MMM - Saliciously Shirtless Swordsman Spectically Suspected, Suddenly Surfaces Spectacularly, Swordsmith Senji (New Year 2021)

The Modern Magus Magazine

Happy New Year, y’all! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful and safe set of celebrations harkening in our new, non-palindromic, year, as well as enjoying all the new announcements and content provided by Type-Moon.

And by that, of course, I mean the Tsukihime remake. Being able to kill three memes in one broadcast is impressive, but hey, we have Muramasa, Carnival Phantasm’s new season, and the Tsukihime remake actually has a tentative release date. The cherry on top is that, judging by the statements of Mahou Tsukai no Yoru’s translation group, the MahouTsukai translation will ALSO be done before the Tsukihime remake comes out, and they’re changing to porting a translation to it immediately.

But hey, that’s entirely unrelated to our game of waifu png roulette. Or in this case, husbando png roulette. I failed the slots. Hard. But I can still evaluate things! ~~Why is it raining indoors?~~

Introduction

Look at him. Not only does he bring all the Shirou-voiced manliness we expected from Muramasa, but he has some pretty swanky outfits, 2 animation sets, and he is real, blessing us in the year of 2021. Things are already looking up.

Servant Data

Saber

QAABB (Saber)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

2

3

5

3

Attribute	Human
Alignment	Chaotic Balanced

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

April Fool's

Max HP 14,680

HP Rank

Max ATK 11,373

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,757	Base HP	2,153
Max Atk	11,373	Max HP	14,680
Grail Atk	12,449	Grail HP	16,083

Magic Resistance B

Increase your Debuff Resist by 17.5%.

Territory Creation A

Increase your Arts Card effectiveness by 10%.

Connoisseur of Blades A

Increase Critical Strength for all allies while you are on the field (5%).

Sire's Ill Omen B

Apply Special ATK [King] to self (20%).

Overview

So far as base stats go, Muramasa doesn’t look too hot for a Saber of his rarity. His low Mana and Agility eat into how his base HP and Atk play out, on top of having a more defensively-leaned stat focus. This places him at the 3rd worst attack stat and tied 4th best HP of his class and rarity alongside Mordred, but this situation does have a silver lining - if you sort SSR Sabers by attack stat, he’s right next to Arturia. Tell me this wasn’t intentional, and you’re probably right, but it is sweet.

Muramasa does much better on the passive front. While decent Magic Resistance is a given for a Saber, boosting his passive resistance to debuffs, he also comes packing A-rank Territory Creation, giving a notable boost to his primary card type, Arts, as well as two unique skills. Sword Aesthetic gives every ally while he’s on the field, including himself, a small critical damage boost, while Dynasty Misfortune provides him with a sizeable passive trait bonus versus the King trait. Well, Kings and Queens, but you get the idea.

All these passives together make for a significant offensive boost for Muramasa, largely compensating for his failings in his base attack. And should you decide to pit him against the weapon triangle, it won’t sting as bad - King of Heroes, do you have enough weapons in stock?

NP Generation

Card Hits	2	3	3	5	3
Per Hit	0.59%	0.59%	0.59%	0.59%	0.59%

	NP per Hit (%)	0.59%
NP when Attacked (%)	3%

	Star Absorption	100
Star Generation per Hit	9.8%

Servant Skills

All Type Up

Tameshi-Mono B+

Increase own Quick Card effectiveness (1 turn).
Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (1 turn).
Increase own Buster Card effectiveness (1 turn).
Increase own Critical Star Gather Rate (1 turn).
Gain Critical Stars.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Quick +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
Arts +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
Buster +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
Star Gather +	500%	550%	600%	650%	700%	750%	800%	850%	900%	1000%
Stars +	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	15
CD	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	6	6	5

First on Muramasa’s skill lineup is Super Projection. Oh, sorry. Varied Styles. Still, this skill is essentially the Infinity Gauntlet of Mana Burst, MHXA eat your heart out. Providing a 50%, 1 turn boost to all three card types, this skill provides Muramasa a large star focus buff, and a moderate 15 star bomb, assuming the skill is at level 10.

