Touhou in last word

The Yukari Yakumo of C3, just like her Friend Type suggests, is quite an Epic unit, which may even be an understatement to her abilities. She is extremely valuable in battle when it comes to keeping the team healthy with HP recovery, Barrier restoration and even multiple Bind Cleanses. She also boasts teamwide offensive utility including Yang ATK, CRIT ATK, and Spirit Power. And from a more individual standpoint, her access to Water and Sun breaks is quite immense, backed up with Freeze anomaly inflictions and breaking, with a powerful Last Word containing 6 lines of Water and Hard Scaling which is off the chain, this Sage of Eternal Summer’s boundaries for her potential greatness in Touhou LostWord are almost limitless!

Abundance in Water and Sun Elemental breaks, including 0P Sun and Water in Spread and Focus Shots.

With only 2 Non-Elemental bullet lines on C3 Yukari’s Spread Shot, every other line either consists of Water and Sun. With 2 of each on her Spread Shot, and 3 of each on her Focus Shot, and both Spell Cards as well as 6/6 lines of Water in her Last Word, you’ll be more than content with her immense Sun and Water breaking potential!

Able to inflict and break Freeze Anomalies.

Freeze Anomaly breaks are Solo-Targeting, barring 3P Last Word.

At first glance, it seems that her only Freeze anomaly infliction access is on her second spell card with +3 Layers of Freeze on an enemy (3T), but her bullet lines showcase a lot more Freeze infliction to take advantage of, which all have a 100% chance to be inflicted! Take her Solo-Targeting Focus Shot, with lines 1, 3 and 5 and her All-Targeting first spell card, which appears on lines 2, 4 & 6. She can also break these barriers with relative ease too, albeit, on specific enemies. With Melting bullets on her Spread Shot lines 2 & 6 at 1P and 3P and her second spell card at lines 4 & 6, also at 1P and 3P, which are both Solo-Targeting, we are just left with her All-Targeting Last Word on line 6, which is very unlikely for one to use her Last Word just for multiple Freeze breaks when there are other reasons to use it like raw damage, Water breaks, even Bind Cleanse. That being said, against a specific enemy who is susceptible to Freeze breaks, it’s very easy for C3 Yukari to rack up a good amount of Freeze anomalies, which may result in Freeze breaks later on!

Massive damage output in general, especially with her Last Word.

From a more selfish standpoint, C3 Yukari’s damage is incredible and cannot be underestimated. With the aforementioned buffs as well as bullet line buffs such as +2 Accuracy on both her first spell card and her Last Word, both on Line 1, as well as Yang DEF debuffs on all enemies all over her Last Word, not only will the Summer Sage’s damage be consistent but will also be backed up greatly with a massive Hard Scaling at 175%/0%/0%/175%/175%/185%, contributing to a truly impactful Last Word in terms of damage output! She can also gain +0.75 and +1.25 Spirit Power from her first and second skills respectively, meaning instant access to a fully powered Last Word. It’s also worth mentioning she has a solid range of Killers, with the common ones like Youkai, God and Human which she can really take advantage of with her CRIT ATK buffs. Whatever the situation, you can always expect great things from C3 Yukari in terms of damage output!

Provides valuable offensive utility, such as teamwide Yang ATK, CRIT ATK and Spirit Power.

Part of what makes this Summer Sage incredible is her additional support on the offensive side, which also happens to have fruitful turn durations lasting as long as 4 Turns. C3 Yukari can use her second skill to boost everyone’s Yang ATK by +3 Stages (4T) and can also take this teamwide buff further for every boost she performs, thanks to her Ability. There is more though, a +2 in her first spell card’s Pre-ATK and a final +2 for the team with her Last Word’s Pre-ATK. CRIT ATK is fairly abundant too, also in her second skill providing +3 for the team (4T) and can take this further for every Graze she pulls off. We also have the ever so valuable Spirit Power UP being accessed in her first skill, adding +0.75 to everyone’s Spirit Power count. We also see a bit of teamwide Yang DEF UP on her first spell card’s Pre-ATK being +3 Stages (3T). All in all, C3 Yukari is definitely a fantastic option for Spirit Power and Yang-based buffs.

Unrivaled with teamwide HP recovery, Barrier restoration and multiple Bind Cleanses.

No Passives that can mitigate certain Binds or Debuffs

As a unit with the Heal Class, C3 Yukari excels at this very purpose! Starting with teamwide HP recovery, she can recover 80% of it via her first skill and her Last Word’s Post-ATK including a 100% HP recovery. Don’t forget that since C3 Yukari has the highest HP in the game at 9000, being able to also heal your teammates by that much HP isn’t to be overlooked! As for Barrier support, Skill 3 gives the team +2 Barriers with her second spell card’s Post-ATK providing the team +1 more. Finally, being able to cleanse multiple Binds/Stat Debuffs for the team is quite an exceptional feat, executed by her first and third skill, as well as a Last Word Post-ATK effect being able to do so too, meaning 3 different ways to pull this off! Do note however, that C3 Yukari is missing a Passive to handle specific Binds imposed on her, since being locked out of your Skills for a number of turns will be quite a pain. That being said, this is a more situational drawback, meaning it’s just a small gap that this Sage can overcome easily with means such as team support and strategy!

With a new color palette, Koishi Komeiji arrives from the F1 universe! While she may not look like much, don’t be fooled as she holds powers that can make a person green with envy (or maybe it’s the Poison she inflicts? Who knows?)

Amazing overall damage

With her Last Word being augmented by Little Sister and Sweets as well as a great deal of self buffs on the first turn, it’s no wonder that she can output insane amounts of damage both in the first turn as well as with setup which nearly no other character can hope to match. Her other spell cards are also no slouch as they also contain great killers.

Strong survivability with regards to Defense up, as well as barrier restoration

Koishi can certainly tank a few hits here and there with the amount of DEF ups that she has on her skills and spell cards. Combined with her 2nd skill restoring her barriers, she can sustain herself in more difficult content, assuming that she doesn’t get her grazes locked.

An absurd amount of anomaly breaks, combined with strong elemental coverage to boot.

While Koishi does have an insane amount of elemental breaks (and no non-elemental lines at that!) Koishi’s true appeal would be her anomaly breaks, where she can inflict a load of Poison anomalies and break them by herself using her skills and spell cards alone.

Inflicts Poison anomalies to the party

Ultimately, the only true flaw this character would have is how she debuffs the team with Poison anomalies, which can be somewhat detriment if you can’t afford to graze and are using Yang attackers.

As a Friend who has assumedly explored and gone through multiple worlds, Reimu Hakurei from the F1 Universe has certainly proved her title as an Epic Friend. All of her attacks, be it normal shot or spell, have ridiculous power backing them up, she has insane coverage of Wood and Sun elemental bullets, can quickly build up insane early-turn damage, and has the usual defensive utility that any Reimu is expected to have. Doing almost everything perfectly, she currently stands as one of the best Friends in Touhou LostWord Global.

Insane overall damage with her shots, spell cards, and Last Word

Any attack from Reimu can practically be a strategic nuke in its own right. There’s almost countless benefits to them: 0P Wood and Sun on the basic shots, great buffs that go off during both basic shots and spells 100% of the time, and crazy barrier break potential thanks to a Last Word that both applies and breaks Burn and Paralyze breaks at the same time!

Power generation is no problem with her Spell Cards and skills

Getting 2.00 Spirit Power on Reimu’s third skill and granting herself 3P access turn 1 without outside help wasn’t enough for Reimu. She decided that she needed to produce 1.50 Spirit Power upon using her first spell as well, meaning Reimu will almost always attack at her fullest boosts with ease.

Tanky due to her passives and 2nd skill

Reimu’s defensive stats and buffs are good already, but what really seals the deal on her defensive utility is found on her second skill and first passive. Her second skill provides a 50% damage reduction from Youkai enemies to the whole team for 2 turns, a race that is rather common in this game. As for the passive, any dweller of Gensokyo will deal 35% less damage to her, making her easily cover another common type of opponent.

Her barrier anomalies can serve to be a detriment to the team

Reimu’s main mistake is applying 2 layers of Burn and Freeze to her whole team via her first and second skill respectively. While Reimu herself is unaffected by these anomalies and instead gets buffs, her team will often not be the same, and with an anomaly that is active for 4 turns, more often than not the team will have to Graze in order to remove the debuffs.

At first glance, E1 Flandre may appear to be similar to L1 Flandre in the sense that she is all about letting out the heavy damage numbers. However, with her Ultra Festival status and a newfound drive to protect her older sister, the E1 variant goes a very long way to improve the original’s damage output with much better consistency along with some teamwide support.

One of the best T1 damage caps. Setup still manages to improve her peak damage.

Flandre’s Last Word goes all out: debuffing every target’s Yin DEF by 2 levels, increasing her own Yin ATK by 4 levels, and even raising her CRIT ATK by 2 more levels. Her Critical rate is already high, and combined with Gensokyo Killer bullets, you will see the damage ramp up rapidly very often. It helps that two of her skills increase her Spirit P up to 2.65 (1.00+0.40+1.25), allowing for access to 4 of the 6 bullet lines on her Last Word right out of the gate. Topped with her own Accuracy support, further CRIT buffs, and even more buffs from self-inflicted Freeze anomalies while setting up, and E1 Flandre can end up dealing the most damage compared to anyone else in the game.

Good CRIT support with some Spirit Power support to the party.

The partywide CRIT support comes specifically from her third skill, which grants 3 levels of CRIT ATK and CRIT Accuracy UP, making for a very immediate boost to any of the party’s critical hits from either Killer bullets or just regular crits. Flandre herself gets even more CRIT ATK and CRIT Accuracy upon applying Freezes to herself, although beware of accidentally Freezing allies that do not gain benefits from being frozen when using partywide self-Freeze inflictions. Even more support comes from her first skill, which grants the entire party 0.40 Spirit Power. While it may seem like Flandre does not boast many buffs, the ones she does provide are rather helpful and the skill cooldowns are rather low to keep constant pressure up.

Decent access to both Star and Water elements.

She may not boast a 0P basic shot, but the elemental breaks on her spell cards are very impressive. This mainly comes from her first spell and Last Word, which ironically enough share a very similar elemental spread: 3 Star on the first three lines and 3 Water on the last three. If access to these elements wasn’t enough for you, then you can always go for Poison and Freeze anomaly breaks at 2P or 3P of her first spell respectively, two elements that she can easily inflict herself. With how high Flandre’s damage output is, she doesn’t even really need to go for Full Breaks herself, but the ability to do so only makes her better.

Low durations on buffs.

While her third skill is very good in terms of CRIT support, the buff only lasts a single turn. This is somewhat mitigated by its lower 4 turn cooldown, but it still means that you have to be more precise when optimizing damage while taking full advantage of this skill in particular.

Toyohime, as the one entrusted by Lady Yagokoro with the Plentiful Temple of Wealth and Equality, does her role as a healer well. However, her role goes beyond plentifully strong heals and barrier restoration, and provides team attack buffs to carry on and defeat the enemy with power befitting the Lunarians. She does every role phenomenally, is useful in a large variety of current content, and will almost certainly stay useful in fights to come.

0P Wood on Focus shot

Plentiful Water and Moon breaks

While B3 Toyohime’s elemental breaking can be somewhat of a strange case at times, it is hard to deny her great access to Water and Moon, both of which can be found with 3 each on her second spell and Last Word. A Wood break at 0P of her Focus shot is just icing on the cake at this point.

High T1 damage and potential damage

Both Toyohime’s Last Word pre-ATK effects and third skill are able to buff Toyohime’s Yang ATK to very high levels, 7 levels UP alone, to be exact. This buff can even be maximized to 10 levels thanks to Grazing! The Spirit Power increase on her third skill, being a 1.50 increase, allows her to get to 2P at turn 1 for major damage. If that wasn’t enough, the Hard scaling on her Last Word is insane, topped with the Yang DEF buffs she is able to provide herself.

Tanky due to characteristics and her skills

Every one of Toyohime’s skills and even passives has some type of defensive or supportive utility. Her first skill both gives a small 0.25 Spirit Power increase to the party while recovering 70% HP and restoring 2 barrier layers as well. Her second skill is similar in also restoring 70% HP while also differing by buffing everyone’s Yang DEF and applying Focus UP to herself to absorb more damage. To sweeten the deal, her third skill’s Yang ATK buff is also partywide. Her passives, while the second one is only a 60% chance of occuring, are also helpful in tanking damage, especially when battling Youkai enemies.

Bind cleanse for the team helps bypass mechanics which the stage has

Toyohime has a very unique mechanic on her third skill and third characteristic that dispels either a stat debuff or a Bind, which are debuffs which restrict a character from using a certain action. Obviously, these type of abilities are downright ridiculous in areas such as the Scarlet Devil Tower and even some Main Story boss stages, where the opponents will try to seal some of your actions such as Boost or Graze. Just remember the skill is the one that will help out all allies, while the characterisitc is purely for herself.

Breaks are mediocre against multiple enemies

While Toyohime having elemental bullets on every part of her spells is impressive, her spread is sadly rather impractical when facing multiple opponents. Her first spell has 6 different elements which makes targeting one weakness puzzling, and even her impressive 3 Water plus 3 Moon breaks on her second spell is only Solo-target. At the very least, this spell also inflicts and breaks Poison anomalies if you still need the extra barrier breaking power.

Bind cleanse is random if there are multiple locks/debuffs

This is mainly a precaution more than a true downside. If you have both a debuff and Binded ability, then it is random if Toyohime’s dispelling abilities will actually get to the Bind before the debuffs. It is less random on herself thanks to being able to remove two debuffs in a single turn, but it can be annoying to your allies if Toyohime decides to lift a random debuff instead of the more urgent Bind. At the very least, this is random and the fight can be tried again so Toyohime gets it right next time.

Solo Stage Farms: ;2-7-1 (slow), 3-3-3, 3-6-3 (slow), 3-11-1, and Hifuu Code E9

Coming in as the cute butler of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, Koakuma provides the team with a set of skills and spell cards that most characters would dream of having. While she may have the role of a healer, make no mistake as Koakuma can do nearly anything that your team needs her to do! Whether it be barrier breaks, dishing out damage, or abusing her aforementioned utility, Koakuma is sure to serve you well.

Excellent Barrier Breaks

Barrier breaks are one of the factors that she excels in. Coming out with an emphasis on Metal and Moon elements to offer as well as anomaly breaks, mainly Incineration (burn breaks).

Amazing Damage Output

Gensokyo and Youkai Killers cover the majority of the cast in the game in which she has access to all her spell cards including her Last Word. This means that she guarantees critical hits against them and thus, ranks her on the high spectrum of damage potential. Additionally, she also has access to Slicing and Hard scalings which further increases her damage with Agility and Defense buffs respectively.

High Utility

She is able to inflict anomalies using her spell card and skills, although she can also do so towards her team which can prove beneficial or detrimental depending on who is slotted in the party with her. The main course, however, is the fact that she is able to dispel her party’s locks just like B3 Toyohime. In addition, she also has the ability to consistently provide YIN ATK + YANG ATK buffs, P UP support, and healing related effects which solidifies her position of having high utility.

No Innate Source of CRIT ATK Buffs

As excellent as she is, she has her own demerits as well, one of the most observable factors is how she does not have any innate source CRIT ATK buffs at all. This impedes her damage potential as she is not able to fully maximize her powerful Killers and scalings. Hence, she needs to constantly rely on external sources — story cards and her party’s buffs.

Lack of Accuracy Buffs

Another detriment of hers is the lack of innate accuracy buffs as this might result in an inconsistency on her damage values. However, this may be overlooked if she overkills the enemy anyway as she has a relatively high accuracy to begin with.

Poison inflicts to the party may be a hindrance for the party

Her 3rd skill, which provides 2 Poison inflicts to the party, is beneficial for L80 Youmu due to her Ability. However, this can slightly gimp other units in the party who are YANG oriented due to the anomaly’s negative effects. On the other hand, this is quite minor when compared to other anomalies and you can mitigate this via grazing and/or anomaly cleanse. In fact, this can become a boon instead for your party if they benefit from the anomaly itself.

Chock-full of ways to remove Seals on her party while maintaining strong Defensive and Offensive support, Satori is a powerful Heal-type Friend who can also wreck havoc on the enemy team with powerful Earth and Fire breaks

Phenomenal Seal recovery utility

Satori can remove Seals through both her third Skill and her second Spell Card, thoug the latter may target a Debuff instead, depending on your luck.

Amazing tank

Similarly, Satori can recover Barriers through her first Skill and her first Spell Card. Further protection can be derived with Focus UP on herself while boasting self healing through Absorb Bullets and her passive.

0P breaks on both Spread and Focus Shots

Satori has a Single Target P0 Fire and Earth breaks on Spread and Focus Shots respectively. Useful for longer fights.

Range of Killers falls short of full coverage

While wide-reaching, There are certain factions Satori cannot reach with her range of Killers, including most Gods and Lunarians.

L80 Satori is a Destruction class character who specializes in powerful barrier breaks or nuking.

Amazing barrier breaking potential

Satori can inflict both Burn and Poison anomalies and break them via her Shots, 2nd Spell Card, and Last Word.

Self sustainable

Satori is self sustainable in a way where she can replenish her barriers and Spirit P via her Spell Cards, allowing her to take advantage of barrier breaks and potentially graze utility. Her skills also have a decent duration where they can be used to keep her buffs with little to no downtime.

Lackluster Spell Card damage (except Last Word)

Despite being a DEST-type character, she cannot carry her Crit Accuracy enough to do great damage using her Spell Cards. Additionally, her lack of currently relevant Killers also contribute on her Spell Card’s damage output. If these Killers do hit however, it can prove to output great damage.

Does not have a particularly strong team utility

Her team utility is not strong for a Relic character. Her main utility lies on her 1st skill – which boosts the party’s CRIT ACC and ACC plus give 0.75P – and her ability to give CRIT ATK while grazing. However, the latter gimps her ability to stack buffs via her Poison and Blind anomaly self-inflicts.

While she may have lost everything in the L80 universe, Remilia continues to resolve the incident to claim back her fate. As the game’s first Relic character, she certainly holds up. With the ability to do great damage and support both Yin and Yang attackers, it’s no wonder why Remilia can hold her own against the best of the bunch.

Amazing damage with her Last Word

Coupled with the powerful story card, The Heat of My Fingertips, Remilia can do a great deal of damage with her Last Word. Not to mention, Remilia can do well when it comes to barrier breaking enemies due to a decent amount of burn anomalies which she can then break with either her Spread shot or 2nd Spell Card.

Good team utility with skills and Spell Cards

Not only can she do a good deal of barrier breaks with burn anomaly breaks, but her skills also lend themselves well to this performance. With a strong buff duration of 5 turns on her 1st skill, debuffs on her 3rd skill, and even more buffs to provide the team with her 1st Spell Card and Last Word. The only truly bad thing you can say about these factors would be the cooldown on her skills, which can be detrimental in multi wave stages.

Self Inflicting anomalies can create awkward usage

Ultimately, one flaw that Remilia does have is her barriers. With burn anomalies being useful for her, Remilia has to decide whether to either graze and deal less damage to provide the team with some utility, or keep the burn barriers to augment her power. This also proves to be a slight loss as her only source of barrier restoration in her kit is her Last Word.

B5 Reisen Udongein Inaba is your definition of an incredible Yin tank, capable of buffing her Yin DEF to the max while still hitting high damage numbers thanks to huge Hard scaling. Most of her Yin DEF buffs are teamwide as well, and along with the Focus UP she applies to keep the damage on her, Reisen can stay in the battle long while keeping her allies alive as well. If that wasn’t enough, she has great Moon and Star breaking potential on all of her spells, along with possible Blind anomaly breaks on her first spell card and Last Word.

0P Star Focus shot

Rich in Moon and Star breaks on spells

Extra utility due to Blind anomaly breaks on SC1 and LW

Reisen’s breaking potential is definitely above average when put next to any other Friend. Every spell of hers has 3 Moon and 3 Star breaks, along with having a 0P Focus shot. Star has always been a useful element to be good at breaking, and her having both that and Moon solidifies her as a top pick for any stage that has enemies weak to those elements. She can also break Blind anomalies via her first spell and Last Word, but the way those anomalies are applied will depend on other Friends.

Devastating setup damage potential thanks to heavy Hard scaling

Reisen can both dish out major damage from the start of turn 1 or when setting up, all thanks her crazy Hard scaling on her Last Word. Many elements of her kit, from her skills to buffs from Boosting to spell pre-ATK effects, contribute toward maximizing her Yin DEF buffs to make her damage go up very heavily. The 4 levels of Yin ATK UP on her Last Word and 2 levels from her second skill also help, obviously.

Amazing Yin tank with 10+ levels of Yin DEF UP; with for herself and party

As mentioned before, all of the elements that increase Reisen’s Yin DEF in her kit end up making her reach the cap of 10 levels of Yin DEF UP. However, additional utility comes in the form of the partywide buffs to both Yin and Yang DEF in her skills, along with 1 barrier restoration on her third skill. Even the Yin ATK debuff on her first spell can be taken advantage of to decrease the damage she takes, further helping her tanking ability. Finally, a shoutout has to be given to her second characteristic, which decreases the damage Reisen takes by 75% when at full HP. Thanks to Absorbing bullets and the 70% HP heal on her first skill, it is very easy to abuse this skill and make her even tankier.

As a DEF Unit, she lacks in team-wide ATK buffs

It is the unit type she is classified with, but many of the EX-tier threats have some sort of offensive buff to provide to the entire party. Reisen even lacks substansial defensive debuffs to indirectly buff party members, meaning she has to be brought down a bit compared to the upper top of EX tier. Still, her defensive utility and elemental access is so high, she remains to be a great Friend in her own right.

Solo Story Card Farms: 3-3-3, 3-6-3, 3-11-1, Future Story Card Stage

Sakuya emerges as a Debuff-class Friend who shears away the enemy’s defense, allowing her to crush the opposition in no time.

Amazing Star and Moon breaks

Both elements feature on all every single bullet line Sakuya has, including options for 0P Star and Moon breaks on Spread and Focus shots.

Enables Yang attackers through debuffs to enemy Yang DEF and Crit DEF

Sakuya’s claim to fame as a Debuff-class Friend manifests in Yang and Crit DEF debuffs from her Spell Cards and Skill.

Strong range of killers

With her bullet lines covering Human, Youkai and God Killers among others, she can guarantee a crit on a large assortment of Gensokyo’s cast.

Great utility with anomaly breaks and stun

Sakuya can break Burn and Paralysis anomalies with her attacks, as well as guarantee a stun on a single enemy with 2P on her second Spell Card.

Mix of Yin and Yang on most attacks makes her harder to fully optimize

With the exception of her fully Yang Last Word, Sakuya’s attacks are all mixed, meaning buffs and debuffs to either stat alone only gives her half the benefit.

Evasion tanking is niche

While Evasion is more of this subtle maid’s game, being able to completely negate damage is generally more handy than a higher chance of avoiding it. Best paired with Friends who want to avoid grazing in order to keep their Anomalies active.

Applying Burn to team may hinder certain Friends

Not everyone relishes the Burn quite like Sakuya does, with normal units taking a hit to Yin ATK and DEF unless they dispel it. Synergizes with Friends with Burn converting Abilities such as Reimu (F1), Reimu (C3) and Marisa (C3).

E9 Remilia, boasting power befitting the Mistress of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, hits extremely hard. With having amazing support capabilities for Yin nukers and a good amount of barrier breaks, Remilia can do it all.

0P Moon on Spread shot

Good access to both Moon and Fire breaks while able to break Poison and Freeze anomalies

Both Remilia’s second spell and Last Word have the potential of 3 Fire and Moon breaks, with her first spell having 2 of each instead. Her elemental breaking is already good from that, not even considering the 0P Moon on her Spread shot, but she goes on to do well breaking-wise with Poison and Freeze anomaly breaks. With the ability to inflict many Poison anomalies with her spell pre-ATK effects, the Poison breaks on her second spell are only made better, even if they only target one foe.

One of the best Yin supporters in the game

As expected for an Ultra Festival threat, Remilia can easily reach 2P on turn 1, heavily increase her preferred attack stat of Yin ATK, and sprinkle in some CRIT support for good measure. Her Last Word itself might not have the most amazing Hard scaling, but more than makes up for it with the wide-range Gensokyo Killer bullets.

Amazing damage all around

Outside of her Last Word’s self-Yin ATK UP, the Yin ATK buffs that Remilia provide are partywide, making her a great team supporter, especially Yin-wise. Both her first and third skill increase Yin ATK by 2 levels, with the first skill only having a cooldown of 4, making it an amazing back-up buff in extended fights.

Barrier Replenish RNG with her 2nd skill can be annoying

Remilia’s second skill is a guaranteed restoration of at least 1 barrier, but there is a 50% chance to replenish an additional one as well. This can be slightly annoying if you’re relying on restoring another barrier to get past a challenging fight. Since she doesn’t get any buffs from Graze, this issue is at the very least only a defensive one.

Poison conflicts with her role as a Yin nuker

Poison is an anomaly that decreases a target’s Yang ATK and DEF stats, something that Remilia never really takes advantage of in her own kit. The only Yang attacks are in her shots, and it’s not like she needs to debuff the foe’s Yang ATK to tank more hits. Other Friends might be thankful for the Yang DEF debuffs, especially if they don’t benefit from Remilia’s Yin buffs, but these anomalies are likely just going to be used for barrier breaks.

Story card farms: 3-3-3, 3-6-3, Hifuu E9*, a Future story card stage.

Reimu is here to spend her days playing games featuring her modified Yin Yang Beach Ball to her heart’s content as a Speed-class Friend that’s ready to rumble!

Amazing Wood and Water breaks, with 0P Water break on all Shots

Every bullet from this beachside shrine maiden features either Wood or Water elements, meaning you’ll have breaks for days. Couple this with her 0P Water breaks of both shots and you have a super soaker that any kid would love to get from the Patron Saint of Learning for Xmas!

Great base stats contribute to high amount of slicing damage

Reimu is naturally endowed with big guns, with a staggering 1940 Yang ATK and 1560 Agility at max. This works perfectly with a full Yang kit and strong Slicing values especially on her Last Word (120%/100%/0%/200%/0%/200%)

Powerful team Yang ATK and Agility support, able to keep buffs coming every turn

Reimu’s multiple sources of team enhancements culminates in a crazy 1 Turn Cooldown on her third Skill, which constantly boosts Yang ATK and Agility for her entire team.

Great utility with anomaly breaks and stun

Reimu can break Freeze and Paralysis anomalies with her attacks, as well as guarantee a stun on a single enemy with a 3P Focus Shot

Some buffs also inflict Freeze on allies, which may impede them

Her zealous dedication to gaming leaves her allies in the dust, inflicting Freeze barriers on them alongside other positive buffs. This can be turned around with a team that synergizes with Freeze anomalies instead!

Marisa is surfing into your lives as a Support-class Friend that stands firm against all opposition, empowering almost everything under the Gensokyo sun!

Amazing Star and Water break, with some Earth thrown in for change

The Magician on Vacation packed a suitcase filled with Star and Water, with features on almost every single line of her attacks. The exception is her Spread Shot, which replaces Water with Earth Breaks instead.

Fully enables attackers with buffs for most offensive stats as well as waves of Spirit P

Almost anything Marisa does will provide a buff to her team. Using Skills? Using Spell Cards? Even Boosting and Grazing will endow her team with some form of Yang ATK, Yin ATK, Crit ATK, Accuracy and/or Agility buff. This all comes with a bountiful source of Spirit , ensuring her team is ready for fun in the sun all day!

Doubles as an immense tank with Team Barrier recovery with strong personal HP recovery mechanics

Marisa’s seemingly unstoppable drive to enjoy her holiday comes in the form of incredible HP Recovery from most Anomalies, as well as her attacks. She can also put up multiple sources of Barriers for her entire team, prolonging any session in the water as long as she wants.

Great utility with anomaly breaks and stun

Marisa can break Freeze and Paralysis anomalies with her attacks, as well as guarantee a stun on a single enemy with a 3P Spread Shot

Personal damage is lacking

Marisa unfortunately falls short on her offensive, lacking broad Killers that set her apart from the top of the chaff.

Sagume is best for her team utility, nearly unmatched in terms of how generalized the support is. With good barrier breaks and great damage to boot, Sagume can help the team out tremendously.

0P Moon on Focus shot

Great barrier breaks with paralysis breaks, blind breaks, and a decent spread of Metal and Moon

B3 Sagume’s breaking potential is rather insane, if the second positive didn’t spell it out for you already. 0P Moon on a basic shot is always good to spam breaks if needed, but practically all of her spells have good Moon access on them, from the 2 on her first and second spell to the 3 on her Last Word. Metal is also spread out well on all of her spells, with even a small amount of Star on her first spell for good measure. Furthermore, she hold anomaly breaks on some spells: specifically Paralyze breaks on her first spell, Blind breaks on her second, and both on her Last Word. She can only inflict these anomalies via spells (either in pre-ATKs or chances during the spell), but the accessibility only makes her easier to synergize well on different teams.

High and versatile utility

If breaks weren’t what you wanted, then Sagume’s heavy utility usage might be what you’re looking for. Outside of a self-CRIT Accuracy UP on her second skill, all of her skill effects revolve around helping the party. Spirit Power restoration, offensive buffs, defensive buffs, barrier restoration… she has all of it! Even her spells join the fun, with her first spell restoring even more barriers, her second spell giving Agility and more Spirit Power, and her Last Word serving as another offensive buff. Sure, she might not be able to fully max out one buff by herself, but the incredible coverage means that she can be paired with any other good attacker, tank, or Technical Friend to easily build up to great stat coverage.

Great damage all around

If breaks and utility weren’t what you wanted, then Sagume might as well start dealing good damage as well. She is very easy to reach 6 levels of Yang and CRIT ATK UP with due to skills and her Last Word’s pre-ATK effects, the CRIT buff specifically doing well thanks to her Killer coverage. The enemies will even be constantly getting their Yang DEF decreased over the course of the attack, which is in part thanks to being able to reach 2P on turn 1 from her second skill.

Cooldown on her 2nd skill makes it more of a one time use than a skill that actively supports the team

Skill 2’s cooldown of 6 turns is the highest of all of her skills, the other ones being only 4 or 5 turns. It is unfortunate since it is a very powerful skill, being her Spirit Power restoration, CRIT Accuracy buff, and self-Quick. If the fight isn’t going on for an extensive time, this skill will likely be a one-use buff that you need to plan ahead to use.

Team can become more fragile with self-inflicted Focus down on spell cards

Both of Sagume’s basic spells will lower her Focus for 3 turns, which can help her survive against some foes, but will also end up having your teammates take more damage than usual, both from being hit by more Solo-target attacks and absorbing more All-target damage. You can take a more bulky unit with some Focus UP to mitigate this, but if you are running a raw offense team, just be wary of the party’s health. Fortunately, Sagume’s high barrier restoration means everyone on the team can at least use more Grazes than usual to avoid damage.

Story card solo farms: 2-7-1*, 3-3-3, 3-11-1, and Hifuu Code E9.

Meiling from the E1 universe is a master of guarding, be it concerning gates or even other party members. She will heavily buff her own Yin DEF as well as her team, which helps protect them all while she keeps her own Focus high and even goes back to doing heavy damage thanks to her hefty Hard scaling. She gets to hit hard thanks to Gensokyo-Killer and Youkai-killer bullets, and while her elemental access is a bit flawed, she more than makes up for it with Burn anomaly casting and breaking on her first spell. There’s almost no obstacle that can bypass this gatekeeper when she does her job right.

0P Earth and Metal on basic shots

Rainbow-spread of elements hinders specific elemental utility

When it comes to elemental breaks, Meiling primarily stands out for her two 0P spamming options in the form of Earth on her Spread shot and Metal on her Focus shot. While every single bullet line on her spells has an element on it, these elements are very “rainbow-like” and target many different weaknesses, making it challenging to truly focus on one weakness of an opponent.

Burn anomaly breaks at 2P of first spell, which also inflicts them

However, Meiling doesn’t really need to focus on elemental weaknesses when she can easily just break barriers right away with her first spell! She casts 2 layers of Burn to all foes upon activating the spell, followed up with a Burn anomaly break at 2P of the attack, giving her very easy breaks to access whenever they are required. She can even break up to 3 barriers if she inflicts more Burn anomalies during the attack, which has a 50% chance to occur.

Last Word packs a punch with Gensokyo-Killer and Hard scaling

Thanks to Meiling’s high Yin DEF buffs, the Yin-only Hard scaling of her Last Word gives her a very easy way to set up and dish out devastating damage. Combined with even more Yin ATK buffs within her kit and access to Gensokyo-Killer and Youkai-Killer bullets, she can easily kick out the invaders when they are done failing to break her defenses.

Insane defensive utility for self and allies

Not only does Meiling heavily buff her own defenses on her spells and skills, but these buffs are given to allies as well! This would already help their survivability tenfold, but Meiling makes sure to be a responsible tank and buffs her Focus to high levels to ensure nothing goes by her unscathed. Afterwards, she can quickly heal off any heavier hits with her second skill and go right back to defending.

Yorihime Peace Temple has everything that an outstanding offensive nuke needs: Spirit Power gain, CRIT ATK buffs and CRIT DEF debuffs to back up her Killers, Yang ATK buffs, Accuracy support, and more. Even better is the fact that either most of these buffs are applied to the entire party or the debuffs can be taken advantage of by other Friends. That combined with her large assortment of elemental and anomaly breaks makes Yorihime worthy of the highest tier in the game.

0P Metal on Focus Shot

Barrier breaking with elements and Paralyze/Freeze/Poison anomalies

B3 Yorihime holds a pretty varied range of elemental breaks, from the 0P Metal on her Focus shot to her spells. 3 Star breaks on her second spell is impressive, but she also has 3 Fire and Wood breaks on her first spell as well as a fully-Moon Last Word! If that wasn’t enough, she can also break Paralyze anomalies with her first spell (an anomaly which she inflicts upon using the spell), Freeze anomalies with her second spell, and Poison anomalies on her Last Word.

Insane damage output on Moon-only Last Word

CRIT Attacker on Large Amount of Cast along with CRIT Support

The Moon-only nature of her Last Word increases the ways she can support the damage of her Last Word with story cards, along with just decimating any foes weak to Moon. Along with the decent Slice scaling on the attack, the bullets have Killers against youkai, humans, and even more to ensure critical hits on a wide variety of the cast. This is where the CRIT DEF debuff of her Last Word and CRIT ATK buff on her third skill come in to optimize her damage even more.

Supports Self and Party with Offensive Buffs and Defensive Debuffs

The party can recieve both the Yang ATK UP from her first skill and the CRIT ATK UP from her third skill, helping increase the damage of allies’ Killer bullets or just critical hits in general. On top of that, Yorihime is good great at debuffing the foes, particularly through her second skill, in which many Yang Friends can join in the nuking potential. She even comes with partywide Accuracy support whenever she boosts, making her being at 3P even more powerful.

1-1-3 Spell Card Spread Can Work Against You Without Some Spirit Power Support

Yorihime can only reach 2P on turn 1, and a 1-1-3 spread on both of her spells can hurt her damage output and actually limit what she can do otherwise immediately, as all of her anomaly breaks only occur at 3P. Another Friend can try to jump in to assist with more Spirit P restoration, but otherwise Yorihime will be starting off the fight slower than other Friends.

Solo Stage Farms: 2-7-1, 3-3-3, 3-6-3, Future Story Card Stage

Alice Margatroid, while she may have lost her dolls, showcases her newfound power as another Relic character. With a mix of utility for Yin nukers and being a great Yin nuker herself, Alice can and will do her best to help resolve this incident.

Last Word can do great damage

With her story card, Sporadically Margaret, Alice deals good damage to all her enemies due to her decent killer range as well as the powerful boost which her Last Word has. However, her Last Word does have the inherent flaw where due to its elemental spread, it may be more difficult to take advantage of its high damage peak.

Utility, especially for Yin characters, is top notch

With a mix of Yin ATK up, Accuracy, and Yin DEF down on her skills, Alice can support the team even further with power and barriers on her 1st skill, and her Last Word providing even more buffs and debuffs to support the team. She does hold a bias towards Yin nukers as she lacks Yang buffs for the party, but that’s a small price to pay as Yin nukers can benefit a great deal from her kit.

Self inflicting anomalies can create awkward usage

Much like the other Relic character, Remilia, Alice does have an awkward situation with her barrier usage. With her grazes providing the team utility and the anomalies she inflicts herself providing a great damage boost, Alice puts herself in an awkward spot for what she wants to do with her barriers. However, she can mitigate this cost with her 1st skill due to it restoring 2 barriers.

Coming from the E1 Universe, Patchouli Knowledge makes her appearance as the Magician of the Mistress. Boasting a set of powerful tools with damage and utility, her only true flaw would be her barrier breaks, where they may feel clunky to use. Despite this, Patchouli can help your team dish out damage while doing her own share as well

Great Damage Output

With a great range of killers as well as powerful buffs, Patchouli can dish out a great deal of damage that is sure to make all her enemies quiver. This is especially shown with her Last Word, Periodic Table Ring, which has Gensokyo killers as well as Youkai.

Fairly Strong Utility

With a fair amount of anomaly inflicts, Patchouli also provides a decent amount of ATK up, DEF up, and Accuracy on her skills. However, her 3rd skill may come as an awkward use case due to its long cooldown.

Cumbersome Barrier Breaks

Ultimately, her biggest flaw is her barrier breaks, as her lack of focus on a singular or two elements make her relatively inconsistent as a barrier breaker against multiple enemies. Despite this, she can help break barriers through the use of anomalies.

Ran Yakumo, coming from the A7 universe, comes and shows her power as one of Yukari’s shikigami. While she may be subservient to the sage, don’t take her lightly, as Ran certainly proves herself worthy as a powerful ally to have. With an array of Metal breaks as well as the ability to provide a good amount of breaks, Ran can support the team through it all.

