MMM - Macho Mahabharatan Men-At-Arms March in Mainframe Microcosm, Maintained by Many Magi with Matching Mugs (Ordeal Call 1)

As a self-proclaimed Indian mythology fanboy, I can assure you I’m very stoked to have another figure from its mythos added, especially one from the Mahabharata who isn’t just going to be yelling “Karna! Arjuna!” all the time.

…Okay, maybe he’ll be shouting Karna’s name a lot. Honestly there were a billion individual skirmishes in the Mahabharata and Bhima and Karna fought directly a lot, usually resulting in Bhima’s loss. And the death of one of his sons to Karna.

As much as I love the guy, maybe Karna deserves a little hate.

…also a random fun fact, but Bhima’s eyebrows are pointed and pretty bushy because he’s directly described as having his eyebrows converge in a visible way when he’s thinking hard and creasing his forehead as a result.

As an SSR Lancer, Bhima is joining the ranks of a historically well-statted class with a good mix of offense and durability both. Thankfully, he comes with one of, if not arguably the best, statline in his class, packing the 2nd highest Attack losing by only 30 points to his countrywoman Vritra, and packing the 4th worst HP stat in exchange, more than a worthy tradeoff, and one demonstrating his high stat total.

(It’s pretty fair considering his lore parameters are pretty stacked, his physical parameters are literally better than Heracles with Madness Enhancement backing him, and his Mana/Luck aren’t too shabby either. Bhima is described as a physical juggernaut who continually fought on par with similar monsters like Karna and Ashwatthama for good reason.)

With that kind of statline, Bhima doesn’t need anything too crazy for passives, and it more or less pans out that way. His Magic Resistance is pretty typical for a Lancer, and his Divinity brings with it a slight damage boost and host of weaknesses, but he also has a unique passive in Naga’s Poisoned Fang, providing immunity to Poison.

While Poison is largely the rarest of the three DoT debuffs out there, at least when appearing in a meaningful capacity, any kind of way to no-sell a type of debuff is useful, so I won’t disparage it too much.

With a base NP gain of 0.72% and a BBAQQ card deck, Bhima to begin with isn’t going to break any records for NP gain, simply for lacking a solid quantity of Arts cards. His 3-hit Arts card puts out a typical 2.16 base Arts gain, very normal for a Servant of his card deck, but he compensates reasonably elsewhere. His 4-hit Quicks are solid on the NP gain front, and his 5-hit Extra provides an ample sum of gauge whenever it’s relevant.

On the flipside, his stargen is decent. The high hitcounts on his Quicks goes a long way to provide stars for himself, as does the moderate hitcounts on his other cards. Nothing really absurd in that area overall, so he isn’t going to be spewing critical stars for the team to abuse, but he isn’t half bad in that area.

Overall, Bhima has very typical NP gain for a servant of his card deck, being less than most Servants but not weak enough to be a hindrance. Likewise, his stargen isn’t anything special, but is more than enough to ensure he can provide stars for his own use should the opportunity call for it.

So how is Bhima overall? Well, on the one hand he certainly fights with the ferocity of an army, multiple of them, even:

However, he also might lack the strength to lift something as little as a monkey’s tail:

Bhima for all intents and purposes is a very archetypical “Bring me to a tough fight and let me punch the shit out of the boss” type of Servant. Capability to play through common boss mechanics, high and reasonably consistent damage output, the works.

The issue for him to overcome is he’s not really alone in that niche by a long shot, and unlike farming, unless you like to over-optimize, you don’t need many Servants under that banner to have a solid shot at crushing the game’s difficult content. He’s certainly a fine addition if you need more Servants that fill that sort of role, but he doesn’t break any new boundaries for the game, which means he’s a little difficult to truly find a home for.

His lack of affinity for farming (not to say he can’t loop consistently, but there’s pretty much no reason to use him for ST farming purposes) on top of that certainly makes him more awkward to use.

I’ll just lay my cards on the table, I’m on team Kauravas, not Pandavas. The only Indian Lancer in my heart is Karna (and Vritra, I suppose). That isn’t influencing my opinion here at all, I promise, but it does give me a good excuse to be lukewarm on Bhima for comedic effect.

I have to say, maybe it’s Fate’s own more…generous interpretation of Karna, but whenever I read up on the Mahabharata it never really seems like Duryodhana is the evil king he’s meant to be so far as the narrative goes.

He’s steadfastly loyal to his friends and family, has honor as a warrior, and does some legendary bro moves in the mythical cycle, such as making Karna king of Anga on the spot so he can compete with Arjuna at an archery contest without dishonour, while simultaneously exalting the value of skill and bravery over birthright for warriors.

And sure, the whole Draupadi situation was kind of a dick move, but it’s kind of Yudhishthira’s fault for literally gambling away his entire kingdom, wealth, and family in a dice game. I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t be allowed to do that last two, but heck, he did it.

So don’t listen to the Pandava propaganda, my brethren! The Kauravas are just under the eyes of the gods! Except maybe Indra, fuck Indra.

As an SR Berserker, Duryo is naturally pretty effective offensively, but within his own class he doesn’t scale up so well. With the 4th worst Attack stat and 2nd best HP stat, he’s built bulky, which unfortunately doesn’t translate to much with his class’s already-low HP stats and inherent weak defenses. At least he isn’t suffering too much for that increased bulk - his Attack may not be impressive, but it’s still good for an SR’s standard, especially with the offensive perks of his class factored in.

Duryo’s passive lineup is…not much of a lineup. With only E- Madness Enhancement to his name, you have to ask why he even can be summoned as a Berserker. I guess his habit for intense envy could be seen as madness? In any case, he has pretty much nothing to his name for passives, which isn’t great, but hardly the worst flaw a Servant could pack.

