MMM - Supreme Sorcerer's Scars Sneakily Supplies Succor in Season of Suprise (Solomon)

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Table of Contents
Intro
Solomon
Outro
Intro
Even with all the story and campaign lead-up to prepare us for it, it’s still bizarre to think we’re on the precipice of FGO’s ribbon to its story. Whether we like it or not, by the end of this year the tale of Chaldea and the Earth’s erasure that began all the way back in 2015 will conclude. 
And I think nothing cements that more than having Solomon dropped on us as a freebie, the true NPC-locked legend, having appeared in-game just before the new year of 2016 and being graced in our playable rosters right now. That’s one heck of a wait, though it doesn’t feel like it, given the lore reasons for Solomon to not be in our collection.
JP Release DateNA Release Date
12/4/202512/2027
Solomon
Well Lev, you sure have ended up in a weird place after joining Marisbury’s little project, that’s for sure. I’m sure the reunion between you and U-Olga Marie will go swimmingly, so get right to it, okay?
The real thing this whole scenario around the Grand Caster battle and the buildup to this remnant of Solomon and Goetia joining us really just settles how powerful full power Solomon actually is. Lev might just be puppeteering the remains of Solomon, but he still has one remaining Ring and the might of a single Demon Pillar behind it, and that’s enough to still hold the seat of Grand and drop whatever the hell Lord Loegres is on us. No wonder Marisbury utterly crushed the Holy Grail War he used just to fund Chaldea.
Solomon
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As an SSR Pretender, Solomon has surprisingly plain base stats, with the second-lowest Attack stat of his rarity in exchange for a pretty bulky HP stat. He’s still got pretty absurd stats for what should be a Caster, but he’s not crazy in terms of Mana or Luck, which is presumably why he is basically on par with Proto Merlin and Dante for stats overall. Even if he’s built bulky, Pretenders still have very high Attack on the whole, so he hits reasonably hard, if nothing exceptional in the grand scheme of things.
On the passives front, you really see why he’s got the Pretender class - that Territory Creation is NOT creating the Timeless Temple, and his Item Creation is on fraud watch. Regardless, Clairvoyance and his Independent Manifestation provide a grab bag of very minor passive boosts, and that Territory Creation does at least improve his Arts cards somewhat.
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With a base NP gain of 0.54% and a BBAAQ card deck, Solomon’s 4-hit Arts cards provide a fairly above-average base Arts gain of 2.24, and thankfully not at the cost of his other cards. His Busters have a shockingly good hitcount, and provide a modest sum of NP gauge with Arts chain bonus, while his Quick card is decent for NP gain, but similarly high in hitcount. A stand-out is his Extra card, with a mighty 6 hits, meaning he isn’t lagging in either stargen or NP gain for that, too.
Speaking of which, the Pretender class’s excellent base stargen and all those hitcounts means Solomon is superb for star generation despite his lack of Quick cards, so he’s pretty good on both fronts.
Skill 1
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First for Solomon’s skill lineup is Bag of Imaginary Numbers. This skill truly is a goodie bag, providing an impressive 100% gauge charge upon use off the bat, with even more benefits to come. No wonder Sakura’s Element of Imaginary Numbers is considered absurd in the Magus world - it’s meddling with Solomon level power.
In addition to that superb gauge charge, Solomon slaps a 2k HP Regen, 10 Star-per-turn buff, and 30% Critical Damage buff on the whole party for 3 turns, a very respectable package of healing, near-guaranteed crits, and a damage boost to those crits for the period.
You don’t need me to tell you this skill is fantastic - it’s an instant NP in a bottle, but the healing and star generation effects are also absolutely great, and shouldn’t be overlooked. The only flaw to this thing is its understandable 9-turn base cooldown, but for a gauge charger this strong even that’s honestly a short cooldown.
Skill 2
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Next up is the Ring of Solomon. Even with a single Ring, this skill is absurdly powerful. Off the bat, it provides an excellent team support package, providing a 1-time 100% Overcharge boost, 30% Debuff Resistance, and a hefty 50% NP Strength Up buff for 3 turns to the whole team.
