Shiki

Musashi being handled better is part of the improved writing quality but it doesn't change the fact that this entire chapter revolves around her. If someone doesn't care about or even dislike her then they will get bored quickly. Speaking of which, I have finished Shimosa. Overall, it's a great EoR chapter. I put it on an equal or above level to Shinjuku but it's still 2nd place to CCC.

So, uh, this happened: Still doing Shimosa though I will have to say; despite being of much higher writing quality this is basically Nero's Septem for Musashi. Good for people like me who enjoy her, not so good if you don't.

If you do enjoy Waver as a character or are just interested in his development after Fate/Zero it's very much worth a look. Though the main plot line is a bit of a mess. I still find it odd they skipped the first book entirely despite it being Luvia's introduction. Well at least there is now a retweet/like campaign (don't bother reading the comments though). NA getting less SQ has been a thing since time immemorial. This year we miss some retweet campaigns (like the one with the 7M download campaign) and other small stuff like stage play or stream events. Can't exactly give out stuff without reason though I wish NA would put more effort in to somehow hand out those rewards. I can't possibly pull for King Hassan anymore because we lost way too much free SQ this year. That being said some people expect we should get the same amount of maintenance SQ. ------- For some more positive news (read: how I make people salty😞 I got Musashi with 5 10-rolls. Hell yeah. Now to cry bitter tears when I don't get NP2 Tomoe with my 300 SQ tomorrow. Also the game doesn't approve of me getting her. She only passed 1st Ascension. Why? I have enough EXP and mats to make her fully ascended with 10/10/10 skills. Gated. By. Saber Pieces. Not Monuments but Pieces. Btw. relevant:

Meanwhile I'm waiting for them to announce the KoRT Interludes. Shimosa is probably going to on the 3rd of October or the week after if they are using the Interlude campaign as a buffer after Halloween.

Someone needs to get punished I see. Also everybody is lying about being Dust addicts anyway. Worse than coke I say. tbf there are plenty of opportunities to farm for QP. Lottos and 1/2 Dailies are pretty common events by now. Not to mention usually Lores are the bottleneck that keep you from maxing out stuff. In comparision if you want an easy way to farm mats you are either lucky with the shop or you have found your past-time during dead weeks. Any Bronze Mats are the worst offender, 20-30 is not enough.

Don't worry I'll be dead in 3 weeks anyway. You wanna hear something cursed? On the other hand you won't have the FBI on your doorstep. I could have sworn that you have either Artoria or Void Shiki. Was that on your JP account? Oh, I'm definetly picking Edison now. Why? Just checked my inventory after max. ascending Arthur. I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm out of Saber Pieces and Monuments. Can't even get past the 1st Ascension. Guess that was bound to happen after I managed to finish my backlog. At the very least I have now everyone max. ascended, max. leveled and at 4/4/4 minimum. Now only I need to farm for my targets.

inb4 JP now gives away a SSR ... or nothing at all. Bad rep sticks harder on you than chewing gum. Or you know people just dislike him in general? Every time he shows up he is a douche. Emiya could be a choice if you care about bonus drop for future events. CCC rerun and all GudaGuda events list him as a bonus Servant and Christmas Rerun is also coming up. Otherwise pick Wu I would say. Saber Alter depends on if you are actually using her all that much. Not that S!Alter is your waifu anymore, you betrayed her after all. Also where is the Lancer Alter pick? I knew you tasted like a liar. ------ Might just have to roll the dice for my pick. It's between: Nero Edison Gorgon Most of my go-to SRs are already at NP2+ and while NP2 Tristan was tempting with his upcoming Interlude I would prefer something new. Li will be benched in favor of Kagetora so that's another off from the list. So that leaves me with Story-locked stuff. I don't have any EoR SR but none of them are priority either. Tried to get Nero now 2 times and failed both times (CCC and Nero Fest). Gameplay-wise not that great since she is severely lacking in damage (IP doesn't really count) but aside from Void Shiki and Jason (pfffffff) we don't have another AoE Arts Saber yet. On the other hand she technically has a rate-up with Skadi next year. Edison is a funky option. Exceedingly rare too. I don't think he is great but he certainly looks like to be fun to mess around with. Gorgon is probably a pass. JP screwed up her Strengthening really bad and considering I will gun for NP5 Salieri not really appealing.

Just going to confirm the obvious (since it's still on the main page) but Gilbert is a BL-only unit. He will not join on the True BE, Church BE or GD routes. A very easy proof (aside from playing all the routes) is looking at supports. Only on the BL path you can support with him in Part 1, all the other routes do not allow that (akin to the other Lords, Hubert and Dedue).

