Labyrinth of Touhou 5F

[Ghaleon]

In fact, the only bosses that are immune to debuffs after 18F are Rainbow Phoenix (who even remembers this one?), Shikieiki, Utsuho, and that floor 1 Bloodstained Seal boss with the really long name. Every other boss ranges from average boss debuff resistance (Yuka, most Plus Disk sigil guardians) to high but still doable (Hibachi, Serpent of Chaos, even the **WINNER**).

Anything with a dbf resist over 15 is too high for me to think worth bothering for IMO. I personally have little to no luck with hoping for sometimes-based attacks. For example, Yuyuko's 100% death spell works MAYBE 1/4 of the time on enemies with just 8-12 resist for me. so eff it >=P

Don't even get me started on using Tenshi's sword of rapture on a boss that buffs every stat like 16f or 20F. Seems like the only thing it would ever succeed at would be 16f's speed. Admittably that made it worthwhile, but every other boss would avoid it completely every damn time.

[Pesco]

As long as there's a chance that it could hit, it's worth trying if the damage doesn't slow you down.

[Parallaxal]

-50% Speed is still incredible even well into the Plus Disk. Just think of how many fewer turns the boss gets because of that, especially bosses that resist paralysis much better (which would be...every single Plus Disk boss except the Flame Tyrant). Many of Team Unappreciated's boss fights start with Renko spamming Galaxy Stop until the SPD debuff lands. Makes a huge difference, I assure you; I defeated Baal Avatar 14 times for that stupid Gurthang drop, and noted how different the fight became depending on whether or not the first Galaxy Stop's effect landed.

[Serela]

*cough*

With only ATK debuffs and no equipment changing (e.g. extra NTR resist), and no switching people out for empty spots, it's still not hard.

Although now I realize that the SPD debuff makes it so damn slow that switching out all but ones who'll live is very easy. So either way works.

About spamming Galaxy Stop... I remember fighting Agaustrobauma and going "well I might as well try Galaxy Stop once..." and PAR LANDED. So I brought in all my glass cannons (lol second playthrough team) and nuked it to death before Renko's insane PAR wears off ahaha

[Ghaleon]

You guys talk about how wonderful these effects are when they work...But my point is they effing dont for me >=P. And when they do, it's so damn late in the fight that the 10ish turns wasted trying to land a good debuff already outweigh the benefits, assuming the boss is even alive. Renko of course is a special case. Even then, I find I can just as easily live without her debuffs as with since their use is really limited when they don't work most of the time.

[Parallaxal]

Well then, maybe you need to sacrifice more cherished possessions to the Random Number Generator.

In Reisen's case, it's nice that the debuff effects come with her most damaging spell anyway. Doing solid DPS while letting those debuffs drop where they may, so to speak. Whereas characters who do nothing but debuff, like Renko and Cirno, I usually will only use during the beginning of the fight. In fact, that's how most of my fights go now: start with Renko to land Galaxy Stop, then switch to Reisen and keep her in full-time to reapply the debuffs a little bit at a time while still doing damage.

[Serela]

then switch to Renko and keep her in full-time to reapply the debuffs a little bit at a time while still doing damage.

typo

And yeah, I think that's how I'll use Maribel if I replace Wriggle with her. When the situation is right, of course. Too bad she doesn't hit SPD, though...

Hit 20F, so I'll probably do the final boss today... it doesn't take long once you get there :D

[Parallaxal]

Thank you, corrected.

Maribel is not bad if you want both debuffs and damage, but the reason why I prefer Reisen over her isn't because Reisen hits SPD, but because Reisen rebuffs herself a lot more easily. Whenever Reisen's buffs drop below 60%, I can easily bring them back up with Grand Patriot's Elixir in almost no time at all. I mean, it's only 1% more delay than Flight of Idaten! And she's got speed buffs anyway. Maribel's buff costs her entire active bar, and since it gives +75% at a time, using it before she hits 25% buffs wastes some of the buffs, but that allows her to drop to a lower level of buffs in the meantime.

