Labyrinth of Touhou 2 - 15F

[Serela]

Grand Incantation can help Maribel hit half-decent healing numbers with her DIY Novice Barrier. She's such a jack of trades that she really needs sub-healer tier capability to be worth a damn, unfortunately, and it's questionable whether she's actually there yet. Worst of all is that her synergy with Renko DOES. NOT. WORK. If they fix that she should get a lot better, it's a hefty stat boost and Renko's stats get godlike for tanking with if you build her that way (and why wouldn't you?)

[Kirin no Sora]

And it's a pity that Youmu isn't getting a variation of Grand Incantation for her skill set, because as noted before, that would solve her damage dealing issues pretty well.

Personally, I would throw in Sheer Force and Piercing Attack on Youmu as well, just so said output would be more reliable. But maybe all of that would be too much?

[Serela]

Grand Incantation alone would make Youmu amazing, there's no need to overdo things :V

[Kirin no Sora]

True enough. Youmu really only needs that one skill.

By the by, would Grand Incantation be a good idea for Sanae, at least for those who want to use her offensively?

[nyttyn]

LoT2: So I just got Yukari, gave her the usual 40 points in magic, some magic boosting items, pumped her mag up with level up and...

She's doing absolutely no damage  Am I missing something about her? Floor 16, level 60s, and she's doing absolutely nothing to anything (in comparison to Sanae's Night of Bright Guest Stars, which is doing like 11k)

[Seraphic Shou]

LoT2: So I just got Yukari, gave her the usual 40 points in magic, some magic boosting items, pumped her mag up with level up and...

She's doing absolutely no damage  Am I missing something about her? Floor 16, level 60s, and she's doing absolutely nothing to anything (in comparison to Sanae's Night of Bright Guest Stars, which is doing like 11k)

Yukari's formulas may be better but her multipliers are lower than Night of Bright Guest Stars. I assume that's why.

[Kirin no Sora]

LoT2: So I just got Yukari, gave her the usual 40 points in magic, some magic boosting items, pumped her mag up with level up and...

She's doing absolutely no damage  Am I missing something about her? Floor 16, level 60s, and she's doing absolutely nothing to anything (in comparison to Sanae's Night of Bright Guest Stars, which is doing like 11k)

First off, by points, you mean library levels? Because your characters in general should be given more than that in their main stats.

Second, Sanae's spell is far more powerful due to it's formula(Sanae: 242 MAG - 100 T.MND vs. Yukari: 144 MAG - 60 T.MND) and Sanae's Power of the Living God passive(presuming that you have it fully activated), which strengthens Spirit attacks, including Night of Bright Guest Stars.

If anything, Yukari's best offensive spell is actually Hyperactive Flying Object, a Wind spell that attacks a row of enemies with a formula of 240% MAG - 50% T.MND(and since it's a row targeting spell, it can be strengthened by the Sorcerer's Row Attack Strengthening skill), so Yukari's not exactly the best choice for dealing with the floor trash of the Darkness stratum.

[Serela]

Yeah, Mesh of Light and Darkness isn't very strong. Hyperactive Flying Object, on the other hand, is great (especially with Sorc Row Strengthening as noted), and Shikigami + turns into a wrecking ball if you have the whole family.

[nyttyn]

Ah yeah, library levels, sorry. So Hyperactive Flying Object is the one I need to use for her, got it, thanks!

...Then again maybe I need to take a look at how I'm assigning equipment and stats overall because some people are falling a bit (or a lot) behind damage wise.

[Kirin no Sora]

As a rule of thumb, you should keep a character's library levels(save for their dump stat, if any) equal to their level at minimum and raise it further from there. Also, if any of a character's natural elemental affinities(this would be without equipment) are at 84 and up, but below 100, you should boost those until they hit 100. It helps more than one might think.

[Serela]

Boosting affinities is easy in LoT1 but in LoT2 not quite as much... which is fair, considering how insane boosting affinities got in postgame lot1.