He’ll just have to compensate with the rest of his kit, no?

Allow me to take a large gulp of water in a theatrical fashion before looking at Duryo’s base NP gain…

You think I can properly vocalize a spit-take in text form? I got the point across regardless. With 2 3-hit Arts cards and 0.32% base NP gain, Duryo’s Arts gain comes out to an abysmal 0.96, sitting lower than the all-time icon of awful Arts NP gain, Zerkerlot, and other similar hits.

As you might expect, this gimps all his other cards’ NP gain to absolutely abysmal levels, to the point that even his 5-hit Quick is below average on NP gain. And damn if that isn’t impressive.

Of course, the reason he’s hurt in such a manner is because of his Arts AOE NP that would be really broken in terms of refund if he had a reasonable base NP gain. I’ll get onto that in a bit, but regardless his regular card NP gain is some of the worst in the game.

At least Duryo isn’t too bad on the stargen front. His aforementioned 5-hit Quick card provides a solid quantity of stars, and his decent hitcounts across the board means he’s not awful for stargen all things considered. In the grand scheme of things, though, it won’t compensate much for his weakness in NP gain.

So how is Duryodhana overall? On the one hand, he’s ambitious and keen in equal measure, a king who would never betray his sworn brothers-in-arms:

However, he is also, y’know, the whole uh, cum jar thing. Also apparently he’s meant to be the bad guy, I’m told:

With a very capable farming profile that’s optimized towards refund and damage, and in the class that compliments it perfectly, Duryodhana is more or less the closest to a perfect budget farmer you would see in FGO, only requiring the niggling presence of a Castoria on your account. He is more or less miniature Summer Ibuki, which is a very good place to be in.

Now I’m well aware I have made my bias clear in my uh, numerous affirmations of my loyalty to Duryodhana’s kingship, but let me be clear - I am not throwing my seal of approval on him and not Bhima because of my personal biases. I am doing it because he’s simply extremely good and my personal biases. Capiche?

Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation.

I absolutely promise you I was on pace to release the MMM shortly after the new story chapter came out, but oh no, the tragedy! Durga was added by surprise to the gacha, so now I suppose I’ll have to take my time to include her in the same issue.

Truly a shame that. My convenient excuses for procrastination get better by the day.

And with that said…where the heck is Medusa Saber? Ah well, I’ll settle for this Sakuraface as another fine addition to my collection.

Boy, and I thought Superhuman Orion was over-statted for an Archer. With her obscene lore parameters throwing around “EX”’s like nobody’s business, it’s no surprise Durga’s gameplay bases reflect it. With the highest Attack stat of any Archer and somehow still having the tied 5th worst HP in spite of it (next to Arjuna, which is rather cute), Durga kicks off with a very impressive baseline to work from.

It doesn’t stop there, either. Following the tradition of Sakurafaces tending to have a billion passives, she’s packing 5 here, so I’ll break them down with the familiar ones first. Magic Resistance in combination with Core of the Goddess provides Durga with a very high baseline debuff resistance, meaning almost half of debuffs will simply miss her on the spot. She’s also packing high-ranking Riding, giving a modest boost to her Quick cards, and the Archer class staple of Independent Action, providing a minute boost to her critical damage.

Those familiar passives are rounded off by Durga’s unique passive, Divine Gift of Arms. Considering the fact she’s depicted wielding the weapon of every Hindu god in myth, I don’t doubt the high ranking on this thing. It provides her with a significant 10% boost to her Arts cards and Critical Damage respectively, giving her, on top of her already-amazing baseline offense, a further boost to her primary card type and critical damage, as an Archer.

Yeah, she’s already looking pretty superb from this alone.

Unfortunately, some Servants can’t go a day without being shot in the kneecaps by Lasengle’s NP gain police. With a base NP gain of 0.3% and 4-hit Arts cards, Durga’s base Arts gain comes out to 1.32 after her passive Arts booster is accounted for. A fair bit below average, her NP gain elsewhere is similarly not good, despite her Buster, Quick, and Extra cards having high hitcounts.

Simply put, while her Arts card isn’t unusable, her regular card NP gain is something of a bust, but it’s a sin Durga simply has to bear - she’s hit here because if her NP gain were any better, her farming would be completely incomprehensibly good. I’ll get onto that later, but fundamentally, her poor NP gain here, similar to Duryodhana, is just a balancing mechanism.

For stargen, though, she’s in a very good spot. With every one of her cards in her BAAQQ card deck being 4 hits or higher, she produces a solid amount of stars regardless of the chain she forms, though obviously her focus on Arts cards means she fundamentally isn’t going to be producing stars over picking her primary card type. It means she can provide herself with a solid amount of critical stars to fuel her own critical damage output, and compensate for her lesser NP gain at the same time.

So how is Durga overall? One point for consideration, she’s the incarnate of destruction and I have to hand it to her, she’s really good at it:

All I can say is boy, did the Archer class need someone like Durga. With only Summer Jeanne as competition for her niche and card type, in general we were lacking for Arts farmers in her class, then again good ones. She naturally knocks it out of the park, with the kind of farming profile you’d expect from a top-tier Servant, with ultimately her only flaw being, ironically, her class if anything.

She might not have any tools that can go crazy in content outside of farming, like huge critical damage buffs or particularly notable utility tools, but she’s well-rounded on the whole, with capability to apply her strengths across multiple forms of content.

An incredibly welcome addition to the game on the whole, and one you should certainly consider for your roster, doubly so if you, like me, don’t really have a solid Archer farming option. I’ve had to depend on Zenobia until now, and she’s well, solid, but not capable on the same level Durga is.

Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation.