And here we have the time-honored tradition of the absurdly long usage tips section for the new meta support. Skadi has added complexity here by virtue of also being a DPS. There will inevitably be teams, considerations, and ideas that get skipped here, so let me preface this by saying this is not a complete breakdown of every team Skadi can work in, everything she can do, and everything she can enable. In the interest of keeping this from turning into a novel, I have to pick and choose. If you’re wondering whether Skadi can work in such-and-such Quick team, the answer is probably yes! I’m going to highlight some of the most optimal and interesting setups, as well as address how Skadi changes several existing Servants, but there are plenty of other neat use-cases for her as well. Consider this a starting point for your own idea-generation.
To start with, though, lets address Skadi as a DPS, since that’s a little more intrinsically constrained.
Skadi refunds about 13% per enemy in a Base Skadi/Summer Skadi/Summer Skadi team. Against Casters, she’ll refund more like 16%, which (with a tiny bit of overkill) means she can loop standard nodes CE-less with a plug charger. Oberon’s extra 20% can cover for a missing enemy, too, making 2/3/x or 3/2/x Caster nodes possible. Riders also give bonus NP gain, but Skadi’s anti-Caster append makes Casters particularly notable.
Against neutral NP gain classes, Skadi’s loop specs are a little tighter, but not unworkably so. If she gets three hits of overkill per enemy on the low-HP wave, she still refunds 50%, meaning she can rely on Oberon’s extra 20% charge to cover the other wave. She also has an even more reliable (if less-obvious) setup using Castoria instead. Castoria/Skadi/Skadi/Skadi uses all Castoria and support Summer Skadi skills, then plugs the support Summer Skadi for base Skadi, who uses her quick buff. DPS Skadi uses her first two skills and then NPs, refunding 50%, thanks to the bonus NP gain from Castoria. You then have the two Skadis’ 50% batteries to secure the loop on each subsequent turn.
Bride is actually marginally better for this than Castoria is, if you have her. She only brings 30% charge, but Mana Loading can make up the difference since you’re using those batteries on turn 1 anyway, and you get more damage buffs and NP gain buffs in exchange, letting Skadi loop even low-NP-gain enemies fairly reliably, while also amping damage against Sky enemies. Xu Fu also works, if you’re hitting damage thresholds regardless, as she brings the requisite 30% charge in conjunction with the missing NP gain buff.
For 90+ nodes, Skadi needs starting charge. If allowed a 50% charge CE, Skadi/Skadi/Skadi/Oberon should be able to clear 1/2/x or 2/1/x nodes with just a little bit of overkill on the wave of 2. A Skadi battery plus the charge CE gets you to your first NP. Two Skadi batteries cover the wave of 1, and Skadi only needs to refund 30% against the wave of 2 for Oberon to make up the remaining difference. On top of that, even if you have to rely on crits for later waves, you get 30 stars per turn, plus additional stars from the various batteries, plus massive crit buffs on most of DPS Skadi’s cards, cutting down on crit-based RNG. It’s really not a bad setup, and while it’s not quite as reliable as comparable Buster farming teams, it’s not that far below.
You can also do the same thing (albeit with reduced damage) with Castoria, Waver, or Reines, at least on 1/2/x nodes. For your team, you run [Charger]/Skadi/Skadi/Skadi, with Mana Loading on the DPS Skadi. On turn 1, you use 30% in total charge from the extra charger to reach 100% charge, and you use both frontline Skadis’ damage buffs. On turn 2, you use both frontline Skadis’ batteries and plug the support Skadi for the backline Skadi for the additional Quick buff. A bit of overkill gets you to 30% refund, at which point you can use the remaining 20% from the charger and the last Skadi battery to secure the loop.
You can also farm basically anything with Kaleid, of course. Kaleid Skadi actually has a plugless loop for any node with three enemies on wave one or two. You need either Mana Loading or an MLB Kaleid. You have three 50% charges available, so one wave is “free” in that you secure the loop with batteries alone. For the other wave, you can either run 2004 and use its NP gain buff to let Skadi naturally refund 50% off three enemies, or you can bring an MC with at least 10% charge to make up the difference with flat batteries. 2/1/x and 1/2/x nodes are theoretically possible with the Clock Tower mystic code as well, though you need a bit of overkill on the wave of 2 in order to hit the 30% refund you need to swing the loop. Alternatively, any plug charger guarantees you the loop under any circumstances.
