Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 17F

[Nyxnyx]

I don't have high hopes for her, but an interesting way of trying her would be to use her along with the Eientei family. She makes for a good tank due to her huge HP score and -20% damage taken from her awakening, and Reisen's Intense Vertigo has strong synergy with her SHK-related abilities. Furthermore, Full Moon Pompolikin would hit for an extra +30% damage, which combined with the +40% from the awakening could lead to some decent results. The only issue, here, is that Mamizou herself does not bring much to Eientei (compared to, say, something like Reimu).

Miko feels a bit average for a large part of the game, though by the time you get her on 22F she should have a high enough level to pull her full weight. Her main use, to me, has been as a stat debuffer and piercing attacker (thanks to Asuka Heritage Attack).

Yakumo's Shikigami + is insane, I can confirm, and it only gets stronger as you keep levelling, like all high formula spells. In general, characters with high formulas scale much better past lvl 1000 than characters with high stats but average formulas (which is, again, why I feel Yuyuko and Youmu could still have potential... if only I could find room for them on my team lol. Maybe I could try removing Miko, but she's my only debuffer... ).

Finally, yes I think Alice just doesn't work that well due to her bad spellcards - if you want to use Marisa, you better use her alone since she doesn't rly need the speed buff that much anyway.

I played a new game+ save with plus disk character. So I used Miko right from level 1. Her heal was bad and her damage was worse. Right now at about lv 240 she's kinda ok, but I don't really need to bring her out to do much. Maybe she needs her awakening.

[LonelyGaruga]

The Awakening helps, but unfortunately Miko's heal is always bad. Buffing it was one of the things I asked for in an e-mail to 3peso, but while they did implement many of the things I requested, a buff to Miko's heal was not one of those things implemented. Which is unfortunate, because it is really underpowered, weaker than most multi-target heals.

[Libra]

The Awakening helps, but unfortunately Miko's heal is always bad. Buffing it was one of the things I asked for in an e-mail to 3peso, but while they did implement many of the things I requested, a buff to Miko's heal was not one of those things implemented. Which is unfortunate, because it is really underpowered, weaker than most multi-target heals.

Interestingly enough, the MP heal seems to be 1 for every debuff/ailment the target is inflicted with, for a potential maximum of 10 MP recovery, the healing increase seems to be around 20-40% per ailment/debuff ( so it could technically increase by a lot). Its overall a pretty situational heal, just like Mystia's imo.

[Serela]

Miko's heal seems fine to me in endgame, considering a full MAG build (I don't see any reason to build her as a tank regardless). It might scale badly before that, though...

Alice's damage should be good so long as you're using Sorc and Marisa. Hanged Hourai Dolls is over 300% with row attack enhancement and she gets +30% off Marisa and +32% if you can activate Final Blow, and those are some winning numbers- she ignores a hunk of it's high mind factor and it's not a big problem in postgame in general. She does need final blow to -really- keep up with competition, unfortunately. Her enormous eva should be good if you're trying to use Mystia, tho.

Mamizou seems... average. HP and damage reduction is king in postgame, and she's got both, but other characters just... do it better? Her only real specialty is attaching any weakness on any skill, main or subclass, which is... convenient, and can combo well with elemental boost passives, but I'm not sure how much that really matters. Her stat layout doesn't work that great until endgame, so she belongs in postgame where she is.

Futo mostly comes into her own at like, lv500+ when she can afford her whole awakening set. I only barely decided to replace her with Mokou, it's easy to maintain 10 plates and she gets a helluva lotta boost from it. She's really averagey before awakening, though.

Still doubtful about Yuyuko having endgame potential. My characters with high level/library cost have depressingly poor stats, other than Miko possessing Maintennance. Eirin is still king because of overheal, but man are her stats garbage; it feels like those sorts of characters will only keep working if they have supremely good passives/skills, which to be fair, many of them do! e.g. Yukari.

A character I'd be curious about in NG+ is Tokiko. Her "regen when a sub-200 affininy is attacked" is good in maingame but useless in Plus. Try to activate reading once you can afford the buff sustainer, then use subclass support with her mp regen on hits. Koishi might work alright too since she can achieve eva scores that are absurd in maingame, even if her gimmicks are too expensive to learn.

