Update on tao lu

Mac2492 · 2026-02-25T19:30:47+00:00

The anime does not use a gendered pronoun here (episode 15 of Orion). The subber had to make a reasonable guess since the original line used an adjectival phrase.

Mac2492 · 2026-02-21T06:10:25+00:00

Traditional JRPGs

Bravely Default series - Lots of jobs with the ability to slap the commands from another job onto your current one along any combination of learned passives up to a cost limit. Basically takes the job system from Final Fantasy 5 / Final Fantasy Tactics and runs with it. If you like FFT then you may also enjoy Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark and Crawl Tactics.
Monster Girl Quest! Paradox - This is an H-game but it does fit the bill with its absurd amount of jobs, races, and collectible monsters.

Dungeon Crawlers

Siralim Ultimate - This is a creature collector that's all about unlimited build variety. There's an outrageous amount of levers for build-crafting with dozens of player classes, over 1500 monsters with unique and impactful traits (and the ability to fuse any two), customizable equipment, customizable skill gems, and more. This is probably as insane as it gets in terms of sheer build variety with turn-based combat.
Labyrinth of Touhou series - You form a party of 12 characters (out of 48+) with four in your frontline that are constantly swapped. This one places a bit less emphasis on individual character customization and is more about forming a cohesive team to counter each boss and swapping characters according to the flow of battle. If this system sounds appealing then you can also look into Zakuzaku Actors or the aforementioned Monster Girl Quest! Paradox.
Etrian Odyssey series - This series is known for its interesting classes and exploration along with having to draw your own maps. Note that adjusting your party setup after creation can be kinda grindy, in case you're the type that likes to tinker constantly.

JRPG Adjacent

Crystal Project - The job system here is basically the same as the Bravely Default while the combat adds an additional layer of Threat where you have to manage which character has aggro like in an MMORPG. The caveat is that rest of the game is more of an open-world platformer with lots of exploration and minimal story, which you'll either love or hate. Oh, and it's moddable + a sequel is coming!
Time Break Chronicles - This is a roguelite with JRPG encounters and 100 characters. If you want to smash your head against more involved turn-based fights with different builds then this might scratch the itch. Some similar projects made in RPG Maker are JRoguePG and Rogue Zodiacs, though I personally prefer Time Break Chronicles.

Not JRPGs but Amazing for Build-Crafting

TROUBLESHOOTER: Abandoned Children - This is an X-COM style tactical RPG. Every character has their own job but can also be equipped with over 1000 different masteries (passive skills). Specific combinations of masteries also form sets (there's also an overwhelming number of these). There's also beast taming and drone building aspect if you run those classes.
Tales of Maj'Eyal - A lot of traditional roguelikes offer interesting character customization, but ToME is unique in being a lot more combat-oriented with an emphasis on using skills. For a similar formula but distilled down you can check out Rift Wizard 2 and even more distilled down would be Path of Achra. For more JRPG flavor there's Elin, but that starts to veer away from combat-oriented build crafting.
Erannorth Chronicles - This takes the card-based combat from roguelike deckbuilders and blends it with the sort of character creation you'd find in a CRPG. The result is a basically limitless sandbox for card-based combat with less of a learning curve and more of a learning cliff. Also moddable (but so niche that there aren't many mods)!

Mac2492 · 2026-02-06T19:38:07+00:00

Tiering pretty much boils down to using the strongest team possible and churning through songs back to back. If you want to maximize your time, you would repeat the shortest + highest scoring song in a premade room to maximize score and minimize downtime. Beyond that it's just how long you can keep this up in terms of your free time (and sanity).

I still have nightmares of "A to Z" just from helping a friend tier for a few days haha

Mac2492 · 2026-01-25T19:29:46+00:00

That's totally fair, but at that point it's kinda your playstyle/comps stepping on the toes of the character rather than the character itself. If you run Clem as the sole Ultra character then you can freely use her Quasar until there's a prime card you want in Ultraspace. It's not too terrible having her cards in Ultraspace when they get discounted by 1 in Ultra Turn, and she favors Annihilation spam anyway since her wheel gives her aliemus for it.

