Rabbit’s Reviews #374: Sugitani Zenjubou (3* Archer)

Introduction

It’s been several years since our last 3* Archer! Zenjubou is fine—they have a flavorful gimmick where they get stronger the longer they wait to act, representing the idea of taking aim for a powerful sniper shot. They aren’t especially powerful or useful—if you need a budget silver Archer, Robin, Euryale, and Tell are all much better and much simpler—but if you’re looking for a fun a flavorful unit to use on a not-too-difficult fight, Zenjubou’s free!

Servant Data

Archer

QAABB (Saber)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

5

4

Attribute	Human
Alignment	Neutral Balanced

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

Max HP 9,682

HP Rank

Max ATK 7,647

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,364	Base HP	1,742
Max Atk	7,647	Max HP	9,682
Grail Atk	9,943	Grail HP	13,127

Traits

Card Hits	4	3	3	5	4
Per Hit	0.66%	0.66%	0.66%	0.66%	0.66%

	NP per Hit (%)	0.66%
NP when Attacked (%)	3%

	Star Absorption	145
Star Generation per Hit	7.9%

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	30,000	x4 Archer Piece
3	100,000	x8 Archer Piece x15 Evil Bone
4	300,000	x4 Archer Monument x13 Void's Dust x10 Mystic Gunpowder
Max	900,000	x8 Archer Monument x20 Mystic Gunpowder x4 Flaming Oni Lantern Plant

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	50,000	x4 Gem of Archer
2 → 3	100,000	x8 Gem of Archer
3 → 4	300,000	x4 Magic Gem of Archer
4 → 5	400,000	x8 Magic Gem of Archer x7 Void's Dust
5 → 6	1,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Archer x13 Void's Dust
6 → 7	1,250,000	x8 Secret Gem of Archer x10 Evil Bone
7 → 8	2,500,000	x20 Evil Bone x12 Mystic Gunpowder
8 → 9	3,000,000	x36 Mystic Gunpowder x48 Obsidian Knife
9 → 10	5,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	50000	x4 Gem of Archer
2 → 3	100000	x8 Gem of Archer
3 → 4	300000	x4 Magic Gem of Archer
4 → 5	400000	x8 Magic Gem of Archer x10 Fool's Chain
5 → 6	1000000	x4 Secret Gem of Archer x20 Fool's Chain
6 → 7	1250000	x8 Secret Gem of Archer x4 Refined Magatama
7 → 8	2500000	x7 Refined Magatama x2 Flaming Oni Lantern Plant
8 → 9	3000000	x5 Flaming Oni Lantern Plant x16 Arrowhead of Malice
9 → 10	5000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Buster Up

Sniper's Nest C

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

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 Damage (Buster) +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
CD	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	6	6	5

Sniper’s Nest is Zenjubou’s simplest skill and core steroid, giving both a Buster buff and a nice Buster Crit buff for 3 turns. It’s on a standard 5-turn cooldown, too, which means it’ll be active most of the time. Zenjubou’s damage is otherwise quite inconsistent and spikey, so having a solid consistent damage boost is very nice.

Debuff Clear

Starting Over (Reloading) C+

Clear all debuffs from self.
Apply buff to self (5 turns): Increase own Critical Strength (1 time, 5 turns) every turn.
Apply to self: Gain critical stars each turn (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Crit Damage +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
Critical Stars	5	6	6	7	7	8	8	9	9	10
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Reloading is an interesting crit skill. Its central feature is that each turn it’s active it gives Zenjubou a one-time stack of crit damage up, giving Zenjubou a strong crit with a single card each turn. The trick here is that the crit damage buffs can stack over time, so if Zenjubou doesn’t crit for several turns, they eventually get a devastating single crit. Zenjubou strongly benefits from critting with their Buster cards before their other cards as a result, so that the strongest cards get these benefits. The “intended” use of this skill is to let Zenjubou wait for a while, prioritizing supports’ cards, and then land a devastating single crit at a key moment. This isn’t especially practical, and it’s not really better in most cases than just treating this as a consistent-ish crit damage buff that’s usually active, but if you want to see big crit numbers, this skill can enable that. The skill also gives some passive stars, to make critting easier, and it removes Zenjubou’s debuffs for consistency.

Evade

Sniper's Camoflage B

Apply Evade to self (3 times, 3 turns).
Increase own Buster Card Star Gather Rate (3 turns).
Apply buff to self (3 turns): Increase own Buff Success Rate by 15% (5 turns) every turn.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Star Gather (Buster) +	300%	320%	340%	360%	380%	400%	420%	440%	460%	500%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Sniper’s Camoflage is another cool and flavorful skill. It gives Zenjubou a Buff Success Rate buff each turn for 3 turns, which feeds into Zenjubou’s NP. As with Reloading, this skill is meant to facilitate waiting for a while and then executing an extremely powerful single NP. This isn’t all that great of a concept at the higher end, but it fits nicely with stall teams or lower-end teams that aren’t relying on dealing as much damage as possible as quickly as possible. The skill is also a three-hit dodge, which is great, and it increases Zenjubou’s Buster card star weight, making it more likely that they can crit with their most optimal cards.

Noble Phantasm

Futatsutamanite Uchitesourou C+

85% chance to apply Sure Hit to self (1 turn) [Activates first]
55% chance to increase own NP Strength by 20% (1 turn) [Activates first].
55% chance to further increase own NP Strength by 20% (1 turn) [Activates first].
Deal damage to a single enemy.
Remove all [Buff Success Rate Up] buffs from self [Demerit].

<Overcharge>

70% chance to increase own Arts Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first].
70% chance to increase own Buster Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first].

