MMM - Mystified Mare Mounts Mythological Mail, Must it be More Mecha, Nasu? (White Day 2020 Gacha)

The Modern Magus Magazine

How’s it hanging, y’all? While I can’t say I’m disliking the sporadic servant updates from DW at present, the lull period FGO so frequently gets can sometimes be grating. Guda needs QP, but at the same time doesn’t want to farm QP daily over and over. Can Christmas come back again? I need it.

On the flipside, I can’t really say I was expecting Odysseus to drop in a side event like he did. It has me curious for what Olympus is gonna be like moreso than anything else. At any rate, I have writing to do.

Introduction

Nasu, can you please just...go on hiatus for a couple years and make SRW fangames like you so clearly want to? I love the creativity throwing mecha into an epic historical fantasy series brings, but at this point I’m almost worried Nasu is working in a genre he’s grown tired of. But hey, the Trojan Horse is now a mecha (though technically it’s Aegis which makes it become a mecha), and that’s frankly pretty badass.

Servant Data

Rider

QQAAB (Archer)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

5

3

Attribute	Earth
Alignment	Neutral Good

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

April Fool's
Aegis (2nd Asc)
Aegis (3rd Asc)

Max HP 13,284

HP Rank

Max ATK 11,795

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,822	Base HP	1,948
Max Atk	11,795	Max HP	13,284
Grail Atk	12,911	Grail HP	14,553

Magic Resistance B

Increase your Debuff Resist by 17.5%.

Riding B+

Increase your Quick Card effectiveness by 9%.

Protection of the Messenger Deity B

Apply Immunity to Pig Status from a certain Witch.
Increase own Arts Card effectiveness by 10%.

Overview

Thankfully, Odysseus lives up to his renown as a hero, and decidedly throws in his lot with Achilles as a greek Rider, instead of the *cough* significantly worse base stats of Europa and Iskandar. Remember Europa? Neither do I. Let’s move on.

With high HP and Atk for his class, Odysseus’s base stats are more or less identical to Achilles’s, albeit with a tiny shuffle from Atk to HP. Still fairly bulky, still packing some solid attack.

His good base stats are further bolstered by a handful of passives. While his Riding rank isn’t too spectacular for the Rider class, it’s a solid boost to his two Quick cards, while also packing some fairly good Magic Resistance to shrug off debuffs when you get lucky.

The real stand-out for his passives line-up is Messenger God’s Protection, giving him a notable 10% Arts boost and uh, also making him immune to Circe’s Piggy status. Guess he’s on call for the inevitable Circe challenge quest this event, then. Needless to say, having such a handy Arts boost for an Arts-focused Rider is great, and it elevates his offense higher.

NP Generation

Card Hits	4	4	3	5	3
Per Hit	0.58%	0.58%	0.58%	0.58%	0.58%

	NP per Hit (%)	0.58%
NP when Attacked (%)	3%

	Star Absorption	208
Star Generation per Hit	8.9%

Servant Skills

Quick/Arts Up

Resourceful General's Inspiration B++

Increase Quick Card effectiveness for all allies (3 turns).
Increase Arts Card effectiveness for all allies (3 turns).
Apply Target Focus to all allies except the targeted ally (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Quick +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Arts +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Starting off Odysseus’s active skills we have Resourceful General's Insight. Even if I avoid one of my many pathoses for this game another will soon arise. Dual-card buffs. Yaaay. This one’s a team buff, providing a modest 20% Quick and Arts up to the whole team, as well as a bonus gimmick effect.

Calling it a gimmick may be harsh. On top of the 3-turn card buffs, you can designate one ally to be saved from Odysseus’s taunt purge for the same duration. Yes, it’s basically an anti-taunt for 3 turns to one ally. It’s legitimately...quite handy. While it’d be far nicer in the hands of a true support (Yes. I would like Arjuna Alter to not be eviscerated for 3 turns), it lets you control the targeting a little on top of aiding both of Odysseus’s main cards, which is hardly cause for complaint. Even the 8 turn base CD seems gentle considering the utility it provides.

So on the whole, a solid skill to work with.

