How do you make Forces a viable character?

[Aribar]

For the past couple of weeks I've been playing a Fomar with two friends of mine; a Hucast and a female Newman Hunter. It's been... A rocky road, to say the least. It seems like my Force is completely and utterly useless.

I'm a level 27 Fomar now and I feel like he's pretty much worthless. I -always- lose money when playing with my friends due to Fluid costs and I barely break even when playing alone. I feel miserably weak because against a Hard Booma my Foies only deal 87 damage, and my Gifoies barely do a hundred! It takes roughly three or four castings to kill a single Booma; that's a seventh of my TP.

My support skills are also worthless. Jellen and Zalure seem worthless because my Hunter friends easily kill enemies without taking much damage. My Deband and Shifta are too weak to affect multiple people. The only halfway worthwhile support I have is Resta, and typically my friends take care of healing on their own. Oh, and I die in roughly one or two hits.

I have the best stuff I can get for my level; a Wand, a 4-slot hyper frame (3 General/Minds and a Priest/Mind), and a Flame Barrier. Also a level 10 Mind mag (raising a better one on my Ranger). Foie and Zonde are at 6, Barta 7. Gifoie and Gibarta are 4, Gizonde 1. The Ra techniques are inferior to the Gi ones so I don't bother with them. Resta's 6, Anti's 1, and I have Reverser and Ryuker. Shifta, Deband, and Jellen are 2 while Zalure is 3. 155 HP, 370 TP. 221 MST.

I recently started a Ramar to fund my Fomar... And I'd say that he can do everything my Force does, only better. He actually kills things without running out of TP every fight.

I just can't see why Forces are a viable class at all, and I'm typically the magician in games. What can I do to actually earn money and help my team as a Force? Or should I just abandon him and keep to my seemingly superior Ramar?

Thanks for listening to my rant...

[Saffran]

3 general minds and a priest mind in your slots, that's one of your problems, right there.
If you feel you need to spare TP while fighting, then start with getting an Arm unit or a power unit and hit stuffs with a real weapon for a change. In hard mode, it will take time at your level, but in the end you're going to get used to do it.

Try to raise a good mag. If you're more of the spellcaster type, get something with the highest mind you can manage - something like 180.
To get the money for that mag, just take as much junk as you can from the battlefield. I mean armors, weapons, shields. Non rare, of course. Keep pickling up useless ????weapons, tech them for 100 and sell them, they are generally worth much more.

The fomar is a bit of an all around character, but it is a very unforgiving class. Resta range is small, only Gi spells are boosted (and grants, but you almost never need grants so....), very little ATA...
But once you get to Ultimate, you can make up for it.
For instance, at the beginning your spells are weak (Zalure and jellen are rather useless spells in normal, hard and very hard...) but once in ultimate, your spells levels go up until lv 30 and that makes a hell of a difference. Jellen lv30 will almost halve the damage an ennemy can dish out ,plus you can boost your own strength...

Generally speaking, forces get good as the game gets harder. For now you feel useless. In ultimate, your friends will insist you come with them, because without you, they will have a hard time...

[EphekZ]

Forces are hard in the beginning. Most people don't touch them until they have a complete mind mag in stock. Finish that mind mag and you'll see that FOmar will be a lot better. Also, if you have a complete power mag you can melee with him. If you get him a high level he can become a one man army, like I was when I played.

[Error_404]

Fomar, in my opinion is by far the hardest class to play. Mages in general, once again, in my opinion, seem to get REALLY awesome arround level 60. Keep going and your fomar will soon own in beautiful fashion. ^_^

[Banish]

I have raised my FOmar...he is truely a magnificent Force now...

They are the hardest FOrce class to raise, but once they are trained well enough, it pays off, and FOmar is enjoyable to play with.

[Splash]

Ever wonder why the game says forces are "suitable for advanced-level players"? This is the exact reason.

