Final Fantasy Hacktics

Update - since the previous post I've accomplished the following:

• Took a stab at animations for new abilities
• Reassigned several R- and P-abilities
• Assigned abilities to equipment. With only a few exceptions, just about every weapon has at least one ability associated with it
• Tweaked some equipment stats
• Raised prices for just about every piece of equipment

Next step is to start implementing the proposed changes. Wish me luck; I'll post here if I run into problems (most likely with animations).

Update - since the first post I've accomplished the following:

• Came up with some high-level changes to equipment, mostly so mages' weapons will boost magick in a similar way that physical weapons boost attack
• Roughly categorized equipment types into early-, mid- and late-game
  
• Built out a table by job to show stat growths and stats at different levels. I used stats at levels 1, 10, 30, 60 and 99 as reference points
• Added stats including equipment to the table. Applied early-game equipment to levels 1 and 10, mid-game equipment to level 30 and late-game equipment to levels 60 and 99
• Determined stat growths. HP growths range from 5-9. MP growths from 1-6. ATK/DEF/MGK/RES from 5-9, with a handful of 10s (only 10s can hit the 999 base cap in raw stats). Jobs that have high ATK and MGK growth are likely to be glass cannons and have low DEF and RES growths. For example, in vanilla the Parivir has HP/MP/Spd/ATK/DEF/MGK/RES of 7/1/62%/11/7/6/5. The Cursed Blade job has 7/2/58%/10/5/7/5, and that's one of the very few jobs that can hit 999 in base ATK
• Determined monster stat growths to make them more competitive. Playable job stats growths should now underperform monster stat growths by 5%, whereas in vanilla they outperformed by 10-20%. However, when you factor in equipment, playable characters' stats should still roughly be +10% higher than monsters by end-game, which is down from +30% in vanilla
• Revisited monster elemental affinities. Plan of record is for tier 1 monsters (i.e. Sprite) to have weaknesses but for tier 2 monsters (i.e. Banshee) to have no weaknesses and additional resistances/immunities
• Also revisited elemental affinities for playable jobs
• Used MP stats to determine abilities' MP cost, power and accuracy
• Used the above to revisit some AP costs
• Determined range and AoE for abilities
• Also tweaked move, jump, evasion and resilience
• Created and executed a test plan for the "new" things I wanted to try. Results below
• Tweaked some abilities. Moved Mirror Items to Alchemist and decided on revised abilities for that set

Here's the most basic test plan I wanted to try out before locking down abilities. This is the first time I started tweaking things, so please let me know if you've tried these things out before and got different results; chances are I did something wrong.

• Space Mage - Gravity: can Yowie Draw In target more than one unit? Result: No. Recommendation: Keep as-is with a single target
• Space Mage - Repel: can Knockback target more than one unit at range? Result: No. Can Knockback knock back targets multiple spaces at once? Result: Kind of, but it's wonky and unpredictable. Can Knockback be used at range? Result: Sometimes, but not reliable. Recommendation: Set radius around user and increase AoE
• Raptor - Air Blast: can teleport target more than one unit? Result: No. Recommendation: Move teleport effect onto Whirlwind, move confuse effect to Air Blast
• Sorcerer - Last Stand: can Quicken target multiple units? Result: Yes. Recommendation: Keep as-is
• Alchemist - Wind Up: can Buckshot increase an attack's AoE (or range?) several times? Result: No. Recommendation: Remove

Next steps before I start implementing changes:

• Determine animations for new abilities
• Revisit which abilities are assigned to which equipment
• Review equipment stats and tweak as necessary (mostly the non-primary stats)

Last, I have some general questions about testing. How do you test your changes? What emulators do you use? What's the quickest way to test?

I've been using DeSmuME on my PC and it's really slow (Drastic on my Android phone is much faster). Is there another emulator you recommend, or if you use DeSmuME, a way to speed it up? (Edit: tried using this thing called Google. It's onto something. Problems solved.)

I also found that if I made a save state in DeSmuME, made some edits to the rom using Lennart's tools and then loaded the save state, the changes wouldn't be reflected (didn't test this super extensively). Instead, I needed to close the rom, reload it and work my way back into a battle again, which, combined with the slowness, was fairly time consuming.

