Ok, im only a few hours into the game, just got the 2nd line of jobs, originally had monk, knight, white mage, black mage, switched monk to berserker, and im leaving it like that for now....which do you guys prefer, and why?

The most important thing is that you switch your jobs every now and then, and give your characters a borad training, so to speak.

I think that monk is superior to Berserker... actually, I think it is one of the most useful jobs anyway. And Berserker one of the more useless.
A monk is strong, and learns really useful abilities... Also, have several characters learn the different kinds of magic, black and white I mean... they are most important...
A Thief is handy to have in your team, especially when exploring new places, dungeons or towns: Thieves can see hidden passages.

Just one suggestion, and there are some spoilers involved so be warned. If you plan on having one of your character's using a Healing Rod I would suggest that you do not let them learn the Monk's Counter ability because once you get Mime (the best job in the game) you will end up countering every time. The reason is because Mime gets all of the non-command abilities but the Equip abilities. This means that if you have a Mime that has learned Counter equipped with the Healing Rod you will heal the enemy every time that character is attacked.

Also, 2-Swords is one of the best (if not THE best) ability in the game. It allows a character to equip two one handed weapons. This means that the character basically gets two attacks every round. There are other abilities that will do more damage than this (like 2-handed) but what is nice about 2-swords is that when you're facing enemies that are hard to hit you get two shots at hitting them. Of course you could always use the Hunter's Aim ability as your attack when using Mime to be sure you hit, but usually I liked being able to use two weapons because it would also up my chances of causing a status effect as well.

Basically what you're doing as you're playing is trying to learn abilities with each character that will complement each other well for when you have Mime. The reason is because the Mime job lets you select 3 pre-learned abilities from other classes to use instead of the 1 you are allotted with most jobs (Bare allows you to select 2). So really, you need to concern yourself with abilities rather than job classes.

Thanks, what setup did you guys usually use through the game as your main jobs/abilities?

I always have Bartz with some Melee job. Here's one setup.


bartz---Knight
Galuf---Monk
Reina---Sorcerer/WhiteMage
Faris----Blackmage

Even though Faris isn't really too skilled at magic she is pretty good. And Reina is pretty good with Sorcerer Job.


but one thing.


Did Galuf help in the final battle or did he die?

Well, I liked a lot of Jobs. I kept switching them too. After one made it to a master somewhere, I switched it again. That means, there was not just one setup from the beginning until the end. It was always different.

But my favorites were:

Monk, White Mage, Knight :)

Later one, I also liked the Dancer (whatever the name was), or the Archer. ;)

Keep on trying and find out by yourself. You'll see, it's big fun! :D

I tended to always try and keep one person with the healing rod and time magic while another had black magic and summoning, then I just had two strong damaging characters.

The skills that my 4 mimies ended the game with were:

Butz - Mimic, !Aim, EqSword, !Item
Faris - Mimic, !Aim, EqRibbon, !Revive
Reina - Mimic, !Dance, !Black, !Summon
Krile - Mimic, !Fight, !White, !Time


Equipment:

Butz - Excalibur, Brave Blade, Crystal Helm, Mirage Vest, and Protect Ring
Faris - Unarmed, Unarmed, Ribbon, Mirage Vest, and Protect Ring
Reina - Assassin, Crystal Shield, Black Hood, Mirage Best, and Protect Ring
Krile - Healing Staff, Aegis Shield, Crystal Helm, Mirage Vest, and Elf Cloak


The way my party basically worked was that all 4 were Mimes at the end. In order to do this Butz needed the Ninja�s 2-Sword ability, the Hunter�s !Aim ability, and the Knight�s Equip Sword ability. Faris needed the Hunter�s !Aim ability, the Dancer�s Equip Ribbon ability, and the Chemist�s Revive ability. I learned !Dance with Reina as well as having her learn all of the black mage and summoner abilities. Krile learned all of the White Mage and Time Mage abilities. I also had everyone other than Krile learn the Monk�s Counter ability, and if you want to the 30% HP bonus is always nice as well. I would also strongly recommend having someone learn the Thief abilities up to Caution. The Geomancer�s Antitrap is also a very nice support ability as well. The Samurai�s SwordGrab ability is always helpful as well because it will reduce the number of attacks that hit your characters. Again, keep in mind that the Mime job has access to all support abilities your character has learned other than the �Equip� abilities. For example, if your character is a Mime and has learned the Monk�s Counter ability the Mime will also perform counters. If you character is a Mime and has the Thief�s Dash ability then your party�s run/walk speed will be increased.

