Rabbit’s Reviews #379: Saika Magoichi (4* Archer)

Saika is a remarkably generic ST Archer. She has one notable feature—a taunt-plus-dodge skill—but aside from that she’s just a straightforward Quick DPS. This isn’t a bad thing, per se—she’s fine and all—but it does mean she doesn’t really stand out aside from being free.

Saika has low attack and high health for an Archer of her rarity, which isn’t a good starting point for a damage-dealer. Her NP gain is decent—Saika’s Arts card is solidly average for her deck, but her Quicks have good NP gain. She’s a Quick Servant with high-hit-count Quicks, so active star gen is a strength. For passives, she has Magic Resistance, for a small chance at staving off debuffs, and Independent Action, for a marginal amount of extra crit damage. She also gets a unique variant of Item Construction that slightly boosts her Arts card and Arts crit damage… neither of which matters much in practice.

Saika’s appends are a bit of an odd situation. As a Quick Servant with a 20% innate battery, Saika doesn’t benefit as much as usual from Mana Loading—in most cases you’ll want two Skadis to start a fight, and since Skadi can’t break up her battery, extra starting charge doesn’t help. Anti-Berserker attack damage is pretty nice, since Saika naturally deals double damage against Berserkers (as most servants do), and the Extra card buff is decent given that Saika has pretty good cards.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x1 M51 Ticket
3	150,000	x1 M51 Ticket
4	500,000	x1 M51 Ticket
Max	1,500,000	x1 M51 Ticket

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x4 Gem of Archer
2 → 3	200,000	x10 Gem of Archer
3 → 4	600,000	x4 Magic Gem of Archer
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Magic Gem of Archer x8 Void's Dust
5 → 6	2,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Archer x16 Void's Dust
6 → 7	25,000,000	x10 Secret Gem of Archer x3 Claw of Chaos
7 → 8	5,000,000	x5 Claw of Chaos x15 Mystic Gunpowder
8 → 9	6,000,000	x45 Mystic Gunpowder x20 Soundless Bell
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x4 Gem of Archer
2 → 3	200000	x10 Gem of Archer
3 → 4	600000	x4 Magic Gem of Archer
4 → 5	800000	x10 Magic Gem of Archer x4 Serpent Jewel
5 → 6	2000000	x4 Secret Gem of Archer x7 Serpent Jewel
6 → 7	2500000	x10 Secret Gem of Archer x3 Tearstone of Blood
7 → 8	5000000	x5 Tearstone of Blood x15 Ashes of Forgetfulness
8 → 9	6000000	x45 Ashes of Forgetfulness x60 Obsidian Knife
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Saika is a welfare, so she doesn’t need any ascension mats other than the things her event gives. Her skill mats, though, are kinda gross, mostly because she needs 60 bullets per skill. That’s a lot of investment for an unremarkable unit.

Saika’s skillset, aside from skill 3, is very plain. Recommended skill order is 3>2>1.

Ideally, Saika wants a triple Skadi team—preferably two Ruler Skadis and a Caster Skadi. Saika is fairly reliant on cards to loop, assuming you’re running Black Grail, but aside from that this is pretty straightforward. You just want to amp Saika’s damage as much as you can and hope she can clear in three turns.

If you don’t have native Skadis, the usual free support options will be decent here. Hans and Barti are both fine as supports for Saika. Barti in particular offers a burst of 20 stars, which, in conjunction with Saika’s first skill, can completely flood the field, guaranteeing a turn of crits. Mash is also a pretty good partner, as she and Saika can alternate taunting in order to periodically protect the party from dangerous crit turns or ST NPs.

The Black Grail is Saika’s best CE for damage, though if you’re having trouble looping reliably (or if you aren’t running Saika in Skadi teams) Traces of Christmas is also a pretty good option.

There’s nothing CCs offer that Saika particularly wants. Crit damage CCs won’t do much for Saika, but in lieu of anything else meaningful, they do provide a bit of extra damage, at least.

Archers aren’t great grail targets and Saika is a deeply unexciting Archer. I wouldn’t grail her unless you’re particularly invested in her as a character.

Saika is an extremely boring unit. She’s fine? She’s automatically NP5, she has an acceptable level of steroids, and she has some defensive utility. We have a lot of great free ST Archers, though, so Saika’s addition is a little confusing. She’s really just kinda there.

Overall: 7/10
Single-Target DPS: 7/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: 2/10
Defensive Utility: 6/10
Farming Usefulness: 1/10
Inheritance: 10/10