Without leveling the skill via Niel/Rainbows, Sophie's primary uses are a one-time brief but powerful blocker (long maps you might get a 2nd use in) and super lightning rod, with her massive HP, DEF and RES stats. She's generally-speaking the best lightning rod in the game, at least on Nutaku. The fact she relies on skill to engage melee enhances this since she can avoid losing HP to melee and thus avoid straining the healers even more, while soaking up damage from archers, mages and the dreaded Liches.

With leveled skill she's also a timed blocker that you can either use to block a moderately powerful enemy (don't do this if she's also getting hit by Liches or other high-powered ranged enemies) or just use her massive attack to wreck a rush of weaker enemies (her raw attack is among the highest in the game, especially without skills factored in like Lyla or Deine and their massive attack-boosting skills)

I would level her for use as a Lightning Rod and only worry about actually attacking with her once you've gotten going and have spare Niels or Rainbows to use on her.


Looking at the rest of your team, you've got excellent tanks (Gellius and Deine) and duelists (Lyla, Clissa, Olivie), Camilla/Iris heal combo will serve you well although you'll want some leveled silver healers (assuming you don't get other healers via shrine or whatever) for certain maps down the road, Jerome for UP generation, Sasha for aoe nuking, Adele and Yuyu are great for slowing enemies and killing armored ones, and Bashira/Spica combo is great. Agreed that once Sophie gets levels you'll want to replace Rita for most maps, as she is a niche unit who specializes in dealing with lots of ranged, non-aoe enemies and/or enemies that counter attacks (Bashira and the black archer Nanaly will rip themselves apart using skill against counter-carrying enemies). All in all, a fantastic team that should rock a lot of maps once you get them leveled.

Some maps you might swap out Lyla if you need the extra ranged attacker/a ranged attacker than can't be targeted, as Olivie and Clissa are both probably better for most dueling situations (MR and don't lose all defense during skill, even if they don't compare to the WTF damage Lyla can hit for during skill). Lyla has one of, if not THE, highest attack stats in the game during skill but that comes at the cost of all defense. Against magic enemies though, this doesn't matter since they ignore defense anyways so it depends on what you're going to be dueling.