Rate that Class! (Delayed) Week 8

[Assailant]

It occurred to me that I should at least finish this. So, week 8 shall be...the Knight!

Black Mage: 8.67
White Mage: 7.71
Ranger: 7.8
Blackbelt: 6.81
Fighter: 6.61
Red Mage: 5.58
Thief: 3.86

Rate (out of 10) in:

Solo Ability
Partying
Fun Factor

So, for Knights...


Solo Ability - Hm. I'm stuck here. They're decent. They're not that great at soloing. If built properly, they aren't bad at soloing. They need a proper balance of dexterity, strength, and possibly vitality/hp to be successful soloers. Then again, they do get divide, but that's being taken out (or drastically altered) unless Kija gets possessed in the future. Then again, they get a very nice skill in retort, but that's a double-edged sword, especially for a soloing knight. All in all, I just don't think they have a very high ceiling for soloing. 6/10

Partying - This is where they can really shine. When in a party with a Black/Blue Mage, their power can is only outdone by the Dragoon. When combined with a White Mage, they literally can't miss (by your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!). They're great for taking out groups of monsters with attacks like dice, defonce, and puree. Need a single monster carved up? Well, knights can also use a very nice attack called Frenzy. Furthermore, retort adds more to their arsenal. They may have less of a chance of being hit in a party, but there are more monsters. A boosted knight could take out half the field with retort and endless rebuttal. There's no real fault to partying with a knight, unless it's just a really really really stupid one. 9/10

Fun Factor - It may just be me. Knights aren't very fun for me. I don't know what it is about them. They're like a mage among melee classes with their skill set, but that just doesn't attract me I guess. 5/10

Overall: 7/10

[Takahashi]

Meh. The only class I'm less enthused with is Dragoon. Anyhow...

Solo Ability: Like with most of the melee classes, this trait is situational. Against monsters that focus on purely physical attacks, Knights can clean up due to the highest natural defense in the game at any point in the game along with the power of Retort. Against monsters that use magic, it's slightly harder to survive since you can't, say, counter a lightning bolt to your (likely) metal-clad crotch. Against monsters that frequently utilize sleep/paralyzing touch... well, it can get ugly.

A good build can round things off and make the disadvantages slightly more forgiving, but in the end you're either going to need to be overlevelled for the area you're in or you're going to need to be intimately familiar with the inside of a tent after every battle by the late-game. 7/10

Partying: Knights are about as close to a melee Black Mage as you get when it comes to versatility. Defonce and Dice let you deal with a row and a column per use, Puree covers a small area, Retort is high damage for a minor cost (more so once Endless Rebuttal is learned), Slash is a cheap and powerful attack, Frenzy is basically the next step up from Slash, and for as long as they remain in the game both Render and Divide work well almost any time that you want to kill something ASAP.

Knights are durable due to solid HP growth and, again, the best natural defense in the game. A Knight can go without body armor for the entire game and still be at or near the top defense-wise in a party due to being the only other class in the game aside from Black Belts to gain three vitality per level. A Shield 1 is often more than enough to keep damage to an absolute minimum until magic is commonly used by enemies. By then even a Barrier 1 can be enough to keep a Knight is good shape unless they get focused... but every class would have problems surviving focused melee and magic spam (yes, even Black and Blue Mages).

For as much disdain I have for Knights, they are still one of the better classes to have in a party strictly because of how much they bring to the table. The only glaring weakness they have is one that they'd need to have in order to make them merely great as opposed to overpowered (zero natural defense against magic of any kind until Enlightenment). 9.5/10

Fun Factor: As I hinted at above, I find Knights to be rather uninteresting. They do well in most any kind of party, so there's certainly fun to be had, but I just can't get myself very interested in what amounts to a melee Black Mage. That is, they have a fairly diverse set of techniques available, but it seems like only two or three of those techniques are commonly used. It doesn't help that one of the techniques isn't learned until around the end of the game. 6/10

[Assailant]

I need more ratings....1 week extension.