Genius of Sappherios Zansyo/Weekend

[Sakurei]

yeah, after stage 17 I got the recipe for kusanagi and created it. well, that's some crazy stuff. youmu is like twice as strong now :V I don't know how many of you will call out on me for this but man, satori can do basically nothing. she's got some generic attacks she got hit with but nothing actual strong. I don't feel like having a dead weight in a boss fight, really. she's a great character, but I just can't find any use for her in boss fights, considering a lot of these are immune/high RES to all the stuff she can do.

now in 18, there is splitting up...in 3 parties. HOORAY :V not looking forward to that. I think I'll get everyone around level 50 before I continue, though. I'm not sure what to do with my teams ~.~

[Hanzo K.]

Wait....I had Byakuren, not marisa! I forgot about that.
See, I had Byakuren around for her IND buff. My strategy was to go in and try to land Venom or Toxic with Poison Arts, given the large HP totals Yuuka had, this was a practical choice.
Also, Satori's not as deadweight as you think. Sure, she's dead weight once she runs out of Bombs and MP, but a lot of the cast is like that when they do. Mokou, Youmu, and Sakuya being the rare exceptions in the maingame, due to their nature as physical beatsticks. Yuugi, Lithos, and Remilia are likely the same in postgame. (I wouldn't know, as I haven't gotten there yet.)

In conclusion, Satori's a strong case of Magikarp Power/Lethal Joke Character. She might seem entirely underwhelming, but she's a lot stronger than one thinks.
She's also the only one for a long while who can ignore Magic Defense considerably I think. I believe that's with Medoroa?

[Sakurei]

she doesn't help me if she can't inflict poison or stat debuffs on the boss. it's as simple as that. plus I always, for some reason, need byakuren to give sakuya or youmu (depending who's with me) an elemental attack. in addition with sanae and alice, all I have left is one slot. and that one changes depending on the fight I'm in. but it has never been "oh, satori looks like she'd be most useful here, let's take her" oftentimes it's a magical attacker like patchouli or marisa. I actually have a very rigid boss-fight pattern. and with the exception of a few bosses, it always worked. youmu's slash of eternity coupled with byakuren's PATK power up and elemental weakness (if there's one) deal over 3000 damage per hit. even on genji, who had massive defenses. and now, she's actually gained a boost of 80 or so PATK due to wearing kusanagi. I don't think there are many bosses who can stand against this.

[SpoonyGundam]

3000 damage per hit, or 3000 damage total? Because if it's the latter, it's not as crazy overpowered as you think, and you might start to have some trouble once you run into bosses with 65k HP and regen. Youmu is great, but I never really felt like she was the best character in the game or anything.

Around that point, I was mostly using Mokou to blow things up for 15-35k each hit with Fujiyama Volcano, depending on the boss.

[Serela]

Satori's usefulness is highly dependent on what moves she knows; and the more notable ones aren't ones you're terribly likely to learn by chance.

Apart from using generic magic to activate a chaser, I suppose. In bosses you'd probably use Patch or Marisa if it was just a generic spell though, and not, say, Mad Thunder for elec chasers. (Sunburst would make her a decent choice for Fire too... although it's nothing compared to Mad Thunder)

If you only have some generic boring spells for her, then yeah, if she can't inflict status effects she's not worth bringing to a boss fight. (Unless it's with the intention of learning off it)

[Starxsword]

she doesn't help me if she can't inflict poison or stat debuffs on the boss.

Most bosses can be hit by one or the other. There are not all too many bosses that can ignore both. But if you do face a boss that ignores or is highly resistant to both, then yes, I don't recommend bringing Satori. Satori's other role is to heal and defend. Her Leaf Shield, Starlight Barrier, Reflect Magic, Area Heal, and Heal are very useful. All of these skills, unfortunately, require you to learn them.

3000 damage per hit, or 3000 damage total? Because if it's the latter, it's not as crazy overpowered as you think, and you might start to have some trouble once you run into bosses with 65k HP and regen. Youmu is great, but I never really felt like she was the best character in the game or anything.

Youmu's not overpowered or anything, but she is the hardest hitter consistently pre-expansion. If the boss has 65k hp and regen and there's no real edge by using other characters, your best bet is Youmu if you want pure damage. If Mokou can do 60k, expect Youmu to hit 90k. Of course, there are some enemies where this isn't the case, like enemies with resistance to her weapons or have high physical defense, you should use magic or have really high raw attack power(something Youmu lacks). Or if your other characters have slayer or can hit weakness vs the opposing enemy, use that instead. For instance, if the enemy is weak to fire, use Mokou, if the enemy is a certain creature type, like Warrior/Magicians, try out Nitori.

Also, if you are up against multiple enemies, Asura is the best, but against single targets, Mannusya is generally the best.

[homing curvy laser]

In conclusion, Satori's a strong case of Magikarp Power/Lethal Joke Character. She might seem entirely underwhelming, but she's a lot stronger than one thinks.