[LonelyGaruga]

Interestingly enough, the MP heal seems to be 1 for every debuff/ailment the target is inflicted with, for a potential maximum of 10 MP recovery, the healing increase seems to be around 20-40% per ailment/debuff ( so it could technically increase by a lot). Its overall a pretty situational heal, just like Mystia's imo.

I didn't know that Miko's heal scales with multiple status/debuffs, but hm, Miko's heal is about 1/4th the strength of Sanae's by default. It would take 10 status effects/debuffs to reach that level of healing, if it's a 40% increase per status/debuff. If it's 20% then it would only reach half that strength with 10 status effects and debuffs. That still seems underpowered for how restrictive it is. The MP recovery is more notable, but difficult to get an appreciable amount of use out of it.

Miko's heal seems fine to me in endgame, considering a full MAG build (I don't see any reason to build her as a tank regardless). It might scale badly before that, though...

Presently for me, even with a full MAG build (3x Tupsimati, MAG Mega Boost, Tokugawa) a buffless Miko only heals about 75% of Tenshi's HP without HP investment, and about 50% on my SPD tank setup for Iku. Sanae can full heal Tenshi with a SPD build (1 MGL and Tokugawa) and heal about 80% of Iku's HP. Since I'm always spamming Akyuu's Miare's Great Knowledge, Sanae can full heal Iku, but Miko would still only heal 75%.

But the important thing for me is that Miko is the most durable character in my party composition and is sometimes necessary to use as a tank. Like she was the only character in my party composition that could withstand the Dark Lord's Underworld Hammer "Grond" (although this might not necessarily be true with the now functional Strategist damage reduction and Dragon God's Power's equivalent). Maxing out her HP (Regalia/Medicine of Life/MGL), she's healing herself for about 11% of her HP without buffs, while Sanae can heal Miko for about 45% under the same setup. With 86% MAG buffs and Miare's Great Knowledge, Sanae would be able to full heal Miko while Miko would only be able to heal about 28%. And Minoriko has even stronger heals than Sanae (not to mention she self-buffs her MAG), so it's not like Sanae is special here.

So it's basically like, Sanae with an HP or SPD build still has enough healing power to full heal dedicated tanks as long as she's buffed, while Miko with the same build and buffs doesn't even reach a third of a full heal. Even with Healer she wouldn't be able to heal much more than 33%. Of course, all these numbers are without factoring in the status effect/debuff scaling, but that doesn't really help much.

[Serela]

Unbuffed Miko heals 1/3rd of my First Aid Kit Renko, the highest hp character in my party. That may sound poor, but it's nearly a fullheal for any non-tank member of my party (without buffs!), and reasonably she'll usually heal 2/3+rds of any non-Renko tank with some buffing.

This is at average party level ~1500, Miko's stats here http://puu.sh/AQuiW.png (edit:okay I guess she had 16% buffs because sorc lol)

By the way THANKS FOR REMINDING ME I NEED TO GIVE SANAE SOME MAG LOL. She has like 20k mag. I forgot she wants to like, HEAL. MAG-build Miko still heals more than tank build Sanae after I tweaked up her MAG, though. Only by like 15~20%, but yeah. ...I guess without Sorc it'd be about even, then.

edit:Miko also gets meikyo shisui buffs... lol. She heals 1m without -any- of that on, which is just a hair less than Sanae is. So many buffs augh! Most of my party has ~1.6m hp, Sanae and Akyuu have 2.7, and Renko is 3.6m. Rumia heals 1.2m, more than either. MAG-Mari heals... 650k without Renko out, lol.

[LonelyGaruga]

Well, Sanae and Minoriko can get full heals on those tanks with some buffs instead of 2/3rds, which was kind of my point. Though you reminded me that I forgot to swap Tokugawa Statue with First-Aid Kit when checking tank Miko's HP, she would actually heal less than 10% of her own HP with a proper tank build without buffs. Less with 2x Medicine of Life, which I should have used in the first place in this example, as that was how I set her up for the Dark Lord.

