Can Balthier be good?

[Water]

I'm fairly new, ten hours in, and just survived the Giza plains by some magical luck.

I have Balthier who is either level 12 or 13 and a Machinst. He is by far my worst character, and I would like help fixing him.

Where Fran and Penelo are not useless due to healing, Balthier does less damage than any other player minus Penelo. He sits back and shoots his 1600's style gun at an enemy for minimal damage, reloads VERY slowly, and fires again. He can't even take out enemies that look like they have 1 HP left on the orange bar.

How do I fix this guy?

[ezzypixel]

guns usually do fixed type damage. I'm guessing he is equipped with a weak gun. check the shops for a better gun.

[Andrea Honeybee]

yeah idk from my past experience when you just make sure he has up to date gear, he was like one of my strongest guys, i felt kinda nekked without him lol, also, there might be times in the game where one class will have a new wep available in the market while others dont, so if you do have someone stronger at the moment, it wouldnt hurt to just have balthier on the side lines until you get to a shop that has a stronger weapon for him.

[eternal248]

Guns deal damage that ignores Defense and Evasion, though there are some enemies that are resilient to Gun attacks (mostly gelatinous enemies such as Flans). That's the tradeoff on them, and is why Guns are so slow. Balthier also has a marginally slower animation with Guns, though this doesn't make a huge impact at all in the long run.

As other users have suggested, make sure his equipment is updated. With Guns especially, keeping them updated is crucial to keeping their damage heightened, as no amount of Strength will help increase their damage output.

[Water]

Thanks.

Any early game shops I should be on the lookout for? I believe I am at Guns 4 or 5 right now, but am not near a city.

[Pendergast891]

so if you want to min/max a bit, shikari balthier is probably one of the stronger characters because he's got a very high speed growth, and his dagger/ninja sword attack animations are some of the quickest

[MOIZEBINGUS]

I made him a knight for the first job, then a Bushi. You can always go to MontBlanc in the clan hall and reassign him. I did this with Penelo when I accidentally made her a white mage early on. I chose:

Vaan: Shikari / Foebreaker
Penelo: Monk / Black Mage
Fran: Archer / Red Battlemage
Balthier: Knight / Bushi
Basch: Ulaan / Time Battlemage
Ashe: White Mage / Machinist

Ashe is hot as heck using a gun I tellz yah....

[Scheneighnay]

*1500s style gun

The trick to guns is your gambit setup.
Make sure he's set to target the foe with the highest hp rather than the party leader's target or anything like that. That does a better job of guaranteeing his target lasts long enough for him to get a hit in on it.

Machinists also make good item-based healers due to license availability, though archers perform similarly and it still requires you to stay ahead of the curve.

Originally posted by Water:

Thanks.

Any early game shops I should be on the lookout for? I believe I am at Guns 4 or 5 right now, but am not near a city.

Not really, in the original version there were some shops you could visit "early" by various means and thus gain a big advantage in items, but that was changed in this version of the game so that a number of shops can have their inventory change based on where you are in the story.

[Hinnyuu]

If you don't mind a bit of potential frustration, you CAN make one of the highest-tier guns, Arcturus, extremely early on in the game using the Bazaar.

To make Arcturus you need Wyvern Wing x2 - steal from Wyvern Lord (Mark) or from Aeros (rare in Ozmone: The Shred; spawns a bit after you defeat the rare Bull Croc in the same area); Yensa Fin x2 (20% drop from Yensa or Bull Yensa with Mage's Monograph); and Salamand Halcyon x1 (rare steal from Salamand Entite, the big yellow ball of death in Ogir Yensa: Primary Tank Complex; steal resets after a single zone change for this, it will take a while to get the rare steal)

If you do make that gun early on, it basically trivializes the game because you two- or three-shot even story bosses. So do this at your own discretion ;)

Following the "regular" progression with guns by buying them from shops leaves them a bit mediocre compared to other options. But it's an option to keep in mind against enemies with high defenses, since guns ignore all stats for their damage.

To speed them up a bit, you may want to have your gunner in Berserk. You can do this via item or spell, or equip them with the Berserker Bracers.

[Skopin]

Guns are awful early on, but become much more useful later as they bypass defense. For earlier in the game, it makes more sense to equip Balthier with a different weapon. He's definitely a good character to have.

[Scheneighnay]

Originally posted by cmoscarell:

I made him a knight for the first job, then a Bushi. You can always go to MontBlanc in the clan hall and reassign him. I did this with Penelo when I accidentally made her a white mage early on. I chose:

Vaan: Shikari / Foebreaker
Penelo: Monk / Black Mage
Fran: Archer / Red Battlemage
Balthier: Knight / Bushi
Basch: Ulaan / Time Battlemage
Ashe: White Mage / Machinist

Ashe is hot as heck using a gun I tellz yah....

