MMM - Must Magnificent Maidens Melt Away Most Morosely? Mite Morbid, Mate (JP Summer 2019 Gacha Part 2)

Let’s all put our hands together in respect for Sir Gawain and Sir Lancelot of the round table. They have done us a great service not only for this event, but for every quest in the future where our oblivious bunny-girl graces us with her presence. Cos’ boy, do we like ‘em thicc.

Oh boy, Jeanne actually got dethroned by a real King. With the now-highest max HP of any Ruler in the game (2nd overall, after Jinako), while tying Jeanne for her attack stat, Arturia Ruler is...excessively tanky. With the Ruler class advantage in play she essentially has nearly 34k HP to play around with, but at the cost of a lacklustre attack stat - while it isn’t as bad as it seems, due to the Ruler class’s 1.1x attack modifier bumping it over 10,000 effectively, it’s still far below the standard for a SSR servant.

In terms of passives, Arturia Ruler has been dealt a pretty simple hand (hehe) - with A-rank Magic Resistance and B-rank Territory Creation, she has a very standard level of debuff-shrugging for a Ruler, on top of a notably better boost to her Arts card...no s. Having a passive boost to a single card does suck, but hey, you take those.

With a BBAQQ card set, Arturia Ruler is yet another interesting deviation from the unruly mass which is Ruler-class card sets. Almost every single one is unique at this point. Her generation stats are...interesting, to say the least. With 4-hit Arts and Quicks, and 0.57% base NP gain, she has a fairly good Arts card in exchange for 2 pretty mediocre Quicks, generating about the same as a release Lancer like Cu with them. Her Extra card is similarly average, with the 5 hits reaching a little over the typical NP gain from an Extra card.

Fundamentally, I would describe Arturia Ruler’s NP gain as insufficient. For a servant with a singular Arts card, it isn’t nearly good enough to compensate for her lacklustre Quicks and Busters, the card generating less than servants like Enkidu or King Hassan do with their Arts cards, even factoring in her Territory Creation.

On the plus side, her stargen is pretty good - Two 4-hit Quicks is fairly self-sufficient, and 3-hit busters will produce some stars in the right circumstances. The 5-hit Extra is nothing spectacular for stargen, but you won’t find it lacking by any means.

How does the King of Knights in less-than-modest attire shape up? On one hand, she’s got a full house:

On the other hand, she’s gone bust:

It’s pretty sad, if I’m being honest. Arturia Ruler could’ve had a much more supportive set in some form focused on distributing crit stars, improving crit damage, and her card reshuffle if designed that way. Instead, you get something of a mess who is sufficient, yet not spectacular, in multiple ways. She’s definitely not a waste of space when used optimally, but even managing the optimal with her comes with pitfalls and tests of luck. When you can get a similar or better performance without having to wait for attack buffs, or test your card-draw luck before a major crit damage chain, why bother with Arturia Ruler, I ask.

And boy, does that question lack an answer outside of “boobs”. As good an answer as any, but it doesn’t win her any seals of approval.

Or “Meltryllis Lancer”, for the uncreative. Seriously, all the weird pseudonyms FGO tends to come up with are so amusing. At any rate, penguin gang rise up, if people decide to underseed you at a major for being European you know the best Alter Ego is your mascot. Also those sunglasses are obscenely hot.

Melt Lancer unfortunately seems to come bearing some of the weakest base stats for a servant in the class with, traditionally, the highest. Possessing the 3rd worst HP stat in exchange for the 6th best Atk stat, Melt is offensively-oriented but not really packing the punch she deserves for the hit to her HP.

Thankfully, she has passives out the wazoo to compensate. Firstly, she has one of my favourite passive wombo comboes in the game of Magic Resistance and Goddess Core, giving her a grand total of 37.5% passive debuff resistance, as well as 200 extra damage on all her cards. If this alone, allowing her to shrug off nearly 40% of all debuff on average, wasn’t enough, she also has C-rank Riding and EX-rank Independent Action.

With 2 Quicks in her card set, that 6% boost to them goes a decent distance, but the 12% critical damage boost is especially potent for a servant with a workable base star weight and spoilers a star focus skill.

Boy, I love it when Alter Egos are thrown amazing passives.

Melt’s performance in the NP gain department is, honestly, pretty weird. With 0.76% base NP gain and two 2-hit Arts cards, her normal Arts card NP gain is gasp - BELOW AVERAGE.

