Rabbit’s Reviews #418: Mash Kyrielight (Shielder) – Part 3

SSR Mash has effectively the same stat spread as base Mash but upgraded to SSR levels. This is slightly less impactful than you might expect, as SR Mash was already capped at level 90—that is to say, the difference between a level 90 SSR Mash and a level 90 SR Mash isn’t as large as the difference between a level 90 SSR Mash and a level 80 SR Mash would have been. This is more strength of Mash’s SR forms than a weakness of her SSR form, of course, and she still gets about 1000 extra attack and health from the upgrade, which is nice.

Mash still has a defense-leaning statline. While we don’t have any other Shielders to compare her to, her attack is pretty low and her health is moderately high by general SSR standards. This is quite good for Mash as a defensive support, but it’s not good for Mash as a damage-dealer. In an ideal world, Mash would have a more offensive stat lean, but having a defensive focus fits the character, so I can’t complain too much.

SSR Mash has exactly the same internals as the older version of Mash, with exactly the same drawbacks. Her active NP gain and star gen are not good. Mash has plenty of ways to offset her NP gain, but her low star gen is a problem for her, especially considering she needs to generate stars to fuel one of her batteries. Granted, active star gen isn’t typically all that important in this day and age, but it’s still unfortunate that Mash is locked to her year-one hit-counts and such.

Mash has the same old passives—Magic Resistance, Riding, and Stargazer’s Journey—which aren’t any different here, except that SSR Mash comes so late in the story you won’t be benefiting from Stargazer’s Journey much, if at all. Aside from that, though, she picks up two new and very strong passives.

Self-Defense is maybe the single strongest passive in the entire game, functioning as a damage cut that brings damage to 1000 rather than reducing it by any particular value. This applies only to Mash’s allies and only for five hits, but nothing in the game gets past it and, like Soujuurou’s death-defying dodge, the stacks are only consumed if an attack deals enough damage to trigger it. Mash has so many defensive tools that it’s quite feasible to make this last for a long while. With smart play, this passive can function as protection against NPs and lethal crits—an ally with a taunt can tank a single-target NP with the help of this damage cut, for example. This passive provides a huge amount of party survivability essentially for free, and if you play strategically the value only increases.

Spiritual Inheritance, finally, is a permanent 1000 HP damage cut to Mash herself. This is less flashy than Self-Defense, but it’s still really strong, especially with Mash’s other defensive buffs in play. You can expect to often see enemies swinging at Mash for zero damage, especially if they aren’t critting. This makes Mash particularly resilient against AoE attacks, which are typically dangerous more because of their frequency than their raw damage. This skill gives Mash a truly remarkable level of bulk.

SSR Mash makes pretty good use of most of her appends. Mana Loading is important for some farming setups, as it gives Mash extra flexibility for her first NP. Skill Reload can be marginally helpful in stall setups and lets Mash use her second skill twice in three turns without needing to rely on an outside source of cooldown reduction. Anti-Extra attack up is generally great for Mash due to its broad applicability and Mash’s lack of class advantage. Crit damage up is okay—Mash has low in-kit crit damage buffs, so a persistent 30% boost can go a long way towards increasing card damage, but she doesn’t have particularly easy crit access, which limits the appeal of crit damage buffs. Extra attack up is probably Mash’s least useful append, as it only applies to brave chains and is a marginal boost besides, especially considering Mash’s low base NP gain on her Extra card.

It’s really unlikely that you would have made it all the way through to the point where SSR Mash unlocks and not have her skills leveled—especially since you’d be making your life harder in all the story fights where Mash is a forced support—but if you somehow have SSR Mash and don’t have her skills leveled, it’s very easy to do so, and extremely important besides.

SSR Mash’s skillset is extremely strong, with every skill more or less being a heightened version of base Mash’s equivalent. Recommended skill order is still 2>1>3.

