Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 17F

[elminster1372]

About Nitori - I think Overheat is the problem. Now that my team is mostly "equalized" (same equip, gems, etc), the damage difference between Nitori and other powerful characters is not as huge. For example, Yukari's Shikigami + does almost the same damage as Megawatt Gun (with a MUCH shorter delay), and Kappa Waterfall is good but not busted. It's after 5 or so Overheats that Nitori's attacks (especially Waterfall) start feeling a bit too good. Though, frankly, I'm still in the field of those who think Nitori is fine now.

I fully agree with your points about Komachi, Kokoro, and Wriggle.

Finally, I think Koishi should finally get Kinship Boost. That's possibly the main thing holding me back from using Earth Palace Party.

[Phen]

-Some endgame bosses have too little HP, such as ***Winner*** and late infinite corridor bosses.

Recently 3peso made some tweets relevant to that. He talked about making patterns for 40 bosses seemed impossible but was actually fun which I take to mean as he is done with or nearing completion of the abyss touhou bosses. But then he tweeted that probably half of them will die before displaying the bosses patterns but that it's just that kind of game. I think it's fine for now unless the same problem occurs when the final content is released. It's unknown what kind of gear and stat tweaking he takes into account for these bosses so for all we know, we could be way overshooting what the bosses are balanced for. For that final content, besides for the inevitable respawning boss that gets stronger, I hope he will think hard about what gear and stats players will have. For example, full gems and tomes, mega boosts, library levels, level bonuses, and awakening item bonus. Additionally, I think bosses have to have some leeway in their stats to account for weaker teams that people may want to run, either as a challenge or because of character favoritism. A very strong team should absolutely stomp any boss that comes their way. A weaker team(one lacking debuffs or good elemental coverage or whatever the boss is weak to) should have some trouble but still be able to clear the boss with good decision making. Or overleveling. Really, in a game like this with no realistic caps, any boss can be made easy. Thankfully, 3peso gives us all the tools we need to make the game as hard or easy as we want. Levels too high? You can level down, Library too high? Reset the character.

[Serela]

I think Koishi should, but he's also been told in the previous email so it's probably on purpose and whaddayagonnado. It -is- sort of thematically accurate because Koishi doesn't have that kind of mindfulness. It's bad because she -really- needs the stats, though. She has potential with her gimmick but her stats are just really mediocre apart from EVA, with no beneficial passives other than Earth Spirits Party.

The difference between Nitori and other characters does slowly catch up, but in the "mid" Plus Disk, you give her your first scourge and she just fuggin annihilates every shadow boss. Well, no, EVERY BOSS. ALL OF THEM. Hollow going down in a FEW HITS, one-shotting Miko forms, etc. Which is really bad. To be fair, I had a SECOND scourge asap from a lucky chest so my Nitori was even more stupidly OP, but still.

Plus, later you get Chaos the Darksword which ensures Nitori's Attack will stay kind of absurd. She has 4mil attack while my best other members scratch 2.5m Magic. Then she gets overheat and a team synergy, and even w/o synergy, 3D Super Scope in overheat is kind of stupid because Super Scope still has by -FAR- the best formula in the game, so I can hardly imagine WITH it active... >_>;

Although huh, does Shikigami + get -that- strong? @.@

-cut with 3peso comments- The thing about Infinite Corridor fights is you're intended to overshoot the required level and streak corridor floors, which is likely what he meant. The problem is even stuff like the 250f checkpoint special boss with an extra-tailored attack pattern will go down in just a few hits even if you're below it's level. That's where it seems kind of wrong. The earlier special bosses Destroyer and Serpent of Chaos were difficult full-blown bossfights, and Dark Lord is just kinda like... falling over even if you're underlevel. (Unless you blast destroyer with 90~100% defense ignoring SPI nukes with Kaguya/Murakumo Iku, but that's very specific)

Also that the problem isn't limited to the corridor, but I guess it can be a symptom of the fact that they aren't meant to be the end-game content and the only problem is we lack the stuff after them. Like, we're fighting the first two incarnations of Winner and it's easy compared to later ones, etc. Also, it's neat to hear he might be nearing completion of content, because after last time you never know if the next patch will take Literally a Year.

