Beat Miko on my playthrough and now I'm a bit stumped what to do next. I'm realizing that my current party has a lot of room for improvement, and most of the recorded bosses could be done better. I don't want to continue knowing that I want to restart, but I don't want to restart and do all that grinding again...I guess I could overlevel for Murakumo, but man, 450+ runs...that was about 30 hours of doing nothing but beating Murakumo. I think I might just wait for the game to be updated or something before doing anything.
Anyway, looking over my current party composition of
Sanae / Eiki / Maribel / Miko
Kogasa / Aya / Eirin / Reisen
Iku / Tenshi / Keine / Momiji
Iku and Tenshi are the core part of the team so they're obviously keepers. They're great characters too, no complaints there. Preferentially, Tenshi is the attacker and Iku is the support, they're well suited for the roles and it fits their characters perfectly too. Tenshi is already an extremely strong attacker with just Girl of Bhava-agra, her Awakening is going to make her ridiculous. Up to 30% more ATK (and all her other stats) from Keystones of Spirit as well as up to 34% (factoring buff decay with Strategist) more ATK from Courageous Sword. Combined with Girl of Bhava-agra, Tenshi is working with a 143% ATK boost before factoring actual ATK buffs. Tenshi should be one of the hardest hitting characters in the game when fully setup. Probably still not Nitori or Flandre level, but still the definitive bulky attacker.
Keine is great. I didn't realize on the first few readings of the skill, but her Organized Formation skill that restores 1 MP to characters that switch and are switched applies to any switch performed when she's on the frontline, not just ones by her (which is how every other switching skill works, only the user's switches count). This is really nice to restore MP to a character by switching with Momiji and Aya. Definitely something I want to try to use more. Besides that, she performs the typical buffing/tanking role just fine, good delays on her spells and pretty much the best MT ATK/MAG buff. Usually, Enhancer MT buffs cover healing well enough that I don't miss having a dedicated healer, which is just as well too, as Maribel took a while for her MAG to be sufficient for MT healing.
Momiji's also better than I initially expected. Instant Attack characters go well with Healer and other support subclasses for quickly doing whatever it is they need to do, so there's never really a situation that they're only useful for switching. Momiji's ability to buff accuracy has also been really handy, as it negates the possibility of a miss against the vast majority of enemies and bosses. I prefer to minimize randomness, so this is a really valuable skill for that purpose. Besides that, Momiji is by far the tankiest character in the party, far surpassing Iku or Tenshi even for MAG based attacks due to her excellent HP count and reasonably balanced affinities. For DEF attacks I don't think a single character is more durable, Momiji doesn't just have the best DEF growth in the game, she has a fairly good leveling curve to accompany it, ending up with about 25% more DEF than Tenshi does. Her ATK, while not as amazing as her DEF, is also extremely good among the cast members, on par with Eiki (after factoring Majesty giving her a higher buff baseline), and she's the only good PHY attacker in the party, though I don't really like using her to attack because that leaves me without an Instant Attacker in the back. Adding a second Instant Attacker is something I've been considering because of that, probably Mystia. Lastly, she has a racial bonus against Flying enemies, but that isn't useful too often. A free 20% damage bonus on every attack is not small though.
Kogasa's a really strong attacker. Factoring her leveling rate, her ATK is exceptional, and A Rainy Night's Ghost Story and Drizzling Large Raindrops (backed by Warrior subclass) are excellent spell cards to take advantage of it, with TRR further boosting her damage output. But that's not why I picked her. I picked her for, among other things, debuffing MND for Iku. This hasn't been very useful because Reisen does that, although a little worse (40% compared to 42%, and Sheer Force reduces resistance by 33% compared to Intense Vertigo's 20%), Reisen does all of these other things that makes her more useful to have than Kogasa. Everything else about her comes from her Awakening, and I don't really see them being that useful, although they're strong effects. Speedy Formation Change is a great skill for rapidly taking turns to heal with, but that level of healing isn't really necessary. And having her fulfill that role keeps her from debuffing MND, which is why I would want her in the front in the first place. There isn't really a specific need that Kogasa actually fills besides a strong DRK attacker, and that's handled with Eiki and, to a lesser extent, subclasses. Even if that wasn't true, there are other characters that are more useful than her for the party composition.
Aya is one of the best characters in the game, I don't think there's anything to even talk about here.