Lord Chaldeas is a best-of-all-worlds version of Mash’s two older NPs. At its core, it does the same things—damage cut, defense up, and attack up—but it adds a couple other effects and its values are generally improved. The damage cut effect starts at 1000 and scales to 2000 at NP5. At NP3 (where Mash currently sits) it’s a 1750 HP damage cut to the whole party for three turns, which is huge, especially with Mash’s defense buffs in play. It’s very likely that most incoming attacks will do zero damage to your team while this NP is up, especially if you pair this with outside defensive buffs. The defense buff itself has the same values as always, and the attack buff is back to a flat 30% and also applies to Mash herself. The fact that the attack buff doesn’t scale with overcharge anymore means Ortinax Mash’s Lord Camelot can sometimes provide more damage to the party, but in most cases the flat 30% attack up is better.

Aside from those effects, the NP also grants a 50% NP damage buff to all allies if there’s even one Threat to Humanity enemy on the field. 30% attack up, while nice, isn’t really competitive with other damage supports, but a 30/50 spread is right up there with the various meta supports, making Mash a truly top-tier support unit in all regards in the fights that trigger this benefit—and that’s to say nothing of the effect this has on Mash’s own NP damage.

The most unique element of this NP is the “Holy Sword” buff that it applies to Mash herself, changing her NP and second skill to offensive versions of themselves. This effect is both good and bad. It means Mash can’t use her defensive NP more often than once every three turns, unlike base Mash. It also means Mash temporarily loses access to the defensive version of her second skill after she NPs, which is not ideal. In exchange, though, she gets an extremely powerful offensive skill and an extremely powerful NP for the subsequent two turns.

If you’re using Mash as a purely defensive unit, you can just ignore her offensive NP and use her defensive NP once every three turns, maintaining its effects permanently. This makes Mash a much more reliable support than BB Dubai—having access to your supportive NP for one turn out of every three works much more nicely in the context of FGO than having access to it for three turns out of every six. The duration of the buff and the cadence of Mash’s skills gives her a clear way to play as a support and a clear way to play as a DPS—and you can mix and match the approaches in a single fight, too. Mash is slightly less effective as a support than she would be if she had her defensive NP always, but in most cases you want your supports to NP once every three turns anyway, so the loss is marginal, and the benefit is that Mash can also do a heck ton of damage.

From a DPS standpoint, this NP-switching mechanic is a bit less of a positive. The fact that Mash only has her offensive NP for two turns out of every three can be awkward if Mash is your only DPS. She’s still capable of farming and fastburn with the help of Servants like Arash and Habetrot, and she makes up for her awkwardness with sheer damage, but needing to take a turn to switch forms will always leave her behind traditional top-end Buster Servants as a pure DPS.

It's also worth revisiting Lord Chaldeas’s skill 2 cooldown reduction effect. As I mentioned earlier, you can use this to use either version of the skill once every three turns, provided you use Lord Chaldeas consistently. If you have the Skill Reload append, the cooldowns also line up such that you can use the defensive version of skill 2 on turn 1 and the offensive version on turn 3, even without Koyan help, which is pretty nice.

As one final bit of utility, Lord Chaldeas gives the whole party a one-time debuff immunity effect, which is nice for consistency.

…And that’s just the supportive NP! Now we look at the fantastic AoE Buster NP that is Rayproof Kyrielight.

At base, Rayproof Kyrielight is a strong AoE NP. It has a pre-cast Buster buff that scales with overcharge, and then it deals damage. This NP counts as having an interlude, too, so the damage values start at 400% and scale to 600% (landing at 550% currently—just above the damage of an uninterluded NP5 Buster AoE). While I don’t expect Mash to get any further kit changes before the end of FGO, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a way to bring her to NP5, whether via a set of special bonus quests or as part of the finale. Even at NP3, though, this deals a lot of damage.

Outside of raw damage, Rayproof Kyrielight grants Mash pierce invuln and pierce defense, making it extremely difficult for anything to avoid her Noble Phantasm. It also removes buffs after it hits, clearing the way for other teammates to use their own NPs and also getting rid of dangerous offensive buffs—and while the NP itself can’t pierce anti-enforcement defense, it can remove those buffs, letting Mash do at least some damage with follow-up crits.