So uh, guess a visual example would be good.

Miko (tank build): https://i.imgur.com/l5hFMZS.png
Sanae (MAG build): https://i.imgur.com/Gy8Ibnz.png
Yasaka healing (no MAG buff or Boost): https://i.imgur.com/8JDmMGH.png

The healing variance was a little favorable though. Healing is pretty easy to calculate since there's no DEF or MND reduction, it's a fairly simple character stat * multiplier. The average healing power for Sanae in this setup is 3.1m without buffs. With a SPD/tank build (Tokugawa and 1 MGL) Sanae can get 1.1m average heals. With a max MAG build Miko can get an 825K average, accounting for Divinely Appointed Stateswoman. With the above tank build Miko gets 175K heals (also with DAS). All of the numbers are prior to buffs, and Miko is set to Transcendent while Sanae is Enhancer.

As another example, Rumia gets 990K heals with a max MAG build and no buffs (besides I'm Fine Even by Myself) as an Enhancer, and that's MT.

[Serela]

Well, Sanae and Minoriko can get full heals on those tanks with some buffs instead of 2/3rds, which was kind of my point.

I guess that's fair, but given it's low strength, I think it's pretty clear it's meant to be a utility option for offensive miko rather than actually encouraging Miko-tank. Other than sheer bulk, she brings pretty little to the table anyway; in Laby2, bulk isn't enough to really make someone a good tank outside of very specific situations like trying to survive supernukes you aren't necessarily meant to handle. Grond is soooo slow it literally has a designated chargeup move. XD

[elminster1372]

I played a new game+ save with plus disk character. So I used Miko right from level 1. Her heal was bad and her damage was worse. Right now at about lv 240 she's kinda ok, but I don't really need to bring her out to do much. Maybe she needs her awakening.

I, too, used her since lvl 1 a few times. For me, she started performing well after lvl 40-50 or so - after she gets at least OOPART and Asuka Heritage Attack (so, around F13-15). By then, however, her piercing ability will truly start to shine, as well as her debuffing potential.

[LonelyGaruga]

I guess that's fair, but given it's low strength, I think it's pretty clear it's meant to be a utility option for offensive miko rather than actually encouraging Miko-tank. Other than sheer bulk, she brings pretty little to the table anyway; in Laby2, bulk isn't enough to really make someone a good tank outside of very specific situations like trying to survive supernukes you aren't necessarily meant to handle. Grond is soooo slow it literally has a designated chargeup move. XD

Thing about Grond is that if you want to avoid any characters getting incapacitated, you do have to have a way to survive it, which is different from most other super power attacks that have alternative ways to deal with them, like Scourge's low Hit or Desire Eating Demon having 0 SHK resistance. So I think it's fair to assume that you're intended to be able to withstand it. I try to do runs with 0 character losses, but the game isn't necessarily meant to be played like that. That aside, Miko actually does make a pretty good tank character beyond stats since she can heal (obviously), debuff and remove buffs, and has her +16% buff effect passive while on the frontline, as opposed to 8% when in the back. She's not exactly ideal compared to Akyuu, Satori, or Sanae, but she's solid and probably the most useful all-debuffing character as a tank, aside from Rumia for Human enemies.

But anyway, I guess if you have Miko with a max MAG build with high buffs and Boost she could heal semi-tanky builds properly, but using an attacker for that purpose is pretty questionable, since that's sacrificing a damage dealer's turn for something that a support character could do just as well or better. I mean, Sanae's still a better healer with a SPD/tank build and Rumia can heal more HP for the full party. Think even Rinnosuke's heal is stronger, but I haven't checked. Healer's Prayer of Recovery is certainly stronger.

Like, I'm not denying that it's a utility option, but even with all that she isn't fully healing moderately tanky characters, which is a liability against bosses with strong attacks. Taking Ryujin-sama for example, the red phase hits extremely hard. If a tank loses say 90% of their HP in one hit, then Miko won't be able to preserve them with her 60-80% heals. Even some Abyss bosses like Momiji and Kogasa hit tanks for numbers that Miko wouldn't be able to keep up with very well, it's not that uncommon to see a single target move rip off a huge amount of HP.

