Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 16F

[LonelyGaruga]

Yeah, Keine's switches aren't quite as good in practice as they appear on paper. Keine still has the benefit of being a good MT buffing character, but she doesn't have racial damage bonuses like Rinnosuke (Other) and Nazrin (Divine), and Enhancer/Herbalist are good subclasses for ST support purposes (and ST is more important than MT unless you have two attackers). Nazrin in particular can trigger Extra Attack while using subclass buffs, which is pretty cool (although gimmicky and useless for Herb of Awakening). I've been considering ditching Keine (my current party formation is Tenshi, Iku, Keine, Momiji, Rumia, Aya, Mystia, Satori, Reisen, Sanae, Miko, Akyuu), but there isn't really any character in particular that I want to switch her for besides Suwako (for the 30% buff to NTR attacks on Tenshi), but Suwako is too frail to stay in effectively (she's one of the only characters that I've tested that cannot survive Serpent of Chaos' Disintegrating Breath using the setup I used for it) and too much of a hassle to attack with compared to Tenshi, so it's just impractical to use her. So I'm stuck with Keine for now.

Speedy Formation Change + Instant Attack should be a pretty cool combination, although you'll have some difficulties maintaining buffs on them like that. Post-Awakening Momiji can sustain a 100% ATK buff by herself with her personal skills (far as I can tell, White Wolf Tengu's Sword and Shield activates before damage is calculated, so she has a maximum buff of 100% ATK on the moment she attacks instead of 86% like most characters would, which is a good damage boost), but she still won't have a Boost effect on her, so that's 36%/50% damage missing out unless you can find an opportunity to get the buff on her. Momiji is a pretty great attacker with Instant Attack since she loses its main weakness (buff maintenance), and Instant Attack itself is a huge boost in how quickly a character can dish out damage. Mystia's Midnight Chorus Master is the strongest attack offered by Instant Attack characters (especially with Silent Singing Voice activated), but Mystia needs more assistance maintaining her buffs compared to Momiji. Mystia is also reasonably durable (about as durable as Sanae is) due to her fast leveling rate and should be able to take a hit from most bosses. Can't say much about Chen since haven't tried her, but I don't think she has any significant advantages compared to Momiji.

As for Plus Disk, you might as well start on it, unless the dialogue is important to you. You could always make an extra save at the start of it so you can go over it again when the EN patch comes out if that is the case though. If you get stuck on anything or need to read something, then you can just ask about it here since there's a few people who've already gone through Plus Disk that can help you.

[dawnbomb]

As for Plus Disk, you might as well start on it, unless the dialogue is important to you. You could always make an extra save at the start of it so you can go over it again when the EN patch comes out if that is the case though. If you get stuck on anything or need to read something, then you can just ask about it here since there's a few people who've already gone through Plus Disk that can help you.

is there actually someone making the EN patch for it now? if not i'd be willing to give a stab at it. see what i can do.

[LonelyGaruga]

I don't know anything about the EN patch. Don't want/need it, so I don't look into it. Maybe someone else can tell you what's going on with it.

[dawnbomb]

in order for me to look into how possible it is for me to apply the ENG contents over to the plus disk, i kinda need the plus disk. if someone can PM me it, that would be great. im going to sleep >_>;

i looked all over and found nothing, not even a outdated version.

[Arcvasti]

is there actually someone making the EN patch for it now? if not i'd be willing to give a stab at it. see what i can do.

There's sort of an english patch out, but it basically only covers skill and item names. This is still incredibly helpful for actually playing the game, mind you. Its only real flaws from a pure gameplay perspective are that some of the skill descriptions go off the screen and it hasn't translated any of the rock bypassing requirements[E.G: "You must collect 162 potato extracts to pass"].

[Serela]

To be more specific, I think the latest edition of the patch covers everything except plus disk dialogue and rock descriptions (although a lack of rock descriptions can be minorly problematic, I imagine they can generally be passed by fully exploring the floor(s) and defeating available events/bosses, so).

It should be the one in this post? https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,15439.msg1354086.html#msg1354086

[elminster1372]

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

I'm still theorymonning at this stage - mostly because I still have not heard enough about the Endless Corridor to make an informed decision (ex: how difficult are random encounters compared to bosses, how much power vs "value" (Appraisers, Shou/Kourin/Nazrin, etc.) you need, how much of a concern TP consumption is, and so on). I do have some firm points though (for TL;DR purposes, I have bolded the names of the characters I intend to use).

The first is the Sealing Club - Renko and Maribel. The former is, IMO, the strongest tank in the game. Thanks to maintenance, as well as Sealing Club's MP regeneration, Renko can become exceptionally bulky - to the point I managed to beat Ame-no-Mokurano on floor 12 simply by tanking it with Renko (and I wasn't even overlevelled for that, I just had over 300 SPI resistance and a huge HP pool). Renko's Charge is also surprisingly useful, especially if the rest of your team has regeneration, too. Even if this is not the case, anyway, Maribel has a very good AoE heal which also doubles as a damage boost.

Speaking of which, Maribel is an awesome attacker. Her Void AoE clears random encounters easily since it's basically unresisted, and her ability to heal the team while delivering solid damage is nearly unmatched. To top it off, she has easily one of the strongest Awakened Skills in the game. Vision Sharing basically grants the entire team a passive 25% boost to all stats as long as Maribel is kept 100% buffed (incidentally, Renko gets a whopping +50%, making her even more unbreakable). Even if Maribel is in the back, the frontline would still get approx. a 12% boost - which is almost the equivalent of a kinship bonus. In short, Renko and Maribel are one of the strongest pairs in the game (and I'm surprised I don't hear as much about them on this thread, have you even tested them?).

Yuuka also worked impressively well for me. Unlike her LoT1 counterpart, which is only good because of Master Spark, LoT2 Yuuka has an incredible damage output, has a huge MP pool, is pretty damn tanky for a sweeper of her power, and is very easy to keep buffed (which makes her an ideal partner for Renko and Maribel). Moreover, since she has no kinship families, she slots well into any lineup, and can be switched in easily during any boss fights. She's also an ideal candidate for those uber subclasses, because of her titanic stats.

Reimu is another character I've been using for a long time, but which I'm a bit less sure about. While she's still an extraordinary healer, it's not one I absolutely need for any fight at higher levels. Much depends on how relevant her MP regen ability is - which is part of why I'd like to know more about the Endless Corridor and how "taxing" it is. The same holds true for Sanae and her TP saving ability. Though, at least, Sanae combined with Reimu, Suwako and Kanako make for a very good random encounter cleaning party. This is especially true once Suwako is equipped with a "certain" uber class skill which gives her a gigantic SPI nuke, which is further powered by Sanae's SPI party boost.

Tenshi and Iku I was a bit on the fence, but I heard a lot of good things about them, so I'm going to try and include them in my party.

Miko attracts me because of her synergy with Renko's buffing (since Miko can keep buffs up to +120%), as well as her Maintenance-like skill. She does level up extremely slowly, but given the equipments I've seen from the spoiler files a while back, I'm pretty sure just about any character with Maintenance (including Nitori, even without Youkai Mountain Alliance, which unfortunately includes chars I'd rather not use in the first place) will be extremely powerful in the Plus Disk, right?

So... this leaves me with what? Let's see...

Renko / Yuuka / Miko / Maribel
Sanae / Reimu / Suwako / Kanako
/ Tenshi / Iku /

The good question now would be - what should go in the last two slots? It largely depends, again, on whether I need more power vs bosses, or more "value" to farm random encounters. If I were to go down the "boss" route, I would probably choose Byakuren and Nitori. The former is one of the tougher tanks in the game, and the Plus Disk version of Duplicating Chant is just perfect for keeping Tenshi fully buffed at all times. The latter, as mentioned above, can reach astronomical stats thanks to her Maintenance skill, even without other Youkai Mountain Alliance party members.

If I wanted more rewards - in terms of XP and money - I would probably go with Rinnosuke (over Byakuren) and Shou (over Nitori), instead. Together, they provide a hefty money and xp boost, especially if Shou is the one finishing foes off with Radiant Treasure Gun and if Rinnosuke takes the Magician subclass to keep Shou's MP topped off. Such a setup, however, would require overlevelling random encounters significantly, and would mean having 2 dead slots against most bosses, I'm assuming. Is this handicap made up for by the increased rewards? This is the question I'd like to answer before making my decision (though ofc, until I'm that late into the postgame, Byakuren and Nitori would remain the more plausible alternative.

[Serela]

Oh yeah, I was planning on getting a lot of use out of Mari-Renko and having MAribel be one of my first few awakenings. Vision Sharing and double damage on the void attack sound awesome, not to mention Sealing Club was fixed to actually function and grant Mari-Renko that big stat boost (which didn't work before), plus vision sharing making Renko get silly... (Although, honestly, I was considering HP tank Renko with the regen anyway, especially as I'm planning on using Kogasa as a frontline hp wall with her own awakened regen, also one of my first one or two awakenings.)

I really liked Yuuka on paper, but she was almost impossible to use due to colossal defensive stats in original postgame, like a large portion of the cast... maybe she'll make a return to my team in Plus Disk. (Since I'm using kogasa and the instant attack cast though, there probably won't be room, tbh. I mean, I'd rather have Meiling in free offensive slots, she's too good.) Miko does look absolutely stellar as well, and might make one of my first 3 awakens because her awakening skills are just so sweet (and kinda necessary to make that one attack of hers work). Might go to Momi due to my party setup though, hah.

Rinnosuke takes the Magician subclass to keep Shou's MP topped off. Such a setup, however, would require overlevelling random encounters significantly, and would mean having 2 dead slots against most bosses, I'm assuming. Is this handicap made up for by the increased reward

Whaaat? Dead slots? Rinnosuke's Efficient Formation Change is an absolute asset in boss fights, and in postgame you can power up all those high boosts to make his stats and resistances/affinites all very solid. Eventually you can even get First Aid to heal a good amount of HP+statuses, and Battle Command can do some topping off on spare turns. And Magician is actually a really synergistic subclass for him with it's 1 mp regen per turn, because his skills are mega cheap and low delay; it allows you to use them as freely as you desire when he's not swapping people around. Like, if Keine isn't such a godlike asset after all, all the pressure to awaken star characters means I'll probably just use Rinnosuke for the job just because he's a solid character and not for any farming reasons. Keine would be better earlier and is no slouch herself, but having to awaken her first is a pretty heavy cost.

Shou isn't particularly good until she's awakened, though, and it sounds like boss fights end pretty fast so she doesn't have the time to really get her infinite atk pump gimmick going. However, since Rinno jacks up her offensive stats up, she'd still work enough.


Also, someone was ranking the Instant Attack people before for Speedy Formation Change shenanigans. Momiji's certainly the best, yeah. Chen actually manages to make it though I think, because A.Postgame you can fix up her pitiful base ATK and get some level of power behind her attacks, B.She was useless in maingame because of high defenses, but that's not true postgame, and C.She'll get multiple turns in between Kogasa's Speedy Swaps (...I think? She's got an absolutely blistering speed stat and Accelerate, so with proper tweaking, it should be possible?), and with multiple attacks firing off she can make up for her lower damage- especially because she can do, say, Idaten -> Phoenix Spread and get swapped by Kogasa.

