FINAL FANTASY III Job Guide

Foreword

This guide is a simple look into all of FF3 Pixel Remastered's jobs.

While playing the game I kept looking for information on the multiple jobs we get throughout the game and kept getting conflicting information due to the game being 30+ years old with a few different versions out there.

Be warned, I have not crunched any numbers nor tried to max out every possible aspect of the classes, this is just a guide for people trying to get straight and simple answers about the job system. There is plenty of information in here to make clear decisions on what classes are worth using and which ones aren't. Just to be clear, the game isn't that tough and it only takes about 16-17 hours to make a full run while playing casually. It's also a pretty easy 100% achivement game. So technically, you can use any classes you want, and with enough time and effort you could make even the worse ones work. This guide is for those, like me, who just want to play the game casually.

Default Class

ONION KNIGHT

The starter class. Apparently, if you level it to Lv 99 AND get the Onion Knight gear, it gets pretty decent. Since you need to both grind an awful class and farm gear in the last dungeon to get to that point, it's pretty bad for our purposes. Ditch it as soon as you get the Wind Crystal jobs.

Ranking: D

Wind Crystal

WARRIOR

Wears heavy armor, can use swords and even bows, if you want him in the back row. Your first tank and a decent damage dealer. I always take at least one for my front line.

Ranking: B+

MONK

Decent damage dealer, pretty quick and a good amount of HP. Lack of decent armor makes me think he might as well be fighting naked and it wouldn't change much. His fists become gradually more powerful as he gains levels and eventually you should ditch weapons as he'll hit stronger without 'em.

Change to Black Belt class as soon as you get the Water Crystal.

Ranking: B

WHITE MAGE

Your main source of healing and buffs, never leave home without one. Light armor and low HP makes her definitely a back row character. She does get a few offensive spells (Aero and Aeroga) but her main focus should be keeping the party in good shape. Remember to use her staves with the Item command to get free but weaker versions of elemental attack spells (Fire, Blizzard, Lightning, Break and Blizzaga). Her best staff (Elder Staff) can infinitely cast Cure but at the point where you get it, it's way underpowered for your needs.

Change to Devout class as soon as you get the Earth Crystal.

Ranking: A

BLACK MAGE

Your strongest source of damage for a long time, has low HP and light armor. Stick him in the back row. Since this guy has limited spells he can cast between rests, he won't be your best in regular fights but he'll shine against bosses.

Ranking: B+

RED MAGE

What a shame. In other Final Fantasy games these guys can be very useful but not here unfortunately.

This guy is a hybrid of all the other starter classes. He can use some swords and armor, has access to both white and black magic. Great right? Thing is, he has fewer spell slots than the White and Black mages and his spells are weaker than his counterparts. On top of that, there is a long gap during mid-game where his gear can't be upgraded. I would stick to the other 4 Wind Crystal jobs.

Ranking: D

Fire Crystal

RANGER

Not a bad class but not great either.

Uses bows and can wear some heavy armor. Defence is not bad because bows don't have back row damage penalties and he wears some heavy armor.

He's got the Barrage command which splits his damage into 4 shots directed randomly between all enemies present. Barrage can crit but I haven't checked if it's a crit for all hits or only one of them.

Not that many bows going around and no end-game ones like the weapons found in Eureka makes me doubt his end-game viability.

Ranking: C+

KNIGHT

A direct upgrade to the Warrior.

Now has the Guard command which is a souped-up version of the generic Defend command.

Also has the secret ability of "Cover" which means he'll take a physical hit for another teammate who is in critical (red) HP.

Dual-wield swords at all times except if your enemies start hitting too hard, then take a shield. A great class that only gets replaced by the Ninja.

Ranking: A

THIEF

This guy has a couple of handy skills but all of them have very limited uses.

Steal could be useful if you could steal anything valuable but most of 'em are consumable items.

Scram is completely useless as I never had problems running from a fight using the generic Flee command.

The Thief can also unlock all doors without the need for a Magic Key. Don't get me wrong, this is great... Except that there aren't that many locked doors in the game and nothing keeps you from switching one of your non-casters to the Thief class, unlocking the door, then switching right back to that character's original class.

