Creating a Tier List for Bravely Default jobs is a hard task. The whole game is designed around experimenting, customising and trying everything available. Each job has it’s highs and lows, but they all have something to offer for a certain build, and they can all carve out a niche in your team. Sure, they’re not all the Red & Black Mage beastly combination, but they’re fun nonetheless, and we don’t want to discourage their use. This list then, is more a consideration of ‘Power’, and how powerful the jobs feel throughout the game. Our S tier may not feature the absolute kings of the end game, but it does contain jobs that feel powerful at key points, and they have the potential for more.
S TIER
- Black Mage
- Pirate
- Dark Knight
- Red Mage
- Ranger
Long time readers may be aware of our Top 5 Best Jobs in Bravely Default article, so the choices for our S Tier will come as no surprise. These are the best jobs in the game for us, though again it’s not entirely due to their power level – they rise to the top for a multitude of reasons. Firstly, upon gaining access they are immediately powerful. Whether it’s the type-slaying attacks of the Ranger, the versatile black-plus-white options of the Red Mage, or the chunky physical damage of the Pirate, they all jump straight into your team and make a difference. So much so in fact, that you’ll probably opt to make your whole team into them for a short while – they’re just that good.
This is all reinforced by their fantastic support abilities. The Red Mage can super power your casters with In The Red, the Pirate gives a nice flat 20% physical damage increase, and the Black Mage not only creates attacking options with it’s Black Resonance, but also caters for defence with Damage Dispersion. Your experience will no doubt differ from ours, but we’ll happily say that these are the five jobs that we found exemplified Bravely Default. They’re quirky, unusual, malleable and tremendously fun, which is kind of the point now isn’t it?
Advertisement
A TIER
- White Mage
- Merchant
- Valkyrie
- Spell Fencer
- Thief
- Sage
Our Tier Lists often tend to go this way: A Tier are the units/characters/equips that we really do like, just not quite perfect. The same is true with Bravely Default jobs – we love these six, we really do, just not quite as much as the others. They don’t quite reach the heights of our fantastic five, but that doesn’t mean they’re without merit.
Take the Merchant. It’s a job that is gained very early on, but comes with disastrously bad weapon ratings, leaving you with a unit that, ironically, requires significant investment before seeing a return. If you do persevere however, you’re rewarded with a fantastic support unit that not only helps by earning extra funds with More Money, but also throws in active battle abilities like BP Drink. The point we’re trying to make here is that A Tier jobs require a bit more investment before they reach their peak, but it’s very much worth doing so.
Advertisement
B TIER
- Salve Maker
- Ninja
- Performer
- Monk
- Templar
- Vampire
- Spiritmaster
- Arcanist
This is almost certainly the tier that’s likely to divide opinion. We’re acutely aware that some of these jobs are very powerful, especially when combined with others higher up in the list. It’s worth bearing in mind however, that we’re considering a multitude of factors here, not just outright end game power. For starters, some of these units have such a late join time that their usefulness pales a little too much. The Arcanist has tremendous potential, and the ability to output great amounts of damage, but it comes late and it just feels… Fiddly, at least at first. The Vampire sounds incredible and evokes images of a self sustaining monster, but fails to feel impressive in the players hands.
Those that join early enough just don’t feel good enough to warrant sticking around. The Monk is gained early and feels pretty powerful, yet it falls off rather soon. Likewise the Ninja feels good, hits multiple times and has some great passives, but it doesn’t feel like an amazing job by itself. In the end these lot just didn’t quite mesh for us. We’d recommend you use them all of course, but we didn’t get a great deal of mileage out of them.
Advertisement
C TIER
- Swordmaster
- Time Mage
- Summoner
- Knight
- Freelancer
Our C Tier section is home to Jobs that we just really didn’t enjoy. They each have their good points of course, and we’re aware just how powerful some of their abilities can be, but they just don’t feel good at all, be it down to their weakness at joining time, their underwhelming abilities or the sheer amount of investment needed to see a benefit.
The Freelancer is an obvious inclusion: It’s potential is huge, specifically with abilities like Mimic, but it requires significant investment into a job that feels woefully under-powered against others. The Swordmaster too is filled with potential, but feels far too annoying to set up properly, and requires very specific opponents to maximise. Sadly, these jobs just fell short for us, even in terms of basic entertainment and fun. Your mileage may vary of course, and there’s certainly potential in every Bravely Default job, but these just didn’t cut the mustard for us.
More Bravely Default…
The Best Skills & How To Use Them | Bravely Default
The Job system in Bravely Default, and indeed any Final Fantasy title, is essentially a ‘carrier’ for differing types of skills and their subsequent customisation. At a very basic level for example, the Thief Job is likely to learn skills that focus on pilfering items, however the Bravely series takes things a step further by…
The 5 Best Genome Skills | Bravely Default
The Vampire Job and indeed Genome skills are, essentially, code for the ‘Blue Mage’ of Final Fantasy lore. It’s a Job or Class that is able to learn enemy skills, typically by being the victim of them, and use them as part of it’s repertoire going forward. Title depending, this system can play host to…
The Best Jobs For Every Character | Bravely Default
It’s fair to say that Bravely Default’s Job system forms the basis for the series’ success. Having developed and evolved in the Final Fantasy series over the years, it’s here that it can be found in full bloom. By selecting a job for any given character, you’ll gain access to a myriad of fun and…
Loading…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Categories: Bravely Default