MMM - Salutations, Slender Samurai! Stop Salivating over Streetside Sushi...Sir? (Yamato Takeru)

The Modern Magus Magazine

Happy New Year, one and all! With the new year of Servants comes a new me, and this time features a very prompt MMM, mainly because if I do not finish this MMM at the time of writing, on New Year’s Day, I will literally not finish it until I get back from a holiday to Japan.

Talk about a deadline, huh? There’s no better motivator, at the very least.

While the New Year broadcast wasn’t anything mind-blowing, seeing as a bunch of projects we were anticipating to be shown off like Strange Fake’s anime and the Extra remake were nowhere to be seen, but at the very least the Mahoyo movie is looking incredible, as is to be expected of Ufotable. I recommend reading the VN if you haven’t already, it’s an enthralling experience.

But look at me prattling on, we have a Servant to assess!

Introduction

As the poster-child Saber of Samurai Remnant, Yamato has their true name immediately spoilt by their inclusion in FGO, as is a wondrous tradition. Though to be fair, if you have actually heard of Yamato Takeru before, then their identity was pretty easy to suss out early on in Samurai Remnant. Iori was stated to have figured it out early, too, and he didn’t even have wikipedia to rely on.

Anyway, Yamato Takeru is a pretty big figure of ancient Japan, dating back to the era when Japanese historical sources were pretty sketchy, but his various feats include disguising as a serving maiden at a banquet to kill a warlord and his entire army (which explains some things appearance-wise), slaying his own elder brother essentially for the hell of it, and was essentially a monster at the art of war, subduing various disobedient factions across ancient Japan by himself.

So why is such a bloodthirsty figure just standing around eating food all day? Eh, play Samurai Remnant. I won’t spoil any of it here.

Servant Data

Saber

QAABB (Saber)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

5

8

Attribute	Heaven
Alignment	Neutral Good

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

Max HP 13,498

HP Rank

Max ATK 12,526

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,935	Base HP	1,979
Max Atk	12,526	Max HP	13,498
Grail Atk	13,712	Grail HP	14,788

Magic Resistance A

Increase your Debuff Resist by 20%.

Riding A

Increase your Quick Card effectiveness by 10%.

Divinity D

Apply Damage Plus for yourself (Total Card Damage +125).

Overview

Hey Lasengle…I thought we had a rule going on. You know the rule, “All Japanese Servants have garbage parameters”, right? So explain to me why now, with Yamato Takeru’s inclusion, the two best Sabers in the game offensively are both Japanese?

With the second best Attack stat of any 5* Saber, after Ibuki-douji (which is funny for various lore reasons), Yamato has the second-lowest HP stat of any Saber, tied with Ibuki-douji, again. While this might indicate Yamato is low-statted but just specialized in Attack, it’s more that Ibuki is stupidly strong and Yamato is a bit more reasonable. While they do sacrifice a lot of HP to get Attack that high, the Saber class has pretty high HP overall, so it’s not like Yamato is losing out on much.

In terms of passives, Yamato is a very typical Saber, possessing the class skills of Riding and Magic Resistance at a high rank, providing a notably good passive resistance to debuffs, and a modest boost to their single Quick card. In addition they pack Divinity, less due to being of any specific relation to a god, but being very early on in the imperial line of Japan, which is descended from both Amaterasu and Susano-oo according to myth. Divinity itself doesn’t provide much of a benefit and more so weaknesses, but the small bonus damage might be handy at some point.

NP Generation

Card Hits	4	4	3	5	8
Per Hit	0.30%	0.30%	0.30%	0.30%	0.30%

	NP per Hit (%)	0.30%
NP when Attacked (%)	3%

	Star Absorption	102
Star Generation per Hit	10.0%

Servant Skills

Guts

Bloodstained Prince EX

Apply Guts to self (1 time, 3 turns).
Increase own NP Gauge.
Apply delayed buff to self (3 turns): Increase NP Gauge by 25% when an ally is defeated.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Revives with HP	1000	1200	1400	1600	1800	2000	2200	2400	2600	3000
NP +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

First on the skill lineup is Bloodstained Prince. This skill has two pretty normal functions, plus a bonus “fun” effect if you have certain…hobbies (not looking at anyone, Cheng Gong). Firstly, it provides a standard 1-time, 3-turn Guts buff, giving Yamato a little safety net to hang on to in difficult content, as well as a 30% gauge charge on use.

Gauge charge is naturally great, and this skill doesn’t stop there, as it additionally provides Yamato with a 3-turn buff that provides them with 25% gauge charge whenever an ally is killed and Yamato remains on field. Well if that’s any indication besides the name that this is about Yamato’s famous filicide, I don’t know what is.