[qazmlpok]

I'm only level 350 or so and Nitori is already beyond broken. She has the highest atk stat, something like 30% more than Flandre's with the same equipment, double the speed, vastly more survivability, and non-crippling spellcards. Ran and Chen, and Orin and Okuu both went down in a few hits since they're weak to cold. And I've been skipping the IC, so I don't have exceptionally good equips (flower blades, but not scourge or MGL) or awakenings. 

Also, for bugs: I had mentioned an issue with a character's MP being reset on death. Also Shadow Kokoro's sprite is missing (unless I broke that somehow...). Did you want to include those?

[Serela]

Yes, any bugs should be included of course, I just couldn't recall them. Shadow Kokoro totally doesn't have a sprite, unless it's the patch somehow yes :V

Nitori does get somewhat less broken as more stats come from the library at lv1200+ but in mid-plus it's just fuggin dumb, and she's still absurd later. It would balance out SOMEDAY, at like lv2000+, but, uh. Really, maintenance should be nerfed because it also helps give her obscene staying power and that makes her silly even in the base, non-plus game. Miko's is already a separately named skill so hers can be left alone easily, presumably. Renko doesn't need the nerf but she'll be OK and if it's really a problem she can get her own new naming of it  :V

I debated including Eirin's overheal, but it'd be hard to use if it was Hourai-exclusive... a 150% or 200% cap on overhealing might be reasonable, though... then Healer's "Prayer of Recovery" could perhaps be restored to it's original strength, even.

[LonelyGaruga]

Since 3peso conveniently tweeted their current progress, I think it's better to wait for the next (and probably final as far as content goes) update and then see what has/hasn't been changed. I suspect that the Kokoro sprite bug hasn't been fixed because the sprites simply don't exist in the files, so they need to be made for her. Looking through the thread again, some things that have been mentioned plus some other additions,

-The adjustment to Aya's Divine Grandson's Advent didn't take place.
-Keypoints of Spirit accumulates counters when attacking an enemy with elements it resists.
-The Keypoints of Spirit counter decreases when switching Tenshi from the frontline to the backline.
-The game crashes if, while switching characters, an empty slot on the frontline is selected first, and a character with Instant Attack in the backline is selected second.
-When TP is reduced to 0 by the effect of the Instant Attack skill, a visual bug occurs that distorts the number.
-Byakuren's Awakening skill Blood of Superhuman does not fully restore her HP if healed by a % based healing spell card.
-If a character is defeated in battle, after battle their MP will be equal to what it was at the start of the battle instead of when they were KO'd.
-Characters that survive a DTH effect through skills such as Guts will still have the DTH icon visible.
-Murakumo's Blessing buffs the Attack command when its description specifies spell cards only.
-Reduce the number of bright flashes caused by events in the Infinite Corridor.
-Dragon God Power's skill "Divine Protection of Water" removes debuffs when the description only specifies abnormal status conditions.

Going to leave out balance stuff until after 1.105 hits to see what it's going to be like.

Interesting that 3peso tweeted that they're making 40 bosses. Presently, there are 35 remaining Abyss Touhou bosses, and based on achievements and items left in the game, there's likely to be 5-6 more bosses aside from them, with 6 unattainable items and two confirmed bosses from achievements,

Spoiler:

the mystery boss on 30f that gives True Ama no Murakumo no Tsurugi and True Dragon God

. 40 might be precisely how many bosses are being added for the 1.105 update. This would also suggest that the palette swaps for the

Spoiler:

Heaven Touhou characters are indeed random encounters for 30f depths, similar to the first game

. My hopes are that there'll be

Spoiler:

2-3 Corridor bosses and further enhanced versions for Murakumo and Orochi, in addition to True Dragon God, with Murakumo as the mystery 30f boss and Orochi as the B11f boss

.

[Serela]

I wouldn't read into 40 bosses too hard, because if it's anywhere between 36~46 he could reasonably round to 40 while making a general tweet, not to mention a matter of him not even counting and just making a vague assumption  :V But yeah ~35 abyss touhous mostly covers that.

Also, I wouldn't personally forgo balance adjustments because they could still get in depending on his mood, but it's very likely the next patch will just be for content, so it's not really a bad call either and I totally get it. I hadn't remembered there was so many bugs either, so that's important!

