MMM - Sorcerous Scripter Sad to Spill the Beans, Shamefully didn't Study Tsukihime, Slays the Spire instead (Summer 2024 Part 1)

Not sure what exactly is meant to be mysterious about our resident executioner, especially since there are numerous people and Servants at Chaldea that would probably know who she is, but perhaps it’s there just to add an air of mystique.

And more importantly, she joins with a Neko-Arc ascension, so we can officially tick that off as the biggest meme inclusion of this year.

Joining as the 5th SSR Mooncancer in the roster, Ciel has shockingly little competition in spite of how old the class is. Her stats certainly shape up well, though, having the highest Attack in exchange for the 2nd lowest HP of the class, placing her ahead of Arcueid on both fronts, which I’m sure is just a happy coincidence. Nope, just ignore how peeved she is if she finds out Arc is in Chaldea.

While that’s great within the class itself, in the grander scheme of things it means her offence is about average for an SSR, with a very good HP stat. Her passives bolster her capabilities even further - Her high-ranking Magic Resistance and Independent Action provide notable boosts to her Debuff Resistance and Critical Damage output, and she also has two unique passives on top of that.

Self-regeneration provides Ciel with 500 HP healing every turn, referencing her very unique existence and well, vitality (I’m going off original Tsukihime here, I dunno if there’s anything more to it in the remake). In practice it can act as a refund for Black Grail’s demerit, which is a neat perk, if nothing too significant. Her other passive, Executor (Bow), is a hilarious answer to the flaw I’ve always ragged on some Extra-class Servants for - she gets Archer offensive class advantage, so she hits Sabers for 2x damage, but takes normal damage back from them.

With a base NP gain of 0.46% and a BBAAQ card deck, Ciel’s 4-hit Arts cards produce a slightly-above-average base Arts gain of 1.84 apiece. Pretty good in comparison to most Servants slapped with high-hitcount Arts cards. The rest of her cards follow the theme of high hitcounts, with her Quick card having a decent 5 hits to it, her Extra having a rather necessary 6 hits, and her Busters producing an okay amount of NP gauge with the Arts first card bonus due to their identical hitcounts to her Arts, at 4.

As a direct consequence of these high hitcounts, Ciel’s stargen is pretty superb for her card deck. Her lack of Quicks and the Mooncancer class’s average base stargen means she’s not going to produce a crazy sum of stars, but any amount of modifiers to her stargen will boost her output significantly, and her Brave chains will always drown you in stars due to her Extra’s high hitcount.

While she’s not exactly spectacular in either area, Ciel has a solid backing in both NP gain and stargen, so she’s not flawed from the get-go in any regard.

So how is Ciel overall? Well on one hand, she’s the mysterious and knowledgeable sensei from the distant and wretched lands of France. Oshiete! Ciel-sensei!

However, she also comes across as a jealous hag to the eternally-beautiful and brilliant Millenium Princess, and I’ll be frank, boss, I liked her route in the original Tsukihime the least:

While she might not be the Anniversary Servant this year by technicality, it’s pretty clear that, much like Proto Merlin before her, this Summer form of Ciel aims to be a formidable force in the game, and she largely accomplishes it. With a skill that might as well say “immunity to bullshit”, incredible durability and a very high damage ceiling, she’s set up for success from the start.

The thing that, at the very least, makes me appreciate her design a lot, is that she has some very unique gameplay dynamics that most powerful Servants don’t. The way she explicitly encourages using her regular cards in chains for the bonus effects, and her command card shuffle to enable it, explicitly plays contrary to the more typical strategy in difficult content where you’re only using the damage dealer’s NP most of the time, and regular cards are reserved for getting Castoria’s NP gauge back online, or whatever other support you’re running with. It’s a very neat change of pace, and the payoff feels strong enough to be worth the inconvenience against conventional strategy.

And it’s still peeving me a little that she just gets to essentially be both an Archer and Mooncancer in one. She doesn’t even carry the normal burden of Extra classes not having a “real” common class advantage, so I can’t rag on her for that. She’s basically two Servant roles in one if you want to approach it that way, without the flaws Pretenders or Alter Egos come with.

Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation.

If you told me at FGO’s conception that the Servant who would, by Youtube’s metrics, be the lewdest in FGO was friggen Dobrynya Nikitich in a swimsuit, I’d dismiss it as yet another dumb fake leak.

Man, time travellers must have it rough.

As an SR Lancer, Dobrynya has a fair bit of competition, coming in with the 4th-highest attack of her class and rarity, and the tied 3rd-lowest HP. While that makes her a little weaker than typical for stat totals, being so offensively-focused is a great boon for her, especially with the Lancer class’s 1.05x attack modifier making those points even more effective for her damage output.

In terms of passive, Dobrynya’s lineup is very modest and typical. With both Magic Resistance and Riding at decent ranks, she packs a good passive resistance to debuffs and a minor boost to her singular Quick card, ultimately not particularly impactful effects.

With a BBAAQ card deck and 4-hit Arts cards, Dobrynya’s NP gain lineup is shockingly similar to Ciel’s. Her base NP gain of 0.45% results in a base Arts gain of 1.8, barely above the average, but unlike Ciel, the hitcounts on all her other cards are slightly lower, with only 4 hits to her Quick and 5 to her Extra. This means both are pretty mediocre for NP gain, but she’s not exactly crippled for NP gain overall.

