Back to Final Fantasy 5 Job Classes

Classes ranked in order of usefullness
Classes ranked in order of Ap needed to master
Which classes I think you should have each characters master [In order]
Explanations on why I ranked them th way I did on usefulness

  Classes ranked in order of usefullness

1. Mime

2. Caller

3. White Mage

4. Ninja

5. Black Mage

6. Knight

7. Time Mage

8. Sword Mage

9. Archer

10. Blue Mage

11. Thief

12. Monk

13. Dragoon

14. Bard

15. Chemist

16. Samurai

17. Geomancer

18. Red Mage

19. Dancer

20. Trainer

21. Berserker

At the bottom of this page it tells why i rated them in this order


  Classes ranked in order of Ap needed to master

1. Red Mage [1,159 Ap]

2. Mime [999 Ap]

3. Samurai [820 Ap]

4. Caller [750 Ap]

5. Monk [700 Ap]

6. Knight [690 Ap]

6. Ninja [690 Ap]

8. Black Mage [680 Ap]

8. Sword Mage [680 Ap]

10. Thief [635 Ap]

11. Chemist [630 Ap]

12. Dragoon [600 Ap]

13. White Mage [580 Ap]

14. Time Mage [530 Ap]

15. Berserker [500 Ap]

16. Trainer [460 Ap]

17. Dancer [400 Ap]

18. Blue Mage [350 Ap]

19. Archer [195 Ap]

20. Geomancer [175 Ap]

20. Bard [175 Ap]


  Which classes I think you should have each characters master [In order]

Classes I strongly suggest Bartz mastering [in order]:
Knight, Sword Mage, Ninja, Monk, Mime

Classes I strongly suggest Reina mastering [in order]:
White Mage, Caller, Black Mage, Time Mage, Mime

Classes I strongly suggest Galuf/ Krile mastering [in order]:
Blac Mage, Time Mage, White Mage, Caller, Mime

Classes I strongly suggest Faris mastering [in order]:
Thief, Bard, Samurai, Archer, Mime

It also helps to have someone master Geomancer, Blue Mage, Red Mage and Chemist. They aren't neccessary [while the ones listed above nearly are]. If you have the time and the patience I'd go ahead and have the four other classes [Geomancer, Blue Mage, Red Mage, and Chemist] mastered by a character.


  Why I rated the classes in order of usefullness:

1. Mime
The Mime is definately the best withit you can benefit from the other skills you already have mastered, plus copy any ability any other character uses [such as mimic a Caller or Time Mage to cast Bahamut or Meteor without usuing and Mp at all]

2. Caller
The Caller is the best offensive class. Bahamut is the strongest attackin the game. Leviathan is pretty darn strong too, and Odin can knock out a group of fairly strong enemies in a single attack. Plus Carbuncle and Golem are both great defensive moves, lettign you cast Reflect on your whole party at once, or just about be completely shielded from physical attacks. So the Caller is definately second only to Mime.

3. White Mage
The White Mage is pretty much essential to have. It's almost impossible to beat the game without using one. First off it's the class that has th eability to recover lost Hp. It's Cure spells [which you'll definately need] are unmatched by any other class. Plus Riase and Esuna are both very good recovery spells. And Holy is just as strong as Flare and only take half the amount of Mp to cast.

4. Ninja
You might be surprised that I rated the Ninja so highly, but it'sone of the best fightign classes in the game. It's Twin ability lets you become immune to two physical attacks, it can throw weapons for abotu three times their regular attacking power, plus it can equip two weapons. It is VERY useful to have Bartz master 2-Swords. You'll be thankful once you have a Knight with Ragnarok and Excalibur. With that equipment a high level Knight can deal more damage than most attacking spells [well into the multiple thousands, and that's just their REGULAR attack].

5. Black Mage
Not too many peopel will argue that the Black Mage is a very good character. The attacking power of their spells is second only to the Caller's. They can deal strong elemental damage which will greaty help out with certain bosses, andhave plenty of Mp ro spend on those spells. Use Bio to rapidly suck the life out of an enemy or Break or Doom to instantly kill a target. Then of course there's the super-powerful Flare attack and if you get low on Mp just use Asper to steal some from your enemies[or even allies].