The main thing is she'll burn through MP at the speed of light, especially trying to keep her buffs up. :T I don't know whether it'd be best to sub her as Warrior for buff upkeep, or Hexer/Magician for mp upkeep. How much debuff do you need to get 2mp off hexer conversion? Although, I suppose one thing she could actually do sometimes is send off one buff or idaten, then swap in Momiji or Mystia to slam out a higher damage attack, who then gets swapped by Kogasa again right after... allowing her to upkeep more MP through hexer/magician and keep the damage train going. Depends on boss resistances what's best, I s'pose, since Phoenix Spread Wings ain't half bad. The Kogasa megaswap setup blows through all of their mp, really, because she's effectively giving them all a godlike 93% delay on their attacks. That'd be the point where I'd focus on my bulky damage dealers for a bit like Meiling, Nitori, Miko. XD

...the main problem with my team is between Byakuren being the obigatory bufftank, and then having Rinno the switchtank and Renko the megatank, and then I'm putting in Kogasa for swapmachine regentank, I have a bit... too much on my plate? XDD I guess once I awaken Kogasa I'll be dropping Rinnosuke for her. All my non-instant attackers are the bulkiest of the bunch (sans Maribel, who's not a slouch with Renko out either), so they can take a hit when swapped in.

Lesse.

Meiling/Nitori/Miko  -- Bulky Attackers
Mari/Renko-- Sealing Cluuuub
Byakuren/Rumia (or reimu?) - Obligatory Support Characters
Kogasa/Chen/Mystia/Momiji - Megaswap set, with Kogasa dealing out lovely hp regen to whoever else is on front in the other two slots like Mari/Renko or Byakuren/bulksters
Hina - Tanky debuffs for ERRYBODY.

...huh. But I kinda wanted to use Futo. Well. I'll just have to see how things go when I actually play. As it is, the current plan already involves swapping out Rinno for kogasa and Kaguya/Eirin/Iku/Yuyuko for new attackers. Yuyuko's kind of total garbage versus bosses so far anyway, though, and I don't think I'll need Eirin's overheals after I awaken kogasa... maybe. And Kaguya can just make cameo appearances on mega-defensive fights.

[elminster1372]

@Serela I expressed myself inaccurately about Rinnosuke - what I wanted to mean is that he'd be dead weight in relation to my team setup, which relies a lot on bulky attackers with fast attacks (like Yuuka and Kanako) which are meant to stay in. Rinnosuke is really good as you said, but it requires team members which can actually take advantage of his fast switches, such as Yuugi or Suika.

Also, about Renko and Maribel, another great skill of Maribel is Ability to See Boundaries. I overlooked that skill at first, but in practice it's absolutely murderous - in fact, it allows Maribel to completely murder the likes of Tenshi and Ame-no-Mokurano as soon as they buff up (and when I say murder, I mean 3HKOing 12F Tenshi through State of Enlightenment with minimal self-buffs). Really, the amount of synergy and tricks between those two girls is astounding, and must be seen first-hand to be fully appreciated - no other character duo is equally versatile, powerful, and self-sufficient at the same time.

As for Yuuka, you're right that against enemies with really high defenses she doesn't do a lot of damage, but she's not the sort of attacker which always gets 0s and 1s either - for example, against the Great C she's an all-star nuke which can handle the whole fight on her own, and even against those two mini-bosses on 20F which unlock the final boss she can still deal respectable damage, even if resisted. I can only imagine her getting better in the Post Game.

About your team, I like it but it seems very "boss-oriented", with lots of switchers and tanks. Are you sure it's a good idea for something like the Endless Corridor? To be honest, I'd rather have 1-2 "lines" (i.e. groups of 4 characters) for bosses and 1 line for random encounters (possibly even just 1 for bosses and 2 for random encounters). Unlike in TL1 where you had only to deal with WINNER, it seems here TP and MP consumption will be a concern, after all, which makes more than maybe 2-3 non attacking characters suspiciously risky to me.

[Serela]

Only Renko/Byakuren/Kogasa/Hina are support-focus characters. Rumia has a great MT heal, but she's also got great attacks, and she -needs- plenty of magic to properly use her heal anyway since it's not as powerful as Reimu's- and her attacks also still do good damage if she's in a somewhat mixed build. Byakuren and Renko can still buff the team up which is wonderfully helpful in randoms, Kogasa can still swap in instant attackers even in randoms for damage tossing, and Hina can still debuff the enemy party for some support.

...oh wait, baykuren's scroll doesn't do crud in Plus until she's buffed up. :T Ah well, one dead weight character is OK. Hina's not super good in randoms either, but honestly, it's possible I'll make her more of an offensive build sooner or later once I'm far enough in the corridor to bother awakening her. It's also not out of the question I'd replace her for another debuffer, although I'm not planning on it- Cirno's irresistable SPD debuffs do look tempting...

[Arcvasti]

If MP sustain for instant attackers is a problem, then perhaps consider Keine. Her Organized Formation Change skill gives 1 MP to anyone involved in a Formation Change. With two Instant Attackers, you can just have them swap each other back and forth until they're at full MP. This has the added benefit of maxing out Accelerate and Momiji's DEF/MND buffs in the process. You could go without Keine if you gave the Instant Attackers Magician, but that's probably not a good choice for most other purposes.

While this probably isn't relevant with the Kogasa strategy, you can also effectively nullify ailments or debuffs by giving one of your Instant Attacker the Herbalist subclass. While most "Per turn" effects require that that ATB be at 1001 or higher, the Herbalist skills that reduce the effects of ailments and debuffs do not. By using the Instant Attack loop with your Herbalist, you can cure any ailments or debuffs in a single instant of game time. This is also incredibly tedious, but might be worth it for the 9F Tenshi fight to deal with her Grass Knot/Shadowstep spam.

[LonelyGaruga]

I'm still theorymonning at this stage - mostly because I still have not heard enough about the Endless Corridor to make an informed decision

Right, yeah, this is something that hasn't been discussed much, huh? From my experience with the Endless Corridor, it was actually fairly easy to grind on. Best as I can tell, there's a rather quirky way it picks enemies, in that it seems to select "groups" of enemies on loading the game, with the rest simply not appearing for that duration of the game session. I'm basing this off of extensive grinding where I only encountered the same types of enemies through hundreds of battles, and then seeing totally different enemies when loading the game again. It does seem to separate enemies into "tiers" based on their drop rates, so it's not 100% randomized, but it does mean that there's no guarantee that you'll see the more dangerous enemies in the list. Your odds of seeing them if they are set to spawn are much higher than they'd initially appear, as a consequence. There's a total of 70 different enemies in the Endless Corridor, but most of them are trash mobs, and even the F.O.E. and boss palette swaps go down fairly quickly, usually taking 1-2 MT attacks.

The usual archetypes exist of course. You've got your high EVA enemies, high SPD enemies, enemies with high HP + low DEF/MND and enemies with low HP + high DEF/MND, stuff like that. There's also enemies that resist a bunch of elements but are super weak to their weaknesses, and some enemies are slow but threaten party wipes if they attack. Every single enemy that shows up is palette swapped from an existing enemy, F.O.E., or boss, usually (but not always) with the same attacks, weaknesses, and behavior, though for the ones that have multiple palette swaps it's not always obvious which one it's taken from. I can't really say much about how most of them behave that's relevant to grinding outside of that. Having 2-3 elements (or just using VOI I guess) would be preferable to handle the varying resistances, as there's a few enemies with 400-500 affinity in an element or two that'll tank a hit or two of pretty much anything of that element. One of those being SPI would be a good idea, as SPI is the most common weakness and some enemies basically rely on you attacking that weakness to defeat in a timely fashion. FIR/CLD/PHY might be good too, as there's one boss palette swap in particular (

Spoiler:

3f's boss that Yukari and Yuyuko help the party with

that has way higher HP than anything else in the Infinite Corridor (for comparison, at 91f it has 20m HP, the next highest enemy was 14m, the 90f boss had 27m), and those are its weaknesses.

It'd probably not be too useful, but if you want a list of enemies I could write one up. I can't provide much information on most of them because most don't have noteworthy characteristics or I beat them too quickly to see anything though, but the ones that I can actually give info on would stand out all the more for it.

Anyway, enemy information aside, my lineup for Endless Corridor was max SPD Sanae (Strategist), max SPD Aya (Enhancer), max MAG Iku (Transcendent), and max ATK Tenshi (Warrior). The weaker trash mobs go down to Light Dragon's Sigh and Violent Motherland without a need for buffs, but buffs are needed for the tougher ones, and MP is a non-issue with Sanae's Awakening skill. With everyone at half MP, Sanae provides a nearly infinite supply of MP that lasts through the entire Corridor exploration duration with almost no need to Concentrate ever (except for Aya when abusing Divine Grandson's Advent too much, but she can afford to do that). Having Sanae take extra turns via switching or Divine Grandson's Advent helps to avoid running out of MP if the usual buff-attack strategy doesn't work out. There were occasionally complications when multiple dangerous enemies that had high durability showed up, but that's simply bad luck. The majority of fights were simply a thoughtless buff - attack - win route, with the main variation being whether Iku or Tenshi attacked. TP management wasn't really a thing with the way I ran things though, since I just exited the Corridor when a character ran out of TP and started over again. With the Tokugawa Statue and TP Boost, the characters had 60+ TP, with Sanae's TP recovery skill activating on an averaged out basis each character has 75+ TP effectively. And yeah, Sanae's MP recovery makes it very viable to fight with the same 4 characters for that entire time, short of trying to use Archmage spell cards it's kind of hard to genuinely run out of MP.

Another thing I didn't try to do was grind on the "Risky" floors that feature enormously powered up enemies. I didn't want to try to deal with something like that, but if they can be defeated in a practical manner I guess they'd be good EXP? I personally wouldn't try it and would stick with grinding out the faster, weaker fights.

In short, Renko and Maribel are one of the strongest pairs in the game (and I'm surprised I don't hear as much about them on this thread, have you even tested them?).

I haven't since I specifically wanted to use Tenshi because she's Tenshi instead of any specific gameplay merits (fortunately, she turned out to be very strong), but I agree that Renko and Maribel are probably the strongest duo synergy characters, and have wonderful merits going for them. If I wasn't going specifically for Tenshi, I'd certainly want to try them out (they're two of the more interesting characters in the first place anyway). One thing I want to add that you didn't mention was that Maribel has Grand Incantation, which is a very strong damage boosting skill to have, especially since you don't have Akyuu for her Awakening damage boost. Alternating Concentrate and attacking is basically a 70% damage boost with Grand Incantation, with greatly increased MP efficiency (though she already effectively doesn't run out of MP with Rapid Charge and Sealing Club). Grand Incantation also makes Maribel an effective MT healer, since a 140% boost to her 16% MAG heal bumps it up to 38%, which is comparable with Rumia's Demarcation. It should work pretty well if you have another attacker and you need to heal, as you don't have to switch your other attacker out.

