MMM - Serpentine Symbols of Sovereignty and Self-harming Sacrifice to the Snake Slither Sensationally in Sisterhood (My Little Dragon)

With a BBAQQ card deck, Biscione has a single 4-hit Arts card with 0.7% base NP gain, which comes out to a base Arts gain of 2.8. In a surprising twist, Lasengle managed to produce a Servant with high-hitcount Arts cards that doesn’t get gimped everywhere else. 2.8 base Arts gain is great even for a Servant with one Arts card, and her Quick cards similarly are fairly good, sharing the same hitcount, while her Extra card has a typical hitcount, but isn’t held back by Biscione’s solid base NP gain.

On the other side, Biscione’s stargen is fairly good. Her hitcounts aren’t crazy, but are high on the majority of cards besides her Busters, and the Lancer class’s base stargen combined with her Presence Concealment produces an above-average amount of stars per hit. Simply put, she’s unassuming on the star generation side, but punches slightly above her weight.

Skill 1

First on Biscione’s skill lineup is, just like my ideal relationship, a Toxic Fantasy. This skill can be broadly divided in two. The first half applies first, importantly, providing a 30% Debuff Success rate and 50% Critical Damage buff to Biscione herself for 3 turns. The second half immediately takes advantage of that Debuff Success rate buff, applying 2000 HP Poison, a +100% Poison Amplification debuff, and 50% Healing Reduction to all enemies for 5 turns.

As always, I’m a big DoT skeptic in this game, but it is worth noting that the sheer value on this skill is pretty good in drawn out fights - the 2000 Poison damage becomes 4000 each turn with the amplification, which pans out to 20k damage over 5 turns for every enemy. Nothing to dismiss out of hand, especially since you get that damage from just slapping the skill button. And with the Debuff Success rate buff, only the most resilient (or debuff/poison immune) foes will shrug it off. The healing reduction is also a niche benefit that might come up, as there have been a fair number of fights (including the Durga recollection quest we got just recently) that have enemies with strong regeneration over time or powerful healing effects.

Throwing all the Poison-related stuff aside, it is just a critical damage buff, but the Poison stuff will be relevant for Biscione’s overall performance, I promise, so just have faith it has value. The 8-turn cooldown is pretty long, but given it slaps every enemy with 5-turn debuffs, having it be almost-always online is pretty strong regardless.

Skill 2

Next up is Mana Burst (Dragon). This skill’s name is funny to me on a fundamental level. After all, who started the series of Mana Burst skills? Artoria, the original Saber. Why does Artoria have Mana Burst, for those who paid attention in F/SN?

Bzzt, time’s up, it’s because of her Magic Core, because Papa Pendragon thought it’d be cool to just stuff some dragon blood in his kid. So yes, the “vanilla” Mana Burst can be considered a “Mana Burst (Dragon)”, too. But hey, FGO builds contrivances all the time for the sake of gameplay, so I’ll let it pass.

This skill is a pretty standard dual-card booster skill, if the fact it’s a Mana Burst didn’t suggest it, providing +30% to both Quick and Buster cards for Biscione for 3 turns. On top of that, she gains two buffs that provide additional benefits when using those two card types - Applying a 500 HP, 5-turn Poison to the target hit when using Quick cards, and gaining a flat 5 Critical Stars on hit for the Buster cards, both of those buffs also lasting 3 turns.

It’s just a straightforward damage boost skill, but the capability to stack up Poison debuffs from this skill is pretty important for Biscione’s overall game plan, so the power is deceptively higher than you think. Lining up with her prior skill, this one also has an 8-turn base cooldown, which is frankly criminal given it’s very much on the lower end of power for 3-turn card booster skills.

Skill 3

Last on the skill lineup is Heraldic Snake. Befitting where you would normally find a crest of Heraldry, this skill has a shield for its icon, as it provides a 2-time, 3-turn Invincible buff to Biscione herself, as well as 30% gauge charge on use, and a 20% NP gain buff for 3 turns.

…Wait, that’s it? Come on, now, you can’t be giving just a 30% gauge charge to SSR’s in the year of our lord 2025. Quick teams already have enough aneurysms dealing with non-50% chargers. For what it’s worth, the NP gain boost is great for promoting the spamability of Biscione’s NP, and any amount of NP gauge charging is better than none, but it’s always rough to have level 10 Mana Loading basically be mandatory for your Servant.

And yeah, the Invincible buff is also useful as a defensive backup, but on the whole this skill just oozes disappointment. At least it doesn’t have a criminal base cooldown, matching the rest of her kit at 8 turns base.

Rounding this kit off, and explaining why I’m not dismissing all the Poison in her skill set is Visconti Ascenza, her Noble Phantasm. A single-target Quick NP, this thing will thankfully not be on the farming radar, but I’ll break down the looping potential for it regardless.

This NP has some important effects before damage, applying both 1000 HP Poison (Scaling with Overcharge) and +100% Poison Amplification for 5 turns.

