Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 15F

[ZoomyTsugumi]

I got bored of grinding for winner so I started a NG+ file and I set myself a static team consisting of people I haven't really used before for long periods of time.
It is as follows:

Remilia >ATK
Yuugi >ATK
Sanae >MAG (maybe switch to MND/SPD???)
Minoriko >MND
Reisen >MAG
Yukari >MND
Yuuka >MAG
Okuu >MAG
Maribel >MAG
Shiki >ATK
Keine >DEF
Suika >ATK

Halfway through floor 4 by now and this team is shaping up to be surprisingly decent. This is my first time without a full party heal spell actually, and my first time not using Meiling. Still deciding on who I want to tank full time (thinking of going with Yuugi for DEF and Yukari for MND with decent Def and having Remi/Keine as 2nd slot). Never ever used Okuu, Suika, Yuuka or Maribel, but everyone else has been at least slightly fiddled with in the past, enough to have a semi decent idea of their roles and output. Think the only downfall with this is elemental issues. I'm making up for lack of level up bonuses in defensive stats with SKP and it's going okay so far. Luckily a fair few of these chars are bulky enough to deal with less defensive investment. Having no speedster early in the game is a bit annoying though.

Also yeah Sanae AND Minoriko together seems a bit redundant but w/e. I initially had Eirin in there too instead of Yuugi but that would've been overkill and I would've struggled cos she's completely useless otherwise.

[Serela]

Yuugitank doesn't really work because def-based bosses are almost nonexistent; I can think of one sub-boss in postgame and a couple recruitable characters in maingame where you don't really care (Chen/Youmu are too early, Yuugi's fight doesn't really need a tank), about all the other fights have at least one good magic spell that will take Yuugi down to almost no HP just too often to bother babysitting her... and hoping she doesn't get one-shot by that nonexistent mnd stat. She's amazing end-postgame where you can replace the MND stat with affinities, but that doesn't even remotely work until 30f. Yukari can work, although her def isn't quite enough for first slot imo unless you go all-out and build her for def, I'm used to using her a as a slot-2 tank (in a def build :V)- Keine, Remi, and Yukari in some mix should be able to handle the job, but you might consider dropping Remilia's offensive ability to just have a self-buffing tank. (Only a maybe, though.)

Sanae+Minoriko IS pretty redundant, but I guess they're your only healers after all. I'll tell you now though, MAG build Sanae is gonna be disappointing. She'll do okay damage in random fights and that's about it, and it'll throw her durability out the window.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

True... but I mean she's gonna be very very very useful situationally. I think she's a safe bet to have in first slot for a good portion of the game trash-wise. Most of the time the enemies that move fast are physical attackers. But obviously she's not gonna be a Meiling replacement, or for anyone who has great both defensive stats either. Her HP is really really great for now at least!!
Should I switch to DEF Yukari then? Or focus my efforts on raising either Remi or Keine to 1st slot tank? I've been reading old threads and everyone was saying that Remi gets really disappointing towards the end of the game if you build her defensively, so that's why I went with ATK, but of course I'm open to new opinions.

I want to say that Alice is proving to be a wall but I've only fought her once and that was probably slightly underleveled at that. I got wrecked pretty hard though, Everyone not Yuugi dies to any physical attacks in maybe 2-3 hits and then Yuugi dies really really easily to magic attacks. Having only single target healers is such a crazy thing aaahhh. They aren't fast enough yet to have their speed matter enough

Also yeah, I guess I will switch to MND/DEF Sanae actually,  I think it's a good idea to have one for each type since until Yuuka gets enough SP to spam reflowering they're my only way of healing people, and even when that happens it's not going to add much more to the table.

[Serela]

Remi gets really disappointing built defensively because you wouldn't normally want to use her for only tanking, and someone who isn't built for damage is going to have disappointing damage. But you need a good first slot tank, too. Keine and Yukari are great second slot tanks but putting them in first slot full-time is somewhat worrisome. Remi's got the stats for it and a self-buff to keep her topped out on def/mnd, it's just that she's kind of boring of a tank as her damage drops off that way and you'd normally use Meiling or Tenshi or something.

