Rabbit’s Reviews #370: UDK Barghest (4* Archer)

Introduction

Summer Barghest is an interesting Servant, in that she’s extremely straightforward except for one eye-catching gimmick: she can change her NP from AoE to ST. This is a neat trick, and it technically means Barghest can fill two roles for a box, but in exchange for this flexibility she’s not all that great in either role. There’s no shortage of excellent ST Arts Archers out there—many of whom are free!—and Barghest doesn’t compare favorably to the other AoE Arts Archers. This means there’s not a lot of reason, gameplay-wise, to pull for her, except for the novelty… and while changing NP targeting sounds cool, it doesn’t really result in unique gameplay either, since in practice Barghest will usually be either an okay AoE unit, or an ST unit whose damage falls off massively when her buffs run out.

Servant Data

Archer

QQAAB (Archer)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

5

4

Attribute	Earth
Alignment	Chaotic Good

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

Max HP 12,862

HP Rank

Max ATK 8,851

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,475	Base HP	2,058
Max Atk	8,851	Max HP	12,862
Grail Atk	10,717	Grail HP	15,595

Magic Resistance C

Increase your Debuff Resist by 15%.

Madness Enhancement C

Increase your Buster Card effectiveness by 6%.

Tam Lin Knight E

Increase your Critical Strength against [Human] attribute targets by 4%.

Thunder Eater A

When on a [Burning] field:
- Increase own NP Gauge by 5% each turn.
- Apply Burn and Burn Damage Up Immune to self.

Card Hits	4	4	3	5	4
Per Hit	0.41%	0.41%	0.41%	0.41%	0.41%

	NP per Hit (%)						0.41%
	NP when Attacked (%)						3%

	Star Absorption	153
	Star Generation per Hit	7.9%

Overview

Material Requirements

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x4 Archer Piece
3	150,000	x10 Archer Piece x8 Seed of Yggdrasil
4	500,000	x4 Archer Monument x8 Shell of Reminiscence x2 Spirit Root
Max	1,500,000	x10 Archer Monument x4 Spirit Root x10 Scale of Fantasy

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x4 Gem of Archer
2 → 3	200,000	x10 Gem of Archer
3 → 4	600,000	x4 Magic Gem of Archer
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Magic Gem of Archer x4 Shell of Reminiscence
5 → 6	2,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Archer x8 Shell of Reminiscence
6 → 7	2,500,000	x10 Secret Gem of Archer x5 Seed of Yggdrasil
7 → 8	5,000,000	x10 Seed of Yggdrasil x3 Primordial Lanugo
8 → 9	6,000,000	x9 Primordial Lanugo x20 Scale of Fantasy
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x4 Gem of Archer
2 → 3	200000	x10 Gem of Archer
3 → 4	600000	x4 Magic Gem of Archer
4 → 5	800000	x10 Magic Gem of Archer x8 Great Knight Medal
5 → 6	2000000	x4 Secret Gem of Archer x16 Great Knight Medal
6 → 7	2500000	x10 Secret Gem of Archer x3 Black Beast Grease
7 → 8	5000000	x5 Black Beast Grease x5 Eternal Ice
8 → 9	6000000	x15 Eternal Ice x12 Fruit of Eternity
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Servant Skills

Aside from the NP change gimmick, Barghest’s skillset is pretty plain. Recommended skill order is 2>3>1.

Dmg Up

Protector Knight Alliance A

Increase own ATK (3 turns).
Increase own Critical Strength (3 turns).
Apply buff to self (3 turns): Restore 500 HP for all allies when normal attacking.
If a 3 star or lower rarity ally is on the field, apply all of the below effects:
- Increase own ATK by 20% (3 turns).
- Gain 10 Critical Stars each turn (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
ATK +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
Crit Damage +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Protector Knight Alliance is… fine. It’s a typical 30% attack buff paired with a 50% crit damage buff. The crit buff is a bit odd on a Servant with essentially no way to get access to crits, in the card type with the least crit support, but this skill at least does the basic damage-boosting things. This also lets Barghest heal the team a bit with normal cards, which is kinda cool for stall teams, especially since healing is the thing Castoria teams are often missing. The skill gives Barghest an extra 20% attack up and 10 stars per turn if there’s a silver or lower unit on the field, too, which is handy for players with less-developed boxes, as it makes the likes of Xu Fu and Hans relatively better support picks. Overall, a decent skill, if not overly exciting.

Start Np

Queen Keeper A

Increase own NP Gauge.
Apply Invincible to all allies except self (1 turn).
Restore HP for all allies except self.
Decrease Skill Cooldowns for all allies except self by 1.

Show Info

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

I would argue that Queen Keeper is actually Barghest’s most interesting skill, despite not being the one with her core gimmick. It’s a 30% battery—always nice—but it also gives a bunch of nice defensive utility to Barghest’s allies. The skill gives invuln to everyone except Barghest, provides a hefty heal, and reduces Barghest’s allies’ skill cooldowns by one. All of this is great for stalling with Castoria, though unfortunately this skill pays for it with a long cooldown—and since the CDR doesn’t apply to Barghest herself, the cooldown isn’t mitigated with the skill’s own effect, as is often the case with CDR skills. Especially if you have another source of CDR (such as Tamamo) this is a very nice defensive skill, though on its own the cooldown hurts.

Np Dmg

Strike Weather B

Select an option:
- Option 1: Not Single Target NP (Default)
- Option 2: Single Target NP
Increase own NP Strength (3 turns).
Apply [Super Giant] trait to self (3 turns).
If Option 2 was selected: Set own Noble Phantasm to hit a Single Target (3 turns).

