Is Anne Bonny and Mary Read (Archer) really only tier 3?

But how does Anne fall into the category of having poor, unstraightforward steroids? She can boost her own attack by 45% for 3 turns, on a 5 turn cooldown. Is there even a such thing as a less straightforward steroid than straight up +attack? That's a massive boost to everything she does (her hits, her crits, and her NP), for three turns and with a short cooldown. How does that not stomp her SR competitors steroids into the ground? Emiya only gets a 40% steroid, and it's only for 1 turn. Nobu only gets 50% to crits, which is useless if she doesn't crit and does nothing for her NP. I'd take Anne's +45% to everything any day of the week (plus Anne has a higher level of Independent Action anyway, so her crits should be comparable to Nobu). Or, since it's actually split up into two skills, you could even stagger them, to have a moderate steroid that's constantly active. And her second skill is pretty straightforward too. It gains 15 stars and increases your star absorption. So if you feel like critting something, you use it.

Otherwise, what exactly are Anne's weaknesses or comp issues, that warrant sticking her in tier 3? She seems fairly self sufficient, and can even provide a bit of support on the side. She provide stars for herself decently well. She can buff her own damage very well. She can charge her own NP gauge decently well. She has a no time limit guts, so she can survive on her own decently well. She has potentially one of the best party-wide support buffs in the game, so she even has function as a support, which most of her competitors can't do.

I'm not arguing, so much as just trying to understand. It just feels like, based on the tier criteria that you just mentioned, and based on the facts, she should be higher than tier 3.

I didn't really see it as negative. I was just hoping for something a bit more specific and example-based, I think. But I do appreciate that you answered.

Lol, yeah, I think there are very few scenarios where I would want to intentionally lower my servants' HP down to 1 just to double the strength of their single target NP. Might as well just keep them alive long enough to use their NP twice.

Tristan is so different from Anne that I don't know if it's really even fair to compare them though. I mean, you can obviously compare them, but I don't think that their spots on the tier list should be based on their comparisons, since they are used so differently. I don't see a good reason why they couldn't both share the same tier. Tristan is a support archer, and Anne is a buster based damage dealing archer. And if anything, I would argue the case that Tristan actually is more niche than Anne, because a support archer isn't something you can just really slot into any old team. A support oriented servant with such a high star weight kind of limits your options, and can be a detriment in some situations.

Nobu's 50% crit buff is vastly inferior to Anne's 45% attack buff, in my opinion. Especially since Anne has 3% higher independent action, so Nobu's crits only wind up like 2% higher. Having 2% higher crits is not worth having 45% weaker non-crits and NP, in almost any situation. The Divine damage buff is great... When you are fighting Divine enemies. When you aren't fighting Divine enemies, it is 100% useless and a waste of a skill slot. Anne has no skills that are wasted in any situation, so it's not really accurate to say that Nobu's Divine buff is better than what Anne has to offer. It's just better in certain situations. Anne's kit is better in other situations, and is more universal. In fact, since the lower tier servants are supposed to be more niche, and less universal, I'd almost consider that an argument for Nobu to be lower tier than Anne. And the NP gen buff is great too, but who is to say that it's better than what Anne can do? I'm sure there are situations where her party-wide attack buff, star generation buff, or her guts are more desirable... So they are just different. As far as the rider thing goes, once again, it can be super useful in some situations, and super useless in others. If you're fighting a single target who isn't a rider, then Anne's NP will do more damage at NP1 than Nobu's will do at NP5, and if Anne happens to be injured, the difference will be even larger. So once again, I think it's not really accurate to say that one is better than the other, and there is no good reason why they couldn't share the same tier. Though I'd say that Anne's kit is actually more universal, so if we were to say that higher tiered servants can be useful in any situation, an argument could be made that Anne actually deserves a higher tier than Nobu.

The criteria for a tier 2 SR, on this site, says: "Solid servants that can perform their role reasonably well. They may have one or two weaknesses which need to be compensated for by support servants." I don't see any way in which Anne doesn't meet that criteria. If anything, the fact that nobody has really pointed out any obvious weaknesses about her makes it seem sort of like she is even overqualified for tier 2. "Risky game plan and niche" is really not acceptable as a weakness, because there is no good reason to try to limit this servant to a game plan of trying to get get HP down to 1 and then firing her NP. And "NP Damage Scaling is by NP Level" is not even a weakness at all, since it applies to like 99% of the servants in the game. The fact that someone wrote that really just highlights this servants' lack of weaknesses. "She is worse at healing people than Tristan" and "She is worse at killing waves of Divine Riders than Nobu" really don't count as weaknesses either. If someone needs to fill those two niches, then obviously it's better to use Tristan or Nobu, but for general non-niche situations, I don't see why Anne would be any worse than either of those two, and she even seems better in a lot of ways.