Job advice (early game)

[Serafie1999AD]

I finished every character's Chapter 1, and before moving to Chapter 2, I'm about to do the shrine dungeons to obtain the secondary jobs. Which secondary jobs should I choose for my characters?

Details: my main character is Tressa, and the other characters I'll be using are Cyrus, Ophilia and either H'aanit or Olberic. These are my most preferred characters, but I'm willing to use other characters too, except I don't want Therion to my main party for two reasons: 1) I don't like his character, 2) I want to have one of each path action type in the party, and Tressa already covers the buy/steal path action.

The group is quite magic-focused and pretty weak on physical offence and tankiness, so should I make one of Tressa, Cyrus or Ophilia a Warrior? Another weak point is that Tressa's only AoE is currently the wind attack, which is rarely a weakness, so she's not very good at mass-breaking. I'd also like to use Dancer and Thief classes for buffs and debuffs. However, I'd rather have someone else than Tressa as the Thief, so I can have Tressa use boosted Collect and someone else use boosted Steal.

With these details given, which secondary jobs would you recommend for Chapter 2? An additional question: if I choose some secondary jobs and find them lacking, how tedious is it to switch secondary jobs?

[Kezo]

You can get by with any job combination, I'd say just take the ones you prefer to play. I like having a second Scholar around for the great AoE, and sometimes an Apothecary for First Aid and Rehabilitate. Alfyn is also very great with Concoct, he can AoE break with all six elements and AoE heal/cure ailments/restore SP and BP. Having a Dancer and a Thief for buffs and debuffs is also great for bosses. I'm also not the biggest fan of Therion, but sadly, you will be missing out on all the purple chests without him (I really dislike this design choice).

Switching jobs is not tedious at all, you will be swimming in JP quickly an being able to max out your jobs early on anyways. In fact, it's very important to unlock all the passive skills you need from different jobs for your characters.

[Sakhari]

Personally, I don't get too attached to specific combinations until I get into the late-game when most of the skills are learned and there are a couple of the stupidly overpowered advanced classes available. As said above, switching subjobs just involves a quick trip to the menu (the worst part of it is potentially having to change your weapons if you were depending on something that your new choice doesn't use) so it's generally more useful to pay attention to other factors like:

- Enemy weaknesses in the area (if there are encounters heavy on bow-weak enemies or large targets/a tough boss that you need to deal with, someone with the hunter's Arrow Storm or Leghold Trap would obviously be useful).

- Passive skills that you want to learn. Farming trash-mobs for a while that a Scholar can wipe the floor with in one attack? Use a class that unlocks something you need.

- Available equipment. If you go out of your way to get an early Rune Spear, for example, you might benefit by making Cyrus a Merchant to take advantage of the high Elem. Attack stat.

Other general notes/preferences that spring to mind:

- Unless you're specifically farming pomegranates or something to that effect, I wouldn't worry too much about having the combat Steal and Collect skills available. There are a handful of specific fights that have something worth stealing but you can easily do without using these skills for the other 99% of the game. Collect, in my opinion, is just more trouble than it's worth as money really isn't that hard to come by as the game progresses (especially if you're using the Steal path ability on most NPC's).

- There's quite a bit of useful equipment on various NPC's around the world and Therion has a better chance of stealing it as his level increases. Tressa does have access to the same equipment but if money is a concern in the early game, Therion can get you most of those items earlier and for free.

- On top of the debuffs, the Thief class also acts as an effective SP-battery for the rest of your party, especially in the early game when items might be limited by cash. If I'm not using Therion (which I usually do in my runs), I tend to give this to someone that I want playing a support role. Good daggers are available pretty early so your thief can be an effective damage-dealer while also keeping your SP-heavy classes (Warrior, Scholar, etc.) topped up.

[Doctor Draumbeaulaun]

I personally like the following combinations for a variety of reasons:

Main/Sub

-Apothecary/Warrior (Apothecary with strong axe, sword, and spear moves).

-Scholar/Merchant (adds Wind to Scholars elemental repertoire, plus weapons other than staff for physical chip damage to break guards.)

-Cleric/Scholar (Healing and Light damage work great with Scholars stats).

-Thief/Hunter (Two non-casting jobs = more physical variety),

[Zaris]

My first group from chapter 1 to 4 was Warrior / Hunter, Merchant / Thief, Scholar / Dancer and Cleric / Apo which lasted easily after chapter 4. For bosses i changed to warrior / apo and cleric / hunter to have 2 reviver / healer.

The main strategy especially after unlocking the divine warrior / hunter skills were just the following:
- dancer / warrior buffs the warrior with strength
- thief debuffs boss with corosive armor
- merchant gives boost pts to warrior
- warrior/hunter uses divine skill to oneshot enemy groups with hunter divine skill or deal massive single damage to bosses with warrior divine skill

With that its even possible to kill normal groups in the first turn. Just equip the merchant and dancer with speed items that they can act before the hunter.

Without the divine skills just use all (aoe) skills of the group. Most times it was already enough to use the aoe sword attack from the warrior or the better aoe spells of the scholar without breaking enemy weaknesses. If you encounter groups with high armor and nasty weaknesses like holy just flee and save the time. Not every area is worth farming xp. For example there are some early game dungeons. In one of them there are big groups with 1 armor and good weaknesses while in the other dungeon there are high armor enemies.

Finally the most important thing for early game until chapter 4 is imho that you have Olberic, Ophilia, Therion and Alfyn in your group and level them up first because with Olberic+Ophilia you can unlock the 50% extra xp / jp badge after chapter 4 and with Alfyn / Therion / Olberic you can get some good items early on from town peoples and side quest "items". If Therion can't steal it just swap in Tressa to buy it. I think there were no level constraints for her to buy from people. She just needs haggle bonusses gathered from town npc to get good discounts up to 50%.