, or luck doesn't like you this time (and maybe the next one too). The game is indeed beatable with no grinding at all, but it seems apparent that it is the choice to do no grinding that reduces the efficiency of a playthrough.

1. The whole tedium of Yell you just described is exactly the only thing Calc Ramza is doing for a huge majority of the game since him actually doing stuff takes longer, and deprives you of a combat unit early on, making the process even slower.

2. The whole luck thing you described has never happened. I cannot possibly be that obscenely lucky. In fact by mid to lategame, luck stops being a factor anyways because you have a lot of characters by then who don't give a shit. You mow through those portions anyways. The only luck based hard parts I could even kinda sorta imagine are during points in the game you couldn't possibly have a set up calculator by then.

Path of Radiance is also an easy game, we say, and yet that doesn't encourage dumping Titania in Bottom Tier.

Titania isn't the worst unit in the game for 2/3 of it.

I honestly think this is less an argument and more a tall tale with little appeal.