Table of Contents

Party Composition

Abilities & DPS

Orb Chart

Character & SSB evaluation: Mages & Supports

Character & SSB evaluation: Celerity & Spellblade

Character & SSB evaluation: Job Classes

SSB Rankings

Banner Evaluation: Intro & Cloudy Wolf

Character & SSB evaluation: Job Classes

A word of warning: this one's a doozy.

Also, I have a game for you. See if you can guess who will come out on top.

Alright, let's finish this.

#Knights Knt 5 for Saint Cross. Knt 4 for Banish Raid, Magic Lure.

Knt 3 is usually useless, except for Draw Fire on a Retaliator.

As we've discussed earlier, along with Ramza & Agrias, the Tactics event gives us the powerful 5* Knight ability Saint Cross as well. Just like with the elemental SSBs, since Saint Cross is holy-elemental, we can boost it with equipment. In this case, Basch's Platinum Shield, and IV, V, and VI's Excaliburs. With just one boost, Saint Cross goes from a 3.4x dmg multiplier to 4.08x. This makes potentially any Knight a powerful member of your party.

I will be classifying Knight characters into three groups: Paladins, Tauntaliators, and Miscellaneous.

Paladins: Agrias, Beatrix, Pecil, and later, Warrior of Light, who has a AoE SSB with physical blink we may or may not get in Global, so I'll be leaving him out. Paladins have Wht 4 which allows them to bring utility Wht spells, which does mean they're sacrificing a damage ability slot, but having the flexibility will still come in handy.

• Agrias: Not just a Paladin, but also a Knightblade, she outskills both Beatrix and Pecil, due to her Spellblade access. Her SSB is 4-hit AoE 6.0x (2.75s) with silence and paralyze procs, but is not the soul break you actually want for her. That would be her regular SB, Split Punch, from her shield, a 3-hit 5.13x multiplier that also applies an Offense Breakdown (ATK/MAG -50%) to its target, basically a single target version of Cait Sith's soul break, which allows you to achieve the powerful 3-layered debuff. The trade-off though, is in the damage. If you pull this Soul Break, Agrias may very well become a staple on your A team.

• Beatrix: Her SSB is 8 hits, 7.6x damage, which is on the low end for SSBs, but grants the powerful magic blink effect for the whole party. The same effect that made Selphie's and Rosa's Curaga medicas so good. If you're looking to blink a particular magic attack, the timing may be tricky, but considering all the dangerous AoE magical attacks in Ultimate weak phases, this is an excellent SSB with a powerful effect.

• Pecil: The OG Paladin. Pecil's SSB and BSB are basically the holy versions of Tidus's. His SSB is 3 holy hits for 7.89x damage, but is better than Tidus's because you can actually boost his with equips. Even with Basch's Platinum Shield making it 9.47x, there have been Ultimate bosses where each hit is barely under the 9999 cap, so it can still do good uncapped damage, even if it's not a great SSB. His BSB however, is the one you really want. Like Tidus's, it has a low 5.1x AoE initial soul break multiplier, and grants En-holy. However, holy can actually be boosted, and the Excalibur it's attached to, just so happens to be one of those swords. His single target command is one hit only, so with En-holy it will likely cap. The key here is to actually combine Pecil's En-holy status, which grants +50% to Holy attacks, with Saint Cross. Pecil will be doing close to, if not, 20,000 dmg a turn. With his BSB, he becomes an En-holied beast.

Tauntaliators: Since not all Tauntaliators have Knt 5, they have been filed under Samurai.

Miscellaneous:

• Ingus: I mentioned him in Part 1 when discussing secondary supports for flex slot options. His SSB, 5-hit 7.9x, grants him the oft-overlooked Sentinel status, which triples his DEF and taunts single-target PHY & BLK attacks. In fights with a lot of single target attacks, it can be a useful extra form of mitigation. Do note that Ingus only has Cmb 3 so he can't use Lifesiphon. He can use Breakdowns though, so you can bring one and Saint Cross, or he can help cover for Ramza. His ATK, 156 at Lv80, is 2 pts less than Pecil's and 4 pts higher than Faris', but his other stats are all excellent.

