Rabbit’s Reviews #360: Bhima (5* Lancer)

Introduction

Bhima’s a good Servant. He has essentially two selling points: very high NP damage when properly supported, and very strong crit potential. He can’t really benefit from both at once, and neither is so strong as to make him an especially noteworthy single-target Servant, but he happens to fall in a category—ST SSR Lancers—without a lot of good competition, which lets a generically good unit stand out more than he might otherwise. Bhima’s most direct competition comes from Enkidu, who has a variety of advantages I’ll get into later in the review, and while I personally think Enkidu is the better unit, it’s certainly not clear-cut and compelling arguments can be made the other direction. Either way, it’s nice to have another strong option in the game.

Servant Data

Lancer

QQABB (Lancer)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

5

Attribute	Heaven
Alignment	Lawful Good

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

Max HP 14,045

HP Rank

Max ATK 12,302

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,901	Base HP	2,059
Max Atk	12,302	Max HP	14,045
Grail Atk	13,466	Grail HP	15,387

Traits

Card Hits	4	3	3	5	5
Per Hit	0.72%	0.72%	0.72%	0.72%	0.72%

	NP per Hit (%)	0.72%
NP when Attacked (%)	4%

	Star Absorption	89
Star Generation per Hit	12.3%

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x5 Lancer Piece
3	300,000	x12 Lancer Piece x8 Octuplet Crystals
4	1,000,000	x5 Lancer Monument x6 Claw of Chaos x5 Giant's Ring
Max	3,000,000	x12 Lancer Monument x10 Giant's Ring x5 Mysterious Divine Wine

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x5 Gem of Lancer
2 → 3	400,000	x12 Gem of Lancer
3 → 4	1,200,000	x5 Magic Gem of Lancer
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Magic Gem of Lancer x3 Claw of Chaos
5 → 6	4,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Lancer x6 Claw of Chaos
6 → 7	5,000,000	x12 Secret Gem of Lancer x5 Octuplet Crystals
7 → 8	10,000,000	x10 Octuplet Crystals x6 Giant's Ring
8 → 9	12,000,000	x18 Giant's Ring x72 Remnants of Madness
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200000	x5 Gem of Lancer
2 → 3	400000	x12 Gem of Lancer
3 → 4	1200000	x5 Magic Gem of Lancer
4 → 5	1600000	x12 Magic Gem of Lancer x3 Claw of Chaos
5 → 6	4000000	x5 Secret Gem of Lancer x6 Claw of Chaos
6 → 7	5000000	x12 Secret Gem of Lancer x2 Mysterious Divine Wine
7 → 8	10000000	x4 Mysterious Divine Wine x4 Fruit of Eternity
8 → 9	12000000	x11 Fruit of Eternity x72 Small Bell of Absolution
9 → 10	20000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Guts

Vasuki's Medicine A

Apply Guts to self (1 time, 3 turns).
Increase own NP Gauge.
Clear own debuffs.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Revives with HP	2000	2100	2200	2300	2400	2500	2600	2700	2800	3000
NP +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Vasuki’s Medicine is a fairly standard skill, pairing a 3000 HP guts, with a 30% battery, with a debuff clear. All of this is nice, but none of it is especially unique, and there are a few annoying drawbacks to consider. For one, if you’re running Bhima with Koyanskaya, Bhima can’t use this skill again until turn 3, which limits its flexibility slightly—a 30% battery on a 5-turn CD gives a little more flexibility in terms of when you need to draw cards versus when you can rely purely on batteries to loop, assuming you’re running with Black Grail (or an event damage CE). The guts is also not stackable, meaning unless you’re taking a lot of damage, the guts from the second use of this skill is likely to be blocked by the guts from the first use, which will have nearly worn off at that point. The debuff clear also is unlikely to be helpful on the first turn, though when Bhima has this again on the third turn (or on a later skill cycle) it can help with reliability a bit. All that said, this is a skill that provides charge, survivability, and stability. It’s not a bad skill, even if not quite ideal.

Buster Up

Cudgel Techniques A (Bhima)

Increase own Buster Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Increase own Critical Strength (3 turns).
Gain Critical Stars.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Buster +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
Crit Dmg +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
Stars +	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	15
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Cudgel Techniques is a standard steroid, giving 30% Buster up, plus a small crit buff and some stars. 30% crit up isn’t a lot, especially on a servant as flush with crit buffs as Bhima is, but more damage is more damage and viewed as a small part of a larger package, it’s nothing to complain about. Only real drawback here is, again, the cooldown—for the relative strength of the skill, I would usually expect to be able to double-stack it on turn 2 with Koyan. Unfortunately, Bhima has to wait until turn 3 for this.

