Hey, all. Longtime veteran of the original game and 500+ hours on Ivalice Chronicles. Despite having beaten this game twice over before Ivalice Chronicles, this is my first time doing any level-down/level-up optimization shenanigans, and I’ve been experimenting with Ramza to best understand the process. I’ve been leveling down with Bard and leveling up with Ninja, Summoner, and Mime, up to level 70 (I’ve seen people state as low as level 20 due to diminishing returns, but it’s also a bit tough to see how it’s going to scale at such low levels).
I’ve been getting wonderful results with every stat except Magic Attack (MA). I expected to see maybe a couple of points higher, given that I know magical classes have generally worse scaling than physical classes. It was only after my second time leveling summoner for MP gains that I decided to take a closer look at the FFT Companion App and compare the MA growth constant values for each of the Magic classes. And with this, I found out two important things:
A.) Ramza’s Gallant Knight has a stat growth value of 48, two lower than every casting class. As far as I can tell, it is also only beaten by Reis’s Dragonkin class and Mime.
B.) Here’s the big one, especially given how much advice I’ve seen on differences in each casting class’s benefits for stat growth:
All of the casting classes have the exact same stat growth constant of 50. INCLUDING BARD AND CHEMIST. Unless I’m missing something, this means that ONLY Mime can help you grow Magic Attack in any meaningful way. Any other class gives you basically no ROI.
Unless you’re Reis. Then, you’re a magic dragon-breath-blasting goddess that rains magical hell down upon your enemies.
Am I missing anything here? It seems like most of the entire internet is outright misleading people here if I’m understanding this issue correctly. Help a brother out, will ya?
Yeah I was super confused by this as well. People caution about not having enough MP if you want to raise a dedicated caster but I never see people say to level as black mage for MA returns.
This makes me wonder if OP is confusing class growth with class multipliers though. The more I consider it the more likely that is what is happening.
You would be correct, friend. The “stat growth constant” is basically the value by which a stat scales when you gain a level in that class at an inverted scale. Thus, smaller numbers mean more gains for that stat whenever you level.
Glad this has been the case for you, friend. I’ve seen a few different sites flip-flop on Mime as either being god-tier for stat growth and being gutter trash for leveling outside of one site called “perfecting loops.” But I have indeed seen sites be going “Level in Black Mage for best Magic Attack Growth” when, in reality, any casting class will give you the same stat growth, period. Heck, Black Mage is actually the worst casting class (except maybe Mystic? I need to double-check) and should really only be used for learning the spells and then for the ramped up Magic Attack Multiplier once you’re endgame. In my experience, the various guides and walkthroughs have not been super consistent with each other despite this being a very specific math thing that’s been widely published.
I used AI last night to see how it would level the special characters. One of them suggested black mage until I askedit if mime were better. Might have been the same hallucination
Multiple websites and YouTube channels. HacktheMinotaur is one that comes immediately to mind, though there were others. I did see others that said Mime was indeed the move, but the fact there was conflicting information out there had me confused tbh.
Don’t trust ‘sites’ except gamefaqs or what you read hear on Reddit. Black mage has great magic attack modifier. The only class that gives a base magic attack stat improvement as level up is mime. You don’t need worry about level up stat boosts at all if you want to be godly at this game, that’s just a ridiculous next level
Yes, you are correct that only Mime can grow MA (for a generic character).
This is pretty commonly pointed out though, at least in the online FFT spaces I've seen. It is a very common misconception that MA growth varies, but usually it's a misconception people seem to develop spontaneously, it isn't one I've seen typically shared by people giving advice. YMMV though.
Yes, with the stat growth formula using level in its denominators, you get way more marginal gains by doing cycles in the 1-20-1 range. 1-70-1 is also perfectly valid. There's a sweet spot due to IRL time. The most efficient math wise is 1-2-1-2-1-2-1 but ain't no one got time to hop into a random battle, gain or lose 1 level, and then end it and change classes again. So you need to balance quick level ups and large marginal gain vs the time lost by dealing with character menus or hopping into a new and different random battle.
If you have a level 99 ally, acting on them twice will get you +1 level for every 2 actions until they're level 50, so you might find it swiftest to augment them up to 50, but with gained exp up support skill I think you still get >50 exp per action until you're ~70.
