MMM - Diagonal-Deferring Dame with Deadly Draws Defies Directorial Direction, Differing Dude Determined to Die Disappoints in Duo of Defeats to Death (GudaGuda Shinsengumi The End Part 1)

With a base NP gain of 0.6%, and a BBAAQ card deck, Gensai is surprisingly lacking in Quick cards, and her 4-hit Arts cards shockingly both provide good NP gauge, with a 2.4 base Arts gain, and don’t cause the rest of her cards to suffer much. Packing a similar 4-hits across the board on her other cards, her Quick is pretty average and her Busters are fairly good for NP gain, while her 5-hit Extra provides about average NP gauge.

Conversely, her star generation is pretty bad for an Assassin given her lack of Quicks, but she still has high hitcounts and the class’s base star generation to carry her, so she does produce a solid amount of critical stars on any given chain.

Skill 1

First for Gensai’s skill lineup is Hitokiri Gensai, a skill that, given the lore, is unsurprisingly straightforward.

Through the power of Japan’s title for man-slayers, she gets a standard dual-card buff combo of 30% Arts and Buster Up for 3 turns, as well as a thematic 50% Human attribute effective damage for the same duration.

While naturally the first pair of buffs is just a solid boost to her NP gain and damage output with her primary card types, anti-Human attribute effectiveness is one of the better effective damage boosts out there, as it’s the most common attribute among Servants in the game. A good number of NPC’s also have the attribute, since it covers pretty much everything that is, or was at one point, human. While major story bosses don’t usually end up with this attribute, it’ll still be handy for cases where you’re going against a single Servant boss.

That said, this skill is moderate in power, and its 8-turn base cooldown is a little long given that modest strength.

Skill 2

Next up for her skills is Peerless Battōjutsu. This can be considered her signature skill in a sense, since it’s about hyping up Japanese sword techniques, a Kinoko Nasu classic.

This skill is a powerful burst of Critical power, providing 10 Critical Stars as well as a combo of 50% Critical Damage Up and a significant star weight boost for 1 turn. Most importantly, it applies the Sword Sheathing Stance to herself for 1 turn, which enhances her NP if active.

The benefits of this skill may seem minor, but that’s entirely balanced out by its absurdly short cooldown - a base of 4 turns, reaching 2 turns cooldown at max level. Few skills have this short a cooldown, and when you’re a Buster-focused Servant like Gensai, this also means she can stack it up 3 times on the same turn (4 if you’re feeling daring with a Mystic Code) using double Koyanskaya, providing an absurd amount of critical damage and some redundancy regarding the Sword Sheathing Stance buff. It’s excessive, but it is funny, and “Big number go up” fires the monkey brain neurons.

So it’s rather good. A once-every-3-turns almost guaranteed crit turn with a good damage boost and improvement to her NP is very neat, and feels like you’re spamming quick-draw slashes over and over. Satisfying, if nothing else.

Skill 3

Last for Gensai’s skills is Eyes of the Viper. A blanket debuffing skill, this slaps every enemy with a 1-turn Skill Seal and 30% Critical Resistance Down debuff for 3 turns, and in turn provides Gensai with a 30% Attack Up buff for 3 turns and the all-important SSR gauge charger, a mandatory…30% gauge charge?

Well, that’s something to buck the trend. Admittedly for farming purposes this doesn’t change much, since you only need a 30% gauge charger to perform a 3-turn loop with Koyanskayas and Oberon, but it does lessen her power in difficult content where you’re not sticking to a clearly planned out gauge charging script.

Otherwise this skill is rather good. Skill Seal usually doesn’t provide much of value, but some difficult fights have foes with particularly annoying skills that provide Evasion or Invincible you don’t want them to spam, or their own crippling debuffs you don’t want to eat. Conversely, the Critical Resistance drop and Attack boost is a significant improvement to the Critical Damage of Gensai’s team and herself, in general.

The 8-turn base cooldown on this skill isn’t anything short, but it is more or less appropriate for this skill’s power.

Tying up Gensai’s kit in a little ribbon is her NP, Battō Kamui. She just runs up and cuts you real good, innit, Birmingham style. Or is Izou’s NP Birmingham style? Ah well.

This is a ST Buster NP with only the frills and damage output to look into, so let’s cover it. Off the bat Gensai slaps a bunch of 1-turn buffs on herself before dealing damage, getting Invincible Pierce and Defense Pierce in one go, a 10% NP Strength Up buff, scaling with Overcharge, and a 30% Attack Up buff if she has Sword Sheathing Stance active.

