Four Job Fiesta Update: Week 3

Now that I have all four of my character classes and my party structure is fully established, Week 3 was all about traversing World 2 and taking on several challenging bosses. In general, World 2 seems to represent a bit of a difficulty spike that required more strategizing, but occasionally some grinding as well. A big part of this is finding a roll for each of my classes to fill. So far I've observed the following:

• My Ninja continues to be my highest damage-dealer, however, his weapons alone are often not enough since some boss battles require the ability to quickly do a lot of damage in only a turn or two. My solution: throw absolutely everything! Previously I had only been using the Throw ability for shurikens and elemental scrolls, however, the Ninja can also throw any spare weapons in the inventory to do an impressive amount of damage. Since I can only use a fraction of the weapons I find due to being limited to four classes, I have a supply of powerful ammo that I originally was just selling for cash.
• In addition to healing, I've gained an increased appreciation for my White Mage's ability to buff my characters using Shell and Protect. Since the overall damage output of my party is lower than would be the case in a typical FF5 play-through, boss battles tend to last longer, so increasing my characters' ability to take hits is key to keeping everyone alive during prolonged engagements.
• My Red Mage is the character I'm having the hardest time finding a role for as the game progresses. Her limited black magic and healing abilities have mostly become obsolete at this point, leaving me with a mediocre physical attacker that can also cast Raise. Also, rod breaking has become useful as fewer bosses have straight-forward elemental weaknesses. Thus my Red Mage is by no means worthless, but I still feel like I can find a better use for her by combining her skills with another class's. However, I haven't gotten quite that far yet. For the time being, I'm considering having her work toward the Double-Magic skill to see if that makes her more valuable, though it'll take a long time to gain the required amount of ability points.
• The Lancer (aka Dragoon) has been the most consistent of my classes, but also the least interesting so far. Her role continues to be to just to use Jump every turn to stay out of harm's way and then come down to deal a moderate amount of damage. Of all my characters, I think she has the most untapped potential. It'll be interesting to combine her skills will other classes once she masters her last Lancer ability.

Before this week is over, I'll be working my way through World 3 and taking on some even tougher enemies. From a character building perspective, this is where things will get really interesting as each character will have mastered at least one class, so there will be a lot of potential for mixing and matching different abilities. I'm definitely looking forward to experimenting with unusual combinations that I never would of thought of outside of the Four Job Fiesta setting!

As an additional note, at the time of writing, the Fiesta has raised over $17,000 for Child's Play Charity; we're less than $1000 away from this year's goal! Thanks so much to everyone that has donated, and if you haven't donated yet, there's still plenty of time to make a contribution!