Rabbit’s Reviews #407: Phantasmoon (5* Pretender)

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 In a surprising turn of events, we get a second Christmas event this year, with a brand-new Servant: Phantasmoon. Phantasmoon is an old joke character who’s been around since the early 2000s, and it’s surprising to see her here (though in my opinion she’s a much more fun addition than a generic Santa Arcueid would have been). As a unit, she’s… fine? She’s mostly a Hephaestion side-grade, functioning similarly as a potentially useful tool for multicore farming setups. Her NP damage against knights without outside buffs is pretty decent, and she brings party charge and party buffs as well. If you have 30% charge (from Castoria or a starting charge CE) and only need one ST NP, she’s often a better option than Hephaestion… but Hephaestion’s 100% battery and class advantage versus Casters means she’ll still sometimes be the better option. On the one hand, a new limited SSR being comparable to an old gen-pool SR isn’t a great look. On the other hand, Hephaestion arguably the best gen-pool SR in the game at the moment, so this isn’t an unfavorable comparison.
Most players probably don’t need Phantasmoon, but she has some cool tools and will probably be useful on occasion. That’s not an awful place for a new Servant to be.
Phantasmoon
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Phantasmoon has the highest attack and lowest health of the SSR Pretenders, with quite high attack by the standards of SSRs as a whole. This is a helpful starting point for Phantasmoon as a damage-dealer, and it’s especially important given that in farming situations she’ll need to deal as much damage as possible without the support of many or any outside buffs. Her NP gain, meanwhile, is pretty average for her deck, and while she only has one Quick card, that Quick hits 5 times and thus will drop a decent number of stars when you happen to use it.
Phantasmoon’s passives are somewhat interesting. Magic Resistance and Item Constructions are the usual consistency boosts—nice but unremarkable. Independent Action gives a marginal crit buff, which matters a bit more than usual here as Phantasmoon has solid crit access and low-in-kit crit buffs.  She also gets a unique passive, Avatar of the Holy Night, which gives a pretty-nice five critical stars per turn. This skill also gives a 20% buff to all card types on Darkness fields, which is fairly niche but decent when it applies.
Outside of that, she has Territory Creation—but it has no rank, and no effect. It’s a little odd that she has this at all, and to my knowledge there’s not another example of an unranked standard passive in the game. This is, of course, purely for flavor, and it wouldn’t meaningfully improve Phantasmoon if this did give a small Arts buff, but it’s still a little weird to see.
For appends, Mana Loading is the most important, as it lets Phantasmoon NP with just 30% charge (a single Castoria charisma or a non-MLB event CE) instead of 50%. Skill Reload is the next-most-important, as Phantasmoon’s cooldowns mean she needs the cooldown reduction to work properly with Koyan as a point servant. Aside from that, the crit damage buff is decent given Phantasmoon’s low in-kit crit buffs, and the Extra attack buff is mildly interesting due to Phantasmoon’s AoE Extra cards, but neither is going to be hugely impactful. Anti-Assassin attack up is basically worthless.
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Pretenders ask for no gems and instead need a smattering of different mats. There’s nothing super egregious here, though Phantasmoon does need Ordeal Call 3 mats, which can make her tricky to raise, especially for players who aren’t up-to-date in story.
Long-ish cooldowns aside, Phantasmoon’s skillset is quite strong overall. Recommended skill order is 1>2>3.
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Earth-Heart Rhythm is a partywide 30% battery, which is rare and powerful. In multicore farming setups, this can help offset the loss of a full support—relative to, say, a second Castoria, Phantasmoon only loses you 20% charge for your main damage-dealer. This skill also gives 20% NP damage up to the whole party, further helping with Phantasmoon’s role, along with a 1-time overcharge buff, which can functionally be an additional damage increase for some damage-dealers. The overcharge buff also means Phantasmoon is theoretically cool for Castoria stall teams—she’s naturally a lot weaker as a Castoria stall support than, say, Lady Avalon, but she is workable if you don’t have any of the better options.
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Red Star Vamp is a selfish Arts and Buster buff, along with a 20% battery, all of which are important to Phantasmoon’s ability to function as a damage-dealer in both single-core and multicore setups. Aside from that, the skill turns Phantasmoon’s Extra card into an AoE attack and then doubles the card’s performance. AoE cards have inherently halved damage, NP gain, and star gen, so the Extra attack buff exactly offsets that. Extra cards aren’t strong enough for this to really matter, but it’s a neat trick and could in theory let Phantasmoon farm very very low HP nodes with Ciel and Summer BB’s help. I’m not going to bother going into this in Usage Tips, since the health thresholds are so low it’ll basically only work for the first one or two free quests of any given event, but it’s there.
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Blue Glass Moon is a neat skill in that it can be useful both as support and as a selfish tool. It does a bunch of things—immediate star gen, stars per turn, star weight, crit damage, and attack up. The attack buff and crit damage buff are both fully partywide and relatively weak. 20% attack up is typical for a partywide attack buff, though, and given that Phantasmoon also provides partywide NP damage up, this is pretty acceptable. The crit damage buff, on the other hand, is a bit disappointing, as 30% isn’t usually enough to have a large impact when your typical crit buff is already 50% at minimum. The other crit tools are a bit more interesting. Star bursts are pretty common, and stars-per-turn is also pretty common, but targeted stars per turn is unusual, and it means Phantasmoon can let an ally continue to generate stars without having to stay on the field herself. The star weight buff is also large enough to allow even Berserkers to crit, which is really nice. Overall, this is a cool crit tool that works well selfishly or supportively, and it contributes well to both CQ and farming performance.
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Phantasmoon’s NP is solid overall. It’s an ST NP with a fairly broad niche, which is cool. Sadly it doesn’t have ramp, but that points to Phantasmoon’s multi-core farming focus—if she’s only NP-ing once to help with a farming wave, it doesn’t matter that her NP does ramp. Taken in that context, a shot of damage with niche is all you really need. It’s not a coincidence that everything else on this NP is effectively CQ utility—NP seal for locking down an enemy, self-charge for easier looping, and an Extra card buff for a tiny bit of extra damage when you’re using cards. The NP does give NP charge to Living Human allies, which can make Phantasmoon even better in multicore setups if your main DPS happens to be Living Human, but mostly this NP is here to deal damage to a single enemy on a single wave while farming, and to be consistent in CQs. It does those jobs well.
I’ve spoken at length already about Phantasmoon being a DPS aimed at Multicore teams, so what do those look like in practice? Unfortunately, it’s a bit hard to generalize, as multicore teams tend to be built in response to very specific nodes, to handle very specific problems that can’t otherwise be solved with typical AoE setups. Usually these teams involve a single-target damage-dealer, an AoE damage-dealer, and two supports. Those supports are often Castoria and Oberon, as the supports with AoE charge, AoE buffs, and excellent damage-boosting potential, but that’s not always the case.
When building a multicore team, usually what you do is identify the problem in a node and look for an unconventional way around it. For example, if wave 1 or 2 has a single high-health enemy, or if you’re dealing with an awkward mix of classes, it can be effective to have a single-target damage-dealer NP for some extra damage against that enemy. In exchange for this, you lose damage and charge for your primary damage-dealer. Phantasmoon helps offset this by providing charge and partywide buffs herself. In the most ideal cases, she might even be able to NP twice.
As a hypothetical example of this, imagine a 90++ node where wave 1 has two Riders, wave 2 has a single Evil Archer, and wave 3 has one Evil Archer with a ton of health and two weaker Riders. You could approach this with Phantasmoon, Tezcatlipoca, Castoria, and Oberon. This team has a ton of inbuilt synergy as Tez and Phantasmoon both provide party charge and party buffs, and Tez is Living Human. Even if neither DPS has starting charge (if, say, you need Black Grail on Phantasmoon to hit damage thresholds and want a drop CE on Tez) you can still loop. On turn 1, you use a Castoria battery, bringing both damage-dealers to 50% charge. You use Castoria’s 20% battery on Tez and Phantasmoon’s 30% partywide battery, taking Phantasmoon to 80% charge and Tez to 100%. Tez NPs and refunds about 27% against the two Riders (though there’s actually enough battery in this setup that he could refund nothing and be fine). His NP also provides 10% party charge. On turn 2, Phantasmoon uses her 20% battery and her NP, killing the Archer and giving 25% charge to herself and to Tez. On turn 3, Tez uses his 50% battery, giving 30% charge to Phantasmoon as well. You then plug Oberon in, who uses his batteries to let both damage-dealers NP, using End of the Dream on whichever DPS needs the damage more.
This is, admittedly, a very particular node where this specific setup is uniquely useful, but that’s kind of the point of multicore teams—you craft them as specific solutions for specific cases. There’s no guarantee there’ll be 90++ nodes where Phantasmoon’s combination of utility and damage is helpful, much less that there will be one where her tools are helpful to your box, but she has enough going for her that she’ll probably be a good option every now and again.
She can also function as a support, though she’ll naturally be inferior in this role to any pure support Servant. On skills, she has 20% NP damage up, 20% attack up, some crit support, and 30% party charge, which is weaker than your typical 50% chargers but better than most other alternative supports. With an NP, she becomes a 50%+ charger for Living Human allies. Her partywide overcharge buff also means she’s a decent support for Castoria teams. Tamamo, Lady Avalon, and Reines will always be better, but her party charge and card-type-neutral buffs might make her a better option than Himiko on occasion… and if you don’t have any other dedicated supports, you can bring a free damage dealer and a friend’s Castoria and have a reasonably effective stall team.
And of course she’s also a passable pure DPS. Phantasmoon is locked to half-class-advantage in most cases and she has no ramp, but she does have damage buffs in all three brackets (NP damage, card type, attack), and especially against Evil Knights her damage isn’t bad. While there are better options if you’re looking for a generic Buster crit ST unit, Phantasmoon can reasonably serve as a point Servant in a Koyan team against any Knight-class enemy, which means she can fill holes in less-developed boxes.
The Black Grail is basically always your best CE choice for damage, though in some teams you’ll need a starting charge CE for Phantasmoon to have easy access to her NP. In those cases, CEs like Golden Sumo and Aerial Drive are fine, as are event CEs that give at least 30% starting charge.
Phantasmoon has pretty easy crit access and low in-kit crit buffs, which means the usual CC choice—crit damage—is a good idea here.
Phantasmoon is pretty good, and if you want to use her in multicore setups, you’ll want to be able to squeeze out as much damage as possible with minimal resources. Grails naturally help with this, and especially if you get her to NP2 or higher, I’d recommend taking her to level 100 to make sure she’s ready to go when you need her.
Phantasmoon is a nice Servant. She’s not amazing in either the pure-DPS or pure-support roles, and FGO is a game that generally rewards specialization, but unlike, for example, BB Dubai, Phantasmoon can do both things at once with almost no loss to tempo. This has farming value for the very hardest nodes and is occasionally useful for CQs as well. Outside of cases where you actively need both skillsets, she’s a decent backup support and an okay gap-filler for killing knights. Hephaestion fills a similar role for established players and is cheaper and has a handful of her own advantages, but Phantasmoon is distinct enough and powerful enough to make a case for herself regardless. She’s pretty good! Not amazing, and not a must-pull, but pretty good. Nothing wrong with that.