Bravely Default Flying Fairy Remaster Tier List - Best Characters & Builds

Tier List Overview

When discussing Bravely Default Flying Fairy Remaster, the most relevant way to evaluate the game's depth is by ranking its Jobs. Unlike many traditional JRPGs where characters are locked into specific classes, Bravely Default features a highly customizable Job and Ability system. By the endgame, your physical characters, magic users, and support units are defined almost entirely by their selected Job, their sub-Job passive abilities, and how you leverage the Brave and Default combat system. Therefore, ranking the Jobs is the most accurate metric for determining what is truly "the best" in this remaster.

This tier list ranks every obtainable Job in the base game based on their overall versatility, damage output, utility in boss fights, and synergy with the game's core mechanics. Whether you are tackling the main story or preparing for the gruelling late-game bosses and the infamous Chapter 8 loops, understanding which Jobs rise to the top will save you countless hours of grinding and frustration. The rankings assume access to late-game abilities and passive supports, as that is when the true power ceiling of each Job is realized.

S Tier

The S Tier represents the absolute pinnacle of Bravely Default’s combat design. These Jobs completely break the game's difficulty curve, offering unmatched damage output or utility that trivializes even the toughest Optional Bosses. If you want to steamroll the content, these are the Jobs you need to master.

Spiritist

The Spiritist is, without a shadow of a doubt, the single most broken Job in the entire game. Their signature skill, Status Ailment Amp, increases the success rate of inflictable status ailments to an absolute 100%. Combine this with the ability Exorcise (which instantly kills the Undead) or abilities that inflict Instant Death, and you can bypass the mechanics of almost every late-game boss. Furthermore, the Spiritist has access to abilities that drain massive amounts of MP from enemies, making them an infinite battery for your party. Their inclusion in the Flying Fairy Remaster balances out the game's notoriously bloated boss HP pools.

Spell Fencer

The Spell Fencer is the ultimate physical damage dealer. This Job allows you to imbue your weapon with elemental magic—such as Thunder, Fire, or Dark—before striking. The brilliance of the Spell Fencer lies in the Brave system. Because the spell is cast and stored on the weapon beforehand, you can Default up to three times, then Brave four times on your next turn to unleash four massively powerful elemental strikes in a single turn. When paired with a Swordmaster's Free Lunch ability (which makes all magic cost zero MP for two turns), the Spell Fencer becomes a relentless, zero-cost damage machine that outdamages almost every other setup in the game.

Vampire

The Vampire Job turns the difficulty of Bravely Default completely upside down. Normally, bosses are dangerous because they have high stats. The Vampire doesn't care about enemy stats because its primary damage-dealing abilities—Fire Bane, Ice Bane, Thunder Bane, etc.—deal damage calculated by a percentage of the enemy's maximum HP. A level 1 Vampire can kill a level 99 boss in a few turns if the percentage is high enough. Additionally, the Vampire absorbs HP and MP with every strike, granting them near-infinite sustain. They are virtually unkillable while dishing out proportional damage.

Templar

While the Templar might seem like a simple tank, their true value lies in their support capabilities. The BP Recovery ability allows a Templar to freely give Brave Points (BP) to an ally without spending their own. In a game where BP management is the core mechanic, having a dedicated battery that can fuel a Spiritist's status spam or a Spell Fencer's elemental assault is invaluable. Furthermore, the Templar's innate ability to shield the party from physical attacks makes them the ultimate defensive cornerstone.

• Spiritist: 100% status/death infliction and MP drain.
• Spell Fencer: Highest single-target elemental physical burst damage.
• Vampire: Percentage-based HP damage and infinite self-sustain.
• Templar: Unmatched BP manipulation and party-wide physical shielding.

A Tier

A Tier Jobs are exceptionally strong, reliable, and form the backbone of many successful party compositions. They might lack the utterly game-breaking mechanics of the S Tier, but they will perform phenomenally well in virtually any combat scenario you throw at them.

