Humanoid Characters

There’s an unfortunate bias in Disgaea D2 toward humanoid characters, who can get the full benefit out of the Lift and Throw system and have great flexibility through a larger choice of weapons. They have lower stats on average than monsters for most of the game, but since you need to be able to Throw characters to clear several stages, it’s generally a wash.

There are very few genuinely weak characters in D2. 
Several have very narrow niches or are rescued from 
complete irrelevance by their available Evilities, but this 
is not like past games where the generic characters existed 
to fill space and kill time until you could recruit certain 
unique units. You can make it through the game with
 just about whomever you prefer to use.

Character Rank

Generic characters and monsters both have a six-tier Rank system. When a character is first made available to you, the first Rank is all that’s available. As you level a character, it gradually unlocks the higher Ranks of his or her job. For several spellcasting classes, this also unlocks their higher-end spells.

Warrior

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

The Warrior is the first unit you can come by that has a decent Weapon Mastery with Axes. (Etna’s isn’t bad, but the Warrior’s is better until such a time as you Reincarnate Etna, and you can have a Warrior in your army by the second stage in Episode 1.) You can also have him use a Sword or Spear, but those weapons are covered well enough by Laharl and Etna, respectively.

However you end up using him, the Warrior is designed for pure offense. Both Wild Cry and Shaking Excitement are potentially powerful Evilities that scale well with the Warrior’s level, and in conjunction with an Axe’s high ATK and passive DEF reduction, he’ll hammer enemies into the ground like tent spikes.

Fortitude is more useful than it initially looks because it guarantees that the Warrior cannot be killed in one hit. When paired with a healer, this means the Warrior can soak up punishment from a single strong opponent all day if it becomes necessary; one hit drops him to 1 HP, you heal him on your turn, and the cycle repeats. Fortitude really shines when it’s paired with copied Evilities like Dangerous Revival, where it can potentially help to provide the Warrior with a 99% stat boost, or Garungun’s Fabricated Setting.

Valkyrie

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

The differences between the Warrior and Valkyrie are relatively subtle until you get to their Evilities. The Warrior is designed to run screaming into the thick of the enemy, whereas the Valkyrie is more suited toward a defensive, mobile approach. Until you unlock the Archer or recruit Lanzarote, the Valkyrie is your best option for a Bow user.

Assault Attack can be a very powerful boost to the Valkyrie’s offensive capabilities, particularly if combined with equipment to boost her Move or by stolen Evilities like Blazing Start. Cooperativeness is a flat boost whenever the Valkyrie is deployed as part of your full team.

Magician

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Skills

At character creation, you get to pick a school of elemental magic for a Magician to specialize in. This determines which family of elemental spells he learns as he levels up and provides him with 50% additional resistance against his chosen element. As a trade-off, the Magician receives a 50% penalty against his element’s opposite number: Fire beats Water, Wind beats Fire, and Water beats Wind.

Like other spellcasters, the Magician flat-out does not learn spells above the Mega level of power until you start promoting him to higher Ranks. A level 9,999 Red Skull will still only know the first two basic elemental attack spells and won’t learn Star at all. You’ll learn the Giga spell in your chosen elemental school when your Magician reaches the second rank, Green Skull, and will finally learn the Omega elemental spell and the first two Star spells at the third rank.

The Magician is designed to do as much damage as possible within a relatively short period of time at the expense of any semblance of SP efficiency. Sorcery Depletion is arguably his best Evility as you move into the middle to late game, as it’s relatively easy to find gear that will give him a massive boost to his maximum SP, such as a leveled Orb, then equip it before you go into combat without restoring his SP at the Netherworld Hospital. The Magician then receives a 50% boost to his spells’ power once his SP falls beyond what’s now his halfway point.

If you’re committed to taking your Magician into the endgame, team him up with a Witch so that you can give the Magician the Witch’s Magic Creation Evility. That compensates for 
the 10% SP drain from Over Limit, so your Magician ends up with a 40% boost to his spells’ damage for no extra cost beyond the second Evility slot.

Witch

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Skills

The Witch is the fuel-efficient family sedan to the Magician’s muscle car. Her Evilities are designed to keep her casting longer, whether it’s by casting from her HP, passively regenerating SP, or giving her a flat 50% reduction to all her SP costs. It’s quite useful to teach the Witch some healing and support magic; since it’s nearly impossible for her to run out of SP, she makes an excellent backup healer when the chips are down. As with the Magician, you could also give the Witch his Over Limit Evility, which amounts to a free 40% spell damage if you combine it with Magic Creation.

