Rabbit’s Reviews #409: Biscione (5* Lancer)

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 While there are plenty of situationally great single-target SSR Lancers, and plenty of generically very good single-target SR Lancers, there haven’t historically been many universally powerful single-target SSR Lancers to-date. The closest thing is Bhima, who’s very good but not particularly remarkable. Aside from that we have units like Enkidu and Scathach, both of whom are excellent in specific contexts but have trouble looping and thus aren’t one-size-fits-all damage-dealers. In Biscione we have an ST unit with reasonable loop specs and excellent damage. There’s not much else of note here—she’s very standard, overall—but if what you want is a typical “break three bars in three turns” type Servant, there’s not really a better option in this class, which makes Biscione a reasonable if unexciting addition to the game.
Biscione
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SSR Lancers are interesting in that their stats fall into two distinct groups—there are defense-leaning Lancers, with attack stats below 11000, and offense-leaning Lancers, with attack stats near or above 12000. There’s nobody who falls in the more “average” attack line, at least so far. Unfortunately for her role as a DPS, Biscione falls into the more defensive group, though her attack stat is at least at the top of that bunch, tied with Lancer Artoria. Meanwhile, Biscione is a Quick unit with decent hit-counts, so she has pretty good star gen. Her Arts card NP gain is unusually strong, and her Quick card NP gain is fine.
Biscione’s passives are pretty standard. Magic Resistance, Presence Concealment, and Independent Action are the usual small bonuses to debuff resistance, star gen, and crit damage, respectively. She also gets Dragonkin, which provides a small Buster buff (for better crits) and a little bit of a damage cut. None of these passives are hugely impactful, but they’re all at least decent.
Biscione is a 30% charger, so Mana Loading is her most important append. None of the others have much of an impact, so if you have extra coins you can pick whichever mild benefit interests you most.
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Biscione’s mat asks aren’t too bad. She does need some bronze mats, in the form of fangs, but she doesn’t ask for that many of them. She also needs Ordeal Call 2’s gold mats, which may be an issue for newer players, but we’re coming up on a year since that chapter launched, so they aren’t too rare at this point.
Biscione’s skillset is all about looping and facilitating her sources of damage. Recommended skill order is 3>1>2.
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On any other Servant, Toxic Fantasy would be just a crit damage buff with some utility. 50% crit damage up for 3 turns is pretty standard, and while it’s a decent buff, it’s not that impactful with Skadi buffs in play. For Biscione specifically, though, the other elements of the skill matter a good deal more. This skill gives Biscione 30% debuff success rate up—letting her ignore most Magic Resistance—and inflicts poison, plus a poison damage increase. Biscione has a supereffective damage modifier on her NP that scales with poison stacks, so every stack of poison on a target increases her damage. As such, the poison effect here is functionally an NP damage boost, rather than just being flavor. Aside from all that, this skill also inflicts healing received down, which is usually meaningless but can occasionally be helpful for handling enemies with large healing-related mechanics.
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Mana Burst (Dragon) is a typical 3-turn 30% damage buff, applying to Biscione’s Quicks (for NP damage and NP gain) and Busters (for crit damage). The skill also lets Biscione’s Quicks—including her NP—apply another stack of poison, which functionally serves as her damage ramp. Additionally, this makes Biscione’s Busters drop 5 stars each, helping her maintain her crits even when not using her Quicks.
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Heraldic Snake is a solid but unremarkable skill. It gives your typical 30% battery, plus a small boost to NP gain, plus a two-hit invuln. The invuln being hit-based is nice since you’ll likely want to use this on turn one—the duration means this is unlikely to be wasted even though it will be used early. Aside from that, there’s not much to comment on here.