[Garlyle]

Finally went through overhauling pages 2-5 of the Character list.

I made a few observations over on the Poolswimmer thread, but three in particular caught my eye:

Ran's Princess Tenko has a significantly higher multiplier than its SPI equivalent, although it's also got a higher MND factor but it's actually pretty significant (Just under the 600% mark I think)
Yuyuko's Saigyouji Flawless Nirvana.  It's 900% power (Megawatt, for comparison, is 1000%), but the gauge only loses 60%, as opposed to the 90%+ usually lost from other attacks.  I'm fairly certain this is the SPI nuke of the game.

Also spoilering the whole rest of this for shits and giggles and concealing boss identities.

Spoiler:

Yukari's Shikigami + spellcard formula was wrong.
It actually works like this:

(1.5 + a) x (((1.5 + b) * MAG) - (.5 * MND))
Wherein
If Ran is not in the party, a = 0
If Ran is in reserve, a = 0.5
If Ran is active, a = 1
If Chen is not in the party, b = 0
If Chen is in reserve, b = 0.5
If Chen is active, b = 1
If Chen and Ran are active, a = 1.5 and b = 1.5

Yeah, this is pretty complex and ridiculous.  It's worth noting that the last condition is a huge jump from just 'one is active and the other's in reserve'.  The jump is a difference between 500% MAG - 100% T.MND (when Chen is active and Ran is in reserve) and 900% MAG - 125% T.MND (when both are active).

And yes, that means it hits the God Tier damage multipliers in the right conditions.  And for the record; It's non-elemental and only has 50% delay.

So yeah.

[trancehime]

SEE

THIS is why I said the only reason why you ever want to use Yukari for damage dealing is for Shikigami+. Did I know this? That's a secret, but nobody listened to me yet again  :X

Re: Reisen
The fact of the matter is, for how solid Reisen's movepool is, her stats really... aren't that good.
The moral of the story here is TWINK HARDER

[Garlyle]

SEE

THIS is why I said the only reason why you ever want to use Yukari for damage dealing is for Shikigami+. Did I know this? That's a secret, but nobody listened to me yet again  :X

Uh, no.  I knew that long ago, and changed my stance a long time ago to "Jesus christ her attack sucks unless you can align for Shikigami +'s conditions to work optimally".  And I think that's what most other people did, and very few people have all three characters in their party at once it seems.

I just didn't realise how stupidly powerful it is until I actually really paid attention to it.

[Parallaxal]

All right, all right, I'll get get started on that next team with MAG and ATK-based characters that normally don't get it...

When I have time.

[trancehime]

Uh, no.  I knew that long ago, and changed my stance a long time ago to "Jesus christ her attack sucks unless you can align for Shikigami +'s conditions to work optimally".

:/

The problem is less getting the condition to work optimally and rather why exactly would you have all three of them active at once. You see, that sort of condition makes the attack insanely powerful yeah but there's absolutely no actual incentive other than Shikigami+ dealing sick damage to have ALL three of them active. At once. At least when the damage from Shikigami+ matters most! :/

[Garlyle]

:/

The problem is less getting the condition to work optimally and rather why exactly would you have all three of them active at once. You see, that sort of condition makes the attack insanely powerful yeah but there's absolutely no actual incentive other than Shikigami+ dealing sick damage to have ALL three of them active. At once. At least when the damage from Shikigami+ matters most! :/

Honestly, a team built around using it could do very well.

Chen herself doesn't need to stay in long or benefit from Spiriting Away, and Ran can hold her own and doesn't really need Spiriting Away either, letting Yukari focus on using that.  Plus Yukari's a half-decent tank herself.

I could see it working.

[trancehime]

Creating a team that's built around a particular strategy or taking advantage of a certain exploit is completely different from trying to insert the use of that certain strategy in a regular team, though.

And I am talking about the latter here.

That said, if I actually bothered to start playing Touhou Labyrinth again, I could probably make it work myself, but.

