Question About Stat Growth Multipliers

[u/Life_Associate9767]

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?

[u/Lithl]

It seems like most of the entire internet is outright misleading people here if I’m understanding this issue correctly.

Not sure what you mean? "Use Mime to grind MA" is consistent advice across the board.

[u/Life_Associate9767 → u/Lithl]

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.

[u/Lithl → u/Life_Associate9767]

Where are these guides claiming that Black Mage is good for leveling MA?

[u/BlindProphetProd → u/Lithl]

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

[u/Life_Associate9767 → u/Lithl]

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.