Click here to watch on Youtube

My favourite game of all time is Bravely Default, and I doubt it will be replaced anytime soon by anything else. In my own opinion, it's a perfect game: great graphics, hand painted backgrounds, awesome gameplay, intriguing characters, compelling story. The main reason I wanted to get this game was because of the soundtrack alone, the first time I ever heard of the game.

So, with Bravely Second rolling around the corner in April for us westerners, I thought I'd share my preferred team setup for Default. There are many team combinations you can create in the game, but this one has served quite well in every encounter I've run into. In this article I will assume that you haven't seen many BD group compositions, but if you have then some of this might be familiar as it could be widely used by others already. I won't go too heavily into Abilities and Gear unless it's necessary for the setup. So if your Warriors of Light need a new setup, try this on for size!

I'll start off at the top of my team list and work my way down. First we've got Tiz. Tiz is my major damage source out of the four heroes. For him, I went with a Monk/Dark Knight build. Whatever job I name first is the main job, and the second will be the Job Command. This combo mainly uses two abilities: Phoenix Flight and Minus Strike. At level 99, Tiz has about ten thousand HP with Monk as the selected job, with the HP 10% Up ability. One good ability to have on hand as well is the Steady MP Recovery from the Conjurer, which gives you 30 MP at the end of every turn.

Here's how he would work in battle: You burn out all your Brave Points, giving four moves. First one will be Phoenix Flight, reducing Tiz's health to 1 and dealing damage equal to the life lost. Since he's around 10k, this means you'll do the max damage possible without Bravely Second active - 9999. The next three moves will all be Minus Strike, from the Dark Knight commands. Minus Strike deals damage equal to the amount of hit points you are currently missing. So, that's three more max damage hits. After his attacks finish, should they all land, you'll do just under 40k damage.

The only downside to using this is that Tiz would normally be easily killed. But my setup has that covered so no need to worry.

Anges is, as she is in probably many other teams, the support healer. For her, I go with Spiritmaster/White Mage. This time, the abilities I use are far more specific, but there are only two of them: Holy One and Epic Group-Cast. Holy One comes from the Spiritmaster job, and allows Anges to give up some of her physical attack to boost her recovery magic. Which is fine by me because she's not attacking anyways.

Epic Group-Cast is a White Mage ability that allows her to group-cast without having the power of the magic decline. Usually when you group-cast, the magic is weaker than when you cast the same spell on a single target. But with this, you don't have to worry about that anymore.

And that's not the last awesome thing about this healer setup: Anges' passive ability for having Spiritmaster as the main job is Save White Magic MP, making all White Magic spells cost 25% less. This allows Anges to basically full heal your team with one cast of Cura that only costs 7 MP. 7, out of the 849 that she has on my team. And Cure works pretty good too, healing a fair amount for only 3 MP. Finally, the Spiritmaster command Stillness is available, and is very, very good.

Anges' turn would play out as follows: Hopefully being the last one to go, she would cast Stillness across the field, making all allies and enemies immune to damage for 2 turns. Then, during the second turn while the team get a break to get ready for the next attack, Anges can heal the team for probably less than 20 MP. The only issue that can happen here is if Anges casts Stillness too early and Tiz and Edea don't get their attacks in, making the move a waste.

For Ringabel, this is going to be the character that you could change to whatever you really feel like, because he's not ENTIRELY vital to the composition. On the other hand, he does have one of the main pillars of support for the entire group, which I will get to in a moment.

I have Ringabel setup with a Time Mage/Salve-Maker combo. Time Mage can provide three excellent group-casts: Hastega, speeding up your entire team - a very helpful component in this plan - Veilga, increasing your team's evasion, and Slowga, slowing the enemy team by 75%. Salve-Maker is an expensive job, but a good one nonetheless. You can make Giant's Drafts and use Dragon's Breath on the enemy. And that's about it for active abilities.

Here's how Ringabel would work: at the start of the battle, he would make three Giant's Drafts for himself, Anges, and Edea. (Sorry Tiz, you can't have any.) Giant's Draft, crafted from Beast Liver followed by Dragon Fang, doubles the HP of the chosen teammate until either the battle ends or they die. Then the effect wears off. Tiz won't need one because he's already blowing off all his health and doing max damage, it will be useless on him. Dragon's Breath is an okay attack, dealing damage equal to your current amount of HP without taking any away, but it uses two Dragon Fangs for one attack. And if Anges blocks you with Stillness before you can get it out, that's a big waste of items.

The main special thing about Ringabel is that because he is not role-specific at the moment, he can carry Hasten World. This ability gives all allies and enemies one extra Brave Point at the start of a turn. Now you're probably thinking, "Well yeah, BP for me is great, but I don't want the enemy to have it either!" Actually, yes you do. Hasten World, like Stillness, is very good because it's very broken. When the extra BP is given to the AI, it suddenly has all these extra moves it can do, and that throws it out of its cycle. Plus, unlike the computer, you actually know how to use BP properly and can now use stronger abilities more often. Hasten World overall makes boss fights a LOT easier.

Edea is at the end of list, and brings in a great amount of debuffs and attacks. Edea is a Pirate/Freelancer build, which works fairly well. The Freelancer job only does one thing (like Ringabel) but it's an important thing: Examine, showing the HP and stats of the enemy. Very important for knowing who to attack first and what to attack that with. The Pirate commands is where Edea truly shines. Virtually every single Pirate command is some kind of attack that has a 25% debuff for SOMETHING - Physical attack, physical defence, speed, magic attack, it's just beautiful.

Edea's abilities should include Hawkeye, giving her a 100% boost in accuracy, Dual Wield, allowing her to use two axes without the lose of damage, and Protect Ally. This is what should save Tiz's 1 HP any time he's about to be attacked. This or Stillness, one or the other.

Edea's turns will be the following: first, a full Examination of the enemy team's stats, following by smashing with Shell Split, Shin Smash, Skull Bash, etc. You'll have to adjust these commands to who you're fighting. Once the enemy is weakened, use Torrent to deal major damage, or continue using the other commands.

Alright, so now that you've got the team composition, let's run through how a turn will work: On the first two turn, Default to max out your Brave Points. Then, full Brave Tiz, Phoenix Flight and 3 Minus Strikes. Ringabel can either make the Giant's Drafts or go right to buffs and debuffs. Edea examines the enemy, and Anges finishes with Stillness before any enemy attacks can land. During the next turn, Default Tiz, Ringabel and Edea to get their BP back up, and Anges can heal once across the team. Then repeat, but have Edea use attacks to debuff the enemy further, and keep going. (Tip: during Stillness, you can't damage the enemy. But you CAN debuff them with Ringabel or Edea's commands)

And there you go! That's my Bravely Default team makeup. You can change it in whatever way you feel like, maybe you could make it even better than I already have it (probably find something for Ringabel). Hopefully now you can get over that boss you might be struggling with, or this has made the game a little easier or more interesting for you, and I'll see ya soon.