On top of all that, this NP has a 200% supereffective multiplier against Threat to Humanity enemies, functionally giving Mash class-advantage-tier damage against Threats—and that’s not even taking into account the extra NP damage buff on Lord Chaldeas. Mash generally won’t outperform Arts Servants against Threats due to Mash’s lack of class advantage and the anti-Threat power mod Castoria gives to anyone she buffs, but she’ll still be a perfectly viable option, and she’ll be able to contribute good damage as a secondary damage-dealer versus threats even when you’re using her primarily as a support.

The one drawback to this NP is that it doesn’t have any ramp, but Mash’s damage is so high already that it’s probably fair that she doesn’t get any more.

As a support, Mash pairs best with supports and damage-dealers who offer some combination of defensive buffs and healing. This is actually effectively the same as with base Mash: Waver, Reines, and a high-NP Jeanne are all great partners, as are damage-dealers like Munenori. You may also have success with Merlin or Lady Avalon, who can help with NP cycling and can provide the stars and healing Mash is missing. Castoria teams will still generally be safer, but Mash teams are a perfectly viable alternative and notably don’t require access to a Castoria.

DPS Mash setups are somewhat more complicated. If you’re farming, you need another Servant who can clear the first wave while Mash uses her supportive NP to switch forms. Arash, Chen Gong, and Habetrot are the classic options for this. Habetrot is probably the best of the three, as she doesn’t need any extra charge to use her NP—in a Koyan/Mash/Habetrot/Koyan/Oberon team you can stick a farming CE or Black Grail on both Mash and Habetrot and still loop. On turn 1, Mash uses her batteries on herself, Koyan uses her battery on Mash, Habetrot uses her battery and her self-sacrifice skill, and then Mash and Habetrot NP, in that order. Assuming Habetrot clears the wave, on turn two both Koyans use their star burst skills, Mash uses her second skill again to fully charge her NP gauge, and then Mash NPs. On the third turn, you use the remaining Koyan battery, re-use Mash’s first skill for extra damage, and plug Oberon in to use his batteries and damage buffs for even more damage. This works against anything provided Habetrot can kill the first wave, and if you’ve fully maxed Mash out—level 120, gold fous, class score, MLB black grail, and so on—this can even break a million damage, making Mash a 90++ viable farmer. The real question is wave 1 damage.

You can make this work with Arash, too, if you do things in a slightly different order. Assuming Mash and Arash both have Mana Loading, you can use Arash’s battery plus both of Mash’s batteries to fill Arash’s NP gauge, use Koyan’s skills on Mash, and then plug Koyan out for Oberon, who uses his 20% battery to fill Mash’s NP gauge the rest of the way. Mash and then Arash use their NPs, and the other Koyan comes in to replace Arash. Koyan and Oberon both use their 50% batteries to let Mash NP on turn 2. On turn 3, Koyan uses her star burst skill to generate 20 stars, which Mash converts to 80% charge, and then Mash re-uses her first skill to fill her NP gauge the rest of the way. This setup leads to lower turn 2 damage as Mash has to wait until turn 3 to re-use her second skill, but it should mostly work overall.

Chen is also theoretically usable, but the changes you have to make in order to secure the loop without giving anyone a starting charge CE significantly reduce Mash’s damage output. Similarly, you can pretty easily use Arc as your wave 1 damage dealer, but her inability to switch herself out costs you a support and reduces Mash’s overall damage. If you aren’t trying to 90++ farm with a maxed-out Mash as your sole DPS, though, there are lots of different ways you can farm things with creative dual-core Mash setups, so it’s worth experimenting to find setups you like!

The biggest drawback for using Mash to farm is that you’re giving up on a zero-cost CE-holder, which can be a problem for efficient farming in some instances. Overall, though, she’s a better farmer than you might expect given her kit.

As with most Servants, you can adapt farming setups to fastburn CQ setups pretty easily, though I would argue that Mash is uniquely ill-suited to fastplay in harder fights. Once you get past your initial three turns, Mash needs to take a turn to transform again before she can start hitting things, which isn’t ideal in a situation where you just need a little more damage push to finish out a fight—where a typical DPS might be able to finish things off with one last NP, Mash is likely to take two turns to finish things off, which can sometimes be a problem.

