Rabbit’s Reviews #447: Ascalaphus (5* Alter Ego)

Ascalaphus has pretty average stats for an AoE Alter Ego, which tracks with his blend of a supportive kit and a damaging NP. Ascalaphus isn’t great at damage, so from a certain perspective it would make more sense for his stats to lean fully defensively… but decent attack is still good for the rare case where you’re relying on an Ascalaphus NP, which you occasionally might for the same reasons you might occasionally find yourself using Oberon’s NP. If you need your supports to output a little extra damage to close out a CQ, or if you’re relying on a support NP to clear some low-HP enemies in what is otherwise a mostly single-target farming node, Ascalaphus’s decent attack will help with that.

Ascalaphus’s active NP gain, meanwhile, is absolutely terrible. His Arts and Quick cards both have a measly 1% base NP gain, where Arts cards for this deck typically hover in the 1.6-1.7% range, and Quick cards can comfortably be anywhere from 2-4%. Ascalaphus is extremely reliant on batteries to access his NP, and while he does have plenty of those, it’s not an ideal place to be. He does have two Quicks and decent hit-counts, though, so he’s at least not terrible at active star gen.

Ascalaphus gets the baseline Magic Resistance and Item Construction passives, letting him occasionally avoid debuffs and making his own debuffs more reliable. He also gets a unique passive that gives him a permanent small damage cut—making him a little bulkier—and that passively boosts his Arts cards, helping a bit with damage and NP gain. His passives end with a unique Divinity variant that very slightly increases Ascalaphus’s damage and passively boosts his instant-kill rate—which won’t matter in most cases but might occasionally be relevant for farming.

Mana Loading can be helpful to Ascalaphus if you’re hoping to use his NP for a bit of extra damage, and anti-Caster attack up is decent since Ascalaphus gets class advantage against Casters. Skill Reload, meanwhile, is okay if you’re using Ascalaphus in CQs and aren’t aiming for fast clears. None of these appends make a huge amount of difference, though, and in most cases where you’re using Ascalaphus, none of them will be relevant.

As an Alter Ego, Ascalaphus takes fewer normal mats than most Servants, but instead he needs two full sets of pieces and gems. Caster gems are often in short supply, on account of there being many Casters (and non-Casters who still want Caster gems) worth leveling, but aside from that maxing Ascalaphus out shouldn’t be too bad.

Ascalaphus has an extremely powerful supportive skillset. Recommended skill order is 3>2>1.

Ascalaphus’s NP is comically simple. It deals damage, deals supereffective damage against enemies with IK resist down, and has a chance of instant-kill. The IK chance is rolled twice on Hell battlefields, but IK is so rarely anything more than flavor that it might as well not exist. Maybe there are some specific farming nodes where Ascalaphus’s ability to proc an Instant-Kill matters, but for the most part all this does is damage, and it has nothing other than SE to support that—no pre-cast buffs, no debuffs, no ramp of any form, not even any CQ-oriented utility. Ascalaphus has an almost perfectly controllable supereffective modifier, but for all intents and purposes, that’s all this NP does. On the one hand, that makes this NP rather unimpressive… but on the other hand, even with a bad NP, Ascalaphus is phenomenal, and his NP being largely irrelevant means you only need him at NP1 to get his full value.

...And yet, even with what looks on its face like an unimpressive NP, Ascalaphus hits really hard. More on that below!

As with Apocalypse before him, Ascalaphus is primarily a support, but for reasons of thoroughness I’ll start by examining him in his theoretical DPS capacity.

Ascalaphus’s long cooldowns mean he doesn’t get anything out of bringing Apocalypse over Castoria as a support—and since he can easily loop and can also easily facilitate Castoria NPs, there’s not much reason to run double Ascalaphus over double Castoria.

A conventional Castoria/Castoria/Oberon team results in very high turn-3 NP damage and also gives Ascalaphus perfect loopage. If everyone has Mana Loading, on turn 1, you can use both Castorias’ 30% batteries, plus Ascalaphus’s second skill, to bring all three Servants to 100% NP gauge, at which point you can uses both Castoria NPs, followed by an Ascalaphus NP. With the Castorias’ Arts buffs in play, Ascalaphus refunds well more than 10% against a single enemy, which is all he needs. On turn 2, Ascalaphus uses his third skill on himself, and you use both Castorias’ 20% batteries, bringing Ascalaphus back to 100%. He NPs again, and on turn 3, you use Ascalaphus’s first skill, then plug a Castoria out for Oberon, who uses all his skills to secure the loop. Using Ascalaphus’s first skill on turn 3 also gets you Ascalaphus’s supereffective damage multiplier on the turn when you likely need it.

