Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-2804:431:B700:C9A:B50A:FE8F:B64F:B932-20180705000151

I've recently finished a run through the current content and I want to share some thoughts on the combat effectiveness of the current party members in the form of a tiered list from best to worst:

S-tier

Qum D'umpe - Qum sits at the top of the list due to not only the potency of her spells, but also their cost-benefit efficiency and her usage of SP instead of mana for most of her spells, making her an incredibly sustainable healer. Arousing Aura is easily her strongest spell, applying party-wide offensive buffs while also doing considerable healing thanks to her high MAG stat, all for the meager cost of 25 SP. The rest of her kit isnt anything to scoff at either, Little Death is a full health revive for just 25 SP, Orgasmic Thoughts replenishes a little bit of mana for the entire party and does a large heal, she can cleanse statuses and also give SP to allies. Her main weakness used to be that she was a succubus character that couldn't deal sexual damage, but her synergy with Robin allows her to use lust damage lances now, making sure she can also deal her own damage after buffing the entire party.

Vhala - Vhala is a very solid character all-around while also possessing strong specialties. She essentially has a monopoly on holy damage currently (the only somewhat effective alternative is reshaped-Varia using the crusader sword), her respectably large mana pool allows her to use her spells for a long while, and her spells are really good. On top of the holy damage nukes, she can use group debuffs, which combined with her large health pool, can effectively make her a better tank than Hilstara in certain fights, triple shot gives her decent physical damage potential and the upgraded version of the unperson aura makes sex damage users cry with no downsides to your party. But her main gimmick is the immunity to sexual damage and heals, while Im not certain the benefits outweigh the cons, I say it is pretty much harmless; she can still receive buffs from Qum's spells and no matter what you almost always want to have at least one arcane magic character in your party and all of them can heal, so in the worst case scenario you just need to have your arcane wizard babysit her a bit.

A-tier

Robin - Robin is probably the best arcane user in the party, the focused nature of her spell lances are powerful in a turn-based RPG, she struggles a bit in the early game since she's the only arcane magic user that can't use any succubus equipment, which is generally better for mages, but as the game progresses she can get some really good arcane equipment (crusader gear, arcane crystal, unperson circlet). Her strong synergies with a strong character like Qum also help pull her up a bit higher.

Varia - Varia is a high-cost/higher-reward type of character, while she has a somewhat limited mana pool and is somewhat squishy, her potential for physical damage is ridiculously freaking high. Her spells costing health does mean she can sometimes be a liability and she will need a dedicated healer, you can try to make it better by gaming the healer's AGI to be lower than Varia's but higher than the enemy's. She'd probably be ranked higher if she was easier to sustain or if she could use daggers to boost her crit rate. Dominated-Varia is considerably stronger than reshaped-Varia, but they have the same fundamental weaknesses so I grouped them together.

Riala - Riala is a pretty good offensive mage, she has access to strong arcane and sexual spells, including AoE arcane spells, however she lags behind Robin in terms of sheer focused burst damage because her stronger spells require both lust and mana to be used.

Aka - Aka is a good physical damage dealer with access to single-target debuffs and poison, unfortunately poison is only useful sometimes, and she will generally lose to Vhala in terms of debuff utility and lose to Varia in terms of raw physical damage, but Aka's higher crit rate helps her catch up. In the end she is still pretty damn good, she can get different types of damage with her synergy skills, but they arent very impressive unless she gets crits with them.

Carina - Carina is a good healer, just not a particularly special one. She can outclass anyone in terms of pure and continuous healing, Divine Touch can fully heal most of the characters, and Mass Heal can decently heal the entire party every turn, things like Calming Aura and Cleansing Aura are nice but statuses are usually better dealt with preemptively by getting good acessories, the main issue is that most of the time Qum can handle the healing just fine and in a more sustainable way, Carina cant do that since she is always using mana, also her defensive party buff is nothing special, Hilstara can just as well do the same with Hold The Line while also serving as a more dedicated tank.

B-tier

Simon - Simon is easily one of the characters that improves the most throughout the game, but to me he still isn't quite there yet, he is still a pretty mana starved character that does decent physical damage with Precise Strike. The improvements he can get to his SP mechanics help him a lot, Lust Renewal helps him sustain himself a bit better, Dominate and Corrupt are occasionally useful, King's Aura is useful to re-apply and extend buffs on the party, and Support Allies/Servants/Slaves is useful in a pinch if you want your healers to be doing something else instead of reviving.

Nalili - Nalili will probably be one of the better characters later on since Sexual Aegis is an amazing skill, but the Succubus conumdrum keeps me from liking her, do I use accessories to help me with my SP output or do I use my accessory slot to protect me from statuses? Either way, she has good physical/lust damage output and Blade of Lust is pretty useful against some annoying enemies, but I feel she's too high maintenance for what she accomplishes.

Uyae - Classic hybrid character, she can fit in both the role of a damage dealer or of a healer, but she won't excel at either, that said she isn't bad at either, she can do decent physical damage with Takedown and heal adequately with her Healing Aura.

Hilstara - Hilstara is either the best character in the field or almost dead weight, it all comes down to if she can tank or not, and lately against demons she hasn't been able to do that very well, if she can't survive while using Shieldwall, she defaults to being an underwhelming support with very little in terms of healing, Hold the Line and Tactical Eye are good defensive spells and she can buff the damage of a party member with Encourage. She has very little in terms of damage.

Altina - Altina just kind of had her thunder stolen by Riala, she's still a good arcane wizard, but the only things she can offer over the others is poison, which is only occasionally useful, and earth magic which is very expensive and also only occasionally useful.

C-tier

Yarra - I don't really know if I can say a single good thing about Yarra, pretty much everything she does is either done better by someone else or not very good, the only things unique to her are Flirt and Incubus King's Emissary. Incubus King's Emissary is AoE lust damage with a chance of inflicting lust death, but for the cost of 50 SP its not something you can use all the time and not that impressive, and Flirt is downright dangerous to use, if it works it's okay, if it doesn't you just buffed an enemy and now he might take out one of your party members. Yarra is involved in some really good synergy skills, but I feel she needs so many of those to become useful enough that you kind of just pigeonhole yourself into a party that isnt very good just to make Yarra not be very bad.

If anyone had a different experience than mine, or different opinions on the matter, I'm interested in hearing about it. 