I wouldn't worry about them much, although of course you wouldn't want to ignore it.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

So Rumia, Iku, Yuyuko, Mokou, Wriggle, Yukari, Orin, Sakuya, Cirno, Alice, Aya, Ran.
Sounds good? It can work I think. Rumia as the only healer is kind of the gimmick, but the rest of the team seems surprisingly well balanced, actually, if a little on the low damage side maybe

So I'm working on this team now, Currently half done with 4F.
Realising now this team has no status curing, so difficulties will be had early game (especially considering my only usable offensive buff right now is Iku). But what is getting me more is the fact  that I only just realised the only Physical nukes I have are Orin's Needle Hill (but is that really much of a nuke?) and Return Inanimateness.

Not sure how I shoudl build Sakuya long term, I've kind of been spreading out a bit with a focus on DEF but I know I need to build her pure to be effective. Problem is, is Killing Doll worth it as a nuke (after Iku buffs of course) to justify her being ATK built? I'm thinking I might have to else I am lacking in physical firepower. I seem to have enough durability elsewhere right now (trying to use Wriggle as main tank and have DEF Yukari and MAG build Ran with currently excellent stats for backup. MAG Alice should be a decentish tank too as well as Iku for MND), but at the same time I am not sure if an ATK Sakuya is actually worth it. Idk I need advice.

I'm really reallly happy with this team's trash clearing abilities though. It's all better than last team so far and its basically alll much cheaper too (likely cos I have zero +disk chars this time around). I'm probably going to run into issues again after 13F cos of lack of good physical firepower other than Orin and Little Legion, however. I'm building Cirno for SPD for trash help cos she's otherwise useless after earlygame. Alice and Ran are having a pure MAG build this time around cos last time I used them both I built them defensively and they were fantastic maingame tanks but with a MAG focus they shoudl still be fairly bulky and good but also fantastic for trash clearing (and I really need Little Legion in this playthough lets be honest here).

[Seraphic Shou]

Problem is, is Killing Doll worth it as a nuke (after Iku buffs of course) to justify her being ATK built? I'm thinking I might have to else I am lacking in physical firepower.

Sakuya can become a pretty good attacker. She can kinda pierce with her Piercing Attack passive, can paralyze with all attacks, and if you are lucky and have the extra attack passive she can do anything like 6 times in a row. She also has ATK boost so that's nice.  :3

[ZoomyTsugumi]

oh oops sorry i should've mentioned im still on the first game.

[Seraphic Shou]

the first game.

Oh,oops  :blush: . Well for the first game she can be a decent attacker because her killing doll multiplier is decent and she's pretty speedy if you have the SP, although you might need to put a bit more points into so she stays useful.

[jester147]

Sakuya really needs all the ATK she can get to be a really good attacker. A buff greatly helps as Killing Doll has high damage multiplier while only having middling ATK multiplier.

Besides, other than her ATK, her other stats are very good, especially her HP, or that's what I had anyway. My game (which is post-***WINNER***, mind) has her HP on par with Meiling. Her defenses and affinities are so-so, but can be boosted further with items.

Really, compared with other powerhouses, Sakuya's ATK is subpar with disappointing multipliers. Yuugi has insane ATK while Nitori has broken ATK multiplier to compensate her low ATK.

[Kirin no Sora]

So I'm working on this team now, Currently half done with 4F.
Realising now this team has no status curing, so difficulties will be had early game (especially considering my only usable offensive buff right now is Iku). But what is getting me more is the fact  that I only just realised the only Physical nukes I have are Orin's Needle Hill (but is that really much of a nuke?) and Return Inanimateness.

Not sure how I shoudl build Sakuya long term, I've kind of been spreading out a bit with a focus on DEF but I know I need to build her pure to be effective. Problem is, is Killing Doll worth it as a nuke (after Iku buffs of course) to justify her being ATK built? I'm thinking I might have to else I am lacking in physical firepower. I seem to have enough durability elsewhere right now (trying to use Wriggle as main tank and have DEF Yukari and MAG build Ran with currently excellent stats for backup. MAG Alice should be a decentish tank too as well as Iku for MND), but at the same time I am not sure if an ATK Sakuya is actually worth it. Idk I need advice.

I'm really reallly happy with this team's trash clearing abilities though. It's all better than last team so far and its basically alll much cheaper too (likely cos I have zero +disk chars this time around). I'm probably going to run into issues again after 13F cos of lack of good physical firepower other than Orin and Little Legion, however. I'm building Cirno for SPD for trash help cos she's otherwise useless after earlygame. Alice and Ran are having a pure MAG build this time around cos last time I used them both I built them defensively and they were fantastic maingame tanks but with a MAG focus they shoudl still be fairly bulky and good but also fantastic for trash clearing (and I really need Little Legion in this playthough lets be honest here).

