MMM - Arcade Adonis of Adolescence Auspiciously Appended, Animalistic Anti-Hero Annuls Advantage As We Knew It, Also Apprehensive Alchemist Applies Alarming Antidotes that Aren't Antivenom (FGO Arcade Collab)

First in Draco’s skill lineup is, almost unsurprisingly, Number of the Beast. This is a skill with a triad of buffs, each with a duration of 6 turns…yeah, I don’t think I have to explain that any further.

In terms of gameplay, though, this is a decent skill. It provides a 10% NP gauge charge per turn, a 30% Critical Damage buff, and a 1000 damage cut for its 6-turn duration, which all provide a lot of value simply due to their longevity. 60% gauge charge in total is frankly a good sum of NP gauge to get in difficult content, even if it isn’t instantaneous, and likewise 1000 damage cut means a lot less HP lost from regular attacks over time. With class advantage, it’s likely Draco will take near-zero damage from attacks, which is certainly impressive.

The only real flaw, if any, to this skill, is the cooldown. A base cooldown of 9 turns looks bad, but when the skill itself lasts 6 turns, this essentially means Draco only has 1 turn of downtime on this skill when it’s at max skill level, and the cooldown is 7 turns.

Next up is Golden Chalice. How generous of Draco to provide us with some drink from her cup, but for some reason this grape juice really burns…

This skill more or less has 2 components to it, a series of debuffs to all enemies, and a couple of buffs to Draco herself. All enemies get inflicted with a 1-turn Skill Seal and 3-turn, 5k damage burn, but in exchange have their NP gauges charged by 1 step. The burn is surprisingly high value, but still ultimately not a significant debuffs, especially as Draco doesn’t have any form of burn amplification built into her kit. Similarly, Skill Seal is useful in niche situations, but often does nothing to aid in a fight. Getting those at the cost of charging enemy NP gauge is, frankly, a really awful deal, so the buffs to Draco better be good.

The first of which is a 40% attack buff for 3 turns. Draco was in need of a solid offensive steroid thus far, and this is certainly one, providing a significant boost to all of her damage output, albeit at the mostly-negative cost of the enemy gauge charge. The second buff is applying Holy Grail Possession to Draco, a buff that does nothing on its own, but changes the function of her third skill, to a very dramatic degree.

With a base cooldown of 8 turns, this skill is sitting on something of a harsh cooldown considering the relatively low power. Here’s hoping that third skill is crazy…

Hoo boy, that’s a lot of text. Seven Crowns of the Beast, the payoff for that weird reference to Draco built into Swimsuit Nero’s kit long ago, is something of a ride to talk about, so strap in:

No matter what, this skill will always apply one effect to Draco, which is a 1-time, 3-turn 100% Buff Removal Resistance buff. While this functionally doesn’t provide much without powerful buffs supplementing it, it’s there to be insurance for the other buffs provided by this skill, as well as the long-lasting buffs that Number of the Beast provides to her.

With that said, if Draco has Holy Grail Possession active, this skill also provides:

• A 40% anti-Dragon effective damage buff for 3 turns.
• A 40% anti-Roman effective damage buff for 3 turns.
• A 10 stars-per-turn buff for 3 turns.
• A 1-time Debuff Immunity buff (no turn limit).
• An Ignore Defense buff for 3 turns.
• A 20% Healing Amplification buff for 3 turns.
• A 20% NP gauge charge/turn buff for 3 turns.

Phew, that’s a lot to get through. In terms of what’s useful/important, the main take-aways should be the anti-Dragon/Roman buffs, the Ignore Defense buff, and the 20% NP gauge per turn buff. Together they improve Draco’s offensive profile greatly, if only versus certain enemy types. There are a surprisingly large number of Dragon Servants in the game, numbering about 40, and most of them Saberfaces, but when combined with Romans, which includes Draco herself (who is also a Dragon, so she’s very adept at killing herself), a neat collection of about 50 Servants are hit by those effective damage buffs.

The gauge charge is naturally great, providing 60% NP gauge in total over a short timeframe, though it means Draco is completely lacking in on-demand gauge charge. The remainder of the buffs are mostly utility and convenience. The debuff immunity buff in particular is pretty nice due to its lack of an expiry, meaning Draco can get insurance against 1 case of debuffing for as long as she needs it. And equally, Defense Pierce is a useful buff that can frequently bypass mechanics in difficult fights, as it works even versus defense buffs that can’t be hit with buff removal.

This skill is unsurprisingly very powerful, though it somehow manages to not provide any straight damage buffs to Draco. With an unsurprising 9-turn base cooldown, it takes a while to come off cooldown, but considering the best parts of the skill are locked behind using her 2nd skill, a lower cooldown wouldn’t do that much for it, anyway.

First on the skill lineup is Poison Mixing. To no-one’s surprise, this is a Poison debuff skill, applying a 1000 damage Poison to all enemies for 5 turns. However, this also doubles up as a NP steroid for Locusta, providing an essential 30% damage boost and 56% refund boost, both essential for an Arts ST Servant who definitely aims to NP spam if she can.

The Poison application is also useful, for reasons you’ll see later, and not just to stack up Poison Amplification on her targets, though she does do that.

With an 8-turn base cooldown this skill is on a longer cooldown than it reasonably should, so imagine me frowning at this design choice.

Because I am frowning at it.