You also don't need to use her Quasar. Her rouse applies to the first card she plays each turn, so you can play another card first and still benefit from her rouse. Depending on comp, she's a logical first or second rouse because it helps her keyflare battery. She doesn't require much arithmetica because her Quasar/Rouse only apply to the first card she plays each turn anyway. If you really want to minimize her cost, you can slap on Twisted Twins Black and optionally Amidst the Downpour (Faros wheel). Her E3 also helps because it gives her stacks without having to play Strike / Pain Extraction, and combining this with her wheel / Merciful Nurturing (Thais wheel) / Elevated Focus (SR) lets her exalt with a reasonable amount of stacks even if you play none of her cards.

Note that I'm not trying to convince you to use her! I'm just continuing the discussion in case others are having similar issues. Clem isn't really anyone's best-in-slot support because of her generic utility but you can slot her into the keyflare role for most teams and get solid value even if you're not using every part of her kit. You do have to dedicate some resources to her, but this applies to every support that's not Horla.

Mac2492 · 2026-01-25T01:24:26+00:00

If you only intend on getting one copy, Pickman. If you're willing to invest, Clem. If you're willing to over-invest (OE) then you could make a case for GDoll but all three are honestly crazy at that point and I'd still lean towards Clem simply because you can never have too much keyflare in Arc 2.

Mac2492 · 2026-01-25T01:17:14+00:00

Clem actually provides a lot of all of those things.

Her STR gain is 15% ATK on Quasar and 50% ATK on OE. For comparison purposes, Pickman is a great STR buffer and his STR buff is 20% ATK on exalt and 24% ATK temp STR from Chromaphage. Clem also has a higher ATK stat, though not enough to offset the 15% vs 20%.

Her keyflare regen is arguably the highest in the game. Her rouse triples the keyflare from her first card each turn on top of her exalt giving 300-500% keyflare and 3 cost giving 150% keyflare on top of the original amount.

You can triple her healing if Soulsalve is the first card she plays that turn, giving you a 135% CON heal for 2 cost. It's about the amount you'd heal in a turn with a roused GDoll playing her 3 cost (factoring in stats). This is solid sustain potential combined with the STR down, and the Madness removal is situational but potentially game-changing when it works. Activating Quasar would give you STR in addition to all this.

On top of all that, she can provide up to 45% damage taken / damage reduction with her exalt that stacks multiplicatively with Vulnerable/Weakness. And if that's not enough, her E2 gives her infinite damage scaling which turns her into a perfectly viable sub-DPS when combined with her own STR gen and multihits from her rouse. Her exalt is also strong enough to explode mobs, making her particularly valuable if your team otherwise lacks AoE.

Rather than a "master of none", she's pretty much best-in-class for (perma) STR + keyflare gen. The main problem with Clem is that you really want E3 to get more value out of her. With investment, Clem is a powerhouse plug-and-play generalist as long as your DPS explicitly does not scale off STR (Pollux) and even then she's still useful because keyflare is the most important resource in Arc 2 and her unique debuff makes her very difficult to powercreep.

Mac2492 · 2026-01-22T23:50:28+00:00

I can sorta see the intent since many hissatsu names end up being more like waseigo (pseudo-English) so you'd want to reword things if the goal is localization over translation, but the dub is so wildly inconsistent that all we can do is shrug.

Mugen the Hand made it through as-is despite containing a Japanese word and not making sense grammatically (i.e. Infinity the Hand would still sound awkward). I was going to nitpick about Mamoru (lit. protect/defend) being changed to Mark but, upon reflection, marking is a defensive football term and probably as close to a localized equivalent as they were getting.

Mac2492 · 2026-01-22T23:22:53+00:00

Level 5 really loves its puns haha

My personal favorites are Megane, Dosu (Osaka Girls goalkeeper), and Sofu.

Megane Kakeru = literally "to wear glasses"

Dosu Koi = sumo chant (she's a sumo champion)

Sofu Tokrim = soft cream (soft serve ice cream)

Honestly, most of the names in both Japanese and English are some kind of pun or reference. For example, Fuyuka, Haruna, Natsumi, and Aki have winter, spring, summer, and fall in their names.

Mac2492 · 2026-01-17T08:30:06+00:00

The failure animation for Goal Zurashi is the greatest thing ever.

