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MMM - Starry Soldiers Sortie in Sordid Strife Started by Shrunken Shrieking Singer (Halloween 2022)

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Article by GamepressRath
MMM 108Halloween

The Modern Magus Magazine

If there’s one tradition I gotta say I like about FGO, it’s when they take an entire section of mythology or fiction and use it as the stepping stone to produce an event. 108 is a pretty magical number that’s referenced in a number of places, and Water Margin is the reason for it.

But all the same, I don’t feel any envy for Lasengle’s position, having to choose what Heroic Spirits to introduce from a tremendously broad roster of warriors from the novel.

Look at me, pretending I’ve actually read Water Margin or know anything about it prior to this event. Ha.

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NA Release Date: 10/2024

Huyan Zhuo

Introduction

Are they clubs? Are they whips? Are they “swords” ribbed for her pleasure? Entirely depends on who you ask, or how literally you look at the characters. Or how horny you are, I guess.

All I know is that I really want to give her the confidence to finish the black cat pancakes song.

Servant Data
Assassin
Presence Concealment C

Increase your Critical Star Drop Rate by 6%.

Riding B

Increase your Quick Card effectiveness by 8%.

Phantasmal Beast Possession C

Increase own Buster Critical Star Gather Rate by 10%.

Overview

So far as Huyan’s base stats go they aren’t, uh, particularly great. With the 2nd lowest Attack stat among her fellow SSR Assassins, and the tied 2nd best HP stat, her spread may seem fairly typical, but those rankings don’t show how she has a pretty bad stat deficit in general compared to other SSR Assassins like Koyanskaya, Kama, or King Hassan, on top of lacking their more offensively-leaned stat spread.

Being more defensive isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but having poorer offensive stats harms her when she is an offensive Servant, on top of her being weaker stat-wise in general.

She does thankfully get some compensation from her passives. With the typical Presence Concealment boosting her stargen, she also has Riding of a solid rank, boosting her primary card type’s damage output by a modest sum, and lastly a unique passive in Phantasmal Beast Possession, which raises her Buster cards’ Critical Star Gather Rate slightly. Not the most powerful unique passive out there, but it’s something to raise her damage output, as is her Riding.

On the whole, not the greatest start, but Huyan has some things going for her.

NP Generation
Servant Skills
Noble Phantasm
Conclusion

So how is Huyan on the whole? On one hand, she’s an absolute star, her kit a chain of unity keeping her bound together:

Huyan is a pretty curious critical damage dealer, in the sense that she feels explicitly built to compliment the bizarre way Summer Skadi’s kit was designed. She uses her Quicks for stargen, but aims to inflict all her Critical Damage in her more-powerful Busters, while Summer Skadi compliments that perfectly, providing her Buster-only Critical Damage buff and Star Focus buff. It actually ends up working out, though, especially since Huyan’s own stargen is basically good enough to carry the team’s stargen burden, making her a devastating offensive threat in difficult content.

I probably shouldn’t undersell the utility Huyan has, either. While Buff Removal Resistance isn’t particularly rare, having it at 100% for 3 turns certainly is, and essentially makes Huyan able to ignore buff-wipes half of the time she’s on the field. For a damage dealer who aims to be stacked up with Skadi buffs, that’s not something to be understated. Paired with her Invincible Pierce for a similar duration, anti-Evil niche, and her ability to potentially lock down multi-enemy quests with Stun, she has plenty of traits that let her stand out beyond her damage output.

It feels weird putting it as a footnote, but yeah, Huyan can also farm. While not exactly the craziest farmer in the world, she manages class advantage farming consistently in relatively low-investment setups while she can…technically perform Black Grail universal farming in a setup that is about as complex as you can manage to make a farming comp. So practically speaking, she’s a solid class-advantage farmer, and we’ll leave it at that.

On the other hand, she’s bound to crash into the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up, sooner or later:

With my talk of Huyan’s abilities as a Critical Damage dealer, I feel the need to point out that her actual offensive boosts…aren’t very good. The 20% Critical damage boost per Buster will round out to +80% Critical damage over (sort of) 3 turns if you get INSANELY lucky with the timing of when you use the skill and the card shuffle, but will usually be +40% critical damage instead. She compensates for it with her great stargen and sources of star focus, but the point is, she depends on the presence of Skadi, particularly Summer Skadi, to make her kit work, and without them she kind of just flounders about with a bunch of stars while dishing out mediocre damage.

