Author Topic: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F  (Read 186943 times)

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #870 on: September 13, 2017, 01:09:56 PM »
Does the bug also remove all status effects from the enemy as well?

Not in about 50 uses of it while an enemy was PAR'd or TRR'd. It does cure those for allies, though.

EDIT: For a random thing I just found out, Patchouli's Passive Philosopher's Stone can be PHY element from concentrating.
« Last Edit: September 13, 2017, 06:42:01 PM by Krhinji »

IRUN

  • Sin Sack
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #871 on: September 15, 2017, 12:09:40 PM »
If anyone wants it, I have a NG+ file with all 56 characters unlocked along with all of their endless corridor awakening items. +50100 from achievements (94, 97, 98, 99, 101, 44, 45, 46, 47, 19 and 17, 21, 22, 23 of plus disk) along with their rewards are included. No maps have been explored but Relays up to 20F depths have been unlocked, unfortunately.

Edit: Not sure how to attach file here...
« Last Edit: September 16, 2017, 05:10:44 AM by IRUN »
I walk one step, and I?m visiting a shrine
I continue two steps, and I?m spirited away
I tread three steps, and I?m playing god
I arrive with four steps, and ****

Xarizzar

  • RPG fan
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #872 on: September 16, 2017, 03:37:20 AM »
So, I've defeated the LoT2 plus disk final boss with some amount of difficulty and luck, as well as the boss that required
Spoiler:
36 (?) shadow characters
to get access to, and am now stuck. The rocks on 26F and B7F will not disappear. I've seen videos of later content, so I don't think I've done quite everything. Maybe I need to progress on that random dungeon in order to open those rocks? I've been ignoring it, because I'm kinda scared of wasting floors and not having enough of the currency to buy items.

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #873 on: September 16, 2017, 05:37:53 AM »
Unless I'm misreading it (and I could be), the 26f rock requires you to recruit everyone. The B7f rock requires you to hit a switch in 27f, which becomes accessible after hitting all of the other switches on the floor.

Xarizzar

  • RPG fan
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #874 on: September 16, 2017, 02:39:11 PM »
Strange, I'm missing 3 then, most likely. This should be them: https://i.imgur.com/3gdIOrR.png Possible spoilers btw.

EDIT: Judging from the images in the site on the Characters tab, I seem to be missing
Spoiler:
Koishi, Tokiko (?), and Kokoro.
How do I recruit them?
« Last Edit: September 16, 2017, 09:35:49 PM by Xarizzar »

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #875 on: September 16, 2017, 10:30:45 PM »
For the first character, you need to collect four items on B1f, B2f (I think), 22f, and 23f, then you can find them on 24f. Second character requires collecting items on B1f, B2f, B3f (I think), and 21f, then you can find them on 22f. Third character is simply triggering events at B1f, B3f, and 21f, then you can get them at 24f.

The items you need to collect are on the 6th page on the fourth item tab. First two rows are for the first character, rows three and four are for the second character.

Xarizzar

  • RPG fan
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #876 on: September 16, 2017, 10:57:19 PM »
I see, thanks. I managed to recruit
Spoiler:
Tokiko and Kokoro
. Since
Spoiler:
Koishi
is event based, I'll have to remember which events I didn't do. I suppose I'll go check them out one by one again... Oh well.

Knight

  • Reti or not, here I come!
  • WE WILL WE WILL FORK YOU!
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #877 on: October 01, 2017, 09:25:14 PM »
How do I unlock more Awakened Skills? Most of the characters already have awakened skills unlocked but some of them don?t.

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #878 on: October 01, 2017, 09:44:07 PM »
Presently, it is only possible to unlock Awakening skills on 7 characters, since the game only gives 7 of the item needed for it at the moment. The next update will probably add more, possibly enough to get everyone's Awakening skills.

RegalStar

  • Envoy of Balance
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #879 on: October 02, 2017, 09:37:21 AM »
Although I wouldn't be too hopeful about "next update". As far as I can tell 3peso had disappeared off the face of the Internet since March.