• Great access to Metal breaks primarily with a decent amount of Moon breaks

With Ran’s skills and spell cards helping her generate P easily, Ran has very good access to her barrier breaks. As such, her barrier breaks can come really useful, especially if the enemy is weak to either Moon or Metal.

• Useful utility

Thanks to Ran’s skills being on a low cooldown, Ran can even provide the team with 1.8P in 5 turns, which can absolutely help the team in terms of accessing their own breaks or help them augment their damage further. Furthermore, Ran also provides a substantial amount of Yin ATK, Agility, and even some Yin DEF to the party. The only truly bad part about her utility, would be the lack of sustainability on her Yin ATK as she does not extend it without a use of either a story card or Last Word.

• Damage is on the lower end

One thing that does hold Ran back is her damage. Thanks to her lower range of killers and lackluster scalings, Ran can’t hit as hard as some of the more modern friends. Beyond that, her elements hold her back from being a powerful farmer in the current relevant story card stages.

Momoyo Himemushi, is an absolute force to be reckoned with. You can expect nothing less from someone that enjoys combat, and does their best when faced by a strong opponent.

Huge Yin attack stats

Being the FES Friend with the greatest raw Yin Attack stats, she can deal lots of damage and has less obstacles for her offensive potential.

Amazing CRIT Accuracy

Reaching -8 CRIT Evasion on her opponents on turn one and having plenty of attacks to reduce it even further makes her able to CRIT a lot.

Amazing access to Metal and Earth

With a Solo targeting Spell Card that is fully Earth and an ALL targeting LW that is fully Metal, Solo shots that allow a 0p Metal and a 0p Earth spammable Attack.

Access to Poison anomaly infliction and breaking

With her Focus shot being able to break Poison, her Spread shot having access to 2 lines that apply the same anomaly, and her 2nd Spell Card being a potential 3 poison layers to every opponent that can be broken with the same spell card at 2P, and rarely her ability to reflect Poison will get her extra anomaly inflictions, lastly her LW that can break poison, she is able to use the anomaly to her own benefit by lowering her opponents’ Yin DEF or by full breaking them.

Low Hard scaling & mediocre Killers

Her low Scaling percentages unfortunately limit how much she benefits from her Yin DEF buffs, and her Killers aren’t very common aside from the occasional Youkai Killer. This is somewhat remedied by her high CRIT Accuracy.

Reimu is an incredibly good tank, nuker, and breaker for harder fights, having a strong argument for being one of the best Friends in the game for them. Between her Focus UP, high firepower, P0 access to Wood and Sun on basic shots, and incredible self-sustain, she’ll stay alive for a long while and blast away your foes. She’s merely great instead in shorter fights and for farming purposes, but being merely ‘great’ at your worst areas isn’t a bad deal.

Great Breaks, including P0 Sun and Wood on her basic shots

Having two 0P spammable elemental options in the form of Wood and Sun is already good, but the rest of her kit does well in these elements as well. Wood stands out with 3 breaks on her first spell, which Sun overpowering it with 3 breaks on her second spell and 4 on her Last Word.

Great Killer bullet types and amazing damage when at full Spirit Power boost

Reimu might be a defensive-heavy Friend, but she is able to bring this back to dealing damage thanks to high Hard scaling, especially on her Last Word. Said Last Word also contains Killer bullets against Youkai, a rather common opponent in Lost Word. Topped off with her high Yang ATK and DEF buff upon using her Last Word and other setup opportunities, this Shaman can easily summon devastating damage.

Fantastic team support, among the best if not the best in keeping a team alive

Just like L1 Reimu, B3 Reimu tries her hardest to be a defensive threat, and her mechanical enhancements only made her better at the job. Her third skill, while having a cooldown of 6 turns, has a long-enduring 3 turns of partywide defensive buffs to ensure that everyone is able to live through the fight. Her second skill, while not healing everyone, is still very good at keeping herself alive due to a 70% heal. Her third characterisitc is even good for this, healing herself by 20% every turn. This combined with her heavy Focus UP helps keep the damage off of the rest of the team, and even lessens it in general.

1-1-3 Bullet layout makes her 1-Turn damage mediocre without Spirit Power support

The bullet spread of her Last Word is what mainly holds Reimu back, as she can only reach 2P on turn 1 by herself, meaning that many parts of her Last Word are inaccessible until another turn when being used by herself. This heavily hurts her turn 1 or even early damage output, unless she is being supported by a Power Link Friend or gets Spirit Power from another source.

Really wants accuracy support for consistency

Strangely enough, Reimu has no Accuracy UP in her kit whatsoever, making her need to rely on other Friends or a story card to help ensure her damaging shots even connect in the first place. Fortunately, both of the above downsides can be solved with support, but still hurt her own farming potential.

Solo Stage Farms: 2-7-1 (slow), 3-3-3, Future Story Card Stage

Don’t let her looks deceive you. Junko’s hatred for Chang’e still runs deep and she shows this with versatile anomaly breaks, good team utility, and great damage to boot. With a powerful kit and the potential to go further beyond, it’s no wonder why she was a threat to the Lunar Capital.

Amazing Anomaly Breaks

B2 Junko’s breaking potential is just as deceiving as her cute form. She may not have any elemental breaks on her spells, but Junko has exchanged that for a high amount of anomaly breaks. In fact, they’re so ridiculous that here is a basic list of where each anomaly break is located:
Incineration (Burn Break): Spell 1 (2P), Last Word (2P)
Toxic (Poison Break): Spell 1 (1P), Last Word (1P)
Melting (Freeze Break): Spell 2 (1P), Last Word (3P)
Discharged (Paralyze Break): Spell 2 (2P), Last Word (3P)
Flash Break (Blind Break): Spell 2 (3P), Last Word (3P)
She may not have the ability to easily inflict all of these anomalies herself, but having all of these breaks only makes her Full Break opportunities very high when using other anomaly-inflicting Friends.

6/6 Star Spread Shot

If you really do want the elements though, She does have a fully-Star spread shot. Star is always very nice to have, since many enemies are usually weak to it, and if you want to flex on other elemental breakers by Full Breaking with a Spread shot, go right ahead.

High Turn 1 and Potential Damage

Junko carries the usual kit that any great turn 1 attacker wants: ability to reach 2P at turn 1 with her second skill, both Yin ATK buffs and Yin DEF debuffs, and a fair amount of Hard scaling on her Last Word to seal the deal. Additionally, while having no elemental bullets may have seemed like a flaw at first, this likewise means it is impossible for a Friend to have elemental resistances to Junko’s spells, only making her attacks even more universally powerful. When combined with set-up potential with her other spells’ Yin DEF UP buffs and anomaly inflictions, Junko can very easily deal some of the highest damage numbers in the game.

Decent utility with her skills

While Junko’s focus isn’t to buff her allies, she ends up doing well to support them anyway. The buffs on her third skill are partywide, providing a good amount of Yin ATK, Accuracy, and even some Spirit Power to all allies. Additionally, the Yin DEF and anomaly debuffs that Junko applies to foes are indirectly buffs to other Friends as well due to being able to take advantage of the cripplied opponents.

Cannot be Fully Broken

If all of her usage wasn’t enough for you, it is even impossible to Full Break Junko! She has no elemental weaknesses and is immune to every anomaly in the game, meaning she just cannot break her own barriers. It is unfortunate that she does not gain buffs from Grazing, as there would be no concern about being Full Broken after using all of her barriers.

Very Spirit Power hungry

In order to reach many of her anomaly breaks, Junko will need to burn through a lot of Spirit Power. Her skills that restore Spirit Power somewhat help, but if you want to reach her strongest stuff, you will likely need outside Spirit Power support from other Friends (either skills or switch links) or certain story cards.

Needs team support to bring out full potential

Cannot break barriers with her spell cards aside from anomalies

As mentioned before, Junko has difficultly in applying all of the anoamlies required to take full advantage of every anomaly break she has, mainly exceling in Burn and Poison and not much else. This means that other Friends are likely needed to apply their own anomalies so that they can be broken as well. However, thanks to Junko’s heavy value in other categories, along with good team support, this is not the worst flaw in the world.

Solo story card farms: 2-7-1, 3-3-3, 3-6-3*, 3-11-1, and a future story card.

Hecatia Lapislazuli’s Earth form takes on a very tropical style as she brings the opponents down to Earth through debuffing. She especially specializes in Yang DEF DOWN, being able to put 10 stacks of it on one foe, and Freeze anomalies, capable of applying multiple layers on all foes while breaking them afterwards. With a great Yang ATK stat, some high Hard scaling, and even some team utility in the form of healing and barrier restoration, Hecatia stands tall as one of the highest-ranked Friends in LostWord, even if her debuffs can hit some snags at times.

0P Water on Focus Shot

Great Water and Earth elemental access on spells

Plentiful Freeze anomaly inflictions and breaks

Hecatia has some of the best breaking potential in the game, mainly if she is in a stage that synergizes well with Water and Earth breaks. Not only does her Focus Shot have 0P Water breaks for spamming, but all of her spells have 3 breaks in both Water and Earth to make an easy 3 breaks for either element as long as Hecatia has Spirit Power, something her second skill gives her a good boost in thanks to 2.00 Spirit Power UP. To top that off, she can even apply many Freeze anomalies with her first skill and follow it up with Freeze breaks on her Focus Shot, first spell, and Last Word. Her Last Word can break Paralyze anomalies as well for good measure.

Hits well with high Yang ATK and Hard scaling

Lacking good killers on her Last Word

Hecatia’s damage potential is great thanks to her bulky 1930 Yang ATK stat, which gets comboed well with high Hard scaling on her Last Word. The 2.00 Spirit Power she can gain from turn 1 allows her to do a 3P Last Word immediately as well. Sadly, none of this damage will really come from her Killer Bullets, as Gensokyo Killer only shows up on her fifth line, while the rest of her Killer Bullets are more trivial.

Insane Yang DEF debuff potential (up to 10 levels on one enemy)

Hecatia’s Yang DEF potential comes from all of her spells, especially her second spell and Last Word, the former in which debuffs every Yin and Yang stat as well. Hecatia’s third skill joins in the crippling as well, allowing Hecatia to very easily total up to 10 levels of Yang DEF DOWN, the maximum debuffed value allowed.

Breaking potential can conflict with Yang DEF debuffs at times

Hecatia is all about applying Yang DEF DOWN, a detail that will be explained more below. However, when a foe is Full Broken, something Hecatia can be great at as mentioned above, all of Hecatia’s Yang DEF debuffs will be removed in favor of the penalty applied on Full Break. While her debuff potential is still great, this debuff removal makes it harder to use Hecatia in certain instances, especially when the situation she is in is all about Full Breaking.

High Yang DEF debuffs can be excessive, especially without Yang ATK buffs

4-5 turn endurance on debuffs unlikely to last if wave or HP Gauge ends early

Hecatia runs into a few more problems regarding her Yang DEF debuffs. For one, 10 levels of Yang DEF DOWN do add a lot more damage than compared to lower debuff values, but more Yang ATK UP would contribute even more damage than that, something that Hecatia cannot do alone and must rely on allies or story cards instead. On top of that, many of her debuffs boast a long endurance of 4 or 5 turns. While this sounds great on paper, debuffs are removed at the end of a wave or when the target loses their HP Gauge. This heavily limits the practicality of long-enduring debuffs, especially considering Hecatia’s third skill has a brutal 7 turn cooldown, something that can be very painful if used at the wrong time.

Miyoi Okunoda (C3) is a Technical-Class Friend who debuffs enemy Crit DEF and EVA, breaks Freeze Anomalies and supports her Yang Attack teammates.

Long Duration Crit Buffs and Debuffs

An experience with Miyoi is one to not be forgotten (ironic). She can inflict multiple sources of Crit DEF and Crit EVA debuffs on enemy teams lasting up to 5 turns long. Her allies benefit the same, with Yang ATK and Crit ATK buffs going up to 4 turns long. These long lasting durations give her the flexibility of extending team strategies as needed.

B-B-Brain Freeze

Watch out for that Dr Eirin she’s serving up! Miyoi has multiple sources that inflict Freeze Anomalies on enemies, with her Spell Card 2 both dropping and breaking them in a single breath.

Unfocused Elements

Although Water features heavily in her kit, she shares her other bullet lines with Moon and Star, with her Last Word holding all three elements. This lack of focus takes away from her breaking and damage potential, splitting it up with potential resistances that enemies may have.

Odd Killers

For such a beach focused character, Miyoi does a LOT of damage to her fellow beachgoers, with Aquatic, Swimsuit and Summer Killers all lined up in her bullets. Her other Killers aren’t as far reaching, meaning she’ll have to make up for that with Crit ACC, though she stands to shine against others in the C3 World.

Yuuka’s scientific love for flowers translates into a Technical-Class Friend who weeds out her enemies with ease with powerful killers, potent Blind and Poison mastery and Wood/Star bullets.

Great damage with room to grow

With Yuuka’s wide reaching killers, decent buffs and debuffs, Yuuka can dish out a good amount of damage with options like her 1st Spell Card or her Last Word. Her damage can still improve with more buffs, as well as a future card to come.

Powerful breaks

A spread of 3 Star and 3 Wood on all her Spell Cards make her breaks powerful against enemies who are weak to these. With her 2nd Spell Card, she can also break Poison and Blind anomalies, which improves her already impressive breaks. A unique thing to note is how she inflicts more Poison anomalies to whoever she was targeting which can be useful in staggering enemy breaks.

Support is lacking in most areas

While her 1st Spell Card has the very powerful niche that is a guaranteed Stun, her utility otherwise is not great. With fairly long cooldowns on both her 1st Skill and 3rd Skill and her Spell Card utility not being as impactful as it may suggest, Yuuka’s utility falls on the lower end of the spectrum.

Anomaly usage is awkward to utilize

While she does gain buffs from Poison and Blind anomalies, Yuuka also has incentive to use up her barriers for accuracy. Thus, her usage of self-inflicted anomalies and grazes can very frequently come in conflict with each other.

Fujiwara no Mokou (but with a cape) comes from the L80 universe as a HEAL-type unit. Providing great party utility and anomaly breaks, there’s not much she can’t do for your team.

Strong and widely accessible anomaly breaks

Paired with The Witch of Scarlet Dreams and her Skill 2, Burning Evidence, and with the right setup, Mokou is able to provide either herself or her team with an anomaly break every turn with her Spell Cards, along with her Spell Card effects providing massive amounts of team utility and enemy debuffs.

Good variety of party buffs

Mokou’s party buffs come from every which-where in her kit. Her Spell Cards provide the team with HP recovery and Yang DEF up, meanwhile her skills and passives allow her even more team HP recovery, even more Yang DEF up, bind and stat debuff dispels, Yang ATK up, and even Accuracy up. Aside from party Spirit P up, it seems there’s almost nothing Mokou can’t bring to the table.

Elemental-type spread on her Spell Cards are very disjointed

Mokou’s Spell Cards are a bit of a mash-up of various elements. Her Spell Card 1 has an even mix of Moon and Star, meanwhile her Spell Card 2 has an even mix of Moon and Fire. In comparison to other characters, it would be ill-advised to use her as a primary source for breaks.

Inflexible with skill options

Mokou’s skills, while great on paper, can be difficult to use to their maximum potential. The biggest example of this would be her Skill 2, Burning Evidence. This one skill has party bind/stat debuff dispels, Yang ATK up, and own 2 Spirit P up. Hypothetically, if you were ever in a situation where you needed to dispel party binds but needed to save the Spirit P up or Yang ATK up and Mokou was one of your only options, this would be trouble as you are essentially having to use the other parts of her skill suboptimally.

S5 Utsuho Reiuji is an Attack-class Friend who can support the team with CRIT buffs, Spirit Power buffs, and Defense debuffs.

Strong skills and pre-attack effects

Utsuho’s skills enable her to easily reach 3.1P in 1 Turn while providing the party with CRIT, Accuracy, and YANG ATK buffs. Her Spell Card 1 and Last Word’s pre-attack effects also enable her to debuff enemies’ defense.

Powerful Breaking Ability

Thanks to her ability to reach 3.1P in 1 Turn and the fact that she can inflict Burn to her enemies, she will have an easier time reaching the full potential of her barrier breaking abilities whether it be through elemental breaking or through anomaly breaking.

Lackluster damage

While she has strong skills to boot, her niche Killers and disjointed debuffs resulted in her damage being lower than expected.

Be wary of party Burn inflicts

Just like S5 Rin, her 3rd skill has the side effect of inflicting Burn to the party, which is usually unfavorable due to the negative effects it brings. However, this is not a problem if her party is immune to it, and even turns into a boon if they benefit from it.

S5 Rin Kaenbyou is a Speed-class Friend who hits fast and heavy, Blinding her opponents while supporting Yin Friends and keeping them safe from harm.

Powerful Yin attacker with Water/Earth, Blind setting and breaking

Rin’s ability to ramp up her Yin ATK and Agility means she can very quickly build up the momentum she needs to wreak havoc on enemy teams, especially when taking into account the Slicing scaling on her Last Word. Healthy element breaks coupled with sources of Blind breaks on almost all her attacks will result in enemy teams very quickly being full broken under her assault.

Good Yin support means her teammates can follow suit while staying guarded

Rin doesn’t have to be the period at the end of your attacking sentence. Feel free to continue the attack with your teammates after providing them with the Yin ATK and Agility they need to crush the enemy. Should battles stretch longer, Rin has several sources of Barrier recovery for her team as well.

Low cooldown on Skill 1 means easy chaining of buffs and constant supply of Spirit P

Rin’s Skill 1 can be refired every 2 Turns, meaning she can reapply Agility and Accuracy buffs to her team constantly, while fuelling them with Spirit P for harder hitting attacks.

Can remove Debuffs or Seals on herself.

Rin’s second Skill doubles up as purification for any pesky Seals or Debuffs landed on her. Especially useful when looking to solo challenging content without needing to also cleanse fellow team mates.

Lacks powerful Killers

Rin’s spread of Killers are fairly specific, allowing her to perform well on certain groups of enemies but not on others, limiting her damage output.

Watch out for friendly Burn

Rin’s 3rd Skill has the unfortunate side effect of also inflicting Burn on her allies. Consider pairing her with Friends who appreciate this anomaly, such as Utsuho (S5), Reimu (F1) or Megumu.

Reimu’s a bit of everything — solid All targeting damage, good Spell Cards for Arena, Accuracy support, and good Breaks. She lags a bit behind the highest tier of attackers, but she’s definitely great all the same.

Solid Breaks, including P0 Solo-targeting Wood on her Spread Shot

A6 Reimu is your example of an above-average breaker, covering 2 elements very well. She may have only a 0P Wood break on her Spread shot, but her spells make up a lot of Wood and Sun breaks. This comes from 4 Wood/2 Sun on her first spell, 4 Sun breaks on her second spell, and 3 Wood and Sun breaks on her Last Word.

Very high damage, in farming and hard fights alike

Reimu must have been a score-based player back in Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, since two of her skills provide Spirit Power so that she can reach 2P at turn 1. Her buffs on her skills may be simplisitc, but they are still party-wide in the forms of Yang ATK and Yang DEF UP. Topped with further Yang DEF from her first spell and the great Hard scaling on her Last Word, Reimu can easily reach some great damage numbers. It helps that she has rather decent Killer bullets, specifically Youkai-Killer.

Provides Accuracy support

Accuracy support from Reimu comes in two forms: party-wide Accuracy UP from her third skill and the Evasion debuffs on her second spell. Combined with the other skills that provide team support (especially the short 4 turn cooldown from the second skill), Reimu can definitely support Friends while still being strong in a longer fight.

Doesn’t have quite the scaling of other top tier units for harder fights

This downside mainly comes from the way the rest of the competition naturally has higher stats (Ultra Festival Friends have higher stat counts than Festivals), but Reimu will just naturally not hit as hard as the rest of the top tier competition, let alone if she’s by herself. She can still dish out good numbers, but it will be smaller when compared to many Ultra Festival attackers.

Solo Stage Farms: 2-7-1, 3-3-3, 3-6-3, Future Story Card Stages

Sunny Milk (Scarlet) is the ideal Friend, offering team Accuracy support, Spirit P generation to kickstart battles and a boatload of debuffs to demoralize the enemy team. Add that to her stellar element and anomaly breaking ability and decent evasive/defensive bulk and you have yourself a powerful ally worthy of any Yang focused team.

Teamwide Accuracy Support

Sunny Milk covers the basics of any team’s requirements with team wide Accuracy Up on her third skill, Light Up. This transitions easily into her second perk…

Low Cooldown on Skills

Her third skill has a great cooldown time of 3 Turn at max level. Her other two skills require 4 Turns to cool down. This is plenty given that her first skill debuffs enemy team Crit DEF and EVASION for 3 whole turns, while her second skill provides her 1 Spirit P and Quick.
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Amazing Barrier Breaking Utility

Sunny is stuffed to the brim with Sun lines, clocking in at 3 Sun on her first Spellcard which does AoE damage, and a whopping 6 Sun on her second Spellcard which does Single Target damage. Her Last Word does 2 Fire and 4 Sun on all enemies. She also has Blind breaks in her kit, allowing her to do so at 2P with her first Spellcard, and at 3P on her Last Word. Finally, she has an easily accessible 0P Sun on her Focus Shot, allowing her to whittle away barriers in a pinch.

Lack of Killers

Where Sunny Milk falls short are her unusual spread of Anti bullets, none of which are common enough to see usage outside certain content. Expect to see Anti-Human bullets lines work the hardest for her, as she sweeps Gensokyo’s regular citizens off their feet.

Featuring very high damage, reasonably solid Breaks, and fantastic support for CRIT & Killer units, this scarlet mist fighting witch is a very potent Friend. About the worst you can say about her is that she can’t hit the highs that the most damaging Friends can, and that CRIT & Killer support is perhaps somewhat narrow.

P0 Fire on a Basic Shot

Coming in hot with a 0P spammable Fire break on her Focus shot, Marisa actually has a great niche in Star breaking. All of her spells have at least 3 Star breaks, with her first one even having 4 instead, giving her a great access to this common elemental weakness.

Extremely damaging and frontloaded All-targeting Last Word

Marisa has a 3-1-1 bullet line spread on her Last Word to make sure enemies feel the pain immediately. On top of that, she can easily raise her own Agility for good Slice values and buff her Yang ATK for overall more damage.

Fantastic CRIT and Killer Support

Marisa doesn’t directly help her Friends with teamwide buffs, instead supporting them by heavily crippling the foes’ CRIT defensive stats. With a lot of CRIT DEF DOWN and CRIT Evasion DOWN on both her spells, as well as some more CRIT DEF DOWN on her third skill, Friends with great CRIT stats or just good Killer bullets will heavily appreciate the extra damage they’ll get while with Marisa.

Doesn’t quite hit the damage levels of other meta units

Without any additional scaling or heavy damage niches, Marisa’s damage still doesn’t land her on the extreme end of most nukes.

Solo Stage Farms: 2-7-1, 3-3-3, Future Story Card Stages

Keiki Haniyasushin may be a god capable of creation, but her abilities in LostWord give her a lot of destructive capabilities as well. With a Last Word that is powerful with setup time without even needing Killers, plentiful amount of elemental and anomaly breaks, and a good range of support on top of that, there is almost nothing inherently wrong with what Keiki has to offer. Even her slight downsides, mainly backloaded damage and some short-lasting buffs, can be worked around to create a nearly flawless figure.

0P Earth on Focus shot

Amazing Earth, Star, and anomaly breaks on spells

Poison on second spell can be immediately broken at 2P

Keiki’s barrier breaking potential is one of the best in the game. Element-wise, she gets a spammabe 0P Earth break from her Focus shot and a good mix of Earth and Star on all of her spells, along with an Earth-only Last Word. If that wasn’t enough, her second spell contains Poison anomaly breaks at 2P and Burn anomaly breaks at 3P. As an All-target spell and the ability to inflict 2-3 Poison anomalies before attacking, this makes her second spell both good in elemental breaks and an immediate 2-3 breaks on any foe not immune to Poison.

Incredible setup damage via Last Word

Underwhelming turn 1 damage

Keiki has a backloaded (1-1-3 bullet spread for boosting) Last Word, which isn’t common but still makes her immediate turn 1 damage less than ideal. Luckily, it doesn’t take much effort to make that damage ideal, especially with a second skill that gives her 1.50 Spirit Power to get closer to the elusive 3P Last Word. As an entirely Earth, Yang, and Heavy bullet attack with Human-Killer bullets, Keiki can easily set herself up to do some amazing damage, especially when using all of her self-Yang ATK buffs.

Team utility in the form of CRIT and Yang support

Keiki is a lot more than just a selfish attacker, thanks to both her debuffs via spells and buffs on skills. Both her second spell and third skill debuff the foes’ CRIT DEF to allow Friends with good critical hit chances or Killer bullets the chance to deal even more damage. On top of that, every Graze used can grant all allies up to 3 levels of Yang ATK UP for a single turn to assist Yang nukes. She also can use her first skill for 3 levels of teamwide Yang DEF UP, along with minor Yin ATK UP from her third skill to cover both offensive bases.

The Goddess of Hell is an absolute force to be reckoned with. With hard hitting Spell Cards, a good Elemental layout, and bending the power of anomalies for her own benefit, and In terms of raw stats, she has the one of the highest Yin attacks, only beaten by some Ultra Festival Friends. So if you’re ever in a pinch, relying on her is the right thing to do.

Good Elemental access

Alongside having a 0p Star Spread Shot, every Spell Card of hers has an element. She mainly has Star and Moon breaks, with a few Sun and Fire breaks on her 1st Spell Card and Last Word respectively.

Extremely high Turn 1 damage as well as set up damage

Due to her having so many Gensokyo Killer bullets and buffing herself greatly in addition to her amazing raw stats, she deals extraordinary damage on turn one. She also has amazing damage output with a setup, which is made easier because of her ability.

Self-inflicts anomalies which allows her to counter fights which inflict anomalies

Due to her Ability, Freeze anomaly attacks grant her +0.20P, and every layer of poison grants her 1 level up of Yang ATK, Yin ATK, CRIT ATK, and CRIT Accuracy. Beside giving her easy buffs, Poison also protects her against other anomalies when all her barriers have an anomaly inflicted.

Good Barrier Management is needed to use her full potential

Knowing when to graze and when to activate her Skills is important to maximize what she can do with all the benefits of the anomalies. This can prove difficult to manage at times.

No notable Utility

Her only Party buffs are Yin ATK and CRIT Accuracy, which are on her 2nd Spell Card and 3rd Skill respectively. This isn’t bad, but when higher tier units do more, she can be underwhelming relative to them.

Solo Stage Farms: 3-6-3(!), 3-11-1, E9(!), 3-18-3, Future Story Card Stage (as part of a duo)

The Lunar War version of Youmu simply does utterly unreal damage in short and hard fights alike, thanks to her dual scaling combined with a 1-2-2 All targeting Last Word and Spirit Power UP on turn 1. She also packs solid teamwide buffs for Yang ATK, Yang DEF, Agility, and Accuracy, and can do some Paralyze infliction for further accuracy support (though it’s not quite enough to use for Breaking purposes).

Great Breaking ability, including P0 Water and Sun on basic shots

B3 Youmu’s 0P coverage of Water and Sun is only the base of her great access to these elements. Her first spell boasts 4 Water breaks, her second spell has 3 Sun breaks, and her Last Word tops it off with 4 Sun and 2 Water. Being able to both spam these elements if needed and just dish them out in general makes for a very useful application for many fights.

Utterly incredible damage in both short and hard fights, both on her Last Word and Spell Cards

Both of Youmu’s spells increase her own Yang DEF, an attribute that is able to help increase the damage of her spells even more due to some small but useful Hard scaling. Their damage output in general is just great, especially her Last Word due to bulking up her Yang ATK by a staggering 5 levels for a single turn.

Solid teamwide buffs, including Yang DEF, Yang ATK, Agility, Accuracy support

As stated above, Youmu’s supportive utility is very varied and especially helpful for Yang-focused Friends. Yang DEF and ATK for the whole party comes from when she Boosts and Grazes respectively. Even more Yang DEF is given to the party through her third skill, and Agility is even given by her first skill, which can help Slice-based Friends. Finally, Accuracy is provided by her second skill to make sure everyone’s damage output is more consistent.

Bad Killer bullet types, making CRIT support necessary for maximum damage

Youmu mainly covers soul-like presences or Lunar Capital residents in terms of Killer bullets, generally harming her critical hit output. Without any major CRIT ATK or Accuracy buff access on her own, she needs to rely on other Friends for them. With the buffs she provides back, hopefully it is a rather equal exchange.

Solo Stage Farms: 3-3-3, Future Story Card Stage

Hecatia Lapislazuli (B3) is a Support-Class Friend who bolsters attackers of all types, keeping them safe from harm while also exterminating any daring enough to attempt to cross her threshold.

A Gate to Powerful Offensive Buffs

Stored within this form of Hecatia is a bountiful source of buffs that lean towards Yin attackers. She can easily max out party Yin ATK and DEF levels (great for Friends who have Hard scaling) via a combination of Skills, Spell Cards and Graze/Boosts. Slicing Friends also benefit from Agility buffs, and Yang attackers aren’t left behind with her Spell Card 2 providing Yang ATK buffs. Additionally, she fills out team Accuracy and provides a constant source of Spirit P, providing teams the firepower they need to excel.

A Defensive Gatekeeper

Meiling now shares her unique role with Hecatia, who brings defensive buffs and other forms of protection to the table. Asides from giving her team Yin DEF, she can also reduce Moon Damage to the team by 50%, and recover team Barriers. Additionally, Hecatia takes 35% less damage from Youkai enemies; leaving a broad swathe of Gensokyo unable to do more than dent her exterior.

Shockingly Broken

Hecatia breaks Paralyze barriers with frightening efficiency. Spell Card 2 will inflict and break 2 layers of Paralyze on all enemy targets, while her Last Word doubles this, inflicting and breaking 4 whole barriers at once. This is very certain to result in entire teams being Full Broken, leaving them open to retribution from her teammates should any survive the initial hammerfall.

Unfocused Elements

Hecatia struggles with carrying the mantle of her three roles, which materialize as Moon, Star and Sun bullets. This lack of focus means that she’ll be dividing her damage potential between elements that may not be effective against enemies, reducing her total output.

Seiran (B3) is a Speed-class friend who supports Yang Agility teams with Water and Moon elements while stopping enemies in their tracks with Freeze and Paralyze anomalies.

Powerful Damage Synergy

All of Seiran’s knowledge comes to bear with the plethora of synergies in her kit geared towards inflicting pain. A combination of Yang ATK and Crit ATK buffs for herself and debuffs on her enemies gives her a good head start while her Agility scaling lends her a good burst of speed. Her ability to deal 30% more Water and Moon damage on enemies weak to those elements will leave her opponents rooted to the spot as the hammer comes rushing down, the moment of impact made sweeter by the range of killers she has, which include Youkai, Kaiju, Moon Rabbit, Fairy, Machine and God. There won’t be much left to clean up when she’s done with her opponent.

An Anomaly in the Ranks

Seiran is able to manipulate both Freeze and Paralyze Anomalies to her favour, distributing them among her enemies and breaking them in wide sweeping ALL attacks that cover her Spell Card 1 and Last Word. She can do the same on a single enemy that has Burn applied to them with her Spread Shot as well.

Stunning Presence

Players looking to devise stall based strategies will enjoy Seiran’s ability to guarantee a stun on her 3P Focus Shot. This works well with her high base Agility stats and Agility buffs, ensuring she can pin enemies down before they have time to even blink.

Could use more buffs

Seiran has a decent kit to start with, but it doesn’t give her very many levels, even when maxed out. She can use a Friend or Story Card to help boost her levels of Yang ATK, Crit ATK and Agility further to maximize her output.

The Vampire Hunter arrives at the scene and befitting her title, she comes with tools to dispose of anyone who tries to fight against her. E1 Sakuya goes above and beyond to complete her mission to eradicate the Scarlet sisters and she proves this with her CRIT buffs.

Amazing power generation.

Sakuya will never be short on Spirit P, with her Spell Cards generating more of it with every use, while her skill keeps her fueled from the get go.

A good spread of elements on her Spell Cards with Sun and Metal

These two go hand in hand as Sakuya can use the power generation that she has with her skills and Spell Cards to break multiple barriers that her enemies would have. Sakuya’s 3/3 spread of Sun and Metal on both her 1st and 2nd Spell Card break multiple enemies with ease.

Last Word has great damage setup

Her Last Word, while not necessarily capable of insane damage on the 1st turn, can deal some great damage with setup. With a high peak due to her Last Word’s backloaded scaling of 1-1-3, Sakuya can make use of Yang ATK buffs to pump up her damage, as her Last Word only provides her with 2 levels of Yang ATK. However, thanks to her skills and pre-effects on her Spell Cards and Last Word, CRIT buffs are easily capped.

Selfish character with little utility

Ultimately, what holds Sakuya back would be her lack of utility outside of CRIT buffs. While the CRIT buffs that she provides can be really powerful in the right hands, these buffs may not impact the field as much as other buffs due to who can possibly take advantage of these buffs.

Solo farms: 3-3-3, 3-6-3, 3-11-1, 3-18-3, Hifuu E9.

Strong anomaly breaks

While she may have a primary focus on Star elements, Koishi’s barrier breaks are at their best when utilizing anomalies to break. With strong access to Freeze anomalies, she can full break with ease an enemy on the first turn, assuming they are weak to one of her elements.

Powerful Power support

One powerful utility tool she has is her ability to provide the party with a large amount of power. With her 2nd skill providing the party with 1.2 P, she augments this further with her Spell Cards and Last Word providing more power, allowing her teammates to be more liberal with their boosts.

Disjointed skills

While she functions as a YANG nuker and accordingly buffs YANG ATK, her DEF DOWN skill debuffs YIN DEF — this allows her to function with YIN teammates, but will be less useful in YANG-oriented teams where she is stronger.

Lack of powerful killers hamper her damage potential

Despite her strong initial burst of damage, her lack of powerful killers limits her growth on setup

Suwako proves to be the best out of the other A10 Friends, suiting her well for being her source game’s Extra boss. She holds a great front in the Metal-element department and an even greater one when it comes to Spirit Power restoration. On top of that, she holds great finishing power in her fully-metal Last Word and some anomaly breaks on her normal spells.

Able to spam barrier breaks with her Spell Cards and skills generating power.

Suwako might not have a 0P break option, but the Metal breaks on her spell cards are just great. Both of her normal spells have 3 Metal along with 3 of another element, while her Last Word is entirely made up of Metal. On top of that, her first spell can break Freeze anomalies at 3P and her second spell can do the same to Poison anomalies, which she inflicts when using the spell, at 2P. These may sound like hefty Boost values, but Suwako has so much Spirit Power generation on her spells and two of her skills that this is an easy bar to reach..

Good damage potential with her Last Word

A pure Metal Last Word means Suwako will be chasing down exactly one damage type, and excelling at hitting with it. Helps that it also boosts her entire party’s Crit ATK by 3 levels, setting her up for some nice rolling damage.

Okay team utility

Suwako achieves decent team utility from her skills and ability. Her second skill provides partywide Yang ATK UP and her third skill grants the team CRIT ATK UP, something her Last Word provides to the whole team as well. Topped with the CRIT Accuracy UP given to the party everytime Suwako Boosts, something that is easy with her quick Spirit Power gain, Suwako is a decent support option when it comes to offensive buffing.

High damage variance

Suwako has a Yang-only Last Word that has good damage potential after setup. However, this damage will rely a good bit on critical hits, a factor that her Killer bullets are not that great at ensuring on their own. She has secondary effects to increase CRIT chance based on the foe’s stats, but this is still putting faith into the enemy she is facing over guaranteeing great damage by herself.

Yukari (A7) can farm multiple current Story Card Stages, has a ton of elements and high tier Last Word damage, ranking up there with some UFES. A Well-rounded Friend who fits well in farms as well as CQ.

Powerful teamwide Yin and Accuracy support

Yukari keeps herself strong through many offensive buffs of both types, as well as very good early Hard scaling on her Last Word and even other spells. She can even get up to 2P turn 1 with her third skill to do a lot of immediate damage if needed. To top it off, Yukari has a nice variety of buffs in the form of Accuracy, Yin ATK, and Yin DEF buffs on her spell, and even a barrier restoration on her first spell.

Great overall damage.

Yukari has access to Human, Youkai and Gensokyo Killers, running the full gamut of the realm and almost anyone in it. Saddle her up with Crit ATK buffs and watch the numbers roll.

Very flexible due to ease of supporting.

Not only does Yukari do a lot, but she can do a lot relatively fine on any setup. Despite being a mixed Yin and Yang attacker,she can easily buff both her Yin ATK and Yang ATK and do so well in either that it doesn’t matter if she is paired with other Friends. Combined with her varied support as well, and you have a Friend that can serve many purposes in battle.

Unfocused Rainbow elements.

All of Yukari’s spells have an element on them, for better and for worse. She gets decent coverage of Fire and Metal on her second spell and Water and Wood on her Last Word, but her first spell is an uncomfortable mix of Star, Water, and Earth. With all of these different elements, Yukari may have an easy way to break many types of barriers, but for challenging quests like Elemental EX Battle Stages, her breaks will feel a lot more limited.

Flandre is a defense role character, who focuses primarily on Star breaks and protecting the team with guards.

Powerful star breaker

Flandre can deal a lot of Star breaks, not only with her Spell Cards, but also with her Basic Shots. This can enable some potential gimmicks which only Flandre can do, especially with her Basic Shots targeting all enemies.

Defensive capabilities can buy the team extra turns

With her power to outright prevent Star and Moon damage for the party, defense buffs, and abilities that can make any damage taken at full health to a negligible amount, Flandre can absolutely buy your teams some extra turns to complete a challenging fight.

Lackluster damage

One of Flandre’s biggest flaws, ironically, would be her damage output as while her Story Card can compensate for some damage loss, it will never compare to being able to hit common killers like Gensokyo Dweller or Youkai.

