Labyrinth of Touhou 8F

[Starxsword]

Mystia... just looking at her stats, I find it hard to believe that she is as good as people say. I suppose she's like Reisen then? "Better in practice then on paper" or such? I look at her stats, and I think "slower then Chen, but better stats overall, but still nothing special."

Mystia stats may look crappy, but I would argue she is probably one of the best, if not the best character in Labyrinth of Touhou. Her attacks do respectable damage, she can heal conditions, is pretty fast, can paralyze, and can take a hit.

[MysTeariousYukari]

Mystia stats may look crappy, but I would argue she is probably one of the best, if not the best character in Labyrinth of Touhou. Her attacks do respectable damage, she can heal conditions, is pretty fast, can paralyze, and can take a hit.

Thing is "heal conditions" is a VERY useless upside if you are in the Plusdisk chunk of the game, and by that point, you probly aren't even seeing condition-using enemies getting turns, let alone using those moves!

Also, SPD-Renko(which is best Renko IMO) is also quite fast(like 5000 SPD when I took on Winner, similar ammount on SPD-Iku), can paralyze AND debuff every working stat.

Also, maybe my main team was just naturally rather tanky, but all of them could take a hit as well :V SPD-Iku was even my main tank!

[Starxsword]

I have no idea why you say the heal conditions are useless. You only get her in the Plus Disk normally, and I find the heal conditions very good. Mystia's stats are crazy once you consider her leveling speed. She is one of the few characters I would call overpowered in this game.

[Pesco]

By lategame your gear is good enough that you should be immune to most of those statuses.

[SuccinctAndPunchy]

>starts collecting the various postgame stars.
>realises he missed an item that can otherwise only be gotten on the plus disk floors on floor 18F.

FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

TRIAL AND ERROR GAMEPLAY, GO!

[MysTeariousYukari]

Mystia's stats are crazy once you consider her leveling speed. She is one of the few characters I would call overpowered in this game.

Thing is, by time you get her, you already have about 70-100 Skill Levels in most stats for every character you've been using seriously, more if you made it to, say, 24F before getting Mystia. Only so many characters that I can stand pressing my Z key like my life depended on it, to keep up to date.

Also, Leveling Speed isn't exactly that great of a deciding factor either. Chen has an insane leveling speed, still isn't beastly. Remilia, Patchouli and Rinnosuke all have bad(or even the worst) leveling speed, and are extremely good to outright godly.

My little list of who is "OP" contains a whole two characters. Nitori(Iku support boosting this further) for one, the other being Eiki... sorta... Really, when no one on my team can out damage Nitori and her Linear Gun, even a full ATK-Buffed Eiki

Spoiler:

outside of the DEF-God of the Hibachi Twins, only thing Nitori can't blow to bits... yet

, it gets hard to see anyone beyond my main sweep team(Iku, Mary, Nitori, Eiki) as being worth any effort XD

[Serela]

Chen has an insane leveling speed, still isn't beastly

Chen's beastly as fuck in the main game. But, the thing is that you have to consider their stat growth rate -and- their leveling speed; Chen has really low stat growth, Mystia has a very fast level rate plus stat gains that aren't bad.

Slow leveling people also usually have pretty high stat gains in exchange. So you just sort of have to gauge the two in comparison to eachother. It can be kind of hard without a lot of experience with how it scales ingame.

Rinnosuke definitely doesn't even really count as "extremely good". His damage is NOT exciting, and his tankiness isn't either. Both are nice enough (He's a good character, certainly), but when I was doing plus disk, he was comparable to, say, Alice. Except Alice had better mnd, which was arguably better for what I was needing them for.

Also, yeah, once you're getting into plus, you only need a few switch-in attackers to be set, the main being Nitori. What you would look for in others are things like being able to stay out and take hits while dealing damage at the same time.

A big reason for using mystia is the powerful group paralysis in combo with her speed and it's nice damage. It helps a -lot- in randoms, and she's still good enough for bosses, so it works.

[Pesco]

Does Parallaxel or anyone else remember where his tier listing post is?

[Ozzy]

Soooo, I've just gotten this game but haven't started playing it yet. Do you guys know any general tips/tricks that would be helpful to a newbie?