Knight

  • Reti or not, here I come!
  • WE WILL WE WILL FORK YOU!
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #880 on: October 02, 2017, 11:56:39 AM »
To be more specific, the problem I have is that the options for buying awakened skills at Akyuu?s House for some of the plus disk characters are missing. I used cheat engine to give myself 99 of whatever currency Akyuu accepts (although that?s more than enough).

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #881 on: October 02, 2017, 06:00:33 PM »
That's peculiar, they should all be available in the shop from the start. There is no need or way to unlock any of them. Which ones are you missing?

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #882 on: October 02, 2017, 10:44:38 PM »
That's peculiar, they should all be available in the shop from the start. There is no need or way to unlock any of them. Which ones are you missing?

They aren't all in the shop from the start. Any character you do not have (Which is exclusively the 5 (Actually 6 since Shou is *technically* optional for most of the game from my memory, but most people'll get her easily I miscounted the Shadow Fragments, Shou *is* required.) characters of Plus Disk after B4F since you need 48 characters to pass the B2F rock) will not have theirs show up until you've actually gotten them in your party through events. If you use a NG+ file with all 56 characters, I'm assuming the game isn't properly programmed for that possibility yet, and the items won't show up until you complete the respective character events and get them in the party. Unless of course, it was just a normal run in which case I have no idea why they could be missing and this was pointless.
« Last Edit: October 02, 2017, 10:53:37 PM by Krhinji »

Knight

  • Reti or not, here I come!
  • WE WILL WE WILL FORK YOU!
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #883 on: October 02, 2017, 11:20:33 PM »
Omfg, I am such an idiot. I just realized that I already unlocked all of the characters awakened skills. I didn?t notice before because I hacked in a shit ton of skill points and maxed everyone ?s skills out. That must have camouflaged the awakened skills so I couldn?t see them. Sorry for wasting your time, guys. Fuck me -_-

jaxter0987

  • Umiiro Shoujo ni Miserarete
  • Umi is love, Umi is life
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #884 on: October 02, 2017, 11:29:20 PM »
Although I wouldn't be too hopeful about "next update". As far as I can tell 3peso had disappeared off the face of the Internet since March.
Eh, the same thing happened with the Plus Disk and that got finished eventually so its just a patient waiting game again. I've finally started playing though. Was originally planning to grind out stat gems some more but on a whim, I finally decided to boot up the Plus Disk and dive in. I'm... worried as my original run doesn't have Reisen or Hina in it (not that I know who I'd cut for them). Was already "hard" to cut Marisa for Yuuka and gut the MAlice cannon but I figured Yuuka gets Master Spark later on if I ever needed big Mystic nukes. But the lack of a general debuffer might hurt me in the future since Eiki and Kaguya aren't as strong against the lower defenses of the Plus Disk bosses. Oh well, Komachi and Byakuren will have to make do for now.

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #885 on: October 03, 2017, 04:05:56 AM »
They aren't all in the shop from the start. Any character you do not have (Which is exclusively the 5 (Actually 6 since Shou is *technically* optional for most of the game from my memory, but most people'll get her easily I miscounted the Shadow Fragments, Shou *is* required.) characters of Plus Disk after B4F since you need 48 characters to pass the B2F rock) will not have theirs show up until you've actually gotten them in your party through events.

Hm, I must be remembering incorrectly then, as I had thought that the Awakening items were indeed all there, regardless of whether you actually had the character or not. But by the time I actually acquired the trade items, I had every character except for Akyuu anyway, and I didn't think to check whether or not her item was there, since there would be no reason to acquire an item I had no use for yet.

Eh, the same thing happened with the Plus Disk and that got finished eventually so its just a patient waiting game again. I've finally started playing though. Was originally planning to grind out stat gems some more but on a whim, I finally decided to boot up the Plus Disk and dive in. I'm... worried as my original run doesn't have Reisen or Hina in it (not that I know who I'd cut for them). Was already "hard" to cut Marisa for Yuuka and gut the MAlice cannon but I figured Yuuka gets Master Spark later on if I ever needed big Mystic nukes. But the lack of a general debuffer might hurt me in the future since Eiki and Kaguya aren't as strong against the lower defenses of the Plus Disk bosses. Oh well, Komachi and Byakuren will have to make do for now.

