Rabbit’s Reviews #356: Draco (5* Beast)

For the first time in nearly two years, we have a new playable Servant class—but unlike the past few, this is one we’ve actually seen in the game before, as an enemy class. Enemy Beasts have all had different properties and class advantage rules, but for the purpose of this review, I’m going to assume that the things that are true about Draco will also be true of all future playable Beasts. If this turns out to not be true, I’ll address it in a later review.

With that said, what is a Beast? Beasts are a nifty variation on Berserkers, getting a 1.5x damage multiplier against knights and cavalry and 2x against berserkers, while dealing half damage to and taking double damage from all extra classes. They also don’t have any flat bonuses or penalties to attack (unlike Berserkers and Assassins and the like), which means what you see is what you get, as far as their stats are concerned. Based on the data we have available, it looks like they will tend to have very high stats, which should keep them roughly on-par with Berserkers and Avengers in effective attack, despite lacking their innate multiplier. As a whole, they’re sort of a Berserker-minus, packing many of the same strengths, without the squishiness, but with a slightly narrower use-case. The one catch to this is that Ordeal Call’s ostensible focus on extra classes might make a main-class-killing class less valuable in the long-run. I personally expect Beasts to be roughly as useful moving forward as Alter Egos were at the time they debuted—which is to say, pretty good, about half the time. We’ll see whether that prediction holds up.

Draco herself is one of the best ST Arts units we’ve seen, provided you’re fighting a main-class unit. An NP1 Draco roughly matches an NP2 Vlad, which is a testament to her raw strength. Kriemhild is probably better overall—her anti-Dragon damage is comparable and she has a 50% battery—but Draco is less reliant on cards to loop and doesn’t have the usual defensive issues Berserkers do. She’s a great unit, and if you don’t have a favored ST Arts unit, she’s a good pull. That said, there’s no shortage of acceptable-to-great substitutes, and if you have any of Vlad, Galatea, Kriem—or, heck, even Hephaestion in many cases—you probably don’t need her.

I alluded to Beasts seeming as though they will have very high stats, and Draco is a good example of this, with what is in the abstract quite high attack, and reasonable health to complement it. This is a good starting point for a DPS, and Draco uses it well. Beasts also seem to have Archer-ish star gen and star weight, meaning slightly above-average crit chance on the whole. Draco’s NP gain is somewhat less impressive, as a triple-Buster Servant with a solid Arts card and an underwhelming Quick, but that’s not a problem in light of her skills and NP. All-in-all, not bad bases.

Draco starts with the two typical Beast passives: Authority of the Beast, for a small crit damage buff, and Independent Manifestation, which has numbers so low as to be effectively flavor. Her third passive, though, is Nega-Messiah, giving a huge 500% increase to debuff success rate. Draco isn’t especially reliant on debuffs, but this does mean any debuffs she offers will land provided the target isn’t immune, which is pretty neat. For appends, Mana Loading is the best, as always. Anti-Caster attack up is kinda nice on a Servant who deals extra damages to Casters by default, and the Extra Attack buff isn’t very useful.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x10 Dragon Fang x10 Void's Dust
3	300,000	x10 Serpent Jewel x10 Black Beast Grease
4	1,000,000	x10 Tearstone of Blood x10 Heart of the Foreign God
Max	3,000,000	x10 Cursed Beast Gallstone x10 Dragon's Reverse Scale

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x10 Dragon Fang
2 → 3	400,000	x10 Octuplet Crystals
3 → 4	1,200,000	x12 Phoenix Feather
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Homunculus Baby
5 → 6	4,000,000	x12 Serpent Jewel
6 → 7	5,000,000	x15 Heart of the Foreign God
7 → 8	10,000,000	x15 Cursed Beast Gallstone
8 → 9	12,000,000	x15 Dragon's Reverse Scale
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200000	x10 Void's Dust
2 → 3	400000	x10 Claw of Chaos
3 → 4	1200000	x12 Black Beast Grease
4 → 5	1600000	x12 Tearstone of Blood
5 → 6	4000000	x12 Giant's Ring
6 → 7	5000000	x15 Crown of Silvery Light
7 → 8	10000000	x15 Ashes of Forgetfulness
8 → 9	12000000	x15 Flaming Oni Lantern Plant
9 → 10	20000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Draco’s skillset is very busy, and it has some nice stuff in it, but ultimately none of this is what makes her good. Recommended skill order is 2>3>1.