• Edgar: See Machinists.

#Samurai Sam 4 for Flame Blossom? Sam 2 for Retaliate (in combination with Draw Fire).

The Samurai skillset as a whole doesn't offer that much. Most of its 4&5 skills are AoE, but it does have Retaliate. Parties built around a retaliator will fall out in favor of Scream teams, but Retaliate is still useful in a Scream team as mitigation when a lot of single-target physicals are thrown about. Currently, excluding record dives, there are three users of Tauntaliate in JP: Gilgamesh, Basch, and Auron.

• Gilgamesh: You should be pretty familiar with our old pal by now. Access to all melee weapons in addition to rods. Knt 5 and Drg 4 on top of Cmb 5 and Sam 5. His main weakness would be in his SB selection. To date in JP, he still only has three, his most powerful being his SSB which is 3-hit AoE 6.0x and grants heavy regen to the party. Granted, the heavy regen is nice if you don't have another source for it. His regular SBs are just slightly weaker at ~5.1x but with inconsequential extra effects. His stats are pretty good DEF-heavy Knight stats, like Ingus, but also like Ingus & Pecil, he has lowish ATK at 160. That said, he's still an excellent addition to your party when you need to bring a Tauntaliator, even without a SB.

• Basch: Basch is basically a more offensive version of Gilgamesh, but he doesn't get his MC2 until later, so he can't actually achieve that higher Lv80 ATK for a while. He loses out on Drg 4 and rods to Gilgamesh and only has Sam 4, but none of these are major drawbacks. I've already mentioned his holy-boosting Platinum Shield, which is a great item. It gives him Unyielding Shield, a Hand of the Emperor clone that gives your party a ATK/DEF +30% buff that stacks on top of Scream. He doesn't have a SSB yet, but that will almost certainly change in two weeks in JP. [Note: How do you know when the HotE effect will be useful? Usually, if you lack RS for a realm. With Scream's +50% to ATK, you need 393 ATK to reach soft cap (393-->589). Stacking HotE on top of Scream gives you a total +95% to ATK, so then you only need 303 ATK to reach 589.]

• Auron: Like Basch, Auron is a higher ATK Tauntaliator, but gets his MC2 relatively early. Unlike Gilg and Basch however, he has a more limited weapon selection and skillset. If you're not using him for Draw Fire + Retaliate, then all he really has is Cmb 5 for Lifesiphon, Breaks, and Full Charge. Even then, that's often good enough. He does, however, have the best SSB of the bunch. It's a 5-hit 7.8x multiplier that debilitates the enemy with a ATK/DEF -50% debuff. This stacks on top of Breakdowns, Full Break, and even Agrias's Split Punch, giving your entire party another layer of physical mitigation and boosting damage (even if you're at soft cap). As you can see, it's very good. Very, very good.

#Monk Um, uh… Mnk 0?

Yea, so the Monk skillset is basically a wash. And yes, Monk is singular on purpose, since there's only one Monk worth considering.

• Jecht: He can use swords. (The only other monk who can is Yda and she even has Sup 4 to boot. The problem is her SSB which grants a +30% ATK boost to your party, making it the worst SSB for a Scream team.) Jecht also has the most diverse skillset out of the monks, but even that is kind of deceptive because it's not as great as it looks. We can ignore Mnk 5 and Knt 3 on him, and Drk 5 on fighters just means Dark Raid which is like HotE's boost, but lowers DEF, so you only need it if you don't have RS and it lowers Jecht's already lowish DEF. The reason he's here then is because of his SSB, a 7-hit physical that gives your party a 50?% increase in critical hit rate. (I don't think anyone's mined the actual number yet.) Assuming it is 50% for 1.5x criticals, that's an overall 25% boost to your physical damage, as long as your hits were less than 6666 before. Imagine having Jecht pull off his SSB and then unleashing a flurry of death and destruction from your other SSBs and multi-hit abilities on hapless Ultimate bosses. Jecht's SSB is basically the physical version of Lulu's Focus once you hit ATK soft cap, granting you a "stacking" damage boost, in addition to SSB-level dmg sprinkled on top. Overpowered.