Yeah, I'm sure that the next (and possibly "final" minus balance revisions) update will roll around within the next few months, maybe around January or February, so it doesn't worry me too much that the guy's been quiet. He might just have a really good work ethic. Or a girlfriend, idk.

Regarding Plus Disk bosses, it's exactly because they have lower defenses that DEF/MND debuffs aren't as valuable against them compared to high defense targets, since the gains are lower. I did some damage calculations with Tenshi (who has Flandre-tier ATK with Girl of Bhava-agra on top of excellent multipliers), a -50% DEF debuff on an above average DEF target amounts to about a 9-15% damage buff (depending on spell card formula), assuming an 86% ATK buff on Tenshi. More specifically, I did the damage tests for a target with Serpent of Chaos' DEF/MND (which is 1m by my tests). IIRC, Abyss Kogasa (the boss preceding SoC) had something like 500K DEF and even less MND (unfortunately, don't remember what her MND was), damage gains from debuffs are even lower on a 500K target (merely 4-6% with a -50% debuff under the same test circumstances). The Touhou character bosses that comprise most of Plus Disk's boss fights generally have this kind of level for their DEF/MND (relative to what you will have at the level you fight them), with very few exceptions (such as Parsee for MND or Tenshi for both stats). Characters with lower ATK/MAG (both on their stats and their spell card multipliers) will benefit more from debuffs since there's less diminishing return on them, but generally, a -50% DEF/MND debuff might net around 10% more damage, not much more than that.

Generally , you're best off ignoring DEF/MND debuffs in favor of buffing your attacker's ATK/MAG and stacking other damage multipliers. This gets the most favorable damage boost you can acquire. Of course, for those bosses with astounding DEF/MND, attacks that ignore DEF/MND entirely might be preferable to debuffs anyway.

RegalStar

  • Envoy of Balance
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #886 on: October 03, 2017, 10:36:35 AM »
Eh, the same thing happened with the Plus Disk and that got finished eventually so its just a patient waiting game again.

The difference here is that even though Plus Disk was delayed to hell, 3peso had always been on twitter and you know that at least the guy is alive and kicking. His twitter hasn't bee updated at all since March 23rd and as far as I can tell nobody has seen any activity from him at all since then.

Serela

  • Moon Tiara Magic
  • VIA PIZZA SLINGING
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #887 on: October 03, 2017, 02:36:37 PM »
The difference here is that even though Plus Disk was delayed to hell, 3peso had always been on twitter and you know that at least the guy is alive and kicking. His twitter hasn't bee updated at all since March 23rd and as far as I can tell nobody has seen any activity from him at all since then.
Oh jeez. I hope he didn't like... die >.>;
<mauvecow> see this is how evil works in reality, it just wears you down with bureaucracy until you don't care anymore

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #888 on: October 03, 2017, 05:41:38 PM »
The difference here is that even though Plus Disk was delayed to hell, 3peso had always been on twitter and you know that at least the guy is alive and kicking. His twitter hasn't bee updated at all since March 23rd and as far as I can tell nobody has seen any activity from him at all since then.

Oh, that does seem a little troubling then. If he had been inactive on twitter while working on Plus Disk, it would be different, but since he wasn't, it sounds like there was something that created a significant change in routine for him. Still would wait a few more months before making any negative assumptions about the game's future, but Japan is a relatively safe place compared to most other countries (particularly the U.S.), so I have doubts that anything fatal happened.

Guess one can always try e-mailing the guy or something.

jaxter0987

  • Umiiro Shoujo ni Miserarete
  • Umi is love, Umi is life
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #889 on: October 06, 2017, 12:02:25 AM »
Regarding Plus Disk bosses, it's exactly because they have lower defenses that DEF/MND debuffs aren't as valuable against them compared to high defense targets, since the gains are lower. I did some damage calculations with Tenshi (who has Flandre-tier ATK with Girl of Bhava-agra on top of excellent multipliers), a -50% DEF debuff on an above average DEF target amounts to about a 9-15% damage buff (depending on spell card formula), assuming an 86% ATK buff on Tenshi. More specifically, I did the damage tests for a target with Serpent of Chaos' DEF/MND (which is 1m by my tests). IIRC, Abyss Kogasa (the boss preceding SoC) had something like 500K DEF and even less MND (unfortunately, don't remember what her MND was), damage gains from debuffs are even lower on a 500K target (merely 4-6% with a -50% debuff under the same test circumstances). The Touhou character bosses that comprise most of Plus Disk's boss fights generally have this kind of level for their DEF/MND (relative to what you will have at the level you fight them), with very few exceptions (such as Parsee for MND or Tenshi for both stats). Characters with lower ATK/MAG (both on their stats and their spell card multipliers) will benefit more from debuffs since there's less diminishing return on them, but generally, a -50% DEF/MND debuff might net around 10% more damage, not much more than that.