You can go ahead and raise Yuugi defensively but I don't really think you're going to get much out of it :S She already has nearly tank-grade DEF when built for ATK in the first place as far as using her for physical guarding goes (her def/hp are certainly enough for random fights without investment), but magic wiping out almost her entire hp bar makes it a really silly idea to try to actually build her specifically for tanking- immune to physical, but no longer a top-grade nuker and still dies to a single spell. She'll always have awesome HP, but that's the only reason she isn't usually one-shot by magic- in or out of randoms.

Normally I'd say building Sanae for DEF is a waste of time (physical attacks going outside the first two slots is rare in LoT1 and her base def is pretty meh) but since you already have a MND minoriko maybe it's not a bad idea?

[ZoomyTsugumi]

Ok, I guess I can use Remi as a replacement Tenshi/Meiling hybrid and build her defensively from now on.

I wasn't planning on raising Yuugi's DEF with level up bonuses, but rather pooling a ton of SKP into her DEF instead. I already know she's got damn fine DEF growth (not put a single level bonus into her DEF and she's already like 200 points higher than Keine/Yukari/Remi), so I'm just focusing on making that fantastic ATK growth even better. She's one of my only Physical powerhouses on a mostly magic oriented team (and the only physical attacker who can even really take a hit right now) so I'm not planning on sacrificing better output for anything else really.

Also it's decided then, I'm building Sanae for DEF from now on. I guess this counts as an experiment on how useful of a synergy she has with Minoriko when built like this.

Tried Alice again after levelling up more, and I really think I need to increase my DPS too. Healing light is proving to be hard to defeat cos my best attack against it is Last Judgement but that takes basically all of Shiki's EXP. Buffed MAG Utsuho using UNR can do some good numbers against it though. Need to experiment a bit more I guess, hopefully with a couple more levels I won't need to focus so much on keeping my party alive :/

[jester147]

Remi can be defensive even without pooling level up bonuses to defenses, she really has awesome stats, except MND, which is still great but average.

Don't build Sanae on DEF, she has little DEF to be worth investing. Just pump MND is enough, usually.

The builds are fine, but Yukari can function as a hybrid tank, given her awesome DEF stat, although still quite expensive compared to building MND.

About Minoriko+Sanae, there are ups and downs, like Minoriko is better MND tank and heals much better than Sanae, and buffing defenses, while Sanae could heal statuses and buff all stats. It's a choice really, choose one that is good for the current given situation.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

Beat Alice, all I really needed was a better opening strategy Ended up losing both of my healers and luckily pulled through in the end.

I'm not planning on changing the party for the entire game, so I need Remi to fill the first slot tank role. Her defenses have to be absolutely impeccable for that to be viable.

If I go MND Sanae what's she going to be used for over Minoriko? Minoriko can tank magic way better, and can heal way more so if I try to build Sanae the same way she's already outclassed. I'm focusing on Sanae's healing and thinking it would be good to use her for healing in situations where Minoriko would be hazardous to have out. Sanae could probably better pull off an all round bulky healer if I go for a DEF focus anyway, cos I can always dump SKP into her MND to get it more up to scratch. If her bonus effects are to be utilised I think thats her best bet, so she dies to less overall.

I was planning on giving Yukari a MND focus originally, but I'm reconsidering and maybe going 75%DEF>25%MND to make her into a much better all rounder tank.

[Ghaleon]

Eh, I never had any disappointment towards def remi late game. Sure she doesn't dish out numbers as big as a pure nuke but lot1 isn't lot2, where boss defenses are very significant. Frankly I've built her for atk and def multiple times and I actually prefer the def build because she can eat multiple physical nukes like Iai slash, triple sword, and still actually do good dps (dps not alpha, she's fast too so stuff... plus her good self buff means you can keep her atk buff high without Iku or Ran or someone maintaining it). Her recovery is stupid good too so when you DO switch her out, it doesn't have to be very long before she's ready to go again. I'm not saying DO it, but, if you're thinking about it, don't get the impression everyone says it's bad, because it's not.

[RegalStar]

I'm not really sure DEF Yukari would work. On my draft run I found that her DEF is OK but her HP is like Tenshi level low, and that's just not going to cut it because the few physically aligned bosses in the game tend to do enough damage that she can't just expect to take 0s even after buffing.

I would say just stick with Remilia and Keine for your DEF tanking needs. Yukari's much better built as MND-slanted tank for the more magic focused bosses (which far outnumber the physically oriented bosses anyhow).