[Serela]

Yuyuko's Saigyouji Flawless Nirvana etc

Yukari's Shikigami + spellcard formula was wrong.
It actually works like this:

Unfortunately, Yuyuko's MAG due to her high leveling rate, plus her low speed, means it isn't terribly exciting. It's still a good nuke of course, but it's not going to be like HOLY SHIT DAMAGE as the formula might suggest. And unfortunately, several high bosses like Shikieiki and Serpent of Chaos (;_;) have 500 SPI affinity. She's great in Plus Disk other then that, though; her HP and MND are quite nice.

And the formula we had for Yukari's Shikigami spellcard is the same as what you had, just written out differently ;P Yukari's MAG is similarly weakened by her high leveling rate, plus you've gotta have Ran and Chen out for it to be good, AND her best way to deal damage is with Spiriting Away abuse anyway... (see Parallaxal's video where he kills Bloody Papa at a fairly low level before it attacks that way)

[Esoterica]

Unfortunately, Yuyuko's MAG due to her high leveling rate, plus her low speed, means it isn't terribly exciting. It's still a good nuke of course, but it's not going to be like HOLY SHIT DAMAGE as the formula might suggest. And unfortunately, several high bosses like Shikieiki and Serpent of Chaos (;_;) have 500 SPI affinity. She's great in Plus Disk other then that, though; her HP and MND are quite nice.

Honestly, it'd be pretty stupid if Yuyuko was a top-tier DPSer with her defensive stats.  Though with the low delay, I guess she's still pretty high up there.

[Garlyle]

And the formula we had for Yukari's Shikigami spellcard is the same as what you had, just written out differently ;P

Not quite.  Previously the way the formula was understood was that the individual multiplier would jump straight up to 3 with the matching character out; in truth, it only goes up to 2.5.  Which makes it a little more complex.

[Serela]

Not quite.  Previously the way the formula was understood was that the individual multiplier would jump straight up to 3 with the matching character out; in truth, it only goes up to 2.5.  Which makes it a little more complex.

What? Really? I could have sworn it wasn't written that way, because I've known the formula worked the way you wrote for... well, the whole time I've known Yukari's formulas :V

EDIT:Haha, I was right. I looked up old histories of the wiki page, and it was right from the beginning. Direct quote of the original wording is...

(Normal: 1.5, Ran in back row: 2, Ran in front row: 2.5, Chen and Ran in front row: 3)

And then a similar thing for the multiplier based off Chen.

Also, after looking at the old versions of the page, I remember how much DRASTICALLY better the pages looked before those images were added in and squished the pages together. Formulas actually fit on one line oh my god. Could someone either move or delete the images ;_; And I think I'm starting to like the newer formula style that's on page one. I've found myself starting to multiply the numbers to see how they are and I felt dirty ):

[Parallaxal]

Just a head's up: I made two corrections to Yukari's data on the character wiki.

First is that her second spell hits DEF, not MND.

Second is that Buddha's Stone Bowl still works on her after Spiriting Away. However, Spiriting Away raises Kaguya's bar to 12,000 rather than 10,000 like every other character, so she'll always act next. If she casts Buddha's Stone Bowl on Yukari, that sets her bar to 11,000, which means she gets to go again before the other two characters have even used their extra turns. That's why the infinite turns combo doesn't work...unless you want to buff Yukari. If you've got a few thousand SP to spare, you can keep casting Spiriting Away and Buddha's Stone Bowl over and over to buff Yukari to 100% in all stats. Not sure why you'd want to do that, though. Maybe if your remaining 2 members where Ran and Chen, I guess?

[Serela]

First is that her second spell hits DEF, not MND.

I checked the histories since it was on DEF as far as I could remember, looks like it was just messed up during the VERY recent (like within an hour) change to the new formula layout.

I really wish that spell didn't have a terrible formula, WND attacks are useful for a good amount of randoms... and it's a row attack to boot. With a horrible formula. On a character with non-stellar MAG. Ehh, whatever... at least the funner version on Maribel is good. Except it's a row so boo to randoms, and many plus disk bosses resist wind, even Serpent of Chaos (Which ALSO resists SPI, those are the two elements it always has 500 resist for except inbetween it's turns where you'll never get to act, so poor Maribel is stuck with her composite for attacking! Ahh...)