She's actually just a Blue Mage with a few status spells. Mostly useless if you don't get her to learn monster skills, pretty amazing if you get the right ones. Also, put the right things in the right places and you get basically a slower and cuter Marisa, with access to all elements.
In fact, she's the only reliable dark-element magic user in the game, because Byakuren sucks at that and Patchouli needs to spend bombs to use hers. In the expansion there's also Remilia, but her usage of that element is kind of weird.

[SpoonyGundam]

Youmu's not overpowered or anything, but she is the hardest hitter consistently pre-expansion. If the boss has 65k hp and regen and there's no real edge by using other characters, your best bet is Youmu if you want pure damage. If Mokou can do 60k, expect Youmu to hit 90k.

I don't know, man. I never really saw Slash of Eternity do what I managed with Fujiyama Volcano.

I was playing the game alongside a friend the first time I played it, and he was shocked that I was able to two-shot most of the bosses from Genji on. And he was using Slash of Eternity! Maybe it was because I went after slayer weapons over raw damage when preparing for boss fights (I one-shot Matsuba using a spear I got from the Garden of the Sun, eight stages ago at that point.), but I tried similar slayer setups on other characters without seeing the same results.

I'm looking at an Anastasis fight on Nicovideo right now and this dude is doing 900 per hit with Slash of Eternity (~2000 with a crit). So somewhere in the realm of 6-7k average each attack, and when I did the fight Mokou was easily exceeding that without a crit and doubling the best case scenario with a crit. And this Youmu was using the Doujigiri Yasutsuna versus my Mokou's Turtlesmasher. Anastasis is weak to slashing and resists bludgeoning. The reason I picked Anastasis for the comparison was because it was the fight where Mokou was at her weakest*, and even then there's still a pretty staggering damage difference. Higher raw attack (Probably not even much, since Youmu's weapon had a good 30 points on mine) and a slayer can't be the only reasons for that.

I'm not saying Youmu's not good, but I think the claim that she's consistently the hardest hitter is a little suspect. Especially when her main attack is something as random as Slash of Eternity. The guy in this video was getting mostly three hits and never doublecast SoE. That probably felt pretty bad.

*I ultimately had her sit the fight out, but only because she needed a few more bombs to take Anastasis down and I somehow never noticed the +bombs accessories.

[Sungho]

If someone's resisting a weapon type, use Byakuren's Elemental Weapon, which 'overwrite's the weapon type, unless you're trying to beat the game without her.
Youmu's Crescent Moon Slash + Byakuren's buff was how I pushed through most of the game.
Slash of Eternity has rather meh accuracy, and 3-hits come out 50% of the time, so that's that.

I, myself, was never aware Mokou can deal that sort of damage.
She becomes very useless when she runs out of bombs, unlike Youmu, so I guess I never used Mokou to the fullest.

[Starxsword]

@Youmu and Mokou: That is not a good comparison. You are comparing Youmu with Doujigiri Yasutsuna vs Mokou with Turtle Smasher against Anastasis. Both Sakuya and Mokou should do more damage than Youmu in this scenario without buffs. Anastasis good defense and that hurts your damage output a lot, especially since Youmu does not have raw attack power. Against high defense enemies, you are better off using attacks with higher raw power. You will get better numbers if you switch to Asura stance.
This is the same case as when you try to fight the Terminator Mark II. Your damage on it is nothing, you hit it for zeroes using Youmu with Lightning enchant. This is simply because you do not have the raw power beat their defense. You need Byakuren or Sanae's buff and possibly some attack up items, before you can go nuts. If you want to compare, why not compare Youmu vs the goddesses against Mokou vs the goddesses, both using Kusanagi? Or just compare it against any regular enemies? I am sure Youmu will consistently outdamage Mokou.

In most scenarios, Youmu will outdamage Mokou. But that is assuming you are using buffs, unless you are up against enemies with lackluster defense. Against high defense enemies, her damage is not very impressive and you are better off using either Mokou or Sakuya. If you want to compare Youmu's damage with Mokou, just have them both use similar weapons with similar slayers. Mokou's growth tree only gives her 30 attack more than Youmu, so that is not a very big edge.

[Sakurei]

when I say 3k I mean per hit of course, not in total. my youmu is loads stronger than my mokou, but also has level difference reasons.

I ALWAYS go with elemental weakness + byakuren's ATK buff. so of course youmu does tons and tons of damage. I don't see the problem with her. to me, she's the best character in the game, but that may be biased :V seeing how she's my favorite after Flandre. I was planning to go into stage 18 today, but I'm not sure how to split up my party. it's probably similar to last time where one faces physical, one magical...I dunno about the last team, but it feels liek mixed is a good guess.

any tips for that?

