Most OP Choices for jobs and early grinds.

[Bevinator]

So I normally play RPG/JRPG being completely OP and the same will be done with this game. so does anyone have any recommendations on how to start here?

[Pendergast891]

there are a couple of early game level grinds, after the prologue and a bit in the story you'll have some access to the deserts. After you've turned in the sun stone to the indian man you'll lose your teammate and be solo for a while. This is the ideal level grinding time due to future party memebers being leveled to you.

You'll want to then go into the trial mode section with this save and on the very first zone you can find a diamond armlet. You can keep resetting the trials to keep getting the armlet and selling it for a bunch of money.

Look up dustia farming, that is a decent early game level grinding, and the phoenix downs are bought at nalbina fortress.

you can also steal a very late game sword from the flowering cactoid in the 3rd trial zone.

This is the basic early game power up most people do, but theres also the ability to powerlevel all the way to 99 but that takes way too long and you'll probably be able to beat all of the game, close to 100%, and get level 99 from normal play before you do with the early game farming

once youve beaten the game you'll unlock a ng+ like mode where you'll start at lvl 90, which is a way to emulate that early game grind, but at that point you may have burned out on your first playthrough.

[Hinnyuu]

As for grinding, levels really don't mean all that much in this game - gear is everything. That being said, you can "grind" for some really OP gear pieces early on if you so choose, and select jobs accordingly.

To find THE "best" setup is very difficult, owing to the complexity of the sheer number of possible job combinations together with the fact that you can reset jobs at will now. There are, however, some standout combos to consider:

Knight/Black Mage is arguably the best overall damage dealer, allowing you to reach both maximum magic and maximum physical damage (against element-neutral targets) on the same character, switching as needed.

Shikari is an interesting one - it has access to some of the best early game weapons (Gladius and Platinum Dagger) and has a niche at endgame in being the highest damage dealer against the biggest superboss in the game (Yiazmat). In between those two extremes, it's arguably the best dedicated tank job when combined with White Mage - however it's debatable whether you need a dedicated tank or not, and whether or not that's "optimal". Outside of the superboss, it's not a great endgame damage dealer because its best weapon is dark element, and so many dungeon enemies at endgame are undead (immune to dark).

Foebreaker is another oddball. It has the earliest available ultimate weapon (Vrscika) and can dominate the midgame if you make it ASAP. However, owing to the random damage of breaker weapons, it will be overshadowed fairly quickly by other options, and is pretty mediocre at endgame. This might be a job you switch into just for the brief window where Vrscika is OP.

Machinist is equally contingent on weapon choice, but in a different way. If you rush to make its high-end guns extremely early, it's quite ridiculous - most story bosses will die in 2-3 shots. It crushes the midgame and is solid up until the endgame, but it's burst more than sustain so it's not that great against endgame bosses. Personally I like to use Machinist/White Mage as a Reverse-based tank for Yiazmat, because it has access to all offensive buffs (Hastega + Bravery) to buff your berserker damage dealers.

The top damage at endgame is split between the top weapons, belonging to Bushi, Monk, and Knight - who comes out on top depends on several factors, including fight length, enemy elemental susceptibility, whether or not you can maintain low HP easily, what level you are, etc.

All this is, of course, considering only the "normal" flow of the game. There are a number of invisible weapons obtained in obscure ways that are so powerful they might as well be cheats. The invisible bow Seitengrat, for example, has double range, nearly DOUBLE the attack power of most ultimate weapons, 75 evasion, and five times the crit rate of most other bows - all the while being equippable by any job without needing to spend LP. If you wish to play with those items, job selection is pretty much irrelevant. You can just afk through the entire game with it start to finish.

Similarly, the optional Trial Mode can be used to import items into the main game at will, allowing you access to endgame equipment that would otherwise be unobtainable for a long, long time. You can do this repeatedly to kit your entire party with best-in-slot gear, including the Wyrmhero Blade, an absurdly OP sword normally only obtained as a trophy in the main game after all the superbosses have already been defeated. Once again, if you plan on using this to acquire gear jobs barely matter, and you'll just steamroll everything.