[Serela]

The thing is, a party usually has more than enough MND tanks in it's support members, and a MND tank often is relegated to the back slots... which are already in high demand. DEF-build Yukari actually has very nice def (I did it for a full run through WINNER and was quite pleased) and still more than enough MND to easily tank through magic; it lets her take the front slots. Otherwise she'll surely fall to any strong physical and cannot be let into the front slots safely.

Building your levelups into a stat have an incredibly large effect when you're as far as postgame. Zeros? What, nah. She's no Meiling. But she'll survive just fine, and that's what's needed. Not a slot 1 tank, but solidly capable of taking slot 2.

[RegalStar]

No matter how much you tweak it, I can't really see Yukari being more physically defensive than Wriggle (she'd get a bit more DEF but her HP plummets, plus she would be much more expensive to maintain SKP wise due to her HP and DEF requiring a lot of it to level). The thing is, majorly physically based bosses tend to have things like Steel Clash or Slash Dive which is just murder on Yukari's poor HP (Tenshi could have an easier time with them but she's got way more DEF), and she can't reduce them with affinities. Baal Avatar is the only boss I know of that uses mostly 2-to-1 attacks but that thing's got so much ATK it demands a lot of HP regardless. Using her to tank those bosses is just forcing someone to do a job they're not really built to do, especially when Remilia, Keine and Yuugi are all on the team. MND based Yukari on the other hand handles first slot on all the magically inclined bosses a lot better; her DEF is still sufficient to cover composites, the more MND piercing attacks are almost always elemental, and very few of them use strong non-elemental physical attacks (only one I can think of is Okuu, and maybe Eiki but that one is so predictable anyways). I definitely don't see Remilia or Keine (or anyone else) handling those bosses better even with heavy MND investment, so this is just much more efficient allocation of resources.

[Serela]

We're just gonna have to agree to disagree here. IMO MND-based Yukari has to be kept out of the front in too many boss fights (many of which only use occasional physicals and are by no means focused on them, e.g. Maribel v2, but nevertheless you must absolutely deal with their presence; Baal Avatar is honestly like the only physical-based boss fight I can think of that isn't a v2 or earlygame. Great Stamp???) and DEF-Yukari has more flexibility (Wriggle and Keine would edge her out. Some. Not a whole lot. For reference, def Ran edges her out just a bit, based on the WINNER endgame fight. They win in HP but she's usually got enough to take a big physical hit) whilst still having pretty dang high MND... a stat that's significantly less important for tanks postgame anyway where it's almost replaceable by affinity.

Pretty sure you're underestimating the amount of physical attacks  bosses have. There's a surprising amount of magic-only bosses but not -that- many.

"Forcing her to tank". Well it's pretty nice to have your def/mnd party buffer to be able to stay out in -all- bosses. Not to mention the ones with all-target physicals, which are uncommon but bothersome... that Needle Parade, augh! (Apart from that I only think of Arrow Rain from Yuuka. Baal Avatar's murders like everyone anyway. Nightmares.)

[RegalStar]

Maribel is entirely magic/composite. Amniseri/Martena is the only thing that uses physicals, but that thing's also the one vulnerable to PAR and in any case the only thing threatening about Maribel is her last phase anyways.

MND based Yukari can comfortably slot 1 St Elmo's Fire, Suwako's magic phase, Reisen (physical using minion is easily PAR'd), Eientei (need a Star World Bracelet for Galaxy in a Pot), Evil Forge (no physical), Yuyuko (no physical), Yukari (no physical), Rinnosuke's elemental phases (only Huge Whirlwind and Sealing Slash), Rainbow Phoenix (lol), Great Intellect (no physical), Cosmic (no physical), Maribel (no physical), Bloody Papa (no physical), Hibachi's magic phase (only Ultimate Light Cannon), Celestial Bright Demon (Ultimate Light Cannon and Poison Thrust), Agastobrauma (Plasma Touch), Yuuka (Arrow Rain off 20k ATK), Eiki (Last Judgement but that's easy to work around), and Kedamagrammaton (no physical). It doesn't seem like a huge list, but it includes almost all the bosses that needs to be beaten (in a reasonable timeframe) to progress through the game, so I would still definitely say that she can see her share of the battle. (In fact, if there were anything I learned from the draft run I did, it was how pure MND tanks could actually be so relevant in slot 1. Iku now seems even more broken than I thought she would be before this!)

