#artist: bakunyuu gorilla

[300iqprower]

Hypothetical Rank Ups No. 74-77: Tamamo (Cat)

[Special thanks to who else but @hastamamocatdoneanythingwrong for letting me consult them on the balancing (mfw no one on your friends list has a Cat to use) as well as helping to heavily streamline the effects being handed out.]

New Passive:

Catnap B++: Increase your HP Recovery amount by 33% while asleep.

Self-Explanatory really, and it'll come back later on.

Monstrous Strength B -> Maddening Consumption (Beast) B

Increase own ATK (2 turns).^ Remove own Offensive Debuffs. Increase own Quick Card effectiveness (1 time, 2 turns) Increase own Buster Card effectiveness by 10% (2 turns). [ATK up scaling increased to 20-40%, Quick up scales from 30-50%.]

Man, it is NOT easy with these units with odd decks, doubly so if Quick is involved. But at least it makes for variety in the stims I hand out. We're sticking to only 2 turns instead of 3, but they're two turns with the Strength of a Beast. Cat taps into her inner Ammy to massively boost her NP type of Quick 1 time, both increasing its refund, star drop, and of course damage, but not being reliable for looping and you'll want to make sure you don't use her quick facecard beforehand. Meanwhile, her monstrous strength becomes near unstoppable (debuff removal to throw a wrench into attempts to mitigate it) at the "cost" of drastically ranking up her Madness Enhancement while active (Buster up).

So to restate, what this all does is clear the way for Cat to deal major burst damage. By briefly giving in to her Beast attribute alter ego she gains a massive Attack Up and a 2 mutually exclusive stims that stack with the universal one manipulatively: a big one time buff intended for her NP and a small multi-use one for most of her facecards.

Malediction, Cat Sunshine B -> A-

Chance to decrease one enemy's Charge. Apply Invincible for yourself (1 time, 5 turns). Decrease ATK for a single enemy (3 turns). Decrease Quick Resist for a single enemy (3 turns). Apply [Sunlight] field status to self (5 turns) Decrease own Debuff Resist by 100% (1 turn). [Demerit] [ATK down scales from 10-20%, Quick Resist down scales from 10-20%.]

You'd really think they'd have given the already existing rank up for this skill something that reflected how it was used in SE.RA.PH but oh well I guess that's what I'm for. So firstly since this is an Amaterasu spell (and also because ITS LITERALLY IN THE NAME) we're making this a field change! if it wasn't clear yet, get used to seeing these fairly often. Next we're gonna give it a bunch of effects based on what we saw in the event against Suzuka, so that's gonna be an attack reduction as well as a quick res debuff. Oh and we're changing the text so that it's not a flat out lie about the charge's chance to reduce. Originally I was gonna boost that to 100% but I have it on good authority that with Cat's kit that's actually more of a stealth nerf given how useful it is for the charge reduction to NOT proc on the skill. Even still, it's a lot of positive effects so both for lore accuracy and balancing, we're having the skill tucker poor Cat out like we saw in the event, tanking her resistance to other status effects for a turn (because defense down on a berserker is just unfair)

Morph (Lunch) A -> Morph (Lunchtime!) A+

Increase own DEF (3 turns).^ Further increase own DEF for each other [Cooking] ally (3 turns). Increase own Max HP (3 turns).^ Recover HP for all allies by 1000 Further recover HP for each other [Cooking] ally. Apply Debuff Immune to self (1 turn). [DEF up scaling slightly increased to a max of 30%, Max HP scaling increased to 1500-3000, Extra DEF up scales from 10-15%/ally, Extra HP Recovered scales from 1000-2000/ally.]

You'd ALSO really think that the series of Nasu "Everything must have a foodporn scene" TypeMoon would have a dedicated Cooking trait but again I guess that's what I'm here for. I still have no fcking idea why they give so many berserkers Morph when it's about as much use as, to pick a random example, giving Mash a buste-crit stim, but I suppose if there's any berserker it makes sense to give a semi-tanky skill it might as well be the chef taking as much comic punishment as wile e coyote.