What's even worse about the Thief is the lack of decent equipment until after you get the Water Crystal and by then there are much better jobs to contend with. The only time I use a Thief in combat is to replace my Black Mage against Goldor since he's immune to magic.

Ranking: C

SCHOLAR

This guys is kind of a hidden gem.

His Study command is a free Libra spell (White Magic Lv 4). It's kind-ish useful except against enemies with the Barrier Shift ability, then the Scholar becomes almost essential. Problem is, only Hein and, much later, Amon have that ability.

Now, the Scholar does have good intellect but he can't cast any spells. That's where his Alchemy command comes into play. Alchemy replaces the generic Item command and boosts the power of healing and damaging consumable items. The higher his job level is, the stronger the boost. The only inconvenient is that to make this class viable you'd need a lot of consumables which means you'd need a high-level Thief to aquire said items.

The class has potential, but requires too much effort to be worth it. I'll stay with my Black Mage, thank you.

Ranking: B

Water Crystal

GEOMANCER

A Black Mage alternative.

Similar stats to a Black Mage but his main use would rather be in regular fights than bosses. You could say that regular fights is his main... element! ... Yeah, I'm a dad, I've earned the right to make awful jokes, deal with it.

The Geomancer can't cast spells but he has the Terrain Command. Terrain casts random offensive spells with different attributes depending on your geographic location. Terrain uses no spell slots nor is it affected by Silence, but you can't control what'll happen.

His weapons, the bells, don't do enough damage to warrant a spot on the front row, use Terrain at all times. Not a bad class but I'd rather use a Black Mage to keep control of what I'm casting.

Ranking: B

DRAGOON

A pretty good alternative to the Knight.

Uses spears and heavy armor. Good damage dealer, the Wind Spears you get once you get the class are great since quite a few enemies around that time are weak against wind. Try to get both Blood Lances and dual-wield 'em, you'll have a high damage, self-sustaining character for a good chunk of mid-late game (Blood Lances steals 25% HP damage dealt and it goes up to 50% while using both lances). Just don't use the lances against undead, you're gonna have a bad time.

The Dragoon has the Jump command which makes him rise above the battle, out of reach of any attacks. The next turn, he'll drop down, stomping his target like a plumber with a goomba, dealing high damage.

A full team of Dragoons against the boss Garuda means a 1 turn kill.

Change into a Ninja once you can.

Ranking: A

VIKING

Not bad but nothing special.

This guys uses hammers and axes with heavy armor. Probably one of the more tanky classes.

Has the Draw Attacks command, which does just that. Unfortunately, I have never felt the need to use it.

Since this job loses a bit on the damage front to compensate for its extra toughness, I feel better off using a Knight instead.

Ranking: C

BLACK BELT

Well HELLO THERE!

This guy is a Monk boosted on steroids. He still has paper-thin armor that is offset by a high HP pool but at the point where you get him, your White Mage should be using Protect to help him cope being practically naked. I stopped using claws around the time I got the Fairy claws and never looked back. This guy can be one of your, if not THE main damage dealer of your team.

He can raise that damage further by using the Boost command, raising the power of your next attack. You can even use it twice in a row to raise further the level of carnage. Be aware that boosting a third time makes you Self-Destruct (exact wording), ruining your boost and taking 50% of your HP.

The Black Belt also has FF4 Yang's Kick command... And it still sucks. It does low physical damage to all enemies but there are few if any situations where it'll be useful.

All in all, I wholeheartedly recommend the Black Belt as one of your final classes for its awesome damage dealing capabilities.

Ranking: A+

DARK KNIGHT

Decent damage dealer, uses swords, katanas and wears heavy armor.

The Dark Knight's whole gimmick is his Blade Blitz command which hits all enemies with magical damage. Its purpose is all about countering enemies withe the Divide ability which consists of duplicating said enemy if hit by physical damage. Thing is, these enemies only show up in the Ancient Ruins, the Falgabard Cave and the Cave of Shadows. On top of that, you only start getting gear for this guy after the Ancient Ruins. So the places where it should be useful are few and otherwise Blade Blitz is pretty meh.

Knights, Dragoons and Black Belts are better options. Dump the job after the Cave of Shadows.

Ranking: B

EVOKER

Using this class is like playing Spin the Wheel to win a mediocre prize.

