Bloodsport - now that I am looking properly at your signature I notice the order in which your girls are grouped up.

Dunno if you know about this, but it is recommended to let the AOE skill girls be first in line and the single target skill users finish the line up.
What it does is that the AOE girls wipe out either all the pests immediately or if its a boss fight, they wipe out the small ones, leaving the more powerful girls targeting the Boss with their attacks. (Kinda like I`ve put Sakura and Alpinia at the end of the line up)
Granted - if its a pure cosmetic choice - that you like that one certain girl being displayed as the team leader, and have her sprite run around then never mind me

It's mostly just set up that way because my team lacks a Reduce Damage from pests. The back 4 don't particularly matter but with my alt account using my main account as the primary helper when it runs 12-5, my Main Account's squad storms ahead and takes almost all damage from the map in the form of Small Pests. The team used to have more AoE with Conva as the mage, but I got in the habit of moving Alpinia to the first unit from the back line to help my alt grind 12-5 runs easier.
My alt's teams 3-4 hover around the same speed as my main account's helper squad so they've occasionally pass Alpinia&Co. and get killed off at the first Threestepper. I found that leaving Alpinia first gave her more chances to proc a heal, because for a while my alt's girls were all lvl40 or so and Alpinia was able to solo the Queen Bee only if she went in with more than 20% health. Early on it made a notable difference in the suitability of Alpinia due to her gear slots.

Most of that is out the window with tomorrow's rewards and the last week of grinding on my alt though. I was hoping to change my squad order today/tomorrow with the rewards and tomorrow's yellow Dragons to evolve Daisy but... Maintenance. #BlameNameless

But I appreciate the advice Myrdin! I really should optimise that asap.

Edit: Life Gems for Dressblooms and better Dragon odds, as Maladaptive said, would be great QoL improvements.

No thats... err maybe I explained it in a wrong way....
What I meant is that it doesnt really matter which girls you use or in your team. Rather I was talking about the order in which the girls are placed into each of teams.
What I am trying to convey is that in a team (any of the teams) its better to put the AOE girls up front > meaning, on the first two/3 (from left to right, in case of your Signature the #1 is Alpinia, #2 is Winter Rose, #3 is.... etc) positions in your team, and put the single target hitters on the last place in the team. You dont have to change any of the girl, neither does it matter if you have any particullar girl in there for a certain purpose - like debuffing. All buffs/debuffs are applied instantly at the beginning of the combat, regardless of the order in which the girls are placed in the particular team itself. So you are not loosing out on anything.
The setup is used to minimize damage loss per battle, thus allowing you to finish the battle sooner and moving on to the next one.

I get that Myrdin. What I'm saying is that I had them set like that because I needed Alpinia to be able to attack first in fights back a few weeks ago, and formed a habit of putting her first in my line up for that squad because of that need. I manually replaced Convalaria for Fatsia early this week disregarding AoE. That's why my squad is all willy wonky atm.

Again, a few weeks ago I had a need for Alpinia to be proc'ing as many attacks as possible while she was being used as a helper squad to muscle my alt through it's first week of 12-5 runs. When that squad would reach a Threestepper that had 1/10th of it's life left, it didn't give her a chance to attack when the AoE attacks were placed before her, so she'd always just accumulate pest damage. In 12-5 there aren't any pest nodes that required blanket AoE, but keeping Alpinia at a decent health by the time she actually got to the Queen Bee fight to make use of her meant organising my squad with her lifesteal in mind, since I didn't have a Lantana/Suzuki Grass/Edelweiss to use for any other form of health recovery.

It basically came down to priorities: Being a more useful crutch for my alt at the expense of running maps less efficiently for myself/being a less useful helper squad to people who didn't need that specific need. Like I've previously mentioned, I was planning on switching it around today after I got Daisy/QotN up to a usable point from the event rewards so I could switch out Rose. It'll be Christmas Rose -Hypericum - Daisy - QotN - Alpinia sometime after maintenance tomorrow, now that my alt should also be strong enough to run 12-5s with any squad being able to handle their own.