Making Sakuya on a full ATK build should work as long as you're willing to buff that ATK during boss fights with Iku. Hell, Iku can support Sakuya further by debuffing the DEF of enemies with her spells, since Killing Doll has a high DEF influence, meaning that lowering that DEF that can and will make a difference in Sakuya's damage output. So Sakuya will need help in order to nuke effectively, but she's definitely good at it once she's set up.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

alright, i guess i will make her pure ATK from now on. I guess for every target that has ridiculous defense that renders Killing Doll horrible even after buffs, there's always magic attacks. It's not like there's too many bosses with high stats in both defenses in the maingame.

[Serela]

Sakuya is a functional attacker, she's just not all that good either. It'll work. The main thing helping will be that you're still in maingame, so using The World will still actually help- in postgame spd is so prorated that it doesn't do much anymore... with Orin, Sakuya, Alice, and Aya you should be covered well enough for physical trash clearing. You might not have too much in the way of big physical nukes but that honestly doesn't matter too much, especially since postgame isn't a factor for this run so you aren't worried about double hibachi or anything.

Your main issue isn't really that so much as being able to last through bosses with no healing and subpar tanking capability. The big bosses of the game (Eientei, Yukari, Rinnosuke) are gonna be... problematic.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

Sakuya is a functional attacker, she's just not all that good either. It'll work. The main thing helping will be that you're still in maingame, so using The World will still actually help- in postgame spd is so prorated that it doesn't do much anymore... with Orin, Sakuya, Alice, and Aya you should be covered well enough for physical trash clearing. You might not have too much in the way of big physical nukes but that honestly doesn't matter too much, especially since postgame isn't a factor for this run so you aren't worried about double hibachi or anything.

Your main issue isn't really that so much as being able to last through bosses with no healing and subpar tanking capability. The big bosses of the game (Eientei, Yukari, Rinnosuke) are gonna be... problematic.

Eientei shouldn't be too difficult. I can build a significant portion of my characters to be relatively MND tanky and that will render so much of the fight silly damagewise. Alice Ran Yukari and Iku alone should be tanky enough for the fight, but if that's not the case I can still pump more MND into Sakuya Wriggle and Yuyuko for extra tankiness all round.

What worries me is Yukari and Rinnosuke. My only NTR attacker is Wriggle. I'm not counting on her to do huge damage with any attack alone, cos most of her damage is poison and I'm building her as a tank. So I'm really gonna have to utilise debuffs even moreso than usual. Luckily I have both Alice and Mokou to proc MAG debuffs on her super often. Cirno can proc some SPD debuffs too. That should be all I really need. But it's gonna be a struggle.

I'm worried about Rinno cos of lack of great great DEF tanks (Yukari is shaping up to be a better DEF tank than Wriggle oops) and just being able to survive his first/last/WND phases. Everything else should go reasonably okay?

[Shadowlupus]

I have beaten the final boss a few days ago. The battle wasn't as hard if you are around Level 130 with 100 Voile Level in all stats. With max buffs and debuffs, my main attackers can do around 50k-60k, except Yuugi who dealt around 80k-100k instead. Its attacks in the second phase has high-delay and the boss itself is extremely slow if its speed is fully debuffed. The problem is in this fight is trying to debuff its Magic because for some reason, the debuff wouldn't proc, and that's annoying. Aya and Hina also help make the final phase much more bearable.


Now onto the postgame, once again, I don't see anything different from the original version. The random battles and shadow bosses are frustrating as ever but with the helps of Hina and Aya, most of the fights are bearable. I wonder if the developers test the postgame using only these two.

I have tried to fight some shadow bosses at the challenge level. Of Course, in some battles I just overlevel and kick some party members out because I can't figure it out why else the game stops the hard mode after the main game. Honestly, most battles are challenging yet fun to fight that way.

Malignut Eater, Paralysis Wasp, Kraken, Orchid can be beaten at Level 150 with 120 Voile Level in all stats. However, I have beaten Poison Wasp and Jungle Demonic Eye at Level 170-180 with with 150 Voile Level in all stats.

