Rabbit’s Reviews #366: Suzuka Gozen (4* Rider)

Introduction

Suzuka is the one Servant this summer with really nothing interesting going on. That’s not an indictment of her kit, to be clear—she’s actually quite good by Quick standards, especially for an SR—but everyone else involved in the event has something unusual or noteworthy about their kits. Suzuka’s just a good AoE Quick unit. There’s nothing wrong with that, and she’s probably not even the weakest Servant out of the batch, but she’s definitely the least-interesting and the most skippable.

Servant Data

Rider

QQAAB (Archer)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

5

Attribute	Heaven
Alignment	Neutral Summer

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

Max HP 11,172

HP Rank

Max ATK 9,349

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,558	Base HP	1,787
Max Atk	9,349	Max HP	11,172
Grail Atk	11,320	Grail HP	13,546

Riding A

Increase your Quick Card effectiveness by 10%.

Magic Resistance D

Increase your Debuff Resist by 12.5%.

Territory Creation C

Increase your Arts Card effectiveness by 6%.

Divinity A

Apply Damage Plus for yourself (Total Card Damage +200).

Card Hits	4	4	3	5	5
Per Hit	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%

	NP per Hit (%)						0.55%
	NP when Attacked (%)						3%

	Star Absorption	200
	Star Generation per Hit	9.1%

Overview

Material Requirements

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x4 Rider Piece
3	150,000	x10 Rider Piece x6 Eternal Gear
4	500,000	x4 Rider Monument x8 Refined Magatama x4 Shell of Reminiscence
Max	1,500,000	x10 Rider Monument x8 Shell of Reminiscence x4 Flaming Oni Lantern Plant

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x4 Gem of Rider
2 → 3	200,000	x10 Gem of Rider
3 → 4	600,000	x4 Magic Gem of Rider
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Magic Gem of Rider x4 Refined Magatama
5 → 6	2,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Rider x8 Refined Magatama
6 → 7	2,500,000	x10 Secret Gem of Rider x4 Eternal Gear
7 → 8	5,000,000	x8 Eternal Gear x5 Shell of Reminiscence
8 → 9	6,000,000	x15 Shell of Reminiscence x20 Sun Leather
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x4 Gem of Rider
2 → 3	200000	x10 Gem of Rider
3 → 4	600000	x4 Magic Gem of Rider
4 → 5	800000	x10 Magic Gem of Rider x2 Mysterious Divine Wine
5 → 6	2000000	x4 Secret Gem of Rider x4 Mysterious Divine Wine
6 → 7	2500000	x10 Secret Gem of Rider x4 Eternal Ice
7 → 8	5000000	x8 Eternal Ice x3 Reactor Core of Dawn
8 → 9	6000000	x9 Reactor Core of Dawn x8 Flaming Oni Lantern Plant
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Servant Skills

Suzuka’s skillset is pretty nice. It’s fairly simple, only offering all the basic DPS things… but it does offer all the basic DPS things, so I can’t really complain. Recommended skill order is 3>1>2.

Dmg Up

BF Super Summer EX

Increase ATK for all allies (3 turns).
Increase NP Strength for all [Summer Form] trait allies (3 turns).
Gain Critical Stars.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
ATK +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
NP Damage +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Stars +	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	15
CD	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	6	6	5

BF Super Summer is a nice Charisma variant. In addition to the standard 20% partywide attack up, it also gives 20% NP damage up to all Summer allies. Mostly this just makes this a better-than-average steroid for Suzuka herself, part of which gets doubled in Oberon teams. This is a decent damage buff to a Summer ally as well, which can potentially make Suzuka decent for unconvential teams or dual-core farming setups, but she doesn’t really offer much meaningful utility outside of this, so generally the benefit of this will be selfish. As an extra benefit, this gives a small number of critical stars—not enough to let Suzuka crit reliably on their own, but enough to help out if you have bonus stars from (for example) Summer Skadi.

Quick Up

Divine Power (Summer) A

Increase own Quick Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Increase own Critical Strength (3 turns).
Apply buff to self (3 turns): Increase own ATK by 10% (3 turns) when hitting with Critical Hits.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Quick +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Crit Damage +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Divine Power is a somewhat weaker steroid on its own, though that’s forgivable in light of Suzuka’s other steroids. Most 3-turn card-type buffs cap out at 30%, but this only gives 20% Quick up. Unfortunate, but Suzuka isn’t lacking for damage elsewhere, at least. This skill also gives 50% crit damage up, which is nice, though the Skadis provide so much crit damage up already that this doesn’t make a massive difference. The final benefit of this skill is both more interesting and less important, increasing Suzuka’s attack by 10% each time she crits (applying before damage, effectively strengthening the crit itself a little bit). In CQs especially this can let Suzuka ramp her damage fairly effectively, and it technically can work in farming, too, if you place Suzuka’s cards before her NP. Suzuka’s NP doesn’t ramp on its own, so she’s reliant on being able to crit to accomplish something similar—which, of course, is RNG-reliant. It’s not a bad bonus effect, by any means—as I often say, more damage is more damage—but it’s not something you can count on.

