Rabbit's Reviews #311: Sakamoto Ryouma (5* Lancer)

It has been a good year for Lancers.

Ryouma is, in a word, excellent. He’s an AoE Arts Lancer with a 50% battery and a fantastic spread of buffs. He has low base NP refund, which limits (but does not preclude) his ability to farm 90+ nodes, but pretty much everything else about his kit is exactly what you want of a Servant of his type. He also has some nifty CQ utility that lets him get around some of the more annoying common gimmicks, including the primary weakness of Castoria teams: buff removal. The biggest knock against Ryouma is that by this point top-tier Arts loopers have been around for a while, so odds are good most longtime players have one of Spishtar, Muramasa, and Summer Kama—or even slightly weaker options like Summer Kiara—and the welfare in Ryouma’s own event, Ranmaru, is herself an AoE Arts unit who can reliably farm standard nodes. None of this, however, discounts how strong Ryouma is within his own kit. He may not be groundbreaking, and he may be redundant for a lot of players, but he’s still a fantastic Servant.

Ryouma has a fairly defense-oriented stat spread as SSR Lancers go, with attack and HP about on par with the likes of Enkidu and Lancer Tamamo. Low-end attack is not ideal for a damage-dealer, but Lancers have high stats on average, so even with low-end Lancer attack, Ryouma still ends up with offensively middling bases. Could be worse. Ryouma’s internals are a mixed bag. He has quite high hit-counts, which works both to his credit and against him. On the one hand, his Quick generates a lot of stars, and with any sort of star gen buff, his brave chains will also make for easy crits. On the other, it makes his NP gain… weird. Ryouma’s Arts cards are better than average relative to his deck, which is nice, but his Quick is fairly unremarkable due to the Quick-to-Arts hit-count ratio. More importantly, Ryouma’s NP refund is a bit below the standard for AoE units. Typical AoE Arts NPs refund 1.5-1.6% per enemy, while Ryouma gets 1.41%. He offsets this in part with sizable Arts buffs and his battery, but it does mean he has a little more trouble looping than, say, Muramasa does.

For passives, Ryouma gets Magic Resistance (which doesn’t matter a whole lot since Ryouma spends a lot of time immune to debuffs anyway) and Riding, to prop up his Quick card a little. His special passive, Shapeshift (Orochi), gives Ryouma a permanent crit resistance buff, which is deceptively powerful as a stability tool—remember that crit chance is additive, so 10% crit chance down is a significant reduction in the rate of received crits. This skill also increases Ryouma’s crit damage by 10%, which is valuable in part because Ryouma has decent crit access but relatively low crit damage buffs. As far as appends go, Mana Loading is extremely important to Ryouma’s looping capabilities. After that, his extra attack boost is nice, and his anti-Alter Ego damage is fairly niche and not especially meaningful.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x5 Lancer Piece
3	300,000	x12 Lancer Piece x22 Proof of Hero
4	1,000,000	x5 Lancer Monument x20 Void's Dust x3 Warhorse's Young Horn
Max	3,000,000	x12 Lancer Monument x6 Warhorse's Young Horn x5 Dragon's Reverse Scale

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x5 Gem of Lancer
2 → 3	400,000	x12 Gem of Lancer
3 → 4	1,200,000	x5 Magic Gem of Lancer
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Magic Gem of Lancer x10 Void's Dust
5 → 6	4,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Lancer x20 Void's Dust
6 → 7	5,000,000	x12 Secret Gem of Lancer x15 Proof of Hero
7 → 8	10,000,000	x29 Proof of Hero x6 Soundless Bell
8 → 9	12,000,000	x18 Soundless Bell x10 Dragon's Reverse Scale
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200000	x5 Gem of Lancer
2 → 3	400000	x12 Gem of Lancer
3 → 4	1200000	x5 Magic Gem of Lancer
4 → 5	1600000	x12 Magic Gem of Lancer x4 Serpent Jewel
5 → 6	4000000	x5 Secret Gem of Lancer x8 Serpent Jewel
6 → 7	5000000	x12 Secret Gem of Lancer x3 Warhorse's Young Horn
7 → 8	10000000	x6 Warhorse's Young Horn x18 Mystic Gunpowder
8 → 9	12000000	x54 Mystic Gunpowder x15 Reactor Core of Dawn
9 → 10	20000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Ryouma’s skillset is not especially dramatic, but it’s still quite good. Recommended skill order is 2>1>3.

For all his strengths, Ryouma is dependent on either CEs or plug in order to loop. His NP gain is sadly just not quite where it would need to be to tri-loop with just Castoria and the 2004 Mystic Code. He’s close enough with enough different setups, though, that I fully believe there are circumstances in which it’ll be doable depending on event CE properties and enemy wave compositions. He should be able to swing it versus Casters with the help of Mana Loading, for instance, by using his battery and both Castorias’ second skills on turn 1, letting him refund to 70% on each subsequent turn, which the Castorias’ first skills can cover—but against neutral classes (including, most importantly, Archers) he’s just short of the NP gain he needs.

