Rabbit’s Reviews #410: Kurohime (4* Saber)

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 Kurohime’s pretty simple. She’s a standard-but-strong ST Arts unit with an anti-snake niche. In most cases, she has reasonable damage, some ramp, and some utility, which makes her a good unit, especially if you don’t already have a favored ST Arts Saber. Against snake or dragon enemies, though, she’s quite powerful. There are already a few good anti-dragon Servants out there, but Kurohime’s niche is a bit broader, which might make her more appealing overall than someone like Sigurd.
Kurohime
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Kurohime has a somewhat offensive stat lean, with above-average attack and below-average health for an SR Saber. Sabers tend to have pretty good stats in general, so this isn’t a bad starting place for Kurohime as a damage-dealer, even if her stats could be better. Her Arts card NP gain is slightly better than normal for her deck as well, and her Quick cards are fine. As an Arts Servant, though, she’s not going to be particularly good at active star gen, and her hit-counts are fairly low overall, which further contributes to that.
Kurohime’s only passives are Magic Resistance and Riding, neither of which does much for her. Appends-wise, Mana Loading is useful as Kurohime is (usually) a 30% charger, and none of the others particularly matter.
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Kurohime requires a ton of bronze mats, along with some gold and silver mats that are (at least in my experience) perennially in short supply. She may be strong enough to justify the investment, but especially if you already have a good Saber, Kurohime’s mat asks may make investing in her less appealing.
Kurohime’s skillset is pretty plain, but it’s also reasonably strong, providing all the core DPS tools. Recommended skill order is 3>2>1.
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Protection is a great skill overall. Most importantly, it gives Kurohime a 30% NP damage buff that lasts for three turns, which is great for NP damage and also scales nicely with Oberon. Kurohime provides the same buff to snake or dragon allies, which may be situationally useful for multicore farming, especially when you factor in Kurohime’s other tools. Outside of that, this skill gives a two-hit dodge—always nice for survival—and provides some stars each turn. The star gen doesn’t matter all that much, as Kurohime’s crit buffs are pretty weak and even with 15 stars most Arts teams will struggle to crit… but the occasional crit is still helpful, and the rest of this skill is great already.
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Soul-Enchanting Hair is your typical 30% 3-turn card-type buff, applying to both Kurohime’s Arts cards (for NP damage and NP gain) and Quick cards (also for a bit more NP gain). This means Kurohime has a 30/30 steroids split before ramp, which is pretty nice for an ST unit. This skill also gives a 30% crit buff to Kurohime herself, as well as to snake and dragon allies. 30% is pretty weak by crit buff standards, but Kurohime isn’t likely to run in crit-centric teams regardless, so this doesn’t particularly matter.
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Golden Rule is first and foremost a 30% battery. It also gives an additional 10% per snake or dragon unit on the field, counting both allies and enemies. This is part of why Kurohime could be interesting in multicore setups on occasion—if paired with an AoE DPS with those traits, Kurohime gets a little extra battery and also boosts damage to that ally. Aside from that, the skill gives a one-time debuff immunity and some passive healing, both of which are nice for consistency reasons. All that said, the “feature” effect of this skill, so to speak, is that it gives a 3-turn taunt that specifically applies only to snake and dragon enemies. 3-turn taunt effects are really powerful, but this only applies against Kurohime’s favored enemies, which means Kurohime can’t leverage this in most cases, and when you do bring her against snake or dragon enemies, she’s a bit more likely to get killed early. Castoria helps with this, of course, as does Kurohime’s own defensive skill, but it could still cause problems on occasion.
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Kurohime’s NP is pretty nice! It lets her ignore evasion and defense buffs, which is great for consistency. It also has ramp, in the form of post-damage Arts resist down. The ramp being post-cast and also debuff-based isn’t ideal, but Kurohime has good steroids even before her ramp, so the fact that she gets a full 20% ramp also is excellent. Perhaps most importantly, Kurohime gets a typical overcharge-based supereffective damage modifier against snake and dragon enemies. Her damage is good normally and very good in-niche, which is a solid place for an SR to be.
Kurohime is an utterly standard ST Arts unit. Ideally you pair her with two Castorias and a third support (Tamamo, Reines, or Lady Avalon if you want to be able to shift to stall, or Oberon for pure burst capabilities) and let her go crazy. She can also stall from the outset with the usual Castoria-plus-stall-support setup. Lady Avalon is probably the best option for this due to Kurohime’s (modest) crit tools, but any of the three will work.
Outside of optimal teams, you can make use of the usual free suspects. Xu Fu is a great option as always, and Servants like Mozart and Hans can also do just fine. There’s not much else to say about this—treat Kurohime like any other ST Arts DPS and she’ll do just fine.
Kurohime’s best CE choice is, of course, The Black Grail. She can even offset the demerit with her passive healing (not that that matters much). As usual, if you don’t have The Black Grail, bring your best damage-push CE.
Kurohime doesn’t need anything specific that CCs can provide. Her in-kit crit buffs are quite weak, so you could consider giving her crit damage CCs to offset that, or you can give her star gen CCs to offset her weak active star gen. Neither will be hugely impactful, but they’re still probably your best options.
Kurohime is pretty good! If you don’t already have a strong ST Saber you favor, she might benefit from some grails. Two grails is a small investment, and at the point you’ve bothered to level Kurohime’s skills, you might as well take her to level 90. That said, she’s not a particularly unique unit, so especially if you’ve grailed another ST Saber (or an alternative like Hephaestion) there’s not much need for Kurohime specifically.
Kurohime is totally fine. She has good steroids, ramp, some survival, some offensive utility, and a niche. The only real problem with Kurohime is that there are a ton of other good Lancer-killers. On the flip-side, she’s a spookable SR, so you may end up picking up a couple of incidental copies over time, if you’re lucky. Kurohime falls pretty solidly in the category of “welcome spook.” I wouldn’t call her a particularly meaningful addition to the game, but she’s pretty good, and for a gen-pool SR, that’s enough.