MMM - Dapper Dons Don Delectable Dress, Deserving Distaste for Directing Disastrous Despair (Ordeal Call 2 Gacha 2)

While I’m certain the plot wheels of Ordeal Call 2 provide sufficient justification for it, there’s still something comedic about giving Dantes a new outfit and artist, calling him by another name, then making him another SSR Avenger. It comes with a whole new set of gameplay stats to unravel, but in terms of character…it’s basically still Dantes.

…his art is impossibly cool, though.

As an SSR Avenger, the Count naturally has a superb offensive profile regardless of how he stacks up with his competitors. With that said, he immediately joins with the same attack stat as Marie Alter, making him the tied 3rd best Avenger offensively, albeit with a slightly worse HP stat, giving him the 4th worst HP of the SSR Avengers.

His offensive might is solid and that’s ultimately what matters most for him, so he’s still in a good position. In addition to that, he’s packing the standard Avenger passives, getting increased defensive NP gain, 3% NP gauge per turn, and a fairly hefty 12% Critical Damage buff from Oblivion Correction EX. Regardless of the fact that every other Avenger also gets these passives, they’re excellent boosts to his performance and especially NP gain.

Speaking of NP gain, the Count comes to us with some sweet ointment to my Hassan-wounded soul in terms of base NP gain. With a base NP gain of 0.72% and a 3-hit Arts card, the Count’s base Arts gain is 2.16, more or less dead on average for a BBAQQ card deck. While that Arts card is solid, he supplements it with high hitcounts on both his Busters and Quicks, making them dependable sources of NP gain, too. He gets roughly 3% gauge from each Buster in an Arts first card bonus chain, and his Quicks tally to 3.6 NP gain, very good for a Quick card, though nothing extraordinary.

Pairing this with his typical 5-hit Extra card and this form of Dantes has much better NP gain than his original on the whole, and strong NP gain for a Servant lacking in Arts cards overall.

Naturally, with his focus on Quicks and Busters, his stargen is also very high, producing an overwhelming amount of stars on most chains that include his Quicks, in spite of the Avenger class’s relatively low base stargen stat. He won’t be able to put said stars to use readily without some star weight buffs, but producing critical stars at all is a huge benefit.

So how is the Count of Monte Cristo overall? Well, he’s a force of fury straight out of the pits of hell, with the sickest visuals out there to match:

However, he’s also a little vengeance hobo that should hobble back to his cave, O “King”:

I’m gonna call it now, Shimazaki Nobunaga personally invaded the offices of Lasengle and held them by uh, edgy cloak-point in a Dantes cosplay until they produced an insanely strong alternative version of him. YOU ALREADY GOT ARJUNA ALTER, NOBU, ISN’T THAT ENOUGH?!

But in all seriousness, the Count is by far one of the best single target damage dealers available in the game, having almost all of the perks that would make one desirable - high damage output in both regular cards and NP, a fairly spammable NP, strong defensive perks, Invincible Pierce, and good enough gauge charge / NP gain to not be dependent on his supports. In fact, with how strong he is at soloing bosses, he’s the opposite of dependent on supports, though he performs well in either circumstance.

The only real thing holding him back is just being a Quick Servant - Skadi’s variants are the only reasonably good Quick supports around, and both have some amount of flaws that make them a little inferior to their Arts or Buster counterparts. That doesn’t hurt him enough to make a meaningful difference, though. If you want a strong ST Avenger, this form of Dantes is pretty much as good as it will get, so long as you have the proper tools to support him. Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation.

I have to say, one of my favourite and freakiest parts of world history is the occultist movement from the 18th to early 20th century. Most of the well-known figures of that period were involved with the occult in one way or another, whether by being a victim like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a staunch naysayer like Harry Houdini, or being an occultist oneself, in the case of Alessandro di Cagliostro.

A lot of the foundation of modern magic fiction culture was founded in that time period, with books like the Lesser Key of Solomon, as you might expect, influencing Fate’s own lore significantly.

And let’s be frank, most of it was just scam artists looking to make a quick buck. Alessandro di Cagliostro was no different, a capable forger and con artist who just happened to use the occult touch when it suited him, and as Ordeal Call 2 points out wholeheartedly, he even has a connection to Marie Antoinette’s execution in the French revolution, as he was basically arrested on instinct when a scandal occurred involving the French crown. Talk about a reputation.

