| My order of preference in casters goes:
- White Mages: NECESSARY!!!! If you don't believe me, I DARE you to try to get through the game without one.
- Blue Mages: Awesome. White Wind is the best healing spell in the game, and the Aero series is the only way to hit wind weaknesses. Plus, you get some really hot stuff like Mind Blast and Big Guard late game.
- Time Mages: Slow works on just about everything (including most bosses); combining it with haste gets you about four turns to the enemy's one. Comet is a hella useful attack spell, and you can't say no to Return.
- Magic Knights: My favorite class in the game, listed fourth only because it's not really that good as a caster; it's more of a warrior that can also hit elemental weaknesses. Once you get to level 4 sword skills, you get pretty brutal.
- Summoners: Sorta annoying because they spend most of their time poking things with a dagger or rod, but they have a few spells like Golem and Carbuncle that make parts of the game a LOT easier.
- Bards: Most of their songs suck, but Charm Song is freakin' sweet. Requiem also toasts undead pretty nicely, but it's not like every other attack in the game doesn't also do that. BTW, I consider them to be a caster because their songs are listed under the "Magic" command in the menu.
- Black Mages: All the same problems as Summoners without any of the cool defensive spells. They can dish out damage to multiple enemies, but that's about it. Did I mention that Magic Knights can do everything Black Mages can do, and they only have to pay the first time? I'd say Black Mages are the most useless caster class in the game.
- Red Mages: No, I take that back. Red Mages hold the "most useless" distinction, but they hold it so firmly that it's easy to just forget that they exist. They require more JP to master than any other class, have practically no stat bonuses if you do master it, can't cast anything beyond Cure2, Life, and Fire2, and... well, they just stink! A lot!
Okay, back on topic: the above is basically the order that I'll go for the classes... that is, if I have one caster on my team, it'll probably be a White Mage; two casters means a White and a Blue; etc. Summoners have the advantage that they get a huge magic boost, but as you can see, I don't really go for them unless I've gotten the above slots covered. I like Summons more than Black Magic, but I dislike attack magic in general.
EDIT: Fixed formatting to make it easier to read. |