[JP] Servant Rank Up Quests Part 11

Release Date: 2019-08-00 19:00 JST - 2019-08-10 18:00 JST

Official news post can be found here

Along with all the Anniversary festivities, and new Servants, the JP server also received a new batch of 14 Servant Rank Ups. Since we're this close to Summer, perhaps we'll finally see upgrades to some of the Summer Servants? 

We'll add some guesses as to who we expect to get a Rank Up - and update this page every day. 

God's Whip: Ah yes, Tactics, Intuition/Instinct's just-as maligned cousin and a skill many Masters would wish changed. The single turn duration of Tactics, and its low value, make it a rather unappealing skill for almost every Servant. For Altera, Tactics is her weakest skill even if NP Damage buffs tend to scale well with supports.

Yet, this Rank Up adds not only a 3-turn duration to the NP Damage buff, it also slightly improves the buff value. As a support tool it is much more useful in team situations now as well, as launching multiple NPs in one turn is often less ideal than simply unleashing a long chain with a single Servant. Since NP Damage is rather rare, this grants Altera more versatility as a Kscope farmer. 

In addition, the Defense stripping on a short cooldown is pretty neat. Straight up removing protection is very valuable for the entire team (as opposed to the selfish nature of most Pierce Invincibility effects) and tends to work better in the long term. It's not hampered by enemies casting buff absorption on the main DPS and fits in well conceptually with Altera as a Servant. 

A nice buff that at least helps to differentiate Altera from the Saber beam pack.

Roman Wind: What is there to add, a nice 20% NP charge is always welcome, and the healing the skill provides is rather substantial. At 4000 HP the healing is signficant especially considering the host of survival effects Romulus already has. 

But the main benefit is that Romulus becomes an excellent budget farming option - an area for which no budget Lancer has been available. Until now. Romulus already carries a large amount of NP Damage if his Imperial Privilege procs even capable of (out)matching Nezha at equal NP levels. 

This truly is peak Rome. 

Vain Sisters A: Medusa (Lancer) has always been on the weak side, even after she acquired her NP Upgrade (which is coming up soon on the global server). What certainly does not help are some very long cooldowns with short durations on mediocre skills. 

Luckily, at least one of those skills, her charm, has been improved a fair bit. Reducing the charm's cooldown from 7 to 6 at max, an additional 10% hit chance to hit 100% at max, and a 3-turn 20% Quick Down at max, make this skill altogether rather good. Medusa (Lancer)'s burst damage is also much stronger, as together with her NP Upgrade, her NP Damage will be among the highest for her rarity in a single burst. Some quick calculations puts her NP1 NP damage at around 44k-45k, which would be near upgraded Li Shuwen's damage just below Enkidu. 

Impressive stuff, but her other skills remain a bit weak. Nonetheless, she is far more useful now.

Giant Monster Trampling EX: Making use of Gorgon's critical capability was always a bit difficult. Her low Avenger weight required Masters to either employ Critical Gathering CEs, or flood the field with Stars if they wanted to make her Crit. However, to activate that critical component often required giving up something else; a straight damage CE or different supports tools. There was an opportunity cost involved. 

With an added Critical Star Gathering component for her Buster Cards on her Monstrous Attack buff, Gorgon is far, far more flexible in terms of CE and supports choices. Masters can opt to focus on her burst potential and create better CE/team combinations that do not just focus on shoring up her Star Weight issues. In addition, the Attack buff can be stretched over 2 turns, but more than 4 hits (a full Extra chain) isn't possible. Still, the added flexibility is a plus. 

Gorgon's kit should flow much better now, though her fragility, 1 turn burst and Avenger weight (even with 600% Star Gathering she is only around Rider level) are still overall drawbacks in her kit.

Subjugation Strategy A: Long term sustained offense was always Iskandar's biggest problem. After his Interlude, his NP Damage has always been amazing, in fact, Iskandar has the highest AoE NP Damage potential of all Servants in the game. Outside of anti-traits that is. With a small 2% buff to his NP Damage buff, that has even increased slightly.

Yet, the Critical component to this skill is what grants Iskandar the sustained offense he has been looking for. With his Rider Star Weight drawing all critical stars to him, and the combination of his stargen buff and NP setting him up for a crit turn as well, it should be fairly easy to unlock his critical damage. With multiplicative stacking of all buff types in his kit (Buster, NP Damage/Critical Damage and Attack Up) his criticals are sure to hurt as well. In addition, an NP Damage buff at 3 turns is much more usable for successive NPs from different character (perfect for farming), while his overall support is really rather good now, providing a Defense Down/Critical Down on NP, Charisma, and now both NP Damage and Critical Damage for 3 turns. 

