MMM Miniature - Little Lady Lacks Leading Litany No Longer (Elice Utsumi)

The Modern Magus Magazine

I’d put some witty writing here, but I ran all my jokes short for the previous MMM. And besides, when you put “Miniature” in front of anything, people naturally take a drop in quality in their stride. Like with the Gameboy Micro, or uh, Mini Oreos.

We’re here to assess a welfare, since her data has been datamined and frankly I probably could’ve just waited a few days to post it all at once. Oh well, twice the MMM’s, double the imaginary internet points, am I right?

Introduction

Despite all the speculation on seeing her outfit and NP, I’m afraid Elice isn’t an Izanami pseudo-Servant or anything so fancy. In fact, she apparently gets part of her abilities as a Servant literally from being a Chuuni. Even if she didn’t, anybody who calls themselves a “Shinigami” unironically deserves to be labelled one.

Ah right, and I’m aware some official material has her name written as “Erice” and so do most sources for her, but on the FGO stream both Kawasumi and Kanou pronounced her name with a pretty distinct “L”. And besides, Elice is an actual name. And also besides, following the official romanized names got us “Altria”. Yup, not using Erice.

Servant Data

Lancer

QQAAB (Archer)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

5

3

Attribute	Human
Alignment	Lawful Balanced

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

April Fool's

Max HP 11,991

HP Rank

Max ATK 9,122

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,520	Base HP	1,918
Max Atk	9,122	Max HP	11,991
Grail Atk	11,045	Grail HP	14,539

Traits

Card Hits	4	3	3	5	3
Per Hit	0.63%	0.63%	0.63%	0.63%	0.63%

	NP per Hit (%)	0.63%
NP when Attacked (%)	4%

	Star Absorption	87
Star Generation per Hit	12.0%

Arts Up

Evil Spirit Medium A

Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Apply Evade to self (2 times, 3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Arts +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Moving on to active skills, we have Evil Spirit Medium Miko. While the Touhou fan in me instantly has his brain popping to the most recent installment in the series, this skill won’t be producing pretty displays of bullets. Or force you to collect a dozen animal spirits just to get more bombs or lives…

Keeping on point, this is a straightforward combined NP steroid / Evasion skill, but unlike Voyager’s, it’s done right. Providing a 30% Arts boost for 3 turns, and also a 2-hit Evasion buff for the same duration, Elice doesn’t lose anything by popping it when she wants the Arts boost, or vice versa. While there’s little more to this skill, it’s also on a moderate 8-turn base cooldown, so it doesn’t come back as fast as you might like.

But hey, at least you’re likely to get mileage out of all its effects.

Target

Der Freischütz (Imitation) B

Apply Sure Hit to self (1 turn).
Increase own Critical Star Gather Rate (1 turn).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Star Gather +	300%	330%	360%	390%	420%	450%	480%	510%	540%	600%
CD	6	6	6	6	6	5	5	5	5	4

Crap, I made the Touhou joke without even translating this skill. More fitting than I anticipated.

Anyway, this skill is a variant of Moriarty’s own supposedly-unique skill, but not any more I suppose. In a sense, it’s better than Moriarty’s, as it gains almost the same benefits but on a shorter, 6-turn cooldown base. In another sense, known as common sense, having the Invincible Pierce downgraded to Sure Hit is far more important.

At any rate, being able to hit through Evasion is still handy, and being able to funnel critical stars into yourself is always handy as an offensive Servant, which Elice absolutely is. It’s a bit niche, but it can have its place in the right circumstances.

Death Chance Up

Reaper B

Increase own Instant Death success rate (3 turns).
Increase own Critical Strength (3 turns).
Apply Special ATK [Servant] to self (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Death Rate +	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%	90%	100%
Crit Dmg +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
Special ATK +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Last in the list of active skills is Shinigami. Wow, so chuuni, I know.

I guess at this point I’ll just throw in a small tangent, since I’m already going all-in on the Touhou tangents for this profile, and I learned this much from, you guessed it, Touhou. While people often equate Shinigami = Grim Reaper (and frankly, in most cases it’s a good translation), Shinigami are usually characterized in Japanese media not as just the spooky ghost boi who takes you to the afterlife when the time comes, but specifically as beings who are tasked with claiming the lives of those who are trying to escape the cycle of death through immortality, or particularly wicked souls who might just ignore the cycle of death.

So while this skill doesn’t really discriminate, the kind of Shinigami Elice is based on is the kind to hunt down hermits and particularly wicked individuals.

Onto the actual stats, then. This skill provides Elice with three buffs, but really two, since death chance up, and instant death in general, is almost always useless. A 30% critical damage up buff for herself, and 30% effective damage versus Servants, both for 3 turns at skill level 10.

The critical damage boost synergizes nicely with her already neat critical niche, and a damage boost to a very universal trait for major bosses (and for farming, usually the 3rd wave’s strongest enemy) is useful to have around. While I may have gripes over the 8 turn base cooldown for a skill which really could be 7 turns base, the benefits are solid enough to give a pass.

Noble Phantasm

Amenosakahoko B

Deal damage to all enemies.
Remove Defensive Buffs from all enemies.

<Overcharge>

Chance of inflicting Instant Death on all enemies [Activates first].

Show Info/Video

Amenosakahoko

Heaven-tracing Spear

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	B	Spiritual	3

Effect	Deal damage to all enemies. Remove Defensive Buffs from all enemies.

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Damage +	450%	600%	675%	712.5%	750%
Buff Removal

Overcharge Effect	Chance of inflicting Instant Death on all enemies [Activates first].

