Rin Tohsaka Best Build Guide

[Overview]

Wave 2 of the Fate collab brings with it Rin, a Quantum Erudition support designed specifically for Archer. Like Gilgamesh, Rin also brings a brand new mechanic to the game in the form of a Joint ATK involving two completely separate units, that she and Archer perform when paired together, dealing large AoE damage using both her and Archer's stats, as well as restoring 4 Skill Points for the team in the process. She gives buffs to allies based on the Skill Point usage, and gains buffs to her own damage when allies consume or recover SP. She provides supplemental damage to the Archer team, and shares her personal large ATK boost and Quantum RES PEN with Archer by default. She's only really got that one team, but damn is it a good one.

[Intro]

Something about Rin is different than I remember from the Fate franchise, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Well, another of the main characters from the Fate series has entered the fray, and it's actually the canonical Master of Archer. Extremely fitting that she is designed to be a support for Archer and pretty much Archer alone.

Yeah, unlike Gilgamesh who you could very well take to support some other non-Fate characters, Rin is very focused in on her sole role.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself 'Did Archer really need this upscale?', and the answer is pretty unanimously: No, what the heck? No. Archer?? Why would he need an upscale?

Not sure if you've necessarily been keeping track, but Archer has been a hilariously consistent performer across all gamemodes ever since his release, and when it seemed like his performance was starting to fall a bit, they went and buffed Sparkle, and that pulled him back up again.

Apparently, since Archer is the real main character of the Fate franchise as we all know, it's time for his next arguably unnecessary buff.

Given that Rin is very clearly signposted to be an Archer-specific teammate, I'd advise reading the Archer review to make sure you know what he does, as I won't be going in-depth into his mechanics here, just referencing when necessary.

The addition of this new Joint Follow-up ATK is extremely exciting for what the future might hold, especially in terms of future character and team design, and for Rin specifically, it addresses some of the only concerns that Archer's teams have had.

[Abilities]

Rin's a kind of sub-DPS support hybrid, acting mostly to benefit Archer exclusively, but does come with token support for other allies.

When an ally consumes or recovers SP, Rin will increase that ally's CRIT DMG by 70% for 2 turns. That's pretty much it for this part.

The other part of the Talent is that Rin can accumulate 'Gem Energy', an extra resource under her Energy. She gains 1 Gem Energy for every 1 SP consumed or restored. She gains 20 Gem Energy when entering combat, and whenever she has 15 or more Gem Energy, her Skill will become Enhanced. This will also occur if there are 7 or more Skill Points available.

Rin's Skill is a single-target attack, dealing 180% ATK. When Enhanced, this deals 90% ATK to all enemies, and then consumes 3 Gem Energy to deal 90% ATK as a Bounce to a single random enemy. This Bounce repeats until Gem Energy goes below 3 or there are no more alive enemies.

This can repeat up to 33 times. Lol. Lmao, even. This means this Enhanced Skill can reach a potential 3060% ATK against a single enemy. Mmm, yes, very nice. And yes, each Bounce also deals Toughness DMG, so the maximum total Toughness DMG dealt is 86.

Are you likely to ever achieve this in combat? Well, you'd actually be surprised by the answer, but even just getting double-digit cycle counts on this results in some extremely impressive multipliers. This is even more impressive since the cost for ramping this up is just making or spending SP as a whole.

This Enhanced Skill can also expend extra SP. When used, if you have more than 2 SP, you consume SP down to 2 and each SP consumed instantly gives 2 Gem Energy. This is how you can actually end up reaching the funny numbers faster because it's twice as effective at generating Gem Energy on Rin's own usage of this Enhanced Skill, and it's in addition to the Gem Energy you have from the Talent as well. You're not always likely to have a large amount of excess SP, nor would you want to expend it immediately either, especially if you've got Archer's turn coming up next, but it's there for when such an occasion does come up.

Rin's Ultimate deals 600% ATK to a target enemy and 200% ATK to every other enemy on the field. It also recovers 1 SP for the team, and applies a 20% Vulnerability to enemies for 3 turns.