Quote from: Chronovore on July 06, 2020, 01:51:18 pmHeavily restricted movement isn't fun. It's even worse on a melee character. It just makes them hard to use

Why is it not fun? I'd say that the vanilla game is too biased in favor of physical and against magick. Restricting heavy armor-wearing jobs' move and making light armor-wearing jobs into glass cannons seems like a good way to introduce more balance.

Quote from: Chronovore on July 06, 2020, 01:51:18 pm2. Forgive me for forgetting who it was but someone else tried assigning MP costs to everything. An important result was that Turbo MP became ridiculously powerful.

I can't remember the mod either, but I played it and had the same feedback. I think I said that all I needed to do was use it with Blitz, which dealt full damage in that mod, and it outperformed even a Geomancy-boosted Hoarfrost Blade. A couple points about how I'm designing this mod that might mitigate this:

• I'm trying to balance MP growth with costs in a way that would make this not feasible beyond a couple turns. If I recall correctly that mod had the vanilla FFTA2 MP regen every turn. I'm going with full MP from the start, no MP regen. I'm planning to set MP growth for pure physical jobs to 1, which will leave their MP at level 99 somewhere around 115. Jobs like Paladin and Ninja have an MP growth of 2, which would put their MP at level 99 around 210. Strict mages have a growth of 5 and the more utility-style mages have a growth of 3, which at level 99 will leave them with ~500-600 and ~300 MP, respectively. To use Blitz as an example, which tentatively will cost 8 MP, a level 30 Fighter (assuming no other class changes) will have 41 MP, which means that they'll only be able to use it 5x over the course of a battle. If they use it with MP Turbo, then it's down to 2x. The stat rework will make it difficult for any job to hit the 999 cap (I think there are 11 jobs that can max one stat among ATK/DEF/MGK/RES), so if you level the character as a mage for a few levels to gain MP, you're won't be able to make up your primary stat by the time you hit 99.
• If, after testing, MP Turbo still turns out to be game-breaking, then I'll yank it (I'll probably give it to Montblanc just for giggles).

Quote from: rrs_kai on July 03, 2020, 01:19:39 pmI was just comparing tanks to fast-moving offensive classes.

I agree with you. The remedy I'm going to try and pursue is to turn those classes into glass cannons

Quote from: Zeke_Aileron on July 03, 2020, 03:12:25 amAOE Cover actually breaks the game, i've tried this with my Mod before, lol.

You're missing some other stuff here as well...

I've attached the spreadsheets and an updated GF table, so hopefully these help....

Thanks, Zeke. The excel sheets make more sense now, but I'm not sure how to use the GF table. How is it different from the regular rom's hex?

Quote from: Zeke_Aileron on July 02, 2020, 04:06:47 amEternal's post of the attached notes.

Unfortunately the file is no longer available at that Sendspace location.

I downloaded the FFTA2 updated table.tbl file in one of the subsequent posts and opened it with Goldfinger, but all it seemed to do was to fill in some of the #s with characters. I wasn't sure what to make of it or how to use it.

Quote from: rrs_kai on July 02, 2020, 12:42:20 pmHere is my reasoning:
The AI generally targets units with lowest defense/resistance. If your heavy unit needs to draw fire, he needs to be the only one in range.
FFTA/A2 do not have any draw-attention or zone-of-control skills. So, defensive units are mostly the least preferred.

This is part of my reasoning behind lowering heavy armor equip jobs' move to 3 and making 4 the minimum range for spells. It should help keep mages at a distance while you march up your tanky characters. If tanks are the only ones in range, then the AI won't have a choice. The really "hard" fights are ones where the enemy targets all of your units, so a more defensive-oriented unit could be helpful.

I think my proposal for the Defender should give it more utility than before. Ideally Cover would apply to all units within an AoE, or the game would have a decoy-like skill.

Quote from: Zeke_Aileron on July 01, 2020, 03:48:18 pmStart with Max MP
BD180: B8 03 C4 E1
BD18C: 00 10 A0 E3
BEC44: BA 03 D5 E1

Bear with me because I'm really clueless when it comes to hex editing.