[General_Milky]

All this makes me wanna do is, when I start a new playthrough, try to do all the Abyss bosses as low level as I possibly can and see how those fights actually go when they aren't being 2-shot. The 3-ish end-supers sound fun but I reallly want to run the IC gauntlet and see what all those bosses have to offer.

[LonelyGaruga]

I wouldn't read into 40 bosses too hard, because if it's anywhere between 36~46 he could reasonably round to 40 while making a general tweet, not to mention a matter of him not even counting and just making a vague assumption  :V But yeah ~35 abyss touhous mostly covers that.

Also, I wouldn't personally forgo balance adjustments because they could still get in depending on his mood, but it's very likely the next patch will just be for content, so it's not really a bad call either and I totally get it. I hadn't remembered there was so many bugs either, so that's important!

Well, what I was getting at was that I was anticipating for there to be 40-41 bosses to be added based on the remaining Abyss Touhou fights and the remaining items, so it does look like that's going to be the case.

As for balance adjustments, I mean more that any adjustments that would be recommended at this point are based on the current state of the game, and aren't necessarily going to be applicable for 1.105's endgame. For example, I expect Nitori to fall close to Tenshi or Tokiko's level of damage pretty rapidly when using similar spell cards like Murakumo Slash, and come the total endgame she might actually end up inferior. So I think it's important to look at how the game balances out at the end of postgame so that we can have a full picture to work with when deciding balance changes. This won't change some other things, like buffs to Komachi, Kokoro, and Wriggle (tbh I think Byakuren is really underwhelming too), but I think it'd be better to get everything organized and figured out before saying anything to 3peso.

[Phen]

On the subject of maintenance, how about making it only affect longevity(hp, mp, tp, affinities, resists, and possibly mind and defense) and reversing the prior damage nerfs. That would certainly make it a lot easier to balance since you cleanly divide defensive and offensive skills. This would also draw Nitori's offensive effectiveness away from your current gear progression. Thematically I find it makes sense as well since maintenance is basically extending the lifespan of an object so it can continue to do its job. Can't very well deal damage while dead. As well as makes sense when combined with overheat. Good maintenance allows an item to go beyond its specs for longer duration (more mp to make more attacks, more defenses to stay out longer).

All this makes me wanna do is, when I start a new playthrough, try to do all the Abyss bosses as low level as I possibly can and see how those fights actually go when they aren't being 2-shot. The 3-ish end-supers sound fun but I reallly want to run the IC gauntlet and see what all those bosses have to offer.

I hope eventually, when the corridor is fully implemented, it will start throwing random bosses at you every 10 floors at which point you could just keep running as high as possible to check them out.

[Libra]

2 other bugs off the top of my head
-Rinnosuke's Precise Diagnosis will remove debuffs from enemies.
-Earth Spirit Palace Party gives one additional level/counter than it should for each character in the frontline for members who also have learned Proof of Kinship (so if Satori learns Proof of Kinship, she gets a lv3 boost for each other member in the frontline instead of 2)

Something I also recently realized is that Akyuu's two base spells also don't seem to scale with level, which could be mentioned I guess.

[Serela]

Since Akyuu comes after skill points are of much relevance, the level thing is sort of whatever. They'd probably only get nerfed to where you need to hit lv5 for the current delay value. Those other two are important bugs tho yeah.

I mean more that any adjustments that would be recommended at this point are based on the current state of the game, and aren't necessarily going to be applicable for 1.105's endgame.

That's a good point, as Nitori -will- fall behind some as Maintennance won't improve (unless the final equips are truly crazy, which to be fair, is -very- possible) and more stats will attribute to library; but there's still the issue that, for the entire middle of Plus Disk, she absolutely annihilates everything well beyond what's reasonable. You're guaranteed a scourge on 30f infinite corridor and that lets her start taking out every boss in a few hits, weakness or not, or even one-shot them with Super Scope after using Attack a few times. While still being durable. Her falling behind in endgame doesn't exactly make her power level in the rest of the game OK, and she's got her awakening team synergy.

Plus it's not "falling behind" so much as "going down to the level of everyone else". Overheat is still a huge damage bonus, she'll still have one of the best attack stats even if it's no longer literally twice as much as other members, and she'll still be durable as heck, and Super Scope still has by far the best damage formula outside of Marisa's Spark. Even in 100 winner territory she'd still probably hold her own very well as-is, she just wouldn't be the same massive juggernaut as before since you'd be using defensive equipment (that she'd still love the double affinity/resistances from).