6. Knight
The Knight is your basic fighting character. He has pretty much no special abilities, but his Cover ability can very well save the life of your weaker characters [Mages and such] at the beginning of the game. Plus Two-handed, is almost as good as 2-Swords [excpet for the fact that you can't attack two enemies with it, where as in 2-swords you can kill a weak enemy and still harm anohter, by using two weak hits,  this only deals one large blow]. Plus if this class is mastered you can equip Armor, Helmest and Shields with any classes even Mages. It hleps quite a bit to have a Monk that can wear Crystal Armor instead of just a Kung-fu Suit.

7. Time Mage
The Time Mage is a very, very useful wizard to have, even though it can't recover Hp or do much damage with it's spells. First of there's the exception to the rule, Meteor which typiclaly strikes with four strong attacks to random enemies [or if it' sone enemy, such as a boss, that means it gets hit with four attacks, usually at least for 3,000 or so Hp a piece, makign Metoer nearly as good as Bahamut]. Then there's Haste and Hast 2 which you can use to let your characters attack more often [their ATB guage fills up quicker], and Slow to cuase the opposite effect on enemies. Demi, which can take off half of a normal enemy's Hp in one blow, Telepo which lets you escpae battle or dungeons automatically, and the best spell of all Quick, which lets a character get two turns for every one they'd usually get.

8. Sword Mage
The sword mage is one, maybe the, most balanced character in the game. He has decent speed, can use most heavy armor and swords, and can use elemental magic. His ability to cast spells on his weapon is in a way, better than the Black Mage. Becuase, he [and for some reason it only costs a fraction of the Mp that it takes to regularly cast the spell] can cast a spell on his weapon, so that for his regular attack he will instead cast that spell, without using Mp. Sure casting Fire 2 or Ice 2 every turn as a regular attack is usefull, but casting, Sleep or Bio is VERY usefull. Or if you want to forget usefullness and go for all-out destruction, try giving him the to sord or Super Shot ability [From the Ninja and Hunter, they let you equip two weapons or attack four times] while you have Flare or holy cast on your weapon. It'll do more damage sometimes than even Meteor. Plus if an enemy's weak to an element [especially a boss] it will be extremely helpful to cast their weakness on your wepon and attack them, most of them time you can hitdestroy them in one or two rounds if you use Super hot whiel their weakness is in your weapon.

9. Archer
The Archer has, for the most part fairly useless abilities, his main one beign "Critter" a scaled down version of summoning, in which he'll call an animal friend to his aid [that puzzlesme why would a Hunter, as the Archer is called in this game, be FRIENDS with forest animals?]Most of the animals are barely strongerthan a normal physical attack [there are only three usefull ones, Nightengale which recovers hp, Falcon which reduces the target's Hp to 1/3, and Unicorn which recovers some of the party's Hp and Mp]. They do have one extremely useful skill though. The Super Shot. This ability when a hunter uses it is fairly strong, it deals out four physical attacks, just slightly weaker than normal, to a single target. Now put this in the hands of say.... a high level Knight, Dragoon, or Monk, and they will do an amazing amount of damage. More than a lot of spells. now aadd this to the Sword mage's "Sword magic" ability to deal damage that is only rivaled by Bahamut. Making Super Shot, in my opinion [since it takes no Mp and Bahamut does] the best attacking skill in the game.

10. Blue Mage
The Blue Mage, can be very useful but takes a lot of time to build up. It can use a wide variety of spells that the enmy can also use, which covers nearly every effect that Black and White magic covers, and generally, it takes little Mp to cast these spells. The thing is, Blue Magic can only be learned if a Blue Mage is in your party and the enemy uses th epsll against you. In other words, your team has to get hit with the spell [when a Blue Mage is in the party] in order to learn it. This as one would guess, makes Blue Magic a bit difficult to learn compared to the other versions, [Black, White and Time] where you you usually just have to buy the spells to learn them. Theit magic can cause large amounts of damage, increase your whole part's defense, restore your party's Hp, cut an enemy's Hp by 3/4, or their Mp by half or even decrease the enemy's leve, as well as doezens of other things. The magic is certainly useful, though they doesn't possess any SUPER strong attacking spells [not along the lines of Flare, Holy, Meteor, or Bahamut, at least], plus they can equip wepons and armor of a decent strength [about what the Sword Mage can equip]. So, with these in mind the Blue mage gets a spot in the top ten.

