MMM - Mooncancer-Malicious Maven Manifests Monopoly, or Maybe Mario Party, Manipulating Maverick Master Much like a Marionette (Kazuradrop)

As an SSR Alter-Ego, Kazuradrop is frankly pretty poorly statted. With the second-lowest Attack of her class and rarity, she trades off a small amount of HP for slightly more attack than Kotomine, and despite that is entirely outclassed by Kiara, Tiamat, AND Sitonai in base stats. So she essentially has solid bulk, but gets an incredibly poor deal out of it, losing a significant amount of value in attack.

Thankfully Alter Egos on the whole have pretty high Attack stats, so she’s still not in awful shape, ending up being middling on the offensive side of things, instead of Sheherazade levels of attack.

She gets a better deal out of her passives, packing some solid debuff resistance courtesy of Magic Resistance, and a notable boost to her Arts cards from Territory Creation. She also packs a unique passive in Hatred of Kin, providing not only a 30% Effective Damage bonus versus every Sakura Series enemy (which is BB, Meltlilith, Passionlip, Kingprotea, Kazuradrop, or any variant of them, as well as enemies with obvious sakura flower motifs), but also a massive 75% effective damage boost against those who share Kazuradrop’s class. While this translates into offensive class advantage versus Alter Egos normally, you might note that the way it’s worded opens up potential shenanigans, which you’ll see more of soon.

So while Kazuradrop’s base stats leave a lot to be desires, her passives are solid, and open an avenue for significantly higher damage than you might expect from a typical Alter Ego.

With a base NP gain of 0.68% and a BAAQQ card deck, Kazuradrop’s base Arts gain is… pretty darn good, coming out to 2.28 after her Territory Creation’s factored in, well above the average for Servants with 2 Arts cards.

This theme continues more or less with her other cards, her 4-hit Quicks providing a little above average in NP gauge, her Buster being decent though nothing spectacular, and her Extra being about average on NP gauge generation.

Managing strong NP gain on all her cards is pretty impressive given her hitcounts across the board are reasonably high, so she also produces a good amount of stars on any given chain, and she will splurge out stars in general due to being Quick-focused.

There’s really not much more to say, she’s strong in both areas, and that contributes to her solid foundation overall.

Skill 1

First on Kazuradrop’s skill list is Pixie Finger. Reprising her role as a faerie in LB6, her fae power starts with two curious utility effects - a enemy-team gauge drop and a significant 30% boost to her Debuff Success Rate for 3 turns.

This buff alone is enough to let Kazuradrop bypass most Servants’ passive Debuff Resistance, and take a huge chunk of the inconsistency off of landing debuffs when tackling the Goddess Core Servants with around 40-50% passive Debuff Resistance. The reason this is essential is due to the second part of this skill.

She applies the appropriately-named Pixie Finger buff to herself for 2 turns which, for the next 2 upcoming turns, applies a 50% Quick Resist Down and 50% Critical Resistance Down to every enemy for 1 turn. This is a curious effect both because it applies 1-turn debuffs in a delayed fashion, but also because it’s the first source of Critical Resistance Down in player hands.

While it might be confusing at first, Critical Resistance Down isn’t resistance to whether you get crit or not, but to the critical damage itself. So in other words it’s a 50% Critical Damage buff for the team, in delayed debuff form.

The cherry on the cake is this skill also does the same debuff to every enemy on the turn it’s used, so it’s essentially a team +50% Quick Booster and +50% Critical Damage buff for 3 turns that jumps through some hoops to accomplish it. While it’s an odd way of doing it, the damage boost is great, and it also comes packaged with NP gauge drops and the Debuff Success Rate Up buff that pay in other ways.

With all these perks, the 8-turn base cooldown is pretty fair overall, it’s a very potent offensive steroid for the team.

Skill 2

Next up is Sakura Eater. This skill is elegant in its simplicity, providing Kazuradrop 50% NP gauge charge on use, as is typical for any SSR in modern FGO, but also providing an additional 50% NP gauge for every Sakura Series unit on the field, besides herself. So if you’re kicking BB’s ass, she gets 100% NP gauge on use. If you’re kicking BB’s ass and both Melt and Passionlip are along for the ride, it’s a hefty 200% gauge charge.

Obviously the potential peaks of this skill are colossal, but gauge chargers become significantly weaker past 100% overall (unless you have a very good NP Overcharge bonus or skills that consume NP gauge), so in practice you would only want to net one singular Sakura Series ally to benefit from this.

It’s a shame she isn’t a Mooncancer, since reaping the bonus supportive effects from BB Dubai would make them a dynamic duo on top of the boost to her gauge charger, but regardless it’s a powerful effect, especially if you’re facing down a Sakura Series Servant, as she also nets her effective damage bonus.

