Altria Pendragon (Santa Alter)

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Excalibur Morgan all the way! In an effort to improve her image, Altria Alter has decided to become Santa Claus and spread holiday cheer (violently). Along with a class change to Rider, this seasonal counterpart roughly copies the skill set and AoE Noble Phantasm of the original. Most notably, Santa Alter has access to the powerful Excalibur Morgan, which boasts a higher damage multiplier than almost any other Buster AoE NP.

In terms of features, Santa Alter trades some of Altria Alter’s offense for a more balanced kit. With Saint’s Gift, Santa Alter can heal a target for a substantial amount and slightly buff their star generation for 3 turns. Intuition can instantly supply some critical stars, which her Rider-class star weight easily attracts to herself. Finally, the requisite Mana Burst is a welcome addition to power up her Noble Phantasm.

Sadly, the balanced nature of her skill set actually works somewhat against her, as her primary purpose is simply to blast the enemy with her superb Noble Phantasm. In the end, she only really has access to one additional short-lived steroid by herself for this purpose. Furthermore, Santa Alter’s NP generation is fairly average, which further limits her use during longer and/or challenging combat. Nevertheless, such a powerful Noble Phantasm makes her one of the best easily available farming Servants when pure damage is the key factor.  

AoE Noble Phantasm Powerhouse

Santa Alter’s Excalibur Morgan can deal some terrifying AoE damage thanks to a higher NP damage multiplier than normal, Mana Burst and of course easily available additional copies during the event. Blasting the final wave of a quest is often her entire raison d’être.

Buster Critical Capability

Taking advantage of Santa Alter’s high natural critical star absorption rate and Intuition, Santa Alter can function quite well as a Buster critical Servant. With some additional critical stars from allies as well as critical damage steroids, Santa Alter’s Noble Phantasm Buster Brave Chain can deal some excellent damage.

Healing Support

Saint’s Gift heals for a rather substantial amount at higher levels and generally helps prevent any early casualties during farming sessions. The cooldown is also short enough that it can potentially be used twice depending on the strength of a team.

Lack of Hard Survivability Tools

While Saint’s gift is useful for topping off allies, it does not help Santa Alter survive enemy Noble Phantoms or devastating enemy attacks. For challenging combat Santa Alter will need to rely on supports for her survival.

Unsuited for Sustained Combat

Santa Alter’s skill set lends itself to one turn of power through her Noble Phantasm and any subsequent (critical) damage chains. She does not offer any additional damage support outside of potentially Intuition for her allies. Her damage skills also only affect a single turn of combat. In essence, she does not excel in fights that require multiple turns of high damage.

Average NP Generation

Santa Alter’s NP generation is bog-standard. The ability to attract critical stars to her Arts cards does make it slightly easier to charge her NP, but she does not have any additional means of charging her Noble Phantasm quickly. As Santa Alter excels at farming, this is less than ideal and should generally be compensated for through Craft Essences or supports.

• Saint’s Gift is Santa Alter’s healing skill, with a fairly low cooldown and a decent scaling. The Critical Star Generation buff is fixed and sadly does not directly benefit from additional skill levels. It’s useful for keeping allies alive during farming runs, but does not directly contribute to Santa Alter’s primary purpose. Level this second.

• Intuition grants a single infusion of critical stars. Santa Alter’s Rider class actually enables her to extract a fair amount of value out of this skill, but it remains a fairly weak skill. Intuition does help make Santa Alter’s burst turns potentially more powerful, but it’s a lot of investment for a few extra stars and a shorter cooldown. Generally her weakest skill and can be leveled last.

• Mana Burst is the standard single turn Buster steroid. It scales well and most importantly actually helps Santa Alter to be even better at farming. Level this first to be able to reach even higher damage benchmarks.

Santa Alter benefits immensely from Starting NP Gauge to fully embrace her role as a farming powerhouse. If her base damage isn’t enough though, Santa Alter can boost her damage in various ways. To deal the most damage possible with Excalibur Morgan, NP Damage Up is ideal. Alternatively, Critical Damage Up will help exploit her Rider class star weight. Finally Buster Performance Up treads the middle ground, but does unfortunately stack additively with her Mana Burst.

• Kaleidoscope/The Imaginary Element/Dragon’s Meridian: Given her already impressive NP damage, what she really needs is to get that NP out the door. Generally, the more Starting NP Gauge, the better.

• Golden Sumo/Halloween Princess/Partake with the King: If a little more damage is required, try the hybrid Starting NP gauge options first. Golden Sumo scales particularly well with Santa Alter.

• Black Grail/Joint Recital/Victor From the Moon/Limited/Zero Over: If her allies can take care of her NP bar, all of the standard Buster Critical Craft Essences can work with Santa Alter. It depends simply on which facet is ideal to boost in the set up Santa Alter will be fielded in, although Black Grail typically extracts the most damage.