New Game Minus Party Help

[Fynox]

Warning: Long Post Incoming

I am currently playing through the game normally (so exploiting things and having fun facerolling it) but am looking forward to the challenge of New Game Minus. I thought I'd ask everyone to help me decide on my final party for that run. Even allowing myself to have 2 jobs per character I think it will be challenging enough (for my tastes). So here is what I have planned out so far:

Vaan - Shikari/Foebreaker
Espers - Adrammelech - For extra Battle Lore (And to simply have an Esper)
Why? - Has 3x Swiftness, all Breaks, access to powerful Ninja Blades. He will be a strong and fast little dodgy fighter.

Balthier - Machinist/White Mage
Espers - Famfrit, Ultima - For high level Time Magic and an extra Magic Lore
Why? - Has 3x Swiftness, ensures Balthier uses guns, low stats of White Mage don't affect gun damage. He will be my ranged healer and support.

Fran - Archer/Red Battlemage
Espers - Cuchulainn, Exodus, Shemhazai, Zeromus - For high level Black Magic, Heavy Armor, Cleanse and Esuna, and an extra Channeling
Why? - Has 3x Swiftness, access to some high magic for both offense and defense, makes use of ranged weapons. She will be a ranged support with both magic and bows for damage.

Basch - Bushi/Uhlan
Espers - Zalera, Belias - For Blood Sword and Libra (Not really the most useful Espers)
Why? - Has 3x Swiftness, access to high damage samurai weapons, access to heavy armor. He will be my frontline tank/physical damage dealer.

Ashe - Knight/Time Battlemage
Espers - Hashmal, Mateus - For mid and high level White Magic and an extra Channeling
Why? - Has 3x Swiftness, access to heavy armor and high damage swords, also has utility spells. She will be a frontline tank/physical damage dealer with some White and Time Magic for moderate support.

Penelo - Monk/Black Mage
Espers - Chaos, Zodiark - For high level White Magic and Renew
Why? - Has 3x Swiftness, high health to cover Black Mage weaknesses. She will be the main source of magic damage with more survivability due to the Monk pairing.

With this setup I use every job with no duplicates and every character has 3x Swiftness (I guess not mandatory but still nice). Since their are no duplicate jobs the characters won't be fighting over who gets the best endgame weapons for each weapon type. The jobs seem lore friendly for the most part too (a little wonky due to using all 12 jobs and no duplicates). I searched all over online and this is a setup I found that seems to fit my preferences (Esper choices I came up with so probably why they are wrong). I think the job selections may be the original idea of someone named YbrikMetaKnight so if it is a good strategy, all credit to them.

Taking this party into New Game Minus, what will be some of the challenges it will face? I personally think I will be very weak on the magic front until unlocking everyone's second license board since I intend to get the jobs in the order they are listed above for each character. This means I may have to spend a little more time farming items but this isn't an issue for me. Once everyone has both jobs, I think it will be an extremely versatile party that can have a few different 3-person setups. I think this plan covers weaknesses more than exploiting strengths which is more to my liking. Maximizing strengths while leaving big weaknesses for characters is almost certainly viable for a New Game Minus run I think, just not for a pleb like me.

I do not plan on exploiting anything on my New Game Minus run so that I can experience the challenge as the designers intended. This being said, I do plan on trying to use the Bazaar to its fullest during my playthrough since this shouldn't be too game-breaking (I think). If you have read this far, please let me know what you think of the above plan. I appreciate all constructive feedback and am open to new ideas. Also, I apologize if this topic has been beaten to death on the forums or if everything here is unoriginal or uninspired. Thanks in advance for any help or insight!

[Serafie1999AD]

To be honest, some of those combinations aren't very effective. I'll let someone like Hinnyuu explain further, but I'll go through a few combinations briefly. xD

First, Shikari/Foebreaker. Shikari doesn't need Foebreaker's Genji Gloves. He's actually better with Germinas Boots. To get the most out of him, you'll need a class with Black Robes to boost the dark element of Shikari's Yagyu Darkblade. That's why Shikari is better paired with either White Mage or Red Battlemage, which additionally turns him into a very tanky character. Foebreaker doesn't really get anything useful from Shikari, either.

Second, if you do not intend to exploit anything, Machinist becomes much less useful. His guns will be more useful on NG- since they ignore the stats, but to make the most out of the class, you'll need to cheese Machinist's strongest weapons in the early game. This is a minor issue, but Balthier has the slowest gun animation, and his stats aren't optimized for a mage class, either.

