Rabbit's Reviews #296: Koyanskaya of the Light

“Buster Is Saved!!!”

…would be the clickbait-style title for this review. That or, say, “You’ll Never Believe How Many Tails This Fox Has!” But something of that nature feels appropriate here, given our Sixth Anniversary Servant is the ruthless capitalist Tamamovitch Koyanskaya, showing up to steal Merlin’s (or Himiko’s, if you’re me and have strange opinions sometimes) title of best Buster support.

Koyanskaya is an interesting Servant for several reasons. Unlike Castoria before her, Koyanskaya doesn’t really raise the overall power ceiling in FGO. Barring a surprise from Oberon (more on that later), Koyanskaya’s set of tools bring top-end Buster Servants up into competition with Arts and Quick for fastplay and farming, but Koyanskaya teams still have a set of key disadvantages relative to Arts. She has no sustain tools, for one thing, and while she has the fabled 50% battery/50% Buster buff skill combo, she actually has no direct and universal NP damage buffs outside of that, which means her stated damage boostage (against non-Man-attribute enemies) is more in-line with Nightingale and Jinako than with Skadi and Castoria. She does provide excellent damage buffs against Man-attribute enemies specifically, so her buffs are on-average about on-par with a typical top-support, but 50%-or-100% is less valuable overall than always-80%, at least on a Servant you want to be able to bring anywhere.

What sets Koyanskaya apart is that her defining supportive feature is not batteries, damage buffs, NP gain buffs, or even crit tools (although she does have all of those things in different forms). What makes Koyanskaya work is the fact that she has a targeted 2-turn cooldown reduction skill. This means double Koyanskaya teams can allow a damage-dealer to use batteries twice and double-stack their innate buffs. As a result of this, where Arts and Quick Servants are sorted first and foremost by their NP gain stats—“but can they loop” is a common refrain—Buster Servants going forward will likely be differentiated according to how well their skills play with Koyanskaya’s skill-stacking nonsense. Servants like Arjuna Alter, with short-CD batteries and great sustained damage buffs, come out ahead, while Servants like Summer BB, with cooldowns too long to realistically loop within 3-turns, are left behind.

All of this, notably, assumes double Koyanskaya. She’s rather more dependent on getting to run doubles than most other supports, as her power scales exponentially rather than linearly with more copies of her. Double Koyanskaya effectively gets you a full extra set of skills to use, in the form of whatever your DPS brings. Koyanskaya has a lot of cool stuff that’s not contingent on having two of her, but she’s a lot less impressive than her direct competition in single-support contexts.

So, what this much-longer-than-is-normal intro is driving at is that Koyanskaya is a weird Servant. She’s something of a tactical solution to Buster’s problems, giving a handful of Buster Servants ways to keep up with Arts and Quick without drastically changing the balance of the game as a whole. She also requires a completely different style of thinking than more traditional supports, and the shape of Koyanskaya setups is going to vary depending on the DPS’s kit—Koyanskaya teams aren’t one-size-fits-all like, say, Castoria teams are. She’s also somewhat more dependent on having access to other battery supports than Castoria and Skadi are, although this is mitigated somewhat by everyone having the opportunity to snag Waver for free.

Where, exactly, Buster will land is still somewhat up in the air. We’ve only had Koyanskaya for a few days, and folks are still uncovering different ways the batteries can add up, and Oberon’s 70% batteries will also likely change the game at least a little, if not a lot. Koyanskaya may not be the support Buster wanted, but she probably is the support Buster needed. In sum…

Buster is Saved(?)

Koyanskaya has mid-high attack and HP for an SSR Assassin, which—while Assassins’ innate attack penalty lessens the impact of this a little—is notable given Koyanskaya’s support status. Most supports have low attack, even in cases of supports with damaging NPs (Jinako being the most obvious example of this). While this isn’t a big deal in fastburn Koyanskaya setups, it does help her in certain lower-investment teams where Koyanskaya wants to use her NP. Similarly, Koyanskaya’s internals are very strong. She only has one Arts card, but that one Arts card has 3.04% total NP gain, which makes it one of the best Arts cards in the game. Her two Quicks are also solid for NP gain purposes, so despite her odd-for-a-support deck she shouldn’t have too much trouble building towards her NP. Star gen is a strength here, too, as an Assassin with two Quicks and generally high hit-counts. Not bad.

