Boudica

“Hm, so this is what you’re interested in…”

Once a defiant queen who fought against Nero, Boudica now teams up with her for… Septem-related reasons. But, learning offense and defense from her time as a queen, Boudica will serve her Masters with her Arts Support Noble Phantasm and Arts skills.

As a queen, Boudica shows off her main strengths by protecting her allies. With her Chariot of Boudica Noble Phantasm, she gives her allies a powerful Defense Up buff for one turn, and a slightly weaker one for the two turns following, along with a 3-turn Attack buff following her Rank Up. In addition, she can keep herself alive after fatal hits with Battle Continuation. Her support continues by rallying her allies with Andraste’s Protection, giving the team an up to 20% Arts Performance buff for three turns. Combined with the additional Attack Up buff from her Noble Phantasm, she can help her teammates dish out decent damage. Furthermore, in very niche situations, she can become a Roman killing machine with her Vow to the Goddess, which after her Rank Up, will also bestow that ability, plus a Critical Strength boost, to all allies.

However, Boudica suffers heavily due to her class and low damage. Without an offensive Noble Phantasm, a lack of a truly effective non-niche steroid, and low base attack, she hardly creates much in the way of damage. This is problematic for a Rider, as Boudica naturally has a high Critical Star Weight, but will often fail to effectively use them due to a lack of Critical skills and her low damage (at least until her third Rank Up).

Boudica serves as a stalwart protection against enemies and supporting those around her. In an Arts team, she could potentially contribute to aid her allies.

Decent Defense

Boudica provides Masters with stackable defense buffs on her Noble Phantasm, which can reduce enemy damage numbers to minimal amounts. While lacking a straight damage cut to lower this to zero, she does provide enough for a support to take care of the rest. This can be further bolstered with other sources of defensive buffs, such as Mash Kyrielight, potentially cutting incoming damage to zero.

Good Offensive Support

After her Rank Ups, Boudica is capable of providing both an attack buff with her Noble Phantasm, and an Arts buff with her Andraste’s Protection, giving the party a significant boost to their damage for 3 turns.

Roman Niche

True to form, Boudica has a vengeance against Romans, giving her three turns of bonus damage against them whenever she has the privilege to fight one. While her Noble Phantasm will not damage them, with the right supports she could get off a nice Critical hit. This is further enhanced with her Rank Up, which gives all party members a 50% Critical Strength boost and anti-Roman special damage.

Extremely Low Damage

Boudica has a low base attack, lacks an offensive Noble Phantasm, and lacks any major steroid to compensate. She will struggle to keep up with most all other Servants.

High Critical Gather Rate

By virtue of being a Rider, Boudica gathers up a ton of Critical Stars. Without a major Critical Buff or at least decent damage, these stars serve very little purpose to her, and would be best to go to other servants. This will be corrected in her third rankup when she and her allies gain a 50% critical damage boost for three turns on a five turn cooldown, but until then she is not feasible as a critical support or damage dealer. 

Isn’t Mash

Boudica in many ways is similar to Mash Kyrielight, the free Servant Masters get at the start of the game. Yet her defense buffs are weaker than Mash’s damage cut and defense buffs, her Attack buffs are only slightly better, has a worse survivability turn, and costs more to place in a party. While we normally don’t list Servant weaknesses as their comparison to others, in this case it is a weakness as all Masters have Mash on their rosters.

Masters primarily use Boudica for her support as opposed to her damage. Seeing this, they would be best to level her Andraste’s Protection before anything else, primarily to reduce the cooldown to 5 turns at level 10. Battle Continuation does not gain much, and Vow to the Goddess is a super niche skill pre Rank Up, so Masters can leave these at level 1.

• Vow to the Goddess B is Boudica’s anti-Roman skill, giving her up to 60% more damage against Roman enemies. As Roman enemies are rare and often weak to begin with, this skill rarely will see usage. In addition, as Boudica lacks an offensive Noble Phantasm, this skill will only affect her Command Cards. Level this second, if at all. After Rank Up, this skill can be leveled first as the Critical Strength buff scales well with skill level.
• Battle Continuation A grants Boudica a guts to continue to survive in the worst case scenario. This skill is on a massive cooldown and only provides more HP on resurrection per level, so Masters can comfortably skip leveling this skill. Level this last, if at all.
• Andraste’s Protection A is one of Boudica’s primary supports, and grants an Arts buff for 3 turns on a 5-turn cooldown at max level. While the scaling of the skill’s buff is small (10% - 20%), its cooldown reduction makes a huge difference. Level this skill first.

Boudica is all about stacking Defense Up buffs with early access to her Noble Phantasm, so a Starting NP Gauge CE will go a long way to promote access.  She also can use her CE in conjunction with her NP to reduce her own damage with a Defense Up CE. Last, she could bolster her role in increasing her party’s survivability with a party HP Up CE.

• Kaleidoscope / The Imaginary Element / Devilish Bodhisattva: Boudica wants to use her NP as quick as possible, and a starting gauge will get her there. Demonic Bodhisvatta helps her even further with an overcharge to provide more defense.
• Iron Willed Training / Azoth Blade: By increasing Boudica’s defense, Masters could get ever closer to the 100% Defense up which negates all enemy damage.
• Ideal Holy King: Boudica’s purpose is to support her party, and giving the party and extra 1000 HP at the start always helps for this purpose.