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With a base NP gain of 0.54% and a BBAQQ card deck, Louhi’s 4-hit Arts card hits a bit above the typical Arts gain of single-Arts card servants, with 2.37 base Arts gain to her name. As always, the curse of high-hitcount Arts cards plagues her as a consequence, so the NP gain of her Quick cards and Busters both, sharing the same hitcounts, are rather mediocre. Her Extra card suffers the worst of all, producing a very middling amount of NP gauge with its 5 hits due to Louhi’s lesser base NP gain.

She thankfully performs better in regards to stargen. Having a good amount of hits on every card allows her to produce a solid sum of stars regardless of the chain she makes, even if the Berserker class’s low base stargen might hold her back a bit. Having multiple Quick cards and a general focus on the card type also means she’s more liable to produce a large amount of stars in actual battle context, as you’ll load her up on Quick card buffs.

So Louhi isn’t exactly the greatest in regards to her regular card NP gain, but there’s plenty of ways to alleviate that, with her solid stargen being one of them.

Skill 1

First on the skill lineup is Celestial Orbit Adjustment. This skill is a pretty powerful team support tool, providing +20% Quick and Buster up to the team, as well as a 1-time, 3-turn Evasion buff. Louhi herself naturally loves having the buffs for her own offence, but any Servant that can provide extra durability to the team is valuable, especially because Quick teams’ typical supports are lacking in that department.

The additional perk to this skill is that it changes the battle field to Darkness for 5 turns. This is a fairly niche field trait, with there only being 3 Servants that reap benefits from it - Alice, Phantom, and Hassan of Stars. The long duration on this effect means Louhi basically turns the benefits on permanently for those teammates, but Alice is the only one that I would argue is both good enough and synergistic enough with Louhi to be worth considering as a teammate.

Regardless of the value of the field change, the supportive perks on this skill are great, and Louhi herself can take advantage of them, so it’s a straightforward dual-card buffing skill with some bonus perks. The base cooldown of 8 turns is fair given how much value the team Evasion buff packs.

Skill 2

Next up is Calamity of the North. This skill lives up to its name, plastering every enemy with a wide range of negative effects, some more useful than others. A 100% Stun chance and Defensive buff removal are both incredibly handy in difficult content, simultaneously buying yourself a turn and ensuring Louhi’s offense will hit home versus all targets, and in general AOE Stuns are rare and valuable debuffs, since few foes are immune to them, and ones that have 100% application rate are even better. It’s still subject to Debuff Resistance but working off a baseline 100% chance instead of 60% or worse is significantly more consistent.

The other effects unfortunately aren’t as useful. Inflicting Poison and Curse, even if it’s 2k damage each for 5 turns, doesn’t add up to a significant amount of damage without amplification effects, and dishes out damage too slowly to really be of value. While 50% healing reduction is useful in some difficult content, the scope is still pretty limited.

The value from this skill simply comes from how it has all of these individual effects in one. Stun and buff removal is great, the others not so much, but getting all these benefits in a single skill is pretty rare. Only issue is that all of the said effects aren’t particularly useful in farming content. Even the Poison and Curse tick at the end of the opponent’s turn, so they don’t save time even if they secure the kill on a wave. This skill’s cooldown is also pretty harsh, with 9 turns at base, but that’s pretty standard for AOE Stun/Charm skills, since they can theoretically lock down fights indefinitely if the cooldown is too short.

Skill 3

Last of Louhi’s skills is Challenge of Ruin. As is standard for every SSR in FGO’s meta, this is a gauge charger skill, providing a hefty 80% gauge charge to Louhi herself, as well as 20% NP gauge to her allies (exempting herself). This alone would be an absolutely superb skill, but Louhi goes even further beyond, also slapping every enemy with a 30% Critical Rate Down debuff for 3 turns, pretty much making the team crit immune while the effect is active.

While obviously it can be higher, 80% gauge charge is a very good benchmark to meet, as it allows you to NP without a starting gauge charge CE using level 10 Mana Loading, and a large number of smaller gauge chargers in the game sit at 20%, allowing you to fill in the remaining gauge very easily in a number of setups. The team gauge charge also isn’t to be overlooked, whether it’s supporting a secondary damage dealer in getting their NP ready or simply giving dedicated supports an extra leg up. Lord knows vanilla Skadi needs it, getting her NP ready when you need it is a chore.

Outside of that, there’s not much to discuss about this skill. It’s superb, but rather straightforward. The 9-turn base cooldown isn’t surprising given how potent its effects are, but it does leave Louhi saddled with a fairly long cooldown on her skills overall.

Demo so nanja da-me mou sonnan ja hora kokoro wa shinka suru yo motto motto!