Show Info/Video

Futatsutamanite Uchitesourou

Shooting With Two Bullets

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	C+	Anti-Personnel	4

Effect	85% chance to apply Sure Hit to self (1 turn) [Activates first] 55% chance to increase own NP Strength by 20% (1 turn) [Activates first]. 55% chance to further increase own NP Strength by 20% (1 turn) [Activates first]. Deal damage to a single enemy. Remove all [Buff Success Rate Up] buffs from self [Demerit].

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Sure Hit
NP Damage +	20%	20%	20%	20%	20%
NP Damage +	20%	20%	20%	20%	20%
Damage +	600%	800%	900%	950%	1000%
Buff Removal

Overcharge Effect	70% chance to increase own Arts Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first]. 70% chance to increase own Buster Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first].

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

Zenjubou’s NP is built around an accuracy gimmick. The NP has a ton of bonus effects, most of which increase its damage. If everything lands, Zenjubou gets to ignore evasion, they get 40% NP damage up, and they get 20% to both their Arts and Buster cards for a turn. This gives them unusually high steroids for an ST Servant, letting them do quite good damage despite their rarity and lack of an interlude. All of this, though, can miss. This is where Sniper’s Camoflage comes in. With one success up stack, the Sure Hit is guaranteed. With two, the card-type buffs are guaranteed. With three, all of it will land.

The implied gameplay approach here is for Zenjubou to use Camoflage, wait three turns, and then NP. At lower-level play, without access to a lot of supports and batteries, this is a pretty cool idea, as you spend those turns building NP charge anyway, and then the payoff for it is great. The buff success rate buffs last for 5 turns, too, so the timing is pretty flexible once you’ve waited long enough. In higher-end teams that can swing loops, though, this is less good, as each NP removes the success up buffs. If Zenjubou NPs on each of the first three turns of a fight, they start off with nothing guaranteed, and then they have only the sure hit guaranteed on the next two turns (though the other buffs also become slightly more likely to land).

This isn’t a bad concept or a bad NP, but it’s definitely more natural for budget and stall teams than it is for traditionally optimal setups. In some ways this makes sense—Zenjubou is a free unit, after all, so catering to lower-end team is perhaps natural—but it does mean more established players aren’t especially likely to want to use them.

Usage Tips

There are essentially three options for Zenjubou. Option 1 is to ignore everything else can try to squeeze them into a burst team regardless. If you want to do this, you probably know what you’re getting yourself into and are doing it just because you can, so I’m not going to go into much detail here, but it involves doing the usual Koyan/Oberon things and just accepting that Zenjubou’s damage will be inconsistent.

Option 2 is probably the strongest team for Zenjubou, and that’s the classic Himiko/Castoria setup. This team fits Zenjubou’s playstyle extremely cleanly for several reasons. The most obvious, of course, is that the team wants everyone to NP once every three turns, which fits perfectly with Zenjubou’s NP timing and means every other Zenjubou NP should be firing with all buffs. Himiko also boosts overcharge, which provides Zenjubou with even more damage. If you’re willing to play slightly risky, you can do Himiko->Castoria->Zenjubou instead of Himiko->Zenjubou->Castoria when chaining NPs, which gives Zenjubou a ton of extra damage in exchange for ending up with one less hit of solemn defense for the team.

The other nice thing about this setup is that it means Zenjubou will be incidentally stacking crit buffs. On the NP turn, no one is using cards, which means Zenjubou for-sure accumulates a crit damage stack that goes unused initially. You’ll also likely be prioritizing support cards for NP gain reasons on other turns, letting those accumulate further. Even if you end up mostly using Arts crits instead of Buster crits, Zenjubou should be critting for impressive levels of damage when you do prioritize their cards.

Option 3 is to run a classic budget team, mostly using normal cards as they come and only NP-ing occasionally for bursts of damage. Mash and Hans, for example, both make good supports in this context, helping Zenjubou to survive longer while also potentially boosting damage. These sorts of teams are pretty flexible, and anyone who brings some combination of damage, survivability, and stars will help Zenjubou work. The real trick here is making sure Zenjubou can get stars when they want to crit, and timing Zenjubou’s pushes of damage for when they’ll matter most.

Given their lack of innate charge, starting charge CEs can be helpful for Zenjubou. The usual Buster options are all good here—Aerial Drive, Cranking, etc—though given Zenjubou’s preference for mixing powerful crits with powerful NPs, Golden Sumo can also be a uniquely good choice, as its attack bonus applies equally to both crits and NPs and Zenjubou has no in-kit attack up.

Zenjubou has lots of in-kit crit buffs, so additional crit damage up will be of limited usefulness. That said, the fact that you know which cards you want to crit makes for some interesting options. Crit damage on Zenjubou’s Buster cards specifically can be useful, as can star weight up on those cards to facilitate drawing stars away from Zenjubou’s other cards. Meanwhile, star gen CCs on Zenjubou’s Arts and Quick cards can help set up Buster crits later.

Grail Potential

Conclusion

Like Ptolemy, Zenjubou is a cool unit based around a cool gimmick that’s not actually very useful. Unlike Ptolemy, playing into the gimmick is the most effective way of using Zenjubou, which makes them feel somewhat better even if they’re mechanically much worse. The fact that Zenjubou’s free is really what ties all this together—they will never be an optimal pick, but they have cool gameplay and it doesn’t really cost you anything other than time to get them ready to use. They won’t help you clear the hardest fights, but they might make the game a bit more interesting when you bring them, and that alone makes them a worthwhile addition.

Rabbit's Arbitrary Ratings

Overall: 6/10
Single-Target DPS: 7/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 7/10
Offensive Utility: 3/10
Defensive Utility: N/A
Farming Usefulness: 1/10
Patience: 10/10