NP Gain Up

Summer Flag B

Increase NP Gain for an ally (3 turns).
Decrease Skill Cooldown for an ally by 1 turn.
Increase own NP Gauge.

Show Info

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

Summer Flag is Suzuka’s 30% battery. It also comes with a targeted NP gain buff and a single turn of CDR. The battery is always selfish, and Suzuka will usually want the targeted aspects of this skill on herself as well to help with loopage, but in CQ contexts you might occasionally splash this to a support (probably Castoria) in an emergency. It’s also worth noting Suzuka’s cooldowns don’t seem to be penalized for her having CDR in-kit—Servants with CDR often have cooldowns that are only “standard” if the CDR skills are used selfishly, but Suzuka goes from having “normal” cooldowns to short cooldowns if this is used selfishly, which is nice.

Noble Phantasm

Natsumorijoudo Kourinteien A+

Apply Ignore Invincible to self (1 turn) [Activates first].
Apply 30% Special ATK [Lawful] alignment to self (1 turn) [Activates first].
Deal damage to all enemies.

<Overcharge>

Deal supereffective damage against [Earth] attribute enemies.

Show Info/Video

Natsumorijoudo Kourinteien

Pure Land at the Height of Summer - Nimbus Garden

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	A+	Anti-Army	5

Effect	Apply Ignore Invincible to self (1 turn) [Activates first]. Apply 30% Special ATK [Lawful] alignment to self (1 turn) [Activates first]. Deal damage to all enemies.

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Ignore Invincible
Bonus Damage (Lawful) +	30%	30%	30%	30%	30%
Damage +	600%	800%	900%	950%	1000%

Overcharge Effect	Deal supereffective damage against [Earth] attribute enemies.

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Supereffective ATK +	150%	162.5%	175%	187.5%	200%

Suzuka’s NP is fairly straightforward. It’s an AoE Quick NP with relatively low refund, pierce invuln, and two broad niches. Pierce invuln is nice for consistency reasons, and having two niches is great, but that’s all there is here. It does damage, and sometimes it does more damage.

One of the niche damage buffs is a 30% power mod against Lawful enemies, which, while nice, is of somewhat limited use. 30% is pretty low for niche damage, and power mod stacks additively with NP damage buffs, which means it won’t be all that impactful in practice. The other niche, on the other hand, is supereffective damage against Earth, which majorly spikes Suzuka’s damage against Earth enemies. Especially with her high overall steroids, Suzuka will do great damage to Earth Casters and Berserkers.

Usage Tips

Suzuka’s about as conventional as it gets, usage-wise. For CQs, you give her three Skadis and let her loose on things. If you have 2030 for the Skadis, that can be a good pick—Suzuka really relies on flooding the field with stars to crit, and her hit-counts aren’t really enough to do that particularly reliably. You can also run Suzuka in a Skadi/Suzuka/Castoria stall team, though Suzuka doesn’t really bring all that much of value to that shell aside from CDR.

In farming contexts, Suzuka doesn’t have the loop specs to loop CE-less. She refunds about 11% per enemy with double Summer Skadi against Casters, or 7.5% against Berserkers. With a 50% charge CE, she can loop Caster nodes as long as one wave has three enemies—Mana Loading and her own battery covers the first NP, Oberon covers the wave of three, giving 70% charge in addition to Suzuka’s total refund, while both Skadis cover the other wave. For Berserker farming, Suzuka’s limited to Kaleid in all cases.

Suzuka’s utility can let her work as an alternative support in a pinch. She technically works with Arcueid, by virtue of providing the CDR Arc needs and a (small) steroid for her, and she can provide a damage buff and some minor utility for any Summer Servant as well. She’s not the best choice for any of these rolls, but she’s there.

In CQs, Suzuka wants as much damage as possible, so Black Grail is a good pick if you’re willing to rely on drawing cards necessary for NP gain. You can also pick Traces of Christmas to make looping easier in exchange for a substantial damage loss. Traces of Christmas (or any other 50% charge CE that brings damage) is usually going to be the best pick for farming, unless you’re fighting Berserkers, in which case you need Kaleid.

Suzuka will be flush with crit buffs as-is, but there aren’t really any other notable CC choices for her and she should be critting regularly, so you might as well give her crit damage CCs for a bit of extra damage.

Grail Potential

Conclusion

Suzuka’s a pretty good SR. Her loop specs are on the low side, but she has good steroids, two niches, and a way to scale her damage with a bit of luck. There’s not that much else to say here—nothing wrong with this one, but nothing overly exciting either.

Rabbit's Arbitrary Ratings

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