MMM - Fringe Freelancer made Fraud in Flagrant Forgery of Falsehoods, Fantastical Floozie Forms From Thin Air (Phantasmoon)

With a 0.58% base NP gain and a BBAAQ card deck, Phantasmoon’s base Arts gain on her 3-hit Arts comes out at 1.74, slightly above average, though nothing spectacular. Her 4-hit Quick card is nothing special, though not bad for NP gain, while her 5-hit Busters are actually pretty good for NP gain, producing a baseline 3% NP gauge in Arts chains. In a similar fashion, her 5-hit Extra is decent for NP gain, though not fantastic either.

On the other side of things, Phantasmoon’s star generation is pretty good for her card deck, even discounting her passive. The high hits on her Busters and Quick produce a large quantity of stars, and the Pretender class’s high base stargen pushes those high hitcounts even further, so she can produce a solid amount of stars in the right chains, though nothing absurd.

In both NP gauge and star generation, Phantasmoon is just pretty solid, not spectacular on either end, but not critically flawed, either. She might have to rely on her supports to generate either, but there’s plenty of room to manage that with the right compositions.

Skill 1

First on Phantasmoon’s skill lineup is Earth-Heart Rhythm. I have to say, typing it in that order is awkward for me, since I’m so used to the Yugioh card Heart-eartH Dragon. And yes, it is spelt that way - shoutouts to my Draglubion or Utopia Dragonar gamers.

Focusing on the game at hand, this skill is a team NP gauge boosting skill in every sense of the word, providing a hefty 30% gauge charge to the whole party, as well as a 20% NP Strength Up buff and a 1-time Overcharge boost buff for 3 turns. Those who have gone from using Castoria in setups to dropping her for one reason or another know how valuable a 30% team gauge charger is, so having access to that on anyone is superb. Combined with any 20% team gauge charge it adds up to 50%, which can let a whole lineup of Servants NP on turn 1 with 50% gauge charge CE’s, something that is often useful in difficult content, or more complex farming setups that require multiple damage dealers.

Needless to say, getting that on top of a NP damage steroid and Overcharge is fantastic. Lady Avalon gets a similar package in her team gauge charge and it’s similarly spectacular, setting up high-Overcharge Castoria NP’s like it’s nothing, or simply boosting the damage output of certain NP’s far beyond their normal capabilities.

With how great this skill is, it’s no surprise it’s saddled with a 9-turn base cooldown. Hm, team gauge charger on a 9-turn base cooldown? That’s just like Arcueid! Must just be a coincidence, but like Arcueid she can deal with it using the skill cooldown reduction append skill to still use it twice in 3 turns with double Koyanskaya, should that be relevant.

Skill 2

Next up is Red Star Vamp. I’m sure it just refers to a red giant star somewhere in the solar system, not like a Crimson Moon or anything. We all know “Star” in Japanese can refer to any celestial body, but that’s probably nothing to worry about.

This is a…triple-card booster skill, but not of the three types you’d expect. Getting a +30% boost to both her Buster and Arts cards for 3 turns, Phantasmoon also gets a hefty +100% Extra card boost for the same duration, as well as AOE Extra card attacks at 50% power for 3 turns. In other words, her Extra cards essentially do the same damage, but hit AOE. Same deal as Super Aoko, which is probably just to flex on her fellow Type-Moon Heroine. She even has the accessories of Aoko (Blue ribbon), Saber (3rd ascension crown) and Arcueid (she’s not Arcueid, after all) in her final ascension art to assert dominance.

In addition to those boosts to almost all her regular cards, she also gets a 20% gauge charge, which…yep, adds up to a 50% gauge charge. No SSR can escape it in the modern FGO economy - you WILL have a 50% gauge charge, or else you suck.

Naturally, this damage boost and the additional capability for AOE damage are both excellent benefits for Phantasmoon to reap, though I can say through experience with Super Aoko that unless her overall attack power is REALLY amped up, you won’t be able to do anything insane like clear an AOE farming wave with an Extra card. It’s mostly just a nice ribbon effect to pair with the damage boost to her primary card types and the gauge charge. The 8-turn base cooldown on this skill is fair given the benefits, all in all.

Skill 3

Last for the skill lineup is Blue Glass Moon. Hey, it’s not even a piece of it, we get the whole damn thing. I don’t think I can fit that in a present, though.