[Serela]

party 1 faces a variety of enemies. Some reflect magic or physical, some are Dragons that are hard to kill without slayer on them, and lots have an elemental weakness. I recommend having Byakuren/Patch/Nitori set up so you have Byakuren buff one, and then chaser rape- and Nitori with a sword for Dragon Fang Strike. You may want Alice for this party! The enemies are kinda scary! Try to get some kind of elemental resists on your guys too, here. Fire Breath, if nothing else, is kind of common here. (If you're not using Alice, then Mokou is the one leftover to tank, but you'll need to set this party up with good enough equipment to make it through in that case)

Party 2 faces some enemies that null or are resistant against magic, and lots of Permanent status effects. You need EVERYONE IN THIS PARTY to be able to highly resist Restrict and/or Permanents. Might wanna throw a small armor with resists on someone even though they can wear something better. The Pinaka spear is great here because there's some spirits to slay and some enemies are weak to pierce. I'd recommend Sakuya/Aya/Youmu  (Get Youmu's restrict resist +1 bonus for 3 pts in Deva!) and Sanae using a patk buff and then being on healing/status cure duty if needed. You can get away with going lite on the status resistance if you're gonna have Sanae just use her RES buff when needed, though, so whatever works out.

The third party fights a lot of enemies weak vs. Light (and/or Dark, but just concentrate on Light) or Elec, along with some annoying slimes that you want to blast out quickly with either Fire or Water. Some enemies highly resist or reflect physicals. Those are the three elements you need to cover. There is also a lot of petrification in this party, so get out your petrification resist items! Reimu and Satori are shoe-ins for this party, as long as Satori has moves to cover at least 2 of those three elements; and Marisa is plenty useful to hit those Elec and WTR/FIR weaknesses. If Alice is your party one tank, Mokou is your tank/panic-nuke-button for this one. You'll have to be somewhat careful if you're using Mokou here though. (Also the deer are weak to Elec, which is non-obvious. Iirc the elephant things and cockatrices too, but they are also weak to light along with some of the other enemies)

The individual sections aren't very long and they all have a midway one-time healing circle, so don't worry too much about conserving your MP as long as you don't go crazy.

[RegalStar]

Satori's boss killing damage, for pretty much all of the latter half of the main game, comes directly from Mad Thunder, which is a stupidly overpowered attack as far as magic spells goes. If you didn't pick it up from Iku, then she won't be able to do much damage to bosses. She can still pull her weight against randoms with the right status spells though.

Slash of Eternity isn't that strong of a spell. Before level 60 Youmu is a decent damage dealer, but she's not really godly. It's when she picks up Paschal that she becomes peerless at damage dealing. If you're facing high defense enemies before you get Paschal, you might want to try Deva Stance instead. Deva Sword skills have high attack multiplier instead of high damage multiplier, so it gets past high defense a bit better. On Biotopos though Mokou with a turtlesmasher is WAY better than Youmu though no matter what you do.

[SpoonyGundam]

If you want to compare, why not compare Youmu vs the goddesses against Mokou vs the goddesses, both using Kusanagi?

The final boss has much higher defense than Anastasis. 800 to 300. If defense actually matters as much as you say, the difference should be more pronounced. At the very least, I'd expect the numbers to be similar, but you could get Fujiyama Volcano to 0 cooldown by that point and be constantly throwing out big damage instead of having to use a weaker attack on off turns. More importantly, if Youmu isn't good against high defense, who does that leave that she's actually the best against? The only bosses from Genji onward that have less defense than Anastasis are Chihiro and Lithos.

But I don't have an endgame save to test it anymore, and I didn't have anywhere near the materials to make the Kusanagi my first time through or I would have tried it then.

Deva Sword skills have high attack multiplier instead of high damage multiplier, so it gets past high defense a bit better.

I suspected this was why I saw Mokou doing as much damage as she did, but my Japanese isn't good enough to really work out the damage formula. If that's what's causing the difference, it's more of a case of Slash of Eternity not being as good as advertised, and they should be doing similar damage if Youmu used Deva stuff more often.

On Biotopos though Mokou with a turtlesmasher is WAY better than Youmu though no matter what you do.

Yep

[Starxsword]

The final boss has much higher defense than Anastasis. 800 to 300. If defense actually matters as much as you say, the difference should be more pronounced.

Having enough attack power matters. You don't need to compare it to just the final boss. Compare it with any enemy. I use the final boss as an example, because that is one of the enemies where you should be buffing your attack and have attack up items.
From my uses of Slash of Eternity, it is very good. But then again, I make sure I buff my characters beforehand. Otherwise, you are better off using the other Sword skills with higher damage multipliers.

I suspected this was why I saw Mokou doing as much damage as she did, but my Japanese isn't good enough to really work out the damage formula. If that's what's causing the difference, it's more of a case of Slash of Eternity not being as good as advertised, and they should be doing similar damage if Youmu used Deva stuff more often.

The advertised damage seems right. It advertises 3 to 5 at low damage. The other sword skills say high or very high damage. They would both be weaker than Slash of Eternity though, assuming you buff or if the enemy doesn't have high defense.

Against Biotopos, that would be a good enemy to compare against by having Youmu use the Turtle Smasher. Buff sufficiently and see if it is possible to exceed 40k. The numbers should favor Youmu.