My current setup-

Vaan: Shikari / Monk - Poles actually suit him pretty well while letting him hit flying targets, and shikari fits his thief archetype

Penelo: White Mage / Red Mage - Penelo's idiotic stances look ridiculous with anything but a mace

Fran: Archer / Uhlan - Fran's proportions make anything other than a bow or spear look odd.

Balthier: Machinist / Foebreaker - Balthier just makes the most sense as a machinist, while having axes, hammers, and bombs seems to fit in with the whole "engineer" theme of the machinist.

Basch: Knight / Time Mage - Having Basch not be a knight seems wrong. Crossbows or bows are both "knightly" weapons and give him ranged capabilities.

Ashe: Bushi / Black Mage - I swear they changed Ashe's katana stance between the PS2 version and TZA so that it's now held vertically rather than horizontally at her hip. katanas seem to fit her well, especially with the improved stance. Also fun to have her run around with it above her head.

[MOIZEBINGUS]

Originally posted by Scheneighnay:

Originally posted by cmoscarell:

I made him a knight for the first job, then a Bushi. You can always go to MontBlanc in the clan hall and reassign him. I did this with Penelo when I accidentally made her a white mage early on. I chose:

Vaan: Shikari / Foebreaker
Penelo: Monk / Black Mage
Fran: Archer / Red Battlemage
Balthier: Knight / Bushi
Basch: Ulaan / Time Battlemage
Ashe: White Mage / Machinist

Ashe is hot as heck using a gun I tellz yah....

My current setup-

Vaan: Shikari / Monk - Poles actually suit him pretty well while letting him hit flying targets, and shikari fits his thief archetype

Penelo: White Mage / Red Mage - Penelo's idiotic stances look ridiculous with anything but a mace

Fran: Archer / Uhlan - Fran's proportions make anything other than a bow or spear look odd.

Balthier: Machinist / Foebreaker - Balthier just makes the most sense as a machinist, while having axes, hammers, and bombs seems to fit in with the whole "engineer" theme of the machinist.

Basch: Knight / Time Mage - Having Basch not be a knight seems wrong. Crossbows or bows are both "knightly" weapons and give him ranged capabilities.

Ashe: Bushi / Black Mage - I swear they changed Ashe's katana stance between the PS2 version and TZA so that it's now held vertically rather than horizontally at her hip. katanas seem to fit her well, especially with the improved stance. Also fun to have her run around with it above her head.

Fran does look a little odd with a mace, but I almost never take the bow off of her anyway. The only change I'd have made thinking back on it would have been to switch Basch and Balthier because you're right... Basch really should be a knight. I figured though, an Uhlan is a form of warrior too right?

Back to the content of the thread, I didn't assign machinist until after Raithwall's tomb anyway, so I didn't have to worry about having crappy guns. When I got to about level 40, I did a crazy run through Lhusu mines to get Scathe (this was a miserable ordeal but worth it for scathe). I ended up getting the arcturus pretty early, which was nice. And before the end game content I slogged through fighting archeoaevis's to get the Mithuna. :)

[Jill Sandwich]

Yes anything melee will be more viable on Balthier. Guns are worthless unless you farm the high tier ones and are only good for NG- runs and various statuses they can inflict (blind shots are good).

Having machinist as a second class is a whole another story. I really enjoy my WHM/Machinist as a support. You get 3 Swiftness, lots of HP, Remedy Lore 3, Hastega via Famfrit etc You can even switch to oil bombs if you have fire damage in the party. (Mithuno still hits like a wet fart tho)

[forumcrybaby]

Most of Balthier's combat animations suck. I give him a bow because it looks cool. FF12 is easy as pie so I could care less about min-maxing.

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by ScrmblesThDethDealr:

Most of Balthier's combat animations suck. I give him a bow because it looks cool. FF12 is easy as pie so I could care less about min-maxing.

That's honestly the most productive approach - play what you enjoy. If that includes min/maxing because that's something that's fun to you, by all means. If it doesn't, then don't let it bother you and just go for what you like best.

[Water]

I made some corrections with Balthier and he's OK as of right now. Penelo turned out to be my best character because of her rapid healing, I usually run with Penelo, Ashe, and rotate Vaan/Basche.

Fran has been far and away my worst character. She gets 2 shotted quite often and isn't fast enough with a bow to make any kind of offensive contribution.

Put this game down for about 2 weeks b/c I'm in that crystal cave. Ran around for 2 hours wondering WTF to do and eventually quit.