The first part of that line, the "BD180" - does that refer to the offset? And then the 4 hex codes after, "B8 03 C4 E1", does that imply that I should change the code I find starting at BD180 to those characters?

Similarly, for the MP channeling offset? 00321E30, when you say change it to 00 are you referring to the hex code that's found at that offset?

Quote from: Zeke_Aileron on July 01, 2020, 03:48:18 pmIt's easier to use the Nightmare Module.... if it works properly...;

I tried to use Nightmare to open the FFTA2 rom but I get an error message saying "an unnamed file was not found." Have you run into this before and do you know of a way to solve it? I seem to be able to load the modules in Nightmare just fine, and I can play the rom just fine. (EDIT: I solved this by... changing the name of the rom. Wat.)

Quote from: Zeke_Aileron on July 01, 2020, 03:48:18 pmYou look through the Animation table from Lennart's Notes and find the Hex index of the Ability you want to Change up

Where can I find the table and notes?

Quote from: rrs_kai on June 30, 2020, 01:36:19 pmMelee units with 3 move are not very useful

Can you help explain why this is the case? Heavy armor-wearing units are usually quite tanky, you can put them in the range of enemy melee units to draw fire and they get very strong beat sticks. Plus, even if their primary skill set doesn't have any ranged abilities you can usually give them ranged skills as a secondary (e.g. paladin/fighter, any bangaa melee/white monk). Since most mages have move 3, it's probably a matter of time before you can walk up to them and smash. The only potential weak spot would be against a ranged unit using light armor (4 move), assuming they can hit hard enough with physical weapons, or if there was a job that focused on weapon-range magick damage that you could put as a secondary skill set on a ranged physical unit. That could make for an interesting job.

Maybe there's a rock/paper/scissors to explore among heavy/light/magick armor, or tank/ranged/mage?

Quote from: Zeke_Aileron on June 29, 2020, 02:03:54 pmThis is doable in Hex Editing...

Thanks for the responses! I have a few follow up questions for you, thanks again in advance:

• How do I make the units start at max MP change in a hex editor?
• If it's difficult to disable the MP channeling/regen clan privileges, is it possible to instead set MP regen to 0, or remove the clan trial?
• How can I set MP regen to 0 (apart from the clan privilege - I think it's okay to ask players on this forum to avoid the clan privilege if it's too hard to implement)
• How do I reassign how Mirror Items works?
• How do I reassign abilities from one job to another? I was looking at Lennart's editor and for example, "Defend" has a race/index of hume/AD and bangaa/78, but then I looked at "Cover" and it has a race/index of hume/4E, so that index doesn't refer to the job. Should I use the FFta2TextEditor.jar that was included in the modding package?
• How do I edit equipment for FFTA2? I tried opening the rom file with Nightmare 2 that was included in the hacking suite and it didn't seem to work.
• How do I bind animations to abilities if I want to switch them up?

There are a lot of things I like about FFTA2: the variety, the sheer amount of content, the plot - I kid, I kid - but there are a number of things that strike me as less than ideal that I'd like to remedy. These include:

• The MP system punishes magick jobs and rewards physical ones
• Some of the jobs are too unbalanced
• Many of the jobs have a muddle of abilities, out of which you only need to use one or two; the rest are wasted
• While I'm no fan of hardtype mods, I find this game is too easy, even on Hard mode

At a global level, here are the changes I made:

• MP starts at max
• No MP regen (MP Channeling does nothing)
• All skills cost MP
• Magick spells have a range of no less than 4
• Debuff abilities' accuracy and damage vary by the severity and MP cost of the debuff
• Ultima is mostly gone
• Heavy armor-wearing jobs have 3 move
• Rebalanced job stat growths to remove clear-cut winners and losers
• Increased monster stat growths to roughly net out to characters stats + equipment and buff elemental resistances
• Rebalanced equipment so that mages' weapons give higher magick, not attack (unless this turns out to be too broken; I don't know what the damage formulas are)
• Equipment is more expensive than before
• Playable characters have inherent elemental resistances and weaknesses
• I don't know how to remove the halve MP clan privilege, but I tried te balance MP growths around not using it. All I can ask is scout's honor that you don't use the clan privilege