For everything in her kit, Draco is, at her core, a very standard ST Arts unit. She deals a lot of damage, very quickly, and that’s about it. For short fights, you run her with two Castorias and another support—Oberon for raw charge and final-turn burst damage, Tamamo for consistent damage, Xu Fu if you don’t have premium options, et cetera—and she’ll hit main class Servants hard without much managing. There’s… really very little complexity here. She’s mostly self-sufficient, and she does well.

Unlike Berserkers, though, Draco takes half-damage from her favored targets, which means she can also work well in stall contexts, especially with her long-duration skills and her high damage output even without other buffs in play. For stall teams, you want one Castoria, and another support: ideally one of Tamamo, Reines, and Lady Avalon. Tamamo provides the most in terms of pure steroids, and her cooldown reduction speeds up the whole team, making her the best offensive pick. Reines brings more flexible batteries, extra stability with Castoria, faster NP gain, and even potentially more damage than Tamamo, thanks to Reines’s NP boosting Draco’s overcharge-based SE damage. Lady Avalon splits the difference between the two, bringing some of what each offers.

Draco is a good Arts Servant mostly because of, rather than in spite of, how simple she is. She does very high damage, pretty much always, with essentially no drawbacks. She’s limited to main-class Servants, sure, but for those Servants she’s just about the best offensive ST unit you can bring (aside from sometimes Kriemhild or Hephaestion or the like when you need big batteries).

If you’re aiming for a quick clear, or you have some source of healing in the team, Black Grail is the best CE for Draco, by virtue of the damage it provides. Otherwise, you have a bunch of options. Due to Draco’s lack of in-kit Arts buffs, Formal Craft is an unusually useful pick here, as are staples like Mark on a Smiling Face and Painting Summer.

The best CC for Draco was introduced during her own event: Romance That is in the Spear inflicts the Roman trait (and also increases the affixed card’s damage against Romans), effectively guaranteeing Draco can get access to her anti-Roman power mod at some point within the first 3 turns, and because it lasts for 5 turns, it’s pretty much permanent once you use it. Put this on one of Draco’s cards—probably a Buster so you can use it before her NP without losing refund—and you’re golden. Nothing else aside from that matters much, though you might consider giving Draco debuff-focused CCs just because she mostly guarantees they land, which is kinda fun.

Draco is a fantastic unit and she’s well-worth grailing. Her high-base stats become even higher with grail scaling, letting her hit things hard and survive a long while with levels past 90. If you plan to make her your primary Arts DPS, especially, she’s a great grail target.

Draco is a fantastic unit and one of the best ST Arts Servants we’ve seen, provided you’re not fighting extra classes. There’s not a lot else to say about her beyond that: she’s a generically good Servant, and while she is very good, she isn’t standout enough to be a necessity for players with established bosses.

As a whole, Draco feels to me like something of a catch-up unit. If you’re a relatively new player, or you don’t have all your main-class ST needs covered, Draco is a one-stop-shop. Even an NP1 Draco probably covers most of your non-extra-class ST needs, and at higher NP levels she definitely does. There’s still a place for characters with niche damage or large batteries—again, Kriem and Hephaestion have proven their value over and over in the age of super recollections and 90++ nodes—but for the most part, Draco does everything you need. With Ordeal Call likely to focus mostly on extra-class enemies and characters, Draco is here to ensure you don’t have to worry about any of the old stuff. It is not a coincidence, I think, that she only asks for old mats. She’ll get you through most of the tough ST stuff to-date, so you can be caught-up and ready for the new story content.

This is contingent on pulling her, of course, and if you’re already caught up and have a good box, you don’t need her. But it’s nice that she’s there for the people she can help.

Overall: 10/10
Single-Target DPS: 10/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: 1/10
Defensive Utility: 2/10
Farming Usefulness: 6/10
Summoning Animation: 10/10