MMM - Writer Regretfully Realizes Previous Magazine's Title Would Be More Appropriate For This One, Tosses Thesaurus (Summer 2023 Part 2)

First in the skill lineup is Grave of the Queen. This skill is essentially Golden Rule (Body) retrained, with the same Debuff Immunity effect (except 1-time, 3 turns), the same healing over 3 turns, and most importantly, 20% NP gauge for the user each turn for 3 turns. As an AOE Servant Knocknarea naturally has capability for farming, so having a (practically) 40% gauge charge built into her kit for farming is very handy.

But there’s also a secondary effect to this skill, providing a 30% NP gauge charge to all allies with the My Fair Soldier status. This is something Knocknarea can apply to her allies with her own kit, as we’ll see in a moment, so the only notable thing to say about it at this point is Knocknarea can’t benefit from this gauge charge herself unless she’s paired with a second Knocknarea as a support (which kind of defeats the point, as you’ll see soon).

Regardless this is a solid gauge charging skill with bonus utility, so it’s bound to have its value. The 8-turn base cooldown is fair considering its capability for team gauge charging, too.

Next is Queen’s Contract. This is a pretty powerful team support buff, providing a significant 20% NP Damage Up buff to all allies for 3 turns, and for allies excluding Knocknarea herself, a monstrous 50% Attack up buff and 30% Defence up buff for the same duration.

The issue being, those secondary buffs are tied to the My Fair Soldier status. While it enables your allies to benefit from the huge buffs tied to this skill and Knocknarea’s gauge charger from her first skill, it’s also a 3-turn Skill Seal to those affected. And as it’s a demerit applied by an ally, you can’t resist the skill seal part, or remove it without also losing the benefits of Knocknarea’s buffs.

So to benefit from this skill and the prior one in full, you’d need to use all of your other Servants’ skills immediately before locking them down with Knocknarea’s buffs, which isn’t the end of the world, but in some teams can be impractical, especially for difficult content, rather than farming.

The supportive side covered, this is still an offensive buff for Knocknarea’s NP, so it has benefits besides potentially sabotaging the other 66% of the frontline. And hey, it’s an enabler for a pretty powerful gauge charge for the team, so frankly it’s solid, if finicky to use. The cooldown conveniently lines up with her prior skill at 8-turns base, too.

No, I’m afraid Knocknarea isn’t a fan of hyper-difficult pixel platformers, VVV is short for Violence Violin Voltage, and as the name might suggest, it’s pain upon the eardrums.

This skill acts as Knocknarea’s 3-turn card booster, providing a 20% Arts boost for the duration, on top of a 60% chance to Stun all enemies, and a 20% Defence down debuff to them for 3 turns, if that weren’t enough.

Those effects make for a pretty good skill, AOE Stun is rare and fairly powerful in difficult content, especially if you can find means to increase the success rate, while the Arts booster and def down debuff provide a neat pair of offensive steroids to further bolster her NP damage. The issue is this skill comes with a tiny downside, sealing use of Arts cards from all allies the turn you use it, except Knocknarea herself and Artoria Caster (the original). While this does make for some annoying situations where you can’t, say, use a ProtoMerlin or Reines NP on the same turn Knocknarea drops this skill, at the very least it excludes the most important Servant in the game from its flaws.

…maybe it’s because Castoria is tone-deaf? Who knows.

In any case, the drawback, like others in Knocknarea’s kit, looks harsh on paper but doesn’t end up that impactful in practice, especially since the odds of using it on the same turn you want to use an Arts card/NP from someone who isn’t Knocknarea herself or Castoria is very low. The cooldown, like all her other skills, sits at 8 turns base, meaning she can align her buff windows very easily.

First on the skill lineup is Faerie Pack. This skill is Melusine’s standard 3-turn card buffing skill, providing her with 30% Arts Up for 3 turns, but it’s also something of a grab bag, providing a variety of other benefits. On Melusine herself, it also provides her with a neat 30% Critical Damage and anti-Chaotic alignment effective damage buff for 3 turns.

While it’s natural to expect critical-focused buffs on Melusine given her original form’s kit, the anti-Chaotic buff is more out of left field. Chaotic is the most common on the Law-Chaos alignment axis, allowing Melusine to hit a good number of Servants in the game for effective damage, as well as a fair few NPC-only Servant bosses. Turns out the bad guys are often chaotic.

The last and more left-field portion of this skill is a 1k damage cut for the team except Melusine herself over 3 turns. So far as defensive support goes it isn’t too bad, reducing the damage taken from regular attacks significantly and ensuring that Melusine’s support lineup are less likely to drop dead from stray hits. It’s just something of a neat bonus on top of what is otherwise an entirely-selfish buff skill, and a good one at that.