#Machinists Mch 4 for Blind Shot, Silence Shot, Poison Shot.

• Balthier: see Spellblades.

• Edgar: Edgar has a pretty good skillset with Cmb 5 and Knt 5 and Mch 5. His Chainsaw SSB's effect is not so stellar however. It's 6 random hits at 7.92x exactly like Balthier's SSB, and it also grants a 20% poison elemental weakness. Unlike Balthier's though, the SSB itself is non-elemental and not poison, so subsequent SSBs from Edgar aren't boosted themselves. Poison is also much harder to exploit than other elements.

#Dragoon Drg 5 for Dragonfire Dive. Drg 4 for Dragon's Blood.

There's only one Dragoon to gain a SSB in JP to date: Kain. (If you're looking to use the Dragoon combo though, Fang and Ricard can both use swords as well, though Ricard has the honor of being the most neglected named character in FFRK.)

• Kain: His SSB is a standard 4-hit ranged 7.8x attack which grants the interesting instant jump 3 status. This makes his next 3 jumps have no jump time. The intended use is with Dragonfire Dive. This makes the 2-hit 4.7x ability have a total cast time of 1.75s ATB + 1.5s cast or 3.25s. So its DPS is 4.7/3.25 or 1.45x, given it doesn't cap. That is better than Chainstarter + Full Charge's 1.34x. It's also better than any of the burst commands (assuming the 20% ATK doesn't matter since you were already hitting soft cap). So you can think of it as a BSB with a much better burst command than any of the actual BSBs but takes up one of Kain's ability slots. Of course, chaining SSBs still has higher DPS (1.84x) which may be awkward (especially in the weak phase) since the instant jump effect encourages you not to.

Action	Damage/Time	DPS
Average SSB	7.8/4.25=	1.84x
Instant Jump Dragonfire Dive	4.7/3.25=	1.45x
Chainstarter + Full Charge	6.68/5=	1.34x
Dragoon Combo	11.6/9.9=	1.17x
Saint Cross (20%)	4.08/3.55=	1.15x
Thief's Raid	3.5/3.4=	1.03x
Pecil 1-hit burst w/en-holy (9999 cap)	3.45/3.4=	1.01x
Saint Cross	3.4/3.55=	0.96x
Tidus 4-hit burst command w/en-water	3.24/3.4=	0.95x
Full Charge	4.68/5.05=	0.93x
4-hit fire burst command after oil	3.02/3.4=	0.89x
Cloud 4-hit burst command	2.8/3.4=	0.82x
Lightning 4-hit burst w/ stun chance	2.58/3.4=	0.76x
4-hit elemental burst command	2.52/3.4=	0.74x

#Thieves Thf 5 for Thief's Raid.

As mentioned with Balthier and Bartz, the other good Thief skill, Steal Power, loses its luster because half of its functionality is already covered by Scream.

• Yuffie: She doesn't have Lifesiphon, and she can't equip swords, so what's she doing here? Well, I wanted to make sure she got mentioned, because she is the only other physical character other than Ramza who has a 40% heal, which may be useful in freeing up your RW. It might be a bit awkward to fit her on your team, if you're cutting a SSB for instance, but Yuffie can bring Thief's Raid for DPS. She also gets Dnc 4 for Breakdown dances for some reason. Her weapon selection is pretty diverse, but lacks swords, so RS may be an issue.

• Locke: You've probably already heard talk of his Valiant Knife SSB by now. It doesn't have any additional effect per se, but it has an innate "Minus Strike" effect. The lower Locke's HP is, the higher the damage his SSB deals. I've compiled a table below with the damage at different HP thresholds using formulas from u/Enlir's spreadsheet. I think it speaks for itself.

From u/Enlir himself:

About Valiant Attack, the "minus strike" effect is not a damage multiplier, but rather an ATK one. It kinda works like Armor Strike, by replacing the ATK in the regular damage formula with another number. This means it's better than a damage multiplier if you are under the soft cap, but worse if you already broke it.

