With nearly 24 jobs in Bravely Default 2, it’s no surprise that a few of them are duds. Battles in the late-game can go excruciatingly long, and while it’s important to level up every job class in order to get the powerful passives they offer to any job, there are only a few that can reliably carry your team to their biggest victories.
If you put enough time into the game to try them all out, you’ll quickly find that there are ten in the game that heavily outclass the others due to their moves, stats, or passive abilities. Once you try one of these classes on a party member, you’ll find it nearly impossible to stop using them in every battle.
10 Berserker Class
The Berserker is an absolutely insane class early in the game, particularly for your grinding needs. One of the best skills it learns is Level Slash, a powerful physical attack that uses health instead of mana to deal wide damage to all your opponents.
This is great against mobs, but even individual bosses will take more damage from this attack because the power isn’t spread to as many enemies. The Berserker does suffer from some low accuracy, but just putting it as a subclass will make any physical fighter more powerful.
9 Monk Class
The Monk isn’t necessarily overpowered when entering the later sections of the game, but the early part of the game becomes way easier when your main damage dealers are Monks. These fighters have a unique benefit of saving you money as their unarmed passive means you won’t be spending money on weapons.
They also get tons of great moves that other classes normally learn later, such as one attack that pierces the Default state to take down defensive foes. It’s a great teaser for the later game’s classes, giving a ton of diverse playstyles that let you prepare for the game’s deeper classes later on.
8 Bastion Class
There are several gimmick strategies you can take on in Bravely Default 2, but perhaps one of the most ridiculous you can do is having a team entirely of tanks that are impossible to die. If you plan on doing this and want to deal damage at the same time, Bastion ends up being the best all-around tank class in perhaps the entire series.
This powerful knight gives access to all sorts of abilities from offensive strikes that raise your stats, to some defensive wall abilities that can reflect attacks that target your team right back at your foes. You’ll want to level it up fairly high if you want to get value out of it, but it’s all too easy to break the game by having several Bastions building up walls and a single healer to keep them alive.
7 Phantom Class
The Phantom class is here to replace many of the series earlier rapid-fire DPS classes like the Ninja, and it blows nearly all of them out of the water. This class has tons of straightforward damage attacks that can give extra turns with kills, but the key power this class has is its damage-boosting passive specialty.
Achilles Heel makes it so any attack that exploits a foe’s vulnerable weakness will result in a Critical Hit half the time, which can be made even easier with Painters that lower a foe’s resistances or Salve-Makers that increase vulnerabilities while analyzing foes. However, even with just good planning before a boss, the Phantom can deal more immediate damage than nearly any other class in the game.
6 Bard Class
While many teams will find the most success with two healers and two damage characters, it’s important to make sure you can supply your team with enough utility as well. These are best done through stat boosts to raise defenses or offensive abilities before big strikes, and no class does this better than the Bard.
The Bard raises stats on a much higher level than any other class in the game, and using any move three times in a row will often let your fighters reach the damage limit of 9999 with little trouble. Thanks to its passive specialties, it’ll even let you cast free spells on frequent occasions and raise stats higher based on your level.
5 Shieldmaster Class
On an alternate end of support, the Shieldmaster might be one of the more unique classes of the game by giving players a pure tank with zero offensive capability. One of its signature passive ability is even Dual Shields, which lets your character replace its weapon with a shield to provide pure defensive stats.
This might seem silly, but the result is an unbearably sturdy teammate that will innately take damage for low-health allies. Since you can increase your mana and BP with the Shieldmaster’s later specialty, you can often do this hand-in-hand with Bard or Spiritmaster moves to consistently buff and protect your team with zero trouble.
4 Swordmaster Class
It’s never been easy to spam the Attack button than it is with the Swordmaster, a returning class that’s been given a whole new makeover and moveset. The strategy of this returning class involves choosing a Fluid Stance to counter attacks, or a Solid Stance to double your basic Attacks.
Either is a great option, as the Fluid Stance and aggro-drawing moves let you build it as a tank while the Solid Stance lets you go all-in on offense. It’s incredibly versatile, and can often fit nearly any role in your team besides Healer.
3 Hellblade Class
The Hellblade is one of the last classes you get in the game, taking it from Adam after your climactic and seemingly-final boss fight with him. Once you finally get a taste of him, you’ll see he has a remarkably unique moveset that feels reminiscent of the first game’s Dark Knight, using many attacks that expend your health.
Perhaps the most powerful tool at the Hellblade’s disposal, though, is Death Throes. This status move will cause you to faint in five turns, but in return grants fifty percent higher damage on all your moves before you die. Using this with other stat boosts can help you do absurd amounts of damage, particularly with the classic Minus Strike ability to strike your opponents based on how little health you have.
2 Bravebearer Class
The final class you unlock is perhaps a little disappointing, in that it’s so much more infinitely useful than nearly any class in the game. Its specialties let you restore an additional BP each turn, and gain one whenever you slay an enemy, giving you a seemingly infinite supply of free moves with Brave Attacks.
If that’s not enough, the Bravebearer also has the best damage move in the game in the form of Gigagravity, which deals damage equal to 75% of your current health. If you use this with rapid Brave attacks at full health, you can easily deal tens of thousands of damage to every opponent you’re up against, making every foe into an absolute joke.
1 Spiritmaster Class
The Bravebearer is hardly the only class to make the others seem like a joke, but playing without one is at least a sort of challenge mode. Playing the game without a Spiritbringer feels almost unfair, as its ability to heal allies at the end of each turn cycle gives it some of the greatest healing effects of the entire game.
This isn’t even to mention spells like Holy, which deal ridiculous amounts of Light-type magic damage to your target if you need a little more offense. Even the White Mage lacks this option to attack, giving the Spiritbringer everything you could want out of any party member who wields its asterisk.