[Sakurei]

well, I started to do stage 17. oh god why. I tried to cheese it by going with a full party per route, backtrack, re-arrange party for 2nd path etc. the way the dungeon is made allows this.

I wiped because the HDD disk crashed 4 of my characters in one hit :V sanae got killed before she could flee. welp. now I have 2 choices: either do something else ingame, wai until every enemy has respawned and repeat everything OR do it like you're supposed to and form 3  four-member parties. also, don't tell me my RES was horrible. that was just super unlucky. I do have proper resistances on everyone by now. Next time I will probably use sanae RES buff just to be sure. that was ridiculous.
for experience's sake, I'll probably do the former and farm for some items and supplies and whatnot on lower stages.

[Serela]

can't we just leave it at both of them being fabulous :V (If the enemy has high fire resist though that hurts Fujiyama)

Slash of Eternity and Fujiyama Volcano are both fearsomely strong attacks, although SoE is certainly a little more luck-based since 3~5 hits and Youmu relies on her massive crit damage multiplier. For that matter, other stances don't stand a chance on bosses, regardless of what people are saying. The damage is HORRIBLE comparatively in boss situations pre-lv-60, plus it hurts her criticals. Her Level Eighty tier Deva nuke might be okay, but by then you have other options...

Exception is the final boss in expansion, because Asura's nonspells are nifty for AoE damage there, plus you'll have Paschal around. You might have Conjoined Stance by then anyway, though. Reincarnation Slash~

Cut by Sakurei:I think HDD Format ignores at least some of your RES
and why do you have to wait for all the enemies to respawn :V You could just... walk back in, and only a few should be back. The one-time healing circles respawn, for that matter.

[Sakurei]

because if I walk in immediately again with a half assed 3 man party, they'll get killed nonetheless. I'd rather kill every encounter again so that I can be safe. it also allows me for more mineral drops :V I'll probably need them.

I only used up one 1-time healing circle until that point, too. I was doing well, I think. that encounter was just complete bad luck. I suppose getting a crushing weapon for the HDDs is a good idea. mokou currently has a sword ~.~

[SpoonyGundam]

Having enough attack power matters. You don't need to compare it to just the final boss. Compare it with any enemy. I use the final boss as an example, because that is one of the enemies where you should be buffing your attack and have attack up items.
From my uses of Slash of Eternity, it is very good. But then again, I make sure I buff my characters beforehand. Otherwise, you are better off using the other Sword skills with higher damage multipliers.

The Anastasis example I gave earlier was with buffing. She's got significantly less defense than Biotopos, so what makes you think Youmu would suddenly do so much more damage there?

I'm looking at the damage formula on the Japanese wiki at the moment, and the first step is multiplying the user's attack by the skill's power. The target's defense is subtracted from that, then the skill's damage multiplier is applied. What this means is that attack buffs are going to have a significantly greater impact against high-defense enemies (I.E. Almost every boss in the last half of the game) when applied to skills with high base power as opposed to skills with a high damage multiplier. Fujiyama Volcano has a base power of 350, Slash of Eternity has 105. Attack buffs are over three times as effective on FV than SoE. Mathematically! SoE's 150 damage multiplier (Compared to FV's 101) isn't enough to make up that difference. And it just gets worse when you consider that each individual hit of SoE is reduced by defense. Multiplying for slayer and elemental weakness happens near the end, and having a very high base power will give that bonus a much more profound effect. So you say attack buffs make Slash of Eternity good? They make Fujiyama Volcano even better. Also FV is over twice as accurate and casts faster. :V Now it makes sense why I was seeing such high numbers with Mokou, but someone correct me if I'm reading this wrong. Mokou's the only physical character with such a high base power attack until Yuugi strolls in with her swagger and 800 power Knockout in Three Steps.

Paschal does way better at 275 base power per hit, but she can't get the cooldown there below 2 turns. So unless it consistently does three times the damage of FV (Not necessarily improbable, considering its crit rate), it's kind of a wash. But in the expansion Mokou can use Fujiyama Big Eruption every other turn (500 base power) and can use Final Finger (400 base power, defense piercing) during the cooldown. I can't see Youmu keeping pace with that without being lucky as hell with doublecasts. And if Mokou gets a crit there's no contest.

I don't even really think Youmu's better in randoms. She needs a turn to set up her stance to do any serious damage, and by that point Mokou has already blown something up or nailed something with Soul Finger/Final Finger. And she'll be tagging things with status effects all the time for free too! Can Youmu blind a Hydra? No. She can't.

Is Youmu a good character? No doubt. She's a great! But she isn't far and away the best character. Hell, a little while ago I saw a video of someone fighting the final boss, and buffed Sakuya (Vyse Sword, meaning no Exorcism) was keeping up pretty close with buffed Youmu's SoE (Doujigiri Yasutsuna) by using crappy-ass Full Moon Revenge. She's about as good as other heavy-hitters. Maybe slightly better against the final boss, assuming you're using Paschal, since other characters won't likely reach a high enough level to get a new big attack, but that's about it.

can't we just leave it at both of them being fabulous :V

That's what I'm saying!