For example, at 10% HP, you actually have +40% ATK, which is a whopping +83% damage under the soft cap, but only +18% above it.

(Revised Locke section pending. In short, it's much worse than I had thought.)

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Ok, that's all the classes covered so we're about done here.

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Wait, what's that? You're saying I missed one?

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No, I'm pretty sure…oh wait, looks like I did. Very well then.

But before that, did you figure out my game? It's Locke, right? I mean, his SSB has the highest damage ceiling. It's gotta be him.

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Wrong!

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#Ninja Nin 4 for Phantasm. Nin 3/4 for the elemental scrolls, which are situationally useful.

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They do have a habit of sneaking up on you… when you least suspect it…

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So which Ninja? He already mentioned Yuffie, and Ramza. Edge, right? I mean, that's his flair. He must be some huge wailing fanboy.

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Unfortunately, Edge is a terrible character in FFRK.

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Then Thancred?

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Nope.

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• Shadow: Wait a minute. You're telling me that Shadow is a good character, let alone a top one? No, he's actually pretty bad. No access to swords, poor armor selection. His skillset's not so hot either. I mean, Ninja's pretty bad. Not Monk bad, but almost. With Seymour Flux, we've passed the gauntlet of sap-vulnerable Ultimate bosses, so Shadowsteel's not very useful anymore. His SSB is nothing to write home about either, just your bread and butter 8-hit 7.68x multiplier, which is on the lowish end, with no good party-wide effect, just physical self-blink x2 and instant cast. Poor skillset, bad equips. It's easy to just write him off. And that's exactly what I did for the longest time. But then I took another look. So let's take a look again shall we? Shadow Fang: 8-hit 7.68x, with self-blink x2 and instant cast. Wait a second. Instant cast. That has to do with time, right? Why don’t we calculate that?

SSB	Multiplier	Damage/Time	DPS
Average SSB	7.8x	7.8/4.25=	1.84x
Locke @10% HP	9.44x	9.44/4.25=	2.22x
Balthier w/ +20%	9.50x	9.50/4.25=	2.24x
Balthier w/ +44%	11.40x	11.40/4.25=	2.68x
Shadow	7.68x	7.68/1.75=	4.39x

• Holy shit! Shadow's basically the Sultan of Burst. Move over BSBs! Can you imagine? You charge up three SB bars, and when the boss hits weak phase, it takes Shadow all of 5.25 seconds to unleash all three of his SSBs for a total of 23.04x damage! Other fighters need 4.25 seconds just to pull off one!

• But what about his flaws? Well, he has Cmb 4 for Lifesiphon, which you definitely want for him, and he has access to Dismissal and Breaks. That's good enough. As for his lack of swords and RS, there are two solutions. 1. Bring Leon or Basch for HotE. 2. This one's kinda tricky, but use augments. Of course, we need a (B)SSB level Katana, but let's do the math. The magic number is 393. At Lv80 Shadow has 177 ATK after his SSB bonus. The tricky part is pulling the Katana, but later ones have 125 ATK and upwards. +20 from your Rosetta Stone augments. +45 for a RS accessory. +25 from a non-RS bracer. That's 392, we're just one point short. With a RS bracer, that's at least another +10. Hot damn.

• Instant cast, huh? It's that good? Anyone else have one? Well, being ninjas, Edge has one and so does Yuffie, but they're both AoE, and neither has Lifesiphon. Yuffie's percent heal is also instant, as is Minwu's Curaga medica. (I think they were going with his mask being a white ninja mask or something. Minwu, ninja white mage, so ninja nobody even knows.) But for single-target SSBs that can be spammed with Lifesiphon, just Shadow. And he even brought along Interceptor, for a ninja-quick and awesome animation with none of that overly ostentatious flair (looking at you, Cloud BSB). Because Shadow doesn’t give a damn. Hell, he'd slit his mama's throat for a nickel!

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You heard it here first folks: Interceptor meta incoming.