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War Magus
Can equip: Swords, Staves, Light Armor, Clothing
You've seen a Medic that whacks, but how about a Medic that jabs? War Magus are another interesting new class that compresses a few roles and are a weird combo of Medic, Troubadour and Landy. In the right setup they are pretty incredible, but since they rely on external ailments for nearly half their skills, they're otherwise a nice healer and buffer with not much else going for them in some team comps. They really, REALLY appreciate a Sword Dark Hunter or a Hexer to shine, and their toolkit can get some taking used to, they technically perform worse in their roles than the dedicated classes they copy, but having them rolled into one class is quite the strength. And one bonus is they have faster heals due to sword speed modifiers being much better than staff speed modifiers. If you're willing to have some of the best classes in the game with you and want to have some ailment fun, you'll struggle to remember why Medic's are even in this game.
War Magi are... well frankly a class that doesn't have much of a right to be good. They're very generalist instead of specialized, so why would you take them over the classes that are dedicated to the role? Well there's one big issue. Those classes got nerfed hard, remember? So War Magus ended up being better than those by default. Unfortunately they do fall a bit into "jack of all trades, master of none", but make up for the latter in various ways. One of which is their flexibility. They're a pretty easy support to fit onto a team with their versatility, being able to heal, buff, disable, and deal damage all in one role. The other reason being that they are a fast class. This allows them to react on the fly to situations in battle a lot more easily than say, a Medic can. They can wield Swords or Staves, but there's really not much of a reason at all for them to use Staves as Swords are a massive speed boost and you can't use War Edge skills with Staves. And using Staves are essentially weighing them down with an iron ball.
War Magus are at least more straightforward than Gunner, having pretty good stats overall, with the main weaknesses being AGI and LUC. They have one of the highest TP totals, which is always nice, as well as a great VIT stat brought down a little by their middling HP. Pretty equally above average in STR and TEC, which is good, as we need both of those. Overall, pretty solid.
War Magi have pretty decent stat bodies with only their low points being AGI and LUC. STR is an okay investment if you really want to make use of an offensive War Magus, but not a huge priority since the damage mods on their skills aren't too great. TEC is good for boosting their healing capabilities. Don't worry too much about investing in AGI, as Swords give them enough of a speed boost to act first most of the time. LUC is also not really a priority as their infliction skills have the highest base infliction rates in the entire game. As always, HP and TP are always good investments, though not a huge priority until later as they already have strong HP and TP pools.
Common Passive Unlocks
TP Up: Lv1: Transfer
STR Up: Lv1: Blindcut; Lv2: Venomcut; Lv3: Sleepcut; Lv4: Fearcut; Lv5: Stuncut; Lv6: Cursecut
Now this is very different, but first, one point of TP to get a pretty good utility skill is definitely worth it, though it's up to you if you want to max TP. One of the issues of this class is how interwoven STR Up is to War Edge, technically giving this class three masteries. Now, War Magus do appreciate extra STR points, but we prefer to invest in these lategame due to how little they matter, it's just a nice bonus. But it means if you want to invest in the offensive skills, you have to pay double duty, and that's kinda lame. These skills are also a little hard to use, and have limited utility outside of Cursecut, so it can be hard to recommend them as well, but we'll get to that in due time.
War Edge
Unlocks: Lv1: Blindcut; Lv2: Venomcut; Lv3: Sleepcut; Lv4: Fearcut; Lv5: Stuncut; Lv10: Cursecut
Passive.
The first, or maybe second, of the mastery skills, as bland as always. But due to being in tandem with STR Up it's hard to just invest in this skill to get an offensive War Magus, you'll be focusing on War Lore to start with anyway. Its second issue comes with how it's frontloaded, but not with great skills, depending on your setup, and there's a nice abyss of unlocks until Cursecut. Just a weirdly designed skill that you'll max out if you want the best sword skill, but you won't be best pleased about it.
