Row 4 has some real awful subskills.
In addition to the extra delay and additional source of stackable debuffs to ramp faster after debuff clears, Chaos Ruler brings a source of healing; Absorption covers some of that deficit, especially for the two high damage triggers at 60% and 35%. For the latter, Haase 2 can cover part of it, but 60% is unavoidable, and an effective 30% mitigation really helps. It'd be nice if it were bigger, but can't afford to be picky here. Over the course of the run, it's probably around one blue pot of healing - which isn't very impressive, mind you; Quick Down probably would have been better mitigation without Quatre for DA/TA down. (Check out how low the party got on turn 23, by the way; that was far closer a shave than I had been expecting.)
The extra targeted delay makes wing route not that bad to manage, but it also doesn't feel like there's a ton of upside in doing it; the plain damage from trial 12 and Socie's HoT getting dispelled adds up over the course of an extra couple of dozen turns with trials active.
The shortage of damage compared to Kengo feels lacking. Spending a Beelzebub call to push into 75% without taking an ougi PL is fine since it's still off cooldown by the next time it's needed at 50%, but without that bit of burst it'd have been a real problem to live.
Gopherwood led off with me forgetting about the body's ougi again, which really deserved to have wiped the run. Trying to delay the burst by a turn because the party didn't have enough meter was bad, too; that one extra turn of autos without absorption put MC low enough to die to plain damage during the subjugate turns. Not ideal.
I'll try more water stuff once I finish at least the first couple of Schrodingers; they're going to be gargantuan improvements over Auberons.
water ship 8%/water reactor 10%
0:00 100%
5:10 75%
9:59 50%
14:40 25%