Rabbit's Reviews #242: Miyamoto Musashi (5* Berserker)

The summer 4 servant batch starts with our first AoE Arts ‘Zerker in Musashi. Long story short, she’s really good. She can loop, under the right circumstances, which is inherently valuable, but even beyond that she has a pretty excellent kit for more “normal” Arts play provided all you need is a lot of AoE damage. Musashi teams may have sustain issues, but in most fights her damage output will likely be high enough that it doesn’t really matter.

In what is a bit of a surprise for an Arts servant, Musashi’s stat spread skews strongly offensive. She has the highest attack of the AoE Berserkers and nearly the highest attack of Berserkers as a whole—both of her stats are identical to Kintoki’s. This fits with her offense-leaning kit, and she gets good use out of the high attack. Her innate star gen capability is hurt by her Arts lean, but her hit counts are pretty high, so with the help of CasGil or Lanling she actually can generate a fair number of stars off a brave chain. Her base NP gain capabilities are unimpressive, with substandard Arts cards and a just-barely-passable Quick, but fortunately her other tools make up the difference. For passives, she has a very high level of Madness Enhancement, which is less useful here than it is on other Berserkers but still useful for pushing single-turn damage. She also has Magic Resistance—a bit of a rarity on a ‘Zerker—along with low levels of Riding and Divinity that are mostly there for flavor.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x5 Berserker Piece
3	300,000	x12 Berserker Piece x22 Proof of Hero
4	1,000,000	x5 Berserker Monument x10 Shell of Reminiscence x3 Lamp of Evil-Sealing
Max	3,000,000	x12 Berserker Monument x6 Lamp of Evil-Sealing x5 Cursed Beast Gallstone

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x5 Gem of Berserker
2 → 3	400,000	x12 Gem of Berserker
3 → 4	1,200,000	x5 Magic Gem of Berserker
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Magic Gem of Berserker x5 Shell of Reminiscence
5 → 6	4,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Berserker x10 Shell of Reminiscence
6 → 7	5,000,000	x12 Secret Gem of Berserker x15 Proof of Hero
7 → 8	10,000,000	x29 Proof of Hero x6 Ring of Giants
8 → 9	12,000,000	x18 Ring of Giants x10 Tsukumo Mirror
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Musashi’s mats are remarkably forgiving. Her only potentially annoying mats (provided you’re not out of proofs) are rings and mirrors, and rings at least seem to pop up fairly regularly in events and the like, while she doesn’t need all that many mirrors despite it being her capstone mat.

Musashi’s skillset is super strong as a whole. Recommended skill order is 2>3>1.

Musashi can fit into traditional Arts teams—Merlin/Tamamo, Waver/Tamamo, etc—and do fine. She lacks the utility those types of teams prefer, but her damage is high enough that she’ll get away with it, and those team shells are quite strong regardless of DPS choice anyway. Generally speaking, though, she’ll be more at home in fastburn teams, and especially those that facilitate looping. Bride/Paracelsus/Tamamo can let her loop with just her NP, but even less “committed” teams can loop reliably in CQ contexts provided Musashi gets access to her Arts cards. Musashi’s Arts cards under Fifth Serving are so strong that she should be able to NP consecutively so long as she pulls at least one of them, assuming you’re giving her an Arts buff or an NP gain buff or two. You could, for example, run Bride/Musashi/Tamamo/Merlin with Kaleid on Musashi, letting Musashi rampage for the first three turns and then letting her die, after which Merlin steps in and Bride flexes into the DPS role to clean up whatever Musashi wasn’t able to kill. Bond CE Lanling is a passable substitute for either Bride or Tamamo as well, though in a Lanling/Musashi/Tamamo setup you’d probably want your fourth servant to be a crit-capable DPS (like the new welfare Hokusai, for instance) instead of Merlin.

Musashi will be at her best if she can get going immediately, which will usually mean bringing a starting NP CE. Lanling or Jinako (or Merlin, in slower teams) can let Musashi NP immediately with a Kaleid, while Bride only asks for an MLB Imaginary Element. And because I can’t review an Arts servant without bringing up Painting Summer, if you’re bringing Bride and one of the other three, Painting Summer lets Musashi NP immediately while also boosting her effective NP gain and damage.

Musashi is a strong Berserker with great stats and a broad use case. Grails let her hit higher damage thresholds for farming and for CQs, which is especially valuable if you’re planning to use her for loop shenanigans. Even in more normal play, a grailed Musashi is a force to be reckoned with. Solid pick.

Musashi may lack the excellent utility Rider da Vinci brings, but in exchange her damage is pretty excellent. She’ll still be a slower farmer than ideal-case Dantes due to the necessity of the plug suit, but if you have the Arts support tools and lack Dantes or Skadi, Musashi has a lot of value (especially at higher NP levels). Even outside of farming, though, Musashi is a great general-purpose tool for AoE CQs, especially if you want to run Arts without having to play slow.

Overall: 9/10
Single-Target DPS: 7/10
AoE DPS: 10/10
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: N/A
Defensive Utility: 4/10
Farming Usefulness: 9/10
Dueling Kojirou: 10/10