Too focused on a singular element

While focusing on a singular element may sound appealing at first, it reduces how flexible a character can be for multiple stages unless they truly stand out with phenomenal firepower, support, or even both. As Flandre struggles to offer either of these, she only is truly capable of being effective in Star only.

C3 Satori has come to defend your team with barriers, defense ups, and focus to boot.

Great survivability for both herself and the party

Satori has a good deal of Yang defense and can heal herself with her 1st skill. Combined with her 3rd passive reducing damage significantly at full HP, her 3rd skill outright nullifying damage from Liquid and Water bullets, and more barrier restorations on her 1st skill and Spell Cards, she can survive some brutal hits while helping the team with Focus.

Provides a lot of barriers and defense ups for the team

She provides multiple barriers with her 2nd spell card, 1st spell card, and Last Word. At the same time, she can also provide more defense ups with a strong preference to Yang on her 2nd skill, Spell Cards, and Last Word.

Awkward barrier breaking

One major problem that Satori has would be her elements, or lack of focus on one element. Without anomaly breaks to help supplement this, Satori fails to effectively strike what she wants to nuke easily.

Lacking in self buffs

Her only source of YANG ATK UP comes from her 3rd skill, not to mention that she has no source of CRIT ATK to take advantage of her damage. This results in her effective damage can be weaker than anticipated without external support.

Parsee’s debuffs are great for any Yin-based team, her element density is high, and her personal damage isn’t half bad either. She doesn’t have any significant drawbacks while being a solid choice for many teams.

Incredible elemental break potential, including 0P Water and Sun on Solo Shots.

Parsee has an All-Targeting first Spell Card with 4 lines of Sun, while her second Spell Card (Solo-Targeting) has 4 Metal with an additional 2 Sun. She tops this off with her Last Word with 4 Sun and 2 Water, with additional Freeze anomaly break potential at 3P.

Decent Debuff potential with CRIT DEF and Evasion.

Parsee’s various sources of Crit DEF and Evasion debuffs means your teams are always ready to hit hard.

Lack of strong Killers.

Her Killer range consists of just Soul, Fairy, Princess, Noble and Treasure. Hardly all-encompassing. Lean on Crit ACC if you want her to reach her full potential.

Otherwise limited team support.

Even if you count the above enemy debuffs as team support, it’s still rather limited, as the most notable team buffs come in the form of her Ability to grant the team +1 Yin ATK for every Boost performed. Exclude the debuff potential and that’s pretty much it for what she can do for the team. This isn’t all bad as Story Card effects and other teammates are always an option.

Miko has come to terms with her Attack Class to become the Defense Class and do a pretty damn good job at being one. With her main appeal being Yang DEF buffs, she not only applies them to the whole party, but she ends up giving out a huge amount thanks to a mix of spell effects, skills, and 1-turn Boost and Graze buffs. Of course, she still has a good offensive game thanks to self-Spirit Power UP and some Hard scaling on her Last Word. Although her variety of elements on her spells is way too high, she has a few anomaly breaks to make up for it, and it still does not undermine her party support potential.

Some elemental anomaly infliction and breaking via spells.

Miko can inflict both Burn and Paralyze on all foes with her second spell and follow it up with Solo-target anomaly breaks of both anomalies with her first spell. The amount of anomalies inflicted is random, but Miko is at least ensured 2 breaks as long as the foe isn’t immune to one of the anomalies.

Powerful Last Word paired with high Yang stats.

Miko’s high Yang offense comes from two sources: her high Yang ATK stat and her high Yang DEF that is buffed even further with several parts of her kit. For reference, she can easily produce 6 levels of Yang DEF UP in 1 turn without even using a spell or skill as long as she Boosts and Grazes 3 times. Thanks to her Last Word’s Hard scaling, these contribute greatly to her overall output.

Great tank.

The 6 levels of Yang DEF that Miko gets off of maximum Boosts and Grazes is a partywide buff, meaning everyone can join in on the fun! Even greater is her Barrier restore potential, as she restores one layer of the party’s Barrier with her first spell and 4-turn cooldown first skill.

Rainbow-element bullet lines on Spell Cards can be a hindrance.

Miko’s elemental access is a very mixed bag. She does have a spammable Sun option via 0P Sun on her Focus shot, but the rest of her elements are pretty mediocre. The rainbow spread on her spells, or just elements of very different types, makes it hard for Miko to lock down on a single elemental weakness. At the very least, her Last Word is a fair mix of Sun and Water to make it practical on enemies weak to either.

Lacking multiple Focus UP options for tanking.

Miko is definitely good at tanking hits, at least on the Yang-side of things, but unlike other tanks, she lacks consistent ways to raise her Focus to keep those attacks on her and not her allies. Her first spell grants 3 levels of Focus UP while her second spell does the same for an extra turn, which isn’t terrible. However, for extended fights, Miko will definitely have some issues catching up with Focus when compared to the best tanks.

While you may not notice her, being wary of Koishi’s existence is in your best interest as she’s a Friend that will make your journey much easier with her absolutely massive 1880 Yin ATK, great breaking and damage.

Great damage all around, and almost entirely AoE

Koishi’s output is held in place with her strong core of base stats, accuracy and a mix of buffs and debuffs to Yin ATK/enemy Yin DEF and Agility which scales with her damage.Being fully Yin also makes her easy to support.

Minor Extra Survivability

Koishi gets 1 Barrier regen on her 1st Spell Card, and her Passive Skill recovers 1 Barrier 50% of the time at the start of every turn. Live life long!

Selfish damage dealer

Outside of Accuracy, Evasion, and Agility, and the few AoE Yin DEF downs, she doesn’t support her team with anything big. She’s not bad in this regard, but she certainly gets outdone compared to other units.

Lacks any Crit buffs on her kit

Her Killers aren’t amazing, which means Koishi will need full Crit support to optimize her output.

The Mysterious Sword Master, Youmu Konpaku is a devastatingly powerful nuker, with outrageously high Slicing and a Last Word that’s amongst the highest of damage dealers for both farming and harder fights. She has no team utility besides breaks, but she hits so hard it doesn’t really matter, cutting down even time itself.

Great Elemental Break density and diversity throughout her Shots and Spell Cards

Metal, Fire and Wood features heavily on Youmu’s bullet lines..

Good Spirit P generation on attacks

She may not be frontloaded, but her shots can build up Spirit Power whenever needed at a decent rate to make up for a lack of a Spirit Power-restoring skill.

Really wants CRIT and Accuracy support for best damage

Youmu is a selfish buffer, keeping all of her spell and skill buffs to herself. The only teamwide buff is via Boosting, which even then is only Agility, which helps some Friends but not everyone. Even worse, without good Killer bullets or self-Accuracy buffs, she will need even more support in the form of Accuracy UP and CRIT Accuracy UP.

B3 Kaguya Houraisan is an extremely powerful Friend who is an easy pick for any meta-focused player. Unlike other top tiers who just try to heavily increase their Agility for Slice scaling, Kaguya goes for a more evasive approach in…increasing Evasion. While other Friends may have random Evasion buffs or Accuracy debuffs as downsides, B3 Kaguya can keep up the Evasion for so long that it can be a viable option! It also helps to be Ultra Festival, granting her very high Yang ATK and Agility stats.

Very high damage potential on Last Word

High Slice scaling and decent Killers (Youkai Killer hits so many things) means Kaguya’s Last Word will hit most enemies like a truck. Just grab some Crit ATK and you’re good to go!

Extremely high Spirit P collection rate.

Kaguya converts her self inflicted Paralyze and Blind barriers into Spirit P. No pain no gain (except she’s immune to these Anomalies).

Needs Crit and Yang ATK buffs to function at her best.

Kaguya does not have strong Yang ATK buffs and will need some support to hit higher levels. Her damage could also be improved by CRIT ATK due to her Youkai-Killer bullets, but she lacks these buffs as well.

Outside of Evasion and Agility utility, she does not have any other party utility to speak of.

Kaguya’s heavy focus on Evasion is something that really only works during certain challenging content, and otherwise is still a risk of just failing spectacularly. Because of this and her focus of buffing Agility for the whole team (to a good extent, at least), Kaguya lacks any other relevant team support for extended fights.

This little commander packs a lot of support in her arsenal, including Yang ATK, Agility, and Spirit Power for the party. Not only does she do a fantastic job at her role, but her elemental breaks for Water and Metal are very plentiful, and for General Friend standards, Nazrin is definitely one of the best.

Generally great access to Metal and Water breaks

Nazrin both has a good spammable elemental break in the form of a 0P Spread shot and good access to elements overall. Her first spell is a generally decent 3 Water breaks to all foes, while her second spell can be 4 Water breaks along with 2 Metal breaks. Her Last Word is also good at elemental breaks, having 4 Metal and 2 Water to help slap any foes weak to either element.

Decent Killers.

Nazrin has access to both Human and Youkai Killers, which covers a good spectrum of Gensokyo under her critical eye (Haha Crit joke).

A ton of support.

Every one of Nazrin’s skills has a buff that can assist many kinds of Friends, from Agility on her first skill to Accuracy support on her second skill to Spirit Power and Yang ATK on her third skill. Even her spells can be used for team support, most notably the 0.7 Spirit Power on her first spell and the Yang ATK and Agility teamwide buffs on her Last Word.

Flimsy with low Yang DEF stats.

Even with a character ability that allows herself to increase Yang DEF when boosting, Nazrin’s low Yang DEF can be pretty fatal when facing Yang-based opponents, as she isn’t really built to tank hits. Try pairing her up with a defensive tank to ensure she survives to be a good assist.

Low Slice scaling.

On the other side of the pendulum, Nazrin suffers from weak Slice scaling, which gimps her overall damage output.

Marisa Kirisame, the Witch of Scarlet Dreams, is an incredibly powerful and versatile unit. With a mixture of a devastatingly powerful All targeting Last Word that deals incredible damage for farming and harder fights alike, two All targeting Spell Cards, an abundance of team support, and Elemental Break access second to none, the Witch of Scarlet Dreams does it all.

Full ALL targeting on Spell Cards

Every spell in her arsenal is All-target to make sure no one feels left out on the Burning or hurting.

Self Charge makes her easy to support

More allies can stack on debuffs with their own Last Words before Marisa sweeps in for a finishing blow.

Also great at supporting others

Marisa provides Evasion DOWN, CRIT Def & Evasion DOWN, and Burn Barriers to support her and her teammates.

Weak Spirit Power generation on her shots

For such a Spirit Power-hungry Friend, not getting much from her basic shots can be somewhat damaging. While her second spell produces Spirit Power as well, you might want to have more boosts before using the spell. On top of that, her first skill only provides 0.75 Spirit Power, meaning she is unable to reach 2P on turn 1 without extra Friend support.

Lack of relevant Killers

Marisa’s Killer bullets cover only Incident Resolvers and Scarlet Devil Mansion residents, with her Last Word not even having the luxury of that minimal coverage. This means that she will heavily need to rely on CRIT Accuracy to hopefully land critical hits. Even her own CRIT Accuracy support, on her third skill, only lasts for one turn, making it difficult to fully take advantage of over a long fight.

Alice Margatroid is a speedy yet strong attacker with fantastic breaks. Watch her decimate Paralyze and Burn Anomalies while piling on rainbow elements. Follow that up with a large amount of Yin ATK UP for more damage, Agility UP and heavy Slice scaling for even more damage, and even a few Yin DEF debuffs on her second spell, and you get a magician who can do almost everything.

Paralyze and Burn anomaly breaks on All-target spell card, which she can inflict herself

Alice can break Paralyze and Burn anomalies via her first spell, which is All-targeting to maximize breaking potential. With the ability to inflict up to 4 of these anomalies on a single target with her second spell, Alice can easily break a lot of barriers by herself and even more with potential team support.

Heavy Yin ATK and Agility buffs for very high damage

Alice is a pure Attack-type Friend, heavily raising both her Yin ATK for amazing Last Word damage as well as Agility to get a good amount of Slice scaling at the start of the attack.

Unfocused Rainbow elements.

The only spell that hits the mark above average is her second spell, with 3 Metal and 3 Earth breaks. Her first spell and Last Word, unfortunately, are rather mixed in many elements and aren’t really good at elemental breaks, instead at higher risk of losing damage to elemental resistances.

Low team utility.

Alice’s buffs are mostly for herself. She gives a few of the Yin ATK and Agility buffs to the whole party, but not enough to stand as a worthwhile support.

Flower Aya is very potent in terms of utility and breaking. To be more specific, she provides unseen accuracy support to her team and a solid array of debuffs in addition to 2 Blind anomalies. In terms of breaking she excels due to her P0 break shot and a wide variety of breaks.

Good Turn 1 damage

With a slightly frontloaded Last Word with a bullet scaling of 2-2-1, Aya can definitely deal some good immediate damage, especially when using her third skill to reach 2P immediately.

Plentiful debuffs to Evasion, Accuracy, and Yang DEF

Aya’s main role is debuffing, especially in the field of Evasion via her first spell and first skill and CRIT Evasion via her Last Word. Since she gets self-Quick, she can easily apply this CRIT Evasion DOWN before other CRIT-heavy Friends take a shot at the opponents. On top of that, she gets a little defensive debuffing through her third skill, which debuffs all foes’ Yang DEF by 2 levels.

Reliant on Killer bullets to deal sufficient damage

Sadly, since a lot of her kit is focused more for slightly debuffing foes rather than heavily buffing herself, Aya’s damage will not be the greatest unless you hit her Killers, which are very spread out and may not always hit when you need them the most.

Shion’s got two jobs: saddle your opponent with a ton of Yin & Yang DEF DOWN and some Burn Barriers, and delete one opponent from existence with a extremely potent Solo Last Word. She’s good at hard fights, she’s good for farming, the only thing she’s not stellar at is that her Break ability is just kinda average. Still, she’s so good at everything else it’s hard to care, especially since DEF DOWN doesn’t work with Full Breaks. 

+Extremely strong Solo-target Last Word that’s also frontloaded, making her good for farming and hard fights alike
Shion’s Last Word will make sure that a singular foe feels great pain quickly due to its 3-1-1 bullet spread. On top of even more Yin DEF DOWN from casting the attack itself, Shion gets Human-Killer bullets to dish out some nice additional CRIT damage.

+Devastatingly powerful DEF DOWN debuffs
Shion’s Last Word isn’t the only defense debuff she has, far from it. Her second skill debuffs both defensive types (Yin and Yang), while her second spell and third skill are Evasion debuffs to act as accuracy support for the team if needed. With so many DEF DOWNs, Shion doesn’t even need to Full Break the foes for good damage numbers, from either her or her team.

— Breaks are merely average
And good thing she doesn’t need Full Break either, as breaking-wise, Shion is just an average Fire breaker. She is definitely good for the job, with 3 Fire breaks on her spells and 4 more on her Last Word, but she won’t be doing anything very impressive when breaking the enemy. It may be for the better, as DEF DOWN doesn’t work when enemies are Full Broken, giving Shion less use on a team that is just going for breaks.

Marisa’s simply among the strongest units in the game’s history, Possessing superior firepower (in more ways than one), and a ton of support to boot (mainly for Yin and CRIT, and to a lesser extent Yang), she’ll obliterate anything in her path, and singlehandedly farm every fight in the game to boot with some manual play.

+ Good Element access, including P0 Fire and Star on her basic shots.
B3 Marisa might not have elemental coverage on every single bullet of her spells, but her coverage is still nevertheless great. Not only does she have 0P access to her main elements, but her Last Word has 4 Star on it, which is great against any enemy weak to the starry element.

+ Incredible damage output.
As expected from Ultra Festivals, Marisa is easily able to serve a damaging meal, starting off strong with 6 levels of Yang ATK UP upon using her Last Word. She can also boost her own Yang ATK and CRIT ATK/CRIT Accuracy with skills to make her damage output good on her spells. Finally, she gives heavy Accuracy buffs to herself to ensure her amazing damage is consistent.

+ Great support for Yin & CRIT attackers, with decent support for Yang attackers.
+ Can put out a lot of Burn Barriers.
Not only are her Yang and CRIT buffs good, but most of them, particurally on her skills, are partywide. This is especially helpful for CRIT-focused attackers as well as helping out Yang attackers a bit. Her Yin support comes from her the great amount of Burn barriers applied by all of her spells, which inflict Yin-based debuffs to anyone inflicted with them. While her Yin and Yang coverage is smaller compared to CRIT support, it still gives her good utility for many team compositions.

— Bad Spirit Power generation on her shots.
Marisa may be able to increase her Spirit Power via all of her skills, but lacking in Spirit Power generation on her shots means that she will eventually have less Spirit Power to work with or will have to rely on a Spirit Power-restoring story card.

— CRIT DEF support is situational.
The CRIT DEF UP from her first skill can help if a certain target is, for example, targeting one of your Friend’s own Killer weaknesses, but those situations are still few and far between. If it truly is an issue, you might as well be defending with Grazes anyway.

Solo Stage Farms: 2-7-1, 3-3-3, 3-6-3 

The maid with a hint of scarlet mist has a wide variety of abilities to make herself stick out, primarily from lowering the Yin DEF and Evasion of every opponent or increasing the Yin ATK of herself as well as her allies. Even with a Solo-target Last Word, Sakuya makes up for that with an array of All-target spell cards that have a great amount of Fire and Moon breaks along with basic spread and focus shots that have 0P Metal breaks. 

+ Every spell card bullet is elemental; plentiful Fire, Metal, or Moon breaks
+ P0 All-target Metal break on Spread and Focus shot
When it comes to elemental breaking, Sakuya is quite amazing at it, with 0P Metal on both basic Shots, which are also All-Targeting, and when fully boosted, you can bring out 3 Metal Breaks on her Focus Shot! If that wasn’t enough, everything else is elemental! With the first Spell Card having 2 Breaks for Fire, Metal and Moon, 3 Breaks for Fire and Moon on the second Spell Card and a Last Word with 6 out of 6 lines of Fire, this maid’s elemental breaking potential is immensely valuable!

+ Support through Yin ATK buffs and Yin DEF/Evasion debuffs
Sakuya also provides some useful support, especially on the Yin side of things. With Skill 3 providing the team 2 Levels of Yin ATK UP and Skill 2 weakening the enemies’ Yin DEF by 2 Stages as well as the ability to lower the Evasion of all Targets by up to 2 Stages via second Spell Card, there are definitely ways for teammates, especially the Yin based ones, to benefit from this.

+ Powerful Yin/Fire-only Last Word
— Solo LW Damage does reach a ceiling in comparison to other strong units
With Yin buffs and target debuff potential, with the latter even being present in her Last Word, Sakuya’s will do great when it comes to this attack. While this is very good for Solo LW standards, it does miss out on a few things that may have benefited it just a little more, such as Hard/Slice Scaling, which Sakuya does not use at all. As well as this, her Killer range is also somewhat limited, meaning that CRIT potential is lower than other high tier units. However, this is still a very good Last Word, even if it isn’t the cream of the crop. 
 

Solo Story Card Farms: 3-6-3

The Matriarch of the Kiketsu Family is a formidable unit with access to Water and Wood breaks, and an ALL Wood Last Word. While Yachie’s utility isn’t the most impressive thing about her, her Yin ATK boosts and Scaling for Hard and Slice are not to be overlooked.

Powerful Last Word, especially when paired with her best story card.

Yachie is a very unique Last Word nuke due to getting scaling from both Hard and Slice, giving her reasons to buff both Yin DEF (since it is a fully Yin attack) and Agility. Her skills do both of this, and with a Gensokyo-Killer at 2P, Yachie’s damage easily hits ridiculous numbers fast.

Very solid Yin DEF and Agility Support

Yachie’s second skill is a partywide Yin DEF buff for 2 levels over 3 turns, making her actually decent as a defensive side-support. Both her second spell and first skill serve as Agility buffs for the party, and doing a rather good job at that. She even gets direct offense support via Grazing, which buffs the party’s Yin ATK.

Low barrier restoration is problematic, especially when using Graze for Yin ATK

Having 1 barrier restore on her third skill is definitely not a bad thing, but for a Friend who wants to spam Graze for Yin ATK buffs, having to use barriers for reasons such as defending will make her barrier and Graze access more limited than the usual Friend.

Yuuka Kazami is a healer role character, who is focused around nuking with Sun elements and has some additional utility.

Powerful sun nuke

As befitting of the one who hangs around the Garden of the Sun frequently, Yuuka’s sun breaks, as well as damage potential are all great. Thanks to her large amount of Sun breaks as well as good access to Youkai killer, Yuuka can do extremely well against common enemies.

Good at enabling and breaking barriers

With her power to outright prevent Star and Moon damage for the party, defense buffs, and abilities that can make any damage taken at full health to a negligible amount, Flandre can absolutely buy your teams some extra turns to complete a challenging fight.

Low utility

Despite her 3rd skill having powerful effects tied to it with a dispel and 2 party barriers, Yuuka’s utility is not particularly impressive due to the high cooldown on the skill, as well as overall weak supporting ability.

Too focused on a singular element

While it can be taken as a strength, too much focus on an element can make her rather cumbersome in more difficult content, and Yuuka has this problem with her focus towards Sun elements, albeit compensated by her killer range.

Eternal Reisen fixates herself on her ability that allows her to deal a lot of damage in a very short amount of time to enemies weak against the elements she applies. Because of this, she is very useful for farming and at the same time, harder fights that could make use of her breaks and high damage output.

Breaks at anomalies on P2 of Spell Card 1

Reisen can break any anomaly with her first spell…provide you find a way to inflict them beyond Paralyze and Blind on her kit. Bring other Anomaly inflicting Friends for the ride

Very high damage for both hard levels and farming

Reisen’s Last Word damage is simply very good, giving herself 4 levels of Yin ATK UP before beginning and having some great Slice to pair up with her Agility buffs.

Great team-wide Agility buffs

Reisen may not do much teamwide support, but she can at least raise the party’s Agility a fair bit with her second spell and third skill. Granted, not everyone might need these buffs, but Friends with Slice scaling that need more Agility will appreciate it.

Doesn’t scale nearly as well as other top tier units for longer fights

While Reisen can easily max out her own Yin ATK, she lacks Crit related buffs to capitalize on. Crit Evasion debuffs will only go so far. Bring some Crit ATK support to keep her doing healthy damage.

Youmu is a powerful CRIT and Killer enabler with a potent All targeting Last Word, fantastic for harder fights and solid for event farming.

Good access to Water and Metal Breaks, including P0 All targeting Metal on a Basic Shot

Youmu both breaks Metal at 0P with her Focus shot and does good elemental breaks on her spells. She has 4 Metal and 2 Water on her first spell, with the revese on her second spell (4 Water and 2 Metal). Her Last Word goes for a good mix of Wood and Moon if needed, heavily outpacing her L1 self’s Moon access.

High All-targeting damage on Last Word

Just like the L1 Myon, Youmu powers both her Yin ATK and Yang ATK before using her Last Word for major damage. Her damage is a bit backloaded, but if set up with the defensive debuffs of her other spells, then Youmu will definitely show off her sword mastery with flying colors. She even gets a good variety of Killer bullets for good measure.

Fantastic support for CRIT and Killer attackers

Youmu has a great first skill that buffs both CRIT ATK and CRIT Accuracy of the party to serve as very good CRIT support for Friends who need the accuracy or the attack buff for Killers.

Backloaded damage

Youmu requires heavy Spirit P expenditure to hit a lot of her bullet lines.

Lunar War Soldier, like her Gardener comrade, is a more balanced fighter of the six Lunar War fighters; not outright excelling in one field of combat but instead doing very well in most of them. Reisen can guide everyone well in the front lines of battle.

Very good turn 1 Last Word damage

While not a frontloaded attack, her Last Word can still do heavy damage right off the bat at 2P thanks to an incredible 5 levels of Yang ATK UP upon use. She even gets 5 levels of Yang DEF UP to support the huge Hard scaling on the attack. Furthermore, she debuffs the targets’ Evasion to serve as great accuracy support and hit even more bullets. With already good turn 1 damage, her set-up damage only makes her stronger.

Provides good attack and defense support

Many parts of Reisen’s kit are able to provide good team utility. Grazing gives the party Yang ATK UP, she can give the party Yin DEF through Boosting or her third skill, and the Evasion debuffs on her spells indirectly serve as accuracy support to everyone. To top things off, she can even restore a barrier via her third skill and heal the party for 25% of her HP through her first skill.

Accuracy debuffs are situational

Reisen’s spells and skills obsess a bit over debuffing the opponents’ Accuracy. While it can definitely get you through some tight scenarios, the debuffs are definitely not as globally useful as what the rest of her kit boasts.

Mediocre Killers

Reisen’s Killer bullets only target Moon-related entities, something that not a lot of Lost Word foes can say they have. In order to optimize her CRIT damage, she will need support in the form of CRIT ATK and CRIT Accuracy.

The steed of Prince Shoutoku serves to provide plentiful barrier breaks and a strong hitting single-targeting Last Word. While her utility may not be the best for most characters to take advantage of, the other aspects of her kit compensate for this downside and help make her useful in nearly any piece of challenging content.

Amazing Elemental access rivaling the best in terms of barrier breaks.

Not only does Saki contain two 0P spammable break options in the form of 0P Wood on her Spread shot and 0P Fire on her Focus shot, but the rest of her spells’ breaks are just outright good. Her first spell is 4 breaks of Star and her second spell covers 4 breaks of Wood, with 2 Fire spread out for those two. Saki more than makes up for the firepower with a Fire-only Last Word, solidifying herself as a great elemental breaker.

High Turn 1 damage which can be increased with CRIT support.

Without a backloaded Last Word, Saki’s Solo-target damage potential turn 1 is better than other backloaded competitors. Thanks to her Gensokyo-Killer and Human-Killer bullets, however, she can easily rack up even higher numbers with a little bit of CRIT ATK support. It helps that her damage doesn’t fully rely on critical hits either, thanks to some decent Slice scaling and other buffs.

Main sources of team utility are locked to her 2nd Spell Card and Last Word.

Saki is mostly a greedy attacker, only buffing her allies via her first skill, which is only 2 levels of Agility UP. Her real utility comes in the form of Evasion debuffs on her second spell and the defensive debuff on her Last Word, which is only for a singular target, somewhat limiting its reach.

Byakuren’s A12 self serves as a much better Friend, deciding to abandon the attempt to protect youkai and instead shooting first and asking questions later. Byakuren is a strong Yin nuke with a bit of team utility as well.

Incredible ALL SUN Last Word

Byakuren’s Last Word is just an insane attack, being fully Sun, Human-Killer bullets, and a great amount of damaging potential in general. It has the unfortunate side effect of being heavily back loaded, but this is solvable with her generous Spirit P stores.

Good amount of Spirit Power restoration on spell 2 and skill 2

With Byakuren eating up all that Spirit P for her attacks, its a good thing she generates them readily from her kit.

Little team utility outside of Accuracy support and Yin DEF debuffs

Byakuren is another case of a greedy buffer, mainly preparing her own damage instead of helping others. The Burn anomalies do inflict Yin DEF debuffs if not broken by her Focus shot, serving as decent Yin nuking support for herself and allies. But outside of a bit of CRIT ATK and Accuracy buffing from her third skill, Byakuren is really just here to dish out a lot of damage.

Iku Nagae transfers over to LostWord quite well. She is able to apply a multitude of buffs to herself using her skills quickly and deals a ton of AoE damage. In addition, she can also serve as a Water/Wood breaker with very little drawbacks.  She also has incredible farm ability. This makes her an overall S+ Tier Friend.

+P0 Wood/Water breaks on her shots.
Iku has two 0P spammable breaks on her shots just to show off: that being Wood on her Spread shot and Water on her Focus shot. The rest of her spells’ elemental breaks may just be rather mediocre, but never underestimate the 6/6 Wood breaks on her Last Word. On a Wood-weak foe, it is practically asking for destruction from this attack.

+Powerful AoE and Yang damage
+Last Word possesses 2 levels of 2 Yang DEF DOWN
Iku has some great early Slice scaling on her Last Word, which gets even better when she heavily buffs her Agility on her spells, skills, and even when inflicting herself with Paralyze, something she does on her second and third skills. If her Energy-only Last Word wasn’t enough, then she also debuffs the targets’ Yang DEF to help out more of the team.

+Can inflict up to a total of 7 Paralyze Barriers on all foes
-Applies Paralyze barriers to her allies
Paralyze anomalies is Iku’s final main theme: being able to apply up to 7 of them after using both of her second spell uses and her third skill. While being unable to break them herself, any Paralyze anomaly breaker will have to owe Iku a favor if she is able to take advantage of it. However, the main cost of these Paralyze-related skills comes in the form of the partywide Paralyze on her third skill. Not everyone wants to be paralyzed, meaning the rest of them will have to waste a barrier layer if they don’t want to risk being stunned. Finding a Friend that restores anomalies on barriers will just remove Iku’s own buffs from self-Paralyze!

-Weaker in longer fights, where she must spend Barriers to survive and thus cannot benefit from her character ability
If Iku needs to use barriers to defend herself, she gets less layers to play around with her character ability, and therefore less buffs. Good barrier restoration is the main counter for this, but obviously Iku does not have any way to do that by herself.

Solo Stage Farms: 2-7-1, 3-3-3, 3-11-1

Chimata is a strong Yang Attack Friend that supplements her entire team with Yang and Crit buffs while also debuffing the enemy in equal measure.

Provides Accuracy and Spirit P support

Chimata’s third skill increases team Accuracy, while her first and second Spell Cards each boosts Team Spirit P by 0.5. She can also provide herself 1 Spirit P through her second skill, allowing her access to good Turn 1 damage.

Debuffs enemies while buffing allies

Chimata’s Spell Cards operate on a strict give and take policy. Her Spell Cards buffs all allies’ Yang ATK and DEF while simultaneously debuffing the same stats for the enemy team. Her skills add onto this, giving her team more Yang ATK while debuffing enemy Crit DEF and ACC.

Teamwide Blind setting and breaking

Chimata can inflict up to two Blind barriers on all enemies using her second Spell Card, and then break those barriers with a 2P Last Word.

Rainbow elements hurt her breaking capability

Most of Chimata’s attacks operate on a spectrum of elements, meaning she won’t ever break more than one (or two or three) elements on any given enemy, anomaly breaks notwithstanding.

Killers aren’t as far-reaching as other top-tier Friends

Chimata’s killers are focused very specifically towards the Youkai Mountain and the river that flows it, hitting an assortment of Tengus, Kappas and various residents among those areas. Her Human Killer and Moon Related Killer bullets only see use on two lines of her Last Word, giving them very little room to shine through.

A6 Patchouli Knowledge’s primary role will be to quickly nuke the competition, especially when hitting her Human-Killer bullets on her Last Word. She can pretty easily buff her own Yin ATK via skills and even extend Accuracy, CRIT Accuracy, and Yang ATK buffs to her allies. While her elemental access is very expensive, making it difficult to focus on one element, her spells apply Burn and Poison for either more debuffs or anomaly breaks on the same spells that inflict the anomalies. These factors combined give her good synergy with many teams and make her a very valued Friend.

+ 0P All-target Water on Focus shot
— The rest of her elemental access is very mixed
Patchouli starts off somewhat strong in the elemental front with an All-target 0P Water break on her Focus shot. From there, however, her elemental access just goes all over the place, from Fire and Wood on her first spell to Water and Metal on her second spell to Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood on her Last Word. It may give her plenty of elements to use, but it makes her impractical to focus on one element for, say, an Element EX Battle Stage.

+ Practical anomaly inflictions and breaks on spells
Patchouli makes up for strange elemental breaks with very useful anomaly breaks. Her first spell inflicts 3 layers of Burn on all foes and can break those anomalies at 2P. Her second spell inflicts 2 layers of Poison on the targeted foe and can break those anomalies at 1P. Being able to cast and immediately break anomalies allows Patchouli to get some easy breaks in. On top of that, if she needs to wait for other Friends to inflict those anomalies after using their own spells, she can self-Charge with her first skill to synergize well with anomaly-inflicting allies.

+ Heavy-damage capability with her Last Word at 3P
— Backloaded Last Word means she needs 3P to do great damage
Patchouli’s heavy damage comes from her Yin-only Last Word, which holds a higher CRIT rate and Human-killer bullets at higher Boosts. When not boosting or hitting those killer bullets and lack the proper CRIT Accuracy, however, her damage will definitely be quite lacking. She can at least build up Spirit Power by herself rather easily with her third skill’s 1.75 increase, although it does have a hefty cooldown. 

+ Teamwide Accuracy and Yang ATK support on skills
— Rather long cooldown on skills
Patchouli holds some rather decent teamwide buffs on her skills, primarily the 2 levels of CRIT Accuracy UP and Yang ATK UP on her first and second skills respectively. She also grants 1 level of Accuracy UP on her second skill, something that is flexible thanks to all of the buffs’ 3-turn durations. However, the main drawback of these skills are their cooldowns. Skill 1 has an average 5-turn cooldown, but Skill 2 has a 6-turn cooldown and Skill 3 has a lengthy 7-turn cooldown. The latter may only be a self-buff, but it still stands that Patchouli can be rather slow if relied on for consistent buffs throughout a battle.

Rumia’s darkness now comes tinged with a spot of blood magic, manifesting in a Destruction-Class Friend who focuses on spreading her Blindness to her foes with an extra serving of Crit debuffs, allowing her allies to feast well upon the remains of her enemies.

Strong Crit debuffs

Rumia’s kit is dedicated towards ensuring enemy teams are constantly weak to incoming Crits, helping Friends hit those hard notes when going ham.

Powerful Blind Anomaly setting and breaking

Her second Spell Card takes the cake when paired with her first Skill, allowing her to break 4 Blind Barriers instantly when boosted twice. Blind breaking also features in her Last Word and Focus Shot.

Decent tanking ability

Rumia has several layers of damage nullification, depending on how lucky she is with her passives. Her ability to recover both Barriers and HP allows her to stay healthy in prolonged battles.

Slow innate Accuracy gain

Unusual for modern Friends is Rumia’s slow Accuracy gain, which is locked behind her Spell Cards and mostly require Spirit P expenditure to unlock. Keep some Acc support handy in the form of Story Cards or Friends.

Lacks damage

Although Rumia can debuff to high hell, her kit lacks any buffs to Yin ATK, as well as meaningful killers, meaning she’ll need additional support to increase her personal output.

Tewi is a Heal-Class Friend who can remove Barrier statuses, Binds and Debuffs from your party with startling frequency while empowering Yang teams to rain terror upon her enemies..

Team stays clean and healthy

For such a debilitating trickster, Tewi keeps her own team clean, with a 2T cooldown on cleansing team Barrier Anomalies and Healing HP on her 3rd skill. She has multiple other sources of team Healing as well as team Barrier Recovery, allowing her to stretch out battles in her favor as long as she needs.

Enemy teams will buckle under Anomalies

On the other hand, enemies will fall before Poison and Paralysis, while she sweeps up by breaking those in a variety of ways. If you have someone to land Freeze, she can collect that as well, breaking the whole lot through her Last Word.

Dual source of Bind/Debuff Cleansing

Somewhat unique to Tewi is her multiple sources of Bind and Debuff Cleansing, split between her Skill 1 and 2. This has a strategic purpose, allowing you to ride out multiple waves of Binds while knocking them all out without having to wait for a Cooldown to end.

Slow innate Accuracy gain

Tewi’s Accuracy gain is somewhat unorthodox, locked behind her Spell Cards and mostly require Spirit P expenditure to unlock. Keep some Acc support handy in the form of Story Cards or Friends.

Lacks damage

Tewi is a good example of a Heal-Class Friend who excels in her specialty, while falling short in others. Her lack of Killers is compounded by her odd spread of Elements, with Wood being the only one tying them all together. Don’t expect Tewi to mop up. That job will fall to her teammates who follow up on her tricks.

Team Anomaly Cleansing is a double edged sword

With the increasing number of Friends who benefit from Anomalies, Tewi’s doctoring may have less than the desired effect when paired up with the wrong teammates.

Mokou (B5) is a Defense-Class Friend who boosts her party’s Defense, recovers Barriers and shields them from the ravages of Fire and Sun Elements.

Spreads her immortality around

A generous Mokou is a frightening ally to have. Her ability to help her team graze, heal or almost ignore damage sources is not to be trifled with. Coupled with her multiple sources of Focus UP and additional DEF buffs and healing, Mokou will keep your team healthy for a very long time.

Strong Barrier Breaker

Most of Mokou’s bullet lines feature an element that works on the enemy. Most of these are focused on Fire, with a minor degree in Sun, as well as a smattering of additional elements she’s taken co-curriculum classes for on her Spell Card 2. And while rainbow Spell Cards are generally frowned upon, she enhances this with her ability to inflict and simultaneously break Burn Anomalies on this attack.

Can pound the ground with her enemies with some setup

Mokou benefits from having both a high Yang ATK stat -and- a high Yang DEF stat she can scale Hard bullets off. With a ton of Yang DEF buffs already on her kit, all you need to do is fill in for her Yang ATK, Crit ATK and Accuracy before you start seeing those damage numbers rising.

Balancing Anomalies on her kit can be annoying

Mokou earns different benefits from Burn and Freeze anomalies, with the former helping unlock her offensive capabilities through Hard scaling while the latter heals her passively each turn. With her self-inflicted Freeze coming from her misc attacks, Mokou will need to consciously fire off her Skill 2 early if she wants to avoid filling up her Barriers too early with the wrong anomaly. A minor quip to be sure, but worth considering when optimising runs.

Lacks Offensive support for herself and team

Aside from some minor Yang ATK buffs and Spirit P, Mokou doesn’t do much else when it comes to pushing damage numbers up. Her own Accuracy buffs are locked behind Spell Card use, with only her Last Word guaranteeing her a boost. She also lacks notable Killers, meaning you’ll have to boost her Crit Acc alongside her other stats if you want her to deal meaningful damage.