Next up is Robust Health (Poison). A variant on the skill which, up until now, has only existed on Arash, this is a wholly defensive skill, providing Locusta with a 2k HP, 1-time, 3-turn Guts buff, as well as a 500 damage cut for 3 turns.

While both of those are nice for keeping oneself alive, especially in combination in dire situations, the interesting twist to this skill is its 3rd buff, one that converts all Poison damage Locusta takes into Healing for 5 turns.

Naturally, a buff like that screams “gimmick”, and for the most part, it is. There’s not an easy way to poison your own team in FGO (and if it were Curse, that’d be a different story), and even then the payoff of essentially giving Locusta a regeneration buff by proxy is hardly worthwhile. But it is a notable way of cheesing a boss that focuses heavily on building up poison damage…if and when that ever happens.

Kind of sad that we’ve had a number of bosses that focus on building Burn or Curse damage, but I can’t recall any of notable difficulty that stack up Poison. Shame, but it is a cool skill, regardless.

The 8-turn base cooldown on this skill is pretty fair given it’s a Guts buff, so I won’t get angry this time. Promise.

Ayo…hol up, let her cook.

As much as I really don’t want to sample Locusta’s extensive mushroom cooking knowledge, you have to in order to reap the benefits of this skill. Cooking (Mushroom) is an all-important gauge charge skill, providing 20% gauge to the whole team, as well as providing some additional poison-based benefits.

Obviously the team gauge charge is by far the best part, but the other components of this skill are at least interesting. Locusta applies a 1000 damage Poison debuff to herself for 5 turns, and the game calls this a downside, but it’s an outright lie - all I can see is a 1000 HP Heal every turn. Locusta also gets a 3-time, 3-turn buff to inflict a 3-turn 500 damage Poison debuff to targets hit by her attacks, or in other words, it’s 1500 Poison damage per turn dispersed out by her attacks.

The fact this skill applies the Poison in individual stacks is actually important for her NP, so it’s worth trying to land this skill’s Poison damage when possible. That aside, it’s a team support skill that’s also a heal in disguise, what’s not to like?

The 8-turn base cooldown on this skill is justified given the power of even weak team gauge chargers, so no complaints here.

First on Setanta’s skill lineup is Knight of the Red Branch. This skill is fairly straightforward, being a 20% Attack Up buff to the boy himself for 3 turns, as well as a couple of supplementary benefits - a freebie Debuff removal on himself, and a 20-star bomb.

And that’s it. I don’t think it’s possible to complain about offensive steroids, but this skill is fundamentally pretty boring. The star bomb gives a head-start to any of Setanta’s attempts to set up a crit chain, while the Debuff Removal is generally useful to have around, but probably won’t see much use for that reason, given you’re going to be popping this skill every single time it comes off cooldown, instead of saving it for that purpose.
At the very least, this skill has a sane 7-turn base cooldown, meaning it’ll be coming off cooldown fairly quickly for Setanta in drawn-out fights.

Next is Savage Dog-Killer. I won’t elaborate if that means he kills savage dogs, or he’s a savage who murders the cute little puppy of Chulainn how could h-

Phew, I needed to vent a little there. In any case, this skill unsurprisingly provides a huge Effective Damage buff versus the Wild Beast trait, a trait that exists on roughly a dozen Servants, and pretty much every single animalistic-looking generic enemy in the game. The +100% damage boost is colossal, but given the niche nature of this trait, it’s unlikely to crop up often, so you can’t really factor it into his offensive performance.

The most important buff on this skill is the 20% Quick Booster he gets for 3 turns, improving the damage, NP gain, and stargen on Setanta’s primary card type, and combining together with the prior Attack buff to make a decent steroid for his NP. But, yet again, this skill is rather plain, so there’s little else to discuss.

Once again, the 7-turn base cooldown on this skill is reasonable, so Setanta’s offensive buffs have some solid uptime.

Last on the skill lineup is Shadowlands Arms Training. What’s kind of interesting is how this skill is one that has a fundamental connection to Gae Bolg, to the point where, since possessing Gae Bolg means that Setanta has passed Scathach’s training, he can only have this skill if he doesn’t have Gae Bolg.

..which is weird, since it’s not like your skills you’ve learned just disappear once you graduate, but it’s Servants, you don’t gotta explain shit.

This skill might look slightly complicated at first glance, but that’s basically a smokescreen - the buffs on this skill have a % chance to apply, which increases as you level the skill, but it hits 100% at max skill level, so that factor of the skill essentially doesn’t matter, since who ever struggles to max the skills on welfares? (Please ignore that I had my Ryougi Shiki at 6/6/6 for about 3 years because I forgot I was no longer low on Assassin gems.)

Getting back on topic, this skill provides Setanta with a 40% Critical Damage buff, +400% Star Gather Rate, and a 2-time Evasion, all on a 3-turn duration. At this point I’d call this trio of buffs the Shadowlands classic, but it’s fundamentally just a great skill, improving Setanta’s offensive profile, making his crits more consistent, and that all-important defensive option to ensure he doesn’t die to a stiff breeze. Considering his focus on Quick cards, it’s doubly useful, since it’s unlikely we won’t be working with a solid star supply each turn.
The only real flaw to this skill is its cooldown, sitting on an 8-turn base cooldown. Need I remind us that Protection from Arrows is a 7-turn cooldown? We’d have flying cars if Lasengle stopped being scared of giving defensive tools reasonably low cooldowns.