Rabbit’s Reviews #340: Valkyrie (4* Assassin)

The Valkyries are very much a Servant in the same mold as Ranmaru—an AoE Arts welfare, with solid sustained damage, great refund, a 20% battery, and terrible Arts cards. They’re in a weak class overall, which means their non-niche damage will be lower than Ranmaru’s, but in exchange they have a class advantage context and absurdly high NP refund. They’re a very good welfare, if slightly redundant, and they make a solid option for Rider farming.

Also, notably, the Valkyries are technically three separate Servants, and you only get to pick one of them (though each of the three main Valks comes with a costume for one of the minor ones). All three Valkyries are mechanically identical—this is a similar situation to Mecha-Liz—so the selection just comes down to aesthetic preferences.

The Valkyries have the highest attack and nearly the lowest health of the SR Assasins. This offense-oriented stat spread is great for a DPS, even if their class keeps their effective attack stat lower. Their internals are a different story, with extremely weak Arts cards—only two-tenths of a percent better than Ranmaru’s—and nearly the weakest Quicks in the whole game. 2% is generally the bottom end of “okay,” and the Valkyries have 0.69%—about a third of that lower threshold. It’s really terrible, and it means the Valks will struggle to NP without batteries or NP refund. On the other hand, their active star gen is… decent for an Arts unit at least. The Valkyries have high hit-counts and two Quicks, so they can drop a few stars off a brave chain. Additionally, the Valkyries only have two passives, one of which is Divinity (and therefore just flavor), and the other of which is Presence Concealment, which boosts star gen a little.

For appends, Mana Loading is the most important, as always. In the Valkyries’ case, Mana Loading enables slightly more flexible farming. Anti-Saber damage is the second-most useful, as it can help the Valkyries farm Sabers if you’re trying to use them as a neutral farmer. The extra attack buff is the least useful append here, since the Valkyries have terrible cards.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x1 War Maiden's Beret Open War Maiden's Beret configuration options
3	150,000	x1 War Maiden's Beret Open War Maiden's Beret configuration options
4	500,000	x1 War Maiden's Beret Open War Maiden's Beret configuration options
Max	1,500,000	x1 War Maiden's Beret Open War Maiden's Beret configuration options

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x4 Gem of Assassin Open Gem of Assassin configuration options
2 → 3	200,000	x10 Gem of Assassin Open Gem of Assassin configuration options
3 → 4	600,000	x4 Magic Gem of Assassin Open Magic Gem of Assassin configuration options
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Magic Gem of Assassin Open Magic Gem of Assassin configuration options x4 Shell of Reminiscence Open Shell of Reminiscence configuration options
5 → 6	2,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Assassin Open Secret Gem of Assassin configuration options x8 Shell of Reminiscence Open Shell of Reminiscence configuration options
6 → 7	2,500,000	x10 Secret Gem of Assassin Open Secret Gem of Assassin configuration options x4 Phoenix Feather Open Phoenix Feather configuration options
7 → 8	5,000,000	x7 Phoenix Feather Open Phoenix Feather configuration options x15 Mystic Gunpowder Open Mystic Gunpowder configuration options
8 → 9	6,000,000	x45 Mystic Gunpowder Open Mystic Gunpowder configuration options x12 Reactor Core of Dawn Open Reactor Core of Dawn configuration options
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x4 Gem of Assassin Open Gem of Assassin configuration options
2 → 3	200000	x10 Gem of Assassin Open Gem of Assassin configuration options
3 → 4	600000	x4 Magic Gem of Assassin Open Magic Gem of Assassin configuration options
4 → 5	800000	x10 Magic Gem of Assassin Open Magic Gem of Assassin configuration options x4 Eternal Ice Open Eternal Ice configuration options
5 → 6	2000000	x4 Secret Gem of Assassin Open Secret Gem of Assassin configuration options x8 Eternal Ice Open Eternal Ice configuration options
6 → 7	2500000	x10 Secret Gem of Assassin Open Secret Gem of Assassin configuration options x4 Eternal Gear Open Eternal Gear configuration options
7 → 8	5000000	x8 Eternal Gear Open Eternal Gear configuration options x5 Aurora Steel Open Aurora Steel configuration options
8 → 9	6000000	x15 Aurora Steel Open Aurora Steel configuration options x20 Divine Leyline Spiritron Open Divine Leyline Spiritron configuration options
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

As a welfare, the Valkyries get all their ascension mats for clearing their event. For skills, though, the Valks need 60 bullets apiece, which is a pain. They’re worth the investment if you don’t have another Arts looper, but otherwise, this might be more than you want to spend on them.

The Valkyries’ skillset is pretty straightforward, but it does what they need it to do. Recommended skill order is 2>1>3.