I do agree that DEF based Yukari could cover more threats more comfortably like Orin, Okuu or Master Light Wings, and be much more relevant for the 30F bosses, while still being pretty decent against what I've brought up. The thing is though, in Zoomy's proposed team Remilia and Keine exists, both of which handles physical and mixed tanking better (mixed tanking tends to require a lot more DEF than MND because of affinties being able to replace MND, so having good HP and DEF is better than having decent DEF and good MND), but there isn't anyone that's better at handling magic/composite based bosses than Yukari (Minoriko could do in a pinch but she'd have much more problem with composite attacks), so she's better off focusing on that area, and let Remilia/Keine handle the others.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

ftr, as it stands now my level 25 Yukari has had about 50/50 MND/DEF investment and she's got around 60 points less MND than pure MND Minoriko(30) and about 100/130 less DEF than PureDEFKeine(28)/ATK/DEFRemi(26) respectively.

Was super worried about Tam's Foe, cos I was fretting about Flowing Hellfire, but when I actually fought it, it turns out I had like 6 party members who could all tank at least one, lol. So I say the fight went pretty easy
I swear I've only heard not too great things about Okuu but honestly her MAG growth is fantastic compared to the rest of the party and she is clearing trash without a sweat. Shame she can only do 2 UNR's before she needs to be benched but oh man I'm happy with how she's turning out. Reisen is fairly decent too when things don't resist Magic or MYS, cos Mind Starmine is pretty good and she's at least 4 SPD ahead of my second fastest (Okuu) so she gets them out quick.

Still not sure how to use Maribel or what her strengths are. I guess she's like another variant of Reisen with self buff powers but I'm not too sure how she will end up playing out.

Excited to finally be able to bring out Shiki's Wandering sin for boss debuff help now too cos I was reluctant to use it in case of premature DTH. Shouldn't have too much issue with debuffs considering Reisen and Maribel but she's bringing in status effects to the mix so thats fun.

Suika is kind of meh and I am thinking maybe she just needs a bit more time and investment to start actually standing out. Her multi-target WND spell is kinda blah and Yuugi does basically the exact same thing but much better almost all the time (yes ik Suika's is composite and Yuugi's is just plain ATK). Her nukes haven't seen much use either yet, so I'm left awating for her usefulness to come. The best thing about her right now is that she is a physical attacker on a team that's only 1/3 physical + Keine. Also she's got one of the only two composite attacks on the team.

Not sure how far I'm going to take this I guess,  I will see where I'm at by endgame and how motivated I am to continue. I'm already thinking about next playthrough though so I might not stay on this one much longer than Maribel. Maybe I can do another silly not tooooo optimal team and have some fun stuff like Rumia as my main healer (with iku to help her ofc) and Yuuka as backup healer lol.

[Serela]

Suika's alltarget is super weak against most enemies. It's pretty much just for the powerful alltarget speed debuff. Suika fills the uncommon role of a physical attacker with passable MND, but her damage is sorta meh (Good, but many others can do notably better) if you have ATK buffs for other party members... or amazing if you don't and her self-buff means she's got way more ATK buff than your other members generally do.

Reisen's pretty good versus randoms and Discarder is, of course, pretty nice on bosses. Maribel is... harder to use before postgame because of her SP costs, but at least she has a few lower cost moves; she's got just enough durability to take a non-severe hit and just enough damage to be respectable versus the heavy hitters in the cast, but if you don't value her self-buff, she's not very special at anything other than having a Discarder-like attack in her debuffing barriers. The SP costs are arbitrary and painful for NG+ because the damage is not proportional to the cost, it's just made for postgame's bloated sp values.

Utsuho's fine against randoms, but she just doesn't have any high-power move to use on a boss fight, nor any worthy durability to speak of to make up for it. She's not glassy but she's... definitely not bulky. Her damage isn't -that- bad even on bosses, but it's comparable to using your random battle clearing moves on bosses when you have nukes available.

No one would blame you for stopping at 20F Maribel fight because postgame is a lot of grinding and way less interesting in general :V

Rumia as main healer? I've tried that and, whilst it's -great- in postgame, it really really does not work until... -maybe- with Iku you can do it near the final boss of maingame, sorta. Before then she just heals for piddly nothing, even with buffs. She's a super solid party member postgame for a mix of Second Healer and having nuke-grade damage output, but realllly questionable until then with how many enemies resist MYS.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

Yeah I think I'm going to stop after doing the bloodstained seals +V2 bosses cos I think thats a good place to leave it.

