Labyrinth of Touhou 9F

[Raikaria]

On the topic of drafts, if there's enough interest I'm willing to organize one, especially considering I'm yet to actually finish a draft due to save errors and such plaugeing me.

All that is required is three people who want to be involved [Well, two, since I can be in], and us to be on the chatroom at the same time.

If I recall the chatroom has a D6 option, which lets us decide a pick order, which proceeds like a pendulum.

1 - 2 - 3 - 3 - 2 - 1 - 1 - 2 ect.

And the bans are usually:
1 ban everyone agrees on [Usually Meiling/Iku]
1 bans
2 bans
3 bans

Really bans can work two ways. You can either ban the best options, or ban the worst so you don't have to take them :V

On the topic of character use:
Some characters are pretty awful early, but blossom later. Rumia is a great example, she's pretty awful early, but Demarkation scales up.
Some characters are better early than late [Cirno], usually because resists rise.
Some characters are just good all the time :V

[I have no name]

I would totally do that if I wasn't still in the middle of one with a really good drafted team...

[Raikaria]

It was mainly due to interest indicated a few posts back when you mentioned a draft before.

[I have no name]

Yeah, I figured  :V

Draft runs are fun though, even if depending on who you get some fights become super easy, like Nitori went from "HOW DO YOU WIN THIS FIGHT OTHER THAN EXTENDING ARM LUCK" to "lol 20k Return Inanimateness knockout blow"...yeah I underestimated how useful Alice was in my first playthrough.

[Ikari]

Defense piercing/ignoring moves say hi.

Hence the "better for bosses" thing. Komachi is by far the best tank for random encounters, while Meiling is... Kind of bad. Not Tenshi-bad but still.

Besides, she's severely severely outclassed by Meiling and has next to no damage output.  She's situationally useful, but outside of those situations I found her to be dead weight.  Meiling also has next to no damage output, but heals herself AND can cure statuses.  Tenshi has that Sword of Rapture thing that randomly removes enemy buffs but it's a crapshoot.

I'll give you that she's outclassed by Meiling, on quite a few aspects. (However, I actually think Meiling and Tenshi go great together, though; Meiling's heal is... Let's face it, a bit on the weak side, but with Tenshi's low-health, it becomes a viable solution. (Plus it can heal the bad effects of her self-buff, but I'm one of those guys who uses them as advantages))

Tenshi is basically an iron wall. While she is a deadweight, she's a neigh immortal deadweight. I can count on my hands the number of times I used any of her 3 other spells during the game, because she's useless on that point; She's much better on supporting the party indirectly. A hit on Tenshi is basically like the boss used up his turn to do nothing. Other tanks will either require healing soon, or immediately. It was a nice break to have one character would could stay alive for a whole fight.

Basically, I'm not trying to say Tenshi is the best for everyone, but she fits the turtle-like playstyle wonderfully. The top 5 was a personal thing; In the end, her real position would be around mid-low tier, IMO. I don't think she has her place in a "Most useless characters" team, or at least, to be ranked without a special mention among other people like Wriggle, Cirno, Mokou, Eirin, etc.

[Raikaria]

Just sayin, when do you use Meiling for damage either? Most 1st slot tanks mainly do the switching.

If you're using Tenshi you can just use a high HP character for the bosses with Def-Ignoreing attacks, like Remi or Komachi, or, even better, invest somewhat in Tenshi's HP and/or elemental affinities. It's not like Tenshi dosen't shrug off most non-def ignoreing attacks anyway.

[I have no name]

I'll give you that she's outclassed by Meiling, on quite a few aspects. (However, I actually think Meiling and Tenshi go great together, though; Meiling's heal is... Let's face it, a bit on the weak side, but with Tenshi's low-health, it becomes a viable solution. (Plus it can heal the bad effects of her self-buff, but I'm one of those guys who uses them as advantages))

I meant Colorful Rain for Meiling on bosses, which is far from weak.  Healer is useful for status healing and rarely patchcing someone up who needs a bit more HP.  That and switching nukes in and out is more effective from a tank slot, which Meiling does excellently.  Tenshi sitting there paralyzed forever taking 0 isn't doing much switching now is she :V

[Raikaria]

I meant Colorful Rain for Meiling on bosses, which is far from weak.  Healer is useful for status healing and rarely patchcing someone up who needs a bit more HP.  That and switching nukes in and out is more effective from a tank slot, which Meiling does excellently.  Tenshi sitting there paralyzed forever taking 0 isn't doing much switching now is she :V

I don't like Para'ed Tenshi personally :/

But yeah I value Tenshi highly, and just take a backup with high HP, usually Remi/Komachi.

