JP Release Date: 04/26/2024
NA Release Date: 04/2026
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The Mahoutsukai no Yoru collab event has certainly made some bold choices with its Servant designs. While we haven’t seen Alice’s kit yet, both Aoko and Soujuurou have some pretty unique stuff going on. Both Servants, in fact, have multiple new mechanics, even if Aoko’s are an order of magnitude weirder than Soujuurou’s.
Soujuurou is, in a word, excellent. He’s an extremely bulky ST Buster Berserker with a battery, the ability to rig his own cards, and supereffective damage. As a welfare Servant, he’s free and comes automatically at NP5. The most notable thing about him, though, is that his NP kills him. This keeps him from working as a conventional fastplay Servant—but in exchange, it gives him a clear and powerful role as a farmer, and it makes him an engaging DPS to work around. He is a Servant you bring in for a burst of damage and who gets out of the way when he’s done, or a Servant who you slot into the last slot to anchor for you.
Base Atk | 1,659 | Base HP | 1,615 |
---|---|---|---|
Max Atk | 9,954 | Max HP | 10,099 |
Grail Atk | 12,052 | Grail HP | 12,245 |
Traits
Tags
Increase your Critical Star Drop Rate by 10%.
Increase own Critical Rate Resist by 10%.
Grants self immunity to Terror, Confusion, and Skill Seal.
Card Hits | 4 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 1 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Per Hit | 0.50% | 0.50% | 0.50% | 0.50% | 0.50% |
NP per Hit (%) | 0.50% | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
NP when Attacked (%) | 5% |
Star Absorption | 10 | |
---|---|---|
Star Generation per Hit | 4.9% |
Soujuurou has middling stats by SR Berserker standards, which is a bit of a surprise—you’d expect a self-sacrificing unit to be all-in on attack. Middling attack for a Berserker is still high attack in general, though, so it’s not a deal-breaker by any means. Internals-wise, Soujuurou is also unremarkable. He’s not great at star gen, as you’d expect of a single-Quick Servant, and he has low-but-not-awful NP gain, which is Berserker-typical. Neither of these matters much, though, as Buster Servants tend to rely on skills for star gen anyway, and Soujuurou only needs to NP once, which means weak NP gain isn’t an issue.
Passives-wise, Soujuurou notably does not get Madness Enhancement, which is unfortunate given that he would make good use of it. Instead, he gets Presence Concealment, which is usually an Assassin skill. Marginally boosted star gen is theoretically nice but unlikely to matter in most cases. He then gets two unique passives: Knowledge of the Sowa, which gives a small crit chance resistance, and Good Luck Chant, which blocks terror, confusion, and skill seal. Both of these are nice-ish—crit resistance can buy Soujuurou an extra hit of survival, and the mental debuffs can be annoying when they’re relevant—but neither is hugely impactful.
For appends, Mana Loading is cleanly the most useful. Since Soujuurou only needs to NP once, starting off 20% of the way there is a big deal—and because of how Soujuurou’s battery works, you really only need 50% charge for him to NP, which makes Mana Loading even more impactful. Mana Loading and a single Castoria Charisma is enough to facilitate a Soujuurou NP. Outside of that, the Extra Attack buff is nice for anchor situations in particular, where a little extra card damage can make a difference, while anti-Caster crit resistance is mostly irrelevant—especially considering Soujuurou should almost never die to enemy fire anyway.
Ascension Materials
Stage | Cost | Materials |
---|---|---|
2 |
50,000
|
|
3 |
150,000
|
|
4 |
500,000
|
|
Max |
1,500,000
|
Skill Enhancement Materials
Level | Cost | Materials |
---|---|---|
1 → 2 | 100,000 | |
2 → 3 | 200,000 | x10
|
3 → 4 | 600,000 | |
4 → 5 | 800,000 | |
5 → 6 | 2,000,000 | |
6 → 7 | 2,500,000 |
x2
|
7 → 8 | 5,000,000 | x4
|
8 → 9 | 6,000,000 | |
9 → 10 | 10,000,000 |
Append Skill Materials
Level | Cost | Materials |
---|---|---|
1 → 2 | 100000 | |
2 → 3 | 200000 | x10
|
3 → 4 | 600000 | |
4 → 5 | 800000 | |
5 → 6 | 2000000 | |
6 → 7 | 2500000 | |
7 → 8 | 5000000 |
x5
|
8 → 9 | 6000000 | x15
|
9 → 10 | 10000000 |
Soujuurou’s skillset is quite good, but it’s especially interesting in that each of his three skills introduces a new mechanic of some variety. Recommended skill order is 1>3>2.
Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Increase own Buster Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Apply [Evade only Lethal Damage] to self (5 times, 3 turns).
Lvl | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Arts + | 10% | 11% | 12% | 13% | 14% | 15% | 16% | 17% | 18% | 20% |
Buster + | 10% | 11% | 12% | 13% | 14% | 15% | 16% | 17% | 18% | 20% |
CD | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 6 |
Mushi Fusatsu Henro is a weak card-type buff, capping out at 20% for Arts and Buster cards instead of the usual 30%. In exchange for the low numbers, though it’s also one of the best defensive skills in the entire game. This skill gives Soujuurou a 3-turn, 5-hit dodge against lethal damage. That is to say, if a hit would kill Soujuurou, he dodges and consumes a hit of dodge. In a full-team context, this means Soujurou is effectively guaranteed to survive for three turns unless the enemy can pierce or remove defensive buffs. Even in a situation where all fire is aimed at Soujuurou—if you’re soloing or anchoring, or if Soujuurou has a taunt CE—he’s still more likely than not to survive three turns. In a typical fight, enemies get three actions per turn. On average, one of those will be spent on a skill, which means Soujuurou will probably take six hits over three turns. He can dodge five of those, and his dodge doesn’t proc if an attack isn’t lethal. Unless you’re fighting something really nasty, Soujuurou stands a good chance of being able to withstand one or two hits without dodging, which is enough for him to last through all three turns. This survivability is nice for Soujuurou’s role as a one-and-done burster, as he can reliably take a few turns to build up to an NP if need be. It’s even better for him as an anchor, though—much like Herc, Soujuurou can spend several turns hitting things without fear of death, which is really nice.
Doubles own NP Gauge value.
Increase own Critical Strength (3 turns).
Further increase own Critical Strength under 75% health (3 turns).
Further increase own Critical Strength under 50% health (3 turns).
Further increase own Critical Strength under 25% health (3 turns).
(Max Crit Damage boost of 100% at lowest health tier)
Lvl | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Crit Damage + | 15% | 16% | 17% | 18% | 19% | 20% | 21% | 22% | 23% | 25% |
Crit Damage + | 15% | 16% | 17% | 18% | 19% | 20% | 21% | 22% | 23% | 25% |
Crit Damage + | 15% | 16% | 17% | 18% | 19% | 20% | 21% | 22% | 23% | 25% |
Crit Damage + | 15% | 16% | 17% | 18% | 19% | 20% | 21% | 22% | 23% | 25% |
CD | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 6 |
Shakutenrin Jizai Zaifuza is functionally Soujuurou’s battery, and it’s a wholly unique one. Rather than giving any particular amount of charge, it just doubles whatever Soujuurou’s current NP gauge is. For a typical Servant, this might lead to some interesting timing considerations, but for Soujuurou, it’s really simple—use this when you have at least 50% charge, and it’s as good as a 50% battery. It has some value even if you already have 100% charge, too, as Soujuurou’s NP has a decent overcharge effect, and this skill can get you to a higher level of overcharge essentially for free. That alone would be good enough as a skill, but this also provides a 3-turn crit buff, with its effectiveness scaling depending on Soujuurou’s health. For every 25% of health Soujuurou has lost, this grants an extra 25% crit damage, starting from a not-very impactful 25% while Soujuurou is at full and capping out at 100% if Soujuurou is nearly dead. It’s this, rather than the mechanics of the battery, that gives this skill unusual timing considerations. The longer you wait to use this skill, the more crit damage (and the more NP charge, though that’s usually less relevant) this will give—but the less time Soujuurou will have with which to use it. If you use this early, it’s a modest buff, but it applies for more or less the entirety of Soujuurou’s time on the field. If you wait to use it when Soujuurou is about to NP, you get a more substantial crit buff, but you only get at most two crits’ worth of use out of it. You can guarantee you get the maximum buff value by giving Soujuurou a guts, having him NP, and then using this skill, but that requires building your team around Soujuurou to a degree that will be impractical for most fights. Altogether, this is a really strong skill, and it also leads to interesting tactical considerations, which speaks to how well-designed Soujuurou is overall.
