[ Guide ] Bravely Default 2 Builds for Every Occasion

There’s a whole host of Asterisks you can obtain in Bravely Default 2, and with them comes with a lot of opportunity to mix and match main- and sub-job skills. Still, as with any game, there are some combinations more efficient than others, so here’s a list of them with their uses.

NOTES

These combinations will assume you can do the most efficient farms and obtain the end-game weapons for maximum optimization, and level 15 Jobs.

You will probably see a lot of Freelancer and Beastmaster, so why? For this, we need to see their respective Specialty 2 abilities:

• Freelancer’s Late Bloomer: Boosts all stats based on the number of jobs mastered
• Beastmaster’s Creature Comforts: All stats are increased by an amount based on the number of monsters you’ve captured

Both these classes allow for massive boosts to your base attributes, thus potentially trivializing content. Who needs to exploit weaknesses when you can just facetank everything, right?

PHYSICAL OFFENSE

This build will see you spamming Jump, or Soul Jump if you’re running four Dragoons. Thanks to the stats from Beastmaster, your damage can range from 20k to 40k per jump depending on the difficulty you are playing on. The Draconic Lance will free up space for other class passives (as is the case with Spear of Judgement), and will allow you to begin with Sky High (a free Jump).

Four Dragoons means four free Jumps, and Soul Jump means everyone gets to take off again. Indiscriminate Rage means your Jumps will hit all enemies, with Brave Front and Full Force (from the Draconic Lance) further boosting damage. The Spear of Judgement’s Critical Flow and BP Limit Up gives you more of that wiggle room with regards to BP usage, and Auto Guard reduces the need for healing.

If you’re able to crit enough, you can replace Who Dares Win with Drain Attack (White Mage) to heal with every Jump. If you’d like a little more flexibility with your skills, you can opt for Freelancer sub-job, though with enough monsters, Beastmaster will offer far superior stats. This setup will not use any MP.

The setup begins with Nature’s Blessings, which will cost 0 BP thanks to Sub-Job BP saver, for 0 mana spells. Go to town with Ninefold Flurry, with access to Beastmaster’s stats and Bravebearer’s passives with the Sword of Light. Across the Board allows Ninefold Flurry to deal AOE damage, where you can expect roughly 5k per slash with maxed out stats. Spear of Judgement is used to provide synergy for Brave Front and Critical Flow to lessen BP concerns. Trigger Critical Flow enough, and you would ideally spam 3 Brave turns per round.

Due to Ninefold Flurry not being able to deal more than 9999 damage per slash, Surpassing Power is not needed. This build is best paired with a Red Mage + Oracle support to provide Attack, Elemental Supplement buffs and Elemental Impairment debuffs on enemies.

Begin by setting up with Solid Stance, then spam Attack. Stacking all those damage boosts on multi-target abilities and any effects that applies to the Attack command and topped off with Solid Stance, makes regular Attacks very threatening. To sum, the Attack command will:

• Target all enemies
• Doubled hits with Frenetic Fighting (with Vengeance equipped)
• Spammable Brave Attacks (with Spear of Judgement’s Critical Flow, and Vengeance’s Turn Tables)

Attack 8 times in total with a 33% chance to trigger Multitask with every attack, which can then trigger Critical Flow. Best supported with a Red Mage + Oracle to provide Attack, Elemental Supplement buffs and Elemental Impairment debuffs on enemies.

You’d probably have had this combination at some point. Our suggested build will provide the highest speed possible, enhanced with Fast Hands. Nature’s Blessings will cost MP instead of BP with the Thief’s specialty, and will allow you to spam Godspeed Strike. You can expect around 20k twice at 300+ speed.

Never worry about BP again with this combination thanks to Apex Predator and Critical Flow, as you generate BP with every X Slayer ability. Across the Board will allow your abilities to hit all targets, with Full Force and Brave Front further enhancing damage. Unfortunately, this combination gets overshadowed by Swordmaster or Berserker combos.

Pair this with a Red Mage + Oracle for the buffs and debuffs to maximize damage output.

A build for dealing insane physical damage. Lower your HP to 10% with Level Strike, then spam Death’s Door. Beastmaster is once again used to boost stats and give access to Nature’s Blessings to remove Death’s Door’s 200 MP requirement. Level Strike and Death’s Door both deal AOE damage, so Full Force and Brave Front from the Draconic Lance enhances damage, then getting Critical Flow and BP Limit UP from Spear of Judgement synergizes with Brave Front.