[Ikari]

I meant Colorful Rain for Meiling on bosses, which is far from weak.

Derp. Forgot Colorful Rain.

That and switching nukes in and out is more effective from a tank slot, which Meiling does excellently.  Tenshi sitting there paralyzed forever taking 0 isn't doing much switching now is she :V

Meiling is too fast to my liking, though. Thanks to Tenshi's speed, you can actually send Patchy out (Or any slow character, really), have her cast a spell, and then switch her back in; Something Meiling can't do without getting a turn before Patchy, resetting her action bar.

I don't like Para'ed Tenshi personally :/

But yeah I value Tenshi highly, and just take a backup with high HP, usually Remi/Komachi.

All of that too.

And finally, as my last point, Tenshi does a fine job as a tank, and saying she's outclassed by Meiling isn't saying much anyway; Meiling is amazing.

[SirChaotick]

I... haven't quite yet seen a situation in which Tenshi is even viable. I can see she's pretty much only intended to be a brick wall, and not much beyond that. The issue right now seems to be that... well, her stats simply don't seem to be good enough. Of course, her defences are better than anyone else's, but they still don't really seem to be able to actually keep attacks away from her frankly horrid HP (for a tank anyway).
I'm currently (still) getting pulverized by Rinnosuke, so I'm not sure if she's any better beyond that point, but I've tried her a lot before that (on most of the boss battles I got stuck on) and still. Perhaps I'm spoiled by Meiling, but practically every other tanky character I have consistently outlives her. Which is sad because I really like the concept.

[Ghaleon]

yeah if you're going for a "as low a level as possible" run or whatever... It doesn't take defense ignore attacks to 1shot tenshi unfortunately. And defense ignore attacks just become all but expected for each boss once you reach post game.

On a first playthru where you typically have your levels higher than you ordinarily would otherwise, she seems alot more useful.

I'd be willing to do the draft thing but I should probably be overlooked because
1: I have to afk with little warning at times... I'll be able to say for sure if there's a date set I guess?
2: my strategies for this game are more turtle-esque than nuke esque. So my opinions tend to be rather different. For example I'd gladly take ran over iku =P. I mean Iku is great for an instant gratifying powerful nuke with just about anyone yes. But I really only care about post game for balance since most of the pre-post isn't too challenging once you're familiar with the game. And in post game ran can quite effectively keep an entire team topped up at 100% (oh yeah, and bosses tend to live long enough to actually do that before they're already 90% dead). This way you don't ahve to worry about timing iku's buff to occur before the character gets to nuke. In addition, you can def buff them really high too before taking lengthy precautions to avoid risk eating a nuke to the face before dat def buff (which is the case with other def buffers).
3: Not sure if it matters but my general gaming free time isn't quite as high nowdays as it used to be, so it'll prob take me months to finish a run if anyone cares.

[Raikaria]

@ 1 - Don't even know if there's enough interest yet. Can't say a date

@ 2 - Odds you'll get exactly what you want are always slim

@ 3 - Dosen't matter. The aim is to get you to use new combos and characters you wouldn't normally, in abnormal ways. [For example, someone had to use Tank Yuugi once because they had no real tank] Dosen't matter how long it takes, it's not a race. Maybe the only competition would be to see who can reach what milestone at the lowest level of [Insert Characters of same rough EXP bracket here].

[Ghaleon]

@ 1 - Don't even know if there's enough interest yet. Can't say a date

@ 2 - Odds you'll get exactly what you want are always slim

@ 3 - Dosen't matter. The aim is to get you to use new combos and characters you wouldn't normally, in abnormal ways. [For example, someone had to use Tank Yuugi once because they had no real tank] Dosen't matter how long it takes, it's not a race. Maybe the only competition would be to see who can reach what milestone at the lowest level of [Insert Characters of same rough EXP bracket here].

