Overpowered Tactics A2: Broken Combinations

Posted by fuzzwobble on Jun 19, 2011 in Adventure, Role Playing, Strategy | 1 comment

Welcome to the second installment of Overpowered Tactics A2.

The first article dealt with ways to work around the judges and laws in Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift; extremely useful knowledge for anybody who plays the game (at least, if you want to gain the additional benefits of judges).

What about the more fun aspects of the gameplay? Well, there’s certainly a lot of variety to be seen in Tactics A2. The game features 7 playable races (8 if you count Cid, who is a Revgaji with the Bangaa skillset), 57 jobs and literally thousands of different abilities and items, most of which serve a different purpose in the game that can be combined in interesting ways.

Many of the different aspects work together as you would expect, such as having a Black Mage using White Magic as its secondary ability set, but there are many more… subtle and interesting ways in which some jobs, items or abilities suit each other.

This time I’ll be teaching you:

The 5 Most Broken Combinations in FFTA2

First of all, allow me to explain a little about how jobs affect how your units mature in Tactics games.

While your units won’t gain XP (experience) without participating in quests, they still gain JP (job points) when they sit on the sidelines. This means that you can custom-build most of the features of your unit without even taking it into combat, then continue its practical growth at a later time.

[Note: In the original Final Fantasy Tactics you gained XP and JP as you took each turn in battle, making its system some-what unique to Advance and A2]

Jobs change your stats in 3 direct ways:

• Your unit will have access to different items depending on its job
• Your unit’s base stats will dynamically change as you switch jobs
• Your unit will gain stats based upon its current job when it levels

Let’s elaborate.

You can examine a piece of armor or a weapon to see what jobs can use it. In addition, certain items are gender specific, and almost every case of gender specific items side with females. These limitations can be manipulated by certain Support abilities. For example, you can equip Shields on a Soldier but not on a White Mage, but you can also equip a Bronze Shield on a Soldier for a while to learn the Support ability ‘Shieldbearer’ and equip the ability. While the ability is equipped you will be able to use Shields as any job, so long as you aren’t using a two-handed weapon such as a bow or greatsword.

Remember that you have access to abilities learned from equipped items even if you are still learning them, so long as you still have the item equipped. So you can equip a Ragetsu-Denbu to gain access to Dual-Wield, equip Dual-Wield as your Support ability, then throw another sword in your offhand.

Your unit will have different statistics depending on which job class it currently is. You will notice immediate changes if you switch a unit’s job from Soldier to Thief (In this case, it would lose brute strength but gain speed and mobility), but those changes will revert if you decided to switch back to Soldier, or would just change entirely if you chose to make the unit a Black Mage. These stats make a notable difference early in the game, but are less important as you gain higher levels.

While itemization and base stats affect your unit greatly, neither affect your character as much as its stat growth.

When your unit levels it gains some stats, and the job in which it is currently employed when it levels determines where these stats are allocated. This process is called growth. Many players will argue that you should min-max this, but I believe that over-specialization breeds weakness, particularly when it comes to manipulating CT (The time it takes for your character’s speed to fill its AT gauge, so that it may have its turn). My personal recommendation is that you simply choose a path: Physical or Magical. Once you choose, then try to stick to one or the other with that unit and you’ll be fine.

To put it simply: a unit that has spent its whole life as a Mage might know how to do battle as a Fighter, but it certainly won’t be very good at it.

Now that you understand growth and how important its role is in world of Ivalice, we can continue.

5- Scratch and Boom!

Building what I like to call a ‘Scratchboom’ can take a little bit of effort, but it can be a fun and interesting unit to bring to battle.

First of all, you’re going to need either a Bangaa or a Moogle. Level whichever you obtain as a caster if you can, but you can also simply recruit one who is a caster from the start. A Trickster is a fine choice for the Bangaa, as is a Black Mage Moogle.

Once you have your caster, you need to keep it out of battles. While this sounds counter-productive, you need to teach it a rather strange job. You need to learn either the Gladiator skillset for Bangaa or the Moogle Knight job for mogs.

