While the four main characters of Bravely Default 2 might have fairly similar base stats, it’s impossible to ignore the variety of skills that your party can have in this game. Between the various passive abilities, spells, and stats that you can use through the game’s marvelous job class system, you can have a near-infinite amount of customization.
That said, beating the game’s hardest bosses requires a bit more than just creativity. You’ll have to abuse the game’s stats to your advantage, and there are thankfully many builds that can help you make certain bosses into absolute jokes. Once you’ve found the combo that works for you, the game’s difficulty disappears almost immediately.
10 Non-Stop Healing
While you still need a way to kill your opponent, there isn’t anything in the rulebook that says you can’t have four healers on your team. Having everyone at least feature a subclass of a healer can give you perfect sustainment through any battle, and let you just take your time waiting for a perfect opportunity to start attacking.
The Red Mage is an especially great option for this, healing based on flat health amounts instead of your Restoration stat. This means even your melee characters can give significant healing to your teammates, giving you all the versatility with none of the drawbacks of usual healer weaknesses.
9 Super Effective Salve-Makers
One of the most interesting abilities that a Salve-Maker has is Analysis, a physical attack that does an examination effect to see an opponent’s weaknesses. More than that, monsters hit by this will take vulnerability damage, making any follow-up attacks for three turns absolutely deadly.
Using an examination move or item like the Magnifying Glass is almost mandatory in battles, and having Salve-Makers for your subclass means you’ll always be able to see exactly what your opponents have and make new vulnerabilities with zero risk. With their item attacks, you’ll also be able to often deal great elemental damage without the often-required spellcaster stats.
8 Bravebearer Subclasses
Once you unlock the Bravebearer job class at the end of the game, you’ll very likely never want to unequip it. Thankfully, its power is exactly as high as it seems, with several damage attacks that are calculated by your hours played and battles won, both of which bound to be quite high by the time you unlock it.
This goes even better with the passive unlocked at Level 10, which can let you use your sub-job’s second specialty. For the Bravebearer, this is an effect that grants BP at the start of every turn regardless of your action, making it the perfect subclass for every member of your team regardless of their role.
7 Counter Every Attack With Swordmasters
As mentioned in the first strategy, it’s extremely effective to spam defensive characters to beat long and arduous bosses. Many will actually run out of mana if the battle goes on long enough, and just taking your time can often let you find moments to strike stronger than ever.
The returning Swordmaster class is a great way to do this, as each can enter their Fluid Stance to counter any attacks and deal progressive damage while remaining in the Default state. This will let you avoid dying without taking a break from damage, and when your foe has low enough health, you can just spam them with rapid Solid Stance attacks with all the BP you’ve built up.
6 Hunker Down With Shieldmasters
The strategy with the Swordmasters is certainly classier, but it’s hard to deny how absolutely ridiculous your defenses get with a Shieldmaster on your team. Using Defender of the People each turn will let them block your allies from single-shot hits, and with the Dual Shields passive you can reach some truly alarming stats.
One Shieldmaster is often enough, but having a total of two alongside a White Mage to top up your health can make an even more impenetrable wall than the Swordmaster brigade. It might feel a little repetitive after a while, but you’ll quickly find that it’s surprisingly effective.
5 Attack Items Ahoy
Using up mana can sometimes end up in serious trouble with the game’s longer boss fights. Between effects like Contagion and many moves that just steal your resources, it’s easy to plan a big attack and get interrupted by a sudden lack. The key solution to this is to ignore MP altogether, and instead just fight with your inventory.
Once you reach the later stages of the game, you can start buying items that deal all kinds of damage to help you exploit any vulnerability. When combined with the Salve-Maker team mentioned earlier, you can even combine them with herbs that maximize your damage further, hitting remarkable damage amounts without needing to modify your stats.
4 Beastmaster Grinding
The Beastmaster is primarily based around a mechanic where they can capture monsters at low health, only to inflict them on opponents later with various effects depending on their species. This can be somewhat tricky to use well, but an alternate way to use them is as aggressive fighters that increase their stats based on the number they’ve obtained.
This is thanks to the second specialty Creature Comforts, which will give additional boosts depending on how many monsters are in your inventory. Since you can easily grind foes with passives like Obliterate and have others to capture defeated foes, you can potentially maximize the stats of your Beastmaster with just an hour or two of simple grinding.
3 Arcanists With Resistance Accessories
Arcanists are quite strange compared to most of the game’s other spellcasters. Rather than focusing on specific elements, these strong wizards combine elements for dramatic AOE attacks that harm your foes and allies at the same time, making them seem quite useless on the surface.
It’s actually the exact opposite, though, as there are tons of accessories and clothing items that can raise your resistances to specific attacks that can be bought right from the game’s many stores. Just decide which element you plan to use, and equip some identical bangles on your team to ensure your foes get hit by their cataclysms instead of your friends.
2 Two Fighters, Two Supports
At the end of the day, there’s two main aspects to any party that can make a perfectly balanced team. The first is a simple makeup of two supports and two fighters, where both supports are able to provide light healing so the other can grant stat boosts through Bard of Pictomancer skills.
As for what the damage dealers are, that can be the player’s choice of nearly any in the game. Two great ones are the Dark Knight-style class Hellblade and Swordmaster if you want raw physical damage, but if you prefer focusing on vulnerabilities it’s plenty possible to use the earlier-mentioned Arcanist strategy with two in your aggressive roles.
1 Bring A Spiritmaster
The last and simplest way to make an overpowered team in Bravely Default 2 is, simply put, the Spiritmaster. This class is almost broken in its ability to restore your team’s resources whether it’s health, mana, or even BP you’re lacking, and it can just as easily swap to some Light spells like Holy to switch into an aggressive role when needed.
This class’s later specialties even spawn all your spirits at once through the entire battle, giving gradual health that can be increased further through certain passives. Playing without a Spiritmaster almost feels like playing the game on Hard Mode, as its ability to sustain your team in long battles is totally unmatched.
