Altria Pendragon

“I ask of you, are you my Master?”

Of all the flavors of Altria, the original's skill set is best described as "vanilla": nothing fancy, but enduringly reliable. Sporting one of the strongest self-buffed AoE Buster NPs and some team support, Altria can fit on a variety of teams with her strong wave clear ability.

While her skills aren't loaded with multiple effects, Altria's claim to fame is her straightforward strong Saber NP damage. Her Mana Burst-boosted NP and SSR stats are great for handily clearing waves, as well as providing the team with a decent Attack up from Charisma and perhaps a critical hit with Intuition. In addition, after her Rank Up Altria continues to be an even stronger farming Servant with access to a potent 30% NP charge.

In terms of generation stats, her launch-era hit counts and average generation stats are abysmal for generating critical stars despite the presence of a Riding passive, but offer reasonable uptime on her NP. Altria's balanced BBAAQ deck thus fits her kit well, helping her gain NP gauge through Arts Chains and enabling NP-Buster Brave chains for more damage. It is only after her Rank Up that Altria's NP up-time comes alive, as the combination of a 30% NP Charge on a 5-turn cooldown and a scaling 20% base NP refund makes her a potential NP-spamming juggernaut with support.

Unfortunately, while Altria has one of the higher HP stats in the game, in return her attack stat is on the lower side for an SSR Saber. Furthermore, Altria lacks powerful long-term boosts to her damage performance, nor does she carry any effect in her skill set that provides utility or grants her additional survivability. As a result, her performance during challenge quests often is highly dependent on the support of others.

Until her Rank Up, the King of Knights will find it difficult to outperform specialized Servants during challenging encounters for Masters with expansive rosters. However, once her Intuition is upgraded Altria will become a highly capable Servant that not only farms exceedingly well, but also turns up a stellar performance during challenge quests with her NP spam potential.

Gameplay Tip

Altria's farming ability and challenge quest capability greatly improves after she receives her NP Charge Rank Up. Not only can she run a wider selection of Craft Essences for farming, but at max level her NP Charge combined with the NP refund from Excalibur’s Overcharge grants at least 50% NP gauge. Indirectly, the Rank Up enables Altria’s kit more NP usage options, granting her a potent niche in using her powerful upgraded AoE NP frequently with the right supports.

Strong Burst NP

Altria's native Mana Burst and Charisma stack multiplicatively for up to 77% in self buffs, amongst the highest for AoE Sabers. Combined with her early NP Interlude, she has one of the strongest trait-independent AoE NP's without external buffs. Altria will usually be able to repress the enemies with her Holy Hand Grenade of an NP on the final wave of many quests.  

Team Support

In addition to her strong NP damage, Altria also provides some team support. Charisma provides a decent amount of Attack Up for the entire team for 3 turns, while Intuition provides a moderate injection of critical stars on-demand. Solid team support from an AoE Saber is relatively rare, and is a premium for her farming niche to help the team clear waves.

Farming/NP Spam Potential

Once Altria receives her Rank Up, the NP charge added onto Intuition makes her one of the strongest farming Sabers. Her NP damage potential alone makes her an excellent farming Servant already, but the NP charge both makes her easier to use and allows for a more varied CE selection. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, it can also be combined with her NP refund for impressive back-to-back NP potential during difficult encounters.

Lack of Unique Skill/Role Combination until Rank Up

Altria's vanilla skill set is straightforward and useful for a variety of stages, but her lack of a unique effect or ability to target a niche means that she won't perform as well as specialists in challenge quests, or farming quests with enemies weak to certain bonus damage. Notably, she relies on her teammates to overcome any problems that cannot be solved by pure damage due to having no utility at all in her kit. However, her Rank Up does increase her challenge quest viability by allowing for more NP uptime.

Relatively Low Avenues of Offense

Altria’s biggest problem as a damage dealer is her lack of sustained high damage potential. Without access to long duration powerful steroids, or the ability to exploit any critical potential on her own, and with average NP gain and relatively low base attack, Altria struggles to keep up with her peers when it comes to challenging content. This downside is somewhat reduced by her NP Charge Rank Up as she gains a niche in unleashing her NP frequently, but her damage against single enemies remains problematic.

Fragile

As none of Altria's skills provide sustain or survivability, she will need support for longer quests or high-damage challenge quests to cover this weakness. While she has a decently high HP stat and passive Magic Resistance, Altria also has many traits (i.e. Altria-face, Arthur, etc.) that make her more likely to be targeted/take effective damage from enemies than the average servant.  

As an offense-oriented Servant specifically focused on her NP, Altria benefits most from maxing out Charisma and Mana Burst for stronger NP turns and card damage. Of these two skills, Mana Burst is usually leveled first for the greatest NP damage increase, but Charisma first is also viable for a more supportive option. Intuition is typically leveled last due to its weak effect, but becomes a powerful investment after Altria's Rank Up due to the added NP Charge effect.

• Charisma is a solid skill on a reasonable cooldown. As the performance increase per level is lower than Mana Burst, this skill is usually leveled second. However, since it is a more enduring buff that affects the entire team, some Masters may elect to max it first.

• Mana Burst is the signature skill of Altria-kind (or at least it used to be), and provides the greatest damage increase per level at the cost of being a card-specific one-turn buff. Due to providing the highest NP performance increase per level, it is recommended to level this up first.

• Intuition traditionally gets a bad reputation due to being a weak skill with the amount of stars it generates. However, post-Rank Up it becomes a worthy investment due to the 30% NP battery on a short cooldown, which makes Altria better at both farming and challenge quests. Will become the most important skill to level post-Rank Up.

Typically Altria focuses on unleashing her Buster NP and increasing its damage. This makes Starting NP Gauge, NP Damage Up, and Buster Up Craft Essences ideal. Starting NP Gauge not only allows for instant NP deployment, but also provides quicker access to potential NP looping post-Rank Up due to her NP refund. NP Damage Up works especially well to efficiently boost Altria's NP damage further through multiplicative buff stacking, while Buster Up Craft Essences not only buff her NP but also the damage on her Buster Command Cards as well.  

• Kaleidoscope / The Imaginary Element: Kaleidoscope and MLB Imaginary Element allow Altria to NP immediately after her Rank Up or with the help of external support.

• Aerial Drive / Holy Night Supper / Golden Sumo / Partake with the King / First Sunrise: Hybrid CEs work well if Altria has a short time to charge her NP or receives additional NP charging support. These options are an excellent mix between performance and and launching an NP quickly.

• Black Grail / Heaven’s Feel / Hero Elly’s Adventure: Pure NP Damage like Black Grail will improve Altria’s damage the most and can work well given Altria's high base HP. It becomes more effective after her Rank Up as she will be able to charge her NP faster.  

• Limited/Zero Over / Verdant Sound of Destruction: Despite Buster Buffs stacking additively with Mana Burst, Altria still benefits from Buster buffs outside of NP turns to increase her command card damage.