Reimu is another character I've been using for a long time, but which I'm a bit less sure about. While she's still an extraordinary healer, it's not one I absolutely need for any fight at higher levels. Much depends on how relevant her MP regen ability is - which is part of why I'd like to know more about the Endless Corridor and how "taxing" it is. The same holds true for Sanae and her TP saving ability. Though, at least, Sanae combined with Reimu, Suwako and Kanako make for a very good random encounter cleaning party. This is especially true once Suwako is equipped with a "certain" uber class skill which gives her a gigantic SPI nuke, which is further powered by Sanae's SPI party boost.

From my experience with Sanae's Awakening skill, as long as your MP consumption is around the 6 range, you have pretty much unlimited MP, so Reimu's 66% chance to get +1 MP is pretty redundant. Even at the level 540-560 range, Rumia (second strongest MAG dependent MT heal) has a hard time fully recovering a party's HP (but that's partly because damage reducing skills like Transcendent's and Strategist's also reduce non-% based healing), something Reimu has no issue with, but further along in the game, Reimu's healing power advantage will certainly be lost, so if you don't have any other reason to use her, switching her out for another character may be ideal. Kanako looks to be a very strong attacker, but I'm not too sure about Suwako, especially when compared with Kanako. Kanako gets Majesty(+ post-Awakening) for 6-9% more to all stats per turn, Sky Creation for +32% more damage when in the rightmost slot (where she belongs), has great bulk alongside Desperation, and on SPI weak bosses she can further buff herself using Mad Dance on Medoteko for her Awakening skill Divine Authority. So she's looking at 9% more stats by default, 25% more if she's at ~60% HP, +32% damage just for occupying an ideal frontline slot, and a further 10-50% more damage with Divine Authority (with a bonus 5-25% damage reduction). Suwako, meanwhile, gets 36% more damage if she's in the leftmost slot (only 4% more damage than Kanako, but she absolutely can't stay in that slot), +30% more NTR damage, and post-Awakening, +20% more damage for every turn she spends in the back, capping at 100%. Suwako has higher attacking stats than Kanako, but Majesty compensates for that a lot. To top it off, Suwako specializes in NTR damage, but you already have Yuuka and Tenshi (though Tenshi needs Iku to compete here) for that, so you have three of the best NTR attackers in the game, and Yuuka/Tenshi are both pretty bulky (Yuuka moreso imo). Doesn't seem like Suwako would be able to do a whole lot to be useful in the party composition, but maybe I'm missing something. Suwako does contribute to Moriya synergy, so that is a definite thing she's got going for her.

At the very least, I can confidently say that Kanako would use that subclass much better, since Kanako has Majesty+ and Sky Creation to strengthen it, while Suwako has nothing unless you want her in the leftmost slot (and that's going to get her wrecked by fast enemies without Aya, and sometimes even with Aya).

Tenshi and Iku I was a bit on the fence, but I heard a lot of good things about them, so I'm going to try and include them in my party.

My favorites

While I'm obviously biased for them with how much I've said about them, I do think they legitimately have great merits. Tenshi's one of the top NTR attackers with Girl of Bhava-agra active and gains even more ATK with DEF/MND buffs and when striking weakness, plus she has excellent HP post-Awakening. She's certainly one of the better attackers in the game, mainly "held back" by the fact that Iku basically needs to be at the front for her to be do good damage (Girl of Bhava-agra is roughly a 50% damage boost). But Iku is the best ST buffer for ATK/MAG and has only slightly less HP than Tenshi (but higher DEF/MND with Hisouten Guard), and Iku is also a very respectable defense ignoring attacker provided you can debuff the enemy's MND to -50% (or just use her normal attack with Sorcerer). With leveling rates and her Awakening factored in, Iku has pretty much the best MAG growth in the game, but regrettably doesn't have anything else to really bolster it besides Heavenly Maiden's Blow. Elekiter Dragon Palace is a strong WND attack, but Kanako's Virtue of Wind God would probably get better results unless you need to ignore defense. Iku shines more as a ST buffer than an attacker I would say, and it's pretty hard to top a 68% ATK/MAG buff with merely 6600 delay. Supple Hagoromo and a level 5 Thundercloud Stickleback has a low enough PAR rate that I find it pretty consistent to buff even characters with 30 PAR resistance without drawbacks.

I've probably said a lot of this stuff before, but just reiterating it. A bit shameless advertisement, but I recorded most of the fights in the game with my Tenshi/Iku focused party if you want to look at gameplay of that (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbKPr8l6tlmCV1p0_paXnxPWDa0wzrJ9t). I try to watch as many other players as I can to learn more about potential strategies to use, but not many people upload Labyrinth of Touhou 2 gameplay unfortunately.

Miko attracts me because of her synergy with Renko's buffing (since Miko can keep buffs up to +120%), as well as her Maintenance-like skill. She does level up extremely slowly, but given the equipments I've seen from the spoiler files a while back, I'm pretty sure just about any character with Maintenance (including Nitori, even without Youkai Mountain Alliance, which unfortunately includes chars I'd rather not use in the first place) will be extremely powerful in the Plus Disk, right?

In the extreme long-term, I'm not too confident about Maintenance users since idk how strong characters are going to get compared to their equipment, but for right now, they're very strong with Plus Disk's best equipment, yeah. For a practical example of Miko's leveling rate, at Reimu 540 Miko is at level 479, and at Iku 540 Miko is at level 496. Miko also gets +16% more ATK/MAG and +24% more DEF/MND/SPD post-Awakening by default, which is pretty good. Miko also has the benefit of being able to ignore 40% of an enemy's defenses when she has more than 50% of her HP, which she generally will. Not large enough to be able to dent bosses that have obscenely high defenses, but enough to be a decent damage buff for general usage. Finally, Tradition of Just Rewards debuffs all stats, so she can attack and provide good debuffs at the same time. I have no idea if Sanae's +30% SPI damage buff works on Tradition of Just Rewards when it's working off its DRK element as a composite tech, but I would assume that it does.

The good question now would be - what should go in the last two slots?

Well, looking at "gaps" in the party composition, I think you'd need something to effectively counter random enemies that have high SPD, since they'll consistently attack before your party can and cost you TP or even wipe out characters. Aya getting a guaranteed first turn is the most consistent way to deal with this and would get a vote from me, though using Strategist and Monk for subclasses can counter this, if less consistently. There's also no Instant Attack, Effective Formation Change, or the like, but if you're relying on low-average (5000+) delay attacks then this is not really necessary, and this is what you're doing so it wouldn't help you too much. After that, hm...Suwako has a solid MND debuff (-36%, this is the 3rd strongest MND debuff IIRC next to Reisen and Kogasa) for Iku if you need a defense ignoring attack (and such a thing is pretty important for select bosses), so you've got that covered, though Monk's Iron Mountain Charge is good enough for NTR weak targets anyway. Doesn't look like you have any good PHY options, so that might be something to look into. Akyuu is pretty strong for support (even with max SPD she can take some hits and not have to resurrect from them), she'd be the other character I'd recommend for how strong the +50% Boost and +16% weakness damage is, but Herbalist can mitigate her usefulness. Super Incantation should make her very strong offensively too, but I haven't done any damage calculations for it since she's way better for my party as support.

I personally don't really think Byakuren is all that great since she needs to buff herself first to buff other characters more effectively than Sanae, and Herbalist's Placebo Effect quickly becomes a better all-buff once a target has already received a decent amount of buffs (about the 60% range is good). You don't really need to buff a character more than 30-40% every couple turns, and the 7000 delay on Placebo Effect makes it a lot better for maintaining a high buff than Byakuren's 5000 delay on Sutra - Duplicating Chant.

Found something somewhat important while testing Byakuren's buffs though: her skills are still +14% buffs. The descriptions say 12%, but they actually increase by 14% still. Also, Enhancer doesn't buff Sutra - Duplicating Chant. This is pretty lame since that means it caps at +56% while Enhancer Sanae's Miracle Fruit is a +48% buff.

Anyway, for a more thorough comparison, Byakuren gains +14% buffs every turn, and needs a 75% buff on herself to match Sanae's Miracle Fruit. Relying solely on Byakuren's self-buffs to meet that, she would take 14 turns. Using Sutra - Duplicating Chant on herself to speed up the process, she would take 4 turns (3 self uses of Sutra - Duplicating Chant) to exceed Sanae's Miracle Fruit (Enhancer or not).

Turn 1: 14% (Scroll buff: 7%)
Turn 2: 32% (Scroll buff: 17%)
Turn 3: 56% (Scroll buff: 31%)
Turn 4: 88% (Scroll buff: 49%)

Might as well just use Sanae to buff instead since Byakuren would have to spend multiple turns buffing herself instead of supporting. Other characters can also buff her, but that's still taking turns away from buffing the character(s) you actually want to buff.  Generally, my preferred method for buffing Tenshi (which is more or less applicable to most other characters) is to use Miracle Fruit once or twice and then Placebo Effect for the rest of the fight. Sutra - Duplicating Chant wouldn't change anything about that, and without that, It wouldn't change with Byakuren, and Byakuren doesn't have the +30% SPI damage or +40% (or 44%, unsure) Youkai damage benefits that Sanae has, or a ST heal like Sanae's Yasaka's Divine Wind. So I'd recommend skipping her.

Nitori is about as much of a bruiser as usual, though I think Plus Disk indirectly nerfs Super Scope 3D because of how awful its compatibility is with the special subclass. She's certainly a very strong character nonetheless, but besides Super Scope 3D, her damage output isn't outrageously high compared to what other characters are capable of doing, so it might be worth looking at characters too.

Can't say anything about having characters that boost battle rewards because I don't know what kind of value to attribute that property. Which is rather unfortunate, since that's important for your party member selections. If it helps, if you didn't see my post about it already, it turns out that Appraiser does stack, but the visual display doesn't properly reflect this. So if you have say a 50% boost by default with items, having an Appraiser in the front will show a boost of 3/3/6% for EXP/money/drop rate, regardless of whether you have 1 or 4 in the front, but the game will properly account for all of the boosts from each Appraiser despite that.

But yeah, my personal recommendations for the last two slots would be Aya and Akyuu, with Aya helping random encounters (with some boss utility as well) and Akyuu being for bosses. I might add that since the game offers extremely easy access to Infinite Gems you can afford to reset characters pretty much on a whim so you can actually experiment with characters, although that's not true of Awakening items...which do require a lot more proper planning. At the very least, you could save and reset on some bosses to experiment with strategies and stuff so you can try things out in practice to see if you like them or not.

