Rabbit's Reviews #284: Senji Muramasa (5* Saber)

After first appearing in Shimousa in the fall of 2017, Senji Muramasa finally makes his playable debut on the 2021 New Year’s banner, more than three years later. Muramasa is one of the longest-awaited and most-requested Servants in the game, and fortunately he does not disappoint. He’s one of the best offensive Servants to-date, pairing excellent farming power and consistency with tons of CQ-oriented utility and firepower. Muramasa’s a top-notch gameplay pick, which is especially great for anyone who’s been waiting on the guy to finally show up.

Muramasa’s stat spread is fairly middling as Sabers go. His attack and HP are both middle-of-the-road, which isn’t amazing on an offense-oriented Servant, but it could be worse. His hit-counts aren’t terribly high and he only has one Quick, so without star gen buffs in play he’s not going to drop many stars. His NP gain is better, though, with high-standard NP gain for his deck and plenty of persistent Arts buffs to push it higher. Muramasa will have an easy time looping his NP, especially with cards in play. That said, Muramasa’s Quick is one of the worst we’ve seen in a long time, so it’s generally a card to avoid. For passives, Muramasa has Magic Resistance, as well as Territory Creation, which is excellent for Muramasa as it's a permanent boost to his NP damage and NP gain. He also has two unique passives: one that boosts the whole team's crit damage by a bit, and (more importantly) one that gives him a permanent 20% power mod versus kings, which is super nice when it's relevant. Incidentally, the last passive is in reference to the reputation of Muramasa’s swords for being cursed, and specifically the various legends about his swords bringing ruin to the Tokugawa, which makes it a really neat bit of gameplay-representation-of-lore.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x5 Saber Piece Open Saber Piece configuration options
3	300,000	x12 Saber Piece Open Saber Piece configuration options x8 Octuplet Crystals Open Octuplet Crystals configuration options
4	1,000,000	x5 Saber Monument Open Saber Monument configuration options x10 Ghost Lantern Open Ghost Lantern configuration options x5 Aurora Steel Open Aurora Steel configuration options
Max	3,000,000	x12 Saber Monument Open Saber Monument configuration options x10 Aurora Steel Open Aurora Steel configuration options x5 Glowing Star Fragment Open Glowing Star Fragment configuration options

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x5 Gem of Saber Open Gem of Saber configuration options
2 → 3	400,000	x12 Gem of Saber Open Gem of Saber configuration options
3 → 4	1,200,000	x5 Magic Gem of Saber Open Magic Gem of Saber configuration options
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Magic Gem of Saber Open Magic Gem of Saber configuration options x5 Ghost Lantern Open Ghost Lantern configuration options
5 → 6	4,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Saber Open Secret Gem of Saber configuration options x10 Ghost Lantern Open Ghost Lantern configuration options
6 → 7	5,000,000	x12 Secret Gem of Saber Open Secret Gem of Saber configuration options x5 Octuplet Crystals Open Octuplet Crystals configuration options
7 → 8	10,000,000	x10 Octuplet Crystals Open Octuplet Crystals configuration options x6 Refined Magatama Open Refined Magatama configuration options
8 → 9	12,000,000	x18 Refined Magatama Open Refined Magatama configuration options x10 Demonic Flame Light Open Demonic Flame Light configuration options
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

Muramasa’s mats are actually pretty reasonable. Most of his mats are fairly common and/or not in especially high demand, and while he does need 10 of the new LB5.5 gold mat per skill, clearing the chapter gives a fair number of them already. He’s well worth the investment, and it isn’t particularly painful to max him out.

Muramasa’s skillset is silly strong across the board. Recommended skill order is 3>1>2, with 3 and 1 being much more important to his farming potential than 2 is.

