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MMM - "Kakkoi" King and Killer Konsort to Kalamitous Knight Konfer Khaos (Traum Gacha Part 1)

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Article by GamepressRath
MMM Traum Part 1
Table of Contents

The Modern Magus Magazine

Also, Conspiring Creator Cheats by using “C” words by putting a “K” in front. Hey, considering the gacha features both “C”harlemagne and “K”riemhild, I think I can get away with it.

I guess if you count using the Japanese word for Charlie’s obsession with self-image it’s a double cheat. Feel free to vent your anger now.

On a tangent to that, which is in reality staying on topic, I kind of forgot for half a day that LB6.5 was a story chapter, and not just a new gacha for Charlemagne. Pretty much anyone who’s played Extella Link loves the guy, and I’m no different. It leaves me worried what his story implications are in Traum, though, since there’s a lot to work through with him.

Traum Part 1
NA Release Date: 05/13/2024

Charlemagne

Introduction

Man, he’s so cool. He’s just so cool. But he’s also a nerd and possibly Gudao’s great, great, great, great, great, great, (...), grandpa.

That third ascension though… I suppose Charlie…resolving his issues with “that man” is technically a good thing for the heroic spirit, but it gives me mixed feelings regardless.

Servant Data
Saber
Magic Resistance A

Increase your Debuff Resist by 20%.

Riding A

Increase your Quick Card effectiveness by 10%.

Overview

Part of me wants to say “Oh look, yet another Quick SSR Saber”, but in actuality the Quick Saber lineup was very limited until a year or two ago, with Summer Okitan and Charlie now filling out the roster immensely.

As for how he shapes up to the SSR Saber roster, Charlie is very middle-of-the-road. With the 8th best Atk stat and tied 6th best HP stat of his rarity and class, he has no real weaknesses, and leans toward the higher end of the base stat equation. In essence, he’s very solid offensively, but also possesses a pretty high HP stat, giving him a good balance, even if head-to-head with other Sabers his Attack may look slightly lacking.

On the passives front, Charlie is very typical. With A-rank Magic Resistance he’s assured to be resistant to typical debuffs with some consistency, and A-rank Riding gives him an essential +10% boost to his primary card type. While not flashy, not every Servant gets such a sizable boost to their main form of dishing out damage, so it’s a good package to work with.

While not spectacular in any way, Charlie has a fine baseline to work from for the remainder of his kit.

NP Generation
Servant Skills
Noble Phantasm
Conclusion

So how’s Charlie on the whole? On one hand, he’s adventuring toward success, comrades beside him:

Charlie is a really, really solid farmer. While his 30% gauge charger and seemingly-mediocre damage steroids may give a different impression, the incredible refund on his NP enables him to run variety of farming setups, including ones which cover for his otherwise-average damage output with the boost from a Black Grail, pushing him into the realms of a universal farmer.

Even in the realm of CQ’s, Charlie can really bring the pain. The ramping damage and refund formed by both his Brave King buffs and the Quick Resist Down on his NP can amplify his damage output to an insane degree, and when paired with the possibility of getting the trait bonuses for his anti-Demonic and anti-Evil buffs, his damage output can quickly hit the realms of absurdity.

Despite his strong offensive kit, Charlie still has some aspect of support built into his kit. Over the Royal Road’s Invincibility buff is practically shouting to be used to protect his allies, acting as a key defensive tool in the right situations, and one that will almost always see use due to its 3-turn duration, while his Charisma buff and high stargen give his allies both offensive boosts and greater ease setting up crits, which in turn produces more damage, NP gauge, and critical stars.

However, under the surface he’s struggling against a persona of tyranny:

While I’ve been praising him glowingly, Charlie is ultimately one of those Servants who grows better exponentially based on the level of support you can provide for him. Only with access to 2 of Skadi/Reines/Nero Bride as well as Black Grail does he become truly incredible, and even with only 1 of them is he a competent farmer for his own class advantage. Without any of those tools at his disposal, he doesn’t perform notably at all, even with supported by more generic 50% gauge charger supports like Waver, especially when stacked against some of the other Saber farmers out there.

You know, this specific MMM puts me in a bit of an awkward position. Why? Because Charlemagne and Okita Alter Summer are both very, very similar Servants. And compared to Okita Alter’s summer form, I’ve given Charlie a much more glowing review for one reason, and one reason alone - Reines’s NP upgrade.

