MMM - Wintertime Writer Weathered With Well of Warriors Anew, Wishing Wellness (Christmas 2020)

Moving on to skills, we start off with Penetrating Vajra. A new entry to the series of “Why does this Servant have that?” and joining the general club of “Why are you walking around with the weapon that killed you or your relative?”, Vritra just has the divine weapon Indra used to shank her ass as her main arm. Is it some dragon thing to claim every weapon that lands on your body as your own, even if it kills you?

At any rate, this thing is your standard 3-turn card booster, providing Vritra with a moderate Arts card buff for 3 turns, on top of a 1-turn Arts card star focus with some reasonable power. There’s not much beyond that for this skill, but when you’re a hint AOE Arts Servant, often a 3-turn Arts buff is much more valuable than it is on paper. The star focus has its uses, too, but often tends to fall flat due to its 1-turn duration and Vritra’s desire often to NP on the first turn, not known for having much in the way of critical stars.

And as you would expect, this skill has a clean 7-turn base cooldown. Not much else to speak of.

Next in the lineup is Fated Enemy of the Gods. So far as lore goes, you can’t really deny that one. Indra practically had to call in the Hindu God equivalent of the Avengers to even make a weapon which could dent Vritra.

As you could probably guess from the name, this skill is a somewhat unique team Super-Effective Damage buff, giving a moderate bonus versus Divine trait enemies to the whole team for 3 turns. More importantly, it’s a gauge charger, providing Vritra with 30% gauge charge at max skill level.

While most of us would take a straight Charisma buff any day of the week, Divine isn’t the worst trait out there to get an offensive buff on - a very good proportion of Servants have the trait, and a handful of miniboss-type enemies do, too, such as Sphinxes, Valkyries, Indian Dragons and most of the minibosses in LB5.2 by nature. It’s largely a situational bonus to the already-solid benefit of a gauge charger, and it being a team buff is a neat bonus to ensure Vritra’s teammates also get a potential damage boost out of it.

All-in-all, the 8-turn base cooldown is fair for what it provides, though I do wish her skills were a little bit more stacked.

Last on the skill list is Eternal Immortal Demon. Because being a dragon isn’t enough, Vritra is also an Asura.

Answering my calls so soon, this Guts skill is really using the icon to hide its true nature, being a powerful over-time gauge charger and additional NP steroid, featuring Guts from the ‘Lancer May Die’ series.

Providing 10% gauge charge each turn over 5 turns, for 50% total at skill level 10, this skill is a blessing for looping compositions, effectively changing her kit from a 30% gauge charge one to a 50% one for 3-turn farming, which is a very important improvement. And naturally, in high-difficulty content, being able to NP much more frequently than what her card NP gain suggests is a huge boon to her viability.

The 1-time, 5 turn team NP damage buff is really an accessory in the end, providing Vritra with a moderate offensive boost while also opening the possibility for aiding a support or secondary damage Servant to get a boost on their own NP.

And I may have glossed over it, but having that Guts there as a defensive fallback is still good to have around, even if it’s something of a bare minimum for hard defensive options. Only shame is that it pulls the skill’s base cooldown up to 9 turns, being quite inconvenient.

Kicking off Santa Karna’s skill lineup is Foot Santa. Hah, see what I did there? While I won’t say no to Karna’s feet, I’m assuming this name is more in the sense of “Pedestrian” than “Your filthy fetish” kind of feet.

At any rate, this skill is the tried and tested dual card booster skill, providing Santa Karna with 30% boosts for 3 times, 3 turns to both his Quick and Buster cards at skill level 10. On top of that is also a 50% critical damage boost for 3 turns flat.

Goes without saying that when your focus is neatly spread across 2 cards, that getting a boost to both of them is good. While the 3-time limit on this skill’s card buffs limits the actual longevity of its boosts (essentially helping for 2 full chains, at most), you’re unlikely to expend all of them within the 3 turn time limit without some hand shuffle or Summer BB shenanigans.

And so, this thing is both a solid and long-lasting offensive boost to both of Santa Karna’s primary cards while also making him more vicious on his criticals, all on a relatively short 7-turn base cooldown. It’s a good skill.

It’s like Karna didn’t just want to have one skill to the critical damage monster tally, on top of his passive, so he added another. Flash Fist is a two-in-one of devastating crit burst skill and hard defensive option, providing him both with a 2-hit, 3 turn evasion buff and star focus mixed with Quick critical damage up.

While normally this mix of offensive and defensive selection is detrimental to the skill’s actual use, the nature of Santa Karna’s evasion lasting 3 turns and being hit-based gives you a lot of leeway to pop it offensively while still reaping the benefits of its defensive boon. And boy is it a nasty boon. Even off his own skills thus far, getting +30% Quick booster, +50% Critical damage up and +100% Quick Critical damage up is a whopping 225% boost to his Quick crit damage, or more powerful than a Skadi providing her Quick buff to him for a turn. And with the star focus provided by this skill in the same turn, you won’t fail to miss the stars necessary for 100% crit chance, or at least, I’d hope.

This skill is rounded out on an 8-turn base cooldown, something I’d call fair were it not for the existence of Protection from Arrows. But hey, 8 turns is the baseline for evasion skills, so I’ll let it slide.

Last on the skill lineup is a break from just wrecking face, Hero of Charity (Saint). Much in the line of other Santa Servant’s gift-style skills, this is a targeted gauge charger with the bonus effect of providing a 3-time, 3 turn Debuff Immunity buff to the target.

The gauge charger may only be 20%, but it’s still strong to have around, either as a supportive option to charge key NP’s from Karna’s allies, or to give him his own head start in getting his NP out. The debuff immunity buff is largely a bonus, though one which will likely come in handy often for challenge quests, guarding a chosen ally from all kinds of infuriating effects for a solid duration, until it gets overloaded.

But the bottom of the line is, Santa Karna is likely to want to spam his NP a lot, and this skill helps him do it. With a convenient 7-turn base cooldown, he’s going to be doing that frequently.