Outside of the global changes mentioned above, this is mostly a vanilla+ mod. I preferred to tweak, unless, in my opinion, a job or ability was untenable or undifferentiated enough. I nerfed some abilities and buffed others. I also did a lot more musical chairs - moving abilities one from job to another - than creating new jobs and abilities. There are physical jobs that specialize in every element (similar to the Raptor for wind). A changelog for jobs and abilities is below. If an ability isn't mentioned, it is unchanged. Nothing is final and I welcome your feedback.I'm looking for feedback on the following:

• Is there anything that's broken or freezes the game (I'll *try* to fix these ASAP)
• What jobs and abilities are OP to the point that you would never use anything else? On the flip side, what jobs and abilities are so bad that you'd never touch them (e.g. vanilla tinker)?
• How is the balance on the stat growths? Are jobs that can OHKO, like the Assassin, fragile enough? Do mages have too much MP growth that it's too easy to take a physical character and spend a couple levels as a mage to get enough MP?
• Where could the mod use additional polish (i.e. how apt are the skill animations)?

Here's what I'm dissatisfied with:

• Archer - unclear whether this job will be useful
• Space Mage - I wanted this job to manipulate ranges and AoEs. Would love to increase the AoE of Gravity and Repulse and have Repulse knock back several tiles
• Alchemist - couldn't get this skill set working properly as abilities to learn
• Idol - I wanted to focus this job around smash gauge mechanics, but couldn't figure out a way to manipulate them beyond what's in the ability editor (steal smash gauge)
• Psychic - I wanted to make this job like the Psychic in FFX-2, but I don't think there's a way to manipulate elemental resistances
• Green Mage - the skill set makes sense, but putting it on the vanilla Geomancer means by the time you unlock it you'll be up to the -ga spells so the others will be useless
• Couldn't remove the half MP clan privilege
• Not sure how to change the bazaar offerings - would like to remove the high-level equipment

You might want to check out Eternal's FFTA2 mod for pointers. I think he gave the Fighter a skill called Grapple that had the same draw in effect.

Congrats on the mod!

Could you maybe post a summary or more detailed log of the changes you made? I see different skills/jobs, and it looks like you increased the max number of units from 6 to 8 - did you similarly increase the number of units in enemy formations so the game isn't completely easy mode?

Sidewinder looks like it deals the same damage in the pre-attack estimate, but it follows up with a second hit not shown in the estimate. I had the same initial reaction as you.

Not sure about Doublehand, never used it.

I finally finished up a 300-quest run of this mod.

Overall you've done a great job and on the whole I preferred playing your mod to pure vanilla. Since your mod is close enough to vanilla I'm not going to comment on every little thing; here are the things that stood out to me:

• Luso/Keeper: Great overall class; the MP costs are high enough to stop you from spamming the strongest abilities. However, early in the game Free Energy is really powerful compared to the competition. Did you intend for Luso to have Elusion as a starting passive ability? It's really OP, especially against the Illua battles where she can take out half your party before you can move. It still leaves you vulnerable to Time Blade (although you can fix that with an accessory), but not much else. The one thing I kept wondering was what to pair this class with. I think I probably should have just stuck to Items since it does so much. Does anyone think otherwise?


• Adelle/Heritor: Thanks for buffing the Heritor's stats; I actually had a reason to level up and play as one for a change. The Heritor skillset still isn't too OP; I mostly stuck to dual wielding and used Lennart or Hilo when I couldn't get close enough. Similar to the Keeper, I wasn't sure what to pair this job with. Small nit: Lennart (and Scathe) have a 100% accuracy rate. Is that intentional?


• Bard: I wonder whether Angelsong at 12mp is still too cheap; as soon as you get MP Channeling that's almost always my opening move.


• MP costs: While I get the reasons for adding MP costs to most things, MP Turbo sort of blows everything up because it's usually more effective to use a tier-1 ability that's under 20mp with MP Turbo than it is to use a tier-2 ability that's under 20mp without MP Turbo, and there are a lot of tier-1 abilities under 20mp, if not 10mp, even when using MP Turbo. Is there a flag that could prevent MP Turbo from affecting some abilities? Outside of one character I avoided it because it seemed cheap, but it's definitely an easy way to breeze through the game.


