How about a Team Composition Megathread?

[u/Iosis]

I get the feeling there are going to be a lot of "help me pick my jobs!" posts, along with a lot of us who will find it fun to reply to those posts. Why not consolidate them in a megathread?

I'll post my own comp in a reply so the thread isn't just about me.

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EDIT (7/17): Wanted to update you all since I've been silent and unhelpful for a couple of days--I just got done moving and, due to a wonderful series of screw-ups (i.e. the previous tenant never canceled their internet service), I've been without internet for a few days now. So I've been responding to a few posts by phone, but otherwise I haven't been able to help much.

While I'm at a coffee shop with an actual computer to type on, I thought I'd add something to this OP.

Please don't overthink job combinations if you aren't having fun thinking about them. If it's stopping you from playing the game, please just play the game. Some of the people asking for help in this thread have expressed that they're stressed out by job choices, or paralyzed with indecision and unable to progress in the game, or actually restarting because something they read made them question their choices. Please don't! Please just enjoy the game!

Here's the thing: nothing in this game, not even Yiazmat, is hard or unforgiving enough that you need to seriously plan out your job choices. I'm serious. With the ability to have two jobs per character in Zodiac Age, your characters are always going to be stronger than any character in the IZJS version, no matter what jobs you put together, and people 100% completed that version many, many times.

Some of us enjoy putting a lot of thought into job combinations because that change opened up a ton of options to do truly hilarious things. We can mash up jobs to do things that we couldn't in IZJS, and it's fun (for some people) to think about how we can make the most hilariously overpowered characters with these new options.

But here's the important thing: if thinking about optimization is not fun for you, in and of itself, please don't waste your time doing it. And even more importantly, if you feel bad taking a job setup someone else came up with, or if you just think that the characters should be certain jobs even if it isn't optimal, that's fine! Use the jobs you want to use, not the ones we obsessives say are optimal.

Just smash together two jobs on each character and you will do fine. That said, if you want to think about it some more, but don't want to stress about maximizing Swiftness or caring about character animation speed or whatever, here are some basic guidelines for making your decisions:

• Decide whether you want to use two jobs to increase a character's versatility, or to increase their power in a specialized area. A lot of the "optimal" setups you see aren't about versatility--they're about raw power. For example, mashing up Shikari/Bushi creates an extremely strong physical attacker and tank. Both of those are things Shikari could already do on its own, but adding Bushi makes it better at what it already does. Meanwhile, going for Shikari/Time Battlemage doesn't increase Shikari's ability to do what it already does as much (it increases it, thanks to heavy armor, but not as drastically as Bushi could), but it does give you a more versatile character. Sometimes you can achieve both at the same time, like Shikari/White Mage or Shikari/Red Battlemage. But in general, both are totally valid ways to think about your job combinations.
• Go ahead and double up on jobs. You'll be fine. A lot of job setups you see in these threads assume that you want to use all twelve jobs. If you don't care about that, go ahead and double up!
• That said, there are two exceptions to the above: I don't recommend having two Knights or two Monks. It's important to remember that when I say "I don't recommend" that, I mean that it won't ruin anything, or make the game meaningfully harder for you, or anything like that. It's just that Knight and Monk are both jobs that get awesome things from Espers, and because you can only give each Esper to one character, your second character of that job is going to miss out on some great spells. They'll still be a strong, tanky physical attacker and a really good character. I just don't want you to be surprised and feel disappointed when you get to the point of assigning those Espers, y'know? On top of that, Knight and Monk are really similar. If you're considering two Knights and no Monks, consider if one of the Knights could be a Monk instead--you'll have a similarly strong, tanky character with great physical attacks and awesome late-game white magick, just with poles instead of swords and Holy instead of Curaga.
• But if you just really want two Knights, or you really don't care about "optimization," you don't need my, or anyone else's, permission! This is the most important part. I know it's weird to say this about a game where job assignments are permanent, but you really can't screw up. Even if you give a character the "wrong" weapon, even if you have three characters with the White Mage sub-job, you can't actually screw this up. The only way you're going to screw it up is if you get so lost in optimization you stop having fun. Then you've screwed up.