I want to point out something regarding Supports changing: Some support conversations seem not only to take past circumstances or events in account but also other Supports. One example for this is Ashe x Marianne's A Support (1:05:20 in this video). But I recall that Marianne mentions Sylvain in this Support (specifically what they discussed in their B-Support) and this is confirmed in the Gfaqs script provided by Sire That means even that "full" script might need to have pointers that some lines only occur if certain conditions are met. Yorokobe, Editors. What do you guys want on your epitaph?

As for your last line: 1. The most recent hardest fight I hear of is Kama with 100% event gauge. That one requires stall. a. Obvioulsy the 0% gauge can be cleared through rushing. But since it's a lesser version of the harder fight stalling should work just as well. 2. Nothing in Case Files Collab suggests that stalling wouldn't work. On the other hand I heard nothing of a really tough fight either. 3. CCC rerun had Kingprotea who only leaves 2 options: Either you end her in 1 turn or you stall her out until her gimmick runs out. Both are viable options. 4. Entirety of LB3 (especially that one fight) is considered the biggest difficulty spike post-Skadi. Didn't really found anything but otoh 5. Only the Sherlock CQ matches your description as that one piles up buffs and requires a fast clear. Ironically the first clear I found features Vlad with double Tamamo, so ... So patently false are your claims, I'm afraid. Also, ironically enough, some of the faster Arts team clears I found involve Tamamo, using her NP and damage buffs to ensure NPs in quick succession while being massively buffed from her skills. So this comes as very funny to me: You sure you're not selling Summer BB + Merlin as an Arts team? B stands for Buster, you know? tbh I'm very skeptical about your claims of JP because on paper while it seems a lot different from the current NA format (ST -> AoE shift being the biggest culprit) nothing suggests that it becomes that much harder and phases out existing teams. If anything I suspect that the Skadi rush lead people to use the more comfortable option rather than actually working out a stall team (because that's the majority of clears I found). Plus you see Honako still doing 1-3* clears so everything is more than manageable. Honako wins. Fatality. ----------------- Yes. In NA: Yan Qing: 20158 Kojiro (NP5, no grail): 22306 Yan Qing is unfortunately pretty underwhelming and post-buff the gap becomes even more favorable for Kojiro (because he got an actual NP strengthening). Even with his skill upgrade Yan Qing is ... just there. For all intents and purposes Hassan is a better choice if you need someone who can supply stars and not only is he far more durable, he has a cheap deployment cost as well. This holds especially true once he gets buffed, making one of the best star generators in the game.

On the other hand none of the others can provide skill upkeep at the levels of her. Which can include Crit buffs and batteries from other sources. With the exception of Merlin they also lack her capability of providing consistent sustain. Skadi and Zhuge Liang have defense buffs but that's hardly a replacement and precisely the reason why these two ultimately fail at certain type of quests (at least Skadi, Zhuge Liang usually leeches off from another Support). And this kind of thinking made stop caring because in the grand scheme of things no strategy is better or worse than the other. The FGO "meta" doesn't exist in the first place and there is no need to establish one. "Blitzing" might be better for most quests but then outright fails in others. How can this be the "superior" strategy? It fails to cover a portion of the game. On the other hand "slow-play" will always work. It takes time (Jeanne teams especially *cough*) but you will complete the quest in a reliable manner. Pre-Skadi (or even Pre-Merlin) era is the perfect proof that it works and even now Arts team are seeing widespread use, even in JP (which means less relevant doesn't apply in the first place). Considering there is demand for them dismissing them is incredibly foolish. This obviously doesn't excuse actual bad Servants. e.g. Osakabehime, Yu and Miyu are still very much bad for gameplay purposes and there exists a relative scale of whether something is better or worse (nobody is stupid enough to put Hans over Merlin). It's the reason why I created my F2P list in the first place. But in case of these Casters; e.g. Tamamo in particular may lack the sheer broken skill sets of Merlin or Skadi but on the other hand she is very much carried by what kind of Servants you pair her up with and she ultimately makes up an important for 2 of 3 commonly used Arts teams. By that point we're comparing card teams and in my eyes it's so unnecessary to discuss this. EDIT: My head hurt after typing this wall above. Now I got a seizure trying to comprehend the individual who mashed all these sci-fi franchises together. Just ... why?