Ibaraki Douji’s Arm (L1) is a Destroy-class Friend who can rally her party’s Crit while wreaking havoc on the battlefield.

Critically Acclaimed Friend

Ibaraki’s Arm has a knack for singling out enemy weaknesses, with the ability to boost both Crit ACC and Crit ATK for her entire party to dizzying heights. Her own lines feature the powerful Youkai Killer alongside a few others to help her hit broad swathes on Gensokyo’s populace, as well as Explosive bullets that give her a chance of landing crits on enemies with heavy Yin or Yang DEF (bullet line dependant). Keep her stocked with Spirit P and soon you’ll be partying on the smoldering ashes of your enemies’ remains.

Burn Baby Burn

Friends with the ability to both drop and break Anomalies in a single breath are always cherished. Ibaraki’s Arm does this on her Spellcard 1 which also hits ALL enemies, leaving them with much fewer barriers than before.

Needs Yin support

Ibaraki’s Arm is very heavily weighted towards landing Crits, with very minor Yin buffs on her end. You will want to fill this gap with allied supports, or Story Cards to keep her Yin ATK levels healthy.

Odd Element balancing

It can be hard to pinpoint any particular element for her to break, aside from Earth. Even then, she has some awkward choices in her kit, with her Last Word featuring 4 Metal and 2 Earth. She rocks 3 Water/2 Earth/1 Moon on her Spell Card 1, and 4 Earth/2 Star on Spell Card 2. Plan accordingly.

Kanako Yasaka (L80) is a Technical-Class Friend who expertly wields Anomalies to her benefit and against her opponents before laying down devastating firepower.

Anomalous Faith

Kanako’s mastery of Anomalies is evident in the way she wields elements of the Land and Sky equally. She can break 3 Poison barriers on a single target, and can setup a whopping 6-7 Paralyze breaks on ALL enemies on Turn 1. Her Last Word can break both these Anomalies, adding Burn and Freeze to the mix. Finally, she converts Burn, Freeze and Paralyze into a cornucopia of buffs, making her a great addition to most Anomaly teams.

Mountain of Damage

The Goddess of Wind and Rain can unleash a torrent of damage, with Yang ATK and Crit ATK buffs that come close to maxing her out. Her Killers are nothing to sneeze at, covering the ever popular Gensokyo tag, while also hitting Gods and Parallel Presences to great effect.

Elemental Soup

Kanako has a colorful assortment of Elements spread throughout her kit. She hits both Wood and Star on her ALL targeting Spell Card 1 while Spell Card 2 focuses entirely on hitting a single target with Earth. Her Last Word carries Wood, Metal and Water, similar to her Spread and Focus Shots. This lack of focus is of smaller consequence due to her ability to break barriers efficiently through Anomalies, but will limit her damage potential when hitting ineffective elements.

Selfish Attacker?

Most of Kanako’s kit is very much geared towards her own benefit, offering little in return to her allies. She is able to provide useful Accuracy, Yang ATK and Crit ATK buffs to her Friends, but she is otherwise very much looking to shine in the spotlight.

Yuyuko is a great support Friend who fills her team with energy while enabling Yin teams to do their best against tier enemies.

Provides Accuracy and Spirit P support

⅔ of Yuyuko’s Spell Cards provide her teammates Spirit P, while her second Skill gives them even more. Her third Skill boosts team Accuracy, covering their basics for a clean offense.

Powerful Yin support

Yuyuko’s skills and Spell Cards all contribute some measure of Yin ATK, Crit ATK and Yin DEF (useful for Hard scaling). She can further augment these stats by Boosting and Grazing, which increase the party’s Yin DEF and Yin ATK by 1 per level respectively.

Low cooldowns on skills

Yuyuko’s first and third skills both have a 3 turn cooldown, while her second skill has a 4 turn cooldown, allowing her to reapply buffs on her team swiftly.

Access to Poison anomaly infliction and breaking

With her Focus shot being able to break Poison, her Spread shot having access to 2 lines that apply the same anomaly, and her 2nd Spell Card being a potential 3 poison layers to every opponent that can be broken with the same spell card at 2P, and rarely her ability to reflect Poison will get her extra anomaly inflictions, lastly her LW that can break poison, she is able to use the anomaly to her own benefit by lowering her opponents’ Yin DEF or by full breaking them.

Low Hard scaling

Yuyuko’s second Spell Card and Last Word all feature some measure of Hard scaling. Unfortunately these numbers are relatively modest, with 2 lines of 20% each on her second Spell Card and 30% on her first line on her Last Word. Her Last Word also has some Agility scaling, though her stats aren’t high enough to make good use of it.

Division of bullet types and elements on Last Word makes it difficult to optimize

Yuyuko’s Last Word is a mix of Water and Wood elements, while her bullet types are divided between Laser and Energy. With no cards available that boost all these traits at once, players will have to decide which elements and bullets they want to focus on improving with Story Cards.

Once, Meiling was the weakest friend in the game. Now, she has been buffed to the point of being one of the strongest. For event farming, she’s among the strongest candidates, she is also capable of farming chapter 3 act 1 in conjunction with Tewi. For harder fights, she packs amazing damage, good team support, and above average element access, including P0 Earth on her Focus Shot. You can’t go wrong with this gatekeeper, and she’s absolutely deserving of being called one of LostWord’s stronger Friends.

+ Above average Element access, including P0 Earth on a Basic Shot
Meiling’s elemental spread on her spells may be considered average by most standards, but the 3 Star on her first spell does a lot to give her more utility due to the usefulness of Star breaks. Additionally, the 0P Earth on her Focus shot gives her a spammable breaking option to make her truly above average.

+ Extremely strong Last Word that scales well into longer fights
— Doesn’t quite reach the same levels of damage as the very best attackers
Meiling’s Last Word is frontloaded, meaning it has a 3-1-1 bullet spread to give it greater power at 1P. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have room to grow at 2P or 3P, as her Last Word has downright wonderful Hard scaling that can be taken advantage of with additional buffs from her own skills or when Boosting. Still, these damage numbers are tamer compared to the hardest hitters, but that doesn’t mean Meiling doesn’t try her hardest.

+ Good team support
Meiling’s support isn’t going to win any big awards, but for an offensive Friend they are definitely above average. Her Yin ATK buff on her second skill is both teamwide and lasts 3 turns while having a 4 turn cooldown, allowing her to buff many Friends’ over long periods of time. Her Yang DEF buffs upon Boosting are also teamwide, providing some extra Hard scaling for Yang nukes when the time is needed.

The Sanae from the incident involving the mountain gods fills a very clear role: offensive Speed-type Nuking. With high a Agility stat, Agility buffs, and a heavy Yang ATK stat to coincide with her Yang-only, Slice-heavy Last Word, she will certainly give the foes a run for their money (or faith?). Outside of this, Sanae can provide some Yang ATK and Agility buffs for the party, but her team utility is still low and her elemental breaks can be rather mixed.

+ All-target 0P Star on Spread Shot
Sanae spreads out the Star breaks with her 0P Spread shot, hitting all foes, which can be very good on a stage with Star-weak foes. The rest of Sanae’s breaking is good, but nothing amazing. She retains a good amount of Star bullets on her spells, but mixes in a lot of Water and Wood as well to make her breaking niche mixed and yet confused. She will still shine in Star breaking for the most part, but not as much as a dedicated Star breaker.

+ High Yang ATK
+ Good Slice Scalings
Both of Sanae’s offensive stats, Yang ATK and Agility, are high and support her heavy self-buffs for great Last Word damage. The Slice of her Last Word is somewhat lower than other Slice attackers, but what she lacks in quality she makes up for with quantity, or consistency in Slice scaling throughout the entire attack. Her many Agility buffs from skills, spells, and even Grazing help keep this scaling high as well.

+ Lots of Barrier restore for longer fights
-Squishy without Barrier
Sanae has two ways to restore her own Barrier layers: a layer restore from her 5-turn cooldown third skill and after using her Last Word. This helps her defenses a slight bit, along with giving her more Graze for Agility buffs, but otherwise Sanae lacks in defense and can end up suffering a lot of pain if she is not careful.

— Unfocused team support, with only a couple levels of Party’s Agility, Evasion and Yang ATK UP throughout skills
Sanae’s worthwhile teamwide buffs come in the form of Agility, given from her second spell, first skill and Grazing, and Yang ATK, given from her third skill. She does not help the party in any other way, and her Agility buffs are situational, based on if her allies have Slice scaling of their own or even need the additional levels of Agility UP to properly function.

Very good supportive capabilities

The cute scarlet-haired nameless devil gives it her all as a Support unit to support her party by providing a wide variety of buffs. Her Yin-based support capabilities are above average and can be convenient to have if you want to easily set up offensive buffs for the party. She is also able to support the CRIT and Accuracy department via her Spell Cards, which can prove beneficial most of the time due to how crucial both buffs are in having consistent and high damage outputs. For universal support, she is capable of adding barrier layers and granting high Spirit Power to the party, not to mention that she can easily provide 1.50 Spirit Power UP to the party through her skills alone. Her Skills are also good in terms of cooldowns but not as amazing as other Support units.

Disjointed elemental breaks

Her Spell Cards have some fragmented elements embedded within, which is usually not a good sign. However, her Spell Cards and Last Word’s main elements can be easily accessed at 2.00P so it’s a fair trade perhaps.

Flandre shows the power of an Extra Stage boss as a Speed-type character who is focused on Star and good turn 1 damage.

Decent turn 1 damage

Due to the amount of Yin ATK buffs and Yin DEF debuffs that she can inflict on the enemy on her first turn, she can easily deal a large amount of damage on her first turn.

Team utility with regards to Yin nukers, as well as Power support.

Thanks to her low cooldowns, Flandre has the ability to support the team with Spirit Power and Yin DEF debuffs, while also providing Yin ATK by boosting herself. Her spell cards also help out by providing even more buffs and debuffs to the team.

Aside from Star, lacks strong elements

Her elements, aside from Star, lack focus which can make her tedious to use outside of Star oriented content.

Peaks early on, but doesn’t scale well due to lack of strong killers.

While her initial burst of damage may seem great at first glance, her killers, or lack of wide reaching killers, make her damage with setup not as impactful.

Ringo (B3) a Technical-Class Friend who balances a range of roles, supporting Yang teams, increasing her side’s survivability and dropping heavy Anomalies on both allies and enemies alike.

Major Anomaly Gamer

Ringo drops Paralyze on enemies with two of her Spell Cards, while breaking them with all of them. She can also land Burn with her Focus Shot, with her Last Word breaking those as well.

Stun lock meta

The ever useful guaranteed 3P Stun on a Spread Shot makes Ringo ideal for scenarios where you need to stall for a few turns.

Enables Yang attacking teams

Ringo can boost your team’s Yang ATK and Crit ATK via Skills, Grazing and Spell Cards.

Low defensive synergy

With part of Ringo’s kit dedicated to lowering enemy Yang and Yin ATK, you will likely have to deal with situations where those debuffs get wiped when she, or any of her Friends inadvertently Full Breaks the enemy. This is especially easy to do, with her penchant of dropping and breaking Paralyze barriers on her opponents.

Lacks damage

Ringo’s Last Word suffers the unfortunate side effect of being divided cleanly in half by both Element and bullet type. A minor setback, given that there’s a card that buffs both bullet types at once, though with stronger Story Cards likely to show in future, this may limit her growth potential. Her lack of Killers cements this as well, targeting a very specific niche of enemies only.

Beware team inflicted Anomalies

Ringo’s electrifying personality may not be appreciated by all Friends. Bring along allies who benefit from Paralyze barriers, or be careful with popping Skill 1 in battle, lest someone ends up being stunned mid-turn.

Mike shines best as a Yang Support member who provides Accuracy and Spirit P to her team, boosts EVASION and lays down decent Metal cover fire against the enemy.

Teamwide Accuracy and Spirit P support

Mike boosts team Accuracy with her first Spell Card and provides everyone Spirit P with her first skill. A nice little boost to ensure battles run smoother.

Decent Metal breaks

Mike has a useful 0P Metal on her Focus Shot, and 3 lines of Metal (and Star) on her first two spellcards. Her Last Word includes a modest 2 lines of Metal.

Empowers Yang focused teams

Mike’s third skill boosts your team’s Yang ATK and Crit ATK, while her Last Word further boosts team Yang ATK and DEF.

Support falls short of the required amount to hit 2P boosts on Turn 1

At max, Mike can only provide 0.75P up to her entire team. While not unsubstantial, this means teammates will need a little more of a push to hit 2P. This will either come from their own reserves of Spirit P generation, an ally who can give Spirit P to their team, or through hitting the enemy and taking hits on Turn 1.

Dilution of elements in Last Word takes off some of her edge

Her Last Word comes with a balanced 2 Metal / 2 Water / 2 Sun loadout, spreading out her breaking and damage among the three elements. Beware any resistances!

Evasion tanking is less reliable compared to barrier recovery

While the idea of never getting hit is tempting, it’s simply not as ideal as being able to drop grazes into the field. Still worth considering if you’re the type to conserve barriers for anomalies that provide team members buffs.

Satori (A11) provides valuable Crit support to herself and her allies, laying all opponents bare with her mind reading abilities. A power assortment of Fire, Water, and Metal breaks couple together with Freeze anomaly breaks that will leave any opponents frozen in their tracks, unable to respond to her onslaught.

+ P0 Water Break on Focus Shot

+ Can both set and break Freeze barriers

Satori brings freeze anomalies into the mix, laying them down on both her 3rd skills, her Spread Shot and her 2nd Spell Card as a post effect. She can then choose to break these with either her Focus Shot (as at 2P) or her Last Word at 3P.

+ CRIT and Accuracy support helps for setting up big damage

Her second Spellcard, Recollection: Philosopher’s Stone boosts team Crit ATK, which is then further bolstered by her Last Word, Memory Fault Crash which increases team Crit ATK while debuff the enemy team’s Yang DEF and Crit DEF. These work in tandem with her 3rd skill, Confirmation Bias which lowers Crit DEF and Crit EVA by up to 3 levels, leaving enemies ripe for the plucking.

— Backloaded Last Word dampens 1T farming slightly

— Large mix of elements of her AoE Spell Card makes it difficult to target elemental breaks.

Her second Spell card spreads out across a veritable Philosopher’s Stone worth of elements, hitting Earth, Fire, Water, Wood, Metal and then Earth again on her 3P bullet line.

Kisume, hiding in her bucket like always, shows up as a CRIT oriented character. While she may have okay CRIT support and self-sustaining Yin ATK, Kisume does suffer from a lack of Accuracy as well as somewhat inconsistent damage due to the nature of DEST characters.

+ Decent Crit support
Thanks to her skills, ability, and pre-effects on spell cards, Kisume can provide a decent amount of CRIT Accuracy as well as CRIT ATK for the party to use. This can be used to help support CRIT oriented characters. 

+ Decent Fire access
Not only does her Last Word contain a good deal of Fire, but her spell cards can also dish out an okay amount of Fire breaks with both spell cards containing 2 Fire bullets.

— Lacks Accuracy
— Somewhat inconsistent damage output
As with the nature of DEST characters, Kisume does sadly suffer from some inconsistency in her damage output. Not only that, but Kisume has another problem to deal with her having no in-built accuracy in any part of her kit.

If Ichirin Kumoi had to enter a fistfight, then she definitely knows what to bring with her: the cloud spirit Unzan! This nyuudou is an excellent offensive tool, not only hitting very hard when using Ichirin’s Last Word, but even bringing her to 3P after enlarging himself! Ichirin supports her ally through CRIT ATK buffs, although these are mainly for herself and not other Friends. At the very least, she has a small amount of teamwide buffs and some elemental breaks to make her a nice and strong Friend on her own merits.

+ 0P Metal on Spread shot
+ Fair balance of Water and Wood breaks on spells
Ichirin’s elemental breaking is overall very strong. Her Spread shot has 0P Metal on it for spamming Metal breaks, while her spells cover two extra elements in the form of Water and Wood. While she does not excel in a single element, the high amount of Water and Wood on her spells makes her a very decent breaker at those two. 

+ Very high CRIT ATK buffing 
— Will somewhat rely on critical hits for great damage
Ichirin is a Destroy-Type Friend, naturally coming with a very hefty amount of CRIT ATK UP on her skills, Last Word, and even when Boosting. However, without very accurate Killer Bullets, little self-Yang ATK buffs, and only one CRIT Accuracy buff, she might need some outside help, either from more buffs from allies or praying to the luck gods, in order to do her maximum potential.

+ Reaches 3P immediately due to third skill
What also helps Ichirin’s damage potential is how she can just reach 3P immediately thanks to the 2.00 Spirit Power found on her third skill. This skill does have an 8-turn cooldown, but the burst-potential this gives Ichirin makes it very hard to pass on.

— Selfish attacker with very little team buffs
Ichirin is one of those Friends who gives a lot to herself (and Unzan), but little to other Friends in the party. Her only buffs for the team are Yang DEF on her first spell and CRIT ATK UP from her Boosts. At the very least, her second spell provides CRIT DEF DOWN to all foes, giving her another indirect CRIT ATK buff to the party.

Misumaru Tamatsukuri takes full advantage of creating the yin-yang orbs by mixing up Yin and Yang within her attacks. While at times this can hurt the way her Last Word is only Yang, she still comes through as a great Friend in terms of a variety of buffs, debuffs, and barrier breaks via Earth and Star or Blind anomalies. 

+ 0P All-target Earth break on Focus shot
+ Very balanced Earth and Star breaks on spells
Misumaru both has a 0P Earth break on her Focus shot that targets all enemies and spells that have 3 Earth breaks and 3 Star breaks attached to them. This already makes her an ideal breaker for either element, but she goes even further with a Blind anomaly break on her Spread shot and Last Word, something she can get mileage out of after using her second spell that applies 3 layers of Blind.

+ Buffs herself a decent bit for a strong Last Word
— Confused mixed attacker; doesn’t buff Agility for Slice scaling
Misumaru holds a good mix of Yin and Yang buffs to back up her mixed nature, but the way she buffs Yin ATK and Yang ATK on her Last Word, a Yang-only attack, is rather confusing for optimizing damage. She comes with good Hard and Slice scaling to help out her setup damage, but Agility is a stat she can only buff at 2P of Spread shot or randomly during her second spell. She’s definitely not the worst at nuking with her Last Word, but the choices on her kit make her a bit less ideal than other Friends.

+ Variety of Yin, Yang, and CRIT-related buffs and debuffs
— Not so focused on a specific stat to buff
Misumaru is a Technical Friend that buffs both herself and her allies, specifically granting teamwide Yang DEF and Accuracy via her skills. She can even decrease CRIT DEF via her second skill, something that Friends with Killers will easily use to their advantage. Her first skill is also a decent Solo-target option for debuffing both Yin DEF and Yang DEF. The main issue when it comes to her utility is that she does not particularly flourish in one type of stat (Yang DEF? CRIT DEF DOWN? Accuracy?), meaning she usually should not be the main source for a supportive buff.

Takane Yamashiro is a Technical Friend that actually does a lot for the rest of the team as well as herself. While she can buff her own Yang ATK and CRIT ATK to very serviceable levels, she also debuffs all opponents’ Yang DEF and CRIT DEF for a similar outcome for the entire team. Combined with her great Wood breaking and decent Metal/Paralyze breaking as well as great Last Word for damage and Human-killer purposes, Takane is one of the better Yang attackers to bring out to battle, benefitting herself and other Friends.

+ 0P All-target Wood on Focus shot
+ Spells full of Wood and Metal breaks
Takane does really well in combining the forest and mechanics into elemental breaks, starting off with a 0P All-target Wood break on her Focus shot for spammable Wood breaks. Afterwards, she can easily pepper foes with Wood and Metal breaks since her spells are filled with both Wood and Metal, meaning Takane can have utility in stages where either element is a huge boon.

— Can’t really take full advantage of Paralyze anomaly breaks on shots
Takane actually has a second way to break barriers: Paralyze anomaly breaks via 1P of her basic shots. Sadly, Takane lacks real consistent ways to apply Paralyze herself, only doing so on her first skill. Outside of that, she will have to hope on either her character ability to reflect anomalies or her spells to apply Paralyze as well. Or you can just bring along Friends that can apply Paralyze to be more consistent.

+ Sets up good damage all by herself
All of Takane’s skills are practically great for setup damage, buffing her own Yang ATK and CRIT ATK or even just debuffing foes’ defenses. Her Last Word may not have the most optimal story card to increase the damage of its bullet type, but the Human-killers attached to it are sure to catch many common bosses and foes off-guard for devastating damage.

+ Includes partywide offense buffs and enemy debuffs for utility
— Doesn’t fully excel in Yang or CRIT support
Takane holds a good amount of teamwide utility, both in buffs and debuffs. Her second spell gives everyone CRIT ATK, and she can debuff both Yang DEF and CRIT DEF on all foes, the former with her Last Word and the latter with her first skill. Unfortunately, while she is good for these buffs, they are still somewhat lacking, especially when she mainly buffs herself while other Friends can provide a good amount of either Yang or CRIT support more than her.

Yamame Kurodani, an earth spider living in the underworld. She doesn’t use her ability to control illness but she still deals big damage, has amazing access to Earth, and is overall a selfish Speed type nuker with great Slice scaling.

Looking into her kit in more detail:
+ Great access to Earth Breaks With a spamable 0p focus shot break, 3 Earth lines at 1p from her 2nd Spell Card, and 6 lines of Earth on her Last Word, she for sure is one of the Friends you think of when you see opponents weak to earth.
+ Self sufficient Agility buffs
+ Good Slice scaling
 As a Speed unit, the agility buffs benefit her a lot. Being able to provide enough agility buffs independently to get her plentiful Slicing scaling going makes her capable of doing damage without any major help.

-Lack of team utility
Yamame’s kit only contains a bit of team accuracy and agility support, while other units do much more for their team. Making her underwhelming in this regard.
-Poison Break is awkward to use
Needing 3p to poison break with a unit that doesn’t apply the anomaly isn’t very efficient.
-Only limited to Earth breaking and a little poison break
Kind of ironic that one of her strengths causes one of her weaknesses. She cannot break any element other than Earth.

Story Card Stages: 3-3-3, 3-18-3

Eirin Yagokoro from the Eternal Night Incident is still on the defensive, leading her to go all-out in terms of damage and offensive medicine. Instead of healing her allies, you can bet this doctor will steel herself with defensive buffs via applying Poison and Blind on herself while applying the same anomalies on foes to keep them unhealthy. To finish them off, Eirin goes for a Yin-based Last Word filled with Human and Youkai Killers to make sure they will never solve the mystery of Eientei!

+ 0P All-target Moon on Focus shot
— Elemental breaking on spells is a mixed bag
Eirin serves decently on the elemental breaking-side of things thanks to having elements on every bullet line of her spells, as well as targeting all foes with a 0P Moon break on her Focus shot. Unfortunately, a small issue in terms of elements on her spells is that they are evenly split between Moon, Sun, and Star, making it more difficult to single out a target’s elemental weaknesses. Her Last Word is mostly Moon to make up for this, but a bit of Sun and Star still sneak in to make things inconvenient. 

+ Niche in Poison and Blind anomaly breaks
Eirin’s Last Word makes up for the somewhat underwhelming spell breaks by breaking Poison anomalies at 1P and Blind anomalies at 3P. Thanks to her second skill applying many of these on a singular target and her Last Word itself applying Blind to all foes, Eirin can easily pair up with other anomaly inflictors to deal major breaking when hitting hard with her Last Word.

+ Good Yin nuking potential on Last Word thanks to Killers
— Limited Hard scaling and mixed bullets makes her difficult to optimize
Eirin has a great boost on her Last Word thanks to a wider range of Killer Bullets: specifically Human and Youkai. However, while Eirin has many Yin DEF buffs to make the most out of Hard scaling, Eirin somewhat lacks this on her backloaded Last Word anyway. Additionally, the attack is a mix of Laser and Light Bullets, making optimizing the card a bit harder than other, solo-type Last Words.

+ Slight CRIT and Yin support
— Team utility she provides is still on the lower end
Eirin can use her third skill to directly buff allies’ Accuracy and Yin ATK to give her a decent amount of support. Sadly, this is really her only main direct buff, and the Accuracy only lasts 1 turn, making it hard to use to great advantage. At the very least, Eirin specializes in debuffs as well, giving Yin DEF DOWN to a target with her second skill and debuffing all targets’ CRIT DEF with her second spell to give her more indirect buffing opportunity.

Kanako (Faith) is a powerhouse, dealing incredible damage and even providing some buffs to CRIT ATK and Yin ATK to the team, as well as debuffing the enemies’ CRIT DEF. Her breaks are average, and strong in the Metal department.

+Amazing damage due to self buffs, Hard Scaling and Killer Bullets.
Although she has a back-loaded Last Word in a 1-1-3 bullet line layout, her buffs and a Yin ATK 3 levels UP story card can get her to 10 Yin ATK UP turn one, which utilizes her 1725 max Yin ATK stat incredibly well. Her Hard scaling, which is 60%-80%-100%-0%-0%-100% also mitigates this somewhat, as it utilizes her 1050 Yin DEF stat and buffs. Having various Killers and especially Human-killer, she can usually find a target which will regret having that trait.

+Good metal breaks, decent breaks in general.
Her overall breaks are decent, and her Metal breaks are great, having an All targeting 0P Metal Focus shot, and an All Last Word with 4 Metal breaks throughout. Her second spell card at 2P has 2 Wood breaks which target All as well.

-Team utility is alright, nothing outstanding.
She gives Yin ATK and CRIT ATK buffs and debuffs, making her an excellent partner for a Yin Destroy unit, but she lacks any accuracy support to go alongside this. She can at least cover her own Accuracy with her ability, which raises it when she boosts.

Reisen, as the Peacekeeper of the Capital, shows her power as a supporter to her team. With good access to elements and utility all around, Reisen can help the team out through a variety of ways. Her CRI ACC and CRI ATK support helps critical reliant teams who would like to boost their critical damage.

+ Decent Breakings throughout shots and spells
Reisen may be a victim of a rather varied set of elemental breaks, but she is one of the few examples to do this very well. For once, she gets 0P elemental breaks of both Moon and Fire for two spammable options. All of her spells have 3 Moon on them, with 3 Wood on her first, 3 Earth on her second, and 3 Fire on her third. While she doesn’t focus much on the side elements, she remains a very solid Moon breaker for any fight that needs them.

+ Boost Based Teamwide P
+ Good utility throughout with CRIT support and Yang ATK
Reisen has access to a very good variety of buffs, from the Spirit Power gains on her second spell and third skill to many other stat buffs. The particularly good buffs come from her second skill, acting as CRIT support via CRIT ATK UP and CRIT Accuracy UP, and her third skill, serving as Yang ATK UP and normal accuracy support. She can even Boost and Graze for more CRIT support, which many Killer bullet Friends will appreciate for optimal damage. She even adds 2 layers to the party’s Barrier via her first spell, giving her defensive utility as well!

— Her 3rd skill, while spammable, has low buff durations
— Her CRIT support, while powerful, can be a bit niche at times
Reisen’s third skill faces a problem of the buffs only lasting one turn. Even with a 4 turn cooldown, this is rather short and needs to be planned around. Additionally, CRIT support is great and all, but sometimes the party would rather have normal offensive buffs, especially if a Friend either has their own CRIT support or just doesn’t rely on critical hits for damage.

Solo Story Card Farms: 3-3-3, 3-6-3, and E9.

A tank with an All Last Word that starts off weak but scales well with Power and unparalleled access to Barrier recovery, Yukari Yakumo is better at keeping a team alive than any other Friend in the game. She’s not very well suited to farming, due to the lack of punch on her Last Word at 1 Power, and for shorter fights her defensive utility is mostly meaningless. But for any harder fight that goes on for multiple turns, between her team-wide Barrier recovery, Yang DEF Up, and her own personal exceptional access to Focus, Yukari is a tank who can babysit just about any team, buying you valuable turns to ensure victory. She’s no slouch offensively either, packing an All Last Word that deals tremendous damage at 3 Power, as well as slightly above average access to Barrier Breaks.

+ Access to Earth on a Basic Shot at 0 Power
+ All-targeting Spell Card with 2 Earth and Sun Breaks at 3 Power
While it is the only element on her basic shots, Yukari’s 0P Earth Focus shot still is a good option for spamming Earth breaks. Outside of that, Yukari has rather average Earth access with a small bonus of Sun, especially on her first spell card.

+ Very solid damage on All Last Word at 3 Power
— Last Word deals low damage at 1 Power
Yukari is another example of a backloaded Last Word with a 1-1-3 spread that really needs that 3P in order to do any substansial damage. Thanks to heavy defensive buffs combined with good Hard scaling, this Last Word can hit rather hard despite Yukari’s apparent role as a defensive unit.

+ Unparalleled team-wide Barrier restoration, restoring 2 Barriers every 5 turns team-wide
Barrier restoration helps Friends block devastating attacks easier and even apply some buffs based on character abilities. Yukari just helps everyone do that even more thanks to her third skill, adding 2 more barriers every 5 turns. This even lets Yukari be one of the tanks that isn’t hurt by raising her Focus, as she can just restore any barriers she uses to block against fatal strikes.

— Utility is entirely defensive, leaving her somewhat lacking for shorter fights
Of course, when a Friend is mainly there for protection, they might not stand out as much in shorter fights. With Global’s bigger emphasis on harder content, however, this has become less of an issue overtime and Yukari’s potential has started to shine even more.

Nue Houjuu is a powerful Yin Attacker with great break potential among Star, Fire and Water Elements. Not only does her ability allow immunity to Burn, Freeze and Blind but she also gains Spirit P from them upon self infliction. With plentiful access to Yin ATK buffs, this mysterious being should not be taken lightly.

+ 0P Water and Fire on Basic shots
+ Varied elemental access
— Elemental variety is spread out, especially on Last Word
Having two different spammable 0P elements is rather amazing, and Nue pulls through with 0P Water on her spread shot and 0P Fire on her Focus shot. Her spells are varied between the two elements as well, adding in some extra Star for even more potential breaks. While being evenly spread out in elements can make her useful in certain fights where enemies are weak to all of her elements, it also makes her not as impressive at breaking only Fire, Water, or Star. This is especially shown by her rather puzzling spread of elements on her Last Word.

+ Lots of Yin ATK UP and Accuracy UP for herself and also her team
Nue’s skills provide Yin ATK UP and Accuracy UP for the entire party, something that Nue heavily grants herself as well to do good damage with her Yin-only spells and Last Word. Her Last Word even decreases all foes’ Evasion to make for an effective and indirect Accuracy buff.

+ Immune to Burn, Freeze and Blind and gains Spirit P for being inflicted with them
— Partywide Blind infliction can be detrimental for a lot of teammates
Nue regains Spirit Power via getting inflicted with Burn, Freeze, and Blind, something that can be abused vs. other foes but on herself as well, since every skill she has inflicts those anomalies on herself for easy Spirit Power restoration. Something detrimental though is her third skill, applying a staggering 3 layers of Blind on the whole party. It may be a tasty snack for Nue and only last for a turn on everyone else, but it will definitely hurt everyone’s aim if not taken care of on that one turn.

The second in command, Mayumi Joutouguu, bolsters her might as a haniwa soldier by having good access to the Earth and Metal elements. Her Last Word has a 4:2 ratio of Slash to Sharp bullets as well as its Earth to Metal elements, allowing her to be a potent Earth nuker. Mayumi’s team utility is YANG oriented and falls a bit short due to the duration of the buffs from her second skill.

+ P0 Earth on Focus Shot.
+ Decent access to Earth and Metal elements.
Not only does Mayumi have a 0P Earth break on her Focus shot that she can spam, but her spells have an amazing balance of Earth and Metal. She gets 3 Metal and 3 Earth from both of her spells, along with 4 Earth and 2 Metal on her Last Word, making her a solid breaker in both elements.

+ Very good Last Word, especially when paired with her best story card.
+ Can sustain her own Accuracy.
Mayumi holds true as a great Attack-type Friend with a strong Last Word. She can afford to unleash it turn 1 due to getting to 2P from her third skill, and being allowed to set up buffs and more Spirit Power only allows her Last Word to deal even more damage and unleash more Yang-based buffs. Accuracy is also a non-issue for her thanks to her first skill and first spell acting as accuracy support.

+ Decent Yang-oriented support for the team.
— Low turn duration and bad cooldown of Skill 2 gimps her potential to support the team.
Mayumi’s second skill is a great Yang support buff for the whole team, both for Yang ATK and Yang DEF. Unfortunately, it has a low endurance of 1-2 turns for the buffs and only cooldowns in 5 turns, meaning it cannot be spammed as much as better support buffs. Still, she can indirectly help Yang nukers via her second spell’s Yang DEF debuff on a singular target.

Story Card Farms: 3-3-3, Future Story Card stage
 

Shinmyoumaru is your everyday (though definitely not unimpressive) Yang nuker, doing well in increasing both her own Yang ATK and her party’s through the use of her spells. Along with some Yang DEF buffs to optimize her Hard scaling and accuracy support, Shinmyoumaru does not need much from other Friends to hit hard. However, she does somewhat lack in team utility outside of her Yang support and is rather unimpressive in terms of barrier breaks.

+ 0P Star on Focus shot
— Lacking in elemental breaking on spells
Shinmyoumaru’s elemental breakings are best shown with her 0P Star break on her Focus, but not much else spell-wise. It’s really just an average mix of Star and Metal. However, the same definitely cannot be said for her fully-Star Last Word, an amazing way to break with Star when needed.

+ Fully Star Last Word hits hard with set up
— Evasion debuff on Last Word is a tad excessive
Shinmyoumaru does usually want 3P to get the most of her Last Word, but thanks to her own buffs, the Last Word can definitely hit really well. On the other hand, the attack debuffs both Evasion and CRIT Evasion by 4 levels, which is a bit extreme and not the most necessary debuff at times.

+ Comes with her own Accuracy support
— Team support mainly on spells instead of skills
Her Evasion debuff still does serve as good accuracy support for the rest of the team, and if that wasn’t enough she can give the team 2 levels of Accuracy UP from her third skill. Unfortunately, the rest of her good buffs are on spells, meaning that in a longer fight, Shinmyoumaru’s buffs may be less effective once all of her spells are gone.

— Rather fragile; little Yang DEF buffs
Shinmyoumaru can buff Yang DEF on her second spell, but with only 3775 HP and lower defensive stats, you will have to make sure the tiny Friend is able to stand long enough to use her full potential.

There’s not much to go wrong with using Servant from the Lunar War; as she proves her worth through maxing her Agility UP by herself and following up with heavy Slice damage as well as elementally breaking foes with a 0P Moon shot and more Moon and Metal breaks. She can also give a helpful boost to Agility and Accuracy to other Friends in need, along with applying Freeze barriers on opponents for the chance of Friends to follow-up with anomaly breaks.

+ 0P Moon break on Focus shot
+ Good Moon and Metal breaks on spells
With great access to Moon and Metal across her kit, leaning more toward the former, B3 Sakuya is a very reliable breaker in terms of these elements, with the first Spell Card having 1 Metal at 0P followed by 3 Moon, and the second Spell Card with another 3 Moon, but also with 2 Metal and sealing the deal with 4 Moon and 2 Metal! B3 Sakuya also boasts a Solo-Targeting 0P Moon Focus Shot too, with 2 more Metal available there when boosting, and an All-Targeting Spread Shot with 1 Metal and 2 Moon.

+ Heavy amount of Agility and Accuracy buffs for self and allies
— Teamwide agility buffs limit support potential
B3 Sakuya also has some team support too! She has a large amount of access to Accuracy and Agility buffs for the team, and that seems to be about it for team buffs. While these are some helpful buffs, with Accuracy helping with consistency and Agility maybe helping allies with Slice in their bullets, these buffs, mainly Agility can be excessive due to how often these buffs can be accessed, especially when there isn’t much else for B3 Sakuya to bring support-wise.

+ Solo-target Last Word can unleash devastating damage
Among some of the best Solo-Targeting Last Word users with setup, B3 Sakuya will bring a world of pain to the target, supported by high Slice Scaling and potential Killers. As a bonus, if that enemy somehow survives a fully boosted Last Word from B3 Sakuya, they will be Stunned via Impact on Bullet Line 6 (unless they somehow move before B3 Sakuya).

+ Good All-target spells with Freeze anomaly potential
B3 Sakuya’s All-Targeting Spell Cards are very powerful, especially for Spell Card standards. Her first Spell Card is a strong card that isn’t as reliant on Boosts, while her second Spell Card’s potential can be realised with 3 boosts! Both Spell Cards and Last Word have a Post-ATK effect to inflict Freeze anomalies on her enemies, and while she can’t break them herself, this can be amazing setup for an ally with Melting bullets.

— Mediocre farming capability
When it comes to Story Card stages, B3 Sakuya just doesn’t quite make the cut compared to other units. Event farming isn’t as unfortunate depending on the situation, but this isn’t too big of a downside overall.

Under the codename of Oracle, Sanae boasts great power from her amazing spread of Star and Wood breaks, plentiful debuffs on the enemies’ CRIT DEF and Evasion, and overall general support in the form of offensive buffs and healing. With a passive that heals 20% of her HP every turn, Oracle is a Friend who refuses to fall down until the job is done.

+ 0P Star and Wood breaks on basic shots
Sanae gets two spammable elemental break options in the form of 0P Star on her Spread shot and 0P Wood on her Focus shot. Outside of this, Sanae stands proud as a good elemental breaker, mainly in the Star field due to retaining 3 Star breaks over both of her spells and getting 4 Star/2 Wood on her Last Word.

+ Good Slice scaling values
— Inconsistent damage output due to relying on her own CRIT Accuracy
— Mediocre Killer bullet types
Sanae’s damage output is certainly great, as expected from an Ultra Festival Friend, and her high Slice scaling has a good portion to do with it. Sadly, her best damage will have to come out of CRITs, and without good CRIT Accuracy support and good Killer bullets, she won’t be seeing super high damage numbers that often.

