| 1 | As expected of a gacha game, there are several, but if you think you'll have easy access to them, you'll have to roll the gacha for them first and cross your fingers for the best. |
| 2 | ---- |
| 3 | !! Individual Servants |
| 4 | |
| 5 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 6 | |
| 7 | [[folder:Buster]] |
| 8 | * '''Merlin''' is what happens when you really want an insanely powerful support servant. He provides 20% NP charge and 20% attack to the party with his first skill, his second skill is full party invulnerability, star gen up and enemy crit chance down with a moderate cooldown and the third skill provides 50% Buster up for 3 turns, 3000 Max HP increase and a staggering 100% Critical Damage bonus for a turn. He has a passive that generates 5% NP per turn and at [=NP1=] provides 1000 healing, 5% NP charge and 5 critical stars to the party per turn for five turns. As a result, if you have two Merlins on the field you can have anywhere from four to six of his NP going at any one time. Believe it or not, his playable version actually comes ''after'' a nerf from the NPC Story Support in Babylonia, which also provided a 3000 direct heal on top of the heal per turn. As a result, he basically defined the metagame for a really long time, with various gimmicks seemingly targeted directly at stopping him, such as a Saber Alter Memorial Battle where she's programmed to attack Casters exclusively before any other target, or explicit Buster Card-resistance on some bosses. These things have considerably crippled him, but really, it's nothing too painful to deny the potential he offers. He brings the pain with superpowered Buster crits, and has great sustain to go with it. To top it off, unlike many of his fellow supports, he has great versatility, synergizing just fine within non-Buster Crit oriented teams, with his heavy sustain and NP charge working perfectly for enabling the Arts [[SpamAttack meta]]. He is so broken that [[PowerEqualsRarity he has extremely few pickups]], and while he's one of the featured Servants during Summer 2019, players can only try and roll for him ''for three days''. What few weaknesses he has are primarily the fact he's an Arts focused character, which can cause some card issues with Buster Servants, and that his party-wide NP battery isn't big enough to justify using two of him in farming, but even then he is still strong enough that even with other Caster supports released after being tailor made to support Quick and Arts cards, Merlin is still considered top tier, to the point that he's one of the few pure support focused characters pre-Altria Caster to not have been buffed at all. |
| 9 | * While an Assassin might seem like a poor suit for a support servant (since that field has traditionally been dominated by elite Caster servants), '''Koyanskaya of Light''' is so horrifically strong that she overcomes this bias to carve a niche all her own. Part of this is due to her overblown kit, filled with literally anything a Buster servant could want. 50% NP Charge, a buff to increase a servant's NP gauge when they make an attack with a Buster card, Critical Star production... etc. But her final skill, "NFF Special A" is where she becomes incredibly strong. It's a traditional 50% Buster superbuff the likes of which are seen on Merlin and Nightingale, but hers comes with two powerful caveats- Buster Crit damage up (granted, it's about half as potent as Merlin's, but makes up for that by lasting for three turns while retaining the same cooldown) and Buster Card Star Absorption up by '''5000%'''. The massive Star Weight gain on this buff alone opens up a ton of doors to all sorts rather insane party compositions, since many Buster servants lack the Critical Star weight to reliably hold onto Critical Stars. Hercules, Kintoki, Gorgon, and so on are now significantly more powerful via this buff, to say nothing of the traditional Buster Crit powerhouses like Jalter, Super Orion, Musashi, and First Hassan. Even better, Koyanskaya can actually drop all of these monstrous buffs ''onto herself'', since she has a Buster [=AOE=] Noble Phantasm that charges her NP by 10% per level of overcharge. A Max-Limit Broken Kaleidoscope CE (or the second Append Skill which gives up to 20% starting charge paired with a normal K-scope) is all that's needed to suddenly take this overblown support and turn her into a veritable farmer in her own right, which means that Koyanskaya is arguably the first servant in FGO history that can completely support ''her entire gameplan singlehandedly.'' Most broken of all, her first skill also reduced the skill cooldown of its target by 2, allowing Buster AOE attackers with skills (most importantly NP charge skills) that had a cooldown of 6 turns of lower to use their skills twice in 1 run with 2 Koyanskayas, which means either double NP charge or double attack buffs, enabling them to either let off 3 [=NPs=] in a row reliably, supercharge their [=NPs=] and attacks with their own buffs twice, or even both. Even more so, unlike using Skadi or [[FanNickname Castoria]] for Quick-farming and Arts-farming respectively where it's genuinely preferred to have three enemies on the field for NP gaining, using Koyanskaya for Buster looping doesn't require you to have three enemies on the field for three-turn farming. Whether it's singlehandedly letting the entire Buster meta farm efficiently or being a solid Buster omnifarmer herself, Koyanskaya is easily one of the best servants to be released in the entire 2021 run of the game and is a fantastic choice to roll for any account. |
| 10 | * '''Altria Pendragon''' began life as one of the first SSR servants released, and remained as one of the worst for several years due to an underwhelming kit and lackluster damage. Beginning with the ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'' content, DW slowly worked on buffing Altria several times over to match her in-universe StoryBreakerPower, and the results have landed her firmly on this page. While her first skill is a slightly underwhelming Charisma, her second two skills are excellent. In particular, her second skill, '''Dragon Reactor B''', is a self Buster buff and NP damage up with the unique ability to turn all of her currently drawn facecards into ''Buster facecards'', [[https://youtu.be/bk6exUSQbck?t=106 as demonstrated here.]] This makes her into one of the more reliable Buster servants in the game, and compliments her third skill, a 30% NP Charge ''and'' Critical Star gain. Lastly, her Noble Phantasm went from one of the weakest to being one of the strongest thanks to an NP Strengthening Quest, with an added bonus of giving her 20% NP charge at the first level of Overcharge. Her ability to generate 50% NP Charge in one turn all by herself is nothing to sneeze at, and her high compatibility with the best supports in the game made her into both a reliable farming servant and a dangerous Challenge Quest [=DPS=] all at the same time. And all of this got even better with the release of Koyanskaya of Light, with whom Altria synergizes with arguably the best among the myriad options available. All in all, Altria has come a long way from the bottom of the tier list, and her reliable, straightforward kit earns her a reputation as one of the most consistent and well-rounded servants in the game. |
| 11 | * '''Jeanne d'Arc (Alter)''' was, for quite some time, considered the best overall damage dealer in the game. With her Avenger class packing a natural 1.1 damage modifier that is currently resisted by only Moon Cancer class, consisting of five Servants (BB, Summer BB, Ganesha, Summer Kiara, and Arcueid Brunestud), Jalter can actually hit harder than some servants even without class advantage thanks to having ''the'' highest attack stat in the game at 13,244. Being an Avenger, Jalter has several passives like increased crit damage and natural NP generation to set herself up, meaning she's surprisingly self-sufficient. In terms of skills, Jalter is basically the textbook ideal offensive servant, having a Charisma to boost her damage output, Self-Modification a skill that massively improves her already solid critical damage, and a Mana Burst that doubles as a defensive skill, offering invulnerability for the turn it is used. Her cards have good hitcount, solid NP generation and respectable star generation, and her Noble Phantasm is Buster type with a nifty side effect of blocking the first buff applied to the target. At the time of her release, Jeanne Alter was the gold standard of offensive servants, being able to quickly nuke down bosses regardless of class. The release of Merlin made her even stronger, and Jeanne Alter stayed as one of the best offensive servants years after her release until better options for single target Class Counter caught up to her, and even then she outdamages many of her contemporaries thanks to her Buster critical hits. Jeanne Alter was the second Avenger released and the gold standard to which every other member of the class strives to live up to, with her insanely high damage output solidifying the direction the meta would take for several years. The 6th Anniversary campaign gave her not just a NP damage buff to ensure additional damage, but also generates critical stars as well, and it's just enough to ensure that she will crit hard on the next turn if her opponent isn't already dead. And when Ordeal Call 2 came by she got another strengthening by adding '''a monstrous 50% NP battery''' to her third skill, giving her much more versatility as a Single-Target attacker in 90++ nodes and raids.[[labelnote:*]]Though note that her flat damage output from NP is still inferior to Kintoki (who is advantageous to all but Foreigner foes) in general.[[/labelnote]] |
| 12 | ** Her welfare Berserker form is no slouch either. This form is geared with attack and Buster buffs and an NP charge, and with her high natural attack and ease to [=NP5=] she can deal solid amounts of damage. That said, with some support from Mystic Codes, Craft Essence, Shakespeare and friend's Merlin, she can nuke bosses to oblivion in just one turn regardless of class with cheap setup which is extremely useful for events with raids. |
| 13 | * '''Heracles,''' while already a solid Berserker on his own, reaches this status thanks to his Bond CE - Castle of Snow, which grants him three layers of Guts. Because of the way Guts works, if your last remaining Servant revives via Guts, then the turn immediately ends without a chance for the opponent to finish you off. As a result, triple Guts combined with Herc's own Mind's Eye/Battle Continuation combo means that Herc is guaranteed to last for five or six turns if he's the last Servant you have. Combine this with great attack even for a Berserker, plus the NP charge he gains from being hit, and Herc can easily take an otherwise guaranteed defeat and turn it around into a victory. He's also not that difficult to get if you know what you're doing, having appeared in several free giveaways as well as being available in the Start Dash gacha (meaning you can just reroll accounts until you have a Herc at the very beginning, giving you all the time in the world to level up his Bond). And after his Rank Up Quest for the Fifth Anniversary, this has only been magnified since Heracles can now stack Guts as well as gain a Buster buff for five turns if a Guts is activated, meaning by including Herc's bond [=CE=], he can gain an maximum of '''80%''' Buster buff for several turns. |
| 14 | * '''BB (Summer)''' at first might not seem like much, her stats being somewhat middling for an SSR Servant and Moon Cancer only being able to deal effective damage to Avengers, which are uncommon enemies at best. Her first skill is Self Modification, which while at EX rank is pretty powerful and helps her damage quite a bit isn't too mindblowing. Her second skill is where things start tipping more towards the broken side. Golden Pig Cup at max rank gives her (and yes this is all one skill): An NP gauge charge of 50%, a 3,000 hp heal, 20% Buster up for 3 turns, 50% NP damage up for 3 turns, and a one time evade just to cap it all off. At 7 CD at level 10. While this is more than most Noble Phantasms can accomplish in one skill, it is somewhat justifiable by her aforementioned stats and class, with it ultimately just allowing her to keep up with other offensive Servants damage wise rather than surpassing them. So why is she listed here? Three words, and her final skill: '''Faceless Moon EX.''' This is, without question, one of the best skills in the entire game, allowing BB to "lock in" the current hand of cards for three turns, meaning that another new hand will not be drawn in that time. This is, frankly, beyond ludicrous and allows for terrifying synergies. Are you annoyed that your Merlin and Jeanne Alter team is too reliant on RNG for those glorious Buster Brave chains? BB has you covered! Maybe you'd like to have as many Arts cards as possible when using a Servant like, say, Hokusai so you can debuff the enemies defense into oblivion? No problem! Want an Assassin like Jack to always have three Quick cards, thus guaranteeing 50 stars for three turns, while also going through enemies like a chainsaw if you have Skadi? Your kouhai is here to serve. And the real kicker? At level 10, the cooldown is only ''six turns.'' The downsides which prevent it from becoming a full-blown Game-Breaker is shuffling the deck or swapping out party members (such as any deaths) will prematurely cancel the skill, and waiting for a good hand to lock with the skill is also time-consuming (sometimes probably life-threatening) with the RNG mechanic, but it's still too good for making every possible builds even stronger for three turns, and the possibility to subvert fundamental game mechanics. |
| 15 | * '''Cu Chulainn (Alter)''' is what happens when you get rid of the Berserker class' GlassCannon weakness. While his Lancer incarnation is merely BoringButPractical, having great skills for survivability and endurance but low damage due to his rarity; His Alter form alleviates the low damage due to being a higher rarity ''and'' a Berserker. While his Protection from Arrows is a rank lower (lower defense buff and a 2 attack dodge compared to Lancer's 3), it's a small price to pay. He also trades Disengage for a new skill, Madness of the Spirits, which lowers the opponent's Critical Rate and Attack for 3 turns to give him and your team even more survivability. His NP even buffs his own Attack and Defense for a single turn ''before'' it activates. This makes him, along with the aforementioned Jeanne Alter, one of the best general use boss killers in the game, trading the latter's high burst damage for more endurance. The [=6th=] anniversary also gave him a boost to his NP, allowing his to remove all defensive buffs, evasion ''and'' invulnerability from his target before he strikes, making it impossible to defend against. While it doesn't aid his survivability any, there won't be much of the enemy left after this anyway. |
| 16 | * '''Minamoto-no-Raikou (Summer)'''. For a 4-star unit, she can surpass even 5-star Lancers for being the best in class when it comes to sheer offensive power. While her regular Berserker version is one contender for game breaker status who is only held back by her [[GlassCannon squishiness]], Lancer Raikou retains a similar power level on a Lancer class. Both of Lancer Raikou's card damage boosting skills lasts 3 turns, with one being a generic charisma while increasing Star generation rate, and the other being a loaded 3 turn 40% Buster buff ''in addition to'' a debuff removal with 6 turn Cooldown (and it's targetable giving her some form of flexibility in usage). Her last skill is a simple 1 turn critical buff and Star absorbion, but since her Noble Phantasm produces stars in its own right, Lancer Raikou is able to easilly work around it. What truly pushes Lancer Raikou further is her cardset, while her Lancer esque(2 Buster, 1 Arts, 2 Quick) cardset is otherwise unremarkable, her Arts card is significantly better than normal allowing an Arts third card critical from her to quickly refill her NP gauge. |
