Chronicles: Fate of a Princess

author=Egdelion
You get some points, and actually, I think we can reconcile both our points of view of you divide companion classes and Princess classes ranking. For I think the tier list isn't exactly the same.

The thing is, Princess is mandatory, so if you have her in a weak class, you will have to deal with it for the entire game with no possibility of ever switching her out of the party, so it will be about limiting the disaster. So it's all about "What class am I the most ok with never switching out of the party?". For companions, it's a bit different. If a companion has nothing to bring, all you have to do is not pick them in your party. If they somehow are a one-trick pony, you can pick them in the rare situation they are somehow useful, and completely ignore them otherwise. So you will never pick a companion if there is nothing they can do that someone else can't do better. Which means that some classes may be worse as Princess choices, but less as companions.

So, here would be my companions ranking :

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Best
1) Rogue. Just no discussion.
2) Ranger. Best damage dealer.

Good
3-4) Paladin and Bard. I think this is a question of personal preference. I tend to get better results with Paladin, but I get why you would find Bard as so good. The thing is, they are both good supports, and you need one of them in your party regardless the situation. I tend to switch between them depending on my needs.

Average
5) Warrior. I agree that this class has a lot of flaws. They have many abilities I never use, and they indeed get the useful one late. It's worth noting, though, that you only get Warrior companion late, so it won't take long for him to get useful anyway. But it certainly doesn't rival Rogue or Ranger who are useful for the entire game and join the party early on.

Bad
6) Priest. There just isn't any reason to pick him over Paladin/Bard. His only use is picking him to use Full Heal, but after that he will be oom and you want to switch him back out of the party. The cost is just ridiculous.

Terrible.
7) Mage. Why am I insisting putting the Mage here, rather than last ? At least, Mage can be played "as intended", without getting worse results than playing it in an unintended way. And he even has a saving grace : Flame Wave can actually be passably useful against large groups, given that there are very few abilities that hit all enemies. The only others are Paladin's Holy Fire (which is comparable to Flame Wave), Warrior's Sweep Attack (which I tend to value less, because it costs 50 TP, making it unreliable, and against random encounters, you can end the fight before reaching that), and Warlock's Soul Vortex and Eternal Damnation (both of which are unreliable, the former depends on your health, the latter damages you more than the enemy, so should never be used). I consider Holy Fire and Flame Wave as the only two actually reliable abilities that hit all enemies. So if you want to deal with a large group as fast as possible, I find that using Paladin + Mage as an efficient, viable way. But that's quite situational and the only case when you would ever consider picking Mage.
8) Warlock. Simply, why would you pick Warlock in your party when she has nothing relevant to bring ? This is the only class in the game that you can't even play "as intended", because it puts your team in too much danger. If you don't use their dangerous abilities, they are useless. If you use these abilities, you put your party at risk. And if I want an "alchemist" who uses items, I would rather pick a warrior who has something else to offer when you are not using items. Also, there seems to be a bug. Warlocks are supposed to be more powerful than other classes when using items, but I can't see any difference. So right now, it's as if they didn't have any traits. Fix that and then, Warlock get a niche role as some kind of alchemist, and become better than Mage.

So now, for the Princess ranking :

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Best
1) Rogue.
2) Ranger.
Nothing changes for these.

Good
3) Warrior. 3rd by default.

Average
4-5) Paladin and Bard. Because it is just too suboptimal to make Princess a support, and the remaining non-support classes are useless.

Bad
6) Warlock. To be fair, if you don't use the dangerous spells, Princess Warlock isn't as bad as the classes below. She can still use items and have some passable offence with Strength/Magic Drain and Incinerate (the latter could mainly serve against enemies that are immune to Dark element).

Terrible.
7) Priest. Has no offensive power at all. No relevant damage, no buff/debuff (besides heal over time), just a bazillion variations of heals, most of which you will never use anyway. Once again, no reason to pick Priest when you could have picked Paladin or Bard instead. But at least Priest can actually survive for a while, unlike...
8) Mage. Indeed. Princess Mage is just awful. Abilities are but glorified normal attacks, except for the one you learn at lvl 10 (and even then, it's only worth anything against large groups, and pretty much useless against bosses). Not that t matters a lot, though. Because you won't get many occasion to deal damage anyway. I mean, look at that health. It's just so low that you have no survivability. Good luck surviving during boss fights. And to add insult to the injury, unlike companion Mage, you can't even switch her out of your party. No wonder you struggled so much against the bonus boss with a Mage Princess.

That being said, I tend to use the companion ranking for my overall ranking because I wouldn't even consider making Princess anything that isn't Rogue, Ranger or Warrior. So other classes are classes I only know as their companion versions.

What could be interesting is thinking about how the three useless classes could be fixed. Here is some of my thoughts :

Priest

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Let's look at his abilities first. Only heals, revive and mana recover. In a game where the party is healed after every battle, and bosses have anti-healing debuffs. Basically a one-trick pony who is mediocre at the only thing he can do. Priest needs something else, just as Paladins and Bards have.

He needs an offensive ability, be it only a generic damage dealing ability like Mage.

