Claws useless for Black Belts?

[mOnocularJohn]

Or are there high level ones later that increase damage instead of decrease?

[Hobo Elf]

Don't give any weapons to your Monk/Black Belt. These jobs are meant to only use their fists. I'm still unsure why Square kept adding Monk specific weapons into their FF games when every time they were a trap. Maybe it was a cruel joke.

[SC_Nikki]

I used every claw I came across. :( Are you telling me my Black Belt would've done even MORE damage unarmed!? :O

[mOnocularJohn]

After looking at a few I did get, apparently some have status effects or elemental affinities.. I guess under certain circumstances, those might do more damage if you're attacking something weak to it.. other than that, yeah the fists just do massive damage.

But if your BB gets confused, he's just going to one shot everybody else in the party.

[Kuchiri55]

Monks and BB do more damage with weapons until roughly Job Level 40 then fists become much more powerful.

[Atomic Kid]

like said above, black belts and monks depends on his class level for damage...once they get high unequip his weapons and he will do more damage. If you switch to the class for the first time or are still low job rank prob still needs weapons, but after 40+ he shouldnt have weapons on and becomes closer to his old ff1 self though if you want to use the upgraded ver of him to end of game you'd have to go back to lv1 job rank again but the upgraded ver of him is really op esp at high job ranks where he can hit 32x lol

black belt is viable for endgame but not if his job rank is low and he does have good stamina (not as much as viking) but he will get good hp growths and cap 9999 hp sooner.

[mOnocularJohn]

I wound up finishing the game with 3 Ninjas and a Devout at JL99. As usual I greatly over-leveled and crunched the final boss like a baws! The damage of the Ninja wasn't too much lowere than BB, but with the bonus of being able to wear full protective armor.

[Zunnoab #931]

Interesting. Currently my black belts do WAY more damage with the claws I've gotten from dungeons. I'll have to keep this in mind for when their levels get higher.

[Vambran]

Black belts get no ultimate weapon. So they peak around mid game with gear. Once you hit late game take off the weapons.

[Avalith]

Black Belts gain 2 attack points unarmed for every job level and another 2 for character level. You'll definitely want to use claws early on, but if you stick with your black belt for a while you'll want to take the claws off sooner or later.

[Dadalama]

Originally posted by Hobo Elf:

Don't give any weapons to your Monk/Black Belt. These jobs are meant to only use their fists. I'm still unsure why Square kept adding Monk specific weapons into their FF games when every time they were a trap. Maybe it was a cruel joke.

It's a holdover from the NES version where you can get your monk/bb to places under leveled. It's not a problem in this version, but they left them in there for posterity.

[Zunnoab #931]

Originally posted by Dadalama:

Originally posted by Hobo Elf:

Don't give any weapons to your Monk/Black Belt. These jobs are meant to only use their fists. I'm still unsure why Square kept adding Monk specific weapons into their FF games when every time they were a trap. Maybe it was a cruel joke.

It's a holdover from the NES version where you can get your monk/bb to places under leveled. It's not a problem in this version, but they left them in there for posterity.

I'm not sure what you mean by under-leveled. It's decently high-leveled in the job before ditching the weapons makes sense. Helpfully, the in game UI does in fact show you the attack power of unarmed after you take both weapons off.