Every race (except Seeq) has its version of Ultima. If you have played a Final Fantasy game in the past, you know what I’m talking about. It’s essentially a giant explosion of non-elemental magical damage, meaning that nothing is resistant to or weak against it. It’s a reliable attack that is capable of dealing obscene amounts of damage.

These two races have access to it through melee strikes, specifically Ultima Charge and Ultima Sword. What the spell doesn’t openly show is that its attack range is based upon your weapon and the damage is based off of your magical prowess. Note that many of the abilities those two jobs have can also be cast at your weapon range.

Particular fun can be had with Rush or Moogle attack, which allow you to poke a target with a ranged weapon for around 30 damage but send them spiraling off of a cliff.

Now that you have mastered these two jobs, switch either the Moogle to a Fusilier or the Bangaa to a Trickster. Note that Fusiliers and Tricksters use weapons which have incredible range and that both are capable of inflicting a variety of interesting status effects.

Scratch an enemy from across the map with your weak weapon attack invoking Ultima, then laugh as the enemy explodes instantly.

For best results use either ‘MP Channeling’ or ‘MP Efficiency’ as your Clan Privilege. Also note that Moogles tend to deal more damage since they have more magically pure classes to gain growth in, but Bangaa can learn Halve MP as a Bishop from the Luminous Robe. Halve MP combined with either of the MP privileges allow a Bangaa of this build to fire an Ultima attack every round.

I suggest you go with whatever you think is the most stylish: Gun-toting bundles of fluff, or card-throwing lizardmen gamblers?

4- No Cost, Double Trouble

Red Mages have always been a thing of debate. A lot of the difficulty in Final Fantasy games has come from how well a combination of specialized allies works, and the Red Mage always had a tendency to throw a wrench in that whole puzzle.

The Red Mage is the poster-child of those who are versatile; a jack of all trades. While they cannot cast the more powerful versions of spells that other jobs have access to, they have access to several schools of spells at the same time. In Tactics A2 they are unique to the Viera race, and they can cast Black Magic, White Magic, Green Magic and their own special Red Magic.

This alone wouldn’t be a real issue, since the whole problem would be balanced out by stat growth to prevent an all-powerful melee unit that can cast almost anything, as well as the ability for offensive casters to choose defensive magic as a secondary skillset anyway. What makes a Red Mage so devastating is Doublecast. Doublecast is a spell unique to the Red Mage. Using it is simple. You cast Doublecast, then pick a spell and the target, then pick another spell and it’s target. The unit will then cast both spells in one turn.

Doublecast is designed around the idea of burst. You save up mana by using the Red Mage’s considerable melee strength, then spend it all in one hit. However, this concept falls flat when you introduce the Spellblade’s Support ability ‘Blood Price’. Blood Price converts the mana cost of spells cast to cost health instead, equal to double the cost of the spell. A Doublecast throwing out Fire for 8 mana and Thunder for 8 mana, which would cost 16 mana (2 turns worth of mana) instead costs 32 health.

Now here’s where it gets broken: Introduce items which absorb certain elemental attacks. Say you have a Red Mage wearing a Flurry Robe, which absorbs Ice, walk up into a group of enemies and Doublecast 2 Ice spells so that they cleave onto itself?

You could even step it up and use Doublecast on Summoner spells. Hell, Doublecast even works on Spellblade attacks, meaning that you can strike a target for two melee hits with two chances to cause status debuffs. Fun.

3- Ultimate Specialist

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a melee unit specifically built to be capable of decimating anything thrown at it?

You can. It’s called a Geomancer Parivir.

This build is effective since your unit will still be powerful if you allow growth as you work your way up the job tree, making it an ideal choice for Luso (your main character). The extra health and speed gained from levels in Soldier, Thief and Fighter compliment the build well, to the point of which it’s recommended that you gain a few levels in Ninja to boost the Speed benefit a little further.

Once you can choose the class Parivir, you do. You level in it, and you almost never stray. Parivirs have incredible growth and access to a variety of elemental attacks which can do Fire, Ice, Lightning or Dark damage, depending on which skill you use at the time, as well as inflicting a status effect. They also have a few non-elemental attacks, including a desperation strike that deals half your attack damage but sometimes instantly kills a target.