Generally , you're best off ignoring DEF/MND debuffs in favor of buffing your attacker's ATK/MAG and stacking other damage multipliers. This gets the most favorable damage boost you can acquire. Of course, for those bosses with astounding DEF/MND, attacks that ignore DEF/MND entirely might be preferable to debuffs anyway.
I guess I was just getting the wrong impression then? From the posts in the past two threads, I got the impression that DEF/MND ignoring characters were less effective because of the lowered defenses. What they probably meant was that non DEF/MND ignoring characters can shine more, since they tend to have stronger spell card formulas to compensate for the lack of piercing. I guess the name of the game is still "launch strong nuke and switch out" which is slightly disappointing but still fun.

Random thought I just had but I'm kind of hoping that there's a boss where you have to kill the adds in a specific order. Thinking about the Guardian of the Crystals fight triggered this thought.

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #890 on: October 06, 2017, 04:44:03 AM »
Oh, yeah, comparatively speaking, characters that can ignore defense do less damage than characters that don't due to the latter generally having better formulas on their spell cards. It would be more accurate to say that the latter shine more than the former. I figured you were just talking about debuffs though, since Reisen and Hina are the best debuffing characters in the game, and you wouldn't need to debuff a boss' DEF/MND if you were going to ignore it entirely in the first place.

There's still a couple of bosses that have tremendous defenses though, like Grandgon and Permitter of Destruction (60f Infinite Corridor boss), where you definitely want to just ignore their defenses due to them being difficult to reasonably damage otherwise, even with a -50% debuff. For a comparison, with HVY applied to the latter boss, Tenshi with full buffs was doing about 700K (out of 20m HP) with Sword of Hisou, while Iku could do 13m with Start of Heavenly Demise and a -50% MND debuff (which is 100% with Heavenly Maiden's Blow). Normally, Sword of Hisou would be a little bit stronger (about 10%), that's how much of a difference being able to ignore DEF/MND can make in some fights, even when you aren't hitting 0s for a lack of it.

Regarding switching attackers in, I'm probably biased because Tenshi/Iku are quite bulky as attackers, and the rest of the secondary attackers I've tried (like Momiji and Eiki) had reasonable levels of durability, but from my experience, I feel that going with a stay-in attacker is more effective than a switch-in attacker due to them being much easier to maintain buffs on, plus not having to avoid getting the character knocked out since they can withstand pretty much anything when properly set up. Most MT attacks will wipe out a character that's completely focused on offense, but you can get some excellent results in damage mitigation by simply stacking lots of damage reducing effects (affinity, Transcendent, Strategist, Quartz Charm) and HP, making it fairly easy to set a character up for a bulky attacker. DEF/MND don't mean much (a 100% buff for Tenshi generally amounts to taking 10% less damage, pretty lame), so they can usually be ignored, a character's natural defenses are good enough. Even with all the level-up points in ATK/MAG, surviving attacks isn't difficult like this. The only boss with a MT attack that I found to be difficult to withstand was Serpent of Chaos' Disintegrating Breath, which required debuffs in order to make it manageable (fortunately, it is fairly easy to debuff). But since this was with some of the bulkier characters in the game, it might be different for trying it with super frail characters like Kaguya.

Komachi, Yuuka, and Byakuren all have HP regen (although Yuuka's is a bit quirky), and Eiki takes 10% less damage from all elemental attacks, so those would be excellent candidates for bulky attackers, since those are very strong defensive effects. Don't know about the rest of your party so can't say anything about them.

