Rabbit’s Reviews #325: Kriemhild (4* Berserker)

Introduction

So, Kriemhild is arguably the best ST unit in the game. Not the best ST SR—the best ST period, including SSRs. In optimal setups and with equal levels of investment, she outdamages Vlad, which is absolutely ridiculous. Vlad is a little easier to use, and all of Galatea’s use cases relative to Vlad apply here as well, but… they’re both SSRs, and Kriem is an SR. And she has her own advantages outside of damage, too! Kriem is only the second ST Berserker to have a 50% battery, and she has a targeted taunt effect tied to it for extra utility.

And did I mention she’s in contention for being the best ST unit in the game, as an SR? I kinda can’t believe Lasengle did this.

Servant Data

Berserker

QAABB (Saber)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

3

5

Attribute	Earth
Alignment	Chaotic Balanced

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

Max HP 9,922

HP Rank

Max ATK 10,400

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,733	Base HP	1,587
Max Atk	10,400	Max HP	9,922
Grail Atk	12,592	Grail HP	12,030

Traits

Card Hits	3	3	3	5	5
Per Hit	0.53%	0.53%	0.53%	0.53%	0.53%

	NP per Hit (%)	0.53%
NP when Attacked (%)	5%

	Star Absorption	19
Star Generation per Hit	4.9%

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x4 Berserker Piece
3	150,000	x10 Berserker Piece x15 Dragon Fang
4	500,000	x4 Berserker Monument x5 Tearstone of Blood x2 Dragon's Reverse Scale
Max	1,500,000	x10 Berserker Monument x4 Dragon's Reverse Scale x30 Ashes of Forgetfulness

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x4 Gem of Berserker
2 → 3	200,000	x10 Gem of Berserker
3 → 4	600,000	x4 Magic Gem of Berserker
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Magic Gem of Berserker x3 Tearstone of Blood
5 → 6	2,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Berserker x5 Tearstone of Blood
6 → 7	2,500,000	x10 Secret Gem of Berserker x10 Dragon Fang
7 → 8	5,000,000	x20 Dragon Fang x15 Stake of Wailing Night
8 → 9	6,000,000	x45 Stake of Wailing Night x60 Ashes of Forgetfulness
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x4 Gem of Berserker
2 → 3	200000	x10 Gem of Berserker
3 → 4	600000	x4 Magic Gem of Berserker
4 → 5	800000	x10 Magic Gem of Berserker x4 Ghost Lantern
5 → 6	2000000	x4 Secret Gem of Berserker x8 Ghost Lantern
6 → 7	2500000	x10 Secret Gem of Berserker x2 Cursed Beast Gallstone
7 → 8	5000000	x4 Cursed Beast Gallstone x2 Dragon's Reverse Scale
8 → 9	6000000	x6 Dragon's Reverse Scale x60 Small Bell of Absolution
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

NP Drain

Revenge Plot (Amok) B++

Decrease NP Gauge for all enemies by 1.
Decrease DEF for all enemies (3 turns).
Decrease Critical Rate for all enemies (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
DEF -	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Crit Rate -	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Revenge Plan is Kriem’s most basic skill, but basic does not mean bad. The skill drains all enemies’ NP gauges, which is nice for managing when damage arrives. It also reduces enemy crit rate by 20%, which, while not huge, is enough to stave off most natural crits. More importantly, the skill provides a sustained defense down effect, increasing Kriem’s overall damage output. Debuff resistance can negate this, which is disappointing, but overall it’s a small piece of Kriem’s damage output, so we can live with the occasional fail chance.

Arts/Buster Up

Murderous Retribution A

Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Increase own Buster Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Apply Special ATK [Chaotic] alignment to self (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%
Buster +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
Special ATK +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Mutual Slaughter is Kriem’s primary damage buff, increasing her Arts and (less importantly) Buster cards by 30% for the standard 3 turns. This skill is on a slightly longer cooldown than is normal for skills of this type, but in exchange it gets a very nice 50% power mod versus Chaotic enemies. This is about a third of the cast, and it takes Kriem’s already-excellent damage up to truly absurd levels. Kriem’s performance does drop quite a bit while her buffs are on cooldown, but her peak performance is so high that it largely makes up for it.

Taunt

Noblewoman's Love EX

Apply Target Focus to an ally (1 turn).
Increase own NP Gauge.
Restore own HP.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
NP +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
Heal +	1000	1200	1400	1600	1800	2000	2200	2400	2600	3000
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Noble Maiden’s Love is a fantastic skill. It’s a 50% battery, which on an ST Berserker is amazing in its own right. Not only does the battery make Kriemhild quite flexible in CQs, but it also makes her a good farming pick. With this plus Mana Loading, Kriem only needs 30% charge in order to NP. A Castoria Charisma or a 30% charge CE (such as from a non-MLB event CE) makes up the difference, so while Kriem isn’t quite as good for farming as, say, Hephaestion, she’s not far behind and works against all standard classes. This skill also gives a targeted taunt, and taunts are always excellent. Targeted taunt skills are fairly rare, and the effect is especially powerful here. This skill helps direct fire away from Kriem herself, and it can ensure an allied support dies when necessary in order to cycle through the team faster. This is particularly relevant to Kriem’s best support: George. I’ll go into this in more detail in the Usage Tips section, but to summarize here, George sets Dragon trait on enemies, which massively increases Kriem’s damage, but his taunt also makes him bulky enough to sometimes survive a turn of enemy attacks, even at level 1. Kriem’s taunt lets George skip using his own, ensuring he dies properly. Very nice. The skill also provides a self-heal to Kriem, which usually won’t matter, but it may be helpful on occasion. Excellent skill all-around.