Now that I’ve infested you with an earworm immediately after hearing the phrase “X Circulation”, let’s talk about Louhi’s NP. Polaris Circulation is a Quick AOE NP with a fair bit of frills to unwrap, as well as the farming potential, so let’s get to it.

Before dealing damage, Louhi applies a +20% NP gain buff and +20% NP Strength Up buff to the team (scaling with Overcharge) for 3 turns. While these buffs are separated technically into Louhi’s own buff (before damage) and the rest of the team (after damage), there’s basically no difference between the two outside of weird interactions with Buff Denial effects, so I’m just listing them as one for convenience. In 99.9% of fights there’s no difference between them being separated and a team buff, after all.

Both of those buffs are naturally great to have prior to damage on a Quick AOE NP, giving a ramping damage boost and also improving her NP refund significantly with each successive NP. Then Louhi does the damage, with no special traits to speak of, and finally applies 1k damage Burn to all enemies for 5 turns.

While there’s nothing flashy in this NP, having ramping damage and refund on a NP is rare, as it can be especially powerful in the right circumstance. But speaking of that, let’s go over Louhi’s NP refund. With just her own buffs active (factoring in the NP gain boost from the NP itself), Louhi nets a baseline refund of 14%, which is fairly good for a Quick NP. Thrown into a practical setup with a 50% gauge CE and double Ruler Skadi, the refund leaps to 32%, not anything spectacular, but definitely enough to manage 3-turn loops. She does need at minimum a Da Vinci Ruler swap in for consistent farming using a 50% gauge CE, so I’ll be factoring that into the damage calcs.

The real issue to crunch is damage output. You might’ve noticed Louhi’s damage steroids are rather sparse, with only the +20% Quick booster from her first skill and her NP’s inbuilt scaling to work with. In the prior setup, her NP damage comes out to 118k damage wave 1 (with Berserker class advantage factored in), increasing to 169k on wave 2 with the Da Vinci switch in, then finally 231k damage on wave 3. Needless to say, her lack of personal damage buffs hardly sabotages her damage output, though that’s partially due to the high damage output of Quick NP’s overall from the way damage multipliers pan out and Ruler Skadi’s superior damage buffs.

To give a proper idea of how Louhi compares to other Quick AOE farmers, Amor (Caren) is pretty much the poster child of a good Quick universal farmer, and in the same setup and conditions, she hits for 150k damage on wave 3 on a neutral target (since a Ruler’s not getting class advantage). Sure, the Berserker class is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, but that’s just one of Louhi’s perks you have to account for. From the dawn of FGO where monkey mode BBB chain spam was the original 3-turn farming, to the modern era, Berserkers remain king of damage.

Oh, and naturally, Louhi can do Black Grail farming, too. With level 10 Mana Loading her double Ruler Skadi and Oberon swap-in setup is incredibly reliable, and nets a massively increased damage output peaking at just under 500k damage on wave 3 if my calculations are right. That level of damage on a non-Buster Servant is pretty absurd. As it turns out, having ramping NP Strength Up buffs on your NP makes you best buddies with Oberon.

With a base NP gain of 0.38, Abby tries her best to take away the biggest strength of her 3-Arts card deck, resulting in a base Arts gain of 1.61 on her 4-hit Arts cards, after Territory Creation is factored in. While this is essentially dead on the average for any given Arts card, it would’ve been nice to have more oomph on your dominant card type.

Abby’s low base NP gain naturally gimps the capabilities of her other cards, with her Quick, Buster, and Extra all having pretty awful NP gauge generation in spite of their reasonable hitcounts. At the very least, Abby has passable NP gain on the cards that are meant to produce NP gauge.

She performs much better on the star generation front, largely thanks to Fantasy Prima. Her Arts cards will produce around 2 stars apiece with no other modifiers in play, while the 4 hits on her Buster and Quick are great for stargen. As I’ll always point out, good star generation is a fine way to alleviate weaker NP gain, as it translates into more NP gauge from crits on regular cards, and with Abby’s excess of Arts cards, it certainly rings true.

Skill 1

First on Abby’s skill lineup is Sugar Plum Fairy Dance. This is more or less your textbook 3-turn card booster buff skill, providing a 30% Arts Up and 50% Critical Damage Up buff to herself for 3 turns, as well as providing 10 Critical Stars each turn to the team for the same duration.

So far as selfish buffing skills go, getting a boost to your dominant card type as well as a good critical damage buff and a means of supplying more stars for those crits is straightforward and useful. It’s nothing exceptional, sure, but for welfares having a simple but useful skill is a luxury, and this certainly fits the bill, improving her damage output and NP gain while also providing a respectable critical damage offense.

The 8-turn base cooldown on this skill is a little long given its overall power, but such a cooldown isn’t really abnormal for 3-turn card booster skills, either.