The Witch’s spell selection and elemental resistances are determined at character creation in the same way as the Magician’s. She also doesn’t get access to her entire spell list until she reaches the third rank of the job. This is a common feature of all other magic-using jobs in the game, but it can be actively crippling for the Witch and Magician unless you keep them up to speed on promotions.

Cleric

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Skills

As with the Magician vs. the Witch, the big advantage a Cleric has over a Priest is efficiency. Advanced Healing tags an extra 25% of the target’s maximum HP onto any Heal spell the Cleric casts, which scales very well as your stats improve and allows the Cleric to deliberately use weaker spells to conserve SP.

Toward the very end of the game, as your characters’ HP pools approach the 10-digit range and beyond, Advanced Healing allows the Cleric to keep fulfilling her chosen role within your group when your other healers just aren’t able to get the job done. It’s easily the best healing Evility in the game.

For a character who has an actual religious objection to opening her eyes (it’s canon! Check the Data Shop!), the Cleric is surprisingly good with a Bow, which allows you to switch up her role on occasion so that she can get some Mana. Another option is to flip her Evility at the Dark Assembly to Book of Medicine, so that you can equip a Book and use her RES as if it were INT for purposes of attack magic. More than almost every other support class in the game, the Cleric is going to have a serious problem with lagging a few levels behind the rest of your crew, and every little bit helps.

The Cleric needs to be at Rank 4 or higher to unlock the entirety of her spell list.

Priest

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Skills

The Priest is a dude. Yeah, I know. I mention this not to enforce cisgender orthodoxy—because let’s face it, the man owns that strapless evening gown—but instead, to let you know so that you don’t accidentally dispatch the Priest in situations where male characters are a drawback. This includes stages such as Drift of Evil Intent, where every Y chromosome on the field buffs the Succubus by 5%.

Early in the game, the Light Protection Evility provides the Priest’s Heal spells with a useful 30% DEF/RES buff in addition to whatever HP they restore. This remains handy all the way through the endgame because, while Light Protection isn’t as effective as Shield or Magic Wall, it’s one of the only methods in the game of applying multiple stat buffs with a single action.

Book of Magic is a very useful Evility, if not necessarily for the Priest himself, as it flips the script on recommended weapons for your designated spellcasters. Usually you’d be crazy to not hand every single one of them a Staff, for the extra power, range, and area that a Staff’s Weapon Mastery provides, but Book of Magic allows you to get similar benefits by using a Book instead. It’s not a bad Evility to swap to Sicily via the Demon Connect system, as previously mentioned, but it also allows a Priest to be a reasonably effective hybrid of an offensive and defensive spellcaster. His spells won’t hit as hard as a Staff user’s will, but the extra range and area are still worthwhile.

As with the Cleric, the Priest needs to be at Rank 4 
or higher to unlock 
his entire spell list.

Martial Artist

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

One of the advantages to the Martial Artist, as well as his distaff counterpart, is that he has no elemental vulnerabilities. That combined with his increasingly massive HP pool as he levels up makes the Martial Artist a solid candidate for your front line.

The Martial Artist doesn’t differ that much from the Fight Mistress—she has the edge on RES and SPD, he’s got slightly better HP and ATK—except for Evilities. Much of the Martial Artist’s combat potential comes from Counterattacks, which he can boost via Fury. Against particularly tough opponents, the Martial Artist can come in first to deliberately bait Counterattacks via Forced Counter, which uses up all of that target’s Counterattacks for the turn. This obviously doesn’t work against gimmicks like Barbara’s Passiveness/Defensive Stance combo on Netherworld Maw, but it’s a useful tactic for much of the game.

Fight Mistress

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

If nothing else, the Fight Mistress easily has the best Rank names in the game. Storm Bringer? God Buster? This is a woman who does not mess around.

Fists can be unreliable weapons, as they draw a lot of their damage potential from the chance they have to land up to six consecutive punches per attack. With Combo Attack, the Fight Mistress bumps that chance up by 25%, which dramatically improves her damage output. Whatever character you’ve got holding an Axe will likely be your primary damage dealer, but a Fight Mistress with Combo Attack won’t be far behind.

On certain stages such as Conspiracy Landing, where enemy Counterattacks are a serious problem, Counter Dodge can be a lifesaver. It’s worth sacrificing the damage increase from Combo Attack to exchange it for the survivability increase from Counter Dodge, if only for that map.

Thief

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Skills

Unlock Condition

The problem with a Thief is that she’s good at exactly one thing, and that one thing has nothing to do with combat. She’s adequate with a Gun or Bow, but you want a Thief in your army for her Stealing Hand Skill, so that she can swipe rare equipment from your enemies without having to use up Hands to do it. Until she’s got serious gear or a few levels behind her, however, she’s an easy kill for any enemy who gets within range.

You can gradually work on this by having the Thief use Stealing Hand to swipe defensive stats from the enemy or even from your own units, gradually acquiring much-needed HP, DEF, RES, and SPD. These stat points won’t survive a Reincarnation, but they’re otherwise permanent. Your Thief can also contribute to a fight by stealing opponents’ weapons and armor, effectively lowering their stats and keeping them from using certain problematic Weapon Skills.

A Thief’s chance to steal an item is affected by her HIT and level vs. the target’s SPD and level. As a rule, the Thief must be of equal or higher level than her target to have even a reasonable chance at stealing items or stats from an enemy target. Due to the modifiers from an opponent’s facing, however, the Thief gets a large bonus if she’s standing behind her target when she uses Stealing Hand. This is what makes it possible to steal Rank 40 weapons and armor from level 9,999 Item Gods. Throughout the game, you won’t have to worry too much about the hard numbers behind Stealing Hand as long as you make a habit of using it from behind an equal-level opponent.

Create Box is another unique skill that justifies the Thief’s regular presence in your roster. There are several stages in the main game where you can use Create Box to get a vantage point, allowing you to deal with distant targets or reach certain areas well before you otherwise would be able to, or recover on stages like Red Overlord Search where it’s easy to botch their gimmick. Create Barrel isn’t quite as handy, but it does let you throw explosives at people.

Onmyo Monk

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Skills

Unlock Condition

Outside of the Item World, the Monk is an underachiever. He learns both Heal and Star spells, which give him a role in the group, but his primary use in a story stage will be preventing or amplifying Geo Chain or Geo Panel damage via his Evilities. Beyond that, there isn’t much he does that another class can’t do better.

In the Item World, the Onmyo Monk comes into his own, although much of his arsenal’s neutralized if you turn off Geo Panels using the relevant cheat. You can use Geo Warp to reach Innocents before they’re overrun by enemies or drop onto the Mystery Anchor and skip a stage in a couple of short turns.

Enemy Onmyo Monks learn an additional Skill called Bonus Blast that removes a random entry from the Bonus meter’s list of rewards. They are likely to use this when encountered in the Item World, for no real reason other than to be personally unpleasant. It does not seem to be possible to learn that Skill for yourself, nor is there an obvious reason why you’d want it.

Archer

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Unlock Condition

The Sniping Evility adds a two-panel bonus to the range of any attacks or spells used by the Archer, which makes it an excellent value add for any spellcaster. You can either steal it from the Archer in the usual way through Demon Connect or Reincarnate a spellcaster with a high degree of Staff Weapon Mastery into an Archer. At a Genius level of Reincarnation, enough Mastery will survive the transition to let the character get the full benefit of both the Mastery and Sniping, giving you the ability to drop attack spells on opponents from half a battlefield away.

On her own, the Archer can be a valuable member of your back field via constant Cover Attacks. If you pay attention to her positioning, the wide range of a Bow combined with the potential range boost from Sniping allows her a chance at contributing to almost every outgoing attack you make. If you do end up using her in this fashion, be sure to equip the Archer with equipment that specifically boosts her ATK and HIT, such as Belts or items that feature Pugilist Innocents, in order for each individual shot to hit as hard as possible. Without appropriate stat stacking, Bows don’t do that much damage per shot compared to other weapons of a similar power level.

Gunner

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Unlock Condition

The Gunner is designed to make it easier for other characters to do damage. His Evilities all focus on improving either his or others’ performances as part of a Combo Attack, which makes him a solid team player but underwhelming on his own. The Gunner’s also somewhat fragile, but if he’s getting hit at all, something has gone wrong.

