Baobhan Sith

“No matter where I go or what I do, I am who I am. I’ll be as mischievous as I want and make a mess of everything..”

“The greatest look and the worst personality” is a meta yet apt description of this devilish fae. Baobhan Sith, or Fae Knight Tristan of the Faerie Knight Table is a sadistic Quick-centric single target damage dealer who torture her victims with endless assaults of her curses. Furthermore, she has quite a few elusive tricks up her sleeves that are quite handy in a pinch, making her a highly versatile Servant that can shine in many forms of content. 

Baobhan Sith packs an unusually multifunctional skillset for a 4 Star Servant. Her first skill - Grimalkin A is her main offensive steroid that grants a strong 3 turn Quick card buff to herself, but also gives Invincible to herself for a turn and Evade to all allies for 1 hit. This is a stacked skill with very few drawbacks as the cooldown at max level is only 6 turns and the offensive buff being 3 turns make the opportunity cost from being glued to a defensive tool a lot more tolerable. Secondly, Blessed Scion EX functions as both her NP Gauge Charger and a utility tool as it inflicts both NP Seal and Skill Seal on an enemy at the same time. On its own, this skill seems unimpressive, but when combined with her third skill - Fae Vampirism A, its strength becomes a lot more obvious. Fae Vampirism is a NP Drain Skill that heals Baobhan Sith and increases her NP Gauge. Having a total of 60% NP Battery that staggers across two skills is ridiculous, let alone them being a powerful stalling tool to control bosses’ NP Bars. Even the heal from this skill is quite noticeable, giving her lasting power in prolonged battles. 

Fetch Failnaught E is Baobhan Sith’s Noble Phantasm, a single target Quick attack that grants her Sure Hit before dealing damage and inflicts both a Curse and Evil Curse (Curse Damage Amplification) debuffs for five turns on her target that scales with overcharge. While Damage Over Time is often scoffed at for their low impact, Baobhan Sith’s Evil Curse definitely packs a punch, especially against enemies with high Damage Resistance. In a team that would look to utilize this kind of playstyle, Baobhan Sith would be an amazing lynchpin that bolster her teammates’ Damage Over Time output, particularly when she is allowed to spam her Noble Phantasm to stack this debuff and get to high Overcharge Level. 

Similar to her namesake knight - Tristan, Baobhan Sith serves as a competent Quick Damage Dealer with strong utility for Challenge Quests and has a very easy time accessing her Noble Phantasm. However, beyond her generalist performance, she can enable some silly shenanigans alongside Curse enthusiasts like Ashiya Douman that can be very handy against gimmicky bosses or enemies with high Damage Resistance. However, as she is not a hyper offensive Servant, Baobhan Sith’s damage can prove to be inefficient when lacking supports, as she lacks both powerful Critical niche that many of her peers possess and only a Quick card buff on her own. All in all, Baobhan Sith is definitely a well-rounded Servant that stays strong from early to midgame and becomes even better when the account gets more options to synergize with.

High Amount Of Strong Utilities For Challenge Quests

Having teamwide Evade, Invincible, NP Seal and NP Drain makes Baobhan Sith an excellent Damage Dealer / Support Hybrid for Challenge Quest. Even when she is not a fully fledged defensive support, her skills can allow a lot of flexibility when picking a team for certain quests. 

Consistent Single Target Damage

Thanks to her two forms of NP Battery, Baobhan Sith has a very easy time accessing her Noble Phantasm. Furthermore, while her NP refund rate is not particularly high, her generation stats and Quick performance are good enough to dish out consistent single target damage. 

Enabling Damage Over Turn Playstyle

Baobhan Sith is one of the very rare Servants in the game that can inflict a very high Curse Damage Amplification debuff. While Damage Over Time in general is still a gimmick strategy with limited application, Curse has the easiest application due to having several powerful Servants that can compliment this playstyle without sacrificing general performance. Once she can set up properly and get going, Curse Damage can ramp up to a nasty level.

Lacks Sufficient Refund To Be A Looper

Despite having two powerful NP Gauge Chargers, Baobhan Sith is not a proper looper due to her insufficient combination of hit counts and NP generation rate on her Noble Phantasm. While Master can definitely make her loop, it will require more resources to get her to that level compared to more stable loopers like Kama.

Weak Burst Damage Without Support

Single Target Servants with high NP Batteries are usually useful for clearing irregular farming nodes that only have one or two high HP enemies. However, Baobhan Sith on her own lacks the necessary firepower to function well in this role, especially at low NP Levels and without proper offensive Support Servants such as Zhuge Liang or Scathach-Skadi, who often would opt to spend their buffs on a better scaling damage dealer. As a result, she can be weirdly difficult to slot in any farming team.

Ideally, Masters should get all of her skills to 6/6/6, particularly the two latter skills as at level 6 their combined NP Battery value is 50%, which is a very useful breakpoint when combined with Craft Essences with Starting NP Gauge and Skill Append. If the Master plans to raise her further, all three skills scale well and are good investments, but definitely not as high priority when compared to a more dedicated and higher scaling Damage Dealers. 

• Grimalkin EX – This is her main offensive buff so it has obvious value in leveling. The reduced cooldown is also very handy for challenge quests as it lets her use the defensive aspects of this skill more frequently. 
• Blessed Scion EX – Of her three skills, this skill probably has the lowest priority. While NP Seal is very powerful, Skill Seal has much more limited application as sometimes it can be a double-edge blade. Being Skill Sealed means the enemies are much more likely to just straight up attack your team. Furthermore, the only scaling this skill has is in its NP Battery value, so it should be leveled last amongst her skills. 
• Fae Vampirism A  – Outside of the NP Battery, both the NP Drain Chance and HP Recovery value scales with skill level, making this skill an easy choice to level after her first skill. 

Baobhan Sith is not a particularly picky Servant when it comes to Craft Essences. Her lack of NP Damage and Attack buffs in her kit means these buffs have great value in terms of bolstering her damage, while Quick card effectiveness, while less effective at raising her damage, does improve her NP Generation and Critical Star Generation as well. Starting NP Gauge is also a very potent choice, as it lets her utilize her NP Battery from her skills with more freedom. Critical Damage is also not a bad idea, as she has no problem generating Critical Stars and lacks any form of Critical Damage boosting. Overall, she tends to do best with Craft Essence that combines several of these stats. 

• Black Grail / Heaven’s Feel: Highly effective CEs to boost her damage output thanks to the massive amount of NP Damage and flat Attack bonus, especially when needing the extra firepower to burst through something. 
• Golden Sumo / Holy Night Supper / Knights of Marines / Cherry Icicle / Crimson Teacher's Pointer: Easily splashable CEs with Starting NP Gauge and beneficial stats that will do well on her in most situations. 
• Chocolate Heaven / Midsummer Moment / Dumplings Over Flowers: These Craft Essence sacrifice the convenience of starting NP Gauge for more firepower, boosting all aspects of Baobhan Sith’s performance.
• Imaginary Around / Gandr: Basic CEs that boost Quick card effectiveness that can be used before more specialized choices are obtained.