For the Plus Disk bosses, a fair number of the Shadow Touhou fights do have special behaviors if you defeat one boss before another (or even just hit certain HP thresholds), although the consequences vary greatly, from being manageable (and sometimes very interesting) to a virtually guaranteed game over. Since idk if you'd want that kind of thing spoiled for you, figure it would be better not to say more than "they're a thing" unless you want to avoid the really dangerous ones.

dawnbomb

  • Adventurer
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #891 on: October 06, 2017, 05:33:04 AM »
ive been away for like 5 months. is there any menu/gameplay patch for plus disk yet?
There's no way I could love anyone
but i wish to be loved by someone in return

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #892 on: October 06, 2017, 01:15:13 PM »
Regarding switching attackers in, I'm probably biased because Tenshi/Iku are quite bulky as attackers, and the rest of the secondary attackers I've tried (like Momiji and Eiki) had reasonable levels of durability, but from my experience, I feel that going with a stay-in attacker is more effective than a switch-in attacker due to them being much easier to maintain buffs on, plus not having to avoid getting the character knocked out since they can withstand pretty much anything when properly set up. Most MT attacks will wipe out a character that's completely focused on offense, but you can get some excellent results in damage mitigation by simply stacking lots of damage reducing effects (affinity, Transcendent, Strategist, Quartz Charm) and HP, making it fairly easy to set a character up for a bulky attacker. DEF/MND don't mean much (a 100% buff for Tenshi generally amounts to taking 10% less damage, pretty lame), so they can usually be ignored, a character's natural defenses are good enough. Even with all the level-up points in ATK/MAG, surviving attacks isn't difficult like this. The only boss with a MT attack that I found to be difficult to withstand was Serpent of Chaos' Disintegrating Breath, which required debuffs in order to make it manageable (fortunately, it is fairly easy to debuff). But since this was with some of the bulkier characters in the game, it might be different for trying it with super frail characters like Kaguya.

 To add on to that, even some originally frail characters can take a hit or two as long as you patch up their HP with Eirin and increase their affinities in the library. Examples are Kaguya who has naturally high affinities and synergy with Eirin or Patchouli since her awakening passives all focus on her being better at staying in.

jaxter0987

  • Umiiro Shoujo ni Miserarete
  • Umi is love, Umi is life
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #893 on: October 07, 2017, 01:58:06 AM »
When I was talking about debuffs, I was mainly thinking about damage mitigating debuffs (ATK, MAG, SPD) rather than damage increasing ones. I'm already putting myself at a "disadvantage" in most fights due to using Eiki and Kaguya (and Yuuka and Alice) as my damage sources, so I thought about how the best way to make up for that would be debuffs. Regardless, I'm not planning to make any changes to my lineup unless the Plus Disk characters really impress me in some way.

My lineup is Komachi, Byakuren, Renko, Aya, Sanae, Reimu, Minoriko, Wriggle, Yuuka, Kaguya, Eiki, and Alice.

Wriggle and Alice are about the only two malleable parts of my line up. Poison sounds like its doing just fine in Plus Disk unlike in LoT1 (and she's the only one "suitable" to be an Herbalist) while I really like Alice's DEF targeting attacks plus I really like Tripwire. I want to mess around with
Spoiler:
Kokoro and Tokiko
but I don't see any of them influencing my team. Speaking of which, does
Spoiler:
Tokiko lose "Reading" after using any attack? And how much of a pipe dream would it be to turn her into a decent Magical attacker?
I lack strong WND, DRK, and CLD spells (Penetrator kind of suffices for now) and a dedicated debuffer but other than that, I really like my set up for how I play. Reisen is probably the best bet if I wanted a debuffer and a DRK attack and I've had favorable experiences with her in my synergy runs but I really don't know how I'd cut.

You made the right call in that I really wouldn't want that kind of thing spoiled other than being told it exists. I am kind of sad though that that would make some fights more interesting and I could miss out simply because I explored "incorrectly".

