Rabbit’s Reviews #438: Hanasaka no Okina (5* Caster)

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Hanasaka no Okina is a pretty generic AoE Quick Servant. He has a handful of mildly interesting tools, but at the end of the day he’s just a mostly average AoE unit with above-average multicore potential. His damage output is comparable to Ono no Komachi’s, and it’s a little better than Alice Kuonji’s, but his loopage is worse than both. As a farmer, he’s not great, being mostly limited to 3/3/x nodes. As a CQ unit, he’s more worth considering—though his utility doesn’t hold a candle to Alice’s persistent stuns, even looking just at Quick Casters. I don’t think he’s a bad unit on the whole—just a bit undertuned. There’s a world where a targeted buff or two made him worthwhile… but for now, he’s pretty unremarkable, especially in light of how annoying his skills are to max.
Hanasaka no Okina
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Hanasaka no Okina has pretty average stats by SSR standards, which actually means his stat spread is relatively offense-leaning as Casters go. His attack isn’t as high as Ono no Komachi’s, but it’s still not a bad starting point for a DPS. His NP gain is quite good for his deck, with above-average NP gain on both his Arts and Quick cards, and his star gen is excellent due to his Quick-focused deck and his high hit-counts.
Hanasaka no Okina has a wide spread of passives. He starts with low levels of Territory Creation and Riding, providing marginal effective bonuses to his damage and effective NP gain nearly across-the-board. He also has Item Construction for slightly more reliable debuff application, as well as Magic Resistance for occasionally avoiding enemy debuffs. Together with Ashes is Hanasaka no Okina’s most interesting passive, giving a passive NP damage buff on Burning fields, or when any enemy has the Ash Blossom status. Functionally this means Hanasaka no Okina gets a persistent NP damage boost after his first NP in CQs—when enemies with Ash Blossom are likely to linger on the field—but that this does nothing in most farming contexts.
Mana Loading is Hanasaka no Okina’s most important append, as it’s necessary for letting him loop. None of the other appends really matter—Skill Reload could be helpful for CQs, but that’s about it.
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Hanasaka no Okina asks for 72 Ashes of Remembrance per skill, which immediately makes him annoying to max out, even setting aside the fact that Caster gems are often in high demand. Maxing him out is a big investment, and the benefits of doing so are somewhat questionable.
Hanasaka no Okina’s skillset has all the core things you want from an AoE DPS—good steroids, good batteries, and some utility. Recommended skill order is 1>2>3.
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Rare White Dog is about as simple as it gets: a 30% 3-turn buff for Arts and Quick, plus a 30% battery. There’s not much to say here—all of this is good, but it’s all very standard.
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Woof Woof is a very good skill, providing a 30% 3-turn NP damage buff and 20% NP charge, all partywide. This is a solid skill for multicore purposes—it’s a good damage buff for your other DPS, along with the party charge—and it’s also good in single-core contexts, as the split batteries (30% on one skill and 20% on another) means Hanasaka no Okina can run double Skadi without wasting batteries. The partywide NP charge is also potentially handy for CQs, helping your supports NP more frequently. On top of that, this also inflicts NP seal and poison on all enemies, neither of which is hugely impactful but neither of which is bad, either. Overall, this is a really solid tool.
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Gravestone Mortar is Hanasaka no Okina’s most interesting skill. For farming purposes, all it really offers is 20% attack up partywide. This is still solid—it gives Hanasaka no Okina solid selfish steroids, and quite good partywide buffs for multicore contexts. Everything else here is for CQs. This skill causes all allies to gain an overcharge buff every time they use normal cards. For Servants with strong overcharge effects—like Castoria—this can be hugely impactful, and there’s no limit to it other than this skill’s relatively long cooldown. The skill also causes enemies to curse themselves when they attack—a small effect, but one that synergizes with Hanasaka no Okina’s NP—and it reduces enemy crit chance by 30%, effectively negating crits from any enemies who don’t have crit chance buffs. The one other thing this skill offers is a partwide 30% crit damage boost, which isn’t strong enough to be meaningful, but the skill does enough else that it’s fine to also have this. Overall, this is a pretty interesting skill, and while it’s on a very long cooldown, the overcharge-boosting effect has enough shenanigans-enabling potential that the cooldown is probably justified.
