Sessyoin Kiara

After several attempts to be the final boss of something, the Devilish Bodhisattva Kiara Sessyoin finally decides to aid Chaldea in an unexpected twist of fate. She is the third Servant of the Alter Ego class to join the fray, serving as a hybrid between an AoE Damage Dealer, a potent debuffer and a part-time Ruler killer.

Kiara’s main feature is her versatility. Capable of dealing bonus damage against six different classes, she functions as a useful option in many situations, especially for Masters with less developed rosters. Furthermore, her skill set and Noble Phantasm bring a vast amount of different useful effects, including teamwide versions of a Defense Debuff and an NP Drain, and a single target Debuff Resistance Debuff, which are all useful for Challenge Quests in particular. With a multi-hit AoE Arts Noble Phantasm and a 50% NP battery skill in Clairvoyance (Beast), Kiara is also capable of using her Noble Phantasm Heaven's Hole multiple times per battle, a useful perk for clearing waves. With her passive and third skill, she is also a surprisingly decent damage dealer for Arts Critical teams. Last but not least, Kiara’s survivability is significantly aided by on-demand Invincibility and the healing from her Noble Phantasm.

Regardless, versatile Servants often do not excel at all of their niches, and Kiara is no exception. For one, her damage pre-Rank Ups is generally mediocre, due to a combination of the Alter Ego’s unique Berserker-like 1.5x class advantage, ineffective damage output against Knight class enemies, and her lack of strong offensive self-buffs. It is often better to resort to using natural class counters for better survival and damage potential in single class enemy nodes. Kiara’s skills also have incredibly long cooldowns initially. This is a huge detriment in longer battles, though this weakness is greatly diminished after completing both of her skill Rank Ups.

Thus, even with her jam-packed skill set and ability to cover multiple roles at the same time, Kiara’s middling damage output puts a damper on her ability to remain competitive with other Servants with higher ceilings. Without her Rank Ups, she remains a decent stopgap option for farming and a capable Challenge Quest substitute for Masters with smaller rosters; with them, however, she sees huge jumps in her overall usefulness.

Bonus Damage Against Several Classes

As an Alter Ego, Kiara will deal 1.5x damage against Riders, Casters, and Assassins, as well as the standard 2x damage against Berserkers and eventually Foreigners. Furthermore, Kiara’s passive Nega-Saver grants her a 1.5x damage bonus against Rulers as well. This makes Kiara a good candidate for taking on quests with enemies of different classes that otherwise may pose a problem to mono-class teams.

Good NP Generation

While her base NP gain per hit isn’t particularly outstanding, Kiara’s Clairvoyance (Beast) more than makes up for it with a standard 50% NP charge upon use. Furthermore, Heaven’s Hole has a high amount of hits for an AoE Arts Noble Phantasm, allowing for decent NP gauge refund. When used in conjunction with her 3rd skill Goddess Morph, it is not uncommon for her to release Heaven’s Hole twice in a row, especially if she gets support from Arts-centric buffers like Tamamo-no-Mae or Gilgamesh (Caster).

Strong Survivability

Goddess Morph grants an on-demand Invincibility buff that is highly valuable for survival. Furthermore, its HP demerit is offset by the fact that Heaven’s Hole also heals Kiara for a significant amount upon use. As she can use the latter more often than not, Kiara will often maintain a high amount of HP.

Excellent Utility and Support

Kiara’s skill set offers various effects, including an AoE NP drain, Debuff Resistance and teamwide Defense debuffs, Ignore Invincibility and Ignore Defense. Her first Rank Up adds in a powerful 30% Arts Resistance Down debuff (basically an Arts Performance buff, but attached to the enemy like a Defense debuff) to her Clairvoyance (Beast), and after her second Rank Up Quest, Five Approaches to Meditation also gains an incredibly useful AoE Buff Removal effect that is immensely useful for many Challenge Quests. Furthermore both of these Rank Ups lower her skill cooldowns, reducing their cooldowns by an additional turn. All in all, Kiara can adapt to many situations thanks to these eclectic abilities, especially in high difficulty content.

Reduced Damage Potential

Kiara’s damage leaves much to be desired due to several factors. Despite having a strong combination of passives, she lacks strong sustained self-buffs to make up for her Alter Ego modifiers. When facing enemies that she gains an advantage against, she will generally lose in terms of damage compared to Servants who naturally counter them (such as Assassins vs Riders) as Alter Ego and Nega-Saver only grant 1.5x bonus damage, not 2x like any normal class advantage bonus. Furthermore, her ineffective damage against Knight class enemies also lowers her damage output in quests that feature them. Her Noble Phantasm will similarly do middling damage until her first Rank Up Quest, which also boosts its refund potential.

