MMM - Feathered Forerunner Flocks For Fatal Facts, Fearless of Familial Forfeiture (Ascalaphus)

norseftx
Table of Contents
Intro
Ascalaphus
Outro
Intro
I can testify, dear readers, that Summer has come. Summer has made its presence known by the blistering gaze of the Sun, the sweat of the brow, the dreaded absence of AC, and, most of all, AN ALL EXPENSES-PAID TRIP TO CHALDENIA THEME PARK, YAHOO!
Yes, a heat wave is a devastating harbinger of Climate Change, but have you considered…riding on spinning teacups? I thought not - the allure of fleeting joy will always overcome existential dread, I assure you! Now just eat this pomegranate salad I’ve made…
JP Release DateNA Release Date
7/1/20267/2028
Ascalaphus
At this stage I’m basically impressed we’ve gotten Greek mythological figures I didn’t even know existed. While Perseus and his wakame-shaped hair remain out of mention within FGO, we’re getting yet another Servant in the series of “undeserving victims of the Greek Gods”. Demeter has never heard the phrase “don’t shoot the messenger”, apparently.
Thus, this lad was punished to become an owl, apparently “the vilest bird; a messenger of grief; the lazy owl; sad omen to mankind.” I have to admit, I don’t think I’ve heard ANY of these words used to describe owls before. I think Ovid just had a grudge against them, yeesh.
Ascalaphus
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As an Alter Ego, Ascalaphus gets to benefit from one of the better stat spreads a class can offer, and even among other Alter Egos, he gets a pretty good deal - with the 6th-highest Attack stat of his fellows, and the tied 5th-lowest HP, he has a balanced statline that leans towards offense. He might still pale compared to the juggernauts of his class like Kingprotea, but it’s hardly a bad place to be.
He has plenty of useful passives, too. His Magic Resistance and Item Creation skills allow him to shrug off enemy debuffs easier, while simultaneously boosting the consistency of his own debuffs, while his two other passives, with titles unknown as of writing, provide a combo of 200 damage cut and 150 damage up, minute boosts to his durability and damage boosts, on top of a hefty passive 10% Arts Booster, and a boost to his Instant Death Success rate. Huzzah, I suppose?
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I’d like to take some time to present Ascalphus with a prize, a bronze medal, in fact, for his outstanding accomplishment in the space of Servant evaluation. Why? Because he’s managed to earn a tied position for the 3rd-worst base NP gain in FGO! An outstanding accomplishment, if you ask me. With a base NP gain of 0.25%, he has the same as Abigail Williams, while losing out to the Assassin Valkyries, as well as the king of all the treasures in the world (including NP gain), Gilgamesh Caster.
This naturally means, even with his two 4-hit Arts cards, that base Arts gain of 1.1 is not doing him ANY favors, and I don’t think I need to explain how his 4-hit Quicks or his Extra card won’t be any better. This sort of thing isn’t a true death sentence for a Servant, heck, I’ve used both Gilgamesh Caster and Abigail pretty extensively in spite of those flaws, but it does mean he’s really going to depend on external sources for his NP gauge building.
On the flipside, his star generation is pretty great, with high hitcounts across all his cards. It’s not anything exceptional, but certainly good enough to fuel some crits following a Brave chain, so good for him.
Skill 1
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First for Ascalaphus’s skill lineup is Messenger Bird of Ill Omen. His wicked wings taking flight, this skill provides a potent 2-time, 3-turn Evasion buff and 20 Critical Stars to the team, then plasters the enemy with a bundle of debuffs - Terror (a 40% chance to Stun the enemy for 1 turn, each turn, expiring when it succeeds) for 1-time, 3 turns, a wonderfully useless 100% Instant Death Resistance down for 3 turns, and 30% Critical Rate down, also for 3 turns.
While some of those debuffs are more cosmetic than others, Terror is genuinely quite good for protecting the team, and it’s more likely to succeed with Ascalaphus’s passive Debuff Success rate boost. Combined with the Critical Rate Down and Evasion buff, this skill alone represents a huge defensive boon for the team, and that’s not even all the effects - Ascalaphus gets a 30% gauge charge upon use.
All these perks together make for an exceptionally good defensive skill that also compensates for Ascalaphus’s poor NP gain, opening up with a pretty good supportive skill. With an 8-turn base cooldown, this skill also comes back online far quicker than some team-wide Evasion/Invincible skills, which is a great perk.
Skill 2
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Next up is Pruning the Garden of Shades, a skill referring to Ascalaphus’s position as the gardener of Hades’ orchard in the Underworld. I have to say, the owl-ification probably ruined his job term there, a great shame.
This skill is far more straightforward than the prior, providing the team with a 20% Arts Up buff for 3 turns, and 20% gauge charge, while also draining the whole enemy’s NP gauge by 1. It goes without saying the Arts boost and gauge charge is great for getting Arts allies’ NP’s ready faster, and hitting harder, but Ascalaphus himself is also an Arts-focused Servant, and this skill results in him having a 50% gauge charge as well as more damage and NP gain off his primary card type.