If you want to use Mash as a DPS in hard fights, the simplest approach is generally going to be to plan on playing relatively slow, keeping your team safe until you’re ready for Mash to use her NP multiple times in a row. In a perfect world, Mash NPs twice every three turns, using her defensive NP, then using her second skill to immediately charge up to her offensive NP, and then taking a turn to rebuild towards her defensive NP to repeat the loop. Mash’s best supports, then, are Servants who facilitate NP gain while also keeping the team safe. Waver and Reines are still great picks here on account of their defense buffs and batteries, and Merlin is also a particularly strong pick. You might even consider running something that hasn’t been in fashion in a very long time: double Merlin. While Merlin doesn’t provide defense up, he does offer healing, stars, and consistent party charge, plus his partywide invuln. And, of course, he boosts damage.

Mash is also a rare Servant who can function effectively as a true semi-support. She provides solid partywide buffs—especially against Threat enemies—and she has strong damage output even if you can’t afford to throw any outside buffs to her. As long as there are enough stars around for Mash to make good use of her second skill, she can alternate between supportive and offensive NPs to provide defense, damage buffs, and raw damage, all without needing to necessarily be the focus of your team.

Mash is an unusual Servant in structure and she asks for outside-the-box thinking in team composition. When using SSR Mash, look at your Servants and think about the forms of utility they offer. There’s a wide range of teams that can work effectively with this Servant—the only real limitation is your creativity!

SSR Mash’s kit is mostly superior to base Mash’s kit. There are only two notable disadvantages to SSR Mash relative to base Mash, but those disadvantages are significant enough that you might occasionally pick base Mash over SSR Mash. Notably, SSR Mash can only use her supportive NP once every three turns at most, and SSR Mash has a team cost of 16. If team cost is an issue, or if you really want to be able to overlap the benefits of Mash’s supportive NP, you might consider using base Mash instead.

Ortinax Mash, meanwhile, serves a different purpose entirely. SSR Mash, like base Mash, has a preference for longer fights, meaning Ortinax Mash retains her superiority when dealing with extremely high-damage enemies that need to be held off just long enough to kill them. The cost difference exists here as well, of course, though it’s less likely to be the reason you’d pick Ortinax Mash over SSR Mash than it is in the case of the base Mash comparison.

If you plan to leverage Mash’s damage, the Black Grail is a great CE pick, as always. For a supportive Mash, Kaleidoscope or a 50% charge CE can be helpful for getting Mash rolling quickly, though 2030 and Prisma Cosmos are also both still strong options. 2030 is notable for giving you a baseline number of stars to fuel Mash’s offensive second skill, and Prisma Cosmos makes it easier to reliably cycle Mash’s defensive NP. When picking a CE for Mash, look at how you plan to use her and pick the CE that will have the largest impact on the piece of her kit you most want to highlight.

The simple CC choice for SSR Mash is crit damage, as Mash is a Buster-focused Servant with limited in-kit crit buffs. She has iffy crit access in general, though, so you might prefer to prioritize something that will have somewhat more consistent value. For example, defensive CCs and healing CCs are both great choices for accentuating Mash’s already-sky-high tankiness.

SSR Mash is an excellent Servant and having higher stats will only make her stronger. Even a bit more health and attack will make her more consistent and will let her kill faster—and while she’s not the best option for this, a fully-maxed-out Mash can in theory farm certain 90++ nodes, which is remarkable for a free unit. She’s a very good candidate for whatever level of grailing you’re willing to give her.

SSR Mash is a top-tier Servant. I wouldn’t question this kit on a fancy new Limited SSR, and Mash is free, automatically interluded, and automatically NP3. She’s really, really good. Her biggest drawback is the loss of her zero-cost nature, but I don’t actually mind the fact that she has an SSR cost. She certainly merits it power-wise, and it ensures Mash’s older kits still have contexts in which you might choose them over the newer one.

It’s always exciting when a new Servant has a kit that’s unique, fun to use, and also strong. We periodically get Servants who fall into one or two of those categories, but hitting all three is pretty rare. I’m very glad that the first Servant, the one Servant every single player is guaranteed to have, gets to fall into that category. Excellent addition to the game.