Koyanskaya’s passives are powerful enough and numerous enough to warrant their own paragraph. She starts with Riding, which, while plain, helps her NP gain and star gen a little. She also gets Independent Action and Independent Manifestation, which collectively boost her crit damage by 18%. That’s enough to be meaningful, and if Koyanskaya crits she’ll be able to contribute some nice damage, at least relative to what’s typical of a support. Independent Manifestation also gives small mental debuff and Instant-Kill resistance buffs, both of which are pretty niche. Koyanskaya then gets Morph as a passive rather than as an active skill, boosting her Arts performance and her star gen by 10%. This is a solid passive despite Koyanskaya only having a single Arts, as a 10% boost to an already very strong Arts card further increases Koyanskaya’s card-based NP gain. Koyanskaya’s final passive is Goddess Metamorphosis (Gun), which is one of the best passives in the game. It gives Koyanskaya a permanent 20% NP damage buff, which means Koyanskaya’s NP damage is going to be better than expected even when running her as a support. This passive combined with Koyanskaya’s NP’s precast attack buff gives Koyanskaya a guaranteed 44% minimum damage increase every single time she NPs. For perspective, Yu Meiren pays through the nose for a similar level of guaranteed NP buff. Koyanskaya gets it for free despite not even being primarily a DPS, and that’s fantastic.

The 6th anniversary also introduced a brand-new Servant strengthening mechanic in the form of Append skills, which are functionally level-able passives, so they’ll live in this section of the review moving forward. These passives don’t vary much from Servant to Servant, so in future reviews this will be a pretty short blurb—which ones to prioritize and which to ignore, mostly—but since it’s a brand-new mechanic, Koyanskaya gets a full breakdown of what each does and why they matter.

-The first Append skill is Follow-Up Technique Improvement, which boosts the Servant’s Extra Attack damage by 30-50%, scaling with skill level. While this seems underwhelming at first glance, it’s actually better than it looks, particularly on certain Servants. Like card-type buffs, this also boosts NP gain and star gen on Extra attacks, which can matter a lot for Servants who already have good NP gain on their extra. It’s particularly notable for anchors, as well as Servants who have few genning cards and will brave chain on occasion. It also stacks multiplicatively with attack buffs and power mod buffs, so while Extra cards still can’t crit, this can give some Servants a deceptively large damage boost. It’s particularly useful for anchors, as they’re most likely to use their Extra cards consistently, but it can be nice on some others, too. Koyanskaya doesn’t get a ton of benefit, since she’ll be a support in most cases, but if you find yourself using her in a DPS capacity often, you may want to level this one.
-The second Append skill is Mana Loading, which provides 10-20% starting NP charge, scaling with level. This is additive with starting NP charge CEs, so at max level it allows a Servant to start at 100% charge with a non-MLB Kaleid, or 70% charge with a 50% starting CE. This is a huge deal. Not only does it democratize Servants who previously needed MLB Kaleid for certain setups—Sherlock, Reines, Chen Gong, and Nobukatsu all immediately come to mind—but it also enables some battery-fueled loop or NP setups that weren’t possible before. Any Servant with a 30% battery, for instance, can now use a 50% charge CE, instead of Kaleid or Imaginary Element, and still NP right away. Every Servant will benefit from having this leveled, although some will benefit more than others. Koyanskaya, for example, likes this skill because it lets her have her NP ready to go with a Kaleid, which she can’t usually do otherwise since she’ll probably be using her battery on someone else. This should generally be your first priority when deciding where to spend the new Servant Coins resource, and Koyanskaya is no exception.

