Rabbit’s Reviews #445: John Lackland (5* Avenger)

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The third Servant for the Strange/Fake collab is, bafflingly, not a Strange Fake character. Instead we have John Lackland, the notoriously ineffective king of England, and Richard the Lionheart’s younger brother. With the exception of his strangely low attack stat, John Lackland is an extremely optimized AoE Buster Servant—probably the best in the game at this point, outside of Olga. His damage is super high, and he’s a CE-less Buster looper. He doesn’t do much other than damage, but at the end of the day he’s essentially a modern Arjuna Alter or Avenger Nobu—he only hits hard, but he hits so hard that he doesn’t need to do anything else. In almost all cases, fights are won by dealing enough damage, which means a Servant who can output maximum damage doesn’t need to do anything else.
John Lackland
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I cannot overstate just how low John Lackland’s attack is. It’s not just low, it’s roughly 2000 points lower than a typical SSR Avenger. It’s lower than one of the 4* Avengers (that being Gorgon). Avengers inherently have strongly attack-leaning statlines. Lackland is so defense-skewed that he overcomes the class’s innate tendency and has an attack stat that’s low relative to all SSRs, not just his direct competition. It’s really, really bad.
...Fortunately he makes up the damage elsewhere. Lackland’s stats are his one real drawback.
Attack stat aside, Lackland’s internals are pretty unremarkable. His Arts card NP gain is just about average for his deck, and his Quick card is just south of standard. He has high hit-counts but only one Quick card, so his active star gen is not great, but not terrible for being a single-Quick Servant. His only passives are the Avenger standard ones—which, admittedly, are all decent. Avenger boosts defensive NP gain at the cost of making allies more vulnerable to debuffs, Oblivion Correction is a modest crit damage buff, and Self-Restoration makes it slightly easier for Lackland to access his NP in CQ contexts.
Unfortunately, Lackland needs both Mana Loading and Skill Reload to loop in his optimal teams. This means he realistically needs at least NP2 (with high bond levels) and probably NP3 to be fully functional, due to the number of coins it takes to unlock two appends. In this day and age, you’re unlikely to make a damage-dealer into your go-to unless they’re at least NP2 anyway, so it’s not a huge deal… but this does make an NP1 Lackland disappointing in a way he didn’t necessarily need to be. Aside from that, the crit damage append is decent—Lackland is a Buster Servant with somewhat underwhelming crit buffs—while Anti-Saber attack up is nice when relevant. The Extra Attack boost is probably the least useful append overall, though it is of course better than the Anti-Saber append when not fighting Sabers.
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Lackland is an Avenger, so he requires no gems and he doesn’t ask for any mats in exceptionally high quantities. In exchange, he takes a wide array of different materials. Usually this means Avengers are pretty easy to raise, though most players will likely run into one or two mats they’re low on, just by virtue of how many different mats are used.
Lackland’s skillset falls solidly into the “straightforwardly strong” category. Recommended skill order is 3>2>1.
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Fool King’s Charisma is a mostly typical Charisma variant, pairing a partywide 20% attack buff with a partywide 30% crit buff. The crit buff is mostly relevant to Lackland himself, and the value is a little low—I usually look for at least 50% on a crit buff—but it’s not a bad skill, especially in the context of Lackland’s kit. The skill also removes enemy buffs, which can be helpful for consistency in CQs, especially since Lackland doesn’t otherwise have a way to get past defensive buffs. The skill ends with a small “demerit” in the form of a 500 damage curse that’s applied to your whole party—but Lackland’s NP has a special effect that turns curses into healing for your team, so as long as Lackland is using his NP consistently, this is actually a small passive heal in practice. That said, even if this is functionally a heal, debuff removal (such as from Castoria’s NP) will still remove it, which would be mildly annoying if the effect weren’t so minor anyway.
