Rabbit's Reviews #330: Kyokutei Bakin (5* Rider)

Bakin is about as generic as an Arts Servant gets. Despite her busy kit, there’s really nothing about her to set her apart from other general Arts loopers, which is particularly problematic when she’s directly competing with Habetrot, who’s both fantastic and free. Bakin has bad cards, standard NP refund, low damage, and limited ramp, and is locked with a 30% battery. She doesn’t have short cooldowns or much bulk, and she doesn’t have any notable utility to speak of either. She feels much more like a gen-pool SSR, in that she’s perfectly serviceable but has nothing to make her stand out from others in her role. As a limited servant especially, though, she’s not impressive.

At least her art is nice.

Bakin has one of the most defensive stat spreads of the SSR Riders, which is not ideal for a damage-dealer and is a large part of why her damage suffers. Her internals are pretty terrible—as an Arts Servant, star gen is not a strength, and her Arts and Quick cards are both among the worst in recent memory in terms of NP gain, meaning she’ll struggle to NP without relying on refund or batteries. For passives, Bakin has Riding, Magic Resistance, and Divinity, none of which meaningfully helps her. Mana Loading is the most important append as always, especially considering Bakin’s 30% battery. The other two are pretty skippable: Extra Attack Up doesn’t help much given Bakin’s bad cards, and anti-Foreigner damage is far to niche to be worthwhile, especially with Taisui getting full class advantage against the class and being recent and free.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x5 Rider Piece
3	300,000	x12 Rider Piece x9 Seed of Yggdrasil
4	1,000,000	x5 Rider Monument x10 Forbidden Page x5 Refined Magatama
Max	3,000,000	x12 Rider Monument x10 Refined Magatama x12 Soundless Bell

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x5 Gem of Rider
2 → 3	400,000	x12 Gem of Rider
3 → 4	1,200,000	x5 Magic Gem of Rider
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Magic Gem of Rider x5 Forbidden Page
5 → 6	4,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Rider x10 Forbidden Page
6 → 7	5,000,000	x12 Secret Gem of Rider x6 Seed of Yggdrasil
7 → 8	10,000,000	x12 Seed of Yggdrasil x6 Refined Magatama
8 → 9	12,000,000	x18 Refined Magatama x10 Tsukumo Mirror
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200000	x5 Gem of Rider
2 → 3	400000	x12 Gem of Rider
3 → 4	1200000	x5 Magic Gem of Rider
4 → 5	1600000	x12 Magic Gem of Rider x5 Homunculus Baby
5 → 6	4000000	x5 Secret Gem of Rider x10 Homunculus Baby
6 → 7	5000000	x12 Secret Gem of Rider x2 Mysterious Divine Wine
7 → 8	10000000	x4 Mysterious Divine Wine x6 Soundless Bell
8 → 9	12000000	x18 Soundless Bell x24 Ball of Rainbow Thread
9 → 10	20000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

For as many effects as Bakin has on her skills, her skillset is remarkably plain. Recommended skill order is 1>2>3.

Bakin is a typical Arts looper, so for farming and CQs she’ll want double Castoria. Her loop specs are such that she can do 2/3/x or 3/2/x nodes CE-less with Mana Loading and Oberon—and with slightly less optimal conditions if she gets lots of overkill. 2/2/x nodes are generally going to be beyond her unless she’s getting massive overkill or otherwise getting extra NP gain buffs (such as from an event CE). There are a wide range of possible farming variations, as usual, but for the most part, expect Bakin to be able to farm standard nodes, with the ability to make up for a single missing enemy in a pinch if you have optimal tools.

The only weird thing about farming with Bakin is that (assuming you know her NP will kill and her cards won’t) you want to make sure to put her Arts cards before her NP if you have access to them, as that’s required for her to ramp fully. If Bakin loses out on her Arts cards—for example, because her NP killed all enemies in a wave—she loses out on potential attack buffs as well, hurting her already-low damage.

For hard fights, Bakin is a mostly conventional blitzer. Aside from the limited defensive tools on her second skill, Bakin doesn’t have much in the way of survival, so she doesn’t really want to stall if she doesn’t have to. Double Castoria setups with whatever third support you have—Tamamo is nice for damage and Oberon for looping—will increase Bakin’s likelihood of clearing quickly. If you have to play slower, standard Castoria slowplay will work decently. Reines/Castoria teams are always great and unlikely to go down.

The Black Grail is Bakin’s best CE for damage output, though CEs like Painting Summer and Mark on a Smiling Face are good for loop stability, especially if stalling. Anything that you would typically run on an Arts unit will work here—Bakin is very bland.

Crit damage CCs aren’t a bad idea on Bakin, as she has some star gen abilities and Rider star weight but only 20% in in-kit crit buffs. NP damage CCs are a solid pick for Bakin’s Arts cards, too, since she sometimes wants to put them before her NP anyway.

If you’re going to grail an AoE Rider for gameplay reasons, grail Habetrot instead. She’s much better and benefits more from the grails besides. It is always valid, of course, to grail characters just because you like them, but Bakin has little gameplay value to recommend her.

Bakin is fine. She’s undertuned as an Arts Servant and has a number of annoyances within her kit, but ultimately she has loop specs—albeit limited ones—and decent steroids. The biggest mark against her is that she doesn’t really do anything meaningful that Habetrot doesn’t also do, and Habetrot does do a lot of things Bakin doesn’t… on top of being free. If you like Bakin and choose to invest in her, she’ll be passable, but she’s the weakest AoE Arts unit we’ve gotten in a long while.

Overall: 6/10
Single-Target DPS: 3/10
AoE DPS: 6/10
Survivability: 2/10
Offensive Utility: 2/10
Defensive Utility: 2/10
Farming Usefulness: 6/10
Dogs: 8/8