On its own these two debuffs can really push Biscione’s poison damage to some impressive numbers. Combined with her existing +100% amplification and sources of Poison, she’s inflicting at least 10500 Poison damage per turn over 5 turns on an enemy she uses both her first skill and NP against in the same turn, resulting in 52.5k damage over time, as well as the additional damage you can net from her regular Quick cards. And that’s not even factoring in multiple NP’s in a row, or Command Codes applied to her regular cards that inflict Poison.

Yet somehow that’s not even the main payoff of her Poison debuffs. She then does her damage, with a +15% Super-Effective damage multiplier for each Poison debuff on the target, maxing out at 10 debuffs for +150%. The one thing I’m uncertain on is whether this counts just normal Poison debuffs or it also counts Poison Amplification, since the game itself only lists “With each Poison(毒) status that the target has”, and both Poison and Poison Amplification has that character in the name, but for now I’ll assume it only means normal Poison.

So in other words Biscione falls into the category of self-enabling effective damage Servants, which tend to be very strong if the rest of their kit holds up. Assuming you just drop all her skills and immediately NP, it’s a +30% effective damage boost, and a subsequent NP within 5 turns will get +60%, and you get the idea. In practice you’ll pretty much only use Biscione versus singular, strong bosses, so you will have a lot of Poison from regular cards added on top. If all of Biscione’s normal cards have a Poison Command Code on them (which you’re basically obligated to do), then a single 3-turn rotation’s worth of Quick cards will stack up 4 Poison debuffs on their own. It’s very likely you can keep a single enemy plastered with around 6-8 Poison debuffs at a time with ease.

But that’s not the end of it. Biscione’s NP lastly drops the NP gauge of the target by 1, a fantastic effect in difficult content that essentially keeps the enemy’s NP eternally delayed provided you’re NP’ing often.

Speaking of which, let’s break down Biscione’s refund potential and damage output. With just her own buffs in play, Biscione nets a refund of about 5.5% from one NP. Not much, but honestly pretty typical for single-target Quick NP’s. You’re unlikely to net more than 10% refund from her, but any refund is better than none. In terms of damage output, a raw Biscione NP on turn 1 with no outside support does a pretty pathetic 43k damage neutral, well below the rough 50k benchmark of “good single target damage”.

That might sound bad, but Biscione is one of those Servants that is really weak taken in a vacuum. With a 50% gauge CE and double Ruler Skadi support, we’re instead looking at a more reasonable 163k damage neutral on her first NP. Making the somewhat reasonable presumption Biscione gets 3 more Poison debuffs from her regular cards (on top of what the Quick card NP applies) by turn 2, she then deals a hefty 258k damage neutral.

And somehow, her damage only ramps up further from there. Of course, there’s plenty of caveats to this, including the investment of the reasonably-scarce Poison Command Codes (though, who else is really using them?), and a modicum of luck regarding enemy debuff resistance and card draw, but since Biscione has a long 5-turn window to capitalize on each Poison debuff it’s hard for luck to really ruin her damage output. It’s not out of the ordinary for her to hit over 1m damage with class advantage if you really focus fully on offense.

I feel the need to point out the Poison DoT damage isn’t to be ignored, either. In such a scenario where Biscione is NP’ing twice in a row, you’re already getting 20k Poison damage ticks each turn, which ramps up even more if you’re netting Poison from Quick cards or Command Codes. That’s as much damage as you usually get from a full Brave chain off a Support servant - it shouldn’t just be dismissed. In a drawn out-fight, you can expect Biscione to inflict well over 100k damage from just Poison damage, provided the debuffs don’t get resisted or cleansed.

With a Base NP Gain of 0.62% and 3-hit Arts cards, Kurohime’s base Arts gain is a very average 1.86, but expressed in a form that weakens her other cards’ NP gain, the curse of your Base NP Gain tanking for the sake of the hitcount on your Arts card.

While Kurohime’s Quicks aren’t the worst for NP gain, packing 4 hits to their name, her Buster and Extra card aren’t anything spectacular, so her NP gain as a whole ends up very average, which is becoming something of a common theme at this point.

Unsurprisingly, Kurohime’s mediocrity extends to stargen, too, having good hitcounts on her Quick cards but nothing else particularly stand-out to supplement it, so she’s more of a Servant who doesn’t have bad star generation, but you can’t expect anything more than that out of her.

Skill 1

Don’t you love it when the first part of a Servant’s kit invalidates some of the weaknesses from their base stats? Protection of the Mountain God is a hell of a package skill for Kurohime, providing a 2-time, 3-turn Evasion buff, a 15 Critical Stars per turn buff for 3 turns, and a 30% NP Strength Up buff to Kurohime herself for 3 turns, that also extends to any Snake or Dragon allies she’s paired with.

Unsurprisingly the list of Servants who have the Snake or Dragon traits are pretty self-evident - if they have snake parts they’re a Snake, if they are a dragon in physicality or lore they’re a Dragon. There are some funny cases like OG Shuten, who has absolutely no dragon or snake parts, simply has both traits for being the child of the Yamata-no-Orochi, as shown with Ibuki-douji. Regardless, both traits are more widespread than you might think, and total roughly 50 Servants.