| 17 | * '''Ibaraki Douji (Summer)''' is basically Summer Raikou with her cards more slanted towards Quick, featuring 4.24 NP gain on Quick. This NP gain on quick card is further boosted by Demonic Magic (Water), essentially the exact same skill as Summer Nitocris's PurposefullyOverpowered third. With it active, Ibaraki's Quick card is every bit as good as Okita Souji's Quick card allowing her to quickly generates NP gauge. While Ibaraki is decidedly considered worse than Raikou, thanks to weaker card damage, and less flexibility, her power is very much comparable to Raikou to the point of being nearly interchangeable. |
| 18 | * '''Gilgamesh''' used to be a LowTierLetdown. In theory, his Noble Phantasm, Enuma Elish, is extremely broken, with a unique property of getting super effective damage against the vast majority of the entire servant cast thanks to the "weak to Enuma Elish" attribute. However, Enuma Elish was infamous for having the damage output of a wet paper thanks to the relatively low damage scaling of Buster AOE Noble Phantasms, and lacked a way to boost it further without outside support. His skillset was also fairly basic, with a Charisma for attack, a standard Golden Rule, and Collector EX for critting. He used to be extremely broken early in the game lifespan due to the wonky crit star mechanics, but as time goes on, said mechanic were changed to his detriment, and he was stuck as a servant who focused entirely on his relatively underwhelming Noble Phantasm. This all changed after an update gave him an overloaded Noble Phantasm upgrade: on top of the standard damage boosts, said upgrade also gave him a pre-casted 30% boost towards NP damage. Due to how NP damage boosts are calculated, the upgrade was so significant that a post upgrade Gil at [=NP1=] would outdamage pre-upgrade Gil at ''[=NP5!=]'' With this upgrade, not only does Gil now have incredible damage output with his NP, it basically deals as much damage as a standard single target NP against Servants, which makes up the vast majority of difficult content in the game. Gil would later on be buffed further by changing Collector EX into '''Treasury of Babylon''', which gave up to 30% instant NP charge allowing Gil to access his Noble Phantasm more quickly. And then his Charisma gets upgraded to '''The One Who Saw It All''', granting up to 20 critical stars and additional 20% NP damage boost to all Sky Attribute allies, including himself! The current version of Gil is commonly considered to be one of the most valuable damage dealers in the game, thanks to his powerful NP damage, and thanks to being an AOE who do as much damage as an ST servant, Gil is able to handle almost every situation, and a passable option for farming if you don't have a more competent option with shorter animation time. "King of Heroes" indeed. |
| 19 | * '''Arjuna Alter''' is the fourth Lostbelt King, and like the rest of them, he's suitably powerful. He's one of the strongest, if not ''the'' strongest [=AoE=] Berserker in the game, having exceeded the damage potential of the similarly-powerful Raikou, who held the position as "best [=AOE=] Berserker" until his arrival. His first skill, '''Anti-Evil EX''' is where the majority of his damage comes from. It's a fairly normal Attack buff with a unique upside- with this buff online, Arjuna Alter deals an additional 50% damage to any enemies who have been debuffed. That's right, any and ''all'' debuffs. His Noble Phantasm happens to apply a Buster resistance reduction debuff to all enemies before his Noble Phantasm damage, ensuring that he deals a ''ton'' of damage to all enemies in his path. If the combination of Buster resistance down and Anti-Evil don't do you in, his kit still has a lot of other great elements to it. His second skill, '''Clairvoyance (Transcendent) EX''' is an on-demand NP charge skill, which doubles as a critical star absorption skill specifically for his Buster cards, meaning he's also very suitable on single target boss fights because of the aforementioned Buster debuff. Unlike Minamoto-no-Raikou, Arjuna Alter has access to a strong defensive option with his Bond Craft Essence, which bestows himself Invincibility for 3 attacks, and that's on top of his third skill that bestows himself Guts ''and'' HP regeneration per turn. If the player can feed him enough critical stars, he'll blast enemies to pieces with enough damage to kill them five times over. Pairing him with the aforementioned Merlin above, and he'll mow down any enemies that stand in his way, but pairing him with Koyanskaya of Light allows him to use his first two skills twice in 1 run, resulting in him being able to NP three times consecutively while doing massive damage by the third turn due to his first skill being stacked on top of itself. Not bad for the fourth Lostbelt King. |
| 20 | * '''Fujino Asagami''' is considered to be the strongest 4* Archer in the game. Despite her naturally GlassCannon stats, her GlassCannon status is compensated with her third skill, which bestows herself a ''2000 damage cut'' at max rank and Guts despite her third skill giving herself a 2000 maximum HP demerit. This means most of her opponent's normal damage attacks will mostly be doing single to double digit damage, even against ''Berserkers''. And on top of that, her first two skills provide her a ''ton'' of damage as well as allowing to break through two layers of defense. Her first skill, Mystic Eyes of Distortion, amplifies her Buster card damage, increase her NP generation rate, and ignore Defense. Combined with her Territory Creation passive, this allows her to build up her NP bar fairly quickly as well as punishing bosses with defense up gimmick (especially when her Art Cards crits). Her second skill is her own unique Clairvoyance skill that applies Sure Hit to herself and gain critical stars, meaning her attacks not only punishes bosses with defense up, but also bosses that would try to survive her Noble Phantasm with an Evade. And speaking of her Noble Phantasm, her Noble Phantasm is not only capable of inflicting a ton of damage, but applies a buff block status and attack down debuff. This means not only her Noble Phantasm negates any nasty self buffs effects, but when combined with her defensive damage cut skill and the attack down effect from her Noble Phantasm, your opponent's normal attacks will almost be dealing zero damage. The rerun for the Servant Summer Camp gives a Rank Up quest for her Noble Phantasm, which not only increases its base power, but also gives it a SituationalSword effect of doing extra damage to Super Giant enemies. In fact, her damage output is so high that an [=NP1=] Fujino will outdamage ''Chloe von Einzbern'' (a solid 4* Archer that the player can obtain to ''[=NP5=]!'' for free). When grailed to level 100, she'll even outdamage some of the 5* Archers in the game, including Gilgamesh and even Summer Altria.[[note]]The only 5* Archer she doesn't outdamage is Superhuman Orion mentioned below due to his overloaded kit as a Buster crit Archer.[[/note]] If the player manages to get her to at least [=NP2=], she can even solo some of the hardest contents in the game thanks to her third skill providing her a lot of survivability. Pair her with the aforementioned Merlin, and she'll tear up anyone who opposes her in her path with lots of healing and protection from Merlin. Her biggest downside is that she is currently one of two ''severely'' limited servants in the game (the other one being Miyu Edelfelt) with only ''two'' rate ups, so if you couldn't get her, you're out of luck. |
| 21 | * As befitting of his former title of [[spoiler:Grand Archer]], the aptly named '''Super Orion''' is without a doubt the strongest Archer in the game, and is the current contender for best Solo Servant in the entire game. His first skill is a monstrous 50% Buster buff for 1 turn that reaches 100% percent against a Wild Beast or Demonic enemy, of which there are many. His second skill is a powerful 3000 HP Guts coupled with a decent 20% attack buff and some crit stars, and his third skill is a Star Absorption skill mixed with a big crit damage buff and a special bonus for attacking with Buster cards, of which he has three. But what ''really'' pushes him over the edge is his extremely strong Noble Phantasm: Artemis Agnos. A self buff, Artemis Agnos gives Orion the following at Level 1 with 100% Overcharge: a 30% attack boost, Ignore Invincible, Debuff Immunity, ten crit stars per turn, and 100% crit damage buff all on three turns. That's more than some servants entire skillset, and since Orion has extremely good NP gain and hits like a truck with his crits, he's capable of rapidly stacking this buff ala Hozoin. With just two stacks, Orion can hit for close to '''500,000 damage with a single Buster Crit''' as demonstrated [[https://youtu.be/2FFD1_LOXu8 here.]] And that's ''by himself''- there's no telling what he can do with supports.[[note]][[https://appmedia.jp/fategrandorder/4276714 Testers]] estimate his output can hit ''seven digits'' with two Merlins on board[[/note]] While he needs to be Solo in order to really take advantage of his buffs (and he's quite a GlassCannon for that), along with the fact that his NP card is Arts, meaning no trying to start with a Buster NP to initiate a Buster Brave Chain for even bigger damage[[labelnote:*]]which is kinda fixed after Mighty Chain was introduced[[/labelnote]], there's no denying that the damage he outputs is going to be extremely high no matter the situation. |
| 22 | * '''Morgan''' is what you get if you sacrifice a bit of the raw AOE damage of Arjuna Alter, but add in the powerful utility of Altria Caster and Himiko. Her first skill is a beefed-up version of Charisma called Charisma of Yearning, not only giving the party a 20% Attack Up, but also gives herself 30% NP Charge and gives out a 30% Defense Down debuff as well at max level. Her second skill can be described as a weaker version of Altria Caster's Protection of the Lake, but still potent to make up for it. Both her first and second skills combine to grant her 50% NP gauge right off the bat, which contributes to her incredible power. Her third skill, From the Furthest End, not only gives her a Guts buff, but also increases Crit Star absorption and Crit Damage while giving herself a buff that reduces enemy Attack and Crit Chance while also granting Crit Stars, ensuring that she can not only survive a potential fatal hit, but also ensure she deals a critical blow. However, the most crucial part of her kit is her Noble Phantasm: firstly, it deals additional damage to enemies with the "Man" trait, of which there are a ''lot''. (It also deals extra damage to "Round Table" or "Fae" enemies, which is a nice bonus.) But most importantly, the entire party gets a one-use buff that increases their NP Overcharge by 1 stage, which - crucially - can be triggered any time ''within three turns''. The fact it lasts three turns and is tied to a Noble Phantasm (which can be spammed as many times as you have gauge) created '''a brand new "Overcharge meta"''' wherein Morgan could enable incredible new strategies for farming and high difficulty quests across the board (e.g. if you loop her, she can stack it on someone!!), to the point where quest strategy guides became divided into "with Morgan" and "without Morgan" sections. The release of Koyanskaya of Light - an absurdly good Buster support and attacker - further hypercharged Morgan's universality and ability to be slotted into ''any'' team or challenge, making her one of the best Servants in the entire game. |
| 23 | * '''Oberon''' was hyped up as a very strong support servant upon his introduction, and he did not disappoint for being the first Pretender servant upon his release for the Avalon le Fae Conclusion Campaign, defining DifficultButAwesome, but with the "Awesome" part emphasized. His first skill, Curtain of the Night EX grants a NP Damage buff and a flat 20% NP Charge to all current party members, but the "Difficult" part comes with his second skill Morning Lark EX, which charges a Servant's NP gauge by 50% and grants 20 Critical Stars at max level, at the expense of draining 20% NP the next turn. While this creates anti-synergy with Arts and (somewhat) Quick Teams, this is an absolute boon towards Buster Teams, because they're unlikely to generate their NP gauge with their Buster Cards including their Noble Phantasms. This combined makes for one of the strongest NP Charges at 70%, meaning that Servants with at least a 30% NP Charge can unleash ''three Noble Phantasms in three turns''! His final skill, Ending of Dreams EX, is basically a DeathOrGloryAttack rolled up into one skill: At max level, it gives a 50% Buster Damage buff and ''doubles'' the potency of NP Damage Boosts, including those from Craft Essences such as Black Grail, ensuring that they will hit extremely hard, but at the expense of losing all their buffs afterwards and being hit with a '''PERMANENT SLEEP DEBUFF''' alongside a permanent taunt buff and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking unable to use Order Change on them]]. Of course, the debuff doesn't matter if it's the last wave and that there are a few enemies waiting to be finished off. Even better is that his Noble Phantasm, Rye Rhyme Goodfellow/[[spoiler:Lie Like Vortigern]], hits for basically ''single-target'' damage for an AOE Noble Phantasm thanks to his buffs, at the expense of giving the enemies Invincibility if they survive... In exchange for them suffering the Sleep debuff, and unlike Summer Abigail, it perfectly synchronizes with his kit as well as long as it'd placed last in a chain of attacks, meaning that much like Koyanskaya of Light, whom he synchronizes well with, he can support ''his own entire gameplan single-handedly'', making him useful against the Knight classes (Saber, Archer, Lancer) and Alter Egos as well. The only downsides are that his ???/[[spoiler:Anti-Humanity D]] passive causes Merlin's buffs to have a 20% chance of not working while he is on the field, though he gives a 10% Debuff Success chance to all party members except Foreigners, and as a Pretender, he deals less damage to Cavalry classes (Assassin, Rider, Caster) and that Foreigners absolutely demolish him, but with all his skills, it can be very hard to not roll for him, and is a must in farming in Buster teams. He is so absurd that it's widely agreed 90++ event nodes with bosses whose HP sits comfortably in the 1 million HP range at minimum introduced a year after his debut solely exist to give players who have him some ''semblance'' of difficulty. |
| 24 | * '''Kukulkan''' is considered one of '''the''' premiere [=AoE=] Buster Servant alongside the aforementioned Arjuna Alter. Good lordy, where to begin with this lady? Let's start with her skills: Her first skill, '''Charisma of Jade A+''' is one that raises the attack of all party members by 20% and grants them 30% better defense against critical hit chances, resulting in Critical Misses more often. But ''then'' Kukulkan has the option to pay 10 Critical Stars to further increase her own Attack by 30%, resulting in a hefty 50% Attack steroid from the get-go. Her second Skill, '''We Are the Winged Serpent EX''', is a targetable 50% battery for allies, and should she choose to spend 10 Critical Stars, also grant them 2-hit Evade and Sure Hit for 3 turns. But then there's her third skill, '''Golden Sea of Trees Travelogue EX''', which grants her Invincibility for 1 turn, increases her own Buster performance by 30%, increases her own Crit Damage by ''50%'', and should she choose to spend 10 Critical Stars on this skill, it increases her own NP damage by a huge 30%, all three buffs lasting for 3 turns to maximize her damage output. Her Noble Phantasm, Kinich Ahau Impact/[[spoiler:Last Sun Xibalba]], first-increases her damage against Threat to Humanity enemies by 50% for 1 turn, seals enemy skills for 1 turn, has a 30-Star bomb, and deals extra damage to Earth-attribute enemies. But the biggest highlight is her Passive, [[spoiler: '''Archetype ORT''']], which grants her 10 Stars per turn, 3% NP Gauge per turn, and gives her the ability to '''''passively upgrade any Invincibility she receives to Anti-Enforcement Defense''''', which was previously exclusive to Altria Caster! In the only class capable of resisting Berserkers, this passive makes her a godsend for if she's sent against Alter Egos and other Foreigners. So in the end, you have somebody who somehow managed to surpass the likes of Altria Caster and Summer Ibuki in terms of raw power, having steroids and crits for days, and what can be considered one of the most broken passives in the history of ''Fate/Grand Order'', fitting for the [[spoiler: heart of the Ultimate One of the Oort Cloud, ORT]]. Her one downside is that she doesn't have the Entity of the Outer Realm passive that all the other Foreigners have, which weakens her compatibility with Van Gogh, but she's so hilariously strong, she still works well with her anyway. |