Pair this with a Red Mage + Oracle for the buffs and debuffs to maximize damage output.

This build is a pretty straightforward one. Who Dares Win is unnecessary as Monk can already increase their Critical Chance through Concentration. Focal Blast means you can deal damage as well as applying a random debuff, which can hit all enemies with Across the Board and Dragoon abilities.

Pair this with a Red Mage + Oracle for the buffs and debuffs to maximize damage output.

You will want to maintain your BP to one or lower to activate buffs from the spirits. Red Moon will give access to HP / MP Converter to reduce your HP to 1 with Ultima Sword while dealing 99,999 damage (when you have more than 5k HP) to all enemies at once. Keep it going with Minus Strike. With the Life Ring (+3,300 HP) you will hit the HP cap of 19,998, allowing you to deal 19,997 damage to all enemies with Minus Strike. Counter Savvy will help you prevent deaths from enemy counters, and you’ll be revived through Spiritmaster, provided your BP is one or lower.

Hellblade needs to be the Sub-Job to remove the BP cost with Sub-Job BP saver. Deal with the Devil (Hellblade Specialty 1) will also work against this build if you opt it as a Main Job, as the build aims to provide party wide support while dealing consistent damage.

Sub-Job BP Saver will allow you to spam Ultimatum (Perform an extremely powerful physical attack on all targets, after which the user is less likely to be targeted until their next turn comes around), and chaining Brave Ultimatum will deal impressive damage boosted via Raw Power and Brute Force from Ringmaster’s Spear. This build won’t be using much, if at all, HP and MP.

If Freelancer gives you more stats, you can swap to that as your main job instead.

This build can deal more damage compared to the Spiritmaster + Hellblade combination, but can find it hard to generate BP without spending a lot of PG. You can heal yourself well, but you’ll also need the ingredients on hand. Pre-emptive use of items is not as “foolproof” as the Spiritmaster option.

This build will see you cast Ultima Blade -> party-wide Advanced Compounding (Ether + Healing Herb + Healing Herb = Elixir) for HP and MP restoration -> Ultima Blade -> Advanced Compounding. Rinse repeat. If you have a lot of PG, you can instead replace the last Advanced Compounding in the chain for a party wide Double BP Tonic to restore BP.

MAGICAL OFFENSE

Elemental spells can be a double-edged sword, due to enemies who either absorb or nullify them. In that case, you will want Meteor, the strongest non-elemental spell in the game. With four hits to Meteor, maxed out stats and criticals will see you rack up 17 to 19k damage per hit, for roughly 70k damage per cast. Wild Wizardry is nice for the damage boost, but if your party members don’t have enough stats, you might accidentally kill them and they lose MP to boot.

At the very least, this job combination will mean it is a good standalone damage dealer, as Meteor does not benefit from Elemental Impairment.

You’ll be kept healed up through Spiritmaster’s spells, while you can dish out respectable Magic damage (light, through Holy) or Physical damage (using Muzzling Maelstrom). You can expect to hit peaks of 40k with Holy, and 7 to 11k damage hits per strike with Muzzling Maelstrom. As Muzzling Maelstrom requires a spear, here’s where Spear of Judgement comes in to give access to Critical Flow and BP Limit Up.

Divine Rod further boosts Holy’s damage, but if you would prefer, you can opt for Sword of Light instead and have Spiritmaster as your main job and retain Beastmaster’s stat bonuses from the Sword of Light which gives you Sub-Job Specialty 2.

Bravebearer has the potential to be the most overpowered job to deal 99,999 per action, but at 60 hours, Best Practice and Victory Double can only deal around 5k per strike. 50k requires 600 hours, which would be pretty unlikely for most people to hit. Instead, focus on maximum HP instead, with this build hitting 19,998 HP. You will need to heal up at the beginning of the battle, however, to ensure that Gigagravity will deal 14,999 damage.

As this damage cannot crit or be boosted, the abilities are more utilitarian and / or defensive: Sub-Job BP saver to remove Nature’s Blessings BP requirement, then you can spam Gigagravity. Vengeance is used for Turn Tables and Dual Wield to synergize with Thrust and Parry for the 50% damage reduction.

All you want to do is use Nature’s Blessings then spam Burial Shroud. This build is focused on single target damage, and if that target happens to be immune to Dark elemental attacks, your damage output will be severely neutered at best.

Pair this with a Red Mage + Oracle for the buffs and debuffs to maximize damage output.

You’ll be abusing Chainspell to multicast Tornado or Quake, with your weapons swapped accordingly depending on what element you want to boost (earth or wind). Across the Board via Sword of Light will ensure your spells will hit all enemies.

