#artist: 80478750

[300iqprower]

Hypothetical Rank Ups No. 57-60: Arjuna

[Disclaimer: For posterity's sake, realistically he only needs the last two of these. Even more realistically he only needs the NP rank up to be brought up to to his competition. But three things that trigger me are "Crit star drop rate up" on an Artscher, a 1 turn buster mana burst on an Artscher, and anything having a cooldown in the double digits. Plus I'd argue even if he only needed the NP rank up, the gap between old and new servants is so wide that even with all of these he's not powercreeping any new units. I don't use Arjuna at all myself (Unless Extella counts in which case I freaking main him) so special thanks once again to @hasarjunadoneanythingwrong for help with the lore and NP stuff, and thanks to @bitterrosebrokenspear as well for also looking over the skill mechanics! ...Okay additional disclaimer cause wow I talk too much, reminder that the only important part is the indented bit. Everything else is just the rationale behind it.]

Clairvoyance (Archer) B+ -> A+

Increase own Critical Star Drop Rate (3 turns).^ Apply Debuff Immune to self (5 turns). Apply Ignore Target Focus for yourself (6 turns) Apply Sure Hit when attacking with Arts Cards (6 turns) [Star Drop scaling increased from 30-50% to 50-100%]

Honestly whose idea was to give him clairvoyance and buster up with a triple arts deck. What the actual fck was that. Well his official rank up for the first of those was really good, even if it was pretty lazily just...making the skill's main focus something else entirely. The real use of his Clairvoyance now is to be a near perpetual full debuff immune, so lets take that even further with effects that are VERY much perpetual if fully leveled. In exchange, these effects are both relatively minor, being the EXTREME niche of ignoring target focus (which is especially useful when it's not uncommon for challenges to pair sabers with target focus lancers) and the ability to always have Sure-Hit up on his arts cards. Both of these have their utility but they're so situational that you could argue the obligatory star drop buff is the bigger change. Bringing the star drop up to a doubled 100%, which crazily isn't even anything too special these days despite being the SECOND time it's been increased, Arjuna's high hit counts mean even as an Artscher he'd be potentially generating over 20 stars BEFORE factoring in his second skill or ally support. Given the duration remains at 3 turns though, and the cooldown remains an unchanged 8/7/6 as well, this means you're effectively choosing between two options. Do you want Arjuna to be a decent crit star generator, or do you want to save the skill for its utility and make sure those other effects are up when you need them to be?

Lore wise it's actually quite simple. Arjuna's just styling on everyone he fight, as per usual when he uses his clairvoyance not to actually aim better, but to see how much he can show off while still actually landing shots. Canon fact! So with his main card type, IE Arts, Arjuna's aiming is so good that his clairvoyance allows him to ensure his shots always hit their mark. What's more because he has the ability to ensure his shots hit their mark, enemy skills are unable to draw his attack to an undesired target.

Hero of the Endowed A+ -> A+++

Increase own NP Gauge by 25%. Recover own HP every turn (5 turns).^ Gain Critical Stars every turn (5 turns). Increase own NP Gauge by 10% each turn (5 turns). Increase own DEF (5 turns). [Double healing to 1500-3000. Defense scales from 5-35%.]

Ironically his most notable skill gets the simplest change, most of the skill remaining untouched. Arjuna, like Karna, completely lacks any real defensive options. Whereas the rank ups for Karna gave him almost no soft defense in exchange for a unique hard defense, this is the opposite, giving Arjuna VERY good soft defense but zero hard defense. Hard defense is borderline mandatory for SSRs at this point (Seriously the only gold unit not in NA left who even has Defense Up is Ibuki) so it has to be really good to make up for it, totaling at 5 out of every 8 turns having up to 1.5x the initial regen and an additional 35% defense. This gives him both unquestionably the best HP regen in the game and one of the best defense buffs in terms of %-to-duration ratio. Between these 2 effects and the long term debuff immunity on his first skill, the margin of support needed to keep a dedicated Arjuna alive is also drastically reduced to be feasible for more than just those with Merlin's invincible and Waver's damage cut. (Seriously though what is with these "great heroes who are uber powerful" in lore DYING IN SECONDS?! Don't answer that its because enemy NP scaling is horrid...)

Mana Burst (Flame) A -> Mana Burst (Agni) B++

Increase own Buster Card effectiveness (3^ turns). Increase own NP Strength (3^ turns). Apply Increase Critical Strength to self (3 turns) when landing a critical hit (5 turns) Apply Spreading Fire to all enemies (5 turns) every turn (5 turns) Apply [Burning] field status to self (10 turns).

