What class to switch martial artist to?

[Zardoz134]

My current party is Priest->Sage, Mage and Martial Artist. I don't know if they nerfed the MA class in this or not, but they absolutely don't pull their weight. They crit slightly more often than my hero, but it still only amounts to 1-2 crits per boss fight while the rest of their damage is mediocre at best. The most use I've gotten out of them since the boss troll fight is constantly leg sweeping to get a few free turns.

I'll probably switch some characters to MA for the agility once they have useful skills, but it's largely a detriment right now. I'm planning on swapping my mage to a warrior soon and I don't want to use Monster Wrangler because I've heard that it's too powerful. I've thought about Gadabout->Sage->MA or maybe a thief.

[deadbeef]

Martial Artists are most useful for their Critical Claim ability that they get around level 48. This move is a guaranteed kill on any metal monster you find. Also Ripple of Disruption is pretty good on bosses and you get it around level 44.

Otherwise, Martial Artist is pretty mid. If you're not planning on levelling a character to 48 in the class, I would not reccomend switching to it.

Also, Monster Wrangler is only OP once you recruit at least 50 monsters. They get a skill at 50 monsters recruited that allows them to act twice in a turn, and they also have an attack that scales with the amount of monsters you've recruited. So the idea is to recruit every monster, use the act twice ability, and then use the monster-scaling attack twice.

Point is, if you haven't recruited a whole bunch of monsters, they are nothing special.

I would go ahead and switch your Mage to Warrior as you mentioned and then switch your Martial Artist to a thief so you have at least one character with the useful Thief skills Padfoot, Nose for Treasure, and Persecutter.

[Zardoz134]

Thanks for the detailed reply, it's very helpful. Waiting until level 48 is a bit more of an investment than I'm willing to make, so I think I'm going to swap over to a thief. It's a class I've never used before so it'll be fun to see how it works

[atmasabr]

Martial Artists have always been weaker than Warriors in boss fights, especially defensively. A big chunk of their utility is their agility letting them kill randoms quickly, and Warriors compete with that with Mercurial Thrust. Agility is still king when it comes to using special items, which you get many, many more of in this remake. They can suffer a bit as party member #2 if you don't have great control over battles. They're great as party member #3, but you favor a faster-heavy party.

Martial Artists' critical formula gets higher over time. Not quite the same outrageous way as in the NES, but there's still a mechanic. But so does Hero's. Just not as fast.

I think you could do worse than switch to Priest. They're rather slow and mediocre naturally, so MA's high stats synergize okay with that. For that matter Thief would do the same thing. I made mine into a Mage.

[hopefuldeath]

Well not always weaker. They formerly had better damage output than the Warrior even ignoring criticals and their high agility even gave them better physical survivability than the Warrior for the majority of the game. The Warrior basically competed on high HP and access to resistance equipment(but if you picked a female Martial Artist they had somewhat decent access to the latter too)

Now that agility's function as defense was removed, their strength was nerfed from being much higher than the Warrior to barely above a Merchant for most of the game, and most of their damage skills basically being worse than the Warrior, yeah. They were arguably the only job in the game that was nerfed. They're still arguably the best job to be once you're completely maxed out, but their main-game use is pretty stunted.

[gregfromthepeg]

Agreed, @hopefuldeath, they used to be good all the way through. I used to feel warriors didn't get enough STR growth. My MA would always have far more, so they were good even when their crit didn't trigger.

In this remake, the wiki seems to confirm that the everyman strength is now lower for the MA vs Warrior. It was definitely higher in the old versions - it was always the tradeoff consideration. MA with little gear that had magic or breath defense but better STR vs warrior with great gear for defense and more stamina but a bit lower STR.

Their abilities are fun in this one, but they need some stat boosting so are pretty mediocre unless used as a class change option late game.

(I was glad to see Merchants not so useless late game now, as I like playing them for some reason, ha)

[atmasabr]

Originally posted by hopefuldeath:

Well not always weaker. They formerly had better damage output than the Warrior even ignoring criticals and their high agility even gave them better physical survivability than the Warrior for the majority of the game. The Warrior basically competed on high HP and access to resistance equipment(but if you picked a female Martial Artist they had somewhat decent access to the latter too)

Now that agility's function as defense was removed, their strength was nerfed from being much higher than the Warrior to barely above a Merchant for most of the game, and most of their damage skills basically being worse than the Warrior, yeah. They were arguably the only job in the game that was nerfed. They're still arguably the best job to be once you're completely maxed out, but their main-game use is pretty stunted.

