Swordsman Best Builds

Swordsman is one of the basic Jobs that can be accessed in Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins. Read on to find out more about this Job, its best builds, and which Equipment Effects to go after to maximize Jack's potential!

Swordsman Guides
How to Use Swordsman	Swordsman Best Builds

Tank Build

The Swordsman Job is an excellent Basic Job that players will start out with. Many of the Abilities and nodes in its Job Tree include increases to a player's Slash Damage – harness the power of these stat boosting abilities, players can find it easy to activate the base Spinning Slash Ability.

Holding down on its button will cause Jack to spin widlly with increasing speed, easily a spammable move with enough MP that can defeat larger and much more difficult enemies.

Best Abilities Loadout

Combo Ability Setup

No.	Ability	Button Commands
1	Spinning Slash
2	Highbringer	> > > >
3	Piercing Thrust	> > > > > >

Command Ability Setup

Best Commands
Reinforce	Venom	Swayback

• Reinforce: Reinforce is one of the command abilities that you can pick up in the Job Tree for Swordsman. The Ability decreases the amount of time required to charge attacks and makes the chances of being staggered when attacked low.
• Venom: Serves as the central focus of this build. It allows players to get enemies to gradually accumulate Poison overtime, with them eventually getting the status ailment once they have received enough hits. As a Tank build, you can easily just cause your opponent to be rendered with the ailment and stand back to wait as they're affected.
• Swayback: Useful ability that you can get from the Lancer, giving you an agile move where you can avoid enemy attacks and replenish your Break Gauge at the same time.

Passive and Effect Priorities

Best Passives and Effects
All Damage -5.5%	Ever Stronger	Slash Damage +2.9%

• All Damage -5.5%: Increases all forms of damage that you can receive from opponents, allowing you more longetivity against enemies who can easily hit you.
• Ever Stronger: Increases physical damage dealt of Greatsword abilities assigned to the Guard Attack Link. In particular, Highbringer is affected by this ability as it is the only Ability that can be assigned to the Link.
• Slash Damage +2.9%: Increases slash damage for players – this ability is particularly useful for players who like to spam the Spinning Slash Action Ability.

Recommended Equipment Effects

Equipment Effects
・Magic Resistance ( + ) ・MP Recovery Rate with Normal Attacks ( + ) ・Physical Damage Dealt ( + ) ・Critical Damage Dealt ( + )

By running a Tanky build for the Swordsman Job, players can expect plenty of MP consumption coupled with many open opportunities for your enemies to attack and cause you to stagger.

Having equipment that can supplement and cover these needs, sustained by the Reinforce ability to reduce charge time for attacks and Spinning Slash Mastery for reduced MP consumption when using the spinning slash, can help keep you in the fight for much longer without having to pull back whenever your MP or HP runs low.

Balanced Attacker Build

This second build relies more on the many different abilities that the Swordsman Job offers, with the primary focus being a player's ability to mix and match attacks with both long and short wind ups in their arsenal.

Due to the slow nature of attacks under the Swordsman Job, chaining together strings of Ability Attacks can be difficult, but ultimately rewarding when paired alongside regular attacks that can easily stunlock enemies into submission.

Best Abilities Loadout

Combo Ability Setup

No.	Ability	Button Commands
1	Onslaught	> >
2	Highbringer	> > > >
3	Piercing Thrust	> > > > > >

Command Ability Setup

Best Commands
Reinforce	Venom	Swayback

• Reinforce: Reinforce is one of the command abilities that you can pick up in the Job Tree for Swordsman. The Ability decreases the amount of time required to charge attacks and makes the chances of being staggered when attacked low.
• Venom: Serves as the central focus of this build. It allows players to get enemies to gradually accumulate Poison overtime, with them eventually getting the status ailment once they have received enough hits. Although the effects of the status ailment are slow, they do provide bonus damage at the very least against enemies.
  
  Alternatively, you can swap Venom out for Flee, which can be unlocked in the Thief Job Tree. This increases movement speed as well as Break Gauge recovery, allowing you restrategize while in engagements.
• Swayback: Useful ability that you can get from the Lancer, giving you an agile move where you can avoid enemy attacks and replenish your Break Gauge at the same time.

Passive and Effect Priorities

Best Passives and Effects
Ever Stronger	Warrior's Ward	All Damage -5.5%

• Ever Stronger: Increases physical damage dealt of Greatsword abilities assigned to the Guard Attack Link. In particular, Highbringer is affected by this ability as it is the only Ability that can be assigned to the Link.
• Warrior's Ward: Decreases taken damage when using an ability assigned to the Charged Attack Link.
• All Damage -5.5%: Increases all forms of damage that you can receive from opponents, allowing you more longetivity against enemies who can easily hit you.

Recommended Equipment Effects

Equipment Effects
・Slash Damage Dealt ( + ) ・Damage Reduction While Attacking ( - ) ・Critical Damage Dealt ( + ) ・MP Recovery Rate with Normal Attacks ( + )

Making use of the many attack abilities for the Swordsman Job can easily drain players of their MP if they're not managing their gauge properly. Having gear or equipment with Equipment Effects that particularly boost Jack's attack damage will help to end fights fast.

In unlikely circumstances where a player's MP goes out, they can instead opt to attack with regular attacks to build their MP up at a faster rate.

Best Job Synergies and Pairings

Mage

Mage	Available Weapon(s)	Shield?
	Mace	Can use shields
Basic Info	The Mage is a job that relies on the use of magic to deal considerable damage to enemies. This class utilizes both maces and shield, making it a capable melee fighter when it runs out of MP.

The Swordsman Job suffers from many of the same shortcomings as that of the Swordfighter Job. One of these is its inability to cast any magical attacks that can exploit magical weaknesses on enemies.

The Mage Job, and later on the Red and Black Mages respectively, solves this problem. These Jobs provide the player with a way of casting magic, making it an almost essential Job Pairing for Swordsman.

Mage Guide: How to Use Mage

Duelist

Duelist	Available Weapon(s)	Shield?
	Daggers	Cannot use shields
Basic Info	The Duelist is dual wielding rogue-type combatant. Equipped with daggers, it relies on quick attacks and agile dodges to land critical hits on enemies.

Swordsman attacks tend to be very slow in exchange for increased attack power – however, you may find this to be an issue when coming up against enemies, particularly bosses, that have a significant speed advantage over you.

Switching out to Duelist, which is a Job that has faster attack speed, can help to offset speedy enemies at the cost of a reduced attack damage.

Ronin Guide: How to Use Ronin

Swordsman Job Info

General Info

Swordsman Info
Swordsman
Info	The Swordsman is a warrior that utilizes a Greatsword as the primary weapon. Swordsman offers high damaging blows while sacrificing mobility and agility due to the size of their weapon.
Job Action	Spinning Slash: A spinning, slash-type attack. Hold Ability to continue spinning and gradually pick up speed. Switch to a charged attack by pressing Attack, or and enhanced guard by pressing Guard.
Level	Basic
Usable Weapon	Greatsword
Shield?	Cannot use Shields

Swordsman Guide: How to Use Swordsman

Stranger of Paradise Related Guides

Best Builds for Each Job

All Builds

Basic Jobs
Swordsman	Swordfighter	Duelist
Ronin	Pugilist	Mage
Marauder	Lancer
Advanced Jobs
Samurai	Monk	Knight
Dragoon	Warrior	Berserker
White Mage	Black Mage	Thief
Red Mage
Expert Jobs
Liberator	Cyclic Warrior	Breaker
Tyrant	Sage	Paladin
Ninja	Assassin	Dark Knight
Void Knight

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