Keeping that in mind let me explain how each of my characters worked. Butz had the !Aim ability so that he would be sure to get a hit with each weapon he had equipped and also because �Mimic� doesn�t count as a fight command, so you need something that will act as a fight command. I already explained why I went with 2-Swords instead of the 2-hand option in my other post. He needed Equip Sword because the Mime can�t naturally equip swords and those are the two highest damaging weapons in the game. I gave him the Item command because I needed someone who could heal without using magic AND could give my magic users some MP back if they were in desperate need. As far as equipment went it is pretty self-explanatory. The strongest two weapons and the best helm with an armor that negates the first physical attack against the character and a ring that regenerates the character�s HP.

I used Unarmed for Faris because at the levels I had she could do more damage using her hands than any of the weapons I had left after Butz was equipped. Yes, the Monk�s unarmed ability does become that powerful later in the game. The reason I gave Faris a Ribbon is because it was nice to have one character that could not be the target of status effects, and really, there wasn�t much else I needed her to be able to do. I used !Aim for the same reason I used it for Butz. As for Revive, it was nice to be able to bring someone back to the battle without using an item or magic. The equipment has pretty much already been explained.

In Reina�s case I used the !Dance ability as a way for her to either heal herself or steal MP when she was running low. As you can see she had both summon and black magic so she was constantly casting spells. There is a dance that allows you to steal MP, so it made sense to have her use it. As far as the equipment went, the Assassin was the most powerful weapon I could equip her with. The Black Hood raised her magic power, the Crystal Shield helped her defense (she never attacked so there was no need for a second weapon) and the other two pieces of equipment I�ve explained already.

In Krile�s case I made sure that I didn�t learn Counter with her because I planned on equipping her with the Healing Staff (or Rod, I don�t remember which it was). I gave her the fight command so that she should attack members of the party and heal them. As for the magic, that is pretty self-explanatory. I gave her the Aegis Shield and Elf Cloak because I didn�t have another Protect Ring. So because I couldn�t have her HP regenerate I equipped her with three items that would reduce the number of hits she took (the third being the Mirage Vest). I equipped her with the Crystal Helm because her Magic Power was already really high so I figured the defense would help me more than equipping her with a hood to raise her magic power more.

The party worked really well. I generally didn�t have to heal that often because I could attack the wounded party member with Krile to heal them and on the off chance that I needed a really quick healing of someone I could have Butz heal them with an item.

Rabid Monkey made a serious mistake about saying Mime is the most powerful job in the game... Bare is. But only AFTER you've mastered numerous jobs.

Mime, while giving you 3 slots and getting all the command abilities, will always have crappy stats in higher 20s or lower 30s. Bare not only gets all the command abilities of mastered jobs as well, but it also gets the stats of the jobs you've mastered, and if you've mastered many jobs, it will get the strongest of the available stats. Why have a Mime with 33 Magic Power cast Cure IV when you can have a Bare with 60 Magic Power do it ?

Let's take the example I did with Bartz :

I made him master Knight, Sorcerer and White Mage.


Therefore, he ended up with the HP, VIT and STR of a Knight, the MP and Magic Power of White Mage, the Speed of a Sorcerer. Basically, all his stats were nearing 60, except for Speed at 40. He had all White Magic spells and all Sword Spells, meaning that he can heal, fight an ennemy with its weakness (Elemental sword spell), had infinite MP thanks to Aspir Sword Spell ( you can cast, you slash, back to full MP ), would cast both Safe and Shell automatically when on Low HP, and would automatically Cover allies with low HP. Now THAT is major ownage.

So, basically, master both a melee and a Mage Job for every character, put them back to Bare, and now you have quite the powerhouse of a party.

In my first game, I did this :

Bartz : Mastered Knight, Sorcerer, White Mage
Reina : Dragoon, White Mage
Faris : Samura�, Time Mage
Galuf/Krile : Monk,Sorcerer, Summoner

Give them the best equip they can afford (at Bare, they can equip ANYTHING, unlike Mimes) and you end up with something much better than 4 Mimes.

Knight, W. Mage, B. Mage and Monk had my vote for the first crystal jobs. For 2, I had to go w/ the Swordsmagic job.....For 3, it was Summoner, Red, Swordsmage and Monk. Finally, I went with Summoner, Red, Lancer and NINJA throughout the game.