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #894 on: October 07, 2017, 05:38:08 AM »
Ah, well, you have Komachi's Narrow Confines of Avici and Eiki's Trial of the Ten Kings, so you can debuff reasonably effectively even without Reisen and Hina. The only boss I personally felt warranted debuffs was Serpent of Chaos, but debuffing ATK/MAG/SPD in general is still pretty handy. I can't say anything about PSN because I didn't use it at all through my entire playthrough (even for The Great "C", I just SHK locked it the whole fight and used Iku to deal damage), but it does scale properly I think. At least, it's better than in the first game. For
Spoiler:
Tokiko, only Youkai Yakuza Kick can reset Reading unless you grab one of her Awakening skills, Tokiko has good stats overall in all areas (especially ATK) due to her leveling rate, but her MAG spell cards are only a little stronger than the cards Toxicologist and Hexer have under normal circumstances, and they only receive damage buffs if you grab the Awakening skill that gives them a chance to reset Reading. Tokiko would be pretty average as a MAG attacker, especially compared to Alice backed by MAlice Cannon. Tokiko should be a fairly good ATK character though, especially on the PHY side of things, Youkai Yakuza Kick's base spell formula is the same as Momiji's Rabies Bite, but has 66% delay instead of 60%, Tokiko has higher ATK (especially with her synergy skill with Reimu/Marisa), and she gets +25% ATK post-Awakening when not under Reading. Reading is a 125% damage increase to Youkai Yakuza Kick, which probably isn't worth trying to get it since you'd have to get Reading every other attack for it to be worthwhile. Dunno how often Reading procs, so can't say what the odds of it being worth it are.

For CLD, Sanae's Moses' Miracle should be sufficient, as it's one of the stronger CLD attacks in the game (CLD in general is the weakest element though). Aya's Peerless Wind God is actually a pretty good WND attack if you want to try that. Eiki's Trial of the Ten Kings does DRK reasonably effectively as well. Might be useful to try running some damage calculations to compare how strong your party's spell cards are with each other so you can see which characters are your best attackers in practice. This wouldn't take into account things like a character's durability or additional effects like status/debuffs, but you can figure that stuff out too. I would say though, if you could fit Marisa back into your team, that would probably be a good idea, as +30% MAG on Alice is an enormous damage buff. Alice should be a high tier damage dealer with Final Blow, MAlice Cannon, and her level 7 spell cards, enough that she may even outclass some characters even when they're hitting weakness and she isn't (or at worst, she's using subclass spells to hit weakness). It's been a similar experience for me with Tenshi, although Girl of Bhava-agra is a 40% ATK buff (but Tenshi has lower ATK than Alice has MAG).

Though, hm, if the boss doesn't resist SPI, it might just be preferable to mainly use Kaguya's Bullet Branch of Hourai with Sanae, since Sanae gives a 30% SPI damage boost. Most weaknesses are about 60 affinity (a 66% damage increase), and a lot of spell cards won't be able to compete with Bullet Branch of Hourai's amazing damage formula (if backed by Sanae's SPI boost) even if they're targeting a weakness like that (and if it's 80 affinity with no SPI resistance, then this would simply be superior). Only thing is that Kaguya is super frail, but this could be applicable to other SPI attackers too, like Komachi, Eiki, and maybe even Reimu (with Grand Incantation). Though managing character delays seems like a hassle for the party too. Doesn't seem that there's anyone that can really speed up switching (Instant Attack, Effective Formation Change, that kind of thing), although max SPD Aya might work satisfactorily.

jaxter0987

  • Umiiro Shoujo ni Miserarete
  • Umi is love, Umi is life
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #895 on: October 09, 2017, 09:35:55 AM »
I guess I'll add that unless the character was already built as an attacker, they're not going to suddenly become an attacker now. Characters like Suwako and Eiki for example, who could reasonably switch between ATK or MAG would be something I'd consider, but Sanae's staying in a tanky supporting role, and likewise with Aya (although she's max SPD instead of bulk. She's still there expressly for Divine Grandson's Advent and randoms).

I've never had problems with switching with this set up. I've already had the practice playing through LoT1 (granted, without beating SoC, Twins, or WINNER) without all these fancy skills.

Regarding Marisa, she's just too much of a dead weight if Master Spark nuking isn't feasible. I might have forgotten stuff that she gets from Plus Disk that could change her singular element coverage / deal with that limitation but MAlice Cannon isn't worth playing with an 11 character party otherwise. It also doesn't help that I've played that exact way with Marisa in LoT1 a bunch and she hasn't changed much at all nor got interesting skills to mix things up.