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Death Chance +	30%	40%	50%	60%	70%

Amenosakahoko, or if you take the Kanji literally “Heaven-tracing Spear”, is Elice’s NP. This NP, outside of its basic traits for damage, has a low chance of instantly killing (and ‘low’ for an already-low chance is well...good luck landing it) and removes enemy defensive buffs after damage.

But let’s be honest. Elice is a welfare - you know this NP’s damage is going to be good, and I’ve already probably established that outside of some occasions where removing enemy Invincibility / Evasion will be handy, the side-effects aren’t too appealing either. Let’s look at this NP’s refund.

On a basic level, versus three neutral targets and with her Arts buff active, Elice’s NP will provide her with 22% gauge refund. Those who are already pretty prolific Arts farmers may notice that this refund is really similar to Space Ishtar’s, and that’s because it is. However, Elice entirely lacks the 50% gauge charger Space Ishtar boasts, which makes things a lot harder to set up for her.

With Paracelsus buffs, Elice’s refund bumps up to 38%.Due to her lack of a gauge charger, she needs to run with double Waver and LB Kaleido to even have a hope of looping, so that 38% is all she has to work with. If she gets full overkill (reasonable, versus Archers and Berserkers) then that will bring her to the 50% NP gauge threshold to get 3 loops. Otherwise, she’s going to be limited to facing off Casters and hoping she gets enough Overkill to push the refund up from 46% to the necessary 50%.

HOWEVER...if you’re particularly adept in using Nitocris for farming, you may have noticed a huge problem with Elice’s farming viability. That’s right, her NP applies its instant death before damage. What this means is, if you’re (un)fortunate and her NP instantly kills a target, the damaging segment won’t hit that enemy, and she won’t get the refund from hitting them as a result.

So the conclusion? Elice can technically 3-turn loop with strict compositions, but she will always have a rough 60% chance (Assuming 3 wave quests with 3 enemies on wave 1 and 2) of insta-killing one of the enemies and ruining her loop. So in other words, no, she’s not good at farming. And in the end this NP just feels like budget Amakusa NP - welfare edition.

Conclusion

So how good is Elice? On one hand, she’s the freshest thing on this side of the Sanzu:

In terms of AOE damage output, she’s pretty solid. Her Arts focus, free NP5 and strong offense versus Servants will let her crush multi-Servant challenge quests pretty hard, and even regularly a NP5 Lancer NP will hit pretty hard, especially with class advantage. Her decent NP refund is a good added bonus (especially since the near-immunity to instant death challenge quest Servants have means the refund is consistent), letting her pull off her NP more often than competitors like Jailter will manage.

On top of her AOE damage, Elice’s crit damage is pretty solid, too. Her Shinigami skill means she gets a total of +69% (nice) damage on any crits versus Servants for 3 turns, boosted even further if it’s on her Arts cards. Magic Bullet Shooter (Imitation) means she can get a crit turn fairly consistently, too, so she isn’t lacking for single target offense, either.

She has a reliable Evasion skill. Usually I’d lay other defensive strong points here, but Elice doesn’t really have any. The Evasion alone is worth a bullet point though - dying to NP’s sucks, and I’d hope my readerbase all know that already. So uh, let me fit something in here to pad...ah, she has Sure Hit. She’s got Evasion, and she can ignore it. Go Elice!

On the other hand, she’s five fathoms deep at the riverbed and needs fishing out:

As I’ve already dissected, she’s an AOE Arts-focused Servant with good refund who can only farm for people addicted to gambling. Given we’re all gacha addicts, I suppose that doesn’t say much, but really you want consistency where you can get it. And Elice lacks that completely.

While I’d like to say any welfare is a good one, Elice’s competition is stiff. Jailter has crushingly high NP damage and a gauge charger which lets her farm in very niche setups, as well as similar usefulness for challenge quests, while on the front of just being Arts focused, Kagetora is...really, really good for challenge quests. And also covers pretty much the exact same niches, except with much higher damage. She’s still better than Fionn, at least?

As unfortunate as it is for me to say, Elice isn’t that great by most welfare’s standards. She doesn’t have a completely dysfunctional kit or anything so drastic, but her peaks are pretty consistently matched by her competing welfare Lancers, at the same time the region where she may have possessed a niche is just entirely killed and shipped to the afterlife by her own inconsistency. Poor girl.

At least her final ascension art is pretty revealing right? Hmm? “Check her profile”, you say?

...oh, oh no. I need to get out before the FBI show up.

Outro

On May 29th, 2020. A SWAT raid was performed on the residence of one not-particularly famous miscellaneous FGO content writer, “Rathilal”, who hosted his content on Gamepress and frequently posted to Reddit.

Officers detained the individual, and on suspicion of further offences besides lewding the lolis, found a stash of merchandise relating to the game Fate/Grand Order, including numerous illustrations and figurines of scantily-clad, underraged girls. The suspect is on record to have exclaimed ‘She’s a thousand-year old Oni voiced by an adult, she’s legal, I swear!’ and ‘Why are you arresting me for that one, she has huge boobs! It doesn’t count!’

The prosecutor’s office is still waiting to press charges, however so far as this anonymous reporter is concerned, “Rathilal”’s image is forever tarnished. When pressed for a comment, the defendant said thusly:

“Why do all the lolis have the most suggestive final art?”

We cannot say, “Rathilal”. We cannot say.

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MMM Miniature - Little Lady Lacks Leading Litany No Longer (Elice Utsumi)

The Modern Magus Magazine

QQAAB (Archer)

Quick Card

Quick Card

Arts Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

Traits

Tags

Arts Up

Target

Death Chance Up

Amenosakahoko

Outro

About the Author(s)

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