Rabbit's Reviews #244: Carmilla (4* Rider)

Introduction

Introduction

Phantom Thief Mistress C rounds out the first banner of Summer 4 servants. Like Osakabehime, she’s pretty weird, but unlike Osakabehime her tools are generally powerful enough to make up for it. She’s a Quick-oriented semi-support who can flex into a full DPS role if needed, and if you’re willing to work around her high innate star weight she brings a lot of value to mid-range Quick teams. Notably, she’s also the first SR gacha Rider in three years.

Servant Data

Rider

QQAAB (Archer)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

4

Attribute	Earth
Alignment	Neutral Evil

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

April Fool's

Max HP 10,476

HP Rank

Max ATK 9,651

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,608	Base HP	1,676
Max Atk	9,651	Max HP	10,476
Grail Atk	11,685	Grail HP	12,702

Traits

Humanoid Servant Heaven or Earth Weak to Enuma Elish Female Hominidae Summer Form

Card Hits	4	4	3	4	4
Per Hit	0.52%	0.52%	0.52%	0.52%	0.52%

	NP per Hit (%)	0.52%
NP when Attacked (%)	3%

	Star Absorption	200
Star Generation per Hit	9.1%

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x4 Rider Piece
3	150,000	x10 Rider Piece x15 Deadly Poisonous Needle
4	500,000	x4 Rider Monument x5 Tearstone of Blood x4 Serpent Jewel
Max	1,500,000	x10 Rider Monument x7 Serpent Jewel x10 Shell of Reminiscence

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x4 Gem of Rider
2 → 3	200,000	x10 Gem of Rider
3 → 4	600,000	x4 Magic Gem of Rider
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Magic Gem of Rider x3 Tearstone of Blood
5 → 6	2,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Rider x5 Tearstone of Blood
6 → 7	2,500,000	x12 Secret Gem of Rider x10 Deadly Poisonous Needle
7 → 8	5,000,000	x20 Deadly Poisonous Needle x15 Iron Stake of Evening Tears
8 → 9	6,000,000	x45 Iron Stake of Evening Tears x60 Mystic Spinal Fluid
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Supression

Femme Fatale (Fake) A

Chance to Skill Seal a single enemy (1 turn)
Decrease DEF against Critical Attacks for a single enemy (3 turns).
Gain Critical Stars.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Seal Chance	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%	90%	100%
Critical DEF -	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
Stars +	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	15
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Femme Fatale is a nifty skill. Skill seal is among the least reliably useful forms of utility out there, but the real draw here is the second effect, which essentially functions as the debuff equivalent of crit damage up. The skill increases critical damage to the target by 50%, allowing the entire party to hit significantly harder provided you can enable crits. The wording on this skill (coupled with it being a new effect) means I’m not entirely sure whether it’s treated as part of the crit damage bracket or the defense/attack bracket, which impacts multiplicative stacking somewhat, but in either case it’s a very powerful effect. The skill also provides a decent star burst to make crits easier on the first turn of the debuff.

NP Drain

Thief's Calling Card A

Applies delayed debuff "Calling Card" to a single enemy.
Calling Card: After one turn, drain NP gauge by 1. Increase NP Gauge for all allies.
Decrease Critical Rate for a single enemy (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
NP +	15%	16%	17%	18%	19%	20%	21%	22%	23%	25%
Crit Chance -	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Calling Card is a bit tricky to use effectively, but in exchange it’s an exceptionally powerful skill. The skill inflicts the “Calling Card” debuff to the target, which procs after a turn, draining the NP gauge of the affected enemy by 1 and charging the party’s NP gauge by 25% at max. You are, essentially, trading timing flexibility in exchange for the largest skill-based partywide battery in the game (outside of Seven Veils gimmickry), along with some NP delay. The effect doesn’t proc if the targeted enemy dies first, which makes this basically useless in farming contexts, but in harder fights it has definite value. Additionally, Carmilla does not actually need to be on the field in order for this to proc, which means creative usage of the Plug Suit (or Chen Gong) can allow Carmilla to push three allies into NP territory, as opposed to the usual two. To top this skill off, this also grants a 3-turn 30% crit chance reduction, which is highly valuable for the purpose of keeping enemy card damage under control—especially considering Carmilla’s skill seal forces the target to use their cards instead of skills.