It’s no surprise he’s a Pretender, that’s all I’m saying.

The SR Pretender pool remains pretty limited to this day, but there’s at least enough individuals there to make some manner of comparison for base stats. With the 3rd best Attack of his class and rarity, and the tied 2nd worst HP, Cagliostro is very middle-of-the-road, having a somewhat mediocre base stat total that’s thankfully offensively-leaned, providing him with a solid offensive profile at the cost of some bulk. Not the greatest baseline to work with, but plenty are dealt with worse.

Where Cagliostro really gets his biggest boost is his passive, all three of which are unique. Disguise Creation provides him with a staggering +30% stargen rate, and +10% Debuff resistance. Combined with the Pretender class’s base of 20%, this makes Cagliostro’s base stargen rate 50%, which is significantly higher than even Assassins with high-ranking Presence Concealment. What does that mean in practice? The best way to express it would be that every hit on his cards produces 0.5 stars at a baseline before factoring in the card’s modifier to star generation or any other bonuses. So even his Arts cards with 3 hits would produce 1-2 stars guaranteed, without any other bonus on the table. The effect is greater for cards with higher hitcounts.

Next is Merchandise Casting (Fake), providing a +10% bonus to his Debuff Success Rate and Buff Removal Resistance at once. More consistent debuffing is very useful, but a low chance to ignore buff removal won’t come up often, or consistently at that, so it’s not too important in the grand scheme of things.

Then lastly there’s Hero’s Nemesis (Fake), providing a modest boost to his Arts card critical damage. With a BAAAQ card set and his established incredibly-high stargen, he has plenty of room to take advantage of this, as minor a damage boost it is.

With a base NP gain of 0.41% and 3-hit Arts cards, Cagliostro’s base Arts gain is a pretty pitiful 1.23, well below even the acceptable average most Servants get slapped with. It’s fortunate that he can at least compensate for quality with quantity, due to his heavy focus on Arts cards in general, especially as his other cards suffer equally for his low base NP gain - his Quick is passable, his Extra card isn’t that great, and his Buster card is a Buster card.

As already stated, though, his stargen is fantastic. Even if he’s lacking in cards that typically produce a good amount of critical stars, his high base stargen allows him to produce a solid sum even on Arts-heavy chains, and especially if he can land a Quick first card bonus for even further increased star generation. It goes a fine distance to compensate for his poor NP gain, that’s for sure.

How does Cagliostro shape up on the whole? Well one thing’s for certain, he knows the secrets to immortality, he can contact the dead, conjure jewels from nothingness, and even make me roll Gacha SSR’s on my first ticket:

However, all of those things are simply apt illusions, and you have all been drawn in by the honeyed words of a professional trickster:

My ultimate feeling towards Cagliostro is that he was given just one or two too many funky quirky “unique” effects in his kit that don’t actually directly contribute to his performance. As a farmer he’s more than fine, with good enough damage to tackle the node’s he’s meant to, with a level of convenience that’s rare for SR Servants, on top of the bonus versatility of covering multiple enemy types with a single Servant. That’s a lot of value he’s packing.

The issue comes when applying him outside the scope of farming. He’s not the greatest farmer to begin with, but for difficult content his flaws start showing a lot more clearly - why use Cagliostro against an Archer when Percival has better damage output, utility/support, and durability? Why use him against a Saber when Zenobia is in the same situation as Percival? Why use him at all when a high-damage universal farmer Berserker or Avenger can reach the same levels of damage?

The answer is usually convenience. Cagliostro offering what he has in the package of an easily-accessible SR Servant that can tackle multiple classes is great value for people for less-developed rosters, but such perks will lose their lustre over time. In general the scarcity of good Pretenders means he holds value simply for existing as a class option to smash Alter Egos, but I feel it just takes one reasonably good universal farmer Arts Servant like Summer Ibuki in someone’s roster to kill basically any argument for using Cagliostro.

And it doesn’t have to be a high-value SSR either. Day by day the pool of strong welfare farmers is growing, and are becoming more accessible to new players rather than long-standing ones. As a result, it’s kind of hard to advocate for him. If you’re severely in need of AOE farming and offence for the knight classes Cagliostro is a very dependable pick, but for people with a more diverse roster he’s an easy pass.