And this skill isn’t just a plain 50% gauge charge if there’s no Sakura Series units to be found - as a consolation prize Kazuradrop gets to…reduce her skill cooldown by 1 instead. Man, that guy with the Mooncancers using skill cooldown reduction didn’t get fired for unoriginality, I see.

Gauge chargers are always great. This one might be a little bit more on the circumstantial side, but the benefits are good no matter what, so it’s a fine skill for her to have, the cooldown also being normal for a 50% gauge charge.

Skill 3

Last but far from least is Moon Chrysalis. This is a reset button, providing a hefty 5k HP heal to Kazuradrop and a debuff cleanse, but it also performs a very unique effect - she copies the class of the targeted enemy, becoming their class for 3 turns, so long as it’s a playable class that isn’t either of the Beast Servants.

While this seems hard to utilise on paper, we shouldn’t forget her Hatred of Kin passive, providing a hefty +75% damage boost versus enemies of her same class. So she can transform into her target’s class, gaining a sudden and major damage boost, one that even eclipses her Alter Ego class advantage against Horsemen.

And if you’re worried about this skill being a negative for the Foreigner matchup, where she usually has class advantage, don’t forget Foreigners have offensive class advantage against each other, so at least offensively, she’ll net a significant damage boost even in her best matchup. To surmise, when she doesn’t have class advantage or versus Foreigners it’s a +75% damage boost, when she’s fighting Horsemen class Servants it’s essentially a +25% damage boost, and when she’s fighting Berserkers it’s about a 62.5% damage boost, since she trades 2x class advantage for 1.5x.

If that weren’t enough, this skill also slaps a huge 50% Defence Down debuff on the target enemy. That means this skill is a total of +162.5% damage versus a single enemy for 3 turns.

Clearly that’s an obscene damage boost, especially since you can get that bonus on all forms of damage - normal cards, crits, NP, whatever. The fact it affects only a single target and can be awkward to use on waves with multiple different classes does hold it back a little, but the perks to this skill are still spectacular. Like all her other skills, it has an 8-turn base cooldown.

To round her whole kit off, we have Gallitrap - Funny Murian. As a Quick AOE NP we’ll look into her looping capability, but let’s hammer out the effects first. A rarity nowadays, this NP does its damage before anything else, with nothing special about it. Then, afterwards, it applies a plethora of debuffs.

The 20% Attack Down for 3 turns, 20% Defence Down for 3 turns (Scaling with Overcharge), and 40% Stun for 1 turn debuffs might seem innocuous, but with her Debuff Success Rate Up buff they become scarily consistent, the Stun leaping to 70% chance on targets with no Debuff Resistance, and the other debuffs are all but guaranteed on most targets. It might not have a before-damage steroid, but the ramping damage and defensive boost are useful in challenge quest scenarios, something she’ll be rather effective at due to her flexible class advantage (in multiple-class enemy quests) and general capability to ignore her natural class most of the time.

But putting that all aside for now, let’s look at Kazuradrop’s looping capabilities. With just her own kit active, her NP produces a base refund of 12%. Admittedly not that spectacular, but thrown into a 50% NP Gauge CE setup with double Ruler Skadi, it becomes 29% accounting for the Overkill bonus you get for the killing hit. That’s still not great, but 29% NP gauge is essentially the bare minimum you need to produce to manage 3-turn loops that don’t tear the user’s hair out, allowing her to 3-turn loop with anyone like Oberon, Reines, Castoria or Waver on Battlesuit swap.

For damage output in such setups, I’ll assume you’re using Oberon (since I’m most used to calculating for him) and for the sake of convenience, every enemy in the quest is the same class, as that’s usually the case for farming. On Wave 1, she’ll do 103k damage neutral. On Wave 2, that jumps to 121k, then lastly on Wave 3, she’ll do 169k neutral.

Those damage numbers are pretty damn insane, especially for a setup without Black Grail or a particularly damage-focused Battlesuit swap support (at least, compared to vanilla Skadi), but it’s worth bearing in mind she will almost never have “class advantage” on top of the damage numbers listed, since she’s changing to the class of the enemies in the farming node. That’s partially why she gets such a huge +75% damage boost from her passive, because otherwise swapping to the same class as the enemy is essentially a damage loss in ideal circumstances, but for an Alter Ego specifically it’s always an upside, which is honestly a clever design for her kit - since Alter Ego is the only class whose specific 2x class advantage is also equally strong against itself.

