Talk:Battle in New York 2018/@comment-31392049-20180922151633/@comment-36470477-20180923204906

While Tamamo might seem to have more or less standard NP gain off her Arts cards for a triple Arts servants (most of whom rely on Arts chains to get the ball rolling), she in particular does suffer from having a high Arts hit count, as the subsequent NP gain stat is balanced around it to make the gain from an Arts card be a somewhat reasonable level. This in turn causes any NP gain off of her Quick and Extra attacks to be practically nonexistent - robbing of her of some chances to gain a little more NP gauge when she may need it.

Compare to Merlin, whose Quick and Extra are noticeably better and give at least twice the NP gain that Tama gets off her own. And that's not even factoring his passive giving him an extra 5% per turn.

It's kind of why I feel Merlin really helps Tamamo, by giving her the gift of NP regen, which is a stable and reliable source of NP gauge building. Running Tama with Mashu or Jeanne may be more standard (and on occasion I do prefer it, depending on the specific challenge at hand) but Mashu and Jeanne are both servants who don't really do anything to help Tama build her own NP gauge, and as such, a little bit of bad luck regarding cards needed for Arts chains can cause Tama's NP momentum to stagnate somewhat.

Of course, crit stars from Merlin are also another route through which Tamamo gets to build up her NP gauge faster. (Jeanne's Revelation skill... exists, but the number of stars and how often it can be used really doesn't match Garden of Avalon's pace at all.)

Moving on, regarding the lack of team protection given by the Tama Merlin team core. I'd like to say that the very frequent healing occuring thanks to NP spam makes this a nonissue, but I admit, certain challenge quests can definitely pose a threat with high damage crit hitters. I've never had any issue with Tama Merlin teams getting hit by NPs; with a maxed Witchcraft and Illusion skill + a high rate of usage of Tama's NP, the team is able to consistently prevent the enemy from pulling off an NP until Merlin is ready to receive it.

I do point a little towards the utility attackers, and I suppose the way I phrased it made it seem like the pool of such servants wasn't that high, but actually, there's a decent amount of overlap within other compatible groups of servants I mentioned. Some also have decent survivablity of their own, and factoring in Tama's own Shapeshift, the team survivability isn't actually much of an issue except for Merlin, who can be kept alive through Tama and Merlin's targeted buff heals. (the performance buffs may be better served on the offense servant, but if it can keep Merlin alive longer...)

And while I often run Fragments on Tama and Merlin, with a crit/NP gain based CE on the offense servant, I'll sometimes run Bond CE on Tama and LB Steel Training (4 star Kotomine CE) on Merlin. The offense servant, through way of class advantage and any helpful skills they may possess usually can survive just fine.

In terms of utility, I've already mentioned Shuten, who can also survive through her Guts skill and Abigail with enemy Attack, Stun, and crit chance debuffs, but we also have Arts crit servants like Emiya, who has an Evade, Defense buff, and enemy Attack debuff, Rhyme, who has her own Shapeshift, a personal HP and status heal, and enemy NP drain off her NP, BB, who has a stun, ally debuff clear, and handy party NP charge off her own NP, all of whom have personal survivability and/or effects to help the team survive in general.

Servants from other categories come in as well: Ryouma, with his three active skill party buffs and reliable enemy NP drain off his NP, Mordred, with Guts and Evade skills, and potential to drain enemy NP, Kuro, with an Evade and enemy crit debuff, Euryale, who has an NP drain, two avenues of Charm, and enemy Attack debuff, Tama Lancer, with her Invincibility skill and Charm skill (although it gives enemy NP charge, it can instead delay their NP if it used when their gauge is already full), and so on and so forth.

So, yeah, with Tama's excellent Shapeshift skill, running LB Steel Training on Merlin, and whatever the third servant brings to the table, I find that team survivability isn't actually that severe an issue. And hey, if the enemy's a male, not only can I introduce them to hell via Euryale or Tama Lancer, I have my three LBed Holy Shrouds of Magdalene to just wall them off. (Non-LB can probably work well enough, too.)