These sets of skills are bizarre and are probably the ones you can easily skip if you had to. For one thing, they require you to have access to that specific ailment in the party to really work, so if you don't have access to any inflictors, feel free to ignore this branch of skills entirely. Since requiring other inflictors is basically going to be a given, those skills will be written assuming you do have access to these ailments in the party. Hexers make good partners to these Doctor Magi as a result, since they have access to all the required ailments, so there's something to keep in mind. And remember you need to be using Swords for these skills, so any dreams of wielding Staves are basically thrown out the window, not that Staves are an appealing weapon type to use.
War Lore
Unlocks: Lv1: Cure; Lv2: Warmight, Rockskin, Elkspeed; Lv3: Cure II, Erase; Lv5: Cure III; Lv7: Salve II; Lv10: Salve II
Increases healing from non-fixed sources. Passive.
This is where the magic happens. This is a renamed Healer skill, but obviously much worse since maxing it out gives you the same effect as Lv2 Healer. Yeah... add on no Salve III and other useful tools like debilitation healing and, uh, oh yeah, NO REVIVE, makes War Magus a very discount Medic. But it speaks to how nuke heavy this game is when you can use this class as your dedicated healer all game and be just fine. And there's some other tools here that give War Magus the edge. Still, because of the various disadvantages you'll need to squeeze as much as you can from these skills, so maxing is of course the way to go. Though since it's not a great effect, you don't have to do it immediately.
This is pretty much one of the big reasons why War Magi are a bit weaker than the specialized Medic. Their healing passive is weaker in comparison. Without this skill, each point of TEC adds on 0.625% to the healing multiplier, capping out at a 61.875% boost to healing at 99 TEC. With War Lore maxed out that turns into... 0.69375% per TEC. Which caps out at a 68.68125% boost to healing at 99 TEC. Yeah, pales in comparison to the potential 95.90625% boost the Medic could have for their healing skills. And the lack of a healing boost actually hurts here, because unlike Medics where Healer's effects essentially become meaningless in the late game, War Magi actually have to care about the amount of healing they can output since they don't have access to Salve 3. You have to max this out at some point to get Salve 2 anyways, so you'll just have to deal with the weaker healing. On the plus side, these and the rest of the War Magus's skillset aren't dependant on having a specific team composition.
Not only that, they lose access to a few important defensive skills the Medic had since they're a more offensive oriented support. They have no access to revival or disable purges. You'll have to make up for that with items or other means. Gunner is a popular damage dealer to include in the party since they come with an AOE ailment dispel, though Medics are the only source of AOE bind dispels. Nectars, Therica As, and Therica Bs are plentiful at least for the single target dispels.
Regenall
Heals the entire party by a set amount each turn. Passive.
Woah one of these skills isn't godawful for once. This is actually pretty alright at the start of the game, but of course falls off a fucking cliff past, like, the first stratum. Honestly not a bad option if you're not gonna invest in the healing skills immediately.
At the start of the game it can provide some very nice passive regeneration for the party, letting them last longer in the brutal earlygame. And you'd likely want all the help you can get. An overall 25 HP heal isn't terrible in Stratum 1, but this skill sadly ceases to see use past that point and is just a waste of SP past that. If you're willing to Rest your War Magus at some point to regain the SP in this skill, feel free to take this at the start for a nice earlygame advantage.
Blindcut/Venomcut/Stuncut
Prerequisites: War Edge Lv1, STR Up Lv1 / War Edge Lv2, STR Up Lv2 / War Edge Lv5, STR Up Lv5
A single target Sword attack that attempts to inflict Head/Leg/Arm Bind if the enemy is already inflicted by Blind/Poison/Paralysis. Sword skill with untyped damage, uses the Arms.
Alright, sooooooo, War Magus can inflict binds, but with some prerequisites. Now as sword skills go, these aren't bad, since they deal untyped damage and thus can do pretty dependable damage on all sources, even if the other effects of these skills don't proc. The main issue comes in trying to land the binds, if you don't have these ailments available, and some parties won't, these skills are effectively identically very bland.
