Rabbit’s Reviews #357: Locusta (4* Assassin)

Introduction

Curiously, among the servants introduced in the Arcade collab is a character who’s fully new, rather than someone who was added to Arcade first. Locusta’s an odd ST Arts Assassin built around long fights against single targets. We have plenty of strong ST Arts Assassins—Shiki, Li, Izou, the Hassans, and so on—so there’s no real need for a new one, but Locusta’s unique gimmick gives her some distinct strengths in longer fights, and—more importantly—it makes her interesting and potentially fun to use. Nothing wrong with that.

Servant Data

Assassin

QAAAB (Caster)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

5

4

Attribute	Human
Alignment	Chaotic Balanced

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

Max HP 10,971

HP Rank

Max ATK 8,890

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,481	Base HP	1,755
Max Atk	8,890	Max HP	10,971
Grail Atk	10,764	Grail HP	13,302

Traits

Card Hits	4	3	3	5	4
Per Hit	0.47%	0.47%	0.47%	0.47%	0.47%

	NP per Hit (%)	0.47%
NP when Attacked (%)	4%

	Star Absorption	104
Star Generation per Hit	24.2%

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x4 Assassin Piece
3	150,000	x10 Assassin Piece x8 Seed of Yggdrasil
4	500,000	x4 Assassin Monument x20 Deadly Poisonous Needle x4 Forbidden Page
Max	1,500,000	x10 Assassin Monument x8 Forbidden Page x6 Lamp of Evil-Sealing

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x4 Gem of Assassin
2 → 3	200,000	x10 Gem of Assassin
3 → 4	600,000	x4 Magic Gem of Assassin
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Magic Gem of Assassin x10 Deadly Poisonous Needle
5 → 6	2,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Assassin x20 Deadly Poisonous Needle
6 → 7	2,500,000	x10 Secret Gem of Assassin x5 Seed of Yggdrasil
7 → 8	5,000,000	x10 Seed of Yggdrasil x4 Phoenix Feather
8 → 9	6,000,000	x12 Phoenix Feather x8 Egg of Truth
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x4 Gem of Assassin
2 → 3	200000	x10 Gem of Assassin
3 → 4	600000	x4 Magic Gem of Assassin
4 → 5	800000	x10 Magic Gem of Assassin x4 Forbidden Page
5 → 6	2000000	x4 Secret Gem of Assassin x8 Forbidden Page
6 → 7	2500000	x10 Secret Gem of Assassin x3 Lamp of Evil-Sealing
7 → 8	5000000	x5 Lamp of Evil-Sealing x15 Mystic Spinal Fluid
8 → 9	6000000	x45 Mystic Spinal Fluid x60 Obsidian Knife
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Poison Up

Poison Mixing A+

Inflict Poison on all enemies (5 turns).
Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Increase own NP Gain (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Poison Dmg	500	550	600	650	700	750	800	850	900	1000
Arts +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
NP Gain +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Poison Mixing is a fairly standard—but solid—performance buff, increasing Locusta’s Arts performance and NP gain. The skill also inflicts an AoE poison for 5 turns, which would normally just be flavor, but it’s functionally an additional damage buff here due to Locusta’s NP, which deals supereffective damage to poisoned targets. Locusta’s NP also increases the effectiveness of poison debuffs, making the damage-over-time effect slightly more impactful than it would normally be. All-in-all, this is a simple skill that does the things Locusta needs it to.

Guts

Robust Health (Poison) A

Apply Guts to self (1 time, 3 turns).
Apply Damage Cut to self (3 turns).
Apply [Convert Poison damage to HP Recovery] to self (5 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Revives with HP	1000	1100	1200	1300	1400	1500	1600	1700	1800	2000
Damage Cut -	300	320	340	360	380	400	420	440	460	500
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Robust Health is an odd skill. It’s a modest Guts and Damage Cut, both of which are nice but not remarkable. More interestingly, it converts poison damage on Locusta to healing. Usually, this just means 1000 healing passively each turn, thanks to Locusta’s third skill, though it can potentially become more in poison-centric fights. This can be a bit awkward in Castoria teams, since Castoria will clear the poison effects, but if you’re spamming Castoria’s NP you hopefully don’t need the self-healing anyway.

Start Np

Cooking (Mushroom) B

Increase NP Gauge for all allies.
Apply effect to self (3 times, 3 turns): Inflict Poison when normal attacking (3 turns, 500 dmg/turn).
Inflict Poison on self (5 turns, 1000 dmg/turn) [Demerit].

Show Info

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

Cooking is a nice, if fairly restrained, skill. It charges the whole team’s NP gauges by 20%, which is always nice on a DPS for using support NPs more reliably, and it lets Locusta inflict poison up to three times with her normal attacks. Each poison stack translates to an extra 15% NP damage for Locusta, letting her damage scale nicely if you’re intentional about using her cards. The skill also poisons Locusta, which becomes passive healing thanks to her second skill. All of these things are nice for Locusta, but none of them are so powerful as to be especially remarkable. With higher values, they might be, but as-is they’re just “fair.” There’s nothing wrong with “fair,” but it doesn’t make for the most exciting skill.

Noble Phantasm

Finis Fungus C+

Inflict Poison on a single enemy (1 turn, 500 dmg/turn) [Activates first]
Deal damage to a single enemy.
Deal supereffective damage of 15% per [Poison] stack on the enemy (Max 10 stacks, up to 150%).
Inflict Poison Damage Up by 100% on a single enemy (5 turns).

<Overcharge>

Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first].

Show Info/Video

Finis Fungus

Mushrooms, My Sacred Offering to the Gods

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	C+	Anti-Personnel/Anti-Army	4

Effect	Inflict Poison on a single enemy (1 turn, 500 dmg/turn) [Activates first] Deal damage to a single enemy. Deal supereffective damage of 15% per [Poison] stack on the enemy (Max 10 stacks, up to 150%). Inflict Poison Damage Up by 100% on a single enemy (5 turns).

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Poison	500	500	500	500	500
Damage +	900%	1200%	1350%	1425%	1500%
Supereffective ATK +	15%	15%	15%	15%	15%
Poison Damage +	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%

Overcharge Effect	Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first].

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

Finis Fungus is the core of Locusta’s kit. It inflicts poison, gives Locusta a small Arts buff, and then deals increased damage for every poison stack on the enemy. This should have two stacks minimum in most cases—one from itself, and one from Locusta’s first skill—which gives Locusta pretty normal ST damage, with the SE damage offsetting her low steroids. Over multiple turns, though, Locusta’s ability to repeatedly stack poison lets her damage ramp substantially, and most of her poison effects last long enough that her damage will remain decently high even once her buffs have worn off, making her a good pick for longer fights.

Usage Tips

Grail Potential

Conclusion

Locusta is a CQ unit with a cool gimmick, but she’s not especially powerful or unique outside of the implications of her gimmick. As SR units go, that’s not a bad place to be—there’s nothing really wrong with her, even if she’s completely unnecessary. She’ll work pretty well in the contexts in which she’s meant to be used, and she’s easy enough to ignore otherwise.

Rabbit's Arbitrary Ratings

Overall: 7/10
Single-Target DPS: 7/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: 3/10
Defensive Utility: 3/10
Farming Usefulness: 3/10
Mushrooms: 10/10