Ooooooooooh YEAAAAAAAAH.
Finally got that whore Maxwell down. Ended up with original team ( Lilly/Altri/Lilith/Lilith/Darvanshel with Grah friend ) - in the end it just came down to RNG, I even did something amazingly dumb ( attacked with Grah on a double destiny turn ) but RNG smiled by dumping them on the Liliths. ( In every single try I never had a Lilith die first, not once - I dunno why this is )
I tried a few goes with a Darv friend, and it was certainly a lot more survivable, damage mitigation every single turn - but the problem was that double destiny will kill shit regardless, and not having grah meant the fight went MUCH slower, so RNG always caught up eventually.
That was try 13 or so I think - I got stuck for a while when I ran out of mats to make revives and had to stockpile for a week or so. I was not prepared for how hard it was, I salute the JP players who did it with Oulu and no Lilly, that must have been gruelling as hell ;p I nominate my best run as the one where I had 3 guys paralyzed on round 1 of juggernaut, and then had altri killed on round 2 ;p
And yeah, I agree, the new batch looks underwhelming. They are mostly decent substitutes for staple guys but not with enough of a clear advantage that you'd want to upgrade - ( e.g. Michele -> Kuda/Kuhla, Darvanshel -> Narza, Lilith -> Rowgen etc )