It may not look like much, but her ability to act as a secondary Quick/Arts farming support by popping her own NP before the farming Servant’s on wave 1 and pass that juicy +50% NP gain buff essentially threw Quick farming back onto the table by accident, simply because it meant Quick farming teams could run a 50% gauge charger who didn’t have to throw the entire 50% in one go, and still provided similar offensive and refund boosts to Skadi.

Back when I reviewed Okita Alter Summer, a Black Grail setup on her was somewhat inconsistent, simply because you needed to run double Skadi + Nero Bride to get the necessary refund numbers, and that produced an awkward situation where you had Okita getting 80%+ refund per wave, but you only had access to your second Skadi’s singular 50% gauge charge. If you could divide it into 2 and use it twice, you’d be golden, but it simply wasn’t feasible.

Reines essentially became that necessary divided Skadi gauge charger, and as a result, I’m now kind of reviewing Okita Alter Summer by proxy, since her kit and Charlemagne’s, once you strip them to the essentials, are incredibly similar. Okita’s now immensely better than she was at release, and so is Charlemagne. Pretty much everything I’ve said for Charlie’s farming refund and damage output applies to Okita now with little deviation.

The reason I’ve gone on that diatribe against my past self is simply so I don’t look like a hypocrite. The game is constantly changing, and even buffs which don’t directly impact a Servant can shift the game around them so they become immensely more valuable. This is one of those cases.

Charlemagne excels in both farming and CQ’s alike, and does so while providing a small handful of interesting perks that further his uniqueness as a Quick AOE Saber. Even if you can’t provide the Black Grail farming setup which kicks him into overdrive, he remains a dependable farmer and a very fun tool to take for a spin on CQ’s where it’s appropriate. Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation.

Roland

Introduction

Well, it’s the nudist knight himself. Frankly, with how long Durandal has sat around in the mindspace of the Fate series (having its own weapon profile in the F/SN VN, plus Hector’s own NP being Durandal’s precursor), it’s shocking it took this long for Roland to be given any sort of elaboration or profile, then again put in the game. With how many KotR are hanging about, it still feels criminal that we only have Roland/Astolfo/Charlie despite how many Paladins are easily famous enough to be worthy of introduction.

Servant Data
Saber
Magic Resistance A

Increase your Debuff Resist by 20%.

Riding A

Increase your Quick Card effectiveness by 10%.

Overview

Roland, much like his King, takes a middle-of-the-road approach so far as stats go. With the 10th best Attack of any SR Saber and 7th best HP, Roland has a very typical attack score, but compensates with a HP stat that punches well above his offensive profile. While that doesn’t make him an offensive powerhouse, it does mean he’s a decent bit bulkier than competitors with similar offensive might are.

Those base stats are supplemented by an identical set of passives to Charlemagne - A-rank Magic Resistance and A-rank Riding. The passive debuff resistance remains a silent and thankless hero, as always, but the Riding is a little less impressive on Roland, as he isn’t Quick-focused like Charlie is. Regardless, a sizable boost to one of his cards is nothing to dismiss.

In general, Roland starts off very typical. His base stats offer nothing to complain about, but his passive lineup has basically 0 spice to it, or direct impact, measurable impact on his performance. Just boring, basically.

NP Generation
Servant Skills
Noble Phantasm
Conclusion

So how does Roland stack up? On one hand, he’s baring all he has to offer to the world:

When Roland can get the right setup, his offense gets pretty devastating. The short cooldown on Olifant creates some crazy continuous crit chains with his NP and support from Koyanskaya, all the while providing more NP gauge off the skill itself and crits to further enable NP spam.

With both his second skill’s buff removal effect and the Invincible Pierce on his NP, Roland is very effective at breaking through enemies with annoying buffs or defensive effects active. In combination with his access to a solid defensive tool, he makes for a dependable damage dealer in CQ content.

However, he’s also being arrested for indecent exposure to minors:

Unfortunately for Roland, the single-target Buster Saber niche is, well, not much of a niche. Servants such as Bedivere and even Brave Liz provide pretty strong competition to Roland even on a F2P budget, and that’s not even looking into the SSR titan that is Musashi, or other card type competitors like Summer Hokusai. He’s largely outclassed in damage output, team utility, and he typically requires more effort to set up continuous NP’s than most Servants.

The bottom line is, Roland is outclassed offensively by a wide range of Servants, and doesn’t bring enough new to the table to distinguish himself. With 3 ST Welfare Sabers on the market, and ⅔ of them considered widely to be very good, Roland is already on a setback. But even if he were to have the same NP level as those competitors, he’d still largely be outclassed simply because he doesn’t have the damage numbers necessary to distinguish himself.