It's just a shame nobody ever takes Mokou out of the commander slot.

[Serela]

They're pretty vulnerable to instant death too- I gave my Aya an Instant Kill axe since Youmu/Sakuya were super strong already.

And, what, did they actually run out of lives? /headtilt Even if they did, there's the healing circles, so it wouldn't have to be a half-assed party... heheh, in any case, whatever works :3 Getting more stuff certainly never hurts.

Anyway, the damage calculating I was cut by is pretty bad :V No, attack buffs aren't three times stronger for Mokou then Youmu, that's silly- your math there is wrong. (If nothing else, it's because Mokou only has 1 hit getting powered up and Youmu has 3 to 5 hits becoming stronger) For that matter, you also don't keep in mind that Youmu gets huge damage boosts off of her criticals, which have several bonuses to damage and chance to occur from her weapons and pow trees and Manussya Stance buff. Also, Youmu gets a new nuke in Expansion to deal with Mokou's new Fujiyama Big Eruption (Which you can use every turn if you use a spear, which can be ideal sometimes depending on how early in the game you learn it)

Which one is better is a situational thing. The criticals are far and away what generally carries Youmu through, though, later in.

edit:AND WHY DOES IT SAY I'M USING WINDOWS NT :boggle:

[SpoonyGundam]

Anyway, the damage calculating I was cut by is pretty bad :V No, attack buffs aren't three times stronger for Mokou then Youmu, that's silly- your math there is wrong. (If nothing else, it's because Mokou only has 1 hit getting powered up and Youmu has 3 to 5 hits becoming stronger)

The first step is literally multiplying the character's attack value by the skill's power. If Byakuren is boosting a character's attack by 50, for all intents and purposes, Mokou is getting a bonus of 175 and Youmu is getting 52.5 out of it due to the difference between their skill's power. Youmu is hitting up to five times, yes, but the more important thing is that Mokou's one hit is influenced far less by the target's defense. Which I'll reiterate that all but two bosses in the last half of the game have significant amounts of, and even more do in the expansion.

Mokou comes out of the attack-defense part of the formula with a much higher base damage value, which means a much higher value to multiply by when slayers and elemental weaknesses come into the picture. Youmu gets many hits, but they're all reduced by defense. Five hits of 500 cut by half through defense ends up being noticeably less than one hit of 2500 cut by a tenth, and it's the number after the defense cut that gets multiplied by everything. The crit bonuses do a great job of boosting Youmu's damage afterwards, but you aren't realistically going to get a crit every hit, and each non-crit ends up being pretty insignificant damage. You're fighting the RNG on two fronts with SoE, which is pretty much the opposite of consistency in my book. I want to sit down and actually do some for-real full damage calculation, but I'm still a bit confused on where to look up some of this stuff.

Best-case scenario, I could see them doing similar damage, but even that's a little hard to believe with the evidence I've seen. I mean, my Satori was the same damage per turn on average against Anastasis as this Nicovideo guy's Youmu. Using Plasma Ball. And that attack sucks! High defense isn't really a good excuse there when almost every boss a few stages before and after have even higher defense.

[Sakurei]

and what do you know of that guy's youmu? maybe she wore crap equipment because he didn't care enough to craft a proper weapon/armor/whatever for her. I don't know how much damage satori does with plasma ball for you, but I highly doubt that my level 53 youmu would do less, even if it's without any criticals. she did around 1200-1500 damage per hit with SoE against genji, and that without critical. and that 3, 4 or 5 times in one round ended the fight pretty damn quickly. I don't know WHAT you are doing with youmu in this game, but it's obviously wrong. same goes for that guy in the niconico video.

what I am doing now is saying that you're making youmu weaker than she is - not that she's doing more damage than mokou (though, in my case, it applies; unless the enemy's weak to fire and youmu doesn't have fire elemntal casted  on her). Mokou's dealing fantastic damage, but she's just less varied than youmu and sakuya due to the element of her attacks. she becomes straight out useless against anything that resists fire, because honest man's death and iwakasa (or whatever it's called) just don't deal the damage necessary.

just watch me :V I'll clear the last fight without using mokou and hax my way with youmu because I am biased like that.

[SpoonyGundam]

and what do you know of that guy's youmu? maybe she wore crap equipment because he didn't care enough to craft a proper weapon/armor/whatever for her.

Oooooooorrrrrr I could know that the guy had the strongest pre-expansion katana equipped. Which is probably more effective than the Kusanagi for her overall, due to the bonuses to crit and the doublecast chance.

That's a thing I could know.

I'm not trying to say Youmu isn't capable of killing things. Just that she's not capable of doing 40k per attack with Slash of Eternity against high-defense bosses.

