Best Support Skills - Octopath Traveler II Guide - IGN (2024)

Jobs are very important in Octopath Traveler 2, not just so you can double your weapon abilities or gain new Skills, but also Support Skills. While you lose access to Skills and equippable weapons should you change jobs, what you don’t lose are your Support Skills.

Support Skills are passive abilities that stick with individual Characters and can be swapped in and out between battles. As long as you’ve got JP to spend, it is entirely possible for every character to unlock every Support Skill for every job and have access to an entire passive arsenal that will add another layer of depth to their potential usefulness. Unlocking more Skills unlocks more Support Skills for that job.

But what exactly are the best Support Skills you should stock up on? This guide is here to give you a blueprint and our recommendations of the best Support Skills in Octopath Traveler 2, their benefits, and which Jobs they come from.

As a sign of the viability of every Job and character, this list contains at least one Support Skill from every job and is in no particular order.

Best Support Skills: Base Jobs

Hard Worker - Dancer

JP is a precious resource for every party member as you level up. JP is what is necessary for unlocking new Skills for your Jobs and with each new Skill unlocked in a Job from 4 upwards, you can gain a new Support Skill. Every fight procures a certain amount of JP, but with Hard Worker, you’ll gain an additional amount following every battle. And since JP is spread among the entire party and not just one individual, everyone in the party will benefit from the bonus of Hard Worker.

The Show Must Go On - Dancer

If you’ve played any RPG, whether eastern or western in origin, you know that party buffs and enemy debuffs can be the difference between dying in the first turn or actually having a fighting chance - especially when you get to boss battles. Both buffs and debuffs are balanced by being made to last only a certain amount of time, but with The Show Goes On, you gain an extra turn for any augmentations doled out by the equipping character.

This counts for party buffs as well as any debuffs that might apply; “augmentation” is the term in this game that includes both. That additional turn can mean all the difference in many key battles.

Inspiriting Break - Apothecary

SP is the most precious battle resource in this game and its predecessor and in many games like it, so having some way of regaining it is always clutch. Having a way of gaining it while also keeping damage on an opponent is even better. Inspiriting Break gives you back a small percentage of your SP when you break completely through a foe’s defenses, giving you more ammunition to deal out huge damage with Skills now that they’re vulnerable.

For Characters like Hikari, Ochette, and Partitio who don’t have the greatest SP growth but great utility, this can be a great way to give them back an even more limited resource for them - especially if you give them some of the SP draining Secret Jobs.

Vigorous Victor - Apothecary

Having to run back to town to heal or consume items to restore SP can be a tiring affair, especially when you’re focused on level grinding. Vigorous Victor restores an entire 1/3rd of a party member’s HP and SP upon a victory, meaning that level grinding itself can restore members of your party. This can cut grinding times in half and while this Support Skill has limited utility, its usage in that utility is incredibly valuable.

Deal More Damage - Warrior

As the name implies, Deal More Damage is all about putting on some extra hurt for the enemy. Not just any kind of hurt, though, it’s a limit breaker. Deal More Damage doesn’t cap your damage at just 9,999 but instead boosts it all the way up to 99,999. The later in the game it gets, the higher your stats and augmentations will get, as will enemy HP, so having absolutely no cap when you deal massive damage with anyone is a tremendous help.

This skill seems specifically designed for Characters like Hikari and Osvald, who are built to deal exceptional physical and elemental damage respectively, especially when enhanced by their Latent Powers, and may start dealing 9,999 damage as early as levels in their mid-30s.

Salt in the Wound - Hunter

Number of actions per turn is another incredibly important battle mechanic to the point that any boss that gains more than one action per turn is genuine trouble for your party. But if they can do it, you can too, and with Salt in the Wound, you have a decent chance of getting to move once again after breaking an opponent.

It won’t stack with itself, but that 50% chance is a bombastic help when it hits. Any character that begins with or can gain a tremendous amount of versatility will want to unlock 7 Hunter skills ASAP.

Extra Experience - Scholar

A title that speaks for itself, Extra Experience gains more EXP for everyone following a battle. This is of course valuable for level grinding as well as just progressing through the game, and because EXP is shared but not split with your entire present party, the equipped character isn’t the only one who will benefit. Everyone you’re with will gain more EXP, which is why you don’t need to have more than one character equipped with it at a time.

Evasive Maneuvers - Scholar

On the complete flip side to many of the EXP assistance skills that are great for helping out with level grinding, this one is your best tool for just exploring. One of the biggest differences overall with Octopath Traveler 2 from its predecessor is part of the sense of openness, like you can go anywhere if you can make it there.