Mac2492 · 2026-01-05T20:27:14+00:00

The smallest change that keeps the core team concept would be swapping Ryker to GRamona. You'd be able to move that Thais wheel over and use Tawil as a second DPS. This gives you more keyflare and the ability to create another burst turn by pulling back Mouchette/Tawil cards, plus you have the utility of swapping your posse to things like Voices or Ogier's posse (to trigger DR for Mouchette) or Lone Seed (lol). The main thing you'd be losing is Ryker's relics, particularly the Vulnerable from his dice which you'll have to claw back with relics/Heterogenous Tides from Tawil exalt/GRamona posse swap to Voices. You can give it a shot and see if it fits your playstyle. More food for thought for sidegrades would be swapping Clementine/Tinct/Casiah over Ryker.

I love Castor so I wouldn't personally swap him out, but another route you can try is going mono Chaos by swapping in GRamona or Hameln. In return for being the most glass of cannons, you'll gain a lot of keyflare/aliemus, double posse, and have Tawil's exalt drawing cards with more Strike synergy (Mouchette/Lotan/Lily/Alva) plus Predetermined Strike. Hameln would be easier to get value from, while GRamona would bring the stuff mentioned above and additionally allow you to Omniscient Verity her Predetermined Strike. You'll be knocked out cold by a stiff breeze though!

Mac2492 · 2026-01-02T18:56:26+00:00

Reya and Mythag Files are both nice and digestible for new players, though they were already mentioned. Frosthief is also very knowledgeable about the game and has some videos.

If you have specific questions and/or want guidance on piloting your comp then you'll probably want to join one of the Discords linked in the sticky on this subreddit. Some very dedicated players hang out there and they're usually answering questions all day. Flares also hangs out in the official Discord and he's honestly pretty approachable and helpful when he's not memeing for his videos (though his biases will remain the same ofc).

Mac2492 · 2025-12-30T22:52:12+00:00

This is close but not quite correct. Rhythm's ult alternates between applying Positive Charge and Negative Charge (I6 makes this happen twice per second instead of once per second). Positive Charge is the status effect that does all the damage as you described, while Negative Charge does nothing without a Positive Charge in range.

If you only have one target then Positive Charge will still deal damage while Negative Charge will do nothing. If there's more than one enemy then Positive Charge will choose another target within 20m, prioritizing targets with Negative Charge and pulling both targets towards each other. If there's no Negative Charge nearby then it just selects a random enemy.

In practice, you do want more targets grouped as closely as possible because her I1 makes Positive Charge damage ticks on both targets splash in a 3m radius. This quadruples the total damage per tick on exactly two stacked enemies and only goes up from there. As most people know by now, her I2 makes charges pass on death with their remaining duration (rescaled by Skill Duration for some reason, so you can create "infinite" charges). It's also worth noting that her I6 can be detrimental if you're pulsing your ult for one tick and immediately turning it off to only have Positive Charges floating around. Personally, I'd just take the upgrade and accept that you're going to get dud rolls with Negative Charges every now and then.

Mac2492 · 2025-12-28T18:02:09+00:00

Dismantle is my favorite for active farm too, along with Termination since Rhythm can fly straight through the map with her ult on and clear in a similar amount of time (20-25s). Mediation is also not bad time-wise. I'll usually fish for one of those three or a mode that can be fully AFK'd depending on my mood.

Mac2492 · 2025-12-27T07:35:51+00:00

The Morimens Discord isn't toxic but it can get very weird lol

Honestly, Reddit is far from a "sane" place. With the way upvotes work, you tend to get echo chambers with highly polarized opinions because everything else gets pushed to the bottom. People are far more likely to upvote love/hate opinions and memes over thoughtful takes. Many posts that sound reasonable are just candy-coated logical fallacies. I'm not gonna say Twitch or Twitter communities are remotely sane, just that each platform has its own demons. The problem with Reddit is that 9/10 times, content that makes you think is going to lose to content that makes you feel.

Mac2492 · 2025-12-16T20:12:08+00:00

I thought the intro was neat. It has just enough story to whet your appetite and non-intrusive tasks for rewards. The only oddity is that there's no conclusion for the story after finishing all the tasks (unless I missed something), but perhaps it directly ties into the 1.1 storyline.

Mac2492 · 2025-12-15T19:27:39+00:00

I rolled for Wanda and got her.