Despite working as a class-advantage farmer Assassin, Huyan has some very unfortunate timing with her release. We literally just had the Summer event, including the Welfare Valkyries who, well, basically have the same damage output under double Castoria, but do it with far better refund and in a much more robust Card type, with a broader pool of support options. And for free. Did I mention that part? If Huyan performed better as a farmer this wouldn’t be an issue, but frankly she doesn’t have much over the Valks, even in terms of an anti-trait niche, with Earth being far more common than Evil.

Huyan is fundamentally a pretty average Servant. That isn’t to say she’s bad, or doesn’t stand out, but simply that she isn’t breaking boundaries, despite having a lot of useful tools to her. She has a lot of potential to perform in difficult content with her synergy alongside Summer Skadi, and her numerous utility perks, but her overall mediocre damage output means for the majority of this game’s content, farming, she doesn’t stand out too much.

If you’re such an unfortunate sod to not have gotten the Valk Welfares in summer and really need an Assassin farmer, she’s a perfectly good Servant to get for that role. Likewise, she’s a very good pick for just a well-rounded offensive Servant in difficult content, but plenty of other Servants, Assassins or otherwise, can compete with her. Just bear that in mind if you’re considering rolling for her - plenty of fish in the sea, or in this case, plenty of stars in the sky. Rath™ Seal of Approval.

Huang Feihu

Introduction

For some reason it feels like an eternity since we’ve had a male Servant that is just a cool, fairly upstanding dude with prowess as a warrior. For a while now it’s kind of felt like a slew of nudists…or pretty boys…or some kind of inbetween.

But not to worry, as with this young man of the Huang family, the dignity of the male cast is saved…just don’t ask him about Daji. Worst mistake of my life.

Servant Data
Rider
Magic Resistance D

Increase your Debuff Resist by 12.5%.

Riding B+

Increase your Quick Card effectiveness by 9%.

Divinity C

Apply Damage Plus for yourself (Total Card Damage +150).

Reed Spear Technique B

Increase Buster Card Critical Strength by 10%.

Familial Bond of Huang B

Gain 2 Critical Stars each turn.
Increase own Debuff Resist by 10%.

Overview

With the 6th Worst Attack stat in exchange for the 3rd best HP stat of his class and rarity, Feihu may have a defensively-leaning stat spread, but it’s a fairly strong one, not losing too much offensively for the additional bulk.

He’ll still come up lacking in comparison to the higher-attack Riders, but it’s a much more reasonable tradeoff than some Servants are dealt with, so even if he’s offensively-focused in his kit it isn’t much of a drawback.

He also gets compensated quite heavily on the Passives front, with 5 to his name. Magic Resistance, Riding, and Divinity are all fairly standard, providing him with some passive Debuff Resistance, a modest boost to his Quick cards, and some extra damage on his cards in exchange for Divinity weaknesses.

Feihu’s unique passives, however, are a little bit more interesting. Reed Spear Technique provides a small boost to his Buster Critical Damage, while Familial Bond of Huang gives him a couple of bonus crit stars to use each turn, as well as a further boost to his Debuff Resistance, making him rather resilient to debuffs overall.

Frankly, he’s got a nice set of base stats backing him, especially with those passives in play.

NP Generation
Servant Skills
Noble Phantasm
Conclusion

So how does Feihu shape up? On one hand, he brings honour to his family name, and a rainbow bull…and a fancy sword…

Feihu makes for a fearsome crit damage dealer. With the Rider star weight backing him, in-built star generation, and a powerful combo of +30% Attack, +80% Critical damage, and +20% Boost to his primary card types, he can really bring the hurt when his Crit Brave chains roll round. Compounded by his solid gauge charger, and access to a defensive tool, he has some potential as an offensive option in difficult content.

However, he also can’t really beat the machinations of one little fox, or in this case, modern FGO game meta:

While his crit damage is good and all, Feihu doesn’t really do himself favours by being a one-trick pony in a niche that fell off roughly 5 years ago. Buster-focused support has certainly improved since then, but lends itself better to Servants with loop-able NP’s and potent skill sets or NP effects which benefit from Koyanskaya’s cooldown reduction, neither of which Feihu really possesses.

If Feihu can’t get a decent crit turn off, his damage output is really, really mediocre. His NP, even with a solid number of steroids behind it, doesn’t hit too hard, and his regular card damage isn’t going to shock anyone, crits or not. Compound it with his utter lack of utility tools at his disposal, and it’s no surprise he has no ground to stand on.

All I can really say is that Feihu feels like a particularly good release Servant, but not a particularly good one in, well, anything resembling modern FGO. He focuses almost entirely on his offensive output, which doesn’t really break records to begin with, and invests it in a NP / card type that is pretty difficult to make stand out.