| 25 | * Coming from Arcade is '''Larva/Tiamat''', and by '''''god''''', she has a lot to work with. Her first skill, '''Eye of Blue Star B''', grants her a 50% battery and completely negates all enemy critical attack chance for one turn, while also blocking their healing for one turn as well. Her second skill, '''Eye of Red Star B''', Increases her own attack and Buster performance, both by 30% for 3 turns, inflicts a 2000-per-turn Curse effect on enemies, and has 60% chance of stunning them all. But the jaw-dropper is her third skill, '''Sea of Blue Stars A''': it heals all party members by 1500, charges their battery by 10% and increases their NP damage by 20% for one turn... but then there's the fact that the damn thing has a '''''2 turn cooldown''''', meaning she can use this up to ''three times'' '''''on the same turn''''' with double Koyanskaya! Her Noble Phantasm, '''Nammu Duranki''', first removes all her debuffs and bolsters her Buster performance by 30-60% for 3 turns depending on her overcharge level, then seals enemy skills as she deals heavy damage to all enemies on the field. The combination of her battery-charging, pure Buster power and perfect synergy with the double Koyanskaya (and Oberon) strat certainly puts her up there as one of the strongest CE-less Buster loopers in the game. Her one downside is that she's an Alter Ego, making her only really specialized against the Foreigners and Cavalry Classes (Casters, Assassins, Riders, and ''especaially'' Berserkers) in addition to Beasts to lesser extents[[note]]This will require her third append skill to be unlocked, but even then her Anti-Beast niche works best only against both halves of Beast III as they are weak to Alter-Egos[[/note]], but with Buster steroids like hers, you can't argue the results. |
| 26 | * '''Aesc the Savior''' is an absolutely jaw-dropping Servant to use. Her first skill, '''Fae of the Rain Clan A''', increases all allies' NP Gauge by 10% per turn and gives herself 10 Crit Stars per turn, 50% Battery and 20% NP Damage, so out the gate she's already got looping potential with the Kaleidoscope CE. Then comes '''Charisma of Adversity A''', which takes the Number 1 spot of most ridiculous Charisma variant: not only does she grant herself and her allies 20% extra Attack, she also grants ''4 extra Attack buffs that activate based on health'', upwards to 40%. If she manages to keep all allies at full HP, though, she gets another 10 Crit Stars. Her third skill, '''Last Resort A''', lives up to its name: although it starts a battle with a 5-turn cooldown, once it's available it grants all allies 50% Battery, 30% NP Damage, and a 3000 HP Guts for 1 time, 3 turns, making effective use of '''Charisma of Adversity''''s HP-dependent attack buffs. Her Noble Phantasm, '''Memory of Londinium'''/'''Summer Pool Dozmary''', applies Ignore Invincible for 1 time 1 turn and a 1 turn 20%-50% Buster buff at the start, then deals heavy damage to all Evil enemies and decreases Defense by 20% for 3 turns, and hastens the cooldown of her S3 based on Overcharge. With a kit like that, there's little wonder Aesc was considered so powerful during her repeated attempts to fulfill the prophecy of the Mirror Clan, opening doors for many Guts-dependent strategies and having perfect synergy with Double Koyanskaya & Oberon to hasten her S3's cooldown. |
| 27 | * '''Ozymandias''' was already a great Servant, but after two Strengthenings he's dethroned Kintoki as the best single-target NP Rider in the game. His first skill is a bog standard Charisma Attack Up, his second skill is the much loathed Imperial Privilege that gives him a guaranteed heal plus 40% Attack and Defense Up boosts provided both buffs hit, and his third skill gives a 20% NP Charge and Buff Success Up buff for the whole party, guaranteeing Imperial Privilege gives all buffs at the cost of chaining it to the third skill which has an extra turn in cooldown. His NP is fairly solid too, sealing the target's NP while lowering their defense boost after damage. All in all, a great well-balanced kit but lacking just a little to make him extraordinary. His first strengthening was mediocre, giving a minor boost to his Charisma's attack up and if the battlefield is a Sun type, it gives him 10 Crit stars per turn while boosting his Crit damage which he appreciates since Riders suck up Crit stars like no other. A cute upgrade to reference him being an incarnation of the sun, but like all weather-based skills it was too unreliable to matter. Then his second Strengthening came for his NP and by the knobbly knees of Ramesses, it's probably the most absurd in the entire game. On top of the standard damage buff, now it sets the battlefield to Sun type for 5 turns, and lowers all his skill cooldowns by one, completing the synergy in his whole kit. Now his Charisma's secondary effects will always go off while his Imperial Privilege buffs will almost be always active, especially since he can generate his NP very quickly with two Arts cards and critical hits. |
| 28 | * '''Miyamoto Iori''' already enjoys the usual free event Servant benefits of being a free 4-star with an easily accessible NP5, he also has '''extremely''' overloaded skills that basically turn him into a Rider Kintoki on steroids. Between all three of his skills, he gets attack up, all three card strength buffs, an NP battery, crit damage up, a star bomb ''and'' star regen, star absorbtion, flat damage reduction, two stacks of evade, mental debuff resistance and burn on all enemies. And to top it all off, his Noble Phantasm gives him another buff to buster and quick ''before'' it strikes, ignores evade, and generates more stars. It's very easy for him to shred his enemies with a combination of his Noble Phantasm and powerful crits. |
| 29 | ---- |
| 30 | [[/folder]] |
| 31 | |
| 32 | [[folder:Arts]] |
| 33 | * '''Mash Kyrielight''', your beloved kouhai that has been with you ever since you started the game, becomes one of the best support servants in the game after you clear Camelot. Her first skill goes from just a decent party defense boost to adding a massive 2000-damage cut for one hit with a short 5-turn cooldown. Her Noble Phantasm, Lord Camelot, boosts your party members' Attack by a good 30% alongside a significant damage cut and defense boost too, and should she perform an Arts Brave Chain while her third skill is up (taunt and NP generation massively boosted), her NP can potentially be up again for the next turn, making your party nearly invincible for a couple turns! And to top it off, she has 0 cost, meaning she can be fielded in any party with ease. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, if you're playing through the Lostbelt, her kit becomes significantly nerfed, and while she's still very much usable, it's not as powerful as her awesome defensive kit beforehand. This disadvantage only applies in Lostbelt stories, as you can use her pre-Lostbelt form at will in any other quest, and she gets her original kit back during Lostbelt 6.]] |
| 34 | * '''Zhuge Liang (Waver)''' is the best general support Servant in the game. His skills are all buffs and using each skill fills the NP bar of whichever party member he used it on. Two of his skills are party-wide general attack and defense buffs with damage plus and damage cut as a bonus respectively, making them the strongest and most reliable offensive and defensive buff in the game. His NP stuns the enemy, afflicts poison, lowers defense and -- most importantly -- reduces NP charge, which combined with his NP-filling skills and three Arts card deck can be easily spammed against the enemy. He doesn't even need a specific CE to function greatly in any team and his personal Bond CE is just the cherry on top of all the other buffs he provides. The NA version retains all of these updates from day 1, making him the most sought-out after Servant by newbie players due to his general usefulness on any kind of content, whether farming nodes or battling bosses. He also works extremely well with Merlin, Skadi, and Tamamo, and bringing him and any of the aforementioned three in a team makes general quests quite easy, and greatly eases the difficulty of hard bosses and quests. |
| 35 | * '''Tamamo-no-Mae''' is one of the premier supports for Arts servants. She sports an extremely useful and powerful NP that can recover health (at [=NP1=] provides 1000, 2000 after her First Interlude), reduce party skill cooldowns by one, and restore at least 25% NP for her team. Her skillset consists of Curse, a simple enemy charge drain, Morph, a massive Defense boost to greatly help her survivability, and lastly, one of her main selling points, Fox Wedding EX, a massive 50% Arts performance boost as well as a generous 2500 HP heal; on top of these, her Bond CE will also boost everyone's Arts performance for a further 15%. These allows her to drastically increase the utility of any Arts Servants on your team, whether they be single-target damage dealers (e.g. Archer Altria, Chloe, Dioscuri, Ryougi Shiki), multi-target damage dealers (e.g. Rider Mordred, Katsushika Hokusai, Murasaki Shikibu), debuffers (e.g. Shuten-douji), or supports (e.g. Nero Bride, Jeanne, Mash, Gao Changgong). Her presence in an Art-oriented team is so important that when she is combined with suitable Servants, they can form a team to prevent their foes from using their NP '''damn near forever''', or forming up a MightyGlacier which can slowly but surely grind their foe to death. And come New Year's 2019, she gains a strengthening quest to upgrade her Curse skill to also give her teammates a powerful 30% increase in Noble Phantasm strength, solidifying her role in the Arts meta. She brings the pain with superpowered Arts Noble Phantasms, with ridiculously amazing sustain to go with it. Her downside is that just like Merlin, she's mostly meant for longer and more difficult fights, with her farming capabilities being highly dependent on what Servants or Craft Essences the player has. |
| 36 | * '''Altria Caster''' is easily '''the''' premier support for Arts servants, even beating out Tamamo in some areas. Just like Tamamo, her skill, Sword of Selection/[[spoiler:Sword Creation]], gives an 50% Arts Buff to any ally, but with the added effect of giving invincibility as well as a 50% special attack buff against enemies with the Threat Against Humanity trait. Her other skills are also absolutely fantastic. Her first skill, Charisma of Hope, gives the entire team a 20% attack buff and a 30% NP gauge increase, beating out even Merlin's own Dreamlike Charisma by 10% more gauge! Her second skill, Protection of the Lake/[[spoiler:Avalon le Fae]], also increases the NP gauge by 20% and NP gain by 30%, totalling out to 50% NP to any ally (rivaling such servants as Waver and Reines). These buffs make Arts teams ridiculously loaded, enough to rival Buster and Quick teams for both farming and difficult quests, as two Altria Casters almost ensure Arts-based offensive Servants with good NP gain can [[SpamAttack rinse and repeat]] their NP at their pleasure without outside help. And that's before her Noble Phantasm, Around Caliburn. Along with giving a 30% attack buff[[labelnote:*]]that can go up to 50%, among the strongest attack buffs in the game for its duration, if you shell out enough money to get her to [=NP5=][[/labelnote]] and clearing debuffs to all allies, its main selling point is Anti-Enforcement Defense, which '''negates Ignore Invincibility''', making some of the boss fights you face that have enemies bypass Evade or Invincibility much easier to endure. Because so many of her buffs are team-wide, she also benefits from them and can actually become a semi-competent damage dealer, meaning she isn't even a complete StoneWall. Her only real downside is her lack of healing, and Anti-Enforcement Defense can only block a single attack[[note]]which can increase to 5 times at maximum Overcharge[[/note]] in 3 turns, which can cripple your team if enemies follow up with other strong attacks, but her numerous buffs are more than make up for it, and her excellent compatibility with Tamamo (who ''does'' have healing) means that bringing the two along will make your team almost invincible. |
| 37 | * '''Lady Avalon''' is often considered to be the Arts version of Merlin. Her first skill (a.k.a. "Light Upon That Hand") works the same as Merlin's Hero Creation skill, but instead of a Buster buff, she gives out an Arts buff. Her second skill (a.k.a. "Blooming Flower of Summer Nights") works the same as Merlin's Dreamlike Charisma skill, but it has an additional NP Overcharge increase by one. Her third skill (a.k.a. Succubus' Ridge) gives out a party-wide Invincibility for one turn as well as giving an unique debuff prevents enemies' NP from being charged for 1 tick at start of the next turn to all enemies, and charging her own NP gauge based on the number of enemies. With her latter two skills as well as her "High-Speed Divine Words (Bewitching)" passive skill which has her NP Gauge be at 20% for the start of the battle, she's actually one of the very few servants that can fully get their NP Gauge at 100% at the start of the battle without any append skills, craft essences, or assistance from others; assuming that three enemies are present at the start of the battle. And speaking of her NP, it's pretty much the same as Merlin, but with a Max HP Increase instead of a heal. Over all, she's another incredibly good Arts support that we wouldn't expect any less from the female AU version of Merlin. |
| 38 | * What's that? You don't have any of the super support Casters or failed to roll them?! Well, until you do manage to get them, and even once you ''do'' have them, '''Hans Christian Andersen''' has got your back! To note, his skills include a party-wide critical boost, as well as a skill that generates stars per turn. Given that critical hits in this game are already overpowered, this helps make your team crit harder and often. His second skill allows him to generate most of his Noble Phantasm gauge on the fly, with numbers much higher than other competitive values. His Noble Phantasm is based on chance, but if all his buffs hit, your party will obtain a sizable attack, defense, and crit star drop rate boost (which synergizes with his first skill, by the way) and a guaranteed heal per turn. With all this power, you would expect him to be rare, but nope! He is a 2 star servant you can obtain in the Friend Point gacha. Needless to say, you can count the number of [=F2P=] players that do not have this cute little author fully maxed on one hand, and even whales use him in certain setups due to the sheer versatility that Hans brings to the table. This power of his increased from a rank up quest that removed the debuff on his Innocent Monster skill and gave it a targetable NP gauge boost per turn, speeding up any team compositions using him without sacrificing defense. |