As soon as you can, you learn the Black Mage’s Support ability ‘Geomancy’. Geomancy works by increasing the enemy’s weakness to a particular attack by a notch, with the order being Absorb>Immune>Half Damage>Normal>Weak. For example, This means that if you strike an enemy with a spell and they would take half damage, they would take full damage instead.

The Parivir has access to several different elemental attacks. These attacks will strike with your weapon twice for the element of choice, meaning that if you would melee a target for 75 and you choose to attack with Skyfury Blade, you would strike for 150 Lightning Damage, which then would be modified by Geomancy.

So let’s say you walk up to a Malboro and slash him with an elemental attack which would do normal damage. Instead of slashing him for 75, you would strike it down with a respectable 225 damage. I will also note that I am being modest with these numbers; you will see incredible attacks at later levels, and the best part is that it doesn’t feel that cheesy. There’s something to be said about roaring around a battlefield slaying foes up close.

Another great thing about Parivir/Geomancy is that you are open to choose whatever secondary skillset you want without any real repercussions. Blue Magic is a solid choice to use while you level, and many will switch jobs to Paladin if they ever hit the level cap and keep Parivir as the secondary skillset instead, allowing access to more powerful Knight Sword weaponry. Mix it up and socket whatever secondary job you want!

2- Wise Itemization

Scholars are one of those jobs many don’t take a second glance at, but they can be shockingly effective when in the right hands.

Similar to Illusionists, the Scholar’s main attacks strike map-wide. There’s a twist in their spells however: they do not discriminate between friend or foe!

This leaves the player open to three different methods for using them. You can always take the normal route and try to selectively use them and mitigate the damage (such as using their natural selection ability to target a specific race), but that’s not overpowered is it? The other two options both involve, you guessed it, items that absorb certain elements. You can go about this two ways.

The first and easiest method is to simply equip all your units to absorb a certain element, then have the scholar only cast that school of spell. If you can use the right Clan Privileges, Support abilities and supporting units (such as a unit on MP restoration duty) you can do very well, constantly and cleanly pummeling your enemies for damage while simultaneously healing all of your allies.

The third and more interesting method comes down to planning. You start by bringing at least 2 Scholars to the battle, but instead of having them absorb the spell you simply equip to have them take reduced damage. Why? Well, you socket in the Absorb MP ability and presto! Every time one of your Scholars hit another with a Tome ability, it will gain MP equal to the spell’s cost. Throw in a support healer (maybe a Doublecast White Mage) and you’re all set.

If you want to be really cheap about it, you could even bring 4 Scholars into a fight with a Doublecast White Mage. Have them all stand in a cross formation, have the Viera cast Shell/Curaga on its first turn, then simply heal through the damage. You win. If it wasn’t for the preparation work required to use this combination, it might just have been more overpowered than…

1- Map-Wide Frenzy

There’s a reason why this unit setup is on the top of the list. To put it simply, I don’t recommend you use this. It’s blatantly overpowered to the point of which I feel sympathy-shame whenever I even hear about somebody using it.

It’s the Illusionist/Seer.

Humans are pretty amazing in Tactics A2, but giving them access to such a ridiculous combination was just asking for trouble.

You start by casting Magic Frenzy from the Seer skillset. Magic Frenzy allows you to choose a specific spell to cast, then causes your character to leap to whatever the spell hits and physically attack it. Next, you cast an Illusion spell. For best results, most who use this combination cast Stardust, since it’s non-elemental.

Oh, but it gets better. Before doing any of this, make sure your character is dual-wielding.

The unit will smack every enemy on the map with a spell and two physical attacks in a single round. That’s not the most broken part either; since the damage is split between physical and magical damage, you don’t even have to care about stat growth.

Certain combinations are capable of breaking this build (particularly units who use invisible or units ‘tanky’ enough to outlast the damage output) but they are rarely encountered, and are usually accompanied by enemies that would die from the flurry of attacks before they could even make their move.

This setup is the pinnacle of cheese.

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There you have it. Before I go, let me say that everybody has their own style of doing things, especially when it comes to tactical RPGs. Don’t take any of these as suggestions; play to enjoy. If you don’t, then what’s the point in gaming at all?