Naturally outside of weird Cheng Gong or Arash setups this effect is pretty hard to set up for gauge charge in farming purposes, but in difficult content I can actually see it being quite useful. When you’re deploying a Saber as a damage dealer, it usually means they resist damage from the boss while your Caster supports will take full damage, meaning even if you don’t specifically prioritize keeping Yamato alive, they’re more likely to live than a pair of Castorias or similar. So it’s not unusual that Yamato will survive an AOE NP and reap a sick little 50% NP gauge payday off of it. Combined with the defensive NP gain from a multi-hit NP, it’s likely that it will produce a full NP gauge all on its own.

Now that’s not gonna happen often, so the main perk to this skill is its Guts buff and gauge charge. The gauge charge’s numbers aren’t superb given the 8-turn cooldown on this skill, but any gauge charge is good, and not to spoil anything, it’s not the end of any such effect in Yamato’s skill kit.

Special ATK

Extermination of Gods and Demons A

Apply Special ATK [Divine] to self (3 turns).
Apply Special ATK [Demonic] to self (3 turns).
Increase own Critical Strength (3 turns).

Show Info

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

Next on the list is a pretty simple one, Extermination of Gods and Demons. This is a straightforward effective damage buff skill, providing Yamato with a +50% damage bonus versus Divine and Demonic-trait enemies for 3 turns, as well as a lesser +30% Critical Damage boost for the same duration.

Having effective damage on these traits are, excuse my French, fan-fucking-tastic. I don’t think I could pick a better pair of effective damage traits to have if you discount unfair ones like Humanoid, Servant, or Gender/Attribute-based traits.

Roughly 30% of Servants in the game have the Divine trait, making this a superb effective damage bonus to have for boss-slaying in difficult content, and a good number of important story bosses, particularly in the Lost Belts, also have this trait, so if you’re looking to kill a big baddie this is a superb trait to hit effectively.

On the flip side of things, Demonic is by far the most effective trait to target for farming, as a huge swathe of NPC enemies, including most miniboss-type enemies that appear on waves 2 and 3 of farming nodes, tend to have it. It’s still useful for Servants, too - 24 Servants in the game have the Demonic trait, and 7 of those (mostly Shuten/Ibuki and variants) also pack Divinity, giving Yamato a small contingent of Servants they absolutely wallop.

Not to ignore it, but the critical damage boost is also useful, even if it’s fairly weak compared to most skills flying about nowadays. With an 8-turn base cooldown, this skill is similarly on a bit of a long CD, but at least it’s aligned with Yamato’s other skills.

Arts Up

Mana Burst (Water) B+

Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Increase own NP Strength (1 turn).
Increase own NP Gauge.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Arts +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
NP Damage +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
NP +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Last we have Mana Burst (Water). The only skill in this profile that was originally in Samurai Remnant, this functions as Yamato’s primary offensive steroid, providing a 30% Arts booster for 3 turns, as well as a 20% NP Damage buff for 1 turn. The way this skill is a mix of 3-turn and 1-turn buffs is pretty annoying, since you’ll want to use it on the first wave of a farming run, wasting the turn-limited damage bonus on the usually-weak first wave, but having that bonus damage is better than not having it at all.

The real perk to this skill is its third effect, a 20% gauge charger which, combined with their first skill, results in a 50% gauge charge to this kit, and a rather flexible one, as you can hold the 30% gauge charger for a wave that needs it, instead of having to blow a full 50% immediately. Having an offensive steroid is certainly important, as outside of those effective damage buffs that may not always apply, Yamato had zero offensive boosts without it.

So it’s just a solid skill to round things off - a boost in damage, NP refund, and a second chunk to make Yamato’s gauge charger skills great instead of simply passable. Like all their other skills, this is on an 8-turn base cooldown.

Noble Phantasm

Zetsugi - Hakki Dotō B

Decrease Arts Resist by 50% for a single enemy (1 turn) [Activates first].
Deal damage to all enemies.

<Overcharge>

Decrease DEF for all enemies (3 turns).

Show Info/Video

Zetsugi - Hakki Dotō

Special Technique - Eight-Current Raging Storm

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	B	Anti-Personnel/Anti-Army	8

Effect	Decrease Arts Resist by 50% for a single enemy (1 turn) [Activates first]. Deal damage to all enemies.

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Arts Res -	50%	50%	50%	50%	50%
Damage +	450%	600%	675%	712.5%	750%

Overcharge Effect	Decrease DEF for all enemies (3 turns).