Anyway, I'm just saying Miko's heal could use a buff. Not  to Sanae or Minoriko levels, of course. Presently the formula is apparently 25% MAG, something like 40-50% MAG should be fine.

Though I'm not gonna ask 3peso again or anything, I already put that out there and it wasn't done, so that's that as far as I'm concerned.

[Libra]

Just found out that Byakure'ns Skanda's Legs is still bugged and doesn't increase the SPD buff when killing an enemy, the base SPD buff is 11+1 per level.

[Serela]

can anyone think of a more completely irrelevant move effect?  :getdown: I am not surprised it never got the attention, what would be more surprising is if anyone legitimately cared past the principle of it

OK, I guess if you do NG+, offensive Byakuren is legitimate for a good hunk of the game. Playing normally tho... and even then, like, it only factors in random battles where a somewhat higher speed buff after killing an enemy is like, nothing : VV

[Libra]

Mystia's Mysterious Song seems to be a % based heal, 35+5 per level % (so 60% HP at max level), the heal also doesn't scale with how many status effects you remove.

[Raikaria]

Somehow; I managed to miss that the Plus Disc came out for this. I'd been waiting for a finished English Translation and the Plus Disc. I think I just forgot to keep checking.

So yeah. Now it's time to give LoT2 an actual try. I tried it before for a few floors before the Plus Disc.

I know this game is a lot deeper than the first game. And now it's not moonrunes all over I might be able to figure out half of what's going on.

[Rinnie]

Somehow; I managed to miss that the Plus Disc came out for this. I'd been waiting for a finished English Translation and the Plus Disc. I think I just forgot to keep checking.

So yeah. Now it's time to give LoT2 an actual try. I tried it before for a few floors before the Plus Disc.

I know this game is a lot deeper than the first game. And now it's not moonrunes all over I might be able to figure out half of what's going on.

And the Plus Disk is amazing. It is bigger than main game, and there will be one more patch soon with content for two final post game dungeon levels and with new bosses for Infinite Corridor.

[Nyxnyx]

Hmm, after awakening Youmu, should regeneration be skilled at all? It seems to work against the 1 hp gimmick she has going. Pretty sure the answer is no, but just to be sure.

Somehow; I managed to miss that the Plus Disc came out for this. I'd been waiting for a finished English Translation and the Plus Disc. I think I just forgot to keep checking.

So yeah. Now it's time to give LoT2 an actual try. I tried it before for a few floors before the Plus Disc.

I know this game is a lot deeper than the first game. And now it's not moonrunes all over I might be able to figure out half of what's going on.

The best thing about this game IMO is the customization. You have great selections of choices for your team and almost anything can work.

[Libra]

Hmm, after awakening Youmu, should regeneration be skilled at all? It seems to work against the 1 hp gimmick she has going. Pretty sure the answer is no, but just to be sure.

Yeah, there's no reason to level her Regeneration since you want her to stay at 1 HP for the damage boost.

[Raikaria]

So; I'm crawling through the game between work shifts and real life stuff. I haven't got that far yet. [Only on Floor 3; noticed a little bit of a spike in the strength of the mobs]. Also I'm playing on Hard Mode since I have some experience with LoT mechanics and I'd want the bonus drops for challenge levels with bosses anyway.

Firstly; man; I can't get any Great Tree Leaves to drop. I know I need 3 to recruit Minoriko. I've been grinding out Fairy kills and raising my consecutive wins and I've only got 1.  Is there something better to try and get Great Leaves from other than F1~2 Fairies?

Secondly; I'm finding some characters a lot more useful than I ever did in LoT1; which I'm finding quite pleasing. Perhaps I'm rotateing characters more due to MP/SP changes.

Specifically my opinions on each character at such an early stage:

Reimu - Really suffers from MP issues with her heals/buffs. I do find her handy to occasionally use to clear trash with Fantasy Seal however, and of course; the healing she can throw out in bosses is good; just without me having recruited Minoriko yet and her mana issues I've had a couple of fights where I've simply run out of heals and my tanks died.