Naturally that’s some significant firepower, allowing her to crush her target regardless of their defenses with serious prejudice, but that’s not even the end, as her NP itself has a +50% Anti-Divine effective modifier. This is one of the best effective damage modifiers to have in the game, especially for a ST NP. About a quarter of all Servants in the game have the Divine trait, and a large sum of major story bosses and mini-boss type NPC’s common in farming nodes also have it. So given a particularly tough fight, it’s quite likely the boss has the Divine trait.

The only downside to that is it doesn’t often overlap with the Human attribute, since almost all Servants with Divinity are either Earth or Heaven attribute, leaning toward Servants who are from mythology or human culture, instead of actual historical individuals. Only 24 Servants in the game are Human attribute with the Divine trait as a result.

Regardless, let’s break down Gensai’s damage output. Just working off her baseline damage buffs, Gensai’s NP does a pretty solid 52k damage neutral, above par for most Servants with a non-Interlude NP damage multiplier. But that damage leaps significantly if she hits her effective damage bonuses, dishing out 76k to Human attribute targets, and 78k to Divine ones.

With Koyanskaya buffs under her belt, though, her damage output can become pretty silly. Against a plain, ordinary, class-neutral target, Gensai with a 50% NP gauge CE is doing a respectable 137k damage per NP, but that leaps to 302k damage against Human attribute foes, inching close to a fat 1 million damage once she has class advantage. Being able to do that much damage multiple turns in a row is, naturally, incredibly potent. And that’s not even covering how deadly her Crits would be in such a scenario.

Following a sudden and appreciated theme, Heisuke’s base NP gain of 0.63% combines with his 4-hit Arts card to provide a solid 2.52 base Arts gain, well above the average even for single-Arts card decks. Unlike his banner-mate, Heisuke’s Quicks aren’t too great, providing sub-par NP gain from their middling hitcounts, but his Busters are also good for NP gain, with his standard 5-hit Extra also being solid for NP gain. His BBAQQ card deck isn’t very conductive to strong NP gain, but he does fairly well with it.

As for his star generation, Heisuke is pretty painfully average. He has more star-generating cards than the typical Servant, but the 3 hits on his Quicks don’t produce that many stars, so he’s nothing to rely on for a supply of critical stars.

Skill 1

First on Heisuke’s skill lineup is Designated to Die, a skill name that is certainly…forboding.

Matching the flavour, this provides Heisuke with a 3-turn Taunt, while simultaneously buffing the party with 30% NP Gain Up and Critical Damage Up for 3 turns. Being able to draw away enemy attacks is always handy in difficult content, especially if Heisuke has access to defensive tools to match. The NP gain and Critical Damage buffs are pretty good team support effects, if not the most desirable, but they also combine curiously with the taunt effect.

See, as an Avenger, Heisuke has the highest baseline defensive NP gain in the game at 5% per individual hit he takes. With his passive Defensive NP gain boost and this skill online, that becomes 7% NP gauge per hit, a pretty significant bump in his gauge charge each turn - even if every enemy only has a 1-hit attack, that’s 21% gauge charge off of 3 attacks in a turn. And he still benefits from the NP gain boost on his regular cards, too. Simply put, he gets more out of the taunt than it seems, it’s almost like a gauge charger skill.

The 8-turn cooldown on this skill is a little long, but probably reasonable given how strong Taunts can be with the right support.

Skill 2

Next is Teach by Example, a skill which really exemplifies the point I just made. This skill is a mix of some disparate buffs, providing Heisuke with a 30% Quick booster, 50% Defensive NP gain Up, and 3-hit Evasion buff for 3 turns. The Quick boost is naturally great for his damage output, as a Quick-focused Servant, but the other aspects are more crazy.

With this additional Defensive NP Gain buff live, Heisuke’s NP gauge gain per hit taken bumps up to exactly 9.8%, which is usually 10% per hit from how FGO rounds gauge charge (Gauge charge is measured to 1 decimal, rounding down to the nearest whole number for display purposes, unless it’s 99.1% or higher, in which case it rounds to 100%. In other words, the 0.8% is always recorded and added up, even if it’s not displayed sometimes). That amount of gauge charge basically assures a full 100% gauge charge when hit by multi-hit attacks in one turn, and well beyond in the right circumstances.

