I think it depends on the fighting style. Personally, I favor bulky attackers over glass nukes - nothing gives me a better feeling than seeing, say, In Laquetti going ballistic on my team and everybody surviving, repeatedly^^ In this sense, Kokoro definitely fills the bill for me. Also, it's worth noting that, much like Miko, Kokoro can also debuff - with ANY attack, as long as she has her mask on.
Ah no I do agree about the bulky attacker thing, going with that direction as well, but like, bulky attackers can still blitz things. Like, using In Laquetti for example, I defeated it in 3 of its actions using Monk Tenshi as the sole attacker, at challenge level, just spamming Puncturing Thrust. Did record the run (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spjTGHxZ03g), but the gameplay was a little bit sloppy because I didn't do a practice run beforehand, so it was my actual first run. Strategy could have definitely be polished a bit, stuff like max MND Iku and Herbalist Akyuu were poor ideas (should have done max HP and Murakumo's Blessing here). This is just as much an example of how fast fights can be as it is to how little Tenshi needs setup.
But yeah, Kokoro can debuff a couple stats while dealing decent damage. She's certainly a balanced character, just doesn't seem to do anything outstanding.
As for Miko herself, while it's true that she can't buff herself, unlike Reisen, it's also true that she doesn't need two other specific party members to reach astronomical numbers. She only need a buffer, and both Renko + Maribel (buff, healing, Vision Sharing) and Sanae (buff, healing, SPI boost) are absolutely perfect for this purpose. While I don't dislike Eientei, I always found them kinda... frail. Especially Kaguya. Miko instead is incredibly bulky, and that makes the difference (really, I may have said it before, but 2X Item abilities are busted).
Well, I wouldn't discount Reisen's damage when she has Final Blow for a 32% boost (which she supports herself with using Lunatic Red Eyes), but yeah, Miko is generally stronger and always bulkier. Mostly just comparing the two for being capable of dealing good damage and debuffing at the same time. I'm using both personally. Between the two, Reisen has been more useful, but mainly for her debilitating effects like her MND debuffs and ability to inflict a high success rate multi-target SHK.
You gotta keep in mind though that, when you down level characters for meeting challenge level, those numbers may no longer be accurate. Also, there's the sad fact that I only have 3 slots potentially open on my team as it (no way in hell I'm removing Nitori, Miko, or Kokoro), and I'm not sure Team 9 would be as good if I include only 3 of them.
Well, they're accurate if you level down characters so that they all have the same amount of EXP invested, but if you're only leveling down the characters with high levels, then yeah, it's not accurate. I just wanted to point out that they actually have pretty high stats if the EXP investment is even. I've personally been making sure that everyone has the same EXP investment while matching challenge levels, so the different base stat/level rates are always "fair". Bosses are already easy enough without overleveling the characters that level slowly.
Tbh I didn't have major issues with Mamizou, she has a mountain of HP but she doesn't hit very hard. Miko I'm not even sure lol, I just tunnelvision-ed her fight and suddenly she was dead :-) (mind you, these fights were all done at challenge level but with 40-80 lvls of downgrading, depending on the char - also, for Miko, I had lesser Endless Corridor items like Rhododendron Dress, Uruncel Blade etc. on everybody).
Mamizou's Razor Wind (79% MAG - 14% T.DEF - 14% T.MND) and Leaf Cutting Dance (96% MAG - 20% T.DEF - 20% T.MND) spell cards did hit pretty hard, but she didn't use them much and otherwise yeah her spell cards were pretty low damage. Mamizou was mostly just that she had enough HP to put up a fight (along with a strong self-heal), compared to the previous fights that can be breezed with ease. Same deal with Miko, she's not some weakling boss that goes down in ~5 turns like most Shadow fights were. Futo doesn't really deserve to be compared with Mamizou and Miko, she was an actually reasonably difficult fight.
I should probably give Tenshi and Iku a second chance, though I wonder because Tenshi really needs to be Awakened and, if I awaken Renko, Maribel, Miko, and Kokoro I only have 3 gems left I can use (1 I'd like to use on Orin, so let's say 2 left). Also, I'm not sure how dual element abilities work, but Kokoro can cause NTR + WND damage so it's not like I desperately need NTR. But yeah I can see it's a possibility I should consider.