It’s not the end of the world for her, though. With her Riding in play, she has a decent 2.42% NP gain from Quicks, and when you have 4 cards capable of generating gauge, you won’t have too hard a time getting it up. In the completely non-sexual way.

Also, her Extra card is good for the first time in this entire event, with 5-hits on a reasonable base NP gain giving her a neat sum of gauge.

In terms of stargen, Melt is pretty average. 3-hit Quicks are workable, as is her 5-hit Extra, but she’s far from the star-spewing machine her regular self tends to be. Don’t exactly expect self-sufficiency, but she can end up providing a fair few in a BQQ chain.

So how is Meltryllis Lancer shaping up? On one hand, she’s Lord of the Seas:

However, Melt Lancer is also a flightless bird ripe to be preyed on by seals, to use an analogy, in some aspects:

All in all, Meltryllis Lancer is a finely constructed, but great Arts AOE servant with plenty of extra kinks (of the non-sexual kind, but possibly the sexual kind), to work with. She’s a great farmer with plenty of loop potential, reasonably good at challenge quests with the tools at her disposal and cute as a button. While Melt Envy’s technical demerit does sometimes hamper her performance in difficult content, she’s certainly a servant with some clear goals in mind, and ones she achieves with thorough competence. Rath™ Seal of Approval.

What happens when you take Heaven’s Feel Shirou and fuse it with an already-dying gag Saber then add in Evangelion memes? This apparently. Congratulations, Okita Souji. You got your swimsuit. But at what cost? At. What. Cost?

Is anybody surprised that Okita Assassin has the lowest HP total of any 4* Assassin? Nobody? Good. Okita’s base statline is honestly as fitting as can be, sacrificing any and all durability for maximum attack power. Except she only has the 4th best attack stat of her rarity. D-dai shouri? At any rate, she’s still got good offense, only at the cost of having lower HP than some 3* servants, and the lowest HP of any non-Avenger / Berserker.
But hey, she’s got some nice passives - giving her a grand total of -20% Death Resistance…

Don’t die, Okita, okay?

Now that might sound bad, but in practice it makes her Death Rate a little less than a Berserker’s, and in the first place Death Rate is pretty minor in influencing how often an instant-death effect kills you - especially due to the rarity of it in enemy hands, outside of gimmicks for challenge quests. Definitely don’t take her to a fight with KH, at any rate.

The other benefits of her passives are pretty standard. With both her Magic Resistance (J) C rank and...Foreigner class skill (...is that from the Jets?) she has a respectable 19% passive Debuff Resistance, something most Assassins lack. In addition, she’s a walking quarter-2030, producing 2 stars each turn, and produces more stars than normal due to her Presence Concealment. If that isn’t a win, what is?

Oh Okita, I missed you and your alts’ 5-hit Quicks. So damn much.

With 0.91% base NP gain, BAQQQ card set with 5-hit Quicks, a 3-hit Arts card and a solid Extra card, everything about Okita Assassin’s generation stats is beautiful. Well, except her Buster. But who cares, she has 5-hit Quicks. Her Quick cards generate more gauge than Dantes’s Arts card. It would take nearly 5 Tamamo Quicks to match the NP gain Okita Assassin gets in one. These things are basically Arts cards which spew out 6 crit stars on average each time you use them. In the first card position.

AND her Arts card is good - having slightly worse NP gain than KH’s Arts card, already one of the best Arts cards in the game, is more than enough for me. She gets as much from a QQQ chain as EMIYA does from an Arts Brave chain, discounting the chain bonus 20%.

I think I’ve made my point by now - Okita Assassin has some of the best NP gain in the game, comparable to, and technically (as I’ll get onto later) better than Jack’s and OG Okita’s NP gain, as well.

So, with all my going on about 5-hit Quicks in a BAQQQ card set with 2 passive critical stars each turn and Presence Concealment, do you need me to tell you if her stargen is good?

I have enough faith in my readers to say little more

So how good is Okita Assassin? On one hand, she’s shooting for the stars:

And on the other hand, Okita is the shooting star:

Okita Jets Japan Journey Souji is loaded with charm and fitted with all the things I like most - self-sufficient NP gain and stargen, unique skill and NP design, fun gimmicks to work around, and not being a Buster monstrocity with just big numbers to its name. She has great offensive power, great responsibilities and great risks, while both hitting all time highs and all time lows, but at the same time having enough unique tools to not be made redundant in case some Assassin with better NP refund and damage comes along to steal her thunder. You can probably realize by now I’m very biased towards her, and you’re 100% right. Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation. I don’t care if it’s unjust.