Like most Mana Burst-style skills, this obviously should be used for an important NP turn, but it provides additional effects which feed into both critical damage turns for CQ scenarios, and further NP refund by greatly assisting Muramasa get crits. If this skill assures a crit on one of his Arts cards, it’s essentially like it’s tripling his NP gain on that Arts card. We’re already seeing how Muramasa’s NP gain in practice is far better than just the base numbers tell us.

And this is only the beginning. With a base cooldown of 7 turns, this skill is pretty fantastic.

Shield Break

Karmic Eye A

Apply Ignore Invincible to self (1 turn).
Increase own Critical Strength against Evade or Invincible enemies (1 turn).
Increase own Critical Star Drop Rate (3 turns).
Increase own Critical Strength (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Crit Damage (vs Evade/Invinc) +	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%	90%	100%
Star Drop +	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%	90%	100%
Crit Damage +	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%	90%	100%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

The skill synergy builds right before your eyes, doesn’t it? Eye for Craftsmanship is one of those skills where the icon hardly tells the full story. Sure, this skill provides Muramasa with a 1-turn Invincible Pierce, but it doesn’t tell you it gives him a whopping +200% critical damage versus enemies with said buffs for that duration, too. Even throwing the interesting gimmick of getting both Invincible Pierce and a boost to damage if he does face someone it’s useful on, this skill is a huge 3-turn boost to both Muramasa’s stargen and critical damage.

Sounds familiar. Any relation to this, uh ‘EMIYA’ fellow? No? Good to know, it seemed like a long shot.

Jokes aside, this is an obscenely powerful critical damage skill. Few Servants in the game can boast +100% critical damage over 3 turns, then again on an on-demand skill, and then again on one with such useful additional effects packed in...and then again one with a star focus skill, too.

If we’re being nitpicky, it doesn’t really help for farming unless you need to pull off a brave chain on a stronger mob, but I’m not going to. This skill elevates Muramasa’s CQ performance immensely, as well as placing him into a high-demand niche for such content.

Start Np

Flame EX

Increase own NP Gauge.
Apply [Flame] to self: Increase own NP Gauge when normal attacking (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
NP +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
NP (when attacking) +	5%	5.5%	6%	6.5%	7%	7.5%	8%	8.5%	9%	10%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

It wouldn’t be an SSS tier Servant without a 50% gauge charger, right?

Wait, I’m putting the cart before the horse, here.

Flames isn’t winning a prize for skill name complexity, nor is it really in general complexity. It compensates by being the very thing Muramasa needs for his 3rd skill - a strong gauge charger skill to help him act functionally as a farmer and turn 1 NP option.

But wait, there’s more! This skill also places the ‘unique’ Flames buff onto Muramasa (when it’s really just a slightly edited Dioscuri NP-gauge-on-Quicks buff), giving him an impressive free 10% gauge per normal card attack he makes while it’s active, for 3 turns. Assuming his skill level 10. I didn’t test this personally, but I’m assuming normal cards also includes Extra, meaning Muramasa almost earns himself a full gauge charge from 0% with this skill and a brave chain before even counting the NP gain off his cards. Pretty insane.

For farming purposes the Flames buff isn’t going to be too important outside of really niche setups, but in a CQ environment this thing practically makes Muramasa’s looping impossible to fail, even if his NP refund were garbage (which it’s not). It also makes having higher than NP1 on Muramasa pretty valuable, since believe me, a single Arts crit with his skills active is going to immediately bump him to the 100% mark, making all that extra gauge generation pretty wasteful. Just don’t be tempted to whale for NP levels if you can’t bear the regret of failing, there.

As a typical 8-turn base cooldown 50% gauge charger, it goes without saying Flames is a great skill.

