Antonio Salieri

"Now, let us play your requiem!"

Antonio Salieri, whose current form is based on the rumor that he poisoned Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in their bitter rivalry, is the first silver Avenger class Servants available to Masters. In Fate/Grand Order, he primarily serves as a hybrid AoE Arts critical damage dealer.

Salieri has several sources of damage boosts at his disposal. Lamenting Exterior provides a decent self-Arts buff, while Wildfire can decrease the defense of a single enemy, enhancing damage of all party members against the target. Innocent Monster EX allows Antonio to generate stars while also providing a decent boost to his critical strength on top of his critical strength-boosting passive. Finally, his noble phantasm, Dio Santissimo Misericordia de Mi, deals damage to all enemies, decreases the party’s critical star drop rate, and most notably inflicts an Arts resist down debuff, indirectly enhancing the performance of any Arts-based allies.

In exchange for his many ways of pushing damage, Salieri has no defense whatsoever, meaning he’s likely to go down quickly in harder fights. Additionally, Salieri has difficulty leveraging his potential for strong critical attacks, as he has no innate way to overcome his Avenger star weight. Salieri is also a story-locked 3*, which means he is less likely to be NP5 than are most of the other silver Servants he has to compete with.

Overall, Antonio Salieri is an Arts-based AoE damage dealer who provides various boosts to an Arts-crit hybrid team. While his relative fragility can be a liability, he deals strong damage to all enemy classes, and his general flexibility as a damage-dealer makes him valuable to Masters who lack higher-rarity AoE Arts options or who like using unconventional teams.

Multiple Damage-boosting Tools

All three of Salieri’s skills provide damage buffs or debuffs, and his NP applies Arts Resistance Down to the entire enemy team. As Salieri has damage boosts in all three common buff brackets (attack, card-type, and critical damage), Salieri’s critical attacks can do remarkably good damage despite his status as a 3* Servant.

Avenger Class

As Salieri is an Avenger, he is a flexible pick for AoE quests with enemies of multiple classes. He will almost never benefit from offensive or defensive class advantage, but in exchange he doesn’t much care who he’s facing. This is especially nice given how relatively inexpensive Salieri is. Strong, accessible,  class-neutral AoE options are hard to come by, especially as Arts Servants go.

Crit Support potential is decent

Salieri boosts party damage, makes stars passively, and has low base star weight, which makes him a surprisingly good semi-support in critical-attack-oriented teams. A team consisting of Salieri, another semi-support, and either a third semi-support or a full damage-dealer can be remarkably effective, especially as non-standard team compositions go. This makes Salieri uniquely valuable to Masters who lack the major supportive Servants or who enjoy running unusual teams.

No Defensive Capability

Salieri is a fully offensive Servant, which means he has absolutely no way to protect himself from enemy fire. His low health pool compounds matters, so without outside protection he’s not likely to last long.

Limited Critical Attack Access

While Salieri has the potential for strong critical attacks, his Avenger star weight makes it difficult for him to reliably take the critical stars he needs to leverage his potential. Salieri is dependent on having allies who can generate large numbers of critical stars in order to fully shine as a damage-dealer.

Story Locked

As a story-locked 3*, Salieri is more difficult to take to NP5 than most Servants sharing his rarity. Fortunately for him, the general lack of low-rarity extra-class Servants means Salieri is nearly guaranteed to appear on any extra-class-specific banners. Outside of those banners, however, Salieri is something of a rarity.

Salieri is a Servant built around hit-based skills, which is to say, skills with durations tied primarily to number of attacks rather than turns elapsed. This shapes the usefulness of his skills in practice. Lamenting Exterior is Salieri’s primary NP buff, and it also helps to increase his effective NP gain, so it should be leveled first. Innocent Monster works quite well with its hit-based duration and should be leveled second. Wildfire is the weakest of Salieri’s skills and should be leveled last.

Innocent Monster EX provides stars passively on a reasonably short cooldown, which makes it slightly easier for Salieri to crit and can also help him to enable critical-attack-focused allies. Critical damage buffs also benefit more from hit-based durations than do other types of buffs, as the buff is only expended when Salieri lands a critical attack, meaning this buff isn’t wasted if Salieri gets unlucky on a particular turn.

Lamenting Exterior A is Salieri’s main damage boost. A charge of this is expended each time Salieri uses an Arts card (or his NP), so it can take some micromanaging of card usage to get the most of this skill. That said, an advantage of the hit-based duration is that Salieri can use this skill before he actually needs it in order to get the cooldown rolling so it is ready to use again sooner.

Wildfire B is the least useful of Salieri’s skills. Any attack from any Servant on the enemy afflicted with this debuff will eat one of the charges, which makes it highly difficult to make effective use of this. Additionally, the fact that this is a single-target skill means Salieri can’t use it to boost his NP damage against an entire wave of enemies. This tends to be most useful when Salieri has critical attacks lined up, or when one of Salieri’s allies is ready to use an offensive NP.

Salieri’s middling-to-weak NP gain and his preference for faster-moving teams mean Starting NP Gauge CEs tend to be particularly useful for him. Arts Up and NP Damage Up CEs can also be useful, particularly if Salieri is paired with supports who can help him use his NP more frequently.

• Kaleidoscope / The Imaginary Element: Starting NP Gauge provided by these CEs allows Salieri to fire off an NP more quickly, and is useful for farming and for harder fights where Salieri needs to move quickly.
• The Black Grail / Heaven’s Feel: These CEs provide a sizable NP damage boost and will allow him to maximize his NP damage.
• Dive to Blue / Grand Puppeteer / Holy Night Supper / Golden Sumo: These hybrid CEs provide some starting NP gauge along with damage boosts that increase Salieri’s overall performance.
• Formal Craft / Projection: These are Arts-only boosts with higher base value without the starting NP gauge, providing a bump in longer term performance at the cost of longer startup time.