Arcanist

The Arcanist is the king of damage-over-time (DoT) mechanics. Abilities like Exterminate and Ragnarok apply incredibly potent poison and elemental DoTs to the enemy. Because these ticks happen at the start of the enemy's turn, you can Default to safely mitigate incoming damage while the enemy's health bar slowly melts away. The Arcanist pairs beautifully with the Spiritist, using Status Ailment Amp to guarantee that their devastating DoTs connect on bosses that would normally be immune.

Dark Knight

The Dark Knight is the epitome of high-risk, high-reward gameplay. Their signature move, Dark Bane, sacrifices a portion of the user's HP to deal massive dark damage to all enemies. When combined with the Vampire's Drain ability (which heals the user for the damage dealt) or the Templar's BP Recovery, the Dark Knight becomes a spinning top of AoE destruction. They are slightly lower than Spell Fencers because their AoE focus makes them less efficient against single-target bosses, but they are unparalleled in random encounters.

White Mage

No JRPG is complete without a dedicated healer, and the White Mage in Bravely Default is arguably one of the most robust in the genre. With access to Curaga, Raise, and Esunaga, they can recover from catastrophic party wipes. Their real strength, however, comes from their passive abilities. Angelic Ward grants a flat 25% chance to dodge any physical or magical attack, which can be stacked with other evasion abilities to make the White Mage surprisingly elusive.

Performer

The Performer is the ultimate force multiplier. By using songs like My Hero, the Performer can restore the party's BP while simultaneously boosting their physical attack stats. A well-positioned Performer allows your damage dealers to Brave recklessly without fear of being left vulnerable on the next turn. They are a reactive playstyle Job that requires good battlefield awareness, but the payoff is a party that operates at twice its normal speed.

• Arcanist: Bypasses defense with potent, reliable damage-over-time ticks.
• Dark Knight: Incredible AoE damage that clears random encounters instantly.
• White Mage: Essential, zero-friction healing and status cleansing.
• Performer: Best party-wide BP generation and stat boosting in the game.

B Tier

B Tier Jobs are solid, functional, and perfectly capable of carrying you through the main story. However, they begin to fall off in the late game. They either require too much setup, deal mediocre damage compared to S and A Tier options, or are simply outclassed by a similar Job that does their job better.

Black Mage

The Black Mage is a classic, but in Bravely Default, pure elemental magic suffers from the Spell Level mechanic. To deal high damage, you must cast spells multiple times in a single turn to raise their level. This eats through BP and MP at an alarming rate. While they can output respectable numbers if you build an entire party around MP restoration (like using a Spiritist), the Spell Fencer ultimately does physical elemental damage much more efficiently and with less resource drain.

Swordmaster

The Swordmaster is designed around countering physical attacks using abilities like Nothing Ventured (which strikes back when attacked) and Free Lunch. While Free Lunch is an S-tier passive that you should absolutely slot onto your Spell Fencer, the Swordmaster's actual combat performance is lackluster. Relying on the enemy attacking a specific character is too unpredictable in a game where bosses frequently use AoE magic or target multiple party members.

Pirate

The Pirate excels at a single mechanic: breaking enemy equipment. Shipwreck can lower an enemy's physical defense, making them take more damage. However, in the late game, debuffing bosses often feels like a waste of a turn when you could just be dealing massive percentage-based damage with a Vampire or instantly inflicting death with a Spiritist. They are fun for a challenge run, but mathematically inferior in optimized playthroughs.

Ninja

The Ninja is incredibly fast and can equip two weapons at once via the Two-Handed or dual-wield passives, giving them high raw attack stats. They also have excellent utility with Utsusemi (dodges one physical attack) and Kaira (dodges one magical attack). However, their actual damage output is middling. They act as a great sub-Job for other physical classes, but as a main Job, they struggle to deal meaningful damage to the massive HP pools of late-game bosses.