[Zil]

Evade does nothing, so invest no points in it. Focus on improving the stats that characters are already good at. The improvment is proportional to their natural ability, so you can't really undo weakness. For instance, don't waste your time on Patchy's HP. Her magic and mind are what she's best at, so focus on those.

[Tangrelle]

In a similar way, do try not to spend your level up bonuses on SP. Skill points are more or less fine if you wanted, simply because you can garner them much more quickly, but your group's SP will shortly catch up to the cost of whatever expensive spells they have and more, especially post-game.

Um, other than that, the wiki happens to have a lot of information on characters, along with some general advice somewhere, I believe <3

[Pesco]

Building your team defensively makes bosses easier but trash harder and vice versa. And never bother using the normal attack, it does nothing.

[Starxsword]

Thing is, by time you get her, you already have about 70-100 Skill Levels in most stats for every character you've been using seriously, more if you made it to, say, 24F before getting Mystia. Only so many characters that I can stand pressing my Z key like my life depended on it, to keep up to date.

Also, Leveling Speed isn't exactly that great of a deciding factor either. Chen has an insane leveling speed, still isn't beastly. Remilia, Patchouli and Rinnosuke all have bad(or even the worst) leveling speed, and are extremely good to outright godly.

My little list of who is "OP" contains a whole two characters. Nitori(Iku support boosting this further) for one, the other being Eiki... sorta... Really, when no one on my team can out damage Nitori and her Linear Gun, even a full ATK-Buffed Eiki

Spoiler:

outside of the DEF-God of the Hibachi Twins, only thing Nitori can't blow to bits... yet

, it gets hard to see anyone beyond my main sweep team(Iku, Mary, Nitori, Eiki) as being worth any effort XD

You should try using Mystia then. Skill points isn't as important, since you can get her as soon as you beat the main game. The stage where you can really get skills points is stage 27, which beats earlier stages by the mile.

And as for Chen, I heard good things about her, but I haven't tried her, so no comment. Patchouli and Rinnosuke are so so. I wouldn't say good and I wouldn't say bad. They are far below Mystia in terms of how good a character is.

I don't even know Mystia is when I played this game, all I did was check up to see which characters are supposed to be good and tried them out. Mystia is one of the characters that I tried out and I can say, she is better than every member in my current party. Her attack is average to high, if you take consideration of cool down and damage. Her paralysis is fairly potent, one of the stronger paralysis in the game. Her speed is fast or very fast. This is with leveling speed taken into consideration. You probably want to build her as speed or attack, as while she can take a hit, she is not a tank.

All that said, Mystia obviously doesn't go well with buffs, since she attacks so often, unlike other nukers. So, there is that to take into consideration.

[Serela]

Patchouli and Rinnosuke are so so

Patchouli actually has a unique factor in her fabulous MND stat, especially considering most physical attacks do not hit the back row, or barely do so, and even moreso when you realize... there's an awful lot of bosses in this game that have little or NO physical attacks, and likely few to no composites!

That being said, I've never actually used her past the main boss, and only kept her anywhere near that long in my first playthrough. But I've used characters with similar mnd levels via mnd boosting in levelups, and it's wonderful. It does give her a little niche as a good nuker that still has a massive MND stat.

[Tangrelle]

Does Parallaxel or anyone else remember where his tier listing post is?

Got it. I, uh, hand some free time on my hands and decided to wade through his posts because i am totally a stalker why not.

And yeah, as said, Mystia is useful because she is sort of a jack of all trades, and generally above-average in all these qualities. She's fast, not too fragile has a quick spammable attack for good damage over time, a heavier nuke attack of sorts, a potent status spell (And multi-target, at that!), and she can clean up debuffs and statii. She's like maybe a jack of all trades, master of some? That may be a good word for it.

I would also like to inquire about Yuuka. Say you're in a boss battle, and Master Spark is not a viable spell at the moment (High affinity, more weak to nature, what have you!) Would it be better to use Flower Shot, Gensokyo's Reflowering, or Beauty of Nature? I've taken to simply spamming Flower Shot (Mostly because I'm on floor 2 and SP costs urrrgh) but I wonder if using the other two may be better.

[Zil]

If you're gonna keep her out and the boss's defense is weak enough, flower shot is probably good, just look out for burning through buffs.
For the other two spells...
Gensokyo's Reflowering has low mind piercing but higher damage potential.
The Beauty of Nature has good piercing and usually does more damage.