I'm willing to believe it if she can, but I need to see evidence for that. I've looked, and nothing has led me to believe that those numbers are possible, much less common. She's a pretty good character! She just doesn't tower above everyone else in the game like a lot of people I've come across seem to think.

[Starxsword]

I'm looking at the damage formula on the Japanese wiki at the moment, and the first step is multiplying the user's attack by the skill's power. The target's defense is subtracted from that, then the skill's damage multiplier is applied.

I request more clarification on this. So you have user's attack multiplied by skill's power. Then you subtract defense. Then skill's damage multiplier? What is the skill's damage multiplier? How is this different from the skill power?

The following numbers I posted would be wrong if I don't understand how the formula works. In either case, I will post them so you can see why as attack power goes up it can only favor low attack power people regardless of the formula you use.

But I would like a more accurate formula, so I can show you the numbers. Because I can see that your math is wrong from your explanation.

The Anastasis example I gave earlier was with buffing. She's got significantly less defense than Biotopos, so what makes you think Youmu would suddenly do so much more damage there?

Huh, I have no idea how you are getting those numbers then. A buffed Youmu would not be doing a total of 2k damage to Anastasis. What kind of buff are you using? Byakuren's buff all and not her attack buff? Do you not have Induction at all? Does Youmu have no attack power at all?

The first step is literally multiplying the character's attack value by the skill's power. If Byakuren is boosting a character's attack by 50, for all intents and purposes, Mokou is getting a bonus of 175 and Youmu is getting 52.5 out of it due to the difference between their skill's power. Youmu is hitting up to five times, yes, but the more important thing is that Mokou's one hit is influenced far less by the target's defense. Which I'll reiterate that all but two bosses in the last half of the game have significant amounts of, and even more do in the expansion.

Your math is off. You put up the numbers and yet you do not see how this favors low attack users.

Pretend the enemies' defense is 100, pretend the buff is +100 power.
Let's do some math here, as you already put up all the multipliers necessary.
Fujiyama Volcano - 350 power
Slash of Eternity - 105 power, 3 to 5 hits.

Let's say Mokou has 370(Mokou has tree that gives 70 attack) attack power and Youmu has 340(Youmu has tree that gives 40 attack).

For Mokou, 370 * 3.5 - 100 = 1195
For Youmu, it would be 340 * 1.05 - 100 = 257 * 4(3 to 5 hits) = 1028.

Now with the buff you have 470 * 3.5 - 100 = 1545
For Youmu, it would be 440 * 1.05 - 100 = 362 * 4(3 to 5 hits) = 1448.

Let's use even higher attack. 670 vs 640.
670 * 3.5 - 100 = 2245.
640 * 1.05 - 100 = 572 * 4 = 2288.

BTW, if you do not already realized, if I do (670 - 100) * 3.5 vs (640 -100) * 1.05, the higher the first number is, the more it favors low multi-hit attacks.

The crit bonuses do a great job of boosting Youmu's damage afterwards, but you aren't realistically going to get a crit every hit, and each non-crit ends up being pretty insignificant damage.

I'll just assume you don't use Youmu much then. Depending on the weapon combination, her crit chances get very high. She has about a 75%(using Human Realm stance) crit chance late game. This is in addition to doing extra damage when landing crits. Unlike other characters, Youmu's crit is about 3x damage, instead of 2x damage.

I'm not trying to say Youmu isn't capable of killing things. Just that she's not capable of doing 40k per attack with Slash of Eternity against high-defense bosses.

And I am saying you are wrong. Did you know that the Terminator Mark II has even higher defense and you can do over 40k damage to that using Slash of Eternity?

Before counting it out? Why not just do 2 trials in game? Use Mokou with Fujiyama Volcano and compare it with Slash of Eternity. Both using the same weapons.
I use both Mokou and Youmu and as far as I can tell, Youmu's damage exceeds Mokou's.

Oooooooorrrrrr I could know that the guy had the strongest pre-expansion katana equipped.

You do know that the strongest katana is not the Doujigiri Yasutsuna right? However, it is the best katana to use against the final boss.

[Serela]

Also, since it was brought up- I tried Sakuya as a damage dealer against the lunatic version of the final boss, using Elegant Murder Doll with the Ice Sword and Youmu using the Kusanagi (No slayer effect on that version). Youmu greatly outdamaged Sakuya with Paschal, despite having no slayer for advantage (Nor the Katana critical bonuses) and Sakuya using a powerful weapon with 100 exorcism and her best nuke. In exchange, Sakuya has stronger non-cards, but in this case...

Eventually I dumped Sakuya for Satori which worked out a million times better :V

Anyway, even if you go by pure numbers- the reason youmu is strong is a lot because, as I said, her criticals. Her bonuses to chance to deal them, multihits to increase chance of getting them on a regular basis, and the huge bonus to how much pure damage the critical itself does. That boosts the damage significantly.

And... starxsword didn't factor in that there is a 150% damage multiplier at the end of SoE hits, so the numbers should be 50% higher. Mokou, however, ALSO has additional damage in the fire-elemental portion of Fujiyama Volcano. I'm not sure how it's calculated though. I -think- it's a 100 power 150 multiplier fire element attack addition.