Start Np

Devote Thyself to One Purpose (Love) A

Increase own NP Gauge.
Increase own Star Gather Rate (1 turn).
Apply Charm Immune to self (5 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
NP +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
Star Gather +	500%	550%	600%	650%	700%	750%	800%	850%	900%	1000%
CD	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	6	6	5

Next we have Concentration (Love). Whatever you wanna say about Odysseus, he really loves his wife. This is a reminder to read the Odyssey if you’re even a little interested. It’s true classical classic fiction.

Anyway, we got our typical gauge charger skill, and for once DW had the dignity to give a sub-50% gauge charger a shorter cooldown. While the 20% gauge charge is certainly handy for all sorts of purposes, the additional star gather buff for a turn is something of overkill, boosting Odysseus’s star weight to 2288 for a turn. For every single star a Berserker would get on a card, he’d get 228 of them on one of his own. So yeah, pretty silly. While Odysseus’s focus is hardly crit damage, being able to focus a limited star supply onto his Arts cards really helps his NP gain and damage output.

Oh, and he also gets eternal Charm immunity at skill level 10 (as it’s a 5 turn buff on a 5 turn cd). Worth keeping in mind should some Charm-spamming challenge quest pop up in the near future, but pretty unimportant for normal gameplay.

Invi Shield

Aegis A

Apply Invincible to self (1 turn).
Increase own Buff Removal Resist (1 turn).
Increase own DEF (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Buff Removal Res +	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%	90%	100%
DEF +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
CD	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	6	6	5

Last on the list for Odysseus’s skills is Divine Barrier, or the skill form of Aegis. Yeah, the Divine Construct shield of Athena. Athena really is his sugar momma. As you might expect of the most famous shield in history, arguably, it’s a very good skill - Granting 1-turn Invincibility and Buff removal resist on top of a 3-turn moderate defense buff, while ALSO being only 7 turns base cooldown.

Unremovable Invincibility is already exceptional, but the def buff and cooldown are great icing on the cake, giving him a very reliable defensive option that will come back up sooner than most.

Not much else to say, boy’s set on the defensive front.

Noble Phantasm

Troia Híppos B++

Remove Defensive Buffs from all enemies. [Activates first]
(Defensive Buffs include DEF Up, Evade, and Invincible)
Deal damage to all enemies.

<Overcharge>

Increase own NP Strength (1 turn). [Activates first]

Show Info/Video

Troia Híppos

Great Wooden Horse of Demise

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	B++	Anti-Army	3

Effect	Remove Defensive Buffs from all enemies. [Activates first] (Defensive Buffs include DEF Up, Evade, and Invincible) Deal damage to all enemies.

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Buff Removal
Damage +	450%	600%	675%	712%	750%

Overcharge Effect	Increase own NP Strength (1 turn). [Activates first]

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
NP Damage +	30%	40%	50%	60%	70%

When I envisioned Odysseus as a servant, his NP was more along the lines of a Trojan Killer Queen, with a smarmy bastard walking away as he clicks an invisible trigger and watchs a whole city explode with the conceptual force of ending a nation.

Somehow, despite being in the form of a damn mecha instead, my expectations are still fulfilled

Troia Ippos is an Arts AOE NP with some simple traits, but a lot of firepower. It removes all defensive buffs (Def up, damage cut, Dodge/Invuln) from all enemies before hitting, as well as providing Odysseus a strong 30% NP damage steroid. Combined with Odysseus’s own inherent 30% Arts booster from his 1st skill and passive, this NP hits reasonably hard, doing only a little less damage than Drake’s when vanilla, and surpassing her if they’re using their preferred 50% gauge CE’s (This is due to Odysseus’s own steroids being improved better by the buff trinity of Atk up, NP dmg up, and Card booster).

Of course, though, the question you’re all asking is: “Will it loop?”

And the answer is...it depends.