And Cirno is too low on that list. Even if Mystia's paralysis is better, Cirno's version is still broken as hell.

[Starxsword]

Cirno can't take a hit and does not have a nuke to compensate for it. That is probably why she is so low. Don't forget that Mystia status resistances are pretty godly, so that means you don't need to wear too much status resistant items.

Patchouli actually has a unique factor in her fabulous MND stat, especially considering most physical attacks do not hit the back row, or barely do so, and even moreso when you realize... there's an awful lot of bosses in this game that have little or NO physical attacks, and likely few to no composites!

I used Patchouli in the main game, but I find her less useful in the post game. The physical attacks, even if they are rare drop her automatically. Her mind tankiness isn't as helpful as during the main game.

[Serela]

Cirno is not broken in any meaning of the word. She's nice for inflicting SPD down or PAR on a boss early on, and inflicting PAR on randoms for a bit longer, but these are her absolute only uses, and other characters drastically outclass her in them (Her PAR is very weak compared to many other characters)

Her damaging and survival abilities are both abysmal, which means she has no use outside of status effects that other characters can inflict as well or better then her. She's good early on, but not later.

That tier list looks overall about right, although it's hard to tier due to the fact that character usefulness scales. Minoriko is VERY good for the maingame while not very useful in Plus, and Wriggle is awesome in the main game until... around beating Yukari, while still being totally usable until finishing the main game. And then useless bottom-tier in Plus. Yuyuko and Eirin (more Yuyuko) work the opposite, starting to shine in Plus as they get the MP to spam their big nuke, suddenly becoming rather tanky nukers. Definitely moreso for Yuyuko, who is a great Winner party choice. But due to the amount of bosses who resist SPI... using her earlier can be slightly problematic, sadly.

Also not sure I'd stick Maribel into low-tier. She's not that bad, and can have utility in dealing decent damage and simultaneously having a chance to inflict a good debuff on the opponent, sort of like Reisen, and has some degree of self-sufficiency with her self-buff, as it can be sort of awkward buffing switch-ins sometimes. She can stay out to take a hit decently enough after buffed, so it's viable for her to spam her low-delay skill out for debuffs as well, although Reisen might be better in that aspect. I'd consider Sakuya low-tier before her, at the least.

It's not a big issue though. As long as you keep in mind each character's one or two specific best uses and how they scale during the game, you can figure out whether they're helpful in your party or not, as the mid-tiers can (nearly) all fit quite helpfully into your party as long as you need what they're good at.

In other news, if Maribel, Kanako, and Yuka didn't have such obscene SP costs, they'd be fun to use in the maingame :/ They each do have a single-target affordable skill, but... all their rest are super SP-costly, in many cases on skills that aren't even very strong and would mostly have utility as your go-to normal random trash spell.

[MysTeariousYukari]

Ok, I look at the Tier list... I honestly disagree with Mari being where she is. I don't switch often, and her self-buff is enough that she can 1st Slot Tank, or 2nd slot without. If I compare her to an actual tank like Meiling, yeah, Mari is no tank, but among who I use for trash, and as Main Team for bosses, she can tank quite well

Spoiler:

Hellloooooo, she survived 3 direct hits from WINNER of all people!

. Toss is the fact that she was my sweeper for most of the Plus Disk, OHKO'ing most mooks without an Iku buff, and everything short of the very last of those crabs at the end floor with...

I'll... have to try out Minoriko more, tbh. I used her very little last playthrough She was okay when I used her, but she was no super star like I hear about her, and I was, reasonably, cranking her MAG up so that her heal didn't suck. It still sucked :V

What point, Main or Plus, is Youmu even good for? I swear, she needs like 500 SP Skill Levels or sumthin to have a decent SP count that will last beyond 5 uses Gods Slash of Karma Wind >_>

[Shin Rokuren]

At least in my game, Youmu is on par with Shikieiki in terms of damage. Her Atk may not be that impressive compared to the well known damage dealers, but her Slash of Eternity has very good multipliers. At first I was reluctant to use her, but in the end, going with a full Atk Youmu really did pay off. With her SP pool, especially at early-midgame, I wouldn't really recommend putting her in the front lines as a mook sweeper but she's very good vs bosses.

