First up, the ranger. Rangers are basically an auto-attacking job that uses a bow and arrow. They can wear pretty good armor and can stand in the back row so they take significantly less damage than my current damage dealing jobs. They have a special ability which does less damage than an attack unless you're at a pretty high job level so it's not really worth considering. As far as stats go they have less strength than either a monk or a red mage. They have the same agility and vitality as a monk and more than a red mage. They use a different damage formula entirely (and I think only level 1 melee proficiency hand instead of both) and actually consume arrows with each attack. I've always hated archer characters in Final Fantasy games that consumed arrows so even if I thought switching to a ranger was a good idea I probably wouldn't. As is they don't seem good enough anyway. Pass.
Next up, the knight. It turns out there isn't a paladin job in the game and the knight does most of the things you'd expect a paladin to do. They act a lot like Cecil does in Final Fantasy IV, actually. They can cast white magic spells but only at level 1 so they're pretty much just a cure battery from a spell point of view. Their defend action is modified to be based on job level instead of a flat 50%. It's actually worse than the base defend until job level 50! They have some sort of 'auto-cover' ability of weak allies. They can wear a lot of the good armor so they're pretty tough and can use all of the swords except the onion knight stuff. They have the same strength as a monk which is substantially more than a red mage at my current level. They have lower agility than both. They have higher vitality than both. Vitality determines hit point growth each time you level up and is the only real permanent result of being in a job so having high vitality is a big plus. I'm really considering switching at least one of my red mages into a knight and might do all 3 of my damage dealers if I have enough swords.
For laughs, we have the scholar. These guys are terrible. Ostensibly they can cast both black and white magic spells up to level 3 but their spell growth is really bad. The knight actually gets more spell casts at my level than the scholar does! They do have more strength and agility than my red mages so they might do more auto-attack damage but they have substantially less vitality so in the long run I'd be losing permanent max health by being a scholar. Scholars do have the special ability to peep an enemy like Cid in Final Fantasy IV. I already have that spell for my white mage so I don't care. Scholars also double the usage of any items they use, so if I was glitching the game to have a lot of combat spell items that could be useful... But I'm not cheating so that doesn't help all that much.
Finally we have the geomancer. These guys are weird. They're mediocre in combat but they have a special ability you use every time they get an action. They cast a random wacky spell based on the current environment. (A lot like Mog in Final Fantasy VI!) Each environment has its own list of abilities that can be chosen (with lots of overlap) and they can be pretty powerful. The damage done is based on job level so I think these guys can eventually do some pretty crazy damage. I remember last time I played the game I used one of these and was generally happy with that choice. Not being able to control specifically what attack is chosen can be annoying though. (Monsters that resist fire tend to be found in fire caves, for example. Fire caves tend to generate fire damage attacks.) They have lower vitality than my current characters so I would be losing max health by using one. They can't cast any magic at all so I lose my off-healing ability if I switch a red mage into a geomancer.
Part of me wants to use a geomancer again like last time but part of me wants to be different and there are some real drawbacks to being a geomancer so I think I'm going to pass. None of the new jobs can cast cura so I'm going to keep my white mage around. I don't actually think I'm going to keep a red mage or a monk into the end game so accumulating more job levels on them isn't really an investment in the future. Getting more maximum health from the knight job seems like a good idea so I'm going to try swapping into a party of knight, knight, white mage, knight. The going will probably get a little harder in the short term as I lose those attacks from my old job levels but the extra healing from a 3rd off-healer should offset that a little. On the plus side I should be able to keep leveling all my melee proficiencies and if I have to grind a little to be able to move forward I'm ok with that.
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