• Parivir: I think the fire/ice/lightning blades when hitting an elemental weakness (or using Geomancy to do the same) edge out dual wielding, but just barely to the point that it might not be worth it anymore (probably not if you also consider potential Counter damage).


• Doublecast: I think you should revisit which spells are able to be doublecast. I planned on a Blue Mage / Seer to doublecast blue magick, but when I finally learned everything and tried it out, I could only doublecast Quake. I get why that made sense for Magick Frenzy, but I think you should be able to doublecast almost all, if not all, of the Blue skillset. In vanilla Red Mages could doublecast Protect, Shell and Silence, which are similar to the buffs and debuffs in the Blue skillset.


• Trickster: can't learn Arise from the Cheer Staff even though it's listed as a Bishop skill on the item. This was the biggest bug I found in my playthrough.


• Alchemist: probably more of a niche job now that relies on Bio for damage and Toad for status. I briefly tried pairing it with a Sage to make use of Hi-Ethers, but it didn't seem necessary with Halve MP. If I really wanted an item user, I'd probably slap Items on Luso or Adelle, as mentioned above.


• Sage: very glad that Ultima now has range


• Magick Frenzy: I struggled with how to build a unit with this skill. I ended up leveling as an Assassin because it looked like they had the highest combined ATK + MGK growths, but I never got my character up to level 99 to try it out with what I think would deal the highest damage, which is to pair Red Magick with a Summoner and wield a high-attack staff. The tier-1 red spells just aren't strong enough to be worthwhile (unlike the tier-2 spells on the Seer combined with dual wielding in vanilla).


• Moogles: I feel bad about asking for more, but this race is still pretty useless, with the exception of the awesome Juggler and Bard skills. Its stat growths are meh, and more importantly, it doesn't have any good passives. These guys could really use a couple worthwhile passives, or a skill like Doublecast.


• Mog Knight: Hidden Mog is pretty underpowered, especially with its MP costs. Seemed like a downgrade from Ultima Charge.


• Raptor: This class became a one-trick pony for me with Thunder Flare, which, when combined with Unscarred, does obscene amounts of damage. However, without MP Channeling or that skill, the job is pretty underwhelming. I intended to level up my Raptor to 99 before flipping it into a Hunter with Devastation as a secondary, but never got there. The loss of the Raptor's other ranged options hurt it a decent amount (unless you primary with a ranged weapon).

That's all I have for now. Thanks again!

@Leonarth: I know you're focused on FFTA, but do you foresee eventually getting around to FFTA2? The bazaar could really use a randomizer.

One question about Megido: does it divide the unit's HP damage over the enemy units, or does it deal full HP damage to each enemy unit? If the latter, if you assume that the unit's HP is similar to the enemies', then wouldn't the skill be really overpowered?

Thanks for your continued work on this!

I'm 250 quests in with most of the equipment, and I'm about ready to call it quits for now.

High-level feedback:

• I get that you removed speed growth from the equation. I'd like to understand your reasons for this. How do you think it improves the game?


• What's your thinking behind capping the max level at 75 as opposed to 99? What benefit does this have?


• Similarly, what is your justification for revamping the MP system? I get that MP growth each turn is frustrating, but help me understand why your system (starting at max MP, small gains each turn, removing things like half MP, adding MP costs to almost every skill) is an overall better experience.


• One side effect of adding MP to all skills is that MP Turbo is OP and game-breaking. There's never a reason to use any other passive ability (including dual-wield with Adelle). Even basic skills can dish out excessive damage. One possible solution for this is to remove MP Turbo, but I think it's worthwhile to explore the other options (restricting MP Turbo to certain jobs, removing MP cost from many skills) in part because of the next comment.


• Removing many reaction/passive abilities from player use shrinks the feasible options. Even if I pass on MP Turbo, I'm probably going to choose Pugilist for my physical characters and Archmage for my magical ones (I didn't back-to-back test these or check them in an ability editor, so not sure how powerful they are). Outside of the few you reserved for certain characters, there isn't a whole lot to do. Some races (Nu Mou, Viera) have meh options all around (if regenerate is the best you've got...).


