From life-saving curative spells and city-rending destructive magics to the power to summon famous fiends or even pause time itself, Square Enix’s long-runningFinal Fantasyfranchise is bursting at the seams with classic mage archetypes. Final Fantasy frequently employs a color scheme to suit its needs - White, Black, Red, and so forth.
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When it comes to job classes, everyone’s got their favorite, and we hardly aim to replace yours. But after taking an extensive look at what each of Final Fantasy’s magically-inclined maestros has to offer, we’re ready to voice our rank-obsessive thoughts on them all.
A note on your unlisted favorites! We’ve mainly chosen candidates that have seen lots of representation throughout the games, as well as a couple of rarities we feel have built plenty of identity for themselves within the fandom. If you’re a fan of Bishops, Elementalists, Oracles, Arcanists, Animists, Gun Mages, Green Mages, Illusionists, and more, know that we are as well! They’re just more niche, is all.
12Scholar
Let us start by saying we don’t hate the Scholar class. In fact, it’s pretty cool. The problem is, this field is stacked. Final Fantasy has very few genuinely ‘meh’ jobs, and Scholar isn’t one of them.
What do you do when your ranking field is stacked? You come up with your own approach, and you’ll see it time and again here today - how much presence does this class have in Final Fantasy’s narrative history? How often does that presence change the tide in battle? In these ways, the tome-loving Scholar comes up short. It’s useful for precisely one fight in Final Fantasy 3, and it’s situational everywhere else outside the MMOs.
That said, Scholar’s lore-heavy nature makes it a flawless fit for Final Fantasy 14, whose world is overflowing with history. And, being that FF14’s an MMO, Square aims to make it as balanced alongside the other healing jobs as possible, so you’ll likely have a good go of it.
11White Mage
White Mages are perhaps the most vitally important job class around, and if that were our sole deciding factor, this one would go far. Alas, White Mages, for all their necessity, simply aren’t the most compelling class. Almost everything White Mages do is tied to healing their allies. Cure, Cura, Curaga, the occasional Curaja - these crucial spells merely heal incrementally higher amounts of health points.
You’ll always be thankful for a White Mage’s assistance when half your party’s unconscious and that beloved Raise or Arise spell is ably cast. But a White Mage, on its own, is seldom needed in the single-player entriesexceptwhen things get rough. This can make them feel like a liability as often as a lifesaver.
Once again, this is decidedly less so in the MMOs, where every class must hold its own, but if you’re playing, say, Final Fantasy 5, anticipate some real downtime.
10Sage
Courtesy of Final Fantasy 14’s epic Endwalker expansion, the Sage has recently been given a serious uptick in the coolness department, with long-running hero character Alphinaud donning the garb and defeating untold scores of foes. The sheer visual splendor of the class makes it easily appealing.
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What is the Sage, though, beyond Endwalker’s bounds? Recurring traits include the ability to tap into portions of White and Black Magic whilst maintaining a generally low physically offensive capabilities. This makes them the sort of the jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none that Red Mages can get a bad reputation for,withoutthe perks we’ll talk about later.
9Calculator
Also known as Arithmeticians, the Calculators are Final Fantasy Tactics' most exquisitely strange class, a job rooted in the rigors of mathematics to the point of magical prowess. By performing complex computations, these odd warriors march into conflict carrying naught but a book, and shouting algebraic equations like…
You know what? We’re finally beginning to understand why Calculators are so terrifying. Think of the most hard-knuckle math teacher you ever had. Can you imagine them storming into a siege against demons and vengeful spirits? We can.
The Calculator’s as niche as niche can be, and their challenging gameplay style has mostly limited their appearance to just the one game, but in a theoretical universe in which they were prolific and consistently expanded-upon, this would be a top-tier gig.
8Bard
Bards don’t deserve all that ire. Final Fantasy 4’s Prince Edward, famously cowardly until his character arc kicks into higher gear, compounds the bardic badness by being a poor accompaniment in most battles. But look beyond all that, and you have a class that’s heaps of fun almost every other time it pops up.