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #896 on: October 09, 2017, 10:46:01 AM »
Well, I agree that at first sight LoT1 Marisa and LoT2 Marisa look pretty much the same, but that's less true than you may think. LoT2 Marisa, in fact, has some key perks LoT1 Marisa sorely lacks:

1) LoT1 Marisa's damage formulas, besides Master Spark, are embarassingly low (compared, say, to Yuyuko or Mystia). LoT2 Marisa, on the contrary, actually hits decently hard with her Asteroid Belt.
2) LoT1 Marisa has no means of overcoming MYS resistant enemies. LoT2 Marisa, on the other hand, has Sheer Force. While this is not really helpful vs bosses (even if a Boss resists MYS, you'd rather hit it on its weakness), it still makes Marisa an excellent random encounter cleaner.
3) LoT1's endgame had a higher emphasis on single-target encounters. Once you reach 30F, both the random encounters and the remaining bosses are vs 1 enemy only, making single-target nukes like Nitori clearly superior (even considering Master Spark, Yuuka is remarkably better at this given her superior bulk). LoT2's endgame, on the other hand, seems to feature a lot more traditional multi-target encounters, which makes an AoE cleaner like Marisa surprisingly better.

I still don't know if I want to include Marisa in my final lineup, though that has more to do with me being (1) disappointed more in Alice, rather than Marisa, and (2) more interested in other excellent AoE options (unlike in LoT1, there're a plethora of good AoE nukes to choose from)

Serela

  • Moon Tiara Magic
  • VIA PIZZA SLINGING
Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #897 on: October 09, 2017, 01:24:28 PM »
Marisa can choose a sub like ArchMage to get some valuable elemental coverage, once you hit postgame. Kinda pricy, but she's got MP. Delay would be sort of painful as far as bosses go, though.
<mauvecow> see this is how evil works in reality, it just wears you down with bureaucracy until you don't care anymore

Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #898 on: October 09, 2017, 07:24:58 PM »
I guess I'll add that unless the character was already built as an attacker, they're not going to suddenly become an attacker now. Characters like Suwako and Eiki for example, who could reasonably switch between ATK or MAG would be something I'd consider, but Sanae's staying in a tanky supporting role, and likewise with Aya (although she's max SPD instead of bulk. She's still there expressly for Divine Grandson's Advent and randoms).

I've never had problems with switching with this set up. I've already had the practice playing through LoT1 (granted, without beating SoC, Twins, or WINNER) without all these fancy skills.

Regarding Marisa, she's just too much of a dead weight if Master Spark nuking isn't feasible. I might have forgotten stuff that she gets from Plus Disk that could change her singular element coverage / deal with that limitation but MAlice Cannon isn't worth playing with an 11 character party otherwise. It also doesn't help that I've played that exact way with Marisa in LoT1 a bunch and she hasn't changed much at all nor got interesting skills to mix things up.

Hm, well, if you don't want to use a character for a nonstandard role, then I guess that's that. It seems wasteful when they're actually good at it, but OK.

For the switching thing, I'll give an example. At LoT2's current endgame (around 540 or so), character SPD generally ranges at about 700-900 ATB per tick normally, with max SPD characters at about 1200-1300 (this is without SPD buffs). If you were to switch a character out that just used a heavy delay attack, your best option would be Aya, who hits that 1300 ATB range (IIRC, max SPD buff is about 1900 per tick, 2500 is still very distant). Aya would consume two ticks before she can switch your attacker back in. Besides the lost ticks every time you do this, during the time she's in, your buffing characters won't be able to buff your attacking character, so if they get a turn, it's wasted. And if you're rotating attackers, then it's terribly inefficient for buffing since you have to buff at least two characters from scratch, which slows down your damage a lot. So the most effective solution is to use an Instant Attack character so you can immediately switch back to your primary attacker, so that you can buff them more effectively since they're out more often.

This works more effectively for bulky attackers that can come into the frontline without fear of a boss' attacks compared to fragile characters though. For those, a character with Effective Formation Change would work out better, since then your attacker would get their turn after a single tick, allowing you to get their attack in and switch out quickly. Otherwise, you'd generally look at 3-4 ticks before your attacker can act. Bosses move pretty quickly (Serpent of Chaos gets 1300 ATB per tick, so that would be 3900-5200 ATB), so it's dangerous to switch characters like this, since even if you get your attacker's attack before the boss acts, you have to have another character switch them out before the boss acts. It also makes buffing them a lot harder since you have less time to work with before you need to switch the character out.