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Biscione’s NP is pretty simple: it amps poison damage, and then it deals damage. Since Biscione’s second skill causes this NP to inflict poison before dealing damage, Biscione’s first NP should have two poison stacks, for a total of 30% in supereffective damage. This gives Biscione what is functionally a 30/30 steroid split—pretty typical for an ST unit—with two important caveats: first, an enemy that is immune to or removes poison severely hurts Biscione’s damage, and second, Biscione’s de-facto ramping damage buff stacks multiplicatively with anything a support Servant will provide. The supereffective damage also caps out at 150% instead of the usual 100%—probably to partially offset the fact that her in-kit steroids are otherwise very low. If Biscione is able to apply lots of poison stacks and has supports helping her out, she’ll deal fantastic damage. If she’s operating without a support’s help (in a dual-core farming setup, for example) she’ll be pretty standard. If she can’t get her debuffs to stick, she becomes actively bad.
This is a pretty nice place for an ST DPS to be overall. “A single enemy that does not negate debuffs” is, functionally, a very broad niche. Especially if what you need is an Archer killer, Biscione does that well, and her NP is the biggest reason why.
As a side-note, this NP also reduces the target’s NP gauge, so as long as Biscione is looping the target will need batteries in order to NP. Plenty of enemies automatically NP on break, so the value of this will be mixed in practice, but it’s a nice side benefit. Also, since Biscione should be stacking both poison debuffs and poison damage up debuffs, she should end up doing a deceptively large amount of damage from poison itself, slightly increasing her overall damage output.
Biscione is a straightforward ST Quick unit. You want to pair her with three Skadis—ideally two Summer Skadis and a Caster Skadi—and let her NP three times for a whole ton of damage. While she’s very much a burst unit who wants to kill fast, her damage doesn’t fall off too terribly when her buffs are on cooldown (at least, relative to most other Servants), as her poison debuffs last five turns and she can keep inflicting poison using Command Codes. In a pinch, she might be able to squeeze out enough damage to clear a fourth break bar with an extra NP or two without having to wait all the way until a second buff cycle, which is pretty nice.
What Biscione wants most from her supports is damage buffs, especially in the attack and NP damage brackets, so if you don’t have top-end supports innately, you should look to support Biscione with free options who provide those things. Barti is a great pick for this, offering a tiny bit of NP charge along with buffs in both brackets Biscione is looking for. Santa Nightingale also provides buffs in both of these brackets, along with some other useful utility. Against the right enemies, Santa Martha is a particularly fantastic choice, giving 70% attack up (factoring in defense debuffs) and 50% power mod (which is the same bracket as NP damage) against Demon, Divine, and Undead enemies.
Biscione wants to kill as fast as possible and isn’t all that concerned about long-term survivability, so The Black Grail is almost always going to be her best CE option if it’s available. If you don’t have The Black Grail, any CE that provides a substantial boost to damage—ideally to attack or NP damage—is a good option.
Extra poison stacks have a huge impact on Biscione’s NP damage, so poison CCs are far and away the best option. Unfortunately, there aren’t currently enough poison CCs in the game to stick them on all of Biscione’s cards. At the very least, you should put poison CCs on Biscione’s Quick cards, so that they apply two stacks each. Beyond that, you should prioritize her Busters, and then leave her Arts card for last, assuming we eventually get more poison CCs.
Biscione is a strong Servant with low-ish base attack. She doesn’t particularly need extra levels in order to function, but more attack is always useful to a DPS, and grails can help to offset her defensive stat lean. I wouldn’t call Biscione a high-priority grail target, but if you find yourself using her a lot, she’s not a bad option.
Biscione is quite strong. She doesn’t do much other than damage, and her damage drops off considerably if fight mechanics happen to shut down her gimmick, but in most contexts she’s a very good, if relatively plain, DPS. While none of this is particularly exciting, Biscione fills a role that’s mostly been absent among SSR Lancers, and she has an effective and controllable gimmick that may lead to her being the best ST option available in some contexts. She’s smartly designed and generally powerful. Biscione probably isn’t a necessary pull for most players, but anyone who invests in her is likely to find cases where she’s useful. Solid addition to the game.