• Black Mage: Held back by clunky spell-leveling mechanics and high MP costs.
• Swordmaster: Too reliant on enemy AI, though provides top-tier sub-Job passives.
• Pirate: Defense debuffing is inferior to raw damage or instant-kill strategies.
• Ninja: High evasion and speed, but lacks the raw damage needed for endgame content.

C Tier

C Tier Jobs are highly situational, fundamentally flawed, or just outright outclassed by the time you unlock them. You should generally avoid using these as your primary Jobs in the late game, though a few of them offer niche passive abilities worth stealing for your sub-Job slots.

Merchant

The Merchant's gimmick is making money in combat and spending money to deal damage. Mineuchi can stun enemies, which is okay for crowd control, but their big damage move, Miscast, requires you to have a massive stockpile of pg (money) to be effective. By the time you have enough pg to make Miscast worthwhile, you have access to Jobs that can end the fight for zero cost. The only reason to level a Merchant is for the Hawkeye passive, which increases physical accuracy.

Monk

The Monk is fantastic in the first few hours of the game, but their scaling falls off a cliff. Their bare-knuckle damage relies entirely on their base level and P.Atk, which simply cannot keep up with weapon-wielding Jobs later on. Abilities like Pressure Point offer niche uses against specific undead enemies, but you are much better off using a Spell Fencer or Vampire for single-target physical damage.

Freelancer

The Freelancer is your starting class, and it actually possesses one of the best passives in the game: Guide, which increases encounter rates (if you want to grind) and ensures you always strike first. However, as a main Job, the Freelancer has no defining combat identity, no specialized weapons, and no high-tier commands. It is purely a vessel for passives.

Knight

The Knight is meant to be a physical tank that draws aggro using Cover. In theory, this protects weaker party members. In practice, Bravely Default's boss design makes this a liability. Many late-game bosses hit so hard that a Knight will simply die even while covering, or worse, the boss will use an AoE attack that ignores Cover entirely. The Templar does everything the Knight does, but with actual damage mitigation and BP manipulation.

• Merchant: A gimmick that wastes your hard-earned pg for mediocre damage.
• Monk: Scales terribly, completely outpaced by armed physical Jobs.
• Freelancer: Only good for the "Guide" passive; useless in actual combat.
• Knight: A defensive crutch that crumbles against late-game boss mechanics.

How to Use This Tier List

Understanding this tier list requires a solid grasp of Bravely Default's intricate Job mechanics. The most important concept to remember is that your Main Job determines your stats, while your Sub-Job determines the abilities you can equip. Because you can equip up to four passive abilities from any Job you have leveled, the true meta of Bravely Default involves building Frankenstein-style combinations.

For example, just because the Swordmaster is in B Tier does not mean it is bad. A Swordmaster's Free Lunch passive is absolutely vital when placed on an S Tier Spell Fencer. Similarly, the Freelancer's Guide passive is C Tier on its own, but it is mandatory if you want to efficiently farm encounters to level up your S Tier Jobs. Use the high-tier Jobs as your Main Job to benefit from their stat distributions, and pillage the lower-tier Jobs for their passive abilities.

It is also important to note that the Flying Fairy Remaster does not feature any major gameplay patches or balance changes compared to the original Nintendo 3DS release. The tier list remains completely accurate to the original game's design. The remaster primarily improves the UI, adds quality-of-life features like an art gallery, and updates the soundtrack and visuals. The underlying combat math is entirely untouched.

Finally, consider your personal playstyle. Bravely Default is designed to be broken; the developers fully expected players to figure out combinations like Spiritist + Arcanist or Spell Fencer + Free Lunch. If you prefer a casual experience where you can Default, heal, and slowly whittle down enemy health, an A Tier composition featuring a White Mage, a Dark Knight, and a Performer will feel incredibly satisfying without feeling overly exploitative. However, if you are staring down the brutal late-game Optional Bosses or the repetitive Chapter 8 gauntlets, do not hesitate to lean heavily into the S Tier. In Bravely Default, fighting fair is rarely the intended solution.