Basically, it's just about managing ATB more effectively. While these skills aren't necessary to use (or even the only things you can use, a heavy focus on SPD buffs and debuffs would achieve similar results, and you can use the two together if you wanted), you can probably get better results by using them. Though tbh (and this applies to the Marisa thing too), with my perspective of the game being skewed toward "how can I break this game the most" (with the additional condition of "with Tenshi"), I'm looking primarily at finding ways to trivialize the game the most, so idk if that kind of thing is what you'd want to go for in the first place. Marisa taking up a dead slot in the party for the sole purpose of giving Alice 30% more MAG does actually seem fairly reasonable to me because you generally don't really need more than 2-3 dedicated attacking characters (although I may be biased with my approach on things here). But even so, Marisa is one of the strongest MYS attackers even without wiping a boss with a single Master Spark since she has the +30% MYS damage boosting skill, gets +15% more damage from her Awakening (I find that most boss fights don't even last 10 turns, so Hakkero Charge Mode is generally worse than Hakkero Custom Mode), and gets the very handy ability to restore 7 MP with every Magic Missile, which, combined with Sanae's Awakening (+2 MP per turn minimum), would allow her to fire off a minimum powered Master Spark every 4 or so turns, while doing good damage with Magic Missile (Magic Missile does about 40% of a 27 MP Master Spark's damage by my estimates). This should be a more effective method of using her than going solely for a fully powered Master Spark, only thing is that most bosses aren't weak to MYS in the first place. Though, even without weakness, it might be a pretty good strategy to use.

Though all of this is just assuming you'd rather keep Alice than replace her, and tbh I'm not sure how strong she is relative to the whole game. Just pretty sure she would be one of the strongest attackers in the party with MAlice Cannon active.

I still don't know if I want to include Marisa in my final lineup, though that has more to do with me being (1) disappointed more in Alice, rather than Marisa, and (2) more interested in other excellent AoE options (unlike in LoT1, there're a plethora of good AoE nukes to choose from)

Just curious, what are you currently planning with your party?

Marisa can choose a sub like ArchMage to get some valuable elemental coverage, once you hit postgame. Kinda pricy, but she's got MP. Delay would be sort of painful as far as bosses go, though.

tbh the damage output on Archmage spells for their MP cost is so bad that Marisa would run out of MP against most bosses even when striking weakness. She only gets like, 5-6 uses out of them by the time you get Archmage, or something like that. A Grand Incantation character (like Reimu) would probably be able to make decent use out of them, but otherwise Archmage subclass spells are too expensive for the damage that they deal, and for boss fights, it's normal to run out of MP. Southern Cross in particular is very weak and wouldn't even outdamage Magic Missile (which costs 2 MP as opposed to 10) on a 60 CLD target if it was neutral to MYS, with Sheer Force being enough to generally ensure that even MYS resistant targets take more damage from Magic Missile. Post-Awakening, Hakkero Custom Mode only boosts Marisa's personal spell cards, so she has more incentive to use her personal spell cards instead of subclass spells.

Execution is kinda somewhat usable but realistically, most characters will still run out of MP before they can beat the boss with it. Archmage is honestly kinda bad as a subclass.

Serela

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Re: Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F
« Reply #899 on: October 09, 2017, 07:33:04 PM »
Huh, I guess Keine's less of an auto-choice once you get really late in the game. 9999 ATB swaps sound godlike until most of your characters will move just as fast with 9300 swaps from Rinnosuke or Nazrin, at which point they're all good choices depending on your set up. (Nazrin is still more of an offensive presence, but, with her byakuren piggybacks she could do support.)

Although I'll try Speedy Formation Change shenanigans with awakened Kogasa and instant attackers. Maybe I should go ahead and play Plus since no one can say when (or if?) the patch will happen.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2017, 07:35:08 PM by Serela »
<mauvecow> see this is how evil works in reality, it just wears you down with bureaucracy until you don't care anymore