Eirin's sole purpose was to overheal, and she does that ridiculously well. Fully buffed, at level 230 she's healing 80K when characters have about 25K HP on average. But that level of durability is not really necessary, and I think that every run that I've used her in was slowed down because of it. It was never strictly necessary or even useful to overheal with her. Bulky attackers are bulky enough without the overheal. It was just excessive. Besides the overheal, she has Astronomical Entombing, which is amazingly strong, the strongest DRK attack in the party composition (even stronger than Kogasa's A Rainy Night's Ghost Story), but runs into the same problem that Kogasa has. That isn't enough of a reason to use her for me.
Reisen's one of the characters I tend to favor because of her independence. She's really easy to buff and keep buffed with Grand Patriot's Elixir, and she does so much all by herself. Besides Lunatic Red Eyes doing solid damage while applying a 40% MND debuff plus TRR and SIL at a high success rate, she's also got a wonderfully damaging MYS attack with Mind Starmine that also applies SHK at a high rate and Discarder for debuffing everything while also doing solid damage (about 75% of what Kogasa can do on average, before applying Final Blow). With her splendid MYS and DRK affinities, she's practically immune to those attacks, so she's pretty useful for the bosses that exclusively use those elements (a decent number of them, really), although she can hardly take a powerful SPI attack even with triple Grand Master Breaker Title (but she can take it). Definitely don't regret picking her over Hina for the debuffing role, Reisen has been indispensable.
Sanae is similarly useful, in that she does a lot of things all by herself. Sanae is very unique in that she's only one of two characters that have both a racial damage boosting skill and an elemental damage boosting skill (Nitori is the other one). Having Youkai Buster and Power of the Living God is an exceptional combination, because of how many youkai bosses exist and many of the party's strong attacks are SPI element (Tenshi's Sword of Hisou for ST, Eiki's Last Judgement for defense piercing, Sanae's Night of Bright Guest Stars for MT, Miko's spell cards, and the spell cards from Murakumo's Blessing, namely Start of Heavenly Demise). This can add up to being 56% more damage just for having Sanae active, and then she's got decent durability and speed, Miracle Fruit and Yasaka's Divine Wind for support, her own spell cards being amazingly strong on Plus Disk enemies and bosses (Moses' Miracle is the party's best CLD attack, a little bit stronger than Kogasa's Drizzling Large Raindrops on average), and her Awakening letting her get in on MP recovery while further strengthening Youkai Buster. Ignoring Tenshi and Iku (since the whole point is to have those two in the party), Sanae is the best character in the party next to Aya, she's just been amazing. The combination of her damage bonuses, support, and durability are wonderful, and she is one of the best MT attackers in the party composition at the same time.
Eiki was picked for Cleansed Crystal Mirror working from the backrow after Awakening, so she hasn't served the purpose that I picked her for yet. But what she has done is be the second best attacker in the party composition, capable of hitting very hard with both ATK and MAG. Factoring in Majesty giving her a maximum ATK buff of 92% instead of 86% (with Strategist) she has slightly more ATK than Momiji, and the same amount of MAG. Cleansed Crystal Mirror gives her good durability as a bulky attacker since % damage reduction is the most effective way to reduce damage from strong attacks, and when she gets ~66% on HP Strong Faith kicks in for an amazing +3 MP regen per turn. Besides that, Rod of Remorse's MP regeneration effect kicks in regardless of what Eiki does so long as an enemy wasn't killed by it, switching and Concentration also activate it. With Keine's Organized Formation and an Instant Attack character, Eiki can rapidly regenerate 6 MP before her next action (+1 from her previous action, +2 from being switched in and out, +3 upon receiving a turn with Strong Faith), so she can spam her expensive spell cards, or quickly recover after depleting her MP (+10 with Concentration). The actual power of her spell cards is also hardly lacking. Although Last Judgement is generally inferior to Tenshi's Sword of Hisou in Plus Disk, the targets it works well on are difficult to damage otherwise, and it's still one of the strongest defense ignoring attacks in the game. Trial of the Ten Kings is yet another powerful DRK spell, being marginally weaker than Kogasa's A Rainy Night's Ghost Story but debuffs all stats while being MT. And Eiki's high ATK/MAG makes her competent at using subclass spell cards like Warrior's Explosive Flame Sword. And while it isn't often helpful, Eiki can apply SIL with any attack, which seems to happen reliably on bosses that have low SIL resistance. While none of this has anything to do with the original purpose I picked Eiki for, using her has helped me understand that it's important to have characters that contribute by being alternative attackers to the Hisouten duo, since sometimes Tenshi needs to tank and Iku's damage output, while good, is not exceptional. Eiki is a great character for this role while also being able to reduce damage for everyone, and not just for herself.