+Large amounts of healing on Last Word and skills
Sanae stands tall in the support department with plenty of heals spread over her Last Word and second and third skills. Not only is her HP of 6500 already high to take advantage of healing, but her percents are very high to make sure everyone else is fully healed. She even gets her own self-survivabiltiy improved thanks to her third passive, healing herself for 20% every turn and making sure she stands strong. Especially with no elemental weaknesses, it will be hard to take this healer down.

+ Amazing CRIT DEF and Evasion debuffs
Sanae’s spells and first skill prioritize in a different type of support: CRIT support. Decreasing all of the foes’ CRIT DEF and Evasion will help Sanae get a little more ensurance from her own critical hits, as well as help out allies with their own critical damage and Killer bullets. 

Solo Stage Farms: 2-7-1, 3-3-3

Tenshi Hinanawi brings a lot of damage to the table, and quickly — she doesn’t really do much in the way of utility, with only P0 Earth on a Basic Shot being notable, but she hits so hard it’s hard to care too much.

+P0 Earth on her Focus Shot
-Breaks are otherwise middling
Tenshi gets a good niche in Earth breaking with her 0P Earth Focus shot. Otherwise, her elements aren’t really doing much. A decent 3 Earth breaks on her first spell, yes, but her second spell is just a mix of elements, making it hard to break someone with. She does get a good even mix of Earth and Metal on her Last Word, at least, but that should only be used for the damage.

+Incredible damage output, including an All-targeting Last Word
Tenshi becomes a great general farmer with her Last Word, which just has devastating raw damaging potential. Her Killer bullets may be later on in the attack, but what she gets to start off with, with great Hard scaling, is more than enough to make her great in her offensive role.

-Selfish attacker, brings no utility
And the offensive role is something she will definitely keep, as she does not fit much else. All of her buffs are only for herself, and she doesn’t even have a debuff to potentially help out other allies.

Solo Stage Farms: 2-7-1, 3-3-3, Future Story Card Stages

Sagume Kishin is a great Yang attacker support. Featuring an incredible 5 levels of Yang DEF DOWN against all targets in total, combined with some accuracy support, she gives Yang teams effectively half a Full Break — which is more than enough to take down any fight. Otherwise, she’s got great personal damage, and she’s a fine farmer to boot, if limited mostly to event stages and needing 2 or 3 turns to handle single-target stages. .

Great damage in short and long fights alike

Sagume gets good damage off by herself, mainly due to her many Yang DEF debuffs she applies on foes. Otherwise, even with a Last Word with mixed elements, being only composed of Yang and Sharp bullets makes it easy to support for even better damage.p>

Incredible support for Yang attackers

Featuring an incredible 5 levels of Yang DEF DOWN against all targets in total, combined with some accuracy support, she gives Yang teams effectively half a Full Break — which is more than enough to take down any fight.

Good Accuracy Support

Sagume’s can debuff Evasion to give indirect accuracy support to her team.

Best Yang DEF DOWN debuff only lasts one turn

You will need to be careful with how you apply your debuffs, or else find a way to extend her duration with other supports.

Slightly lacking break potential

Sagume just has an average breaking potential when it comes to elemental breaks. Her Moon access is decent, with 3 breaks on each spell. Her Last Word also has 3 Moon with 3 Star mixed in, so she’s not the worst at breaking; she just has nothing impressive going for her.

She may be small, but Yuyuko brings big damage. For farming or harder fights alike, she’s your girl, with some Water Breaks as well, and a tiiiny amount of Agility support for her teammates. But since she kind of suffers in longer fights due to how her character ability works, you’re really just bringing her to do a bunch of damage when the time is right — which she’ll do extremely well. And perhaps cook you up some delicious food while she’s at it. 

+ Solid access to Water Breaks, including Solo targeting P0 Water on her Focus Shot
Yuyuko is a solid Water breaker, and there is not much else to add on that point. A 0P Water break to spam on her Focus shot and while her Water breaks on her spells are the average amount of 3, her Water-only Last Word more than makes up for it.

+ Very high 1-Turn damage
+ Incredible Killer Bullet types make critting consistent across most enemies
Yuyuko has a frontloaded, 3-1-1 Last Word if the need to do immediate damage ever arises in a hard fight or just for farming. Still, she gets great Slice values on the second half of the attack if you get the time to set her up, and combined with Killer bullets on youkai, she can easily get to very devastating damage values.

— Low team utility
Yuyuko’s kit may be devastating in terms of damage, but that’s all she is really here to do. None of her buffs on her spells or skills are partwide outside of a small Agility buff on her first skill, which doesn’t even benefit everyone.

— Damage suffers if she needs to use Barrier
In longer fights, Yuyuko’s damage may suffer if she needs to utilize Grazing to stay alive. This is detrimental because of her Agility buffs via Grazing, which will be lower if Yuyuko needs to give up more than one Barrier over a more challenging fight.

Solo Stage Farms: 3-3-3, 3-11-1

Doremy is a selfish attacker with a powerful All targeting Last Word that does good damage both in short fights, and scales immensely in harder fights. She also provides some Earth and Star breaks, alongside Yang DEF DOWN support. With that said, she’s very reliant on landing a Killer in order to do her damage — whilst very wide ranging, there are some targets she doesn’t have a Killer against, so watch out for those, as her damage will suffer immensely when she cannot get the automatic critical hits that a Killer provides.

+ P0 Star on a basic shot for spammable Star Breaks
— Otherwise slightly below average breaks
A 0P Star break always has practical purposes thanks to how common Star weaknesses are. However, the dual mix of Earth and Star breaks that Doremy goes for in the rest of her spells make her a rather mediocre elemental breaker outside of spamming.

+ Very damaging All-targeting Last Word both for farming and longer fights
— Very reliant on Killer — whilst it’s wide ranging, there’s the occasional enemy that slips past it and thus makes her damage plummet
While her first skill’s Yang ATK buffs don’t go into her Last Word’s Yin-only damage, Doremy can more thank make up for it thanks to a wide array of other Yin ATK buffs and an attack filled with Killer bullets, ranging from humans, youkai, and even Lunarians. Of course, when not hitting these Killers on targets such as fairies or gods, Doremy will lack the critical hits to do greater damage. Additionally, she doesn’t come with any CRIT ATK buffs to further increase this Killer bullet damage and will need to rely on story cards or other Friends for some.

+ Provides some DEF Down support for Yang teammates
— Self Quick can make her a little harder to support
Doremy may be a selfish attacker, but she can at last apply some Yang DEF DOWN via her second skill, which allows Yang nukes to do some better damage. Outside of that, not only does she have no buffs for her team, but her casting Quick on herself through her third skill can be rather inconvienent if you’re trying to debuff the opponent with other Last Words first.

Tewi Inaba is an extremely powerful DEF Down support, with a powerful nuke of a last word to boot. She requires a bit of a careful hand to get the maximum value out of her though, as a lot of her utility comes from skills, which must be carefully used for maximum value. Additionally, whilst she excels at one boss event farms, as well as enabling some main story boss farms, she can struggle with two or three boss stages. Still, those are minor flaws, and any player would be more than happy to have her.

+ Great defensive debuff potential on single targets
+ High damage output against a single target
— Skills require careful use for maximum effectiveness, as they each only affect one target
— Damage on secondary targets is greatly reduced
Tewi’s skills are all about bullying singular targets, as both the anomalies she inflicts and the debuffs are only on one foe. The debuffs are still great, especially when it comes to Yin DEF, Yang DEF, and even Evasion, but they will only really work on a singular target and llower her All-target damage on other foes. She at least debuffs everyone’s Yang DEF a good amount on her Last Word.

+ Great access to Freeze, Burn, and Poison
All of Tewi’s skills inflict 2 layers of an anomaly on a foe, and the best ones in particular are the Burn on her second skill and Poison on her third skill. While anyone with anomaly breaks of the respective anomaly is fine just breaking them, the Burn and Poison can act as secondhand Yin and Yang debuffs respectively, helping both types of attackers.

— Below average elemental access
Nowadays Tewi’s elemental access is just low. She is a mixed elemental breaker of Sun and Star with nothing special on her shots and jsut average breaks on her spells. Having the average amount of Sun and Star on spells makes her not great at either, making her not the most suited for dedicated breaking. Due to her anomaly debuffs, though, she at least has reason not to break barriers.
 

Suika Ibuki is a remarkably powerful unit — so powerful, in fact, she was Global LostWord’s first S+ Tier Friend. Although, due to the passing of time, she has grown a bit dull. Despite this, she still possesses a tremendous amount of team support — Yin & Yang DEF Down, Yin ATK Up, and Accuracy Up. If that’s not enough, her All Last Word deals fantastic damage at 1 Power, and scales very well with additional Spirit Power. Farming, hard fights, damage, team support — the oni simply can provide nearly anything for the party.

+ Extremely damaging All-targeting Last Word at 1 Power that scales well with additional Spirit Power
Suika is a raw damage dealer, partially thanks to her Last Word, that is both powerful at 1P and gains a lot more power with further boosts. Thanks to heavy defense buffs from her first spell, she can take advantage of pretty good Hard scaling along with the many other boosts she obtains while Grazing and using skills.

+ Graze provides 1 Level of Yin ATK UP for 1 Turn for entire team
+ Second Spell Card provides 3 Levels of Accuracy Up for 3 Turns for Suika’s entire team
+ All-target Last Word inflicts 2 Levels of Yin & Yang DEF Down for 3 Turns
Suika is a Friend with a good variety of team support as well. Each Graze is a level fo Yin ATK UP for the whole party on the turn it is used, her second spell is direct accuracy support when needed, and her Last Word provides 2 levels of defensive stats down for all foes, allowing other attackers to finish the job if needed.

— Very low on focused elemental breaks
Suika has a 0P Fire break on her Spread shot, and the rest of her breaks are just below average. 3 Fire on her second spell isn’t terrible, but her Last Word is just a mix of Metal and Moon, something that just doesn’t allow Suika to focus on a single element for breaking. 

— Outside of Accuracy buffs, Last Word’s debuffs are only team support
Accuracy support is something that many Friends nowadays have on their own, leaving Suika with little substansial party support on certain teams. Her Last Word’s debuffs are still servicable, but they’re the only thing that will last over a turn due to how her Grazing buffs work.

Kasen Ibaraki is a selfish damage dealer with a Solo Last Word designed around doing one thing: hitting hard. Either hitting pretty hard turn 1, making her a good farmer (if limited to Solo friendly stages), or hitting extremely hard if given prep time. She has no team utility otherwise, and her access to Barrier Breaks is merely average, but if you need a single enemy knocked cold out, there aren’t many who do it better than Kasen.

+ Access to both Water and Earth element on spells
— The number of Element Breaks on her Spell Cards is merely average
Kasen’s spell cards and Last Word have the same spread of elemental breaks: one at 0P, one at 1P, and one more at 3P. While the Fire on her Last Word can easily do more damage on Fire-weak foes, the breaks she do are still very average and due to their mixed nautre not very worth using her solely for breaking.

+ Powerful Solo-target Last Word that deals high damage in 1 turn and an incredible amount at 3P
Kasen is all about the self-buffs, increasing both her Yin ATK and Yang ATK to take full advantage of her mixed Yin and Yang spell cards. All of her spells give her good buffs, including some additional CRIT ATK UP to pair well with her Last Word’s 20% chance to do critical hits. With good setup, Kasen’s damage can easily be fatal.

— Entirely selfish damage dealer with no utility
— Although she doesn’t entirely need support, for the rare fight she does self-Quick can make it tricky to support her.
Of course, when Kasen entirely focuses on supporting herself, that only means she lacks any team utility to support other Friends. Additionally, her self-Quick on her second skill can make her difficult to support with other debuffs on spells or Last Words, but this can at least be worked around with simple planning.

Sannyo is a Debuff Friend honing in on her Fire and Wood breaks, Blind and Poison utility and her Yin DEF debuffing capabilities.

Breaking the Mold.

To be in her element, Sannyo only needs Wood and Fire, as she hones in on both of them, especially Fire as her Last Word has 6 Fire breaks. Her anomaly utility is also self-sufficient, finding multiple ways to inflict Blind and Poison breaks onto her enemies and breaking them, mainly with her Second Spell Card at 2P and 3P respectively.

Definitive Debuffer

Of the debuffs that are featured in this yamajorou’s hand include Evasion on her Second Spell Card, Yin ATK scattered across some of her bullet lines, and most importantly, Yin DEF as her ace up her sleeve, which can be found in her third Skill, first Spell Card and her Last Word.

Selfish and Finite Gambler

Aside from Anomalies and Yin DEF debuffing, Sannyo doesn’t provide a whole lot for her teammates to work with. Since she can only buff her own Yin DEF and Accuracy to an extent, she is reliant on external means of providing important buffs to her like Yin ATK and CRIT ATK. Should Sannyo score some CRIT ATK buffs, she doesn’t have the best hand when it comes to Killer range. With some of her more effective targets being Youkai Mountain, Collector and Noble to name a few, Sannyo and her house of cards have a ceiling when it comes to Killers.

With an ample amount of Slicing and Wood throughout her entire kit and a hefty amount of Yang Attack up without any Story Cards, Raiko can prove to be quite a capable farmer for certain events and stages. However, much like Kaguya, Raiko’s skills and Story Cards do not provide much use for her allies, with the buffs she receives being primarily self-buffs to her speed, accuracy, Spirit P, and Yang Attack.

— Her kit primarily provides Wood and Slicing, making Raiko an incredibly specialized fighter. This means outside of specific stages, she may not be the most prioritized Friend.

— Incredibly selfish Friend, providing almost no buffs to her team. An overwhelming majority of her buffs are self-buffs. 

— Is able to give herself a 1 Spirit P buff with her 2nd Skill when maxed out, allowing for an advantaged turn 1 attack versus other Friends.

A tank with an above-average All Last Word that also scales very well with Power, Reimu Hakurei is one of the best Def Friends in the game. Offensively, on top of her LW, she also has access to the Sun element on a basic shot and unusually high accuracy on all of her attacks. Defensively, her ability to buff her team’s evasion, Yang Def, and Yin Def combine to allow her to circumvent the usual weakness of a tank against All attacks. She isn’t perfect: her damage outside of her Last Word is lacking, and her access to Focus is rather low for a tank, meaning she won’t always intercept Solo attacks. Overall though, she’s a fantastic tank, and a top-tier Friend especially as all players get her for free.

+ Highly spammable 0P Sun on a shot
— Only has access to Sun
0P Sun on her Focus shot may be her only element on her basic shots, but that’s all you really need to be good at breaking with shots, since they can easily be spammed over longer fights. Outside of this, though, Reimu has only Sun, and a low amount at that. Her first spell and Last Word at the best with 3 Sun breaks, but her second spell is just pathetic at breaking, having only 1 Sun.

+ Powerful All-target Last Word which scales at 3 Power
— Very low damage outside of Last Word
Reimu’s 2-1-2 bullet spread on her Last Word is a little strange compared to frontloaded or backloaded spreads, but that just means Reimu has a lot to build on before she scales to great damage at maximum power. The attack comes with some great Hard scaling, which can be increased via Yang DEF buffs from Boosting or her first and third skills. Reimu can’t really do great damage outside of her Last Word, but most Friends don’t really need to deal much damage with their spells if the Last Word does all of the work.

+ Powerful defensive utility, having large amounts of Yin & Yang DEF, and Evasion UP on both skills and her passive
— Low Focus for a tank
Reimu has both defensive buffs for herself for the purpose of tanking, but she can even share these with Friends if needed. This helps their own durability, as well as serving as good Hard scaling buffs if any allies need that as well. Unfortunately, even with 2 barriers restored on her third skill, her Focus UPs being only on her first skill and Last Word make her sometimes difficult to properly tank with.

Aunn Komano is your shining definition of a Support Friend, doing everything in her power to back up the rest of her team. Her skills basically cover everything: offense support, defense support, and accuracy support (at most, she is lacking CRIT support if you really need it). Outside of that, Aunn provides some Wood and Earth breaks on her spells followed up by an impressive Sun-only Last Word for some additional damage if the team utility wasn’t enough for you.

+ Last Word comprised entirely of Sun and Energy bullets
— Doesn’t hit so hard, even with Slice and Hard scaling
Aunn’s Last Word is the highlight of her offense; being only Sun and Energy to make it very easy to support via story card. However, this is really Aunn’s only major reason for elemental breaks, as her spells are very unimpressive for the matter. And even with that, her Last Word isn’t the best for damage.

+ All-around supporter: Accuracy, Yin ATK, and defensive buffs
+ Skills with 4-turn cooldown serve as spammable support
— Lacks a specific buff to excel at
Aunn is great at filling in any gaps for a support: providing Accuracy and Agility on her second skill, Yin ATK on her first skill, and many defensive buffs on her third skill and by Grazing. However, with all of this varied, short-cooldown support, Aunn doesn’t really end up buffing one stat that high in particular, meaning she shouldn’t be the only replacement for buffing a singular stat someone on the party lacks.

Daiyousei (A6) is a Debuff Friend who scrambles enemy lines with Yin and Crit Debuffs while inflicting and breaking Freeze and Paralyze anomalies.

”Weights are so passé.”

Once known for her proficiency with dropping the Twitter bird onto a single target for 6 Metal bonks, this prankster has embraced modernity, opting instead to apply Freeze and Paralyze Anomalies onto enemy teams which she can then break with Spell Card 1 or her Last Word. 25% less memey, 150% more efficient!

”Where are you aiming?”

Understanding the value of a funny prank, Daiyousei has diversified her skill set, settling on instead blinding her opponents so hard even Rumia would take notice. Her Spell Card 1, Last Word and Skill 1 drop a combined 9 Levels of Accuracy Down on all enemies for 3 turns, meaning they’ll be fumbling around in the dark long after your Friends are done setting up for their afternoon cup of murder.

Poor damage potential

Daiyousei is a selfless debuffer through and through, devoting every little of her kit to herself. While she is technically able to max out her Yin ATK with sustained Focus Shots and continuous Boosting, players wanting to avoid drawn out battles will find that she otherwise lacks relevant buffs to Accuracy and Crit ATK to really hit home her damage.

Debuffs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be

With no actual team buffs to speak of, players may find themselves starting back at zero when enemy buffs are thrown off, most commonly due to being Full Broken.

Hong Meiling (A6) is a Speed-Class Friend specializing in Yin and Crit DEF debuffs while supporting Yin teams with relevant buffs.

Great Wall of China

Meiling has multiple ways of reducing damage, from skills that reduce Wood and Star element bullets by 45% to passives to allow her to take 25% less damage from Humans. She also provides party Barrier recovery through her Spell Card 2.

Swift as a Coursing River

While Meiling works best with Yin teams, she is especially good at ramping up Agility buffs for her Friends. With the right Story Card load out, she can cap team Agility in a single turn, combining buffs from her Last Word, Skill 1 and Grazing, all of which provide Agility.

A Lack of Focus

While Meiling has many ways of reducing damage to herself, she is unable to draw enemy fire as she lacks Focus buffs. Make sure your Friends don’t neglect to graze, especially when not covered by her protective buffs.

A Lack of Damage Potential

While she excels in providing Agility buffs, she is unable to capitalise on them very well, with low Agility scaling on her attacks. She makes up for this with bonus damage from effective Elements, but this is somewhat stymied by her somewhat rainbow coloured bullet lines. Furthermore, she lacks Yin ATK buffs to reach the upper limits of her damage, requiring help from Friends or Story Cards to do so.

Remilia, with her overwhelming might, reveals herself as a Speed type Friend with a strong emphasis towards Burn breaks.

Inflicts a massive amount of Burn anomalies, which she can break with her attacks

Her 1st skill, as well as her Spell Cards inflicting a decent amount of burn, can break a large amount of barriers

Decent utility providing Agility, Yin ATK, Yin DEF, and barriers.

Thanks to her skills and Spell Cards providing Agility, Yin buffs, and barriers, Remilia can support Yin nukers, especially if they have strong Slicing scaling.

Aside from Moon, lackluster sub-elements.

One factor that holds her barrier breaks from being truly amazing is her spell cards having a weird spread of elements aside from Moon that makes her awkward to utilize.

Setup damage is on the weaker end

While her turn 1 damage is certainly not weak by any means, her lack of strong killers or Slicing scaling makes her damage not peak as high, especially when compared to the higher end of characters.

Nitori (Faith) is a self-sufficient Friend with decent Turn 1 damage, Freeze anomaly setting and breaking and minor tanking ability. That’s about as much that can be said for this kappa, who lacks the punch that modern A-Universe Friends have. She’ll get the job done; albeit with a little less punch compared to her peers. 

+ P0 Water Break on Spread Shot

+ Can both set and break Freeze barriers

Nitori is able to apply up to 3 barries of Freeze to one enemy with her second skill, <skill 2>, as well as her Spread and Focus shots on 3P (35% chance). Her second spellcard, Kappa: Spin the Cephalic Plate can then be used to break these at 2P, leaving her target worse for wear, especially when combo-ed with other Freeze applying Friends.

+ Immune to both Burn and Freeze anomalies, is healed by them

Her ability allows her to sit on Freeze and Burn anomalies without suffering from the usual debuffs. In fact, Freeze and Burn anomalies will heal her for 5% for every stack she has!

— Triple Element Last Word dampens her potential burst damage

— Minor team support utility

Her biggest contribution to team synergy is her ability to boost team Yin ATTACK for 3 levels for one turn. The rest of the kit is geared mostly towards making her as strong as she can be; emblematic of the business minded Nitori looking to turn a good profit for herself!

Kyouko Kasodani excels in providing CRIT support to herself and her allies, bringing valuable assistance to any firefight regardless of the terms. Her kit focuses on boosting her own CRIT while debuffing the enemy team’s CRIT EVASION, leading to a cascading effect that will topple any resistance given the right setup.

+ Easy T1 damage makes her a decent farmer
+ P skills make hitting her Moon and Wood breaks simple
Kyouko can tap into 2P on T1 with her first skill, <strong>Cheerful Greeting</strong>. This, in turn, grants her access to most of her Moon and Wood breaks, lining up the barriers perfectly within her sights for swift breaks.

+ CRIT and Accuracy support helps for setting up big damage
Kyouko’s ability to debuff enemy Evasion and CRIT Evasion through both her Skills and her Spell Cards makes her a great staple to any team looking to focus on building up personal damage. Her first Spell Card, <strong>Echo Sign: Mountain Echo</strong> can debuff CRIT DEF by 1 level for a single enemy, while her second Spell Card, <strong>Great Voice: Charged Cry</strong> debuffs CRIT EVASION for the entire enemy lineup by 1 level. This is further boosted by her Last Word, <strong>Sutra-Chanting Room — Complete Manual</strong> which reduces all enemy Yang DEF and CRIT EVASION by 2 levels. 

— Low personal synergy with anomaly setting and breaking
Kyouko can set Paralysis with her Spread Shot and second Spell Card at 2P and 3P respectively, while her Last Word can break Burn anomalies. Capitalising this will require someone on the team (or the opposing team) to be able to set Burn on their barriers to begin with.

Mystia Lorelei is here to inflict night-blindness on all of her foes, ranging from decreasing their Accuracy and (the more practical effect) causing actual Blind via anomalies. Once inflicted, she can break these anomalies at 3P of her second spell, which can lead to 5 breaks with proper set up and without even considering her decent elemental coverage! Afterwards, Mystia has a good way to set up a strong Yin Last Word finisher, although she is one of the Friends that unfortunately needs some sort of Spirit Power booster if she wants to set up quickly.

+ 0P All-target Moon on Spread shot and serviceable Moon/Wood on spells
Mystia’s elemental access shines with her 0P All-target Moon break on her Spread shot, something that can easily be spammed to cripple Moon-weak foes. Outside of this, her spells have a low but still good mix of Moon and Wood, mainly topping off at her Last Word’s mix of 3 Wood and 3 Moon.

+ Stacks up Blind anomalies for breaks on 2nd spell
+ Self-Quick allows her to break the Blind anomalies before other Friends attack
Where Mystia truly stands out in terms of breaking is her Blind anomaly break on her second spell. When at 3P, she is able to Solo-target a foe and break any Blind anomaly on them. Not only does the spell itself inflict 3 Blind layers at the start, but her third skill applies 2 more to all foes for a great 5 breaks on non-Blind-immune foes! On top of that, Mystia can apply self-Quick to herself via her second skill to ensure she goes first and even gets an easy Full Break before the other nukes go all-out.

— Lacks Spirit Power restoration to quickly apply breaks to perform strongest attacks
— Blind break is only at 3P of a Solo-target spell
Mystia’s set up time can be…slow without support. Due to not having any Spirit Power restoration on her skills, she really wants a Power Linked ally or Spirit Power story card or else she will take a good amount of time to reach that 3P for anomaly breaking. Even then, it is unfortunate that it only targets one foe, especially when her third skill’s Blind anomalies hit all foes. Without Spirit Power gain of her own, it is basically impossible for her to use both of her second spells to cripple multiple opponents’ barriers.

— Very situational debuffs
Mystia’s best debuff is her Yin DEF DOWN on all foes on her second skill. Otherwise, she really only debuffs foes’ Accuracy and Yin ATK, two offensive stats that really do not have practical application for debuffing unless you are trying to survive a long time in battles and are for some reason lacking an actual Focus tank.

Seija is mainly on the team for pure damage, setting herself up with Blind anomalies on her skills to heavily increase her offensive stats. With Specular on every single bullet, she will aim to confuse the enemies by attacking their flipped defensive stats, mainly being Yin attacks targeting Yang DEF instead of Yin DEF. Outside of this, Seija doesn’t provide a whole lot for her team (and can even detriment them by giving everyone Blind anomalies), but she still pulls through with decent synergy and Blind anomaly breaks, one even being on a normal shot.

+ 0P Moon break on Spread
— Underwhelming Moon and Fire breaks overall
+ Flash breaks on Spread and first spell; can be used for synergy
Seija leans more toward Moon than Fire, but is still nothing spetacular for elemental breaks. She has a 0P Moon break on her Spread shot and 4 Moon on her Last Word, but the rest of her spells are mediocre. However, her barrier breaks are still good thanks to Blind anomaly breaks on her Spread shot and first spell, the anomaly in particular being applied by her second spell. Seija can be paired with additional Blind anomaly inflictors to make these breaks even better.

+ Last Word can hit hard after setting up from self-Blind buffs
— Requires outside Accuracy support
Seija can cast 4 Blind anomalies on herself with her first and third skill combined, which grant her great offensive buffs instead of the usual downsides of Blind. This would make her Last Word even better than it already is, but without any of her own Accuracy buffs, she will have to hope another Friend gives her some before she risks missing some of her attacks.

— Very low team synergy
— Blind anomalies on team forces team to waste a barrier
Seija is a selfish buffer, and even worse, her third skill applies Blind to the entire party. If the allies do not benefit from being Blinded themselves, than this is practically a negative synergy with Seija.

+ Specular bullets makes her Yin attacks target Yang DEF (more battle-dependent than a strength)
There’s a reason why Seija debuffs Yang DEF on her third skill despite mainly using Yin: those Yin bullets will target Yang DEF instead due to every attack being Specular. This can be a benefit for a detriment based on the fight, so you mainly have to plan your team build accordingly. If the enemy has better Yin DEF than Yang DEF, then Seija may actually do some nice damage.

Even as way back as her original appearance, Cirno proves that she is stronger than her L1 alternative- but only slightly. She boasts a minimum of 4 Freeze anomalies on all targets in a single turn, as well as a good amount of Yin DEF, CRIT DEF, and Evasion debuffs between her spells and skills. However, there are many detriments to her kit, such as requiring heavy Spirit Power to pull off her Freeze anomaly breaks and other bullet lines but lacking Spirit Power restoration to make up for it. Still, Cirno can definitely have her moments to shine in battle, just not when it comes to farming.

+ 0P All-target Water on spread shot
Cirno’s breaking abilities are rather good. When it comes to her elements, she gets 0P Water on her spread shot, as well as a decent mix of Water and Wood on both of her spells. Her Last Word mixes in a bit of Fire as well, which can come in clutch when needed.

+ 4 to 5 easy Freeze anomalies in a single turn
— Freeze anomaly break locked at 3P of a Solo-target spell card
Cirno has an easy combo to inflict 4 to 5 Freeze anoamlies: her first skill’s 2 Freezes into her second spell’s either 2 or 3 Freezes, both of which will be on all foes. It is nice that Cirno can break these anomalies with her first spell as well, it needs to be at 3P, a feat that can be difficult for her to reach alone. Additionally, it being only Solo-target may mean that Cirno loses out on breaking other Freeze anomalies if she cannot get back to 3P in time.

+ A good amount of debuffs: Yin DEF, CRIT DEF, and Evasion
+ Self-Quick makes her a reliable debuffer before the attack-focused Friends hit
— Last Word and Skill 3 debuffs lasting 1 turn can be annoying
Cirno is mainly a debuffer, shown by the many defensive debuffs she applies via her skills and spells. She can even apply Quick to herself with her second skill in order to apply debuffs with her spells before other Friends attack with spells or Last Words. However, do note how her third skill and Last Word’s debuffs only last a single turn, making them hard to retain and take advantage of.

— Needs a lot of Spirit Power to function and just cannot make that herself
No Spirit Power generation makes it hard for Cirno to both hit harder than she can at the start of the fight and access her elemental and anomaly breaks. This really slows Cirno down, something that can prove fatal for much harder fights.

— Damage is underwhelming in general
Even when set up, Cirno just doesn’t have the tools to hit heavy damage numbers by herself due to trying to debuff so many stats instead of havily buffing herself.

A strong Solo-targeting burst nuker, the Crown Prince also brings a solid amount of Breaks to the table, alongside All targeting P0 Sun on a Basic Shot, and some Accuracy support. Outside of that though her other primary team support, that being some Yin ATK UP on a Spell Card, is only really useful in the Arena (and does not benefit herself), and she can’t hit quite as hard as the top tier nukers.

+ P0 All-targeting Sun on a Basic Shot
Miko is a mix of Metal and Sun breaks, but with a 0P Sun break on her Spread shot, 3 Sun breaks on her second spell, and a duo-Metal/Sun Last Word, Miko can definitely dish out the elemental breaks when needed, at a decent rate to boot.

+ Great burst damage to singular targets
— Can’t hit as hard as the highest tier of attackers
With a second skill that immediately gets her to 3P thanks to a 2.00 Spirit Power boost, Miko is actually great at turn 1, imemdiate damage. When taking advatage of the 2 levels of Yang ATK UP from her first skill as well, Miko can end up doing good damage to a singular target, but still nothing that amazing.

+ Self Charge makes her easy to support
+ Decent amount of teamwide Accuracy and Yin ATK support
— Yin ATK support isn’t particularly helpful; Miko doesn’t benefit from it herself
Miko has the traditional Charge to make her good at supporting as a nuke, but otherwise Miko has a good amount of Accuracy buffs for the party on skills. But for some reason her third skill buffs her own Yin ATK while her first spell buffs her party’s Yin ATK as well. Yin is something Miko never uses on her Last Word, and with such a low teamwide buff, it is rather pointless in that regard as well.

Youmu Konpaku has one job — hit very hard with her All-target Last Word. Her access to elemental attacks is average at best, but she hits super hard and she has access to the potent DEF DOWN in both Yin and Yang flavors. Unfortunately she does have some RNG so it may take a few attempts to make the most of it, but at a 80% chance for a bonus level of each type of DEF DOWN, it’s easy to fish for and well worth the effort — and for many fights, even 1 level of each alone will suffice to massively amplify your team’s output. 

+ Extremely damaging Last Word both at 1 and 3 Power
+ Last Word brings 1.8 Levels of Yin and Yang DEF Down
— DEF Down is on Last Word, which can make utilizing it awkward
Youmu wants to hit very strong with her Last Word, something she is able to do both early thanks to her buffs on skills and when setting up thanks to greater bullet access at 2P or 3P. It also holds a great debuff of both Yin DEF and Yang DEF on all foes, something that actually supports both damage types on her Last Word, like her Boost and Graze buffs. This can make it somewhat awkward for other Friends to take advantage off, as Youmu needs to unleash her strongest attack before debuffing for her allies.

— Purely a selfish buffer and attacker
Outside of her Last Word debuffs, Youmu does not benefit the party through any other buffs and is just a selfish attacker. Her damage numbers definitely let her be valid in this category, but it is still unfortunate.

— Below average access to Metal and Moon element attacks
Youmu’s Moon and Metal access used to be alright when the game was just started. Nowadays? Not really. 2 Metal breaks on her spells is below average, and 3 Moon on her Last Word forces you to use her Last Word for decent Moon breaking potential.

Yuuka Kazami does two things for you — she hits extremely hard with her All-targeting Last Word, and she comes packed with a suite of All-targeting Spell Cards for Arena, farming, and mashing through events for Seal Crystal first time clear bonuses. She has no utility to speak of, and her Breaks are rather poor, but she hits hard enough to be valuable all the same. 

+ Very high and front-loaded damage which partially ignores elemental resistances
+ All spells are All-targeting for easy damage spreads
Yuuka can get straight to 3P thanks to her first and third skills, meaning she comes with devastating damage right out of the gate. She can get even more Spirit Power from her second spell, with pairs well with the fact that all of her spells are All-targeting, making Yuuka a very practical pick for multi-target battles. 

— Minimal utility
— Poor Breaks
Yuuka’s front-loaded damage is really her main appeal, as otherwise she just doesn’t have much to offer. All of her buffs are for herself, with only her Poison anomalies on her second spell being potential Yang DEF debuffs for Yang nukes. She doesn’t even get good elemental breaks outside of a spammable 0P Wood break on her Focus shot.

Solo Stage Farms: 2-7-1, 3-3-3
 

A solid Solo-targeting frontloaded nuker with strong Yang DEF DOWN & Accuracy support, Merlin’s only real flaws are mixed damage (leaving her with a lower ceiling than other Solo nukers), as well as merely average Breaks. 

+ Can apply a decent amount of Freeze Barriers
— Breaks are just average
Merlin gets a good amount of Freeze anomalies via her first skill and second spell, though note the former lasts for only a single turn. Without a way to break these anomalies herself, as well as a medicore mix of Water and Wood on her spells, Merlin isn’t that great for Full Breaking foes.

+ Very strong, front-loaded Solo-targeting Last Word
— Can’t quite reach the highs of other nukers due to mixed scaling
Thanks to debuffing the foe’s Yang DEF from on her Last Word, Merlin does get the chance to do a decent amount of damage, especially considering the attack has a 3-1-1 bullet line spread. Sadly, she cannot buff herself that much to make the attack much more devastating than a good nuke.

+ Solid amount of Yang DEF DOWN to all enemies
+ Strong Accuracy support via Evasion DOWN to all enemies
Merlin makes up for lower damage with a great amount of support, from the Yang DEF DOWN from her second skill to the Evasion DOWN from her third skill acting as good accuracy support for the whole team. With self-Quick on her first skill, she can also end up using her Last Word as a simple extra Yang DEF DOWN to support the damage of other allies.

A purrfect Friend, Orin may just well be the ultimate in Yin attacker support. Between her abundance of Burn barriers and Yin DEF DOWN, there’s no defense she can’t kasha off guard. She may be lacking in personal attack power, but you can sharpen her claws with some Story Cards or Friend support to help her cat-ch up to her allies. 

+ Solid Breaks, including P0 Solo targeting Moon on a basic shot
Orin would almost be your typical case of a confused duo-elemental attacker, having a mix of Moon and Fire on her spells, but she more thank makes up for it with her 0P Moon on her Spread shot. On top of that, her Last Word is more focused with 4 Moon and 2 Fire, making for a better focus on what element she’s better at breaking.

+ Great levels of Yin DEF DOWN & Burn Barriers
Orin chose some great debuffs to apply on foes, from the Yin DEF DOWN on her Last Word and third skill to the Burn anomalies she inflicts on her second spell, which act as even more Yin DEF DOWN. With these, this cat can easily claw her way into the foes with her own Yin-focused attacks and allow other Friends to dig in too.

— No Accuracy UP
— Low levels of Yin ATK UP
Without Accuracy or Yin ATK UP on her kit, Orin really needs to rely on outside support to do great damage when her elements and debuffs aren’t doing everything for her.

Packing fire power on the level of an atomic bomb, Utsuho Reiuji is an incredibly powerful All targeting Last Word nuker useful both for farming and harder fights, with some party-wide Agility support to boot alongside 0P Sun on a Basic Shot. Her Breaks are otherwise fairly average, but when that’s the worst you can say about a Friend, they’re unquestionably top tier. 

+ 0P All-targeting Sun Breaks on a Basic Shot
— Overall average Breaks
Okuu gets a 0P Sun break on her Focus shot, but has middling breaks otherwise. She gets the traditional dual mix of Fire and Sun between her spells and Last Word, with neither of them really standing out outside of more Sun on her Last Word.

+Extremely strong All-targeting Last Word, for farming or longer fights alike.
Thanks to Okuu’s heavy Slice scaling and just raw buffs an power, her Last Word is the traditional baseline for any good Yang nuke.

+Can provide Yang DEF DOWN on a priority target or two.
+Provides Agility UP for the entire team, though this is of limited use.
Okuu is an offensive Friend with some actual team utility thanks to her second spell, which lowers a target’s Yang DEF and CRIT Evasion to help out different teammates. She can also try to buff Agility with her third skill, though this does not really help Friends with no Slice scaling.
 

Minamitsu Murasa is an extremely powerful unit — so powerful in fact that she is one of the better units in the game,. Her ability to ramp up damage and speed as quickly as she does using her skills combined with her good Slice values makes her a force to be reckoned with. She also has very good Barrier breaks and can provide the rest of her allies the same speeds she gives herself using her skills.

+ Plenty of Water breaks.
Murasa holds ground as a good elemental breaker due to her great Water breaks. With a 0P Water Focus shot, several Water breaks on her spells, and 4 Water breaks on her Last Word, she is a definite must for any Water-weak opponents.