Muramasa is a highly offense-oriented Servant, and he wants to be looping whenever possible. Fortunately, that’s pretty easy for him, especially assuming access to double Castoria. A double Castoria team with the 2004 Mystic Code tri-loops without needing to plug in a third Servant—Muramasa’s Mana Burst in conjunction with 2004’s NP gain buff nearly guarantees Muramasa refunds to full, while his battery can cover the other turn. Using Muramasa’s Mana Burst and the 2004 buff on wave 2 can help cover a higher-HP second wave, while using the Mana Burst and NP gain buff on wave 1 makes Muramasa more likely to get the extra overkill he needs to loop against Assassins or Berserkers.

If Muramasa can’t reliably farm plugless, plugsuit setups will more than make up the difference. Castoria/Castoria/Any 50% charger—Reines is the best option here if you have her—pretty much guarantees Muramasa the loop assuming there are enough enemies on the field. Tamamo setups need more overkill but significantly amp Muramasa’s damage in exchange, and Paracelsus setups work as a relatively cheap alternative as well.

Even if you don’t have native Castoria, though, Muramasa can be really powerful. A setup using Muramasa with Kaleid, the Clock Tower Mystic Code (for the 20% battery), your own Paracelsus, and a support Castoria gets enough for Muramasa to still loop. This amounts to significantly less damage, of course, but the point is that you can get Muramasa looping at at least a basic level—enough to kill doors and hands, essentially—even with just free tools.

For CQs, much of the same logic applies, with the added benefit of being able to lean on Muramasa’s excellent cards for refund purposes. As such, you can run Tamamo (or whoever your best damage ampers happen to be) without worrying about missing your loops. Castoria is Muramasa’s best partner, as always, and you’ll likely want at least one Castoria accompanying him no matter how you’re running him. Additionally, if you want to lean into a stallier playstyle that leverages Muramasa’s easy NP recursion to gradually whittle the enemy down with frequent NPs, you can run Himiko/Castoria as well to keep the party protected while Muramasa does his thing. This has the added benefit of letting Himiko boost Muramasa’s Buster crits, which he definitely appreciates. For CQs in general, though, Muramasa wants to always have stars available, so bringing 2030 on your supports is a good call.

Muramasa’s best CE is always Black Grail. He wants its damage for farming reasons, and in CQs he has such easy NP access that there’s no reason to pass up the extra damage. If you don’t have Black Grail or don’t want to run it for whatever reason, Sign of Smiling Face also gives Muramasa a lot of things he likes, while Painting Summer makes his loops a little more consistent and has starting NP to let him get away with some looser, battery-oriented loop setups.

Muramasa’s going to like Command Codes that help him get access to crits. CCs that boost star weight on a single card are smart picks here, as they can help Muramasa crit even with relatively few stars available. Similarly, CCs that generate extra stars when Muramasa uses his cards are really nice for helping him flood out more reliably so he can leverage his trademark damage stretch.

Muramasa is a super strong candidate for grails. As both an omnifarmer and a CQ unit, Muramasa has pretty much everything you’d want in terms of consistency and antigimmick utility—the only thing he’s missing is raw damage. Grails go a long way towards addressing his most significant weakness, leaving him as an extremely complete unit, especially at NP levels above 1.

Muramasa’s a phenomenal Servant. He’s in contention with the top AoE Arts Servants in the game—which means he’s one of the best damage-dealers period in the current environment. While he lacks the raw damage of Summer Musashi, Space Ishtar, and Summer Kiara, he has the consistency and utility to make up for it, so while he’s probably not at the top of the pack as it currently stands, he’s also not strictly inferior to the Servants above him. (Personally I’d put him third, behind Musashi and Ishtar, but there are strong arguments to be made for a variety of orderings of the four). As an added farming bonus, his NP animation is relatively short, which adds up to a lot of time saved in long farming sessions. There’s a lot to like here.

All in all, he’s the best Servant we’ve had in a long while, and he’s an excellent gameplay pull even if you weren’t actively anticipating his addition to the game.
tl;dr: Shirou is Strong.

Overall: 10/10
Single-Target DPS: 8/10
AoE DPS: 9/10
Survivability: 3/10
Offensive Utility: 4/10
Defensive Utility: 3/10
Farming Usefulness: 10/10
Craftsmanship: 10/10