11. Thief
The Thief is fairly weak physically, not nearly as strong as a Knight or Dragoon or even a Samurai. About the strength of the Ninja, generally able to equip the same weapons and armor [though unlike the Ninja they can only equip one weapon]. They have no real skills as far as attacking goes, so if one is in your team you'll be stuck with them only attacking with their knife. They have a few abilites that are pretty useful on the map, they have Dash which allows you to run about four times as fast as usual [by holding the O button]. Secret allows you to view hidden passages and Caution lets you avoid back attacks in battle. THeir two command abilities, though, are what get them to score so high. Flee lets you escape automatically from a battle [just about any battle but boss ones] and then their greatest ability, Steal lets you steal items in battle from enemies. Steal is definately one of the most useful skills in the game, though it's not essential to get, I reccomend it. Many of the strongest weapons and armor and many a rare item, are only able to be obtained through stealing from enemies.

12. Monk
The Monk is physically, the strongest character in the game. Even outrankign the bersker in terms of strength and stamina. They gain Hp at a high rate, but their downside is thier lack of commands in battle and thier inability to equip that powerful of equipment. They can equip fair strngeth armor as strong as most medium level characters [like the Ninja and Archer], they can't rquip shields though and can their biggest dissadvantage....they can equip no weapons whatsoever. Even without their weapons though, they can still cause as much damage as most characters. They have very good skills to learn, Counter lets you counterattack in battle, Hp+  lets you raise your Maximum Hp by up to 30% and thier best ability Barefist, allows a character to gain the same physical strength as a Monk, meaning pair that with Two-swords and you will have one heck of a physical attack [reaching to abotu the strength fo Flare, but actually doubel that becuase with two swords you can attack twice]. So even if the Monk has no real skills in battle besides his regular physical attack, he definately deserves a spot near the top half.

13. Dragoon
The Dragoon has always been one of my personal favorites. They are about the strength, physically, of the Knight [a tad bit weaker but not that much]. They can equip the strongest armor and thier Spears are abotu the strength of the Knight's sword [once again a little weaker, but not that much]. They only have three skills, Equip Lance which is a given [I woudl just learn equip Sword instead though] and two others which are actually useful.The Lance command lets you drain Hp and mp from an enemy and the then there's thier signature move, the Jump ability. Jump lets you perform an aerial attack which if you have a spear equipped is roughly twice as strong as thier normal attack. You do have to wait for a while though while the leap into the air so it takes a little longer than the regular attack but it really doesn't matter and is in a way sort of a plus becuase while your in the air you're immune from any damage.

14. Bard
The Bard is all-around a fairly weak character. His one good trait though, is his ability to sing. bards learn eight songs. A few of them [Power, Mp and Level song] will increase your party's stats. Speed song will cast Haste on an ally, and Love song and Temptsong will trick your enemies into not attacking or attacking themselves. And none of these take any Mp to use. now this may all sound dine and dandy but really none of them songs are TOO great, nothing that a few drinks by the Chemist couldn't do. The last two songs are the too good ones. Requiem will allow you to attack and in some cases completely destory an entire group of undead enemies in one attack, which is very useful in the Valley of Drgons near Kelb Villag, and is the only way to gain the very useful Golem summoning spell which is also found in the Valley of Drgons. And in the Pyramid, later in the game, there a ton of strong enemies and 90% of them are undead and can be knocked out with one Requiem song, posing a very easyand fairly quick way [especially if you kill off your teammates] to gain experience points. Then the last song, Strength song is extremely useful in that it casts Regen, free of Mp cost, on your entire party [their Hp will recover itself a bit whenever it becomes their turn in battle, pretty much the opposite of poison]. So even if theBard is physically weak, can hardly use any weapons and has practically no attacking skills in battle, these songs make it a character that you'll definately want to use at least a few time throughout the game