A great improvement, although it doesn't fix his wider NP Gain issues of course. But that is what Kscopes are for.

Fair Youth (Thunder) A: The charm percentage has been bumped it to be 100% at max rank, and its wide coverage was always its good point. The key upgrade is of course its buff removal component, which is a valuable piece of utility for almost any non-farming situation. Alexander has always been a stellar budget Quick Support (especially currently on global server with few Quick options), but buff removal will not really impact his support potential overly much. With all his support based on offense, there are few opportunities to use it for most Masters as other, more well-rounded, supports are often picked over him. 

As such, this is more of a lackluster upgrade, doing little to impact his overall use and viability. But Alexander has always been a solid Servant anyway. 

Ephemeral Love EX: Medea (Lily) has never been a Servant for widespread use, focusing her power mainly on providing healing capability and cleansing capability for challenging content. It should thus be no surprise that her Challenge Quest utility just got a further boost to coincide with the release of the magnificent... buffoon that is Jason. 

With a targetable 3-turn buff removal resistance (and a flat 2 turn cooldown reduction at all levels), Medea (lily) becomes an excellent option against some of the most annoying boss enemies in the game: those who strip you of protections/offensive buffs. While this buff is sadly just targetable and only affects one ally, it can be used with Servants like Mash to tank enemy NPs like those of Abigail. In addition, it also helps to prevent Servants from wiping out their own buffs - such as Hassan of the Hundred Faces is wont to do. 

An extra niche is never a bad thing, and while it will not give her much more widespread use, knowing this option is always available to deal with buff removal mechanics is rather comforting. And who knows, it may well be able to cheese certain upcoming unknown Challenge Quests for all we know. 

Suspicious Shadow C++: With no direct steroids to his name outside of his NP Upgrade/Defense Down on NP, Fuuma can certainly do worse with a nice AoE Defense debuff. Of course, a paltry -20% will not instantly save him from being a low NP Damage Servant (his NP should hit around 19k AoE numbers - 1k below Katou Danzou), but it does help.

Not satisfied with just a steroid increase, Fuuma also packs an incredibly rare, and as far as we know, first AoE buff block on a skill. While AoE buff blocking is available on NP from the likes of Cleopatra and Murasaki, the on-demand nature of a skill makes it far powerful. Fuuma is also a much better Servant than the other prime source of buff blocking: Mephistopheles (although his ST one lasts for 3 times) with more party-wide support and utility. 

Thus, much like Medea (Lily), Fuuma is granted an additional niche that can prove quite useful in solving certain Challenge Quests. Buff blocking is often a darkhorse option in preventing nasty non-permanent Break Bar buffs such as Pierce Invincibility. Still, don't expect the new steroid to solve his offense. His NP still isn't good enough to refund with Skadi, and its damage is still amongst the lower damage ones in the game. 

Stars for the Sky EX: An unexpected Rank Up, yet one that does make some measure of sense with the benefit of hindsight. Since Paracelsus' massive buff last year, he took over as the primary NP Gain support (especially in Arts teams), a job Nero (Bride) used to take care of. 

Yet, the addition of an NP Charge unto Stars for the Sky makes Nero (Bride) a stronger option once more, especially as her attack buff can potentially make up for the 5% NP Gain buff through Overkill. The NP Charging itself helps with CE flexibility (reducing reliance on (MLB) Kscope), or as a swap in on turn 2 when doing NP loop farming with Skadi or Arts comps. While Nero (Bride)'s Chaldea Combat Uniform synergy was always superb, it got even better.

In addition, Nero can easily function as an ST nuke as well now, as she can still use Stars for the Sky on herself. All in all, a massive buff to her support, general farming and personal damage performance, even if it is attached to her longest cooldown skill. 

Queen of Victory A: Boudica's third Rank Up, and boy did she still need one. But did it solve her issues?

Well, not particularly, although she has become somewhat more viable and useful - especially as a solo Servant (which she is pretty decent at). The core problem of her support is that she steals all Critical Stars for herself with her Rider class Star Weight, while unlocking her full defense support requires actively charging her NP bar. 