-The third append skill is Anti-Class Attack Damage Aptitude (usually—Berserkers are a little different, and I’ll go into detail whenever we get another Berserker to review). This skill varies from Servant to Servant, giving a 20-30% attack boost against a particular class. The class in question seems to be selected via a mix of lore and gameplay considerations, often referencing a specific enemy in story or lore, and typically being a class for which the Servant does not have Class Advantage. There are a few exceptions—some of the Alter Egos get bonus damage against certain Cavalry classes, and a good chunk of Servants get a bonus against Berserkers—but typically this serves as a buff against a neutral class. This is generally more valuable on AoE units than ST ones, as it can help an AoE Servant push damage a little more against a neutral class in a CQ or farming node that features that class as a secondary enemy. This is probably the most situational of the three skills, in part because the bonus is specifically to attack, which doesn’t usually scale as well as, say, Power Mod (let alone proper Class Advantage). Some Servants will want to prioritize this skill, but most can safely leave it alone. Koyanskaya falls into the latter category. She gets bonus attack against Archers, which is cool, but unless you find yourself regularly using Koyanskaya as a DPS and also regularly needing a little more damage against Archers specifically, it’s probably not worth the investment.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x5 Assassin Piece Open Assassin Piece configuration options
3	300,000	x12 Assassin Piece Open Assassin Piece configuration options x22 Mystic Spinal Fluid Open Mystic Spinal Fluid configuration options
4	1,000,000	x5 Assassin Monument Open Assassin Monument configuration options x29 Mystic Gunpowder Open Mystic Gunpowder configuration options x15 Stake of Wailing Night Open Stake of Wailing Night configuration options
Max	3,000,000	x12 Assassin Monument Open Assassin Monument configuration options x29 Stake of Wailing Night Open Stake of Wailing Night configuration options x8 Reactor Core of Dawn Open Reactor Core of Dawn configuration options

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x5 Gem of Assassin Open Gem of Assassin configuration options
2 → 3	400,000	x12 Gem of Assassin Open Gem of Assassin configuration options
3 → 4	1,200,000	x5 Magic Gem of Assassin Open Magic Gem of Assassin configuration options
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Magic Gem of Assassin Open Magic Gem of Assassin configuration options x15 Mystic Gunpowder Open Mystic Gunpowder configuration options
5 → 6	4,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Assassin Open Secret Gem of Assassin configuration options x29 Mystic Gunpowder Open Mystic Gunpowder configuration options
6 → 7	5,000,000	x12 Secret Gem of Assassin Open Secret Gem of Assassin configuration options x15 Mystic Spinal Fluid Open Mystic Spinal Fluid configuration options
7 → 8	10,000,000	x29 Mystic Spinal Fluid Open Mystic Spinal Fluid configuration options x6 Arrowhead of Malice Open Arrowhead of Malice configuration options
8 → 9	12,000,000	x18 Arrowhead of Malice Open Arrowhead of Malice configuration options x10 Egg of Truth Open Egg of Truth configuration options
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

Koyanskaya’s mats are gross. She asks for a lot of bronze mats, even for ascension, and the silver and gold mats she asks for are among the more annoying to farm. Fortunately, the most recent mats she needs date back to LB4, so longtime players are reasonably likely to have a decent stock of them built up.

Koyanskaya’s skillset is a lot. It’s probably the single most complex support kit we’ve seen, with multiple disparate effects on every skill, and interesting implications in terms of skill synergies, anti-synergies, and timing considerations. It’s a powerful skillset, but not a simple one. Recommended skill order is 1>3>2.

Oh boy, here we go.

So, Koyanskaya is a Buster support. Let’s start there. You pair her with your favorite Buster unit, use all her skills, and let the chosen DPS whack things. Seems simple, right? That’s how card supports work, right?

Except, not quite. For better or worse, Koyanskaya is a lot more nuanced than the other card-type supports. Where with Castoria you can say “run two Castorias, and then Tamamo or a 50% charger as needed,” Koyanskaya teams are heavily dependent on the specific skills the DPS has. I could spend all day listing out different Koyanskaya setups for different Buster damage-dealers, but that’s something of a fool’s errand. They’re all going to be slightly different, and my goal is to outline how to approach team-building with Koyanskaya, rather than to just list things that will work (even though I’ll still end up doing a bit of that later on).

To summarize the things Koyanskaya has that really matter, we have:
-A 50% battery that also reduces skill CDs by 2
-A Star burst and power mod skill that also gives Buster cards some NP gain
-A Buster buff and crit enabler

Skills 2 and 3 are pretty straightforward, and you can usually just use them as soon as possible without worrying about timing considerations. You might sometimes want to hang on to Koyanskaya’s skill 2 for a turn when you actively want to crit, but generally speaking you can just run double Koyanskaya and drop both of those skills on your DPS whenever Koyanskaya is on the field. No big deal. The complexity comes when Koyanskaya’s first skill gets involved, and this is where we have to start looking at our damage-dealers and doing math.