If his section feels particularly brief, that’s ultimately because there’s little to discuss on him, and I’d rather not flounder trying to find some redeeming point to push. He’s not that great.

Elisabeth Bathory (Kumonryu)

Introduction

Liz’s goal of world domination by flooding FGO with her alts progresses ever-closer to completion. And this time she does it by appropriating Chinese culture due to her obsession with being a dragon.

It’s almost a worse crime than killing a bunch of women and bathing in their blood.

Servant Data
Overview

As the, well, second 4* Pretender in the game, Loli Liz sadly doesn’t have a great pool of Servants to compare herself to. She is, however, slightly inferior to her sole competitor in Hephaestion, but carries the relatively-strong base stat total of the Pretender class regardless.

She hits fairly hard compared to most SR Servants, and also has a solid HP stat to keep her alive. Certainly better than the deal some other renditions of Liz get.

As for passives, she hasn’t really got an expansive lineup. Independent Action provides a minor boost to her own Critical Damage, while her unique variant of Territory Creation (pretty much being the cause of our miniature farming simulator in the event, putting our Servant roster to work in 108 different places) gives her a modest boost to both her Arts cards and stargen.

Those two skills alone carry a lot of weight, especially compared to some more useless passives out there, but she doesn’t have a stacked set of passives, regardless.

On the whole, she’s working with a solid baseline, especially when she’s in a class with little competition.

NP Generation
Servant Skills
Noble Phantasm
Conclusion

So how is Kumonryu Liz overall? Well on the one hand, she’s the pillar of Eastern culture, a symbol of strength and dignity, and her plushies are super cute:

Just as an accessible offensive Servant in the Pretender class, Liz would be solid. But beyond even that, she’s got a solid Critical Damage game behind her, solid team support, and some superb stargen to supply both herself and her team in a number of scenarios. Whenever a new Class is added to the game, the first welfare, or 3* or lower Servant, to be added in that class is usually significant, since access to class advantage alone is a huge deciding factor in tackling difficult fights. But even beyond that she’s a strong damage dealer, and only Hephaestion is really even trying to fill that role among the competitors in her class. TL/DR she has a good niche.

Liz’s supportive capabilities are worth keeping in mind. If the Gamepress FGO Tiering team can be continually pilled on Helena for her ability to provide 20% gauge charge to the team on a 4*’s party cost, as well as team offensive buffs, then damn it I can say the same for Loli Liz. There are a number of cases where team 20% gauge charge can completely save a farming composition, as I can testify to with how often I plug Oberon into teams, even when my damage dealer isn’t Buster. Add in her solid team buff, and you have yet another solid Battlesuit Swap support to plug in at the right time.

However, she’s also the larva of the greatest menace to ever plague Chaldea, the “One-Who-Screeches”, a child whose voice will eventually grow into a force beyond all comprehension, rupturing eardrums with no regard for your opinion. Oh, and also the whole “killing-women-and-bathing-in-their-blood” thing:

It’s a great shame that Liz isn’t really effective at farming. Just a smidgen of extra gauge charge thrown anywhere into her kit would be enough, or even just a 60+% gauge charger added to the game that isn’t Oberon. But the reality (for now) is that she can’t farm effectively, dashing her hopes of becoming a Knight-class farming queen for budget players. She can hit pretty hard with her NP in succession in difficult content, thanks to the freedom of having regular cards in the chain to follow and generate more gauge, but that’s only one portion of the game’s content.

Frankly, if Lasengle produces a welfare in a class that doesn’t yet have a budget option to them, they could have Caster Gilles’ kit and I’d probably still consider them great. Factoring in that Liz is pretty good even if she weren’t a Pretender, she’s naturally an excellent choice to use in the future.

…even if she can’t farm. At least with Quick/Arts AOE Servants, they get a gradual buildup to their NP gain numbers, that usually produces a sliding scale of “How good at farming” they are. For Buster Servants it’s unfortunately harsher, and Liz has to deal with the reality of being incapable of it in any serious capacity at the point her kit was locked on.

But enough dooming and glooming. She’s a good offensive Pretender, a solid low-cost support option, and she somehow managed to break the curse most Liz Servants bear of being mediocre to bad, so good on her. Even if she’s not a game-breaking staple to add to your roster. Rath™ Seal of Approval.

Outro

You know, one of these days I’ll actually manage to keep up my promise of delivering the MMM promptly. Just…launch an event on a weekend, Lasengle. Please. I have a job beyond this one.

As for what the future holds…you know, we haven’t had our high-difficulty event this year yet, have we? And frankly, we’re creeping up on December, and LB7 as a result, pretty soon. The coming months could either be very chaotic or very disappointing, I imagine…but until then!

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