Whaaat? Dead slots? Rinnosuke's Efficient Formation Change is an absolute asset in boss fights, and in postgame you can power up all those high boosts to make his stats and resistances/affinites all very solid. Eventually you can even get First Aid to heal a good amount of HP+statuses, and Battle Command can do some topping off on spare turns. And Magician is actually a really synergistic subclass for him with it's 1 mp regen per turn, because his skills are mega cheap and low delay; it allows you to use them as freely as you desire when he's not swapping people around.

tbh Rinnosuke doesn't really need MP conservation since he's looking at 48 MP minimum by end-game with MP High Boost (18 base, +20 from Orbs/Gems, +10 from MP High Boost), so you can probably go with another subclass for him, like Enhancer, Herbalist, or Strategist.

Dunno if this is common knowledge, but as an aside, Rinnosuke's Giga Boost skills cost 75 SP per level compared to the 50 per level that Mega Boost skills require. Ridiculously expensive compared to his High Boosts, so he's gonna be stuck with those for a while. 375 levels just to max a single Giga Boost.

Also, someone was ranking the Instant Attack people before for Speedy Formation Change shenanigans. Momiji's certainly the best, yeah. Chen actually manages to make it though I think, because A.Postgame you can fix up her pitiful base ATK and get some level of power behind her attacks, B.She was useless in maingame because of high defenses, but that's not true postgame, and C.She'll get multiple turns in between Kogasa's Speedy Swaps (...I think? She's got an absolutely blistering speed stat and Accelerate, so with proper tweaking, it should be possible?), and with multiple attacks firing off she can make up for her lower damage- especially because she can do, say, Idaten -> Phoenix Spread and get swapped by Kogasa.

Hm, well, tbh, Flight of Idaten does like half the damage Momiji can do with Rabies Bite, so idk about Chen competing on the PHY side. Chen should be able to act twice in a row with some SPD investment (or a lack thereof for Kogasa, she's already hitting 700 ATB easy for end-game), but she's still spending 4 MP to do what Momiji can do with 3 while being nowhere near as tanky or having any real advantage to speak of (plus Kimontonkou's MP costs). Regardless of her disadvantages in that area, Chen's Phoenix Spread Wings is very strong though, and lacks proper competition from the other Instant Attack characters since their best FIR attack is Explosive Flame Sword, which is a strong spell card (particularly for Momiji since she has +50% ACC), but still loses out. If you want to use Chen specifically, using her for that would get the best results, I think.

The main thing is she'll burn through MP at the speed of light, especially trying to keep her buffs up. :T I don't know whether it'd be best to sub her as Warrior for buff upkeep, or Hexer/Magician for mp upkeep. How much debuff do you need to get 2mp off hexer conversion?

Hexer requires a 50% debuff to get +2 MP and 100% for +3 MP from Hexer's Conversion, though tbh I think it's better to increase MP efficiency by boosting your damage output and get more mileage out of the MP you spend than to try to conserve and restore it. Simply using 1 Phoenix Spread Wings per switch as opposed to Idaten > Phoenix, for example. Chen has base 20 MP with +5 from MP Boost and +20 from Orbs/Gems for a baseline of 45 MP, so if she uses Kimontonkou, then Phoenix Spread Wings say...3 times without buffing (so 86% > 73% > 63%), then repeat, she can be expected to be able to perform Phoenix Spread Wings 9 times, which should be fairly doable with a bunch of damage boosts (usual stuff, 20% weakness boost from Divine Falchion, 36% damage boost from Herbalist, preferably the 56% damage boost from the special subclass but Warrior's 43% damage boost for Row attacks works too). If you have one of the other Instant Attackers put a Magic Circuit on her, then MP should be a non-issue.

[Serela]

If MP sustain for instant attackers is a problem, then perhaps consider Keine. Her Organized Formation Change skill gives 1 MP to anyone involved in a Formation Change.

This... is actually a pretty good idea. Thanks! Sanae's value in the infinite corridor also does sound pretty incredible.

re:Instant attackers, the thing with my party plan is I'd be firing off their attacks every 700 ticks (or more, in Chen's case), so I was figuring that I'd use all three and -still- probably be trying to keep their MP in mind. Chen and Momiji both have awful mp stats, and Mystia's only eh, especially with Chorus Master costing her five. Keine would help a looot by giving them 2 mp per swapin and swapout, and probably mostly negate the issue- I could start using Ill-Starred Dive when mystia's mp ran out and Momiji realistically wouldn't be running out unless I was using swordmaster attacks for hitting weakness. Yeah, losing out damage per attack once the mp gets too low, but the sheer speed... (Of course, when their mp gets low, I can always just bring in my other attackers instead, but Keine would prolong things by a very large amount.)

Chen having kimontonkou is nice but her mp would just die from using that -and- attacks, which was why I was considering hexer. Cutting Chen out entirely puts more pressure on Mystia meaning I'd need to buff her a little more... but once Kogasa can eventually subclass

Spoiler:

Dragon God

, Warrior Mystia plus that would need fairly little buff upkeep, so that's probably fine. For everything else, I can always just use my -other- attackers once the instant ones burn out.

Heeeeh. Originally megaswap tactics only needed 2 party slots, but Keine bumps it up to a concerning 3. Still, she's not REQUIRED to be in there all the time, and can sub herbalist or somethin' to provide damage support. And since I'll have a speedy formation changer, it's actually OK if I want to employ tactics that involve me changing literally the entire front row to go from megaswap to Mari/Renko/others working more conventionally. And Keine's 9999 swaps certainly still won't be half bad.

[LonelyGaruga]

Momiji's looking at a baseline of 43 MP (18 base, +20 from Orbs/Gems, +5 from MP Boost) so she generally shouldn't be running out of MP with Rabies Bite, she can use it 14 times consecutively. Samidare Slash is kind of expensive at 6 MP, but it's a horrible spell card for damage, I would strongly recommend using Kogasa's Drizzling Large Raindrops or Nitori's Kappa's Illusionary Waterfall instead. Mystia's got a baseline of 53 MP (28 base, +20 from Orbs/Gems, +5 from MP Boost), so she's getting 10 uses out of Midnight Chorus Master. It's only a bit stronger than Rabies Bite under ideal circumstances, but it's not really the kind of attack you need to use 10 times in a boss fight. Things like exploiting the boss' weakness, Boost effects, anything you can use to boost the damage of each spell card also boosts MP efficiency, and that's important. You don't need to restore MP if you do so much damage so efficiently that the boss goes down before you run out of MP, and that's something you can realistically do. Trying to prepare for long-term combat actually ends up setting you up to more likely require it since you're doing less damage per MP spent by doing that. Like with Hexer Chen, doing that is sacrificing the ability to use Transcendent, Warrior, or the special subclass, so you're losing out on a lot of damage you could be doing and making it so that you're more likely to need MP restoration than you otherwise would.

But if you do find yourself wanting or needing MP restoration, Keine gives infinite MP for Instant Attack characters since the skill only cares if Keine's in the front, not if she's the one switching. So you can switch between two Instant Attack characters until they're both at full MP. Momiji and Chen would max out Accelerate doing this, Momiji would also max out her DEF/MND buff too. This destroys their other buffs though, so you'd need to buff them up again. Your frontline would look like Keine/Kogasa/x/IA user probably, Keine can handle ATK buffs and is decently effective at MT healing as an Enhancer, or maybe even go Herbalist with her. Kogasa is probably the best bet for Strategist since she isn't really doing anything besides sit and switch. Third slot would probably be another support character (healer, damage booster, etc) or another attacker. Since Kogasa should be busy switching the IA user, it's probably best to use a character that doesn't have Instant Attack as the secondary attacker, since you can't use the skill as effectively.

--

This is not particularly related to the conversation at hand, but I thought I might give a bit of an overview of damage calculation to draw a picture of the importance of ATK/MAG buffs, and to provide a sort of foundation for others to try to calculate their own damage. The basic damage formula is basically

Damage = (Attack Power - T.Defense Power) * Multiplier * (100 / T.Affinity) * Random Number (any number between 0.9 and 1.1)

Think most people know what this stuff means so I'll skip more into a practical example of calculating an attack. I'll use Tenshi as an example (naturally), for her World Creation Press. For practical purposes, here's what her stats look like at the point of the game I'm at.

https://i.imgur.com/Dwo5acr.jpg
Subclass: Murakumo's Blessing
Main Equipment: Divine Sword Falchion (+20% damage when attacking elemental weaknesses, ~80 affinity)
Sub Equipment: Long Sword "Crimson Lotus Princess" x2, Scourge

So she has 400770 ATK.

Damage = (400770 - T.Defense Power) * Multiplier * (100 / T.Affinity) * Random Number

For the sake of ease of reading, I'll be assuming that T.Defense is 1m (1000000), T.Affinity is 100, and Random Number is 1.
World Creation Press is a (164% ATK - 50% T.DEF) * 164% spell card formula. With a level 5 spell card, the damage multiplier is further increased by 20%.

Damage = ((400,770 * 1.64) - (1,000,000 * 0.5)) * (1.64 * 1.2) * 1 * 1
Damage = (657,262 - 500,000) * 1.968
Damage = 157,262 * 1.968
Damage = 309,491

The final Infinite Corridor boss has 84m HP, so this would take off 0.36% of its HP. That is scratch damage and would take 278 hits to defeat the boss. Thankfully, that is the minimum possible damage pretty much. Next, adding ATK buffs. The Enhancer subclass provides a 37% ATK/MAG buff. With the typical decay of 20%, this buff becomes 29% upon taking a turn. So let's assume a 29% ATK buff. With 400770 ATK, a 29% ATK buff is 516993 ATK, which is 116223 more ATK.

Damage = ((400,770 * 1.29 * 1.64) - (1,000,000 * 0.5)) * (1.64 * 1.2) * 1 * 1
Damage = (847,869 - 500,000) * 1.968
Damage = 347,869 * 1.968
Damage = 684,606

This is 0.81% of 84m, and a 121% damage increase from having no ATK buff. So a 29% buff adds 121% more damage in this context. With a Strategist available, the decay rate of 14% would mean that Tenshi would have a buff of 31% on her instead of 29%. This is marginal, so I won't be calculating that. Instead, I'll calculate with a second Enhancer buff. With a 29% buff, the +37% buff puts the total buff to be 66%. With the 20% decay rate, the buff when Tenshi takes her turn will be 53%. A 53% ATK buff to 400770 ATK puts it at 613178, which is 212408 more ATK.

Damage = ((400,770 * 1.53 * 1.64) - (1,000,000 * 0.5)) * (1.64 * 1.2) * 1 * 1
Damage = (1,005,612 - 500,000) * 1.968
Damage = 505,612 * 1.968
Damage = 995,044

This is 1.1% of 84m. Compared to having no ATK buff, the 53% ATK buff is a 221% damage increase. Compared to the 29% ATK buff, the 53% ATK buff is a 45% damage increase. As you can immediately tell, there is an enormous damage % dropoff at this buff level, but 45% is still an enormous increase. Skipping ahead a bit, let's assume Tenshi's has a 100% ATK buff and now takes a turn with 20% decay. She now has an 80% ATK buff. 400770 ATK with an 80% ATK buff becomes 721386 ATK, a 320616 ATK increase.

