Rabbit's Reviews #258: Sei Shonagon (5* Archer)

This year’s Valentine’s event brings with it our very first SSR Quick Archer. Sei Shonagon is a nifty Servant all-around, with some good utility and the potential for very high damage against the right enemies. As with most of the post-Skadi Quick SSRs, she’s not particularly notable at the very high end, but she’s entirely usable and can be pretty strong if you like her enough to invest in her.

Sei has an offense-oriented stat spread, with an attack stat right about on-par with Arjuna, Gil, and Ishtar. Extra attack on an offensive Servant is always nice, and Sei leverages it well. She’s also pretty good at active star gen, with an AoE Quick NP and reasonably high hit-counts on her Quicks. Unfortunately, her NP gain leaves a lot to be desired, with low-average Arts cards and unimpressive base Quicks. She has a Quick buff and batteries to help cover for this, but raw NP gain is a glaring weakness here. For passives, Sei has Magic Resistance and then a set of fully unique skills. Independent Action (Selfishness) slightly boosts Sei’s star weight on her Quick cards, which gives her some extra natural synergy with Skadi. Similarly, Snow buffs Sei’s Quick crits by a tiny bit—although this boost will mostly get washed out if Skadi is present. Dharma makes Sei functionally immune to most charms, which is deeply amusing if you’ve read her writing but otherwise is a nice-but-mostly-irrelevant bit of utility.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x5 Archer Piece
3	300,000	x12 Archer Piece x8 Refined Magatama
4	1,000,000	x5 Archer Monument x10 Aurora Steel x5 Ancient Bell
Max	3,000,000	x12 Archer Monument x10 Ancient Bell x5 Glowing Star Fragment

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x5 Gem of Archer
2 → 3	400,000	x12 Gem of Archer
3 → 4	1,200,000	x5 Magic Gem of Archer
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Magic Gem of Archer x5 Aurora Steel
5 → 6	4,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Archer x10 Aurora Steel
6 → 7	5,000,000	x12 Secret Gem of Archer x5 Refined Magatama
7 → 8	10,000,000	x10 Refined Magatama x3 Tsukumo Mirror
8 → 9	12,000,000	x8 Tsukumo Mirror x10 Egg of Truth
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Sei’s kit is a good mix of straightforward and strong, hitting all of the basic notes while also giving some neat extra utility. Recommended skill order is 3>1>2.

To start with, Sei’s batteries and typing mean she can actually loop consistently with two Skadis, a Waver, and a Kaleid, which is cool. She’s not the best Servant for that type of setup, though, so if you have the tools to enable that odds are you also have a favored looper already (whether that’s Dantes or Lance or Parvati or somebody else). Sei’s more interesting teams are likely to be of the Single-Skadi variety, pairing Sei with a Quick Semi-Support who can take advantage of her Charisma and passive battery. Barti is a particularly obvious choice here, as he can help push Sei’s damage and Sei’s NP charges help to cover for his weak base NP gain, though any of Lakshmibai, Summer Carmilla, Santa Nightingale, and so on could make good partners. Sei’s passive battery and PfA-like may also give her some nice synergy with more sustain-oriented Quick teams along the likes of Skadi/Merlin or Skadi/Mash.

Sei’s 20% battery makes her an obvious Kaleid-holder. Conversely, Sei’s heavy power mod bonuses make NP damage buffs less useful than normal, so The Black Grail is less ideal here than it is on many other Servants. The Christmas 2019 Shop CE, Traces of Christmas, may be a good in-between here, providing a boost to Quick cards and NP gain that help to offset Sei’s low-ish Internals while also giving 50% starting NP to help Sei get moving faster.

If you’re looking to grail for gameplay (and you have native Skadi), you’re probably better-off looking to other AoE Quick Servants, whether that’s the top-tier loopers, or Atalanta, or even Night for reliable burst damage. That said, Sei is strong in general and if you plan to use her often she’s not a bad use of resources.

Sei is in a similar place as Servants like Bradamante—she’s not a top-level servant for full-on Quick Blitz, but she has a lot of strong tools that make her an appealing pick for mid-range Quick setups. She’s going to lose out to Atalanta in general if you have the tools to get Atalanta looping, but at basically every other level of play she’s significantly better. Definitely not a must-pull, but entirely workable and likely a lot of fun if you do get her.

Overall: 8/10
Single-Target DPS: 7/10
AoE DPS: 8/10
Survivability: 6/10
Offensive Utility: 6/10
Defensive Utility: 2/10
Farming Usefulness: 8/10
Opinions, Lists, and Witty Observations: 10/10