Select one of three Command Card types when using the skill:
Quick:
- Apply delayed buff to self that triggers after 1 turn: Change own Command Cards to Quick (1 turn) and increase own Quick Card effectiveness (1 turn).
Arts:
- Apply delayed buff to self that triggers after 1 turn: Change own Command Cards to Arts (1 turn) and increase own Arts Card effectiveness (1 turn).
Buster:
- Apply delayed buff to self that triggers after 1 turn: Change own Command Cards to Buster (1 turn) and increase own Buster Card effectiveness (1 turn).
Lvl | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Quick + | 20% | 21% | 22% | 23% | 24% | 25% | 26% | 27% | 28% | 30% |
Arts + | 20% | 21% | 22% | 23% | 24% | 25% | 26% | 27% | 28% | 30% |
Buster + | 20% | 21% | 22% | 23% | 24% | 25% | 26% | 27% | 28% | 30% |
CD | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 6 |
Hyakkotsu Bansei Sentou Shugen is yet another totally unique skill. It operates on a one-turn delay, which isn’t the most ideal, but in exchange you get an extremely rare effect: you can pick one card type and turn all of Soujuurou’s cards into that card type for a turn, while also getting a 1-turn buff to cards of that type. While you can use this to force a Quick or Arts chain, and while that can be handy for star gen or NP gain in a pinch, in most cases what this does is get you a extra Buster cards. You can use this the turn before you want to NP in order to get a Buster buff and (ideally) a pair of Buster cards for some extra damage push on the NP turn, or you can use this when you aren’t planning to NP in order to rig a BBB chain for some extra damage before Soujuurou finishes out. The latter usage is particularly valuable when Soujuurou is anchoring, as he only has two Busters otherwise. The one caveat to this skill is that it doesn’t guarantee you actually draw Soujuurou’s cards. Since the effect happens the turn after you use it, you want to be sure to use this when you can count on drawing as many of Soujuurou’s cards as you need. Naturally, if Soujuurou is soloing or anchoring, you know you’ll have his cards—but how do you know otherwise?
The answer to this is card-counting. I’ve alluded to card-counting in FGO before, but I’m not sure I’ve ever actually explained how it works, so for the unfamiliar, here’s a quick primer. If you already know all this, feel free to skip forward to the next paragraph. Otherwise… in FGO’s system, every Servant has five cards. Your three active Servants’ cards are shuffled into a single deck, which isn’t reshuffled until it’s exhausted, a “shuffle” effect is activated, or a Servant dies. Notably, it does not get reshuffled when a Servant is swapped out via something like the plug suit—the new Servant’s cards just replace the old Servant’s cards in the deck. What this means is that while the first turn in each cycle is fully random, you can anticipate what you’re likely to draw on the second turn, and by the time you see your second turn’s cards, you know for a fact what your third turn’s cards will be. This is often useful for strategizing both in shortform and longform fights—you can make decisions about what cards you play and what skills you use based on the cards you see, which lets you control for randomness in ways that are tactically advantageous.
In Soujuurou’s case, what this means is that you can time his third skill based on the cards you see. If you draw one or zero Soujuurou cards on turn one, you can pretty safely use this skill right away, expecting to get two-ish on the second turn. More usefully, if you have only drawn two Soujuurou cards across the first two turns, you know you’ll have enough for a BBB chain on turn 3. Conversely, if you do draw a bunch of Soujuurou cards early, you can plan on just using this for the Buster buff when you want to NP, since you probably won’t draw enough cards at once for converting them to Busters to be useful.
Objectively speaking, this isn’t all that powerful of a skill. A 30% one-turn buff that’s also on a delay is weak, and the card-transformation gimmick, while very cool, is held back substantially by the need for card RNG manipulation caused by the timing requirement. Still, used well, this can lead to very powerful turns.
Apply Ignore Invincible to self (1 turn) [Activates first].
Apply Ignore Damage Cut to self (1 turn) [Activates first].
Deal damage to a single enemy.
Deal 150% supereffective damage against enemies with [DEF Up] buffs.
Inflict Death on self [Demerit].