Okay now we get to the important stuff. As stated before this is where the truly necessary buffs start. Arjuna's biggest issue is the lack of damage - his NP hits hard but he has no sustained damage at all even with his crit generation. If he had any survival at all that'd be fine but...see previous rank up. The solution though is easy. Feedback loop. Arjuna's issue is that his stim isn't just a Mana Burst, therefore Buster, it's also a weaker than normal one, being the same 50% total as most but 20% split off to NP strength up. For comparison, Artoria's OOPS ALL BUSTERS rank up gives her 30% NP strength on top of a base 50%. Rather than do that kind of crazy shit though, we're gonna actually leave the scaling on the mana burst untouched, making it 3 turns to compensate. This means you don't have to wait until the NP turn to use it, which is crucial with the new effect giving a very good reason to not wait until then (Whereas before you never had a reason to use it when his NP wasn't ready). I really wish we had more crit buffs like Orion and Hokusaber's, because it's really good design and feeds into how quick and crit star based teams are best at feeding into themselves. On that note, Arjuna would finally get proper use out of all those crit stars he generates per turn. Hence, while the crit buff itself is the standard 3 turns, the amount you can apply them is 5 turns, which means at its max Arjuna has yet another pseudo-passive of boosting his crit damage on crit. And that's the real trend of these rank ups.

The other new effects are entire flavor based to that's as good a point as any to go into the lore side. The burning field gives Arjuna synergy with his fellow anti-divine servants the Nobus, as well as that previous Karna rank up idea, and given Tomoe's whole deal there's definitely some niche situations where the absurd number of potential Spreading Fire stacks could be genuinely useful, but in 95% of situations both aren't even worth mentioning and are included solely for flavor. More speciifcally, WHY Arjuna has Agni's blessing to begin with, the events of Khandava-dahan or "The Burning of Khandava Forest." Agni basically wanted to "feed" by burning down a forest, but Indra was friends with the Naga who lived in it so he obviously said no. Agni decided that clearly the sensible thing to do would be the equivalent of "Dad said no so I'll ask mom" and asked Indra's son for permission, the specific son in question of course being Arjuna (Krishna was also there). Arjuna was like "Um...OK? You probably know best you're the god here-" and then shit hit the fan and while the entire forest burned down Arjuna fought off Indra himself and a bunch of divine forces with a bow given to him by Agni. That bow was Gandiva, which Agni would let him keep as thanks alongside a special chariot and two quivers that would never run out of arrows. In Fate, this translates to him getting his bow with arrows he can just manifest at will, being able to float, and being able to use flames to turn his arrows into veritable napalm rockets. So yeah, it doesn't take much to figure out why I gave him Spreading Fire and Burning Field.

Citation needed on this last part but I got the idea for the Crit buff from the same story. I found this one description of the events (there's like a million versions of every part of the Mahabharata apparently) where during the fight against Indra, Arjuna fought for days on end - in order to keep Gandiva's bowstrings lubricated, he used his own sweat from the flame coming off of it, so that's where the feedback loop idea came from!

Pashupata A+ -> Pashupatastra EX

Deal heavy damage to all enemies. 50% chance to inflict Death to all enemies. Extra 80% chance to inflict Death to [Divine] targets. Remove Buffs from all enemies. [Activates first] Apply NP Boost to yourself (1 turn). [Activates first] Gain Class Affinity half-advantage (1.5x) against [Divine enemies except for Saber, Berserker, and Foreigner class enemies] (1 turn). [Activates First] <Overcharge> Decrease DEF of all enemies (3 turns).^ [NP Boost scaling is 50/70/80/85/90%. Defense down scaling increased to 20/30/40/50/60%]