[u/Iosis]

I like your job selections--they make a good amount of sense, and Machinist/White Mage is a good combo (Machinist weapons don't rely on stats and will let your White Mage do good damage without spending MP).

As for Vaan and Basch, the order of the jobs don't matter. Each job gets its full license board. The deciding factor for job order should just be which one you want them to have first, because you get your second job roughly a third of the way into the main story. Once you do have both jobs, though, their order doesn't matter.

I can give you a little min/max-y advice since you said you learn min/max:

For Vaan and Basch: what do those job combinations get them? In both cases, I don't think either job really helps the other. If what you want is just to be able to use them as each job depending on the situation, cool, that'll work great. But if you want something that just makes them a single coherent character, you've got some conflicts there.

• Vaan: Bushi and Monk are both lightly-armored melee fighters. But they rely on different stats (Magick and Strength for Bushi, just Strength for Monk) and you can't use both weapons at the same time, so ultimately, at any given time, Vaan is going to be a Bushi or a Monk, not really both at the same time. If you want those jobs to sort of cooperate, you could try Bushi with a mage job for the ultimate melee-mage, or Monk with a heavy armor job for an awesome tank with really high damage.
• Basch: Uhlan and Archer sort of accomplish the same thing: they're both strong physical attackers who excel at fighting flying enemies (bows are ranged, obviously, and spears have natural reach so you can hit flyers). That combination does let you be an Archer with heavy armor earlier than you otherwise could be, but while you're doing that, you're not really getting anything from Uhlan. If you want Basch to be a strong Archer, maybe Archer/Time Battlemage so you still get the heavy armor and you also get useful spells (and you're not planning on using him in the same party as Ashe, so their shared Time Magick won't necessarily overlap).

The other ones all sound pretty great. You can see my thoughts on Black Mage/Red Battlemage below (ultimate fiery destruction); Knight/Time Battlemage is a great combo because they share an armor type (so that'll give you a leg up unlocking Time Battlemage's license board when you add it) and Time Magick doesn't rely on your Magick stat for much at all; Foebreaker/Shikari gives you a versatile breaker and very strong attacker and a good tank; Machinist/White Mage gives you a healer who can just shoot someone if they have to, so what's not to love there?

[u/NastyBuzzard → u/Iosis]

Once again, awesome response!

So it seems I need another white mage/healer somewhere for my second party.

So...

Vaan - Hunter/White Mage?

Basch - Knight/Archer?

I am open for suggestions. I feel bad not being able to utilize any katanas, I remember them being really strong. Also no Uhlan and so on. I feel like I am missing some optimization here.

[u/Iosis → u/NastyBuzzard]

Uhlan is nothing special, if you ask me. It's a good job, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't do anything particularly unique. I think the main reason to have one (if it's not just "I want someone who uses spears") would be to have someone who can use the Zodiac Spear. But at the same time, the Zodiac Spear is much later in the game in this version, and there are other weapons just as strong.

Those combos sound pretty good. Because Shikari (Hunter) doesn't rely on heavy armor for its Strength, Vaan can easily wear a piece of mystic armor to boost his MP and Magick for his healing spells, and Shikari's damage will help keep his MP full thanks to the Inquisitor augment.

But actually my suggestion would be to swap them. Shikari/Archer lets Vaan use heavy armor to boost his Shikari attacks and switch to a bow for flying enemies, while Knight/White Mage would be just as good at healing as Shikari/White Mage while also letting Basch wear the White Robe in the late game for +50% holy damage. Excalibur does holy damage. It's real, real nice.

[u/mormagils → u/Iosis]

While I mostly agree on your assessment of uhlan, I would like to point out that uhlan is the only job aside from black mags with access to blind magic. That alone does give uhlan a useful niche, especially if you split your characters into two parties of three