The number of Servants with this odd supportive NP gauge charger plus selfish NP gauge charger combo is rising significantly of late, but that hardly makes it any less useful. The enemy NP gauge drain is also a neat touch, able to delay enemy NP turns slightly, so you’re more capable of getting Ascalaphus’s team Evasion buff online before the next devastating NP. Speaking of which, this skill shares the same 8-turn cooldown at base, so they come back online simultaneously.
Skill 3
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Last and certainly far from least among Ascalaphus’s skill kit is Pomegranate of No Return. As one might expect from the name, this is the fabled delicious fruit that Persephone ate in the Underworld, condemning her to reside there “forever”, but in actuality during the season of Winter to be a mythological analogy for the turning of the seasons. In case you didn’t know, Greek Mythology explicitly explains Winter being because Demeter is sad she can’t see her daughter, so she makes crops fail and ruins the weather. Fun.
At any rate, this skill hardly ruins anything, providing an absurd combo of benefits for a chosen ally - a 3-time Guts buff, Buff Removal Immunity, a 30% Attack Up buff, and a 20% NP Strength Up buff, all for 3 turns. On top of that, the target ALSO gets a 50% NP gauge charge on use. All those benefits make it, punch for punch, the strongest single-target buff in the game.
…so naturally, it has a harsh downside, putting the chosen Servant on a timer for 3 turns, at the end of which they’re Sacrificed, dying even through Guts effects. While this kind of effect is hardly new, the way this is a targeted buff means it comes into play quite differently.
After all, we currently use a damaging Servant for 3 turns in a Koyanskaya loop before throwing Oberon in the ring and condemning them to eternal sleep, which is essentially the same thing as death. And the real kicker is that death is often a beneficial effect in FGO if you plan around it. After a 3-turn cycle of buffs ends, the damaging Servant usually has run out of the offensive buffs applied by both themselves and their support team, and becomes something of a deadweight unless they have great Critical Damage buffs off of their NP or something. With this skill, you can tag out your first offensive Servant as soon as they become a liability, putting a fresh Servant in the ring, and with an Order Change Mystic Code, you can even put in a fresh Support Servant to get them set up, too.
Just to re-iterate, the combo of offensive buffs on this skill are a fantastic damage boost, as is the 50% gauge charge, and even the Guts and Buff Removal Resist is absurdly useful in difficult content, essentially ensuring said Servant lasts the 3-turn duration. But those benefits in combo with the death effect makes it even better, since you can make any Servant tag out once their usefulness expires.
As is expected of such a powerful skill, the base cooldown is an absurdly long 12 turns at base. You’re unlikely to get a second shot with it, but even one shot is enough for most content, so it hardly matters.
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With all that talk of supportive potential, I almost forgot Ascalaphus has a damaging NP. That being Prominima ti Satichias, an Arts AOE NP. Or in other words, the criminal responsible for his abysmally low base NP gain. But let’s put that aside for a short while, and focus on this NP’s effects.
For a modern NP this thing is absurdly straightforward - Ascalaphus deals his damage first, with a +50% Effective damage multiplier (Scaling with Overcharge) against foes with Instant Death Resistance Down, then tries to take advantage of that debuff with a 100% Instant Death Effect. He even gets a second shot at it if the terrain is Hell, though I doubt that will be relevant often unless he’s buddy-buddy with Dante. I’ll make the usual declaration that Instant Death effects are usually useless, because even regular NPC enemies of Silver or higher quality have a naturally solid Instant Death rate (The number you multiply by the Instant Death chance to get the actual odds of death), and most enemy Servants have special flags to increase their resistance to instant death, too. The types of foes you have a good chance of killing with Instant Death are so weak that Ascalaphus’s NP damage will kill them anyway, so it really is redundant most of the time.
What is important about this NP is its built-in damage multiplier, one that Ascalaphus can set up himself. While the fact it’s tied to a debuff means you have to conserve his first skill for the final wave of a farming loop, it’s still a significant damage boost that stacks multiplicatively with other damage buffs, notably raising his damage output.
And with farming on the mind, let’s look into his damage output and refund. With all of his buffs active on himself, Ascalaphus’s NP is doing an absurd 38k damage against neutral targets, the sort of number bad single-target NPs tend to deal. While that’s only applicable for the enemies he has Instant Death Resistance down on, it’s impressive regardless. At the same time, he’ll get 23.4% NP gauge in refund, impressive given how few boosts he has to NP gain in his own kit.
So let’s put that into practice. With a Black Grail (since his gauge chargers are so good he obviously doesn’t need a 50% gauge CE) and double Castoria, Ascalaphus will easily perform a 3-turn farming loop, dishing out 97k damage neutral on wave 1, 110k on wave 2, and a hefty 205k damage on wave 3. Given he’s an Alter Ego, he’s not truly going to perform like a universal farmer with those damage numbers against Knight classes, but given those damage numbers are competitive even without class advantage, at any time he does have class advantage, he’s hitting just as hard as Servants with a proper 2.0x multiplier.