Damage = ((400,770 * 1.8 * 1.64) - (1,000,000 * 0.5)) * (1.64 * 1.2) * 1 * 1
Damage = (1,183,073 - 500,000) * 1.968
Damage = 683,073 * 1.968
Damage = 1,344,287

This is 1.6% of 84m. Compared to having no ATK buff, the 80% ATK buff is a 334% damage increase. Compared to the 29% ATK buff, the 80% ATK buff is a 96% damage increase. Compared to the 53% ATK buff, the 80% ATK buff is a 35% damage increase.

Thus, you can see how there's a diminishing return on further stacking ATK here. Next, let's try stacking % boosting skills. First, let's start with adding a Strategist to the frontline. Furious Scheme increases damage by 10%. Very simple. Inspirational Plan also cuts down buff decay rate from 20% to 14%, so a 100% buff goes from 80% to 86%, so that should be taken into account here as well.

Damage = ((400,770 * 1.86 * 1.64) - (1,000,000 * 0.5)) * (1.64 * 1.2 * 1.1) * 1 * 1
Damage = (1,222,508 - 500,000) * 2.1648
Damage = 722,508 * 2.1648
Damage = 1,564,085

This is 1.8% of 84m. Compared to the 80% ATK buff, adding a Strategist increased damage by 16% (the additional 6% being from the higher ATK buff). Skipping some steps, adding an Herbalist's Herb of Awakening for a 36% damage boost results in

Damage = 722,508 * (1.64 * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.36)
Damage = 722,508 * 2.944128
Damage = 2,127,156

This is 2.5% of 84m. With the current damage output, the boss would take 40 hits to defeat. Still pretty terrible, but there's still the Murakumo's Blessing multiplier. Three Swords of the Divine Era grants a 16% damage boost for every character that can spend MP on the subclass holder's attack. In total, 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.16 = 56% more damage.

Damage = 722,508 * (1.64 * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.36 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.16)
Damage = 722,508 * 4.595477618688
Damage = 3,320,269

This is now 3.9% of 84m, which would take 26 hits to defeat the boss. Now, we're starting to run out of the universal damage boosts, so let's look at character specific things. Tenshi has Girl of Bhava-agra, which is a 40% ATK boost if Iku is at the front.

Damage = ((400,770 * 1.86 * 1.64 * 1.4) - (1,000,000 * 0.5)) * (1.64 * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.36 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.16) * 1 * 1
Damage = (1,711,512 - 500,000) * 4.595477618688
Damage = 1,211,512 * 4.595477618688
Damage = 5,567,476

This is now 6.6% of 84m (and a 67% [wtf so high] damage increase), which would take 16 hits to defeat the boss. This is now a somewhat manageable fight, but the damage can still be further improved. Next, adding Courageous Sword's buff. It's a bit impractical to assume that Tenshi also has her DEF/MND at 86% when her ATK is at 86%. Instead, since Tenshi starts out with 33% ATK/DEF buffs with Enduring Celestial, let's assume that. 33% + 33% / 5 = 13% more ATK.

Damage = ((400,770 * 1.86 * 1.64 * 1.4 * 1.13) - (1,000,000 * 0.5)) * (1.64 * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.36 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.16) * 1 * 1
Damage = (1,934,008 - 500,000) * 4.595477618688
Damage = 1,434,008 * 4.595477618688
Damage = 6,589,951

This is now 7.8% of 84m, and an 18% damage increase. At this point, the boss takes 13 hits to defeat. The last thing Tenshi has that can boost her damage is Keystones of Spirit, which requires striking weakness, so skipping that for now. 13 hits is pretty reasonable, but it can still be further reduced. The last important boost that isn't reliant on the boss' weaknesses or race is the elemental damage boosting skill. Suwako is not realistically going to be on the frontline, but this is just for damage calculation purposes. Froggy Power! gives a +30% boost to NTR element attacks.

Damage = 1,434,008 * (1.64 * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.36 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.3)
Damage = 1,434,008 * 5.9741209042944
Damage = 8,566,937

This is now 10.1% of 84m, and a 10HKO on the boss, all the way down from the original, buffless 278HKO. This is a pretty satisfactory and practical amount of damage to aim for. The Herbalist's 36% Boost can be switched out for Akyuu's +50% Boost, and Miko and/or Maribel can further add to the damage with their Awakening skills, but a 10HKO is good.

For an attack that isn't even hitting weakness.

Damage = 1,434,008 * (1.64 * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.36 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.3) * (100 / 60)
Damage = 1,434,008 * 5.9741209042944 * 1.667
Damage = 14,281,084

17% of 84m, a 6HKO. This is on a 60 affinity, which most bosses have. Of the Infinite Corridor bosses for example, only 2/10 of them do not have a 60 weakness (Abyss Marisa is probably 88 like her playable counterpart, Abyss Rinnosuke is 80 and counts as a weakness). For the maximum possible damage multiplier, adding Akyuu to the frontline so that it's Iku/Akyuu/Suwako/Tenshi (with one being a Strategist), replacing Herbalist's 36% Boost with Akyuu's, and adding her 16% weakness boost with the Divine Falchion's 20% weakness boost,

Damage = 1,434,008 * (1.64 * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.5 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.3 * 1.2) * (100 / 60)
Damage = 1,434,008 * 7.906924726272 * 1.667
Damage = 18,901,435

22.5% of 84m, a 5HKO. At this point, there isn't much reason to further attempt to maximize damage, but it's still yet possible by maxing out Tenshi's DEF/MND buff (a 34% ATK increase with 86% DEF/MND instead of 13% ATK with 33% DEF/MND), accounting for Keystones of Spirit (4% more ATK for every time she hits a weakness, for a maximum of 28%), and adding Maribel (with buffs, 12.5% more ATK) and Miko (8% stronger buffs, 86% buffs become 92% buffs like this) to the back. This maximum possible damage is

Damage = ((400,770 * 1.92 * 1.64 * 1.4 * 1.34 * 1.28 * 1.125) - (1,000,000 * 0.5)) * (1.64 * 1.2 * 1.1 * 1.5 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.3 * 1.2) * (100 / 60)
Damage = (3,409,067 - 500,000) * 7.906924726272 * 1.667
Damage = 2,909,607 * 7.906924726272 * 1.667
Damage = 38,351,074

45.6% of 84m, and a 3HKO. Never going to happen, but it's the theoretical maximum with these stats. It has no practicality and shouldn't be aimed for of course. Actually it can go even higher with a -50% DEF debuff but I'm done.

Anyway, the point of all of this was to give an idea of the exact value of damage buffs and the effect stacking them has, as well as to give a damage calculation model that's hopefully practical to duplicate (I'd recommend using a spreadsheet or something instead of manually calculating it though). With good stacking you can generally down a boss in 5-10 hits. In practice it'll always take more than the theoretical amount since it takes time to get all your buffs active and you'll usually not have them all maxed out (stat buff decay is the main reason for this), but it's a fairly decent target to aim for I think. Hope the whole thing was easy to understand, sorry if it was a hassle!

Spoiler:

Tl;dr: A 50% buff is like double damage from no buff, BUFF ATTACKERS A LOT

[Serela]

Momiji's looking at a baseline of 43 MP (18 base, +20 from Orbs/Gems, +5 from MP Boost) so she generally shouldn't be running out of MP with Rabies Bite, she can use it 14 times consecutively. Samidare Slash is kind of expensive at 6 MP, but it's a horrible spell card for damage,

Haaaah. I'm really not looking at these things with massive postgame stat tweaking in mind I guess XD I'm thinking "Well, she'll have like, 24 mp, right...?" So, you have a really good point here, I probably don't need Keine after all. And, uh, the point where I'd be using Samidare Slash would be where it's hitting weakness and none of her other attacks would, at which case, yeah, it would definitely outdamage them by a good chunk :S It's formula isn't THAT crappy. Yeah, I could "use Kogasa's Raindrops", except that's like saying I'll use Byakuren's attacks when she's a core party buffer- also, Raindrops has a near-identical formula to Samidare Slash (if anything the extra def factor and her lower base atk makes it do LESS damage...), and Kogasa isn't maintaining permanent 100% buffs, so even with Warrior's boosts she really would barely outdamage Momiji's Samidare Slashes (Like, 15~25% more damage) even in a full offense build- not to mention she'd be dealing with 66% delay instead of 93% delay. See what I'm getting at? XD

Having Nitori's water boost out on the field in my free party slot(s) would certainly help out Momiji's Slashes on cold weak bosses, though c:

Kogasa was initially planned to take Healer until

Spoiler:

Dragon God

opens up, both of which would help her mostly take over on healing (and then help buffing woo!!) the party (although I'd still need -someone-, e.g. Rumia for if my entire front row gets blasted for most of their HP or I lose Kogasa- Rumia works well because she still does appreciable damage apart from heals and helps on megadef bosses a little), but Strategist is on my mind as well, yeah.

While I of course try and keep my frontliners at like 60%+ buffs once the fight is roaring, that long talk about minmaxing buffs sure does drive in a point @.@; The thing about this strat is it involves heavy attack chaingunning- it'd take a lot to keep special buffs like elementalist or boost up on characters attacking every 700 ATB. (That being said, I love herbalist and will prolly have it on someone! Anyone hitting weakness is worth Boosting when I can!) On the upside, they're blasting out 4~5 attacks in the time it takes for most people to recover from a SINGLE low-ish delay attack; even if they do literally half the damage per hit, the DPS is still well higher- even after accounting for it taking all of Kogasa's turns. S'why I had MP on the mind, heheh. That being said, I should keep in mind mega-buff-maxing for my other more typical characters like Nitori and Miko- especially as if, say, the boss is weak to Physical, I'll eventually have a significant amount of Nitori's team bonus people to set up stupid strong 3D scopes. Such high delay attacks are also easy to manage when I've got Kogasa on swap duty, when she's -not- micromanaging the IAs (during which I'd be using more acceptable delay attacks).

Or Miko with both Parsee and Sanae out and some minmaxing done on her maintenance'd stats... >.> Speaking of that, someone said they didn't know how it would scale- in this game, unlike LoT1, equipment stat modifications come significantly later in the status formula, so their boosts should remain quite high, unlike LoT1 where before long you were maxing out affinities and resistances instead because the stat difference was getting almost negligible. If anything, I feel like those characters would only get progressively sillier as the equipment gets crazier and you get more power to raise their initially low base stats.



...and, yeah, +40% Atk makes Tenshi solid to start with (she's got great formulas!), but her awakening is really good. Makes me think about other minmaxable characters, like awakened Yuuka using her guaranteed Extra attack with Master Spark or Start of Heavenly Demise, which is a bit more reuseable than Marisa's meganuke. >_> Although even then, if we're talking about minmaxing, the likes of Keine can get so much more MAG than Yuuka she could realistically outdamage her Heavenly Demise outside of lucky extra attack rolls... (She'd need to set up her history accumulation though, and wouldn't selfsustain buffs as easily, so Yuuka would be better.)

