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 allowing the player to mix two Jobs together, and even allows the usage of any Support (read: Passive) abilities previously learned. All of this allows for a remarkable amount of customisation, however the sheer amount of choice can also be quite deafening for the new player. Thus, we have written the following recommendations for skills, and included combinations that we found the most effective in Bravely Default.
Two-Handed
- Description: (Knight) Doubles a weapon’s Physical Attack when Swords/Axes/Spears/Staves/Katanas are held in both hands.
It’s easy to get seduced by the flashiness that exists with the Dual Wield Ninja skill, however it’s the Two-Handed skill that ends up stealing the show in Bravely Default. Mainly this is because the Job system ensures that plenty of hard hitting skills exist, such as the Pirate’s Amped Strike, but also because the equipment choices make it worthwhile. Massive Axes and powerful Spears mean that you’ll be spoilt for choice, and the diversity of said skills means that you’ll always have a use for them. Remember, even skills that do not sound like they require a weapon, like some of the Dark Knight’s selection, still scale from your base Physical Attack damage, which is influenced by Two-Handed.
Skill Combinations
- P. Attack Up 10/20/30%.
- (Pirate) Torrent, Amped Strike.
- (Dark Knight) Dark Bane, Black Bane, Dark Nebula.
- (Templar) Radiant Blast.
- (Valkyrie) Crescent Moon, Jump/High Jump/Super Jump.
- Basically any ability that scales with Physical damage, since Two-Handed will boost your physical damage by a great deal.
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Dual Shields
- Description: (Knight) Equip a shield on both arms.
This skill is such an underappreciated gem, it really is. Others on this list might get all of the kudos and attention, but Dual Shields can, with the right setup, form the basis for party safety throughout the entirety of Bravely Default. As you might imagine, it focuses on equipping two shields, and whilst this doesn’t sound too interesting at first, the advent of the Ninja Job means that you can directly choose who gets attacked in your team, through the usage of the Kairai skill. So the basic formula is as follows; put two shields and every defensive buff possible on a single character, use the Kairai skill to direct aggro their way, and go hog wild with the remainder of your team.
Skill Combinations
- (Ninja) Kairai – Use this to direct aggro onto your Dual Shield user.
- HP Up 10/20/30%.
- M. Defence Up 10/20/30%.
- P. Defence Up 10/20/30%.
- Any additional abilities that buff your defence or allow you to ignore ailments.
Free Lunch
- Description: For two turns, there is no MP cost.
Yes, it really is that simple and yes, it really is that good. Well, the true value comes from the skills that it allows you to repeatedly push out for two turns, but this functions as a powerful enabler of sorts. As you might imagine this thing really works with anything and allows you to save quite a few resources overall. Favourites here are Amped Strike, since it costs you 50% of your maximum HP and as such, can only be used a few times in a row without some form of mitigation. Other examples would be the 99 MP ultimate elemental spells that the Vampire eventually learns, and the Arcanist spells that also require a percentage rather than a given amount of MP. Judicious usage of Free Lunch effectively removes the leash on these powerful skills, allowing you to deal tremendous damage in a short period of time.
Skill Combinations
- (Pirate) Double Damage & Amped Strike.
- (Vampire) Firaja, Thundaja, Blizzaja, Aeroja.
- (Arcanist) Internment.
- Essentially any very high MP costing skill.
Lullaby
- Description: Inflict Sleep on all enemies (Medium Chance).
If Free Lunch is the fan favourite of skills, then Lullaby is the true connoisseur’s choice. Well, to be clear, Lullaby plus the Arcanist Skill, Twilight, is the true choice. Once the enemies have been put to sleep by Lullaby, Twilight will instantly kill them all. It’s quite simple, but the fact that one character can complete both of these actions, essentially grants you the ability to delete random battles. Brave four times, Lullaby three times and Twilight once, job done. This combination will eventually be replaced by some better random battle removers, such as the Conjurers Obliterate, but even then that targets lower level opponents rather than those around your own.
Skill Combinations
- (Arcanist) Twilight
- The Twilight ability will instantly kill all enemies that are suffering from Sleep.
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Mimic
- Description: Imitate the previous command without expending any HP, MP, BP, pg or Items.
In much the same way that Free Lunch allows you to completely ignore MP requirements, Mimic can allow you to mostly ignore pretty much any resource. As noted above, it imitates the previous command that was completed, but without expending any resources. Now, this can be pretty much any skill that you’re following up, even from team mates, however it’s most useful when you simply mimic the first command that you’ve done.
By far the best example of this is the Performer skill, My Hero. This skill will increase all of your allies BP by 1, for a cost of 2 BP to the user. Now, under normal circumstances you could not use this more than twice without completely exhausting your own BP, but with Mimic in tow you can essentially refresh all of your allies BP every single round, with zero cost. This does completely remove almost any difficulty from the game, but at the same time who doesn’t love being able to excessively abuse your Brave command to deal record amounts of damage each round?
Skill Combinations
- (Performer) My Hero.
- (Conjurer) Any Invocation skill.
- (Summoner) Susano-o, or any Summoning skill.
- (Pirate) Amped Strike, Torrent.
- Essentially, any highly damaging skill that you would like to repeat without any costs associated. Often this is best spent on BP heavy skills rather than MP heavy, since Free Lunch can cope with those.
- Fair warning: Combining this with the Performer skill, My Hero, will remove almost all difficulty from this game.
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Categories: Bravely Default