AAAAAAAND here's the big one. FUCK instant death. All my homies HATE instant death. Honestly who the actual fuck thought the rank up he needed was "The same but the chance of instant death is even higher" as if they don't literally program it so that Instant Death doesn't work in any major fight whatsoever? The only reason I'm even writing it out instead of letting him keep it on top of everything else is the visual clutter. The obvious thing to give him would be Ignore Invincible, but we're choking to death on AOE Buster Archers with Ignore Invincible, given the lore. It's the same lore reason it has ID - Pashupata is Arjuna's use of Shiva's Astra, an Astra being a sort of conceptual weapon of Hindu myth that only a chosen few can even hope to wield without destroying themselves instantly, ESPECIALLY when it comes to those of Shiva. The Pashupatastra, the true form of Pashupata, in particular is said to be for destroying any living thing regardless of its strength. But that can be conveyed through more than just Ignore Invincible. Ya know what we don't have a single one of? AOE Archers with Remove Buffs. Plus it's arguably more accurate since Enforcement defense has the one weakness of remove buffs. Just like with II though, I didn't go with Ignore Defense either to avoid sheer overlap, instead giving Arjuna class advantage against ANYTHING divine, nicely keeping the anti-divine nature of the weapon as part of the kit. The difference simple anti-divine attack and this is that the base multiplier is affected. This won't apply to Sabers or Berserkers since there's already an even bigger x2 advantage against them, but it also can't apply to Foreigners since their divinities come from Outer Gods beyond the scope of human history and its respective gods. The real game changer is that NP Boost though. Oberon is currently the only one to have it, his being targetable and scaling from 50-100% at the cost of the permasleep. Considering the existence of things like Black Grail, it's REALLY not hard to see why it has that demerit and why it can't stack....but I scaled it pretending Holy and Black Grail don't exist. If they wanna make badly designed CE's that's their issue not mine. So Arjuna's applies before attacking, and scales with NP level, which is obviously hard to raise on an SSR but should also be heavily rewarded if someone does love an SSR enough to go for dupes. Even at level 1 this is an decent boost when paired with his natural mana burst NP buff and your basic NP damage support (Santagale, support Tamamo, Bart) but it's once you reach level 2 that you'd regularly have buffs on the level of AUO's automatic 30% buff on his AOE Archer Buster NP. While the nature of NP Boost means it won't get any use without dedicated CE's/team support, the buff removal on the NP combined with it makes it arguably even more devastating than what AUO has. On the one hand, it's a bit much....on the other hand, it's canonically an attack as strong as Ea and it's still not as busted as some of the newer stuff they release, so yeah might as well! Like I said at the start, these last two rankups are the only ones I would actually give for the sake of balance. It's deserved if only for that Instant Death garbage...

TLDR: Again, the real trend of these rankups is to capitalize on what Arjuna's biggest strength already is thanks to the official rank ups he's received: "Set it and Forget it." Normally that's used as a negative description of servants who you thoughtlessly skill spam, but Arjuna could be done in a way that's actually fun by combining dynamic elements with that more passive design. Whereas someone like Karna is suited to burst damage in one massive blow, Arjuna's role becomes much more focused on the other end. 5/6 turn full debuff immune, 75% battery across 5 turns, etc. His OFFICIAL kit is clearly already best for a "set and forget it" approach, with the first two of these rank ups highlighting that with the passive-like effects of ignore-target-focus and sure-hit-arts, while the second rank up reinforces the idea of relying on passives for defense options rather than hard defense. Most crucially though is that third skill which would give his damage output the same approach, rather than being a waste in most situations. The feedback loop of stars per turn and crit buffing crit could be amped even further with the right support to keep arjuna alive and/or increase his star gather, as those are the two failings he retains, being reliant on soft defense (which is terrible for tanking NPs) and his naturally high star gather as an Archer rather than a more certain gather buff. Outside of that, the other hard part becomes making sure you still line the skill timings up. That's where the active elements come in. His first skill has a massive star gen for a shorter duration, his second skill has that 3 turn gap if the fight is drawn out, and his third skill would require you to potentially choose between starting the feedback loop of critical now, or wait until the NP is ready to give a serious buff to what is now a damn good NP, even against single target fights, and probably breaks quite a few CQ's in half, and unlike what we have in game actually lives up to its lore.

#sorry HADAW for the slight difference from the preview but i had to slightly tone down that second skill's changes after doing some math- #i think this one set the record for longest descriptions #either that or its tied with Mata Hari/Jekyll+Hyde Reworks #artist: 80478750 #artist: Emilija Karmonaitė #fgo #fate grand order #wall of text #fgo meta #fgo arjuna #hypothetical rank ups #the one good thing about all this powercreep is it makes soooooo much more stuff justifiable to just hand out #its really pathetic that with the latest servants they're clearly trying to dial it back #Tametomo makes it obvious. #he's obviously supposed to be monstrous but his actual skills arent anything that crazy which just makes it sad. #You already released Chihuahua but NOW you wanna walk it back? Ok sure go ahead and try and put that genie back in the bottle