Skill 2

Next up is Pas de Deux, the romantic ballet routine performed with none other than yourself, or at least Abby hopes so. This skill provides the very unique Mystic Code Effectiveness buff, something we’ve only seen on Tezcatlipoca until now, which boosts the numerical values of buffs provided by your choice of mystic code, provided they aren’t NP gauge charge. So for example, with Abby’s skill active, the Attack buff from the Chaldea Combat Uniform Mystic Code would be boosted by 20%, going from 30% at max level to 36%.

You might have astutely noticed that…this buff isn’t very significant. And you’re right, it’s not. Having it on a passive with Tezcalipoca is fine since there’s not much design space invested in it - Tezcalipoca doesn’t focus on buffing your Mystic Code buffs, it’s just something he also does on the side. This skill, however, provides very minimal benefits from the Mystic Code buffing portion, even if you use a Mystic Code which takes advantage of it the most. Remember, most Mystic Code skills range from a base cooldown of 10-15 turns, so they only ever get used half as often as a Servant’s skill will.

But putting the assessment of why Mystic Code Effectiveness buffs would be better off as Attack Up buffs, this skill also provides a 30% NP gain buff and +100% Critical Star Generation buff to Abby herself for 3 turns. Abby’s star generation was already great, and with this buff active she will absolutely shower the team in stars, even with AAA Brave chains. And naturally the NP gain buff also boosts her NP gauge generation significantly, to the point that her baseline Arts gain is more or less a lie, providing a very respectable amount of gauge with her Arts cards.

And somehow that’s not all, she also nets a 2-hit, 3-turn Evasion buff. Now that’s straight up Meltryllis-coded. Take notes - every single Ballet-related skill in FGO needs a 2-time, 3-turn Evasion buff.

Funnily enough, just even ignoring the Mystic Code Effectiveness buff this is still a fantastic skill, providing major boosts to Abby’s generation capabilities and a defensive tool to endure hits with. I suppose you can just interpret the gimmick as a small bonus to the main draws of the skill. The 8-turn base cooldown is, much like the last skill, a little long, but not unusual to have on Evasion skills packaged with other benefits.

Skill 3

Lastly for the skill lineup we have Holy Night’s Gift. This skill takes notes straight from Lady Avalon, providing the whole team a 20% gauge charge, as well as a 1-time Overcharge boost for 3 turns. While it’s packing no offensive benefits, this skill also provides a 20 Critical Star bomb on use, and a 2k Max HP Up buff to all Child trait Servants on your team.

The perks of this skill are fantastic even for Abby herself. She’s a Child Servant, so she nets the Max HP buff, which essentially is just superior healing that provides a defensive buffer in case your Servants weren’t already injured, as well as a leg-up to her next NP, and even more stars to fuel her critical damage, if her excellent stargen wasn’t enough.

It’s even better in a supportive context. Overcharge boosts on NP’s like Castoria’s are famously powerful, and being able to source it from a Servant who synergizes well with Arts supports is naturally going to pay off well in difficult content. And naturally, team gauge charge is team gauge charge, a luxury for F2P-friendly Servants, especially. While the trait-dependent buff part of this skill might seem off-putting, it’s frankly the weakest part of its benefits, so you can really just interpret it as a Max HP buff for Abby alone and it’s still a superb gauge charge support skill.

For once, the 8-turn base cooldown on this skill is very generous, given how much of a premium team gauge charge can come at. Not to mention it means all of Abby’s skill cooldowns are conveniently lined up.

And to round it all off, we have Abby’s NP, Grand Pas de Deux. Besides living out Abby’s fantasies, this NP is an Arts Support NP, with absolutely no damage numbers to speak of.

The benefits are pretty straightforward. On use, (at NP5, which is free), she applies a +10% Mystic Code Effectiveness buff, a 50% Critical Damage up buff, and a 20% Arts Up buff (Scaling with Overcharge) to the team for 3 turns. She also heals the party for 3k, and reduces the enemy’s gauges by 1.

As we’ve already established, Mystic Code Enhancement is pretty insignificant in terms of impact, so the real benefits of this NP are the offensive buffs for the team, the heal, and the gauge charge reduction. While the critical damage and Arts Up buffs are great and usable by most teammates, the way Abby’s kit pans out means she’s primarily aiming to reap the damage boosts for herself, already having a heavy focus on her Arts cards’ critical damage.

In extended fights, the healing and gauge charge reduction are great tools to have, especially since Abby should be able to throw out her NP fairly often if her cards line up well. The real issue to contend with is the fact she’s focusing entirely on support (seemingly), but ultimately has a skill set that more focuses on her own selfish damage output. The benefits are good on paper, but it’s hard to say she can really compete with the supportive power of some of the big names you’ll find on your friends list, if not your own Servant roster.