Marisa - Yep; this is definitely Marisa. Strong MYS nukes and nothing else really. Dosen't have enough MP to Master Spark yet.

Rinnosuke - MAN this guy is useless. A very tiny heal that dosen't even make 10% of Momiji/Youmu's HP. He can throw out some baby buffs and that's about it. I mostly use him only when someone else needs to restore MP in slot 1/2/3 and throw out what little he can do while he's basically being a meatshield.

Keine - I actually have her in slot 2 the majority of the time. Her buffs and MP pool make her a lot more reliable than Reimu at boss-buffing, and she's alright at doing some work on trash; especially SPI-element.

Kogasa - Oh god she's surprising me is this meta? Kogasa is awesome. Probobly my hardest hitter, great range of elements, status; and for some reason using Concentrate on her fully restores her MP and she dosen't even burn it that quickly. She's in my general trash clearing team too since she tends to have her turn early so she can concentrate if low on MP.

Momiji - She's a tank. Not much else to say.

Rumia - Also surprising me. Moonlight Ray gives Marisa a run for her money; and Dark Side of the Moon is proving rather useful as a cheap attack-all. Demarkation heals are a nice bonus too... although I'm not quite sure why Rumia is a healer.

Cirno - Surprisingly useful for trash fights when someone else is low on MP. Also; I seem to recall CLD not being that useful in LoT1 but it seems more useful here. And obviously; debuffs!

Youmu - Probably the character I am using the least; even less than Rinnosuke. Her damage output is... lower than I'd expect. She's less tanky than Momiji; and her MP costs/pool are disgusting.

I managed to defeat the F2 FoE at Lv 6. I *think* that was significantly under the level requirement considering I was almost dead when I killed it; but Kogasa/Rumia combo was putting out tons of damage.

If I recall from my breif time playing LoT pre-plus disc; the F3 boss is Komachi who's pretty bull and RNG with her Insta-death effects. Looking foward to that fight. @_@

[Phen]

3peso tweeted the next patch should be out this month probably and is likely the last patch, barring bug patching that is.

[Serela]

That means patch in a week or two. Hype!

Re:Raikaria, CLD was good in LoT1 (actually, like half of the bosses were weak to it!) but Cirno's damage just... wasn't good. It's a lot more usable here. You probably remember CLD as underwhelming because the only good CLD attack is in postgame, on a meh character. :V Also yeah, Youmu is depressingly underwhelming. Her awakening is amazing and she gets lv9 attacks, but she's just terrible until late plus- expensive slow attacks that aren't any stronger than your other characters, with no particularly impressive passive other than making a good tank vs. Komachi with all the right resistances. Rinnosuke thankfully scales up faster than that; he has really good passive skills like Efficient Formation Change and the high boosts make him mega tanky once you can actually afford a few of them at once.

[Raikaria]

Yeah; I managed to beat Komachi on my 2nd attempt. The first attempt Minoriko got DTH'ed and Komachi decided to whack Reimu, giving me no good way to keep Youmu up.

The 2nd attempt... Minoriko still got DTH'ed, but this time Reimu didn't get smacked; and Marisa/Rumia were putting out enough damage that I managed to bring her down.

Komachi was as far as I got before because I didn't have an English patch that was completed at that time so Komachi was pretty much a brick wall since I couldn't find what items had DTH resistance :V

Can't bring down the Lesser Golem yet however. It just hits too hard and I can't kill it even with Rumia before it decides to smack someone who isn't Momiji with a PHY-resist item.

[LonelyGaruga]

3peso tweeted the next patch should be out this month probably and is likely the last patch, barring bug patching that is.

Hmm, from the wording of the tweet it sounds like it might be better to report bug fixes before the update rolls out so that they can have more of a break. It would probably feel bad if they received reports on a bunch of bugs and desired balance changes soon after they finished the final update.

[Arcvasti]

Rinnosuke's real utility is Effective Formation Change, which is very nice for hit-and-run with fragile characters. He basically requires high affinity boost in order to be really durable though.