The Valks can farm standard nodes plugless and CE-less in a double Castoria setup. They should refund about 80% against three enemies, which means their own battery can make up the difference for one wave, and a Mystic Code buff (such as Clock Tower’s battery or 2004’s NP gain buff) can cover the other. Damage will be an issue against non-Riders, but the Valks are a pretty accessible option, which is nice.

For harder nodes, you can add in a plug Oberon to farm 2/2/X nodes. On turn one, you use Mana Loading to save yourself a Castoria battery. On turn 2, you use the last Castoria battery, the Valks’ 20% battery, and Oberon’s 20% battery. On turn 3, you use Oberon’s 50% charge. For 3/2/x or 2/3/x nodes you can swap in a non-Oberon 50% charger instead.

The Valks’ weak cards make them a less appealing pick for CQs, especially if not bursting. That said, Proto Merlin in particular is a great support pick for them, providing a lot of flat batteries to make up for their weak cards. In a Proto Merlin/Valks/Tamamo team, you can alternate Illusion and Valkyrie-Style Group Combat to cover enemy NP turns, provided damage in the intervening turns is not too severe to heal off. Proto Merlin/Valks/Castoria is even better, and while the Valks don’t have a way of pushing Castoria’s overcharge, they can accomplish something similar with their Charisma—since their AoE dodge stacks with Solemn Defense, it’s functionally the same as giving Castoria an overcharge level, provided the enemy doesn’t ignore dodges. Alternating the Valks’ dodge with Proto Merlin’s overcharge buff gives you four total hits of protection every three turns, making this a solid stall shell.

The lower-investment you go, the more the holes in the Valks’ kit will show, since you’ll be progressively more reliant on cards. Budget supports who bring charge will be your best bet here—think Hans and Xu Fu—though Paracelsus can also amp the Valks’ NP gain enough to cover their weaknesses a bit. Generally speaking, your first priority in an off-meta support for the Valkyries should be NP charge, followed by NP gain and Arts buffs. Bonus points if they also make critting easier, as Hans does.

If you’re farming and you’re not worried about drops, the Black Grail is the best CE for the Valks. It’s also going to be the best CE for CQ contexts as well, since the Valks either want to be bursting things down or supported by Proto Merlin (who brings a ton of healing). If you don’t have that, you could consider something like Painting Summer or Mark on a Smiling Face, though the Valks’ low base card NP gain means they don’t benefit quite as much from those CEs’ NP gain buffs as most Arts Servants do. You could also consider Prisma Cosmos, for stall contexts, as it doesn’t care about base NP gain and can help the Valks more reliably contribute to, for example, Proto Merlin->Valkyrie->Castoria NP chains.

There’s nothing the Valks particularly want that CCs can provide. Star gen isn’t a bad choice, since most Arts teams (Proto Merlin teams notwithstanding) don’t have much star gen available, and the Valks really want to be critting if possible.

Assassins aren’t great grail targets, but the Valks are among the best around as Assassins go. If you find yourself using them a lot for farming—and especially if you missed Ranmaru—the extra attack from a pair of grails will help them hit damage thresholds more reliably. It’s not the worst idea.

The Valkyries are the best welfare Assassin we’ve had to-date. They’re a loop-enabled Arts AoE, and while their cards are atrocious, their loop specs are good enough to largely make up for it. They’re comparable in some respects to demerit-based Servants—you have a specific drawback, but there are concrete strengths elsewhere to compensate.

Outside of NP gain, the Valkyries have two major weaknesses: damage, and competition. With low steroids and a bad class, the Valks don’t really have the neutral damage they need to kill things. That said, they do get a nice niche against Earth enemies, and they can easily kill Riders… but your mileage may vary with regards to whether that’s worth it. In terms of competition, Ranmaru does mostly the same things while being in a better class, and there are plenty of strong SSR options at this point, any of whom mostly obsoletes the Valks. The Valkyries’ debut event even introduces the best of the bunch to-date—an NP1 Ibuki, let alone NP2+, makes it easy to ignore the Valks for the rest of forever.

The big advantage of the Valkyries is that they’re our first real farming Assassin who doesn’t come with any asterisks other than damage. There are a few other Assassins who can farm, but they’re all locked to starting NP CEs and generally have other miscellaneous drawbacks. The Valks farm most Rider nodes out-of-the-box, which is hard to complain about.

Solid addition all-around.

Overall: 8/10
Single-Target DPS: 5/10
AoE DPS: 7/10
Survivability: 4/10
Offensive Utility: 2/10
Defensive Utility: 5/10
Farming Usefulness: 8/10
Valkyries: 2/6