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Despite the amount of text in its description, Hanasaka no Okina’s NP is pretty simple. It deals damage, and it has Supereffective damage against Evil enemies, which scales with overcharge. Anti-Evil is a pretty good Supereffective niche. It’s too bad this NP doesn’t directly ramp. It does inflict Ash Blossom, a Burn effect that also increases Hanasaka no Okina’s NP damage—but this “ramp” is only relevant to CQs, and multiple applications of the buff don’t increase Hanasaka no Okina’s damage, so it’s not that impressive in practice. Aside from that, the NP increases damage from all three main damage-over-time effects, all of which Hanasaka no Okina can inflict. This doesn’t add up to a ton of damage, but with repeated NPs it can start to become noteworthy in CQs. The NP also clears allies’ debuffs, which might occasionally be handy, and it provides healing per turn, offsetting the demerit from The Black Grail and helping to cover incidental chip damage in stall teams.
Hanasaka no Okina can farm 3/3/x nodes with two Summer Skadis and an Oberon. On turn 1, Mana Loading plus Hanasaka no Okina’s first skill plus a Skadi battery enables an NP. Hanasaka no Okina refunds about 10% per enemy with all Skadi buffs in play, so that’s 30% against three enemies. On turn 2, Hanasaka no Okina’s second skill, plus the other Skadi battery, enables an NP. On turn 3, he refunds 30% again, and Oberon secures the loop.
It’s also worth noting that we just got a third plugsuit, which provides an extra 10% charge in exchange for significantly less damage. This is enough to let Hanasaka no Okina loop 2/3/x or 3/2/x instead, at the cost of having lower damage thresholds. Generally speaking, you want to use the second plugsuit—the one that gives both Attack and NP damage—unless you absolutely can’t loop with it, in which case the extra 10% charge from the new, third plugsuit may make a difference. The new mystic code is most notable for letting any Buster Servant with 50% charge loop CE-less… but that’s not relevant to Hanasaka no Okina, so I’ll go into detail on that next time we get a Servant to whom that applies.
Hanasaka no Okina is also a pretty solid multicore DPS. The strategy for this is the same as always—pair him with another damage-dealer (probably one who’s ST) along with supports who offer AoE buffs (like Archer Tiamat) and strategize around the specific node you’re facing.
For CQs, the same strategies that work for farming will work for bursting things down. Hanasaka no Okina is, however, a uniquely great partner for Castoria, as he provides overcharge buffs and healing, the two things Castoria wants from her DPS. A Tiamat/Hanasaka no Okina/Castoria team will strike a good balance of being safe and being fast, as Tiamat and Castoria both bring defensive buffs and Tiamat and Hanasaka no Okina boost the whole team’s card damage… or you can bring Caster Skadi instead of Tiamat to layer the evasion buff from Skadi’s NP with Anti-Enforcement Defense from Castoria’s.
Hanasaka no Okina has quite a bit of passive healing as long as he’s NP-ing, so there’s little reason not to use The Black Grail.
There’s nothing Hanasaka no Okina needs that CCs can easily provide. Buff removal is one of the few forms of utility he doesn’t have, so you could give him CCs that remove various buffs to give him a little more flexibility. Aside from that, there’s not a lot that will make a difference.
Casters aren’t great Grail targets, and Hanasaka no Okina is only okay as Casters go. If you find yourself using him all the time, grails won’t hurt him, but I wouldn’t prioritize him over other Servants.
Hanasaka no Okina isn’t all that great as a conventional single-core farmer—his damage is unremarkable and his loop specs aren’t good. On the other hand, he has pretty high multicore potential and some interesting CQ tricks. I don’t think he’s a bad Servant, but there are so many other, better Servants out there, that I wouldn’t personally reach for him. He has enough unique elements in his kit to be interesting, but not enough to really stand out in the long-term.