At the cost of 160 Energy, this isn't going to be up super frequently, especially since you're not always going to be using her Skill and so won't be getting the extra Energy from that, but it is still a good Ultimate, and having the Vuln last for 3 turns definitely helps.

Lastly is, of course, the Joint ATK. When Archer uses his Skill to fire off spiral swords, if the team's Skill Points are at 3 or lower then the Joint Follow-up ATK will be automatically launched by both Rin and Archer, dealing 300% of Rin's ATK and 300% of Archer's ATK respectively to all enemies on the field, and recovers 4 Skill Points as well.

Now, Archer was already surprisingly good in AoE scenarios, owing to his unique damage profile. Getting access to a full AoE attack is insane on its own, but the fact it also recovers 4 Skill Points is true lunacy. That's 2 whole extra shots from Archer's Skill!

This Joint ATK will also automatically trigger in the event that Archer has fired off all 5 possible shots during his Circuit Connection, so no need to fear on missing out on it if you're somehow swimming in Skill Points. This can only happen once, and the trigger count is reset at the end of Rin's turn, so if you want to ensure this is happening on every Archer assault, you need Rin to be fast enough to act between said assaults.

[Bonus Traces]

A2 will increase the team's upper SP limit by 2. When entering combat, Rin gains 150% ATK and 15% Quantum RES PEN. These bonuses are already very good on their own, especially as Rin can deal very surprising amounts of damage, but wait, there's more! For Rin actually automatically shares these bonuses with Archer if he is in the team. Archer really needs the help, clearly~.

A4 grants Rin a 20% SPD boost for 3 turns after entering combat or after using her Enhanced Skill. This can be maintained pretty easily throughout the fight, and given that Rin can also be contributing to restoring SP with her Basic ATK, it's quite impactful if you do choose to maintain this throughout the fight. An Enhanced Skill every so often isn't going to be a bad thing, especially if you've got the Gem Energy stored and ready to unleash.

Lastly, the A6. When Rin uses her Ultimate, she gains 12 gem Energy. It's a fairly boring A6, but it does still matter a fair bit, since it means that the Ultimate is essentially granting the equivalent Gem Energy of 12 SP made or used.

[Eidolons]

As always, you don't need Eidolons, it's a nice boost but not at all necessary. We do have some pretty good options for those who do choose to go further in.

E1. When the Enhanced Skill spends 30 or more Gem Energy in a single use, the amount you spent is stored as 'Shadow Gem'. While Rin has Shadow Gem, her Skill is Enhanced, and when used will consume all Shadow Gem, and will not convert SP into Gem Energy or expend Gem Energy. Essentially you get to double up on Enhanced Skills when spending massive stacks of Gem Energy.

E2 will increase Rin's Skill DMG by 30%. Sure. The much more interesting part is that Rin existing on the field will also increase all allies' Skill DMG dealt... To be 130% of the original value. Yep, every ally in the team now has a 1.3x final multiplier to their Skill DMG.

There is a lot of fun potential with this Eidolon, but mostly it just turbo-charges Archer to the Moon.

E4 will let the CRIT DMG buff from her Talent stack up to 2 times on herself only. It's a shame it's only herself, but it is a nice boost to pick up on the way to the E6.

Lastly, the E6. Rin gains 20% All-Type RES PEN, and when using her Ultimate, she will instantly gain 24 Gem Energy and 1 extra turn.

Definitely a front-loaded Eidolon spread, even compared to more recent characters, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

[The Rest]

I love kits like this because it's so focused on realistically one thing that it limits the amount of talking points one can have.

Rin is very clearly designed to be paired with Archer, and that those two are now a package deal moving forward. The same is true for Gilgamesh and Saber, but unlike for Gilgamesh, who actually has some niche uses outside of Saber teams, Rin doesn't really have any way of justifying that.

Her general support capabilities are limited to say the least, with the most impressive buffs being exclusive to herself and her own damage, unless of course you also have Archer in the team to have said buffs shared by default. As such, I'll be talking about her specifically in the context of an Archer team... Because that's where you'll be using her.

