Rabbit’s Reviews #456: Ono no Komachi (4* Archer)

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Ono no Komachi is probably the most “normal” of this year’s Summer units. She’s essentially an SR hybrid of Sei Shonagon and Archer Tiamat, bringing some party buffs and party charge along with an AoE Quick NP with multiple niches. She’s… decent! She doesn’t compare to top-end damage-dealers or supports, but her DPS kit is solid and her utility isn’t too bad either. Ono no Komachi isn’t a Servant you’ll want to particularly prioritize pulling for—unless you love the character, of course—but if you happen to get her while pulling for someone else, she’s not a bad get.
Ono no Komachi (Archer)
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Ono no Komachi has a strongly offense-slanted stat spread, with nearly the highest attack of the SR Archers—a very good starting point for a DPS. She has odd internals, with solidly above-average Arts card NP gain, but weak Quick card NP gain. Similarly, she’s an AoE Quick Servant with two Quick cards, so her active star gen is intrinsically decent… but the hit counts on both that NP and those cards is pretty low, which keeps her star gen in check. She also only has typical passives, with Magic Resistance for a small chance of debuff avoidance, and Independent Action for a marginal crit damage buff. She does technically have one unique passive, but it does nothing, so it doesn’t matter.
Mana Loading is Ono no Komachi’s most important passive, as she has a 30% battery and thus can easily capitalize on it. None of the other passives do that much—she makes okay use of the crit damage buff, and Skill Reload is okay for longer fights, but the benefits of the non-Mana-Loading appends are marginal at best.
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Ono no Komachi has fairly annoying mat asks, needing 60 ashes per skill, plus a whole bunch of the Ordeal Call 4 silver mat, which is still new enough to not be all that common. Fortunately, though, nothing else she needs is especially rare.
Ono no Komachi’s skillset has a lot in common with both Sei’s and Tiamat’s, albeit with lower values. Recommended skill order is 3>1>2.
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Manga Fair is a solid skill, giving 20% Arts and Quick up partywide, plus a 20% partywide battery. These aren’t particularly high steroids—and Ono no Komachi has pretty low steroids in general—but the fact that all of this is partywide is nice. The most notable thing about this skill, though, is that (like Sei Shonagon), Ono no Komachi has some form of flat NP charge on every single one of her skills, which gives her quite a bit of flexibility in terms of NP access. Party batteries are also handy in general, both for CQs and for multicore farming.
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Summertime Lovers is a similar story to Manga Fair. It provides 20% NP damage up partywide—a low damage buff, but nice in that it’s AoE—and it also boosts the party’s overcharge by 1 stage for 3 turns. Ono no Komachi has low steroids from both a DPS and supportive standpoint, but this can help on both fronts, as Ono no Komachi has overcharge-based ramp, so the overcharge buff here is functionally an extra selfish steroid, and this buff pushes damage for certain allies a little more. In addition to that, the skill gives the entire party 10% charge per turn, which is again helpful both for hard fights and for multicore setups, in addition to its benefits for Ono no Komachi’s loop specs.
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All Things in Moderation provides (appropriately) a mix of useful but unrelated benefits. Most importantly, it’s a 30% battery, which helps Ono no Komachi loop—but it also gives a respectable 50% crit damage buff for 3 turns, 15 critical stars per turn, and an impressive 3-hit invuln. This skill functions as an overall performance boost that helps Ono no Komachi in CQs and farming contexts alike.
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Ono no Komachi’s NP is quite strong, especially for an SR unit. It starts with a 3-turn pre-cast NP damage buff that scales with overcharge, which is just about the best form of ramp, and a rarity for an SR Servant. As with Ono no Komachi’s other steroids, its values are on the lower side—scaling from 10% to 30%—but it’s still nice that it’s here. This NP also has both power mod (against Evil enemies) and supereffective damage (against Man enemies), which means Ono no Komachi will get niche damage against a wide portion of the cast, and double niche against a smaller number of foes. All in all, this NP is quite good for damage overall.
In exchange, it does have a relatively low hit-count as Quick NPs go, meaning its refund isn’t great, but that’s a small price to pay for having solid effects otherwise. The NP also inflicts Burn and increases Burn damage, providing another small but scaling source of damage for CQs. 
In a typical double Summer Skadi setup, Ono no Komachi can only CE-less loop 3/3/x nodes, and only if she has Mana Loading. She only refunds 6% NP gauge per enemy, which means her loop specs are iffy despite her very nice battery spread.