By virtue of having guaranteed niche damage, a very nice spread of steroids, and innate meta-support-tier buffs, Ascalaphus’s damage is deceptively high. A level 90, NP2 Ascalaphus with MLB BG, class score, etc, deals about 775k damage at neutral or nearly 1.2 million against cavalry. As an Alter Ego, Ascalaphus is limited in the classes he can swing against for full damage, and he does rely on the Black Grail to reach 90++ level damage, but it doesn’t take much investment to get him to the point where he can serve as an effective DPS against his favored classes, and that’s not even his primary role… which is neat!

Ascalaphus’s highest-damage setup, though, is double Tiamat. This does require three enemies in wave 1 to work—Ascalaphus does have a perfect-loopage setup with Tiamat, but if he has to sacrifice later-turn damage in order to cover early-turn loopage, this team is inferior to the Castoria team and thus not worth considering.

For the Tiamat setup, you start by using both Tiamats’ second and third skills (saving their first skill for turn 3 for added supereffective damage), and you also use Ascalaphus’s second skill. This lets both Tiamats and also Ascalaphus NP. Ascalaphus refunds a little over 10% per enemy. Against three enemies, he gets 30%, plus 20% passively from the two Tiamats. He can then use his third skill on himself to get back to 100%. He NPs again, and on turn 3 you use both Tiamats’ third skills, plug out whichever Tiamat has fewer cards available for Oberon, use all Oberon buffs, and use Ascalaphus’s first skill. When Ascalaphus NPs, he gets max overcharge on his supereffective damage multiplier, and then you also benefit from significant card damage stretch from either the remaining Tiamat or from Ascalaphus himself (depending on whose cards you drew on turn 3).

In the usual NP2 BG setup, Ascalaphus deals about 805k at neutral, or a bit over 1.2 million against cavalry, before any card stretch—which means this team may be able to handle certain neutral (that is to say, Extra-class) 90++ nodes with card stretch factored in. Alternatively, even at NP1, Ascalaphus deals a bit more than 900k against Cavalry, which means an NP1 level 90 Ascalaphus can generally handle 90++ nodes in a double Tiamat team. Which is silly! He’s no Olga—no one is—but even though Ascalaphus is mostly a support, he’s also extremely effective as a farming-oriented DPS, at least when there are no Knight-class enemies involved.

Ascalaphus’s true value, though, is as a support. For farming, you can largely swap Ascalaphus in anywhere you’d use Oberon, provided you don’t need to maximize your damage output. Ascalaphus has 70% charge, divided in the same way as Oberon’s, so he enables loopage for any Servant Oberon does.

If you’re using Ascalaphus in place of Oberon, though, you do get a bit more flexibility. Specifically, you can use Ascalaphus’s buffs before turn 3, giving higher early-turn damage, and you can use Ascalaphus’s 50% battery without interfering with NP refund. There are occasionally setups where Oberon’s 70% batteries would enable a loop, were it not for the NP drain demerit. Ascalaphus comfortably covers those cases.

In short, you use Ascalaphus over Oberon if you need more damage in early turns, you need more NP charge in early turns, or you don’t have or otherwise can’t use Oberon. Ascalaphus also provides more damage than Oberon does if he’s supporting an Arts Servant and that Servant has no other source of NP damage (which necessarily means you’re also not running the Black Grail or any other NP-damage-boosting CE).

Any non-Buster team that previously wanted double Oberon is also better off with Ascalaphus/Oberon instead. Ascalaphus/Oberon provides the same number of batteries, but with more flexible demerits and higher overall damage. This is especially true for Arts Servants, but it’s also true for Quick.

The existence of Ascalaphus also means it’s now possible to run a team of three 70% chargers without any of that charge being charge-per-turn. An Ascalaphus/Ascalaphus/Oberon team brings 210% charge. Factoring Mana Loading in, your DPS only needs to provide 70% charge—which can come from batteries or refund—to loop CE-less, assuming no charge is wasted. We have so many ways to facilitate looping now that this will rarely if ever be necessary, but it is now an option.

...And on that note, despite his obvious similarities to Oberon, Ascalaphus can also replace Castoria in farming contexts. Ascalaphus brings essentially the same on-skill buff value as Castoria does, but those buffs are distributed more effectively, include an NP damage buff that Oberon can double. Ascalaphus also offers more NP charge. If you aren’t using Castoria’s NP, Ascalaphus is always better for farming—and while Castoria boosts refund more than Ascalaphus does, that will almost never outweigh having 20% more flat charge, meaning there will be cases where Ascalaphus enables a loop that Castoria does not, in which case he is decisively superior.

Also, as with Apocalypse, you can run Ascalaphus with Castoria (or Apocalypse), which can be helpful in cases where doubled supports are banned. It also means you can farm with fully native supports and pick any DPS you want off your friend list, ensuring you always have the best possible DPS at your disposal, provided you’re willing to go searching for the right friend support.

