Green Last Philosopher Merlin

Published October 4 2022

Updated January 4 2024

[Last Philosopher] Mage of Infinity Merlin can deal great damage against enemies affected by element effect stacks

## Ultimate

Ultimate Damage: 350/385/420/455/490/525%
Element Explosion multiplier: 5/10/15/20/30/40%

## Hero Guide

Green Festival [Last Philosopher] Merlin was released on October 4, 2022, on a 900 gem Festival banner. Merlin is the first unit to introduce two brand-new effects, “Element” and “Element Explosion,” both skills giving Merlin the edge on offensive teams. Last Philosopher Merlin is commonly used as a support unit inside PVP. Merlin is used as a support because you will want to apply her passive Elements to gain the advantage for your allies. Merlin can apply plenty of debuffs on her opening turn assisting in maximizing units like Green Festival Zeldris’s and Green Filo’s passives.

### Pros

* Powerful ultimate (hindering and power-wise)
* Self stats support
* Depletes Ultimate Gauge
* High CC and attack Stats
* Grey Element Buff can't be removed by cleanse or blocked out by debuff immunity
* Applies Element Effect works in all teams
* Best Unit for Unknown Teams

### Cons

* Low defensive stats
* Takes time to build her passive
* Locked to AOE skills only
* Random on which element passive you apply to the enemy
* Element Effects can be countered by having to cleanse remove them which will force you to stack them all over again or rebuff immunity to block them out since they are red debuffs unlike the Element's Grey buff
* The Element Effects will go away when she is killed
* Unique does not work in Death Match and no usage in Late Game content like End Game story bosses or Demonic Beast Battles due to her reliance on debuffs they are mostly immune to.

### Gear Recommendation

The first recommendation for gear sets will be HP and Defense. These gear sets heavily increases survivability for Merlin and CC as well. The second gear sets recommendation is Attack and Critical gear. This is because both gear sets take advantage of Merlin’s High attack stat.

### PVP

Last Philosopher Merlin is commonly used as a support unit inside PVP. Merlin is used as a support because you will want to apply her passive Elements to gain the advantage for your allies. Merlin can apply plenty of debuffs on her opening turn assisting in maximizing units like Green Festival Zeldris’s and Green Filo’s passives.

A standard team composition built around Last Philosopher Merlin will units like Green Filo, Green Ram, Green Echidna, and Blue Nanashi a few to name. All these units mentioned have perfect synergy with each other as they buff unknown units. The buffs provided by each of these units considerably raise survivability and offensive power.

Merlin’s most vital points are in PvP. Merlin’s first skill “Double Impact” applies a dissolve debuff on the enemy. This plays an important role in Merlin’s kit because it applies dissolve and one element stack on all the opponents. Dissolve cripples the enemy that tries to push the ultimate gauge, making Merlin a good substitute for any ultimate control units on the Unknown team. Elements need to be applied 4 times to activate the one grey “Element” that randomly does one of the four effects. Each element applied to the opponent will also increase all of Merlin’s stats by 7% up to 28%. Remember that the opponents will always start with one grey element debuff on them at the start of the fight. Every additional element applied onwards will be red debuff prone to a cleanse and debuff immunity. Some units can make the red Element Debuff effects be used against her with their unique working around having them debuffed such as Red Skadi and Red Estarossa as Skadi's unique makes her allies stronger and her enemies weaker for each debuff on her and Red Estarossa's unique will increase his attack for each debuff on him but they are usually used in lower PVP ranks and Skadi rarely appears in higher PVP ranks so you most likely not run into that problem here.

Merlin’s second skill, “Fusion Reactor,” is raw damage that can be a high multiplier card. This card has a new effect which is “Elemental Explosive”. This card relies on elements applied to the enemy beforehand to output impressive damage on the field. Using this card can have tricky timing, you do not want to use it early as you will do little damage or too late because if you already applied 4 elements' debuffs it will activate Merlin’s passive element and remove the red debuffs.

Merlin’s ultimate is impressive at a high Ult level (preferably at 6/6) as it requires little to no setup. When the ultimate is up and ready to use, it will do 4 things right off the bat, leading to a wipe or dealing immense damage. First, it will apply 1 to 4-element effects. Since the element effects are red debuffs, this leads to the second point. The red debuffs activate Merlin’s passive giving her that extra 7% all-stats bonus for each red debuff. Third, her ultimate's damage multiplier and element explosive multiplier will come together to deal impressive damage.

### PVE

However, it isn't recommended to use her in Demonic Beast Battle, Final Bosses, or some event bosses as they are mostly immune to most or all debuffs making it impossible for Red Element Effect Debuffs from being applied on and stacked to activate their effects, sometimes they have immunity to the Grey Element buffs, making it impossible for her to be of any sort of use in those cases.

For stage farming, Merlin is a solid choice for speedy teams as she has double AOE skills to wipe mobs of enemies.