Dmg Up

Hanuman Howling EX

Increase own ATK (3 turns).
Apply buff to self (3 turns): Increase own Critical Strength by 10% (3 turns) when using Quick Cards [Applies before damage].
Apply buff to self (3 turns): Gain 5 Critical Stars when using Buster Cards.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
ATK +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Hanuman Howling is a similar deal as the above, giving 30% attack up along with some stars and crit buffs. In this case, the crit-related tools are even smaller, and also are tied to cards—it gives 5 crit stars per Buster, and 10% crit damage up per Quick. Assuming you use this turn 1 and no Servants die, this gives you a total of 20% crit up and 10 critical stars at some point over the course of 3 turns. This is… very marginal. It’s a bit better in solo contexts, but not a lot, and Bhima is not at all a solo-oriented Servant. This is a less useful skill in practice than Cudgel Techniques, and, again, I would normally expect it to be on a one-turn-shorter CD. Oh well.

Noble Phantasm

Marti Vayuputra B

Increase own Critical Strength by 50% (3 turns).
Remove buffs from a single enemy [Activates first].
Deal damage to a single enemy.

<Overcharge>

Deal additional damage to a single enemy.

Show Info/Video

Marti Vayuputra

The Child of the God of Winds is Here

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	B	Anti-Personnel/Anti-Army	5

Effect	Increase own Critical Strength by 50% (3 turns). Remove buffs from a single enemy [Activates first]. Deal damage to a single enemy.

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Crit Damage +	50%	50%	50%	50%	50%
Buff Removal
Damage +	600%	800%	900%	950%	1000%

Overcharge Effect	Deal additional damage to a single enemy.

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Add. Damage +	0%	200%	300%	400%	500%

Whether you’re aiming for NP damage or crits, Bhima’s NP is the star of his kit. Every piece of it is useful: it gives a sizable ramping crit buff, removes the enemy’s buffs, and deals bonus damage based on overcharge. The crit damage buff lets Bhima scale up to truly impressive levels of crit damage on later turns, and the buff removal makes sure he’ll hit for full damage unless enemies have unremovable buffs. This makes Bhima a remarkably consistent unit overall, as he has both debuff removal and buff removal, making it very hard for anyone to stop his damage.

The real highlight here, though, is the Overcharge effect. This is effectively a second NP that triggers after the first one, dealing additional damage based on Overcharge level. If you have a star gen buff in play, such as from Merlin’s Illusion skill, these Overcharge hits can also drop a few extra stars. They can technically do this regardless, but the base star gen on Buster NP hits is too low to matter much without support.

To be clear, the percentage listed on the Overcharge is functionally additive with the base NP multiplier. That is to say, at NP1 and OC2, Bhima’s NP is effectively a 10-hit NP with an 800% multiplier, getting 600% from the base NP and 200% from Overcharge. In the best possible situation—NP5 and OC5—this NP has an effective 1500% multiplier, outdamaging even an interluded Buster NP. This functions sort of like a baked-in interlude, or a small-but-controllable supereffective multiplier. It stacks with everything, which is great! But in most cases it requires a support NP to trigger, which restricts Bhima’s flexibility and reduces the number of cards he has available for crits. This puts his two potential strengths—NP damage and crit damage—somewhat at odds, as he really can’t maximize both at once.

For an NP1 Bhima, getting OC2 (which can be done pretty easily via sticking Kaleid on any support) is equivalent to a 33% SE multiplier, or a standard Interlude. At NP5, it’s still equivalent to an Interlude, but it only matches a 20% SE multiplier. Because this is a flat addition to your effective NP multiplier, it is proportionally more effective at lower NP levels. Having a baked-in pseudo-interlude is still pretty good, though.

Usage Tips

Technically speaking, Bhima has all the tools needed for a guaranteed loop setup with double Koyan, Oberon, and a 50% charge CE. Mana Loading plus S1 gives you your first NP, the two Koyans give you your second, and Oberon plus skill 1 gives you the third. Ideally you put Kaleid on the two Koyans and also Oberon so you can use their NPs to trigger Bhima’s Overcharge effect whenever you haven’t drawn his Busters. You can also run Black Grail on Bhima, but this makes you more susceptible to card RNG by virtue of needing to make up for the missing charge somewhere. Using something like Cranking or Aerial Drive will be a lot more reliable, and especially given that you can amp NP damage with support NPs, I would generally recommend those over Black Grail unless you really need as much damage as possible.

Bhima is somewhat more interesting as a stall unit, though, particularly because of his synergy with Reines and Himiko. Reines/Castoria and Himiko/Castoria are both extremely stable defensive shells for Buster teams. The idea of these teams is that Reines and Himiko both provide extra overcharge levels with their NPs, so every three turns you do a support->DPS->Castoria NP chain, such that Castoria’s NP provides either four or five hits of invuln to the entire party, ideally making it so that you never take damage. This works particularly well when the DPS benefits from overcharge buffs, as Bhima does.