+ Remarkable Agility which translates into more damage using her Slice
+ Very strong damage
Murasa obtains a great amont of power from a combination of Yang ATK self-buffs as well as Agility buffs in order to take advantage of Slice scaling. It helps that her Last Word’s Slice damage is much higher than average, as well as the self-Freeze anoamlies she inflicts serving as further Agility buffs and even accuracy support.

— Very little supportive utility
— Vulnerable after using skills
Murasa’s strengthening buffs may be plentiful, but since all of the ones on her skills last a single turn, it can be difficult to ensure that she retains her solid buffs for long. These buffs are also entirely selfish outside of the Agility buffs on her first and second skills, which even then are situational based on the Friend.

Solo Stage Farms: 3-3-3

Okina combines a abundance of Barrier Breaks (especially fire!), CRIT heavy damage, and support for CRIT attackers and units with relevant Killers into one godly package. Do keep in mind her rating is particularly reliant on the farmable 5* Story Card from Chapter 3 Act 2, and she takes a larger than average hit for having to use a different Story Card.

+ Abundance of Barrier Breaks, including P0 Fire on a Basic Shot
+ Star Element is a nice aid in farming event stages with one boss, as Star weakness is relatively common.
0P Fire on Okina’s Focus shot is already great, and her 4 Fire breaks on her second spell makes her better at breaking the element. While her Star access is smaller, it is a pretty common weakness of enemies, which can be taken advantage of to squeeze out more damage and breaks.

+ Very high damage potential in longer fights
+ Solid CRIT and Killer support
— Somewhat inconsistent due to CRIT based nature
Okina’s damage mainly ends up on if she can hit critical hits, either from Killer bullets or CRIT Accuracy. She has Killer bullets against humans, youkai, and fairies on her Last Word, which is definitely pretty spread-out, but can miss at times. She can at least support other Friends of their own critical hits and damage as well, mainly on her third skill and whenever she Grazes. She can still deal alright damage without the critical hits, but it will be what she is hoping on most of the time.

Watatsuki no Yorihime is here to do one job — hit extremely, extremely hard with her 1-1-3 All targeting Last Word. She has no team utility, her Element access isn’t great, she needs time to set up, and she hits so hard none of that matters. Just make sure she has time to set up, both for hard fights and farming. 

+ Incredible damage when properly set up
— Weak Turn 1 damage
This is practically the only reason for using Yorihime: Last Word setup damage. Being a 1-1-3 Last Word already is unfortunate, and Yorihime doesn’t have much Spirit Power generation by herself to get to that 3P quickly. At the very least, many of her buffs are meant to be set up to do a devastaing amount of damage once ready, instead of just Full Autoing and trying a Turn 1 nuke. Additionally, the Gensokyo-Killer bullets on 2P and beyond of her Last Word just increase the damage on most foes even further.

+ Varied elemental coverage on Last Word at P3
— No elements on Last Word until P2
Yorihime’s elemental coverage is nothing to really care about. However, she does get access to an interesting assortment of elements, specifically Moon, Fire, Water, and Earth, upon being at 3P of her Last Word. Hopefully these elements do more to help her damage rather than end up being resisted by the target…

— Purely selfish attacker
Yorihime is just here for damage set up, she’s doing nothing to buff her other allies and with the heavy damage Yorihime is going for, perhaps that is for the better.

Solo Stage Farms: 3-3-3

As expected of Lunarian nobility, Toyohime is very powerful. She hits incredibly hard in shorter, scales well in longer fights, serves as a useful farmer in both Events and for Chapter 1, 2 Act 2, and 3 Act 1’s Story Cards, and completely invalidates any fight that relies on Evasion to provide a challenge. She’s entirely a selfish damage dealer and her Barrier Break abilities are unusually abysmal, but those don’t really undermine her overwhelming strengths. 

+ Great Turn 1 Damage
+ High set-up damage
+ Yin Only spells are good against Yang-focused enemies
Toyohime is really here for the damage. All of her skills are about optimizing her Yin output and Accuracy to make sure the opponents really feel what they’re being hit with. Her spells can play with this buffing theme as well, especially if you are targetting the Human-Killer bullets of her Last Word. She can do good damage right off the bat for Event farming, and can increase that damage even more if she is setting up. Yin attacks can also be synergized with other Yin supporters to catch some bosses off guard.

— Almost no Breaks
Toyohime just has almost no breaks, and it doesn’t take long to look over her spells to see why. Her Last Word has the highest amount of elements in her kit, which even then is just 2 Wood and 1 Moon. She’s not Full Breaking, and even if she doesn’t need to in order to deal high damage, it can be rather inefficient.

— No utility
All Toyohime does is buff herself, not even debuffing the enemies. She is purely here for the damage, and while supporting her can make her do even more, she’s not giving anything back in terms of support.

Due to her sheer amount of Hard, Kaguya Houraisan punches harder than you might expect from a princess. As a selfish attacker, she’s a rather above average farmer, and a solid candidate for harder fights, thanks to her ability to generate a ton of Spirit P on demand combined with average access to Metal and Fire on top of her highly damaging All targeting Last Word. She’s got no utility on account of being a selfish princess, but what more can you ask for?

+ Average access to two elements, Fire and Metal, as well as Wood on Last Word
Kaguya’s breaks are merely average, not totally dominating in one field or another. 3 Metal on her first spell, 3 Fire on her second spell, and 3 Wood on her Last Word if you truly want to waste it for barrier breaks. Warning: you usually do not.

+ Highly damaging All-targeting Last Word with potential on turn 1 and with setup
It may be backloaded, but Kaguya’s great Yang DEF buffs allow for some great Hard scaling that makes her Last Word hit very hard, even if it is a mixed attack. With a 1-1-3 spread, you will usually want to reach 3P quickly to take full advantage of every bullet pattern.

+ Gains a lot of Spirit Power
— Kaguya’s second Spell Card hurts herself
Not only do her first and second skills give 0.75 Spirit Power each, but both spells provide 1.50 Spirit Power as well! This makes it not only easy to get to that 3P for her Last Word, but it also makes Kaguya very versatile in accessing her other elemental breaks. 

— Selfish attacker with no utility outside of Breaks
Every single buff and spell effect Kaguya performs is for her and her alone. The princess didn’t want to play nice today, so all the rest of the team gets is the peformance she wishes to pull off.

A damage dealer with good Yin DEF Down support and a powerful All Last Word that hits hard at both 1 Power and scales higher at 3 Power, Remilia Scarlet is good at both farming and challenge quests. Her Breaking ability is somewhat below average, but her damage and offensive utility both more than make up for it. 

+ 2 Solo Fire Breaks for 1P from her second Spell Card.
— Only has Fire Breaks, with somewhat below average access to them
Remilia having 2 breaks at 1P is actually rather good for a cheap and quick option to break more barriers than just 1 from a singluar attack. Sadly, this second spell card and her Last Word are her only ways to utilize Fire breaks, making her elemental breaking very mediocre.

+ Powerful All-target Last Word that deals a lot of damage at 1 Power and nearly double at 3 Power
— Deals less damage to secondary targets
Remilia is a case of a backloaded Last Word, having a 1-1-3 bullet line spread, meaning she really wants to build up to 3P to maximize the attack’s damage output. Fortunately, especially when utilizing all of her Yin ATK buffs on her spells and skills, Remilia’s damage will definitely be worth waiting for.

+ Brings a fair amount of Yin DEF DOWN, especially against a single target
— Still a selfish buffer
Remilia’s second skill decreases a target’s Yin DEF and Evasion by 2 levels, indirectly helping allies take down that one foe. Outside of another slight Yin DEF debuff from her first spell, though, Remilia’s kit is entirely marketed toward buffing herself and not her other comrades.

Alice Margatroid (A6) is a Debuff-Class Friend who weakens her enemies with defensive debuffs, plays with Burn and Paralyze anomalies and showers her foes with a rainbow of elements.

Debuffs and Anomalies

While A6 Alice may be focused on Yang DEF debuffs via Skill 2 and her Last Word, she provides Yin DEF debuffs through her Second Spell Card and Last Word Pre-ATKs. It may seem odd for a Yang unit like this puppeteer, but with some Yin-based allies, this could be of use. Yin allies will also appreciate the slight benefit from A6 Alice inflicting Burn anomalies on her foes, should she opt not to anomaly break.

Puppets and Power

Having a decent range of Killers, with Youkai being the main one here is always convenient, and with the CRIT DEF and CRIT Evasion debuffs in A6 Alice’s kit, she will capitalize on that well. She is also able to use Hard Scaling to her advantage, with it having more of an effect through methods such as her Paralyze anomaly inflicts on herself.

Alice in Rainbowland

Having all kinds of elements in one’s attacks is very hard to work with, especially when the most rainbow-y set of elements we have seen to date resides in A6 Alice’s kit. With her rainbow scheme preventing an element appearing more than once in any of her attacks, her elemental break potential is very much hindered, even mitigations like slight anomaly breaking and resisted elements getting a 25% boost aren’t enough to cover this flaw up.

No Support, Needs Support

As a debuffer, it’s natural that A6 Alice will want to focus on that, but her only way to buff the team is Yang DEF UP, which is especially selfish. On top of that, her buffs she gives herself like Yang ATK, CRIT ATK and to some extent, Yang DEF are very lacking, so she needs some backup that can provide the above to really bring her damage up.

A selfish damage dealer with four All Spell Cards, Marisa Kirisame carries new players hard with her extremely powerful Spell Card, Master Spark. Unfortunately after the early game ends and players begin to Max Limit Break their Friends, Marisa falls off somewhat Her Solo Last Word deals average damage for a Solo LW, she has no utility, and her access to only Star element attacks is merely acceptable. However, still has some uses in a few 3-wave stages and harder fights due to having two rather strong All Spell Cards, and her All access to Star will still be relevant at times in difficult content.

+ First spell deals high All damage for a Spell Card
It may be a simple spell, but Marisa’s first spell definitely has potential to do a decent amount of damage. Of course, make sure to set it up first. She may like to brag about her own firepower, but it needs to come from something before being unleashed.

— Mixed Yin and Yang damage makes her hard to scale
Marisa herself only buffs her Yang ATK from her second skill and when Boosting, which is sadly ironic when her Last Word is a mainly Yin attack. Outside forces can be used to buff her own Yin ATK, but don’t be expected Marisa to wisen up and buff the correct stat herself.

— Overall low access to elements
Star might be a good element to have, but Marisa is even lacking having any elements, even for lower standards. One break on both of her spells and 2 on her Last Word. She’s really not Full Breaking anyone unless she’s the final blow.

+ Very powerful early-game
— Falls off hard mid to late-game
All in all, Marisa’s value is very high in the early-game, especially considering every player gets her for free. You can invest in her a little bit to do very well through the early Main Story chapters, Unfortunately, this will immediately change both when times get tougher and better Friends are just available to perform the feats that she used to do. 

Marisa is an A-Tier Friend when considering all of her Fantasy Rebirth 2.0 upgrades, specifically her Last Word upgrade. This upgrade nearly quadruples her Last Word’s damage, making her once again a very good and fast nuker depending on the situation. However, due to the minor changes with her other 2.0 upgrades and the how lackluster she is at base, she is only E-Tier without the Last Word buffs.

Rumia’s a Solo-targeting nuker with some support for teammates who benefit from Blind Barriers being applied to them. It’s a bit narrow, but decent support when a unit benefits. Otherwise, she hits single targets hard, and brings some Breaks (including Blind Breaks) along the way.

+Blind anomaly break on All-target Focus Shot
-Below-average access to elemental breaks; rather costly
Rumia having an anomaly break on a basic shot is a lot better than it may sound, since this means that Rumia can actually break anomalies at any time of the fight, as long as she has the proper amount of Spirit Power. It helps that all of her skills are all about applying Blind anomalies, with the first and third going straight for the foes. Unfortunately, this means she ends up being lackluster in the elemental front, with her spells containing a mediocre mix of other elements.

+Decently strong Solo-target Last Word
+Increases Accuracy through self-inflicted Blind barriers
Rumia’s Last Word debuffs the target’s Yin DEF to help her squeeze out some extra damage, additionally, she can gain her own Accuacy support on the way by applying Blind barriers to herself, ensuring most of the damage goes through. Just be careful of the rest of a team when using her second skill: it applies Blind to everyone, which can easily mess with allies’ Accuracy if they don’t ignore Blind’s penalties.

-Primarily self-buff focused
All of Rumia’s buffs are just for herself, which can be similarly seen through the buffs she gains from self-inflicted Blind anomalies. Her Last Word debuff is really the only thing that can count as team utility for the whole party.

Eternity takes on the role of a Support-class Friend here in Touhou Lost Word, helping Yin-focused teams excel with various buffs to power their attacks.

Supports Yin teams via buffs

Eternity keeps her team running via buffs to ACC and Yin ATK. She also buffs Agility as well as Yin and Yang DEF to help with Slicing and Heavy bullets.

Defensive options keep teams going strong

Eternity can recover both Barriers and HP for her teammates, keeping them going through long firefights.

Zero Anomaly Interactions

Where most modern characters can manipulate Anomalies in some way through buffs or breaks, Eternity stands out like a sore thumb with no interactions with Anomalies whatsoever. Her simple nature means you’ll be sticking to your bread and butter when it comes to her.

Lacks offensive power

Element breaks aside, Eternity doesn’t contribute very much in the way of damage, due to her lack of notable Killers and Crit enhancements.

Wriggle is a Debuff-Class Friend who inflicts various anomalies on her enemies to sow chaos among their ranks.

Supports Yin teams via debuffs

Wriggle’s various debuffs to enemy Yin DEF, EVASION and Crit EVASION and buffs to team Agility helps Yin attackers shine, especially if their attacks feature Slicing bullets.

Anomalies are her playground

Wriggle inflicts Poison and Burn via Spell Cards, and can reflect Poison and Blind back at opponents. Her Shots and Spell Cards break Poison, Burn and Blind

Lacks Spirit P generation to constantly hit her Anomaly breaks

Two out of three of Wriggle’s Anomaly breaks are locked behind her 3P Spread Shot and Focus Shot. With only one skill giving her 1P every 4 turns, she has to rely on support to hit those levels while maintaining her output each turn.

Kutaka is a through and through healer and barrier restoring Friend. She’s got a little bit of other stuff, like Speed support and Melting, but overall not too complicated of a Friend. As such, she’s not gonna be blowing apart the battlefield with ridiculous damage or anything like that, so as long as you temper your expectations for nuking or lots of buffs, she does the job she sets out to do.

+0P Wood Focus Shot
+Tons of healing and barrier restore throughout Skills and Spell Cards
This is pretty much what you’re here for with using Kutaka in the first place, and she has plenty of it. There’s not much else to say.

+Some party wide speed buffs, and personally benefits from Slice scaling
Kutaka can do a little bit of Speed support, and slot into a Speed based team somewhat well. It’s nothing crazy, but it’s something.

+Immune to poison, freeze and burn
+Spirit Power UP switch-in effect
Still the best general use switch-in effect, and a pleasure to have on anyone.

-Middling damage without speed support
-Weak Yang ATK buffs gimp damage further
Don’t go expecting Kutaka’s damage to blow you out of the water. You can set up for it to be pretty decent, but you should probably just set up your other Friends instead.

-Weak passive skills
These really don’t do much of anything for her. the Spirit P UP one is nice, if it goes off, but you usually can’t count on it.

Eiki, as one of the Yama who judges the dead, comes to Lost Word with a decent array of elements and decent damage. While she may lack utility and may not hit as hard as some of the other characters, Eiki can still give her enemies a rough lecture.

+ 0P Fire on Spread Shot
+ Average breaks
Eiki holds a spammable Fire break in the form of her 0P Spread shot while having decent access to both Fire and Sun via her spells. Her Last Word combines the two to have 3 Fire and Sun breaks, making her a serviceable breaker in either category.

— Spellcards need both Yin and Yang to make the most of their damage output.
— Damage, while decent, still doesn’t compare to the top end of nukers
It’s not that Eiki’s damage itself is bad, but it can be very difficult to fully support her Yin and Yang requirements at the same time. She definitely does a decent bit to buff both offensive stats herself with her second skill, along with a Last Word Yang ATK buff that actually relates to the spell’s attack type, but with mediocre Hard scaling, Eiki will remain as one of the more «decent» nukes of Lost Word.

— Little utility to speak of
Eiki’s only teamwide buff is on her second spell, which provides Accuracy and Agility to the party, two rather situational buffs. She can also use her first spell to set up Blind anomalies to a singular target, which can potentially lead to a Blind anomaly break from other Friends. However, she really lacks any way to support the teams in terms of buffs.

Story Card farms: 3-3-3*, 3-6-3*
 

Tojiko is a selfish Destroy class Friend who requires some support to get going. Give her enough juice and she serves as a powerful nuke and Wood/Moon breaker.

Decent Wood and Moon breaks that hit AoE on up to 4 Spell Cards

Both her first and second Spell Cards hit ALL enemies, dealing 3 Wood and 2 Moon worth of Element damage reach. Her Last Word is a Single Target nuke, landing 3 Wood and 3 Moon breaks on one unlucky opponent.

0P breaks on both Spread and Focus Shots

Tojiko’s Spread and Focus shots can hit Single Target Elements at P0, with the former breaking Wood while the latter breaks Moon. Versatile for long fights!

Requires Accuracy and Spirit P support

Conspicuously absent from her kit are Accuracy and Spirit P boosts, meaning she will require Story Cards to help her boost those stats, or Friends who can support her in that way. Be sure to pack wisely when bringing her into firefights!

Heavily backloaded

With most of her lines locked behind 3P, Tojiko requires a lot of energy for her Lightning to run free.

Selfish attacker with low utility

Big breaks and damage numbers aside, Tojiko has little to offer as a team player, with some minor Crit ACC and Crit ATK for her team to use.

Mononobe no Futo is your example of a good Yang nuker, buffing her own Yang ATK for more damage off of her Last Word as well as Agility for better Slice scaling. Outside of this, though, she somewhat lacks a purpose. She can spam Fire and Earth breaks on her basic shots in extended battles, but otherwise her elemental breaks are low and team utility even lower.

+ 0P Fire and Earth on basic shots
— Mediocre elemental breaks on her spells
Futo has 0P Fire on her Spread shot and 0P Earth on her Focus shot, making her a very good candidate to bring along if these elements need to be spammed on a specific enemy in longer fights. Her spells, however, lack this practicality. Her first spell is an uncanny mix of elements and her second spell is just low in them. Her Last Word is a nice 4 Fire breaks, although it should never really be used just for breaking.

+ Can get good damage off of her Yang-only Last Word
Futo’s damage is overall great, especially when she is allowed to set up. At 3P, her Last Word has the benefits of good Slice scaling as well as being Yang-only and Energy-only to make it simple to set up an optimal combo with. On top of that, she gets up to 6 Yang ATK buffs by herself to make the damage go up even higher.

+ Good amount of Agility buffs from whole kit; helps Slice scaling
— A very selfish buffer that offers little from her team buffs
Futo uses most of her skills and her first spell to raise her Agility, a stat that is mainly good for the Slice scaling on her spell cards but not much else. What doesn’t help is that, because of this focus, Futo loses out on a lot of team utility. Her third skill can buff Accuracy and her second skill can buff Agility, but these buffs might not be needed by many other allies, making her somewhat useless to some teams in terms of support.

— Rather lacking in defensive stats
Without a good HP and defense bulk, Futo will need some support to keep her alive most of the time, either in the form of Yin DEF or Yang DEF buffs or at least some form of barrier restoration. Using barriers for Graze too early may also mess with her Agility buffs she gains from Grazing.

Seiga Kaku’s main purpose is to dash around the enemies, constantly debuff their Evasion and Yin DEF, and then circle around her Agility buffs for an All-target Last Word finisher. The backloaded nature of her spells get in the way of this at times, but the low cooldown on her skills and heavy amount of self-Accuracy support make for a rather reliable offensive pick. Also, 6 Star on a single Last Word is still pretty crazy.

+ Decent Earth and Water coverage
Seiga wields a variety of elements, but her best ones are by far the ones contained on her spells. She gets 4 Earth breaks on her first spell, as well as 3 Water breaks on her second spell. If you really need it, there is a Fire break at 1P of her Focus shot, but it is pretty impractical to fully rely on.

+ All-target, Energy and Star-only Last Word
+ Heavy amount of self-Agility UP
A 6/6 Star Last Word is insanely good, both for opponents weak to the element and for supporting with different story cards. The Slice scaling of the attack is pretty low, but Seiga can still squeeze out a decent amout of Agility UP for her second spell and inflicting herself with Poison, with each anomaly inflicted raising her Agility, Evasion, and even Accuracy to help her damage output.

+ Small debuffs on skills that quickly recharge
— Selfish attacker/buffer
Seiga’s skills are unique in the way that all of them have cooldowns below 5 turns, with her second skill that lowers all foes’ Yin DEF by 2 levels for 1 turn having a 3 turn cooldown. Sadly, outside of an Evasion DOWN from her first skill, all of Seiga’s primary buffs are selfish and makes her harder to work with.

— All spells are backloaded (1-1-3)
No self-Spirit Power restoration combined with backloaded spells only means Seiga will require a decent amount of setup time if she is attempting to build up that Spirit Power by herself.

— Risks health of teammates due to Focus DOWN and Poison anomalies
Focus DOWN risks other Friends taking more damage from All-target attacks, while Poison anomalies are inflicted to the entire team by her third skill. While some other Friends may benefit from self-inflicted Poison or just not care, the majority will likely find themselves with a Yang debuff and a major inconvenience.

Sekibanki can be described as a glass cannon. She is a good nuker but her HP is extremely low which makes her vulnerable to being wiped out if you are not careful. However, she provides decent Fire elemental breaks which are essential for Challenge Quest.

+ Good set of Fire elements
A 0P FIre break on her Focus shot and 3 Fire breaks on her first spell makes Sekibanki decent at Fire breaking. She also has a mix of elements on her second spell and Last Word, but there are less bullets to truly take advantage of breaking with.

+ Human and Fairy Killer on Last Word
+ All-target Evasion DOWN on Last Word
Not only can Sekibanki hit relatively hard with her All-target Last Word, but Human and Fairy Killers can be good when facing some somewhat common opponents, though without CRIT ATK buffs of her own, other support is needed to access that increased damage better. Additionally, it inflicts Evasion DOWN to all foes to make it a good follow-up tool by other nukes.

— Extremely low HP stats
With an HP Stat of only 3800, you bet that Sekibanki is the definition of a glass cannon. She will need to be very careful with her Grazes or at least be paired up with a defensive/Focus UP tank to make sure she stays alive long enough to be worth it in a fight.

— Lack of team utility
Outside of the Evasion debuff, Sekibanki is a selfish attacker, only buffing Friends’ Agility slightly with her first spell. While doing good damage is good, having at least some utility should be considered if you want to be more useful in many harder fights.
 

Solo Stage Farms: 3-6-3 

As a strong supporter, Mai brings Yang ATK and CRIT ATK UP to her party, alongside an extremely solid amount of Barrier Recovery on her Spell Cards, and spamable Star Breaks on her Spread Shot. She has otherwise somewhat average damage however, and her Barrier restoration is a one-time thing each fight. 

+ P0 Solo-targeting Star on a Basic Shot, with sure-hit to boot
— Average Breaking potential
Mai’s 0P Star on her Spread shot stands out as a rather useful 0P element, given the common usefulness of Star in most situations. Sure-Hit also means that the attack will connect no matter what, no accuracy risks required. Otherwise, however, Mai’s spells and Last Word just combine to an average amount of Wood and Star. There’s nothing entirely wrong with that, but it can be more difficult to Full Break an enemy only weak to one of those elements.

+ Solid offensive support, with good levels of Yang ATK and CRIT ATK UP
Mai’s skills are all about dancing hard and supporting the group she is allied with, providing 3 levels of Yang ATK UP on her first skill and 3 levels of CRIT ATK UP on her second skill. Any use of Graze increases CRIT ATK even further for the team, and she can even increase Yang DEF via her third skill and Boosting if needed.

+ Incredible Barrier restoration in shorter fights due to restoring 2 Barriers with a Spell Card
— Barrier restoration being tied to Spell Cards means she runs out of gas in longer fights
Restoring 2 barriers via a post-ATK effect on a spell is just as amazing as it sounds, you get 2 barriers back just for being offensive. Of course, the main drawback of barrier restoration being on a spell means you only get 2 shots of it before you cannot restore any more barriers, unless there’s a spell card item in the stage, which is just rare.

— Average, backloaded damage
While she can buff the party heavily, Mai’s damage is just not very impressive. Not terrible, but she doesn’t do anything to stand out from the crowd on the offensive end.

Satono Nishida brings out the mental energy of anyone she dances behind, translating to Yin-focused buffs in the world of Touhou LostWord. She is able to give 3 levels of Yin ATK UP and 6 levels of Yin DEF UP from her kit, which may be lower than other supports but is still a nice help for Yin-based fighters. She also comes with a 0P Fire break on her focus shot and a decent amount of other Fire breaks to make her a decent addition to a team.

+0P Fire Focus shot
Satono is able to spam Fire breaks in extended fights thanks to 0P Fire on her Focus shot. Otherwise, the rest of her spells provide a decent amount of Fire with a side of Star as well, but it’s not the most impressive part of her kit, let alone overall.

+Yin ATK and DEF buffs
-Only slight buffs compared to what better Friends can provide
Yin ATK and DEF buffs come from both Satono’s third and first skills respectively, with both of them lasting rather long to boot. The main issue with them is that these are the only ways that Satono can provide buffs, in where many other and better Friends have kits more specialized in buffing either themselves or even the entire party.

+Minor amount of Spirit Power and Barrier restoration
Satono can boost the team’s Spirit Power by 0.75 with her first spell and even restore 2 barriers with her Last Word, a very good trait for longer fights. Unfortuntely, the barrier restoration being on a Last Word means she only gets to restore barriers once throughout a fight, and she can only do the same for Spirit Power at most twice.

-Solo-target Last Word with mediocre strength
Since Satono does not heavily buff offense, her Last Word damage likewise struggles. She has actually decent Hard scaling, but it still isn’t much to truly make her do better.

-CRIT buffs only particularly helps Friends with high CRIT chance
Satono also attempts to debuff foes’ CRIT Evasion with her second spell and buff CRIT Accuracy when Grazing and using her second skill, but with very little Killer bullets herself, their utility is heavily based on if the team she is with enjoys CRIT support as well.

Hata no Kokoro is a solid, well-rounded healer who is able to dish out some surprisingly, strong damage. In addition, she has 12 Earth Breaks, one of which being a P0 Break on her Focus Shot. She’s an overall strong friend who covers a lot on the table.

+ Amazing Earth breaking capabilities, including a 0P shot break
Kokoro is your definition of a good Earth breaker. Instead of wasting time trying to break a lot of multiple elements at once, Kokoro remains consistent with 3 Earth breaks on both of her spells and 4 more on her Last Word. She even throws in a few Star breaks and a 0P Earth break on her Focus shot for good measure.

+ Solid damage
— Low damage ceiling
With 3 levels of Yin ATK UP upon using her Last Word, Kokoro is able to dish out some decent damage upon using her Last Word. Sadly, without much else to increase her damage, she retains a low damage ceiling, even when being supported.

+ Great healing on spells and skills
— No offensive support
Both Kokoro’s second spell and first two skills provide rather moderate healing to give Kokoro many support options. Unfortunately her main barrier restoration, which is on her third skill, is only for herself and not the party. On top of that, none of her Yin ATK buffs can be given to the rest of the team, limiting her utility. Sure, she is meant to be a Support-type Friend, but there are many Friends who are able to at least provide a good amount of offensive support outside of Accuracy buffs.

Yuugi has two jobs — provide your Killer friends with CRIT ATK UP, and hit a single target hard. In addition, she also provides some decent breaks, including notably All targeting Star at P0 on a basic shot. She doesn’t hit as hard as the friends rated above her, and she needs setup time which isn’t ideal for Solo attackers, who want to take out a priority target ASAP, but she’s solid and will do well in fights where you need one or more of what she brings to the table.

+ P0 Star on a Basic Shot
0P Star breaks gives Yuugi a great spammable elemental option, and that’s the main highlight for her elemental breaking. She gets a mix of Earth, Metal, and Star in her other spells, but she does not do exceptionally well in any of them to make not of. Yuugi is mainly here for the damage.

+ High damage on a single target with setup time
— Lackluster farmer, even with Auto-Replay Update
— Requires setup time, which isn’t ideal for Solo-targeting attackers
— Can’t hit the damage levels that better Solo-targeting attackers can
Yuugi sadly needs the setup time in order to do any substansial damage, and even then the numbers will not compared to some other Solo-target nukes. She has many ways to buff herself, sure, and even a lot of Killers to ensure CRIT damage, but it’s just not enough to make her stand out from the rest of the crowd.

+ CRIT support for the party
At the very least, Yuugi’s second and third skills hold some partywide CRIT buffs, specifically 2 levels of CRIT ATK on the second and 2 levels of CRIT Accuracy on the third. These buffs can at the very least give her purpose in a team that is focusing harder on the critical hits.

Packing Yin & CRIT DEF DOWN support, a ton of damage herself, and some solid Break potential, Koakuma’s name may mean Little Devil, but she’s actually extremely strong. A competent farmer and a great unit for harder fights, her only real failings are not being quite as good as the top shelf farmers, not quite doing as much damage as the top shelf attackers, and not being able to support Yang attackers who don’t CRIT — but she’s still very good.

+ Overall good Break potential
Koakuma’s main elemental breaks are purely good, nothing extensively great or bad about them. 3 Fire breaks on all of her spells, along with 3 extra Moons on her Last Word, give her a clear purpose when it comes to elemental breaks with a small niche ability to Moon break on the side.

+ Strong All-targeting Last Word that gets very powerful in longer fights
— Not quite as strong as other top tier attackers
Koakuma’s Last Word can actually prove to be pretty strong in extended battles, especially if she is able to unleash all of her debuffs before going all out. Sadly, these numbers are still not enough to really challenge higher-tier nukes or offensive Friends.

+ Team support in the form of Yin & CRIT DEF DOWN
— Only provides DEF DOWN for Yin or CRIT attackers
Yin DEF and CRIT DEF DOWN is a very nice basis to cover, especially if you can do both at the same time decently. With a third skill that debuffs Yin DEF of a single target by 3 levels and combos with a Quick into her Last Word, which debuffs every foe’s Yin DEF and CRIT DEF by 2 more levels is a great combination of moves that can support many Friends. Of course, she still lacks any real substansial teamwide buffs, and with only those 2 stats, Yang Friends or Friends who need their stats buffed can feel a bit lacking.

Reisen Udongein Inaba stands out for having access to Moon element attacks, and she can take down the first main story boss at a lower level than anyone else. She also can apply two Paralyze barriers to all enemies, which is nice Accuracy support and can synergize well with Discharge attackers. That’s about all she has going for her — both of her Spell Cards and her Last Word are Solo, her damage is overall rather low, and she brings no utility outside of that.

+ Access to Moon-element attacks
+ Able to capitalize upon certain barrier anomalies with her Spell Cards
Reisen’s breaking potential is rather high. Element-wise, she has access to both a 0P Moon break on her focus shot for spamming and a decent selection of 3 Moon breaks on her spells and Last Word. On top of that, however, Reisen can actually anomaly break every type of anomaly! Her first spell breaks Burn and Freeze at 1P as well as Paralyze at 3P, while her second spell breaks Poison and Blind at 3P. It is a shame that Reisen has no way to access most of these elements, but the option is present to help her syergize with more teams.

+ Applies 2 Paralyze anomalies with her Skill 2
2 guaranteed Paralyze anomalies on all foes combined with the potential of breaking those anomalies with her first spell gives Reisen an easy access to some quick and immediate barrier breaks. 

+ Quite a bit of Evasion debuffs
— Low utility
Reisen’s skills debuff the CRIT Evasion and CRIT DEF of all foes, and her Last Word can debuff Evasion by 2 levels as well. Sadly, this is all that Reisen provides in terms of teamwide support, and even then the debuffs are lower than preferred.

— Low damage
— All Solo-target Spell Cards
Not only does Reisen hit pretty lightly, but having only Solo-target spells can be unfortunate for many reasons. The main one is that barrier breaking becomes a lot harder, as while her second skill does Paralyze every foe, she can only break those anomalies one at a time — and that’s assuming she has enough Spirit Power to access those breaks.

Shou’s a selfish attacker with P0 Sun and a Pagoda Tank here to blast at your enemies. She’s not a super great All farmer, though she can be a good Solo farmer on some one- boss stages due to her Human killer. Where she shines is harder fights, bringing a powerful backloaded Last Word to the table.

+ P0 Sun on Basic Shot
Shou has a 0P Sun break on her Focus shot, but that’s about all she has for amazing elemental break potential. Her spells and Last Word have a small mix of Metal and Sun if that is what you need in the fight, but is otherwise not that special.

+ Powerful All-targeting Last Word if given time to set up
— Backloaded damage makes her not the best at farming anything but humans.
Shou definitely has the tools to set up her great Last Word damage, thanks to a combination of Yang ATK buffs and Human-Killer bullets. If the latter is inaccessible in the current fight, though, then Shou will have trouble unleashing high damage if not at 3P due to the backloaded nature of her Last Word. She at least has a skill and spell to increase her own Spirit Power for the chance of doing good damage.

+ Self Charge makes her easy to support
— Selfish attacker
Shou is another great attacker with Charge, allowing for herself to wait for ally debuffs before attacking with a hard-hitting spell or Last Word. However, this is all Shou has in terms of teamwork, as all of her other buffs are purely for herself and no one else.

Keine is a very good Hard attack support, providing loads of Yang DEF team-wide. In addition, and as a result of her own scaling, Keine’s overall damage without much external Yang ATK support matches that of some other S-Tier contenders. 

+ Rather high damage All targeting Last Word that can farm
— Fairly modest top end for damage without Yang ATK support
With rather good Hard scaling to bounce off her good Yang DEF UP access, Keine can do a good amount of damage with her Last Word. It may take a turn to set up, due to being a 1-3-1 spread, but Keine can at least acess the Spirit Power necessary through just using her first spell, giving her 1.00 Spirit Power upon use. Still, without any Yang ATK buffs, Keine’s damage ceiling will be pretty low.

+ Extremely high levels of Yang DEF UP support
— Low Focus UP for a tank.
Keine is a Defense-type Friend that delivers through buffing Yang DEF heavily on her second and third skills, 2 levels each to the whole party, to be exact. The teamwide buffs make it so the way Focus UP damages the Focused unit more less devastating, though as a tank Keine lacks this attribute, only having 4 levels UP on her first skill and 3 more levels after using her Last Word. However, it is better to have a little Focus UP rather than overwhelm yourself with more damage than you can muster.

— Element access is below average, unless willing to use Last Word for Breaking.
Defending is likely what Keine will be doing, as her Last Word is her own decent access to 4 Sun breaks, and you won’t usually want to only use it for breaks. Her other spells are only a less-than-average 2 Sun breaks each, making her only a back-up option for Sun breaks.

Koishi hits extremely hard in fights she’s given a chance to set up with her Solo-targeting Last Word, and that’s about it. Her team utility is very lacking, and she’s an average farmer for Solo friendly stages. Still, if you ever need a single, beefy target dead, or just need Water Breaks, Koishi’s your girl. 

+ Slightly above average access to Water breaks
Koishi has decent Water break access, with 3 on all of her spells, being able to Solo-target or All-target based on the spell. She can also do 3 Wood breaks on her Last Word if you really need them.

+ Has a respectably powerful Solo-targeting Last Word that deals tremendous damage if given time to set up. 
— Requires some setup time to get the most out of her
Koishi really needs setup time to do the best with her Last Word, due to it being a backloaded attack that needs 3P when she can only reach 2P on the first turn. Still, she is able to provide a great amount of damage to singular targets once prepared.

— Many of her buffs and debuffs rely on bullet line RNG
— No team utility
Weirdly enough, Koishi’s spells do not have any effects before/after using them and instead heavily rely on RNG to apply buffs or debuffs while being active. There are quite a lot of them, but likewise they will need some Spirit Power to access, and that’s even considering you get them to activiate in the first place. Koishi’s skills and other buffs are self-reliant as well, only giving her utility via enemy debuffing.

Minoriko brings plenty of healing, Barrier recovery, Barrier Breaks, and a kit of only All targeting Spell Cards (and Last Word). She’s got rather low damage, no offensive team support, but her strengths certainly outweigh her flaws. Even without the ability to cast the anomalies she breaks, the correct team set-up will allow for her to easily Full Break multiple opponents at once.

+ Average access to both Metal and Wood
+ Possesses the ability to All-target Paralyze & Poison anomaly Break (Separately)
Minoriko’s breaking ability is downright great. While her elements are a little underwhelming, since she goes for a mix of average Metal and Wood breaking on her spells, she makes up for this with an All-target Poison anomaly break on her first spell and an All-target Paralyze anomaly break on her second spell, in addition to her Last Word that can break both anomalies at 1P. While not applying these anomalies by herself, she can easily be paired with other Friends to make great use of Paralyzing and Poisoning alongside breaking. She can even rely on her Focus shot for anomaly breaks if needed, although that is only Solo-target.

— Low damage & mixed scaling
Minoriko is another mixed attacker, and due to focusing more on supportive heals rather than offensive buffs, her damage struggles very hard. Her Last Word doesn’t even have a buff, instead going for a straight 100% HP heal from Minoriko to her allies.

+ Solid healing and Barrier recovery support
— Lacks offensive buffs and extended buffs in general
Minoriko has a fair amount of HP heals between her spells and skills, even having 1 layer of barrier restoration on her third skill. Sadly, this skill has an 8 turn cooldown to make it not so practical to rely on for long fights. Other than that, Minoriko doesn’t provide much in terms of offense, purely just healing off any damage the team may come across.