Third, Knight/Time Battlemage. This isn't a bad combination, but it is limited to only one armor type, the Heavy Armor. You also can't get White Robes to maximize the damage done by Knight's Excalibur.

Fourth, Monk/Black Mage. Black Mage benefits from Monk pretty nicely, getting more HP, great healing magick and Holy boosted by Staff of the Magi. Unfortunately, Holy isn't a very useful spell, and you're better off casting Curaja on the undead enemies. On the other hand, Monk gets very little from Black Mage. Since you're busy casting spells, you're wasting Monk's physical power, and when you are using physical attacks, you're lacking Genji Gloves, so Monk's damage potential has been greatly reduced. Instead, you'll want to pair Monk either either Bushi or Foebreaker, since they both provide him Genji Gloves.

[Fynox]

Okay, taking your suggestions into consideration here is what I came up with:

Vaan - Knight/White Mage - Gives the White Robes/Excalibur/Genji Gloves combo on a character with fast melee animations. Paladin? Fast Sword and Greatsword animations.

Balthier - Shikari/Red Battlemage - Gives the Yagyu Darkblade/Black Robes/Germinas Boots combo on a character with fast melee animations. Also access to heavy armor. Fast Dagger/Ninja Swords animations.

Fran - Monk/Time Battlemage - No Genji Gloves (no license and the 2 in game are taken by other combos) but does give heavy armor for melee damage. Fast Pole animations (hehe).

Basch - Bushi/Foebreaker - Each job contributes something to maximize melee (Genji Gloves and Heavy Armor). Fast Katana animations.

Ashe - Archer/Uhlan - Gives Heavy Armor to the Archer. Supposedly a Burning Bow and Fiery Arrows makes this worthwhile for the early game. Switch to melee late game. Fast Spear animations.

Penelo - Black Mage/Machinist - Make use of her magic stat for high damage spell-casting and a gun gives her a physical attack as well as a little bit of time magic.

I want to use all 12 jobs (despite it being non-optimal, idk why but I want this). Taking weapon animations and gear combos into account these seem pretty good. It also may be weak magically for the early game like the other party. I was having trouble finding a way to use Genji Gloves on the Monk. Should I change that? What do you think?

Oh, and thank you so much for the awesome feedback!

[Sakhari]

This'll probably be long-winded enough so I'll leave the detailed job-breakdown for someone who still enjoys 'rate my party' threads more than I do but in the meantime, some added notes on New Game- in general:

It's a very different game than a normal-mode run and optimizing like you would for a normal game isn't going to be as effective as you might think - Especially if you're doing a 12-job run. It's a niche (and honestly, pretty slapdash) approach to added difficulty and it just isn't very well balanced for several of the classes.

By default, your character levels and stats are going to be dramatically reduced from a normal run so melee classes using weapons where level and strength/magick factor into your damage are going to be about 1/5 as effective (rough average) as they are in a normal game (even if you optimize with robes and dark damage with, say, a Shikari) whereas guns will perform exactly the same as they do in a normal run since they're stat-independent. They're going to represent the largest portion of your damage-dealing potential for most of the game and going out of your way to get, at least, an Arcturus from the bazaar early on is going to save you a lot of tedium. An early Mithuna, of course, is ideal.

Direct-damage magick is also going to be weaker in general so you'll likely be getting a lot more use out of the Oil status to help make up for the shortfall.

Techniks like the Foebreaker's Break abilities are going to be almost completely useless as you won't be able to stick them to enemies that are significantly higher in levels than your characters (read: just about everything, especially in the late game when you actually get those abilities).

Consumable items are going to be much more valuable through most of the game, again, because they're stat-independent. Buffs like Lure and Reverse are going to be more useful as lower HP values make it more critical to direct and mitigate damage. Playing a Shikari as an evasion-tank (and eventually, a backup gunner) is also going to be a lot more useful than trying to make Ninja Blades work and Red Mage is a good choice here for the utilities that give this character something worthwhile to do while absorbing hits (support magic, Death, occasional healing).

Anyway, long story short, it's doable and I'm not trying to dissuade you but don't be too shocked if characters in your 12-job setup that normally sound like safe bets for a standard playthrough end up being dead weight (or near to it) for most of your NG- run.

[Sephiroth]

remember with the new update you can reset your jobs and pick again at any time.
use machinist+monk on at least one character but not balthier or panelo

[Daedalus007]

Balthier is the slowest with gun animations.
Fran is the slowest with bow animations.

I posted a full breakdown over here[pastebin.com] with links and source. Enjoy.