As a Rider, Odysseus has an easy time with loop setups due to the Caster class’s 1.2x NP gain modifier. As such, you can take Odysseus to QP dailies with a Tamamo Nero Bride set up or something even more ghetto and still get 115% NP gauge refund from his NP due to the easy overkill on those poor, squishy doors. In more practical studies, it’s a harder thing to handle. With Paracelsus and Nero Bride you can run a 50% gauge Arts or NP gain CE and do a single loop with Wave battlesuit swap. You can also run double Waver Skadi with battlesuit and do a triple loop, but that tends to suffer more in challenge quest scenarios, on top of being more costly. It requires LB Kaleido, too.

So short of QP farming (which is already a low bar if I’m honest), Odysseus isn’t an easy farm servant, at least on a budget. You can make things work in CQ scenarios using Para, Ascelpius, and a support Bride swap-in, but it’s not as amazing as things some competing Riders like Achilles or Da Vinci Rider can manage.

But still, the damage is solid, it has decent refund, and it ignores most annoying blockades to decimating the enemy.

Conclusion

So how good is Odysseus? On one hand, our proficient pilot of a shield-come-armor-come-horse is practically a dog’s dinner:

Dude is durable. With his first skill’s taunt effect, his amazing Invincible skill, and even his immunity to two Stun/Charm effects for kicks, Odysseus has a lot of options to keep both himself and his allies alive. Were he a Buster servant and not Arts, he’d have an amazing tool to keep Nightingale on field without her inevitably getting hit by a stray kit and dying. He himself can take on most NP’s in the game without a scratch, get some lasting durability increase off it, and get the skill back up faster than most. Just being a reliable presence can be a godsend in difficult content.

Odysseus frankly has really good NP gain - His NPAA chain with crits on both Arts cards gives 101% refund with just his own kit supporting him, and as I spoke of earlier, his looping potential is good, if a little dependent on costly setups. With both his Rider star weight and 2nd skill to further aid his gauge charging and critting, he really isn’t too dependant on external support to build gauge, which allows a lot of freedom with compositions.

His defensive buff removal is frankly really useful as a niche. Only Amakusa shares the ability to strip defensive buffs (though he goes further) from all enemies before an AOE NP, while Altera and Ivan are the only others to have the same effect on a skill. With such a limited roster of servants competing for the niche (and with Odysseus being the only one of them with both fairly high damage and looping potential), our tricky boy will have good reason to be considered for challenge quest and story content.

However, in other aspects he’s a pig’s breakfast:

Odysseus’s regular card damage isn’t too good. While his dual card booster is handy, he lacks any other direct offensive buffs or crit buffs, and even his NP doesn’t provide a damage boost for his card chains. As such, he doesn’t have the potential for the scary brave chains Achilles, Ivan, or even Iskandar can manage in the right conditions.

I feel I end up saying this a lot, but being an Arts servant can hurt for team compositions in more difficult content. As he lacks any stall-centric tools, he’ll be dependent on his chosen supports to keep themselves alive, and that can be a tall task for servants like Tamamo, Bride, or Paracelsus. [That’s why I just use Lanling everywhere.] Anyhow, it’s an issue.

Odysseus is, to put it plainly, a very well rounded and balanced but good servant. He does nothing overwhelmingly effective, but has few weaknesses, and none that can’t be compensated for by other factors. With his numerous tools at his disposal and a fairly uncontested niche of AOE defensive buff removal, he’s sure to see plenty of use in both farming and difficult content if you build the proper teams around him.

Rath™ Seal of Approval.

Final Conclusion

A short and simple one for you all, and I honestly have no complaints about having less to write. I’ll say it again, but look into the Odyssey if you have the time, it’s a thrilling tale about travelling, staying true to your bros, resisting the temptation of sorcerous THOTs, and learning why making your bedpost out of a tree may let you score in the near future. And probably some other, less interesting lessons.

I’ll catch you all on the flipside in what will likely be LB5 2 - Electric Boogaloo. Later.

Search

MMM - Mystified Mare Mounts Mythological Mail, Must it be More Mecha, Nasu? (White Day 2020 Gacha)

The Modern Magus Magazine

QQAAB (Archer)

Quick Card

Quick Card

Arts Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

Traits

Tags

Quick/Arts Up

Start Np

Invi Shield

Troia Híppos

Final Conclusion

About the Author(s)

Comments

Latest Content