Dobrynya Nikitich

“It's hot! So I'm stripping.”

When most people think of spooky Servants, they think of Halloween ones. Not so fast, says Dobrynya, who is bound to spook most Masters’ rolls for ages to come! As a Rider with an AoE Buster Noble Phantasm, Dobrynya primarily acts as a force to kill both Dragons and Casters.

Dobrynya’s primary strength is her anti-Dragon trait. Via Berza Damask A for herself and Berza Burko EX for the party, she is capable of leveling a Dragon, especially with some support. She has fairly good Critical support with Eternal Young Warrior B+’s star generation and Berza Burko’s Critical Strength bonus. And she is fairly tanky with a Guts on Eternal Young Warrior.

Unfortunately, she is incredibly vanilla as a Servant, so she does not particularly excel in any one thing. Although her NP offers the ability to ignore defense, her damage in general is fairly low. Her NP gain is disappointing. And her niche is practically non-existent.

Dobrynya is a rather decent starting Servant, giving early access to a charge and help with the Dragon enemies prevalent in earlier nodes. She can also serve as an anti-Dragon support for Masters needing an extra boost against certain enemies. But above all, she is a catgirl, which makes her super important to summon!

Anti-Dragon

Through a combination of two buffs to boost her anti-Dragon trait, Dobrynya can hit fairly hard against Dragon mobs. Unfortunately, there are very few Caster Dragons in the game. Furthermore, while she has her niche, it is a powermod niche resulting in far less damage than a supereffective niche from a Servant like Siegfried against neutral classes. Her anti-Dragon trait is best thought of as a support skill for other Servants to use.

Critical Support

Dobrynya both generates stars every turn and increases the Critical strength of her allies. Unfortunately for her, she is a Rider so distributing these to other Servants may be a challenge. 

Tanky

Dobrynya has fairly good hit points, so can take a few hits. To add to that, she’s got a decent Guts skill on a short cooldown to extend the battle if necessary.

Low Damage

Dobrynya only has a single small steroid and no passives to boost her damage, so her Noble Phantasm does not hit as hard as other options. She will struggle against most non-Dragon waves, even with class advantage. 

Poor NP Gain

Probably most disappointing is that Dobrynya’s NP charge skill is only 20%. This makes her impossible to use for looping scenarios, and most farming. Even without that in consideration, she’s got poor hit counts on her Quick card and middling counts on her Extra cards. She will likely be a one-and-done Noble Phantasm user. 

Vanilla

Dobrynya simply is not special. Outside of her ability to buff another Servant’s Dragon damage, everything about her is run of the mill damage and crit skills, and none particularly effective either.

Typically a Master is going to want to use Dobrynya to support other Servants in killing Dragons. This would make her third skill crucial to level up, and used as early as possible in a battle. Her first and second skills have a 3-turn duration on all effects so they can be used early as well, especially her first which is used to boost Critical star drop rate.

• Eternal Young Warrior B+ gives Dobrynya Guts, Debuff Immune, and generates Critical stars. This is her primary survival skill and is a hefty one at that. It’s likely safe to level this to level 6 for a few extra stars and cooldown reduction, but it should be leveled last as scaling only gives a couple more stars and a bit more guts HP.
• Berza Damask A is Dobrynya’s steroid, both in a boost in Arts and Buster and a special damage boost against Dragon enemies. The Arts boost is relatively useless, but the Buster gives her NP a little more punch. This skill is useful if using her Noble Phantasm instead of her support, and is best leveled second to level 6 or so.
• Berza Burko EX is Dobrynya’s bread and butter, both enabling a quicker access to a Noble Phantasm with a charge, and giving her allies support Critical damage and Dragon damage. The charge scales with level, making it important to level it to level 10 if planning to use her.

As a standard DPS Servant, Dobrynya works best with the standard Craft Essence recommendations. She can mix damage and earlier access to a gauge with Mixed Starting Gauge / Damage CEs, she can get full earlier access to CEs with Starting NP Gauge CEs, or with proper supports she can deal more damage with NP Damage CEs.

• Aerial Drive / Golden Sumo: Boulder Tournament / Holy Night Supper / Partake with the King / Starry Nights: With a small self-charge, Dobrynya will have a bit easier time accessing her Noble Phantasm than otherwise. With a 50% charge, a max append 2 skill, her own charge, and a MC 10% charge, she can unleash her Noble Phantasm on the first turn. There is a possibility of getting two off if she has the right supports. These add a bit of damage to the equation. 
• Kaleidoscope / The Imaginary Element / Dragon’s Meridian: Starting NP gauge always leads to earlier access to a Noble Phantasm. With a non-MLB Kaleidoscope, she can NP immediately with the help of her own NP charge skill.
• The Black Grail: Dobrynya does not have the charge required to hit for many Noble Phantasms, so Masters may want to beef up the damage she does for the few times she manages to fire off her NP. A Black Grail is the easiest way to bulk it up.