The other balance comments shouldn't really change one way or another. As for Byakuren, I'm using her, and I think she's very solid. I just start battles off with a Charge from Renko, and Strategist still keeps her at apermanent 100%. She can buff herself to reach 100% as well (takes one shot after Charge), and Charge could be replaced by Miracle Fruits and/or Placebo Effect, etc. Her defensive stats actually aren't particularly good due to her expensive library, but the permanent 100% helps make up for that, and her HP is perfectly solid plus 12% regen. Awakening is pretty solid for a stay-out tank. Her buff itself is still 56% to all stats, which is well more than anyone else can do, and she can get infinite mp from awakening if she so desires. So yeah, I think she's fine as-is. It's just that other characters like Sanae can actually compete with her.

[elminster1372]

About Nitori and Maintenance:

Much of your feeling of brokenness, IMO, stems from the fact that, due to how the skill works, you are already inclined to give these chars your best items, so the actual difference with other chars ends up being much larger than it would otherwise be - especially since the jump is huge when you switch to your first corridor Items (I got my first Scourge when most chars were still using stuff like Transforman and Destroy Decomposer). And it's not even just Nitori. For example, in the end of the main game, there are some enemies with rly high defenses which not even Nitori can break through. But Miko can, thx to Asuka Heritage Attack, and if you gave her your best magic items (like Lilium Pants and Astral Dominae), you can still see some absurd numbers. Not as high as Nitori, sure, but they also come attached with a much shorter delay, and with an all-stat debuff which turns many bosses into complete pushovers.

Does Nitori do absurd damage in the mid-plus Disk? Yes. But so do other characters, if equally geared. Yuugi's Knockout in Three Steps, for example, can 3HKO Futo just like Nitori's Super Scope. And as LonelyGaruga said too, Nitori does start getting more reasonable once you get past lvl 1000 or so. The higher you go in level, the more important good damage formulas become compared to good stats. Stuff like Yukari's Shikigami +, Kanako's Virtue of Wind God, and even Sanae's Night of Bright Guest Stars (thx to lvl 9 skills^^) really start hitting VERY hard once you get into those levels. Indeed, I'd be curious to test Youmu (lvl 9 skills ftw) and Yuyuko (396% Nirvana :-O ) at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they turned out to be MUCH stronger than we considered them to be.

As for Byakuren, for me, the issue is mainly that she's simply outclassed too hard by Renko (who can keep multiple chars buffed with ease, while Maribel heals and empowers them with DIY Novice Border), and Sanae (who, unlike Byakuren, actually does real damage with her skills). IMO, Byakuren should get lvl 9 offensive skills as well, or some other kind of buff which allows her to transition from a pure buff role in the early game to a more mixed role in the lategame. Her offensive skills are actually quite nice, with varied elements and good multipliers, but her stats simply don't seem to match up without extra passive buffs.

As for the Abyss bosses... even if I wasn't trying to "streak", the corridor is just too punishing to convince me not to overlevel. Not only do random enemies have generally the same level as bosses or more (and, if you are the same level as them, you can wipe out very easily), but one single Risky Floor can absolutely destroy you - I am around lvl 1800, and one single +50% Risky Floor (sending enemies from lvl 1000 to 1500 average) nearly cost me a streak. I just hope that (1) WINNER gets more HP and (2) we get more than a single "level increasing" boss with different strategies required, so that you have either to party swap or (if you're like me) to use a more flexible party composition and play different strategies with the same party.

[Serela]

Yuugi 3hkos Futo, but Nitori did about 80% of her HP in one Super Scope. While being ridiculously fast and as durable as my tanks. You also argue damage formulas are more important, when Nitori has the strongest attack in the game and the strongest damage increase you can get off a single passive- overheat, so, uhm? :S Like, Nitori is already at least strong as those guys before maintenance even factors in.

So yes I hear what you're saying but I'm still pretty sure Nitori is out of hand. You could totally remove maintenance and she'd still be a strong character. (Maybe slightly underwhelming after losing -that-, but, still pretty good)

edit:To note, that 80% hp damage is without the synergy boost and without elementalist and without Yuugi's PHY damage boost, the latter of which would have made it a potential 0hko at challenge level. I'm not sure either is even available at that point (the synergy absolutely isn't), but yeah. For another comparison, Qaz just noted his Nitori has 30% more attack than Flandre with the same gear on, and felt beyond broken with no Infinite Corridor gear (no scourges, etc).

edit again:Okay, to be fair, it probably just -took futo down- to 80% hp lost, so it was probably like 60~70%, but that's still like double what Yuugi would be achieving.