Ascalaphus’s three-turn guts also means he can facilitate loop setups for self-sacrificing Servants. This has strong synergy with, for example, Tutankhamun, who’s an Arts Servant with a self-sacrifice NP and a skill effect that gives star gen when guts effects trigger. Tutankhamun isn’t a good Servant even once you account for this, but if he’s a favorite of yours, Ascalaphus helps him a lot. Self-sacrifice Servants who are actually good, like Shizuki Soujuurou, benefit even more, and if you play around with those Servants in Ascalaphus teams, you can probably come up with some highly effective, if unorthodox, teams.

Perhaps most interesting, though, is that Arash, of all Servants, now has a ce-less loop setup. He’s 10% charge anywhere in his kit from being able to do it universally, so as-is he requires three enemies on wave 1. To make this work, you run Avenger Chloe/Arash/Ascalaphus/Oberon/Oberon. Relying on Servants who swap themselves out often results in teams that can’t afford to run a full suite of SSR CEs, but because your DPS in this team is a 1* Servant, this setup gets around that problem and isn’t even forced into running SR Mash in the last Servant slot.

On turn 1, you use Chloe’s first skill, Ascalaphus’s third skill, and Arash’s battery. With Mana Loading, this lets Arash NP. He gets three Manuscript stacks against three enemies. On turn 2, you use both of Chloe’s other skills, giving Arash 30% charge. You use Ascalaphus’s second skill, for 20% more charge, and then plug Ascalaphus out for the second Oberon, who uses his 50% battery to let Arash NP. Chloe swaps out for the second Oberon at the end of the turn. You then use both Oberons’ 20% batteries, plus the new Oberon’s 50% battery, and the 10% targeted charge from the newest plugsuit to secure the loop (with End of the Dream from both Oberons for extra damage push).

A level 60 Arash with MLB BG deals about 675k neutral damage in this setup, comfortably enough to counterclass 90++ Saber nodes. A level 100 Arash with gold Fous deals 984k, which usually means he has the damage to clear any non-Lancer or Ruler node as long as there are at least three enemies in the first wave. If you’re willing to take him to level 120, that increases to 1.1 million, which makes his damage sufficiency no longer even a question. A level 100 Arash with gold Fous and no CE deals about 544k damage, making Arash a theoretical 6CE farmer for Saber nodes.

For a 1* unit especially, that’s really really strong!

If the first wave has fewer than 3 enemies, Arash can run a 50% charge CE like First Day of Filming instead. He loses a lot of damage from not bringing Black Grail, but in exchange he can run a team that otherwise has higher damage push, replacing Summer Chloe with Liz of the End. This setup is pretty straightforward: you run Liz/Arash/Ascalaphus/Oberon/Oberon. On turn 1, you use all Liz skills, plus Ascalaphus’s 50% battery. Arash NPs, and Liz dies, swapping herself out. Arash gets 10% charge passively from Liz, uses his own 30% battery, and then you use the 20% batteries from Ascalaphus and (after plugging him out) both Oberons. On turn 3, both Oberons use their 50% batteries to secure the loop, which also lets you use the more damaging second plugsuit instead of the newer one.

A level 60 Arash deals about 547k on turn 3 in this setup, which is enough to counterclass Sabers. A maxed-out Arash deals 910k—not quite omnifarmer territory, but close enough that he might be able to handle a handful of nodes here and there. If Arash were to ever get another 10% charge somewhere in his kit (or if Liz of the End were to get a buff that made her first skill targetable or the like) he’d be able to run this team CE-less. That’s a pretty big if, of course, but the larger point is that Arash with Ascalaphus is really strong, and it wouldn’t take much for him to reach truly absurd levels of effectiveness.

You might expect, incidentally, that Arash can’t run BG even with Ascalaphus due to BG’s demerit triggering Ascalaphus’s guts too many times—but as long as Arash’s NP clears the wave, BG’s demerit doesn’t kill him (instead dealing 0 damage). BG’s demerit is a problem for Arash in CQs, or in any other case where Arash doesn’t completely clear a wave—but for farming it shouldn’t be a problem.

It’s maybe worth noting that this does mean Ascalaphus’s 1 HP guts incentivizes not using the Black Grail in non-farming cases where the guts is likely to be triggered. Prior to this, I wouldn’t have said Heaven’s Feel was especially worth leveling—the Black Grail is almost always better—but if you’re looking at your CEs and debating which one to level, Heaven’s Feel is now more valuable than it was before. You’ll still usually prefer BG, but there might be certain CQs where you want to avoid BG’s demerit for Ascalaphus reasons, in which case Heaven’s Feel is better.