Suwako Moriya’s here to do three things: curse your enemies with Yin DEF Down, destroy them with a powerful Solo Last Word, and party. Both a capable farmer and a powerful challenge unit, with some Barrier Break potential on the side, she’s a Friend you just can’t go wrong with.

+ Average Break potential
— Spirit Power hungry when attempting to Break
Suwako’s breaks in terms of elements are okay, nothing super major. She gets 2 Metal from her first spell, 2 Water and 2 Wood from her second spell, and 2 Earth and 2 Wood on her Last Word. Sadly, all of these spells are backloaded, meaning she will be very desparate for Spirit Power if you really are using her for breaking.

+ Deals high Solo damage both immediately and at 3 Spirit Power
— Needs 3 Spirit Power for full potential
Suwako’s immediate damage is alright, but that requirement of getthing 3P for a majoirty of the bullets of her Last Word really does hurt at times. She can get up to 2P turn 1 thanks to her first skill, but the rest of that Spirit Power has to come from another source. At the very least, she can build up her Yin ATK slightly and even hit Human-Killer bullets to deal more damage when eventually unleashing the attack.

+ Fantastic Yin DEF DOWN support
Her second spell is a good Yin DEF DOWN debuff, being 3 turns of 2 or sometimes 3 levels of the debuff. This definitely helps other Yin attackers, especially one who can buff themselves more than Suwako herself.

A powerful healer who packs a punch alongside some potent Poison Barriers, Eirin Yagokoro is a great candidate for harder fights. Her ability to farm is somewhat average, healing can be a bit niche, and her Barrier Break ability is rather poor, but she’s overall a powerful Friend anyone would be happy to have. 

+ Last Word can deal a lot of damage if given a turn to set up
— Backloaded Last Word
Eirin’s Last Word can deal a lot when set up properly, but it somewhat has to be due to its backloaded nature of a 1-1-3 bullet line spread. Still, thanks to the heavy buffs Eirin provides to herself in both Yin and Yang ATK before using her Last Word, she can easily deal some major damage to help end the fight.

+ Fantastic amount of Healing and Barrier restoration
Eirin has two 30% HP heals on her first and third skills to keep all of her allies in the fight healthy. On top of that, her Last Word grants a single layer of barrier restoration, which can definitely help many Friends survive longer or just obtain more buffs from Grazes. Some Friends may restore more HP or barriers nowadays, but having access to both is still a very strong point.

+ Great Poison Barrier support, for either Anomaly Breaks or supporting Yang Attackers
— Poor Barrier Break potential
Eirin’s first, All-target spell card applies 2 layers of Poison anomalies to its targets, with a 60% chance of a third one. This is a very strong way to debuff the enemy’s Yang DEF to let Yang nukers do their job or just allow another Friend to step in with Poison anomaly breaks. As for Eirin’s own breaking potential, she sadly lacks a lot of elements, only having a few Moon breaks between her spells and Last Word.

— Hard to support due to mixed attacks
Eirin utilizes both Yin and Yang in her spells, which perfectly represents her own balanced nautre, but does little to help her in a practical fight. While she does buff both Yin and Yang on her Last Word, she is otherwise very hard to offensively support, even if you try to buff one stat or the other, as you will always deal less damage than a Friend focusing in one stat.

Fujiwara no Mokou is a Solo Last Word damage dealer who can provide some decent team support and above average Break potential, as she can both generate and Break Burn Barriers on any opponent not immune to them. Additionally her Spell Cards provide her with a massive amount of Yang ATK Up, allowing Mokou to build up to a extremely potent nuke. However, she has some major flaws — her Spell Cards inflict a ton of self damage (that cannot kill her, but at 1 HP she probably won’t survive for long), and are extremely Spirit Power hungry. Additionally, she has rather low turn 1 damage, meaning she can’t solo many one wave one boss event stages. Overall though, her strengths are rather solid, and for most fights lasting longer than a single turn, Mokou is a valuable asset.

+ Good access to Burn barriers, which she can Break with her All-targeting Spread shot
— Spread Shot requires 3 Power to Break Burn Barriers
While lacking in terms of a Fire breaker, Mokou more than makes up for it with Burn anoamly breaks. She can apply Burn anomalies with her 4 turn cooldown first skill and then break them at 3P with her Spread shot, giving her a consistent way to break barriers. Unfortunately, this 3P requirement becomes an issue when combined with a lack of self-Spirit Power regeneration and somewhat backloaded spells. Of course, her Last Word gives her Spirit Power….after her spells are already used up.

+ Solo-target Last Word has incredible damage potential, even without team support
— Deals fairly low damage for a Solo attacker without setup time
Its backloaded nature makes it somewhat necessary to set up Mokou’s Last Word, but the damage it can deal out makes it more than worth it. Her second skill increases her Yang ATK by 2 levels and decreases a target’s Yang DEF by 2 levels to help out in singling out major damage. Her other spells can also boost Yang ATK, but those come with their own issues…

+ 2 levels of Yang DEF DOWN on 1 foe is decent offensive support
While mainly a selfish buffer, the Yang DEF DOWN from her second skill is always good Yang nuking support, especially when Mokou herself isn’t enough to finish the job.

— Unusually frail, as both of her Spell Cards consume a lot of HP — will likely require healing support
While her spells do give Yang ATK buffs, Mokou burns herself up upon using them, requiring a good amount of HP to pull them off. This can leave her in a very bad spot if not healed, and the 35% HP restoration of her third skill is really not enough to make her stand through an extended battle.

Due to the extreme inconsistency in her kit, and a high theoretical damage output, one could be forgiven for assuming Chen is an attacker meant for difficult fights. However, with a 3 Stage Accuracy Story Card boosting her All Last Word accuracy to 100% 4/5ths of the time and 90% otherwise, she actually makes for a reasonably powerful event farmer, especially as she doesn’t have to worry about resistances. The main issue for her is difficult fights — all she brings to the table is damage, not even elements, and this combined with her lower stand-alone damage that’s difficult to practically scale leaves her somewhat lacking compared to the competition. If you are willing to pair her up with Support-type Friends, her damage will skyrocket, but for most team compositions she will simply be an average All-target attacker with no elements. 

+ Strong All-target Last Word 
+ Skills provide Spirit Power (and Agility) to further increase Last Words’ power
Chen is all about easily building to her Last Word’s powerful strikes, something she can actually do turn 1 thanks to the three 0.75 Spirit Power boosts on her skills allowing her 3P right away! Her Slice values may be rather low, but they still add on to the power of this attack if Agility is buffed heavily enough.

+ Above-average chances of Critical Hits
All of Chen’s attacks have a rather higher-than-average chance of inflicting critical hits, 12% on all of her spells to be precise. With the right amount of CRIT ATK and maybe some CRIT Accuracy, Chen can end up doing even more damage than she has ever dreamed of!

— Zero elemental bullets
No elemental bullets means no barrier breaking potential. Even if you want the excuse that not doing elements bypasses elemental resistances, this aspect really doesn’t do Chen favors in terms of usage purposes outside of damage.

— Lacking Accuracy without buffs or story cards 
— No supportive buffs or utility outside of Target debuffs
Chen really needs another Friend or story card to boost her Accuracy if she wants a chance to deal any substansial damage, as her own buffs are pitiful. On top of that, her only sense of team utility is the 2 levels of Evasion DOWN on a singular target, which many other Friends can likely pull off at this level of the game.

Ran Yakumo is a fairly powerful farmer, due to her rather powerful All-target Last Word. When it comes to harder fights, her access to elements is sorely lacking. However, she’s still good — her damage is on the higher end of things, albeit with a low ceiling, she has Charge to make her synergize well with debuffers, and she brings powerful team Accuracy support, if somewhat let down by it being on a Spell Card and not a Skill.

+ Powerful All-target Last Word at 1 Power
— Last Word barely scales with Power
Ran’s main appeal is definitely the power that can come from her Last Word, due to its frontloaded nature and spread of 3-1-1. Ironically enough, this actually means the attack doesn’t gain much from additional Boosts after the first. It doesn’t even raise a stat due to boosting, as Ran only gains Yang ATK from Grazes. Still, with all of her Yang ATK buffs and only needed 1P, Ran can be a great damage dealer right off the bat of a fight.

— Only has Earth element on Last Word
Ran’s only element, Earth, is on her Last Word. While 4 breaks is alright, you definitely wouldn’t want to just use this one-time use spell just for the sake of 4 Earth breaks. 

— Selfish buffer
All of Ran’s main buffs are only for herself, with her first spell at least increasing everyone’s Accuracy for consistency sake. She does have Charge on her third skill, an attribute which allows her to go last after everyone else’s Last Words, which can help if some Friends want to apply debuffs before she continues to nuke.

Although she has fallen off rather far from the game’s release and cannot farm any significant content, Yuyuko Saigyouji’s  All-target Last Word’s damage output is still high, starting off strong at P1 and becoming notably powerful at P3. She also has a great 3 turn accuracy buff, freeing up her Story Card choices, alongside access to the powerful Charge, letting her synergize well with any source of Yang Def down for powerful LW burst turns. Her major flaws are lackluster access to elements, no secondary scaling which leaves her lagging behind the top tiers, and no team support.

+ Powerful Last Word, dealing quite high damage at 1 Power and scaling tremendously at 3.
+ Relatively strong event farmer
Having a 2-2-1 Last Word unlike other 1-1-3 backloaded ones means that Yuyuko can do a good amount of damage right off the bat, helping with event farming and turn 1 damage. Still, with all of her tremendous Yang ATK buffs on skills and spells, Yuyuko can easily set up to do a great amount of damage.

+ Self Charge on Skill 3 means she works well with any supporter
— No utility
Yuyuko is really the one who wants to be supported and does not provide any actual partywide buffs or enemy debuffs for the team to take advantage off. Still, with Charge, Yuyuko can easily wait for other Friends to apply debuffs with their own Last Words before providing a finishing blow.

— Only brings Wood element and lacks many elemental bullets nowadays
Only 2 Wood breaks on each of her spells does not win Yuyuko any awards on the breaking side of things. She is really just here for the raw damage, and if she wants to do even more on a Full Broken target, someone else will have to set that up first.

— Fell off hard with the introduction of many stronger Friends
Yuyuko’s damage numbers simply just do not pile up when compared to the modern state of the game. She lacks any significant secondary scaling on her Last Word, as well as no special Killer bullets. When combined with the fact that she lacks in the utility and breaking fields, Yuyuko just does not shape up to where she used to be.

One of closest things this game has to a wild card, Medicine Melancholy excels in two areas: boss farming, and difficult fights. Due to her abundance of Poison barriers, and a Last Word with a lot of Toxic on it, she can easily Full Break any enemy who isn’t immune to Poison — of which rarely any exist. Whilst this is the only thing she can do due to her otherwise low damage and lack of any other utility, it’s such a valuable niche that she’s unquestionably an extremely powerful asset.

+ Wonderful Poison breaker, practically able to break almost any opponent
— Useless against enemies immune to Poison, which are rare
Medicine’s kit is all about applying heavy Poison anomalies on her skills and going straight for a Full Break with a Toxic Last Word, which breaks any applied Poison anomalies. It is a bit annoying that some skills such as her second skill and spells like her first spell have some randomness to if they apply an extra anomaly or not, but she can still dish out an amazing amount of breaks on average. You’d have to watch out for enemies immune to Poison, and the breaks being on her Last Word means she only gets one shot, but otherwise Medicine is an easy, one-use Full Break.

— Below average elemental breaks
However, Medicine cannot say she’s good at elemental breaking. Both of her spells have 2 Wood breaks and her Last Word is only slightly better at 3. Perhaps they can come in clutch on a Wood-weak foe, but Medicine is really only breaking with Poison anomalies, which still isn’t a big deal.

+ Quick farmer for early game content
Medicine can very easily farm two early game boss stages: 1-5-4 and 2-7-1. Not only does the latter stage have the extremely popular Witch of Scarlet Dreams farmable story card, but due to getting her as a free Friend early on, Medicine’s practical utility never really fades away.

+ Poison anomalies can serve as Yang support
While it may seem like Medicine comes with literally no teamwide support outside of offensive debuffs on foes, her Poison anomalies can also be Yang debuffs for allies. Of course, you would end up doing more damage Full Breaking anyway, but this is just another way that Medicine can fit into a team composition.

— Low Damage
While very heavy in breaking and farming, Medicine still lacks in the damage department. The only reason she does so much damage is because of her Full Breaks, and without that, she doesn’t have any kind of offensive buffs of her own to keep damage high.

Solo Story Card Farms: 2-7-1

As a Speed-class Friend in Touhou Lost Word, Megumu can inflict a decent amount of Star breaks, Blind anomalies, and some evasion down to boot.

Decent buffs with Spell Cards and skills

While her skills don’t provide herself too many buffs on paper, in-line effects on attacks like her 1st Spell Card provide her more buffs to be used properly.

Decent Blind and Star breaks

She can inflict a decent amount of Blind anomalies with her 2nd skill and 2nd Spell Card, whilst also having the ability to break them with her 1st Spell Card. At the same time, she can inflict some decent Star breaks with her 2nd Spell Card and Last Word.

Low damage

Unfortunately, despite her buffs, Megumu struggles to output a great deal of damage with her Yin ATK and lack of relevant killers.

Utility is lacking

One major thing that holds her back is her lack of true utility for the party with her skills. Her main source of utility comes from her Spell Cards which don’t hold too many strong buffs aside from barrier restoration with her 1st Spell Card and Last Word.

Patchouli Knowledge’s main claim to fame is her extreme spread of elements — Having access to every element, including the very powerful Sun and Moon elements, means she can break at least two if not three barriers on virtually every enemy in the game. Unfortunately her Sun and Moon element attacks are both single target, and the somewhat awkward distribution of her elements means it may take her a few turns and/or heavy amounts of Power support to accomplish those breaks. Her damage output is also relatively lacking, with little team support outside of elements. Still, her sheer flexibility and elemental access means she’s a Friend well worth having.

+ Nearly unparalleled Element access
All of Patchouli’s spells are practically a rainbow of elements, showing she perhaps took a page from (or just stole) Alice’s books. Her normal spells are well at applying 4 Moon breaks and Sun breaks on her first and second spell respectively. It may be a little less practical to break using her Last Word, as it heavily varies in what elements it has, but Patchouli still stands as a strong elemental breaker, especially for a General Friend.

— Low damage
Patchouli just doesn’t have much to her outside of the elements, having only one Yin ATK buff on her third skill, a stat that isn’t even mainly used by her Last Word, which already has a low amount of bullets. 

— Requires Spirit Power and Accuracy support
Instead of using her knowledge to help the team, Patchouli will also require outside support from either Friends or story cards to raise her Spirit Power and Accuracy levels in order to do much for the party. She may be a challenge to set up well, but her breaks will make the effort worth it.

As a unit, Joon Yorigami is a mixed bag that shapes her up to a decent unit overall. Her damage output is just about average, even with her rather selfish buffing. In terms of utility Joon does have a supportive Spell Card that provides some nice buffs to the entire team. These tools, while useful, are outshined in almost every aspect by some other unit out there.

+ Can be used as a Metal Breaker
3 Metal breaks on her first spell and 4 Metal from her Last Word makes Joon a serviceable Metal breaker when the job is needed. Do note however that her Last Word is backloaded and would need 3P to reach 3 of the breaks.

+ Provides team-wide buffs using her second Spell Card
While an Aid spell card might seem annoying at first, the buffs she provide are actually pretty solid. Agility can be used by Slice scaling Friends, CRIT ATK is good for anyone that has nice Killer bullets, and Accuracy support is appreciated by everyone.

— Average damage overall
Joon may have a lot of ways to increase her own Yang ATK, but there’s not much else in her kit to make her a heavy Yang nuke. 

— Both offensive Spell Cards are Solo
Solo-targets aren’t inheriently bad, but it limits the stages that Joon can try to take on her own, limits the amount of breaks she can apply at once, and just pales in comparison to better All-target Friends.

— Greedy buffer outside of Aid spell
The rest of Joon’s buffs are purely for herself. In fact, her first and second skills are the same 2 levels of Yang ATK UP with only a high chance of getting Quick or Charge, applying a very annoying random mechanic while using her. On top of that, having the ability to dispel Binds and debuffs on her third skill is nice, but only having it on herself limits its utility.

Wakasagihime’s quiet, level-headed demeanour manifests as a Support-class Friend who is ever at the ready to assist her compatriots in battle.

Decent Water breaks

Delivers decent Water breaks on enemies, with her first and second Spell Cards packing 3 and 4 Water Breaks each. 0P Water on her Focus Shot helps with longer battles.

Enables Yang focused teams

Boosts Accuracy, Yang ATK and Agility through a combination of Spell Cards, Skills, and Graze.

Heals team HP and barriers

Recovers both HP and Barriers for her team via her Support oriented Last Word.

Support Last Word isn’t particularly impressive

There are very few instances where Wakasagihime’s inclusion will outclass an offensive Last Word.

Large cooldowns on skills

Expect to wait between 5-7 turns for her Skills to cooldown; enough time to switch out someone fresh who can finish the job in her stead.

Evasion tanking is iffy at best, especially at low levels.

Evasion isn’t as reliable as solid damage negation.

Kagerou’s canine traits allow her to fulfil the requirements of being a Speed-class Friend in Touhou Lost Word.

Decent Wood and Moon breaks

Delivers decent Wood and Moon breaks on enemies, with her first and second Spell Cards hitting all enemies with 2/2 Moon/Water Breaks each. Her Last Word hits a single Enemy for 3/3 Moon/Water, leaving her with a 0P Wood on her Focus Shot to finish things off.

Slicing helps with damage boosting

While she has Slicing on all her Spell Cards, this is especially prevalent on her Last Word, with slicing values of 80%/0%/0%/80%/0%/90%, turning it into a bona fide ST Nuke.

Single target Last Word limits her to hitting just one thing hard.

While there’s no knocking ST attacks in general due to enemies being able to put ALL Resist up, her limited targeting slightly dampens her as a general purpose attacker.

Selfish attacker

Kagerou lends very little to team synergy, focusing only on what she can do to the other team, with no real utility outside of breaks and damage.

Evasion tanking is iffy at best, especially at low levels.

Evasion isn’t as reliable as solid damage negation.

With a surprisingly good amount of Water breaks, Kogasa can be very helpful with whittling down the enemy’s barrier count, provided they are weak to Water. That being said, she is somewhat disappointing compared to other recent units, from the lack of Killers she has, to the lack of team utility. There are a few silver linings, like a Last Word with some Paralyze and Blind break potential without even having to boost, as well as some helpful Hard and Slice scaling, but Kogasa is just simply outclassed by a lot of the competition.

+ Great Accessibility to Water Breaks including P0 Water on Spread Shot
Kogasa has a good niche in Water breaking thanks to her 0P Water spam option on her spread shot and the Water present on her spells. She gets 3 Water breaks on both of her normal spells, with all of them available at 2P of her first spell to make her somewhat efficient at the craft.

+ Spirit P gain on both Spell Cards can be helpful
Both of Kogasa’s spells give herself 1.00 Spirit Power to allow her to unleash her spells at maximum boosts so that all of her breaks are guaranteed to come out.

+ Potential to break both Paralyze and Blind Anomalies of an Enemy via P0 Last Word.
Kogasa might not be able to inflict these anomalies on her foes, but the ability to break Paralyze and Blind anomalies upon using her Last Word is definitely something she can take adavtage of…if she has Friends on her team that apply those.

— Struggles to make much use of self-inflicted anomalies on her own
Every Paralyze anomaly Kogasa has on herself grants her offensive boosts, while Blind anomalies provide Agility and Accuracy buffs. However, her first and second skills only give her a single layer of either anomaly, meaning that in order to take full advantage of her anomaly immunities, she must rely on allies or enemies to inflict more anomalies on her.

— Killers are almost not present at all
Kogasa may have somewhat decent Hard and Slice scalings on her Last Word, but without any good Killers on the early part of the attack (and a low Critical Hit % in the first place), she will struggle to provide heavy damage by herself.

— No team support
— Overall lacking for modern standards
Kogasa is simply selfish, only buffing her own stats and never even debuffing her opponents to help the rest of her team. This, combined with her general lack of significant upsides and strengths, makes for a Friend who might not have much of a purpose outside of Water breaking.

Sumireko attempts to get a footing in the world of Gensokyo with her variety of psychic abilities. This ends up giving her a small mix of Wood and Star elemental breaks, access to Evasion DOWN via spells, and some slightly heavy Yang damage via her Last Word. Her abilities might not be as impressive as most of the cast, but her kit definitely has time to shine.

+ 0P Wood break on Spread Shot
— Breaks on spells are below-average for modern standards
Sumireko’s elemental access mainly shines in her 0P Wood break on her Spread Shot and the 3 Star/3 Wood present on her Last Word. Otherwise, her spells actually have below-average elemental access, with only 2 Star breaks on her first spell and 3 Metal breaks on her second spell. The mix of elementals at least gives her some varied utility in breaking, but it definitely isn’t a heavy amount.

+ Decent amount of Spirit Power UP on kit
— Damage is lacking without heavy buffs or good killers
Sumireko mainly relies on her two high Yang ATK buffs in order to do high damage with her Last Word. Sadly, she has a lot going against her: her Slice values are alright but only on her first two bullet lines, she doesn’t even have many self-Agility buffs to utilize the Slice, and her Gensokyo Killers are on later bullet lines and have less impact on the overall attack. She can definitely work with this and the rest of her kit to nuke foes, but she will face some difficulty doing much beyond that.

+ Solo-target Evasion debuff on spells
— Entirely selfish outside of debuffs
Sumireko’s main team utility is in the form of her second spell, which debuffs the target’s Evasion by 2 levels for 2 turns. This is indirect accuracy support for the entire team, however most viable Friends will have their own way to buff Accuracy or get consistent damage otherwise. Outside of this, Sumireko’s buffs are entirely selfish, which doesn’t help much when she doesn’t do that much heavy damage already.

Letty Whiterock is a decent Solo-target Yin nuker who has some Yin DEF buffs and self-inflicted Freeze. Struggling to farm most event stages, she can show her strong side in some harder challenge content. Her identity is a bit muddled, however, and she cannot excel as either a defensive unit or nuker. 

+ Solo-target Yin nuker
— Takes a turn or two to reach full damage potential
Letty can do a decent amount of Yin damage through her Last Word rather quickly thanks to a 2-1-2 spread on the bullet lines and being able to reach 2P turn 1 with her third skill. However, greater damage will have to wait a turn or two, since Accuracy support and one Yin ATK UP is locked behind a spell. And don’t expect her horrible Hard scaling to help much either.

+ Some Yin DEF up
+ Self barrier recovery
Letty can pretty consisntently raise her Yin DEF thanks to her second and third skills, both of them providing 2 Yin DEF UP. Her second skill in particular is a very great defensive skill, as it has only a 4 turn cooldown and can even restore one of Letty’s barrier layers!

— Does not provide any utility to the rest of the team besides Accuracy DOWN on targets
Letty is another example of a selfish buffer, providing practically nothing for the rest of the team. Even Grazing only provides herself Yin ATK to herself. The only debuff, on her first spell, is a rather useless Accuracy DOWN to one target.

— No Focus UP as a defensive unit
Ironically enough, instead of Letty’s issue being having too much Focus UP like worse Defense units, since Letty has actual barrier restoration, she is the Defense Friend who would want Focus UP to block more damage. Since she lacks the ability to keep more of the foes’ focus on herself, her value as a Defense Friend is somewhat worse.

Even though Hina Kagiyama could not avoid her own misfortune of only having Solo-targeting spell cards, she still has fairly situational use with a Yin-based Last Word and being able to lower the evasion of every opponent. Her second spell card serves as an anomaly breaker for any barriers inflicted with Poison, Paralyze, or Burn, meaning Hina can synergize with quite a good amount of other Friends and still break barriers, even without an impressive element spread.

+ Poison, Paralyze, and Burn anomaly breaks on second spell card
— Lacking in elemental breaks
Hina’s elemental access is a very wide mix of random elements, which makes her rather lacking in a specific elemental breaking use. Instead, Hina can excel at anomaly breaks in her second spell, having Poison and Paralyze breaks at 1P and Burn breaks at 2P. The main issue is she has to rely on other Friends applying the anomalies, but due to the way anomaly breaks destroy every layer with the inflicted element, Hina still has high breaking potential.

+ Decent Solo-target Last Word Yin nuke
— Primarily a Solo-attacker
Hina is a goddess surrounded by misfortune, meaning her Last Word can do decent damage as well as have low chances of decimating the opponent’s stats, from Yang DEF to defensive CRIT stats. Unfortunately, her reach is limited to only Solo-targets on all of her spells, making it hard for her to spread out the damage in multi-enemy fights.

+ Lowers the Evasion of all enemies
Hina’s third skill comes with 3 levels of Evasion DOWN on every foe for a single turn with a 4 turn cooldown. It’s great that this debuff is useful, as the rest of hers focus on less practical stats to debuff such as Yin and Yang ATK.

Lunasa is simply average — she has an average amount of Break potential (with the noteworthy P0 Water on a basic shot), with a backloaded (and unfortunately mixed) Solo targeting Last Word and decent but not spectacular healing capabilities let down by a lack of Barrier restoration. 

+P0 access to Water on a Basic Shot
0P Water is good whenever the time is needed to spam Water on a Water-weak foe. Lunasa’s other breaks on her spells do rather decently, having 3 Wood on her first spell, 3 Water on her second spell, and a mix of 4 Wood/2 Water on her Last Word

+ Backloaded Solo-target nuke with reasonably solid potential damage
+ Can gain some quick Spirit Power UP from her first spell
A backloaded Solo-target Last Word is never a great sign, but Lunasa at least has the ability to mitigate the setup time with 1.00 Spirit Power restoration on her first spell. Her second skill also has 2 levels of Yin ATK UP to help boost her final damage output a bit more.

— Damage is mostly backloaded
— Mixed damage is hard to scale and support
While she can mitigate her Last Word’s backloaded nature, the same doesn’t really apply when all of her spells have the same backloaded formation. Ironically enough, her Last Word provides 3.00 Spirit Power, which would be great for her spells…if she was still allowed to use them! On top of that, her Last Word and other spells are Yin-focused with a good bit of Yang bullets too, to make optimizing damage more annoying.

-Entirely lacking in offensive support
-Incapable of restoring Barriers, leaving her inferior to other Healers
Lunasa’s teamwide utility only extends to healing, which she does at least have a high HP pool (7750) to grant access heals to the rest of the team. However, with her third skill only extending to restoring anomalies and not barrier layers, her use as a healer can be more limited than others.

Featuring extremely high levels of Focus UP, Evasion UP, and Yin DEF UP, Mamizou is the premier anti-Yin tank. Combine this with some rather stellar Breaks, including a P0 solo targeting Earth Break on a spammable basic shot, and the tanuki has plenty of tricks up her (lack of) sleeves to keep those pesky Yin attackers at bay. However, her complete lack of Yang DEF UP as well as a lack of Barrier restorations means that not only is she fairly vulnerable to Yang attackers, but she is also on a harsher time limit against All-targeting attacks than other tanks with Barrier restoration. She also has rather lackluster damage, due to unimpressive Hard scaling, leaving her overall average. 

+ 0P Solo-target Earth Spread shot to spam breaks
Mamizou’s elemental access is likely her best at her 0P Earth Spread shot and perhaps her 3 Earth/3 Fire breaks on her Last Word. Otherwise, Mamizou’s breaks on her spells are plentiful, but nothing that will make you consider her great in a specific element.

+ Good amount of Yin DEF buffs for herself and the party
— No source of Yang DEF
Mamizou stands tall as a great Yin DEF tank, being able to buff both her own and the rest of the team’s Yin DEF by 3 levels with her second skill. Her third skill also helps in raising the team’s Yin DEF and even Yin ATK by 2 more levels, making Mamizou a good support. One problem arises in which Mamizou contains no Yang DEF buffs, something that can come back to bite her if she is trying to tank against a Yang-focused enemy.

+ Focus UP emphasis to keep damage off teammates
— Lack of barrier restoration makes Focus UP a gamble against All-target attacks
Mamizou is a tank that heavily boasts Focus UP, with it contained on both of her spells, her skills, and even when she Grazes. This would usually be good, considering Mamizou can even heal 30% of her HP using her third skill, but such extreme Focus UP means she will take devastating damage from All-target attacks, and without a consistent barrier restoration option, Mamizou will struggle hard to survive for very long.

— Spirit Power-hungry for her 1-1-3 spell card spreads
Mamizou contains no Spirit Power restoration effects to help reach the limits of her backloaded spreads, a problem that many mid-tier Friends face, but one that is still a huge issue, especially if you are attempting to Full Break foes.

Clownpiece has two major jobs — hit hard with a backloaded Solo targeting Last Word, and inflict Blind Barriers on all your foes. She’s not really capable of farming relevant story card stages, and she’s nothing special, but she’s a solid enough unit.

+ P0 access to Solo-targeting Fire on Focus shot
— Lackluster Break ability by herself
A spammable option in the form of a 0P elemental basic shot always helps breaking potential, and Clownpiece has this in the form of Fire on her Focus shot. Unfortunately, the way the rest of her elemental kit is a huge mix of Moon, Sun, and Star makes her somewhat difficult to break foes with unless they really hate those elements.

+ Rather strong backloaded Solo-targeting Last Word
— Requires setup time
1-1-3 spread on a Last Word is never preferred, but it just means that Clownpiece requires a bit of setup before unleashing a stronger attack. This time building up Spirit Power can be combined with boosting her own offense with her second spell.

+ Inflicts a lot of Blind Barriers
— Can buff enemies!
3 layers of Blind anomalies on her second skill is pretty good, especially when it can be followed up by a Friend that has access to Blind anomaly breaks. However, this skill, as well as her first spell, have the ability to make the foes go insane and increase their offensive stats! It is just something you have to play around, but can definitely come back to bite Clownpiece’s team in the future.

Nemuno’s a simple youkai, with simple jobs. Applying 2 Paralyze Barriers to all foes, and hitting one foe hard with a backloaded Solo targeting Last Word. She isn’t a very fast farmer, and the backloaded nature of her kit makes her less desirable than the competition, but she’ll get the job done.

+ Slightly above average access to Metal Breaks
3 Metal breaks on each of Nemuno’s spells makes her good whenever Metal is needed on the table. Her Last Word is also not the worst element-wise, having 3 of both Fire and Wood to work with.

+ Her Solo-target Last Word can hit pretty hard in longer fights
— Damage is backloaded, making her incapable of eliminating priority targets quickly
A 1-1-3 setup is always rather problematic, requiring the Friend to set up before doing their best amount of damage and Nemuno is no different from this problem. At the very least, she has her second spell to restore Spirit Power when the time comes to use her Last Word in a longer fight. She has plently of offensive buffs and even Human-Killer bullets to make sure she does good damage as well

+ One of her skills inflicts 2 Paralyze barriers to all foes, fantastic for Discharge support
— Little team utility outside of Paralyze barriers
While it is a shame she cannot break them herself, 2 Paralyze anomalies on all foes is always good based on the team setup. However, the rest of Nemuno’s kit is a purely selfish buffer to make sure her Solo-target Last Word does a decent amount of work. She will help her team in the damage sense, but not much else.

Cirno serves as something of a budget wild card barrier breaker. Whilst it’s impractical to use for farming bosses due to a 10% failure rate on the second barrier, 90% of the time Cirno will apply 2 Freeze barriers to all foes, which she can then break with her Melting All-target Last Word. This generally won’t be enough to get the job done by itself however, and her kit otherwise is heavily lacking in both utility and damage. However, if you can give her additional Freeze barrier support, she can break up to 4 Freeze barriers on all enemies, which can make her situationally very powerful, but even breaking 2 Freeze barriers is enough to justify bringing her along. Just watch out for Freeze immune enemies.

+ Decent Water breaker
Cirno’s Water breaks are nothing to brag about, especially with the access Friends have nowadays, but it’s still nothing to scoff at. 3 Water breaks on her second spell and Last Word makes her a somewhat consistent elemental breaker if she has access to the available Spirit Power to burn.

+ Has the ability to cast Freeze anomalies and break them via spell 2 and Last Word
If the Water breaks didn’t satisfy you, then try out inflicting 1 or 2 Freeze of anomalies with her first spell. Afterwards, she can break these anomalies through her second spell at 3P or her Last Word at just 1P, the latter being especially good due to targeting all foes. You can also potentially get more Freeze anomalies from spells’ bullet lines, but the chance is low.

— Very low damage
Cirno’s second skill decreases Yang ATK, the bullet type that her Last Word uses the most. Combined with a lack of any pre-ATK effects from her spells to support her, her damage is really not going anywhere.

— Low utility in the forms of healing, buffs, or debuffs
Cirno just has nothing going for her, preferring to buff and debuff herself with her skills rather than assisting the team. Anomaly casting and breaking is still better than nothing, but she really doesn’t offer much outside of this.

Lyrica is a solid enough Support Friend, offering a wide array of supportive capabilities via her Skills and Ability — however that’s about it. She has an overall poor performance when it comes to breaking and her Solo-targeting Last Word is also nothing special.

+ Wide array of buffs
+ Somewhat relevant supportive utility
Lyrica’s kit is mainly a grab bag of supportive buffs. From Accuracy on her first spell to Yin and Yang DEF on her first and second skills to offensive buffs on her third skill, she almost covers everything. The main catch of this is that, in trying to buff everything, she ends up not truly buffing one singluar stat a high amount. This is fine if the Friends being supported have their own way of buffing as well, but if not, then Lyrica might not be the best support to primarily rely on.

— Poor breaking capabilities
Lyrica only has 2 Wood breaks on her first spell and 2 Water breaks on her second spell. Her Last Word fares a bit better in a mix of 3 Wood and 3 Water, but she is still below-average when compared to other Friends.

— Weak, Solo-targeting Last Word
— Mixed damage
Even when buffing her Yin ATK a lot upon starting her Last Word, the spell fails to do much damage. This is in part by her buffing the wrong stat: her Last Word is mainly Yang, and yet she buffed Yin! Some Yin is mixed in, but this still means her Last Word ends up performing fairly behind other nukes.

Satori Komeiji is essentially defined by her Solo targeting Last Word dealing respectably high damage without much setup. She also brings a slightly above average access to Fire Breaks. The rest of her kit is lacking, and she can’t reach the heights that other Solo nukers can in extended fights, so she’s essentially average on the whole.

+ Slightly above average access to Fire breaks
Satori gets 3 Fire breaks on all of her spells, and even an additional 3 Earth on her Last Word to make her an alright breaker in Fire with a small bit of breaking utility.

+ Respectable damage turn 1 on a Solo-targeting Last Word
— Somewhat low ceiling on damage
Thanks to an incredible 7 levels of Yang ATK UP, Satori is able to deal a very instant heavy amount of Solo-target damage at the beginning of a fight. In a weird way, this is also slightly a flaw since it means that Satori doesn’t have much else to develop more damage, especially considering her Last Word has mixed elements, already making it harder to support with a story card compared to other Last Words.

— No party utility
Satori’s debuffs are to ruin a single opponent’s offense, which sadly has a lot less usefuless for a party than the satori might think. Even squishier Friends can just Graze damage that would be fatal to them, making offensive debuffs less practical in most situations.

The fastest in Gensokyo, Aya brings a fairly damaging Solo targeting Last Word that can scale well in longer fights to the table, alongside some Wood Breaks and teamwide Accuracy support. She’s not particularly strong or weak — just simply average

+ Above average access to Wood breaks on all of her spell cards
All of Aya’s spells have 3 Wood breaks on them, making the tengu a good Friend for any job that requires a heavy amount of Wood breaks.

+ Decent Turn 1 Solo-targeting Last Word
Thanks to the slight Yang ATK and Agility buffs from activating her Last Word, Aya can poke a decent amount of damage from using it turn 1. When fully upgraded, her third skill joins the fun as well with a much better 3 levels of Yang ATK UP.  

+ Evasion debuff on all enemies
— Little party utility outside of debuffing enemies; can only buff herself
— Lacking in powerful skills outside of Yang ATK/Agility buff
Aya’s second spell targeting all foes for 3 levels of Evasion DOWN is rather impressive accuracy support for an entire team. Sadly, this is where her team utility ends, as she only wants to buff herself and try out a niche gimmick of heavily increasing Focus and dodging using Evasion UP. Not only is this somewhat impractical and risky, but it means that Aya lacks any other great buffing skills and cannot optimize her damage as much as better Friends.

— Low turn count on buffs forces her to choose between Breaks or more damage
Aya’s second skill might be spammable with a 1 turn cooldown, but the same can really not be said for her third skill, at a 5 turn cooldown. A shame too, as this is definitely Aya’s best bufff via skills. This forces Aya to either cash out all her damage in a single turn or maybe try to stall to be able to nuke once more. If relying purely on Evasion, results will definitely vary.

Shizuha’s a pretty alright supporter. She brings a unique teamwide Spirit Power support, Accuracy support, can apply Paralyze Barriers, and has solid access to Wood and Metal. Unfortunately she’s saddled by low overall damage, which is a big detriment in LostWord, but she’s overall solid and a boon to have on your side.

+Access to Wood and Metal element attacks
Shizuha has a good elemental spread, with the same spread of 3 Wood on her first spell and 3 Metal on her second spell. Her Last Word is fully elemental, with 4 Metal and 2 Wood. 

+Provides team-wide accuracy support
+Provides team-wide P support
Shizuha’s team utility is rather helpful, being one of the only Friends who provide a rather high Spirit Power increase to the entire party, that being 0.80 from her third skill. Sadly, the skill does have a cooldown of 7 turns, but it still is a very useful skill, especially for Friends who lack their own Spirit Power restoration. Otherwise, she can also apply a small Accuracy buff with her second skill and potentially 2 levels of Yin ATK and Yin DEF UP on her second spell.