[Sungho]

Nope, It's 350% Attack factoring in enemy's MDEF with 100% Multiplier(Has nothing to do with Fujiyama Volcano having 100% Multiplier), with 150 elemental strength.
Double the damage normally. More than double if enemy has lower MDEF.
Hell, Mokou IS strong.

The thing I liked about Youmu was that she was the most MP-efficient physical attacker.
If you're in the later parts of the game, one turn for the stance is nothing too crippling.

[SpoonyGundam]

What is the skill's damage multiplier? How is this different from the skill power?

Scroll through this. The 攻撃力 column is the skill's power, and the 倍率 column is the damage multiplier.

Power gets directly multiplied by the character's attack before defense is involved, while the multiplier is used later in the formula along with all the other multipliers. Slayers, crit damage, etc. I believe the numbers are percentages, because multiplying 400 by 350 gets an impossibly large number when the damage formula doesn't seem to call for any huge division. But I'm still trying to work the whole thing out.

You'll notice that skills with power significantly higher than 100 are very rare, and are usually reserved for two bomb spellcards and last words. That's because they're influenced more directly by the user's offensive stat and tend to ramp up in damage much more quickly as the number raises. It's completely intentional that Mokou's spellcards all have high power. IIRC, Strawberry Bose themselves described her as dealing tons of damage, but with limited shots.

I have no idea how the elemental damage bonus is calculated, but FV gets that too and few bosses in the late game actually resist fire, so yeah.

The main point to take away is that Mokou's base power is much higher, which gives a much higher number for the various multipliers to work off of in the end.

A buffed Youmu would not be doing a total of 2k damage to Anastasis.

2k per crit, not 2k total. It would have been something like 6-7k average. Which is not bad at all, but less than what I pulled with Mokou.

Pretend the enemies' defense is 100, pretend the buff is +100 power.

100 defense is low. Biotopos has 500. The system is designed in such a way that attacks with higher base power will perform better against enemies with high defense, and vice-versa. It's intentional, and it's why axes are described as being better against high defense targets and spears as better against low defense. Their skills heavily favor power and multiplier, respectively.

It's why Youmu can't do crap to the Existence Hater, but Mokou knocks it down in 2-3 attacks. Which I did. I never even saw its super attack and it was awesome.

And I am saying you are wrong. Did you know that the Terminator Mark II has even higher defense and you can do over 40k damage to that using Slash of Eternity?

I'm assuming that involves a defense debuff? Terminator has famously low resistance (As in 0), so it's really easy to neuter its defenses. Biotopos has 80 resistance, which isn't insurmountable, but may take a few casts to get through. Final boss has 110, so good luck with that.

Meanwhile Mokou just doesn't care about defense.

Before counting it out? Why not just do 2 trials in game? Use Mokou with Fujiyama Volcano and compare it with Slash of Eternity. Both using the same weapons.
I use both Mokou and Youmu and as far as I can tell, Youmu's damage exceeds Mokou's.

If I still had a late-game save to test with, I wouldn't be making these posts. :V

And it's not like I'm anti-Youmu or anything. She was in my main dungeoning party for most of the game, and she was in my final boss party with the Doujigiri Yasutsuna. I was just never blown away by the damage she did like I was with Mokou.

Incidentally, Mokou ended up being stuck in the first phase party for the final boss, since I couldn't find anyone else that could end that fight before I died of boredom.

You do know that the strongest katana is not the Doujigiri Yasutsuna right? However, it is the best katana to use against the final boss.

Ah, yeah, sorry. I can't keep katana names straight.

But the point still stands that she had an excellent weapon, and the argument can still be made that it's comparable or better than the Kusanagi for what Youmu needs to do, even in that particular fight.

Incidentally, 1500 on Genji per hit without a crit sounds pretty extreme compared to what I'm seeing elsewhere. To the point that it's pretty hard to believe it's just a level/equipment difference. Are you sure you aren't playing on Easy mode, Sakurei? It's what Weekend defaults to initially, so you might be if you haven't thought to check.

Nope, It's 350% Attack factoring in enemy's MDEF with 100% Multiplier(Has nothing to do with Fujiyama Volcano having 100% Multiplier), with 150 elemental strength.
Double the damage normally. More than double if enemy has lower MDEF.
Hell, Mokou IS strong.

Aha, that's probably the main reason why I was seeing the damage difference, actually. Dealing with high defense better is definitely a factor, but essentially dealing double damage against anything that doesn't resist fire is huge.

[Starxsword]

Power gets directly multiplied by the character's attack before defense is involved, while the multiplier is used later in the formula along with all the other multipliers. Slayers, crit damage, etc. I believe the numbers are percentages, because multiplying 400 by 350 gets an impossibly large number when the damage formula doesn't seem to call for any huge division. But I'm still trying to work the whole thing out.

