Hello and welcome to my complete Final Fantasy III class tier list! Yes, that's right, I said complete (Note, this is not complete on purpose). Ladies and gentlemen and those of unspecified gender, I want to tell you what! So, without further adieu, a summary of the jobs of each crystal and a final summary at the end.Wind CrystalWind crystal jobs tend to have lower stats on higher levels than later jobs, however the trade off is if you stick with a wind crystal job for the whole game, you'll be fairly high in job level which kind of balances out. Also, you may be eligible for a legendary blacksmith items without any extra grinding. If you try to earn job level 99 with a non-wind crystal job, you may have to grind hard.

From StrategyWiki, the video game walkthrough and strategy guide wiki Final Fantasy III.

Consider using at least one wind crystal job the whole game. Trust me, you'll be fine.WarriorYou may want a warrior for consistent melee in the early game. The warrior is kind of a shit melee class, so don't get too attached. They can only use early game equipment and the Excalibur. I recommend upgrading to a knight ASAP.MonkYou can alternatively use a monk for the early game melee and you can't go wrong with punching in Final Fantasy games because punching in Final Fantasy games is usually slightly worse than the chosen one wielding the power cosmic. The only problem with the Monk class in FFIII is that they are shit at first.

Get your job level to about 14 or so and you should begin to see a solid return on your investment. Weaknesses: They are glass cannons.ThiefI used a thief in my previous play through all the way to the end game. The thief is broken!

It gains JP faster than any other class and will be 30 job levels higher than the party average before your know it. The game will give you knives to keep your thief competitive late game. My thief consistently outdid my knight in damage output and could reliably one-hit or two-hit anything. In addition, with its high speed, my thief would be likely to act sooner in turn order, dispatching an enemy and reducing the amount of damage received by the party each battle. By the time I got to the evil dark knight dungeon with duplicating enemies, I could do 5000 damage or max damage on a crit and I was one-hitting almost everything. My other party members would defend every turn because anything they could contribute was too little to matter. Thieves are amazing!Red MageI love the red mage in concept!!!!

There's a reason why you don't see red mages in FF games after this game, and it has to do with the later job class systems allowing you to customize your characters and effectively build a red mage. The FFIII Red Mage class in my experience is crap. One of its perks is that it can use that one early game sword that does extra damage to undead. This class is just too well rounded. It's not the star of anything; it's your backup at everything.

This class doesn't hit hard enough to hit, it doesn't magic well enough to magic, it has less MP, access to weaker equipment, etc. I find that in RPGs, you usually have to specialize to be successful.White MageThe white mage has a lower JP rate than other classes, so to keep your white mage falling too far behind, you should use the defend command instead of wasting your turns planning another action that doesn't go off because another character defeats an enemy before your white mage's turn. The white mage is essential for healing during boss battles.

You can not get away with relying on items alone to heal. Pick a white mage or die.Black MageI hate black mages, but you're required to have them for some boss fights.

Whatever, this game is balanced to allow your black mage to be helpful outside of boss battles. The whole concept of crowd control is gone though. Seriously, if I was confident that I could kill everything with melee, I would only use melee.Fire Crystal JobsI couldn't name all the fire crystal jobs when I began writing this, but you're looking at Geomancer, Knight, Ranger, Scholar.ScholarsScholars are interesting in concept; I wish you could get more attack items. When they use items, the effect is doubled. They're like a prototype Final Fantasy Alchemist/Chemist class with a scan ability. The game tells you that you need that scan ability for at least one boss.

I can't justify this class, but I would like to. I think the scholar has a very low JP gain rate.RangerI've never used a ranger because of a little thing called ammo system.GeomancerI really like this class in concept as well. They have spells that don't use MP! The downsides are that their spell list is determined by the terrain, meaning you will most likely be fighting fire enemies with fire or water enemies with water.

See the problem? Also, they use spells at random so they aren't reliable.

I really, really like reliability in my RPG party. If I have some real badasses and thus I have some discretionary room to fuck around, I may invest in a character who might waste their turns or one shot everything on the screen like a geomancer. I think the geomancer has a low JP gain rate.KnightYou know the end game is going to give you cool knight shit. That's why you have to pick a knight over a viking when deciding what class to have for tanking even in the early game. Deal with it. Excalibur, Ragnarok, and Ultima. If dual wielding shields is a thing (I think it is), a Knight is more effective as tank than a Viking because they have a Defend command which lets them intercept attacks for allies.

Therefore, they're better at being a super tank than a viking.Water Crystal JobsThe water crystal offers jobs: Viking, Dragoon, Dark Knight, Evoker, Bard.VikingI have seen a let's play where the player used aviking just to do something different. Vikings are surprisinglyeffective at melee and as tanks. I recall that you can dual wieldshields in this game and make a viking a super tank, or maybe I'm fullof shit.DragoonI shit you not, you are required to change your entire party into dragoons for one boss battle. After that, you don't need to use them ever again. Dragoons are bad at being tanks because they're special ability Jump removes them from the battle for one-two rounds. This means your squishy characters can take more damage before your dragoon hits an enemy for double damage once every two turns.