[jaxter0987]

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)

All of those points you brought up doesn't actually help Marisa's case. I would still use her exactly as I did in LoT1 which was trash clearing and Master Spark nuking. Except as you said, there's plenty of other good AoE options and I already talked about how she's dead weight to me if she isn't able to Master Spark nuke. I don't really plan a party with trash clearing in mind though, especially since what I have already deals with trash effectively enough.

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.

It's not really about how viable "non-standard" builds are here. It's about the fact that I built them this way for a reason. If I wanted Sanae to be a nuker, I'd build her that way. I'm not about to fundamentally change how I've used Sanae for the entirety of the main game, for a "silly" reason like "lacking a CLD nuke". I'd rather work around that limitation, than handle it by messing with Sanae.

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.

Yup, I already suspected a fundamental ideology difference but your massive damage calculation post further emphasized it. I'll try expressing my thoughts though: I want to optimize to a certain extent but not to the point where things are trivial. I want to be going into bosses thinking "Man I get to have a long, hard slog of a fight" rather than "How can I best one shot or otherwise trivialize this fight?". Yes there will be bosses where I'm forced to employ a different strategy or damage race it. But that's fine because I'm going through the fight on their terms rather than mine.

This is now 10.1% of 84m, and a 10HKO on the boss, all the way down from the original, buffless 278HKO. This is a pretty satisfactory and practical amount of damage to aim for. The Herbalist's 36% Boost can be switched out for Akyuu's +50% Boost, and Miko and/or Maribel can further add to the damage with their Awakening skills, but a 10HKO is good.

For an attack that isn't even hitting weakness.

I'm 100% okay with taking 278 hits to defeat the FINAL boss of the infinite corridor. I'm also NOT okay with a 10HKO especially after considering how blistering fast turns will be in the endgame. I know its all theoretical and you even expressly mentioned that in practice, it'll take longer + more time to set up. But I just wouldn't be having fun playing like this.

I'm just going to echo something I said earlier:

Regardless, I'm not planning to make any changes to my lineup unless the Plus Disk characters really impress me in some way.

That DOES include Plus Disk only content like Awakenings and the like.

I just want to take the time to expressly point out that I have no animosity towards you or anyone that I've disagreed with thus far. I'm just a stubborn person that doesn't want change. I appreciate all the information though. Just thought I'd post this in case I came off unappreciative or anything of the sort.

[elminster1372]

Just a random think which occurred to me: % bonuses to stats, such as kinship skills, other modifiers (ex: Kanako's Sky Creation, Remilia's Last Fortress, etc.)... are they additive or multiplicative? I'm wondering because, if they were additive, I'm wondering if Maribel's Vision Sharing would be stronger for character with naturally high stats (such as Yuuka or Kasen), rather than chars which depend on skills for their stats (such as T9 characters).

[Serela]

Sky Creation boosts damage dealt, so it would be multiplicative. However, stuff that directly increases your stats themselves, well... it's a good question. However, as those skills are all character-specific, there's admittedly not a lot of cases where the bonuses will be large enough to provide a significant difference between the two.

For example, in an ideal situation with Team 9, that's 32% with 3 team members, and then 25% from a fully buffed Maribel in front with them- that's either 57% additive, or 165% multiplicative, which is proportionately a 5% difference in end stats. But in reality you're not likely to encounter situations at those "extreme" numbers for long- Mari will usually be either at more like 80% buffs or in the back, and 3 team ⑨+Mari is a highly dubious front row. So the stat difference will be notably less than 5%.

tl;dr, even in extreme examples, the difference is on the level of the innate random damage variance, so it'd be a drag to even try to test it.

EDIT:Okay, you could get proof of kinship to get 40% and 25%, but, that only takes it to 160% versus 170% instead of 157%/165%, a 6.25% proportionate difference. Awakened Mystia also gets like +30% off a silenced enemy, so you COULD get a more inflated number, but... (And then you'd have to account for whether the base stat increase itself is multiplicative or additive!)

[LonelyGaruga]

Had my PC's hard drive burn out, rip. Had a backup of LoT2 on a USB but apparently it was all the way back before I even started Plus Disk. 200 hours lost there. Gotta farm all those Gems again now...thought for sure I updated it when I finished everything...

lol I did update my backup, it was just a separate save folder. I thought I updated both the save folder I kept separate and the folder with everything in it. Nothing has actually been lost. Wonderful.

Anyway...

Haaaah. I'm really not looking at these things with massive postgame stat tweaking in mind I guess XD I'm thinking "Well, she'll have like, 24 mp, right...?" So, you have a really good point here, I probably don't need Keine after all. And, uh, the point where I'd be using Samidare Slash would be where it's hitting weakness and none of her other attacks would, at which case, yeah, it would definitely outdamage them by a good chunk :S It's formula isn't THAT crappy.

Subclass spells are a bit disadvantaged in any comparison where you can use Murakumo's Blessing, since that's a 56% damage boost to personal spell cards (and its own spell cards). To give an idea, Rabies Bite backed by Murakumo's Blessing would deal about 2% more damage than Samidare Slash on a 60 CLD weak target and Divine Falchion, provided that the target is PHY neutral. With Nitori's CLD boost, you can expect about 27% more damage than Rabies Bite with it though. Main reason I make such a big deal about targeting weakness is that I use both Satori and Akyuu for an additional 43% weakness damage. Tenshi's also got Keystones of Spirit giving her more reason to hit weakness.

Kogasa was initially planned to take Healer until

Spoiler:

Dragon God

opens up, both of which would help her mostly take over on healing (and then help buffing woo!!) the party (although I'd still need -someone-, e.g. Rumia for if my entire front row gets blasted for most of their HP or I lose Kogasa- Rumia works well because she still does appreciable damage apart from heals and helps on megadef bosses a little), but Strategist is on my mind as well, yeah.

Well, looking at Kogasa's healing, let's say you're fighting a boss with 1300 ATB and it uses something like Half Moon Slash (3600 delay) that puts your party to 50%. You can get 5 ticks of healing with 800+ ATB per tick (boss would be at 10,100 when its turn comes up). Without Healer, you're looking at a 40% heal for the party being at 90%. With Healer, the party will be at 100%. Half Moon Slash doesn't get reduced by a Strategist's damage reduction effect, but if an attack of the same delay did 50% of your party's HP and was reduced to 45% by the 10% damage reduction, you'd be looking at the party being reduced to 55% HP and getting to 95% HP after 5 ticks. Something to think about for Strategist's damage reduction.

As for the spoiler subclass,

Spoiler:

Dragon God's Power doesn't seem that great since it has no real offensive bonus. You get 4% more buffs per turn but that's hardly anything. The healing and damage reduction which stacks with Strategist's damage reduction does make it look very appealing for defensive purposes, but I'd go for something that offers more offensive potential.

Or Miko with both Parsee and Sanae out and some minmaxing done on her maintenance'd stats... >.> Speaking of that, someone said they didn't know how it would scale- in this game, unlike LoT1, equipment stat modifications come significantly later in the status formula, so their boosts should remain quite high, unlike LoT1 where before long you were maxing out affinities and resistances instead because the stat difference was getting almost negligible. If anything, I feel like those characters would only get progressively sillier as the equipment gets crazier and you get more power to raise their initially low base stats.

I'll keep that in mind about Maintenance then. Probably worrying about nothing for them. By the way, elemental damage boosting skills don't stack, so Miko can't double dip for her composite spell. I was able to test and confirm before my computer died that Miko's Tradition of Just Rewards will benefit from Sanae's SPI boost even if Miko is targeting a DRK weak target, which is pretty versatile. Too bad the only other composite in the game (at the moment, anyway) is WND + NTR, and WND's elemental boosting skill doesn't exist.

...and, yeah, +40% Atk makes Tenshi solid to start with (she's got great formulas!), but her awakening is really good. Makes me think about other minmaxable characters, like awakened Yuuka using her guaranteed Extra attack with Master Spark or Start of Heavenly Demise, which is a bit more reuseable than Marisa's meganuke. >_> Although even then, if we're talking about minmaxing, the likes of Keine can get so much more MAG than Yuuka she could realistically outdamage her Heavenly Demise outside of lucky extra attack rolls... (She'd need to set up her history accumulation though, and wouldn't selfsustain buffs as easily, so Yuuka would be better.)

Regarding Keine, I tested the damage on her History Accumulation and would say that it isn't worth going out of your way to acquire. Assuming you don't need to use Three Sacred Treasures - Sword to max her MAG out (such as having Iku use Thundercloud Stickleback and an Herbalist use Placebo Effect), you'll generally get more damage per turn by solely attacking with her than by stacking any amount of History Accumulation, at least over the course of 10 turns. I didn't bother testing further than that because 10 turns (of Tenshi's, anyway, and 2 were wasted turns due to Great Calamity) is how long I took to beat Serpent of Chaos. I assumed a frontline of Mokou, Akyuu, and Sanae (damage test was for Start of Heavenly Demise), if she has less MAG than maybe it'll be better for her, and you'll probably want to use Three Sacred Treasures - Sword once or even twice if you have two attackers.

But I wouldn't really say Keine is worth attacking with regardless, Mokou or not. Her damage is still inferior to most other characters.

It's not really about how viable "non-standard" builds are here. It's about the fact that I built them this way for a reason. If I wanted Sanae to be a nuker, I'd build her that way. I'm not about to fundamentally change how I've used Sanae for the entirety of the main game, for a "silly" reason like "lacking a CLD nuke". I'd rather work around that limitation, than handle it by messing with Sanae.

Yeah I guess that's fair enough. Would be silly to try to tell you how to play the game. You know best what you want to do with it.

I'm 100% okay with taking 278 hits to defeat the FINAL boss of the infinite corridor. I'm also NOT okay with a 10HKO especially after considering how blistering fast turns will be in the endgame. I know its all theoretical and you even expressly mentioned that in practice, it'll take longer + more time to set up. But I just wouldn't be having fun playing like this.

That's perfectly fair. It also reminded me that I neglected to consider detailing how many turns it would take to set up the buffs I mentioned, which would be pretty important for context. I'll cover that at a different time I think.

I'm pretty bad at balancing the idea of "optimized, but not too optimized", so I think simply providing information instead of saying "you should do x" would probably work better for you. I'll try doing that for the future.

I just want to take the time to expressly point out that I have no animosity towards you or anyone that I've disagreed with thus far. I'm just a stubborn person that doesn't want change. I appreciate all the information though. Just thought I'd post this in case I came off unappreciative or anything of the sort.

Not in the slightest, everything's good. Thanks for considering that. This place is the only one I post on anymore because everyone is pretty cool like that here. Pretty nice.

Just a random think which occurred to me: % bonuses to stats, such as kinship skills, other modifiers (ex: Kanako's Sky Creation, Remilia's Last Fortress, etc.)... are they additive or multiplicative?

Pretty sure they're multiplicative, but I haven't tested. I'll test it...eventually. Want to recover my lost progress first. It'll be easier with Tenshi's Awakening since I'll have Girl of Bhava-agra and Courageous Sword active to check.