Let’s start with the specific case where a Servant has a 30% battery on a 5-turn CD. Historically, it’s been possible for a Servant with a 50% battery to force a tri-loop with an MLB Kaleid and three 50% charge supports. The combination of Koyanskaya and append skills democratizes this a bit. With Mana Loading maxed out, any Servant can start with 100% charge with even a non-MLB Kaleid. Double Koyanskaya provides 100% total battery, which is enough for a second NP. A 30% battery plus another 50% charger gets you to 80% for the third NP, which is not quite enough to secure the loop without cards.

This is where the 5-turn cooldown comes into play. The two Koyanskaya batteries reduce a 5-turn cooldown to a 1-turn cooldown, which means you can use the 30% battery on back-to-back turns. 80% from Kaleid + 20% from Mana Loading + 30% from the battery + 30% from the battery again + 100% from two Koyanskayas + 50% from another support = 310% total NP charge, which is enough for three NPs. We just have to figure out how to organize the skill uses such that we get 100% on each turn (instead of, for example, wasting excess charge on turn 2).

In order to do this, we can run a team of Koyanskaya/DPS/Koyanskaya/Charger. The charger must have two separate skills with at least 20% charge, which currently means Waver, Reines, Castoria, and probably Oberon. On the first turn, both Koyanskayas use their damage buffs and the DPS NPs. On turn two, the DPS uses their battery, and then one Koyanskaya uses her battery. The Koyanskaya battery has to come after the DPS battery, in order to reduce the cooldown for the following turn. You then swap Koyanskaya out for the charger, and the charger provides 20% charge to the DPS, bringing you to your second NP. Between turns, the battery’s cooldown ticks down from 3 to 2. The second Koyanskaya uses her battery, which brings the DPS’s battery back off cooldown. The DPS uses their battery again, and the charger brings them to 100% for the third NP. Notably this does not work if the 30% battery is on a CD longer than 5 turns, as you need to use it back-to-back in order to swing the tri-loop.

Hopefully this seems pretty straightforward once you see it. Using CDR to reuse or stack DPS skills is a little unintuitive—mostly because it was largely impossible until now—but once you start looking at how skill effects and cooldowns interact, you can start to find ways to leverage the quirks of any individual Servant’s kit to use them to their full potential, which is pretty nifty.

I alluded to Servants with 50% batteries on 6-turn CDs earlier in the review, and they have a slightly better loop available. 50% chargers can now start with a 50% charge CE and use their battery to NP on turn 1. Turn 2, you use both Koyanskaya batteries. Turn 3, you plug in another charger. The DPS’s battery is now off cooldown (6-turn CD, -2 from Koyanskaya, -2 from other Koyanskaya, -2 for the turns that have passed), so their battery plus the other charger gets you back to 100%. This is a little simpler than the 30% setup and will lead to generally higher damage. It also doesn’t require MLB Kaleid or a maxed Mana Loading, which makes it a little easier to access.

These are more-or-less optimal setups, but you can use the same ideas to support whoever your favorite Buster Servants happen to be, even if they don’t meet these conditions. I’ve personally been having fun with an Arash/Avenger Nobu/Nobukatsu/Koyanskaya/Koyanskaya team. Nobu starts with a 50% charge CE, Arash gets Devilish Bodhisattva, and Nobukatsu gets Kaleid. On turn 1, Arash uses Mana Loading and his battery to reach 100% charge, Nobu uses all three of her skills, and Nobukatsu uses his crit buff (and his Buster resistance debuff if needed). Then Nobukatsu and Arash use their NPs, in that order, which gives Arash remarkably solid damage. Turn 2, both Koyanskayas use their damage buffs and Nobu NPs.  Turn 3, the Koyanskayas use their batteries, Nobu uses her damage buffs a second time, and Nobu NPs for big damage.

I give this example not because it’s optimal—Nobu, you may notice, doesn’t match the top-tier Buster conditions I outlined above, as her battery is too small—but rather because it demonstrates that you can, with some creativity, use Koyanskaya’s cooldown reductions in all sorts of interesting and fun ways. If you want to 5- or 6-drop farm 90+ nodes, you’re limited to a small subset of Buster units, but for more general farming, and especially for CQ usage, the sky’s the limit, more or less. You can even use the Atlas mystic code to reduce CDs by another two turns and let Servants whose CDs are normally too long—like Summer BB—do fun stuff as well. Generally speaking, though, the rule of thumb is that if you have a Buster Servant with a cool skill on a CD of 6 or lower, you can probably rig something neat with Koyanskaya.