| 39 | * Similarly, '''Euryale''' is an easy to raise 3* servant, and yet is one of the best Servants in the game for dealing with difficult content. Her kit is deceptively simple: a skill that attempts to drain a bar from the enemy's charge gauge while filling some of her own NP gauge, a skill that inflicts Charm on Males with a high degree of success, a three turn self-Arts boost, and a Noble Phantasm that inflicts scaling-with-NP-level Special Attack damage to Male enemies, with a chance to also Charm them and reduce their attack power. However, the key is that it all synergizes ''extremely'' well, both internally, allowing her to rapidly charge her NP while stalling the enemy, reducing their damage output and slowing their charge while denying them turns, and externally, fitting very well with many common Arts-based supports, not least of which is Mash, whom every player has access to. And the Special Attack scaling on her NP is ''incredibly'' generous, letting her hit well above her weight class while fighting enemy bosses, potentially shaving off entire Break Bars with a single use. Her major weakness is that her shtick only works on Male enemies, and works best when they are Male Sabers or Berserkers... but, from Gawain in Camelot to Megalos of Agartha, to even the Avenger of Shinjuku (especially when, at release, there were ''no'' Servants with class advantage over him and even now those who do are very rare), there are a ''lot'' of very difficult Male bosses, and Euryale can easily carry a team through them with comparatively little investment compared to other potential solutions by simply acting as the hammer in an otherwise-defensive stall team. Later chapters Epic of Remnant and Lostbelt attempt to hard counter her by introducing Charm-immune male Berserkers and Sabers, but Euryale's damage numbers still make her a valuable asset in those fights, and characters like Altria Caster and Lady Avalon basically let her fight ''well'' above her mere 3 star class. |
| 40 | * If you need a dedicated Arts damage dealer, look no further than '''Summer Altria (Archer)''', who comes out swinging with one of the most powerful Noble Phantasms in the entire game. Not only does she have a great HP and ATK totals at level 90, but her facecards are renowned for having some excellent return value. Her Arts cards restore great amounts of NP, her Quick cards generate a ton of stars and charge her NP quite decently, and even though she's Arts focused her single Buster card can absolutely ''destroy'' targets if she gets a crit off. That's not even getting into her skills, which are tailor made to make her almost entirely self-sustainable. Her first skill is a meaty 30% Arts buff with an AOE defense buff on top of it, her second skill heals her for a fantastic 5000 HP at max rank, and her final skill is a decent Charisma with some added critical star generation for Males. While this is all well and good, what pushes her from merely "strong" to "overpowered" is her fantastic Noble Phantasm: Excalibur Viviane. A whopping ''10-hit'' Arts Noble Phantasm that not only hits like a truck but restores a massive portion of her NP gauge by itself, and thanks to her great facecards it's scarily easy for her to NP loop. On top of this it also has a 70% chance to drain an enemy's NP gauge. Combine this with her sizable heal (with it's only downside being a draining of her NP gauge), her multiple attack boosts and a solid defense boost, and Summer Altria secures herself as one of the premier Arts damage dealers in the game. |
| 41 | * '''Qin Huang Di''', on paper, seems to be your usual Ruler, with lots of HP but low Attack, so naturally, he's nothing more than a glorified punching bag, right? Hahaha, '''NO.''' His Noble Phantasm grants him a boatload of powerful buffs, which are: a 50% Attack and critical damage boost at [=NP1=], a 300% critical star absorption buff to help him dish out those powered up critical hits, and a 1 turn invincibility ''and'' taunt to tank whatever attack dares to hit him. His skills are also quite powerful, which feature an enemy wide charge drain plus a defense debuff, an enemy wide stun plus an additional 30% attack boost for Huang Di, and lastly, an NP battery which charges 50% of his NP gauge, removes his debuffs (letting him bypass pesky buff blocks and NP seals) and recovers up to 3000 HP. And since his Noble Phantasm is Arts-based, it's perfectly plausible for him to have his NP back up when he lands those crunchy critical hits with an Arts Brave Chain (albeit with some assistance from supports like Tamamo, Altria Caster, or Waver) or by using his third skill, letting him stack boost after boost to ramp his damage to truly ridiculous levels. Under the right conditions, Huang Di can have up to ''150%'' Attack and critical damage at ''base NP level'', and that's not counting the other buffs he may receive from supports. When built and used properly, this Chinese emperor can trivialize almost any Challenge Quest that events throw at him, and he's commonly run as a powerful anchor to clutch out seemingly impossible victories. |
| 42 | * '''Chen Gong''' has a ton of extremely dangerous mechanics going for him. His second skill is a slightly weaker version of ''Waver's second skill'', which is rather impressive for a measly 2* servant. His final skill is also rather impressive, being a 1-turn version of Merlin's third skill that only applies the Critical Damage boost if the target is a Berserker. This turns Chen into a budget Merlin of sorts, but his Noble Phantasm is easily his most unique feature- it's an AOE that does massive damage in exchange for killing one of your Servants on the field[[note]]the leftmost one has the priority[[/note]], allowing another one to take their place. This means Chen is a fantastic farmer, being a sort of "Inverse Arts Arash" who can sacrifice an ally for massive damage. But there's more: since his Noble Phantasm is Art-based, clever use of Craft Essences and Servants mean that this Noble Phantasm is spammable (and much easier to build than Skadi system, see below); and since Guts will still work as intended, combining it with Servant skills (like Nero) or Craft Essences will make sure those like Hijikata, Anne & Mary and Ashwatthama can unleash [[DesperationAttack their most powerful attack]] almost immediately without the frustration to adjust their HP. Oh, but it gets better! Chen Gong's first skill is Scapegoat, which is a targetable taunt. The first thing it does is that it allows you to direct attacks to whoever you want. Want to protect your low HP units while their skills are on cooldown? Fill somebody's NP gauge? Direct an enemy NP? Activate an on-death effect? Here's the solution, and you don't even need to level this skill to get the most out of it. But of course, there's yet ''another'' function of this skill. Along with his Noble Phantasm, Chen Gong has two different ways to ''replace the servants on your front row''. Yes, he is essentially the Chaldea Combat Uniform Mystic Code without the cooldowns (which by the way, it's listed below in this page). This means that you can replace weak servants or those that have used up their skills with fresh ones ready to be used, while dealing massive damage and/or protecting the ones that are already out. ON DEMAND. Chen Gong has been rated as one of the most useful (if not powerful) Servants only ''hours'' after his release, and it's not without reason. |
| 43 | ** A ridiculous strategy involving him involves both him and the Chaldea Combat Uniform Mystic Code. After getting the support servant's skills out, a Chen Gong with either a Kaleidoscope or another Craft Essence if the support servant's skills were party-wide/targetable would activate his Noble Phantasm to clear out the first wave and to sacrifice the first support servant, then in the next turn, the second support servant uses all their skills at once before switching either Chen Gong out or the second support servant out with a third one. Under the right conditions, this can effectively utilize ''every single party member's skills'' in a few turns, and when done right in farming nodes, can make even servants without an NP Charge skill unleash their Noble Phantasms within ''three turns''! The only downside is that being a 2-star, any enemy that has enough HP to survive Chen Gong's NP will likely ruin the strategy on farming nodes, but Palingenesis can remedy some of his problems. |
| 44 | * '''The Dioscuri Twins, Castor and Pollux,''' are one of the most potent single target Sabers in the game thanks to their incredibly synergistic kit. Their first skill, Stars of the Chief God, is one of their main selling points, which grants them a bonus 10% NP gauge when attacking with a Quick card, and 10 critical stars when attacking with an Arts card, which allows them to charge their NP gauge very quickly ''and'' generate loads of stars as long as they have an Arts or Quick card up. Their second skill, Guardians of Navigation, is a simple and effective NP damage and Attack boost for the party, as well as providing debuff immunity, giving them a good piece of utility. Lastly, while their third skill, Mana Burst (Light/Ancient) is a modest 20% boost to their Arts and Quick cards, it serves to add even ''more'' synergy to their playstyle, and also comes with an evasion buff to aid their survivability. Their Noble Phantasm, Dioscures Tyndaridae, is a powerful single target attack that ''ignores invincibility and also ignores defense buffs,'' letting them really bring the pain. And since it's Arts based, combined with their synergistic kit, this lets them easily build up more gauge to loop their NP over and over again! And as a little bonus, they have the Avenger's passive of Mana Replenishment (bonus NP gauge per turn) and a special type of Divinity that boosts their already great NP generation. And for the cherry on top, if their opponent managed to ''survive'' a hit from that souped-up NP, the victim suffers from a bare minimum 10% Quick ''and'' Arts Resistance down for three turns, making it even easier to finish them off with either further attacks or the second, nearly as powerful follow-up NP. Tellingly, it would take nearly 2 years for another single target Arts Saber of their rarity to be released (the Trung Sisters), and the closest to them in design ended up being Mélusine, a Lancer. All of this power on the very first ''permanent'' single-target SSR Saber in the game! |
| 45 | * Don't have the Dioscuri twins? No matter, '''Katsushika Hokusai (Saber)''' can be basically described as a cheaper alternative towards them, and she trades off their main selling points (generating NP with Quick cards and Critcal Stars with Arts cards, granting party-wide NP Damage and Atk buffs for a single turn along with a single use of debuff immunity) in exchange for more raw strength with Supernatural Power (Ink) C granting her a small NP battery and a lot of Critcal Stars, with Father-Daughter Affinity B helping her take advantage of those by increasing her Critical Star Absorption alongside giving her a Guts buff, and Nom de Plume: Dragon-Crested Octopus B grants her a stronger Arts buff with an on-attack buff that increases her Critical Damage every time she hits the opponent. Most importantly, in exchange for her NP not having [[ArmorPiercingAttack Invulnerability Pierce and ignoring defense]] alongside giving the opponent a Quick and Arts Resistance down debuff, she exchanges that with the ability to hit even ''harder'' with her NP giving her a one-time NP damage buff which can be increased ''even further'' when Overcharged, and due to her status as a Welfare, getting her to [=NP5=] is much easier than the other servants. |
| 46 | * '''Space Ishtar''' pairs up with Altria Caster the same way Edmond Dantes pairs up with Scáthach-Skadi, being a powerful class-neutral AOE DPS that trades off the ability to crit very hard reliably for the ability to hit higher sustained NP damage with significantly lower investment. Her kit makes full advantage of Castoria's skills helping her NP spam, her first skill giving her a 20% attack buff and her allies 30%, her second skill increasing her own NP damage by 20% along with a one-time invincibility (and a gimmick feature of allowing her to change her NP type), and to top it off, a 50% battery in her third skill with a 20% chance-based buff to her Command Cards. Her Noble Phantasm is also very potent, buffing her NP damage before it hits depending on overcharge and giving her a boost to her ''extra card'', ensuring that, between the NP effect and her first and third skills, her Brave Chains hit relatively hard as well. As a cherry on top, Castoria support not only lets her forgo the need of having a very high charge CE, but it also allows her to loop even with '''''Black Grail and every Event Damage CE in the game'''''! |
| 47 | * Keeping your budget to a minimum? Then look forward to none other than '''Saint Georgios''', who provides the most simple, yet most useful kit for Defense. For starters, his HP, when maxed out, is a whopping 9,200, with his kit taking full advantage of it, with Guardian Knight A+ not only providing a great defense buff for him, but also applies a Target Focus on him, ensuring that only he will be targeted by enemies. His second skill, Martyr's Soul B+ gives him a Mental Debuff resist, but also recovers his HP, which is useful for recovering from major attacks such as Noble Phantasms or Critical Hits. Finally, he has the very useful Battle Continuation A, which gives him a Guts buff to recover from a normally fatal attack from an enemy. His main selling point, however, is his Noble Phantasm: While Ascalon's ability to inflict Dragon Traits to an enemy is situational at best[[note]]but which can be extremely lethal when combining with Sigurd, Siegfried, and/or Sieg since it's one of the few methods to forcefully inflict a trait on a foe[[/note]], it's his overcharge effect which takes the cake: it grants him an already respectable 20% Defense buff without overcharge, but if overcharged, it provides up to a whopping '''''40%''''' Defense. When combined with his skillset and a proper arts support, this means that he can basically tank even when ''[[ScissorsCutsRock under class disadvantage]]''. Even better is that he's available at 2*, meaning that he is almost guaranteed to available from the get-go by simply rolling in the FP gacha, while also making levelling his NP less of an hassle. He's even better in ''Cosmos In The Losbelt'': With his competition nerfed (such as [[spoiler:Mash Kyrielight]]) or almost locked behind higher rarity, he is basically the game's premier tank alongside Jeanne D'Arc, allowing him to shine even further. It's worth telling that there has been never been an Rank Up quest for him, simply because he's that ''good''. |
| 48 | * '''Sima Yi ([[Literature/LordElMelloiIICaseFiles Reines]])''' became this following her Interlude. Prior to that, she was seen as a decent support Rider, but nothing special. Post-Interlude? She's seen as a viable contender towards the best general support servant since Waver, primarily because much like Waver, her first skill Advice of the Strategist A gives a 10% NP Charge while also increasing defense, and her second skill, Emperor Xuan of Jin's Command A gives an ally an 20% NP Charge while also increasing their ATK at the expense of decreasing her own. Her Skill Upgrade which upgraded Supreme Mystic Code: Volumen Hydrargyrum from rank B to EX, aside from giving an ally a Invincibility buff for two attacks for three turns and increased debuff resistance, now gives out a 20% NP Charge at max level, fixing a major flaw that her NP Battery was below-standard for supports. Her Noble Phantasm, Unspoken Formation trades Waver's NP drain, potential stun and curse for the ability to give the party the ability to ignore class disadvantage while also removing her own debuffs and reducing enemy critical chances for three turns, enabling Berserkers within your own party to become {{Lightning Bruiser}}s while turning enemy Berserkers into [[MasterOfNone Masters of None]] in addition to allowing Foreigners to handle other Foreigners very well. While she has a few shortcomings compared to Waver, both can surprisingly work well with each other, and is a great option for generalists. The "Lady Reines' Case Files Plus Episode" later added an strengthening quest that made her NP more bonkers, as it now provides her party with an NP generation buff, but it also provides an overcharge buff, meaning that she can surprisingly fit in to the destructive Merlin-Altria Caster combo (see below for more details) |
