Rabbit’s Reviews #371: Cnoc na Riabh (4* Foreigner)

As the welfare for this year’s Summer event, Cnoc is… an interesting case. She is, in theory, quite powerful for a free Servant. She’s something of a budget Oberon, providing party charge and a ton of steroids, in exchange for a host of debilitating drawbacks. She is almost really good, and for players without deep support benches, she still may be useful, but her demerits are too severe for her to be especially valuable to players with lots of supports. She’s not consistent enough to be useful as a farming support, and that inconsistency makes her unappealing for CQs as well unless there are no better options. That said, she does provide 30% charge and a truly remarkable level of damage boosting for her allies, which makes her, at the very least, an interesting unit.

There are surprisingly few SR Foreigners to-date—Cnoc is only the third—and Cnoc’s stats sit in the middle of the pack, with pretty average attack and health for an SR. Her internals are not super—she’s a triple-Arts Servant with a pretty low-hit Quick, so she’s terrible at active star gen, and her card-based NP gain is quite bad for her deck, so Cnoc is dependent on batteries and NP refund in order to gain access to her NP.

Cnoc has three passives, two of which are unique. Magic Resistance is the usual small debuff avoidance skill, but the others are more interesting: Southern Star gives passive stars and passive charge, helping to offset Cnoc’s weak internals, and Melty Heart raises the whole team’s star gen while Cnoc is on the field, which doesn’t help Cnoc much but which can be nice while Cnoc is supporting a Servant with high hit-counts. None of Cnoc’s appends, on the other hand, matter much—Mana Loading is helpful if you want Cnoc to loop, anti-Lancer damage is a small boost to damage against a neutral class, and the Extra Attack buff isn’t helpful given Cnoc’s weak cards.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	500,000	x1 VVV Stick Open VVV Stick configuration options
3	150,000	x1 VVV Stick Open VVV Stick configuration options
4	500,000	x1 VVV Stick Open VVV Stick configuration options
Max	1,500,000	x1 VVV Stick Open VVV Stick configuration options

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x8 Seed of Yggdrasil Open Seed of Yggdrasil configuration options
2 → 3	200,000	x8 Phoenix Feather Open Phoenix Feather configuration options
3 → 4	600,000	x10 Warhorse's Young Horn Open Warhorse's Young Horn configuration options
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Spirit Root Open Spirit Root configuration options
5 → 6	2,000,000	x10 Shell of Reminiscence Open Shell of Reminiscence configuration options
6 → 7	2,500,000	x12 Crown of Silvery Light Open Crown of Silvery Light configuration options
7 → 8	5,000,000	x12 Scale of Fantasy Open Scale of Fantasy configuration options
8 → 9	6,000,000	x12 Fragment of a Twinkling Star Open Fragment of a Twinkling Star configuration options
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x8 Octuplet Crystals Open Octuplet Crystals configuration options
2 → 3	200000	x8 Homunculus Baby Open Homunculus Baby configuration options
3 → 4	600000	x10 Lamp of Evil-Sealing Open Lamp of Evil-Sealing configuration options
4 → 5	800000	x10 Scarab of Wisdom Open Scarab of Wisdom configuration options
5 → 6	2000000	x10 Eternal Ice Open Eternal Ice configuration options
6 → 7	2500000	x12 Ball of Rainbow Thread Open Ball of Rainbow Thread configuration options
7 → 8	5000000	x12 Small Bell of Absolution Open Small Bell of Absolution configuration options
8 → 9	6000000	x12 Ether Light Collector Open Ether Light Collector configuration options
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

Cnoc is a welfare, so she doesn’t need ascension mats beyond the special ones earned from her own event. Cnoc’s skill mats aren’t too bad, especially considering she doesn’t need any gems, though she does ask for a decent number of Lostbelt mats, which can make it hard for newer players—the ones for whom Cnoc is likely to be most useful—to max her skills out, which is a bit unfortunate.

Each of Cnoc’s skills is theoretically powerful, but each comes with a notable catch. Recommended skill order is 1>2>3.

