Rabbit's Reviews #291: Morgan (5* Berserker)

Introduction

After Lostbelt 5 skipped Zeus, Lostbelt 6 returns to the trend of giving us the Lostbelt’s monarch—albeit surprisingly early this time around. Morgan, like Arjuna Alter before her, is an AoE SSR Berserker, which means she has massive competition right out of the gate. Unfortunately, she doesn’t quite live up to the reputation being a monarch implies. Morgan has a lot of things going for her, from a range of utility to tools, to an NP with bonus damage against two separate niches, to a 50% battery, but her damage output is closer to Raikou’s than to Arjuna’s, and, while I think Morgan ultimately comes out ahead of Raikou, it’s not at all a clear victory. She’s a reasonably strong Servant, and if you like her, she’ll do well for you, but she’s an easy skip otherwise—for all the complexity of her kit, she doesn’t actually bring much new value to the table.

Servant Data

Berserker

QAABB (Saber)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

5

6

Attribute	Earth
Alignment	Lawful Evil

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

April Fool's
Winter Queen

Max HP 12,440

HP Rank

Max ATK 12,193

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,884	Base HP	1,824
Max Atk	12,193	Max HP	12,440
Grail Atk	13,347	Grail HP	13,628

Madness Enhancement B

Increase your Buster Card effectiveness by 8%.

Magic Resistance A

Increase your Debuff Resist by 20%.

Item Construction EX

Increase your Debuff Chance Rate by 12%.

Territory Creation B

Increase your Arts Card effectiveness by 8%.

Fae Eyes A

Increase your Critical Chance Resist by 20%

Card Hits	4	3	3	5	6
Per Hit	0.53%	0.53%	0.53%	0.53%	0.53%

	NP per Hit (%)						0.53%
	NP when Attacked (%)						5%

	Star Absorption	10
	Star Generation per Hit	5.0%

Overview

Material Requirements

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x5 Berserker Piece
3	300,000	x12 Berserker Piece x8 Forbidden Page
4	1,000,000	x5 Berserker Monument x10 Homunculus Baby x2 Scarab of Wisdom
Max	3,000,000	x12 Berserker Monument x4 Scarab of Wisdom x5 Egg of Truth

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x5 Gem of Berserker
2 → 3	400,000	x12 Gem of Berserker
3 → 4	1,200,000	x5 Magic Gem of Berserker
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Magic Gem of Berserker x5 Homunculus Baby
5 → 6	4,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Berserker x10 Homunculus Baby
6 → 7	5,000,000	x12 Secret Gem of Berserker x5 Forbidden Page
7 → 8	10,000,000	x10 Forbidden Page x4 Fruit of Eternity
8 → 9	12,000,000	x11 Fruit of Eternity x24 Vision Scales
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Servant Skills

Morgan’s skillset falls into the category of “a lot going on, but not all that complicated to use.” Recommended skill order is 1>2>3.

Dmg Up

Charisma of Yearning B

Increase ATK for all allies (3 turns).
Increase own NP Gauge.
Decrease DEF for all enemies (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
ATK +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
NP +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
DEF -	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Thirsting Charisma is Morgan’s only way to boost her own NP damage, outside of passives and niches. The skill is both a standard 20% AoE attack buff and a more powerful (but more limited) AoE 30% defense buff. The fact that this is effectively a persistent 50% steroid for the whole party is cool. The fact that enemies can be immune to part of it, and that it doesn’t persist across waves, is a lot less cool. Morgan having a substantial portion of her damage boostage tied to a debuff would be less problematic if it were on a separate skill from the Charisma, but as-is, this means in multi-wave fights or farming situations Morgan has to choose between having full steroids on turn 3 and none on 1 or 2, or full steroids on turn 1 and reduced buffs on 2 and 3. It’s not ideal. The skill also tacks on a 30% battery, which is nice, but once again the positioning may cause skill timing issues.

Start Np

Protection of the Lake C

Increase NP Gauge for an ally.
Increase NP Gain for all allies (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
NP +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
NP Gain +	15%	16%	17%	18%	19%	20%	21%	22%	23%	25%
CD	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	6	6	5

Protection of the Lake is a weaker version of Castoria’s targeted battery. Like in Castoria’s case, it’s a targetable 20% battery that provides a partywide NP gain buff. Unlike in Castoria’s case, the NP gain buff tops out at 25% instead of 30%—and, more importantly, Morgan’s not a support. In most practical situations, Morgan will use this on herself, giving her a total 50% battery when paired with her first skill. 50% batteries on damage-dealers are great, and this means Morgan can force a tri-loop with an MLB Kaleid (or with a card or two in a CQ). Buster tri-looping is always a questionable proposition for farming, as it typically has damage issues, and Morgan’s no exception in this regard. For CQs, though, this skill, paired with Morgan’s other battery, should allow her to get access to her NP pretty regularly, which is nice. Additionally, the battery being targeted means Morgan can pass it to Castoria in a pinch for some emergency protection.