One issue I find is the combinations of binds and ailments is... subpar. Like Blind AND Head Bind seems a bit reductive. Poison is good, but when are you gonna want a Leg Bind on top of that? Finally, Arm Binds are great in most cases, but Paralysis is one of the worst ailments. The most dependable source of these ailments is a Hexer, which is what most parties will carry, let's be honest. But otherwise, Sword Dark Hunter? Status Survivalist? Seems a little much for relatively mediocre skills, so it might just be worth ignoring them, even if you have the right tools for the job.
One of the upsides of the War Magus's offensive skills is that they are guaranteed forms of damage since they are untyped. No form of resistance will block their attacks. Unfortunately this also means that they can't take advantage of weaknesses, though that's not a huge deal in this game. Still it's a nice form of chip damage.
That being said the secondary effects of these skills are easily some of the most ignorable of the bunch due to how absurdly conditional they are. If you can capitalize on them, great, go for it! But chances are you can't most of the time. That being said they do have the highest base chances to bind, so that's nice. And of all their War Edge skills, they deal the highest amount of non-conditional damage so it may be worth maxing out at least one of these if you want your War Magus to contribute damage to fights.
Sleepcut
Prerequisites: War Edge Lv3, STR Up Lv3
A single target Sword attack that deals more damage to enemies inflicted with Sleep. Sword skill with untyped damage, uses the Arms.
This is a little better, mainly because it's pretty straightforward, but still has its issues. Without Sleep, this skill is pretty subpar, but with Sleep this skill is pretty- hang on, I'm getting a reason why this isn't good:
Unfortunately this skill does not benefit from the 50% damage bonus from attacking a sleeping enemy since it is Untyped damage, which really brings down this skill further.
This skill may look like it's the best damage option for a War Magus, but it's base damage is weaker than the bind cuts, and the problem with attacking a sleeping enemy is that they wake up after 1 attack, so you can't spam the boosted version of this often in big fights. And in those, chances are you want someone else to benefit from the Sleep damage bonus instead, especially since all hits of a multi-hit attack in 1 and 2 benefit from the damage boost! You might get some use out of this for clearing out randoms if you lack damage in your party, I suppose. Ailing Slash this is not.
I actually did not know about this technicality, Sleep actually lowers the damage resistances of an enemy, so an Untyped attack isn't affected by it. It still deals more damage attacking a sleeping enemy, but you can't stack the bonuses. Because of that, it's best if someone else on your team attacks the sleeping enemy, but in randoms this is something you can fire out when Torpor has afflicted all 5 enemies. That's about its only use.
Fearcut
Prerequisites: War Edge Lv4, STR Up Lv4
A single target Sword attack that heals the user by a percentage of damage dealt if the enemy is already inflicted with Fear. Sword skill with untyped damage, uses the Arms.
Next up is this alright skill, having your healer stay in prime condition is nice, but they could also be more helpful and slap on Salve II, so this skill isn't that great. Fear is pretty uncommon and pretty useless outside of the FEAR TREE, which the Hexer can go for, but they also have a million other things to be doing, so don't count on it.
If you're using a Fear Hexer, the enemy will be helpless and you'll be granted free turns to just spam this for free chip damage. However it deals less damage than the binding cuts, so if you want your War Magus to deal damage, you're better off using those to attack instead. And in big fights if the Hexer has the enemy locked down, your party won't be taking damage at all so the heal is kind of superfluous. Could be alright ways to keep your War Magus topped up in random encounters, but you're probably better off using Salve 2 there instead.
Cursecut
Prerequisites: War Edge Lv10, STR Up Lv6
A single target Sword that heals the user's TP by a percentage of damage dealt if the enemy is already inflicted with Curse. Sword skill with untyped damage, uses the Arms.
Now we're getting somewhere. This skill might seem a bit naff, it does pathetic damage and requires Curse, one of the worst ailments, but it's because of this skill that using Curse is actually worthwhile. TP recovery is pretty rare, and having such a dependable way, after some hefty prerequisites, gives War Magus unmatched utility, especially because they can Transfer it to other members. Also having your healer being at high TP is pretty great, though as you get later into the game, it's probably more worthwhile chugging Amrita IIs while you do something else. Still, if there's one reason to invest in sword skills, this is it. If you're using a Hexer of course, otherwise you better invest in Curse Gas (please do not use the gas items).