[zeroxtime62]

I posted some of my thoughts about Maintenance and Overheating several pages ago but I'm still convinced the latter is the issue. I personally found Super Scope 3D to be a bit underwhelming in the Plus Disk. Not because it isn't a good attack but rather that most bosses were either much weaker to another element or just ended up resisting physical. Instead I found myself using Nitori almost exclusively as a fast attacker with various subclass spells because Overheating enabled her damage output to reach ridiculous levels and given that so many of the good subclass spells have decent post-use gauges, it seemed like that role suited her much more.

I'm not trying to convince anyone to think one way or the other though. I just wanted to add my perspective as more view points can help reach a clearer picture.

[qazmlpok]

So I just got two scourges.

https://i.imgur.com/eJMKU3Z.jpg

Now, some caveats. The main equip is going to help Nitori more than Flandre, since it works on base stats. Nitori is a transcendant, which is also good for her. Flandre is a swordmaster. Nitori also has 18 +atk gems, Flandre has 0. Since, well, they just do so much more for Nitori than Flandre. And finally Nitori has Atk Boost 2, Flandre just has regular Atk boost. Neither have awakening skills. Flandre has the advantage in terms of library levels (300 vs 352) and bonus points (Nitori has 20 in HP, everything else is in Atk. All of Flandre's are in Atk). Final base score is 169 (Nitori) vs 236 (Flandre). Nitori has worse speed, but that's because I used pure +atk items and not flower blade.

My personal thought on fixing maintenance would be to have it double the number of item slots, rather than doubling their effect. This would mean super lategame people could still stack 6 MGLs, but you can't rush your first MGL and have it count as two. She'd be a lot more expensive to keep relevant, but I don't think that'd be too bad.

However I'm certain this would never ever happen, since it'd probably break huge amounts of the existing game code/UI

[LonelyGaruga]

Something I also recently realized is that Akyuu's two base spells also don't seem to scale with level, which could be mentioned I guess.

Ah, yeah...I guess lower MP cost for Protecting Art of Wisdom and lower delay for Guarding Art of Wisdom?

As for Byakuren, I'm using her, and I think she's very solid. I just start battles off with a Charge from Renko, and Strategist still keeps her at apermanent 100%. She can buff herself to reach 100% as well (takes one shot after Charge), and Charge could be replaced by Miracle Fruits and/or Placebo Effect, etc. Her defensive stats actually aren't particularly good due to her expensive library, but the permanent 100% helps make up for that, and her HP is perfectly solid plus 12% regen. Awakening is pretty solid for a stay-out tank. Her buff itself is still 56% to all stats, which is well more than anyone else can do, and she can get infinite mp from awakening if she so desires. So yeah, I think she's fine as-is. It's just that other characters like Sanae can actually compete with her.

It's not so much that Byakuren's buff isn't strong, but that it doesn't really make much of a difference at that point, and the other buffing characters you mentioned are better at buffing characters Byakuren would be useful for buffing. Like, Byakuren can dole out 56% buffs, but Sanae can put out 42% (48% with Enhancer) buffs while also buffing  Youkai damage by 39%, SPI damage by 30%, restoring 1-3 MP per turn to the whole frontline, and she packs the strongest ST healing spell card, and is also a pretty strong attacker herself, being fairly useful for early Plus Disk Basement floors and Shadow bosses with SPI and CLD weaknesses. Now, I think Sanae is a really good character, so it isn't fair to compare Byakuren with the expectation that she should bring as much to the table as Sanae, but compared to her or Renko or other strong buffing characters, I'm at a bit of a loss as to why I'd use Byakuren over them. At the very least, I think she should be good at being a bulky attacker and not just buffing, as she'd have a pretty neat niche in being very self-sufficient with her high natural HP and 14% Regeneration, 100% buff upkeep, and 3 MP regeneration plus large MP pool. She's got a decent foundation to start with too, Master of the Great Trichiliocosm has the same damage formula as Suwako's Long-Arm and Long-Leg, with better delay. She just has a similar problem that Komachi does, her damage doesn't stand out at all because most other cast members do better.