As for your Minoriko, I dunno... I actually stopped raising her MAG cause she can full/near full heal anyone but my tanks. This was when I started floors 25 and up. I just tested now and at level 754 with a mere 150 MAG stat and inferior gears (2x Ultimate ZUN Hat, Great Question's Mask), she can heal somewhere from 260-290k unbuffed. The average HP of my party (non tanks) is around 270k when geared.

[Tangrelle]

Do keep in mind said tier list was done up, around, erm, two years ago! Maybe a few things don't hold as much water as they did then, ahem <3

To be honest, I'm quite fine with using Youmu in the main game. Just give her a few sp recovery items and I honestly let her sit, Slash of Eternity, (Maybe switchout and back in to reset gauge) Focus back to like full SP, and then attack again. I think she just sort of starts at good, and then curves upward from there into Plus? Something like that <3

[Shin Rokuren]

It's the opposite for me. I used Youmu early game and she was terrible. The damage was great but with low speed and the ability to only do 2-4 sweeps before taking a backseat, I had to ditch her. The only time she started to show potential was during the very late parts of the maingame. Then I ditched her halfway though the Plus floors (I ditched a bunch of members barring key members to test new chars out) and got her back on floor 26/27 and never took her out.

That was vanilla New Game, so I really can't judge NG+ with carried over gears.

[Serela]

Youmu is a little limited by her SP pool (A problem that becomes less of an issue as time goes on, making her slowly become better, and jump up in Plus), but her damage is up there with the best in the game, and her best nuke is non-elemental with two good ones to hit WND/NTR weaknesses.

She was okay when I used her, but she was no super star like I hear about her, and I was, reasonably, cranking her MAG up so that her heal didn't suck. It still sucked

You shouldn't need to pump up her MAG much to full or nearly full heal even without a MAG buff on her; and any buff on her should solve any problem in that case. Perhaps if her SKP on MAG was neglected? MAG equips could be a short-term solution until time fixes the issue. Unless maybe she's targetting Meiling or Komachi. And then, with all levelup bonuses slotted into MND, she's got a MND stat up there with Iku, very magic tanky. As well, her spells having very low SP cost (and low delay) comes in handy if she gets Magic Drain/Destroy'd or against things with Djinn Storm, a case where all your other heal/buffers will likely have little to no SP for their costly skills.

But, in Plus Disk, other then bosses with SP drain moves she isn't as needed. At that point multi-target heals+def/mnd buffs are more spammable and high-number capable, and I'd recommend using Rumia as your secondary healer to Reimu as opposed to Minoriko. Or no secondary healer at all. ...assuming you're keeping Meiling as your perma-1st slot in bosses, with her heals, at least.

And, Tangrelle, the Tier list came out pretty much after most strategies were figured out, so for the most part, it's fine; there's a few characters whom are arguable (Aya IMO is high-tier in Plus, acting like a Chen who needs Iku help), or who scale drastically depending on what part of the game you're in.

[MysTeariousYukari]

Rumia is definately pretty solid no matter what ^_^ Main game she can Moonlight Ray things into the ground

Spoiler:

oh Hill Gigas~~

, and Plus Disk her MAG starts to really show, to the point she can be a main healer(helllooooo 200k group heal!)

I guess my Youmu complaints are more from that chunk of the game, floors 3-7 or so, where Youmu's SP counts requires a switch out after just about anything not named Present Life Slash XD Also, she doesn't quite "jump up" in SP count in Plus Disk XD Got to 30F, she only had 550 or so, a count I expected about... 10 floors earlier from mostly anyone else XD

Also, I went the entire game, up to 30F, thinking that Reisen's nuke was Lunatic Red Eyes, not Mind Starmine XD I was disapointed to find out that Mind Starmine was supposed to be the nuke, what with LRE having (IMO) the better animation

Also, assuming good leveling and an offensive build, you can get *some* use out of the Attack command actually... if you have to. After 16Fs Double Djinn Storm, I was in a losing battle, Attack command was good enough that it got me the win XD Didn't really have any cheap spells that had *any* power

Spoiler:

Yin Yang Orb? Mountain Breaker? Short Life Expectancy? yeah... right.

