I agree with this statement, thats why when i have read the skills, and need NP2 above, i just feel that Castoria is still way better, and Proto Merlin is a good option to have or a variety to castoria if you like... but well she is still a good servant to have if you are still lacking some arts support

@@foualter102 you dont need np2 or above tho

@@PlushieMistress Definitely not necessary, but you can't deny that the jump from 5% to 10% and 5K Max HP isn't a big deal for her playstyle.

@@addievargas1590 but castoria and xu fu are still better at farming than her

The annoying thing about Lady Avalon is if she were Quick, it would have been so much more useful. Arts farming is beyond solved. By getting your own Castoria, you take care of the big piece of the puzzle, and you can even take Tammy for free now. And now Xu Fu exists as the off support in arts plug farm teams. Quick on the other hand ends up having to take a Buster support (Merlin) and an Arts support (Castoria) if they want to stall in CQs and thus it ends up an inefficient mess (or you just use say Gogh who has enough team-wide protection to cover for Skadi's infrequent evade help).

uring y youtubecommm.com/watch?v=hiBEdHk59sK Merlin is really just Merlin with arts, you pull her

Or if you don't have Morgan and want to run your own zero damage team with a generic arts dps

I don't have Merlin but has Miss Crane😆

Well yes and no she's on arts teams which just spam their nps anyway So even though the overall charge is lower( gap shrinks with np levels) overall your gonna fire her np more often The o.c increase is more than worth extra turn of couldown cause castoria And the invincibilities are more less gonna block the same numbers of nps Since she delays their np by a turn

The cooldown is kind of mitigated by tomamo though

I dunno.... depends if you actually got the most dominant comp or not. don't think many ftps will have most of the best possible comps. so I wouldn't call it irrelevant if it's possibly the only other comp that some ppl may have.

@@wingi91 true, but most other stall comps are also really SSR heavy, things like QSH and jeanne are both teams that also have merlin in them.

@@wingi91 I mean compared to things like buster looping with Oberon + Double Koyan + AOE 5 star with 30% battery, I'd say Himiko + Castoria + Friend Support Merlin is more accessible since there's one less SSR needed

@@elontusk9167 oh definitley. why i said what I said is that I just hope this fact doesn't discourage ppl from finding out other means of playing the game because sometimes suboptimal is the only option you got. esp for newer players and the e- luck crowd without deep pockets.

@@wingi91 It's not that hard even as a F2P so long as one focuses on power, and the supports used in the dominant stall team are still power picks in arts DPS teams so it doesn't really take much sacrifice either.

Probably is they also might just not do any new Gil/Nero fest and just replace them with grail front lottos

Since I don't have Castoria I found out she can make a Castoria + ProtoMerlin + Arts Looper team loop. I use this team with Summer Ibuki all the time for farming, but i'm assuming any Arts looper can work. Not sure if it can work without a Kscope on the Arts Looper though.

@@starethequiet8633 honestly you can swap proto Merlin out for xu fu or Paracelsus

Based

@@liawct1867 if you like 'em, roll for 'em. That's my principle.

@@rejoicingfakepriest201 thanks for enlightened me Mr Priest 🙏

Another one is She can be a good step sister material

@@Thanawat_CH Does she tend to stuck in different places tho? 😏

Yes i do not believe she is pay to win, if anything OG merlin only having the heal scale with his NP is too little of an incentive and does not reward people who roll high NP in any way. Normal DPS servants gets a base damage boost every NP level and nobody cries about it but god forbid the support gets 2.5 extra NP gauge on their NP. even if we count 3 turns its a net gain of 7.5 NP

@Plushie Mistress also if you take back years ago when OG Merlin was released on Solomon... I don't recall not even a single one that complain that OG Merlin is good the more NP levels and it's required on getting more copies so this brings me the question "Why do they need to single out Pmerlin now and didn't did the same thing a few years back when OG Merlin was released?"

@@shaunaburst5638 Merlin was released during a time where looping wasn't a thing and enemies weren't as strong. He was also released over five years ago, meaning it is very likely that people who wanted a merlin already had a merlin as he had at least 5 banners. If you didn't have merlin, Miyu also got a banner and buff almost a year ago, who gives 10% NP per turn at all NP levels for 3 turns alongside 1k heal as well, with the same crit star generation. The only thing that set Miyu and Merlin apart was the active skills and the fact that Merlin was over 5 turns instead of 3. Now we see P.Merlin with Merlin's 5% gain and Miyu's 3 turns and we think to ourselves, "wow this Merlin's NP is really bad compared to the servants released 3-5 years ago", and then we see the potential 10% locked behind NP levels, which means we have to get more copies of a servant for them to be on par for something we might have already had, so it's not unreasonable to think it's very scummy. Now I'm not saying P.Merlin is comparable to Miyu in terms of value or is worse than OG Merlin, no one wants higher NP levels on supports since DPS benefits the most from the extra coins and the extra damage, and that's why everyone was happy with NP1 merlin having all he needs. Yet LS wants to encourage more copies of supports to maximize efficiency, which feeds on people's FOMO. While other supports also get scaling through NP levels, Skadi and castoria are more notorious for looping, meaning their NP is not the main concern of their kit, while Merlin prefers longer battles where his NP can be used a lot. Merlin does gets more heal, but 1k heal a turn is already huge. When you tie NP gain to levels however, regardless of whether you're looping or stalling, NP gain is always valuable, and locking that behind more copies is extremely noticeable. So, why are people picking on P.Merlin? She's a year 7 servant with a kit of a year 2 servant mixed with a year 4 servant that takes the worst parts of those servant's NPs and locks the better part of one of their NPs behind not just extra levels, but straight up NP5. At this point, it's a waste of SQ to get P.Merlin for gameplay unless you are a whale, are bored, or you lack a miyu/merlin or tamamo/castoria (even then, Hans and Xu Fu are good f2p alternatives), and it's natural for people to voice that, especially when Ibuki and Skadi are released at the same time as her.

