Casual Crono's Q&A: Thillelillie ES- All Shadow Team or Not?

On the Another Eden reddit page, u/Helel89 and I were discussing whether or not Thillelillie ES would work better with four shadow characters or if a light character could make up the dps difference.
We both agreed that Thille's "Photon" skills would definitely be weaker since 4 shadow characters max out it's damage bonus. Where we differed: I felt that using a character like Eva, with her 4x stack glint purge debuff paired with her glacial veil buff would help Thille's Sword in Heart attack more than Mistrare AS's singing and 4x stack of Hakham Chets. Helel89's theory was that Mistrare AS would be more beneficial to SiH. I also felt that Mariel ES's survivability (prayer 50% damage reduction plus 2000hp shield) paired with her prayer's 5x move 50% type attack would keep people alive better than Mistrare AS's 50% damage reduction and her end-of-turn power/int stacking debuff from Lepus Musica.
Helel89 proposed a very controlled damage simulation on the test dummy in Nagsham, and through it I learned that Lepus Musica has a funny way of determining what the "second skill used" means. From the wiki: "1st skill used in AF is judged against skill selected immediately before activation of AF, not against skill used in previous turn." Helel89 used this concept to make sure that Sword in Heart gained the full 150% damage bonus from Lepus Musica! I didn't notice this footnote (or any of the footnotes) related to this concept, so I had thought that SiH would not get any kind of damage boost until the second singing turn, hence the basis for my case.
As you can guess, with a 150% damage multiplier, Mistrare AS was proven to be much more beneficial to Thille's damage than either Eva or Mariel. Along the same lines, I did not notice a significant difference in damage taken, though I was only looking at the Chaos Ogre's bloody knuckle attack, and Mistrare was not singing any of the times he used it.
Are these tests extremely thorough? No. Is using Mistrare AS always the best choice? Probably not; boss fights require different strategies and as any AE player knows, there's no one team that can be used on every fight. I can't say that ALL shadow characters are definitely better than ALL light characters (Mariel ES came very close to 5 damage cap hits on the Ogre), but in this case, Mistrare AS beats the characters I do have access to. Helel89 proved on the test dummy that the singing boost did surpass the strategies I had been using with both Eva and Mariel ES, and I showed that survival was not in danger against the Mysterious Chaos Ogre by using Mistrare AS. Feel free to nitpick any of the details/test methods, but for now, I'm going to agree with Helel89 that Mistrare AS is the best choice for my crystal team right now (based on the characters I have access to). At least in short 2-3 turn boss fights. :)
0:00 The Question
4:40 Test dummy with Eva
7:05 Test dummy with Mariel
10:46 Test dummy with Mistrare AS and same skill
17:33 Test dummy with Mistrare AS and different skill
21:29 Test dummy conclusions
22:39 Mysterious Chaos Ogre Hard with Mariel ES
30:07 Mysterious Chaos Ogre Hard with Eva
35:20 Mysterious Chaos Ogre Hard with Mistrare AS (no song)
39:21 Mysterious Chaos Ogre Hard with Mistrare AS singing
42:25 It's over 10,000,000,000!
45:24 Conclusions

[@guguig9746]

I have her and haven't got to test her a lot ! (Or play at all, life has been busy)
This is interesting, thank you for the time you took making it!
I'm curious to catch up and finally watch the video dedicated solely around her

[@helel89]

Great video! Thank you for taking time to do that!
I'm glad I've been able to help you improve your Crystal team! :)

[@casualcronolv99]

Thank you!

[@kyleali123]

This is so weird I was just trying to build a team with her and was wondering this exact question. Looking forward to the video.

[@casualcronolv99]

I hope the video helps! I've converted, I learned a trick to how Mistrare AS sings which I was unaware of, and that caused Thille's damage to skyrocket compared to how I had tested her in the past. I can't say that ALL shadow characters are definitely better than ALL light characters (Mariel ES came very, very close to 5 damage cap hits), but in this case, Mistrare AS beats the characters I do have access to.

[@kyleali123]

I have this exact team with Mistrare AS so that’s good to know