The best War Edge skill due to the sheer utility it provides. Keeps your War Magus's TP pool heavily topped up, especially since the Troubadour lost Relaxing. And combining this with Transfer lets your party's TP pools stay topped up, though it's a rather tedious way of doing so compared to throwing down Relaxing and waiting back in EO1. And later on it's just far more worthwhile to use Amritas instead.
Cure
Prerequisites: War Lore Lv1
Unlocks: Lv3: Salve
Restores HP to a single target. Healing skill, uses the Head.
Alright, discount Medic time. On first glance this looks pretty similar, but the main issue is War Lore being kinda pathetic. What you might not immediately notice is the Medic's version of these skills have better base healing, though it's hardly noticeable at low levels. At max, it's 125 compared to 170, but I wouldn't recommend going further than you have to. Because you don't have the proper Healer boost that in essence levels these skills at the same time you level it, you should just stop at unlocks and move on to the next tier as soon as possible. Thankfully War Magus has very little in the way of multiple prerequisites, so you could skip Cure and Salve and head straight for II, though that could get expensive.
Like with the Medic's version, you'll want to invest in this first so your funds don't all have to be blown on Medicas in the earlygame. While War Magi are much faster than the Medic, the issues I've outlined with the whole dividing healing skills into different speed tiers still applies here. The reason being that War Magi with Swords are so fast chances are they'll act before the enemy anyways.
As for how to spend your War Magus's starting SP, no matter what you do, you'll only want 1 point in this at the start like with the Medic. At level 1 it heals 37 HP with their starting stats and can cast it up to 8 times for a total healing pool of 296. Level it up to 2 and it only heals 39 HP for a 25% increase in TP cost, reducing the amount of casts to 6 times for a total healing pool of 234. And you really don't want to spend too much in this skill since War Lore can't keep the restoration amount up to date like Healer can, and it really needs to be ditched for better healing skills down the line. Or you can just ignore this skill entirely since Regenall can help quite a bit during the 1st Stratum.
Cure II
Prerequisites: War Lore Lv3
Unlocks: Lv4: Salve II
Restores HP to a single target. Healing skill, uses the Head.
Same as before, but slightly better. Again, even though this isn't as good as the Medic's version, 265 compared to 310, you shouldn't go past Lv4 due to how useful Cure III is as an emergency heal for one ally. It can still be useful as cheap healing outside of battle, but otherwise this skill just isn't too great because it quickly gets outclassed by both Cure III and Salve.
Because the War Magus has Regenall, or you're opting to spend more money on Medicas, you can beeline straight for this skill instead and ignore Cure entirely. And you'll want to get Cure 2 at level 4 anyways since it unlocks Salve 2, their best AOE healing skill. Just don't go past level 4 as they still have access to Cure 3 thankfully, and that should be your go to single target healing skill while this skill holds you over until then.
Cure III
Prerequisites: War Lore Lv5
Restores all HP to a single target. Healing skill, uses the Head.
Last one, and it's a good one, since Cure II might not even heal half health by postgame, so something that has a full healing effect is very useful for a class that has this skill as that only option. This is identical to the Medic's version so that explains why it's so good and should definitely be maxed out for a quick and very useful full heal that has a good chance of going before enemies due to sword speed modifiers compared to staves.
Like with the Medic, this is your best form of single target healing. Get this whenever you can. And it's extra important here since the War Magus's innate healing capabilities pale in comparison to the Medic's. You'll definitely want to max this out to make things easier on their TP pool and to almost double its casting speed, which does matter since War Magi actually care about the speed mechanic.
Salve
Prerequisites: War Lore Lv7, Cure Lv3
Restores HP to the entire party. Healing skill, uses the Head.