Another thing that could be done with her is having her self-buffs apply at 1/2 effect to the frontline, but I think it'd be better to round Byakuren's abilities instead of making her exclusively for buffing.

On the topic of Nitori, I thought, to give an idea of how strong Maintenance is, why not look at how it would affect another character? So I took a look at Tenshi. I took off all her equipment (Tokugawa Statue w/ Magic Sword Chaos, Scourge, and Grond) and found that it's a bit close to doubling her ATK, from 1,176,954 to 2,001,418. That's 824,464 more ATK, or 70% more ATK from her base. If Tenshi had Maintenance, that would take her ATK to 2,825,882. Maintenance is about a 50-55% damage increase compared to 75% from Overheat, at least with Tenshi's ATK score, which is increased further by Girl of Bhava-agra, Courageous Sword, and Keypoints of Spirit. Without the other ATK increasing skills, Maintenance is closer to a 60-65% damage increase. This is with her personal spell cards on a 4m DEF target. I'd imagine it's similar for Nitori, but obviously testing it on her would be better!

[Serela]

Stuff like Yukari's Shikigami +, Kanako's Virtue of Wind God, and even Sanae's Night of Bright Guest Stars (thx to lvl 9 skills^^) really start hitting VERY hard once you get into those levels. Indeed, I'd be curious to test Youmu (lvl 9 skills ftw) and Yuyuko (396% Nirvana :-O ) at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they turned out to be MUCH stronger than we considered them to be.

Getting off the Nitori boat for a minute (altho yeah, half the reason she's OP isn't just the damage- she scores huge durability and speed too OKAY MOVING ON), let's explore that. Yukari might! There was a video of someone using her most of the fight in Winner, recently. It's hard to tell without literally doing it because I don't know what Shikigami + formula upgrades to; that's something to test for sure. And Youmu has a top-class awakening that almost got her in my team, she's definitely really good in endgame. But Yuyuko, Sanae, and Kanako... hmm.

Yuyuko is still the most disappointing of the set. Her poor leveling+library make her magic honestly a little low, and poor library cost makes a big difference in endgame, along with no damage-boosting passives. She does boast awesome DTH for the corridor and irresistable gauge-draining, though, and SFN isn't -disappointing- by any means, it's just not as glorious as you'd hope. And she did, thankfully, get a damage buff in the last patch to help out. Her poor speed becomes less of an issue over time as well, so she's workable, she's just not... ideal? The Youmu synergy is good since Youmu rocks in endgame, though.

Kanako is solid as she always was, and if you charge up her awakening passive she gets a huge damage boost that should make her quite impressive.  I don't like "use this specific attack to get stronger" gimmicks, but she gets a potent boost for sure, and after Sky Creation her damage is effectively doubled, with good durability. Pair that with 4 elements, Majesty+, and a team synergy, and you can't really go wrong. Sanae is just "adequate" in terms of high damage, because she gets roughly a 50% damage boost compared to average moves for Guest Stars, and 30% on Moses Miracle if Sorc subbed. It's honestly just average for a good attacker (many attackers can get almost that much boost or more) but considering her support moves and team synergy, that's very respectable. She doesn't want to sub for Heavenly Demise because of it's delay and lower max level. Suwako is sort of included since team, and she's got good potential with her awakening and kinship boosts, and can afford to be tweaked for enough HP/Affinity to swap into tank slot, take one hit, and fullheal on swapout from her passive. Since glass cannons aren't really Plus Disk meta, she's more of a kinship choice- but charging her Awakening damage-doubler with another Boost effect and full kinship does result in very impressive numbers.

cut by Nitori discussion. Yeah, that's what it looks like at that point in the game. She easily gets double the atk of most party members, considering that's Flan. Later, the Attack stat evens out some, but you put on a Regalia and she obtains ENORMOUS durability for still having top-class ATK that surpasses everyone else, whilst also probably being super fast. Attack balances out at the 2000+ point, where it's the doubled affinities and overheat left shining along with Super Scope. I'm kind of concerned for Miko at that point, where her abysmal library will -really- hurt and maintenance is mostly about affinities and base stats. Ah well... she should still be good enough? There's always tomes of reincarnation...