That alone is a great thing to provide to your whole team, allowing them to shrug off debuffs easily in combination with good Magic Resistance, improving their Overcharge effects, and massively boosting both Solomon and his allies’ NP damage output. But the real stand-out is the buff Solomon applies to himself, providing himself with a 50% refund of the NP gauge consumed by allied Caster NP’s for 3 turns.
What exactly does that mean? If you do a chain of Solomon NP, Castoria NP, Merlin NP, Solomon goes to 0% gauge, then he gets 50% of Castoria’s 100% NP gauge used for her NP, and the same for Merlin’s NP, meaning he gets an immediate full NP gauge refund on the same turn, going to 100%. What’s more impressive is this also applies to (real) overcharge, so a 200% gauge Castoria NP will give him a full 100% on its own, and so on. 
While you can’t always assure Solomon is paired with a Caster at the time this buff is live, it’s potent regardless, allowing him to effectively piggyback off of his supports’ NP’s to dish out more damage. And as my example shows, you can really just use the most potent Servants in the game in concert with Solomon and suffer little for it.
It’s also not a surprise this skill has a hefty 9-turn base cooldown, but given it’s frankly crazier than his 100% gauge charger, somehow, that’s also absurdly generous.
Skill 3
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Rounding off Solomon’s skill kit is King of Humanity’s Ashes, a skill that is thankfully much more normal than the prior entries. This is a dual card buff skill, providing him with a 30% Buster and Arts Booster for 3 turns, as well as a 30% Special Attack and Defense buff against the 7 Knight and Horsemen classes for the same 3-turn duration.
As a Pretender who is already poised to go mana-a-mana with the Knight classes, this is a pretty great offensive skill, boosting his primary card types’ offense and his durability against the majority of his foes. Naturally the boost to NP gain off of the Arts booster is also appreciated, though he hardly needs it given how much he has enabled NP spam already.
So yep, it’s a solid offensive steroid skill that feels like the oddball in an otherwise absurd kit, despite rounding off his offensive profile. The 8-turn base cooldown is unsurprising for this type of effect.
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Naturally, we come to Solomon’s NP - Ars Almadel Salomonis. Boy, I remember back when I first fought with Goetia and this NP animation stunned me because…it had an abnormal perspective shift transitioning to the throne in the Timeless Temple…and now basically every single NP has a front-facing close-up as part of the animation. How far we’ve come.
As an AOE Buster NP I won’t be covering the refund for this thing, but given what Solomon has in his kit, he can unsurprisingly spam this thing to hell and back, so I’ll still be covering his farming damage output.
Before dealing damage, Solomon removes all buffs from the enemy, and gets a 10% NP Strength Up buff for 1 turn, scaling well with Overcharge. He then does his damage, and plasters every enemy with a 20% Buster Resist Down debuff for 3 turns, and finally provides himself with a 20% NP gauge charge, as if he was struggling to get his next NP ready.
Pretty much every effect on this thing is superb, though it’s funny that the effect of Solomon’s NP has changed from Invincible Pierce to Buff Removal - clearly Goetia got tired of people using Guts buffs and Defense stacking to get through the firepower of his NP at the Temple, and decided to shift to a stronger effect. Joke’s on you, buddy - we’ve got Buff Removal Resistance on everyone and their uncle, now!
Thankfully, Solomon is in player hands from now on, so this just results in a NP with a superb amount of offensive penetration as well as ramping damage against bosses, which is a fantastic combo to have. As a free Servant, Solomon also has access to free NP5 via Evocation Leafs, so his damage output is also…well, I’ll get into the numbers now.
Just firing his NP with his own buffs live, Solomon is doing 44K damage neutral. Which is understandably…kind of absurd. The free NP5 naturally comes into play here, but once you start stacking up support buffs the sheer firepower at his disposal really shines through.