Also, math makes that attack seem redundant. Jump will do 4x damage to flying or air themed enemies which are not the majority of dangerous enemies. Even if jump damage scales exponentially with job level, I can't find myself recommending it because healing spells won't target it while it's airborne.Dark KnightA dark knight in the remake of FFIII is a sort of samurai / ninja themed non-ninja character who can use katanas which are effective against enemies that duplicate. You know what else is good against enemies who duplicate? A character who hits hard enough to one-shot that enemy.

You also have the dark attack attack which sacrifices the users HP for extra damage. Dark Knights are not tanks by the way; they're armor is just OK.EvokerI want to give it a fair try, but I didn't and I won't. I'm just too comfortable with my party by this point in the game.

In case you don't know, Evokers are baby versions of summoners.BardI want to use a bard too, but I hear nothing stellar about them.Earth Crystal JobsUnfortunately, I don't like spellcasting classes in JRPGs. This crystal offers 4 spellcasting classes and it's clear (to me at least) that you're meant to pick and commit to only 2 at most and it's supposed to be a difficult choice. The deal with these spellcasting classes is that they are overall better than their lower tier counterparts, but in some ways the lower tier counterparts are better. For example, the White Mage has a higher Magic Power stat and more lower level MP than the Devout. I think you're supposed to trade being really good a using low level spells for being OK at using lover level spells and having access to end game spells. This kind of makes sense for the white mage because having more Cures is better than having fewer, slightly more potent Cures for dungeon crawling.

Other than that, Earth Crystal jobs will be at job level 1 and your other jobs may have quite high job levels.MagusThe big boy Black Mage. Has access to higher level black magic, has more MP, etc. Flare, Meteor, Death.DevoutThe big boy White Mage. Has access to higher level white magic, has more MP, etc. Can cast Life 2, Cure 4, and Holy, which is cool.SummonerThe big boy version of the Evoker.

Access to higher level spells, more MP, etc. Can cast Odin, Leviathan, and Bahamut.SageThis is the big boy red mage if the big boy red mage can't hit or wear armor anymore.

You have access to all magic. I don't know how much more or less MP you have or how much more or less potent your spells are, but I suspect that a jack-of-all-trades super wizard sacrifices something. Oh well, I can choose to cast any three of Bahamut, Full-Life, Holy, Flare, and Meteor plus Odin with one character. That's cool.Black BeltI think this class is amazing for 2 reasons. 1, you don't need a weapon to be a good DPS, however this game actually gives good fist weapons so you'll still hit like a truck. 2, very high HP growth.

If you want to get your HP significantly higher, make your characters into black belts and grind out 10 character levels each. You'll be happy you did. This class is still kind of a glass cannon though.NinjaIn the NES version, this was a secret class that could use ALL weapons and armor making it super fucking duper! In this version, it is a more traditional ninja: glass cannon melee! It has low HP and Defense. I find they get KOed more easily than your magic classes. You can throw ninja stars which do tons of damage.

It's amazing if you don't plan on grinding out tons of job levels, but if you do plan on job level grinding, ninja stars are not so impressive.SummaryFor the length of the game, I recommend a dedicated healer, a dedicated tank, and a dedicated melee attacker. I only keep someone prepared to do attack magic stuff because the game seems to like to throw the occasional boss at you that can only be hurt by attack spells and you want something like a black mage with a decent job level for the sake of potency. Just have your bases covered for the whole game; the game is kind of balanced for that. For your final party, I think it sounds risky to leave out a White Mage or a Devout.

Notable classes (IMO) for your final party include Knight, Ninja, Black Belt, and Sage. Ninja probably beats Black Belt.

I think you have some real leniency to have one wind crystal job with a job level of 99 for that sweet legendary black smith item, in which case I recommend the thief for DPS based on experience. End game grinding is required.You can't in my experience avoid a balanced party. You can't have 4 Black Belts for instance. Longer dungeons will make you burn through too many resources. The game will throw 1-3 enemies at you per battle; 1 or 2 on average with 3 being rare or more common at mid-late and end game. I think any way you roll, your party's damage output will generally be enough to defeat one enemy per round. Your party will on average take 2 to 3 hits per round of combat.

That's just the way this game is balanced. Bosses will be threatening enough to give you a game over if you get unlucky or you make a poor decision.The game will make resources available (such as weapons, armor, spells) to encourage you to choose different classes at different phases of the game and free resources (weapons or armor found as treasures) are available to encourage or limit use of specific classes. You will not have enough swords and armor to equally equip 4 knights for instance.