Maybe it's my own biased viewing on the matter but it really feels like the Quantum element signed a contract that states they cannot have a truly bad unit. All you Xueyi enthusiasts, I see you, and I know your game. Rin continues the trend by having a surprising amount of damage for what is otherwise meant to be a support.

Okay, maybe 'support' is underselling it a little bit, especially since, as mentioned before, Rin has quite impressive self buffs and can reach some... Amusing DMG multipliers. Is there even anything else that gets close to that kind of a raw multiplier? I'm genuinely not sure. Though having said that, Rin is still definitely much more on the supportive side. She just happens to be able to pull some staggering burst damage out from time to time.

Archer hasn't really been struggling all that much recently, especially not since Sparkle's buff. It's only really by comparison to the absolute tops that Archer was maybe 'not quite the same level' but that's still not really saying much when anecdotally he's been helping people clear the endgame for quite a while.

But sure, it's undeniable that he's not as strong as some of the more recent additions we've gotten. What's strange to me is that Archer hasn't fallen off anywhere near as much as I would have expected a character would need to, in order to get such a colossal boost in the form of a dedicated support — hell some people might argue he never even qualified for the statement 'fallen off' to begin with. Not that I'm complaining, especially since Rin really does just address the few pain points Archer has entirely, those being his lack of AoE and general SP management.

There's an asterisk by both of those that's doing some heavy lifting; Archer is a single-target DPS character, but he just so happens to be able to single-target up to 5 times in a single turn, and it turns out that that's pretty good for dealing with multiple foes too. Yeah, sure, it's not the levels of insert-AoE-character-here but it's extremely competent for a Path that has otherwise been plagued with poor performance against multiple targets... Ignore Seele and Ashveil, they're capital A Anomalies.

Rin bringing the Joint ATK 'solves' both the AoE and SP pain points, and it's never been easier to get a full 5 shots off during Circuit Connection. I'm talking about this, and this is even before mentioning Sparkle at all. If you're also bringing Sparkle into the mix, then you're going to have enough SP to full send Archer Spiral Swords and then still be able to massacre the remaining foes with Rin's Enhanced Skill.

The fact that the Joint ATK restores 4 SP is actually just criminal, that's almost as much as a Sparkle Ultimate, and without an Energy cost at all, all you have to do is make sure that Rin acts at least once between every Archer turn and you're golden. Getting to deal extra DMG on top of everything as well is obviously excellent.

Rin's Archer exclusive shared buff is really hard to overstate, too, since it's stats that Archer doesn't actually have very much of, and so they're not very saturated. Archer for himself grants huge DMG% during Circuit Connection, and gets a large CRIT DMG boost from his A6 when allies recover SP and there's more than 4 SP.

Throwing in a hilarious 150% ATK boost on top of that, as well as 15% RES PEN, makes Archer's already very high per-shot damage go even higher still, and it's a lot more effective than if it were more DMG% instead. And then of course you add in the Vuln from Rin's Ultimate, and the extra CRIT DMG from her Talent, and you've got pretty much the big three offensive stats stacked up to amazing levels.

This does mean that adding more damage to the team optimally becomes somewhat more difficult, since a great many supports focus on ATK%, DMG%, or CRIT stats. If only there was a Quantum gremlin who perfectly plays into the SP consuming nature of Archer and could provide action advances while also providing extra Vulnerability on enemies...

Please, everyone act surprised, but Sparkle is still a great pairing with Archer as well, and doesn't overlap too heavily on the buffs that Rin provides either. There's some overlap on the CRIT DMG buffs but the extra Vuln Sparkle inflicts can make for a combined Vuln of 50% after Rin uses her Ultimate, and then there's the 10% RES PEN as well from Sparkle's A6.

Throwing in the expected Genius of Brilliant Stars 4 piece effect, and Archer and Rin are sitting at 25% Quantum RES PEN and 20% DEF ignore against Quantum weak enemies, and this is in addition to everything mentioned before. It's a damn near perfectly set up team, and it's really not heavily contested at all.

This is something I keep bringing up in reviews because it's something I don't see mentioned enough, and that's opportunity cost. I always like having options, and having more options is more better. This is especially true when the more better options do not conflict with pre-existing teams and setups.