| 49 | * '''Senji Muramasa''', fitting for someone whose vessel is [[VisualNovel/FateStayNight Shirou Emiya]], has been a highly requested NPC to be made playable since his debut and he does not disappoint. All three of his skills are loaded with power, including buffing all three card types, dropping several stars that he can instantly use with a built in crit star absorption buff, an ignore invincibility buff that also gives crit damage up to those using it, and an NP battery that boosts his NP gain on attacks up to ten percent. This makes Muramasa not only a powerful farming Saber, but also a powerful boss killer because he can almost instantly refill his NP from two hits from his Arts cards, and if the enemy tries to evade or use an invul skill, he can NoSell it and actually damage them heavily for doing so. As if that wasn't enough, his NP, Tsumukari Muramasa, gives him a three turn NP damage buff, purges any offensive buffs, and the overcharge effect gives him a flat Arts card buff for three turns. With just his base kit, he can loop into another NP with an Arts Brave Chain, and almost do so again. What makes him even more powerful is his synergy with Altria Caster, who makes it possible for him to loop without needing to use some of his skills, meaning he can practically loop every turn if you use two of them to support him. He also has two unique to him passive skills, one that buffs the parties crit damage while he is on the field, and a passive damage buff to enemies with the King trait. His only downsides are his lack of defensive buffs, his low damage output when unbuffed, and that his NP has lower hits, making it a bit hard at times to loop with him, but not only is this easy to adjust to, he offers up so much raw power outside of that, he can make up for falling short of another NP easily. |
| 50 | * '''Kriemhild''' has quickly cemented herself as one of the most powerful boss killers released. Aside from her class advantage against all but one class, her kit is also built for shredding bosses with ease. Her first skill has a party-wide NP gauge drain, defense and critical chance reduction, good for keeping bosses from using their [=NPs=]. Her second skill, meanwhile, has a three-turn Arts and Buster card buff, plus a damage boost against Chaotic-aligned enemies. Finally, her third skill adds a targeted taunt to an ally, heals her HP, ''and'' charges her NP Gauge up to 50% at max level. Tying it all together is her NP, where she removes defensive buffs before inflicting damage (even more against Dragon-trait enemies) and an Arts resistance down debuff on an enemy. On her own, the grieving widow of Siegfried is already powerful enough, but on a dedicated Arts team with supports and possibly a second attacker to take advantage of those debuffs? She's going to bring the pain. Her only true downside is that, due to low hits on her NP (4 hits), she doesn't get much refund from it and so looping her NP is harder than other Arts Servants, but as long as she can attack with her Arts card, she can quickly get her NP back. |
| 51 | * While dethroned as the best 4* Archer by Asagami Fujino up in the Buster section above, '''Chloe von Einzbern''' is still nothing to sneeze at, and can in fact be described as an Arts version of Fujino. Her first skill gives her an Evade that lasts for a whole turn and increases her Crit Damage by up to 36%, her second skill increases the effectiveness of all her card types by up to 35%, and her third skill caps out with a whopping 50% NP battery and a 100% increase her her Crit Star gain (and gives Illya-faces a 30% increase to their Buff Success Rate, but that's neither here nor there). And lest you wonder where her Sure Hit is at, worry not: it procs at the start of her NP, a 6-hit ST Arts nuke, and she will have very little trouble rapid-firing it even with just her own buffs. And the best part about her is that ''she's a Welfare'', which means she is very easy to [=NP5=]. Despite her rank and means of acquisition, Chloe was ''the'' go-to solution for Saber bosses and even a few neutral-damage bosses simply because her damage was so obscene for its time, and she has only continued to age like fine wine in an Arts meta ran by Altria Caster and Lady Avalon. |
| 52 | * '''Ibuki-Douji (Summer)''' was immediately seen as a ridiculously strong unit, with some even calling her an "Arts Morgan". On top of being a Berserker, which has an advantage against every class aside from Foreigner and Shielder, she possesses a very loaded kit as well: her S1 increases the attack power and critical hit strength of all allies, and increases NP gain for all Summer allies. Actually, no, allow us to elaborate: not only can she buff actual Summer units like Summer Tamamo and Summer BB with her S1, but she'll also buff Servants who are in their ''Summer Spiritron Dresses'', letting characters like Mash, Caster Gil, and Asclepius in on that looping action! Her S2 targets an ally and upgrades their Buster and Arts effectiveness by up to 30% and reduces their cooldown by 1 turn as well, allowing flexibility in both Buster and Arts teams and allowing them to use their Skills more often. And lastly, her S3 is a direct upgrade of Summer Raikou's Summer Catastrophe, not only having the same effects but also giving herself up to 50% battery. This fact combined with the fact that she is also affected by her own S1 makes her a terrifying force to be reckoned with in solo battles. And then there's her NP, which allows her to flat-out ''remove'' Defense buffs to maximize her own damage, but also deal increased damage to Earth-attribute enemies, which are an extremely wide niche. To add insult to injury, she also reduces the critical hit rate of enemies by 20%. And that's not even getting to the passive skills, which reduce incoming damage by 550, passively increase her Buster effectiveness by 14% (Which when paired with her S2 becomes up to 44%), and increases Buff Removal Resistance by 20%. Out of all the Summer Servants Lasengle have released, Ibuki-Douji really is high up in terms of power. |
| 53 | * '''Artoria Caster (Berserker)''' brings an incredibly powerful single-target Arts kit that synergizes very well with her normal counterpart. Her first skill, Heartbeat of Spring, gives both a crit damage and star absorbtion buff, and a 50% NP battery, address two of the Berserker class's biggest issues. Her second skill, Fae of Summer, buffs the party's NP generation and gives a 20% battery and 2 stages of Overcharge to one party member, allowing her to not only top off her or another member's charge, but also improve their Overcharge. Her last skill, Holy Sword Handling gives her a 50% Arts buff, MLB Fragments for 3 turns, and a turn of invincibility. Rounding out her already overloaded kit is her powerful Noble Phantasm, Hopewill Camelot, which deals 6 hits of Arts damage, gives the entire party one attack's worth of Anti-Purge Defense, debuffs the enemy's crit rate by 20% (which combined with her Fae Eyes passive, means that the enemy won't get a lucky crit on her without buffs), and deals extra damage to Threat to Humanity, Chaotic-aligned, and Divine enemies (the later two scaling with overcharge). Foreigners tend have at least two or those three traits meaning that if necesary, she can actually ''go damage positive against Foreigners, even with a class disadvantage''. All this makes her a very powerful option for challenge quests, especially when paired with her normal Caster counterpart. |
| 54 | * Sweet mother of Alaya, '''Sodom's Beast/Draco''' is just jaw-droppingly ridiculous: her first skill, '''Number of the Beast''' charges battery per turn and increases her Crit Strength by 30% and applies a 1000-HP damage cut...and the former two are for ''6 turns'' while the latter is ''6'' '''''times'''''. Her second skill, '''Aurea Poculum: Golden Grail''', seals all enemy skills for 1 turn, inflicts a 5000-damage burn for 3 turns on all enemies (Though it does charge their NP by 1 stage), then grants herself a 40% Attack buff and a new status called "Grail". Her third skill, '''Seven Beast Crowns''', by itself completely defends her from buff removal 1 time over 3 turns...but with the "Grail" status from before she gets, and stay with us for this one...a 40% buff against Dragon enemies, a 40% buff against Roman enemies, 10 crit stars per turn for 3 turns, a 1-time debuff immunity buff, Ignore Defense, increased healing, and ''another battery-per-turn'' buff, all for 3 turns (except the debuff immunity, which has no turn limit)! '''''WOW.''''' Still want more? Well, her Noble Phantasm, '''Babalon Domus Aurea''', only targets one enemy, but can deal at most 200% against the Seven Main classes! Now that NP seems simple enough, but here's another thing. She's a '''''Beast-class'''''. No, not an Alter Ego, not a Foreigner, not a terminal for a Beast, or any sort of fancy way. She's a Beast. '''Straight.''' '''''UP.''''' That means she does supereffective damage against and takes less damage from all seven Main Classes, almost as though she were a Berserker/Ruler combination, at the cost of being the inverse against Extra classes. So to summarize: we have an ST Arts Servant who's super-effective against a type of enemy that's more used than others, along with a loaded kit that ensures we're going to be clearing many 90++ Nodes with ease. Her weaknesses are her aforementioned weakness against Extra classes, two of her damage buff niches (Dragon & Roman) are not as common for her to exploit, and that her Noble Phantasm being Arts doesn't exactly help in her looping when she has a three-Buster Card kit, along with not very effective against anything not a Servant. Those aside, Draco proves that the power of a Beast is something to behold. Even then, the trait rarity can be addressed if needed, as other Servants (Georgios or Romulus-Quirinus) or even a Command Code can make ''any'' enemy into a dragon and/or Roman. |
| 55 | * '''Habetrot''' is one of the rewards for completing Lostbelt 6, and boy is she worth it. As a story support, the player only gets to see two of her skills, Lucky Spinning, which heals an ally Debuff Imunity and increased Star generation for a turn, and Quick Spinning, which drains a chunk of her HP in exchange for a 3 turn 30% Arts buff and a massive '''80%''' NP charge. Her Noble Phantasm, Bridal Spinning Wheel, which gives the party health regen and ton of crit stars while lowering her own crit star absorbtion, seems to place her as a support character. However, her playable version changes things up with access to her 3rd skill...and a ''different'' Noble Phantasm. Her 3rd skill, Protector of Brides, grants a Female ally invincibility, guts, health regen, and ailment cleanse, but most importantly, kills her at the end of the turn. That by itself means that she can kill herself and bring in a backline Servant on demand. What completes her kit though is her new Noble Phantasm, Spinster Habetrot, which transforms from a party buff Noble Phantasm to a damage-dealing [=AoE=] Arts Noble Phantasm that applies an NP buff before damage, which synergizes extremely well with her 2nd skill, and still keeps the star bomb and absorbtion reduction from her previous Noble Phantasm. Plus, extra copies of her are rarely available from the Friend Point Summoning, which makes her damage deceptively high for her rarity and statline. Her new Noble Phantasm basically turns her into a ''better Arash'' who can either clear out a wave or chunk of a boss's HP before leaving to let another Servant take her place, or just serve as the main damage dealer for the whole encounter, and her 2nd skill means that with max Mana Loading append skill, she's free to bring any CE since she doesn't need any additional starting charge. The only downside to her is that she's an 4-star Friend Point Gacha Servant, which means you'll be spending millions upon millions of Friend Points to max out her Noble Phantasm and get enough Servant Coins to unlock her Mana Loading Append Skill without the use of Bond farming. |
| 56 | ---- |
| 57 | [[/folder]] |
| 58 | |
| 59 | [[folder:Quick]] |
| 60 | * '''Scáthach-Skadi''' is ''the'' premier support servant for Quick-based servants. Her first skill, Primordial Rune, is one of her main selling points, being a massive 50% Quick card boost on par with Merlin's Buster and Tamamo's Arts, as well as a 100% critical damage boost for Quick cards as well. Her second skill, Freezing Blizzard, provides a potent 30% Defense debuff (effectively a 30% Attack boost, which is higher than Merlin's own Charisma!) and critical rate debuff to all enemies on the field, which greatly boosts her team's damage output. Lastly, her third skill, Allfather's Wisdom, is a simple 50% targeted NP charge on one ally. This makes her ''absolutely amazing'' for farming teams. [=AoE=]-based Quick servants notorious for their subpar NP gain can take advantage of the NP gain from her buffs to refund at least 50% of their NP gauge, wherein it can be topped off with Skadi's third skill to let them reuse their NP the next turn. With this setup, most 3-wave quests can be cleared in only 3 turns, without even needing to rely on Order Change! Skadi is considered to be so good that the aptly named "Skadi System" (i.e, one AOE Quick servant, plus one maxed out Scáthach-Skadi, plus another as your Support servant) was widely believed to be ''the best'' way to farm in the entire game until the release of Altria Caster. That's not even mentioning the large quantity of critical stars that get generated, which practically guarantees critical hits every time. And if you up against a boss, you can simply take already powerful Quick servants such as Rider Kintoki, Jack the Ripper, Kama, Lancer Scáthach, and Okita Souji, give them a good dose of Primordial Rune, and watch them utterly destroy the boss in only a few attacks. Scáthach-Skadi is widely praised as the saviour of the Quick meta, and it really shows with the potential she offers. However, her downside is CripplingOverspecialization as her Noble Phantasm is extremely situational and she has a very rare chance to use it since she can't take advantage of her own supports unlike other support-oriented Casters. Although, not having a very useful Noble Phantasm can be seen as a ''good thing'', as it means you only ever need to roll her once to gain the maximum mileage from her. |
| 61 | ** '''Skadi's Summer version''' is easily just as good, if not even ''better'' when it comes to Quick support. Her first skill, Primordial Rune (Midsummer), provides the same huge 50% Quick buff like her original, albeit the 100% critical damage buff is for Buster cards only (which ''does'' make it beneficial for servants with an Quick NP and a QBBBA deck, such as Berserker Lancelot, Xiang Yu, and Summer Sei). Her second skill, Midsummer Ice Cream C, is an extra 15% Quick and Buster boost for the whole party, and also grants critical stars every turn. Her third skill, Dreaming in the Late Summer Night A+, is a direct upgrade from her original's third skill, adding in a Buster star weight buff and critical stars alongside the 50% gauge. Two Summer Skadis and Caster Skadi can be grouped together to form the '''Triple Skadi System''' that offers a humongous '''''180%''''' boost to Quick, and additional NP batteries for easier looping. Additionally, unlike OG Skadi, Summer Skadi can take advantage of her buffs to serve as a competent DPS unit with her damaging Quick Noble Phantasm. |
