Rabbit’s Reviews #389: Alessandro di Cagliostro (4* Pretender)

Nearly three years into the class’s existence, we get our first AoE Arts Pretender! Pretenders have historically had very strong kits, to offset the fact that (like Alter Egos) they’re essentially half-Berserkers with lower stats. Cagliostro is no exception to this trend, and by SR standards his skillset especially is very strong. Without maximum investment, he won’t be able to handle top-end content, but he’s a flexible and easy-to-use Servant who can cover a lot of needs. He’s particularly good for players with less-developed boxes—while he’s not a proper generalist, and he’s not specialized enough to handle 90++ nodes for any one class, he should be more than sufficient for knight-focused CQs or for farming knight nodes below the 90++ level. Solid standing for an SR.

SR Pretenders tend to be pretty closely grouped in stats, and Cagliostro is pretty much on-par with the others. He has high-mid attack and low-mid health relative to SRs as a whole, which isn’t bad for a DPS, though it could be better. His internals, meanwhile, are iffy—even though his Quick card has 5-hits, Cagliostro is a triple-Arts Servant, so he’s not going to generate many stars. His NP gain is also low, even by triple-Arts Standards, with quite bad Arts cards and a Quick at the lower end of passable.

As is typical of Extra class Servants, Cagliostro has a complement of unique passives. Disguise Creation increases Cagliostro’s Arts card star gen—not enough to make him good at star gen, though it is enough that his NP should generate a star or two per enemy it hits and that his Arts cards should usually generate one star each. Disguise Creation also gives a slight debuff resistance, though not enough to be in any way reliable. Merchandise Casting, meanwhile, makes Cagliostro’s debuffs more likely to land (which matters in CQs but not for farming), and it gives Cagliostro a very small chance of avoiding buff removal. Buff removal resistance is great, though the value here is far too low for it to be anything other than a nice surprise when it happens to work. Closing out Cagliostro’s passives is Hero’s Nemesis, which slightly boosts Cagliostro’s Arts crits… which is mostly irrelevant, as Cagliostro has no good way of getting crit access, and his crit buffs are too weak to be meaningful.

Cagliostro is a looping-centric Arts Servant, so Mana Loading is far and away his most important append. Anti-Avenger damage could be situationally nice if you don’t have a favored Moon Cancer, and the Extra attack buff is mostly useless given Cagliostro’s weak cards.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x8 Forbidden Page Open Forbidden Page configuration options x8 Homunculus Baby Open Homunculus Baby configuration options
3	150,000	x8 Spirit Root Open Spirit Root configuration options x8 Scarab of Wisdom Open Scarab of Wisdom configuration options
4	500,000	x8 Mystic Spinal Fluid Open Mystic Spinal Fluid configuration options x8 Reactor Core of Dawn Open Reactor Core of Dawn configuration options
Max	1,500,000	x8 Egg of Truth Open Egg of Truth configuration options x8 Golden Cauldron Open Golden Cauldron configuration options

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x8 Forbidden Page Open Forbidden Page configuration options
2 → 3	200,000	x8 Homunculus Baby Open Homunculus Baby configuration options
3 → 4	600,000	x10 Spirit Root Open Spirit Root configuration options
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Scarab of Wisdom Open Scarab of Wisdom configuration options
5 → 6	2,000,000	x10 Mystic Spinal Fluid Open Mystic Spinal Fluid configuration options
6 → 7	2,500,000	x12 Reactor Core of Dawn Open Reactor Core of Dawn configuration options
7 → 8	5,000,000	x12 Egg of Truth Open Egg of Truth configuration options
8 → 9	6,000,000	x12 Golden Cauldron Open Golden Cauldron configuration options
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x8 Void's Dust Open Void's Dust configuration options
2 → 3	200000	x8 Octuplet Crystals Open Octuplet Crystals configuration options
3 → 4	600000	x10 Claw of Chaos Open Claw of Chaos configuration options
4 → 5	800000	x10 Serpent Jewel Open Serpent Jewel configuration options
5 → 6	2000000	x10 Aurora Steel Open Aurora Steel configuration options
6 → 7	2500000	x12 Sun Leather Open Sun Leather configuration options
7 → 8	5000000	x12 Twilight Ritual Sword Open Twilight Ritual Sword configuration options
8 → 9	6000000	x12 Ether Light Collector Open Ether Light Collector configuration options
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

Cagliostro’s skillset is quite strong, with the caveat that he has extremely long cooldowns to deal with. Recommended skill order is 1>3>2.