The 8-turn base cooldown on this skill is a little high, but probably fair given the potency of all the sum of its parts.

Next up is Blue Sky Arms Mastery. Much like many of the other Servants’ kits this Summer, this is a clear mirror to OG Melusine’s critical-focused skill 2. At the baseline, this provides a significant Star Weight buff to Melusine for 3 turns, as well as a 10 Star per turn buff for the same duration, and a 10-star bomb on use. Sounds fairly underwhelming by itself, no?

Well, in her favoured terrain, it powers up significantly, providing an additional 20 stars to both the bomb and the number of stars gained per turn, meaning you essentially get 30 stars for 4 turns straight instead of the 10 you receive normally. The only issue is the terrain in question is Near Water and In the Air, both field traits which aren’t particularly common. In the Summer event you can get this bonus basically in every map, but typical content doesn’t happen to occur near a pond, and the air-focused field trait is even rarer, being limited to whenever we fight atop the Storm Border and similar niche scenarios.

(Though I must admit, having those bonuses for the Cernunnos and Albion fights in LB6 is very fitting.)

So while it’s a useful tool to set up her critical damage game and maybe compensate for her poor NP gain with good old fashioned critical NP gain bonus, it’s not a particularly strong skill lest you meet the right requirements. The 7-turn base cooldown on this skill is more or less what you’d hope for its power.

Oh Melusine, Melusine. You really had me going for a second. Show up in a new class, with poor NP gain, a couple of solid but not-crazy skills and make me think you’re going to be terrible. Girl still has those Ray Horizon genes in her, I see.

Blue Horizon is Melusine’s gauge charger skill providing an absurd 80% gauge charge at max level, as well as 30% NP Strength up for 3 turns, and a 2-hit Invincible buff for the same duration.

Gauge chargers in the range of 80-100% are already absurd, as they provide a more or less immediate NP without any investment, but usually Servants with such gauge chargers are Buster Servants who need that level of gauge charger to compensate for their lack of NP refund.

Ruler Melusine has no such weakness, she’s an Arts AOE Servant. She is the meta.

Naturally, this is an insane skill, allowing her to farm incredibly easily just by virtue of having a big gauge charger, but the offensive buff and hit-based Invincibility are also incredibly handy to have, improving her damage output and providing a good defensive tool for her to depend on.

And the crazy thing is this is basically a nerfed version of her OG form’s skill, with a lesser gauge charge and longer base cooldown, at 8 turns. I suppose the gauge charger being re-usable is kind of an insane perk in drawn-out fights, but regardless this skill basically carries her kit on its own.

First for the skill lineup is Protector Knight Alliance. This is mostly a selfish offensive buff skill, providing +30% Attack Up and +50% Critical Damage Up to Barghest herself for 3 turns. But on top of that, she also gains a curious additional effect that heals the team for 500 HP whenever she lands an attack for 3 turns. While interesting, it’s not a particularly powerful bonus effect, so this skill mostly ends up as a straightforward offensive buff.

Or it would be, if not for its secret effects. If you’re a F2P king and are running a 3* or lower Servant alongside Barghest, she gets bonus effects - a further 20% to her Attack buff and a 10 stars per turn buff for 3 turns. While this is a pretty cute bonus effect to get if relevant, the unfortunate truth is it’s usually not optimal, as a small boost to her Attack buff and bonus stars doesn’t really gulf the gap between the boosts Hans, Paracelsus or Ascelpius can provide compared to a titan like Castoria or Reines can do for an offensive Servant. Convenient when it comes up, but not really a practical boost.

So fundamentally this is a solid Attack and Critical Damage buff with some bonus team healing tied to it. Cute, but not overwhelmingly strong, and certainly not deserving of an 8-turn base cooldown.

Next up is Queen Keeper. This skill is a little unconventional, as while it acts as Barghest’s gauge charger, providing her with 30% gauge, it’s primarily a supportive skill, providing 1-turn Invincibility, 1-turn skill cooldown reduction, and a heal to all her allies, except herself.

The gauge charger is naturally great to have around, but the supportive perks are interesting if a little unwieldy. Usually the number one thing you want to protect in a piece of difficult content is the damage dealer, not the supports, so Barghest protecting the team while leaving herself high and dry is certainly nice, but a little counter-intuitive. Then again the fact it’s tied to her gauge charger, so you basically want to pop it as soon as it’s off cooldown.

It’s certainly a supportive tool I appreciate, but I’m worried Barghest is spreading herself a little too thin, and with effects that won’t meld well when she tries to focus hard on dishing out damage instead of anything else.