Heal

Mistress C EX

Drain all enemies' health.
Decrease DEF for all enemies (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
HP Down	1000	1100	1200	1300	1400	1500	1600	1700	1800	2000
Heal (Per Enemy)	1000	1100	1200	1300	1400	1500	1600	1700	1800	2000
Defense -	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Mistress C is yet another powerful skill. It functions as a true HP drain, reducing enemy health by a bit and restoring whatever was drained to Carmilla herself. In a typical AoE context, that means this skill amounts to a hefty 6000 HP heal, which is more than half Carmilla’s un-grailed health pool. More importantly, though, the skill doubles as a 30% defense debuff. Assuming the enemy is vulnerable to debuffs, this skill and Femme Fatale combined amount to level of damage boostage equivalent to what Chiron gives—and then Carmilla brings some other valuable utility on top of that. Taken as a whole, Carmilla’s skillset makes her quite good at pushing party damage output.

Noble Phantasm

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
B	Anti-Personnel/Anti-Army	4

Effect	Deal damage to all enemies. Apply Nullify Buff to all enemies (1 time, 3 turns).

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Damage +	600%	800%	900%	950%	1000%
Buff Block

Overcharge Effect	Decrease Quick Resist for all enemies (3 turns).

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Quick Res -	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%

Usage Tips

Carmilla is a fairly typical (but very strong) semi-support for low-to-mid-range Quick teams. She’s all about helping the team move faster, and what defensive utility she has is more meant to keep RNG from ruining your day than to keep you alive indefinitely. She’ll be best alongside a full DPS (like Ridetoki, Achilles, Okita, etc) and either another semi-support (such as Barti, Riderin, Laksmibai, etc) or Skadi. You need to make sure everyone has crit access in order for these setups to work reliably, though, and given Carmilla’s high star weight that will usually mean bringing servants with star weight boosts or just flooding out stars. These are both entirely possible in Quick setups, of course, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Carmilla can also function in a similar capacity to Chiron (as, again, her skills provide an identical level of boostage). You can have her drop her skills and then plug her out, leaving the whole team with amplified damage for a few turns and also charging the whole party’s NP gauges at the start of turn two. Something like Carmilla/Ridetoki/Chen Gong/Skadi/Barti, where you plug Carmilla for Barti immediately and Barti, Ridetoki, and Chen Gong all have starting NP CEs, would give Ridetoki huge damage boosts to work with for the first three turns while also guaranteeing a devastating NP chain on turn 2.

Carmilla’s biggest drawback in either of these uses, though, is that her entire kit—literally every single valuable thing that she does—is a debuff, which means a debuff-immune enemy shuts her down completely and makes her effectively worthless. This likely won’t often be an issue, but it’s definitely something to be aware of.

Critting is so important to Carmilla teams that 2030 will likely be her best CE choice unless you’re committed to using her as your sole damage-dealer (which is a waste of her debuffs). If you’re confident in your ability to make stars, you could instead give her Hot Spring Under the Moon, which makes fewer stars but boosts her crit damage instead.

Grail Potential

Conclusion

Carmilla falls into a similar category as servants like Laksmibai and Chiron—strong semi-supports for fast-moving teams who can flex into a DPS role in a pinch. Carmilla is more offense-oriented than Laksmibai is, with more tools for pushing offense in exchange for less defensive value. She’s certainly an unusual servant, but she’s none the worse for it, and she’s a highly useful option for non-standard Quick teams in particular.

Rabbit's Arbitrary Ratings

Overall: 9/10
Single-Target DPS: 7/10
AoE DPS: 4/10
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: 9/10
Defensive Utility: 3/10
Farming Usefulness: 5/10
Taking Your Heart: 10/10