But, if you are looking for the top-of-the-top optimal Buster stuff, you’re looking at a small handful of units. Arjuna Alter is excellent now, because he meets the battery criteria and, more importantly, he can stack Anti-Evil with itself. Doubling up on Anti-Evil gives him absolutely absurd damage, and while he won’t be able to 6-drop farm, he’ll probably be able to 5-drop any node regardless of enemy team composition, even at NP1. It’s kinda nonsense.

Powerful 50% chargers are in the next-best position, with Morgan and Space Ishtar at the top of the heap. Spishtar, as always, has great steroids, a 50% battery, and Avenger bases, while Morgan is an AoE Buster Berserker with a 50% battery, so while neither is quite the monster AA is, both can use better CEs and can actually 6-drop farm in events where the relevant bonus CE starts with at least 30% charge.

And then we acknowledge the Fairy King in the room. Oberon still isn’t formally out yet, so I have to hedge everything I say about him, but assuming he keeps his 70% batteries, he’ll further broaden the range of Servants who can do cool things. I’ll wait and examine most of these team comps in Oberon’s inevitable review, since it won’t be quite as speculative at that point, but there are two specific setups that are so noteworthy they deserve mention here.

The first of these two is Melusine. Melusine gets to start every fight with a 100% battery for free. Her 30% battery unfortunately has a CD one turn too long for Melusine to tri-loop CE-less with standard 50% chargers, but Oberon makes up the difference. Koyanskaya/Melusine/Koyanskaya/Oberon lets Melusine tri-loop with any CE. Melusine uses her third skill to charge to 100% on turn 1, and she also uses her first skill for the attack buff. Turn 2, Both Koyanskayas use their batteries, reducing Melusine’s cooldowns and charging her NP. Melusine also uses her third skill a second time for the NP damage buff. Turn 3, Oberon switches in for his 70% batteries and Melusine uses her first skill a second time, amping her damage even further and bringing her to 100% charge. Her damage in this setup is very very good, and at NP2+ she’ll likely be able to 6-drop most 90+ nodes, assuming Oberon is “as-promised,” so to speak. If Oberon has further damage buffs on skill 3, this gets even sillier, and Melusine becomes solidly the best farmer in the game.

…The second of the two is Oberon himself. Oberon also appears to have an AoE Buster NP, despite his seeming support lean. Assuming the skills we’ve seen stay the same, Oberon will also be able to tri-loop against anything with any CE, although he’ll need Mana Loading unlocked (level 1 is fine) to do so. Unlike the other setups, you’ll want to run Koyanskaya/Oberon/Charger/Koyanskaya, as you need the secondary charger’s skills on turn 1. Level 1 Mana Loading gives Oberon 10% NP charge, and he can use both his batteries on himself to bring himself to 80%. The secondary charger uses a 20% charge to bring him to 100%, and Oberon NPs. Turn 2, you use Koyanskaya’s battery, plug her for the other Koyanskaya, and use the second Koyanskaya’s skills. Oberon NPs again. On the third turn, Oberon’s batteries have cooled down, and you use his batteries plus the remaining batteries from the alternative support, and he NPs a third time.

With just his first two skills, Oberon’s damage would be really lacking in this setup, which limits its usefulness, but if Oberon’s third skill is, say, a powerful damage buff, he may compete with Melusine for the claim of best farmer. Being able to 6-drop farm any node, no questions asked, is something not even the best Arts Servants can claim to do.

So, Koyanskaya is a Buster support who works best in fastplay setups, and she mostly enables some silly farming shenanigans. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t work in other contexts. Koyanskaya has a host of cool utility that can let her function in more traditional Buster CQ teams, particularly alongside Merlin. Koyanskaya can actually use her battery on Merlin instead of on a DPS in order to speed up stacking Gardens of Avalon, to keep Dreamlike Charisma and Hero Creation active, and to help Merlin cycle Illusion to protect the team. Used in this context, Koyanskaya also facilitates crits for the DPS and offsets the usual need for Arts chains, via the charge from her own NP and through the on-Buster-card NP charges from Koyanskaya’s second skill. All in all, this is a weaker team than a hyper-fastburn-oriented Koyanskaya team, but it’s somewhat similar to single-Skadi teams that don’t involve Castoria, in that while it can’t survive indefinitely, it deals enough damage that it can probably handle most fights before it falls apart.