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King Lackland’s Pride is a targeted 30% Buster buff and battery, which would be nice on its own—but it also comes with a 1-turn cooldown reduction effect. Servants with in-kit cooldown reduction often have longer cooldowns to offset that, and I think this actually is true of Lackland—many of his individual skill effects (Charisma, 30% buffs, 30% batteries, etc) are commonly tied to 5-turn-cooldown skills, and Lackland’s skills have 6-turn cooldowns across the board. That makes his cooldowns basically a wash as long as he uses this on himself. However, because of how Lackland’s effects are distributed, his skills don’t feel like 5-turn-cooldown skills. Lackland has good steroids, 60% total charge, and some utility. Move the effects around a bit—give him a 60% charge skill and a 50% 3-turn attack buff skill—and you’d absolutely expect 6-turn cooldowns on those skills. What this means in practice is while Lackland’s skills have individually fair cooldowns, his kit taken as a whole has quite low cooldowns. Assuming Lackland uses Lackland’s Pride on himself (which he almost always will), Lackland’s cooldowns enable some atypical setups that result in exceptionally high damage. It’s pretty clever Servant design—nothing in Lackland’s kit is individually exceptional, but they work together to skirt historical “rules” and let Lackland excel. The one gripe I have with Lackland’s Pride is that you’ll almost never want to leverage the fact that this skill is targeted. There might be multicore setups where it’s worth using this on an ally, but Lackland really relies on having all of the effects of this skill to himself, which makes it hard to justify tossing it to someone else.
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False God Metamorphosis is another 30% buff (to attack) and 30% battery—though this one is selfish. These are good effects on their own, and they become great in the context of Lackland’s kit—having two 30% batteries means Lackland can loop without starting charge, which immediately makes him very powerful. On top of that, this skill has a small Power Mod effect. 30% Power Mod isn’t a lot, and Power Mod is a weaker form of niche than supereffective damage… but it’s better than nothing, and Neutral is a pretty broad niche, so I can’t complain too much. This skill also causes Lackland’s crit damage to scale slightly each time he attacks, which is nice, but even with this effect, his overall crit damage buffs are on the low side for a Buster unit. It’s also worth noting that all three of Lackland’s skills curse him, and in total they give him 2000 curse damage per turn. This is a nice chunk of passive healing with Lackland’s NP active—but of course it’s negated if you have a debuff cleanse from an ally, which is a slight anti-synergy with Castoria specifically.
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Lackland’s NP is pretty interesting. It’s an AoE Buster NP without a conventional niche—but what it does do is give Lackland a one-turn NP damage buff that scales based on the number of Evil units and Kings on the field. Lackland himself has both traits, so at minimum he gets 20% NP damage up. Several of Lackland’s preferred supports also have one or both traits: Lord Logres is a King, Koyanskaya is Evil, and Oberon is both. In a double Oberon team, Lackland gets 60% NP damage up every time he uses his NP.
...In exchange, he doesn’t get to ramp in farming contexts, and his CQ ramp is post-damage (in the form of a buster resistance debuff). With the exception of Servants who get to ramp supereffective damage, the best ramp we ever see is 20% pre-cast NP damage up, which caps out at 60% on turn 3. Lackland functionally gets the same level of boost without needing to ramp to get there. He can’t boost this NP damage via overcharge like, say, Spish can, but in exchange his NP damage boost increases further if any enemies are also Evil or Kings, which should be pretty common.
In fact, Lackland will very rarely be swinging against truly neutral enemies—he gets extra NP damage against Evil and King enemies, he has power mod against Neutral foes, and with Koyan he can get power mod against Man enemies. I don’t usually bring this up because it’s a small effect and not worth the trouble of keeping track of in most cases, but due to inherent attribute affinities, Lackland (who is Man attribute) also deals a bit of extra damage against Sky attribute enemies. This means there are very few enemies against whom Lackland has absolutely no niche damage boost. I’ll still run my damage calculations in the Usage Tips section assuming Lackland is swinging against a truly neutral target—but in almost all cases his actual damage will be at least a little bit higher.
The one thing this NP does outside of damage is cause allies to convert curses into healing. As I mentioned above, this gives Lackland some modest party healing and some slightly less-modest self-healing. What this matters most for, though, is countering hard fights that rely heavily on curse debuffs. These aren’t all that common, but Lackland is now arguably the best counter for them.