Ah, party wide healing, so nice. But of course it doesn't heal a great amount, 91 base compared to 115, but earlygame this is probably the skill to speed towards to be more TP efficient. Unfortunately War Magus will be never be great at party healing, but they'll work pretty well until the postgame. Still, if you're not too worried about early game healing, then you can skip this and move onto the next one.
Your earlygame healing skill, and probably one that can be ignored entirely if you play your cards right. AOE healing is good, but War Magi have access to a better skill for that and AOE healing is not super important to have early. And without Healer, this falls off hard past the earlygame, which isn't helped by the weaker base healing either.
Salve II
Prerequisites: War Lore Lv10, Cure II Lv4
Restores HP to the entire party. Healing skill, uses the Head.
And for the upgrade... ehhhh? This is the best healing a War Magus can do for the entire party and it'll be great... for the main game. Postgame will start showing the cracks compared to the Medic, especially with their Salve III that will cost nearly the same TP. Still, you don't need the massive overhealing depending on your team, and this is a pretty great heal with sword speed modifiers, so it's not too bad honestly. Main issue of course is how expensive it is, but with a Cursecut setup and lots of Amrita, that shouldn't be an issue. Oh yeah it's 214 base compared to 230, so not a big a hit as the Cure skills, but it's overall not a massive deal. The lack of Healer is the main problem, but what can ya do?
Unfortunately, this is what your War Magus is stuck with in terms of AOE healing. It's basically a midgame healing skill, but this is all they've got since there's no Salve 3. Crank this and War Lore up as best you can since you might as well get the most out of it. At best it can get up to 346 AOE healing which isn't great since that requires 99 TEC but it's something at least. War Magi are at least pretty fast so they can decide if they want to be using Salve 2 or Cure 3 on a given turn where Medics are just forced to spam Salve 3 due to how slow they are.
Warmight
Prerequisites: War Lore Lv2
Increases the target's base damage for 5 turns, affects untyped damage. Buff skill, uses the Head.
Oh baby now this is an easy skill to get early. I sing my praises of Bravery often enough, but honestly some of your party won't benefit from the buff, singer included. So having a precise version that gives a better boost is incredible for classes like Ronin, Gunner and, due to the untyped boost, Alchemist and even other War Magus. Shame it doesn't last all battle, but honestly you've got turns to spare, so it's definitely worth it, and combining with Bravery can make some beeeeeeeeg numbers. Get your basic healing then pick this up immediately.
Without a doubt, the best skill in the War Magus's skillset and what really carries this class into usefulness. A 60% damage boost is ridiculous, and that's almost twice as powerful as Bravery! That sheer amount is pretty much enough to deal with the downsides of it being single target and only lasting for 5 turns. Oh and it also stacks with Bravery, so if you also have a Troubadour in the party, you can really get up to some absurd shenanigans! Definitely should be one of the skills beelined for and maxed out as soon as possible. Having access to both Warmight and fast healing is the biggest selling point of a War Magus, so ignoring those means you really should be using a different class instead.
Rockskin
Prerequisites: War Lore Lv2
Increases the target's DEF for 5 turns. Buff skill, uses the Head.
Well they won't all be winners, but Rockskin is still pretty alright. It can be useful to put on your Protector or Beast to help them tank more but it's barely better than Shelter despite only working on one target. Still cheap to max out and helpful for the slower strats, but slapping down Warmight and going to town is just way more effective, you don't take damage if the enemy is dead, so it's harder to justify.
Functionally it serves as a 42.86~% increase to effective HP, so it's a pretty beefy defense buff. The real problem is that this game heavily favors killing your enemy before they kill you, so Warmight also serves as a good defensive kill in that regard since enemies dying faster means you take less damage overall. Still it can be pretty handy in less offensive parties, though the Troubadour's Shelter would be a way stronger skill for that since while everyone might not care about a damage boost, everyone will care about a defense boost, and a single target defense boost is a bit of a harder sell than a single target damage buff. May be worth taking 1 point in to dispel defense debuffs at least.
