#artist: 69054227

[300iqprower]

Hypothetical Rank Ups No. 66-68: Vlad III (EXTRA)

[Disclaimer: Alright alright alright back on track with the Apocrypha rankups. So let's get back to...Lancer of Black, Vlad III! And here's Lancer Vlad- WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS ISN'T AN APOC SERVANT?!....WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY JUST UPDATED HIS TACTICS THUS FORCING ME TO COMPLETELY RETOOL THE ENTIRE SET OF 3 RANKUPS FOR HIM I'VE BEEN SITTING ON FOR MONTHS OK THIS ONE ISN'T A GAG WHAT THE FU-]

Innocent Monster A -> Incorruptible Blasphemer

Gain Critical Stars every turn (3 turns). Apply Target Focus to self (1 turn). Apply Guts to self (1 time, 1 turn). Increase own NP Gain when taking damage (1 turn). [Reduce cooldown to 6/5/4, Guts scales from 1000-5000HP, NP Gain on defense increase scales from 50-100%.]

Instead of extending the target focus duration, we're making Vlancer more dynamic (because this is me we're talking about). With a cooldown as low as 4 turns and increased NP gain on damage, you basically want to wait until the turn vlad will take the most hits to use it. In addition to his new Devil's Strategy buff being great for this, the NP gain increase turns this into his ideal way of building his gauge against high hit count enemies. The guts he has is 1 time 1 turn, but Gramps level powerful at max level. This combined with the low cooldown turns it into a very high risk high reward tactic or even make for a decent last stand burst (though without the outright solo capability of your Herc's and Cu's, kinda like what his Berserker counterpart can do ironically)

Lorewise it's more of the same, really. Vlad III was famous and infamous for his steadfast faith. This is the natural evolution of his innocent monster identity derived from the cruelty with which he protected his home; he is unmistakably sinful in his violence and wrath, but his persistence in the face of evil and corruption to rise up and defend from them is just as unmistakably heroic.

Kazikli Bey (EXTRA) C -> C+++

Apply Ignore Invincible for yourself (1 turn). Apply Ignore Target Focus for yourself (4 turns). [Applies first] Inflict [Trauma] status to all enemies (4 turns). (Trauma: Chance to Stun for 1 turn every turn.) Deal significant damage to a single enemy.^ Apply [Scorched Earth] buff to all allies (Non-stackable). Apply 50% Special ATK [Poisoned enemies] to all allies (6 turns). Apply 50% Special ATK [Burned enemies] to all allies (6 turns). Apply 50% Special ATK [Cursed enemies] to all allies (6 turns). <Overcharge> Deal extra Special Attack damage to a single [Evil] enemy. [Trauma scales with level at 25/32.5/36.25/38.125/40%]

I've been sitting on this one for ages, to my detriment as established above. I WAS gonna give most of this to his tactics (Cause, ya know, "Scorched Earth Tactics"?) but of course an obvious wrench was thrown into that, so i toned the change down and hybridized it with the initially MUCH more simple and low-key NP rank up. But that's all besides the point, scorched earth is self explanatory really. For every DOT on the enemy, they take more and more damage. This singlehandedly turns Vlancer into the "savior" of DOTs, as its effectively dealing 50% more damage to enemies for each of the 3 main DOTs they have with permanent uptime in a dedicated team. What keeps it from being broken though is....wow you really don't realize just how little overlap there is between DOT users until you actually look at the lists side by side. And that's BEFORE we take class advantages into account. This is why the original version I had to scrap also had Vlad himself get special attack against enemies with any offensive debuffs at all. That said if you had a certain Sith Chihuahua it'd definitely make for a VERY fun time, as would it be if all these hypothetical rankups I give that add/revamp DOTs were real but that's getting into a far larger process of scaling around an entire seperate gameplay ecosystem-MOVING ON. Trauma is exactly what it looks like, Terror but it doesn't dispel when it activates (Seriously wtf is the point of making the stun rates so low if it cant even happen more than once....) and lastly there's the incredibly niche idea of the ability to ignore Target Focus for things like challenge quests and the like.

Lorewise this one is very obvious. Vlad Dracul, Spawn of the Devil, infamous for his kill count. Specifically there was the raid of Târgoviște where Vlad ambushed a camp at night with intent to kill the Sultan of the Ottoman empire. In the sheer chaos he got lost and went for the wrong tent, resulting in the raid being a failure [Ignore Target Focus]. During the same campaign his guerilla raids and scorched earth tactics left the entire countryside barren [Anti DOT damage] and culminated in the much larger Ottoman army finding a near empty capital only to discover on the other side a literal Forest of Corpses; 23,844 Turks were impaled and Vlad himself claimed responsibility in a letter to the kind of Hungary. The Ottoman's were so terrified they turned around on a dime claiming victory, since they HAD taken the capital, technically speaking [Trauma].

...SO that's Vlancer. God I wish he'd come home, even if his in game kit is basically untouched he has such a cool kit. Definitely one of the most fun to make rank ups for even factoring in that last second rework. Next is the actual Lancer of Black. Ugh. Between this and that garbage Tawara rank up, I am SO not redoing his bc mine is just objectively better, I definitely need to speed up the upload rate of these....