• The quicken % chance associated with many abilities usually works out decently, but sometimes can be really broken (in one battle an enemy pulled off three 5-6-use chains in a row).

Job-specific feedback:

Main characters:

• Luso/Tactician: the Tactician job feels like two or three jobs rolled into one. I really like the buffs, which also strike me as the most innovative part of this job. On the other hand, the elemental/magick attacks, including the arcs, els and even things like ignis and ultima, don't contribute much (ok, the ultima is a great damage dealer, but also unnecessary). I'd recommend streamlining this job to the buffs and maybe some of the strikes (disengaging, etc.), but losing the other attacks. As is, the job has too much going on, some of which is of really limited utility, while other jobs could use the skills.


• Adelle: Adelle felt OP for most of the main quest line, which I focused on out of the gate, because of dual-wielding. My strategy wasn't much more than walking Adelle up to higher-level opponents and having her beat them up. I get it if you want to restrict dual-wielding to her, but maybe a way of smoothing this out is changing dual-wield from a Ninja skill to a Heritor one? However, dual-wielding falls off because of MP Turbo and another skill I'll get to below. Lastly, a common Adelle build is as a dual-wielding Heritor/Seer. However, in this mod you need to wield a book as a primary to use Magick Frenzy, and for some reason, even though books say they're one-handed weapons, I was unable to equip a second weapon with them (I tried both using books as the first and the second weapon, using Magician and Heritor (and even white mage) as different primary jobs.


• Cid: I never used Immunity in vanilla, and didn't seem to get much out of it here either. Am I missing something?


• Hurdy: Evade Magick isn't always the most useful reaction ability, but it's golden when you need it.


• Vaan: same as it ever was with Sky Pirate. I noticed something weird where, even though I mastered all of the Sky Pirate skills, on the job menu it looked like I was only halfway there. I usually don't run Vaan with Reflex on vanilla, but it works fine here.


• Penelo: I built Penelo as a Blade Enchanter/Dancer, but pretty much only ended up using an MP Turbo-boosted Blade Dance. I kept Reflex on Penelo.


• Taoru/Hammerknight: similar to Luso, the Hammerknight has a lot of skills, which makes it difficult to distill what the job is about. The job forces you to use hammers and shields to use its skills, which means that you have to primary as the Hammerknight. This isn't great because hammers aren't very good weapons. It also took until pretty late game to get enough scarletite for Mjolnir, the only hammer worth anything, at the bazaar. I also found the skills to be mostly lackluster. I get that they deal reduced damage because they come with status effects, but most of them aren't worth using (confuse is a mixed bag that rarely helps, immobilize can be good, but less so when you have to be adjacent to use it, and slow rarely proc'd). It was only after I got Mjolnir that some of the skills (Hammer Wave) started dealing half-decent damage; even Sonic Boom dealt sub-par damage. For most of the game I got more mileage out of using Shining Flare from my Geomancer secondary job. This job didn't really stand out at doing anything well and also didn't seem to synergize with the other Gria jobs.


• Frimelda: Strikeback, sure. I can't combo it with Unscarred, but it's ok.


• Al-Cid, Montblanc: didn't use.


Hume:

• Soldier: good improvements to this job. Not sure if it's a top contender, but between Promote for off-turns and dual-bladed it has a decent skill set.


• Thief: marginal improvements with loot consolidation and a ranged option, but it's still a crap job.


• Archer: didn't use with humes.


• Hunter: didn't use with humes.


• Fighter: I typically used this as my secondary skill set on all my humes. While the skill set maintains its usefulness, Blitz is totally OP. Late-game it doesn't pay to do anything but walk around whack enemies with Blitz + MP Turbo. With a level 75 Luso I could deal 800+ damage from behind. MP Turbo outperformed Pugilist by 2x. Blitz in vanilla is a niche skill, but it serves its purpose well. In this mod there's never a reason not to use it. Also, Backdraft behaves weirdly; I've never used it, but when the AI does it typically deals more damage to the unit using it than the enemy.


