Part 3: Disgaea 101: Character Classes Then and Now

Disgaea 101: Character Classes Then and Now

Disgaea characters are differentiated in two ways. What they can do is determined by class, and how powerful they are by tier. Each class has six tiers, each with better stats and weapon masteries than the last.

In the original Disgaea, new character classes were opened up by either having characters of the right class and level or, rarely, by having a high enough mastery of a weapon class on a character. Then, additional tiers of that class were opened up by having a character of that type at a high enough level. This has been altered slightly in Disgaea 2. Now all character classes save one are only unlocked by A) reaching a weapon mastery goal and B) passing a proposal in the Dark Assembly to be able to create them. Further, a new tier can only be unlocked by leveling the previous tier to some critical level, meaning you cannot simply level the basic version of a class and unlock the best version of it.

As of the end of the tutorial levels, we have these classes available to us:

Male Fighter:



Male Fighters are good with axes, swords, and spears. They have better HP and DEF than Lady Fighters, and when they're low in health they do increased critical damage. They have worse weapon mastery stats in the low tiers than they did in Disgaea to make replacing low tier versions more attractive in the mid-game.

Lady Fighter:



Lady Fighters are good with swords, spears, and bows. They have better RES and SPD than Male Fighters, and are more likely to land a critical hit when at low health. As with Male Fighters, they are less effective in the lower tier than they were in Disgaea.

Skulls:



Skulls are boy magic users. They currently come in Red, Green, and Blue, which specialize in Fire, Wind, and Ice respectively. Skulls gain levels in their magic skills more quickly than anyone else. They also have slightly worse Staff mastery than they did in Disgaea. This is again largely to make the ultimate Skull ranks more attractive given that they don't have natural access to the most powerful spells.

Mages:



Mages are girl magic users, and they come in the same flavors as Skulls. They cast spells for less SP than anyone else, which in practice I prefer to the Skulls' bonus. The same Staff mastery comments apply.

Thief:



Thieves are one of the most changed classes. They have changed gender for one. Seems like girls are better shots than guys, because the new thieves are much better with guns than the old ones. They are the best characters for stealing, and what's more they have some new tricks. They can cause status effects on melee range enemies, including a 100% effective if used from behind sleep attack. This is needless to say very useful for locking an enemy down while we rob him blind.

Healer:



Healers are still good at what they do, namely healing. They take less damage from elemental attacks. As with most classes, their weapon mastery stats in the low tiers were reduced to promote mid-game replacement that would otherwise be unneeded.

Prinny:



Prinnies are the first monster class we can make, dood. Their main claim to fame is that they explode if we lift and throw them, dood. They're sort of Nippon Ichi's mascots, and are actually reasonably effective, although that's mostly in the higher tiers. They do have a very high HP stat, and have gained the sixth tier that was lost thanks to Prinny Baal in the first game.