Point being, she trades off having pseudo-class advantage versus (nearly) every playable class for never having a practical class advantage (like most Extra class Servants). But hey, being a pseudo-Berserker is mainly an upside, so who’s complaining?

The main issue is just her weak NP refund, making Black Grail setups…probably possible, but incredibly awkward to plan out, and certainly subject to class defensive NP gain modifiers. This would be far less of an issue if there were a stronger Sakura Series support for Quick Servants, but the closest is, well, herself. Double Kazuradrop farming setups are something you can do, as they both give each-other a 100% gauge charger, meaning if you have a buddy with a Black Grail Kazuradrop support you can use either Kazuradrop’s NP’s for waves 1+2 then use Ruler Skadi then Oberon via Battlesuit swap to set up the last NP. The damage output in such a setup is pretty obscene, with the last NP doing 265k damage neutral if my calculations are correct, but expecting such a convenience on your Support list is a lot to ask.

So how is Kazuradrop on the whole? Well, from one side of things she’s more than capable of surpassing (...and eating) her siblings:

• +While she accomplishes it in a very abnormal way, Kazuradrop is essentially a Berserker with fewer drawbacks. By copying the enemy’s class she scores huge offensive benefits, with only a few fringe cases where it doesn’t result in such a damage boost. Paired with her capability for farming, she can serve as a very versatile universal farmer, dishing out very respectable damage numbers even without Black Grail.

• +In more drawn out, difficult fights, Kazuradrop really gets to shine. The continual Stun and debuffs from her NP have a high chance to work, and drastically improve the team’s damage output and durability, especially when paired with the offensive boosts off Pixie Finger. With the healing, self-debuff cleanse, and NP gauge drain also at her disposal, she’s capable of fighting a long haul in tough fights, which is doubly meaningful when her capability to adapt her class means she essentially has class advantage for every fight, while her 3rd skill is active.

However, she’s also an overconfident brat that really needs to keep her vore fetish out of BB’s likeness - Giantess is the only fetish she subscribes to.

• -Even with the boost she can net to her Debuff Success Rate, Kazuradrop’s offence and frankly most of her game plan being dependent on debuffs is a double-edged sword. While it does allow for her to share her offensive benefits with the whole team, it hits a road bump versus very high Debuff Resistance targets, or, even worse, enemies with Debuff Immunity. Even if she’s capable of fighting every class in theory, certain matchups are naturally worse for her, so think twice when throwing her against Servants with Goddess Core, or with inherently strong debuff protection like Golden Rule (Body) users.

• -While her trick with copying classes disguises it quite well, Kazuradrop’s damage output is, in fact, pretty low when you compare it to other Servants with 2x class advantage. She only has a +50% Quick Booster for damage steroids in her own kit without it, and as I’ve said before, her class changing gimmick essentially is Berserker class Advantage in disguise, since she can’t benefit from any class advantage besides Foreigner-on-Foreigner violence using it. While she still nets the perk of essentially having class advantage on everyone, her damage output will pretty much always be outclassed by a specialised Servant netting class advantage, and will struggle to handle 90++ farming nodes so far as damage output goes.

Kazuradrop really grasps that “I don’t belong with my kind” energy both for the Sakura Series with her self-hate, and by being an Alter Ego that functionally isn’t ever an Alter Ego so far as class advantage goes.

Kit-defining gimmicks can be hit-and-miss at times, but in Kazuradrop’s case, her gimmick essentially providing global class advantage on a 3-turn buff cycle is one hell of a perk, even if her offensive capabilities on the grander scheme of things suffer for it. She has plenty of utility and payoffs within her kit to synergize both with existing Quick support Servants, as well as keep the team alive long enough in difficult content to reap the benefits of her ramping damage output and debuff-layering game plan.

The biggest drawback to her is both how inconvenient her farming can be, requiring battlesuit swap at almost all times to work as well as not doing 90++ node-worthy damage output, and the fact she gets stonewalled by debuff immunity or just poor luck versus Servants with high passive Debuff Resistance. While you can argue that having to tap out versus a small pool of debuff-resistant foes is a fine price for a Servant with effectively universal class advantage, it still adds an asterisk to the label of a universal farmer, especially one with more inconvenient farming setups than most, and lower damage output when her competitors are netting their class advantage.

Regardless, she’s pretty fine as a Quick farmer and multi-tool for difficult content, and she can certainly net a lot of cheese wins versus bosses by just Stun-locking and refilling her NP gauge with her high regular card NP gain and stargen (by merit of being a Quick Servant), with continual healing and strong NP gauge charge to keep the train rolling. While not the strongest Servant around, she’s more than good enough for anyone seeking a versatile Quick AOE damage dealer that can handle farming or harder content. Rath™ Seal of Approval.