And with Heisuke’s Taunt and the Evasion buff on this skill, he’s both capable of drawing in the necessary attacks and enduring them. It’s an interesting gimmick, but so long as his NP’s worth using it will certainly pay off effectively. Naturally, it’s also great outside of the gauge charging purpose, allowing him to draw attacks from his allies and nullify them at once.

Much like his prior skill, this has a 8-turn base cooldown, aligning them nicely.

Skill 3

Last for his skill set is Gunnery Prosthesis. This skill is, much like his others, incredibly direct in what it provides.

On use, Heisuke gets a pair of 20% Attack Up and NP Strength Up buffs for 3 turns, as well as a 30% gauge charge. The gauge charge is always appreciated, as such perks aren’t a guarantee for SR’s, and likewise the damage buffs complete his trifecta of damage steroids for his NP, assuring it’ll at least do respectable damage.

There’s not much else to say, though. It’s a direct and useful offensive buff and gauge charger in one, and like the rest of Heisuke’s skills, its cooldown is unsurprisingly 8 turns at base.

Wrapping up Heisuke’s kit is a Quick ST NP - Sakigake Ichiban Hoshi!! The two exclamation points are mandatory inclusions.

This NP follows the standard damaging NP structure - he gets a 10% Quick booster for 1 turn, scaling with Overcharge, then hits the enemy for normal damage, with an effective modifier against Lawful alignment foes, referencing his defection to a splinter group that opposed the main Shinsengumi, slapping the target with a 20% Defense Down debuff for 3 turns, then he dies.

…Wait, he dies? Okay, I guess some of those skill names foreshadowed it, but this NP doesn’t even have an increased damage modifier like Arash or Cheng Gong do, or at least a broken Overcharge scaling! He just has a very normal NP that happens to kill him…God.

Well, this does recontextualize his whole kit, and not in a positive light. While there’s often some merit to a Servant who can perform “alternative formation change” through self-inflicted injuries, it does ultimately mean Heisuke is aiming to dispose of himself in one NP and let a better Servant take the spotlight. The damage he deals with this NP isn’t bad at all - he has a good combo of offensive steroids and Lawful is a pretty good trait to target, especially among Rulers, so he’s likely to dish out superb damage for the single NP he gets.

And no, Heisuke doesn’t have a source of Guts to depend on, even from his Bond CE. If you suddenly start using Guts buffs to compensate for the drawback on this NP you basically miss the point of using him, anyway.

Hence why I’m not really going deep into his damage numbers or refund or anything. The damage is decent, but he’s by default worse than any other Servant for drawn-out NP spamming, so instead it’s more about what he does before tagging out for your next Servant in the backline.

Bucking the established trend thus far, Sanosuke’s base NP gain of 0.53% combined with his 4-hit Arts card in his BBAQQ card deck results in a base Arts gain of 2.12, essentially dead on average for a single-Arts card deck. While his Arts card might not be as great as the others in this MMM, he does have some pretty good Quick cards, balancing out the poor NP gain he gets per hit while his Busters produce solid gauge to compensate for his very mediocre Extra card.

On a higher note, his star generation is great, with the relatively-high base star generation of his class combining with his high card hitcounts across the board to spray out a good sum of stars in any chain of his. As always, strong star generation somewhat compensates for lesser NP gain due to the boost in NP gauge produced by crits, so Sanosuke performs pretty well on both ends of this section in spite of his Arts-lacking card deck.

The great thing about welfare Servants is they often keep things strong and simple. Sanosuke’s first skill is that exemplified - Red Wolf of Mibu.

Ignoring that all the Shinsengumi really love calling themselves “X of Mibu”, this skill is a straight dual-card booster, providing 30% Quick and Buster Up for 3 turns, as well as a 15 Critical Stars/turn buff on Sanosuke himself. It’s a straightforward improvement in damage, NP gain, and star generation to his most plentiful cards, as well as boosting his NP damage, and the plentiful star supply can always be appreciated, regardless if he focuses on critical damage or not.

And that’s all there is to it - a solid damage boost. The 8-turn base cooldown is long given its relative power, but at this point 8 turns is the standard, so it’s not egregious, either.

Next is the very appropriate skill of Sanosuke, Who Failed to Die. As you might expect, this skill exemplifies Sanosuke’s poor skill in killing himself by…failing to die by all other means. I have to say, this really is a falling upwards kind of blunder you managed to immortalize in your kit as a Servant, buddy.