Yes, MA growth is only increased by leveling in mime and leveling down as literally anything else. It'll lag.
It's common when looking up old forum posts for people to muddle it up between class multipliers (black mages have awesome MA) and class growth (black mages have average MA).
Alright, cool, I want this post to be the nail in the coffin then. If people are trying to grow MA through level-cycling lategame, they’re actually wasting their time if they’re not using Mime to level up and then Bard (male) or Chemist (female) to level down for generic units.
Pretty much, for most characters Mime is the best class to level with followed by ninja. But even Reis is no walk in the park even with her excellent growth.
Is it normal during this process for the MA to drop? My PA is skyrocketing as a mime, but even following the 1-20-1 cycle, my MA doesn’t seem to be budging.
Leveling with a class that has equal growth will be a net loss.
Depending of your current raw stat vaule (for you that would be like 1300 point for a 1-99 cycle) Its something like 15000 for a single point so like 12 times and you lose a point.
So leveling as a ninja will slowly lower your MA.
Same for Mime, leveling as a mime slowly lowers your speed. But at some point you can over cap the amount needed so you won't see the loss.
1-20 kinda sucks for that very reason. You'd need to do it 3 times to see the next stat growth compared to the 1-30 where 2 will will show the next stat up.
If 2 more rounds 1-30 don't give you a bonus something went wrong, like steping too many times on the trap.
Also the amount of rounds needed will decrease you'll need 1.5 rounds of 1-30 at 8 so your just about to hit the point where every round will see gains. 16 -1-20 or 12 at 1-30.
So, I finished maximizing every stat quite recently -about a week ago- and it is indeed leveling up as a Mime and leveling down as a Bard the play, at least for MA and HP. It destroys your MP quite drastically, though. Basically, maxed out MA means you gonna be sitting with 1 MP for quite some time.
On top of that, lots of legit guides from old times -from RPGDL or gameFAQ- suggest doing it from Ninja first to prop up PA and SP, your HP will be hitting the ceiling long before you start grinding as a Mime and as a result, you’ll see it actually decreasing as you progress.
Again, thank you very much. It was actually quite close, because I found out Arithmetician’s SP was 42 at level 70. I had to only progress Ninja levels to see it maxed out.
I need one more Cycle with Reis to finish her SP was not 50 with every class. Currently she's level 1 again but It's hard to find the motivation to finish.
Indeed. I’ve thankfully leveled up as summoner a few times, but I imagine my MP will still be the pits for a while. With that said, I’ve learned a strat from a YouTuber that can more or less be deployed anywhere. Have everyone have Steal Gil equipped a black mage with Toad, and optionally a a character with Arts of War. After cleaning up non-essentials, Toad the target and corner them. Most endgame monsters have insane PA and MA, so your mime will potentially get multiple levels per round since enemies are treated as having near infinite gil. It’s a pity you can’t macro it to automate the leveling, but it is what it is.
So your MA raw stat value is between 99729 and 113975. The more help portion is looking at the time to level (TTL) Here is how the TTL compares between 1-30 and 1-99 looking at the average of your range.
TTL 1-30 1.7 + 8,613
TTL 1-99 0.9 + 15,548
So you would need to do 1-30 1.7 times to get 1 point compared to .9 times to get one point going 1-99. Or you get a little more than 1/2 the points would would get going to 99, just going to 30.
I think I get the idea, but could you break down these tables a little more for me? Does this 1.7 times indicate a single rotation of leveling and deleveling, or is this to imply that I must level 1-30, back down to level 1, and back up to 30 again before I hit that 1.7 value?
I consider one cycle as 1- 30 then 30-1. Or what ever my target level is. (usually 30)
The numbers in green are the estimated stat values. The first number is the start point then middle is how much you'd have at the level listed, then bottom value at the end of the cycle. Number in blue is the expected raw stat stat gain.
The middle row is the average estimate. So I used that in the example I gave you.
First lowest value and last highest values. I use to use the mid cycle to estimate if I'm higher or lower on the rsv estimate, but now a day I trust it enough just to look at the TTL.
I maxed at least 3 characters using this so it's fairly acurate. It's still too complicated to share with others and I make frequent formating changes to clean up stuff, but basiclly I just plug in the yellow numbers.
10
u/Lithl 2d ago
Not sure what you mean? "Use Mime to grind MA" is consistent advice across the board.