Utsuho is doing a significant amount of damage against bosses right now, she just can't do much cos she's got only 2 uses of her cheapest attack before she's out for the count. Her durability is quite good right now too without needing much investment in defenses (she tanks Flowing Hellfire like a pro but then she's got the best FIR affinity lol). Maybe that will fall off as I go through the game, but ya she's quite fantastic for now.

I think it might be worth it significantly bulking up some of my attackers anyway. Especially when speeds are so low in general that I can't fast switch too easily.

Maribel's durability is kind of crap right now, and I know thats cos she's got a selfbuff and having her with good defenses already would make her really OP towards the end of the game. But yeah she's not too great right now and I think thats a bit of a shame. Her damage is alright I guess, Liberated Abilities helps enough with trash, and her usefulness on bosses is basically debuff centric for now. I guess my opinion is still pending overall, but it's not looking so great for her right now!!


Also Rumia as healer probably wouldn't affect me negatively too much. I found that the last regular run I played I managed to make it all the way to Rinno without issue with any boss. Healing wasn't particularly needed until him so if she starts to put up good numbers towards endgame. with an Iku buff on her I should be alright. It's also an incentive to build on her MAG fairly intensively so maybe she will prove useful earlier.

[Serela]

If you do use Rumia maingame, you definitely have incentive to -heavily- tweak her MAG; when I tried to use her I got to like 16f at least, and if you really go for it she can wreck the massively tanky enemies with Dark Side of the Moon; it helps that she's slow so you could, say, have Iku buff her offenses before she moves. (Iku herself is slow, so it's an awkward tactic on most characters, but it makes Iku great in randoms instead of useless. This is one of Keine's main upsides over Iku; she's fast and can buff your team before they attack)

But when you say "good numbers" for healing I mean more like "barely passable as not a waste of time" numbers. *coughs* She really doesn't come into her light until your levels literally double between 20f and 21f as you enter postgame. MAG grows faster than HP and the bloating numbers really makes it apparent. Even in postgame she needs a good MAG buff to heal well but she does it quite well at that point.

I think the reason your stats are the way they are is because earlygame, there's not as much time for the EXP scaling to come into effect. Maribel levels fast and Utsuho levels very slow, and that might not be noticable until much later in the game. (Maribel isn't particularly durable even then, TBH, she's just not anywhere at the point of glassiness.)

[RegalStar]

Something that both Reisen and Maribel have for them is that them buffing their own speed also means that they recover SP faster in the back, which especially helps Mari cope with the unreasonable SP costs of her spells (at least in boss battles).

Okuu DOES have pretty decent defenses; her base DEF is actually only slightly behind Yukari's and is cheaper to raise via SKP (although I'm sure no one in their right mind would waste any level-up points in it) and her MND is pretty respectable too. The problem is that her HP is even more terrible than Yukari's, which means that while she can tank a light hit or two without much trouble, heavy hits will still destroy her. (The distribution kind of makes sense to make UNR's self-debuff actually matter a little, unlike Kimontoku's debuff aspect). And yeah her decent damages don't stay long for that way, every boss between 10F and 16F have either a lot of MND, decent FIR resistance, or is lol Hill Gigas. By the time bosses which she can actually hit for decent damage shows up again, the faster levelling character have long since caught up to the curve, and Okuu turns into some sort of liaison between Alice and Orin in terms of stats, while her affinities are still iffy with three weak points and her TP, Rec% and Resistances are all really bad. Giga Flare is servicable when you need a defense ignoring attack and I guess can clean house on 24F mobs, but is otherwise terrible and not worth using. So yeah; enjoy using her while she's actually pretty good I guess; she'll turn into dead weight for a while and though that will eventually come to pass she probably won't impress you nearly as much any more.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

So I'm up to Eintei fight now, gave it a shot and lost.

I've realised that I could maybe boost Remi's MND a little bit, as well as Suika's, and they shoudl take consistent 0's when buffed. Minoriko and Yukari are perfectly fine to tank magic attacks without heavy buffs. But other than that, survivability isn't a terribly  big issue.