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Def -	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%

It’s not a great surprise to me that Yamato’s NP is Zetsugi - Hakki Dotō. I’ve heard the whole NP chant so much from playing Samurai Remnant that I typed that name without even looking at Yamato’s profile, and in FGO it’s pretty much a one-to-one recreation of the animation in the game, but using Grand Order’s engine and sprites. It’s pretty, as always.

This is an Arts AOE NP, so we’ll be going through some standard NP gain calculation stuff for that, so let’s get right into the effects. Firstly, before dealing damage, this NP applies a 50% Arts resistance down debuff for 1 turn to…a single enemy.

Now you might expect me to be mad that an AOE NP has a pre-damage steroid that doesn’t even apply to every enemy, but frankly that’s not the issue here. The issue is that it’s a boost to NP gain that only applies to a single enemy, meaning I need to do a way more complex formula to figure out NP refund for this one Servant specifically, because Yamato will receive more NP gauge from that singular enemy than the rest. Ugh.

In any case, the damage boost from this effect is colossal, but that’s mostly because it’s intended to bridge the gap between AOE and ST NP damage for thematic reasons. Hakki Dotō might strike in a wide area like it does in Samurai Remnant, but it’s actually an Anti-Unit Noble Phantasm that primarily takes down a single target. The AOE damage is essentially just collateral damage. Hence why it does significantly more damage to a single enemy.

…Just remember to actually target the larger enemy you want to take down before going to command card selection.

The secondary effect to this NP has far less to speak of - a 20% defense drop for 3 turns after the damage to every enemy struck, scaling with Overcharge. Useful for increased damage output in difficult content, but this won’t usually come into play for farming.

Speaking of which, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. With Yamato’s own skills in play, their NP gets a refund of 31.6% versus a 3-enemy wave, that’s crazily high for a baseline, and kind of justifies why Yamato’s base NP gain is so low - for lore reasons their NP needs to have 8 hits to represent the Yamata-no-Orochi, so their base NP gain was adjusted to the hitcount. Even with that, it’s a crazy good base refund. The real problem is the damage output. On their own, Yamato’s NP does 20k damage neutral to all targets, and 28k damage to the singled-out enemy. While the damage to the single enemy is fairly high, the damage output is otherwise low, and that’s with the 1-turn NP damage buff that won’t stick around for long. Hitting their anti-Divine or Demonic traits will compensate for this significantly, but neither can be depended on, especially when considering damage on the non-boss or mini boss enemies for farming, which are less likely to have those traits.

But let’s look at in-action farming numbers and see if it impacts them that badly. In a typical 50% gauge CE double Castoria setup, Yamato is getting an absurd 94% refund, before considering Overkill. With Overkill in play, Yamato nets a clean 100.8% refund if they kill the whole wave in one NP. As for the damage in such a setup, Yamato is doing 60k (73k to the single target) damage neutral on wave 1, 50k (61k) on wave 2 due to the loss of the NP damage buff, and 70k (85k) on wave 3, assuming a typical Mystic Code damage boost.

Those damage numbers are admittedly pretty mediocre, enough to manage class advantage farming but below the mark otherwise. They become a lot more respectable if Yamato hits their effective damage, dealing in excess of 100k damage neutral to every target on wave 3, but you can’t exactly depend on that, even if both of Yamato’s effective traits are common.

As always, however, having high refund means you can afford to run Black Grail, and boy, Yamato both needs it and can afford it. In a typical Black Grail setup, Yamato is getting 90% refund each wave, and dishes out 80k (97k) damage neutral wave 1, 82k (100k) wave 2, and 103k (125k) on wave 3, again with typical Mystic Code damage boost since Yamato doesn’t need a battlesuit swap. That damage output is a vast improvement, but still not precisely Universal Farmer damage numbers, especially for wave 2.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for Yamato. Throw in a battlesuit swap of a potent damage buff support like Tamamo in, and their refund hits a clean 100% again on every wave, on top of dealing as much as 170k damage neutral by wave 3. They can hit Universal Farmer levels of damage even without their effective damage bonuses, they just need to run Battlesuit for it.

Conclusion

So how is Yamato Takeru overall? Well on one hand, they’re a mystery in both past and gender, a veil of noble beauty only accentuated by otherworldly swordplay involving copious amounts of high-pressure water:

Yamato is pretty capable as a farmer. With an obscenely good NP refund at their back, they’re more than capable of specializing their farming setups to improve damage output, a weakness that would otherwise be pretty crippling. As a result, Yamato is an incredibly dependable farmer for Saber class advantage, and if you’re willing to run a Battlesuit setup, they can also function as a Universal Farmer, especially if they hit their effective damage traits.