Maribel is a fantastic SHK engine, but I haven't found her particularly useful for anything else besides DRK damage (again. 5 of the characters in the current party composition possess good DRK spells, 6 for Miko post-Awakening), and Guardian's Shield Bash and Reisen's Mind Starmine, although not as effective, are sufficient for consistent SHK applications. While a 100% SHK rate is important for reducing randomness, picking a character solely for that purpose feels very limiting. Though that isn't the sole reason I selected her, but Vision Sharing seems to be really hard to set up actually. First, leading with Maribel is necessary to rapidly get her buffs up. Then you'd have to drag her to the back for (probably) the attacker to buff up. Under ideal circumstances, this would only cost a turn from everyone, but even that seems like too much compared to setting up an attacker from the get-go. The alternative is to have Maribel out in the frontline, but her only roles in the front are to heal or attack. Maribel is too dependent on Grand Incantation to perform good damage, so she isn't that great of an attacker, and healing is not something that needs to be done every turn. Having Keine, Sanae, or Miko out would be preferable, there's just no room to justify Maribel.
I haven't actually used Miko yet, but she looks to fill a very similar role to Eiki as described above. Prince Shotoku's OoPArt is ridiculous. With all of her other offensive and defensive bonuses, she is clearly one of the best candidates for a bulky attacker in the party composition, aided by her attacks being SPI element and boosted by Sanae (curious if, post-Awakening, her SPI/DRK composite will benefit from Sanae even if DRK is the targeted affinity, this would be really useful if so). Besides that, she offers another small bonus like Eiki with Prince's Lecture, boosting stat buff increases and magnification. She offers enough offensively that having her out as an alternative attacker seems like a really good idea. She looks like she has potential as a tank as well, but it seems hard to figure out how to use her like that. But she could do nothing and still be useful since Prince's Lecture works in the back and requires zero setup, unlike Maribel's Vision Sharing.
Having gone through all those, the characters I want to see about replacing are Kogasa, Eirin, and Maribel. What I'm currently looking at is
Mystia: A second Instant Attack character so that I have one in the back when Momiji is in the front. Besides that extra degree of versatility, a second Instant Attack character would allow an IA Healer when Momiji is running Warrior or Transcendent, and also give an infinite MP recovery loop with Keine's Organized Formation (though this would run Momiji's buffs down to the ground, but Iku can rapidly buff them up again), giving Momiji effectively infinite MP. Mystia looks like she could be potentially more useful than Chen besides having IA, having an actually good PSN attack and a devastating WND attack that applies SIL with the best rate in the game.
Satori: One of the things that I've learned is that passively stacking damage is worth a slot in itself. Satori adds 24% damage with Trauma Recollection for targeting weakness, which is the general idea for any boss fight. She can also copy Thundercloud Stickleback from Iku to double up on that (but she can't double up on Aya's Divine Grandson's Advent because she sets the timebar to 0 with it, which is really silly) to rapidly buff a damage dealer's ATK/MAG. Although I already thought about Satori before and decided against her, I noticed a few setups while playing through that, in retrospect, could have been improved only by Satori's presence. For example, with Grandgon, I had a 2-shot setup with Eiki that did 1.7m damage with all buffs active (line-up was Iku/Sanae/Eiki/Aya). If I had Satori, it would have been 2.1m, enough to turn that 2-shot into a 1-shot. There are other things that could have been improved by having Satori around to double up on spell cards while buffing weak point damage too. 24% is a lot of damage, between racial bonuses and specific element bonuses, while being much more versatile than either of the two, and Satori herself can be a competent buffer thanks to all the other buffing characters present in the party. If nothing else, she could just go Strategist or Herbalist and contribute more than most other characters with that 24% damage bonus.
Rumia: Gives a 20% damage bonus to humans, which are common bosses, and has some status support stuff post-Awakening, plus a good MT heal. Somewhat similar situation to Maribel in that she can heal, attack, and support at the same time, but Rumia looks to do all of that better than Maribel does since she requires no extra setup to use. Not really as useful as the above two characters though.
Yuyuko: Besides the obvious DTH stuff she has going for her, she gives a 20% damage bonus to ghosts, which are common bosses, and she's a fairly durable character so she's easy to leave out in the front as a tank, or use as an attacker.
Probably going to go with Mystia, Satori, and Yuyuko, but there's hardly any rush to try out the next revisions. Would be a waste to want to restart again after finding another area that needs improving on.