Whether you use Himiko or Reines in the above setup is largely a matter of preference. Reines makes charging your NPs a bit easier by virtue of having more flexible batteries and giving NP gain buffs, and she also usually provides slightly more in NP-applicable damage buffs (70% in one bracket, versus 30% and 20% in separate brackets). In exchange, Himiko gives two levels of overcharge instead of one, making her setup slightly safer assuming NP recursion isn’t an issue, and her NP damage increases can actually end up being functionally higher than Reines’s if the DPS benefits meaningfully from Overcharge. Himiko also provides some nice crit buffs and a lot of critical stars, and she’s not reliant on landing debuffs, which sometimes matters. Himiko can also output some half-decent damage herself, where Reines cannot. Having run both teams extensively, I find Himiko teams to be marginally faster, generally more reliable, and a bit more fun—but you can’t go wrong with either.

Bhima’s a pretty self-sufficient unit, so you can run him in lower-end teams without too much issue as well. The classic Mash/DPS/friend Merlin team should work decently here. Hans is a particularly good budget partner for Bhima, as Bhima appreciates Hans’s crit tools, and Hans has ready access to his own NP in order to toss Bhima an Overcharge level on occasion. If you happen to have Edison, he’s also a solid flex pick for Bhima, giving similar things as Hans alongside a skill-based overcharge increase.

As I alluded to above, I’d generally recommend running Bhima with a 50% charge CE rather than the usual Black Grail. His NP gain just isn’t good enough to be totally consistent with BG, especially since his cooldowns mean he must get at least 30% charge with his cards on turn 1 in order to loop (along with an additional 20% on either turn 1 or turn 2). With a turn shorter cooldown, Bhima would be able to divide that 50% card-based NP gain more flexibly, raising the odds he’d get it, but alas, this is not the case. The Black Grail can also be a liability in Buster-focused Castoria teams by virtue of their lack of healing. All this is to say, Cranking, Aerial Drive, or something of that nature is my recommendation for Bhima’s CE.

As one final note, you might be tempted to give Bhima an Overcharge CE, but those are largely a trap. One Who Wishes For Salvation—probably the best of them—only increases Overcharge by 2 levels, for 3 times (or 4 if MLB). The proportional damage value of this is lessened the higher Bhima’s NP level or existing overcharge level, but even in its best case—NP1, no overcharge otherwise—it’s only a 50% increase in damage, which is less than Black Grail gets you. Even Heaven’s Feel is going to amount to more damage in most cases, and it isn’t limited to a certain number of NPs.

Normally I recommend crit damage CCs for Servants without a lot of in-kit crit buffs. Bhima is flush with them, so they won’t make a whole lot of difference… but any damage buffs are useful if you’re trying to crit things down, and Bhima doesn’t have any other particularly noteworthy CC picks, so you might as well give him the crit buffs.

Grail Potential

Conclusion

Bhima is a very good ST unit who’s also mechanically interesting. That’s not a combination that always goes together! Many really good ST Servants are good because they have a 50% battery (or more) coupled with good steroids and maybe some nice refund or crit tools. Bhima does have a lot of these, to be sure, but a lot of his strength comes from his nifty Overcharge gimmick and the teams and strategies that result from that. He also comes with a bunch of nice utility that positions him well for dealing with tricky fights.

The elephant in the room is that Enkidu exists, can spook, and is a lot older. Enkidu has some drawbacks—a weaker deck, a Mana-Burst-Style skill, and a battery that’s on too long of a cooldown to be quickly cycled with Koyan—but in exchange, they have much higher peak damage, an interlude, damage ramp, a very powerful (if small) niche, and their own set of utility. Enkidu’s biggest advantage over Bhima is that their NP stuns Divine enemies, making them really good for locking down certain powerful targets.

Bhima and Enkidu are different enough that each will have places where they shine over the other, but at the same time they’re similar enough that you really don’t need both. Enkidu’s also been around long enough to have had plenty of chances to spook older players, which further reduces the likelihood that Bhima will be needed.

None of this is an argument against Bhima’s strength, really. At the end of the day, Enkidu and Bhima are both really good, and if you happen to have either, whichever you’ve invested in will serve you well. There’s nothing wrong with having more useful tools in the game, and Bhima’s a pretty fun Servant, both from a character standpoint and from a gameplay perspective. Solid Servant. No complaints.

Rabbit's Arbitrary Ratings

Overall: 8/10
Single-Target DPS: 9/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 4/10
Offensive Utility: 2/10
Defensive Utility: 1/10
Farming Usefulness: 2/10
Culinary Aptitude: 10/10