I see, so there is Power of the skill and there is another hidden damage bonus? I did not go to the wiki because it is hard to navigate. I am just mentioning my experience from using both of them.
But yeah, you see what I am trying to say. As your attack goes up, Youmu's damage outpaces Mokou. This is mainly because defense does nerf quite a bit of Youmu's damage.

And yes, Mokou does quite good damage with her Fujiyama Volcano, better than Youmu on high defense targets, and that skill is very useful. I mainly use it against higher defense enemies.

Scroll through this. The 攻撃力 column is the skill's power, and the 倍率 column is the damage multiplier.

I can read a bit of kanji and hiragana, but not nearly enough to read some of the other parts. Some of the stuff there seems interesting and it would be cool to know.

What about 強度125? Does that modify damage too? What is that? Google translate says strength. Is that how much the skill is affected by the land level?

I'm assuming that involves a defense debuff? Terminator has famously low resistance (As in 0), so it's really easy to neuter its defenses. Biotopos has 80 resistance, which isn't insurmountable, but may take a few casts to get through. Final boss has 110, so good luck with that.

Yes and no. You could lower their defense, but not necessary. The thing is Sanae's Wind of Miracles is stackable. So, you can stack that as much as you like. So, doing stupid amounts of damage is not out of the question.
From the png, I saw Byakuren and Sanae in that group, so I am unsure if Wind of Miracles was stacked accidentally or on purpose when Mokou did about 40k damage. Byakuren can re-apply the attack buff before it ends, so Sanae's Wind of Miracles buff to attack will just keep going up. Normally, the stacking ends when the buff ends. So, you have to re-stack the whole thing again.

Incidentally, Mokou ended up being stuck in the first phase party for the final boss, since I couldn't find anyone else that could end that fight before I died of boredom.

I use magic on the first fight. The second fight, I had both Mokou and Youmu in the party, but I did not have the Kusanagi when I fought the final boss. 30 Iron is kinda on the high side...

Hell, Mokou IS strong.

I agree, the only thing I disagree with is that she is somehow consistently outdamaging Youmu, which I do not observe in my games.

Incidentally, 1500 on Genji per hit without a crit sounds pretty extreme compared to what I'm seeing elsewhere. To the point that it's pretty hard to believe it's just a level/equipment difference. Are you sure you aren't playing on Easy mode, Sakurei? It's what Weekend defaults to initially, so you might be if you haven't thought to check.

Does easy mode even affect bosses? I thought it only affected enemies?

[Sungho]

強度, or 属性強度, is what I usually translate as 'elemental strength'.(I'm sure TheNewGuy found a better term for it, but I forgot.)
Most notable in Nitori's Commander Bonus.

Simply put, it amplifies the damage change from affinities.

For a simple example, consider a FIR attack that would deal 1000 damage.
A enemy with ◎FIR(%25) will receive 1000-750 =  250 damage.
A enemy with ?FIR(%300) will receive 1000+2000 = 3000 damage.

If there's a elemental strength +10%
A enemy with ◎FIR(%25) will receive 1000-750*1.1 =  175 damage.
A enemy with ?FIR(%300) will receive 1000+2000*1.1 = 3200 damage.

(example from JPN wiki FAQ)

If an enemy with ◎FIR is hit by Fujiyama Volcano(+FIR multiplier 100%, elemental strength 150%), the additional damage will deal 0 damage. (100-75*1.5 < 0)
That's the one of the reasons why Nitori shouldn't be commander when hunting for yukkuri.

The penalty for hitting resistant enemies doesn't exist in 東方幻想魔録~Devil of Decline. Says some reliable source.
Speaking of other games, Ichigobose made a site for the new game about 9 days ago. Haven't seen any kind of that games to judge properly.


About Easy Mode, I think it effects bosses.
The official site mentions that you can go through the stage with Easy Mode and play the Bosses on normal difficulty.
Sorta implies that Easy Mode do effect Bosses.

[Serela]

Speaking of other games, Ichigobose made a site for the new game about 9 days ago. Haven't seen any kind of that games to judge properly.

It seems that it's going to be vaguely along the lines of either Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh, but we only have a couple screenshots to evaluate from.  link! It's interesting how it uses DoD graphics for everything apart from enemy monsters, which are GoS-style; there's even an entirely new enemy there. (Don't be confused with the DoD ghost; it's because it's a enemy "character" and not a summoned monster) Next update on Dec 13, hopefully it'll have a video!

About Mokou in the first party, she annihilates Lithos if you have a spear with exorcism, so totally worth it. Otherwise she's probably still best on Lithos so she can hit the fire -and- spear weakness, especially due to that 160% (pow tree bonus) elemental strength on fire. If you have Fujiyama Big Eruption, she'll hit like 20k with Sanae buffs and the good attack items on the second party (e.g. playing smartly) but obviously anyone who is SANE will not have FBE yet. It was nice to reliably beat them before Anastasis ever reappears when trying to beat MURDER GODDESSES though.