Rabbit's Reviews #309: Izumo no Okuni (5* Caster)

Introduction

Izumo no Okuni is the first Caster with a Quick Noble Phantasm.

It’s really kind of remarkable that this far into the game’s lifespan we’ve never had a Caster with a Quick NP. Okuni is, if nothing else, notable for breaking that long-running trend. Unfortunately, she’s less remarkable elsewhere: she has pretty standard damage buffs, a solid battery, some crit tools, etc, but Casters suffer from inherent attack penalties both to their actual attack stats (which tend to be low) and to their damage calculations (which have a 90% multiplier applied). As such, evan a Caster with relatively good buffs ends up with disappointingly low damage output. Sadly, Izumo doesn’t have enough going for her to make up for her low damage, and while she’s still arguably the best ST Caster currently—mostly thanks to her ramping Quick debuff and generally solid tools—that’s more a testament to the weakness of the class than to any strength of Izumo’s. The old adage that the best ST Caster is a Berserker is unlikely to change any time soon.

Servant Data

Caster

QQABB (Lancer)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

5

10

Attribute	Human
Alignment	Chaotic Good

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

April Fool's

Max HP 12,965

HP Rank

Max ATK 11,374

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,747	Base HP	1,901
Max Atk	11,374	Max HP	12,965
Grail Atk	12,451	Grail HP	14,204

Traits

Card Hits	4	3	3	5	10
Per Hit	0.80%	0.80%	0.80%	0.80%	0.80%

	NP per Hit (%)	0.80%
NP when Attacked (%)	3%

	Star Absorption	51
Star Generation per Hit	10.9%

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x5 Caster Piece
3	300,000	x12 Caster Piece x8 Eternal Gear
4	1,000,000	x5 Caster Monument x10 Refined Magatama x4 Phoenix Feather
Max	3,000,000	x12 Caster Monument x8 Phoenix Feather x5 Tsukumo Mirror

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x5 Gem of Caster
2 → 3	400,000	x12 Gem of Caster
3 → 4	1,200,000	x5 Magic Gem of Caster
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Magic Gem of Caster x5 Refined Magatama
5 → 6	4,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Caster x10 Refined Magatama
6 → 7	5,000,000	x12 Secret Gem of Caster x5 Eternal Gear
7 → 8	10,000,000	x10 Eternal Gear x6 Rainbow Thread Ball
8 → 9	12,000,000	x18 Rainbow Thread Ball x10 Demonic Flame Light
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200000	x5 Gem of Caster
2 → 3	400000	x12 Gem of Caster
3 → 4	1200000	x5 Magic Gem of Caster
4 → 5	1600000	x12 Magic Gem of Caster x5 Octuplet Crystals
5 → 6	4000000	x5 Secret Gem of Caster x10 Octuplet Crystals
6 → 7	5000000	x12 Secret Gem of Caster x5 Homunculus Baby
7 → 8	10000000	x10 Homunculus Baby x6 Soundless Bell
8 → 9	12000000	x18 Soundless Bell x10 Tsukumo Mirror
9 → 10	20000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Quick/Buster Up

Combat Dance B

Increase own Buster Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Increase own Quick Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Apply Evade to self (2 times, 3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Quick +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
Buster +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
CD	9	9	9	9	9	8	8	8	8	7

Stage Combat is a standard 3-turn 30% damage buff paired with a Protection from Arrows effect. These are both nice effects in themselves. The damage buff is Quick and Buster both, benefitting Okuni’s NP and all but one of her cards. While the Quick buff is most important, the Buster buff also helps prop up Okuni’s Buster crits. Hit-based dodges are also always powerful survival tools, and the 3-turn duration means the dodge is unlikely to be wasted even assuming Okuni uses this skill primarily offensively. The catch to all this is that this skill is on an unusually long cooldown, capping out at 7 turns at max level. Comparable skills are typically given 6-turn cooldowns, and sometimes they get cooldowns as low as 5 (such as in the case of Majin Saber’s recent buff). There’s a reason for the longer cooldown here: Okuni is paying for the fact that she has cooldown reduction in her kit, I have thoughts on this, but they’re better saved for the CDR skill in particular. Suffice it to say that this skill, along with Okuni as a whole, is worse off for it.

Critical Star Absorption Up

Puppet Kagura A

Increase own Critical Star Gather Rate (1 turn).
Increase own Critical Strength (1 turn).
Inflict Defense Down 10% (3 turns) when landing a critical hit (1 turn).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Absorption +	600%	640%	680%	720%	760%	800%	840%	880%	920%	1000%
Crit Damage +	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%	90%	100%
CD	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	6	6	5

Ningyou Kagura is a nifty crit tool. At base, it’s a 100% crit damage buff that comes paired with a solid star weight buff. Given Okuni’s low base NP damage, the ability to push damage via reliable and powerful crits for a turn can be helpful for ensuring she can break a bar or drop an enemy on a crucial turn. The skill also causes Okuni to inflict defense-down debuffs when she crits for a turn. The defense debuffs are quite nice, as they boost both Okuni’s NP damage and her card damage while they remain. The catch here is that, unlike comparable skills on the likes of, say, Saber Hokusai, the crit-based effect only lasts one turn, rather than three. If Okuni is looping, she’ll only have two cards available to crit with on a given turn, which means she can’t get the full value of this skill’s damage amplification. Conversely, if she uses this on a turn when she’s not using her NP, that implies she’s missing out on a turn of NP damage, wasting a turn of NP buffs, or critting without the benefit of her supports. None of these is necessarily a deal-breaker—there will absolutely be cases in which using this on a standard Brave chain rather than with an NP is the right call—but it does force some annoying trades on what is otherwise very close to being a great effect. Overall, this is a solid skill, but it’s more a tool for specific cases than it is a skill that’s always useful to Okuni’s gameplan.