Noble Phantasm

Tsumukari Muramasa A+

Increase own NP Strength by 10% (3 turns). [Activates first]
Remove offensive buffs from all enemies. [Activates first]
Deal heavy DEF-ignoring damage to all enemies.

<Overcharge>

Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (3 turns). [Activates first]

Show Info/Video

Tsumukari Muramasa

Originless Sword Creation

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	A+	Anti-Personnel	3

Effect	Increase own NP Strength by 10% (3 turns). [Activates first] Remove offensive buffs from all enemies. [Activates first] Deal heavy DEF-ignoring damage to all enemies.

Level	1	2	3	4	5
NP Damage +	10%	10%	10%	10%	10%
Buff Removal
Damage +	450%	600%	675%	712.5%	750%

Overcharge Effect	Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (3 turns). [Activates first]

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Arts +	10%	15%	20%	25%	30%

Tsumukari Muramasa, a NP that floods my brain with dopamine, is that kind of NP. That’s right, it’s Arts AOE. So we’ll be pulling the math out for this one. But first, we’ll go over its side effects, which it has aplenty.

Before even dishing out damage, Tsumukari Muramasa has a handful of effects. Firstly, it removes all offensive buffs from each enemy it hits. Neat, but often not a purposeful benefit that you can work around. Secondly, it provides Muramasa with a static 10% NP damage up buff over 3 turns. Much like Space Ishtar, this provides him with a glorious ramping damage effect when he’s looping, meaning even if his 1-turn Mana Burst skill wears off, his damage output won’t take too big a hit. Third, he gets a 3-turn Arts booster that scales with overcharge, starting at the same 10% boost. Forget “too big a hit” - by the second time he NP’s he’s pretty much compensated for the damage boost from the first NP he no longer has. The bonus is it also boosts his further NPs’ refund, making looping with him even more stable.

So let’s get into the looping part. Muramasa’s NP is 3 hits, which combined with all his kit buffs makes a refund of 27% for a singular NP. Taking his Mana Burst out of the picture, it’s a still-respectable 19%. But let’s take this into practical context. With double Casturia and an LB Miyu CE, he pulls out a hefty 64% refund, which in practical context is actually 75% if he kills the wave, making for a very easy loop. And I wasn’t even counting his Mana Burst skill for that calculation. If you pop his 1st skill by the time you make the third wave, that NP is not only going to hurt, but also just barely hits 100% refund. So Muramasa can essentially 4-wave loop with a standard setup.

But that’s not all - his gauge charger and absurdly good refund lets him run more damage-focused CE and support setups, and boy does it pay off. In a double Casturia, Tamamo switch in, 1k atk fou LB Black Grail setup, Muramasa can not only manage a 3-turn loop provided he kills each wave, but also does some absurd damage to make that overkill bonus very manageable - dealing 107k damage neutral on the first wave, 117k on the second, and a hefty 149k on the 3rd. And best of all, that damage output is so excessive you can use his Mana Burst on wave 1 or 2 instead of saving it for damage to help with the loop. Outside of events inflating HP pools for damage CE’s, which will let Muramasa clear them anyway using said damage CE’s, that output is enough to farm most content in the game class-neutral. It goes without saying he has Lancer and Berserker nodes covered.

I will point out that double Casturia Tamamo swap setup is inconsistent on Berserker and Assassin nodes, but you can sub Tamamo for Nero Bride, Paracelsus or Lanling and it becomes 100% consistent while still pretty hard-hitting. Being able to farm with Black Grail to begin with pretty much says it all.

So keeping to the point, I’ll also point out that his NP damage on his lonesome isn’t the greatest, hitting solidly below Ibuki’s output, then again compared to the competing AOE Sabers with NP strengthenings, but in practice he’ll be deployed alongside a support setup that elevates his damage output and looping to such levels that deficiency doesn’t matter. So long as he has class advantage, his damage should be sufficient for quick NP waveclear purposes or farming even with a sub-par support setup.