[Serela]

Hmm, from the wording of the tweet it sounds like it might be better to report bug fixes before the update rolls out so that they can have more of a break. It would probably feel bad if they received reports on a bunch of bugs and desired balance changes soon after they finished the final update.

Yes- and it's understandable, considering how many YEARS he's been working on the game post-release. Probably just wants to be done.

[General_Milky]

Oh man. Hard Mode's a pain in the ass, it really screws over fast levelers and makes it real easy to overshoot literally every fight in the game if you dare to use one, just adds a lot of tedious micromanaging and only veeeerry slightly actually increses difficulty over just, playing normal and meeting challenge level requirements anyway.

Hope you enjoy the game, though. I like 2 much, much more than the original. It may not be as difficult at parts (for instance, there's no real equivalent to

Spoiler:

Rinnosuke's boss fight

from the first game in this one,) and the QoL changes such as being able to very clearly see enemy HP and weak affinities make it easier than ever to nuke bosses down if you know what you're doing, and reallocating levelup bonuses make it possible to minmax for each specific fight in a way you could not in LoT1. But on the other hand this one is just so much more polished and offers so many more choices to you on how to play it that I just can't go back to the original.

[RegalStar]

That means patch in a week or two. Hype!

You mean a year or two

[Nyxnyx]

That means patch in a week or two. Hype!

Re:Raikaria, CLD was good in LoT1 (actually, like half of the bosses were weak to it!) but Cirno's damage just... wasn't good. It's a lot more usable here. You probably remember CLD as underwhelming because the only good CLD attack is in postgame, on a meh character. :V Also yeah, Youmu is depressingly underwhelming. Her awakening is amazing and she gets lv9 attacks, but she's just terrible until late plus- expensive slow attacks that aren't any stronger than your other characters, with no particularly impressive passive other than making a good tank vs. Komachi with all the right resistances. Rinnosuke thankfully scales up faster than that; he has really good passive skills like Efficient Formation Change and the high boosts make him mega tanky once you can actually afford a few of them at once.

I second the "youmu is really bad until late post game". In my new save featuring team9, scarlets except flan and yuyuko, she's not been pulling her weight until the awakening and that's like 80% the game. All points into atk and even with a bit more library levels than her peers in effort to try to make her work, she just doesn't work. Her damage cannot pierce through the harder early game bosses (mirror, tenshi, magatama etc.) and still dies in one or two hits since all points have to go into atk just to barely go through the defense. She's basically a dead slot, unless I make her a support character subbing toxicologist for heavy, which my team lacks. But pretty sure there are so many characters that are better for that.

Post-awakening, her awakening is good enough to put her on par with most characters. But there are so many good PHY attackers in this game that requires no awakening and is useful from the beginning till the very end (yuugi with her heavy and powerful PHY card and PHY buffing skill, nitori cuz nitori, meiling cuz meiling, yukari with her team and superb support skills to go along with it). It's sad when the only blademaster in gensoukyo (not unless you count tenshi a blademaster, but tenshi doesn't use only her blade for her attacks) can't even beat body users(meiling, yuugi). All those training hasn't been paying off, and she's mocked even in the story. Reimu and Marisa only see her as a vine cutter. With that kind of damage before awakening, I can see why. Trained all her life with a sword that's supposed to cut through anything, just to deal 0 damage with huge delay and uses up all her mp, without any way to support her peers.
Shame that slash of eternity has a really cool effect.

[Phen]

How does Heavy and Silence stack with normal stat debuffs? 100% defense reduction or 75%? Probably, main game was balanced around that idea some since it's one of the things in which 2 differs from 1. Falls kind of flat when not every boss can be afflicted with those though. Really, I would prefer all the bosses to be vulnerable to silence, heavy, and terror and make poison resistance for enemies only reduce the damage instead of the chance of applying.

[LonelyGaruga]

I'm not 100%, but I'm pretty sure the effects are multiplicative, so 75%.

[Serela]

Wait, are heavy and silence's stat debuffs that powerful? o.o I was never really sure how much of an effect they had, but I never used a team that was particularly good at inflicting them either.