And I just beat Azure Giant's Shadow at the challenge level. Here's my party.



Yuugi: Full HP build with 2 Cinderforge Sword and Grand Title can tank Giant's attacks like a boss. She takes around 8k - 10k with Giant's max debuffed normal attacks and Rasetsu Fist.
Momiji: 10k ATK and 15k Defense with Healer Subclass helps keep Yuugi in a healthy shape. Unfortunately, since Prayer of Recovery is nerfed, it only heals about 10k.
Aya: Full SPD build with 2 Costume - Ninja Lord and Grand Title. Aya has only and one duty, gives instant turn on Hina to debuff the giant like crazy.
Hina: Full MAG build. Debuff, Debuff and Debuff! She also dealt 100k with her FIre spell if the giant is fully debuffed.
Iku: Thoundcloud Stickleback, nuff said. Full DEF build.
Kaguya: Bullet Branch of Hourai, nuff said. Full MAG build.
Minoriko: Full HP build with 2 Button of Aegis. Without her MAG invested in at all, she heals about 10k.
Sanae: Full DEF build. Heals and Buffs
Kasen and Alice: They don't do much in this fight aside from being a secondary tank.

The fight went a bit messy but I lost only 1 person because RNG feels like it. The key of this battle was to have Aya uses either Divine Grandson's Advent or attack to keep Hina debuffing the Gaint's stats to -50%. Once the giant iwas fully debuffed, I would use Iku to fully buffs Yuugi, Kaguya, Kasen or Alice to attack the giant. Unfortunately, she died early due to being punched in the face so I was forced to use only Kaguya and Hina. I also had to keeps Yuugi alive at all time since no one else can survive Rasetsu nor its normal attack. Thankfully, the giant targeted Yuugi most of the fight. Its Earthquake and Great Roar, while very damaging, wasn't enough to OHKO my party members. Momiji, Minoriko and Sanae did their best to heal Yuugi at all time.


Whew, that fight was quite an ordeal. Where's the achievement for me now, game!?

[RegalStar]

What worries me is Yukari and Rinnosuke. My only NTR attacker is Wriggle. I'm not counting on her to do huge damage with any attack alone, cos most of her damage is poison and I'm building her as a tank. So I'm really gonna have to utilise debuffs even moreso than usual. Luckily I have both Alice and Mokou to proc MAG debuffs on her super often. Cirno can proc some SPD debuffs too. That should be all I really need. But it's gonna be a struggle.

On my current run I only had to heal twice on Yukari since I made it a priority to keep her debuffed as much as possible. If you keep up the debuffs diligently (and she doesn't use Prayer of Purification too much) you can probably do OK there.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

Yeah yeah last run it wasnt toooooo bad but last run I also had Yuuka/Suika for attacking and I had Reisen and Mari (and even Shiki) to deal mass debuffs in one. I'm probably going to have to constantly keep Alice in the party constantly debuffing her MAG and then switching Cirno in and out cos I have nobody who can do it all at once.

Anyway I got Alice down, I made it all the way to just her left basically every attempt I made but the first two she killed me really easily with a Little Legion so I leveled up once or twice for some people and then reattempted. Hardest part about the battle was I have no way to protect against anything except two Yamabiko Necklaces, so everyone was getting paralyzed and silenced left and right and it was all round horrible. My winning attempt she didn't go hard on the status effects thank god and only silenced a few people (only PAR's came from stickleback). Ran was a godsend, for being able to do 2k buffed to Healing Light even with full defense buffs on it. Amazing.

[Seraphic Shou]

Alice Ran Yukari and Iku alone should be tanky enough for the fight

You should probably add some defense to them so they can survive Eirin's Galaxy in a pot spell. 

Edit: You should probably add HP to if you don't think you could kill Eiren and Kaguya fast enough.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

Yukari with a full DEF build like I'm going with her shoudl be reasonable enough to sit in on every single boss fight if I need her to (which I will for every major boss definitely). Ran and Alice can just have sizeable SKP investments into their DEF and they will be fine. Iku I'm just going to keep her with MND, but she will probably be last slot anyway so I doubt she'd get hit often, if at all by GiaP

[Ghaleon]

Kinda off topic but may be useful for someone here. Recently I saw a game for sale on chrono.gg called starcrawlers, never heard of it. But I looked at the steam page and it looked kinda like a sci-fi etrian odyssey or something. So I bought it and been playing for an hour or so and so far it's really impressing me. It's early access though (though seems stable enough so far). So if anyone is interested in trying a new dungeon crawler, may wanna check it out. Do note that the sale only lasts for 13 more hours though.

