Rabbit’s Reviews #419: Typhon Ephemeros (5* Pretender)

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 Typhon is a very powerful AoE Buster DPS, with the caveat that she’s a Pretender and thus does not work against Cavalry. She’s also one of the rare Buster AoE Servants who can loop without a starting charge CE, and unlike most such Servants she actually has the damage to properly 6CE 90++ nodes, provided she has class advantage and moderately high investment. When fully maxed out—level 120 and NP5 and all the bells and whistles—Typhon’s anti-Knight damage is well higher than needed for top-end farming, so she only needs somewhere around level 100 and NP3 to reliably farm 90++ Knights without a CE, which makes her solidly one of the best Buster farmers in the game. She’s arguably even better for hard fights, as she has a bunch of useful utility and a Supereffective damage modifier she can scale.
All this is to say that Typhon is a truly excellent Servant for the fights that don’t hard-counter her. If you’re willing to get her to NP3 or so, Typhon can be an excellent addition to your roster… but at the same time, she’s ultimately “just” a fantastic AoE Buster Servant. If you already have a maxed-out AoE Buster generalist and you don’t particularly care about being able to slot in one extra CE—or if you don’t love the idea of investing heavily in a Servant who doesn’t function well against three common classes—she’ll probably be less appealing.
Typhon Ephemeros
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Typhon has a strongly offense-leaning stat spread. Not only does she have the highest attack and lowest health of the Pretenders, but she has high attack relative to SSRs as a whole, which is great for a DPS. She has pretty ordinary Arts NP gain and moderately low Quick NP gain for a triple-Buster Servant, but due to her deck she’ll be mostly reliant on batteries for NP access. Similarly, while her hit-counts aren’t bad, with only a single Quick card she won’t be generating many stars with her attacks.
All three of Typhon’s passives are unique, and they’re all quite good. Progenitor Dragon gives 5% NP charge every turn, which is handy for CQs (though sadly doesn’t help for farming). Typhon, meanwhile, is a permanent NP damage and crit damage buff. The crit damage buff is too small to be noticeable, but the NP damage buff is great and has nice Oberon synergy. Fruit of Impermanence, lastly, can let Typhon stave off Buff Removal on occasion, which can come in clutch in certain fights. In exchange, it reduces Typhon’s debuff resistance… but this is actually less of a demerit than it seems, as debuff stacks increase Typhon’s NP damage. This is still annoying when you have to deal with random stuns and charms and the like, but in exchange it means less impactful debuffs are more likely to land, fueling Typhon’s damage output.
Typhon needs both Mana Loading and Skill Reload for her CE-less loop setup. Skill Reload has to be at least level 6, while Mana Loading is fine at level 1. Aside from that, Typhon is a Buster Servant with relatively weak in-kit crit buffs, so the crit damage append isn’t terrible. The other two appends don’t really do anything of note for her.
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Typhon takes a mix of mats from throughout the game. Nothing she asks for is in especially short supply, so as long as you’re far enough in the game to have access to late-Lostbelt mats, it shouldn’t be too hard to max her out.
Typhon’s skillset is strong, but it’s also fairly standard in terms of the types of things it offers. Recommended skill order is 3>1>2.
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Ashen Armor is quite plain, giving a modest Attack and Buster buff along with a hit-based invuln. All of these things are good for all the usual reasons: damage buffs are important on any DPS and hit-based invulns generally won’t be wasted. Good skill; not much else to say here.
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Black Wings is an odd skill in that it’s pretty weak in and of itself, but it provides some important tools in the context of Typhon’s kit. The targeted skill cooldown here may in very rare cases be useful for party support, but mostly Typhon will want to use this on herself. The extra CDR lets Typhon stack her first and second skills with only a single Koyanskaya, which is ultimately what enables her CE-less loop setups, and in that sense this skill is really important… but on the other hand, if Typhon just had shorter cooldowns, this skill wouldn’t be necessary. Similarly, a one-time Overcharge buff is pretty situational, and in most cases it would be mostly notable for its Castoria synergy… but in Typhon’s case, it’s functionally a 20% NP damage buff for a turn, which is nice given that Typhon can afford to save this for turn 3, at which point it synergizes with End of the Dream. The other effects are also pretty unremarkable, giving an unimpressive crit damage buff and a small number of critical stars. Overall, I’d probably call this a bad skill given its cooldown, but it gets a pass due to the things it enables in Typhon’s kit specifically.
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Sinful is Typhon’s battery. It’s the usual 50% battery, but it also provides 20% charge to Typhon’s allies and 20% attack up to the whole team, both of which are nice. The attack up is mostly just more damage for Typhon, but the charge and attack buff can both be handy for certain CQs or for multicore farming setups. This skill also applies curse to the whole team as a demerit—but this is actually a damage buff in disguise, as Typhon’s NP deals more damage for each debuff stack on her. This is unfortunately the only in-kit way for Typhon to control her Supereffective multiplier, but still, a 10% NP damage buff that stacks multiplicatively with everything isn’t the worst thing.
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As with most of her kit, Typhon’s NP is straightforwardly strong. It provides a one-turn NP damage buff and deals damage, with a Supereffective damage multiplier that scales with debuffs on Typhon. It’s a bit hard to scale that damage multiplier, and it does mean Typhon has some antisynergy with any support who removes or blocks debuffs (notably Castoria and Nightingale), but this still amounts to a bit of extra damage in most cases and a lot of extra damage in some rare situations. Aside from that, the NP pierces invuln, which is nice for consistency, and it also inflicts burn for flavor.
The most interesting thing about Typhon’s usage is that her preferred farming setup uses double Oberon instead of double Koyan. In an Oberon/Typhon/Oberon/Koyan team, Typhon can loop anything without a starting CE, provided she has Mana Loading and Skill Reload. On turn 1, Mana Loading, Typhon’s battery, and both Oberon 20% batteries fills your NP gauge. On turn 2, the Oberons’ 50% batteries let you NP. On turn 2, you use End of the Dream from both Oberons, swap Koyan in, and use all her skills. Using Typhon’s second skill on herself allows her first and third skills to come off cooldown, and Koyan’s battery plus Typhon’s secures the loop. This setup has somewhat low damage on turns 1 and 2, but her turn 3 damage is very high, making her a viable 90++ farmer against Knights and Berserkers.
This farming setup actually works for any AoE Buster unit with a 50% battery on a five-turn cooldown (or the equivalent with in-kit cooldown reduction). I believe the only Servants this applies to at the moment are Ereshkigal and Takeda Shingen, though, and neither of those Servants are strong enough for this to be a particularly notable strategy—unlike Typhon, they can’t easily get away with not using Black Grail, and they’re much more likely to struggle with early-turn damage than Typhon is.
For CQs, you can use the same burst-oriented setup for quick kills in fights where that’s possible. Otherwise, Castoria stall is also possible, with the caveat that Castoria’s debuff removal interferes with Typhon’s NP. You might also consider running Typhon with SSR Mash and one of the various defense-leaning supports—Waver, Reines, and Merlin all have advantages—for a less stable but potentially faster team.
If you aren’t giving Typhon a farming CE, the Black Grail is a great pick for damage boosting. Alternatively, Typhon is an extremely rare case where her bond CE might occasionally outperform Black Grail. Typhon’s Bond CE gives 30% NP damage up, and it also gives a small crit damage buff and (more importantly) a self-curse when she uses cards. Every curse stack adds another 10% to Typhon’s NP’s SE modifier, so if you get lucky with card draws and prioritize Typhon’s cards, you can massively increase her damage. There isn’t another good way to rig Typhon’s SE modifier, so that at least makes it an interesting pick.
Typhon is a triple-Buster Servant with low in-kit crit buffs, so crit damage CCs are a good pick for her. There’s nothing else particularly obvious that she needs, with the possible exception of healing to help offset the fact that you might be letting damage-over-time debuffs stack up on her.
Typhon is really really strong, and she’s absolutely worth grailing, especially if you get her to NP3 or higher. Extra stats can enable her to farm nodes and clear CQs that she wouldn’t be able to deal with otherwise, and grails are so plentiful these days there’s little reason not to at least take her to level 100. That said, levels past 100 are only worthwhile if you’ve already unlocked Mana Loading and Skill Reload, so those two appends should be your priority in terms of spending coins.
Typhon is in a slightly strange place, in that she’s objectively very strong, but she’s also coming quite late in FGO’s life and is a pretty unremarkable AoE unit outside of her pure power. Typhon’s potential for 6CE farming might be enough to make her interesting to certain players, which makes her solidly more exciting than even most strong Buster AoEs, but the increase in value over existing alternatives is still likely to be marginal for most players. Typhon is a great Servant to invest heavily in if you want to 6CE farm 90++ Knight nodes or if you generally need a strong Servant to handle CQs involving those classes. She’s less appealing if you feel like your farming needs are already sufficiently met, and she doesn’t offer much beyond hitting really hard.