For CQs, Skadi really wants to go as fast as possible, as her long cooldowns mean her average performance drops radically if she has to wait through multiple buff cycles. To that end, all of the above teams are workable. Reines is a particularly interesting pick, assuming you have a Kaleid or an MLB Imaginary Element handy to let her NP immediately, as she provides a lot of extra damage and also increases Skadi’s NP gain, which can be helpful if you’re bringing the Black Grail as Skadi’s CE (as you really should be).
Unfortunately, Skadi falls off pretty hard if you don’t have an optimal team to slot her into, or if you have to stall. The strongest conventional Quick stall shell (outside of specialty teams like Van Gogh’s) is Base Skadi/Castoria. Summer Skadi sadly doesn’t have much synergy with this team—the best point Servants for this setup have party charge and healing, neither of which Skadi brings—but it’s still a decent team in general and you can make it work if you’re willing and able to put up with Summer Skadi’s long cooldowns.
For lower-investment teams, you’re going to want setups that leverage Skadi’s partywide buffs as much as possible, and that are focused on moving quickly. Barti is a particularly good partner here, as he also provides partywide buffs and can help facilitate crits for whoever is benefiting from Skadi’s first skill. Especially if you have a Quick Servant with the potential for strong Buster cards—someone like Atalante Alter, Summer Sei, or ‘Zerker Lancelot—running Skadi/DPS/Barti will let the whole team output solid damage for three turns. This team is then fragile enough that your teammates can die off and make way for fresh damage-dealers or supports. This is a solid approach to short-to-mid-length, low-to-mid-difficulty fights.
And now we move on to Summer Skadi’s more interesting use case: as a shiny new meta Quick support.
The funny thing is there’s not actually a lot of complexity here. You use her in all the ways you’d use base Skadi, with the caveat that you don’t have to worry about skill 2 timing, and you can’t really use her for stall. Simple as that!
For CQ usage, this isn’t even really an oversimplification. Quick Servants want two frontline Summer Skadis, who use all their buffs on turn 1. You can plug in a backline base Skadi for maximum damage push (as well as nice distribution on crit buffs), or you can bring Castoria for NP gen and better sustain, or Oberon for more batteries and easier looping. The only major consideration here is choosing between cards—for maximum effectiveness, especially in ST contexts, you’ll want to learn to anticipate how much damage each of your cards do and how much NP gain you can expect off of them. You want to prioritize Buster crits, generally, but if choosing Busters over Quicks keeps you from looping, they may not be worth it. If you have a favorite ST Quick, I’d suggest bringing them to a replayable fight (such as either Beast III) and playing around with different teams to figure out what combination of supports you like the feel of most, and to get used to the damage and NP gain values you’re working with.
Since Skadi teams want to move fast anyway, you’ll get the best possible results from cycling through supports. With plug, you get access to three Support Servants for free. Miss Crane slots in as a natural fourth, since she removes herself from play. If you want a fifth, you’ll need a support who can die off reliably, which probably means a low-rarity unit. Hans is probably the best generic choice for this, as he brings decent buffs, gets to NP for free, and has low enough health to die without too much fuss assuming he’s taunting. In fights where you can rely on enemies dealing a lot of damage, Wu Zetian and Santa Martha are both good picks who bring a lot of extra damage. This is especially true in Martha’s case, if you can afford to toss a Skadi battery her way and you’re fighting divines. Nobukatsu is also an option for cases where you’re counting on crits, since he gives crit damage and Buster card buffs, while also removing himself for free assuming he’s given a Kaleid.
For these maximum-efficiency teams, you want to run Summer Skadi/DPS/Summer Skadi/Crane/Base Skadi/Sacrificial Taunt Support. On turn 1, you use all of the first Skadi’s skills, and then plug her for your sacrificial taunter, who uses their skills and then gets killed. On turn 2, Crane comes in and uses her NP to swap out. This brings base Skadi in on turn 3 for a final push of damage. Note that Crane’s self-battery puts a taunt on the rest of the team, so the sacrificial support does need to come first in this setup in order to die off reliably.