This skill provides him with the tantalizing inconsistent Guts buff, a 40% Chance to survive lethal blows for 3 turns, occurring up to 2 times. Usually inconsistent Guts buffs are absolute trash that can’t be depended on for anything, but this buff stacks with other sources of Guts, so you can take advantage of allied skills/NP’s that provide Guts, or CE’s that provide a passive Guts effect, and have this more unreliable form of Guts as an extra layer on top of that solid foundation.

Sanosuke certainly takes advantage of it, too, gaining 20 Critical Stars when he revives from a Guts buff for the same 3-turn duration, resulting in a pretty overwhelming supply of stars if he’s constantly thrown into mortal peril.

The last and most important part of this skill for gameplay purposes is a 20% gauge charger. It’s not the all-important 30% charger which lets most Servants loop their NP over 3 turns with Koyanskayas, but it is still handy, and any amount of gauge charger is better than none. This skill is also notable for having an 8-turn base cooldown in spite of being a reasonably strong Guts buff, but I guess the inconsistency of its proccing does balance that out.

Last for Sanosuke’s skills is Unreliable Spear - which, despite its name, doesn’t feature any inconsistency like the prior skill.

This is a straightforward offensive buff skill, providing 30% Attack Up and 50% Critical Damage Up to Sanosuke himself for 3 turns, on top of a generous 15 Critical Stars on use. At this point it’s excessive, Sanosuke is making himself a fountain of critical stars with how things are going. Based on the prior skill, instead of blood he probably spurts critical stars when cut.

Ultimately, this comes together to produce a solid 3-turn buff cycle for Sanosuke’s offense, netting good Card Booster and Attack Up buffs on top of a decent boost to his Critical Damage, allowing him to capitalize on all those stars he’s making.

In general, though, you can see that Sanosuke’s whole kit is straight-to-the-point. No random team support or funky utility tools here, only blood, sweat, and weapons. Much like his other skills, this packs an 8-turn base cooldown, aligning his skill cooldown timers neatly for what it’s worth.

Wrapping it all up is Sanosuke’s NP, Shi Sokone Hitomoji. For those who might not catch the attempted self-censorship done in the animation to cover up the lore, this NP is literally Sanosuke re-enacting his botched Seppuku to become essentially immortal while he just rampages about. As in, he has to cut himself open to perform it. Yeah, that isn’t gonna beat the censorship laws. So we get the ominous circle with a single line cut through it, instead.

This is a Buster ST NP, so thankfully I won’t have to delve into the refund for it. Instead, let’s focus on the effects. Before dealing damage, Sanosuke applies a 1-time, 1-turn Guts buff to himself, as well as a 10% NP Strength Up buff for 1 turn (scaling with Overcharge). This alone is a pretty neat gimmick on a NP, essentially allowing Sanosuke to continually survive incoming attacks so long as he keeps his own offense up, unless he gets his Guts buff(s) removed before damage. The on-use NP steroid is also naturally great, completing the trinity of NP steroids for himself without external aid.

He then dishes out his damage, with no special traits besides the free NP5 that welfare Servants get, which I suppose is very special if you think about it. Afterwards, he slaps his target with a pair of 20% Defense Down and Critical Rate down debuffs for 3 turns, a very handy combo that provides him ramping damage against the same target, and insulating his team from future Critical hits.

As you might expect, the unique perks of this skill and the rest of Sanosuke’s kit makes him a pretty interesting solo / backline clutch Servant, as against foes with no buff removal or Stun/Charm/NP Seal he can essentially stay alive as long as he can keep using his NP (as enemies stop attacking for the rest of the turn if your last Servant alive procs a Guts buff). With the daily-refreshing Command Seals to refuel his NP, that means you can essentially throw him at a Sanosuke-shaped problem and keep him alive for 4 turns straight guaranteed, possibly more if his own cards produce enough NP gauge, or his unreliable Guts buff procs.

While such a strategy probably doesn’t have merit for people with well-developed rosters and support lineups, I imagine for newer players Sanosuke can make a really handy last resort to push past particularly difficult fights that they’re otherwise not equipped for. A Heracles that doesn’t demand farming for his Bond CE, in other words.

But I digress, let’s look at his damage output in more conventional strategies. With his own buffs active, Sanosuke is dealing a solid 56k damage neutral, comparable to most SSR’s at NP1. Since Sanosuke isn’t compatible with present convenient Buster farming setups, I won’t look into his damage in a hypothetical 3-turn loop, but with Koyanskaya support his NP should be doing about 150k damage neutral on his first NP, and 171k on the guaranteed follow-up one. Nothing spectacular, but given his strong capability for critical damage, it’s not indicative of his full potential, either.