Rabbit's Reviews #290: Mysterious Idol X (Alter) (4* Foreigner)

So, Mysterious Idol X Alter is our second AoE Quick welfare in a row. It is somewhat rare to get back-to-back welfares who fill basically the same role, and it largely works out to MIXA’s detriment. Relative to her immediate predecessor, Kiichi Hogen, MIXA initially appears to be something of a sidegrade. They have exactly the same deck and remarkably similar kits, but with a few key distinctions: notably, MIXA gets better cards, higher burst damage, and a pair of damage niches, in exchange for having less reliable sustained damage, lower NP refund, no battery, and—perhaps most importantly—no class advantage context. Altogether this makes her effectively a worse Hogen. Character preference aside, a player would invest in both for similar reasons, and Hogen provides higher returns overall. In a hypothetical situation where Hogen was an old welfare who was inaccessible to newer players, this might be an acceptable situation. As it stands, though, most players in a position to get MIXA probably already have Hogen or are too new to get particularly good use out of what MIXA offers, which leaves her as a Servant without a purpose. She’s neat in that she’s our first welfare Foreigner, but there’s not really anything she provides that other Servants can’t accomplish more effectively, even at the same level of investment.

MIXA’s attack is low-to-middling as SRs in general go, and her HP is fairly high to compensate. By contrast, her kit is strongly oriented towards offense, so this is something of a disadvantage. She has very good internals, though, with a very strong Arts card and respectable Quicks, paired with high overall hit-counts that make for good NP gain. For passives, she has the Foreigner-standard Existence passive, which provides a few stars per turn. She also has Altereactor, which is Magic Resistance by another name, and Madness Enchancement to help her crits a little. All of this is pretty normal stuff, and while collectively it makes her a little better at Buster crits than she would otherwise be, this set of passives doesn’t have all that much practical impact.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x1 Cosmo Guitar Open Cosmo Guitar configuration options
3	150,000	x1 Cosmo Guitar Open Cosmo Guitar configuration options
4	500,000	x1 Cosmo Guitar Open Cosmo Guitar configuration options
Max	1,500,000	x1 Cosmo Guitar Open Cosmo Guitar configuration options

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x8 Dragon Fang Open Dragon Fang configuration options
2 → 3	200,000	x8 Meteor Horseshoe Open Meteor Horseshoe configuration options
3 → 4	600,000	x10 Eternal Gear Open Eternal Gear configuration options
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Warhorse's Young Horn Open Warhorse's Young Horn configuration options
5 → 6	2,000,000	x10 Aurora Steel Open Aurora Steel configuration options
6 → 7	2,500,000	x12 Divine Pulse Spirit Orb Open Divine Pulse Spirit Orb configuration options
7 → 8	5,000,000	x12 Reactor Core of Dawn Open Reactor Core of Dawn configuration options
8 → 9	6,000,000	x12 Glowing Star Fragment Open Glowing Star Fragment configuration options
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

MIXA’s skillset is a fairly straightforward damage-boosting kit. Recommended skill order is 1>3>2.

As mentioned above, MIXA’s loop conditions are rather tight. She needs either an MLB Kaleid and a plug Waver/Reines/Castoria, or Bride. Both cases also need double Skadi and a fair bit of overkill, and at the point you have the tools to enable this, odds are good you have a better DPS you can use instead.

At a slightly lower level of investment, MIXA is a decent point Servant for Skadi/Castoria teams. Skadi and Castoria can collectively use their NPs to keep the party protected while MIXA fishes for strong crit turns and periodically provides heals. MIXA doesn’t bring all that much to this team—you generally want Servants who have more Arts cards and, better yet, bring party charges—but it’s still a generally good Quick shell that’s not dependent on doubled supports.

If you have no top-tier supports, Hans is probably MIXA’s best partner. He helps her get more frequent NP access, provides stars, and boosts MIXA’s damage when she does crit. A Hans/MIXA/Skadi team is fragile and will likely need some luck to clear content, but it should be functional. Laksmibai also pairs fairly nicely with MIXA, as her star gen buff works well with MIXA’s high hit-counts. Barti, meanwhile, can also provide stars and push damage, and he can take his own cards out of the pool for star-gathering purposes.

If you want MIXA to loop farm, she basically has to run Kaleid. If you’re going to rely on cards (and thus sacrifice some damage on later NPs), Traces of Christmas can also be a good CE here, as it accentuates MIXA’s already-good Quick cards.

MIXA relies on flooding the field with stars in order to crit. As such, CCs that boost star gen or provide a flat number of stars can be effective here, helping her to get her power crit turns more often.

MIXA doesn’t bring a whole lot of value. She’s decently usable and more attack will let her punch things harder, but overall grails don’t give her any more real value than she would have otherwise.

MIXA is just okay. She’s an AoE Quick Servant who’s better at crits than she is at NP damage, and she has some tools for good damage on a single NP, but her lack of class advantage contexts hinders her usefulness in that capacity. Were Hogen not so recent, MIXA would be a little more interesting, but we got a better free option just a few months ago. There’s not all that much reason to invest in this one unless you just happen to like her.

Overall: 6/10
Single-Target DPS: 6/10
AoE DPS: 6/10
Survivability: 4/10
Offensive Utility: 2/10
Defensive Utility: 2/10
Farming Usefulness: 4/10
Perfect Combo: 10/10