MMM - Indignant Ignoramus of an Indian Icon Ignites Ionic Invocations, I Intone In Irrevocable Insight - Ick. (Indra Banner)

With a base NP gain of 0.55%, Indra’s BBAQQ card deck brings home a base Arts gain of 2.2 with his 4-hit Arts card. More or less dead on average for a Servant with a single Arts card, his Quick cards are surprisingly decent due to their 5 hits apiece and Indra’s passive Riding, while his Extra card is pretty poor for NP gain, as is often standard for high Arts hitcount Servants.

On the flipside, Indra’s star generation is spectacular, with high hitcounts across his whole kit, a general Quick focus, and his passive star generation boost all resulting in a very star-dense series of regular cards. As is often the case, Indra’s capabilities to produce critical stars can supplement his NP gain to a degree, so he’s pretty good on both ends of his generation stats.

Skill 1

First on Indra’s skill lineup is King of the Gods. While I’d never dream of bowing to him, Indra at least meets the basic checklist for an SSR Servant, this skill providing a 50% gauge charge on use. In addition, Indra gets a 1-turn buff that doubles up on his passive NP gauge gain upon healing, meaning he gets a total of 20% NP gauge per instance of healing (with those restrictions) for 1 turn.

This skill naturally covers the standard requirement of a 50% gauge charger, and the bonus effect essentially exists to synergize with Indra’s instant NP - his NP provides a heal on use, so he essentially gets a 10% refund from it normally, bumped up to 20% on the turn you use this. Comboed with a healing Mystic Code or the right team support, Indra can stack up a surprising amount of gauge charge in one turn.

The only shame is that this is all the skill does. 50% gauge charge with a 10% bonus to refund as well as some situational additional gauge charge is pretty mediocre for a modern gauge charge, though better to have it at all. At the very least the base cooldown of 8 turns is as expected.

Skill 2

Next for the skill lineup is Mana Burst (Divine Lightning). Already acting as an upgrade from his child’s (Raiko) own rendition of Mana Burst, this skill provides a 20% boost to every card type for 3 turns, as well as a duo of buffs that provide a 10% Quick Up buff for 3 turns when using Buster/Arts cards, and a 10% Critical Damage Up buff for the same duration after using Quick cards.

Regardless of your card choice, Indra definitely heads down the Quick card pipeline. The way the duration on his own-hit buffs pans out means you can stack a pretty significant sum of buffs if you focus on using Indra cards, doubly so if you can use his NP frequently, as it activates the critical damage buff.

Regardless it’s a solid offensive steroid skill, providing fairly minute damage buffs but spread across basically all his cards as well as crits, so it’s hard to not benefit from it. The base 8-turn cooldown is a little long, but isn’t abnormal for a 3-turn steroid skill with so many benefits.

Skill 3

Last but far from least of Indra’s skillset is Vritrahan, literally his title meaning the Slayer of Vritra. Due to my prior gripes with this fraud of a God who can’t even slay one dragon without external help, I spit upon this title.

The actual effects of this skill only deserve respect, though. A straightforward self-buffing skill, this provides a +30% Attack and Critical Damage boost to Indra for 3 turns, this skill also provides a similar duo of 30% Effective damage versus both Dragon/Lamia trait foes and Demonic foes, stacking together for a hefty 60% versus Demonic serpentine foes and the like. Obviously meant to cement that anti-Vritra power, though pretty much every single Oni also gets caught in the crossfire by nature of being either a Dragon or Lamia as well.

In general, all these traits are relatively common in NPC’s. Dragons show up frequently in high level farming nodes, and a surprising number of foes qualify as Lamias, including Manticores and the tentacle monster things Gilles de Rais summons. In concert with the very-common Demonic trait among powerful NPC’s, Indra will crush most generic enemies with these effective damage boosts.

But that’s not ignoring the always-applicable Attack and Critical Damage buffs here. With the damage boosts already available to him, this combo provides a competent boost to both Indra’s NP damage and Critical Damage output, the latter especially he’s capable of capitalizing upon.

As if you would expect it to be anything else, Indra’s NP is Shakra Vajra, the truest and most powerful form of his iconic weapon. I can diss him on a number of things, but I can’t deny Vajras look cool as hell.

This is a Quick AOE NP, so I’ll be going into Indra’s looping and farming potential as a result, but let’s go over the effects:

Before dealing damage, Indra gets a +10% NP Damage buff for 1 turn, scaling with Overcharge, and he also removes all Buffs from his targets, producing an incredibly potent combo in player hands, and an incredibly annoying one as an enemy. He then deals his damage to all enemies, with no special frills, lastly recovering his HP by 3000 (3600 after his passive factors in), and gaining 10% gauge charge as a result due to the same passive.

While the effects of this NP aren’t numerous, they are pretty good. The damage boost he gets on NP turn isn’t significant, but it does finish the trinity of NP steroids for him, ensuring he isn’t missing out on a multiplicative boost, and the buff removal is a house of an effect that can negate some of the most difficult gimmicks in challenging content. The self-healing is the icing on the cake, providing reliable sustain to his otherwise defensively-vulnerable kit, and a free 10% gauge refund as a knock-on effect.

But how effective is that gauge refund, you ask? Well, with the 6 hits on his NP, and his own buffs active, Indra nets a baseline refund of 12.8% from his NP, becoming 22.8% after his natural gauge refund, or 32.8% if his first skill was used that turn. If you throw him into a typical double Summer Skadi farming setup with a 50% gauge CE, that refund bumps up to about 42% total (52% if he used his gauge charger the same turn). It’s a little sketchy, but with the right Mystic Code choice Indra can manage 3-turn farming loops without any inconsistent shenanigans, provided he’s getting the overkill boost from slaying his targets.

As for the damage output in such a setup, with the aforementioned 50% gauge CE and dual Summer Skadi support, he’s dishing out 76k damage neutral on wave 1, the same on wave 2, then 87.5k or so on wave 3. Nothing spectacular, but it’s enough to farm his class advantage, and if he’s netting his effective damage he deals damage exceeding 110k neutral, so it’s not like he can’t dish out some real pain. So far as I know Indra’s refund capabilities isn’t enough to use Black Grail without depending on double Koyanskaya, which we obviously don’t want, so he can use Oberon in his setups with battlesuit swap for a moderate damage boost, resulting in a much more respectable 200k damage neutral (more or less) on wave 3, though obviously that means more busywork.

Regardless of the specifics, Indra is a competent Quick farmer that doesn’t need battlesuit shenanigans to farm on the most convenient setup, so he’s fairly good in that department overall.