You don't play a FOmar as if you were playing a HUmar or RAmar or any other class in the Hunters and Rangers section. The Forces get added benefits to their techs, which balances out their lack of ability to melee fully. As for FOmars, they get a 30% boost to Gi-techs (Gifoie, Gizonde, and Gibarta). In the end amount, your Gifoie should be doing just as much as damage as a Foie attack, but Rafoie will be the weakest from all of them.

The LV10 mag is your downfall. You should be consistently feeding it to raise its mind for better damage on your techs. As for your slot items, you can take out the Priest/Mind and replace it with say, a Digger/HP for better survival chances.

Likewise, you should also try to level up. It will add more HP amount and MST boost. You should do so by leveling up offline mode and doing all the quests in one difficulty. For your LV27 FOmar, you should probably stay on Normal for a little longer. Complete all the quests.

True, you will consume TP more quickly. But that is the reason why you shouldn't raise your technique levels so quickly, because it will consume more TP than it should. Your Gi-techs should be doing wonders against various monsters. Most monsters take 100 damage with just one cast. Two casts will, more than likely, kill it.

What Saffran say about being easier in higher difficulty is not always true. When you actually reach into Ultimate the first time, it would be SO difficult, that you would have to adjust in order to even play that difficulty. And when adjusting, I mean level up more than usual, switching armors, equipment, shields as necessary, use different techs, etc. Ultimately, this is why it makes it fun. So you can choose how you would play. It's not going to be fun if you just use a Stag Cutlery all the time or something. Forces have a unique style of playing so it works perfectly well for them.

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[D-type_Ranger]

as mentioned above by the others,Forces are hard to raise but when they bloom they can become 1 man armies,you might want to invest with your ranger and find high lv units like angel minds++,for a whooping 17mst boost each,or if your raanger is purplenum try to hunt for Nar Lillies,they drop God minds on Very Hard which will give you a 40mst boost,don't lv techs too fast,take it slowly and complete quests,also a unit that restores tp exists so seek it out and get the tp/restorate I think comes before Tp/create,Create is the strongest but SUPAH RARE!Get some /body units for DEF,Forces need def if they wanna survive I have a friend with a lv.104 FOnewm in ULTIMATE Ruins and he uses 4 METAL BODs and still a DELSABER can KO him in 1 critical hit,Forces are late bloomers,so,they need to be structured CAREFULLY,some HP materials might do you some good,if spell casting isn't your thing,make him a MELEE Force.

[Jaspaller]

It's probably already been said but I'll say what I'm going to say.

FOmars usually don't get good until they are a high level. They seem to be really good in ultimate at a high level for a mixed class. If you plan on going for a Power FOmar get a Soul Eater through the single player quests. One of your main issues is your mag as well, level 10? you should have a much higher level than that. Final thing is try to get a high level of Shifta/Deband/Jellen/Zalure. As a melee FOmar you should be able to take the enemies down in a decent time, while using little TP for your spells.

I couldn't stand playing FOmars so I stopped at 40... Good luck with that if you can get your character high enough.

[Aribar]

Apologies for not responding in long...

Well, my belief in my Force has been reaffirmed. I just realized I can use the Mines as an excellent way to raise him, plus I've come to love Gizonde a bit more than a normal person should. I can actually earn money and such there!

My friends and I attempted a sort of marathon run through all of the Normal levels as well; easy at first, but I was surprised at how much trouble we were having in the Ruins! I forgot how much help I was against the Belras and such; plus actually being of use with Resta since we were all dying horribly... Heh.

As for my Mag... Well, I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I raised my first mag up a good bit before realizing I was doing so horribly unoptimally (Ooh! New word!). Then I used one of the guides on this site, misread something, and fed the little thing an Antidote, minutely making him worse. The Mag my Ranger currently has is actually going well, but I can't buy Trifluids with him and I haven't gotten around to transferring it over to level it up yet.

Thanks for all the help! My faith in Fomars has been reaffirmed!