1: yeah I mean I'm just saying my ability to commit to such a meeting is not going to be so hot.
2: That's kind of the point though. I'm more worried that my opinions on what should be excluded or whatever will be different...Which is also the point of having more than one person I guess, but maybe TOO different (to the point that you guys will think you're better off picking up some drunk off the street) =P.
3: Yeah, the whole milestone low level thing is actually exactly what I want =) *drools*.

[Ikari]

I... haven't quite yet seen a situation in which Tenshi is even viable.

As much as I am aware what I will say isn't remotely close to a strong argument, Tenshi against Mokou is gold. She just kinda tanks Fujiyama Volcano without losing much health, and gets out a nuker for them to get a turn. That's how I beat most bosses anyway.

[Raikaria]

Bosses also tend to have two types of doomsday nuke. One is an AoE one, the other is a 'Target First Slot kill them' one.

Unless it ignores defense outright, Tenshi laughs at the latter.

If Defense Ignoreing attacks make Tenshi worthless, that must make Komachi the best tank in the game by default since she has tons of HP! Don't exaggerate Tenshi's weakness to Defense-pericing, they are not everywhere, they are not used every turn, and Tenshi's HP is by no means the worst in the game in the first place.

It's just her Achilles Heel, or else she would literally take 0 against everything in the game, especially buffed.

Let us not forget Tenshi's Elemental Resists are also pretty solid, among the game's bests in a weighted total [I think only Patch, Rinno, Kanako, Keine, Eiki and Kaguya are better, 4 of those will not be tanks in the first place], so she only really needs to worry about Non-Elemental Pricing Attacks. Which are very few and far between. I know Eiki has one.

[Ghaleon]

That logic isn't really solid tbh. Problem is after 20f, the amount of defense ignore nukes becomes more common, and they are NOT neccesarily a form of "doomsday" nuke, but are just random abilities in that boss' arsenal. Which is worse because you can NOT predict when they will come, they just happen, and result in a dead tenshi, possibly right at the start of a fight!

Furthermore, they are NOT the most threatening thing those bosses may neccesarily have (if your tank isn't tenshi), making the "komachi must therefore be the best" argument based on essentially nothing..

Last, as I mentioned, she's better if you're on a first playthru, or are otherwise above minimumish levels. Because even nukes that do NOT ignore defense that have relatively piercing formulas can 1shot her. When I played for example, even when she was def buffs, some strong bosses (dual laser whatever) nuke for instance would generally own her face. Flying swallow whatever also did the trick, as did a buffed up...fantastic flying object attack or whatever it is that maribel uses on occasion.

Those attacks are generally very dangerous regardless who your main tank is it's true. But I just find that you can generally count on "tanky" characters to at least survive them with high hp, but tenshi has a habit of looking like a tank taking 0s one second, then the next she's flat out DEAD from full hp..from a NON doomsday nuke. It's just a matter of reliability, which is an important aspect for a first slot tank imo.

Plus yeah, there's the issue of her not really being good for her spells. Sword of rapture would be great if it worked ever, but I literally never had that damn spell work with the stats I wanted it to a single time in my entire playthru.

[Serela]

Tenshi is capable of taking next to zero from even the nukes of many bosses in the game. But then there's also many bosses where you can't use her well because it has some move that is quite likely to one-shot her. A tank that could fall down at full hp+high buffs to a single attack at any turn, that's not safe. (I have no idea how she works out in practice during postgame, I have not used her then and other characters cannot give a good comparison for her situation)

In any case, she definitely wouldn't belong in a "worst characters in the game" list. Orin shouldn't either because Blazing Wheel is great for randoms and actually a pretty good boss nuke as well that gets surprisingly good numbers after Ikubuffs, and she's not glassy in MND (even if not exactly durable). Cat's Walk can be situationally good for some turn management. Wriggle -definitely- shouldn't because she's suuuuper amazing until late maingame, and really you can keep using her until postgame perfectly fine (Poison falls off entirely after beating the final boss though, Wriggle becomes 100% useless). Cirno is also pretty great until you hit midgame and get better options for her PAR/debuffs, but she's not very good at all after you get other characters for it, so that's a fair point.

I don't see how Mystia outranks Chen. Chen's lightning speed and self-buff makes her shine in maingame gloriously. Nothing can equal the damage I have her pulling off on bosses midgame. She falls off some in postgame since speed doesn't scale so well and she starts dying in one hit to -everything-, wheras before she can often take one hit. Mystia... has a different area of expertise? She's not glassy nor hyperfast nor can she self-buff. She's certainly great, and a good replacement after you get Plus, but.