The bardic arts offer buffs unparalleled in games like Final Fantasy 5 and Final Fantasy Tactics, where the mechanical complexity affords these wandering musicians the proper level of utility their concept deserves.
7Time Mage
An aptitude for adjusting time itself is a power with limitless potential. In Final Fantasy, Time Mages drum up this temporal talent with spells that can slow their foes or even stop them outright, hasten their companions to strike twice as often, immobilize multiple targets, even teleport parties safely out of harm’s way.
It’s a rock-solid list of spells, made all the better in the games that let Time Mages be the ones to cast stuff like Gravity, Comet, and even the dreaded Meteor. Just try not to mind those hats.
6Black Mage
This one was tough to place. On their own, Black Mages are cool, but hardly spectacular. They’re the ultimate wizards of the Final Fantasy franchise, the keenest spellcasters, the mages most dead-set on burning their enemies good and dead. The Black Mage skillset is almost entirely offensively based, and their physical fitness is far less impressive. But who cares if a Black Mage can swing a sword when they can melt, freeze, zap, or shatter you long before you reach them?
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So, they’re fun stuff, if limited in their overall arsenal. But what makes it harder is how absolutely incredible a character Final Fantasy 9’s Vivi Ornitier is; he isn’t the game’s chief protagonist, but his personal arc is arguably its most touching, and he represents that iconic Final Fantasy Black Mage look like nobody’s business. Vivi’s existence helps spring Black Mages forward on this list a bit, but make no mistake - if this was a ranking ofBlack Mages, he’d hit the top.
5Mystic Knight
Speaking of spellcasters and swords, why not both, right? There aren’t any individual Mystic Knights (otherwise known under a wide array of names like Sorcerer, Spellblade, Spell Fencer, and more) with half as much widespread adoration as Black Mages get with Vivi, but as aconcept, this class is rad.
Here’s the gist, and it plays out most literally in FF5 and FF9 - these warriors essentially coat their blades in familiar spells, thereafter rending monsters and men alike with Fire Sword, Ice Sword, Thunder Sword, Break Sword, Flare Sword, Bio Sword… you get the picture. It’s a classic Final Fantasy spin on another great high-fantasy favorite, and it blends two distinct fighting styles into a third. Spiffy stuff.
4Geomancer
Let’s get the weird bit out of the way first: Geomancers frequently equip bells as weapons. Bells. If you love yourself some bells, pray forgive our side-eye, but what a weird look, you know? Bells aside, however, this idea of a mage who acts in harmony with the earth to usher powerful attacks via terrain - that’s fantastic.
Torrent, Tanglevine, Quicksand, Snowstorm, these spells and many more come to Geomancers through their pact with the planet itself. A knack for using one’s environment to their advantage in battle is not to be underestimated, and Geomancers make an earthly statement unlike any other of Final Fantasy’s magically-inclined classes.
Final Fantasy 6’s Mog uses the ‘Dance’ command, which operates under the same general ruleset. Geomancers even have a moogle among their ranks!
3Blue Mage
What’s better than learning a defined set of spells within a school of your liking? Diving headlong into battle, and learning the very skills that your would-be killers seek to slay you with. Blue Mages, like many popular classes, emerged from the beautifully experimental world of Final Fantasy 5. That game’s depth is still celebrated annually in the form of the Four Job Fiesta, and the inclusion of such an innovative new job is surely part of that depth.
Notable Blue Mage characters have included Strago, Quistis, Quina, and Kimahri. But the fundamental concept is found in plenty of installments without individually dedicated jobs. Final Fantasy 7’s Enemy Skill Materia, for example, as well as the recurring representation in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and its Nintendo DS sequel.
The quantity of available Blue Magic spells is sometimes staggering. In FF5, there are roughly 30 skills to learn. Strago can learn up to 24 spells with his ‘Lore’ command, and Quina matches that number. This leads to a set of abilities as diverse as it is robust. There’s nothing quite like a Blue Mage.