Not to mention that as a support, he needs some kinds of buffs, like Bard. Thinking about it, Bards heal and buff the entire party. An option could be to give Priest stronger buffs and heals, but that only apply to one ally at a time. The kit could look something like:
- Normal heal (1 ally).
- Damage ability (deals magical damage, 1 enemy).
- Revive (1 ally).
- Buff attack and magic (1 ally). Buff both to avoid wasting an ability slot, since most classes only use one anyway.
- Buff physical and magical defences (1 ally).
- Regenerate (heal over time, 1 ally).
- Either a damage over time, a drain, or leave Pray as it is.
- Full Heal (leave it unchanged).

Of course, the numbers and power should be adjusted so that it is balanced with other supports.

Warlock

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The idea of a class that uses spells that have huge power but a high cost can work, but it's clearly poorly executed in the case of Warlock. Although, fixing it wouldn't require to reconsider the entire kit. Just adjust it properly.
- Strength Drain and Magic Drain : leave them as they are, these abilities are fine and suit the theme.
- Pain Focus and Soul Vortex : tweak the formula. Right now, it deals no damage if your health is high. Have it deal normal damage if you are full health (something that wouldn't be enough to rival Rogues/Rangers), and that significantly increases if you are low health.
- Soul Pact : Fits the theme, might leave as such.
- Overextend : Fits the theme, but feels redundant with Pain Focus and Soul Vortex, that are also about risking your life to deal more damage. Overextend feels like a safer version of these : while Pain Focus and Soul Vortex require you to manage to keep your health low without dying, with Overextend, you can just ignore your health and profit, Warlock will die anyway so it's just about making sure she deals as much damage as possible before that. I would be tempted to either leave it as such, or replace it with a Drain ability. Warlock seems suited for having a life drain.
- Incinerate : It's weird to have a single fire ability among so many dark abilities. Also, anti-healing is pretty much useless outside of bosses. I would be tempted to replace this with an ability that deals damage and applies Blind. I mean, Warlock has tons of Dark abilities, yet none of them applies Blind...
- Eternal damnation : This ability hurts yourself much more than it hurts enemies. I would say, keep the HP cost, but only for the Warlock, allies shouldn't be affected.
- And of course, fix the passive trait.

Not sure what the result would be, but probably already better than what we have now.

Mage

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And now for the boring, useless class. First, give them some more HP. Ok, Mages aren't supposed to be tanks, but that doesn't mean they should die as soon as a boss uses a damaging ability.

The major problem this class faces is that all its abilities look like different variations of the same thing. The same spell but with different elements. When actually, there aren't that many elemental weaknesses to exploit. As a consequence, many of these spells feel useless and are never used.
- Magic Strike shouldn't even be an ability, it should be used for Mage's weapons attack, instead of the physical one. Ok, this requires a plugin, but it's simpler to use than other plugins that the game is already using.
- Burn could be interesting in that it can make the target vulnerable to other spells, but considering how weak Mage's spells are, it doesn't make that much of a difference, and it lacks other spells to combo with. And really, if you compare this with Rogue's Backstab, the bonus damage is barely relevant.
- Chill is very situational. Reducing agility is nice and all, but... even with 1 agility, the enemy is still going to use its attack anyway. So you might as well reduce their attack power of defence instead.
- Zap is the most interesting of the lot. It's basically a much better Burn. It can combo with most classes, and isn't limited to only one element.
- Splash is basically a drain. But considering how large of an HP poor Mage gets, it will hardly matter anyway.
- Crush's only particularity is dealing physical damage. You mean, as Rogues', Rangers' and Warrior's every damaging move ? Except those three deal way more damage with them ?
- Swirl is wind-based and is fast. I guess that fully justifies that it costs four times as much as Magic Strike, which is non-elemental.
- Flame Wave is Mage's only saving grace.

At that point, Mage is so bad that I would just remake the class completely. Although, I'm voluntarily going to remain quite cliché and avoid ideas that would require too many plugins/scripting, since this game has some "RPG Maker MV demo" feels:
- Fireball. Fire-elemental damage on 1 enemy and applies the "Burning" state, that makes the target more vulnerable to Ice attacks (vulnerability x200%) but more resistant to Fire attacks (vulnerability x50%). Removes the "Chilled" state. Let's be honest, for a mage, nothing is more standard than having a fireball as first spell.
- Ice shard. A shattering ice block deals ice-elemental damage to 2 random enemies, and slows them. It also applies the "Chilled" state that makes the target twice as vulnerable to Fire attacks, but half as vulnerable to Ice attacks, and removes the "Burning" state.
- Earthquake. An earthquake deals earth-elemental damage to all enemies, and reduces their defences.
- Tornado. A tornado deals wind-elemental damage to 3 random enemies, and removes all their positive states and buffs.
- Chain lightning. Bolts deal thunder-elemental damage to 4 random enemies, and make them more vulnerable to critical strikes.
- Flame Wave. Apocalyptic pillars of flames inflict colossal fire-elemental damage to all enemies while also silencing them. Applies "Burning" state and removes "Chilled" state.
- Antarctica. A massive ice storm deals tremendous ice-elemental damage to all enemies, while also blinding them. Applies "Chilled" state and removes "Burning" state.
- Doom Storm. Bolts originating directly from the Aether deal monumental thunder-elemental damage to 4 random enemies while also preventing their next action. They never miss and ignore magical resistance (but not thunder elemental resistance).

Not sure how Mage would then be compared to other classes, but I'm quite sure it would be far better than its current state.