Koyanskaya also can work as a DPS herself, thanks to her strong steroids and good utility. Using Koyanskaya’s battery on herself gives her fantastic uptime on her steroids and can make her quite dangerous at higher NP levels. In a DPS context, Koyanskaya will benefit from typical Buster supports like Merlin, Himiko, and Nightingale, as well as more generic supports like Waver, Reines, and Jinako (and Castoria of course). She can handle herself well enough at whatever power level your box of Servants supports.

Koyanskaya has a lot of CE flexibility. For true burst setups, she doesn’t really need anything in particular, so she can afford to go CE-less (for cost reasons). She can also carry 2030 or a star burst CE to facilitate crits. If you’ve been around long enough to have Ox King, that’s a great pick for her, as it provides an extra Buster buff for 3 turns, which is usually all you need in a Koyanskaya team. Kaleid is also always an option if you want her NP available, and Koyanskaya’s bond CE is actually a nice tool for boosting party damage a little versus man-attribute enemies. DPS Koyanskaya, meanwhile, wants any of the typical damage-boosting or starting-NP CEs. Black Grail is best for damage output as usual, while something like Sumo, Tenkihime, Holy Night Supper, or Aerial Drive can split the difference between starting NP gauge and damage output.

Picking CCs for Koyanskaya is a little tricky, since her needs vary depending on the role she’s playing. Everyone’s Da Vinci-chan is a nice pick here, as it has supportive value but also can boost Koyanskaya’s own NP damage. Star gen CCs can also be useful for facilitating crits, which is nice in both a DPS and support capacity.

Assassins and Supports are both generally bad grail targets, but Koyanskaya is a bit of special case. Because Koyanskaya has decent attack and can actually deal damage, she’s not a terrible grail pick, especially if you have her at higher NP levels and find yourself using her as a damage-dealer—against Riders, for instance—semi-frequently. More attack means more damage, which helps offset her lack of an Interlude.

This is the longest review I’ve written to date, with close to double the word count of Castoria’s review, which is perhaps the best testament I can give to the sheer complexity of what Koyanskaya brings to the game. She’s a great addition to FGO, I think—a tactical fix for Buster’s former failings who requires a lot of creativity to use to maximum potential. She’s an extremely powerful Support, and she enables all kinds of things that were impossible until now, but she’s still solidly below Castoria in terms of the power level of what she enables.

Even in hypothetical Melusine-and-Oberon omnifarming setups, Koyanskaya necessitates using the plugsuit, which Arts won’t always need. Around the time Castoria released, I mentioned the concept of “best-in-context,” which is a Systems Design idea that more or less means good balancing lets everything have a situation in which it’s the best option available. Koyanskaya’s addition gives Buster a set of contexts in which it’s best—specifically, 90+ nodes Buster can omnifarm that Arts can’t farm faster. Koyanskaya’s addition doesn’t change the fact that Arts setups are silly powerful and can do basically everything, but it does mean that certain Buster teams can do those things easier, if a little slower. Arts is still better overall, but there are real reasons to use Buster that range from being able to 6-drop difficult 90+ nodes to not needing to worry about digging through your box to find just the right Servants to swing a 3-turn clear.

The really cool thing about this is that, while Buster’s value case essentially amounts to “lets you not think about farming,” actually finding the teams and setups that do that involves a fair bit of math and creativity. Where the math for Arts farming generally lives in crafting a team for a specific node, the math for Buster farming lives in examining the skillsets of your own Servants and building general-purpose teams around them. It’s a nice dichotomy.

Amusingly, this puts Quick back on the bottom of the heap as card types go—but it’s not like Quick is suddenly bad now. All three card types can now do the same sorts of things, in that they all have ways to loop, to farm, to crit things to death, and to stall, but all three card types approach each of these in very different ways. It’s the healthiest balance we’ve seen in the game’s lifespan, I think. Quick is the least effective in this environment, but not drastically so, and we have enough supports that work across card-types that hybrid-sorta teams are very much workable. When you factor in all the quality of life changes from the 6th Anniversary, it’s a good time to be playing FGO.

Overall: 10/10
Single-Target DPS: 5/10
AoE DPS: 7/10
Survivability: 2/10
Offensive Utility: 10/10
Defensive Utility: 3/10
Farming Usefulness: 10/10
Metal… Gear?: 10/10