[I have no name]

I don't see how Mystia outranks Chen. Chen's lightning speed and self-buff makes her shine in maingame gloriously. Nothing can equal the damage I have her pulling off on bosses midgame. She falls off some in postgame since speed doesn't scale so well and she starts dying in one hit to -everything-, wheras before she can often take one hit. Mystia... has a different area of expertise? She's not glassy nor hyperfast nor can she self-buff. She's certainly great, and a good replacement after you get Plus, but.

In my draft run I have both Mystia and Chen.  Mystia is being overall much much better.

[Raikaria]

Yeah the issue is I've never personally got far in postgame :V

[Serela]

Depends how you use them. I'd never be able to use Mystia in a boss fight the way I use Chen. AKA, switch in, nuke until she needs to switch -herself- out (Not using someone else to switch her out), leave, along with selfbuffing whenever necessary because essentially no cooldown.

Man, Chen attacking constantly against Maribel's first few phases is like unleashing atomic nukes on her. (And she can get in a lot of time after any high delay boss attacks or if you land PAR)

Mystia's certainly better for random battles, but that's not the part of the game you should base a team around, of course. She has alright boss damage too, but nothing particularly special...

[SirChaotick]

Well, obviously I'm doing something wrong then because my Tenshi is far from able to "laugh" at front character nukes - if she can hold it back, my other tanks can do so just as well, regardless of whether the attack is defence piercing. And I am on my first playthrough, which probably means I'm at a pretty high level.
Oh well, to each their own. Maybe other people got her better gear or something. What do I know.

[Ghaleon]

kinda off topic but eh.. somtimes people talk about Etrian oddyssey in this thread, or other dungeon crawlers. and just recently I became aware of some kinda VN dungeon crawler that looks quite interesting to me. I'm wondering if anybody else has tried it and has opinions.
It's called Yumina the Ethereal. supposedly way back in 2010, JAST announced it was going to localize it. Then they said "it's coming out soon" in 2011 and have been accepting pre-orders for 40 bucks..
Well not only is it still not out, but over half their website's tabs are completely greyed out (only ones that work are "home", and "images...or was it story?").

My brain is telling me to just forget about it, cuz if they were going to release it ever, they probably would have done so by now, or at least SAID something about it by now (even duke nukem forever had news updates after 2 years of its supposed near releases =P). But I want to try it so bad because I love dungeon crawlers.. and I also have been dying to motivate myself to trying a VN style game again.. glaskjgasljk.

But seriously.. who encourages people to pre-order for 40 bucks and have nothing to say/show/announce regarding it 2 years later? How sleezy is that?
Anyway I don't mean to side-track or anything, I'm just wanting to know what fellow touhou laby fans think of this game if they tried it =).

[Starxsword]

Well, obviously I'm doing something wrong then because my Tenshi is far from able to "laugh" at front character nukes - if she can hold it back, my other tanks can do so just as well, regardless of whether the attack is defence piercing. And I am on my first playthrough, which probably means I'm at a pretty high level.
Oh well, to each their own. Maybe other people got her better gear or something. What do I know.

Are you by any chance leveling up her Attack or something? She can most definitely tank pretty much everything. Of course, she won't able to tank Rinnosuke's first form, because Reiatsu Fist, but then again, not that many characters can tank that. Being defense ignoring and all that good stuff, only characters with HP can take that. However, After Rinnosuke's first form, you should be safe using Tenshi from then on. This is assuming that you have been leveling up either her Defense or her Mind.

Also characters you do not use level slower and therefore are weaker. They gain 80% xp instead of 100% xp.

[Raikaria]

Which is why when I use Tenshi I often carry a high-hp character for those situations. [EG: Komachi, Remilia]

I've had Tenshi survive Eientei's doomsday nukes with over half her HP, without being fully buffed, and with Eientei being buffed [My team was debuff-based, even most of my actual attacks had debuffs attached, so Kaguya would literally spam Stone Bowl. Literally the only way to win was Galaxy Stop and pray to PAR-lock Kaguya because I had Renko]

[SirChaotick]

Are you by any chance leveling up her Attack or something? She can most definitely tank pretty much everything. Of course, she won't able to tank Rinnosuke's first form, because Reiatsu Fist, but then again, not that many characters can tank that. Being defense ignoring and all that good stuff, only characters with HP can take that. However, After Rinnosuke's first form, you should be safe using Tenshi from then on. This is assuming that you have been leveling up either her Defense or her Mind.