It’s also worth noting that Summer Skadi’s Buster-crit specific buffs give her unique synergy with triple-Buster Quick units. Xiang Yu and (especially) summer Sei are the big beneficiaries here, as they are Quick units with the potential for explosive Buster crits. Prior to Summer Skadi, Sei had to choose between bringing a Buster crit support or a Quick NP support. Now she gets to have the best of both worlds, which is a very nice buff for her.
Even if you don’t have a deep bench of supports, or if you don’t have strong native Quick damage-dealers and thus have to bring one off your friend list, Summer Skadi still wants to play as quickly as possible. The more NP chargers and damage-boosters you can work into your team, the better. Xu Fu doesn’t bring damage, but her combination of NP charge and NP gain makes her a good pick for single-Skadi teams that don’t have enough 50% chargers to fill out the roster. Barti, by contrast, brings a lot less charge in exchange for amping overall damage and making crits much easier. Barti is an especially good pick if you have Mana Loading on him and can give him a Kaleid or an MLB Imaginary Element, since his NP gives an additional party damage buff in the form of defense down.
Farming is also not especially changed by Summer Skadi, except in that damage thresholds are more easily reached. Summer Skadi completely replaces base Skadi in most cases: AoE Quick units want to run two copies of Summer Skadi, along with a third support, in order to farm most effectively. There are three main options for that third support: base Skadi, Castoria, and Oberon. Base Skadi gives the most damage, but she gives the least overall NP gain and charge. Castoria maximizes NP refund in most cases—the Quick up bracket is so full in Summer Skadi teams that 30% NP gain up typically leads to more refund than 50% Quick up—which matters to a handful of specific Servants. Oberon gives the most flat charge, which in all cases amounts to the most total NP gauge (meaning Castoria is only better when you need the extra NP gain distributed across multiple waves).
So, who prefers Castoria to Oberon? The most notable example is Majin Saber, as the extra NP gain lets her loop 2/2/x nodes CE-less, where Oberon’s NP charge distribution would not. With Summer Majin Saber (and Mana Loading), you can run Skadi/Majin/Castoria/Skadi. On turn 1, you use all Majin skills and all Castoria skills, plug Castoria out for the other Summer Skadi, and use both Summer Skadi offensive buffs. Majin Saber refunds just under 25% per enemy in this setup—close enough that even the single guaranteed hit of overkill from killing the enemy brings her to 50% off two enemies. You then use a Skadi battery each turn to secure the loop.
This only works because Majin Saber has both her own battery and absurd loop specs. Even Charlemagne, who also has a battery and has almost as good of loop specs, is likely to fall short—he needs 12-ish total hits of overkill on each wave, which is pretty unlikely unless one of the enemies has very low health. Having run the numbers for all the other notable Quick AoEs, no one else seems to even come close. The fact of the matter is that an extra 30% Quick up relative to Caster Skadi teams, while nice, just isn’t enough of an NP gain boost to meaningfully impact loop potential except in the most extreme of cases.
That’s not to say Summer Skadi doesn’t help with farming, though—it’s just that in most cases you want base Skadi or Oberon as your third support. Generally speaking, you want base Skadi if you can loop without Oberon’s charge, as the extra damage helps push through high-HP enemy waves. Skadi will almost always be preferable if you’re running Kaleid (since looping is quite easy at that point). For 50% charge CE setups it will probably depend on the node. CE-less setups will depend heavily on the Servant—anyone with good refund will probably want Skadi for standard nodes and Oberon otherwise, while anyone who’s battery-reliant (like Molay or Caren) will prefer Oberon regardless. There are too many possible situations and shades of difficulty to realistically outline them all here, but the rule of thumb is Oberon if you’re having trouble looping and base Skadi otherwise.
Aside from that, loop farming is mostly unchanged, so rather than outlining how summer Skadi might work with every Servant around, I’d recommend looking back on old reviews for any loop farming suggestions there, as they’ll probably still apply (especially for Servants released since Oberon). Typically you’ll want to use a 50% charge CE, and then to divide up your batteries based on the distributions of the enemy waves. It’s pretty straightforward.