<Overcharge>
Increase own ATK (1 turn) [Activates first].
Coordi■■■■s unknown - Evil spirit ■■■■ing
Za■ Fumei - Auryou ■shi
Rank | Classification | Hit-Count | |
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C+++ | Anti-World | 1 |
Effect | Apply Ignore Invincible to self (1 turn) [Activates first]. |
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Level | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
600% | 800% | 900% | 950% | 1000% | |
150% | 150% | 150% | 150% | 150% |
Overcharge Effect | Increase own ATK (1 turn) [Activates first]. |
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Charge | 100% | 200% | 300% | 400% | 500% |
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10% | 20% | 30% | 40% | 50% |
In spite of everything else he has going on, Soujuurou’s NP is the centerpiece of his kit, mostly because it kills him. Self-sacrifice NPs are, somewhat counterintuitively, really powerful. For farming, especially, being able to do a bunch of damage and then leave the field is really nice, since it means Soujuurou can kill a single high-value target with no loss to farming tempo aside from the extra NP animation and the time it takes to swap servants. In CQs, too, Soujuurou can do his thing and then make way for another damage-dealer. Unlike Arash and Chen, Soujuurou has the standard NP multiplier—but as an NP5 ST Berserker, he’ll hit plenty hard regardless.
As an NP, death demerit aside, this is quite strong. What it lacks in multiplier, it makes up for in other effects. It grants Soujuurou pierce invuln, for one thing—and it also lets him pierce damage cut. While it’s not as flashy as the new effects on his skills, the ability to pierce damage cut is also something we haven’t seen on any Servant to-date. We have other options for piercing defense, but defense-ignoring effects don’t actually ignore damage cut, making Soujuurou an option for the rare fight that mitigates damage through very high damage cut instead of more conventional defenses. Soujuurou typically only gets one piercing attack off per fight, but if all you need is to break through one problem bar or to pick off a single troublesome enemy, Soujuurou can do that for you.
What Soujuurou does not do is pierce defense. Instead, he deals supereffective damage to enemies with defense buffs. Supereffective damage is great, since it stacks with everything, though it won’t be quite as impactful here as hitting full niche, since this effect only triggers when the enemy is already defending. There’s also currently no way to apply a defense buff to an enemy, which means Soujuurou’s supereffective damage is fully out of your control (and will likely never apply for farming). Still, niche damage is great when it applies, and there are occasionally hard fights where the fight gimmicks guarantee a defense buff will be present. The NP also gives attack up on overcharge, which can help to offset the damage loss from a defense buff.
All of the benefits of this NP are one-turn only—which makes sense considering the NP kills Soujuurou—but this does mean the benefits don’t persist beyond a single turn even if you toss Soujuurou a guts. It’s also worth noting that Soujuurou’s lethal-damage-evasion does not negate the death demerit, nor does Aoko’s demerit nullification skill. Unless you give Soujuurou a guts, he’s gone after his NP. This also means if Soujuurou is NP-ing and doesn’t have a guts you need to be sure to put his cards before his NP so they aren’t wasted.
All-in-all, this is a very strong NP, though as with the rest of Soujuurou’s kit, it’s highly unconventional. He’s certainly not another typical Koyan-looping ST Buster unit.
Soujuurou has four basic use cases: as a farming, a one-shot blaster, an atypical fastplay frontliner, and an anchor. I’ll go through each one by one.
For farming, Soujuurou functions like Arash, Chen, and Habetrot, with the caveat that his role is taking out single enemies rather than whole waves. This makes him less useful for lower-level farming, but much more fit for 90+ and 90++ nodes. He’s most useful for Arts teams, as a single Castoria Charisma provides him with enough external charge to NP, assuming he has Mana Loading maxed. The Buster and Quick supports unfortunately do not provide the partywide charge Soujuurou needs—but if you can afford to give him charge, either from a CE or from a spare battery, you can use him anywhere. If the first wave of a node is a single enemy within Soujuurou’s damage range (which is around 100k with a single Castoria Charisma, or 135k with the Berserker class score maxed—and yes, Class Score does make a deceptively big difference and is very much worth the resources) he can clear it on his own, ensuring the primary DPS only has to NP twice. More commonly, though, Soujuurou is useful for effectively increasing your damage output against a single target, when an AoE Servant is already using their NP. High-end farming nodes often feature a first wave with one or two weak enemies and one strong one, which can be a challenge for Servants who are reliant on ramp and the like for their damage output. Soujuurou solves that problem—you can place his NP after your primary damage-dealer’s to finish off the stronger enemy.