Guts

From the World's End A

Apply Guts to self (1 time, 3 turns).
Increase own Critical Star Gather Rate (3 turns).
Increase own Critical Strength (3 turns).
Apply buff to self (3 turns):
-Decrease ATK for all enemies each turn (1 turn).
-Decrease Critical Rate for all enemies each turn (1 turn).
Gain Critical Stars.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Revives with HP	1000	1200	1400	1600	1800	2000	2200	2400	2600	3000
Star Gather +	3000%	3200%	3400%	3600%	3800%	4000%	4200%	4400%	4600%	5000%
Crit Dmg +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
ATK -	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Crit Rate -	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Stars +	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	15
CD	9	9	9	9	9	8	8	8	8	7

From the End of the World is a really busy skill. It’s a 3-turn Guts and has a standard guts cooldown, so while the guts is a nice bit of survival, the skill needs to do a lot to make up for the long downtime. I’m not sure it succeeds. Aside from the guts, the skill is also a self-mod type, giving Morgan significantly increased star weight for 3 turns and also increasing her crit damage. Sadly, the crit damage buff is a measly 30%, so while crits on a Buster Berserker are great, she’s still going to lag behind Raikou and AA as a crit-based DPS—and that’s even before you factor in the fact that this skill has less than 50% uptime, and that using this as a crit tool probably means you aren’t fully leveraging the survival properties. The skill does provide a small star burst, which makes Morgan a pretty self-sufficient crit unit… but Raikou does the same thing with her NP, and AA hits a whole lot harder, so that doesn’t really set Morgan apart either. The skill also gives Morgan an odd buff that applies small attack down and crit chance down debuffs to all enemies each turn. The debuffs each only last a turn, so functionally this means these debuffs can “persist” across enemy groups, and also that enemies can resist them on a turn-by-turn basis. These are more important for protecting supports than for protecting Morgan herself, I think, as Morgan also has her guts available for the duration of these debuffs. Overall, this skill is doing a lot of different things passably rather than doing any one thing well, and I think the skill is hurt for it. I would much rather it have picked two or three of these effects and made those two or three effects very powerful—or, heck, just shortened the cooldown by two turns—but as it is, the skill feels busy and unfocused.

Noble Phantasm

Roadless Camelot EX

Apply Special ATK [Knights of the Round] or [Fae] to self (1 time) [Activates first].
Deal damage to all enemies.
Inflict Curse on all enemies (5 turns, 1000 dmg/turn).
Increase Overcharge Level by 1 for all allies (1 time, 3 turns).

<Overcharge>

Supereffective [Human attribute] bonus damage.

Show Info/Video

Roadless Camelot

はや辿り着けぬ理想郷

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	EX	Anti-Fortress	6

Effect	Apply Special ATK [Knights of the Round] or [Fae] to self (1 time) [Activates first]. Deal damage to all enemies. Inflict Curse on all enemies (5 turns, 1000 dmg/turn). Increase Overcharge Level by 1 for all allies (1 time, 3 turns).

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Special ATK +	50%	50%	50%	50%	50%
Damage +	300%	400%	450%	475%	500%
Curse Damage	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
Overcharge +	1	1	1	1	1

Overcharge Effect	Supereffective [Human attribute] bonus damage.

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Supereffective ATK +	150%	162.5%	175%	187.5%	200%

Lordless Camelot is a mostly-straightforward AoE NP. It has two separate niche bonuses—one in the form of a power mod buff, and one in the form of supereffective damage. The power mod buff applies to Knights of the Round and Fae and comes with all the usual pros and cons of this type of niche—it stacks additively with other power mod buffs, which means damage CEs especially will wash out the effect, but in exchange it lasts the whole turn and can boost brave chains. It’s also worth clarifying that this is one buff, rather than two—it works on anything that has one or both of Knights and Fae, and it won’t count twice on Servants who are both. It’s a pretty specific niche, but it’ll be nice when it’s relevant. The supereffective niche, by contrast, is for Man-attribute enemies, which is a broad grouping, and it roughly matches Raikou’s Earth or Sky niche. I’m not personally a huge fan of SE bonuses of this type—it’s hard to keep track of which attribute any given enemy has—but it amounts to a fair chunk of extra damage against a good portion of the cast. Also, at the moment, Morgan gets double niche against exactly four Servants: Saber Alter, Santa Alter, Maid Alter, and Gray.

For some quick NP1 damage comparisons, Morgan loses out to Arjuna Alter unless she gets both her niches, even with her defense debuff in play—although with either of her damage niches active, she comes pretty close to matching him. Raikou, by contrast, is pretty much strictly stronger assuming equivalent conditions. Raikou with no niche slightly passes Morgan with no niche; Raikou with one niche slightly beats Morgan with one niche; Raikou with double niche (which is more common than Morgan with double niche) beasts Morgan with double niche. That said, Raikou’s Buster buff only lasts a turn, while Morgan’s defense debuff loses out to debuff immunity, so the question of which hits harder is highly situational even without the differing favored enemies taken into consideration.