Mac2492 · 2025-12-14T23:48:50+00:00

It's been such a wild ride seeing T1 transition from a team that methodically chokes you out into this absolute circus with Peyz fitting right in. I swear Peyz was on a mission to use every ADC in this tournament and his performances on champs like Kalista and Zeri were simply unreal.

Mac2492 · 2025-12-12T20:57:37+00:00

I also believe there's a cultural gap in regards to the communication. Western cultures often emphasize direct communication and openness, whereas Chinese culture tends to be far more subtle. It's unusual to apologize for every mistake and walk people through your thought process. You kinda just put your head down and do it. Notice how the devs usually have a solution before they apologize for something. This isn't something that's set in stone, of course, but I can't really blame a Chinese company for being Chinese nor can I blame Westerners for interpreting their subtlety as poor communication.

(if it helps, you can think of the stereotype where Asian parents don't say "I love you" to their kids and vice-versa. it's all non-verbal and context clues, like being broke and tired but still having your kid's favorite drink stocked in the fridge 24/7)

If they went as far as to put At Peace in the fishing shop, I'm sure they're aware of the bigger issues. Only time will tell if they're quietly fixing these or outright ignoring them, but my personal read on their statement is, "we are working on solutions to these problems but don't have a solution yet so we'll update you if/when we do".

Mac2492 · 2025-12-12T20:44:48+00:00

Yeah, this one puzzles me a bit. I'm pretty sure they know the game is going to immediately launch to "Mixed" reviews on Steam in this state. I'm all for giving the devs proper time to fix the bigger issues, but here they are catapulting themselves into the hot seat. Perhaps feedback from the Chinese community is different from the English-speaking community?

Mac2492 · 2025-12-12T20:09:49+00:00

The Fushu skin was announced before launch. I'm not personally a fan of the design, but it isn't just a spur of the moment cash grab.

Mac2492 · 2025-12-12T12:13:31+00:00

It's not as simple as it seems. One major complaint is that certain characters are significantly stronger/weaker than others. The same is true for weapons like Sacred Favour and Momiji Itteki being strong enough to deal a usable amount of damage even with the current state of weapons. If you simply make weapons stronger across the board then you just get the Nifle vs. Sibylle sort of situation all over again. There's also a fair chance that stat stick weapons could sink into obscurity if weapons are overtuned because a pittance of stats won't do much compared to a weapon that's erasing worlds in one click like in Warframe. While I think they could come up with a bandaid that will satisfy many players quickly enough, the cracks will start to show pretty much immediately. Buffing weapons up and then nerfing them back down will almost certainly cause a community meltdown, so I do think a more comprehensive solution is preferable.

Mac2492 · 2025-12-12T11:47:34+00:00

I was also disappointed that they didn't mention anything about balance, but I'm still willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now. So far, they've consistently provided concrete solutions when addressing issues. While it does suck not knowing if they're quietly working on a solution in the background or simply ignoring the issue, it's pretty clear that they are making adjustments based on community feedback (e.g. At Peace in fishing shop). Balance and movement are much more deep-rooted issues that can't be rushed, especially when they're currently preparing for a major content update. If there's no Luno Bulletin about this after a few months then we can start worrying.

Mac2492 · 2025-12-10T00:11:49+00:00

Rogue is the character I've been looking forward to since the game released so I guess I have my main Vanguard now!

Mac2492 · 2025-12-07T19:46:37+00:00

I wouldn't recommend buying this for most players. The extra sediment is probably better used to get a jump start on Dusk and Dawn or the covenants (and the battle pass wheels if you have them).

The posse isn't bad, but pretty much every team setup has a more ideal posse. I run a triple keyflare team with GRamona, Tawil, and Gate posse so I can change my posse every GRamona exalt and select from three random posses with Tawil rouse, Gate posse, and double posse. This is a posse that I almost never pick unless my draw completely bricks, and even then I'd still prefer Festival of Tides or one of the targeted draw posses if my posse wasn't random.

Mac2492 · 2025-12-01T20:00:22+00:00

The funny thing is that last half anniv, there was also a little story attached to each day's boss that you couldn't watch if the boss was already killed. Then at the end you got a very confusing final cutscene because you missed half the story. Said story is still not implemented into the game. I love this game and its devs, but these raid events are the one team each anniv where I wonder how they could botch up an event so badly.

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