Yet, with 20% Arts, 50% Crit, 60% anti-Roman, and a 20%+ Attack buff on Overcharge, all for 3 turns, Boudica actually packs a staggering amount of offensive buffs in addition to her defensive NP. Masters can use her for her buffs and then swap her out or simply let her solo the encounter. And if any enemy Servants happen to be Roman, they're going to be absolutely destroyed. 

Support Bombardment XEX: MHX's skill set has always been her core problem. With an NP Upgrade and excellent base stats, MHX has always been able to do her job, but never truly excelled outside of her anti-Saberface targets. The improvement to Fire Support is thus a welcome addition.

While the reduction in cooldown is on the whole, rather minor (going from 10 to 9 still leaves it as a single use skill for most of the content), the Defense Down is not only AoE, but also scales wonderfully with MHX's own kit. With Riding EX, a powermod in her Anti-Saber, and her NP Damage modifier increase, this Defense Down scales multiplicatively with all of them. Furthermore, it makes boosting her great Quick cards even more important and lucrative. 

MHX's NP Damage is really rather strong now, coming in at 2nd highest at NP1 amongst Assassins behind Assassin of the Nightless City. For reference, MHX's NP Damage clocks in at about 45.4k damage against neutral targets to Jack's 43.7k damage. However, with NP levels MHX scales more poorly than her competition against non-trait opponents, equaling Jack at NP5. 

Where does that leave MHX? In a more viable state actually, as her access to Skadi already helped her a lot. With Kama being available as an option, one could see why they updated MHX to be a more competitive option. Plus, any trait-bonus targets are now going to be quivering in their cursed Saberface boots. 

Tarasque A+: Finally, our very first Summer Servant upgrade. With the floodgates open, we can all hope for some upgrades to some of the more outdated Summer Servants. Either way, Saint Martha really could use this upgrade as the recent new 4* Rulers have proved themselves to have far more competitive damage with a universal kit behind them. 

Whereas before her upgrade at NP1, an NP5 Samba Quetzalcoatl could outdamage her with her NP outside of Water/anti-trait opponents, Saint Martha has now jumped from roughly 26.4k NP Damage, to 38.4k damage against neutral enemies at NP1. Of course her performance vastly improves against the right traits/in the right area - going to 44.8k in water areas or doubling any of her NP Damage against anti-trait opponents. 

Given the sheer Buster goodness Martha can unleash outside of her NP, and that charging her NP isn't that difficult despite the Gorilla deck, this was a solid update that Saint Martha definitely needed to bring her up to par, once again making her the premier BB/Ganesha slayer.
 

Coaching A+: The most important part of this particular Rank Up is that its open season for all Summer Servants. Saint Martha (Ruler) may have been a fluke, but this is confirmation of more potential Summer Servant upgrades in the future. Yet, this buff itself....well, it's....something. 

Maid Alter had no real survival tools before, and a high value Max HP buff certainly grants her some additional durability if it is cast on herself. But with high base HP and 5* stats, that was never truly an issue, as it was mainly enemy bosses with powerful sustained/critical/NP Damage that took her out - effects some Max HP will not help to combat. In that sense, this buff helps more to nullify its HP demerit provided a Master can keep the target alive that turn. 

Still, it is a beneficial effect, and it does improve her support. But its her massive NP damage that is the star of the show, and that has had no improvement. Much like Alexander, this Rank Up does little to change her overall performance. 

Nightless Charisma: Now this, this is what Rank Ups are all about. In one fell swoop, Gawain has gone from a Servant with underwhelming on-demand damage numbers, to a fully functioning and viable gorilla. Most of all, it makes Gawain's kit fit together more neatly and function how it is supposed to.

Outside of Sunny areas, Gawain's effective NP damage was always his most sore point only barely doing more damage at NP1 than an NP1 Fergus. By turning the field sunny, accessing his 30% Buster buff, and seeing his Charisma turn into the full 20% variant, Gawain can stack his effective Buster damage to 82% (30% Buster * 40% Attack Up). Rather than dealing a measly 15.2k without sun, Gawain will deal a full 21k damage at NP1. 

That puts Gawain well above many of his SR competition, only being (vastly) outdone by Altria Pendragon (Alter) and NP5 Altria Pendragon (Lily). However, Gawain still has a 20% NP charge, and a gorrila deck to blast damage with through his triple 82% buffed Buster cards. 

All in all, a wonderful buff that makes Gawain a rather good farming option with Kscope given he also has a 20% teamwide Charisma. In addition, his damage buffs all last for 3 turns on only a 5-turn cooldown at max rank, making his sustained Buster damage remarkably strong. Not bad, not bad at all.