Lackland has a handful of teams to consider, starting with the obvious: he does work in Koyan/Koyan/Oberon teams, and he can actually loop CE-less in that setup, though it requires Lackland to have Mana Loading and to approach the team slightly different from usual. Unless otherwise stated, all damage calculations listed below assume a level 90, NP2 Lackland with an MLB Black Grail, maxed-out mystic codes, and class score.
For the conventional setup, you start with Koyan and Oberon in the frontline, with the second Koyan in the back. On turn 1, you use all of Lackland’s skills (making sure to use Lackland’s Pride last), and you use Koyan’s damage buffs and Oberon’s 20% charge. Mana Loading plus Lackland’s 60% total batteries plus Oberon’s 20% lets you NP. On turn 2, you use Koyan’s 50% charge, then plug her out for the other Koyan, who uses all of her skills. Lackland uses his first skill again (saving his batteries for the next turn) and NPs. On turn 3, Lackland uses both of his batteries and Oberon uses his 50% battery and End of the Dream to secure the loop.
In this setup, John deals about 713k damage—which is, to be clear, obscenely high for swinging against neutral. In this setup, Lackland easily reaches omnifarmer territory with NP5 and grails. He doesn’t need niche, he doesn’t need particular enemy compositions—all he needs is Black Grail. ...But once we have Skill Reload, we can do even better.
With Skill Reload, John only needs one source of outside cooldown reduction, which means you can run double Oberon instead of double Koyanskaya and still re-use Lackland’s skills. To do this, you start with a Koyan/Lackland/Oberon team in the frontline, with a second Oberon in the backline. Turn 1 is the same as the prior setup: you use all of Lackland’s skills, Oberon’s 20% charge, and Koyan’s damaging skills. On turn 2, you use Koyan’s battery and plug her out for the second Oberon. You then use one of the Oberons’ 50% batteries. This team has more charge than it needs, so you can afford to use the second Oberon’s 20% charge on turn 2, wasting the battery but gaining the NP damage boost for wave 2. Lackland NPs, and then on turn 3 his skills come off cooldown, so you can re-use all of them and then use the other 50% Oberon battery to secure the loop.
This team yields about 829k damage at neutral. Again, that’s at NP2. In this setup, Lackland breaks a million damage at NP5 without grails.
...And this still isn’t quite his best setup.
Lackland’s highest-damage team is also the hardest to use, since it requires having both Lord Logres and Oberon natively, being able to pull an Oberon off your friend list, and having enough Lackland coins to unlock both Mana Loading and Skill Reload. Additionally, your frontline Oberon also needs to have Skill Reload unlocked. If you do meet these criteria, though, this team results in even higher damage output than the more conventional teams listed above.
For this team, you run Logres/Lackland/Oberon/Oberon. Turn 1 is almost the same as before: you use all Lackland skills, then Oberon’s 20% battery. Then, Logres uses her second and third skills. This both gives a small attack buff to Lackland and gives cooldown reduction to Lackland and Oberon, setting the skills they’ve used up to be re-used on turn 3. Logres then swaps out for the second Oberon (which you should do immediately because Oberon triggers Lackland’s NP damage buff twice, while Logres only does it once). Lackland NPs. On turn 2, you use both Oberons’ 50% batteries, letting Lackland NP again. On turn 3, Lackland’s skills come off cooldown, as does the first Oberon’s 20% battery. You can then re-use all of Lackland’s skills, plus both Oberons’ 20% batteries, plus End of the Dream from both Oberons, before Lackland NPs a third and final time.
In this setup, Lackland hits 839k on turn 3, marginally higher than the Koyan setup. This is, technically, Lackland’s best neutral setup. ...That said, the difference in damage is small enough that it might not be worth the relative hassle of putting it together—I certainly wouldn’t advise pulling for Logres just to enable it—and against Man enemies Koyanskaya will pull cleanly back ahead (though even against Man enemies, double Oberon wins out against double Koyanskaya).