Noble Phantasm

Balmung Kriemhild A+

Remove defensive buffs from a single enemy [Activates first].
Deal damage to a single enemy.
Deal 150% supereffective damage against [Dragon] enemies.

<Overcharge>

Decrease Arts Resist for a single enemy (3 turns).

Show Info/Video

Balmung Kriemhild

Wandering Mythic Sword - Holy Princess's Fall

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	A+	Anti-Personnel	5

Effect	Remove defensive buffs from a single enemy [Activates first]. Deal damage to a single enemy. Deal 150% supereffective damage against [Dragon] enemies.

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Buff Removal
Damage +	900%	1200%	1350%	1425%	1500%
Supereffective ATK +	150%	150%	150%	150%	150%

Overcharge Effect	Decrease Arts Resist for a single enemy (3 turns).

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Arts Res -	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%

Balmung Kriemhild is the biggest reason Kriem is as strong as she is. It’s an ST Arts NP that inflicts a 3-turn Arts resist down after dealing damage, which means Kriem’s damage and effective NP gain ramps, which is always great. More important, though, is that it gets supereffective damage against Dragon enemies. Kriem’s anti-Dragon damage is extremely high, and Dragon happens to be an easily-applied trait. SE modifiers stack multiplicatively with everything, so George amounts to more functional damage increase than even someone like Tamamo. Since George is free, Kriem gets to assume access to her SE modifier in any blitz context, which is what brings her damage up to supra-Vlad levels.

The NP also removes defensive buffs before dealing damage, just in case Kriem needed any other advantages, which means Kriem can run a better support in some cases where Vlad or Galatea would need Sherlock.

Usage Tips

Kriem is, at the end of the day, a standard Arts DPS, so she wants standard Arts DPS things, which mostly means double Castoria and some additional supports. In Kriem’s case, specifically, there’s basically never any reason not to bring George as one of those additional supports: he brings a ton of extra damage and is easy to kill off.

Kriem’s highest-damage team will be George/Kriem/Castoria/Crane/Reines/Castoria. On turn 1, you use Kriem’s battery, placing the taunt on George, use Castoria 1’s buffs, and plug her for Castoria 2, at which point you have George and Kriem NP. George gets killed by enemy cards. On turn 2, you have Castoria batteries to secure the loop, and Crane uses her skills and NP. One turn 3, Reines uses her buffs and batteries and then NPs to push damage further. This does require an Arts card each turn, but if all goes well it leads to extremely high damage.

If you do not have all of the optimal tools, Kriem can also scale down nicely to whatever you do happen to have. Crane is far from necessary—she just pushes damage a bit more—so you can drop her entirely without losing much. Assuming Black Grail, Reines brings a bit more damage in this team than Tamamo (largely due to diminishing returns in your Arts and NP damage brackets), but Tamamo works nearly as well if you draw the cards to loop. You can also use alternative Arts supports like Lanling, Sherlock, and Mozart. While cheaper or less conventional setups will result in less damage and lower consistency, Kriem will still generally outperform other teams at comparable levels of investment, just by virtue of how much weight that free 50% SE pulls. With that bonus plus the Berserker modifier, it’s like hitting for full class advantage—and then some—against pretty much everything.

It’s worth noting here that if you don’t have your own Castoria, you might want to spend a lore on your level 1 George to max his Mana Loading, just to ensure he has easy access to an NP with Kaleid or what-have-you.

Kriem really wants Black Grail if you have it. It’s the largest damage increase she can get and ideally she’s killing things quickly enough that the demerit is a non-factor. If you don’t have BG (or are planning to stall), Mark on a Smiling Face brings less damage but increases consistency a bit, and Painting Summer and Ocean Flyer provide starting NP gain along with general Arts benefits.

NP gain and consistency are the biggest weaknesses for Kriemhild, so NP gain CCs are a solid choice here. Aside from that, there’s not a lot she wants or needs. Debuff-removal CCs could be handy on occasion for consistency reasons, I suppose.

Grail Potential

Conclusion

As I said at the top of the review, Kriem is now arguably the best ST unit in the game. Vlad is more consistent—at least while he’s looping—and Galatea has some nice utility Kriem doesn’t get, but she’s absolutely in contention with both of them and has some notable advantages. Buster Servants will sometimes be better depending on health bar distributions, too, but Kriem’s damage output is high enough that she can win out in some cases even with crits factored in. She really is just that strong.

And she’s an SR! And not even a limited SR, at that, meaning next time we get a free SR ticket, she’ll likely be an option. She’s powerful enough that I honestly wonder if there’s a substantial meta shift in the pipeline: an interlude for Galatea, or a new Quick support that rockets MHXA ahead, or something similar. It’s a little weird for an SR to more-or-less match a pair of best-in-class SSRs.

But hey, we take those. Strong Servants are always fun.

Rabbit's Arbitrary Ratings

Overall: 10/10
Single-Target DPS: 10/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: 6/10
Defensive Utility: 6/10
Farming Usefulness: 8/10
Letting George Help: 10/10