As such, for meaningful general-purpose farming, it’s safe to assume Ryouma will be using plug—and ideally plug Oberon. With Castoria/Castoria/Oberon, Ryouma can loop NP-neutral classes assuming there are at least four enemies across the first two waves. He has a little more trouble with 3/1/x nodes—he needs an extra hit of overkill on wave 1, and his damage will be lower on wave 2 than it would otherwise be, but he can do it, provided his damage is high enough.

In order to do this, Ryouma needs his Mana Loading maxed. With Castoria’s help, Ryouma refunds roughly 17% per enemy. With Mana Loading, you use the Castorias’ charismas and one of their Avalon le Fae skills on the first turn. This leaves you with two 50% batteries (Ryouma’s and Oberon’s) and two 20% batteries (Castoria’s and Oberon’s) available. Ryouma will need one of the 50% batteries each turn, and he then uses the 20% batteries to make up whatever difference remains. You’ll want to use Castoria’s first, as Ryouma’s NP gain is slightly lower without it—this is why he needs more overkill for 3/1/x nodes, as his refund versus the wave of 3 is lower without having used both Castorias’ batteries first—but all in all this gives Ryouma more flexibility than you might expect given his NP’s low refund. As tends to be the case these days, damage issues are most likely on waves 1 and 2, especially in the case of waves of 1 enemy, but Ryouma’s heavy investment in NP damage buffs means End of the Dream skyrockets Ryouma’s damage, letting him down the third wave without much trouble.

It’s also worth noting that, while Ryouma can’t farm 2/1/x or 1/2/x waves on his own, he does have a party damage buff and a 50% battery, which positions him well for supporting a secondary ST damage dealer in those types of nodes. He can’t farm difficult 90+ enemy formations without help, but he has a nice kit for putting together the sorts of teams that usually can farm those nodes.

For CQs, much of the same logic applies. Two Castorias and an Oberon is going to maximize Ryouma’s 3-turn damage output. You can also run Tamamo in place of Oberon for better sustained buffs in exchange for more reliance on cards and no ability to spike damage with End of the Dream. Sherlock, too, is a nice partner in CQ contexts, as he negates the danger of defensive buffs and he provides nice general damage buffs for Ryouma. He also boosts crit damage for the party, which plays well with Ryouma’s tools.

Ryouma transitions naturally into slower-moving teams as well. Ryouma’s overcharge buff pairs quite well with Castoria in particular, and he also synergizes nicely with Merlin. Merlin/Ryouma/Castoria is a remarkably solid team—on top of the team’s natural defensive benefits, Merlin provides flat charges that help the whole team move faster, and Ryouma appreciates and can take advantage of Merlin’s crit tools. This is an especially good team for fights that like to spam debuffs, as Ryouma can keep those debuffs from interrupting his damage, and Castoria can remove them from the supports as needed.

Outside of top-end setups, Ryouma plays well with lower-end supports as well. Lanling in particular is a great partner, packing star gen buffs that synergize nicely with Ryouma’s hit-counts and a strong Overcharge effect Ryouma can boost. Sherlock/Ryouma/Lanling is a more classical Arts Crit team that could be fun to use, especially if you don’t have the more optimized Arts supports. Mozart is also a great partner for Ryouma due to his Arts buffs and his ability to force crits, and Ruler Da Vinci provides generally-useful tools.

It’s also worth considering Waver, Reines, and base Mash. Ryouma’s defense-up-on-NP effect means teams that focus on stacking defense buffs can be deceptively bulky. Also notably, all three of these Servants provide attack buffs, which is the one buff type Ryouma doesn’t get innately, making them particularly strong partners for him.

The Black Grail is always a great CE for pushing damage output, though Ryouma can also benefit from CEs that make it easier for him to spam his NP: Painting Summer or Ocean Flyer for starting NP charge and other useful benefits, or Mark on a Smiling Face for better damage and NP gain, but no starting charge.

Ryouma benefits from crit-focused command codes. Any of star gen, crit damage up, and star weight up can go a long way towards securing and strengthening Ryouma’s crits, so I’d recommend picking command codes based on whether you want Ryouma’s crits to be more consistent or more powerful.

As with any potential top-end farmer, grails let Ryouma more reliably hit damage thresholds, and as such are a good idea if you plan to use him as your primary farming unit. Lancers also benefit more from grails than most classes do, which makes the added stats especially appealing.

I’m going to repeat what I said for Summer Kama: when comparably excellent Servants already exist, it’s easy to overlook just how powerful a new Servant of the same type is. Ryouma is a great Servant. He has an excellent spread of buffs, some nice CQ utility, and the basic tools to make him compatible with the best Support Servant in the game. Ryouma is in the realm of the top-tier Arts Servants, with his own set of advantages and disadvantages that make him more or less a sidegrade to Muramasa in particular. Many players likely have a favored Arts monster at their disposal already, and it’s true that this limits Ryouma’s appeal for players with more developed boxes, but this shouldn’t overshadow the fact that he has a really great kit—for anyone who’s yet to commit to an AoE Arts unit, especially, Ryouma won’t disappoint.

Overall: 10/10
Single-Target DPS: 7/10
AoE DPS: 10/10
Survivability: 6/10
Offensive Utility: 6/10
Defensive Utility: 6/10
Farming Usefulness: 10/10
Relationship Dynamics: 10/10