Part 70: Starting Magical Jobs

I should have the next update ready later today, but before then let's go over the other half of our starting jobs in:

Job Overview 2: Starting Magical Jobs

Mender



Requirements: None

Unlocks:

2 abilities (Wizard)

3 abilities (Druid*, Gambler*)

4 abilities (Plague Doctor)

5 abilities (SECRET!!*)

7 abilities (SECRET!!!*)

*= Other jobs required

Equipment: Staff, Robe, Light Armor

Mastery Bonus: HP+5

As the name implies, the mender is this game’s white mage equivalent. They’re the base of all of the magical classes in this game, so any mage will always have the option of throwing out a heal or 2 if you pop the skillset on them. Like the mercenary, they have decently rounded growths but with a slant towards Mind and Res instead of Attack and Defense.



Notable Abilities:

Heal I/II and Mass Heal I: The basic healing spells. Regular heal is single target, while Mass Heal has a small AOE. They’re simple, but absolutely indispensable and I almost always have at least 1, sometimes 2 people with Mender as a secondary set to keep my people healed.

Mana Font: A passive ability that gives you 1 MP for every square you walk. You only gain 10 MP a turn, but can usually move 4-5 spaces, so this can give a massive boost to spell-spamming. Plus, most non-basic abilities cost more than 10 MP, so this can let you throw them out on turn 1 while enemies are still clumped up.

Revive I/II: The equivalent of life spells from FFT. They let you revive your fallen units with 25% or 100% HP respectively. They’re also both decently expensive MP-wise, but they’re absolutely crucial to later fights if someone important gets downed. Once the AI unlocks these, they love to use them as soon as someone goes down, so this makes it super important to take out any Menders ASAP or fights can really drag out. (Reviving someone does not prevent injuries, but they don’t get inflicted until after the fight).

Rebirth: Gives the Rebirth (effectively reraise) status effect to the target, making them auto-revive after falling in combat. Very useful for ensuring your guys stay up and fighting, though it only revives them with 20% HP. Also does not prevent injuries. Still, a nice skill to have and one I use pretty often.

Wizard



It’s a wizard. You know what they do.



Requirements: 2 abilities (Mender)

Unlocks:

3 abilities (Druid* Gadgeteer* Fellblade*)

4 abilities (Alchemystic)

5 abilities (SECRET!!*)

Equipment: Rod, Robe, Light Armor

Mastery Bonus: HP+5, MND+5, RES+5

In all seriousness, wizards are great. They’re all about hitting enemies with AOE elemental damage, and are the basic offensive magic job. Combined with the Mender, they offer access to pretty much every magic using job in the game. They have good growths for a magic user and some very useful skills. Because res is generally lower than defense, they usually hit pretty hard, and are typically my 2nd priority after taking out any healers.




Notable Abilities (All of their abilities are good, so this is more of a general overview):

Water/Fire/Earth/Thunder I/II: The basic elemental attack spells. All of them hit a 4 square AOE, with the level IIs hitting 50% harder than the level Is. They’re very nice, especially because having all 4 of them means that wizards can easily take advantage of any elemental weaknesses an enemy might have.

Water/Fire/Earth/Thunder Locus: Single target, stronger versions of the elemental spells. Though they are strong, they’re pretty expensive MP wise so I don’t normally spam them until late game skills become available. They’re great for knocking out specific enemies.

Smart Casting: Makes it so that your unit targets people more intelligently. Beneficial abilities only hit allies; offensive abilities only hit enemies. There are lots of situations where this can be useful, so it’s often my default choice for a mage passive for most of the game. (It does work on physical abilities too, despite the name).

Magic: A counter skill, with which you retaliate against any spell with a non-elemental version of the same attack (so no counter healing yourself). The attack scales off of your magic stat, so a strong mage can do crazy damage against enemy mages by having this. There are a few classes based around huge magic AOEs, so it’s always hilarious to see them kill themselves by hitting multiple units of yours with this skill.

Boon: A passive that, upon killing an enemy, grants the unit a guaranteed Critical Hit on the next action. Unless you have a specific passive, spells and abilities can’t normally crit at all, so this can give a unit a huge snowball effect. One of the stronger offensive passives in my opinion, and can see good use on both physical and magical units.