[Garlyle]

Just a head's up: I made two corrections to Yukari's data on the character wiki.

First is that her second spell hits DEF, not MND.

Second is that Buddha's Stone Bowl still works on her after Spiriting Away. However, Spiriting Away raises Kaguya's bar to 12,000 rather than 10,000 like every other character, so she'll always act next. If she casts Buddha's Stone Bowl on Yukari, that sets her bar to 11,000, which means she gets to go again before the other two characters have even used their extra turns. That's why the infinite turns combo doesn't work...unless you want to buff Yukari. If you've got a few thousand SP to spare, you can keep casting Spiriting Away and Buddha's Stone Bowl over and over to buff Yukari to 100% in all stats. Not sure why you'd want to do that, though. Maybe if your remaining 2 members where Ran and Chen, I guess?

Ah, I see!

...That's acutally kind of ingenious as a way to get around it.  Thanks for clearing those up.  Especially the former; I must have missed the fact that it was DEF instead of MND when reformatting things.

EDIT: Also, I use row spells on trash.  It's obviously not that great if there's 3 or more, but if it's only two, the 20% reduction on one generally is made up for by the fact that Row spells tend to do more than all-target spells from the same characters (Compare Shining Stars of Traumerei and Start of Heavenly Demise, for example)

[Serela]

Yeah, Row spells tend to do more, but Yukari's does terrible damage even BEFORE reduction ;P

And Mari's damage is kinda ehh before she buffs herself up, so for randoms her attacks are mostly only good on stuff weak to the element; so when that stuff weak to WND is over on the side that won't take much damage, it really sucks... then her composite is low damage on many things due to either MYS or one high defensive stat, and her SPI ones have bad MND piercing... ;_;

She's a lot better for bosses then randoms, despite being a damage character :\

[RainfallYoshi]

Is it just me, or is 14F the wall of difficulty where Labyrinth goes from "enjoyable yet difficult pace" to "lol have fun batshit". Obsidian Sorcs can go die in a fire.

[Parallaxal]

I have greater hatred for double Bronze Golem and double Manifested Knowledge on that floor.

[Pesco]

Do 14F by running from everything.

Re Shikigami+: I bet there's a true/false variable I could find in Cheat Engine for that :V

Addresses for switches on 10-12F and 13F have all been found. 16F and 23F also has switches iirc. Any other floors with stuff like that?

[Ghaleon]

I already said Yuyuko's nuke has the best formula in the game.. But upon trying it, yeah..It's not as good as you hope. Her mag just wasn't enough, and the sp cost stays far too obscene well into the plus disk. Her rec isn't steller either so after using it up switching out wont let her recover anytime soon.

I rekon the atk-based Komachi would be a better spirit nuker.

I don't think ANYBODY didn't already know that Yukari's dps wasn't garbage without a perfected Shikigami/ran combo, I dunno wtf hime is talking about...Problem is though that playing musical chairs with 3 different characters just for 1 top-tier nuker isn't really worth the effort when you can just use an ordinary nuker instead, even with Chen providing her own undoubtedly decent nukeage. Chen's just too squishy to have out for multiple attacks from Yukari, making you do triple the effort just for 1 nuke. I mean I'm sure you can get it to work, but it's just not natural, and it doesn't really exploit anything really.

[Pesco]

It's the best thing you've got if you're doing a Yukari / Ran / Reimu / Chen only team

[Ghaleon]

It's the best thing you've got if you're doing a Yukari / Ran / Reimu / Chen only team

I dunno. If you're limiting your party to that only, and you can keep chen alive without switching her out.. I'm thinking she could do some mean dps.

[Serela]

It's the best thing you've got if you're doing a Yukari / Ran / Reimu / Chen only team

gl keeping chen alive for long

Reimu lv123... I can VERY NEARLY beat the final boss each time I try ;_; I suppose I'll level a few more times.