Rabbit’s Reviews #382: Ushi Gozen (5* Avenger)

Ushi Gozen’s value proposition comes down almost entirely to one particular trait: she gets bonus damage against Earth enemies twice—once via power mod, on a skill, and once through a Supereffective damage bonus on her NP. This is, in theory, a good thing, especially on a neutral unit. Niche damage is essentially required to hit 90++ damage levels on an AoE Servant, especially without a common class advantage context, and doubling up on a single niche is, in theory, a great way to hit the requisite levels of damage.

…Unfortunately, Ushi Gozen has very low steroids outside of that, which means she doesn’t deal enough damage for the hardest content even with niche, unless she’s both maxed out and fighting Berserkers. The best neutral damage dealers are Berserkers with great steroids or broad niches (AA, Summer Ibuki) or non-Berserkers with both (Kukulkan, Avenger Nobu). Ushi Gozen has only niche damage going for her, and her lack of steroids means niche damage isn’t enough to carry her. She doesn’t really offer anything outside of that, either—she has very little utility, her crit capabilities are pretty modest for a Quick unit, and her refund is terrible.  She’s mostly inferior to Dantes, and even Berserker Lancelot will outdo her on nodes with difficult loop requirements or if his NP level is higher. Neither of them is exactly a top-of-the-line AoE unit in this day and age, so that doesn’t reflect well on Ushi Gozen. Mechanically speaking, she brings very little of value.

Ushi Gozen has a defense-focused stat spread by Avenger standards, with the lowest attack (though not the highest health) of the SSR Avengers. This isn’t a great starting point for a DPS, though Avengers have such a strong attack lean in general that even with the lowest attack of the SSR Avengers, Ushi Gozen still has high attack relative to SSRs as a whole. Her active star gen is very good, between her three 6-hit Quicks and her AoE Quick NP, and her active NP gen (when she has access to cards) is also pretty solid.

Ushi Gozen has a set of five passives. Avenger passives are nice in general, boosting defensive NP gain and crit damage, as well as providing passive NP gauge every turn. Aside from that, Ushi Gozen gets Madness Enhancement EX, which would be nicer if she had more than one Buster. Her final passive is a unique one, but it’s not all that useful. It gives a tiny damage increase, and it boosts her Quick crit damage by 20%—that’s not a lot, and small crit buffs on Quick units tend to not be very impactful, especially considering the Skadis bring a ton of crit buffs of their own.

For appends, Ushi has options. Mana Loading is usually important for farming, though in Ushi’s case it’s less so—Ushi has a 50% battery, and Ushi’s favored supports also have 50% batteries that can’t be split up, so an extra 20% starting charge only matters if you’re running a 30% charge CE (that is to say, a non-MLB event CE) or are running Castoria, Waver, or Reines instead of Oberon or another Skadi. It’s still probably the best append choice, but anti-Berserker attack damage competes with it. Earth Berserkers are the only real circumstance in which Ushi is likely to hit high-end damage thresholds, so you might choose to go with anti-Berserker damage first to make it easier for Ushi to function in the one case where her damage is likely to be sufficient. Ushi’s Extra card, meanwhile, is underwhelming, so the Extra card buff is of limited usefulness.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x10 Meteor Horseshoe Open Meteor Horseshoe configuration options x10 Warhorse's Young Horn Open Warhorse's Young Horn configuration options
3	300,000	x10 Claw of Chaos Open Claw of Chaos configuration options x10 Tearstone of Blood Open Tearstone of Blood configuration options
4	1,000,000	x10 Refined Magatama Open Refined Magatama configuration options x10 Heart of the Foreign God Open Heart of the Foreign God configuration options
Max	3,000,000	x10 Ball of Rainbow Thread Open Ball of Rainbow Thread configuration options x10 Flaming Oni Lantern Plant Open Flaming Oni Lantern Plant configuration options

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x10 Meteor Horseshoe Open Meteor Horseshoe configuration options
2 → 3	400,000	x10 Warhorse's Young Horn Open Warhorse's Young Horn configuration options
3 → 4	1,200,000	x12 Tearstone of Blood Open Tearstone of Blood configuration options
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Cursed Beast Gallstone Open Cursed Beast Gallstone configuration options
5 → 6	4,000,000	x12 Refined Magatama Open Refined Magatama configuration options
6 → 7	5,000,000	x15 Ball of Rainbow Thread Open Ball of Rainbow Thread configuration options
7 → 8	10,000,000	x15 Flaming Oni Lantern Plant Open Flaming Oni Lantern Plant configuration options
8 → 9	12,000,000	x15 Remnants of Madness Open Remnants of Madness configuration options
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200000	x10 Evil Bone Open Evil Bone configuration options
2 → 3	400000	x10 Claw of Chaos Open Claw of Chaos configuration options
3 → 4	1200000	x12 Black Beast Grease Open Black Beast Grease configuration options
4 → 5	1600000	x12 Heart of the Foreign God Open Heart of the Foreign God configuration options
5 → 6	4000000	x12 Stake of Wailing Night Open Stake of Wailing Night configuration options
6 → 7	5000000	x15 Giant's Ring Open Giant's Ring configuration options
7 → 8	10000000	x15 Arrowhead of Malice Open Arrowhead of Malice configuration options
8 → 9	12000000	x15 Obsidian Knife Open Obsidian Knife configuration options
9 → 10	20000000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

As an Avenger, Ushi Gozen doesn’t need any pieces or gems, instead asking for a plethora of different mats. Usually this makes Servants relatively easy to level but also likely to run into a roadblock here or there with mats you happen to have needed more of, and that will most likely be true here as well.