Long Cooldown on Skills

Kiara’s skills all feature very long cooldowns even at max level. While they’re there to compensate for how powerful some effects on her skills are, they’re nevertheless a detriment in fights where she needs to use these skills more than once, and forces Masters to plan carefully around the uptime of these skills. Thankfully for Kiara, her skill upgrades also reduce the base cooldown for both Clairvoyance (Beast) and Five Approaches to Meditation, making her performance a lot more consistent in longer battles.

Jack of All Trades, Master of None

While Kiara can fill multiple roles, she will not particularly excel at any of those until her skill upgrades greatly boost her performance. Even after her skill upgrades, her lack of true specialization means that it will usually be more efficient for Masters with highly developed rosters to opt for more specialized Servants.

As all of Kiara’s skills are powerful, scale well with levels, and have longer cooldowns compared to most Servants, it is highly recommended to raise her skill levels if Masters plan on using her a lot. Even if material costs are a concern, it is still highly recommended to raise her first skill to level 10; the other two skills can be enough at level 6 in a pinch.

• Clairvoyance (Beast) is Kiara’s most useful skill and also scales the best with levels, as the increase in NP charge from leveling makes it increasingly easy to use Heaven’s Hole in quick succession. The Debuff Resistance debuff also scales quite well with level and can be highly useful for a team that packs a lot of debuffs or has questionable hit rates on key abilities (i.e Shuten Douji or Zhuge Liang). Upon receiving its Rank Up, this skill also inflicts a single target Arts Resistance debuff, which is a decent boost to the team’s damage output and NP Gain. Thus, it is quite worthwhile to raise this skill to level 10

• Five Approaches to Meditation is a strong teamwide Defense Debuff and AoE NP Drain, both of which are extremely useful effects, especially for tougher quests. It serves as both Kiara’s main steroid and stalling tool, but because the Defense debuff lasts for 3 turns and benefits the entire party, it doesn’t suffer from the same timing difficulty as most comparable skills. Once Ranked Up, this skill gains an incredible AoE buff removal effect on top of a reduced cooldown, making it highly valuable for many Challenge Quests. It is worth raising this skill to level 6 at least, as the defense debuff scales with additional levels and the lowered cooldown on two powerful utility effects is too good to pass up.

• Goddess Morph is Kiara’s emergency button, often used to avoid a boss’s Noble Phantasm. On top of that, it grants several powerful boosts, albeit for one turn. The otherwise hefty demerit of this skill (3000 HP) is essentially negated by her Noble Phantasm. This skill has a high opportunity cost, as several of its components benefit Kiara in different situations, such as using it prior to using her Noble Phantasm to increase her NP refund rate. While it is a powerful and multi-functional skill in a vacuum, the poor duration makes it not as worthwhile as her other two skills in terms of practical use, and it can be leveled last.

Kiara’s main damage comes from unleashing Heaven’s Hole as often as she can. Thanks to her great NP refund, spamming her NP is possible in most properly supported Arts-based teams. She will highly appreciate Craft Essences that grant Arts Performance Up, as three out of her six cards are Arts.

Starting NP Gauge is also a highly viable choice, allowing her to use her Noble Phantasm immediately upon the first turn when combined with Clairvoyance (Beast) or other NP chargers like Zhuge Liang or Helena Blavatsky.

Kiara’s damage scales very well with NP Damage buffs, a damage modifier which her skill set lacks. Her capacity to use back to back NPs allows her to benefit even more from improving the damage of her NP.

Though it’s not her primary focus, Kiara is a surprisingly able Arts Critical damage dealer as well, thanks to her passive and third skill providing Critical Damage buffs. Critical hits also boost her NP generation tremendously, especially when overkilling. Star Absorption and Critical Damage Craft Essences are valid options for Masters seeking a different playstyle with Kiara.

• Formal Craft / Projection / Kaleid Sapphire: Arts Performance Up CEs provide not only a boost to Kiara’s damage output but also to her Arts NP generation and NP refund. Note that Arts Performance stacks multiplicatively with NP Generation buffs.

• Kaleidoscope / The Imaginary Element: Starting NP gauge grants quick access to Kiara’s Noble Phantasm, which is highly useful for farming or wave clearing. It also allows her to potentially clear two waves consecutively with a little help, thanks to her strong NP refund and NP battery skill.

• Black Grail / Heaven’s Feel: These Craft Essences grant an incredible damage boost to Kiara’s Noble Phantasm. Black Grail is highly notable because Kiara’s healing from Heaven’s Hole can negate its HP demerit.

• Holy Night Supper / Golden Sumo / Grand Puppeteer: Hybrid Craft Essences that grant two or more beneficial stats to Kiara. They are highly potent for short duration battles where only a single NP from Kiara is required.

• Conversation on the Hot Sands / Room Guard / Teacher and I / Seal Designation Enforcer / Another Ending: Critical Star Absorption is a good option to bolster both Kiara’s damage output and NP generation, as she has decent sources of Critical Damage buff as well as strong NP spamming potential. If the team can supply plenty of Critical Stars, then Critical Damage is a good alternative.