It’s also useful to steal Asagi’s Never Give Up Evility for the Gunner, which lets him attack a second time during any Combo Attacks he’s participating in, and to teach him Target Lock and Speed Boost via apprenticeships with a Lantern and a Prinny, respectively.

Lady Samurai

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Unlock Condition

The Lady Samurai is a good example of how Evilities can change a character’s play style. On her own, the Samurai doesn’t have much going for her besides an unusually high Weapon Mastery with Swords, and is otherwise a slightly less durable Valkyrie.

Both Calm Waters and Bushido let the Samurai deal massive damage against single enemy targets and Duelist makes her a boss killer. In the endgame, when you’re scraping together stat points to be able to even scratch somebody like Darkdeath Evilman or Pringer X, Duelist gives you a massive bonus out of the gate.

As compensation for that, however, the Samurai’s RES is terrible and she’s got not one but two elemental weak spots. She needs support if there are enemy spellcasters on the field or she won’t stand a chance. On maps like An Arrogant Betrayal, when you’re getting wrecked by Ice spells for every step you take, you’ll need to either specifically work to counter her weaknesses via stolen Evilities or team synergy (such as a Magic Knight with Spirit Protection or a Lantern standing nearby with Registry Reverse) or simply not use the Samurai at all.

Armor Knight

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Unlock Condition

Like Barbara, who goes to the same tailor, the Armor Knight has the Move and Jump stats of the average glacier. Her primary use to your group is soaking up enemy attacks, and even with decent weaponry, she’s never going to be your primary damage-dealer.

That’s okay, because she has Defender. Defender is a crucial ability during the story mode and can still be used to decent effect all the way through the Post-Game. By stacking the Armor Knight with defensive accessories, high-quality armor, and a Spear, you can turn her into a more effective damage sponge than anyone else on your team. Park her by your base panel, leave her with a healer to buff her DEF and RES, and watch her leap across half the map to take hits for your other units.

Defender is so good that there isn’t much reason to use her other two Evilities. Advance Guard is useful when you’re Defending, and Defensive Stance makes the Knight extremely hard to kill, but neither of them have the near-universal utility of Defender. It’s worth creating a second, throwaway Armor Knight in the Post-Game to give your main Armor Knight Advance Guard, however, as that combination takes her from being difficult to kill while Defending to nearly impossible.

Ninja

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Skills

Unlock Condition

The Ninja is arguably more useful to the AI as an opponent for you than he’ll ever be as a member of your team, but he’s got some tricks up his sleeve. The Ninja is one of the most mobile units in the game, only outshone in this regard by the Masked Hero and only then because of the Hero’s Evilities.

The general game plan is to slip around behind an opponent, set it up with Armor Break, then punch it to death in seconds. Against melee opponents, the Ninja can stay alive longer than he has any right to via Mirage or Misty Haze, but that’s a bit like staking your life on a coin flip.

Magic Knight

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Skills

Unlock Condition

The trick to the Magic Knight is that she looks like she’s a hybrid between a melee fighter and spellcaster in a game where hybrid classes get the short end of the stick, but she really isn’t. Her role in the group is the ruthless exploitation of elemental weaknesses, and if there are none to exploit, she can create them with the three Anti- spells.

Depending on your personal preference, you can play the Magic Knight as a melee brawler who has a lot of magic in her back pocket or as a particularly durable primary spellcaster. In the former case, she’s good with Swords and there are several that offer an INT bonus to supplement her spells; in the latter, use a Staff and play her like you would a Magician or Witch.

Offensively, Attack Weakness lets you drop enemies in one or two hits, and Element Force works in conjunction with the Charge spells to allow you to set up a single powerful nuke. Spirit Protection is arguably more useful than either of them, however, as it provides your entire team with a 20% boost to all three elemental resistances as long as the Magic Knight is on the field. This actually stacks with multiple Magic Knights, so it’s entirely valid to have a few low-level Knights on your roster whose entire job in a fight is to stand by your base panel and provide a few stacks of Spirit Protection. Even on stages like Zygote of Pain, where you’re potentially facing as many as 10 enemy spellcasters at once, having 99% elemental resistance across the board will slow their roll significantly.