Following in the same vein, her lack of Quick cards and solid, but ultimately insufficiently high hitcounts on her other cards means her stargen is mostly lacking, but that’s typical for a Servant of her card deck. Thus far, she’s shaping up to be very average in, well, everything.

So how is Dobrynya’s new, waterproofed form? Well on the one hand, she’s got the heart of a dragon, and that’s not just the one in her mount:

However, this one dragonslayer has a nemesis, and one that might be hard to surpass - the Dragon of Echigo, of course:

It’s strange - even with a number of tools that SR Servants would kill for, it feels rough to compare Dobrynya to one of the very accessible welfares that every player can access in modern FGO. She’s decently powerful on paper, but little of that directly converts into effective power, especially when the vast majority of FGO players have access to a NP5 Kagetora if they put their mind to it, a comparison that Dobrynya only stops losing once she gets NP2 or higher.

But even then, is investing all those materials into a slightly better Kagetora, a Servant filling an already-limited niche, worth it? As fun as it will be to make Youtube-kun flush together with her, I don’t really see the appeal in it.

Perhaps the most sad thing is if her NP’s effective damage bonus was instead tied to the NP damage itself, and 50% at baseline, it’d probably be enough to make her worthwhile due to her inherent effective damage modifiers on NP’s pan out for damage calculations. But no, sadly, her capabilities are both too narrow and too weak to truly make her worth using for gameplay’s sake, so she’s a case of “feel free to use her if she’s your favourite”.

Man, the Chainsaw Man collab is really looking good right now.

I always like it when the Servants in the game have a very defined (and not one-note) relationship with FGO’s protagonist, and Xu Fu’s is particularly amusing to me, simply due to how their history with their prior Summer Event played out.

But seriously though, who let her get that chainsaw?

With the lowest Attack stat and highest HP of any SR Avenger, Xu Fu manages to hit a level of durability that’s actually kind of average despite the flaws of the Avenger class, and in exchange has…still a pretty high attack stat, especially with the class’s 1.1x Attack modifier in play.

Boy, this class is dumb.

Speaking of which, it seems Lasengle realised the Avenger class skills are really dumb to give to everyone, as while Xu Fu packs the Avenger skill for the increased defensive NP gain and Oblivion Correction for the notable critical damage boost, she lacks Self-Restoration (Magical Energy), instead having a useless High Servant skill (literally to tell you she’s no longer an Alter Ego…why?) and, as you might expect, a negative passive reducing her damage output when attacking Paisen.

Perfect skills for comedic value, but in practice she just nabs solid critical damage and the increased defensive NP gain, which isn’t too bad.

Folks, we live in a society. Not just any society, but one where high-hitcount Arts cards has become the norm, leaving any reasonable chance of balanced NP gain in the dust.

On an entirely unrelated note, Xu Fu has, yet again, a BBAAQ card deck with a 5-hit Arts card, combined with her 0.43% base NP gain results in a base Arts gain of 2.15, well above average for a Servant with two Arts cards, but it comes at a cost. Her 4-hit Quick card is incredibly weak in terms of NP gain, and her Extra card is no different.

While that’s a pretty harsh flaw, it does come with its own benefits. Xu Fu’s star generation is great due to having 5+ hit cards across the board, though that’s still limited by her lack of Quick cards. At the very least, her NP gain is good in the cards that matter.

So how does Xu Fu shape up in the end? Well on the one hand, she’s the perfect Servant to pair with Yu Meiren, the image of devotion, and I am absolutely not being intimidated by her chainsaw at this very moment:

However, and I can only say this because she left the room, I’m frankly terrified out of my mind, and have decided that pursuing the hot millenia-old vampire widower isn’t worth death by chainsaw:

It feels bad to say this for two SR’s in a row, but man, I don’t really think Xu Fu cuts it gameplay-wise. She has the damage peaks necessary to potentially eke out value as a damage dealer, but that damage output is only accomplished through one hoop too many, with absolutely zero bonus frills attached. Need Invincible Pierce? She’s out. Need some defensive options? Not viable. You have a Servant with a similar role, lower damage output, but class advantage? I know you don’t believe it, but boom, Xu Fu loses her value.

Part of me wants to blame the Instant Death focus in her kit for it, but that feels like kicking a puppy when it’s already down, given the whole Instant Death mechanic doesn’t work as her kit seems to intend. I can already imagine a poor Lasengle programmer designing the Instant Death before the damage, then getting directed to a note passed around the team to avoid putting Instant Death before damage since the player base was complaining about it, without realising the nuance to Xu Fu’s kit.

Full credit to her, being able to 3-turn loop at all is rare for a lower-rarity ST Servant, but such capabilities aren’t in demand often, and even when they are, there are probably a lot of better options for the given circumstance, high-difficulty quest or farming. Using the most direct parallel I can think of, Avenger Erice manages smoother NP looping due to being an Arts Servant, similar gauge charge capabilities, and more consistently high damage, as her effective damage bonuses are versus all Servants, and based on Curse, which she can apply with her own skill kit. And she actually has utility skills and defensive options on top of that.

By comparison, Xu Fu is sadly the definition of a glass cannon, and one who doesn’t hit hard consistently enough to be worth it. Nobody else can rock a chainsaw like her, that’s for certain.