Ushi’s skillset is quite weak relative to limited SSRs as a whole, with surprisingly restrained values and awkward buff placement. She does at least get a 50% battery, though, which is a step up over several other relatively recent Quick AoEs. Recommended skill order is 3>2>1.

Ushi Gozen’s loop specs are, as mentioned above, quite bad. With double Summer Skadi, she refunds a measly 8.5% per enemy (though she does get a flat 3.8% after that thanks to her Avenger passives). This means she cannot loop CE-less, even against 3/3/x nodes. Against 3 enemies, she refunds about 30%, factoring in her passive and overkill. Even with a plug Oberon, this leaves Ushi about 20% charge short on the last turn. You can make up the difference with Summer Chloe, but that leaves your team cost too high to run a full set of SSR CEs… and farming 3/3/x nodes is usually easy enough that there’s no reason to sacrifice CE slots for it.

For farming, Ushi’s more or less locked into using a 50% charge CE. For that, with two Summer Skadis and a plug Oberon, Ushi needs to refund 30% on one of the first two waves, which means she can farm 3/x/x or x/3/x, provided she has the damage. You have four 50% batteries and a 20% battery (from Oberon) at your disposal, so you use one 50% battery on the first turn, two on the turn you don’t refund 30%, and one plus Oberon’s 20% battery on the turn where you can refund 30%. Being unable to run Black Grail limits Ushi’s damage potential in these setups, but if you’re farming an event with a damage bonus CE that also gives starting charge, and you’re farming nodes that have at least one wave of three, and the highest-health enemies are Earth-attribute, Ushi might be sufficient.

…She’s, uh, not a very good farmer.

Ushi looks a little better in CQs, in part because she can run triple Skadi, which increases her overall damage output. Given her triple-Quick deck, double Caster Skadi with a single Ruler Skadi is likely the better setup, even though it results in slightly lower NP-applicable steroids (assuming Skadi doesn’t NP). Ushi benefits strongly from loading up on Caster Skadi’s Quick crit buffs, and she can output solid single-target damage if your card draws line up. She’s not the best Quick Servant at doing this—and Buster Servants are much better at this gimmick in general—but it’s an option.

Her performance will drop off substantially in less-optimized teams, as her weak refund will become more of a problem, and the utility she does have isn’t reliable or powerful enough to meaningfully keep a squishy team alive. Budget or alternative Quick supports—Wu, Laksmibai, Santa Night, Barti, et cetera—are all options to prop Raikou up, but the team will likely struggle even relative to other budget teams.

Ushi usually needs 50% charge CEs to loop. Holy Night Supper and Golden Sumo bring damage and charge, and Traces of Christmases Past helps prop up Ushi’s NP gain. The Black Grail is the best damage option for CQs, though at that point you’re relying on good card draws to loop successfully.

There’s nothing that would obviously benefit Ushi CC-wise, so crit buffs are a good standby, even if their actual impact with Skadi buffs factored in will be quite low. More damage is more damage, at least.

Avengers are good grail targets, but Ushi is not a good Avenger. I wouldn’t grail her—even at max investment, she’s beholden to her loop specs and will struggle to clear top-end damage thresholds.

Ushi’s issues really boil down to two things: bad refund, and not enough damage. A good NP interlude could fix the damage issues, but loop specs are a deeper problem and are less likely to be fixed. I definitely wouldn’t pull for her unless she got substantial buffs.

It’s a shame that AoE Quick units are consistently relatively undertuned. Even good ones—Sen no Rikyu, for example—come with caveats (like not getting a proper 50% battery). Arts and Buster regularly get very strong units (even if they also get weak ones now and again), but Quick doesn’t really have the same luxury. Ushi’s weaknesses are by and large emblematic of that. Kukulkan gets anti-Earth damage and tons of steroids. Nobu gets to double up on niche types and tons of steroids. Both meet the loop conditions for their card type. In Arts land, you have monsters like Summer Ibuki and Tez. And then Quick gets Servants like Ushi Gozen, who pays through the nose for getting to double-stack her niche and who finally gets a 50% battery but has terrible NP refund in exchange. As a set of balancing decisions, it’s quite strange.

Overall: 5/10
Single-Target DPS: 6/10
AoE DPS: 4/10
Survivability: 2/10
Offensive Utility: N/A
Defensive Utility: 3/10
Farming Usefulness: 4/10
Giant Mechanical Arms: 2/2