MMM - Contrarian Cupid Called Caren Carouses Cascade of Chocolates, Callously Cold-Shouldering Caliginous Chap (Valentines 2021)

First on Caren’s skill selection is Shroud of Valentinus. Apparently no longer content with merely trapping males in cloth, she’s gone on to wider pastures, like being a competitor to Merlin. Sort of.

This skill is essentially 2 layers of buff under 2 varieties - Buffs for Caren and buffs for her allies. Caren herself gets a powerful 3-time, 3 turn Invincible buff, and a 3-turn buff that steals 10% NP gauge from all of Caren’s allies at the end of each turn, giving it to herself (making for possibly 60% extra NP gauge in total.)

The buffs to her allies are a 1-time, 3 turn Invincible buff and a fairly weak 20% NP gain buff for 3 turns. I suppose the idea being that Caren is “loaning” her allies the NP gain buff only to claim what she’s due from their gauge’s crop later. What a cruel mistress.

Out of the gate, a team Invulnerability skill is a huge strength. Among Servants with a team Invincible buff that has no setup requirements (aka, not Avicebron or rolling the dice with Brave Liz) then only Merlin has a similar skill. At any point, if you’re compared to Merlin, you’re probably in a good spot. The nature of this buff being hit-based with a 3 turn duration also means you don’t have to pop it when there’s imminent danger, especially for Caren, since the odds of her taking all three hits in a single turn is pretty unlikely.

The reason I say that is because the NP gauge-stealing effect is really good for looping. Arturia and Mordred can loop almost solely by the perk of getting 20% gauge back each time they NP, and Caren can do more or less the same off this skill. And unlike them, she actually gets refund.

Only possible flaw of this skill is it may steal too much gauge from Caren’s support partners when they need it most. Unless you have your Skadi or Casturia at NP2, -10% gauge at the end of each round is basically NP seal if you can’t gauge charge them. Of course, there are still workarounds, and the fact Caren herself can do the team Invincibility means it isn’t going to get the team killed most of the time, but it’s to be kept in mind.

And naturally, with an 8-turn base cooldown, this skill is up fairly often despite its power.

I guess DW have really got into the pattern of throwing everything and the kitchen sink at some skills. Golden Arrow is that rare but potentially lifesaving existence which is a Taunt skill, letting Caren draw fire for a turn. But wait! There’s more!

This thing’s also a gauge charger! And a gauge drainer! And an offensive boost! And a defensive one! It’s all too much!

One at a time, me. This skill comes with a 30% gauge charger at skill level 10, planting Caren firmly in the category of “hey look folks, this girl can loop”. What? How can I say that when I haven’t even looked at her NP yet? With the prior skill and this one, provided Caren’s allies have NP gauge to steal, she can earn the 50% minimum gauge charge needed to 3-turn loop by spamming her with gauge chargers via battlesuit. She can even do it with non-LB Kaleidoscope 100% consistently, though you would need to use Waver to set it up due to shenanigans with the gauge steal.

Naturally, gauge charger good. Me can do the Servant evaluation.

Probably more worthy of note is the all-enemy gauge drain. This kind of effect is, like team Invincible, pretty rare to see on a skill. That’s 2/2 for record breaking skills, I guess. In some sense this effect is kind of a nuisance - the primary use of taunt skills is to draw fire of a ST NP on someone who can eat the damage, which Caren can absolutely do. Or rather, she could, if she didn’t deny the enemy their NP gauge on the same skill…

But hey, there’s another purpose to this skill. Taunts are debuffs. Even ones used by players, they’re just applied and stuck onto the character as if they’re a buff. And I have confirmation that Caren’s taunt triggers her Masochistic Spiritualist Disposition, meaning the taunt also functions as a 1-turn, 20% attack buff. That’s a neat segue to go into the similar perks of this skill, the enemy debuffs.

This thing also drops a 20% Attack and Defense debuff on all enemies for 3 turns. While neither are particularly potent, they do make at the very least a bump on Caren’s damage output for a single wave. If you so happen to not have her Invincible buff up in CQ scenarios, this also helps out in her not dying from eating attacks while the Taunt runs its course.

Breaking things down to the essential elements, this skill is a 40% Attack buff for a turn and 30% gauge charger on a pretty hefty 9 turn base cooldown, with some formidable CQ applications. Nobody would say no to damage and a gauge charger.

Ah, Mana Burst variants. You rear your little staple skill head every now and then.

...but how the heck to you Mana Burst with Love? A question for the ages, I’ll presume.

This skill is, to no surprise, also a 3-turn multi-card booster skill. By multi, I mean all of them. Yes, sire.

While 20% boost to each card type isn’t high on raw power, the fact she’s getting card booster at all significantly helps her NP damage, on top of providing a broad boost to her NP gain for 3 turns. Wait, you’re saying there’s more to this skill?

Ah, Caren has a second gauge charger. No, wait, THIRD gauge charger?

...is this lady the only Servant to have some form of gauge charge in all three of her skills that isn’t clearly a support. Hah, you were all about to correct me with Waver and Reines, weren’t you?

At any rate, the 20% gauge from this skill at level 10 combined with Golden Arrow brings Caren to the golden 50% gauge charge number. Well, technically speaking 90%. No wait, technically, technically speaking, 70%. God I need to keep the looping talk for the NP section.

Gauge charger good. Rath should be more like Grug.

Oh, and lastly this skill is a targeted gauge drain. Because apparently one wasn’t enough. I feel like offensive stall has been making a slow and silent death, even if Orion and Archuria are as strong as ever, but maybe Caren’s trying to resurrect it in a new card type.

It’s a gauge charger, so it has an 8 turn base cooldown. Not that I expected otherwise. All these skills are so long and strong I was frankly expecting them all to get the vanilla Kiara treatment. Apparently that isn’t happening, though. DW has seemed to have realized 9 turn cooldown only needs to be slapped on a few, very potent skills.

The cooldown on Arjuna’s Endowed Hero is still criminal, though.