What is fucking me over, however, is the fact that my team is so majorly magic based, so my overall damage is way lower than it needs to be. I ran out of SP for most of my attackers before I could even kill Reisen. I also have no PAR causing multi target that has no debuffs (cos I got Yukari's MoLaD and I have Wandering Sin from Shiki), and the only single target PAR I have is from Yuugi (who absolutely cannot be out at all for long periods of time in this fight).
Reisen's multi targets are MYS which can't kill boss-Reisen too easily. Mari's only non MYS non debuffing non ST attack is a row attack so she's not gonna do shit against Reisen compared to the other two. Yuuka does like no damage ever (when does she start being good?) Suika's multitarget comes with debuffs.

Its like this is possibly the worst team for this battle. Oops. I think my safest bet is to just build at least 4 of my chars for easy 0's and pray that I can somehow win through surviving everything over damage rushing.

[Sen]

Alright I've been seeing this thread enough and decided I'll finally play the game. Does it matter if I skip Labyrinth 1 and go straight to 2? Is there any story I'll miss? Any gameplay elements that make one a better game than the other?

[Serela]

Yuuka's main attack is Flower Shot. It's value is that it has a low delay, so you can get a lot of casts in.

But yeah, I can definitely see why you've got a bad team for Eientei. In a normal game, you're incredibly likely to still have tons of awesome characters for the battle in your party just because you haven't had a lot of time to try to replace them yet. Many of your attackers also do have very high skill costs...

At least Maribel's got a cheaper single target skill you can use on Reisen that hits her SPI weakness? I'm not sure if it causes so many buffs that you get countered purely off that though... I don't remember the exact conditions. (Whether it's how many individual debuffs or how many of the Eientei members are debuffed)

Sen:You can skip to Laby2, sure; this is Touhou so you're not going to be lost in terms of plot. It's certainly more polished, but Laby1 still has some upsides against it, so it's not as though Laby1 is entirely bad... just a simpler game.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

Yeah I literally just beat them. Somehow managed to avoid a Hourai Barrage from Kaguya cos I killed Eirin right before Kaguya was about to take her turn. I needed to grind a few more levels though (was only Remi 44/45 when I first got to the fight, so I grinded to Remi 48).
Mari's single target debuffer hit Reisen for 4 debuffs (only used it cos she had focused and was near death) but Kaguya took her turn before Reisen died, so Idk why she didn't buddha bowl me. The wiki (and experience) tells me that it requires 3 debuffs to be used on any/all boss party members. Weird, but I'm not complaining.

I think my main issue with Yuuka actually is that she was both underlevelled SKP wise, and that she was so fkn slow that she was irrelevant in randoms. I pumped her up to the rest of the levels of everyone else and she did amazing damage against Eientei. She's still rather slow though :P

Anyway, onto 13F. I am dreading how long this floor is gonna take. On my last run I wrote a list for all the combinations I need to hit every single warp point in order but I don't have that list on me right now. Might level a bit there until I can reobtain it.

EDIT:Finished 13F last night, but oh my god 14F and 15F are a painnnnnnn. Might just grind a bit on 15F cos they seem more suitable to a varied party than 14F. I don't have enough physical firepower to easily take care of Manifested Knowledges if they appear in groups of 2 even. Ugh. Nothing kills trash easily anymore and it's the worst. This isn't even like a level up a few times and you're good situation like it is with a normal playthrough with a decent party. It's torture, I swear.

[Ghaleon]

Strange. I always find 14 and 15 to be a breath of fresh air after 13f and those effing super frequent sword fish who can 1 or 2 shot anyone who isnt a hp komachi or something. Maybe they can with her too though. Dunno.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

13F wasn't that bad at all. Swordfish very very rarely double slashed a party member after the first slot (basically everyone could take two at least) and Slash Dive only killed Remi on like one of the early trips, just had to pump a bit more into HP and she was golden. 13F was no biggie. 14F was rlly frustrating though cos my physical firepower is not up to par with what it would be on a normal run. Manifested Knowledges are only easily killed with a team of 3 physical attackers + Remi (who i'm not counting cos she doesnt have multi target). So, Keine, Suika and Yuugi. Thats basically my entire physical output except Shiki in one party. SP drains fast.

I take back my negative words about Yuuka, she's fantastic. Beauty of Nature is fantastic. BoN can easily kill Blackenmels, BoN can severely damage Manifested Knowledges. BoN is basically the best magic spell I have against high MND enemies (yes it's even better than MND ignoring Giga Flare).
Blackenmels are only killable via Nukes and BoN basically. So yeah BoN fucking owns.