Also characters you do not use level slower and therefore are weaker. They gain 80% xp instead of 100% xp.

I know enough to not level up anything but her defences ever.
Tenshi is about the same level as my other characters - I cycle them out periodically when grinding to compensate for the difference in experience. Of course, there are characters that are of higher level than her, but I'm pretty sure some characters need less experience for level ups regardless.
Also, to be clear, I'm not just speaking from my experience with Rinnosuke - that'd be a pretty stupid way to test a character with her design. I'm talking just about all of the boss fights I've seen, piercing attacks or not.

I guess I'll never get it? I don't know, I keep hearing all these anecdotes so I'm sure people have found plenty of merit in her. Just not sure... how.

[Rukoto]

Have you been keeping her SKP levels in her defenses high? I've found that keeping considerable SKP investment in her defenses helps a lot in her tanking ability. The set of equips you're running on her might be making a difference as well. I've only done one plus disc run with Tenshi in the party and she's done fairly well so far, but I also had Remi and Rinno as alternate primary tanks to fall back on. For example, she's been my best way to tank past Baal Avatar (taking 0's from anything he can muster with DEF buffs active), and she can deal with most bosses reasonably well in Plus Disc (although I haven't fought the V2 bloodstained bosses or anything on 30F yet), although I do remember her falling flat against a MAG-buffed Utsuho and Uncontained Nuclear Reaction / Giga Flare in general.

[SirChaotick]

Have you been keeping her SKP levels in her defenses high? I've found that keeping considerable SKP investment in her defenses helps a lot in her tanking ability. The set of equips you're running on her might be making a difference as well. I've only done one plus disc run with Tenshi in the party and she's done fairly well so far, but I also had Remi and Rinno as alternate primary tanks to fall back on. For example, she's been my best way to tank past Baal Avatar (taking 0's from anything he can muster with DEF buffs active), and she can deal with most bosses reasonably well in Plus Disc (although I haven't fought the V2 bloodstained bosses or anything on 30F yet), although I do remember her falling flat against a MAG-buffed Utsuho and Uncontained Nuclear Reaction / Giga Flare in general.

I have. In fact, she has the highest SKP defence levels of all of my characters.

[Validon98]

I finally went back to this in order to flip that last switch preventing me from beating Yukari. Then I tried fighting Yukari to see how bad it would be.
I lasted maybe three of Yukari's turns? Yeah, I'm going to have to grind for a couple hours. Fun times.

[Starxsword]

Tenshi is about the same level as my other characters - I cycle them out periodically when grinding to compensate for the difference in experience. Of course, there are characters that are of higher level than her, but I'm pretty sure some characters need less experience for level ups regardless.
Also, to be clear, I'm not just speaking from my experience with Rinnosuke - that'd be a pretty stupid way to test a character with her design. I'm talking just about all of the boss fights I've seen, piercing attacks or not.

Different characters have different level up speed. Depending on your party, Tenshi should either be higher or lower level than them. For example, Tenshi should be several levels higher than Yukari or Remilia, but several levels lower than Reimu. I am unsure what the gap should be by the time you reach Rinnosuke, but an estimation would be a percentage of sorts. So if Tenshi is level 140, Yukari should be level 110 or somewhere around there. Reimu or Meiling, of course, would be higher level than both of them.

I am unsure why you have having trouble using Tenshi as a tank then. She should be solid, especially since this is not post game.

[SirChaotick]

Different characters have different level up speed. Depending on your party, Tenshi should either be higher or lower level than them. For example, Tenshi should be several levels higher than Yukari or Remilia, but several levels lower than Reimu. I am unsure what the gap should be by the time you reach Rinnosuke, but an estimation would be a percentage of sorts. So if Tenshi is level 140, Yukari should be level 110 or somewhere around there. Reimu or Meiling, of course, would be higher level than both of them.

I am unsure why you have having trouble using Tenshi as a tank then. She should be solid, especially since this is not post game.

Yeah, sounds about right. Yukari's 81, Reimu's 97 and Tenshi 88. Although the differences are smaller than I'd think from looking at the wiki's level up difficulties.