Medicine Seller

Soul

Position 2/4/6: SPD or ATK or HP/ATK or Effect RES/ATK

Discussion:

Medicine Seller is a unique Shikigami in that his damage does not depend too much on Souls.  In this case, even though he’s a DPS, support Souls work just fine.

Shingan – Shingan is redundant to Medicine Seller in most cases.  Though with high HP Bosses, he is not likely to one hit KO the Boss so Shingan could kick in.

Mirror Lady – This is a very useful Soul in PvP.  When enemies attack Mirror Lady and were reflected damage, they could very well be below the HP threshold and ready to be Exorcised.  Mirror Lady does not necessarily have to be attached to Medicine Seller.  Anybody on the team should do.

Tree Nymph/Fortune Cat/etc. – Medicine Seller’s mechanism takes little advantage of offensive Souls so might as well use support Souls to benefit the team.

Substats is a difficult area for Medicine Seller.  By default, he’ll need ATK.  In addition, he’ll need SPD to ensure being able to Exorcise before enemies escape from the 2 turn See Through.  He’ll also need HP and Effect RES to survive and be able to act.  If you do not have outstanding Souls, ATK is often sacrificed.

Special mention – Medicine Seller is looking to undergo skill adjustment that increases his damage output outside the Reveal effect.  In that case, offensive Souls such as Shadow can be used again.  If that’s the case, he’ll need some Crit as well.

Rating

Shape Revealer

Truth and Reasoning

Defense

Sample Team

Shouzu, Ame Onna, Hana, Inugami, Medicine Seller, and Kagura

Medicine Seller is notorious for slow fights.  He needs quite a number of turns to stack enough Scales to enemies before dealing real damage.  This will drag the fight easily past 10 minutes if you don’t die first.  Luckily he does not rely too much on offensive Souls so with a defensive build he can last for some time.  Medicine Seller need needs to be able to suppress enemy HP for the Shikigami to take effect.  If Medicine Seller is not fast enough, he’ll need accelerators like Kamaitachi, Maestro, and Kagura.  This is to make sure enemies do not just speed their way out of Reveal.  Since we are preparing for a long fight, healers are always needed.  Essentially the whole team should be based on mitigating damage while looking for chances to get enemy units below HP threshold.

PvP

The trigger for Medicine Seller’s skill is not easy to achieve.  Enemies have to acquire Scales first.  Then they have to be reduced down below the HP threshold for Reveal to take effect.  Finally, Medicine Seller needs to be fit enough to kill off enemies.  All these steps are quite a bit of a process and tanky enemies may survive the attack.  This makes Medicine Seller hard to use.  The biggest drawback is that Medicine Seller does not really have many other tricks up his sleeve.  Essentially, he’s useless in the early part of the fight and it’s 5 vs 6 against the enemy team.  If you are able to survive through the first part, watch him take enemies out one by one and they can’t do much about it.

Soul

He’s not much use in challenging Soul stages since his warm-up period is too long.

PVE

Medicine Seller has the potential to deal great damage to Bosses.  He won’t be able to one shot Bosses though when they are at high HP.  This is because his damage is capped.  Since PVE requirements are lower than PVP, Medicine Seller can focus on ATK to maximize damage.  The biggest drawback is the waiting time.  Whenever Medicine Seller attacks the enemy using Defense, it often takes some time until he can do that again.  This adds a lot of weight to other team members for damage output.  In addition, the damage cap means it’s hard to justify the waiting time.   I would say having another attacker with Shadow Soul on the team would increase Medicine Seller’s efficiency.

Shikigami Comparison

Arakawa Lord – The most well-known sniper of this Onmyoji game, Arakawa has unrivaled single target damage as well as being able to bypass Shouzu.  This is something that is shared by Medicine Seller.  Arakawa has a bit of a weakness of decreasing DEF when dealing critical hits but that did not decrease his popularity in PvP.  When built with good enough Souls, his attack can often take an enemy out in one shot.  By comparison, Medicine Seller not only bypass Shouzu but also many other effects that mitigate damages.  Not relying on Soul effects as much, this Shikigami can also use supportive Souls which ease Soul requirements.  The downside is the slow warm up.  Arakawa is useful from the very beginning of the fight whereas Medicine Seller is close to useless in the beginning.  This is the main reason he can never match up to Arakawa with his current skill set.