Regardless it’s a pretty solid offensive buff skill that doubles as star generation, and a defensive option all in one. Getting the bonus team buff is nice, but probably isn’t necessary, especially since it only applies to NP damage. As one might expect for a defensive skill, it comes with an 8-turn base cooldown.

Skill 2

Next up is Soul-Enchanting Hair. This is a very standard dual-card buff skill, providing a +30% boost to both Kurohime’s Quick and Arts cards for 3 turns, as well as a 30% Critical Strength Up buff for the same duration which, like before, extends to any Snake or Dragon allies.

Having these basic 3-turn offensive buffs is naturally important for any offensive Servant, and with the star generation built into her first skill, it makes sense Kurohime would have a way to capitalize off it, even if the buff value for that Critical Strength Up buff is…rather low. And once again, the supportive aspect toward Snake and Dragon allies is rather unimportant given how narrow in use the buff provided is, and the unlikelihood of having such allies in an optimal team composition.

Like the prior skill, this has an 8-turn base cooldown, though the overall power of this one is much lower, so it could very reasonably be a 7-turn cooldown. But lined-up skill cooldowns seem to be all the rage in Lasengle’s school of design nowadays. That and skill cooldown reduction on Mooncancers.

Skill 3

Last on the skill lineup is Golden Rule (Snake & Body). Knowing that Golden Rule (Body) is basically perfected physical beauty…what does the Snake part entail? Is she just really attractive to snakes? Or does she accrue wealth in the form of snakes very easily? My curiosity is consuming me.

In any case, this skill has a grab-bag of components. The defensive component is a 3-turn Taunt toward only Snake or Dragon enemies…in other words a useless effect, as well as 1-time Debuff Immunity for 3 turns, and 1k HP regen for 3 turns. It goes without saying that Taunt is valued when it’s absolute, and only having it be active on specific enemy types is just inconvenient and a nuisance to handle, but I suppose it can play its role in the few cases every enemy present is of the Snake or Dragon trait. Besides that, Debuff Immunity is always handy in difficult content, and the healing is ultimately very minor.

The second half of this skill is far more useful - Kurohime charges her NP gauge by 30%, plus an additional 10% for every Snake or Dragon trait present in her allies or enemies on use. 30% gauge charge is already pretty solid for an SR to have, but the fact you can manipulate your team composition to improve its value is also great, and provides a selfish incentive to deploy Kurohime alongside Snake or Dragon allies. While there aren’t many truly standard supportive options with either trait (Oberon notably packing the Dragon trait), a lot of Dragon and Snake foes are of the Lancer class, so it’s likely you’ll be netting some benefit from just throwing Kurohime against her class advantage.

Speaking of netting benefits from using her against Dragons or Snakes, let’s cover Kurohime’s NP, Kurohime Monogatari - Kaminagashi.

This is a Single Target Arts NP, so once again I’m spared from farming calculations. But let’s go over the effects. Before dealing damage, Kurohime applies both Sure Hit and Defence Pierce buffs to herself for 1 turn, essentially bypassing most forms of defence for both her NP’s damage and the chain afterwards. A very good effect on a single-target NP, speaking as someone who uses Dioscuri as the “break past any defensive bullshit” button in difficult fights.

After that, Kurohime deals her damage, with a +150% Effective Damage modifier against Dragon or Snake foes, scaling with Overcharge. Historically Servants who have focused on just taking down Dragon trait enemies have been clowned on in FGO, between Siegfried or his counterpart Sigurd, and frankly the situation hasn’t changed much. While Dragon trait Servants or miniboss NPC’s aren’t exactly infrequent, there are plenty of effective damage bonuses that have a broader reach, such as attribute-based effectiveness, or Demonic, which seems to hit every single big NPC enemy imaginable.

It’s not a bad thing that Kurohime has a reasonable pool of foes to hit extremely hard against, but she is targeting a relatively minor trait in the grander scheme of things, even with Snake tacked on.

The last component is a 20% Arts Resist Down debuff applied to the enemy struck for 3 turns, a frankly pretty good benefit for a Single-Target NP that will ramp up her damage output over successive NP’s and improve the team’s refund with Arts cards against the target.

Speaking of which, let’s briefly go over Kurohime’s refund capabilities and damage output. With her own buffs active, she nets a refund of 12% from her NP, fairly good for a single target NP. Her independent damage output, meanwhile, pans out to be 34k neutral…pretty weak in the grander scheme of things, but not abysmal for an SR, either. Placed in the typical formation of double Castoria and a 50% gauge CE, her refund leaps up to 36%, and her neutral damage becomes 108k, still low, but more respectable. When she nets her effective damage bonus in such a setup she’s dealing a more impressive 270k damage neutral, but you can probably note from comparing her to Biscione in this very MMM that there are Servants out there who nets similar damage output on (nearly) every single enemy in the game, rather than a specific, targeted trait.