, so I decided to ignore focusing, and just attack XD

[Parallaxal]

I would also like to inquire about Yuuka. Say you're in a boss battle, and Master Spark is not a viable spell at the moment (High affinity, more weak to nature, what have you!) Would it be better to use Flower Shot, Gensokyo's Reflowering, or Beauty of Nature? I've taken to simply spamming Flower Shot (Mostly because I'm on floor 2 and SP costs urrrgh) but I wonder if using the other two may be better.

It's pretty situational. General rule of thumb is Gensokyo's Reflowering for low MND targets, Beauty of Nature for high MND targets, and Flower Shot for if you need Yuuka to act again soon, such as for switching someone out. Flower Shot has the highest DPS, but the other two spells can outpace it if you have buffs (which Flower Shot runs down quickly) or if you have someone to switch her out.

[PapillonReel]

I wrapped up GoS sometime last month and wanted another game to scratch that RPG itch, so I figured I'd give Labyrinth of Touhou a try. I already spoiled myself on parts of the game with a Let's Play elsewhere, so I decided to make up for it on my first playthrough by doing something weird. Long story short: I had a group of people I know pick my team for me and I'll be running through the game with them mostly blind. What could possibly go wrong? I know I shouldn't say that, since I've a feeling I'm in for some real pain here. But whatever - bring it on, game!

I think I might replace either Eirin and Shikieiki, however - their SP costs are just too damn ridiculous this early in the game. That said, it was kinda funny watching the Yama one-hit Meiling with Wandering Sin; I guess they weren't expecting you to have instant death this early in the game.  :V

[Tangrelle]

Dropping Eirin is...probably a good idea, yes <3

She's rather lackluster in terms of leveling, her SP costs are high, and her heal is really only meant for Komachi!

you may want to keep the Yama around until you see how much damage she can do with Last Judgment. It's usually quite staggering.

[Shin Rokuren]

What's with all these "first playthough" with all chars unlocked thing? Getting them manually's one of the best things in the game, imo. The starting team and early members are enough to get through early floors since their skills don't take much SP.

[Serela]

you may want to keep the Yama around until you see how much damage she can do with Last Judgment. It's usually quite staggering.

Except the SP cost isn't shoulderable in the normal game and she's, outside of bosses, basically dead weight as well because one cast and -poof- no SP. Even Youmu at least has the double SP regain on focus to help her out. Last Judgement isn't so incredibly strong that its damage overcomes it's downsides, until Plus where the issues aren't nearly as prevalent anymore.

What's with all these "first playthough" with all chars unlocked thing? Getting them manually's one of the best things in the game, imo. The starting team and early members are enough to get through early floors since their skills don't take much SP.

Yeahhhh, I have the same opinion. Honestly whenever I tried a NG+ style I couldn't do it because half the fun of the game was sapped away. And the appeal of using Plus Disk characters for maingame is greatly diminished by their mostly ridiculous SP costs...

[Zil]

Cirno is not broken in any meaning of the word.

Late response here. I'm kind of surprised to hear that really. I always thought of multi-target paralysis as being a very powerful effect, and paired with Cirno's good speed, she can usually disable the random encounters very effectively. I used her for most of the main game and I can't think of any other non plus-disk characters who offer that kind of effect along with the speed to use it fast enough. Yes, she not too hot for boss battles, but her damage isn't terrible when the enemy is weak to ice, and there are many bosses like that, and instant 50% slowdown with Icicle Fall is a powerful debuff. Again, just compared to main game characters, I don't think anyone else can lock the boss at bottom level speed like that. The debuff goes all the way with one shot, and she's got the speed to try again several times if the first few don't stick. She's no Mystia, granted, but I don't think she belongs in the fail-tier. She does her job pretty well in the main game, and can even still be used for paralyzing mooks in the plus-disk, despite the fact that other characters would be better at that point.

What's with all these "first playthough" with all chars unlocked thing? Getting them manually's one of the best things in the game, imo. The starting team and early members are enough to get through early floors since their skills don't take much SP.

And I'm also gonna strongly agree with this. The game's really meant to to played unlocking the characters as you go. It's more fun and some of those late game types are just clumsy early on. If it's your first playthrough you should really just do it normally.

In fact, I've ditched that "final boss" run I was doing. Whether or not it would have worked, it was just plain boring. Almost all the characters were nukes or some plain thing. It just didn't flow... or something. I may try a super defensive team and see how that works out. Lots of buffs and fancy moves going around.