Since I was mistaken about the lost progress, I'll try to check in-game. Currently getting an error when loading files, but it's probably just something missing on the new hard drive. Gonna try to figure out what's going wrong and then I'll get test results.

EDIT: OK so I did lose several hours of gameplay. On 42f of Infinite Corridor, level 460 Iku. Easy to make up for though, not upset about this. Would take a few hours of grinding to reach 540 again. So, testing.

Tested Tenshi's level 1 (forgot to level it) Sword of Hisou with Girl of Bhava-agra, Courageous Sword, Sanae's Power of the Living God, Murakumo's Blessing and Three Swords of the Divine Era, Strategist's Furious Scheme, and an 86% ATK/DEF/MND buff on 1f Nut Eaters for five hits. Tenshi's ATK was 276271.

Damage results were

5,942,750
5,959,497
5,312,204
5,546,566
5,892,589

Assuming the ATK buffs are multipliers, the expected damage range would be

Damage = ((276,271 * 1.28 * 1.86 * 1.4 * 1.34) - (40 * 0.5)) * (2 * 1.3 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.16 * 1.1) * (100 / 100) * Random Number (0.9-1.1)
Damage = (1,233,931 - 20) * 4.46416256 * 1 * (0.9-1.1)
Damage = 5,508379 * (0.9-1.1)
Damage = 4,957,541-6,059,216

Well that's pretty conclusive to me. ATK increasing skills should indeed be multiplicative.

[elminster1372]

Thanks Lonely^^ Well... I guess this is where I finally realize Yuuka is not that good after all :-)

On another note... anyone has any experience with the Earth Palace team? i'm considering trying to fit them on my squad (though maybe only Utsuho/Orin/Koishi), as their stats and awakenings do sound pretty interesting (also, I sorely lack Fire-type offense right now). What are your thoughts on them?

[Royalty of House Scarlet]

How useful are the members of the SDM? I had a keen interest in using them whenever I acquire them.

[Libra]

Thanks Lonely^^ Well... I guess this is where I finally realize Yuuka is not that good after all :-)

On another note... anyone has any experience with the Earth Palace team? i'm considering trying to fit them on my squad (though maybe only Utsuho/Orin/Koishi), as their stats and awakenings do sound pretty interesting (also, I sorely lack Fire-type offense right now). What are your thoughts on them?

 Well, I used Satori/Utsuho/Orin during the main game so I can't say much about Koishi or their performance in Plus Disc but I felt that Satori and Utsuho were a bit underwhelming.

Satori has high HP but no form of recovery which hampers her as tanky-support and she's not that great in an offensive role either since her copied spellcards are lv0 and her offensive stats are average, though you can bring Komachi/Suika along to abuse their spellcards I guess.

 Utsuho got buffed in the Plus Disc update and she's much better that she was before. Both Giga Flare and Hell's Tomahawk were buffed, the first increases her usefulness in mob fights and the latter in boss fights; they also fixed Fighting Spirit so she's a bit less squishy. The main problem I had with her is that even though her damage is much better than before, she's still too squishy to stay out and gets sniped relatively easily thank to her somewhat skewered affinities (which is a problem when she's supposed to spam Hell's Tomahawk to build up Fighting Spirit, Overheat and the MND debuff). I'm assuming she'll be better in Plus Disc since you can fix her affinities and increase her HP to make her a bit bulkier and her awakening gives a large damage boost as well.

 Rin was very good at cleaning mob fights with Former Hell's Needle Hill thanks to Extra Attack, Apparition Carrier and Enhanced Row Attack; she wasn't very useful against bosses because of their high defences though. She should still be pretty good for thrash clearing in Plus Disc and once you fix her average ATK stat she should do decent against bosses as well.

 Also, on another note, I wonder why Koishi doesn't have the Earth's Spirit Palace Party skill.

[elminster1372]

Uh... according to the wiki, Koishi does have the Earth Palace skill. As for Satori, I still don't know if I am going to use her, but if I am, I totally intend to abuse Proof of Kinship and place her in another lineup, where she can put her copying power to better use (for example, both of Renko's skills are very good choices for copying, as is just about any kind of heal). Still, putting her in the team just for a +8% stat for the other members sounds somewhat lame, so I am still considering using only Utsuho, Rin, and Koishi (for bosses, I can keep Rin in the back and again take advantage of Proof of Kinship, plus I have many other boss-oriented characters to use, so I could use more chars for random encounters).

On an unrelated note... it's amazing how Maribel turned Knowledge's Shadow from one of the most difficult Postgame battles in the game into a cakewalk, taking something like 4-5k damage from Ether Flare thanks to Ability to See Boundaries :-) Again, if you're not using the Sealing Club duo, I strongly suggest you give it a try.

[Serela]

Before Plus, a huge portion of the cast suffers from hiiiigh boss defenses on almost everything after a certain point in the game, including Rin; her damage should be a lot more usable on bosses in postgame in general. Her awakening is also perfect, since it lets her ignore half of the enemy's defenses (So much for that low attack stat :D !) and wow you definitely can't complain about higher extra attack proc rate, just imagine the lucky runs where she'll get bunch of casts in a row.

Problem with Koishi is Earth Palace is like, her -only- damage boosting skill; and she also needs high evasion from her equipment to make most of her passives do anything... and enough durability to afford to take a hit, since she needs to try to evade things. So there's a high demand to satisfy before she can really blossom. Her awakening looks like it makes the evasion gimmick pretty dang sweet, though; take extra turns 2/3rds of the time you evade stuff? Plus stuff like the ring that irresistably debuffs enemies when you evade exists, etc.

Satori's a weird one to try to use postgame. Guess it depends if you have skills cool enough to be worth the effort to copy.

[Libra]

Uh... according to the wiki, Koishi does have the Earth Palace skill. As for Satori, I still don't know if I am going to use her, but if I am, I totally intend to abuse Proof of Kinship and place her in another lineup, where she can put her copying power to better use (for example, both of Renko's skills are very good choices for copying, as is just about any kind of heal). Still, putting her in the team just for a +8% stat for the other members sounds somewhat lame, so I am still considering using only Utsuho, Rin, and Koishi (for bosses, I can keep Rin in the back and again take advantage of Proof of Kinship, plus I have many other boss-oriented characters to use, so I could use more chars for random encounters).

On an unrelated note... it's amazing how Maribel turned Knowledge's Shadow from one of the most difficult Postgame battles in the game into a cakewalk, taking something like 4-5k damage from Ether Flare thanks to Ability to See Boundaries :-) Again, if you're not using the Sealing Club duo, I strongly suggest you give it a try.

 Oh yeah I meant to say that Koishi didn't have Proof of Kinship but I somehow got them mixed up.

[LonelyGaruga]

Thanks Lonely^^ Well... I guess this is where I finally realize Yuuka is not that good after all :-)

I'm not sure I would call Yuuka not that good, but I can't really say I've looked into her much. She seems good on paper though, but I'm not totally sure on how to calculate Extra Attack since it procs on itself. Ignoring that aspect of it, the repeated attack doesn't trigger Majesty, but does trigger Encounter with a Strong Foe. Majesty gives Yuuka a maximum buff of 92%, and Tormenting Nature gives her an interesting damage % increase (damage bonus is "Enemy HP % * 0.4", but doesn't work at 100% HP, 1% HP is 0.4% more damage, 50% is 20% more damage, 99% is 39.6% more damage). She's also got HP regeneration from Gensokyo's Eternal Flower (4% minimum) and Protection of Plants (8% and can overheal to 150%). So you're looking at 92% max buffs, let's say an average of 32% more damage from Extra Attack and 20% more damage from Tormenting Nature, and generally 8-12% HP regeneration, plus high base stats, especially in ATK/MAG. I can't run damage calculations because I can't check Yuuka's endgame stats though. It's possible to calculate them accurately without using the game, but there's a rounding issue that I'm a little unsure about. I did take the time to write down every character's level at Reimu 540 while doing a stat calculation side project, so I can confirm that Yuuka would be at level 497 at the point Reimu is at 540.

I'll set aside some time to write about calculating stats here. This info can also be found here: https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Labyrinth_of_Touhou_2/Gameplay#Base_Stats_and_Stat_Formulas

This is kinda important, so putting it bolded: The actual formula for calculating level up bonuses is Level Bonus * 0.03, and not 0.04. This is probably a change in a game update or something, I tried calculating it as 0.04 but that was getting higher results than it should have. 0.03 was perfectly accurate though.

Starting with Yuuka's growth rates, she's looking at

HP: 15.2
ATK: 15.6
DEF: 9.2
MAG: 14
MND: 8
SPD: 7

Stat Orbs and 2 to each of these stats, Gems add 1 to each for a +3 bonus. In addition to this, maxed out stat boosts grant +2 to HP, +0.7 to SPD, and +1 to each other stat. Most characters can get two, sometimes more Second Boost skills at this level, so I'll assume HP Second Boost, ATK Second Boost (Yuuka's ATK is very respectable), and MAG Second Boost are learned. HP Second Boost is a +4 boost to HP, while ATK/MAG Second Boost are a +2 bonus to ATK/MAG. The last bonus is from subclasses. I'll assume Murakumo's Blessing, which is +1 to ATK/DEF/MAG/MND, and no bonus to HP/SPD.

So Yuuka's final growth rates would be

HP: 22.2 (15.2 + 3 + 4)
ATK: 21.6 (15.6 + 3 + 2 + 1)
DEF: 14.2 (9.2 + 3 + 1 + 1)
MAG: 20 (14 + 3 + 2 + 1)
MND: 13 (8 + 3 + 1 + 1)
SPD: 10.7 (7 + 3 + 0.7)

After that is calculating the base values. There's three formulas here. One's for HP, one's for SPD, and one's for the other stats, ATK/DEF/MAG/MND.

HP: (Level + 6) * Growth Rate + 10
ATK/DEF/MAG/MND: (Level + 4) * Growth Rate + 4
SPD: (Level + 10) * (Growth Rate / 32)

So for Yuuka with the aforementioned base stats, it looks like

HP: (497 + 6) * 22.2 + 10
ATK: (497 + 4) * 21.6 + 4
DEF: (497 + 4) * 14.2 + 4
MAG: (497 + 4) * 20 + 4
MND: (497 + 4) * 13 + 4
SPD: (497 + 10) * (10.7 / 32)

HP: 11,176
ATK: 10,825
DEF: 7,118
MAG: 10,024
MND: 6,517
SPD: 169

Decimals are cut off here. There is no rounding up either.

After this is calculating the stat multiplier. This is where equipment, level bonuses, and library stat level ups go.