With Black Grail and double Koyanskaya (because there’s little reason to use a 50% gauge CE on him), this boosts to 131k damage neutral wave 1, 125k on wave 2 (no longer benefitting from Overcharge boost), and a hefty 262k damage on wave 3 once he can cycle all his skills a second time. This does assume you have level 10 of the Skill Cooldown Append skill on him, but again - he’s free, you can buy his Servant Coins, it’s very easy.
If you happen to use a battlesuit swap for Oberon in that prior setup, and pit Solomon against a group of Knight class enemies, well, I’ll just say a number - 889,796. For a Servant without a “real” class advantage multiplier that’s some bonkers damage output. And while that’s his peak, he can deal lesser sums of damage on repeat due to how spammable his NP is.
So how does our little Fake Caster, the one and only Solomon shape up? On one hand, you only need one gold ring to give a hard-hitting slap, and he’s certainly Lainur’d up to dish those out to every enemy in the game:
+For a Buster AOE Servant, Solomon is possibly the most easy to set up for continuous NP loops in the game. While I calculated his farming using Koyanskaya because that’s the norm, he can pretty much perform farming loops with any combination of 2 Caster supports with Kaleidoscopes and at least 30% gauge charge to hand off to Solomon himself. While the need to order his NP before the supports’ ones does reduce the effectiveness of doing NP chains that way, it is pretty damn effective in difficult content, and Solomon’s damage output is well worth that payoff.
+Solomon isn’t just an Ars Almadel Salomonis laser cannon, he’s also got some strong supportive tools. Bolstering his team with improved NP damage and Overcharge, as well as continual healing and consistent Crits, he’s an efficient package that provides a number of benefits many traditional supports don’t. His NP’s buff removal before damage can’t be underestimated either, both ensuring his damage output is persistent through removable defensive buffs, and keeping dangerous bosses away from large stacks of offensive buffs.
+Owing to his overall flexibility and Class, Solomon is very good at doing what the Pretender class is intended to accomplish - be versatile. Owing to his easy access to NP levels and Servant coins, his performance is greater than a typical Gacha Servant, and that both compensates for and complements the Pretender class Advantage, allowing him to effectively farm all Knight class foes while keeping up pace with 2x Class Advantage Servants in performance. That already puts him ahead of plenty Welfare Servants already in the game, the SSR stats backing him and powerful skill set bridging any gap that might exist.
However, no matter how he can slap, Solomon isn’t prepared for the most indomitable pugilist to exist in this game, one even surpassing even Fujimaru “If I’m out of Servants I’m not out of hands” Ritsuka - The Unstoppable Hands of Time:
-Solomon fundamentally feels like a Gotoh, to borrow Fire Emblem fandom terms - he’s a super-powered unit trained to peak performance from the get-go, designed to provide an essential crutch to players in the final hours of the game, if they can’t otherwise handle the difficulty of the game’s final moments. While such units are always great to have, their effectiveness is only ever multiplied by how long they’re available. And uh, he has no Valentine's event…and Part 2’s Story is ending. Even if the game is persisting past this storyline and Nasu’s departure, there’s some writing on the wall that he’s not intended to be a long-term inclusion. I could be wrong, of course - this is all speculation, ultimately, but just enjoy him while he, or the game itself, lasts.
There’s not much to say here, Solomon definitely honours his name, if even lacking the full power to be expected of his lore. His effortlessly excellent performance in damage output and support alike befits Grand Caster, even if he’s caught in the wrong class. If you invest the resources in him, he’s very likely to be one of your best Extra Grand options by default, and his capabilities are as versatile as they are great, too.
If you’ve already got one of the great Pretenders available like Dante set up as your damage option, Solomon does still offer some excellent utility worth considering. And if you don’t, there’s pretty much no reason to not make him your mainstay for offense against the Knight classes, and plenty beyond that. Lasengle has thrown us a nuclear bomb of a welfare Servant, be sure to use him. Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation.
Outro
We truly are wandering along the final staircase of FGO, and the fateful day where the date changes grows ever closer, uncertainty bound to lie ahead.
With that in mind, I hope you all have a great Holiday season should no new Servants rear their head until New Years, and look forward to the next edition of the MMM - Modern Magus Magazine - THE END, coming soon…perhaps.