When using his Summon command, the AI will decide what happens. Either it'll cast an average damage dealing spell to a random enemy or it will use the summon's other spell which varies widely between an auto-run action from Escape / Chocobo to low healing for the whole party by Heatra / Ifrit with anything in between.

The randomness and lack of decent hitting power makes this class useless.

Ranking: F

BARD

Like FF4's Edward but only half as bad.

Harps do low damage but aren't affected by the back row.

The Bard can use the Sing command which are 4 spells unique for bards. They don't use any spell slots and are unlocked behind certain job levels.

Lv 1: Paeon - Restores light HP to the whole party.

Lv 10: Minuet - Raises the party's attack and intellect.

Lv 20: Elegy - Lowers the damage taken by the party.

Lv 30: Requiem - Causes random status effects to all enemies.

The lack of end-game gear and mediocre spells send this guy to the garbage pile. Just use anything else.

Ranking: F

Earth Crystal

MAGUS

An evolved Black Mage who can use LV 8 spells.

Sacrifices LV 1 and LV 2 spell slots in favor of more slots for higher level spells. Has a lot more intellect giving his spells more power.

A great upgrade to an already great class.

Ranking: A

DEVOUT

An evolved White Mage who can use LV 8 spells.

Sacrifices LV 1 and LV 2 spell slots in favor of more slots for higher level spells. Has a lot more spirit making her healing spells that much more warm and fuzzy.

The ultimate group support.

Ranking: A+

SUMMONER

A massive upgrade from the Evoker class.

He no longer casts random versions of his spells with the Summon command. There is now only 1 version of each summon and all of them are damage dealing spells that hit all targets, with the exception of Escape / Chocobo who keeps on sucking.

Wouldn't be a bad damage class if it didn't come along so damn late. You get the Magus job at the same time as you get the Summoner but the Magus hits harder and has more spell slots.

Really this class screams "Missed opportunity".

Ranking: B

Eureka Classes

Both of these classes are found at the very end, in the optional dungeon Eureka. You really should take the time to complete this dungeon as it holds 5 of the best weapons in the game (Mooring Blade, Masamune, Excalibur, Ragnarok and Elder Staff) and 2 of the best classes, the Sage and the Ninja.

SAGE

This guy is what the Red Mage wishes he could be.

He's got more intellect than the Magus and more spirit than the Devout. He can also cast White, Black and Summon magic, making him the most versatile caster in the game. Also note, thank the gods, that he uses the Summoner spells, not the Evoker crappy ones.(Thanks Pacharyk for the correction.) The only drawback is that he gets a few less spell slots than the Magus and Devout jobs.

I like to replace my Magus with this class to have a secondary healer in backup for the final dungeons. Great versatility coupled with great power makes him a solid final party choice.

Ranking: A+

NINJA

The ultimate front row class.

This guy is just great. He can equip any weapon, shield and piece of armor there is. He's got great offensive capabilities, only beaten by the Black Belt, but unlike him he can also take hits.

The Ninja can use the Throw command which does 8k+ damage to the final boss every time. The only drawback is that you need to use Shurikens and those can be quite rare. I believe you can find 5 or 6 of them naturally throughout the game but there is a shop at the end of Eureka that sells them for an outrageous price, but at that point, what else do you need to buy?

I strongly suggest switching all your non-Black Belts frontliners to this class and giving them 2 weapons to destroy your enemies.

Ranking: A+

Final Word

Like I've said earlier, this is not meant to be an in-dept dive into the classes but more of an efficient overview to help average Joes like me get a good idea of which job does what. If you find I missed something big, feel free to comment on them and I'll check it out and edit this guide if needs be.

I just wanted to give the Steam community a bit of help since I found there were many conflicting informations out there and I felt a bit frustrated we didn't have any guides sorting out the job details.

I would like to take this time to thank lylat for his in-dept Walkthrough he put on Steam, it's a perfect guide for anybody who wants to get 100% achivements for FF3 Pixel Remaster and I can't recommend it enough.

I hope this can help some of you guys.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2757775149

Job Guide

Foreword

Default Class

Wind Crystal

Fire Crystal

Water Crystal

Earth Crystal

Eureka Classes

Final Word

More FINAL FANTASY III guilds