The only real restriction of exploring any area is the enemies you might face that can annihilate you. This is one of the only ways in the game to reduce these random encounters and might give you a sliver of hope to collect a treasure chest or two in a high level area.

Hang Tough - Merchant

There are several bosses and particularly difficult random encounters in the game that can target a perfectly healthy character and just nuke their HP bar in one shot. Hang Tough allows someone to hang on after taking a huge amount of damage in one go, which can leave them with just enough life to pump out one last support or two or even just outright heal themselves.

It also prevents you from being an entire party member down in a sudden manner; in a battle system where turns are so valuable, it will prevent the character from being removed from the turn rotation entirely like they would if they were killed and revived.

It is also possible to continually tank hits with this and become borderline immortal with just 1 HP left. Conditions for this, however, seem limited to certain boss battles that lower your party’s HP capabilities.

Rise Again - Cleric

Similarly to the Merchant’s Hang Tough, Rise Again allows a character to essentially tank a death blow, albeit with not all their health intact. Rise Again differs from Hang Tough in that the character does indeed get reduced to 0, but will immediately be revived with 25% of their health. Considering it is a Cleric support skill, you’ll also probably get back up and be ready to heal yourself and the rest of your party without spending an additional turn or items trying to be revived.

Life in the Shadows - Thief

One of the best entries under the umbrella of skills that help with level grinding, Life in the Shadows gives extra EXP and JP following battles at night. Since other EXP and JP gaining skills are different from this one, you can equip this as well as Extra Experience and Hard Worker to gain a whole lot more EXP and JP and they’ll all stack.

This is all in addition to enemies being stronger and giving more EXP and JP when at night already. If used by the default Thief, Throne, she also provides automatic buffs when beginning battles at night, further making great use for it.

Incidental Attack - Thief

One thing you’ll have to figure out relatively quickly with your party set-up is when to pump-up your team or when to lay into your opponents. With Incidental Attack, no matter what you do - a buff, debuff, support, item usage, or even an attack itself - could all be followed up with an entire attack. There’s a 50% chance it works, which is honestly still pretty good. A coin flip to see if you do damage by raising a partner’s stats is a really good deal.

Best Support Skills: Secret Jobs

A Step Ahead - Inventor

Turn order is imperative in Octopath Traveler 2, but what if you had an entire turn just dedicated to one of your characters and it was always guaranteed to come first? That’s the huge boon that comes with A Turn Ahead. You can do anything in that first turn to help set up essentially the rest of the fight with a wide range of options depending on who you have go first.

Even better is the Inventor Support Skills can be used by everyone after it has been unlocked, meaning it’s also entirely possible to have every member of your party equip this to have an entire turn just for your characters before any enemy has any chance to respond whatsoever. Undisputedly one of the very best Support Skills in the entire game.

Master of Offense - Armsmaster

Breaking a foe allows you to deal enormous damage to them and takes away all their actions for the rest of their turn (and possibly the entire visible timeline if you time it right), so Master of Offense allowing you to make it easier to land critical hits on these already broken foes is a killer option.

Combo this with a bevy of other skills and weapons and as soon as an enemy is broken, you’ll be destroying HP bars of all but the spongiest of enemies in seconds.

SP Recover - Arcanist

As stated, SP is probably the most valuable resource in battle and can be difficult to recover at times. However, with SP Recovery, it allows you to regain SP on your enemy’s turns by restoring your SP bar with the damage you’ve taken.

It is only 1% of the damage you’ve taken, so it can amount to miniscule recovery, but for bigger enemies, you can gain a solid amount back and use that to take them down.

Of Equal Might - Arcanist

Every character has their statistical limits, which makes sense given there’s no one character who isn’t going to excel at everything. Some Characters lean much more towards being offensive units of either physical or elemental damage. But what if someone could do both?

Well, with the Of Equal Might skill, it will automatically equalize the melee and magical attacks to match which one is higher. Having one or more bruisers that can cover every dimension can offer otherworldly options. It doesn't have a cheap cost, however, as it costs in total 10,000 JP to get to (2,000 JP per Skill and must unlock 7 Skills).

SP Saver - Conjurer

We’ve said it throughout the entire page but it’s true that SP and making sure you always have some is paramount in combat. What if you could cut its usage in half and still get all the benefits of using the Skills that use it up? That’s the simple but astronomical benefit of the aptly named SP Saver.

It also isn’t the most difficult to unlock if we’re talking about JP usage, costing 6,000 JP by needing to unlock 5 Skills in the Conjurer job, although the Conjurer itself is perhaps the most difficult of all the Secret Jobs to unlock.