And this is coming from someone who isn't in the group of people who just run from most encounters on 17F/lastplusdiskfloors. I never even found 17F randoms difficult enough that I'd want to be running from them, those people confused me ):
On my first playthru, 17f wasn't anything special, nor was it on my last one. But in one of my middle ones it was nearly impossible to survive reliably. I think (don't quite remember) it was a party that had absolutely no form of multitarget physical attacks. I had a hell of a time dealing with those gem thingies that cast ballistic light or piercing light, and had 50 billion mnd but no defense. I think I may have had Kanako in that run, but she could not outspeed them even with some gear rearranging, so they'd still nuke my ass off before her turn.
But yeah, if you have chen, aya, mystia, etc in your party, they wouldn't be a big deal. As for the other trash, I find them to be fairly meh.
One thing that confuses me is the number of complaints about gold sorceresses. Yeah they got some strong nukes, and yes they aren't very squishy, but they aren't really extreme in any catagory, and they certainly aren't speedy, so you should be able to fire off some of your most powerful nukes with your slowest characters even, plus even if they move, I find their spells are rarely deadly because I tend to have alot of high mnd characters. Aya, chen, etc would get creamed for sure yes, but Patchy would nearly take 0s, and any tanky character like Remi, Reimu (or pure tanks obviously) should survive fine too.