Oh, and his NP pierces defense, making him a sudden partner with Ibuki in the “Absolute Penetration AOE Saber” front, or at least the turn he pops Eye for Craftsmanship. Got to admit, having Muramasa come out in the meta-aligned card type and steal Ibuki’s established niche for AOE is pretty rude.

Conclusion

So how good is Muramasa in practice? On one hand, he is a tempered blade without peer:

This man is a farming machine. Sabers, despite decent recent additions, have still yet lacked a very consistent farmer on both the refund and damage front. Muramasa drops in and just decides to change that. His setups are absurdly flexible, he can spec for maximum damage output and still have consistent farm setups versus most nodes, and due to this capability he’s able to farm pretty much anything he’s neutral against. In that sense, he’s incredibly similar to Space Ishtar - able to run full-damage CE setups to compensate for his otherwise more lacklustre damage output and still loop. He’s still a no-go for Archer nodes, of course, but universal-bar-one is only a little below a universal farmer.

Muramasa is absurdly good for challenge quests, too. All of his looping capability carries over with a vengeance, able to put his consistent skill setup for Arts crits and his Flame buff to good use, making almost-endless looping a possibility so long as 3 enemies are available for him to hit. That’s on top of his scarily powerful critical damage and capability to bypass Evasion / Invincible boss gimmicks, something DW have really liked throwing in lately. Especially unremovable, chance-based Evasion buffs. Muramasa will take his free +100% critical damage and send them to the Yama gladly. He’s pretty much AOE Dioscuri, which is a very good position to be in for challenge quests.

I’m struggling to make more points in his favour, but that’s not because he lacks them. It’s because I just said Muramasa is great in the two most important parts of gameplay in FGO, and nothing really trumps that. Not saying anything as absurd as he’s the best Servant in the game, but when he isn’t facing class disadvantage, he’s going to be a very good option for most content. So take this as a big, wordy underline for the prior two points.

However, Muramasa may have some chinks in his edge:

Muramasa lacks any defensive options period. When you have synergy with the absurd defensive support that is Casturia, this isn’t too bad a drawback, but it still exists. Should Casturia not have her NP ready or be NP sealed on the turn you need to put the walls up, Muramasa is definitely showing the limitations of being Sword incarnate. Literally. Where the hell is your plot device Fey healing device when you need it, huh? Guess he’ll die when he’s killed, if his supports have nothing to say about it.

Not even buying into New Years hype, Muramasa is absurdly good. If you still somehow lack one of the big name consistent farmers to take stress out of your FGO gameplay life, Muramasa counts among them. If you picked up Vritra from the Xmas banner, Muramasa and her pretty much cover every piece of farming in the game. That’s pretty important when, until now, the occasional absurdly-high HP Lancer farming node was a real logistic issue to jump through, and people tended to avoid farming them in events even if it were optimal for drops. Muramasa says no. Muramasa is love. Muramasa is life. If you actually have any quartz remaining, unlike me, roll for Muramasa. He’s good. Enjoy the originator of GAR. Have fun. You wouldn’t be me. What salt?

Oh, the seal thingy? Here. Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation. Go nuts.

Outro

That’s the sole Servant we have for the New Year, as usual. 2021 is shaping up to be a curious year for FGO, as we’ll likely see the final stretch of the Part 2 story, a bunch of highly speculated Servants (that silhouette lineup, minus the obvious Minamoto no Yoshitsune, is driving me nuts), and hopefully some more interesting events on the horizon.

Also Tsukihime remake. I don’t care if it’ll be Japan-only and you can’t read moonrunes. Buy it. More need to be inducted into the cult of Nasu’s non-Fate works.

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MMM - Saliciously Shirtless Swordsman Spectically Suspected, Suddenly Surfaces Spectacularly, Swordsmith Senji (New Year 2021)

The Modern Magus Magazine

QAABB (Saber)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

Buster Card

Traits

Tags

All Type Up

Shield Break

Start Np

Tsumukari Muramasa

Outro

Links

About the Author(s)

Comments

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