Well, if you're iffy about using Tenshi, then I dunno about Awakening her, since she just gets extra HP (a
lot of HP, admittedly, about a 20% increase or so) and some damage, as opposed to a super versatile skill like Sanae's MP restoration. Still probably one of the better Awakenings you could go for though. Her default +33% DEF/MND is an instant 11% increase in ATK, which is about 8% more damage with max ATK buffs already in play. Cap out her DEF/MND at 86% and she's looking at 34% more ATK, or about 27% more damage. And if you're hitting weakness, she's getting 4% more ATK (and every other stat) every turn, capping at 28%. After 5 turns she's looking at 22% more overall stats, which is about 17% more damage (ignoring Courageous Sword). It's not quite Fighting Spirit (especially on defense), but stacking the two skills gets great results on a character that already had a high level of damage output.
Probably says a lot about Tenshi's base damage output when her Awakening is probably adding about 25-30% more damage on average and I'm downplaying it as not
that great.
Ah yeah, and naturally, Tenshi does way more damage than Kokoro does with her WND + NTR spell, especially for single target (which is most important for exploiting weaknesses).
I'm... not really a fan of Akyuu tbh. Her stats don't look especially good pre-Concentration, and while her skills are kinda good, they do require intimate knowledge of the boss's rotation to be effective. The boost is nice, but... I dunno, I should test her, but her stats do look underwhelming even factoring in her low library cost. As for her massive MP pool, remember that the Ame-no-Murakumo user already has nearly infinite MP because of the MP draining ability (and Kokoro can replenish extremely fast if needed, thanks to quick Concentrations + MP drain).
Akyuu's stats are pretty usable, enough that she isn't dying from every hit and needing to resurrect (only had her resurrect a couple times in all of my runs actually), and her maxed out SPD ensures she's acting every couple ticks. Her Awakening spell card is 6000 delay and appears to be glitched to randomly (or not randomly, hard to tell how exactly it works) apply 1-hit invincibility to characters in addition to the 50% Boost, which further helps her durability (not that she needs it). Since the 50% Boost works like Herbalist's and lasts 2 turns, a single use of it basically doubles the damage of your 1-2 attackers, plus the 16% weakness bonus Akyuu has by default. Fair to point out that Murakumo's Blessing is restoring 6 MP per turn, but unlike Kokoro (or any other character), Akyuu is throwing around 50% Boosts to the whole party and can survive fatal attacks (90% of the time) with no loss to ATB (which distinguishes herself from Guts users and Mokou), so she can go max SPD even when in the leftmost slot with minimal impact on her survivability, so she's able to buff at a faster pace than any other character. Akyuu's also got 200 VOI resistance but that doesn't come into play too much.
Can't really say I've actually used her 1-hit Invincibility spell card much, only on
and
, and only as precautions, but she doesn't really need to use that to be an amazing character.
I've got 44 fragments, still 27F to clear and I'm on 21F in the Corridor. I'm not in a hurry to finish it all because, sadly, not much is left in terms of content - heck, most of the farming time is spent looking for Corridor drops, because in terms of levelling, if I wanted I could get to 600+ in just a couple hours of 27F farming^^ Compared to TL1 post-disc xp farming, it feels like a walk in the park. I still wish for an expansion, though, because as it is you don't really get to use most of your skill points (unless you get tons of Training Manuals), and being limited with Awakening Gems really sucks (I considered getting them with Cheat Engine but again... what am I beating with them, atm?^^)
Ah, yeah, at that point the big fights you have left are
, plenty of smaller boss fights but nothing exceptional otherwise. Can certainly see where you're coming from with that feeling. Unfortunate that the next update is still in limbo with not even a message saying that it's being worked on. Outside of doing
to demonstrate it's easy to beat even in the low 500s, I basically stopped playing, mostly just check math stuff and miscellaneous things like that now. Really wanna see that next update...but anyway, sounds like you're best off just playing at your own pace then.
