THIS IS NOT FOR MIRROR DUNGEON OR SPEEDRUNS

This is a team core that looks to use the unique quirks of Shi Faust's bow. I personally feel like Shi Faust is such a unremarkable ID without her bow that if you're using her, it should be for the bow. Which naturally presents difficulties since her bow is really badly tuned and clunkily designed. There is some material to play around though.

The best way to view the value of Shi Faust's bow is that she trades the first 4 turns of the fight to apply permanent Defense Level Down and Fragile to make the later phases of the fight shorter. Since Limbus Boss Design leans itself to "easy phase 1, hard phase 2" this is an idea that has merit, you just need to get additional value out of Shi Faust during those first 4 turns while she's playing a weird off-tank role. It is recommended that you run a back-up ID since Shi Faust plays a sacrificial role.

[Faust] Shi Assoc. East Section 3/[Ryōshū] Drifting Blade of Hongyuan/[Heathcliff] Kurokumo Clan Wakashu are the primary core of Shi Faust's synergies; since the bow is the first thing to happen on a turn she triggers Ryoshu's follow-up Skill 1 which is really fun and a good way to get chip damage on the increasingly common "24 Speed [After Attack] End Turn" mechanics. Since Shi Faust typically takes a lot of damage when using her bow she will trigger Heathcliff's retaliation attacks and even Ryoshu's free Skill 3 if she drops low enough or dies. You just need to make sure you have Lust Resonance for Heathcliff.

Fortunately [Hong Lu] The House of Spiders: The Ring Nursefather is a Lust-based ID with a really fun interaction with Shi Faust. Faust's bow is Unclashable which means if she redirects an attack with it, she will take a one-sided attack in response. This actually triggers Assist Defend, as tested with [Faust] Heishou Pack - Mao Branch Adept and [Hong Lu] Tears of the Tarnished Blood [汚血泣淚], meaning Hong Lu can tag in to protect her. This does run counter to the goal of getting Faust to take damage to trigger Heathcliff and Ryoshu, but it's a unique and fun synergy anyway.

From here you can run basically anything as long as you can reliably hit Lust Resonance for Heathcliff. More Rings are an option, Shi Faust's Lodged Arrow is a permanent negative effect that applies another negative effect every turn which fuels conditionals. You will have to grapple with the fact that you're just playing Worse Ring without [Faust] The House of Spiders: The Ring Apprentice but hey, you're already committed to using Shi Faust who cares about being meta, just keep in mind that Hong Lu's Corpus Ingredient gain optimizes at 4 Ring IDs and a 5th mostly only unlocks Closing Time a turn faster. You can opt to drop Heathcliff to free up the need for Lust Resonance which may be better than forcing it, especially since that means you can freely pivot to whatever goodstuff IDs you have.

My initial version of this team in Season 6 actually used [Ishmael] Family Hierarch Candidate + [Hong Lu] The Lord of Hongyuan + [Yi Sang] Heishou Pack - Wu Branch Adept as a fun little core since Ishmael and Hong Lu both have negative status conditionals, so that's a legitimate angle to go for if you're willing to wrangle with Ishmael's rotation.

EGO choice is to taste, this doesn't really rely on any specific EGO. Shi Faust is particularly bad at using EGO since she does not gain any SP when using her bow. Drifting Ryoshu just has really fun interactions with [Ryōshū] 4th Match Flame and [Ryōshū] Great Trichiliocosm [三千大世界].

One caveat with this whole guide is that Limbus Boss Design has also kind of been doing complete status purges on phase transition. This just makes Shi Faust completely useless.