+Applies Paralyze on her first Spell Card
After her first spell, Shizuha inflicts 2 or 3 Paralyze anomalies on the target. While not really taking advantage of this herself, this can be an easy 3 anomaly breaks from another Friend, or just a chance of stunning a foe.

-Low overall damage, and not much use beyond the above
Shizuha may be able to provide a good amount to a team, but that does not extend to her damage output. With a rather low damage capability, it can be difficult to use her for much else outside of her buffs, which even then her skills have rather slow cooldowns. Perhaps bring her out for the teamwide Spirit Power restoration, and leave it at that.
 

A somewhat situational unit, Akyuu is usually hard to fit on a team, as the buffs she provides only affect a somewhat small subset of units — CRIT attackers, and attackers with a fight-relevant Killer. However, when she is useful, Akyuu tends to be incredibly powerful, due to the strength of CRIT ATK combined with how hard it can be to get. Additionally, she can also serve as a Chapter 2-7-1 farmer when combined with Toyohime and Kosuzu, though don’t expect her to farm any events.

+Provides useful buffs in the form of CRIT ATK, CRIT Accuracy, Yin ATK, and Accuracy UP
Akyuu’s first and second skills are very similar, both going for partywide CRIT ATK or CRIT Accuracy buffs respectively, even have the same value of raising it by 1 or 2 levels. Additionally, any Boost provides Yin ATK UP to further help other Friends, as her own Last Word is just Yang-based.

+Can apply Blind barriers
Akyuu’s spread shot and first spell have small chances to inflict Blind anomalies, which is meant to combo with Akyuu’s second spell’s ability to break the same anomalies. Unfortunately, it is not that great due to the random nature of applying these anomalies, but it is still a practical use for breaking.

-Below average Barrier Break potential
Akyuu’s spells only have 2 breaks and while her Last Word may have a full spread of elemental bullets, being split between 2 Fire/Wood/Moon is rather inconveinent for breaking, especially on a Solo-target attack.

-Low damage
Akyuu lacks a way to buff her Yang ATK for her Last Word, and Akyuu’s own Killer bullets are way too specific to be practical for ensured CRITs. Her CRIT Accuracy is somewhat low as well, even when fully buffed by other parts of her kit.

Ringo has a pretty simple job: provide lots of Yang ATK, Yang DEF, and Agility UP for the party, which makes her excel with weaker teammates and falter with stronger ones. Outside of that, her Solo-targeting Last Word doesn’t hit very hard, and her Break potential is rather lacking. She’s just here to provide buffs and dango.

+ Good access to Yang ATK & DEF UP, plus solid access to Agility UP
Every single skill up Ringo’s sleeve is a partywide buff, which is a great help to many teams. Their buffs may be low at times, but she will still be a consistent help if kept alive for a longer fight. Her third skill may last only for a turn, but a 3 turn cooldown just means that the Yang ATK buff will come back sooner than later. Even her first spell and Boosting and Grazing join in Yang-based and defensive buffs.

— Below average Break potential
Ringo only has 2 Moon breaks on her spells at 0P and 3P, while her Last Word is a 0P and 3P 2 Earth breaks as well. 

— Somewhat low damage
Ringo’s Last Word is a Yin-only attack, and yet Yin ATK is the one stat that Ringo doesn’t really increase! Her damage output overall is underwhelming anywa, going more for support than any offense.

Kosuzu’s main selling point is the Piercing (defense buff ignoring) damage on her Last Word. This makes her an attractive teammate to farm 2-7-1. Do keep in mind that her Farm rating is heavily affected by this — her damage is rather low and she’ll have problems farming Event stages on Lunatic by herself. The Piercing is also not as good as you’d think in most fights too, for reasons covered in her analysis. Outside of that, she packs an average amount of Water and Wood Breaks, alongside some CRIT support, making her overall an above average Friend.

+ Average access to Water and Wood Breaks
Kosuzu’s 3 Wood breaks on her first spell, 3 Water breaks on her second spell, and 3 of each on her Last Word is a pretty good spread of elements for elemental breaking.

+ Last Word deals a lot of Piercing damage
— Overall low damage output outside of Piercing shenanigans without heavy setup
Piercing is a special effect that goes through the target’s defense, and having this on the first third of Kosuzu’s Last Word gives it a small niche in damage dealing. Sadly, without a great amount of Yin ATK buffs for herself, her damage will remain pretty low, especially on the non-Piercing spells.

+ Some CRIT Evasion DOWN Support for teammates
Kosuzu’s first spell is a rather impressive 2 or 3 levels of CRIT Evasion DOWN, which can definitely end up helping the rest of a team land more critical hits for better damage. Kosuzu herself focuses a bit on raising CRIT damage, so this can end up being good for herself as well.

— Second Spell Card deals self-damage to Kosuzu
If her second spell connects, Kosuzu will lose some HP and likely put her in a bit of danger. Kosuzu also harms herself on her second and third skills, though the Yang DEF and CRIT Evasion debuffs are less of a concern than more important stats.

Flandre Scarlet is a Friend with a devastatingly powerful Solo Last Word, and some offensive utility as well, but with a lot of caveats. Her Last Word is exceptionally inaccurate and thus requires heavy Accuracy Up support, her Break potential is very lacking, and her support is only against a single target. Additionally, she’s completely unsuited to farming by herself, as even when Solo friendly stages show up again, Flandre’s extremely poor Accuracy means she’ll always have consistency issues. However, keep these caveats in mind, provide her with the support she needs, and she can do some devastating damage in harder fights.

+ Devastatingly powerful Solo Last Word — at max potential.
— Requires 3 Power for maximum potential.
Flandre’s Last Word is going to be Flandre’s true swan song: she either boosts it heavily and prepares to strike a single target in a devastating combo…or she misses almost everything. The attack is somewhat backloaded at a 1-2-2 spread, usually requiring 3P to maximize damage. Flandre herself focuses on increasing CRIT ATK and CRIT Accuracy while decreasing her defense on her skills to try going out with a bang. And if you are able to pull off the attack, it will definitely feel good!

+ Reasonably solid team support for Yin attackers with 3 Yin DEF Down against a single target.
Flandre’s first skill is a very good Yin DEF debuff, to support both the majority of her Last Word’s damage and other Yin nukers.

— Poor access to elements
Flandre’s only access to elements is 2 Fire breaks on her second spell, which even then are only at 0P and 3P. Flandre is not being kept around for her breaking potential.

— Due to brutally low accuracy, she requires heavy accuracy support.
Half of Flandre’s Last Word has an accuracy of 50%, while the other half has a staggering 25%. You need to run Accuracy support with Flandre, because she does not even have any Accuracy buffs of her own to make sure she is more consistent.

Luna Child’s primary job is to hit somewhat hard with a Solo Last Word, and her secondary job is to provide you with some okay but decidedly below average access to Moon Breaks. Unfortunately she falls somewhat shy of the real power houses, leaving her in a decidedly average position.

+ Access to Moon breaks
— Not a great amount of Moon breaks
Just like the other Three Fairies of Light, Luna focuses on a specific element, Moon, and only has a few breaks in that category. However, a Last Word with 3 Moon breaks can still do some work if allowed to actually Full Break.

+ Solo-target Last Word can hit somewhat strong
— Damage lags behind other hard-hitters 
Luna’s Last Word has a strangley not-terrible(?) amount of Hard scaling, but her damage capability is just a slight bit higher than usual. It will definitely not contend with most other Last Word nukes, but sometimes it’s the little things that count.

+ Power Link
Power Link is almost always a universal good thing, as you can easily switch in to give everyone Spirit Power or even just use Luna to swap her out with someone else to give them a good amount of Spirit Power. Sometimes, just switching out can do more than enough in terms of support!

— Low support
The rest of Luna’s kit just has mediocre support. She can raise the party’s Yin DEF with her third skill, but her other skills just mess with Focus DOWN while very slightly increasing her Yin ATK. Even her Graze ability of raising Yin ATK is selfish.

As a purely support-focused Friend, Alice Margatroid excels at bringing Accuracy and ATK Up support to her allies. Due to her rather low personal damage and complete lack of elemental attacks, and her necessity for turns to setup for farming purposes, she shines more in harder fights where, weaker allies are brought in — unfortunately, powercreep means her worth is primarily with less potent friends, whom lack ATK UP in their kit. Even with a farmable story card built just for her, Alice is really just no more than average.

+ Skill 3 is enough to make her teammates very accurate, with some Yang ATK UP to boot
Alice’s third skill is just a great support overall, one that can be taken advantage of by many Friends. Yang ATK UP is always helpful for Yang nukers needing an extra boost, and the 2 levels of Accuracy UP is usually all you need to make most spells a lot more consistent. Her other skills might not be as supportive, but this one is more than enough to make Alice stand out.

+ She also has additional Evasion DOWN , Yin ATK UP, and Yin / Yang DEF DOWN support
— Yin ATK UP, Evasion DOWN , Yin ATK UP, Yin / Yang DEF DOWN support is slow
— Yin / Yang DEF DOWN support is Solo-target, and she can only apply one of them each turn
Evasion DOWN comes from her Last Word, acting as additional accuracy support and means that Alice is usually better attacking first before the rest of the team unleashes their own Last Words. Her other support comes in the form of her spells, which decrease either Yin or Yang DEF. They can be somewhat difficult to take full advantage of due to only targeting singular enemies. As one additional buff, Alice can Boost for Yin ATK and Graze for Yin DEF for the team, but without ways to regain her own Spirit Power, it can be difficult to quickly gain Yin ATK levels.

— No Barrier Break potential at all
All of Alice’s bullet lines, on shots, spells, and her Last Words, has no elements or even anomaly breaks. Pretty strange to lack color in her bullets, considering she is the Seven-Colored Puppeteer.

— Low damage output
Without any real offensive buffs or power, Alice just has no room to deal a great amount of damage. 

Urumi Ushizaki (L1) is a Destruction-Class Friend who specialises in both Crit buffs and debuffs.

Crit Supporter

Urumi can help Crit focused friends hit harder with Crit ATK buffs and enemy Eva/Crit Def/Crit Eva debuffs to throw into the mix.

Decent Spread of Elements

Most of Urumi’s bullets will hit one element or another, with the bulk of this going to Earth, Moon or Water. She also does more effective damage to enemies weak to those elements, helping her to stretch her damage a little further.

Weak Utility

The amount of support she has to give isn’t very much, especially when it mostly amounts to Crit buffs. Her Evasion debuffs are fairly short-lived or single target only, and while she can break Poison barriers, she is unable to inflict them herself, leaving her to rely on others to lay the Anomaly.

Lacks Personal Buffs

Urumi needs all the help she can get to raise her damage. Yin ATK and Accuracy support is a requirement on this ushi-oni to help her go the distance.

Sakuya Izayoi is a Friend who excels in going as fast as possible. Unfortunately that’s a rather useless and actively detrimental niche in LostWord, as you want your debuffers to go first in difficult fights, and for farming you’ll always go first due to Last Word priority. Due to her low damage, mixed Yin & Yang scaling, and nonexistent utility otherwise, you’re pretty much only bringing Sakuya for her somewhat-lacking access to Metal element attacks.

+ Metal elemental access on two of her spell cards
They are very minimal, but Sakuya can at least do 2 Metal breaks on her second spell and Last Word. It is an alright element if it is needed in the situaton, but otherwise Sakuya is really lacking in elements.

+ Can do OK damage when applied in the right situation
— Generally low damage
— Mixed attack types
In order to optimize her damage, Sakuya really wants to heavily buff her offense and perhaps get some Agility buffs. Sadly, even then her Slice scaling is pitiful and she comes with the additional problem of being a mixed attacker — utilizing both Yin and Yang in her spells and even Last Word. It’s not a downright bad thing to have, but without the proper tools to buff yourself, Sakuya can really struggle in the damage department. Still, in the perfect scenario, Sakuya can do some work.

— No utility whatsoever
All of Sakuya’s buffs in skills and spells are about helping herself. Pretty ironic for the perfect maid to not be a good team player.

Kanako’s main claim to fame is being able to take on the Chapter 3 Act 1 Story Card farming in 4 Turns with the right teammate. Other than that, she’s somewhat reliant on getting a Killer target to farm events, and her ability to tank is somewhat lackluster due to low access to Focus and a lack of team-wide damage mitigation. Her damage is also somewhat low in harder fights unless she hits a Killer target and she needs setup beforehand to match other Solo nukers.

+ First Spell Card provides 1 Spirit Power, which makes Kanako very flexible
— Needs time to setup to compare to other nukers, due to relying on Story Cards to provide Yang ATK UP
Having Spirit Power restoration on your own spells or skills goes a long way in helping prepare your damage for future turns. Unfortunately, she will still need more time to set up greater damage due to lacking Yang ATK UP buffs on her own kit, a rather important feature if you’re going for full offense.

+ Last Word deals solid damage if backed by a Killer, of which Kanako has a wide range (Humans, Dwellers of Water, and Gods)
— Kanako deals low damage if she doesn’t hit a Killer target
Human, Gods, and even Water Dwellers are common enough to give Kanako a good nuking niche when being able to set up against these specific foes. Of course, she will likely deal a lot less damage than usual when not facing these targets, unless you have supported her CRIT stats with other Friends or buffs.

— Below average Break access
Especially compared to other Festival Friends, Kanako’s elemental reach is pretty low. 2 Water on her first spell, 2 Wood on her second spell, and only 3 Metal on her Last Word. She doesn’t have any other breaking potential outside of these lacking breaks, decreasing a bit of her value.

— Fully selfish tank, has no way of keeping her tank alive outside of Focus
— Low Focus values
Everything that Kanako does is for her own benefit, outside of her CRIT ATK debuff which is likely not winning the favor of many allies compared to better debuffs. Even with 2 skills (second and third) that do practically the same thing of buffing both Yin and Yang DEF by 2 levels, Kanako is just lacking as a tank, even when it comes to Focus UP, buffing her value by only 5 levels.

Junko simply doesn’t have a ton to offer by modern unit standards — she’s got P0 Water Breaks, a backloaded Solo targeting Last Word, and that’s it. She’ll get the job done if you give her time, but just don’t expect anything amazing.

+ P0 Solo targeting Water Breaks on Spread Shot
— Lackluster Breaks overall
0P Water is good if Junko needs to spam Water breaks, but the rest of her spell elemental bullets are just lacking. Only 2 elements on her spells, with only 3 Star on her Last Word to somewhat make up for it makes for a very below-average breaker.

+ Decently powerful Solo targeting Last Word if given time to setup
— Requires setup to do any damage at all
— Mixed damage makes her hard to support
Junko really needs setup time to get anything done, which can be annoying when others on a team are waiting for her to do her thing. All of her spells are backloaded, and while her first spell provides 1.00 Spirit Power to shorten the wait, the mixed nature of all of her attacks will make it challenging to deal any damage even when Junko prepares all of her buffs.

— No team support
The Yin ATK debuff provided on Junko’s second spell is rather pointless for team utility, and all of her skills are for herself only. The only part that potentially is team support is the Charge on her third skill, and only in the sense that she waits for the rest of the team to debuff before attacking herself.

Momiji Inubashiri is focused on increasing her own Focus while decreasing her allies’ so that she can defend everyone with her strong Yin DEF. Sadly she does not bring much else to fights, her defenses do not cover Yang attackers, and her damage output and breaks are pretty low.

+ Good amount of Yin DEF self-buffs
Momiji gets some good Yin DEF buffs in the forms of her second spell and second and third skills. Something to note about her second skill is that while it is 4 levels of Yin DEF UP to the whole party, it only lasts one turn. Still, since its on a 2 turn cooldown, it’s a bit easier to fully utilize compared to other low-duration buffs.

+ Evasion debuff on singular targets
Momiji’s first spell has the pre-ATK effect of lowering the singular target’s Evasion by 2 levels, making for a decent replacement for Accuracy support for both herself and allies.

— Underwhelming Wood breaks
Momiji’s breaking potential is very mediocre, with your best bet of elemental breaks coming from the 4 Wood placed on her Last Word. Otherwise, most of the further Wood breaks are too expensive to justify being an efficent method of Full Breaking.

— Low amount of Hard scaling on a low-power Last Word
Momiji’s Hard scaling is just pathetic, and it’s a shame because it would have helped increase her damage due to her high Yin DEF buffs. For now, though, she just carries an underwhelming Last Word that decreases foes’ Yin ATK, in the case you’re actually using her for defense purposes.

— Rather specific Defense unit (Yin only + Focus UP can be harmful)
Not only does Momiji cover Yin-defensive bases, but her brutal Focus UP from her first skill and first spell can prove to be fatal at times. Since Focus UP makes it so the buffed target takes even more damage from All-target attacks, defensive Friends without barrier restoration can easily find themselves in a bind. For Momiji, this is both very true and can still be hard to tank everything, especially if the foe is Yang-based.

Hatate Himekaidou arrives as quickly as she can on the scene with a great amount of Agility buffs to herself to compliment her Slice bullets, along with an equally impressive amount of Accuracy buffs that can easily be shared with other Friends. She does not really provide much support outside of that, but can still unleash a rather damaging All-target Last Word if set up properly.

+ 8 levels of Agility UP works well with Slice scaling on Last Word
Hatate heavily increases her Agility UP to serve her purpose as a Speed-type Friend, but unfortunately the Slice scaling on her Last Word results in less damage than would be desired. It still is a decent All-target nuke when it is needed, though.

+ Up to 3 levels of party Accuracy support, as well as 2 levels of Evasion DOWN on all foes
— Accuracy support is unnecessary for units who can self-support themselves
Hatate’s Last Word provides the Evasion DOWN on all enemies, while her first skill is a single turn of a great 3 levels of Accuracy UP. More than 3 levels of accuracy support is a bit excessive, however, especially if the Friend is able to support Accuracy by themselves already.

— Mediocre, Wood-only breaks
Every spell in Hatate’s kit has 3 Wood breaks, which isn’t terrible, but just pretty average at this state of the game. She can break Wood-weak enemies when needed, but there are other people better at the job.

— Rather selfish offensive buffer
— Skill buffs come with nasty debuffs
Outside of the Accuracy support and some Agility buffs from her Last Word, Hatate is a selfish buffer who only focuses on herself. Not only that, but all of her skills come at the cost of a major debuff! Her second and third skills may have minor, inconsequential 1 turn debuffs, but the 4 levels of Yin DEF DOWN from her first skill lasts 2 turns and can definitely backfire if Hatate is not careful.

Komachi Onozuka’s primary goal is to buff herself to get the most out of her Solo-target Last Word with not much else going for her afterwards. Her elemental breaks are lacking or expensive in Spirit Power to access and the rest of her kit does little to impress in general.

+ Spread shot contains Metal breaks
— Below-average breaking
It is a rather strange thing to compliment, but having an All-target Spread shot with 3 Metal breaks accessible at 1/2/3P respectively is not the worst thing in the world, as definitely has the potential to break multiple enemies. However, the rest of her breaking is just mediocre in spell card standards. 3 Water on her first spell is alright, but only 2 Metal on her second spell and 2 Water and Metal on her Last Word can definitely be better.

+ Self-buffs to Yin ATK and Accuracy
Komachi’s third skill is a rather good one, increasing her Yin ATK and Accuracy by 3 levels. It is rather unfortunate that this Accuracy buff is only for one turn, but at the very least she can still self-support herself in terms of Accuracy from Boosting. Being immune to Blind isn’t a big deal, but it does help avoid accuracy issues at times. Her Last Word can at least do some decent damage too, with the 2 levels of Yin ATK UP somewhat helping.

— Selfish attacker/buffs
— Little utility
Komachi just doesn’t do much outside of these buffs and maybe elemental breaks if you pull them off. She tries her best to buff her own Agility for Slice scaling, but it is very underwhelming. Likewise, the Agility debuffs on foes is pointless, just like raising her own Evasion and lowering Focus on her first skill.

Yatsuhashi can do okay damage, brings some lackluster, team buffs, and brings some Wood and Sun Breaks. That’s about it. Her kit’s very plain and ineffectual.

+ Decent teamwide ATK UP
Yatsuhashi can slightly raise the entire party’s Yin and Yang ATK by 1 or 2 levels via her second skill! Too bad this is a 6 turn cooldown skill, but it still is a form of teamwide utility nonetheless. Her Last Word has a similar effect, although it has a higher chance of granted 2 levels, a 30% higher chance for each stat to be exact.

— Below-average breaks
Expensive breaks on basic shots, only 2 Wood breaks on each spell, and 4 Wood/2 Sun on her Last Word gives Yatsuhashi very little in terms of breaking potential. She can definitely break barriers with some Wood given the chance, but it is still very Spirit Power-costly on a Friend with no Spirit Power gain outside of a spell card effect.

— Low damage
With very small offensive buffs and even smaller Slice scaling, Yatsuhashi just doesn’t have the ability to dish out much high damage, either on spells or her Last Word. 

Benben’s a simple but kind of weak attacker with some decent Breaks and not much else going for her. 

+ Decent All-targeting Last Word with Fire and Wood breaks
Benben’s Last Word has an alright 4 Fire/2 Wood elemental spread on it, along with buffing her Yin ATK before the attack to help it serve a decent beating. Unfortunately, the embarrasingly low Slice scaling does little to help with this damage.

+ Buffs own Yin ATK and debuffs one enemy’s Yin DEF
+ At least 5 levels of Accuracy UP to self
While the Yin ATK buff only comes from her Last Word, she can also debufff a target’s Yin DEF by 2 levels via her second spell to help her damage output on that one enemy. Additionally, her second and third skill increase Accuracy to 5 levels so that there is little issue in consistent damage.

— Below average access to elemental breaks
Outside of the arguably decent Last Word coverage, Benben has little to boast about her other elemental coverage, only having 2 Wood on the rest of her spells. Her shots aren’t winning any awards either.

— 1/3/1 scaling on 1/2/3 Spirit Power hurts damage output when farming
Since Benben cannot reach 2P on the first turn, she will need at least one turn (unless paired with Spirit Power support from another Friend) to reach decent Last Word damage. She does, at the very least, have tools to buff her own Spirit Power, both from her first spell and first skill.

— Little team support outside of Yin DEF debuffs
The rest of Benben’s kit focuses on Agility UP which, as mentioned before, only pitifully increases Slice damage by a slight bit. Otherwise, she is decreasing her own Focus, which can actually harm your team if they aren’t into getting targeted!

Seiran provides you with a below average amount of Moon and Earth breaks and that’s about it. Her debuffs aren’t very helpful, her damage is low, and she just doesn’t really do anything else.

+ Earth and Moon Breaks
This is really all Seiran has going for her, and even then they are pretty below average. 2 Moons on her first spell, 2 Earths on her second spell, and only 3 Earths on the Last Word. At the very least, having a Friend with two elements can be somewhat decent, though her Earth only being on some spells does hurt that strength as well.

— Debuffs aren’t very helpful and have low values
Seiran’s debuffs are mainly about hurting the opponents’ offensive values, both Yin or Yang or CRIT stats. These, sadly, are not as practical when compared to debuffing defensive values, as these debuffs only decrease the damage you take instead of helping you nuke enemies faster. Even then, the values of her debuffs are pitiful and are not even very spammable.

— Low damage
When focusing on debuffs, Seiran really has no way to buff her own damage, to the point where her Last Word doesn’t even buff herself and just keeps aiming for that offensive debuff niche. She can try stunning at 3P of either her second spell or Last Word, but without her own way to gain Spirit Power quickly, good luck doing so efficiently. 

As a Healer, Lily White provides the bare minimum required to be considered serviceable in the role, restoring 1 barrier to all allies upon using her Last Word, to help them go just the little extra mile to see a fight done. Her damage is otherwise low, she brings no offensive utility, her access to elements is merely acceptable, and her Focus DOWN actively gets her team killed.

+Cheap access to some Wood elements when needed
-Only element outside of Wood is Star, and costs 3P to get 2 bullets
Lily’s elemental access is both alright and mediocre at the same time. She has the spammable option of a 0P Wood Focus shot that helps the value of many Friends, but otherwise has almost no elements. the spread of the 2 Star and Wood breaks on her second spell and Last Word respectively are expensive to access, at 3P. With no way to boost her own Spirit Power, getting to these breaks herself is rather unconventional.

+Capable of slightly buffing Party’s Yang DEF
+Numerous HP healing skills and 1 Barrier restoration
Lily is mainly on the supporitve-end, holding two heals on her first and third skills and even an extra one on her second spell. Her first skill has the very situational Barrier status restoration to get rid of anomalies, but at least her Last Word is able to restore one Barrier layer, as limited as it can be to use.

-Very lacking in offensive potential
With a focus on support, Lily provides very little in offensive or even defensive buffs and therefore suffers damage-wise.

-Low value on supportive skills (HP heals are based on the user’s max HP, not the % of each healed Friend)
Her HP heals may be plentiful, but since the %s are coming from her own HP (which is the rather low 5750 when fully upgraded or the decent 6375 upon Fantasy Rebirth), the heals might actually do a lot less than you expect they should.

Reisen has some potent buffs, unfortunately let down by their 2 Turn durations. Combined with very low personal damage output and no Barrier Break potential, and Reisen just isnt great. 

+ Solid buffing potential, especially for teammates with Hard and/or Slicing scaling
Strangely enough, Reisen has ways to buff defensive and Agility stats to help Friends with secondary scalings. For Hard, her first aid spell card can potentially increase both Yin and Yang DEF by 2 levels, and for Slice she can increase Agility through both Boost and Graze. It is truly dependent on which Friends you are running, but these small buffs can go a long way in boosting other Friends’ damage.

— Cannot Barrier Break
Self-explanatory. No elements on attacks, and not even any anomalies to inflict or break.

— Last Word deals no damage
— Low damage overall
More self-explanatory. Her first spell and Last Word are Aids, making them only around for supportive reasons. Her Last Word is also pretty much a joke, at most giving the party a mediocre 50% HP heal and excessive 5 levels of Accuracy UP while totally killing Reisen’s defenses. Otherwise, her damaging potential is low due to her rather low buffs.

-Buffs are short, at 2 turns or less each
-Granting the entire party Quick is more of a detriment than a boon
2 turn buffs definitely aren’t the end of the world, but with Reisen’s grab bag of different buffs, they can be pretty trivial to use at times. Additionally, her first skill making everyone Quick can just make the turn order of who is applying debuffs more confusing, although it can definitely be used to your advantage maybe if you’re facing a speedier foe.
 

Byakuren Hijiri is a tank who provides an adequate amount of Sun Breaks at 3 for 3 Power on her first Spell Card, some defensive utility to the team, and she can cheese some earlier floors of the Scarlet Devil Tower. Outside of that, her damage is low, she provides no offensive team utility, and she’s unfortunately lacking in defensive utility compared to the other tanks.

+ Average amount of Sun on first Spell Card at 0/1/2/3 Breaks for 0/1/2/3 Power
Her only significant form of elemental breaks may only be on her first spell, but it is at least better than many low-tier Friends. Getting up to 3 Sun breaks on one attack does has its uses too, as that just means you can get 3 breaks in one turn, getting you closer to Full Break compared to doing only 1 or 2 breaks.

+ Buffs her team’s DEF.
— Low values on DEF Buffs
Byakuren’s defensive buffs come in 2 forms: her self-Yang DEF UP on her first spell and a partywide Yin DEF UP on her second skill. The teamwide buff only lasting 2 turns and being 2 levels is less than desirable, but it can definitely help in some situations. Additionally, she can Graze to raise the party’s Yang DEF for a single turn when required.

— Low damage
Byakuren just doesn’t have the buffs or damage potential to do any substansial damage. For whatever reason, she is a Defense unit with Slice scaling, which while her Agility can be boosted with Boosts, has very little practical application. Funnily enough, her Last Word gives her Spirit Power, which would be good….if she was able to use it for the attack itself!

— No form of teamwide Barrier recovery or Healing
No healing is pretty annoying, especially when many other Defense Friends in the upper echelon come with at least some form of team heals. The same goes for Barrier recovery, but this issue is increased tenfold by the Focus rework. With the Focus UP Byakuren applies to herself, she will only end up taking more damage from All-target attacks and require more Barriers to block fatal attacks, since she cannot heal the damage. Lacking both of these elements hurts her survivablity, something a Defense Friend really doesn’t want to put on their resume.

Packing a slightly below average Solo Last Word, Star Sapphire’s job is to smack one boss a bit shy of hard, and break some barriers along the way. Having one All Star 1 Break Spell Card and one Solo Star 1 Break Spell Card is a useful asset too, due to the general rarity of the Star element for a long time. Still, her damage is overall lackluster, and she brings no utility to the table outside of that, leaving her a still useful but somewhat lacking Friend.

+ Access to Star breaks
— Low amount of breaks overall
Star breaks are commonly valued due to how many enemies can be weak to the element, which naturally makes her access to them very handy. Sadly, there’s not a lot of access to them. She gets 2 breaks on her first spell, only 1 on her second spell, and 3 on her Last Word. They can still be planned for and utilized to good effect, but there isn’t a lot to go around.

+ Accuracy buffs for self and whole party
— Low support outside of strengths
Star’s third skill is her highlight in terms of team utility, giving everyone 3 levels of Accuracy UP. It’s a classic assist for any Friend that lacks their own Accuracy support and doesn’t want to waste a story card slot to fixing it themselves. The main issue here is that these Accuracy buffs are her main highlight, and when it comes to the further buffs from her spells it gets a bit excessive. She does give 3 levels of CRIT Accuracy on her first spell, but it only lasting for a single turn does harm its usefulness.

— Mediocre Solo-target Last Word
Star’s only way of raising her own damage, unless you count the Last Word’s pre-ATK effect of CRIT DEF DOWN, is some Yang ATK from Boosting. With only that, it’s only natural that her Last Word really won’t do much in terms of damage.

Sunny Milk is a Friend you bring if you need Sun element attacks, and not much else. Her access to them isn’t great, her Last Word is Solo and deals low damage to boot, her overall damage output is poor, and her gimmick of lowering enemy Accuracy isn’t very useful.

+ Access to a few Sun breaks
Sun breaks are likely your main reason for bringing Sunny Milk, similar to the respective elements of her fairy gang. Her best bet is her Last Word, with 3 Sun breaks, but the other spells can at least try to drop a little Sun as well if needed. Full Breaking is a crucial mechanic for winning fights, so having another Friend to assist in barrier breaks does help.

+ Blind barrier access from a skill (and potentially Focus shot)
Surprisingly, Sunny’s Blind anomaly infliction on her first skill is rather spammable due to a 3-turn cooldown. While its debuff of decreasing a foe’s Accuracy is not so practical, it can still be taken advantage of by another ally who can break Blind anomalies. 

— Niche debuffs that does little to support a party
Debuffing a enemy team’s CRIT Accuracy and normal Accuracy really doesn’t do a lot to kill the enemies. Even then, her debuffs have rather small values, so I wouldn’t go around trying to dodge all of the enemies bullets anyway. Accuracy and offense debuffs are usually less optimal due to the existence of Graze, which negate all damage already.

— Lacking in damage
Since she focuses so hard on Accuracy debuffs, Sunny does not have much left in terms of buffing her own damage or doing so much on her own anyway.

With an overall lackluster kit, bringing no damage and minimal utility to the table, Nitori Kawashiro doesn’t have a lot going for her. She only brings Solo target Water and Metal element Spell Cards with only 1 break a piece at 0 Power, and only 1 more break at P2 and P3. However, she can apply 2 Electrified barriers to all foes, though the second barrier has a 10% failure rate. This grants her some small niche in providing team-wide Accuracy support that bypasses the normal 10 Stage Accuracy limit, which also goes well with Discharge attacks.

+ Access to Water and Metal element attacks
— Low amount of Breaks
Nitori has access to 2 elemental breaks, but sadly it is a low amount. 3 Water breaks on her first spell and 3 Metal breaks on her second spell seem good, but no elements elsewhere makes her breaking potential very below average. Having a No-Element Last Word sometimes helps you in the damage department, as you avoid hitting enemy resistances, but you have to have a good-hitting Last Word in the first place…

+ Provides team-wide accuracy support
Nitori’s first Solo-target spell has 2 levels of Evasion DOWN to indirectly serve as accuracy support for the whole party. For some Friends who lack their own accuracy support, this can be rather handy.

+ Applies up to 2 Paralyze Barriers with her Skill 2
Her second skill applies 2 Paralyze anomalies to all opponents, something that can be taken advantage of by other allies that can break those anomalies. Without them, though, their only practicality is the chance to Stun and not much else. However, she can also reflect Paralyze barriers back onto enemies in the right situations.

— Low utility
Not only does Nitori not really buff or help her team, but the debuffs she provides in Accuracy are just rather pointless.

— Very low damage
Nitori only increasing her CRIT ATK by 1 level in her Last Word is as much as you need to know about the low damage that she provides. 
 

The best of the healers at launch, Sanae Kochiya’s main selling point is Barrier restoration on a skill. It’s only 1 barrier with a 50% chance of another 1, and on a 8 turn cooldown, but it being on a skill means it doesn’t eat a turn to use. Her healing is also simply better than the other healers, with access to two healing skills. She has simply okay element access otherwise, with a Last Word that would seem theoretically very good for element breaks, but in practice due to how weaknesses are assigned will typically only be 2 breaks on a single target at P3. Her low damage and lack of offensive utility otherwise keeps her firmly as a weaker Friend.

+ Extremely versatile Element access, being able to provide Star, Wood, Earth, Water, and Metal breaks
— Spread of Elements on Last Word is somewhat awkward
Just as it says, Sanae has a good variety of elements under her belt. The most relevant ones are the 3 Star breaks on her first spell, 2 Water breaks on her second spell, and a whole mashup of 2 Wood/Metal/Earth on her Last Word. The triple split may be awkward, particularly when trying not to hit elemental resistances or optimizing damage with a story card, but it still makes Sanae rather versatile in breaking for some scenarios.

+ Exceptionally powerful and flexible healing, alongside Barrier restoration
Sanae does not disappint as the game’s first healer. Two of her skills focus purely on heals, with the first skill having a lower 35% HP with a smaller 4 turn cooldown while the third skill is a large 80% heal with its 8 turn cooldown solidifying it as a last resort. Her partywide 1 barrier restoration on her second skill is likewise 8 turns long, but still very useful for many fights.

— Power hungry, her best breaks all require 3P and she has no Spirit Power boosters herself
Every one of Sanae’s spells are backloaded, or have a 1-1-3 spread for each of her boosts. This means that she will often require 3P to do the best in temrs of damage or just breaks, something her kit is just not made to do by herself.

— Low damage
— Unsuited for farming
It is natural for the healer of a group to not be the best for hard damage and farming, but Sanae’s damage is still less than what would be desired. She doesn’t really have many practical Killers on her Last Word, only being effective against Gods.

Daiyousei is unfortunately perhaps the worst healer in the game. The most powerful form of healing is Barrier restoration, which she has no access to. Her second spell card is completely worthless, her Last Word is the weakest in the game and provides no barrier breaks, and her ability to restore HP is the worst of the healers as well. That said, it isn’t all bad — she gives the team some Yang ATK Up, her 3 Power Spread Shot gives 2 All Wood breaks, and at P3 her first spell card gives a whopping six Metal breaks to a single foe. 

+ Unparalleled 6 Metal breaks on first Spell Card
It’s pretty ridiculous, but Daiyousei’s first (and only damaging) spell card has a full 6 out of 6 Metal breaks on it, making it a crazy tool in Fully Breaking Metal-weak foes. Even if its damage was low (which….it still is), the utility of 6 breaks in one attack is something that the other bottom tiers can’t say they have.

+ Very slight heals
— Heals are very weak due to lacking base HP
Daiyousei has a grand total of one skill that heals: her second one. Not only does it only heal 25% of her own HP, her own low HP pool, 4800 at base with full upgrades, provides a very small amount of health to the team. It is a bit better at Fantasy Rebirth thanks to it being 7000 HP instead, but it still won’t do a lot in the grand scheme of things.

Well actually, her Last Word also gives a 40% heal but…having an Aid Last Word is an issue in its own right.

+ Provides Yang ATK & DEF UP on a skill
While very minimal, Daiyousei’s third skill can grant 1 level of Yang ATK and DEF UP to the whole party, with 50% chance for an additional boost. When she boosts, she also provides the party levels of Yang ATK UP, which can actually support some Yang attackers well. 

— Very low damage
Only two out of the five spells Daiyousei has access to are ones that actually do damage. She just…can’t.

Yoshika mainly serves as a Yin-based Defense Friend, who might get some good hits in with her Last Word. Unfortunately, outside of a fair amount of Water breaks, she will likely not serve much else to the party, and even endangers her own survivability thanks to the increased All-target damage she takes when heavily increasing her own Focus. 

+ Average Water breaker
3 Water breaks for each spell and 4 Water breaks on her Last Word is rather good compared to many General Friends. This makes Yoshika a very good pick when Water breaking is the first priority of a more difficult fight.

+ Good amount of self-Yin DEF buffs
+ Able to heal off some damage, helpful for a Defense unit
Yoshika’s second skill is a partywide 2 levels od Yin DEF UP, with an additional 2 levels of self-Yin DEF levels UP from her third skill. Her Last Word also provides 3 more levels, which can be alright for tanking if truly needed. Her first skill even has a 25% heal to help with the defending at times.

— Unimpressive damage on LW
She might have at least one Yin ATK UP on her first spell’s pre-ATK effect, but the damage of Yoshika’s Last Word is still rather underwhelming. Even her Hard scaling, bullets that increase based on your defensive stats, is very minimal. 

— Greedy buffer; little team utility
Outside of the buffs from her second skill, Yoshika provides very little team support for the party. Both of her Character Ability attributes are only for herself, and the only thing that can slightly help out a team further is her Focus UP to minimze damage given to other party members.

— Heavy Focus UP can heavily screw over Yoshika’s defenses
And about that Focus UP, it can easily kill Yoshika if not wary. All-target attacks do a lot more damage to those with heavy Focus UP, and Yoshika really doesn’t have much to counter this due to a lack of barrier resotation and only one small healing skill. This healing skill, by the way, also increasing her Focus!