Typically, for Soujuurou farming, you’ll want Soujuurou/DPS/Castoria/Oberon/Castoria. The Servant ordering does matter, as you want to be sure the support who comes in to replace Soujuurou is the last one you want on the field. On turn 1, you use all of the first Castoria’s skills on your DPS, and then you plug her out for the second, using her skills as needed. You let your DPS and Soujuurou both NP on turn 1, and then turns 2 and 3 proceed as normal. You can also do similar things for Quick and Buster, but that generally requires a starting charge CE on Soujuurou, which can be a farming efficiency loss if your event drop CE doesn’t provide starting charge. Soujuurou does very much appreciate Summer Skadi’s charisma, though, so if you can provide him with starting charge, he’ll do a fair bit more damage in an ideal Quick team than in an Arts one.
The one major drawback to using Soujuurou to supplement farming (aside from time) is that you can’t afford to run a full set of 5* CEs if you’re also running Soujuurou, three SSR supports, and an SSR DPS, which can result in a drop in farming efficiency in some situations.
Soujuurou’s second use-case is as a one-shot blaster for harder fights. His role here is similar to his role in farming—to provide extra damage early in a fight, with minimal loss to tempo. You can use essentially the same setups as above, but since you aren’t worried about CE efficiency, you can freely give Soujuurou a starting charge CE that also pushes damage, which means he’s no longer quite so Arts-locked (although in an Arts team he can run something like the Black Grail for even more damage).
As a slight variation on this, you can start with the DPS not on the field and have Soujuurou immediately NP with as many of your supports’ buffs as you can afford to spare. This can be particularly nice for four-break-bar fights. Typically, if you’re fighting something with four break bars, the first bar doesn’t have that much health, which means even with just a good CE and maybe a buff or two, Soujuurou stands a good chance of being able to break the bar himself—especially if you’re willing to reset for a Buster card or two to start the fight with. This gets even better if you can wait till turn 2 to have Soujuurou start blasting, since you can use Soujuurou’s third skill to further boost his damage and hopefully get you extra Buster cards… though you may start to run into survivability issues for your supports at that point, as they’re taking two turns’ worth of potential hits before your DPS comes in. At any rate, the general idea is that once Soujuurou NPs and breaks a bar, he removes himself, and then you’re left with three break bars and a fresh DPSs—a perfect setup to break a bar each turn and win the fight quickly.
Alternatively—and especially if you aren’t aiming for min-turns—you can stick Soujuurou in the fourth or fifth team slot, knowing that you can rely on him for damage later in a fight without needing any particular assistance. He’s still a one-and-done damage-dealer in this case, but instead of breaking open the start of a fight, he shows up after your initial damage output is done and a Servant or two dies, and his self-sufficient kit helps you keep the momentum going to hopefully close out the fight effectively.
Soujuurou’s third use case is the most complicated of them: as a proper frontliner. It’s unintuitive to take a Servant with a self-sacrifice NP and build a whole team around them, but Soujuurou has several things going for him. Most important is his first skill: even if he’s at very low HP (which he will be almost always in this setup), he’s unlikely to go down unless you get very unlucky. The general idea is that you supply Soujuurou with a guts buff so he can use his NP without dying, and then you rely on Buster crits otherwise. You typically won’t get three NPs this way, since that requires two separate guts sources, and there aren’t any guts options that don’t imply losing a source of NP charge somewhere.
Strategizing around two NP uses instead of three substantially opens up your team-comp flexibility. My best advice here is to get creative—you’ll have the best time with DPS Soujuurou by trying different setups and seeing what works best for you. That said, there are three main ways you can get a guts on Soujuurou (CE, Mystic Code, and support Servant), so I’ll provide an example team that relies on each of those options. Each of these teams will follow the same general game plan: an NP turn, followed by a buster crit turn, followed by another NP turn.