| 62 | * '''Edmond Dantes''' went from a LowTierLetdown (compared to the other Avengers aside from [[JokeCharacter Angra Mainyu]]) to being one of ''the'' most powerful [=AoE=] Servants in the game thanks to Scáthach-Skadi's arrival. Dantes in particular is a stellar example of the things Skadi can do. He can combine his '''Golden Rule''' skill with two Skadis' Quick boosts to let him easily refund at least 50% of his NP gauge, in which Skadi can top his NP gauge off with her third skill to let him use his NP again on the next turn, making him an extremely powerful farming servant. The second Strengthening quest upgrades Golden Rule to '''Treasure of Monte Christo A+''' which also grants him 20 to 30% NP gauge and allows him to remove one buff on a critical hit. Aside from farming quests in 3 turns with ease, since he's an Avenger with an incredibly hard hitting Quick NP with high damage scaling (while dealing at least neutral damage to 99% enemies on the roster), he can also chunk high health enemies pretty hard with his NP, and then destroy them with his super powered critical Quick attacks, which is pretty similar to Jeanne Alter, who destroys enemies with boosted Buster criticals thanks to Merlin's Hero Creation. The introduction of the Triple Skadi System just further boosts his power, letting him hit extremely hard even at [=NP1=]. |
| 63 | * '''Sakata Kintoki (Rider)''', in part due to the massive advantage of being a free servant with extremely accessible [=NP5=], is probably the main reason why Quick-based Servants weren't completely overshadowed by their Buster and Arts-focused counterparts (before Scáthach-Skadi's arrival). With the insane amount of synergy he has with his attacks, NP gain, critical star gain, and a skill that charges half of his NP gauge you'll have him running enemies over repeatedly if he's ever given a chance. Unlike the reliance on Mana Burst-type skills on most Servants at the time, his Quick buff lasts for three turns on a competitive value, while his NP adds another Quick buff which can be boosted to a much higher amount when boosted with overcharge. Under optimal conditions, Kintoki Rider can run over a target with his Noble Phantasm for three turns, (the duration of his buffs). If you add in Skadi to the mix... ''hoo boy.'' Kintoki Rider is so powerful that he's speculated to be the reason why there haven't been a single SR rarity rider almost 3 years since his release (with the exception of Mordred (Rider) who was initially released a month after his event). |
| 64 | * '''Jack the Ripper''' is considered as one of the best Assassins in the game due to her versatility. Her NP deals huge damage and gets even bigger if the target is female and the damage bonus is carried over in her next chained attacks. Her skill set are geared with Quick performance up, Evade, enemy buff removal and a healing skill with short cooldown. Her card deck is Quick-oriented which each Quick card generate lots of stars and NP gauge, which enable her to spam her already hard-hitting NP. And this isn't even taking into account Scáthach-Skadi's buffs, too! Her one downside is that her NP upgrade is a bit scuffed in the damage increase compared to the usual NP upgrades, but she can still hit hard when she's in her peak condition. |
| 65 | * '''Kama''' is, bar none, ''the'' most broken Quick Assassin in the game thanks to her powerful kit. Her Noble Phantasm boosts her Quick performance for 3 turns before dealing damage, and carries a high chance to charm the target with no restrictions, which not only makes her one of the strongest Servants for the charm lock strategy, but also allows her to snowball in her damage output once she gets going. Her first skill grants her or an ally an overcharge level in their Noble Phantasm and heals Kama for an incredible 4000 HP, and while the demerit that comes with it (Max HP reduced by 1000) is permanent, it is often negligible. Her second skill gives her a simple and effective 30% Attack boost and a Guts buff that lasts ''permanently'' until it is triggered, greatly increasing Kama's survivability in longer fights, not to mention its ''very'' low cooldown for a Guts skill at only 6 turns. Her third skill, Mara-Papiyas, is ''quite'' loaded. Aside from charging her NP gauge by 50% and boosting her critical damage by 20%, it also decreases all enemies' Charm resistance by 40%, letting her land her NP's charm more reliably, and has the added bonus effect of giving her class advantage against Alter Egos, who are notorious for being a pain in the ass to face thanks to having no real weaknesses save Berserkers (at least until the release of the Pretenders class). Her NP gain is also pretty great, letting her spam her NP with more and more ease as she gains more Quick boosts. All in all, an incredible showing for [[spoiler:Beast III/L]]. Kama is widely speculated to be the reason there weren't any new SSR Assassins released until Koyanskaya of Light, with the Assassin releases after her not being able to match her prowess. |
| 66 | * '''Berserker Lancelot''' went from a LowTierLetdown to outright ''a must have 4-star unit'' after Skadi's release. What happened? He became one of the most reliable 3 turn farmers thanks to the Nordic goddess. To begin with, he got a Strengthening Quest (back then in 2017) that granted him a third skill, a buff to his NP generation rate. By using this skill in conjunction with Skadi's Quick buff (or two), Lancelot can easily fill 50% of his NP gauge back when using his NP (it would have to be a limit-broken Kaleidoscope for him to do this at the very first turn), enabling him to use his NP again on the next turn (and the turn after) with Skadi's NP charge skill. Now, the catch that Lancelot's NP grants him an ATK buff ''before'' activation... so on subsequent NP uses, he will stack those buffs like no tomorrow! Moreover, when facing an enemy with 100k+ HP on the 3rd stage of a node, Lancelot can just pop his first skill to absorb those gazillion critical stars generated from NP, enabling him to land crunchy critical hits buffed with 3 ATK buffs from NP and 2 Skadi Quick buffs. This all makes him a go-to unit ''in any farming node'' as he's a Berserker which ''doesn't care about enemy units composition''. As a bonus, this composition also frees you to equip any CE in your other team member, as you only need a limit broken Kaleidoscope, letting your other party members to equip any event CE. That said, in order to really make him work, you need [[RequiredSecondaryPowers a fully-upgraded Skadi, preferably with at least an NP 2 Lancelot, and either a limit broken Kaleidoscope, a non-limit broken Kaleidoscope with a fully maxed out Mana Loading, or a limit broken Traces of Christmas with a decent Mystic Code to help him regain his NP]], limiting his viability as a character piece for low-investment players. |
| 67 | * '''Parvati''' becomes one of the strongest Quick [=AoE=] servants in the game with the advent of Skadi. Parvati on her own is actually quite loaded. She's got impressive NP gain on her Quick cards at 3.24%, letting her generate NP gauge and stars pretty well. Her skills are very strong with great numbers and only have a 5 turn cooldown. Her first skill, Imaginary Around EX boosts her Quick performance and NP generation by 30%. Not only does this massively improve Parvati's looping potential, it also grants her a consistent boost to her damage output. Her second skill, Ashes of Kama is an incredible Mana Burst-type skill, boosting her Attack and Defense by 50%, and boosting her star generation and debuff resistance by 100% for a turn. Blessing of the Goddess, while it does cost her 10% of her NP gauge, is a good supportive skill that charges an ally's NP gauge by 20% and heals them for 3000 HP, or in Parvati's case, it gives her an extra 10% NP gauge to help her out in looping. Parvati's Noble Phantasm is also quite ridiculous, with a solid hitcount, a fantastic NP refill rate, and it even charges the party's NP gauge by 10% for even more ease in looping, with a 60% chance to inflict Charm being the cherry on top. Parvati's ability to loop her Noble Phantasm is so ridiculous that she's one of the few Quick servants capable of looping her NP even ''without'' Skadi's assistance. The only thing that balances her out is her rather low Attack stat for an SR servant, as well as her NP currently being unboosted by an Interlude/Strengthen, and even then, it barely deters her sheer power that competes with Berserker Lancelot and Edmond Dantes. As far as consistency goes, Parvati is the single most consistent Quick looper in the entire game, something that really comes in handy when farming nodes with Archers and Berserkers, which give greatly reduced NP gauge. |
| 68 | * '''Van Gogh''' gave the game a double-dose of breaking just like she gave the main cast a double-dose of crazy, doing very strange things with Curse debuffs. Her first skill grants herself Guts and three Curse stacks, then gives her up to 10% NP charge for each Curse. Her second skill drops all enemies' Defense and Quick Resistance, grants herself Evade, grants the party a small heal per turn, and gives the whole party a Curse stack. Her third skill increases an ally's attack and Crit Star absorption, sucks every Curse on the field (ally or enemy) onto herself, and gives herself an On-Attack buff to remove a curse with each Quick Card attack. Pretty bizarre kit, isn't it? But here's the kicker: Van Gogh has a passive that prevents her from dying to Curse damage, and if you hit her skills in the order of 2-3-1, it's essentially a 60% battery just by her own merits. But the ''real'' juice is in her NP: it supercharges the party with +30-50% Atk (based on Overcharge) and +50-100% Crit Damage (based on NP level), gives ''another'' 100% Crit Damage to party members with the "Existence Outside the Domain" passive, adds 10 Crit Stars per turn, and inflicts Terror (turn-delayed Stun chance) on all enemies. Logically you'd expect Van Gogh to be a janky support for other Foreigners with this toolkit, but the real power is right under your nose: Van Gogh ''herself'' meets the [=EOtD=] check, so not only will she unleash crits like a rainstorm, but the combination of Guts, Evade, and Terror all in her own kit gives her an absurd level of survivability. Set her up with the right Command Codes and Craft Essence, and this humble "support" can actually become a monster of a soloist. Or if you're feeling extra mean, grab a Friend Support Van Gogh to go ''with'' your own Van Gogh, stack their [=NPs=] and watch the majority of the game's enemies get Terror-locked and spontaneously explode from hundreds-of-thousands damage Quick Crits. |
| 69 | * '''Ashiya Douman''' swiftly became one of the most desired servants in the game after his launch, and for good reason- he takes advantage of Servant Traits in ways no other character in the game does. He's a powerful semi-support who specializes in Critical damage for Evil and Chaotic Servants, which is a ''very'' powerful niche unique to him. He has a massively overloaded kit, with half a dozen powerful passives, excellent NP gain and Star generation, and solid Health and Attack values. His first skill is a massive debuff, slapping a 20% Attack down and a 30% defense down (the same value as Skadi!) malus on all enemies as well as inflicting the unique Terror and Confusion ailments. His second skill is a two-time, five-turn Guts that revives him with 3000 HP at max rank, while also boosting Critical Hit damage for all Evil and Chaotic party members by 50% for three turns. His last skill is a whopping '''80%''' NP charge combined with a buff to Evil and Chaotic party members Attack for 20%. Finally, his Noble Phantasm is a Quick [=AoE=] that Curses enemies and has a solid chance to Instantly Kill foes. However, the Instant Kill effect activates ''after'' Douman does his damage, meaning he can actually refund a solid amount of his NP gauge and thus loop with the help of Skadi [[note]] The reason for this is that the Instant Kill status ailment bypasses all forms of damage to instantly reduce the enemies' health to zero. Because Douman's Instant Kill effect activates ''after'' he does damage rather than ''before'' (like with Nitocris), he reaps the benefits of dealing massive amounts of damage, generating tons of Crit Stars, and instantly killing the enemy wave all at the same time.[[/note]]. Since he's an Alter Ego, he can be brought into a variety of different farming nodes, and he can even farm nodes outside of his Class Advantage thanks to the aforementioned Instant Kill effect. While this is all quite good, Douman really shines when brought as a semi-support in a Chaotic Evil team. Since his buffs apply to both "Evil" and "Chaotic" servants separately, Chaotic Evil Servants have their damage output massively improved, to say nothing of their Critical Hit damage. In a nice bit of synergy, many of the best Critical Hit-oriented servants in the game are either Chaotic, Evil, or fully Chaotic Evil. In particular, Jeanne Alter, Edmond Dantes, Kama, Jack the Ripper, Atalante Alter, Summer BB, Kiara, Anne Bonny & Mary Read (Rider), Gorgon and Summer Ibaraki are all Chaotic Evil servants who focus around Critical Hits, and pairing them with Douman can cause them to deal absurdly high amounts of damage if they can crit. Thanks to Douman's Noble Phantasm, they can even have a steady supply of crit stars to strike with. As a final touch, Douman ''himself'' is Chaotic Evil, meaning he takes full advantage of his absurd buffs to be a damage dealer if you need him to be. The only downside to Douman is that his skills are on very long cooldowns even at max rank, but even then the incredible support he offers combined with his strong farming potential make him a fantastic servant. |
| 70 | * Remember how incredibly powerful Jeanne d'Arc (Alter) was (and still is)? '''Taira no Kagekiyo/Minamoto no Yoshitsune''' can basically be described as Jeanne Alter, but green. Her first skill is a massive ''200%'' damage bonus against Genji enemies which is decently niche, but its main selling point is its NP charge at 30%, a whopping ''100%'' critical damage buff for 3 turns, and also lowers all other party members' star absorption by 100%, letting her use critical stars with ease. Her second skill, Kagekiyo Never Dies, is a very interesting skill. It grants her a 3 turn Guts buff that stacks with other Guts buffs, renders her immune to instant kills, and adds an effect that grants her a unique stacking buff, Thirst for Vengeance, that powers up her Noble Phantasm whenever her Guts buff triggers. And at max level, the skill's cooldown is '''''4 turns.''''' You heard that right, a ''Guts skill'' with a cooldown of '''''FOUR TURNS!''''' This is already a fantastic boon to Yoshitsune's survivability, and she compounds it further with her third skill, Mist of Azamaru, with a 2 time Evade to go with a good 30% Attack buff. Her Noble Phantasm is a powerful 10-hit attack that removes the target's buffs before dealing damage, ensuring the victim doesn't get to avoid her immense wrath, and grows in power based on how many stacks of Thirst for Vengeance from her second skill she has. On top of that, she's Quick-based which means she benefits massively from Skadi, and also Chaotic Evil so she benefits massively from Douman listed above. Her one downside is that she has no way to provide herself with critical stars before attacking, but that can easily be remedied with support from Summer Skadi. |
