Rabbit’s Reviews #359: Kashin Koji (5* Assassin)

Kashin Koji is pretty good as non-limited SSRs go. They do all the basic things—solid steroids, passable loop specs, et cetera—but they also deal niche damage against a niche they can apply on their own. They do come with some notable drawbacks—especially that their damage is RNG-dependent—but there are worse units out there, and Kashin is both a good CQ unit and a respectable ant-Rider farmer. Hard to complain about that.

Kashin has a pretty middling stat-spread, with average-ish attack and HP for an Assassin. As a DPS, ideally they’d be more offense-slanted, but it’s not a bad starting point by any means. Their internals are quite good, with very good Arts cards and decent Quicks for their deck, and high hit-counts across-the-board for strong active star gen. They have a good set of passives as well. Presence Concealment is the usual star-gen buff, but with such high hit-counts, it’s not completely trivial. Their other two passives are unique: Karakuri Creation is an excellent passive, boosting Kashin’s primary card type and also making their debuffs—which are crucial to their damage output and sustain—more likely to land. Mental Restructuring, meanwhile, gives a small crit damage buff, which isn’t all that impactful in light of Skadi buffs, and it also gives Kashin a bit of debuff resistance.

Kashin is a 30% charger, so Mana Loading is crucial for facilitating a selfish 50% charge on turn 1. The other two appends don’t matter much. Kashin has good enough cards that an Extra Attack buff is kinda handy, but bonus damage against Alter Egos is basically useless, especially on an Assassin, since Kashin takes increased damage from Alter Egos. You won’t use Kashin against AEs if you can help it.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x5 Assassin Piece
3	300,000	x12 Assassin Piece x8 Eternal Gear
4	1,000,000	x5 Assassin Monument x6 Tearstone of Blood x15 Mystic Spinal Fluid
Max	3,000,000	x12 Assassin Monument x29 Mystic Spinal Fluid x8 Reactor Core of Dawn

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x5 Gem of Assassin
2 → 3	400,000	x12 Gem of Assassin
3 → 4	1,200,000	x5 Magic Gem of Assassin
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Magic Gem of Assassin x3 Tearstone of Blood
5 → 6	4,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Assassin x6 Tearstone of Blood
6 → 7	5,000,000	x12 Secret Gem of Assassin x5 Eternal Gear
7 → 8	10,000,000	x10 Eternal Gear x6 Ball of Rainbow Thread
8 → 9	12,000,000	x18 Ball of Rainbow Thread x72 Obsidian Knife
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200000	x5 Gem of Assassin
2 → 3	400000	x12 Gem of Assassin
3 → 4	1200000	x5 Magic Gem of Assassin
4 → 5	1600000	x12 Magic Gem of Assassin x15 Mystic Spinal Fluid
5 → 6	4000000	x5 Secret Gem of Assassin x29 Mystic Spinal Fluid
6 → 7	5000000	x12 Secret Gem of Assassin x3 Reactor Core of Dawn
7 → 8	10000000	x6 Reactor Core of Dawn x6 Scale of Fantasy
8 → 9	12000000	x18 Scale of Fantasy x72 Ashes of Forgetfulness
9 → 10	20000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Kashin’s mat asks are gross. They need a lot of Spinal Fluid for ascension, and their skills take 72 knives each. Especially if you invested in any of the LB7 Servants—Tez also needs 72 knives per skill, for instance—it’ll probably be a while before you can max out Kashin’s skills. This also limits their value as a spook for new players, since farming the mat is locked behind clearing LB7.

Kashin’s skillset is quite good, but it incurs long cooldowns on the whole. The skills probably merit their cooldowns, especially taken individually, but as a whole they leave Kashin with a lot of downtime between skill uses. Recommended skill order is 3>1>2.

Kashin’s loop specs are deceptively low for an AoE Servant with an 8-hit NP. Kashin gets about 11% refund per enemy. Even if every single hit gets overkill, Kashin is unable to loop CE-less against refund-neutral classes. Fortunately, their favored targets, Riders, give a bonus to effective NP gain. They still need a lot of overkill to loop, even with two Summer Skadis and an Oberon. Assuming Black Grail (or a similar CE that doesn’t help loopage) they need 19 total hits of overkill across the three Rider enemies on at least one wave in order to refund the 50% they need. That probably means 6 hits of overkill on two enemies and 7 on another (or perhaps 7 on two and 5 on one). Because of how damage is distributed across hits, you’re looking at requiring tiny HP values on the first wave to let Kashin loop CE-less. It’s not really feasible.

Things are a little better with a 50% charge CE. In the same setup—two Summer Skadis and an Oberon—Kashin can loop as long as at least one of the first two waves has 3 enemies. Mana Loading plus Kashin’s own batteries get you to the first NP, two Skadi batteries cover the more difficult wave to loop, and Kashin refunds 30% total off three enemies, letting Oberon make up the difference. With Kaleid, of course, Kashin can loop anything. Losing access to Black Grail is a disadvantage, but for any node at the 90-level and below, a sufficiently-invested Kashin will probably hit damage thresholds without too much trouble anyway. They’re not an optimal farmer, but they’re at least serviceable. Unfortunately, their loop specs will make them hard to use in 90+ and 90++ nodes, though with appropriate setups (using a second DPS, for example) you might be able to make it work. Kashin doesn’t have any party charge or party damage push, which makes them not ideal for mixed-DPS setups, but for the right node, they might work.

For CQs, Kashin has a bit more flexibility. Their usefulness comes mostly from keeping enemies locked down, which means you want to let them NP as much as possible. You’re best off starting with a pair of Skadis—Caster Skadi is arguably better than Ruler Skadi here due to Kashin having two Quick cards and only one Buster—and then plugging one Skadi out for a Servant who facilitates NP gain. Castoria, Reines, and even Lady Avalon can work well for this purpose.

Since Kashin needs starting charge to loop reliably, Traces of Christmas is a good CE pick, boosting both damage and NP gain. For CQs, you can run Black Grail and rely on getting the cards you need to loop, though for longer fights you might want to default back to Traces of Christmas just to avoid BG’s damage ticks.

Kashin will generate a lot of stars and outside of their burst turn their innate crit damage buffs are lowish, so crit damage CCs are a solid choice. We sadly don’t have any debuff success rate up (or debuff resistance down) CCs yet, but if we get one, that’d also be a great pick for Kashin, for obvious reasons.

Assassins are weak grail targets and while Kashin is a good unit, they’re not good enough to be a standout grail target. Their weak loop specs and RNG reliance are the biggest things holding them back, and higher stats won’t fix those.

Kashin’s a mostly unobjectionable unit. Their damage is failure-prone, they have long cooldowns, and their loop specs are iffy, but they have the basic AoE things and has relatively easy access to niche damage. Nothing wrong with that. Kashin definitely doesn’t compare to some of the other great AoEs we’ve gotten lately (looking at you, Tez), and they’re also not a top-end Quick AoE—insert the obligatory comparison to Sen-no-Rikyu here—but they’re a nice addition to the gen pool. Kashin is a welcome spook, but not a Servant to actively target.

Overall: 8/10
Single-Target DPS: 5/10
AoE DPS: 8/10
Survivability: 7/10
Offensive Utility: 1/10
Defensive Utility: 8/10
Farming Usefulness: 7/10
Meeting Expectations: 10/10