Pair this with an Oracle to debuff elemental resistance.

This build can both support itself and deal damage, but it requires a bit more setup. For optimum setup, have 3 using this Oracle build, with a support that can heal both HP and MP. One Oracle will then need to focus on debuffing through Impairment for Fire, Water and Lightning then the rest cast Triplaga to hit those three elements. Beastmaster is once again for stat bonuses and for Nature’s Blessing to remove MP costs.

HEALING

Pretty much one of, if not the best, healing combinations. Through Spiritmaster, you’ll get a whole host of buffs, and with Sword of Light giving you access to Across the Board, you can apply other buffs like Reraise, Protect, Shell, and Regeneration to the whole party in a single round. Auto Guard along with damage reduction from Thrust and Parry aided by Dual Wield (from Vengeance) and Maximize HP, you should be able to facetank most attacks.

While Spiritmaster is the main job, the star is Salve-Maker. With Salve-Maker, you’ll get Formulation, and you can go to town with BP manipulating abilities. Granted, these abilities are highly expensive, so Sword of Light will help make it more cost effective with Across the Board.

If you’re not up to spending your PG, Elixir will work just fine with Advanced Compounding (Ether + Healing Herb + Healing Herb) to heal both HP and MP with buffs from Spiritmaster specialties. This combination is also on the fragile side, but you can worry about that less thanks to Spiritmaster’s reviving capabilities. A very good healer, if expensive.

White Mage will provide immediate effects compared to Spiritmaster’s gradual ones. This build doesn’t have the failsafe from Spiritmaster, but you will at least be tanky due to Thrust and Parry and Dual Wield. Beastmaster’s Nature’s Blessing will let you cast free Protect and Shell for your party with Across the Board, further boosting survivability on top of Beastmaster’s stats.

This can help with the Oracle build, to heal the team with party wide Elixirs while having good defense. With Elixir and Treat being able to heal MP, it can be better than White Mage + Beastmaster while having BP manipulating abilities, at the cost of other support buffs like Protect and Shell. Salve-Makers can do party wide resurrections either through Revive (Cost 25% HP – Revive with 50% HP) or with Advanced Compounding (Phoenix Down + Healing Herb + Healing Herb – Revive with 100% HP).

BUFFERS / DEBUFFERS

This combination focuses on applying buffs and debuffs. Thrust and Parry and Dual Wield (from Vengeance) will help with the relative frailty of this combination before the buffs really get going. If you can apply Sleep or Daub, then you can get an extra action through Rewarding Results (from Vengeance).

You won’t want to run Spiritmaster with this combination as the Purebringer spirit will remove your buffs. Other things to keep in mind is that buffs can’t go over 200%, and debuffs can’t go lower than 65%. If your base stats are maxed out, you will also find no use for the buffs.

This build is the support build for quite a few damage dealing builds that we’ve described above. With Across the Board allowing for party wide Quickga (increase Attack hits by 100%), Hastega (Act more quickly for 3 turns) and enhancing Attack through Elemental Supplement, then debuffing all enemies with Elemental Impairment, the damage potential goes through the roof for multi-hit physical jobs with all the buff and debuff stacking. Landing a successful Elemental Impairment gives you an extra action through Rewarding Results from Vengeance.

Caveats include:

• Spiritmaster’s Purebringer will remove stacked buffs
• Bosses with Counter Any Ability will let them gain BP through the Red Mage Chainspells
• Can heal up enemies when they absorb certain elemental damage even if you debuff other elemental defenses

This build supports both Physical and Magical offense roles effectively. You have Elemental Supplement + Impairment, and the Bard’s stat buffs. Impairing enemies can then trigger Rewarding Results (through Vengeance) and further supplement elemental damage and/or physical attack for the whole party with Across the Board (through Sword of Light).

Once again, it falters some with Spiritmaster due to Purebringer removing buffs.

As mentioned, these are meant to be the most optimum possible, with the weapons saving slots for Abilities where relevant, and at level cap / stat cap where applicable. Feel free to shuffle around skills and weapons to best meet your needs, or just slap on Beastmaster and/or Freelancer for the tasty raw stats.

Bravely Default 2

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Claytechworks

Release Date: 2021-02-26

Nintendo Switch

Explore a new world as you fight for survival with your customized team of heroes in the Bravely Default II game, a strikingly beautiful RPG adventure. Balance risk and reward in turn-based battles with the Brave and Default commands.

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