The 9-turn base cooldown on this skill isn’t very helpful either, though I’ll admit the power behind it is pretty high, so it’s probably fair.

Keeping on theme with weird skills, Barghest’s 3rd one is Strike Weather. The effects of this skill are actually quite few, providing a 30% NP Damage Up buff to Barghest herself for 3 turns, as well as giving her the Super Giant trait, which is functionally just flavour with more drawbacks than benefits.

The cool part of this skill is that it has a toggle on use, allowing you to either keep Barghest’s Arts NP as an AOE, or change it to single-target. The damage modifier on the NP changes with the type, so essentially it provides her with a modular NP that can either be used for AOE or ST depending on one’s needs.

Though so far as actual direct tangible direct benefits go, that NP Damage buff is all you get, which is a little sad. Maybe after how defining OG Melusine’s Ray Horizon was they tried to avoid making the skill completely bonkers, but regardless it means her NP isn’t getting the greatest offensive buffs backing it from her skills alone. At least this skill has a reasonable 7-turn base cooldown, allowing you to alter Barghest’s NP type to-and-fro regularly.

First on the skill lineup is Priestunnos☆Cerpriestess. Yes, you do have to vocalise the star when you say it, or else Cernunnos will curse you for a millenia. I’d call this a Charisma clone, but frankly it has some crazy effects that make it far too distinct for that.

This skill provides a 20% Attack and Defence Up buff to the team for 3 turns, but the main appeal is the other two effects - an effect that extends the duration of Regeneration effects on allies (Whether HP, Critical Stars, or NP gauge) by 3 turns, and extends the duration of Burn/Curse/Poison debuffs on the enemy for 3 turns.

While naturally the former is the more potent, being able to essentially produce extra NP gauge out of thin air by extending the buffs on a Merlin or ProtoMerlin NP, or Aesc’s NP gauge charge skill, and so on, you shouldn’t dismiss the potential uses of the latter, either. One of the issues that DoT-focused offensive Servants face is their DoTs run out of duration while an amplification effect is still active, essentially tapering off the damage when it has the potential to be more potent.

Taking Chiyome as an example, if you extend the duration of her Curse debuffs after performing a NP Brave chain, then NP again within 3 turns, the damage from the DoT’s is essentially doubled from 16.5k to 28.5k over their duration. Might seem like a small benefit, but that’s a conservative example, and even the small amounts of damage can add up.

Point being, this skill is far more than some simple buffs to the team, improving the potency of the whole party’s kits if you run her in the right lineups. No good skill goes unpunished, though, as this skill is slapped with a harsh 9-turn base cooldown.

Next on the lineup is Successor of the Rain clan. This is a good old-fashioned “Pick one enemy and make them hate their life” skill, providing a variety of pretty harsh debuffs to a targeted enemy - Removing all their buffs, Reducing their debuff resistance and critical rate by 30% for 3 turns, and even slapping the ProtoMerlin delayed gauge reduction debuff on them for 2 turns (Meaning they don’t generate any NP gauge for 2 turns).

And that’s not all! This skill also charges Baobhan’s gauge by 30% on use. In fact, I probably should’ve led with that, but honestly it feels like an afterthought. As always, having a gauge charger is very good, but generally the perks of this skill are so nice for difficult content they almost feel more important. Buff removal has progressively lost its glimmer as the game begins to stray from the first few years of GilFest involving removable buff stacking that basically made Amakusa your best friend, but the other effects are still rather handy, and it’s not like Buff removal doesn’t have its place here and there. Helps that it’s on a very reasonable 8-turn base cooldown, making it easy to use with reckless abandon.

Rounding everything off we have Priestunnos Hammer. Please respect the slumbering God lest you wish to be bonked.

This skill is a fairly basic 20% NP Damage Up for the team over 3 turns, as well as a 15-star bomb, but it gains bonus effects which apply to any ally with Wrath of the Enshrined God - an extra 20% NP Damage Up for the same duration, and a spicy bonus 20% NP gauge.

The question with this skill is how easy it is to reap the bonus effects. In difficult content you’ll be taking damage at some point with how long fights go on, so getting the bonus is never in question, but for farming things are a little more difficult, as ideally the enemy won’t ever be hitting you.

…and unfortunately there’s no real way to circumvent that. I even dumped 90 Quartz into the gacha to pull Baobhan and test it with a Black Grail, but it seems self-inflicted damage doesn’t count for her passive. Shame.

In any case, it’s a potent buff to be used in difficult content, but otherwise the potency of this skill will feel pretty mediocre. With an 8-turn base cooldown you can benefit from the team gauge fairly often if it becomes applicable, but it’s still very much dependent on the situation.