• Ronin/Parivir: this job seems to emulate the FFT Samurai job, but outside of its stat growths it's not very good. However, because of its stat growths it only makes sense to raise a hume as this or a Duelist. Shirahadori or Kiyomori is decent for an off-turn, but otherwise the damage-dealing skills (Nosada, Ashura) underperform Fighter skills. Osafune has some utility, but doesn't deal enough MP damage to matter. Can you explain why I'd ever want to use Ame-no-Murakamo? It hits allies and enemies alike, and unlike the Scholar spells there's no elemental aspect that a player can try to absorb. Murasame is a little bugged but not game-breaking; chance for confuse applies to all the tiles, but damage only hits one. I'm not sure whether Doom can only hit one or multiple.


• Duelist/Blue Mage: same stat growth comment as the Ronin. I didn't check in the ability editor, but compared to the vanilla Parivir these elemental blades felt less powerful, even when hitting elemental weaknesses (Blitz deals more damage). I think giving it abilities that hit every single elemental weakness is overkill (and makes Geomancy mostly useless), but maybe it's justified at the lower damage level.


• Ninja: without speed growth or dual-wielding, the Ninja is completely useless and there's no reason to ever use it. I'd recommend either revamping the Ninja skill set or recycling it for a new job.


• White Mage: didn't use with humes or otherwise outside of super-early game or filler with an Illusionist.


• Black Mage: didn't use with humes or otherwise outside of super-early game.


• Illusionist: didn't use with humes.


• Magician: see my above comments on Adelle. Without dual-wielding Magick Frenzy its usefulness takes a hit.


Bangaa:

• Warrior: similar comments to the soldier. Definitely more usable, but still not top-tier.


• White Monk: still a great all-around job. Not much changed.


• Gladiator: apart from the Master Monk, the Gladiator has the best Bangaa stat growths, not only for attack but also for magick, which is weird. If I want to raise a magick Bangaa, why should I have to use a Gladiator? Also, same comment on Blitz.


• Defender: didn't use, looks roughly the same.


• Dragoon: didn't use, looks roughly the same. If I recall correctly, in vanilla Dragonheart would resurrect you at HP critical, whereas in this mod it brings you back at full health, so that's a positive for it.


• Bishop: same as vanilla, except I have to raise my magick Bangaa as a Gladiator because of stat growths.


• Templar: I plan to pair this with a Bishop on my magick Bangaa, as soon as I finish maxing magick as a Gladiator. This job benefits from evening out jobs' speed.


• Master Monk: still a great all-around job. Not much changed. Not being able to use Strike Back along with Unscarred make Bangaa less powerful than vanilla.


• Cannoneer: another job that I plan to get around to using as soon as I'm done maxing attack on a Gladiator. Looks like not much has changed from vanilla.


• Trickster: loss of speed and magick growth is a nerf from vanilla. It still has great range, but not nearly as powerful as before. If you're looking for ranged Ultimas, Trickster and Cannoneer are both good.


Nu Mou:

• White Mage: didn't use outside of super-early game or filler with an Illusionist. Still healbots.


• Black Mage: didn't use outside of super-early game or filler with an Illusionist.


• Illusionist: benefits from its relative increase in speed. I never use this job in vanilla, so I don't know if it also requires characters to equip rods in order to use the abilities, which limits the job's synergies. Boosting this job's relative speed means that I never have to move and I'll get my turns more frequently than not, which makes it, I think, one of the most powerful Nu Mou jobs.


• Time Mage: like the Ninja, this is now a trash-level job without Haste/Hastega/Quicken. There's no reason to use it and it should be repurposed, like the Ninja.


• Alchemist: seems unchanged from vanilla, didn't use.


• Arcanist: seems unchanged from vanilla, didn't use.


• Scholar: also benefits from its relative increase in speed. I wanted to combo this with an Illusionist, but couldn't because its skills require books, while the Illusionist's require rods, which limits the job's synergies.


• Sage: seems unchanged from vanilla, which is fine because it has Ultima, which synergizes with...


• Cannon Mage: this is another job that has a load of skills packed into it that aren't too useful. Any ability that requires a unit to use Prime had better be worth a lost turn, and the Cannon Mage's disappoint (similar to the Flintlock, which isn't worth using for the same reason). The shots appear to deal physical damage, which isn't a good fit for Nu Mou, which are almost entirely magick-based. The other ones also aren't worth the lost turn. The primary reason to use the Cannon Mage is that it gives Nu Mou a ranged Ultima, which they lack in vanilla. The Beastmaster skill has some utility, but less so with the loss of Blue Mages. I think this job could use some reworking, especially given all the ability slots its hoarding.