I mean one could say Tamamo still covers most of the important bases and can be used in all kinds of CQ while Skadi fails at anything that requires endurance. So Skadi <<< Tamamo, right? tbh the more I hear these kind of discussions or arguments about those 4 I grow more apathetic to them. As I said, Altera did this before and she didn't go anywhere. Arthur only has his battery over her and that's not that much of a difference. Die in a fire. ... why must MHXA reference the Avengers again? I thought she was based of another franchise. Hold it, Satan. Stop breaking the game when we don't have to. As long as we don't ram the buff cap (which never happens unless you deliberately try to reach it) more damage isn't exactly bad. If anything it is another source of Crit Dmg she would lack without Merlin or Zhuge Liang around. Though I don't see the reason why she is the one who gets an upgrade, especially through an Interlude. There are so many other Servants that need heavy touch-ups

Aside from Raikou all of them fall into the category of "not critting" though so it's still a very questionable Strengthening round. Scratch that, this round is just bad. DW still trying to salvage Osakabehime. Cute. Arthur's ... ok, I suppose? 30 Stars every 5 turns is pretty good but the Crit buff doesn't do much for him with him lacking a way to improve his star weight. At the very least his NPBB is going to hit hard but he is more in need of a NP Interlude. As it is Altera is just better at being the AoE Crit Saber (whatever that niche is worth) at the virtue of having Merlin around. MHX Alter's puzzling, to say the least. A small Crit buff distributed to all of her card types is not good. This is one of the most wasteful buffs, DW has ever given out. Wu's Strengthening is interesting in a sense that she already provides a solid damage buff for her team, now she can remove buffs on top of that. I would say she is the winner- oh wait there's one more. Raikou's stupid. She is that one Berserker who doesn't need to get better. Why was this necessary again? Yeah, it's not like she doubles NP damage with her skills, right? Oh wait, she does. The only thing that really sucks about her is Morph. At the very least you can just give her a Taunt CE and let her soak up damage.

Final tally says 669M+ damage. Sweet Revenge. CQ went relatively smoothly aside from Ibaraki randomly critting away Gil. Only meant that in the end Bedivere could slap her in the face. Satisfying enough I suppose. I also wasted my accumulated tickets to get Gorgon or Stheno on the 6M campaign but I only have NP4 Elisabeth and a copy of Origin Bullet to show. Meh. My random spending will spell my doom once October hits. --------

Well, that's what I meant. Plus Alexander does a lot more damage than Blackbeard besides his buffs so there should be a tier difference between these two and him. I can see that. Kiyohime doesn't outdamage him significantly and she just has marginally better NP gain which probably won't matter much for farming purposes. Stalking is an ok def debuff but it's just another small win. Yeah, I'll move him up. For Touta I'm waiting for his NP Interlude before placing him in B-Tier. Fergus on the other hand is a bit iffy. He is essentially pure stats and little else. Compared to everything in B-Tier he does pale a bit. On the other hand Boudica gives the team a 44% damage increase vs Mash's 30%. Her values on her defense buffs are better overall but Boudica's is still good enough to ensure survival through buff stacking during NP turns. I would say Boudica is B-Tier, she does work as a Support despite being largely NP-reliant and even though it's not that special it's better than being entirely vanilla-flavoured. This is an interesting statement considering I don't see anyone really use Mephisto besides in very specific quests (e.g. Solomon). He can be useful againt break bars but most of the time there are other sources for combating buffs so he is pretty niche. Not to mention it comes at the expense of him heavily lacking in other areas like his bad NP. That being said I'm probably moving him up to C since he can potentially see more use than anything in D-Tier right now when it comes to CQ. No to that last statement. He is absolutely not A-Tier. Even post-Strengthening this guy has severe issues, starting from his terrible NP to unreasonable skill CD. His NP gain is especially bad for a Caster. I could see him post-buff in B at best as he does contribute to certain farming setups (like Summer Mordred) but this guy is not viable for anything else. Looking at what A-Tier has Paracelsus is significantlly worse. Also if I calculated correctly Paracelsus deals 19920 damage with Grail, 25896 with Waver buffs. That's very underwhelming, even pre-Strengthening Babbage without Grail has the about the same damage output under the same conditions. It's not like Paracelsus has great refund and RDW has a massive CD tacked on it so basically Black Grail only makes him comparable to any other Servant with Kaleidoscope. This is an argument against him tbh, though I guess being somewhat useable for farming has its merits. And she does nothing else. That's her biggest problem. max. 60% debuff for 1 turn and 40% for 3 turns isn't anything to scoff at but when it comes at the expense of everything else this becomes problematic for her viability. It is also only applicable against males and against non-males it becomes 40%, then 20% which is a lot worse to look at (and the 3-turn debuff is ST). Also compared to Mephistopheles (who imo has the same problem) her niche is a lot more replaceable (basically stack 2 Charisma for the same result) and considering that her drawbacks weigh heavier. So with most of the input in mind: