Rabbit’s Reviews #424: Ryougi Shiki (5* Moon Cancer)

In a summer full of tightly-balanced and generally useful Servants, Shiki is the standout… in that she’s the only one who’s bad.
Shiki has essentially two core elements to her kit. She’s an NP-form-switching Servant, and she has the best iteration yet on switching between AoE and ST noble phantasms, because her form-switching is tied to a skill, she can choose whether or not to switch, and her NP form persists indefinitely. This means Shiki can function fully as either an ST or AoE Servant, and she can also switch between the two mid-fight provided the skill timing works out. This is, in theory, a neat trick… but it’s only relevant if both of her forms are useful. Unfortunately for Shiki, not only is this not true, but instead both of her forms are useless.
That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but only a little bit. The second core element of Shiki’s kit is that she has really high steroids for a damage-dealer, especially in her AoE form, with the buffs spread nicely between all three brackets. Unfortunately, her attack stat is so low that her overall damage output ends up being mostly nonviable for hard content. It’s pretty rare for base stats to be a Servant’s core failing, but Shiki’s stat spread severely hurts her… and I’m going to be bold and say I think this was an accident.
I’m usually hesitant to say a game’s developers made a mistake when it comes to balancing. For a game like FGO, systems designers do a lot of testing and number-crunching, and even when something is well above or below the power curve, you can safely assume this was both known and intended.
The reason I think this isn’t the case with Shiki is that she’s surrounded by interesting and well-balanced Servants, and if it weren’t for her statline, she would actually be pretty good. It very much looks like Shiki was given what should have been a modestly strong damage-dealing kit, and then her stats were applied using the generic formula that determines all Servants’ stats, which resulted in something much less powerful than intended. It strikes me as likely that most of this summer’s development time—the number-crunching and fine-tuning and playtesting—went to making sure Olga’s card-rigging and Lip’s tanking and Tiamat’s brand-new-Meta-support functionality were all polished to a mirror sheen, which meant that Shiki’s practical damage output went overlooked.
...Whether this is true is neither here nor there (except in that if Shiki is truly well below where she was meant to be she’s more likely to get buffed on the sooner side). The fact of the matter is that every Servant this summer is great, except for Shiki. There’s essentially no reason to pull for her mechanically, and she’s solidly the worst SSR so far this year.
I’m not going to fully go into how Servant stats are calculated, because the full details aren’t relevant here, but suffice it to say that attack and HP are entirely deterministic, set based on a combination of class, rarity, and the lore parameters you can see in a Servant’s profile. The only direct “gameplay design” input on a Servant’s stats outside of that comes in the form of a “lean,” which can push stats in an offensive or defensive direction. Somewhat surprisingly, Shiki has a neutral lean—which is to say, her very low attack comes strictly from all those other factors, and mostly from the fact that Moon Cancers as a class inherently have low attack. This is part of why I say Shiki’s having low attack was an oversight—she’s actually not a defensively-slanted Servant internally, even though that’s how her stats shake out.
That said, the end result of all this is that Shiki has the second-lowest attack of the SSR Moon Cancers, a class that, again, already has low attack on average. Her attack is only a bit above what I would consider SR range, and many SRs in fact have higher attack if grailed to equal levels. While Shiki does get a lot of health to compensate, this is a really bad trade on a Servant who is otherwise purely offense-oriented. If Shiki were an Avenger with exactly the same traits and exactly the same kit, she’d be totally respectable, if not overly exciting, but her class—and the low attack that results from it—really kills her damage.
Shiki’s Arts card NP gain is a bit better than average for her deck, and her Quick cards are passable. Her ST NP’s refund is quite low, but her AoE NP’s refund is relatively high compared to most AoE Arts NPs—probably an attempt to split the difference between the two, as they share hit-counts—which on balance means Shiki’s AoE form has quite good loop specs while her ST form has a bit more trouble with recursion. She also has better star gen than you’d expect out of an Arts Servant due to her high-hit-count Quicks.
Shiki has a pretty modest suite of passives for an Extra-class Servant. Magic Resistance is alright for occasional debuff avoidance, Independent Action provides a marginal crit-damage buff that doesn’t matter much given that Shiki has no good way to reliably access crits, and Presence Concealment has a very small impact on Shiki’s active star gen. Entity is Shiki’s best passive, giving a solid 5 stars per turn, along with a small tricolor buff while Shiki is in her AoE form. Even this isn’t hugely impressive, but any steroids are welcome and the star gen is a nice bonus.
Appends-wide, Mana Loading is important to Shiki’s various loop setups. None of the other appends matter all that much—crit damage is okay if you can get Shiki critting, and Skill Reload can be helpful-ish for getting Shiki to a second buff cycle (and maybe a form change) in hard fights, but really Mana Loading is all you need.
Shiki asks for fewer mats than most Servants, but in exchange she takes a full set of Saber and Assassin monuments and gems. Personally, I’m always short on Saber gems—but as long as you have a good gem stockpile she’s not too hard to raise.
Form-change gimmick aside, Shiki ’s skillset is pretty unremarkable for a DPS, offering a nice buff spread along with some extra utility here and there. Recommended skill order is 2>3>1.
Mystic Eyes of Death Perception is Summer Shiki’s spin on her other two versions’ skill of the same name. It mostly serves as a typical 30% 3-turn Arts buff, though it also has some mildly interesting utility. This is our second source of piercing solemn defense, which means Shiki is potentially valuable in the very rare case where you’re faced with that effect and can’t simply remove it for whatever reason. Pierce solemn defense also applies to invulns but does not apply to dodges. That makes this effect less powerful overall than simple pierce invuln, as dodges are much much more common than solemn defense is. In fact, this skill is mostly a downgrade from Saber Shiki’s equivalent skill, with an inferior (albeit rarer) pierce effect and a lower buff value. The skill does apply a very high instant-kill buff—enough to potentially enable instant-kill-based farming setups against certain enemies with high IK rates—and it also generates 20 stars, which won’t on its own let Shiki crit but which could potentially be modestly helpful when paired with Lady Avalon or Tiamat. Overall, this skill is fine—a 30% persistent Arts buff is baseline useful—but it’s not especially remarkable, despite having a rare form of utility.
Dancing to the Full Moon is both Shiki’s 50% battery and her form-swapping skill. This is the worst of the three skills to be the once that switches her NP’s form, as in most cases it effectively forces Shiki to use her 50% battery on turn 1 when farming. This is problematic because it means Shiki can ’t fully benefit from Kaleidoscope when AoE farming—she must use her battery on turn 1 in order to access her AoE NP, even if that means the charge is wasted. This only matters for low-end farming nodes, and Shiki doesn’t have much trouble clearing those plugless even when forced to start with a 50% charge CE instead of Kaleid, but it’s still a mild annoyance, and Shiki would be a bit stronger if the form-change effect were on skill 1 instead. 50% batteries are still nice, though, and it’s also nice that Shiki’s form change is permanent, as it lets her function fully as an ST or AoE Servant, in a way that (for example) UDK Barghest cannot. The skill also gives some nice utility depending on the form chosen, offering debuff immunity if you choose Moon form and 100% buff removal resistance if you choose Sun form, both of which can be handy for certain CQs. That said, the fact that the utility is split between the two forms and that (unlike in S3’s case) there’s no way to get one form’s benefit and then immediately switch to the other means you may run into situations where a fight is AoE but you really want buff removal resistance, or where a fight is ST but you really want debuff immunity, and in either case the division of the two effects is a little annoying. In a vacuum, this is a good skill—50% batteries are always strong, the bonus utility here is good, and Shiki’s form-swapping is in-theory cool—but it’s just a little awkward in context of Shiki’s overall kit.
Midnight Stroll / Midday Nap changes slightly depending on which form Shiki is in when she uses it. It’s a respectable 3-turn 30% attack buff in both forms, but in sunlight form it also gives healing, crit damage, and a turn of CDR, while in moonlight form it gives 30% NP damage, a two-hit invuln, and overcharge. Shiki isn’t much of a crit Servant and doesn’t slot nicely into crit-oriented teams, but she does have pretty easy NP access, and a 30/30 steroid split on a single skill is very strong. Similarly, healing is nice, but a 2-hit invuln will almost always avert more damage than the Sun version of this skill will heal. Together these make the Moon version of the skill solidly the stronger of the two—so it’s unfortunate that Shiki starts in Sun mode. While Shiki can swap into AoE mode and then use this skill for the stronger buffs, she can’t easily use this skill first and then swap to ST—not until a second buff-cycle at least, and that will only be relevant in fights that are AoE for one buff cycle, last long enough to reach a second buff cycle, and then become primarily ST. Fights that meet this criteria are vanishingly rare, if they exist at all, so in practical terms Shiki as an ST Servant has substantially lower steroids than Shiki as an AoE Servant (which is further compounded by the fact that one of Shiki’s passives also provides extra buffs in AoE form). The one place where the two skills compete is the third effect—the CDR ST form gets might be better for hard fights than the overcharge buff AoE gets, especially since two levels of overcharge is functionally just 10% NP damage up for a turn. It’s also worth noting, relatedly, that when farming Shiki might want to save this skill for turn 2 or 3 if you don’t need the damage sooner, as the overcharge portion of this skill only lasts for a turn. This is a very good skill in a vacuum, and it’s interesting to see directly how Lasengle tries to balance AoE vs. ST servants—with AoE Servants getting 20-30% higher steroids on average—but the structure of this skill feels a bit like it’s unnecessarily penalizing Shiki’s single-target form, and even with this skill neither ST nor AoE Shiki hits particularly hard, due to her other flaws.
Shiki’s NP is fine. Setting aside the form-switching aspect, it’s fairly straightforward. It does get pre-cast NP damage up—which synergizes nicely with Oberon—but that NP damage buff doesn’t ramp. Shiki does get anti-Sky damage, but even with that niche her damage isn’t particularly good. It also gets a low-ish chance of instant-kill—substantially improved with Shiki’s first skill in play—but that’s only going to matter for the occasional farming setup. Lastly, it gives partywide 10% NP charge, which is genuinely quite nice, supporting Shiki’s NP recursion and also helping supports get their NPs. In stall contexts you do have to choose between placing Castoria’s NP before Shiki’s—for extra damage and NP charge for Castoria—or after Shiki’s—for additional survival—but that’s not a problem unique to Shiki.
If Shiki’s damage were higher, this would be a pretty good NP. As-is, it’s kinda disappointing—it’s roughly an interlude plus ramp shy of where I would expect Shiki to be damage-wise, especially in context of the other summer Servants. On the bright side, that’s a clear and specific buff plenty of other Servants have gotten, so it’s not outside of the realm of possibility that she would get it… but on the other hand, Servants rarely get buffed within a year of release, and FGO’s story is ending at the end of this year. While it doesn’t look like FGO is going to get shut down in the near future, it’s an open question whether we’ll be getting any meaningful new content after next Valentine’s day, let alone the sorts of regular damage buffs that might lead to Shiki’s damage getting fixed. I wouldn’t bank on it happening, personally.
As I alluded to above, Shiki can loop anything but 1/1/x nodes. Shiki refunds about 12.5% NP per enemy with just Castoria’s Arts buffs, or 20% with both NP gain buffs as well, which leads to two different setups depending on which wave is harder to loop.
We’ll start with 2/1/x, which works for any wave composition that has more than one enemy on wave 1. On turn 1, Mana Loading plus Shiki’s battery plus a Castoria 30% battery brings you to 100%. Shiki refunds 12.5% per enemy, for a total of 25%, plus 10% from her NP’s flat charge. You then use both Castoria 20% batteries and the other Castoria’s 30% battery to bring Shiki to 100%. She refunds 20% off the one enemy on turn 2 and gets 10% from her NP, at which Oberon can plug in to secure the loop with his 70% total charge.
For 1/2/x, the strategy is slightly different—and this one is specifically for cases where the first wave has one and only one enemy. Shiki does not use her battery (or her third skill) on turn 1, instead staying in ST mode for a turn, which more than offsets the damage loss from waiting to use her third skill. Instead, you have Mana Loading plus both Castoria Charismas plus both Castoria’s 20% batteries—one of which you can use on the Castoria you plan to plug out, letting you slot in a Castoria NP on turn 1. Shiki refunds 20% off her NP, plus her 10% flat charge. On turn 2, you plug Oberon in, use Shiki’s battery, and use Oberon’s 20% battery to bring her to 100%. Shiki refunds 40% total off the two enemies, plus her own 10% charge, at which point you can use Oberon’s 50% battery to secure the loop.
It’s maybe also worth noting that Shiki can technically loop 1/1/x, but only if she gets two hits of overkill on the first wave, and not against any classes with an NP gain penalty. For this strategy you do the same as the above but save the second Castoria’s 20% battery for wave 2—Shiki can just barely get the charge she needs on wave 1 with two hits of overkill on a neutral NP-gain enemy, but given that single-enemy waves tend to have a lot of health and Shiki’s not exactly swimming in extra damage (especially in this setup, where you’re probably saving skill 3 for turn 3), I would consider this to be unfeasible in practice.
If you’re facing a relatively strong single-target first wave and a relatively weak third wave, Shiki’s form-switching might make her a useful farmer… but Shiki’s damage is a real problem. If fully maxed out (NP5, MLB BG, 2k/2k Fous, Class Score, the works), Shiki deals about 650k damage with her AoE NP against a neutral target on wave 3. Shiki’s niche leaves her just shy of a million. Castoria NPs help this a bit, as does saving skill 3 for turn 3 when that’s possible, but this is egregiously low for an AoE generalist and will leave even a totally maxed-out Shiki unable to farm most nodes. You’re looking at a Servant who needs niche to roughly match what Spish can do against everyone, and Space Ishtar isn’t even a top-tier damage-dealer anymore. Shiki’s damage is just about even with Jinako’s pre-ramp damage, and Jinako is primarily a support, has notoriously low damage, and does have ramp. Shiki, a pure DPS, deals less damage than Jinako, a support, if Jinako gets to ramp, which is just unacceptable.
All that is to say, Shiki has really good loop specs and can theoretically farm nodes where she has the damage. She’ll be fine for clearing general content and farming low-level event nodes and the like. Unless you’re swinging at Avengers, though, top-end farming is beyond her.
Shiki fares somewhat better for CQs, if only because damage isn’t the be-all end-all there. She’s still not, you know, good, because killing faster is better, all else being equal, but Shiki has good uptime on her buffs, nice consistency-related utility, and partywide NP charge, all of which is good. She pairs nicely with Castoria, NP-ordering-challenges aside, and she also pairs nicely with Lady Avalon due to her incidental crit tools. A Shiki/Castoria/Lady Avalon team will be quite stable, and while your damage output will be low, it’ll be pretty consistent, making it potentially a good option for long fights where you need a steady stream of damage. The old MHXA fight stands out to me as a good example of this, as a fight that would typically take 15-20 turns, which demands regular NPs and consistent mid-range damage, and which asks for a hard pivot to stall at the fight’s end. ...That said, most CQs these days have higher health thresholds and are also more easily solved with high damage, so the practical value of this kind of team is a bit questionable.
Single-target Shiki also really suffers from comparison to Ciel, who also has tons of consistency-related utility but who hits way, way harder in practice thanks to card-rigging. Not everyone will have Ciel, granted, but if you need an ST Moon Cancer for whatever reason and haven’t pulled either it would be really hard to justify pulling for Shiki, especially given that Ciel got a rerun just before Shiki arrived and will get another banner shortly after. The only reason you might consider choosing Shiki instead is if you really need a solution for both AoE and ST Avenger fights and you already have Olga or maybe Ishtar for card-rigging… but even then, you’re taking it as a given that you need a Moon Cancer, which is a bit questionable when Avenger fights are rare, are likely to be even rarer post-OC2, and there are plenty of Berserkers and the like who can do the job just fine.
I often say that the existence of better Servants does not make a Servant inherently bad, and that’s still true. Shiki’s core problem is that her damage is too low and she doesn’t really do anything other than damage—the fact that there are many other Servants who have much better damage and do bring other valuable things just drives home how bad of a spot she’s in.
At the very least, she’s pretty self-sufficient. If you do have Shiki and don’t have anything better, and if you’re light on supports, you can stick her with the usual budget Arts options—Xu Fu, Mozart, and so on—and she’ll do pretty well relative to other Servants placed in similarly sub-optimal circumstances (though her damage will still be low).
There also may be multicore setups where she’s helpful for specific nodes—setups in which her ability to NP as an ST unit and then as an AoE unit, while also providing some party charge, enables certain strategies. I’m a bit skeptical of this, as Shiki has no partywide buffs and her damage will be even lower if you’re spreading buffs across two Servants, but multicore strategies are so node-dependent I can’t rule it out entirely, especially with the arrival of Tiamat.
Shiki has great loop specs and very low damage, so The Black Grail is going to be her best CE in almost all situations. Having it MLB and max level is particularly beneficial to her, as the proportional difference between a high-attack Servant and a low-attack Servant lessens the more flat attack boosts you have, and a level 100 BG’s +2400 attack is the best you can get.
Shiki has some incidental star gen, but she doesn’t have enough to ensure she crits. CCs can help with this, either by providing additional star weight or by directly generating stars. You’ll probably have the most success mixing the two, giving star weight CCs to Shiki’s Arts and Buster cards, and star gen CCs to her Quicks. Alternatively, you can lean into Shiki’s utility and stability by giving her debuff-removal or buff-removal CCs, or healing.
Without a meaningful buff, Shiki’s damage will be too low to make her a noteworthy farmer even when fully maxed out. Extra attack does help make her feel better for CQs, but unless you’re committed to using Shiki in spite of her weakness, your resources are better spent elsewhere. From a strictly gameplay standpoint, I can’t recommend grailing this one.
I will say, though, that for the same reason Black Grail is particularly helpful for Shiki, gold fous do slightly dull the edge of her low base attack. They won’t fix her—again, even when fully maxed out her damage is insufficient for top-end content—but they are a noticeable quality-of-life improvement for regular use, speaking from experience.
With a high attack stat, Shiki would be a strong ST unit and a strong AoE unit—not best-in-class in either role, but interesting in her ability to do both and respectable in both forms. Sadly, she has a very low attack stat, to the extent that she is instead quite weak. This leaves her in the unfortunate position of devoting most of her kit to dealing damage and still not being good at it. There’s just not much reason to pull for her beyond character and art.
Shiki is fixable. All it would take is an NP interlude that extends the duration of her overcharge effect to three turns and suddenly she’s fine—not top-tier or anything, but solidly a second- or third-tier AoE and ST unit, which would be a fair place to land given that she can do both. Until and unless she gets that kind of buff, though, she’s one to skip. Pull for Tiamat instead.
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