If Soujuurou has a guts CE, you can afford to run supports that provide maximum damage push. For this particular setup, we’ll do Koyan/Soujuurou/Chen Gong/Merlin/Koyan, with Kaleid on Chen and a guts CE on Soujuurou. Notably, this setup does not rely on Chen Gong getting himself killed, as we want his third skill for damage push and fishing for a Chen death introduces extra RNG even beyond drawing cards at the right times. On turn 1, you use Soujuurou’s first and third skills (picking Buster for skill 3), along with all skills from both Koyans, plugging out one Koyan for the other. You also use Chen’s taunt on Soujuurou, which both gets Souujuurou some extra defensive NP gain, just in case, and protects Chen from dying before you’re done with him. You have Chen and Soujuurou NP (in that order, unless there’s more than one enemy), which kills Koyan and brings Merlin in. In the worst case where Soujuurou drew no usable cards and didn’t get attacked on turn 1 (which is unlikely given Chen’s taunt), he’ll have no NP gauge on turn 2. You then use Chen and Merlin’s AoE charges to bring Soujuurou to 30% gauge, at which point Soujuurou uses his second skill, bumping himself to 60%. This also gives him 100% crit damage up, as he should be at nearly no health due to using his own NP. Merlin’s and Chen’s third skills each provide 50% Buster up and 100% crit damage up, giving Soujuurou truly absurd Buster crits. If he drew at least two cards, he’ll automatically get the 40% charge he would need to loop in the aforementioned worst case—gaining 10% charge per Buster per Koyan—but even if he doesn’t, there’s a good chance the defensive NP gain from Chen’s taunt has already closed the distance. On turn 3, Soujuurou NPs again, hopefully winning the fight, and making way for a secondary DPS if not.
If your guts is coming from your Mystic Code, you naturally can’t run as many supports. For variety, we’ll use Crane instead of Chen. Specifically, for this setup, we’ll go with Crane/Soujuurou/Koyan/Koyan. Again, the order matters—Crane and Soujuurou have to be positioned such that Crane’s buffs go to Soujuurou, and the second Koyan must be in the fourth slot in order to come in after Crane. Here, Soujuurou needs a 50% starting charge CE. Like the above setup, on turn 1, you use both Soujuurou skills, along with all skills from Koyan and Crane. You use Crane’s NP before Soujuurou’s rather than after—he doesn’t need the extra NP charge, and he appreciates the extra damage. Crane leaves and brings Koyan in. Koyan uses all of her skills on Soujuurou, who then uses his second skill, bringing him to 100% charge and giving him 100% crit damage up. Ideally he then has three Buster cards for a BBB chain, and then on turn 3 he NPs again and dies. This setup will likely result in less overall damage than the one above, but it has two key advantages. For one, the loop is entirely RNG-independent, so if Soujuurou is never attacked and draws no cards on turns 1 and 2, he still gets his NP on turn 3. This case is still probably a reset (in addition to being exceedingly unlucky) as it means you’re doing basically no damage on turn 2. In fact, if this happens, you’re probably better off NP-ing on turn 2 rather than turn 3, since Soujuurou has as many buffs at that point as he will on turn 3, and that gets him out of the way faster for your other damage-dealer to do cleanup. The second advantage of this setup is that it leaves two Servant slots open rather than one, so you can bring a support for your backup damage-dealer, or two backup damage-dealers instead of one, which can make it somewhat better for fights where Soujuurou can’t reliably clear the whole thing on his own.
If you’re looking for a guts from a support, meanwhile, you have specific implications for your team setup. I’ll go with Santa Nightingale as the guts provider, since she’s free and permanently available. You can run a double Koyan setup that is essentially the same as the above, replacing Crane with plug Night—but we can be more creative than that. In the interest of not just recreating the same team, we’ll do something somewhat weirder: double Oberon, with the Black Grail. This is, to be clear, somewhat impractical and probably not optimal, but the idea behind the setup to follow is to demonstrate the types of creative teams you could create if you were so inclined.