Viera:

• Fencer: seems unchanged from vanilla, didn't use outside of super-early game.


• White Mage: didn't use outside of super-early game.


• Archer: while the Archer's usefulness is unchanged from vanilla, it's relatively more useful in for Viera because of the Blade Enchanter nerf. Disable and Charm are top-tier debuffs that are worth using even if they deal reduced damage, and Focus is great for an off-turn.


• Sniper: seems unchanged from vanilla, except that Beso Toxico appears to have a 100% success rate to set poison unless the target is immune.


• Blade Enchanter: Charge Blade is an interesting skill to add, and Charm is a great debuff, but overall the skills' damage appears to have been nerfed to (I imagine) offset the debuffs. The job is tough to synergize because its skills now require bladed weapons to use, which eliminates a ranged option (Sniper/Spellblade is a typical vanilla physical Viera build). I paired it with Dancer on Penelo, but I ended up only using Blade Dance and Mincing Minuet because of MP Turbo.


• Witch: seems unchanged from vanilla. Doublecast is as great as ever and combos great with the Witch, Elementalist and Summoner skills.


• Elementalist: great magick growth and relatively faster speed make this a natural candidate for a magick Viera to level as. Otherwise seems unchanged from vanilla.


• Summoner: compared to vanilla this job's magick growth was nerfed, so I was leveling as an Elementalist, but otherwise its spells are great as usual.


• Support Mage: seems unchanged from vanilla, didn't use.


• Assassin: seems unchanged from vanilla. I usually pair this with a Dancer, but couldn't fit it into my party this time around.


Moogle:

• Animist: seems unchanged from vanilla, as meh as ever. Didn't use.


• Rogue: same comment as above, marginally better but still not worth using.


• Brave Knight: seems unchanged from vanilla but benefits from its relative increase in speed. Skills still aren't great outside of Ultima.


• Tinker: still possibly the worst job in the game. Didn't use.


• Juggler: I'm used to spamming Dagger Toss, but overall I think you handled the damage nerf to it and the Smile Toss % chance nerf really well. Juggler is still a good job choice because of how powerful Dagger and Ring Toss are.


• Fusilier: seems unchanged from vanilla, still good for ranged attacking.


• Flintlock: seems unchanged from vanilla, still meh because of Prime, didn't use.


• Chocobo Knight: unlocking all Chocobo skills when mounted give this job better options, but it still suffers from the same elemental weaknesses. I only messed around with this a little, so can't speak to whether there's something else meaningfully different about it.


• Black Mage: same as above, also, useless on Moogles.


• Time Mage: same as above, trash job.


Gria:

• Hunter: seems unchanged from vanilla. I usually pair it with a Raptor, but didn't use it in my playthrough.


• Raptor: seems unchanged from vanilla. Still a good pairing for a Hunter or a Ravager.


• Ravager: seems unchanged from vanilla. Sneak Attack is still the go-to for this job. All these jobs aren't as strong as vanilla because of the inability to use Strike Back with Unscarred for additional damage.


• Geomancer: the Transmute-type skills aren't all that useful and I'd probably replace them with something else. Gil Transmute, in particular, is a waste, and Item and Loot don't do much either. Otherwise it wasn't bad having this as a secondary on my Hammer Knight.


Seeq:

• Ranger: even without Mirror Items I think this job continues to have a lot going for it.


• Berserker: with the strongest attack growth, this job benefits from being relatively faster compared to vanilla, and therefore I spent a lot of time leveling in this job, but its skills aren't that great.


• Lanista: seems unchanged from vanilla. Not the most useful job, but not terrible either. If I recall correctly, in vanilla Dragonheart would resurrect you at HP critical, whereas in this mod it brings you back at full health, so that's a positive for it.


• Viking: seems unchanged from vanilla. Didn't use.

I didn't start a new game with the MP patch. My characters are around level 17-20, and I don't have MP problems. It might be a question of the starting spells being too expensive.