It’s a great shame, but he can liberate himself from the oppression of both his clothing and a presence in my team rosters.

Kriemhild

Introduction

Really, the more you read about all the circumstances surrounding Siegfried’s legend and you start to wonder if he was just something of a moron. All the business with the cursed ring and the Rheingold, then having pretty much everyone fight over him, gets himself assassinated, then causing Kriemhild to go on a vengeance bender for over a decade which eventually leads to her death.

All that, when you could’ve just settled for your big tiddy goth wife. Shame.

Servant Data
Berserker
Madness Enhancement EX

Increase your Buster Card effectiveness by 12%.

Overview

Leading things off with her base stats, it’s immediately clear Kriemhild is oriented to be a glass cannon. With the 4th highest Attack of her class and rarity, and the tied lowest HP, she finds herself in good company alongside Summer Jalter and Summer Sei. While on paper that means she’s got a poor stat total relative to other Berserkers, typically the difference in HP between Berserkers makes little difference, simply due to the immense sum of damage they tend to take in general.

Make no mistake - she’s still frail, it’s just the deviation between Berserkers in their HP stats is so minor it’s not much of a drawback. Having the high attack stat she has is far more important in the grand scheme of things.

Supplementing that is Kriemhild’s singular, but high-ranked passive, Madness Enhancement EX. Yup, another case of “Sure, they’re so mad it wraps around and they’re perfectly capable of communicating.” In any case, 12% extra Buster card damage is nothing to scoff at, even if Kriemhild is Arts-focused.

On the whole, Kriemhild is packing a very glass cannon offensive setup with little attention spared to anything else. While that’s pretty good on its own, it can make a Servant a one-trick pony. We’ll see.

NP Generation
Servant Skills
Noble Phantasm
Conclusion

So how is Kriemhild in practice? On one hand, she’s got a thirst for vengeance and hell no am I going to get in the way of that:

Kriemhild, both in terms of damage output and refund, makes for a competent Arts ST damage dealer. While technically her numbers on both ends are inferior to Vlad and Galatea, her pair of Effective Damage bonuses, pre-damage defensive buff removal and higher likelihood to have greater NP levels evens out the competition, as does her stronger gauge charger, enabling her to run slightly more flexible CE / team setups.

Despite looking like an offensive powerhouse, Kriemhild has some utility on the side. The gauge drain and Critical Rate Down debuff from her first skill is handy in most CQ scenarios, while the ability to direct enemy attacks to an ally for a turn when using her gauge charger both preserves her HP total and enables the redirection of a ST NP into someone who can survive it, in the right circumstance.

However, she’s also running headfirst into her own death, as all avengers tend to do:

Kriemhild is one of those Berserkers whose defensive profile can actually present a major issue. With her HP value, she is quite literally one enemy Buster crit roll targeting her from being wiped out of the fight. Even with her 1st skill’s assistance and the taunt on her gauge charger allowing her to mitigate some risk, that doesn’t mean it isn’t present at all. Supports can compensate for this effectively, but it means you have to play a little more cautiously than you would with someone like Vlad, who has his Guts and Defense buff, as well as superior HP, to keep himself afloat.

With Castoria’s support present in the game, it feels like the pool of viable offensive Arts Servants for CQ content expands by the day. It’s odd to think Vlad has 2 competitors for his class and niche so soon in succession, and even weirder that both are very competitive options for it.

While both Galatea and Vlad certainly have higher baselines for their performance as Arts NP spammers, Kriemhild displays a clear advantage in both accessibility and potential. Getting Kriemhild, as well as getting additional copies for NP levels, is far easier, and her tradeoff of a 50% gauge charger for lesser NP refund makes her more convenient to use in lower-investment, F2P-based rosters which can’t run double Castoria or similar setups.

Add in the general versatility of being an Arts Berserker, capable of being deployed versus almost any class enemy, and her notable niche for dealing huge damage to her given Effective Damage traits, and Kriemhild makes for a very worthwhile ST option to add to one’s collection, given one doesn’t already have her SSR brethren. Rath™ Seal of Approval.

Outro

And now we have Traum’s story to look forward to, which has already been thoroughly spoiled and discussed on the subreddit. Thankfully, most of the ‘twists’ in the chapter were pretty easily theorized early on in Part 2’s progression (seriously, this community’s ability to catch hints and form accurate theories on the plot from them is crazy), so it’s nothing so devastating.

In any case, the gachas for Traum are undoubtedly not over yet, we’ll still have some rebellious old men, delirious old men, and a charming young man who should be an old man to discuss in the future. Until then!

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