Acquisition

Wanted Quest

Verdict

Some additional points of Medicine Seller’s mechanism:

• Scale status cannot trigger Hououka so I take that as that is not a debuff.  There goes a potential use.
• Reveal cannot be dispelled as well.
• With Reveal, even if enemies heal back after HP dropping past threshold, the status sticks for two turns.  As opposed to Scale, this status can trigger Hououka.
• Both Scale and Reveal can be Sealed since they come from a passive skill.  However, the Scale that comes from Defense cannot be Sealed.
• Even though Defense would not trigger target’s Soul effects, Tree Nymph that is equipped on another enemy Shikigami can be triggered.
• Defense can benefit from Shikigami ATK buffs that are cast upon Medicine Seller but does not seem to benefit from PvP buffs.
• In terms of Shikigami effects, Defense can bypass revival passives from Hako Doujo and Kyuumei Neko.  Hitotsume’s passive still reflects damage if it has been activated but would not reflect if it hasn’t been activated at the time of the attack.
• In terms of Soul, Defense benefit from Shingan and Shadow but not House Imp because those two Souls are HP related.

Farming (1.0/5.0)

Not a good choice at all as he needs warm-up time and is single target.

Duel/Raid (3.5/5.0)

Medicine Seller is meant to dominate PvP with his unstoppable single target special target.  Instead, he’s having a hard time in PvP for being too hard to trigger his potential.  There are many ways to counter his skills: being fast, be able to control, be tanky enough, etc.  Until he has the conditions to unleash his attacks, the team pretty much fights with one Shikigami less.  This is similar to Shuten, who is not overly popular in PvP.  If the team can suppress enemies with one Shikigami down, then any DPS would work, to be honest.

The latest update give Medicince Seller more fire power at the pre-Revealed stage of the fight.  He’s no longer the Shikigami that waits for things to happen.

Boss Battles (3.0/5.0)

Medicine Seller can deal maximum damage to Bosses since their HP is so high that he’d always hit damage cap until the Bosses die.  The biggest downside is the cooldown and having to wait until the next Defense.  Now, this is potentially shortened once the Bosses gets lower HP, especially under 30% where only one Scale is needed to trigger Reveal.  If you are lucky, that one Scale is granted automatically when Medicine Seller fails to kill the target from Defense.  Of course, at the beginning, Medicine Seller is still quite useless.  He’s also not compatible with Ushi no Toki since damage cannot be transferred.  Though I think this is going to change with the next skill adjustment.  Not being able to work with Ushi no Toki is a big drawback for any DPS to challenge Bosses.  The high damage during the last phase of the Boss is hard to justify the lack thereof in the beginning.  Though one could argue Totem is a good place for him to finish the Boss during the most difficult phase.

With the latest update, he can attach Scale Mark on Ushi no Toki’s straw doll.  This is an upgrade on Boss fights for Medince Sellet to deal 100% extra damage when max Scale attached.  This makes him a contender for Boss fights.  Though the problem remains at lowering straw doll’s HP to the Revealed threshold.

Soul (1.0/5.0)

For obvious reasons, Medicine Seller don’t do well in Soul runs.

Although he is not very useful at this point, I would still get a copy of him for two reasons.  He’s a limited collaborative event Shikigami so there is collective value.  More so if you are a fan of the anime.  He is also likely to get skill adjustment soon.  This is being tested out in the CN test server.  If he is indeed undergoing the said skill changes, then going forward he’ll get more attacking power during early stages of battles.  He would also be able to take advantages of offensive Souls to increase damage output.  Overall, his future looks bright and we should have another high profile attacker in Global soon.

With the latest update, he should be more usable but I still don’t think it’s enough to make him compete with the more prominent DPSs.