Yamato’s specialties don’t just lie in farming, however. With how strong Yamato’s NP refund is even on a single target (gaining around 30-35% refund in a Black Grail setup from 1 enemy alone), they can also perform effectively versus singular bosses, putting their combo of useful effective damage buffs to good use, as well as their critical damage output, to layer on the damage with continual NP’s. The NP gauge charge from Yamato’s allies dying also can come into play here, giving them something of a last gasp even if the frontline gets wiped by a NP.

However, they’re still a bloody slaughterer, putting countless to the sword and losing all they loved in the process. Is such a prince worth anything at all? Well:

Yamato might have effective means to compensate for it, but the bottom line is that their damage output is still low. Without action-intensive setups Yamato won’t be capable of Universal Farming if they don’t hit their effective damage traits, and even then a lot of that is presuming the wave will have one high-HP boss then lesser enemies with no more than 60k HP or so. If you get waves with two enemies in excess of 100k HP then Yamato can start to have problems. Meanwhile competitors would have no such issues.

While Yamato does have useful tools for fighting bosses, they ultimately pale to the damage profiles and utility of competitors. Using Muramasa as the most obvious comparison, having the same class, rarity, niche, and even being a fellow New Year Servant, he has far more utility for difficult content with Invincible Pierce, Defence Pierce, amazing critical damage buffs, and a far better NP gain profile on their regular cards, making him much more effective at the task. But even compared to lower-rarity single target options in the same class like Theseus, it’s hard to give the edge to Yamato there, either.

Despite many of the spectacular and unique New Year Servants we’ve had in years prior, Yamato Takeru is shockingly tame in a number of ways. With no special gimmicks or new effects in their skills, nor any specific aspect of their kit that wows me with its power, they instead feel like a very normal SSR inclusion placed in New Year because it’s technically a collab.

But I’m here to criticize gameplay, not marketing decisions. Like many SSRs that come out nowadays, Yamato is an incredibly convenient Saber farmer that can tackle class advantage nodes with very little skill usage due to their high refund, and should you need an extra oomph, you can run them with Black Grail and/or Battlesuit to elevate their damage output to Universal Farmer levels. That’s already an excellent baseline to work with, but when pitted against their competitors, Yamato lacks that certain oomph outside of their farming capability which entices you to use them in difficult content.
It doesn’t really make Yamato a bad Servant, just one limited to their specialty - a 30% Critical Damage buff alone does not a critical damage dealer make, especially when Yamato’s offensive buffs overall seem quite focused on excelling at farming. And that abysmal regular card NP gain profile doesn’t leave me enthused to deploy them in fights where I might actually press any button but the NP one.

Point being, Yamato is a very good farmer if you’re lacking a solid AOE Saber, especially as they don’t need anywhere near the effort compared to say, an Artoria and double Koyanskaya setup to accomplish essentially the same result. You can push them to do Universal Farming too, albeit with significantly more effort and cost. But outside of those capabilities, Yamato doesn’t really stand out much. It’s a good place to be, but this game has many Servants who do more than just that. Rath™ Seal of Approval.

Outro

Like Melusine breaking the sound barrier and beyond across the winds of the isle of Albion, thus does Rath bang out an MMM in not just a single day, but a single New Year’s Eve morning. Nothing beats a New Year hangover like having to do an entirely new NP gain calc for farming analysis, I tell ya. With the big glutton Saber themselves out of the way, the thing we have to look forward to in January is the Samurai Remnant collab proper, with a number of possible Servants to be added, but nowhere near enough slots for them. Based on the silhouettes for 2024, one Servant is essentially guaranteed, and a certain protagonist samurai-kun is very likely to be the welfare, leaving only a few other possibilities from the game. Personally I’d like to see Tamamo Aria simply because she was so absurdly adorable in the New Year broadcast, but we could really get anything, the only thing we can do is wait and see. With any luck, the event will drop while I’m in Japan, in fact! So prepare for the next issue to be written entirely in Japanese, dear readers. No, I’m not joking. All of you playing FGO JP have probably cruised by barely knowing what any of the menus say, and now you’re getting the final exam, prepare yourselves. またね!

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MMM - Salutations, Slender Samurai! Stop Salivating over Streetside Sushi...Sir? (Yamato Takeru)

The Modern Magus Magazine

QAABB (Saber)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

Buster Card

Traits

Tags

Guts

Special ATK

Arts Up

Zetsugi - Hakki Dotō

Outro

Links

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