Rabbit’s Reviews #362: Durga (5* Archer)

From a narrative and presentation standpoint, Durga is the highlight Servant for Ordeal Call 1. She is essentially to OC1 as the monarchs were to the Lostbelts. Sadly, she doesn’t really live up to that potential. Durga is an AoE Arts unit with a 50% battery, which is still probably the best overall Servant type in the game, but she doesn’t do anything to set herself apart beyond that aside from having usually good loop specs. Her damage is not great, and without anything else particularly worthwhile, she ends up towards the bottom of Servants of her type. An easy skip, unless you love the character.

Durga has the highest attack of the SSR Archers by a fair margin, and while her HP is low, it’s not as low as might be expected in light of her attack. This is a good starting point for a damage-dealer, though unfortunately that strength does not continue through the rest of the kit. Despite being an Arts unit, Durga has two Quick cards with decent hit-counts, so she’s not terrible at active star gen. Her card-based NP gain, though, is terrible, with quite weak Arts cards and truly terrible Quicks.

Durga has five passives, but they’re all pretty standard. Magic Resistance plus Core of the Goddess lets Durga naturally stave off nearly half of the debuffs that come her way, which is nice. Riding props up her Quicks a touch, and Independent Action and Divine Gift of Arms both give crit damage buffs… which would be nice if Durga had any other crit tools. Divine Gift of Arms also gives a passive Arts buff, which is very nice on an Arts unit.

Mana Loading is the best append, as always, but Anti-Berserker Attack Up is a close second, as it gives Durga bonus damage against a class she already hits with class advantage, and Durga has no in-kit attack up otherwise, discounting the post-damage defense down on her NP. The Extra Attack boost is basically useless—Durga’s value is almost exclusively tied to her NP, and her cards are terrible, so this append doesn’t really help.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x5 Archer Piece
3	300,000	x12 Archer Piece x5 Primordial Lanugo
4	1,000,000	x5 Archer Monument x10 Arrowhead of Malice x2 Heart of the Foreign God
Max	3,000,000	x12 Archer Monument x4 Heart of the Foreign God x12 Ether Light Collector

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x5 Gem of Archer
2 → 3	400,000	x12 Gem of Archer
3 → 4	1,200,000	x5 Magic Gem of Archer
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Magic Gem of Archer x5 Arrowhead of Malice
5 → 6	4,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Archer x10 Arrowhead of Malice
6 → 7	5,000,000	x12 Secret Gem of Archer x3 Primordial Lanugo
7 → 8	10,000,000	x6 Primordial Lanugo x4 Tearstone of Blood
8 → 9	12,000,000	x11 Tearstone of Blood x24 Ether Light Collector
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200000	x5 Gem of Archer
2 → 3	400000	x12 Gem of Archer
3 → 4	1200000	x5 Magic Gem of Archer
4 → 5	1600000	x12 Magic Gem of Archer x3 Lamp of Evil-Sealing
5 → 6	4000000	x5 Secret Gem of Archer x6 Lamp of Evil-Sealing
6 → 7	5000000	x12 Secret Gem of Archer x2 Heart of the Foreign God
7 → 8	10000000	x4 Heart of the Foreign God x3 Flaming Oni Lantern Plant
8 → 9	12000000	x8 Flaming Oni Lantern Plant x72 Obsidian Knife
9 → 10	20000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Durga’s mat asks are fairly middling. She needs some old gold mats, some silver Lostbelt mats, and the new silver mat from Ordeal Call 1. There’s nothing too bad here, really, with the caveat that it may take a bit to get enough of the new mat to max her out.

Durga’s skillset is very plain, and it’s pretty restrained for what it is. Recommended skill order is 1>2>3.

Durga’s NP gain is such that she can loop farm 1/2/x and 2/1/x nodes with two Castorias and Oberon, provided she has the damage. The strategy for this is the same as usual: Mana Loading and all Castoria batteries but one on the first turn, using various batteries to make up for any missing NP charge. Because her damage is fairly low, the actual value of this is not that high, but at the very least she can do it fairly easy.

Her CQ usage is mostly the same as any other Arts unit. You can use the same strategy as for farming for quick clears, and for longer fights you can run Castoria and any third support. Reines, Lady Avalon, and Tamamo are all good picks—Tamamo is probably the fastest of the three, while Reines and Lady Avalon are both safer. Lady Avalon is my recommendation overall, but all three work.

Damage is Durga’s biggest weakness, and she can loop easily, so she should pretty much always run The Black Grail if it’s available. If not, bring whatever your highest-damage CE is—Heaven’s Feel, Mark on a Smiling Face, or something similar.

There aren’t any really obvious CC choices for Durga, so crit damage CCs are always safe. She only has a few small passive crit buffs anyway, and if she can get stars—if you’re running Mozart, Lanling, or Lady Avalon, for instance—she’ll appreciate some more damage.

Archers aren’t great grail targets and Durga is just okay as a unit. I wouldn’t grail this one unless she’s a favorite.

Durga is fine. She does the baseline Arts things, but nothing more. There’s… really not much else to say about her. If you really like her, she can do well enough in lower-difficulty fights, but without a substantial buff down the line, she’s not going to be able to handle top-end content. She’s basically just a marginally better Summer Jeanne, which isn’t a very flattering comparison.

Overall: 7/10
Single-Target DPS: 4/10
AoE DPS: 7/10
Survivability: 8/10
Offensive Utility: 3/10
Defensive Utility: 3/10
Farming Usefulness: 7/10
Arms: 10/10