This is a buff skill that’s packed to the gills, providing a 15-star bomb on use, as well a colossal star absorption buff and 15 stars/turn buff to the targeted ally. These two benefits alone basically ensure the chosen party member will crit on every card every turn for the next 3 turns, since with Phantasmoon’s passive 5 stars a turn, you’re basically getting around 30 stars at minimum on a typical turn. And the max buff value of +5000% star weight on this skill means even a Berserker will end up with over double the star weight of a Rider with its benefits, yoinking every star for that turn before anyone else.

Usually, though, you’ll provide those buffs to Phantasmoon herself, since this skill also provides a +20% Attack buff and +30% Critical Damage buff to the team for 3 turns, giving her something of a head start on the critical damage. Though naturally the whole team benefits from those buffs.

Simply put, this is a skill that resolves any issues supplying critical stars to a given damage dealer, and simultaneously boosts their damage output a fair bit. Phantasmoon can use those benefits perfectly fine, but the flexibility is certainly convenient. The 8-turn base cooldown on this skill is pretty reasonable given its power, but also lines up with her second skill’s cooldown so they don’t end up misaligned.

We come to Phantasmoon’s NP, Marble Phantasm - Happy Verse. This is a Buster ST NP that thankfully spares me the stress of refund calculations, but does come with a host of effects, which I’ll get into.

This NP leads with the damage immediately, packing a +50% Effective damage modifier versus Evil trait foes, scaling with Overcharge. This is an absolutely stellar (no pun intended) effect to have on a ST NP, especially on a Servant with a broad class advantage. I rate Astraea as one of the best Servants in the game for many reasons, but one of them is that anti-Evil on single-target NP’s is phenomenal for tackling the game’s difficult content. To give you an idea, I count at a glance 35 major story boss NPC’s that have the Evil trait, and on top of those there are numerous playable Servants that are major story bosses with the Evil trait down the line, such as The Count of Monte Cristo and Oberon, to name to particularly strong examples.

Simply put, if you throw a Servant with anti-Evil effective damage into a difficult fight, there’s like, a coin flip’s chance you’ll do effective damage. Punching extra hard when you need it most is, of course, very useful.

Since Phantasmoon seems to never miss with the handy NP effects, the next is also a banger. NP Seal is often an underrated debuff, one that prevents the enemy from NP’ing while active, but also (typically) disabling NP gauge charging, or the passive NP gauge gain enemies get each turn at least. On skills it’s kind of like a NP Gauge reduction that has to get through debuff resistance, but on NP’s, especially spammable ones, it’s particularly scary. Every single time you NP with Phantasmoon, you’re delaying the target’s NP by one turn, and if you can keep up multiple NP’s on a loop, that means the boss never gets to use their NP, even if they have a dumb gauge break full NP gauge charge that many bosses do…assuming they don’t also debuff cleanse as part of it.

You get the point, at any rate. Delaying and preventing the enemy NP is great for the team’s continued longevity, which means less time spent protecting the team and more time smashing them with your magical girl.

Next is another superb effect, though it’s the last one. After the NP, Phantasmoon charges her own NP gauge by 20%, as well as every Living Human trait ally, scaling with Overcharge. While the main allure here is the fact Phantasmoon sets herself one-fifth of the way to her next NP for free, being able to charge the gauge of allied Wavers, Reines, or Mashu is fairly useful, should you form a team around it. Reines in particular synergizes with this pretty well, as a Phantasmoon NP preceded by her NP and Phantasmoon’s first skill active will get the full 500% Overcharge, providing a colossal 40% gauge charge to the both of them at basically no cost.

The last effect to this NP is pretty impactful - a +50% Extra card buff to Phantasmoon for a turn. While it adds an extra oomph in damage, stargen, and NP gain to her Extra card, the base damage of Extra cards isn’t particularly high in relativity in the first place, so the boost isn’t very impactful, even if it does mean she’ll get a lot of NP gauge and stars from her Extra card.

The notable takeaway from this NP is, despite it being a Buster NP, Phantasmoon is very capable of looping it. With just the skill cooldown Append skill unlocked and a 50% gauge charge CE, she can do a 3-turn loop with double Koyanskaya and any 50% gauge support on battlesuit swap. It’s the magic of having a 20% NP refund and 50% gauge charger split into 30/20. Given the volatile nature of her damage output given she can get two tiers of class advantage from her Pretender class and the anti-Evil effectiveness switching things up significantly, giving damage numbers probably won’t help much, but take my word that her damage output with class advantage is pretty damn good, and you have plenty of opportunities to deploy her in situations with both class advantage and anti-Evil effectiveness.