For standard farming, you run Skadi/Komachi/Skadi/Oberon. On turn 1, you Komachi’s second and third skills, plus one Skadi’s battery, and both Skadis’ damage buffs. Komachi refunds 20% in total with a bit of overkill, and her passive charge gives her an extra 10%. On turn 2, you use Komachi’s first skill, plus the other Skadi’s battery, and Komachi NPs again, once again refunding 20%. Komachi’s passive charge, plus all of Oberon’s skills, secures the loop.
An NP2 level 80 Komachi with MLB BG deals 362k damage at neutral and without niche in this setup. Because power mod stacks additively with NP damage, swinging against Evil doesn’t meaningfully change this—but an NP5 level 100 Komachi, or an NP2 level 80 Komachi swinging against Man-attribute enemies, deals enough damage to counterclass 90++ nodes. That said, 3/3/x Saber nodes where the high-HP enemy is also Man-attribute will be fairly rare, but even at low levels of investment Komachi is an option for them, if they happen.
It’s also worth noting that this setup technically also works for 2/3/x or 3/2/x if you use the newer plugsuit for its extra 10% battery, but this significantly reduces your turn 3 damage in 2/3/x nodes and slightly reduces it in 3/2/x nodes. Komachi also has perfect loopage in this team if allowed a 50% charge CE—you use Mana Loading plus S3 on turn 1, both Skadi batteries turn 2, and S1 plus Oberon on T3—but this of course also significantly reduces Komachi’s damage output. Either of these approaches could be useful to Komachi for farming 90+ nodes, though, especially if an event’s drop CE happens to come with 50% charge.
Unfortunately, Komachi does not have the loop specs for CE-less Tiamat farming, either. She can do 5CE farming with a starting charge CE, though it requires saving the Tiamats’ batteries (and therefore their NPs) until turn 2, which results in quite low turn 1 NP damage. Tiamat teams have the nice bonus of being all Archers, which means your minimum card stretch against Sabers is functionally doubled—regardless of whose cards you draw, you get class advantage—but you’re still restricted in terms of the CEs you can run, and high-HP first-wave enemies are liable to cause problems.
Komachi is an alright multicore option, at least, bringing party buffs and party charge along with most of what she needs to get to an NP in her own right. Especially in nodes that are mostly ST—think a 1/1/3 node where the adds on wave 3 have low health—Komachi can take out the incidental adds while still helping to prop up the ST unit that’s serving as your primary DPS.
For CQs, Komachi is a solid component of a Quick stall team. She doesn’t bring healing, but she’s otherwise a good pick for Skadi/Castoria stall, especially since she speeds up the team with her party charge and gives you an extra hit of solemn defense via her overcharge buff.
Komachi’s also okay as a budget Arts and Quick support, if you happen to need one. She brings modest damage buffs and alright party charge, while also being defensive enough that you don’t have to worry about her going down too quickly. In budget teams, Komachi’s ability to contribute damage while supporting another DPS also has the potential to be relevant, especially if your DPS and other support also have partywide buffs. If you had no other good supports, you could pair Komachi with your preferred Quick or Arts DPS and a friend’s Tiamat and have a pretty solid team.
If you have the loop specs or are using Komachi as a DPS in a fight where cards are allowed, The Black Grail is, as usual, the best option (though given her lack of healing you might opt for, say, Heaven’s Feel if you expect a fight to go on for a long time). Sometimes you may need a 50% charge CE in order to loop, though, in which case Golden Sumo or Traces of Christmas is a solid pick. As a support, it doesn’t matter as much what Komachi has—50% charge CEs can let her freely throw in an NP for a bit of extra damage as needed, while 2030 helps the team crit more consistently, and Prisma Cosmos can get you incidental Komachi NPs for free even while mostly ignoring her cards.
Crit damage CCs are alright here—Komachi should be flush with crit buffs in a Skadi or Tiamat team, and she has a solid crit buff in her own kit, but they won’t hurt to have. Alternatively, star gen CCs can be good for crit consistency, or you can give Komachi healing CCs to fill in that gap in her kit for longer fights.
Komachi isn’t bad, as SRs go, but she’s still an SR and also an Archer, which means her ceiling is only so high, even with grails. If you plan to rely on her, grails will significantly improve her performance—but this isn’t a Servant you need to invest the extra resources in if you weren’t going to reach for her anyway.
Komachi is a solid if unexciting unit. She has low-ish steroids and terrible NP refund, but in exchange she has two broad niches, lots of batteries, and pretty good party support. She doesn’t compete in damage or in support value with comparable SSR units—or even with best-in-class SRs—but if you like the character enough to make a point of reaching for her, she can do okay for you.