| 71 | * Summer 8 brought us '''Chloe von Einzbern (Summer)''', and she immediately solidified herself as a powerful support Servant. Her first skill grants everyone a standard 20% buff to Attack and Crit Damage for 3 turns, but the real meat comes with two effects: the first is the ability to grant all party members "Manuscript Completion", which not only bolsters Chloe's own Noble Phantasm but also grants 10% battery per stack when using her S3. The second is an extra 3-turn Crit Damage buff to herself every time she attacks with a Quick card. Her second skill grants any one ally a Guts and a delayed form-change status effect where Chloe will move herself to the last reserve slot after 1 turn. To put it simply, it's a Form Change in a skill. Her third skill will sacrifice all Manuscript Completion stacks to charge 10% NP per stack, as well as bolster her party's NP Damage by 20% for 3 turns. Should you decide to keep your Manuscript Completion stacks, however, they're used to bolster her Noble Phantasm, ''Monochrome Inverse'', which increases her own Quick performance by 10%-30% for 3 turns, deals heavy damage to a single enemy and decreases that enemy's NP Gauge by 1 charge. With all that together, Chloe becomes an utterly bombastic support Servant and arguably the strongest SR Servant in the entire game. |
| 72 | * '''King of the Cavern, Monte Cristo''', not to be confused with the earlier version of himself from above, is a genuine ''monster'' of an Avenger Servant, taking what his older self had done and cranking it up to 11. His first skill grants him a 2-hit Invincibility for 3 turns as well as a 3-turn, 30% buff to both Buster and Quick attacks, already a pretty hefty steroid out the gate. His second skill bolsters his Attack by another 30% grants Debuff Immunity for 3 times & 3 turns, a ''separate'' Poison Immunity debuff for 3 turns no limit, and a 3-Turn On-Attack debuff that inflicts a 500-damage Burn on the target each time he attacks. His third skill grants him a 50% battery as well as a 3-turn ''50% Crit Damage buff and 1000% star weight'' to further amp up the damage. That not enough? Well, say hello to his Noble Phantasm, '''Paradis Chateau d'If''', which has a whopping '''500% chance to stun''', ignores invincibility, deals more damage the more Burn stacks the foe has (which his 2nd skill can easily proc), and reduces their defense down by 10-30% that scales with Overcharge after...though at the cost of inflicting burn on himself, which can be mitigated by his 2nd Skill or any cleansing Command Code. All this together makes Monte Cristo the premier boss killer among Quick teams, even more so than Kagekiyo, dealing insane amounts of damage in quick bursts to such a degree that a sufficient team could kill Kiara in short order. '''''[[HopelessBossFight The giant Kiara.]]''''' On top of that, the fact that he could easily loop and spam his NP means "stun-locking" any boss isn't out of his capabilities. The only real downsides are that his kit is entirely selfish (although the guaranteed stun does help stall so his team can live a lot longer) and him being reliant on debuffs means bosses with debuff immunity could put a stop to his onslaught, though they are very rare to come by. Aside from that, the Count of Monte Cristo has truly earned his crown as the strongest Avenger in the game, incinerating anyone those unfortunate who crosses his path of vengeance with divine retribution. |
| 73 | ---- |
| 74 | [[/folder]] |
| 75 | |
| 76 | [[folder:Other]] |
| 77 | * '''Mélusine''' a.k.a. Tam Lin Lancelot is what happens when you compress several different playstyles into one Servant and then overtune her. Her stats are fantastic, boasting above-average HP and Attack, and all her skills have average to low cooldown. Her first skill boosts her NP gauge by a decent amount while also giving her a ''40%'' attack boost, damage cut, and self-heal via max HP boost for 3 turns. Her second skill is a compressed version of Saber Lancelot's skillset with both a star bomb and a star generation rate with insane absorption that ensures all of it will go to her for the next three turns. Now, you're probably wondering why Mélusine is placed here and not in any of the three card types above. It's because she has the privilege of having ''two different'' Noble Phantasms, which ties into her third skill. In her first two Ascensions, her NP is a single target Arts attack that gives her more critical stars while also boosting her NP refund for three turns. Support her with the double Altria Caster system and she'll be spamming her NP all over the place thanks to her two Arts cards and critical hits, ensuring that bosses will drop dead. Her second NP which is 3rd Ascension only is a Buster [=AoE=] attack that ignores invincibility and boosts Buster card effectiveness before the NP hits for three turns, making it a nuke that hits everyone hard while increasing the damage every time she launches it. And how does this connect to her third skill? If you're in her first two Ascensions, using her third skill will instantly transform her into 3rd Ascension while boosting her NP gauge by ''100%'' at Lvl. 10, so she can fire off the nuke at will. And thanks to said NP Charge, she is one of the few Buster servants that can three-turn farm with ''any'' CE (including the Black Grail CE) while most other Buster servants need at least an 50% NP Charge CE to three-turn farm (at least prior to the release of Summer Chloe). And if she's already in 3rd Ascension? Then it makes the nuke even more explosive by trading the NP battery for NP damage up. Oh, and the skill always gives her 1-turn invincibility no matter what. Whether you want to make her an Arts boss killer by supporting her with Altria Caster and Tamamo, or a Buster omni-farmer with Merlin, Koyanskaya of Light, and Oberon, or even a mix of the two if you're feeling daring, this dragon faerie knight can do it all. [[spoiler:Anything less impressive for the left hand of the greatest dragon [[UltimateLifeForm Albion]] would be a disappointment.]] Her only downside is that her 3rd skill is a deadweight if you don't plan on using it for her first two Ascensions which is bad since her invincibility is tied to it, but if she's paired with Altria Caster then it won't even matter. Mélusine is generally considered the premier go-to Servant for farming 90+ and 90++ nodes in events thanks to her versatile skillset. |
| 78 | * '''Ptolemaîos''' can be described as Mélusine on ''steroids'', which is amazing considering how overpowered she already is. While he trades off some HP and ATK compared to her, he has better skills overall. His first skill, Charisma of Salvation, is a slightly weaker Dragon Heart B mixed with Perry Dancer, but unlike the latter, it instead grants 15 Crit stars per turn and has an HP Regen buff to stave off some damage. His second skill, Thought Partition (King) A gives a party-wide Arts and Buster buff alongside Crit Chance resistance alongside a 50% NP Charge. His Third Skill, Contact with Wisdom EX is similar to Mélusine's Ray Horizon skill in which his NP changes whenever he uses, such as from ST to AOE, but unlike her, ''there's no limit on how many times he gets to switch NP types'', meaning that after he switches from ST from AOE, he can switch back to ST the moment his third skill becomes active again. Oh, and the third skill's secondary effects also depend on whether he's in is young or old forms: an 30% NP Charge and Damage increase in his younger form or increased NP Generation, Crit Damage and Absorption, and 20 Crit Stars when maxed in his older form. This means, assuming that he has a maxed out Mana Loading Append Skill, he can start off with an instant fully-charged NP with Black Grail, allowing him to deal massive damage right off the bat. If anything, his only weakness is that Arts team compositions won't be able to fully take advantage of his third skill since it relies on cooldown reduction, but much like Mélusine, he's considered a powerful pick for 90+ and 90++ nodes thanks to his even more versatile skillset. |
| 79 | * A significant amount of 4* Servants you can obtain for free via playing events also fit here. Even after three years, Shiki is still one of the absolute strongest Arts-based single target Assassins (with a recent Strengthening quest to her NP making her even ''more'' bonkers), Kintoki is still a hilariously broken Quick-based nightmare of a Rider (even crazier with Skadi), and Chloe is simply one of the best single target Archers in the game, bar none. While there are some welfare Servants that fall short like Assassin Scáthach, the vast majority are extremely good in their designated roles, and can help any master who is trying to save their Quartz by providing them some good alternatives for Servants they may want to roll for. |
| 80 | * The Follow system. For new players who have yet to complete Part 1, you can follow 3 players ''regardless'' of their approval that lets you borrow their Servant just like a friended player (which means they can use their NP). You can just look for a gigantic whale's (players with full [=NP5=] SSR maxed Servants) Friend ID, Follow him, and let them carry you until you bash Goetia's face in. With this system, newbie campaign, and ''permanent 1/2 AP'' on Part 1, you can complete the game easily on just under 3 days, opening you to enjoy events which need Part 1 completion. |
| 81 | ---- |
| 82 | [[/folder]] |
| 83 | |
| 84 | !!Other Strategies |
| 85 | [[folder:Mystic Codes and Craft Essences]] |
| 86 | * Mystic Codes: |
| 87 | ** Amongst all the Mystic Codes, the '''Chaldea Combat Uniform''' is far and away considered the best by a wide margin. Its Game-Breaker status derives from its unique third skill, Order Change, which allows you to swap one of your frontline Servants for one of your backups. It is ''the'' focal point of nearly every 3-turn grinding strategy out there (mostly by letting you swap in a Servant with a CE like K-scope or Imaginary Numbers), but also lets you summon a powerful defense skill on demand to counter an enemy NP (like Mash and Merlin's invincibility skills, or Achilles' Bond CE). Furthermore turns don't pass for servants in the backline so you can buff an attacker servant, swap them to the back and then wait for the buffer's skills to come off cooldown and apply another layer of buffs to that attacker. Alternatively, go straight for burst damage by activating all of a support Servant's skills to the main attacker before swapping that support Servant out for another one to throw on even more skills. |
| 88 | ** The '''Decisive-Battle Chaldea Uniform''' is basically a more offensive-focused version of the Combat Uniform, as not only does it have an Order Change skill, but it also provides an ATK and NP damage buff that stack together for a higher damage ceiling, and trades the stun for an offensive debuff cleanse to work around attempts to neuter a Servant's damage. The caveat is that it will take a huge amount of time to level up the Mystic Code, as it requires ''155 million EXP'' to max, over twice as much as the Combat Uniform, which itself is several times more expensive than almost every other Mystic Code. |
| 89 | ** The '''Fragment of Year 2004''' Mystic Code is one of the best Mystic Codes when paired with Arts and Quick based farming. It features a massive 50% NP damage buff to help defeat the last enemy wave and a hefty 50% NP gain buff to help with NP refunds. It's not as versatile as the Combat Uniform, but it works amazingly well in its role. |
| 90 | ** '''Anniversary Blonde''' is considered not just one of the best Mystic Codes for Buster Servants, but one of the most powerful ones period because of the solo potential it brings to the table. It provides a Mana Burst effect that scales up to 60%, an Instinct skill that at max drops 20 stars, and a Guts effect that revives at 4000 HP at max rank. All three of these effects are top notch for Buster Servants because they allow for them to potentially solo harder fights, while getting their Buster cards buffed, and getting free crit stars to throw out crits. Characters like Super Orion, King Hassan, and Musashi become monsters between all three effects, the former two especially becoming able to casually solo some of the games most infamous boss fights because of it. The only downside is the cooldown timer being high, but the abilities it provides are so good that it is worth it to use it for those situations where you need to ensure your anchor can secure victory. |
| 91 | * Some of the earlier released Craft Essences were made when [=DelightWorks=] hadn't quite figured out what works and what doesn't in the game. As such, some of them are extremely powerful. This includes the following: |
| 92 | ** '''Kaleidoscope''' gives near instant access to a Servant's NP by granting them 80% starting NP (and it just straight up grants 100% at max limit break). This is a cornerstone in ''any'' three turn farming strategy. And with the second Append skill, you don't even need to max limit break it to get the 100% starting NP. |
| 93 | ** '''Wizard Marshal''' a slightly less powerful version of the very broken CE Kaleidoscope, gives 80% start charge but lacks the attack damage of Kaleidoscope, but instead gives you 750 extra health and when it's max limit broken you get both 100% start charge and 3,000 health. It will now confuse people rolling because it also features old man Zelretch, but he's facing forward instead of sideways. The CE is nicknamed the "Okayscope" for being a lesser version of the coveted Kaleidoscope. It is still just as rare to pull, so good luck getting either of the Zelretch Craft Essences. |
| 94 | ** '''The Imaginary Element''' sacrifices some starting NP charge (60% base, 75% at max) and stat focus (roughly 40% Atk and 60% HP) compared to the above two, but more than makes up for it by being more easily available (4* to Kaleidoscope and Wizard Marshal's 5*) and easier to run due to its cost while still giving enough gauge for an immediate NP with minimal usage of skills or Mystic Codes, especially after the introduction of Append skills. Many people were upset that it was taken from the general pool...only for '''Crystallization of Winter''' to effectively replace Imaginary Element as those two craft essences work exactly the same, and Crystallization of Winter is perhaps even better than Imaginary Element as Crystallization of Winter focuses solely on attack in comparison to Imaginary Element focusing on both attack and HP; meaning that servants with the Crystallization of Winter CE can launch even more NP power than they did with Imaginary Element. |
| 95 | ** '''Prisma Cosmos''' grants a passive 8% NP gauge generation per turn (10% at max limit break). Equip this to Merlin and enjoy ''15% NP gauge'' per turn, with no drawback. |
| 96 | ** '''Fragments of 2030''' gives 8 (10 when limit broken) Critical Stars per turn making it the focal point of various overpowered critical hit strategies. |
| 97 | ** '''Black Grail''' increases the damage of Noble Phantasms by a crazy high 60% (80% when limit broken) at the small cost of 500 HP per turn. Put this on practically any Servant with a damaging NP, load them up with Waver/Merlin/Skadi/Tamamo/Reines/Altria Caster/Koyanskaya of Light/Oberon (ESPECIALLY Oberon), and watch with glee as they deal an absolute crapload of damage! |
| 98 | ** '''Phantasmal Princess''' basically works just like the Black Grail CE as it has the same 60% (80% when limit broken) NP Damage Boost, but it only works on Berserkers, is somewhat less powerful that Black Grail (2000 ATK compared to Black Grail's 2400), and removes the small demerit of losing 500 HP per turn. While the uses are more limited than the Black Grail thanks to the class restriction, load it up on a strong Berserker servant (like the aforementioned Arjuna Alter and Morgan), and they will do a lot of damage with their Noble Phantasm without losing HP in a critical moment. |
| 99 | ** '''[=GudaGuda=] Poster Girl''', which is only available in specific [=GudaGuda=] event gachas. On top of offering a 60% attack boost for the first 3 turns, this craft essence also applies a 3-turn taunt to the equipped unit. The biggest abuse of this Craft Essence comes from using it to force a unit death, which allows you to bypass the cooldown period of buffing servant and nullify up to 3 turn worth of damage. Put into perspective, every single copy of Poster Girl essentially becomes a stronger use of Plugsuit's Order Change when used properly. This is on top of other offensive utilities that a 60% attack boost and getting focus fired for NP gain can offer. |