All of the farming setups above also work as fastburn CQ setups, and Ascalaphus’s third skill means your chosen DPS will be extremely hard to stop in these contexts. Ascalaphus is good for fastburn CQ clears in general, but he’s an especially good pick for high-damage fights where you’re also dealing with buff removal spam. Also, while Ascalaphus is a very good farmer himself, he’s an even better DPS in CQs, as he gets his supereffective damage bonus for the entirety of his buff window.

Despite what you might think from the Oberon comparisons, though, Ascalaphus is actually also a pretty good support for defensive play. He’s arguably even better at mid-length fights than short fights, as he sets you up naturally for sustained damage and survival across more than one buff cycle. If you use Ascalaphus’s third skill on your DPS on turn 1, he ensures your DPS dies immediately after their buffs wear off. When your new DPS comes in, Ascalaphus can then use his first skill to protect the party until your supports’ skills come back off cooldown. You can either immediately use your DPS’s buffs, giving you five or so turns of having some buffs (first your DPS’s, then your supports’ once they come off cooldown), or survive two or three turns and safely reach a full second buff cycle.

This becomes even more reliable if the first DPS has a three-turn taunt. A few Servants have this naturally, but if you’re lucky enough to have GudaGuda Poster Girl, you can force it—not only does Poster Girl give the taunt you want, but it also provides a massive attack buff that conveniently lasts exactly as long as your first DPS survives. A team like this—with Poster Girl on your first DPS, and another CE (probably Black Grail or a 50% charge CE) on your second DPS, gives you high sustained damage and significant safety until the end of your second buff cycle, which will be enough to clear all but the most stall-oriented quests.

As I said with Apocalypse, there’s not really any meaning to providing “budget” setups with Ascalaphus. If you have Ascalaphus, you can run meta teams. You can pull another meta support off your friend list and pair them with one of the many powerful free Servants that exist and you immediately have a top-of-the-line team, even if you have no one else. Alternatively, you can grab a friend’s maxed-out DPS off support and run them with Ascalaphus and a free support—like Mash, Xu Fu, or (if you count him) Waver—and also have an extremely strong team. There are many things that make Ascalaphus valuable, but among them is the fact that if you have Ascalaphus, you have access to all kinds of top-tier teams.

As a damage-dealer, Ascalaphus wants the Black Grail in order to maximize his damage. As a support, Ascalaphus’s CE choice doesn’t matter all that much. 2030 is decent for making stars (though Ascalaphus doesn’t really provide much in the way of crit support otherwise), while a 50% charge CE ensures Ascalaphus can throw out an NP for extra damage even while he isn’t your primary DPS.

Ascalaphus will sometimes crit and he doesn’t have any in-kit crit buffs, so crit damage CCs are a decent pick here, especially if you think you’ll run Ascalaphus in Tiamat teams. Alternatively, you can give Ascalaphus more support-oriented CCs, like buff removal or star gen CCs.

Ascalaphus has very high damage, so if you’re going to use him as a DPS, grails are worthwhile here. That said, most of his value is supportive, and if you only have NP1 Ascalaphus anyway, grails won’t make that much of a difference. Essentially, if you’re only going to use Ascalaphus as a support, there’s no reason to grail him—but if you do think you’ll use him as a DPS or a farmer, you might consider at least taking him to 100.

Ascalaphus is a fantastic support who’s situationally superior to both Oberon and Castoria. He doesn’t bring as much sustained survival as Castoria does, nor does he bring as much damage if Castoria NPs—and he doesn’t bring as much burst-turn damage ampage as Oberon usually does, either. Even so, there are cases where he’s optimal for damage, loopage, or both, and he can easily slot in to replace either Servant in all but the most restrictive cases. Being a 70% charger alone would make him a valuable and interesting support, but the fact that he pairs that charge with top-class buff values means he’s truly phenomenal.

On top of the baseline support functionality, Ascalaphus is also an AoE Servant with very high damage, and he enables a handful of unusual strategies and setups that wouldn’t have been possible before. I don’t think he goes quite as far as Apocalypse in terms of enabling Servants who weren’t particularly viable before, but he does do at least a bit of that.

As with Apocalypse, Ascalaphus is probably in the top-five Servants in the game. (For anyone curious, I think my list would be, in no particular order, Castoria, Oberon, Apocalypse, Ascalaphus, and Olga). Ascalaphus is a powerful and flexible 70% charger who’s potentially useful to all three card types, and especially useful for Arts Servants. He’s just about even in power with Castoria and Oberon, with cases where he specifically shines—and he’s a powerful DPS besides. And just like Apocalypse, Ascalaphus’s NP has no supportive value, so if all you want is his support functionality, you only need NP1.

Ascalaphus is a really strong Servant who can bring a lot of value to everyone, whether you have a robust and complete box or only a few favorite Servants you rely on heavily. He’s an excellent pull all-around, and a solidly top-tier addition to the game.