[nickjr]

I'm not missing the OE boost for Sumire; I'm also granting it to the other two leaders because it's so easy to come by. (Athena in particular brings her own via her active.)

There is a super big difference between having natural 100% +orbs and getting +orbs via active skills, especially with Athena's longer CD to compensate for the double OE (roughly 1 every 3.5 turns with max skill Athena leads). Plus there's also the teambuilding issue (Athena teams have 1/3 of the team dedicated to OE while Sumire teams don't need that) but that's a different beast

Of Light gods with at least one TPA: Valk's got two, Verche's got one, Zeus&Hera has one, L/D Izanagi has one, Zeus Olympios has one, L/G Sakuya has two, chibi Metatron has one, Cinderella has one... and soon, reincarnated Verche will have THREE. <3

Or you could just pack Hathor with four OEs; she may not have TPA but she won't weigh you down.

Hathor/reincarnated Verche/Rose/LG Sakuya subs brings you up to 11 OEs, sure, but Hathor and reincarnated Verche are pulling most of the weight. Take out Verche and then, from your list, you have Hathor/1 OE/Rose/LG Sakuya, which is 9 OEs. Take out Hathor instead of Verche and that's 8 OEs. Verche and Rose alone bring 5 OEs, but even though they're farmable and good Athena subs, that's really restricting who you can bring as Athena subs if you're aiming to get 9 OEs.

Sumire teams, meanwhile, get 4 by default from their leads. 1 OE per sub isn't that hard to do. If you're building a Sumire team then you probably have other blue subs that'll work well, and 2 blue OEs on monsters isn't uncommon. (On top of that, there's also natural 40% heart OEs from double Sumires, which not only provide enhanced healing but can also be heartbroken into enhanced blue orbs.) Awoken Isis, Hera-Is uvo, Skuld, Umiyama, Apex Starling, Ars Paulina, Christmas Ars Paulina (x5), Summer Awilda (x5), Summer Urd if you got her, Alrescha. Some of the mons with only 1 blue OE also have off-color OEs, which are super helpful too when puzzling (as someone who has played AYomi and Sumire). All of the options I listed are monsters I would actually use on a Sumire team, too, although I'd probably readily switch out Hera-Is uvo and regular Ars Paulina. There are also other options like Haku, who I would use on a Sumire team as a really nice stopgap ("really nice stopgap" in comparison to how newer players may use dublits as stopgaps)

For double light OE, cards I would actually use (Genie...) include Defoud, Verche (x3), Rose, Hathor (x4), Ars Nova (x4), Fat Chocobo if I want a board reset (looking at you, poison enemies :U), NY Sandalphon (x5), and Pollux. Not necessarily worse than what's there fore blue OEs, but it seems to be about the same, and Sumire teams naturally have 4 blue OEs from the leads to begin with.

Also Sumire still has the match-heart-cross thing in her leader skill and it's incredible now with 75% damage reduction for double Sumire leads. (It's great. And yes it's entirely doable to activate it when needed, as long as I don't get trolled super hard.) Both parts of her leader skill are guaranteed to be activatable (unless there are locked orbs but you don't see those until much later) upon using both Sumire skills, plus you get everyone else hasted 2 turns. If Sumire's damage mutliplier still doesn't look good after bumping up my conservative estimate of 1 blue OE per sub, then the tradeoff in her LS must be in her heart cross match.

With Zeus, that'll be 6 OEs on a full-TPA team, or 8 once Verche's reincarnation comes to the US.

[...] and that goes up to 38.67x -- and now you're beating double Sumire.

A double Sumire team with only 1 blue OE per sub. There are a ton of options for what I can use for a double Sumire team if I'm okay with having only 1 blue OE per sub--and if I have two blue OEs on some subs, I wouldn't even be indecisive about putting a non-OE member into the team (e.g. Andromeda, even before super uvo) like you are with Wukong.

Considering we're comparing a farmable leader to a REM leader so rare I've never actually seen one

No doubt Athena's good, but... Sumire's rare??? Really????? Certainly not as popular as other leads (the awoken shivas are multiplying plz halp), but I got a few to randomly pop up on my friends list, and it wasn't that hard to find people using Sumire. She's only a 5* GFE and she is also a strong lead.

Sumire's in the same boat: The power isn't in how good the leader skill is, it's in the synergy of what you can combine with it.

I think it's both. Teambuilding for Sumire is great, but her leader skill is great, too. I mean, you can have amazing subs but if you have a crappy LS then your subs mean nothing. Sumire's LS combines great damage (even if it's outshined; just because sth isn't the best doesn't mean it's crap, right) with what is effectively a powerful on-demand shield.

Similarly for Awoken Yomi. She can build a great team AND support that team with an awesome LS. Even a 5-match and only 5 other matches (not pro enough to hit 6 other matches orz) puts out great damage.