Eventually I'll need to replace Hypericum for some more utility ability based girls now that dying is less of a concern to my teams/girls when doing the harder maps. Do you find carrying more than 2-3 AoE girls is a waste Myrdin? They tend to deal less damage than other single target girls, and at a certain level I'm assuming your girls start to clear trash mobs in a single AoE proc, making only boss fights the real need for extra firepower, so I'm wondering if my teams might be better off with a 3-2 or 4-1 ratio of AoE to Single target instead of just AoE girls.

No dont get rid of Hyperloli
Chibi Ninja is one of the best girls, both her voice/quotes/ and the banana slip are adorable

Ofc feel free to shuffle her away (though I "obviously" disagree haha), but personally I think she is pretty strong, her ulty deals bunch of damage comparable to non event gacha girls. plus she gets it to lvl 5 and 4 item slots so she is pretty solid.

Well I ran a 4-1 ratio for a time and it was nice and all, but they tend to struggle a bit more at level Bosses, especially the tougher ones, that soak lot of damage.
3-2 ratio for AOE - Single Target attack, seems to be the best.
If its AOE from a 6* usually one is more then enough, if it comes to 5* you usually need 2 of those to get rid of the normal enemies. And since you cant guarantee it will proc having the 3rd AOE girl in the party is insurance of a sort (granted its still up to RnG but thats why we try to mitigate as much of it as possible), while leaving 2 strong single target nukers to clean up whatsever left.

Now if you have someone like Dendrobium with at least 2 more Skillblooms invested into her, she tends to wipe the small enemies by herself, but again depends on the mobs themselves, eventually stronger enemies will be introduced in later missions, so at least 2 AOE girls are the bare minimum I would use.

From testing though the 4-1 raito is for the current mission good enough if you are lazy and want to get the grind done as soon as possible without minimum effort. Take longer with level bosses though
3-2 ratio can take on tougher enemies but can take a round or two longer on normal enemies, but finish Bosses faster. Thats where that 4.0+ damage really shines (Alpinia, Mei, Keria, etc).
So its pretty much the same in the end.

Also in DMM version, Mei got boosted up to 5.1 damage or so ! (According to Wiki), rendering her the most powerful single target nuker in the game, without any bonuses applied.

:P I'm going to be keeping her around for a while, at least until one of my skill activation girls can get as many slots as other event gold girls.
Currently Rose is the closest gold I have to maxed, with 3 equip slots and 3 skill slots, but I'm hoarding 150 FGs for the next time those Dressblooms come around into the shop. Having 4 slots on Alpinia is an amazing difference so I'd like to do the same to Daisy/Helenium if I can get her before the Dressblooms come back around. I'm sadly only sitting at level 2 on Alpinia's skills, the rest of my 6 Stars are the same. Cybidium is a possibility as she has 2/2, but otherwise the Hyper-loli will be on my team until I can get her or Justicia up to 4 gear slots based on your advice (Leaning towards Justicia though, as Slash weakness seems pretty prevalent in most maps I run.)

I was also wondering if pairing several life stealing single target units is worth anything outside of boss raids. One or two in a team seems to lead to one girl outsurviving all the others in extremely brutal fights, but life-steal girls are always single target, and I've never run a fully single target team myself, as up to this point I've never had enough of them. But do teams like Keria/Alpinia/Night Phlox/Camellia Bride/etc bring much to the table when actually used?

Edit: PS Just thanks btw for going out of your way to share some in-depth knowledge on the mechanics like that, always appreciate the tips Myrdin!

Hyperloli with full event equipment for defence (the pieces with highest defence of course) is a beast in addition to being so cute.

I also love her H scene for just how amusing it is.

I'd suggest you switching back to Convallaria in your team as you don't have a Magic girl now. She's a real tanky yandere, go and max her out and you'll see what I mean. Plus, her AOE is pretty good even if her skill is only Lv.1, doing 1.9x damage to 3 enemies which is considered high for a gold unit.

Having a full team of HP stealing units can be devastating and can also be used as one of the many setups. This will greatly increase your squad's survivability against tougher pests. About single target teams, they are really effective in wiping out stronger and tankier bosses. One of the bosses in Geranium's Phase 2 Ultimate is a very good example of this (120k HP with 5k ATK WTF) and you'll see that single target units are excellent for this situation. But anyways, it's all up to the player's preference. Some make a full AOE team, some have a full single target team or a hybrid of those two. Having a Dodge+HP Absorb team can be incredibly annoying.