Elkspeed
Prerequisites: War Lore Lv2
Increases the target's AGI for 5 turns. Buff skill, uses the Head.
Ah, the standard AGI buff, this provides quite a boost, so can be useful in helping a specific ally go faster for whatever reason, but the main issue is going first isn't really that big a deal in this series, and the slower classes won't really get much benefit from it due to their low numbers. The main use for this is using it on the War Magus themselves to help outspeed your own allies for Sleepcut, but damn 5 points in this is really hard to justify. You know what would make you faster? Killing everything in 1 turn with Warmight.
This falls under the same problems Mercury had, in that fast classes don't need the help from this, and slow classes can't get the help from this. It's also not that much of an increase to accuracy so it won't help your Gunner's accuracy woes all that much. Even on inaccurate classes, Warmight is a better damage boost to slap onto them since that increases their overall damage more than an accuracy boost would.
Erase
Prerequisites: War Lore Lv3
Dispels buffs from a single target. Debuff skill, uses the Head.
Oh hey it's Erasure again. Since it's the exact same skill, don't go higher than Lv2, but it's nice utility to have, quick and cheap to get to, though you won't really need it until later on.
Like with the Troubadour's version, it's still really good to grab here. Grab 1 or 2 levels and be on your way. The War Magus doesn't get access to the AOE version of this skill, but that's an even more situational version of this skill so they aren't exactly crying about it.
Transfer
Prerequisites: TP Up Lv1
Restores the target's TP by a specific amount. Heal skill, uses the Head.
To round off this interesting class is a great skill, spend some TP, heal some TP, you even get a slight discount at later levels! Now this skill isn't that useful in the lategame when 40TP doesn't massively help, but it's something you can throw out on occasion if you know you'll need something big next turn. It's probably better tossing them an Amrita II when you get that far and just using Cursecut on occasion. Again, it's just some nice utility that's quite rare in the series, won't complain!
Part 2 of the TP restoration combo. Slurp up TP with Cursecut, give it to another party member with Transfer. Like I said before though, it's pretty tedious to do to your entire party since it's single target, and eventually this falls off and you're better off using Amritas instead. Take it if you want, can help out during midgame and the early parts of late-game.
Invoke
Fully heals the entire party's HP and increases their resistance to all damage types, except untyped, for 5 turns. Force skill, uses the Legs.
And last up is a pretty alright Force skill that isn't as much of an OH SHIT button as Medic's, but also isn't complete trash, so we'll take it. It's pretty nice to turtle down with and be on the defensive, pick up the pieces from the near asskicking more easily. But when compared to other defensive options, like Painless or H. Touch, or the offensive Force skills that end battles nice and quickly, you have to wonder when you'd really need this. Still, can work really well on slower teams that use Sword DH or so to combo with ailments. Those comps exist! They're not as good, but they exist.
Oh hey, it's Immunize. It basically got turned into a Force skill here. If you're farming Force, there are far better defensive Force skills to use, such as Painless or Riot Gun. But if you don't have the Protector or Gunner in your party, you could stick with this. And it lasts for 5 turns too as opposed to those skills lasting only for 1 turn. But do be warned, this buff can be dispelled so that is a downside to be mindful of. Otherwise, you might as well throw it out if for a free big heal and a defensive buff. Be warned that unlike H.Touch and Salivall, this cannot dispel disables nor can it revive the dead.
Well that was a weird journey, there's some chaff, there's some good skills and there's some mediocre healing thrown in, so overall it's a pretty mixed bag. It still works out because the unique combination of skills make for great role compression and the good skills are REALLY good, but there's definitely some aspects of this class you could leave behind. Last up, it's time for the shitpost class. Oh joy.
War Magi are overall kind of a class that's all over the place, but they can use it to their advantage as they can cover multiple roles in one party slot, something that's a bit lacking in EO2's class design as classes got more and more specialized. Also mostly because they are fast and speed is something that really makes this class shine compared to its competition. As a result, it's a pretty easy support to slot into your team.