Is the alchmeist worthless?

[fauxsquared]

I was using the standard party. I was doing fine until the floors 9\10. The party was running out of tp. I sub the Alch with Troubador. Now tp can be regenerated and i can buff my fighters with elemental damage. The alch is really looking weak.

[Drathi]

The Alchemist has its perks, but I only used mine for the Alchemist required quests. XD

Troubadour is a highly useful class. Make sure you get Bravery and TP Maxed out as well. Once you get a high enough level, you don't need to worry about TP conservation. XD Once I reached floor 20, my Trobadour practically was buffing my party without having to relax.

[Apolloncrash]

I would say that it's not so much that the Alchemist is worthless, just that a Bard (Troubador) is far more useful. An Alchemist's main use is to dish out elemental damage, but the Bard can use Blaze, Frost, Shock for the same effect (and situations where you need elemental damage are very rare). They can also use Relaxing/Healing as a portable recovery spring. Bravery is invaluable in boss fights.

However, I'm going to have to disagree with Drathi and say that I would not waste a Bard's Skill Points in TP Up, outside of what you need as a prerec for Relaxing. I didn't, and my Bard is now buffing at least once in almost every fight and he never runs out of TP. The TP costs for their skills are usually very low, and they have high natural TP, not to mention that to keep your other party member's TP topped up you will be using Relaxing quite a bit anyway (especially end/postgame).

[alexpk86]

Alchemists are still the best class to deal highest elemental damage, it just depends on how you want to fight. If you want to exploit enemies' weaknesses then Alchemist is the best way to go...
A Tier2 spell is still far better than an elemental imbued physical attack, also because Alchemist's TEC can be maxed out pretty easily with the right equipment (and have better damage % bonuses), also their spells don't require too much TPs for the damage they deal (14 for Tier2, 20 for Tier3...instead of 36TP and 52TP in EO2 IIRC.)
It's true TP is always an issue, but this goes for every party without a Troubadour.

[Wolkenritter]

[fauxsquared]

[ZetaBladeX13]

I like them, but they're easily replaced later in the game.

Main Game: Can deal strong elemental damage against bosses/F.O.E.s
(Volt is the your friend, fire is near useless)

Post game: Worthless aside from "Alchemist is super effective against Ironcrab", that's about it.


Also, if you put any Skill Points into any kind of poison, you're wasting your skill points.

[scy]

If I recall, Poison was rather broken for the first ~3 Stratums.

[Wolkenritter]

[Medicforhire]

[turkish101]

[warcraff]

[Yoonah]

It increases by level, but scales really bad after the 3rd stratum due to it's fixed damage :X

[Randomnicity]

It really has less to do with damage scaling, but more with enemies resisting Status Effects once you reach the 4th Stratum. Even if damage scaled properly Poison would still be inefficient to use past the third stratum compared to the Alchemists other damage options.

Venom still does enough damage to wipe most random encounters in 2 turns (compared to the 1 turn kill in the previous Stratums) past the 3rd Stratum. For one character to do that while the rest of the party is free to do anything they want (like Defend) that's pretty efficient.

Even Allslash requires Bravery and sometimes a little followup, Chases require a Tier 3 spell. Tier 3 spells require followup like, ironically, Chases. Venom does it by only taking 1 character's turn.

But just like all Status Effects, if the enemy doesn't get poisoned then your Alchemist's turn is wasted. Enemies in random battles start resisting status effects (IIRC all random battle enemies prior to that have no resistance to Status Effects, while 4th Stratum enemies suddenly gain a 50% chance to resist Statuses)

Even if only one enemy doesn't get poisoned that means either the rest of the party needs to start contributing to the battle or the Alchemists tries to reapply Poison, which just drags the battle out even longer.

And in the case where the party pulls their own weight, a better strategy would be just to ignore attemping to poison enemies to begin with and just kill stuff normally.

[warcraff]

Good to know. I guess I might try out Venom on the Royalant and see how it fairs before I make any drastic decisions with regards to 'Rest'ing my Alchemist.

Edit: Seems Poison & Venom are worthless from here on out. So guess I'll go with my Tri-Elemental build instead(focusing on Ice 1st).