FFIII - Trouble on the 'Job'

Didn't really make any progress Sunday after my post, needed a break plus I wanted to catch up on some Dexter and Demon's Souls. But yesterday it was back to the grind, albiet a fun one. =)

After busting up my airship on a rock, I was out of newb land and in the main world (or so I thought at the time). I trotted on down to my first city and was given several tasks to complete. It's kinda cool how there are all these little secret areas, passages, items, and triggers in the game but sucks that you have to zoom in to see anything sparkling. Anyway, I think I found most of the stuff, hopefully. I stocked up on crap tons of items and headed out.

I ran up a Dragon's nest to find... BAHAMUT! Alright! Probably one of my favorite summons of the series makes his first appearance. Love me some Bahamut. Except when he's kicking my ass and is invincible, I ran away. I picked up a fifth tag along character, Desch, who couldn't remember what he was supposed to do, so follows me. After a time, I'm told to head to a water temple, so the Vikings can sail at sea again w/o the great monster in the water killing everyone. I go on over and run through the temple, and am rewarded with a ship! called the Enterprise...

I hop on my ship and now, with full access to the world, I really start laying into the story line and got all the way up to my second crystal and second set of Jobs: Knight, Scholar, Geomancer, and Ranger. Now, by this time I had really been having some party troubles, more so than even FFII. I had Yorick on Warrior, but with crap weapons, hitting for like 30-50 a hit, less on bosses. Eventually I got some decent weapons and I figured out that using a shield is fucking useless since mobs always seem to go for the weaker classes anyway, so I finally dual wielded him. His weapons are still crap but at least he was doing a little more damage when I use the advance command, 100-230, maybe 30 on bosses. Ikorid on Thief was doing even less, and since I sold all my Knives and Daggers (don't ask me why), all he had was one Spark dagger and shield, and a whopping 5-30 damage a swing, useless. Nazomi on Red Mage spent most of her time using health pots on people because her MP is so low, and otherwise swings for about 30 damage. Now on bosses with 6k HP, you can imagine my trouble. The only real DD is Rhek on Black Mage. He throws down hard, hitting mobs and bosses alike for 500-800 damage, but he only has so much MP. I barely scrapped by most dungeons using about 50 pots, phoenix downs, all manner of elemental items in the hands of my useless melee classes, and tons of Mallets and Maiden's Kisses, Antidotes, etc.

So I was mightily relieved to be getting my second set of jobs. The first thing I did was put Nazomi on WHM, I need a fucking WHM, I don't want to start spending billions of gil on Hi-Pots and maybe X-Pots or w/e later on, and I can't do this game with a red mage with 8 Cures and 2 Curas in her arsenal before she's tapped out. No WHM experiment... Failed. Of course I kept Rhek on BLM, Never been a fan of Geomancers, and Scholar.. meh, I'll stick with my pure elemental class, he's served me VERY well so far.

Yorick I switched to knight, hoping for better (just like FFI right...?) and Ikorid I switched to Monk, never gonna look back at Thief again. I played like this a bit but then I just didn't feel right with Yorick not being the Monk, stupid I know. I switched Yorick to Monk and Ikorid to Knight. But now I'm thinking of putting them back, I just don't KNOW!!!! ><><). The other two, no clue... Two heavy hitters? A heavy hitter and a tank...? If I make a 'tank' does that mean my light armor heavy hitter has to be in the back row so he doesn't get hit? Be limited to like a ranger or another mage class? Ugh... help me Obiwan, you're my only hope. Any recommendations out there?

Anyway, I did some more story and got all the way to a part where I'm told that the world I live in is a floating land mass, and now I have to go down to the real world which is dark and evil or something. Who knows what lies in wait, but I think I better figure out my class issue before I head down. Maybe get at least level 5 or 10 job levels on them before I venture forth.