Took a swing at Venomous Vines(Marlboro's) earlier and lost.
Team was
Wilhelm(Physical cover, provoke, and death resist)
CG Nichol(Stat buff,mitigation, mana, remove stat breaks with LB)
CG Lid(Breaks, Lakshmi charm protection, and apparently I didn't have stop protection)
Hyoh/Friend Hyoh(For 2000 defense first phase took about 20 turns to 37% where I died)
Fina(Healing, mana recovery, reraise)
I ended up deciding to go with a physical team as the first phase with no adds and marlboro with high defense seemed the safest to take my time with. Surprisingly the lack of stop protection didn't cause a problem the one time Wilhelm got stopped; I was able to dispel and get back into the groove without anyone dieing. I was planning on using Laksmi for stop protection, but apparently I'd need to add 20 levels to her to have both charm/stop.
It went fairly well until sub 40% where either
a) I let a break fall and my team got hit pretty hard by a barrage of single target magic attacks
b) Wilhelm got berserked and stop covering/provoking
At least I assume a berserked tank stops blocking.
The unknown cause of death really makes me a wish there was a combat log or something; would help a ton.
I'll have to try another time subbing out Nichol for Zarg so I gain stop protection and potentially have him run as an offtank provoking death/magic/berserk; with the second marlboro having lower defense and high spr I'm hoping that ends up having less surprises.
Only problem with Zarg is losing the ability to dispel the 10-turn 100% stat down from the threshold attack.