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If you're looking for 'lighter' gaming-related entertainment, try!The goal of is to provide a place for informative and interesting gaming content and discussions. Submissions should be for the purpose of informing or initiating a discussion, not just with the goal of entertaining viewers.For an in-depth explanation of our rules don't forget to check our andSubreddit CalendarWant to schedule an AMA with us? Read our for more information! To see previous AMAs,. Black Belt is still the number 1 class for getting max HP in the remake.This post doesn't really go into much depth about what makes the classes strong in comparison to some of the info gamefaqs or the wiki which gives actual stats and other info.I'm pretty sure Bard was a requirement for one of the strategies for beating the ultra hard bonus dungeon boss.(Also Geomancer is totally rad at dealing damage from either row and sustaining throughout a dungeon.

Their biggest problem is if you take them into a fight against a boss they can end up wasting turns casting instant kill spells.). Much the same in the remake, with Black Belt being the best at HP growth.HP growth per level is based on characters base vit, which is based on the job and level they are. It's the only stat which is tied to the characters themselves, so you can miss out on capping it if you stay in certain jobs for too long. This point isn't that important as the game doesn't ever require anywhere near max hp (Minimum you can do it with is about 2000-2200) and you only really get locked out of it at level 55 or so, which is at or beyond the end of the game.This is not considering the iron giant, which will kill probably just murder you outright if you aren't approaching at least 6k or 7k health. The analysis isn't horrible, but the premise:there are in my opinion only a finite few Jobs that actually make sense to use, if the aim is to turn your characters into efficient powerhouses. Is a bit meh. The newer iteration of FF3 isn't particularly demanding of the player, and you don't need to be a 'powerhouse' for the most part.

In either case, you'll need to spend some time grinding. Most classes you spend time grinding in will be plenty strong assuming you have some basic balance in your party make-up.Still, I liked FF3 (even the old translated rom I played back in the day), and appreciate that people are still enjoying it. While true, I'm not quite certain their path is the most efficient either (for powerhouses or otherwise). The chunk of the game where Refia takes the thief role could be easily filled by a stronger class for example, and the thief swapped in briefly for segments where you want doors opened.This is part of what I was getting at with my 'most classes you spend time grinding in' comment. The blogger was talking about how much stronger their thief was. But the thief was only strong because it got a high job level. The trade-off of a squishier character to save money on keys (or switching classes in some specific locations) isn't necessarily a great one if your argument is the thief winds up strong.

Any class you get a high job level with will be strong. The thief isn't necessarily more efficient - that entire chain of reasoning in the article is weak.Many of the things he claims are worthless have solid arguments for their 'efficiency' over what he winds up using as well.

Surface examination of the value of the jobs in the game.If you need further proof of that, there's chart at the end showing the relative usefulness/value of the jobs, right? He crosses out one of his recommendations near the end and corrects it with what someone wrote in the comments. What was that well-reasoned comment that changed his mind?Good analysis with one major exception: Black Belts absolutely DESTROY endgame content.Ok then. That was all it took to change his mind about that job.It's not a horrible take on efficiency, but it's definitely not as efficient as possible either. Also, it seems like the endgame strat is to try to just cheese the boss with shurikens if you can manage it (and be level 60). Problem is, 'efficient' is a very nebulous term to use when deciding if you are going to use a class.

It could mean most damage, least chance of deaths, least turns used, or anything in-between.I mean, Scholar doubles all item damage and has naturally very high int, so they can easily become one of the strongest classes in the game. Their problem is just a logistical one, you have to have a thief and know what to steal from and have to conserve attack items. If you are judging efficiency on pure damage, they look great. However, they come at the bottom if you are judging by amount of micromanagement needed to get the most out.I think the game does a really good job of making the classes different from each other and each class has it's place and purpose, and every class gets at least some gear going into the endgame, so judging them on any one metric is going to be difficult.Since job levels are so important to the overall damage and healing, my favourite answer to the question of most efficient classes lies somewhere between 'Party Composition' and 'Classes I've been using the most already'. The quest for Onion Knight is quite short. All it requires is getting four letters from the mognet system from Topapa (Requires some level of game progress on PC/mobile/PSP, DS requires messing around with messages which may be impossible given that Nintendo WFC has shut down). Then it just involves going into a cave and fighting some bombs.Still, as for whether or not it's worth it, I'd say probably not.

For like 99% of people that play the game, the Onion Knight is essentially just a freelancer that can equip weapons and use magic, and with worse stat growths. Beyond level 90. They turn into the best class, as their stats skyrocket, but 90 is a high mark to reach in the first place.It seems like it exists just to be a reference to the original game. Onion Knights don't really have a place except to be essentially just a side-grade class that fills exactly the same purpose as Freelancers, so I can kinda see why they had them separate from the standard game progression.