Show Info

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

Strike Weather is a simple skill at its core: it buffs Barghest’s NP damage, and it lets you make her NP ST. It also gives her the Super Giant trait, but that doesn’t really matter in most cases. Being able to change from AoE to ST is cool in theory, but it comes with a number of drawbacks. If you’re fighting a single target, Barghest’s NP damage is effectively halved when this isn’t in effect (even discounting the attached NP damage buff), and while this skill is on a reasonably short cooldown, it still hurts to be so much weaker outside the normal buff cycle. Barghests’s skill cooldowns also aren’t aligned, so after her initial burst of damage, she won’t often hit her theoretical damage cap. This skill could potentially be good for farming 3/1/1 or 3/3/1 nodes, but those nodes tend to have very very high damage requirements Barghest will struggle to meet, and it also requires not using this skill until the waves of 1, which leaves Barghest without her NP damage buff until then. Barghest’s NP also retains its hit-count even when converted to ST, meaning her ST NP refund is quite bad. This skill is at its best when you don’t need Barghest to be ST at all—when you’re using her purely as an AoE unit—since it’s just a good steroid, but it’s kind of unfortunate that the optimal usage of Barghest is to ignore her cool gimmick.

Noble Phantasm

Watersave Galatine B+

Deal damage to all enemies.
Remove offensive buffs from all enemies.
Remove Burn or Burn Damage Up debuffs from all enemies [Demerit].

<Overcharge>

Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first].

Show Info/Video

Watersave Galatine

Calamity-Cleansing Horn of the Sun

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	B+	Anti-Army	4

Effect	Deal damage to all enemies. Remove offensive buffs from all enemies. Remove Burn or Burn Damage Up debuffs from all enemies [Demerit].

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Damage +	450%	600%	675%	712.5%	750%
Buff Removal
Debuff Clear (Burn/Spreading Fire)

Overcharge Effect	Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first].

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Arts +	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%

Watersave Galatine (ST) B+

Deal damage to a single enemy.
Remove offensive buffs from all enemies.
Remove Burn or Burn Damage Up debuffs from all enemies [Demerit].

<Overcharge>

Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first].

Show Info

Watersave Galatine (ST)

Calamity-Cleansing Horn of the Sun

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	B+	Anti-Army	4

Effect	Deal damage to a single enemy. Remove offensive buffs from all enemies. Remove Burn or Burn Damage Up debuffs from all enemies [Demerit].

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Damage +	900%	1200%	1350%	1425%	1500%
Buff Removal
Debuff Clear (Burn/Spreading Fire)

Overcharge Effect	Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first].

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Arts +	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%

Aside from its ability to transform, Barghest’s NP is pretty underwhelming. It has a pre-cast Arts buff, but it only lasts one turn, meaning Barghest can’t ramp. She does have pretty good steroids—split between all three buff brackets, at that—but she has no niche, which especially as a low-attack SR means high-health nodes and quests will be out of reach for her. Aside from that, the NP removes offensive buffs (nice but not particularly important) and removes burn debuffs (a flavor demert) from any targets. While these additional effects aren’t overly important, their presence, in addition to the refund issues, does mean that this NP actually does get weaker in some respects when converted to ST.

Usage Tips

As an AoE unit, Barghest refunds about 17% per enemy with two Castorias. This isn’t great by Arts standards—with a bit of overkill on the wave of 3, she can loop 3/2/x or 2/3/x waves CE-less with Mana Loading and Oberon. She’s not likely to be farming anything 90+ or above, even before you look at damage requirements. She can switch to ST in the middle of a node for cases where that happens to be useful, but that makes her refund even worse and her damage is still unlikely to be sufficient for more purposes that would want that, so eh.

Barghest is much more interesting as a CQ unit, though her best use-case is generally going to be stalling AoE nodes. She wants a Castoria, for defense, and then a third support to round out the team. Tamamo is a particularly good pick, offsetting one of Bargest’s major weaknesses—her cooldowns—though Lady Avalon or Reines can work as well.

At the lower end, Barghest has natural synergy with free support options. Xu Fu is a particularly good pick, providing benefits every Arts Servant likes while also giving Barghest an effective 20% extra attack up. Hans and Mozart are also good options—Hans makes Barghest’s crits better if you can facilitate them (for example, with 2030 on the supports), while Mozart provides lots of buffs for a single turn and can also guarantee crits on that turn.

Barghest has a lot of innate healing and likes to be run on teams that provide even more healing, so there’s really no reason not to bring The Black Grail unless you’re having issues looping or need something specific for a quest (like pierce invuln).

Barghest’s innate crit buff is going to go to waste in most cases without extra stars, so star gen CCs are a nice pick for her. You can also lean into her tankiness with healing or damage cut CCs—these will usually be redundant in Castoria teams but can help manage turns where your defenses fall apart.

Grail Potential

Conclusion

Barghest advertises herself as a shiny new Servant who can be both ST and AoE, but in practice she’s just an AoE stall unit who can amp her damage against a single target to clean up a fight in a pinch. She’s not bad, per se, but she has a lot of competition and doesn’t really do much to stand out. She’s definitely the least exciting Servant on her banner, and she competes with Suzuka for being the “dud” of this Summer event, insofar as it has one. She’ll be fun and serviceable if you want to make her work, but she doesn’t bring much of value otherwise.

Rabbit's Arbitrary Ratings

Overall: 7/10
Single-Target DPS: 7/10
AoE DPS: 7/10
Survivability: 7/10
Offensive Utility: 2/10
Defensive Utility: 7/10
Farming Usefulness: 7/10
Firefighting: 10/10