Skill Cooldown

Sealing Shrine Maiden B+

Decrease Skill Cooldown for an ally by 1.
Increase own NP Gauge.
Gain Critical Stars.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
NP +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
Stars +	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	15
CD	9	9	9	9	9	8	8	8	8	7

Sealed Shrine Maiden is a 50% battery that also makes some stars. 50% charge skills are great, and the star burst facilitates crits. Solid effects; no complaints here. The problem with this skill comes from its other effect: Okuni can reduce one ally’s skill cooldowns by one turn. Cooldown reduction can be a super strong effect—just look at Koyanskaya for a case-in-point—but Okuni pays heavily for it. Okuni’s first and third skills are both on long cooldowns for skills of their type. As such, if Okuni uses her CDR on herself, she effectively has “standard” skill cooldowns—at which point, why bother giving her cooldown reduction at all? Okuni could have 6/5/6 for her skill cooldowns without the CDR effect and be nearly unchanged, outside of having slightly more restrictive timing on her second skill. The cooldown reduction is basically meaningless in practice, which is not a good feeling for what is usually a powerful form of utility. The only time the CDR effect will be useful is in cases where you urgently need a support’s skills a turn early. If you’re running, say, a Skadi/Okuni/Castoria team, you could toss Okuni’s CDR to Skadi or Castoria in order to get them access to their batteries for an emergency defensive NP, and while that’s not worthless, Okuni then pays for it with disappointingly long cooldowns for the next skill rotation. It’s just kinda gross, altogether, especially considering Okuni could keep the effect and have standard cooldowns and still not be amazing.

Noble Phantasm

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
C	Barrier	10

Effect	Decrease Quick Resist for a single enemy by 20% (3 turns). [Activates first] Deal heavy damage to a single enemy.

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Quick Res -	20%	20%	20%	20%	20%
Damage +	1200%	1600%	1800%	1900%	2000%

Overcharge Effect	Deal supereffective bonus damage against [Demonic] enemies.

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Supereffective ATK +	150%	162.5%	175%	187.5%	200%

Usage Tips

Okuni’s best team is, of course, two Skadis and a plug Oberon. Between the batteries, the easy crit access, and Okuni’s cards, this setup should be able to tri-loop fairly easily. Mana Loading is, unfortunately, wasted in this setup due to the distribution of batteries, but with Quick and Arts crits Okuni should be able to generate enough gauge to secure the loop regardless. Her damage in this team is solid for a Caster-centric team, and it’s fairly simple to run. Okuni’s defensive tools and sustained steroids also let her transition fairly seamlessly into a slower style of play if she can’t secure the quick kill, especially with, for example, a backline Castoria. Remember that Oberon can use End of the Dream on himself if need be to get him off the field, allowing Castoria to swap in to form a Castoria/Skadi shell.

Speaking of which, Castoria/Skadi is also always a remarkably solid stall shell, and Okuni slots nicely into the team. Okuni’s self battery helps to more easily set up Okuni->Skadi->Castoria NP chains (or Skadi->Okuni->Castoria if fighting a Demonic enemy), and Okuni can, as mentioned, toss her CDR to Skadi or Castoria in a pinch. While this is far from the best stall shell out there, it’s a reliable way to use Okuni in fights that can’t be easily blitzed, and it also makes her crit tools more useful and her low NP damage less relevant.

Okuni has a remarkably complete kit, in the sense that she’s not missing anything in particular she needs to function. As such, even if you don’t have meta supports, you can facilitate an Okuni team fairly easily with a friend Skadi and free tools. Barti in particular is a nice partner for Okuni, as he can push her NP damage and facilitate her crits. Hans also works, sacrificing burst damage support in exchange for somewhat stronger sustained damage support.

Most ST Servants, and especially ST Servants who can loop reasonably reliably, benefit from The Black Grail. This is especially true if you’re bringing Oberon, as End of the Dream can double Black Grail’s damage boost for a turn in a pinch. Outside of that, Traces of Christmas is a strong CE choice, providing starting NP gauge and NP gain buffs to make looping even easier.

Command Codes that boost NP damage are a strong pick here, as Okuni can potentially do, say, a BBNP chain with her second skill active in order to maximize NP damage on a given turn. Okuni has no in-kit NP damage buffs, so she benefits fully from those effects on her Busters. Aside from that, star gen CEs are a nice choice to keep Okuni’s crits coming.

Grail Potential

Conclusion

Okuni’s kit is not bad. She has all the basic tools you want in a DPS—a good battery, a nice defensive tool, powerful crits, sustained, ramping buffs, etc—but she’s really held back by two things: her class, and (to a lesser extent) her card type. The damage penalties inherent to the Caster class bring Okuni down a ton, and Skadi just doesn’t bring as much of value as the best options for Arts and Buster. While an amazing new support would help Okuni a lot, I think she’ll likely also need an Interlude in order to overcome the weaknesses of her class. Could she be worthwhile eventually? Sure. Is she worthwhile right now? Sadly, no.

Rabbit's Arbitrary Ratings

Overall: 7/10
Single-Target DPS: 7/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: 2/10
Defensive Utility: 2/10
Farming Usefulness: 5/10
Mafia: 10/10