Supportively, Cnoc’s best use case is as a plug support for hard fights. You run as strong of a front line as you can, and then on turn three you plug Cnoc in for extra damage and extra charge. Ideally, Cnoc gets a Kaleid so she can access her NP for its defense debuff as well. This only works when supporting Quick Servants, Buster Servants, and Berserker Castoria, and it risks not working if the DPS resists Cnoc’s My Fair Soldier debuff, but if it does work, Cnoc provides a lot of extra damage—comparable to what Oberon brings, albeit with a lot less charge.

Looking at Cnoc’s kit, it’s possible to start theorycrafting alternative support setups. Knock’s AoE stun and substantial self-healing imply some decent stall support, but Cnoc’s second skill cuts strongly against that. Cnoc providing charge and steroids makes her look like a decent farming support, but her charge and steroids can fail, which is unacceptable in a context in which consistence is the name of the game. She’s also locked out of fully supporting a good chunk of the cast by virtue of the Arts seal on her third skill. Rather than encouraging unique strategies, all of Cnoc’s demerits lock her into a specific playstyle, which is disappointing.

As a DPS, Cnoc can potentially farm simple nodes. She can BG loop 3/3/x nodes with Mana Loading, or 3/2/x nodes with Mana Loading and Oberon. On wave 1, Cnoc uses her first and third skills, and you use all Castoria skills except for one Castoria’s second skill. Cnoc refunds 40%, charges an extra 20% with her first skill, gains another 20% from Castoria, uses her second skill, and then plugs Castoria out for a third support, who provides the remaining 20% charge. Cnoc then refunds about 30% versus two enemies, or 50% verses 3, gaining another 20% charge from her first skill, and secures the loop with 30% from Waver or Reines, or 50% from Oberon. She’s neutral to most classes and has pretty low steroids when she can’t ramp defense down, so she may have damage issues, but she does work in these cases.

Cnoc can also stall decently in a Castoria team. The one advantage of My Fair Soldier being a debuff is that Castoria can remove it, so as long as you only use Cnoc’s second skill when Castoria has an NP ready to clear it, Cnoc’s demerits don’t matter much—she can ramp her own damage passably, provide charge to the party, and keep her own health up. She’s not the best point Servant for an Arts stall team, but she does work in that role.

As a DPS, Cnoc wants the Black Grail to help offset her lowish steroids before ramp and her lack of a common class advantage context. As a support, she either wants Kaleid (for easy access to her NP and its defense debuff) or a CE that provides some supportive value, such as Ox King for its Buster buff or any star burst CE.

There aren’t any particularly obvious CC picks for Cnoc, as she doesn’t have easy crit access, she has plenty of innate healing, and none of the flaws in her kit are easily fixed with CCs. Supportive CCs are a decent pick in general—CCs that give stars can help her facilitate party crits a bit, while buff-removal CCs can be okay for situational supporting. You can also give her Everyone’s Girl Da Vinci, which gives a partywide NP damage buff for a single turn, but there are better uses for that particular CC and you’d be relying on Cnoc drawing it the turn she shows up, which is not a given.

Supports are not good grail targets in general, and Cnoc is most notable for her supportive value. As a DPS, grails will benefit Cnoc by virtue of helping push her damage, but there are better alternatives out there even in the same role. If you have Iyo, for instance, she’s a much better use of grails, to say nothing of higher-rarity alternatives.

Cnoc is so so close to being really powerful, but she just has one too many demerits to make her useful as a support. It’s really a shame that a free Servant with 30% party charge, 50% attack up, 40% total defense down, and 20% NP damage up is somehow not very good, but between her inflexibility and her inconsistency there are going to be better options for all but the least-developed boxes. Players without a lot of supports—and especially Oberon—may find use for her, but most players won’t need what she brings badly enough to want to put up with her nonsense. Cnoc’s best use is probably as a relatively generic Arts DPS, and there are plenty of better options out there, even among free Servants.

Overall: 6/10
Single-Target DPS: 2/10
AoE DPS: 7/10
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: 7/10
Defensive Utility: 4/10
Farming Usefulness: 5/10
Coronations: 0/1