15. Chemist
The Chemist at first glance seems like a very good character, with the ability to mix to common items to make a new rare item. That is of course thier main ability, they have the useful ability [which I would reccomend everyone learning] of having Potions and Ethers having double the recovery effect on them that they normally would [this only works in battle though, and not outside of it on the menu screen or anything]. Thier other abilites aren't worth learning unless your out to master the class becuase Recover and Revive are just weaker and less effective versions of White Magic spells [even though they are Mp free i would still reccomend the White Magic over them]. This puts the focus of them being useful on thier Mix ability, which really isn't as usefull as you would think, first you have to set it to a command, which means either you have to be a Chemist to use it or set it to your valuable secon slot ability. Then you can ONLY mix items in battle, no outside of it and the resulting item [of the two mixed ones] is used immediately that turn. You can't mix two items to gain a third one that is just added to your inventory for you to use at your own convenience like I thought at first. Instead, you have to use it right away, which unless, you have the combination required for the desired effect memorized, can be a bit difficult to come out with a useful item, you could accidently recover an enemy by targeting them with what you that was Shadowflare and ended up being a Half-Elixir, or vice-verca [kill one of your teammates by it resulting in an offensive attack rather than a recovery or defensive item]. Plus most of the most usefull items, the drinks, can only be used by the Chemist. All that aside there are fifteen items that result from mixing, that I find vry useful [Useful enough to actually have the Mix command in battle and use to create these]. It is important though to write down which Items make which and to make sure you have the needed items to do so. All in all the chemist is in fact, very useful I would reccomend by the end of the game having one characte have mastered the job class. Since lots of these Items can be extremely useful[such as turning a Tonic and an Ether into an X-Potion]. The Chemist job class is useful,  just not as useful as it could have been.

16. Samurai
The Samurai, master of the fantastic Katana [which is about equal in Strength to the Sword or Spear] and able to equip all of the strongest armor. The Samurai has few skills however, he lacks the Cover/ Guard/ Learn-to-equip-armor-despite-your-class abilities of the Knight and the Jumping capility of the Dragoon. But is somewhat of an equal to them. His few abilities thathe does lean are fairly useful [with the exception of one or two which are very useful]. His first attack lets you petrify enemies [though it does not foten work], another lets you equip the Katana reguardless of Job class, and his last is a strong random physical attack to the enemy. Then there are his two useful ones, one of them, Sword grab, allows you to randomly "catch" phyical attacks from the enemy [exact same thing as evading them]. I'd say you probably evade them [the physical attack] about 15 to 20% of the time. So it is a pretty good skill to learn. Then the second useful one, is by far his best ability, Gp toss [I have no idea why in the world learning to throw money would be considered a skill that a Samurai would learn, it seems more like maybe a Thief's skill to me]. Gp toss, as it implies allows you to throw your money at the enemies in order to cuase a large amount of damage, however, it actually takes a good deal away from your cash amount to use this. It's a good last resort idea, but since you need money to buy things, it is actually not too great of an idea to use this unless you relly have to, unless you're at the last boss, in which case money is of no longer of any use to you, than GP toss is actually a very good idea [In fact, I very much reccomend doing so when you reach X-Death in the final dungeon]. So becuase of Gp toss and Sword Grab the Samurai gets a semi-respectable sixteenth place.