The big takeaway from all this is John’s damage is nonsensically high. Even if you don’t want to go to the trouble of looking for a support Oberon—not always the easiest to find—his damage in a conventional Buster farming team is fantastic, and he can 6CE farm most sub-90++ nodes. Lackland is basically the best farmer you could ask for without card rigging. That’s an important asterisk, though—if what you want is a solves-everything omnifarmer, you’re still better off investing heavily in Olga—but in a world where you can’t or don’t want to use her, John is the next best option.
John’s CQ usage, meanwhile, is essentially the same as older high-damage Buster AoEs: if you’re bringing Lackland, it’s probably specifically to try and burst things down. John is now the best there is when it comes to dealing massive amounts of AoE damage, and in CQs specifically he actually makes a case for being better than the card-riggers. Olga and Ciel are phenomenal, but their damage is mostly aimed at single targets. If you’re fighting multiple enemies all of which have very high health, Lackland will likely be a better fit.
You can approach this the same way as the farming teams, but if you aren’t confident you can clear in three turns, you can swap Oberon for a different support. Merlin is a decent choice—he’s not Evil or a King, but he’s still a strong backline support option for letting Lackland transition from pure burst to mid-range sustain. A particularly good setup would be Koyan/Lackland/Koyan/Merlin/Avenger Liz. In this team, you start by using Lackland’s skills and Koyan’s damage buffs, plus one Koyan’s battery. You then swap that Koyan out for Liz, who uses all her skills. Lackland NPs, Liz’s demerits kill her, and Merlin swaps in. You then use the remaining buffs and batteries as available and as needed for short-term damage push, and once the burst window passes, Merlin’s stall tools help keep you alive until you can close out the fight. You’ll need a few Lackland cards to loop, but since this is CQ-specific, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Even in more budget teams, the general strategy is the same: maximize your short-term damage output, and have a backup plan for what you do if you can’t min-turn. All the usual free and budget supports are still good picks here: Hans, Shakespeare, Avenger Liz, Mash, and so on. Mash/Merlin is as good of a shell as always, though you may have more success with a team like Hans/Koyan that’s more aimed at pushing short-term damage.
If you can’t push Lackland’s damage enough that a burst or at least mid-range strategy works for you, you’d probably be better off reaching for a DPS with more utility and leaning into a stall strategy. The Buster Servants best suited for hard stall—Merlin, Himiko, Castoria, Nightingale—don’t have much synergy with Lackland, and he doesn’t bring much to help with long-term sustain or utility.
Lackland has a guaranteed CE-less loop setup as long as he has Mana Loading, so if you’re giving him a functional CE, it should be The Black Grail. If you don’t have Mana Loading unlocked and want to use Lackland anyway, the usual 50% charge CEs like Aerial Drive and First Day of Filming are still options.
Lackland is a Buster Servant with middling crit buffs, and his focus is fully on dealing damage, so crit damage CCs are a good pick here.
Avengers are great grail targets and Lackland is a phenomenal Avenger. There are a few reasons you might not want to grail him—his low base attack means he doesn’t scale as well with extra levels as he does with flat sources of attack like Fous and CEs, his damage is already so high he might not actually need grails in some cases, he’s still ultimately inferior to Olga overall—but honestly these are all quibbles. John Lackland is absurdly strong. If you have him, you should probably take him to at least level 100.
Lackland is Arjuna Alter for the post-Lostbelt era. All he does is damage, but the damage he does is ludicrous—well above his direct competition. The only reason he’s not just suddenly the best DPS in the game is card-rigging is now a thing, and the inherent power of being able to guarantee cards outstrips Lackland’s pure damage output. As non-card-riggers go, though, Lackland is top of the class. He doesn’t have a lot of utility tools, which means he might be stymied in hard fights, but years and years of using Servants like Arjuna Alter, Avenger Nobu, and Kukulkan have shown that at a certain point hitting hard enough covers for most other weaknesses. Lackland is head and shoulders above those three, and (while all of them honestly deserve a buff at this point) it’s not like they aren’t still effective enough for most purposes.
At any rate, if what you want is a Servant who does obscene amounts of AoE damage, John Lackland is your guy. He doesn’t do much else—but when you can one-shot nearly anything, what more do you need?