@@PlushieMistress Why do we need an incentive to roll for more NP's though? The more the game leans to making NP levels just prestige the better imo.

Even at np 1 you will generally fire her np at least once every 3 turns People forget she's on arts teams Which spam arts chains Which means more nps So her buffs stacks easily

Honestly you could swap out hand for xu fu who now

How do you figure that he solo's better? Not that u should ever have to solo anything with her since just bring a friends castoria or your own doesn't matter and any dps you want and you just win( most easy access zero damage set up)

​@@kristianschuff1723 I think they're just coping that Merlin isn't the top dog anymore and never was lmao

Someone made a theory that if it does happen It might be Abe no siemi and a merlin face on top of that

I mean the long cooldown is not of a much issue when we have our Waifu Fox's NP also the HP buff is more like a heal that you need in case you are close to dying...also Merlin's NP heal can sometimes can't sustain enough when being hit pretty hard on cases like CQ or some gimmick that reduce HP healing capacity

Hi I know this comment is a year old but I’ll try my luck anyway HAHAH. How do you use her with Lanling?

from my experience NP2 doesnt make much difference, its 2.5 extra NP per turn which to be fair does slowly stack up but in most stall teams (which is where you use her NP) you overflow with NP after you get your whole engine running. I very often have her as 200% NP bc i want to save her NP for overcharging castoria and its just so often a waste imo

@@PlushieMistress in play it might not make too much of a difference but its a +50% power gain on the NP regen. Thats a lot on a mathematical basis for an NP.

She still works amazing at np1 tho, they are not crippling this servant and then coming back to require higher NP level for decent performance, they are further boosting the servant for people who do go for higher NP levels.

@@PlushieMistress I agree that she is already very solid on np 1. For me it's just the fact that you do actually miss out on much better results on lower np levels, compared to other support servants where the difference is negligible.

Arts falls off in CQ TAs very often from my experience due to the lack of crits, proto merlin doesnt really fix that either. "Noting special" doesnt mean bad, and she is quite literally nothing special because her kit is 90% identical to OG merlin. Also i dont know what you mean by buster having to make heavy sacrifces to the team, can you elaborate? Lastly normal skadi still has a place, she provides quick crits for quick deck heavy servants and her NP while memed on endlessly enables a lot of TAs to be pulled off and is in no way a non-existent NP, unless you are only talking about farming.

@@PlushieMistress I honestly like the overcharge system more on proto Merlin as that gives her something else to not just arts Merlin. She's kinda more balanced that way but still strong for card damage Buster has Merlin Oberon vitch. You really can't use them well together as they step on each other's toes due to the Merlin Oberon thing and then vitch having no survival so stall is not as good. They don't combo as well is what I'm saying and I don't bring up plugsuit as a fix because that just makes arts sky rocket in comparison for whatever is happening Quick crit Is good but I still find ruler skadi has more benefits overall and while they play well together you kinda want one or the other more which is either crit vs damage or half half.

@@PlushieMistress Arts doesn't really need Critting since their Survivabilities are more or less guaranteed to be full proof, unless againts Buff Removal.at least that's how i've been doing it, that Card is the only type where 2 different Supports there complimented and cover for each other.

@@ivanbluecool Ah i see what you mean with buster now, because it lacks a stall support outside of merlin, I agree, however for slower teams I just bring castoria for buster anw since her NP also provides good damage boost, you don't always have to bunch all the buster buff servants together, skadi is testament to that by having a whopping 3 turns of 100% buster crit up as a quick support Ruler skadi is strong yeah, I will be making a hottake video on her next, she is also a rlly decent dps imo as she has a niche and also just can use her strong skills on herself like koyan light Once again I don't mean proto merlin is bad by saying she isn't special, I am just saying the roles she play is really similar to merlin no matter in stall or burst. In burst, she is arts merlin ; in stall, she is faster merlin (which i really prefer with her self charge as well I almost want to say a straight upgrade but its my preference)

@@ShiraFuyu2022 Yeah I am talking more about TAs/min turns ig its just me bc its not a common thing

bc i use widescreen iphone on some clips and normal aspect ratio on ipad for others, I kinda just didnt like how the skill detail overlayed on top of videos with black bars on top and bottom. normally i will have the clips with the black bars.

It does though The second skill: Increases party's attack for 3 turns. Charges party's NP gauge by 20%. Overcharges party's NP by 1 stages for 1 time, 3 turns.

@@starethequiet8633 maybe I'm mentioning the wrong skill no, try to understand I'm talking about that skill where she herself gets battery depending upon the no of enemies , as a support servant i still don't understand the purpose of self battery rather than targetable NP

First servant where I see a self battery be an issue If you want a targetable 50%....Castoria

and in buff removal on break cqs, merlin is the easiest to replace with Murasaki

Thrashing Merlin? Must be pretty salty 💀

I have a runny nose

Next year