Sparkle also has the benefit of being able to flexibly advance whoever needs it the most out of the two; if Archer is already going to be going next, but you've yet to get a turn on Rin, you can advance her to refresh the Joint ATK cooldown and also give some extra CRIT DMG to her for said Joint ATK on Archer's turn; otherwise you can continue to advance Archer to blast the enemy to the next season. 

I mention this mostly for the advanced tech that you could do, especially since there are other certain action advancers that could skew what the board looks like (like Robin). The exact way you play it will depend on what's happening, and what your exact team looks like, and it's a skill check on the player's part, but it's possible to make it work, and that's what matters.

For the majority of players, there is some fairly simple and standard SPD tuning that can make it so you only really need to worry about pulling up Archer, if you're using Sparkle.

'But what if Sparkle is also contested? What if I'm the biggest Seele glazer on the planet and would do anything for her? Asking for a friend~'

Well good news, hypothetical individual that definitely isn't personal projection! Rin and Archer are the package deal. Those are the two that matter. What you put around those two is entirely up to you, and you can do a great many things that can work in damn near any scenario.

If Sparkle is taken, throw in someone like Tribbie, or the Remembrance Trailblazer, for their respective powerful bonuses. If you want to go against off-element, throw in Silver Wolf to apply Quantum Weakness to enemies and also play into the rarer buffs, providing significantly more DEF shred in the process and approaching the coveted 100% when combined with Resolution and Genius (and the abomination of a Signature Light Cone Rin has). Hell, you want to make sure you have all the SP in the world and also get to deal a huge portion of damage that you're already doing, back in the enemy's face? Throw in the kleptomaniac cat Cipher.

Curious how almost all of those are Quantum as well... Naturally if you have no other place to be using the other, more generally contested, options, like Mortenax or Welt, you can use them with the Master Servant duo.

I'd be remiss not to mention the Skill stacking merchant herself, Cerydra. As much as I would love to say to put it on Rin for the memes, it's still ultimately better to put Military Merit on Archer. The extra shots when buffed by both Cerydra and Rin are capable of world-shattering damage, and since Rin grants enough SP to get by courtesy of the Joint ATK, you can actually ramp up Military Merit faster and more reliably than before, even more so if you go for a sustainless setup with both Sparkle and Cerydra.

I wouldn't recommend doing hypercarry solo Rin without her Eidolons, it's just not going to be very good or consistent, but hey, follow your dreams.

Last thing to mention is that the quirks and challenges inherent in playing Archer are still present, you just don't have to worry about SP anywhere near as much. The damage control and target selection is still very much something that matters and something you need to have experience with in order to play the team at its maximum performance.

It's definitely not the headache that Saber teams have to contend with, not even close, but it is still meaningful, and your performance within the endgame modes can vary quite significantly if you're not consciously thinking about what you're targeting, when, and why.

But that only matters for optimisation. If you don't really care and just want to play on auto, Rin is actually surprisingly competent on auto, so as long as the survivability aspect of the team is solved, you can clear 'just fine' on auto. Just remember it'll rot your brain.

The duo is actually so complete on their own that anything can work, go nuts. Should a future character come out that can buff both of them, you can bet that it's going to bump the team up even more, so even if you're not investing in what is clearly the main character comp of Fate (Fate fans don't at me), you should definitely keep an eye on these two. The flexibility of the duo to use uncontested supports to great effect can also mean future such hypothetical characters can also be freely sent to the teams that need them much more.

Very impressive, I must say.

[Wrap up]

In conclusion, you should watch Fate. It might help you understand why Archer is The Chosen One when it comes to direct and indirect buffs.

If Fate characters keep getting put into the game, this may not be a very 'limited' banner anymore. In any case, a reminder that in this patch, Archer is once again a free pickup. You do have to choose between him or Gilgamesh, but personally I don't think you can wrong with either, but the choice is yours.

And since the banner seems to be staying up for Some Time™, you shouldn't feel too pressured to rush for completing your Fate duos right this moment, you still got time.

Bone of one's sword.