[ZoomyTsugumi]

So wait are there characters in Laby 2 who are generally agreed on to be kind of horrible overall? Along the lines of Laby1's Eirin, Okuu, +disk Wriggle and Cirno who have niche uses at best but are completely and 100% outclassed by other people. I still know very little about the roster oops.

[Ghaleon]

Not sure I didn't play enough laby 2 to really know and listen to other people discuss such things, but in my experience, I found youmu and marisa to be kinda awful. Marisa's master spark often does less damage than her magic missile for whatever reason (its defense piercing ability is awful, just awful), though her magic missle and asteroid belt abilities aren't bad, they aren't enough to really make her shine as a dpser when she can't tank or heal or provide utility. Youmu was in a similar spot where her slash of eternity also had awful penetration, she would often hit bosses for 0 using it.

Honestly I found the damage formulas to be pretty wonky. Cuz some of the normalish nukes like rumia's would clean their clocks, and kogasa's mnd-reducing attack could not only do decent damage to any boss, but always reduced it's mnd resistance. Then they looked at nitori, and decided that megawatt cannon needed to be EVEN STRONGER. enter 3d cannon, wut (the formula may not be better but averaging them all out, it seems to be relatively better, not to mention nitori's godly passives)

[nyttyn]

Re: Marisa. She still remains a fantastic trash wiper (probably one of the most efficient in the game at the job), and Master Spark is really reliant on either Marisa receiving buffs or the enemy's resistance, as the case needs be, being shredded. She kind of has an issue where Nitori just does her job better, but then again Nitori isn't really a fair comparison against anyone.

From my experience nobody's been unusable so far - some distribution of items, library levels, and maybe bonus items if you want tend to solve most woes. And as a disclaimer, I'm a fairly new player to this game and so anything I say should be taken with a grain of salt or criticized if someone else knows something that counters the flaws I'm about to mention. That being said, from glaring examples I've noticed (some of which not necessarily bad at their roles, just unnecessarily awkward to use)...

Youmu is kind of a case of just really poor design. She's a sustain/stay-in attacker who can't natively accomplish her job. Fighting Spirit and some cheaper spells would have really helped out there, or grand incarnation, or much higher values to make up for the fact she loses every other turn to concentration.

Momiji just...falls off as soon as you get Komachi.  She has no real attractive purpose as a tank, no real merit as a bulky attacker save for her incredibly situational ACC boost, and overall is just someone you use if you really like her, but even then she's kind of a burden. Her numbers aren't awful or anything, there's just very little reason to use her over everyone else.

Kogasa is someone I love and tried to make work for ages, but TRR is just so unreliable against so many big value targets and she's so incredibly reliant on landing it that I don't really feel she works. It really sucks investing in a character that, for a not inconsiderable number of bosses, the game just goes "Nope, Kogasa doesn't get to really be a effective factor in this fight" even with other people attempting to apply TRR as well. Her raw numbers are totally fine, she's just too reliant on a status condition too many bosses resist heavily.

Ran is just kind of a lackluster jack of all trades. She doesn't do any of her jobs particularly well, and you need to focus on one of them for her because it's incredibly inefficent to do everything with her. Back-row buffing in this game isn't really worthwhile either, when it's such an incredibly small effect. She has some pretty incredible synergy with Yukari and Chen though, and really it's not like she's useless - just worse than everyone at everything she does because she has a hybrid tax without really being effective at that job with a disproportionate amount of investment.

Suwako is way more awkward than she needs to be, since you basically need to entirely reskill and re-equip her every time you want to use her for trash or for a boss, and she's hell on library levels to boot. She also has easily the worst skill in the game - why is a E/E/E bulk mage with awful afinites and no defensive skill incentivised to be put in the 1 slot? Honestly the only explanation I have for that is that somehow her and Kanako's abilities got swapped. I'm pretty sure she could be effective if you're willing to put up with the hassle, but...why put up with the hassle when you could use other attackers?

