mogwaimon
Magister
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2017
- Messages
- 1,079
I was mostly concerned about multi-classing because of my mages, since Cleric gets native MP regen so it has more staying power, but I find my cleric sitting on its ass waiting to heal or tossing an occasional buff more often than not while my wizard blows through all her mana but has nothing to regain it with. I realize Cleric later gets Mana Exchange but that means risking my healer being down. So I'll probably just multi-class those two characters and the Samurai since SAM/NIN seems to be highly recommended here.
Not fond of the overly sensitive level scaling mechanics either, makes it a lot tougher to fight under-leveled.
I realize that is the common motivation. Absolutely NOT worth it, IMO. Like you noticed, Cleric gets Mana Exchange and can fill the Wizard up (although that is deceptive, the wizard will have a much higher MP pool total , so he will get mana from cleric only once he's actually very low). In a pinch, there are also MP pots. Mana Regeneration is based on Piety and the first Mana Heal I is actually very weak. Mana Heal I is absolutely not worth it. Mana Heal II is much better, but then the grind to reach it becomes serious business.
Only for hardcore grinders IMO, along with the Cleric status effect immunity ability. Very neat, but absolutely not necessary. Particularly considering that you can spam Spirit Wall for the same, party wide, effect. Sure, it costs Morale.... but you should put it to good use anyway, right? And with a high Piety/Luck Dancer Morale is an endless resource.
For me, it's much more important to get the high level caster abilities and spells faster, as they are actually what makes or breaks these classes. Master casting (x3) the top level Tri-elemental spell is like casting 9 regular spells in one round. Cleric needs the Mana Heal II ASAP and his healing spells better be full heals, preferably party-wide. And you want the mage weapon-temper spell and Cleric armor-strengthening one ASAP. They are a HUGE boost to damage/survivability and what you spend the most MP on eventually.
Again, a Cleric 15 / Wizard 25 will be much weaker then a straight Wizard 30.
Guess a case can be made for teaching the Cleric Wizard dual-cast ability. 3-cast is too much work IMO. And possibly teaching the Wizard the Cleric Multi-Hit/Evade spells. Though with a good tank, the Cleric high level armor strengthening spell, Light/Dark Veil, Ninjas who can ignore enemy defenses and high level Samurais with high Agi and Hit, even those are absolutely not needed.
At least for the normal game. I admittedly haven't finished the post game. I hear some of those portal elemental realm bosses can be quite strong. But for what I did play, I used Hit/Evade very sparsely in end-game and early post-game. Certainly you don't need several pre-buff turns and Hit/Avoid at 99 to beat any regular content. But then it's important to be high level in your main-class, so your party member's Hit, SpE, Evade and Armor are naturally high, without pre-buffing.
See, I'm going to try for the post-game so I'm planning ahead a bit. I certainly don't want my multi-class characters to fall too far behind, but as of earlier today I did class-change 3 of my characters. The wizard and cleric changed places as expected and I ended up changing my Fighter to Ninja. This all happened at level 14. They are currently behind a bit in terms of level, true, but they are slowly catching up. I think when I shut the game down they were at level 14 in their new class while the three who didn't and probably won't multi-class are at level 18. The worst part is that, while they are getting max HP/MP increases, they're not getting any new stats, which is a bummer but I also heard that in post-game you can remove that limitation when multi-classing so you can eventually max out all your stats if you really felt like it.
So far I haven't had any real problems with them. I spent like an hour grinding Orcs in the Forest to bring them up to somewhere around level 10, and then I played normally from there. The mages have been playing support while I explore the Mausoleum of the Sea (I beat all three starter dungeons BTW) and the Ninja has quickly become one of my top DDs despite her low level because of Assassinate paired with the Heresy Mace she had when she was a Fighter (Since upgraded to Heresy Mace + 8) and a pair of Silver Katars +13. She got poison, KO, and silence because of that grouping. I also do find the Multi-hit/Avoid spells useful to have on both mages since I can stack them quicker against Lineage types. I usually pop the healing light divinity, then apply Sky Dragon div/Confine on the boss and stack Avoid on my guys and I'm set. My weak spot is magic though, I try and get magic resist on my Knight where possible but I haven't done a lot of farming for lighter armor for my squishier classes in this next item tier yet.
Been having trouble finding the Lineage Types in Sea but I guess that's because they're all past a story-gated area minus the one I did find so I dove into Mausoleum of Fire. Haven't found any bosses yet but have gotten great EXP off the zombie hordes.