So how does Ascalaphus perform, in the end? Well on the one hand, he’s emblematic of the bounties of the beneath - the glittering, alluring gemstones and succulent fruits that come to bear only from the bounty of the Styx:
+Ascalaphus is genuinely a great AOE Alter Ego overall. His damage output is great and generally can compete with many Servants in spite of the lesser Class Advantage multiplier he has access to, and the high refund of his NP in combination with his multiple gauge chargers means it’s easy for him to function in a variety of setups. In higher difficulty content he gets even more useful, with his NP’s effective damage multiplier able to work for multiple NP’s on the same wave, instead of a single shot.
+The place where Ascalaphus really shines, however, is his supportive capabilities. The support he provides on paper is already absurdly good - 70% gauge charge, 20% Arts Booster, 30% Attack Up, 20% NP Strength Up, an ensemble that’s good for any Servant, and exceptional for Arts Servants. But combined with his defensive support options like his team Evasion and NP gauge drain, he really feels like a supercharged Arts version of Oberon. The real cherry on top, however, is his ability to kill off his supported ally once the buff window expires, providing a fresh-faced Servant to immediately join the fray. I’ve said before that being able to take out your own Servant on demand is essentially like performing an Order Change, but that’s usually limited by the circumstance you can pull it off. Since Ascalaphus automatically does it to any Servant of your choice at the time you would want them to disappear, anyway, he’s by default the best way of accomplishing this.
However, the allure of the dark is dangerous for good reason, and not every iteration of Hades is the kind with a buried heart of gold, a big, black beard and two games named after him:
-The irony of all this talk about removing a Servant from play the instant their usefulness and 3-turn buff window expires is that, in a supportive role, Ascalaphus is basically in that exact position. None of his buffs improve his regular card damage by a significant degree, his own NP provides no team utility (though damage is a form of utility, I guess), and if he’s using his third skill on another ally, he himself has no recourse to get off the field without dying the old-fashioned way or using an Order Change Mystic Code. What I mean is, compared to the Merlins, Castorias, or Summer Tiamats of the world, Ascalaphus offers very little to a team while in a supportive role after his 3-turn buffs expire, and he can just sit around and dish out mediocre regular card damage. He’s not the type of support you want lingering on the field during a drawn out battle…much like Oberon. Those two are just peas in a pod, really.
It really feels like a memo got passed around Lasengle HQ over the past few months that it’s fine to print out SSR’s that can compete with Castoria, now. While Archer of the Apocalypse was filled with a lot of caveats in the scenarios she outclasses Castoria, with Ascalaphus…frankly he has a much better shot.
For one, Ascalaphus has a kit of defensive tools, and said tools are pretty damn good. A 2-time Evasion buff isn’t outclassing Castoria NP, but most of the time it fulfils the same purpose, and his other defensive tools like the Critical Rate debuff and NP gauge drain shouldn’t be overlooked, either. And the offensive benefits he provides certainly outstrip Castoria - he completes the triad of damage buffs that stack multiplicatively by himself, unlike Castoria, and he even slaps Buff Removal Immunity on the ally he’s supporting, shielding them from the same scenario that Castoria runs into, and struggles with, fairly often - boss fights where they perform buff removal on attack, NP, or gauge break.
And most importantly, Ascalaphus is the best way of forcibly killing off your own Servants to bring in a new one, a technique that really pays off in difficult fights where the limitations on Order Change Mystic Codes and your own team’s durability can really hinder itself.
He does have his own issues to deal with, particularly in drawn-out battles, but those are really just a product of what the boy specializes in - hard-and-fast hitting offense that cycles through Servants as fast as possible. Being able to survive for 10 turns with a defensive NP that saves the team doesn’t matter if you’re tagging out heavy hitters for more heavy hitters the instant their offensive buffs fall off - Ascalaphus aims to end quests he’s deployed on within 6 turns, and boy does he excel at it. All the while, he can play ball as a dependable offensive AOE Servant if you desire. I really am echoing half the stuff I said for Archer of the Apocalypse, here.
Unsurprisingly, he gets a Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation.
Outro
Th-th-that’s all, folks!
While at the time of writing, Gray Lily is datamined in the game files, she hasn’t been made obtainable yet, and with a suspicious lack of skill that lets her switch between her classes in her kit, I’m going to avoid burning myself later by evaluating her only to get slapped by a mid-event Skill Strengthening…for the third time.
That’s why she’s not included in this issue, at least. Ascalaphus himself is more than enough to savor, so don’t feel too bad about it.
In the meantime, enjoy the amenities of our marvellous theme park, and don’t forget to buy an express pass, lest you remain waiting in line…for all eternity! Or something similarly ominous! Muahahahaha!