Male Angel

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Skills

Unlock Condition

The Male Angel is primarily a force multiplier. His Weapon Masteries are universally low, although he can be made to be adequate with a Spear or Staff, and he never learns anything more exciting than Heal spells on his own, but he can provide your team with substantial bonuses to ATK or damage inflicted just by standing nearby. In the endgame, when you can stack Range boosts to both equipment and weapons via the Item Assembly and thus allow your characters to hit enemies from an absurd distance, Angel Song becomes a very potent ability for augmenting your outgoing damage. A character with a Range of 8 or 9 standing at the center of a formation of four Male Angels receives a passive 100% ATK boost that stacks with any other similar effects.

At Rank 6, the Male Angel can be made into a halfway decent fighter with a Sword or Spear, but it’s a bit of a slog to get there, particularly given how hard it is to unlock him.

Female Angel

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Skills

Unlock Condition

As with her male counterpart, the Female Angel is entirely focused around cooperative play and isn’t great by herself. Unlike her male counterpart, the Female Angel’s Evilities all focus on defense, to the point where she can double an ally’s DEF if you pick a good spot for her to stand. As you’ll see in the Cave of Ordeals, any kind of perfect defensive formation will involve a Female Angel in a starring role.

You can develop a Female Angel into a fighter-healer hybrid using a Sword or Bow, or simply equip her with a Staff to use her as a standard healer. She works well if you position her directly behind your front line, providing both healing and her DEF boost to your tougher characters. You can also use her proactively by standing her next to particularly tough enemies so that they’re weakened by Angel Song.

Beast Master

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Skills

Unlock Condition

If you’re going to use monsters as a regular part of your roster, bring a Beast Master. Dark Breeder provides a high Likability boost that translates directly into more damaging Mounted Skills, and Dark Tamer strengthens monsters that are next to her or that she’s riding. More importantly, she knows Dominate, a powerful buff spell that works only on monsters and which improves a target’s ATK, INT, and HIT simultaneously.

On her own, the Beast Master can be used as an effective front-line brawler, since she has high Weapon Mastery with Axes even before her Weapon Forte is applied during character creation, and Dark Blood provides her with a stat multiplier regardless of whether the monsters on the field are friendly or not. That makes her a very strong fighter on monster-heavy maps, although the further you get into the fight, the worse she gets. You can also use Wild Groom to multiply the Mana and EXP value of individual enemy targets, which is an excellent ability to have in your back pocket.

Shaman

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Skills

Unlock Condition

The Shaman is another job without a clear niche. In a game where you had more than 10 spots on your active roster, or where it wasn’t as easy to teach characters spells that they wouldn’t ordinarily learn, the Shaman would shine as a complimentary character to your offense. In this game, however, the Shaman doesn’t have quite as much going for her. It’s often easier to simply kill a troublesome opponent than it is to cripple it with status ailments, and the latter is the Shaman’s entire game plan.

If you apprentice your Shaman to Flonne, a Magician, a Cleric, or a Witch to expand her spell list, her high INT, SP, and RES growths and high natural Weapon Mastery with Staves make her a solid choice for a caster, while providing Cursed Dance or Ominous Dance to debuff the enemy team. Gloomy Dance is also an excellent combination with other jobs or monsters that rely heavily on status ailments, such as Lanterns or Mothmen.

Masked Hero

Base Stats

APTITUDES

Weapon Mastery

Evility

Unlock Condition

The Masked Hero’s got one thing going for him and that’s sheer battlefield mobility. The Hero enjoys the highest base Move (tied with the Mothman) and highest Aptitude for SPD of any unit in the game, and with Rapid Movement or Heart of a Flea and a couple of pairs of Shoes, he can cover insane amounts of ground per turn. He’s also quite capable of bringing the hurt with a Fist or Gun, which makes the Hero an excellent pick on maps like Cave of Ordeals 1, where you need to maximize your damage on your first turn.

Heart of a Flea looks like a death sentence, and it is, but with the right buffs it can be surprisingly useful. Since the Hero already has a massive SPD stat, he has as good a chance as anyone of dodging an attack that would otherwise kill him. With a buff from Speed Boost and multiple pairs of Shoes, your Hero can stay in a fight much longer than he should. If you transfer one of a Ninja’s evasive Evilities to the Hero via Demon Connect, it makes him even harder to hit.

The Hero has a secondary, unadvertised ability: unlike other characters, he can walk through panels that are occupied by hostile units. An enemy Masked Hero is not stopped by any defensive lines or bottlenecks you’ve set up with your troops. The only real solution is to leave him with nowhere to stand, so that he can’t simply waltz up to your backfield characters and knock them out.