Rabbit’s Reviews #370: UDK Barghest (4* Archer)

Summer Barghest is an interesting Servant, in that she’s extremely straightforward except for one eye-catching gimmick: she can change her NP from AoE to ST. This is a neat trick, and it technically means Barghest can fill two roles for a box, but in exchange for this flexibility she’s not all that great in either role. There’s no shortage of excellent ST Arts Archers out there—many of whom are free!—and Barghest doesn’t compare favorably to the other AoE Arts Archers. This means there’s not a lot of reason, gameplay-wise, to pull for her, except for the novelty… and while changing NP targeting sounds cool, it doesn’t really result in unique gameplay either, since in practice Barghest will usually be either an okay AoE unit, or an ST unit whose damage falls off massively when her buffs run out.

Barghest has low attack by SR Archer standards, which is knocked lower in practice due to Archers’ innate attack penalty. Her defensive stat-spread indicates an intended stall focus, which her skills largely match, but it’s not a good starting point for a damage-dealer. Her internals are fairly unremarkable—as an Arts Servant, she’s not great at star gen, and while her Arts cards have average NP gain, her two Quick cards have terrible NP gain and are mostly useless.

Barghest’s passives aren’t super impactful. Magic Resistance provides the usual marginal consistency bonus, Madness Enhancement doesn’t really help Barghest, and Tam Lin Knight is an extremely marginal crit damage bonus that also only works against specific targets. Thunder Eater is a bit more interesting, giving passive NP charge (and burn immunity) on burning fields. Passive NP charge is quite nice, especially on a non-Buster unit, but Burning fields are pretty rare, so the actual usefulness of this is limited.

Barghest is a 30% charger, so Mana Loading particularly important to her. The other two appends don’t do much—anti-Ruler damage is practically useless on an Archer, since any Berserker (not to mention any Avenger) will be a better anti-Ruler pick, and Barghest’s cards aren’t all that great, so the Extra Attack buff won’t really matter.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x4 Archer Piece
3	150,000	x10 Archer Piece x8 Seed of Yggdrasil
4	500,000	x4 Archer Monument x8 Shell of Reminiscence x2 Spirit Root
Max	1,500,000	x10 Archer Monument x4 Spirit Root x10 Scale of Fantasy

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x4 Gem of Archer
2 → 3	200,000	x10 Gem of Archer
3 → 4	600,000	x4 Magic Gem of Archer
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Magic Gem of Archer x4 Shell of Reminiscence
5 → 6	2,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Archer x8 Shell of Reminiscence
6 → 7	2,500,000	x10 Secret Gem of Archer x5 Seed of Yggdrasil
7 → 8	5,000,000	x10 Seed of Yggdrasil x3 Primordial Lanugo
8 → 9	6,000,000	x9 Primordial Lanugo x20 Scale of Fantasy
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x4 Gem of Archer
2 → 3	200000	x10 Gem of Archer
3 → 4	600000	x4 Magic Gem of Archer
4 → 5	800000	x10 Magic Gem of Archer x8 Great Knight Medal
5 → 6	2000000	x4 Secret Gem of Archer x16 Great Knight Medal
6 → 7	2500000	x10 Secret Gem of Archer x3 Black Beast Grease
7 → 8	5000000	x5 Black Beast Grease x5 Eternal Ice
8 → 9	6000000	x15 Eternal Ice x12 Fruit of Eternity
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Aside from the NP change gimmick, Barghest’s skillset is pretty plain. Recommended skill order is 2>3>1.

As an AoE unit, Barghest refunds about 17% per enemy with two Castorias. This isn’t great by Arts standards—with a bit of overkill on the wave of 3, she can loop 3/2/x or 2/3/x waves CE-less with Mana Loading and Oberon. She’s not likely to be farming anything 90+ or above, even before you look at damage requirements. She can switch to ST in the middle of a node for cases where that happens to be useful, but that makes her refund even worse and her damage is still unlikely to be sufficient for more purposes that would want that, so eh.

Barghest is much more interesting as a CQ unit, though her best use-case is generally going to be stalling AoE nodes. She wants a Castoria, for defense, and then a third support to round out the team. Tamamo is a particularly good pick, offsetting one of Bargest’s major weaknesses—her cooldowns—though Lady Avalon or Reines can work as well.

At the lower end, Barghest has natural synergy with free support options. Xu Fu is a particularly good pick, providing benefits every Arts Servant likes while also giving Barghest an effective 20% extra attack up. Hans and Mozart are also good options—Hans makes Barghest’s crits better if you can facilitate them (for example, with 2030 on the supports), while Mozart provides lots of buffs for a single turn and can also guarantee crits on that turn.

Barghest has a lot of innate healing and likes to be run on teams that provide even more healing, so there’s really no reason not to bring The Black Grail unless you’re having issues looping or need something specific for a quest (like pierce invuln).

Barghest’s innate crit buff is going to go to waste in most cases without extra stars, so star gen CCs are a nice pick for her. You can also lean into her tankiness with healing or damage cut CCs—these will usually be redundant in Castoria teams but can help manage turns where your defenses fall apart.

Archers benefit less from grails than most units and Barghest is a pretty unremarkable Archer. I’d pass on this one unless you really love her.

Barghest advertises herself as a shiny new Servant who can be both ST and AoE, but in practice she’s just an AoE stall unit who can amp her damage against a single target to clean up a fight in a pinch. She’s not bad, per se, but she has a lot of competition and doesn’t really do much to stand out. She’s definitely the least exciting Servant on her banner, and she competes with Suzuka for being the “dud” of this Summer event, insofar as it has one. She’ll be fun and serviceable if you want to make her work, but she doesn’t bring much of value otherwise.

Overall: 7/10
Single-Target DPS: 7/10
AoE DPS: 7/10
Survivability: 7/10
Offensive Utility: 2/10
Defensive Utility: 7/10
Farming Usefulness: 7/10
Firefighting: 10/10