For this third setup, you run Santa Night/Soujuurou/Oberon/Oberon. On turn 1, you use all of the Night skills and then plug her out for the second Oberon. You use both Oberons’ NP damage buffs, along with a 50% charge from one Oberon, after which Soujuurou NPs. In order for this to work, Soujuurou needs Mana Loading (though it doesn’t need to be leveled), as he only gets 90% charge on turn 1. He also needs a healing command code on at least one of his cards, and he needs to draw that card on turn 1 or turn 2, or you need to be using specifically the newer plugsuit, which has a healing skill—Night’s guts revives Soujuurou with 1000 HP, and BG deals 500 damage per turn, meaning it will kill him on turn 2 if he receives no healing. On turn 2, you use the other Oberon’s 50% battery, which you then double via Soujuurou’s battery. The Oberon battery also gives you stars to help Soujuurou crit. Soujuurou does need to gain at least 20% extra NP gauge somewhere in this process (most likely through defensive NP gain) as Oberon’s battery’s demerit will drain 20% charge from Soujuurou before the next turn. Assuming he does get the extra charge he needs, though, on turn 3 you use End of the Dream from both Oberons, at which point the many NP damage buffs you have are all doubled (though only once, sadly), and you also have several Buster buffs in play. This setup has much lower crit damage than the others, but in exchange your final NP will hit much much harder.
Again, these are just examples. There’s a lot of flexibility with how you build teams around Soujuurou, and if you’re inclined to do so, you’ll want to experiment with the tools in your box to see what works best for you. The hypothetical teams I listed all assume access to various top-end supports, but Soujuurou should still do pretty well even with lower-end supportive options, provided they offer a good mix of charge, crit-enabling, and damage ampage.
Soujuurou’s final use case is by far the simplest: as an anchor. If Soujuurou is alone on the field, he dodges lethal attacks and whacks things for three or four turns, closing out a fight. His third skill gives him a BBB turn, and he can freely use BAB or QAB chains otherwise. Note that he cannot NP in this setup unless you give him a guts, even if that NP would kill the enemy, as you automatically lose the fight if all of your Servants are dead, even if the enemies are also dead. This is easy to solve, though—a guts CE on Soujuurou provides a get-out-of-jail-free card of sorts, letting him NP once without it losing you the fight. You can also look at a guts CE as giving you the ability to trade an extra turn of survival for a turn of increased damage, which lets you respond more flexibly to the situation you’re faced with at the end of a fight.
I’ve addressed CE options for Soujuurou pretty thoroughly above, but in short, the options are charge (for self-sufficiency and quick kills), damage boosts (for hitting harder while Soujuurou is on the field), and guts CEs (for using Soujuurou’s NP without him dying). I’d also like to call attention to one other option: GudaGuda Poster Girl. Soujuurou is a great candidate for that specific CE, as it provides a huge damage buff in a bracket Soujuurou has little of otherwise. The buff only lasts for three turns, but Soujuurou doesn’t usually want to be around for more than three turns anyway. Even better, it turns Soujuurou’s innate bulk into party defensive utility, as you can count on Soujuurou to safely eat enemy hits for the duration of Poster Girl’s taunt. If you happen to have that CE, it’s a great pick.
Crit CCs are Soujuurou’s best friend. If you’re not using Koyan, Soujuurou doesn’t have a great way of drawing stars to himself, which means he needs a lot of stars on the field in order to crit reliably. Star gen CCs help with this. Alternatively, if you are mostly using Koyan, crit damage CCs let Soujuurou hit harder—although the bonuses they provide are pretty small relative to the other buffs Soujuurou should be getting. Finally, there’s a very small case to be made for healing and burn/curse/poison-removal CCs, only because they can help Soujuurou offset damage-over-time debuffs (or The Black Grail’s demerit in the case of healing), which are one of the few things that can kill him through his first-skill’s dodge.
Berserkers are always good grail targets and Soujuurou is an excellent Berserker who’s NP5 by default and who starts at level 80. You really can’t go wrong giving him at least a pair of grails—it’s a good chunk of extra damage for him at very low cost. Beyond that is a harder call. He’ll absolutely make good use of the extra stats, but grails quickly start to become a lot of investment, especially on a Servant who’s not meant to stick around.
Soujuurou is an extremely novel Servant. Not only is his kit full of individually novel elements, but taken as a whole it’s also rather unlike anything else we have. I could go on and on about how cool his kit is and how strong he is, but I’ve done that for several thousand words already, so all that’s really left is to say: Soujuurou good.
Overall: 10/10
Single-Target DPS: 10/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 9/10
Offensive Utility: N/A
Defensive Utility: 2/10
Farming Usefulness: 9/10
Aozaki-Dodging: 10/10