17. Geomancer
The Geomancer is very qeak phycially, but would lead yu to beleive that he is a good character becuase he can use elemental spells [randomly cast one of four spells, the selection of spells depending on what kind of terrain you're fighting in, by use of the Earth ability] without any cost of Mp.This is not nearly as good as it would sound, though. Maybe the attacks actually are fairly strong and worth casting at first, i wouldn't know becuase I only really used the Geomancer through a few dungeons, but by the time you reach X-Death's castle [after getting the sealed weapons], when a Geomancer is actually a good idea to have in your party [becuase of thier Find hole and Antitrap abilities] thier elemental attacks are of only medium strength, about as strong as a good phycial hit from a Knight, Dragoon, or Samurai. Which makes their main ability pretty useless. I mea you might as well have a Knight who can deal that kind of damage every time, than a Geomancer and take a bit of a risk with the random spells of thier "Earth" ability. In the end, have somone master ther Findhole ability so you can use it in the few dungeons that you'll need it in [it will be usefull then, I can gurantee you] but have that character be a better class, with Findhole as thier second slot ability.

18. Red Mage
Red Mages have been along clear since back in the days of the original Final Fantasy. They are able to use both limited Black and White magic, and can use medium level weapons and armor [about the same as the Blue Mage]. Heck, they can even gain the incredible ability of [this takes 999 Ap to learn though] casting two spells back to back [as in two spells in one of thier turns in battle]. So from all this it sounds like a good deal, I mean the Red Mage is a good, no make that great character, right?That is where you are wrong my friend, many, many people overrate the Red Mage. i would even go as far as to say that Red mages are probably the most commonly-overrated characters ever to be in a Final Fantasy game. You see, there's a sligth problem here, Red Mages can only learn up to Level 3 Black and White Magic, meaning their stongest magic is Cure,Fire, Ice and Bolt 2. It takes you 160 Ap to get there, Level 3 Red Magic [the spells from both Black and White Magic]. While on the other hand after 180 Ap [so only 20 more] the Black Mage, is at Level 5 magic, using Fire, Ice and Bolt 3. So by the time Red mages get around to learning their medium spells it's already outdated becuse your Black Mage has stuff that's twice as strong [actually even stronger than that]. So the Red Mage just isn't worth it, his stuff is always outdated and fairly useless by the time he learns is plus, by halfway through the game his strongest stuff's going to be useless anyways. So just stick with getting a White and a Black mage, instead of trying to combine the tw. Even if they can't equip the strong weapons and armor that the Red mage can, their magic is a heck of a lot stronger, and isn't that why you pick wizards in the first place? Becuase of strong Magic?

19. Dancer
The Dancer is in all aspects, a fairly useless character. I did use it a few times during the game, but really it pales in comparrison to 90% of the other job classes. It only has three abilities

20. Trainer
The Trainer, at first seems like a very cool and useful job class. Even if they do have fairly weak wepons and armor isn't the ability to capture the enemies you run into and then unleash them on suspecting foes later the coolest thing ever? Well, I admit it does sound cool but really it's not all it's cracked up to be. First off, they have to be very low on Hp for you to be able to capture them [with only an eight or less of their maximum Hp remaining]. Secondly, once they have a monster captured they can release it to attack, but only once. Which means after you have released it to attack you have to  go catch another monester. So they are pretty useless against bosses since their normal attacks are pretty weak and [since you can't catch bosses] they are only able to use their special ability once in a boss fight. And fighting bosses really is what matters, so the Trainer just doesn't make the cut.

21. Berserker
The Berserker is in fact the most useless job class in the game. If you want to just fight weak enemies and get levels up quickly, then I guess that they are semi-useful becuase they are constanstly attacking the enemy without you haveing to tell them to. But then again instead [if you have a turbo type controller] you can just switch over the button to automatic. Berserkers havevery high attack power and can equip the very powerful axe. But if you get a Knight, Dragoon, Samurai, or Monk to a high enough level [and equip them with two eapons] then they easily take off more damage then the Berserker [and if you use Super Shot then there is just no comparison between the two]. Then the Berserker's downfall... he can do nothing but attack and attacks random enemies. So if you are trying to defeat a certain enemy first, you can't make the Berserker attack just that enemy. Also they can't help out with any recovering at all since they can't use Items or Magic. So if a Berserker can do nothing but attack and you can't pick who it attacks and some job classes have higher attack then it does, well then just pick the ohter job class instead of the Berserker