Outside of damage, Morgan’s NP also brings a pair of additional effects. There’s a decent curse tied to it, and while damage-over-time is functionally just flavor in most cases, it’s still a little bit of extra damage. More importantly, though, the NP grants the entire party an overcharge buff for 1 time and 3 turns. This means Morgan is a particularly effective point Servant in Merlin/Castoria teams, as she both helps Merlin generate more stars and lets Castoria provide an extra hit of invuln. By contrast, this means Himiko/Castoria teams are somewhat redundant for Morgan, since she can accomplish similar things without committing to Himiko’s playstyle.

Usage Tips

Morgan can tri-loop farm with an MLB Kaleid and a trio of 50% chargers. This is a really expensive setup, though, and if you can enable it you can probably also enable higher-damage farming setups, so the actual practical value is limited. That said, for most farming nodes, Chen Gong can reliably clear the first wave, and Morgan’s AoE buffs can actually help CG clear a wave 1 he might otherwise struggle with. Furthermore, if you’re using a standard duoloop farming setup—Merlin/Morgan/Chen/Merlin/(Reines or Waver or Castoria or Skadi)—you can actually get away with a 50% charge CE, rather than Kaleid, on either Chen or Morgan, since Morgan has an extra 20% charge to work with. This can help one of the two hit higher damage thresholds than they would otherwise be able to, or it can allow for an extra drop CE in certain events relative to comparable teams that use Arjuna Alter. This is still expensive and inferior to most Arts farming and some Quick farming setups, but it doesn’t require MLB Kaleid and it’s also not dependent on enemy formation, which can be a plus. A duoloop Morgan setup could be nice for players who lack more conventional farming setups.

For CQs, Morgan’s best setup is cleanly Merlin/Morgan/Castoria. This setup is highly durable and fully leverages pretty much all of what Morgan brings to the table. It even leaves her more likely to take advantage of her crit tools, thanks to Merlin’s star gen and Hero Creation. It also only requires one support Servant natively, since you can usually grab the other off support, which means Morgan’s optimal team is pretty accessible, all things considered.

If you don’t have either Merlin or Castoria, though, there are a range of cheaper supports who can also work nicely. While Chen Gong often gets attention for his role on extremely fast teams, he does have a set of strong supportive skills that are especially valuable on crit-enabled Buster Berserkers like Morgan. Hans also works nicely here, providing stars, crit damage, and other generally useful buffs. Morgan’s general stability versus card damage makes her a good partner for the original Mash as well, and Nobukatsu’s Buster Crit utility is also a strong option. All in all, you can pretty much grab any of the good, cheap Buster supports, pull a Merlin or a Castoria off your support list, and expect Morgan to do just fine.

For CEs, starting NP CEs are always good on Buster Servants. Unless you’re relying on an MLB Kaleid for some reason, Morgan’s batteries mean she can pretty safely run with 50% charge CEs that bring extra damage—things like Golden Sumo, Holy Night Supper, Aerial Drive, and Tenkihime. Black Grail is also an option, but given Morgan’s tendency to prefer longer fights, the demerit may start to become an issue.

As far as CCs go, you’ll probably want CCs that push damage, and especially crit damage. Morgan has pretty easy crit access but low crit damage buffs, so crit-boosting CCs are a natural fit. Honorable mention goes to CCs that remove enemy crit buffs, as Morgan can pretty reliably avoid enemy crits provided they aren’t buffing themselves.

Grail Potential

Conclusion

Morgan is only underwhelming in the context of her competition. She is, I think, better than Raikou in the current environment, but Raikou—despite not exactly being a top-notch Servant—still has her own advantages. AA, meanwhile, is so wildly powerful he overshadows Morgan almost completely. And that’s all without addressing the fact that Buster is strongly disfavored in the game as it currently stands.

That said, typical Buster clears nowadays typically involve some degree of stall, and Morgan is well-positioned to support those types of strategies. She has a lot of utility and plays nicely with Buster’s best current supports (setting aside Himiko shenanigans). She should be able to clear hard content pretty reliably, and she can farm, too, with a little creativity and some battery help. If you’re looking for a paradigm-shiftingly-powerful Servant like the other monarchs were at release (yes, even Ivan was remarkable for a brief time), Morgan is probably a disappointment, but she’s a reasonably strong Servant in her own right. She has some neat tools, and anyone who likes her enough to pull will find themselves with a solid Buster point Servant who can get the job done.

Rabbit's Arbitrary Ratings

Overall: 8/10
Single-Target DPS: 6/10
AoE DPS: 8/10
Survivability: 7/10
Offensive Utility: 5/10
Defensive Utility: 5/10
Farming Usefulness: 8/10
Iron Fist: 10/10