The GBA/SFC version gave Martial Artists weapons that kept pace with Warriors. The NES version did not. I definitely cannot agree on the survivability in either game, their best armor in the NES was the Cloak of Evasion, and that doesn't get trumped easily in the GBA/SFC. You almost have to use the Meteorite Armband to give them good defense. Once Warriors get the Demon Axe/Headsman's Axe it's more difficult to justify Martial Artists, because neither of them are 1-rounding most randoms anymore but now Warriors can get critical hits. When it comes to enemy magic and critical hits, hit points are almost everything.

I will say that Warriors got terrifically buffed in this one from the cursed equipment mechanics, how that you can keep the equipment if you uncurse it.

[hopefuldeath]

The MAs suck in the NES version and I don't think anyone is going to be bothering with that version so we're not really talking about that. But yeah you underestimate their physical survivability a bit it seems. For example, at the Pyramid(level 15) they'll both have ~80 defense power with their best equipment, but the Martial Artist can put on the Meteorite Armband for 120 defense. The highest attack power enemy in the Pyramid(minus Canniboxes which are crazy) are the mummies with 60 attack power which means you can put the MA out in front and have them take 0/1 damage from everything. Meanwhile the Warrior would take ~10 damage from mummies. They actually practically nullify physical damage like this until quite a ways into the game if you keep the bracelet on them.

Later on when you're a bit before Baramos(level 25), the Warrior only has ~110 defense power with their optimal set of Magic Armor, Dragon Shield, and Iron Mask. The Martial Artist will have ~150 with Magical Skirt/Tempest shield/Silver Tiara. You can actually bring that up to 183 by using the Stealth Suit if you want but you probably want magic resistance instead. If you put on the Meteorite Armband you can bring that up to 210(243 with Stealth Suit). For reference with the Armband that's enough to nullify almost every random encounter physical attack up through Baramos with the exception of really strong enemies like trolls being able to pull off like 25 damage. Since you're maxing agility at about this point the armband stops being as effective here on out though(though I guess if you use the Tough Cookie personality you can delay agility maxing a bit while also increasing your HP by 40%)

They will be vulnerable to critical hits but those are too rare to really factor in to be honest(and in boss fights like Boss Troll you can even disable their crits by oomphing them. Sounds counter-intuitive but it's actually pretty effective). Magic tends to be weaker than breath so the Magical Skirt suffices for the majority of the game for that. Their real weakness is breath attacks and the fact that they don't get a weapon upgrade past the Gold Claw until after beating Baramos which means when you're fighting the hardest boss in the game they're only about tied with the Warrior offensively instead of being better which means Warriors are better there for their higher HP and breath resistance. On the flipside since you don't really need to worry about breath until Baramos(and maybe Orochi since a wily player might purchase a Dragon Shield beforehand), Martial Artists are overwhelmingly just plain better until that point(which is like, 80% of the game)

Right after Baramos they get another weapon upgrade to put them above Warriors again but their breath resistance hinges on whether you want to give them the somewhat rare best armor in the game or not(you can get unlimited copies in SFC/GBC but on Mobile/Switch it is one-of-a-kind). Considering most classes get breath resistance from other things, they are one of the best candidates for what it's worth. Of course around this point they're over level 30 so I guess their crit rate becomes worth mentioning too.

The main competition for the Martial Artist is actually the Thief since they have even higher agility with better armor options and can equip whips and boomerangs for mooks. Thief is even more crap for Baramos Castle onwards though but you can always class change.

[atmasabr]

Originally posted by hopefuldeath:

The MAs suck in the NES version and I don't think anyone is going to be bothering with that version so we're not really talking about that...

I always thought the meta was that they were better than Warriors in the NES version. They're strictly superior against frail casters and enemies that rely on inflicting status (with the exception of Putrepups and Madhounds). Their main compensation for their lower attack in late boss fights is that you can get away with not casting BiKill on them.

10 damage against Mummies is not IMO significant.

They will be vulnerable to critical hits but those are too rare to really factor in to be honest(and in boss fights like Boss Troll you can even disable their crits by oomphing them. Sounds counter-intuitive but it's actually pretty effective).

I'm quite sure that would not work in the NES version.
No, wait, I forgot. In the remakes, critical hit is a special ability. An AI would choose not to do it when under Oomph.