[Kirin no Sora]

Not sure I didn't play enough laby 2 to really know and listen to other people discuss such things, but in my experience, I found youmu and marisa to be kinda awful. Marisa's master spark often does less damage than her magic missile for whatever reason (its defense piercing ability is awful, just awful), though her magic missle and asteroid belt abilities aren't bad, they aren't enough to really make her shine as a dpser when she can't tank or heal or provide utility. Youmu was in a similar spot where her slash of eternity also had awful penetration, she would often hit bosses for 0 using it.

Re: Marisa. She still remains a fantastic trash wiper (probably one of the most efficient in the game at the job), and Master Spark is really reliant on either Marisa receiving buffs or the enemy's resistance, as the case needs be, being shredded. She kind of has an issue where Nitori just does her job better, but then again Nitori isn't really a fair comparison against anyone.

From my experience nobody's been unusable so far - some distribution of items, library levels, and maybe bonus items if you want tend to solve most woes. And as a disclaimer, I'm a fairly new player to this game and so anything I say should be taken with a grain of salt or criticized if someone else knows something that counters the flaws I'm about to mention. That being said, from glaring examples I've noticed (some of which not necessarily bad at their roles, just unnecessarily awkward to use)...

Youmu is kind of a case of just really poor design. She's a sustain/stay-in attacker who can't natively accomplish her job. Fighting Spirit and some cheaper spells would have really helped out there, or grand incarnation, or much higher values to make up for the fact she loses every other turn to concentration.

Momiji just...falls off as soon as you get Komachi.  She has no real attractive purpose as a tank, no real merit as a bulky attacker save for her incredibly situational ACC boost, and overall is just someone you use if you really like her, but even then she's kind of a burden. Her numbers aren't awful or anything, there's just very little reason to use her over everyone else.

Suwako is way more awkward than she needs to be, since you basically need to entirely reskill and re-equip her every time you want to use her for trash or for a boss, and she's hell on library levels to boot. She also has easily the worst skill in the game - why is a E/E/E bulk mage with awful afinites and no defensive skill incentivised to be put in the 1 slot? Honestly the only explanation I have for that is that somehow her and Kanako's abilities got swapped. I'm pretty sure she could be effective if you're willing to put up with the hassle, but...why put up with the hassle when you could use other attackers?

Personally, I would do the following changes skillwise...

Marisa:

Add the skill Piercing Attack(because 20% of Master Spark's output dealing damage regardless of defenses is nothing to sneeze at)

Youmu:

Add the skill Grand Incantation(because it fits with her "focus, then attack" style of fighting)
Raise the Max Lv of Mental Concentration from 4 to 6(gives Youmu the ability to not need a MP boosting item to be able to use her Wind nuke with her fighting style)

Momiji:

Add the skill Firm Defense(because it helps out in tanking)
Add the skill Eye for an Eye(because it helps her to increase her damage output while tanking)
Add the skill Heart of Patience(because it grants her MP recovery while tanking)
Add the skill Impact Attack(grants utility to Momiji's attacks and possibly strengthens the Shock effect of Guardian's Shield Bash)

Suwako:

Add the skill Guts(To have synergy with Native God of Earth and survive the unexpected, making Suwako somewhat more forgiving than other glass cannons)
Change Suwako's skill "Earth Creation" to this:

"Earth Creation"
Max SLv: 3
Skill cost: 4
If there are 4 party members on the front line and Suwako is placed on the far right, her damage will be increased by (SLv * 12)% and her speed will be increased by (SLv * 10)%.

(Speed boost is for the sake of aiding a hit and run set up, since Suwako is not meant to take hits in the first place, so speed will be an important thing for that)

And while I'm at it...

Kanako:

Change Kanako's skill "Sky Creation" to this:

"Sky Creation"
Max SLv: 3
Skill cost: 4
If there are 4 party members on the front line and Kanako is placed on the far left, her damage will be increased by (SLv * 12)% and damage dealt to her will be reduced by (SLv * 12)%.

(Damage reduction is to aid in being in the front slot(36% dmg reduction is sweet, plus she can gain more from the Guardian subclass))

---

Any thoughts on this?