Should You Pull?
Maybe, leaning towards no. Patchouli holds a powerful set of tools that can help the team out in her own meaningful way. While she may output a great deal of damage and provide good utility to boot, her barrier breaks can make her somewhat clunky to take advantage of. While she may have powerful tools, the banners running alongside her ultimately make her more of a side banner to go for, rather than being THE banner to pull on.
Running alongside her would be another character from the E1 universe, being Koakuma. With Koakuma’s own unique tools that can give many characters a run for their money, she may be more worthwhile depending on what friends you have in your roster. Alongside that banner would be the 20M Downloads banner, featuring A6 Reimu Hakurei, A6 Sakuya Izayoi, A6 Patchouli Knowledge, A7 Alice Margatroid, A11 Koishi Komeiji, and A13 Toyosatomimi no Miko. With this banner giving access to powerful friends like A6 Reimu and A11 Koishi, this banner may also seem as appealing as Patchouli herself.
Quick Overview
Character Strengths:
+ Great damage with a good set of buffs, as well as Killers.
+ Decent utility to provide the team with ATK UP, DEF UPs, and Accuracy.
Character Weaknesses:
- Barrier breaks can be a bit cumbersome to use.
- Quick can make her somewhat awkward to use as a nuke.
Kit Overview
Patchouli Knowledge (Loyal Elemental Magician)
As the magician of the Mistress, Patchouli boasts great damage as well as the ability to support her allies fairly well. Despite this, her barrier breaks leave much to be desired as she fails to hone in on specific elemental weaknesses with her spread out elements, and requires support to break anomalies. She is also awkward to utilize with the self provided quick forcing her attacks to go before any allies can assist her. Despite these flaws, her power is not to be underestimated.
Patchouli’s skills provide an array of useful benefits, ranging from support to a nice boost to her own damage output.. Her 1st skill, Autumn Leaf Burning, inflicts all enemies with 3 layers of burn anomalies, and 3 levels of Defense up for the party for 3 turns. Her 2nd skill, Doyou Vacation, provides the party with 0.5 P and 3 levels of Accuracy for 3 turns, whilst providing herself with Quick. Finally, her 3rd skill, Cherry Blossom Storm, provides the party with 3 levels of both Yin and Yang ATK up and provides 1.25 P for herself. With all of these skills, Patchouli can support the team well, though her 3rd skill may be awkward with its high cooldown.
As for her spells cards, Patchouli has some useful tricks up her sleeve as seen in her 1st spell card, Fire Water Wood Metal Earth Sign: Philosopher’s Stone. This spell inflicts 3 Freeze anomalies to all enemies, which are then broken as long as Patchouli boosts 3 times. The spell card also provides 1 P to herself, which helps to prevent her from running out of steam. Her 2nd spell card, Sun Moon Sign: Royal Diamond Ring, provides 2 levels of CRIT Accuracy to the party and provides herself with 1 P as a post effect. If that wasn’t enough, Patchouli also inflicts 3 layers of Poison anomalies to one target, which she breaks in the same attack by using 2 boosts. Finally, her Last Word, Periodic Table Ring, gives 4 levels of Yin, Yang, and CRIT ATK for 2 turns as well as providing herself with 3 barriers.
When it comes to breaking barriers, Patchouli’s performance does prove to be somewhat questionable. The variety of elements on her 1st spell card as well as Last Word mean that her elemental barrier breaks are unlikely to provide more than a few breaks on any given enemy. To compensate, her anomaly breaks for Poison and Freeze barriers can be useful at times, but her full potential only comes if there is another character to help in the burn barriers she inflicts.
Ultimately, the magician will not let you down with her performance. While she may require some forethought to use effectively, she truly does show why her Mistress trusts her so much
