MMM - Multi-faceted Magus of the Many-Faced Maiden Matures into Melancholic Makeover, MMM Manufacturer Mystified Meticulously on her Moniker (Anniversary 2023)

First on Aesc’s skill lineup is Fae of the Rain Clan. Right off the gates this skill is providing some impressive buffs, granting 10% NP gauge per turn and 10 Stars per turn for the team over 3 turns, but it goes even further beyond, providing Aesc with the all-important 50% gauge charger to give her NP a kick-start, on top of a 20% NP damage buff for the same durations as its other buffs.

It goes without saying having all this in one skill is pretty incredible, it represents 80% NP gauge charge for Aesc alone, 140% total if you include her allies, while also doubling up as an offensive steroid for her NP, and a source of stars to fuel her team’s crits. There isn’t much more you could ask for in a single skill, which is probably why it’s slapped with a fairly hefty 9-turn base cooldown. A worthy trade for how much this skill does compared to a typical 50% gauge charger, so it’s a very powerful tool, regardless.

Next up is Charisma of Adversity. As the name might suggest, it’s a Charisma clone, providing a 20% Attack buff to the team for 3 turns, but it also gets stronger in adversity. More specifically, it applies an array of additional 10% Attack buffs for the same duration that become active once the Servant’s HP hits a certain % threshold - at 99%, 75%, 50%, and 25% respectively. In other words, you get 20% Attack Up by default, but as your team’s HP drops lower, it increases up to 60%, which is naturally a pretty significant damage boost.

And that’s not all, either. If you’re simply too good or loaded up on healing or defensive buffs alike, resulting in a team at full HP, then you get a consolation prize of a 3-turn, 10-star per turn buff for each turn your team is at full HP. In other words, if you go undamaged for 3 straight turns, Aesc ends up stacking up 30 stars per turn in buffs for free.

Practically speaking, though, it’s better to gain the damage boost from being injured. With synergistic tools like Koyanskaya’s team HP loss from her gauge charge, or Black Grail, it isn’t too hard to lose HP enough to activate the earlier thresholds, even if you’re not taking any damage from the enemy.

In practice, this means at minimum if you’re building Aesc’s composition right she’s getting a 30% Attack Up buff for the team. In difficult content it becomes much more effective, frequently getting the 40-60% buff range as damage is taken over a fight, and I’ll say with Aesc’s third skill, keeping the whole team in the fight at low HP is pretty easy.

The base cooldown for this skill, despite its surprising complexity, is 7 turns, same as almost every other Charisma buff, so it comes back up pretty fast.

Last and, well, Last for Aesc’s skill lineup is Last Resort. This skill is certainly a wild one so I’ll break down the unique cooldown mechanics this skill has first before talking about the effects:

Regardless of its skill level, this skill starts on cooldown with 5 turns remaining at the start of a battle. While this sounds like a colossal detriment, it’s more of a compensation mechanic for the power of the skill, and how Aesc can reduce its cooldown. Her NP has a secondary effect that reduces the cooldown of this skill (and this skill only) by 1 turn, scaling up by an additional 1 turn for each level of Overcharge. In other words, if you NP with Aesc with 400% Overcharge on turn 1, this skill will come off cooldown on turn 2.

Or you can like, double Koyanskaya buff her then use the Atlas Mystic Code skill CD reduction on her or something, there’s options.

Point being, it can’t be used immediately, and a significant part of Aesc’s kit is balanced around the way this skill comes with a huge cooldown burden that is lessened as she NP’s more. Understood?

Good. The reason why this skill has all these finicky mechanics and drawbacks to it is because it’s by far the most powerful skill released in the game. Simply the first effect, providing a whopping 50% gauge charge to the whole team, is nigh-unprecedented, at least at the level of convenience this skill represents (before you put on your glasses and acne and mention Salome to me). It’s even more absurd when you realize it’s one of those self-fuelling engines - providing NP gauge to supports like Reines, Tamamo, Merlin, or Proto Merlin means Aesc gets more gauge charge and NP Overcharge, this means she NP’s more often and with better Overcharge, which means she uses this skill more often, and so on…

And that’s not even the sole effect! This skill also provides a pretty notable 30% NP Strength Up buff for the team over 3 turns, as well as a 1-time, 3k HP Guts buff for the same duration. The damage boost alone is great, but a team Guts buff that you can theoretically cycle through every 4-5 turns if you manage your team well not only vastly improves the party’s survivability, but also synergizes with her Charisma skill, providing a buffer to reach the maximum damage threshold safely (since pretty much every level 80+ Servant will have at least 12k HP, putting them at the 25% mark when on 3k HP).

The base cooldown of this skill being a hefty 12 might seem insanely harsh, but with the mechanics surrounding it, having it on a 10-turn cooldown at max level is incredibly short relatively speaking - Simply performing a Reines -> Aesc NP chain on the turn you use this skill will mean it’s on a 6-turn cooldown at the start of the next turn, which can then be reduced further by more NP usage or team support. If it were any lower it’d be actually broken, rather than borderline broken.