Like, Byakuren can dole out 56% buffs, but Sanae can put out 42% (48% with Enhancer) buffs while also buffing  Youkai damage by 39%, SPI damage by 30%, restoring 1-3 MP per turn to the whole frontline, and she packs the strongest ST healing spell card.

Sanae is definitely someone I've considered replacing Byakuren with. She could even upkeep buffs with World Shaking Rule by using her mp refill passive to make Murakumo's MP Drain free, and it's other passives to keep her durability high whilst refilling party power herself... and boasting a heal and great passives over Byakuren. Since I was satisfied with Byakuren I never made the change, though. I don't really care about the attacks because I'm looking at a full-time-support role who wants to upkeep buffs or heal/formswap every single turn. But yes, when it comes to bulky attacker builds, she doesn't really cut it; her attack stats are somewhat poor due to level and library cost, and her self-buffs only offset the lack of damage boost passives, not her poor stats themselves. Sanae pulls that role off much better.

If I was interested in moving in the Moriya team I'd absolutely swap to Sanae. Kanako is very good and Suwako is quirky, but with strong potential application.

[Xarizzar]

Yukari might! There was a video of someone using her most of the fight in Winner, recently. It's hard to tell without literally doing it because I don't know what Shikigami + formula upgrades to; that's something to test for sure.

This ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAErriCldvI ) might () be said video? But I'm really bad at this game, and also used her very recklessly, so I'm not sure if I'm good research material.

Also, I one shot, without any special setup

Spoiler:

Shadow Komachi - Abyss

, @ level 500, because my library levels were really high (like, 1100 high). Maybe that was still overpowered, I wonder if I should have went at level 400, instead?

[LonelyGaruga]

Yeesh, even I didn't one-shot

Spoiler:

Abyss Komachi

with Tenshi. Ran it at Iku 641 (average 638) and library 700. Only did about 75% with World Creation Press. That probably was a little overpowered haha

[Yggdrasil]

Two other bugs I just remembered are that Yukari's Mesh of Light and Darkness has an extremely high SPD debuff, which may or may not be intentional, and Meiling's China Qi-Gong doesn't disappear when attacking, which also could be intentional.

[Xarizzar]

By one-shot I meant it took me one attempt. Sorry for any misunderstanding (;・∀・) I'll, uh. Try to refrain from using that from now on, as I'm trying to avoid actually killing them in one blow.

[Serela]

I checked and Shikigami + seems to do like 550~600% MAG with full boost (which is perpetual post-awakening). Yukari's MAG isn't super impressive so that's not ABSOLUTELY INSANE but it's still pretty dang intense, especially at it's delay, and she does have her kinship boost to assist. And as Sorc she has Hyperactive Flying Object as a solid backup skill, that... actually... does about the same damage as a resisted Shikigami+ so uh, well then, maybe that's not an important sub XDD

Two other bugs I just remembered are that Yukari's Mesh of Light and Darkness has an extremely high SPD debuff, which may or may not be intentional, and Meiling's China Qi-Gong doesn't disappear when attacking, which also could be intentional.

I noticed this and meiling is already insanely good so uh
she really didn't need a double damage passive after awakening lol

[Libra]

Did some tests with Nitori: https://imgur.com/a/1h0x76j
Left is stats and damage without Maintenance (but with both Overheat and Youkai Mountain Alliance at max level). Middle is Nitori's stats and damage this time with Maintenance. Right is her damage with Maintenance but without either Overheat or Alliance. (I didn't sub anyone Strategist so she could technically deal 10% more).

I would say Alliance is a pretty situational boost though.

Something I was thinking about is that Momiji is actually not that good, her whole Awakening is focused around making it easy for her to keep herself constantly buffed up, but as long as you have any actual buffer in your team that's trivial, and past that, she actually has no damage increasing passives (other than Alliance).

[Serela]

Something I was thinking about is that Momiji is actually not that good, her whole Awakening is focused around making it easy for her to keep herself constantly buffed up, but as long as you have any actual buffer in your team that's trivial, and past that, she actually has no damage increasing passives (other than Alliance).

That's a fair point. Her main selling feature is Instant Attack. It's less special with how fast ATB currently (and especially will later...) tick, though, since it makes her move twice as fast as a normal character on swap-in instead of numerous times faster... along with things like swap-heavy Kogasa builds being much less of a boon for instant attack spamming in general. She suffers from speed inflation more than anything else. The buff maintenance would have been really good on an instant attack spam build, but speed is already obsoleting them...

also lol at nitori dealing one third of king's hp in one hit. When you include synergy members to actually optimize her damage, it gets dumb even in current endgame.

[LonelyGaruga]

Hm, so Maintenance and Overheat are adding about the same amount of damage for Nitori. Figures.

Also since it was mentioned, Yukari's Mesh of Light and Darkness is currently set as SPD - 2500%. I thought about mentioning this before but I decided against it because I felt that the data in the files that isn't visible in-game isn't really supposed to be known, like spell card formulas and such. I guess phrasing it as "it seems to be too high" would be safe. Should mention the Qi-Gong buff not vanishing on attack as well.

I was thinking Momiji was pretty good with Instant Attack and all, but at this point in the game she probably could use some kind of damage buff, yeah. It's a little tricky to buff Momiji while simultaneously abusing Instant Attack to its fullest, particularly when it comes to Boost effects since Momiji doesn't have a way to apply it to herself. She does have the Flying racial damage passive, but the number of relevant Flying bosses is, uh...small. There are more Flying bosses than Aquatic or Insect though, and notably Serpent of Chaos is a Flying boss. Still terrible compared to the Human or Youkai racial passives that Rumia and Reimu/Sanae have of course.

also lol at nitori dealing one third of king's hp in one hit.

And I thought Tenshi doing 25% with Sword of Hisou was a lot. And that's hitting weakness and a -50% DEF debuff, with 50% Boost, 30% SPI, 16% weakness from Akyuu and Sanae. And she even had better equipment! Granted, Nitori 1200 is a little higher than Tenshi 1123 in terms of EXP investment, but only by a few levels or so I would estimate.

[Libra]

That's a fair point. Her main selling feature is Instant Attack. It's less special with how fast ATB currently (and especially will later...) tick, though, since it makes her move twice as fast as a normal character on swap-in instead of numerous times faster... along with things like swap-heavy Kogasa builds being much less of a boon for instant attack spamming in general. She suffers from speed inflation more than anything else.

I mean, Mystia and Chen also get Instant Attack and get a bunch of easy to use Kinship boosts, ATK increasing awakening passives and spellcards with excellent formulas, all of which Momiji lacks (and their frailty is a moot point if we're using Instant Attack as comparison, without mentioning Chen and Mystia's better EVA).

[Serela]

Mystia's latest awakening buff really makes her the unexpected hit character. It seems most endgame bosses will feature proper accuracy, but, against fights that don't have new high-accuracy moves, you see a lot of evading. Like, random battles are MISS MISS MISS MISS MISS MISS MISS. And she gets a -massive- stat boost off Silencing an enemy, which she has obscene accuracy for now that she's got higher max level; 120% infliction chance, 32000 effect, and biiig damage formula. Before she had been pretty underwhelming other than her status as Team 9 member.

I'm kind of messing around with my "debuff character slot". Hina/Mystia/Aya have been swapping around in it after Hina sitting there as a mainstay all game. Hina doesn't really need boosts or gems, but Mystia... wasted potential without them! Plus I might try Reisen for magnificent vertigo... that plus Sheer Force Mokou must make guardian's Shock awfully accurate against even -slightly- vulnerable bosses. Not that we really need to delay turns at the moment, but later.

[Libra]

I personally found Mystia+Reisen to be a fantastic combination when clearing random battles in early to mid Plus Disk, Poisonous Moth's Dark Dance with Reisen's resistance reduction allows you to PAR/PSN enemies quite reliably, you just need either Aya or a Strategist/Monk to get the first turn and then switch in Mystia to cripple half the enemies.

EDIT: Kinda random but I just noticed that Magical Tempest got fixed and is properly VOI elemental now, and Patchy's Passive Phylosopher's Stone works with it, which is currently the only way to reduce VOI damage.

[IRUN]

Kinda random but I just noticed that Magical Tempest got fixed and is properly VOI elemental now, and Patchy's Passive Phylosopher's Stone works with it, which is currently the only way to reduce VOI damage.

Could you reduce VOI damage by subbing Patchy with Elementalist? All of its subclass spells are void.