| 100 | ** '''Knight's Pride''' boosts Critical Damage to obscene levels a whopping ''50%'' when MLB'd (Even moreso than Gem Magecraft/Antumbra by 20% when MLB'd!) at the expense of a Defense Down debuff. Since there are numerous ways to bear with the debuff, not to mention some of the main users are {{Glass Cannon}}s anyway, this turns any CriticalHit into either a nasty OneHitKill or leaving the enemy with barely remaining some HP worst. Pair it up with users that rely on crits, such as Superhuman Orion, and watch those digits fly up. All this in spite of being a '''''4* CE!''''' |
| 101 | * Some craft essences the player can obtain for free can be very broken as well: |
| 102 | ** '''Holy Night Dinner''' obtained from the 2nd Christmas event is considered to be one of the best Craft Essences the player can obtain, as it grants the equipped servant 50% starting NP gauge, 15% critical damage boost, and 15% NP damage boost when its max limit is broken. The servant pictured in the Craft Essence, Jeanne Alter, is the perfect candidate for the craft essence, as her kit is built around strong critical hits and having a powerful Noble Phantasm. Heck, any servant with both strong critical hits and Noble Phantasm (Miyamoto Musashi, Saber Lancelot, Rider Kintoki, Raikou, Sigurd, etc.) will love this craft essence, as the combination of both starting NP and increased critical damage and Noble Phantasm damage will push them over the top. |
| 103 | ** '''Golden Sumo''' obtained from the Onigashima event is even better, as the Craft Essence bestows the servant 50% starting NP gauge and +15% attack boost. The 15% attack boost in particular is incredibly good, as Craft Essences that passively boost attack are ''very'' rare. The raw power provided by Golden Sumo is so good in fact, that it's considered a universally good Craft Essence for any Servant, with the only exceptions being niche kit Servants like healers. It says something that since it's release, no other Craft Essence save for Anniversary Heroines has given a flat percentage increase in damage like it. |
| 104 | ** '''Aerial Drive''', '''Dive to Blue''' and '''One Summer''' (obtained from respectively Halloween 2017, Dead Heat Summer Race, and the SE.RA.PH event). All three provide a buff to a single card type (Buster, Arts, and Quick respectively), but also give a flat 50% starting NP and NP damage. All three are incredibly powerful because they ensure that any offensively NP focused Servant gets not only double the damage on their NP, but also can quickly throw out their NP with even minimal support. Aerial Drive lets characters like Altria, Berserker Kintoki, and Gilgamesh become heavy hitting characters, Dive to Blue allows for characters like Sieg, Berserker Vlad, and Saber Lancelot to unleash powerful NP's that can almost loop, and One Summer allows Quick Servants like Rider Kintoki, Meltryllis, and Okita to loop alright with Skadi support while generating astounding numbers of Crit Stars for nigh-guaranteed critical hits. Of them, Aerial Drive tends to be placed a bit higher because it focuses all on increasing attack while the other two are more focused on either HP or being split, but both still are great and very useful. |
| 105 | ** '''Painting Summer''', from the "Servant Summer Festival!" event. It provides an Arts card buff, increases NP gain, and gives starting NP charge. This works wonders for any Arts focused Servant because of the fact that an Arts focused Servant will effectively get double their normal NP generation when using an Arts card, allowing them to quickly gain their NP back. With supports that buff Arts cards, it can allow for back-to-back looping with ease, and helps Arts stall teams get their NP out quicker, such as Jeanne. |
| 106 | ** '''Traces of Christmas''', from the 5th Christmas event, is basically like the Painting Summer CE for Quick servants as it provides a Quick card buff, increased NP Gain, and a starting NP charge. By using [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPlavWxfwVM&t= the right Mystic Code]] as well as this Craft Essence, it is actually possible to use effectively use the Skadi System without a Kaleidoscope. Even more so, unlike the Painting Summer CE, this one purely focuses on attack, meaning that Quick servants that can launch even more damage from this CE. |
| 107 | ** '''Fondant au Chocolat''', from the Valentine 2016 rerun event. It gives a special attack buff when fighting Divine enemies, and starting NP charge. At max limit broken, this equals out to a 30% attack buff, and 50% starting NP. As a result, any time you know you are going to fight Divine enemies, it allows your primary damage dealer to deal high amounts of damage while also getting their NP out quickly. Characters like Karna, Archer Nobunaga, and Enkidu can become very powerful when fighting Divine enemies thanks to having either special damage modifiers against them, or for having special effects that tie in well against them. It also helps greatly with Servants who can attack other Traits as well; characters like Raikou, Euryale, and Penthesilea can use their skills to not only do their normal extra special damage, but add a powerful attack buff on top of it! Normally a powerful Craft Essence like this would be gone once it's event is over, but it was added to the Rare Prism shop, meaning that you can still get it if you have the Rare Prisms. |
| 108 | * The '''Demonic Bodhisattva''', introduced to the main gacha with the release of the Babylonia Singularity. Having a 60% NP Battery when MLB'd is good enough, but the main draw of this it boosts NP Overcharge by two stages for one Noble Phantasm. While its usability is debatable among various Servants, the Servants that gain major boosts from being Overcharged greatly appreciate it, such as Altria Caster, who can easily set up a three-hit Anti-Purge Defense, Merlin's increased amount of Critical Star generation ensuring that with the right servants, he can essentially NP alongside another Merlin to ensure that at least one CriticalHit is performed, allows Arash to Stella for even more damage, and even enables Hijikata Toshizo to deal Overcharge Damage much easier (he essentially deals more damage than what he would have with the aforementioned Black Grail!). '''One Who Wishes for Salvation''' Craft Essence, introduced to the main gacha with the release of the Atlantis Lostbelt, trades the ability to gain a NP Battery in exchange for boosting NP Overcharge by two stages for ''three'' Noble Phantasms ('''''four''''' if MLB'd), making it more useful in battles that tend to drag on for a long time. |
| 109 | * While '''Divine Banquet''' basically has a BoringButPractical effect of increasing NP Generation rate by 25% (30% if MLB'd), '''Magical Girl of Sapphire''' is basically that but better: Aside from the same NP Generation rate increase, it also provides a very useful 40% NP Charge (50% if MLB'd). This makes it very useful for Servants that rely on spamming their NP as much as possible, especially if two Altria Casters use their second skills with hilarious results. This is perhaps the closest thing you can get to the PurposelyOverpowered Story Support Craft Essences. The only downside is that they're limited, meaning you only have a window before it goes away for a long time. |
| 110 | [[/folder]] |
| 111 | |
| 112 | [[folder:General Strategies]] |
| 113 | * The turtle team consisting of Mash, Merlin, and Jeanne (you can also slot in Reines, Waver, and Tamamo in there) cannot die. EVER. With massive DEF buffs, HP regeneration, debuff clear, two party-wide invulnerability, you can safely slog through million HP boss with more than 80% HP most of the time (whilst slowly whittling the enemy's HP). Although an invulnerability pierce is a problem, and the developers eventually began catching on to these strategies and began deploying counter-strategies to eliminate them. In particular most bosses after year one content tend to wash the player in debuffs, meaning most strategies revolve around killing the boss in 20-30 turns. That being said, there are some stall teams that can hit quite hard and thus avoid the constant debuffs that bosses love to dish out. Some of them include: |
| 114 | ** The composition of Qin Shi Huang, Merlin, and Tamamo can be very strong. The plan is, you use the emperor as a tank/damage dealer hybrid, stalling with Merlin's invulnerability and heal/cooldown reduction from Tamamo. After two stacks of Qin's NP, he'll fuck the poor schmuck's day up with six-digits of damage from his boosted criticals, while tanking all of your enemies' attacks thrown at the party. |
| 115 | ** Another possible setup for stalling with damage tactics is BB, Tamamo and a third support member. BB focuses as the damager through critical hits and her spammable NP which also charges party's NP gauge, as well as her supportive skills like heal with debuff cleanse and a stun which goes with evade/invincibility removal. Tamamo will drain the enemies NP gauge to buy more time as well as buff BB's Arts and NP power, and heals, charge NP gauge and reduce cooldown of skills of the party through her NP. The third member will fill in the additional supports like Zhuge Liang for party buffs, Merlin for more heals and party invincibility or Mash for almost permanent defensive buffs. |
| 116 | ** A truly ridiculous stalling setup is Altria (Caster), Himiko and Merlin. Himiko is both the damager through her critical hits as well and support due to her Noble Phantasm. Between Merlin and Altria (Caster)'s buffs and Noble Phantams there is fast [=NP=] gauge generation. What truly makes this setup insane is due to the one time partywide [=NP=] overcharge up by 2 for three turns effect of Himiko's NP, it's incredibly easy to ensure Altria (Caster)'s [=NP=] is at least Overcharge 3 which gives the entire party three time three turn Enforcement Defense which prevents the party from being damaged ''at all'' during the entire fight. Pretty much the ''only'' thing that balances out this absurd team composition is the fact that Himiko's Noble Phantasm is Buster-typed, which reduces the uptime that she can use her NP, and even then, ''that'' is incredibly minor in the long run. |
| 117 | *** After the release of Morgan, many fans consider her to be an alternative to Himiko. While her Noble Phantasm only provides an overcharge effect of one in comparison to Himiko's Noble Phantasm providing an overcharge effect of two, she exchanges that for providing more damage than Himiko. |
| 118 | *** After Reines' strengthening quest, she's considered alternative to both as well. While her kit has only supportive capabilities, her NP can provide an overcharge effect as well, on top of giving a buff that allows the team to ignore class disadvantage and NP generation buff as well, making it perfect for stalling out fights. |
| 119 | ** The Infinite Miyu System. A funny comedy option is Voyager and, of all things, Double Miyu. With Voyager's Noble Phantasm upgrade as of September 2023, he can give 40% NP charge (20% base, 20% for Living Human allies) to the two Miyus every time his own NP fires. Meanwhile, Miyu's NP grants a buff that applies 10% NP charge every turn for 3 turns, and this can be stacked 3 times from ''both'' Miyus for 60% total. 40 + 60 = 100 -- with some Craft Essence finagling and help from a fourth teammate, all three party members can use their [=NPs=] ''every turn, potentially forever'', with Voyager and the Miyus having a separate NP charge skill (Miyu's being targettable) in case Voyager comes up short. Stacking Miyu's NP buffs this way also results in multiple ATK buffs and ''massive'' amounts of party healing (up to 12,000 '''per turn''' if both Miyus are [=NP5=]), and Voyager and Miyu both have Debuff Immunity and survival skills for big hits (Evade for Voyager, Guts for Miyu). The only caveat to the strat (hence why it's a comedy option) is that it requires at least one Command Seal for NP charging to get the loop going, but so long as Buff Strip or NP Drain aren't in play, once the loop starts, it doesn't stop until the battle is over. |
| 120 | * The Gorgon Sisters' Charm spam, even if it's bordering on AwesomeButImpractical, is an almost guaranteed method to stunlock any male boss without Magic Resistance (or at least with a low rank in it). All of the Sisters have a skill which will stun male enemies, as well as Euryale and Stheno having stun effects in their [=NPs=] (they also each have a skill to charge their NP); Lancer Medusa's Charm and NP will both reduce Quick Card resistance for Stheno and Medusa, while Gorgon's NP will provide 15% NP to everyone. High skill levels are almost required for the build, however, use their skills and [=NPs=] in the right order and you'll find their foes can't move a bit while you grind them to death. Unfortunately, the devs caught on and stealth-nerfed it, giving most Male and/or Saber bosses post-Shimosa Charm immunity. |
| 121 | * ''Mass'' defense buff stacking strategies since defense buffs are stacked additively (as an "inverse attack buff" against foes). The extreme end of this results in taking 0 damage as defensive buffs climb to nearly 100%, and it's why stall-based teams featuring Waver and Mash are so strong and why there are numerous Servants and Noble Phantasms that specifically say they bypass defense buffs (and as demonstrated in the [[https://grandorder.gamepress.gg/return-nero-fest-2018-act-iv-demonic-dragon-descends-again second run of Nero Fest]], these effects turn out to "only" bypass 100% defense). Enemies can also abuse this tactic -- besides the Siegfried challenge quest in Nero Fest, the common non-Servant Amazoness enemy has a skill that raises their defense by 20% for three turns, and due to how enemy turns work they may well spam this all the way to 100% defense! Meanwhile, there are numerous examples of Servants already packed with defense buffs outright soloing challenge quests, such as [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJAwYfKYbkE Ibaraki versus Tristan]] in Camelot or [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsggN2SGxeo two hours of Mash wearing down entire waves of enemies]] in the "Chocolate Lady's Commotion" expanded rerun challenge quest. |
| 122 | ** On that same topic, mass attack debuffing strategies, which is the same idea except (usually) against a single target. The pioneer of this is Asterios, who can be used against ''the final story boss'' in part one among other fights thanks to his ''6-turn'' 20% ATK debuff from his Noble Phantasm plus an additional 1-turn 40% ATK debuff. Once again, it's possible to debuff a 100% attack decrease, leading to enemies doing 0 damage. Nightingale also carves a niche in these strategies, trading in longterm debuffing for a crippling 1-turn 50% ATK debuff and a (multiplicative, not additive) 1-turn 50% NP damage debuff; any damage leaking through can then be healed by the rest of her kit. The tradeoff of this strategy is enemy debuff resistance, but now enemies can't remove or bypass friendly defense buffs -- a key factor to this strategy being viable in the otherwise infamously difficult 0-Kiara-Punisher Beast III/R fight. |
| 123 | * The '''[[SpamAttack NP Looping]]''' tactic has dominated FGO meta since players first figured out how to do it efficiently. Through innate NP gain, buffs and NP batteries, a Servant is able to regain sufficient NP gauge after firing off a Noble Phantasm and killing off all the enemies within the current wave to do so again the next turn. This results in three turn battles (the minimum amount of time a battle usually can take) and zero damage to your servants. Note that without this tactic, farming battles can take about ''nine turns'' and your servant line up can accrue enough damage to tap deep into your backline. |
| 124 | [[/folder]] |
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