Multiplier = 1 + Equipment Bonuses + (Level Bonuses * 0.03) + (Stat Level * 0.02)

For equipment, something like a 100% stat bonus would be rendered as a 1 here. A 412% stat bonus would be 4.12, etc. I'll assume that all 496 of Yuuka's level bonuses go toward MAG. This'll be a 496 * 0.03 = 14.88 multiplier. I'll assume 600 library levels for every stat, so 600 * 0.02 = 12 multiplier. Let's assume 3x Machine God Lucifer for the equipment bonus, which would be a 6.66 * 3 = 19.98 multiplier. So it's looking like

MAG: 1 + 19.98 + 14.88 + 12 = 47.86
HP/ATK/DEF/MND/SPD: 1 + 19.98 + 12 = 32.98

After calculating that, the final stat formulas are

HP/ATK/DEF/MAG/MND: Base Value * Multiplier
SPD: (Base Value * Multiplier) + 100

So the final stats are

HP: 11,176 * 32.98 = 368,584
ATK: 10,825 * 32.98 = 357,008
DEF: 7,118 * 32.98 = 234,751
MAG: 10,024 * 47.86 = 479,748
MND: 6,517 * 32.98 = 214,930
SPD: (169 * 32.98) + 100 = 5,673

Now comes the big question: Is this accurate? Since I can't just post a picture of her stats proving these calculations are 100% accurate, I'll use the one I took of Tenshi's earlier for the damage calculation.

https://i.imgur.com/Dwo5acr.jpg

HP: 256,706
ATK: 400,770
DEF: 153,238
MAG: 16,384
MND: 115,804
SPD: 3,020

So, Tenshi's growth rates here are all stat boosts (except MAG), with HP/ATK Second Boost, as well as Seven Celestial Peaches (+4.9 to HP), Murakumo's Blessing, and maxed stat Gems/Orbs (except MAG). This puts her growth rates at

HP: 10.8 + 3 + 4 + 4.9 = 22.7
ATK: 10.8 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 16.8
DEF: 12 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 17
MAG: 5.2 + 1 = 6.2
MND: 11.8 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 16.8
SPD: 6.6 + 3 + 0.7 = 10.3

Base values are

HP: (526 + 6) * 22.7 + 10 = 12,086
ATK: (526 + 4) * 16.8 + 4 = 8,908
DEF: (526 + 4) * 17 + 4 = 9,014
MAG: (526 + 4) * 6.2 + 4 = 3,290
MND: (526 + 4) * 16.8 + 4 = 8,908
SPD: (526 + 10) * (10.3 / 32) = 172

Equipment multipliers for 2x Crimson Lotus Princess + Scourge are

HP: 4.12 + 4.12 = 8.24
ATK: 4.12 + 4.12 + 8 = 16.24
DEF: 4
MAG: 1.99 + 1.99 = 3.98
MND: 0
SPD: 1.99 + 1.99 = 3.98

600 (12) library level to all stats except MAG, and 525 (15.75) level bonus to ATK. Final multipliers are

HP: 1 + 8.24 + 12 = 21.24
ATK: 1 + 16.24 + 15.75 + 12 = 44.99
DEF: 1 + 4 + 12 = 17
MAG: 1 + 3.98  = 4.98
MND: 1 + 12 = 13
SPD: 1 + 3.98 + 12 = 16.98

Final stats are

HP: 12,041 * 21.24 = 256,706
ATK: 8,908 * 44.99 = 400,770
DEF: 9,014 * 17 = 153,238
MAG: 3,290 * 4.98 = 16,384
MND: 8,908 * 13 = 115,804
SPD: (172 * 16.98) + 100 = 3,020

This is a perfect match, so Yuuka's stats should be as they were calculated to be in-game as well. This also demonstrates how you can accurately calculate any character's stats provided you know what kind of levels, library levels, equipment, stat boosts, and so on you're going to have on them. So you can compare with any character.

On another note... anyone has any experience with the Earth Palace team? i'm considering trying to fit them on my squad (though maybe only Utsuho/Orin/Koishi), as their stats and awakenings do sound pretty interesting (also, I sorely lack Fire-type offense right now). What are your thoughts on them?

I've only used Satori of them, but I thought she was good. She's a little bit less tanky than Momiji (having slightly more HP but also almost half the DEF/MND), but besides her and Miko she's the tankiest character in my party composition. The 24% weakness damage bonus is extremely versatile, though there isn't a whole lot to really do with Spell Card Recollection. I've had her copy things like Miracle Fruit and Demarcation, but otherwise mostly just subclass stuff like Placebo Effect. Her damage doesn't seem horrible since she can get a personal 36% weakness damage bonus from her Awakening, which is either a 60% damage bonus or a 68% one. One thing I do want to say is that even though Narrow Confines of Avici has one of the strongest personal spell card formulas without a drawback, it's still weaker than Start of Heavenly Demise (Heavenly Demise is about 6% stronger), since Satori can level that to 5 compared to Avici being a level 0 spell card. Avici does have the advantage of debuffing all stats though, and MND debuffs would help it do more damage. Just mentioning Start of Heavenly Demise as a comparison. I compiled all the spell cards in the game for a damage comparison if you wanna look at that, but I'd have to clean it up a lot to make it more user friendly and do some additional calculations to account for things like no access to Murakumo's Blessing (if another character is using it) and such.

As for FIR damage, Explosive Flame Sword should probably be good enough to say you've got it covered, I think. Certainly no objections here with Tenshi. World Creation Press does only about 9% more damage under equal circumstances (Murakumo's Blessing makes it 70% stronger though). On a 60 FIR weak target with Divine Falchion and maxed Keystones of Spirit, Explosive Flame Sword should do about 58% more damage even with Murakumo's Blessing in play, and that's without Satori, Akyuu, or Utsuho/Mokou for FIR boosts. Only thing is the lowered ACC, but equipping something like Long Sword "Ringil" (+360% ATK, +560% SPD, +32 ACC, among other bonuses) covers ACC just fine.

--

So gonna list the character levels at Reimu 540, what I did to get these levels was to level down all characters to 1, count how much EXP it took to level Reimu to 540, and then give the same amount of EXP to every other character. Proportionately speaking, character levels generally remain the same, but not generally enough that I'd make assumptions about level 2000 or something.

So, character levels at Reimu 540 are

582: Chen
569: Cirno
554: Minoriko
552: Mystia, Renko
549: Tokiko
547: Kogasa
543: Hina
540: Reimu, Rumia, Wriggle, Meiling, Akyuu
538: Nitori
534: Parsee
528: Rinnosuke, Reisen
525: Momiji
523: Kokoro
522: Rin, Iku, Maribel
520: Sanae
518: Keine, Alice
517: Futo
515: Marisa, Youmu, Aya, Nazrin, Sakuya, Eiki
512: Mokou, Kasen, Eirin
509: Tenshi
506: Shou
503: Komachi, Yuugi, Yuyuko
497: Ran, Yuuka, Yukari, Mamizou
494: Satori
492: Suika, Remilia, Kanako, Suwako, Flandre
490: Byakuren
489: Utsuho, Koishi
487: Kaguya, Patchouli
479: Miko

[Libra]

I believe that for the damage increase of Extra Attack you can calculate it as 0.32+0.32²+0.32³...+0.32ⁿ which eventually rounds up at about 0.47 (so a 47% damage increase on average), I'm not sure if the guaranteed Extra Attack from Dangerous Paradise can procc on itself though.

 If I'm not wrong and we assume Rin's Erratic Steps increases Extra Attacks activation rate by 16%, it would equal about a 92% increase in damage in her case.

[elminster1372]

Just got started with B1F... and wow, I'm loving it already^^ The random encounters are nearly impossible at my lvl (180-200) unless I use the Moriya team + Reimu, but at the same time there are not many "no-sell" enemies like in 8F-16F extra floors. The bosses I faced so far also felt much less unfair than, say, Great C or Matagama of Darkness. Incidentally, I'd like to ask... what's the condition for opening that rock on B1F which covers that lvl 200+ boss? I read it asks for 16... something. I think.

[Arcvasti]

Geez, Chen is over a hundred levels ahead of Miko. That's something else for the Instant Attacker debate: Chen gets way more skill points then any other character, meaning that she benefits more from the improved boost tomes/Awakenings.

She's also tied for the second highest HP recovery rate. This, combined with her very quick speed, means that Chen can very quickly recover from damage while in the back line.

Just got started with B1F... and wow, I'm loving it already^^ The random encounters are nearly impossible at my lvl (180-200) unless I use the Moriya team + Reimu, but at the same time there are not many "no-sell" enemies like in 8F-16F extra floors. The bosses I faced so far also felt much less unfair than, say, Great C or Matagama of Darkness. Incidentally, I'd like to ask... what's the condition for opening that rock on B1F which covers that lvl 200+ boss? I read it asks for 16... something. I think.

Whenever a rock asks for a number of something, it's asking for the number of Black Fragments you have. You get one black fragment for each Shadow boss you defeat, more or less[I can't remember whether you get two from Shadow Kasen]. There are a maximum of 56 Black Fragments, one for each playable character. There's a translation patchhere. Although it is still incomplete, it does have items fully translated, which is extremely helpful for determining how many Black Fragments you have.

As far as the random encounters go, they tend to be fairly brutal, at least at first. Something you may not notice at first is that some enemies are much[~100 levels] stronger then the rest of the enemies and they constitute the biggest threat and need to be prioritised. Strong fire or spirit attacks work well for the first few basement floors[Chen practically soloed most enemy encounters in my play-through].

[LonelyGaruga]

I believe that for the damage increase of Extra Attack you can calculate it as 0.32+0.32²+0.32³...+0.32ⁿ which eventually rounds up at about 0.47 (so a 47% damage increase on average), I'm not sure if the guaranteed Extra Attack from Dangerous Paradise can procc on itself though.

 If I'm not wrong and we assume Rin's Erratic Steps increases Extra Attacks activation rate by 16%, it would equal about a 92% increase in damage in her case.

Hmmm, 47% then, that's pretty good. Do you (or anyone else) know if Extra Attack consumes Boost turns, suffer buff decay, or anything like that? I'm assuming not, since I do know that positive per turn effects like Yuuka's Majesty don't activate due to Extra Attack, but wanna make sure about that. If it does consume Boost, that's a pretty serious damage loss past two attacks in a row.

Just got started with B1F... and wow, I'm loving it already^^ The random encounters are nearly impossible at my lvl (180-200) unless I use the Moriya team + Reimu, but at the same time there are not many "no-sell" enemies like in 8F-16F extra floors. The bosses I faced so far also felt much less unfair than, say, Great C or Matagama of Darkness. Incidentally, I'd like to ask... what's the condition for opening that rock on B1F which covers that lvl 200+ boss? I read it asks for 16... something. I think.

Are you buffing your attackers? That's about the point where I found buffing to be a necessity for random encounters. Might help a lot, but the skeletal demons (at least for MND) and the higher leveled enemies are still very tanky at this point in the game. With more levels and better equipment the whole thing becomes a bit more manageable.

Regarding the item locked rock, as was already answered, it requires the Black Fragments that are acquired with each Shadow boss kill. There's four optional bosses locked behind these rocks, but only the one you're describing is at a level you can reasonably fight before beating the final boss. You won't be getting 16 until you reach B5f, which is the level 215-236 range. Some of the floors are also locked behind these rocks so you can't proceed until you defeat every Shadow boss up until that point as well, if you get roadblocked by anything.