To do that though we need to ramp it WAY up, both in the base effects and the new ones, using the team-specific qualifier to balance it out. To that end Cat'll work with everyone else available to whip up a feast for the entire party. Not only do other allies increase the food to go around and thus the recovery, but in addition to that being at home in the kitchen also does wonders for keeping her berserker tendencies at bay (IE the defense mitigation further increases for each cook with her). While the numbers reached can reach astronomical amounts given the skill's unchanged 5 turn cooldown, reaching said numbers requires one of the most finicky team compositions around given the scattershot results of who exactly qualifies as a cooking servant. None of the staple DPS or Stall support units qualify with the exception of Castamamo whose arts focus is completely at odds with the rest of Cat's kit. There are a handful of units with good inherent synergy with Catamamo, but more than half of them are gold rarity and/or limited. Overall the result is that, under the right conditions with event bonuses or something similar at play you could have a real dream team, but most of the time you're better off not going for a full team of 3 fielded cooks at once. ...I'm sure there's a witticism buried in there about spoiling the broth.

Cooking Servants: Emiya, Arash, Boudica, Saint Martha, Ruler Martha, Santa Martha, Medea, Medea Lily, Kiyohime, Lancer Kiyohime, Tamamo Cat, Tamamo no Mae, Tamamo Lancer, Geronimo, Tawara Touta, MHXA, Suzuka Gozen, Paul Bunyan, Tomoe, Saber Tomoe, Inshun, Oskabehime, Circe, Chiron, Robin, Qin Liangyu, Beni-Enma, Muramasa, Percival, Barghest, Gareth, Gareth (Saber), Yamanami Keisuke, Daikokuten

Napping in the Dazzling Sunshine and Feasting D+ -> D+++

Apply Sure Hit for yourself (1 turn). Deal heavy damage to all enemies. Inflict Sleep^ to yourself (2 turns). [Demerit] Increase your Buster Card effectiveness when field is [Sunlight] (3 turns). [Activates first] Increase your Quick Card effectiveness when field is [Sunlight] (3 turns). [Activates first] <Overcharge> Restore your HP per turn (3 turns). [Buster and Quick Card up scale with level at 20/30/35/37.5/40%.]

I told you Catnap would be relevant later! Self-Stun is pretty horrid demerit, even if they gave Cat that rank up with a debuff immune charge, so we're buffing that up to only be a self-Sleep now that Sabby made Sleep an official debuff. This is a buff twofold, both removing the stun a turn early if Cat gets attacked (which without setupid is still pretty devastating given she's a berserker) and boosting the HP recovery per turn indirectly since while the rank up isn't changing the inherent Overcharge scaling, the new passive improves the HP it'll recover by 33% so long as Cat remains asleep. Next we're gonna give her a much needed Sunlight buff, again ITS LITERALLY IN THE NAME. Scaling with level, which isn't TOO hard as an unlimited servant who still gets rate-ups to boot, we're tying a Sunlight dependent buff to both her 3 buster cards and her Quick NP which without leveling isn't as strong as her first skill but has a more flexible duration to make up for it, and with a dedicated team can probably fairly easily get stacked with itself at least once (and if you do have a dedicated Cat team, you deserve that). Lastly for some niche appeal we're giving Cat the role of Sure Hit AOE Berserker as well, something desperately needed in the free to play pool as well as a representation of the patented Catamamo tactic of "Just make the fight dust cloud so big everything gets caught in it! :3"

This was a real fun one, even if I got a bit too carried away and had to tone it down quite a bit to make it properly balanced. Which is at least in character for Cat. Again, super huge thanks to @hastamamocatdoneanythingwrong ! Their help went beyond simple tweaks into basically being half the reason I was able to do this one.