Ashiya Doman also has a weird double Oberon loop that works specifically for 2/1/x nodes. You run Skadi/Doman/Oberon/Oberon for this. On turn 1, you use the Skadi buffs, as well as Doman’s 80% battery (plus Mana Loading). He refunds 5% per enemy, for a total of 10%. You then use Skadi’s 50% battery and both Oberon 20% batteries, bringing Doman back to 100%. On the final turn you use both Oberon 50% batteries, securing the loop. Not that this does not work for 1/2/x nodes, as Doman must refund 10% on the first wave specifically. If he needs two 50% batteries on turn 2, Oberon’s battery’s demerit kills his refund on the following wave. This setup only works against Cavalry, of course, but it should be pretty reliable for those contexts.
Caren does the inverse: in double Oberon teams, she can clear 1/2/x nodes, but not 2/1/x nodes. In a Skadi/Caren/Oberon/Oberon team, Caren refunds about 5% per enemy, plus an additional 20% per turn from her first skill, provided her supports have NP gauge available (such as from Mana Loading). The double Oberon team has 300% in total charge with Mana Loading factored in, but the distribution of the batteries means at least 10% of that will always be wasted, so Caren needs to refund 10% on one turn to make up the difference. Unfortunately, Oberon’s battery’s demerit interferes with this, since you have to use one the Oberon batteries on turn 1 or turn 2 to avoid wasting charge, and that causes the demerit to eat into your refund on the following wave.
This leads to a weird factoid: clock debuffs activate in the order they were applied. That is to say, if you use Caren’s first skill before Oberon’s battery, Caren will gain her 20% charge, and then immediately lose it. If, on the other hand, you use Oberon’s battery first, Caren will drop down to 0% gauge, and then charge back up to 20%. Since we need Caren’s passive charge active every turn, we have to use that skill on turn 1. As such, in order to use one of Oberon’s batteries before Caren’s passive charge skill, we also have to use an Oberon battery on turn 1… which means any active NP refund from turn 1 gets effectively negated, and Caren has to generate her 10% gauge on turn 2. Hence, 1/2/x nodes only.
In order to make this work, you start with Mana Loading, Caren’s 30% charge, and an Oberon 50% battery. After using the Oberon battery—the order is important—you use Caren’s first skill. Caren NPs, refunding a little, dropping down to 0%, and then draining 20% from her supports. You then use Caren’s 20% battery, Oberon’s 20% battery, and Skadi’s 50% battery to reach 100%. Caren refunds a little over 10% against two enemies and charges up to 30%. The second Oberon then plugs in and uses his 70% charge to secure the loop.
Caren can also clear 2/2/x nodes in a more conventional setup: Skadi/Caren/Skadi/Oberon. With double Skadi, Caren refunds about 7% per enemy on top of her 20% per turn. On turn 1, Mana Loading plus Caren’s 30% battery plus a Skadi battery lets Caren NP. She refunds a bit over 10% and gets another 20% from her first skill. She uses her 20% battery and the other Skadi uses her 50% battery. On turn 2, she refunds another 10%, charges another 20%, and then lets Oberon’s batteries get her the rest of the way there.
So, on the whole, Quick farming is much less flexible than Arts and both more complex and less reliable than Buster. In exchange, Quick generally comes online with much higher damage on earlier turns. Buster farming, in particular, tends to have excellent wave 3 damage but iffy wave 1 and 2 damage. Thanks to Summer Skadi, Quick Servants now have much better early waves, making them more reliable farmers when you can get them to loop. This is probably a fair balance trade, especially since Buster also needs starting charge in all but a very small handful of cases, and CE-less Quick looping on standard nodes is possible for a decent number of units. This isn’t an exciting rebalance, and it doesn’t really give Quick a clear an obvious playstyle difference, but it’s there, at least.
DPS Skadi wants the Black Grail if possible, as she really wants to clear things as fast as possible. In a support context, she doesn’t massively benefit from any particular CE, since, again, she’s not meant to stick around long-term. Her NP also doesn’t have enough supportive value to bother prioritizing starting charge. Generally, if you’re giving support Skadi a CE at all, it should probably be crit-oriented. 2030 is nice for sustained crit access, and star burst CEs like Golden Captures the Carp are solid for jump-starting crits.
Summer Skadi isn’t missing anything particularly noteworthy that CCs can make up for. Star gen CCs are a decent choice, helping to facilitate party crits, but any benefit provided will be marginal.
Introduction
Ruler
4
3
4
5
6