Cagliostro can loop any enemy composition that has at least two enemies on the second wave, assuming Mana Loading and a Castoria/Castoria/Oberon setup. On turn 1, Mana Loading, Cagliostro’s battery, and a Castoria Charisma takes you to 100%. Cagliostro refunds about 15% per enemy. Assuming one enemy on the first wave, you can use the rest of the Castoria batteries, and then you can plug a Castoria out for Oberon and use his 20% battery to bring Cagliostro back to 100%. He then refunds about 25% per enemy, thanks to the extra NP gain buffs from Castoria, so against two enemies he refunds 50%, which is enough for Oberon to make up the difference with his 50% battery. He can also handle 3/1/x nodes, though the batteries don’t work out well enough to enable 2/1/x without a ton of overkill.

Fortunately, if you’re using Cagliostro for farming, it’s probably for a 90+ or lower node, which is more likely to have a wave composition he can handle. In an optimized team comp and with Black Grail supporting him, Cagliostro should be able to handle knight farming on 90+ and below without any issues, even at NP1.

For CQs, burst setups are effectively the same as farming setups. For anything longer, it’s a good idea to bring Tamamo (alongside a Castoria, of course) to offset Cagliostro’s cooldowns. Lady Avalon is usually safer than Tamamo, and she’s not much slower, but if you want to be able to re-use Cagliostro’s skills with any consistency, cooldown reduction is extremely valuable.

Cagliostro suffers somewhat at the lower end due to his long cooldowns and weak cards—without a support to prop him up, he’s likely to run out of steam quickly. To compensate for this, it’s best to run Cagliostro with Servants who can help him clear fights fast. Xu Fu is great for this due to her loop-enabling tools, and Mozart goes a long way towards enabling burst damage. If you have taunt CEs, sticking them on your budget supports is a great idea, since you can partially offset the lack of SSR supports by cycling through your cheap alternatives.

Cagliostro benefits from clearing fights as quickly as possible, and his loop specs are plenty good enough to run him with The Black Grail. Lacking that, go with your best damage-amping CE, whether that’s Heaven’s Feel or Formal Craft or something else in that vein.

Given Cagliostro’s half-hearted crit tools, there’s a natural gap in his kit that CCs can fill. You can either give him star gen/star weight CCs, to help him get access to his (not super impressive) crits more frequently, or you can give him crit damage up CCs so that when he does happen to crit, it’s a little less pathetic. Neither is especially important, but crit-oriented CCs are plentiful, so there’s little cost to giving him a few.

Cagliostro’s a pretty good Servant, and grails will let him hit higher damage thresholds. That said, he’s probably sufficient for most things you’d want him for even un-grailed, and he can’t do 90++ farming until you hit level 120, so the actual value of anything less than full commitment isn’t the highest. Spending two grails to take him to level 90 isn’t too expensive, at least, and he’s a good enough unit to probably justify the expense.

As with most good SRs, Cagliostro is something of a mixed bag. He has some genuinely very powerful tools, with the standout piece being his 50% battery. In exchange, he has some annoying drawbacks, and his damage isn’t really sufficient for top-end content. He’s very good for an SR, but “for an SR” is doing a lot of heavy-lifting there. If you don’t have strong SSR alternatives, he can put in a lot of good work, but if you do have alternatives, he likely won’t do much for you.

Overall: 8/10
Single-Target DPS: 2/10
AoE DPS: 8/10
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: 4/10
Defensive Utility: 1/10
Farming Usefulness: 6/10
Never Lying About Anything Ever: 10/10