[RegalStar]

IIRC Minoriko can kill Blackenmels with Falling Leaves of Madness pretty easily, although only one at a time obviously.

Also a nice thing about Blackenmels is that they seem to only cast Silent Cloud and Purple Paralysis Cloud when they're not alone, so if you run into a pair you can just leave them there and sit on the spot to recharge your team's SP.

[Otaku]

I wonder which subclass would be best for Eiki, so far I'm thinking Transcendent?

[Serela]

Transcendant or Gambler. She's a durable nuker so you can enhance that with trans, but at the same time, her nuke is so slow she's also well suited for gambling.

[Shadowlupus]

So, I have been thinking about the skill Efficient Concentration of the Guardian subclass. I wonder if it would be effective to give it to non-tanks, specifically, the ones that use a lot of MP, or focuses on regenerating MP. So, here is my idea of non-tanks who I think can take advantage of the skill.

Marisa: She can quickly regains MP by concentrating for Master Spark if you also gives her a lot of MP Recovery items.
Youmu: At least, it makes her turn comes faster.
Nitori: The same reason as Marisa. However, unlike Marisa, with Maintenance, she is in a little risk of being one-shotted.
Aya: When Diva subclass is not yet available at least.
Hina: If you make Hina a Hexer, her Debuff resistance is raised to 40, which makes her a little harder to self-debuff with Bioryrthm so I think this is the alternative for her to gain MP faster.
Ran: She can quickly and continuously (or even endlessly) buffs your whole characters provided that she takes zero damage from every attack so that Cooling Down can activate. Also, with Expansion of Conciousness, she can gain a large amount of MP in a short time.
Yukari: Same reason as Marisa, especially with her Phenomenal Force of Will skill.

However, the biggest problem with this subclass is that enemies will also have a higher chance of targeting that character since its the subclass innate skill. I don't know if we can nullify that by having 2 Guardians on the field so I think it is best used on bulky supporters.

What do you think?

[Serela]

The issue with Efficient Concentration is you don't often want to have people sit out concentrating... unless they're a tank, in which case several of them are in more need of useful active skills to use than the guardian's passives- which, admittedly, ARE pretty nice, but few of the tanks have the innate skill variety to actually have enough to do. If you have Marisa sit out doing it she's liable to get her face punched in, and the concentration isn't -that- fast to try to chainspark; you may as well just cast magic missile if she's out and getting turns, you'll do more damage. Yukari can take the hits but making her concentrate faster still isn't going to make Spiriting Away something you're actively trying to use multiple times.

Nitori's Cooling Down (which works regardless of hp, no matter what it says in the description) and Maintennance let her get insane amounts of MP back from just one concentrate, so she doesn't really need it... apart from the fact that she REALLY, REALLY wants transcendant. Low base stats+maintennance=passable stats, make them less low with Transcendant and she gets a helluva lot of boost out of it. The other classes simply are not worth the huge stat loss.

Hina doesn't really have any MP problems to start with in my experience, but maybe we use her differently. Granted, actually, I think I just buff Hina with Byakuren and ignore the debuff synergy anyway... that might change in Plus when Byakuren gets a heavy nerf.

Ran is the best point here since she's durable support and would love to spam her buffs as often as physically possible, so she actually doesn't need a different subclass and could get some real use out of it, along with the fact that her concentrate gets beefy as hell so it's worth using. Apart from this, the other people who are well-interested in the sub are people with Grand Incantation... as they can reap both offensive benefits -and- some nice passives. Or, in a different line of thinking, people with Sheer Force who might want to use the SHK-inflicting skill, a viable strat against many bosses, and you can build 'em as a passable tank to make use of other guardian stuff.

Also, I'm not sure Guardian actually has any "higher chance of being hit" thing. The class description says it possesses skills that provoke enemies, but none of it's skills say anything about that. It feels like a typical 3peso "The end result was different than the original concept, but we never changed the description". That thing seems to happen a lot in the ThLaby series.

[Deranged]

Renko in either tank or non-tank role is by far the best user of the skill, since it doubles as her heal move as well, and she does eat up MP like crazy. Though to be honest, Renko is spoiled for choice when it comes to subclasses, so Guardian tends to get a bit overlooked.

Otherwise, it synergizes well with Mari too, letting her use Grand Incantation/Rapid Charge more efficiently, but at the cost of elemental variety with other subclasses. Patchy may be a decent option if you're willing to keep her out that long.