Elisabeth Bathory (Halloween)

Rejoice, puppies! The most wondrous idol among all Servants is ready to regale her devoted audience with the most lovely of voices.

As the first welfare Servant to be rewarded in an event, the Caster version of Elisabeth Bathory provides Masters with easy access to a decently powerful AoE Buster NP5. This Noble Phantasm is a perfect tool for farming pesky Assassins, but her skill set, base attack stat and Caster class attack modifier (0.9x) do leave something to be desired on the damage front. In particular, Casters with a BAAAQ deck and a Buster NP often have difficulty doing truly strong damage as they lack the command cards to do a Buster Brave Chain or fully exploit their Territory Creation passive. For extended fights, there are often more viable picks, but if wave clearing is needed, Elisabeth provides.

However, Elisabeth does bring some decent star generation capability, with both Innocent Monster providing stars per turn and Performance Continuation adding an instant infusion of stars. Furthermore, her triple Arts cards can easily facilitate Arts chains for better NP generation which is a welcome addition due to Elisabeth's own average NP gain. With Buster buffs and trait-based Charisma support (she has the Dragon, Evil and Female traits), Elisabeth can function excellently as a hybrid damage-dealer in a variety of nodes despite her vanilla kit. Finally, her access to guts, high base HP and  personal healing capability allows Elisabeth to survive decently in longer quests as well.

Powerful AoE Noble Phantasm

Elisabeth’s most valuable tool is her powerful fully upgraded AoE Noble Phantasm and Mana Burst combination. It’s strong enough to clear most medium-strength waves with class advantage, but it might require a bit more buffing to clear harder waves and/or the boss monster.  

Star Generation Support

With up to 12 stars per turn from Innocent Monster and an additional 8 stars from Performance Continuation once, Elisabeth can provide decent passive star generation. If fielded with A Fragment of 2030, Elisabeth can actually provide just enough stars for most critical-based Servants. Still, critical stars alone do not make a full support, especially if her Innocent Monster skill is on cooldown.

Buster Compatibility

While a Buster NP usually isn’t ideal for Caster Servants, it does enable Masters to field her in Buster compositions. Buster compositions and buffs are more readily available, and often do benefit from the additional stars Elisabeth can provide. Add in her variety of traits (Evil, Dragon, Female) and she can be fielded in a surprising amount of compositions.

Poor Basic Card Damage

With her Caster class damage modifier, card set, low base attack and single turn steroid, Elisabeth struggles to put out decent damage when her NP isn’t fully charged. Therefore, Elisabeth functions best when she doesn’t have to attack often and waits for her moment in the NP spotlight. Her command cards also generate near non-existent star generation due to their low hit counts, and her mediocre NP gain similarly does not encourage relying on her basic command cards outside of facilitating Arts chains.

Inability to Exploit Own Star Generation

The Caster class has one of the lower star weights in the game and if Elisabeth has to be the centerpiece of the damage output, she usually struggles to attract even her own stars. Furthermore, within a full Caster class composition, her star generation is difficult to exploit as most Casters lack any ways to boost their critical capability outside of a select few.

• Innocent Monster provides great value per skill rank, lacks the usual Innocent Monster demerit, and has a surprisingly low cooldown. Still, Elisabeth’s main purpose is blasting enemies with her NP rather than committing fully to being a star support and/or keeping herself alive. A good skill, but should be leveled after Mana Burst.
• Mana Burst (Pumpkin) provides a good Buster buff and a small flat AoE burn on the enemy. While the burn effect is basically inconsequential, the Buster buff itself goes a long way to reaching the damage benchmarks Elisabeth needs to reach to wave clear. Prioritize this skill first.
• Performance Continuation is Elisabeth’s guts skill with an added Instinct effect in the form of 8 stars. The stars do not increase per level which makes leveling this skill mostly useful for the cooldown reduction. Level this last and, if materials are tight, leave it unleveled until later when materials are more plentiful.

With a Buster buff of her own, Elisabeth prefers Craft Essences that synergize well with her NP and preferably stacks multiplicatively with her Buster buff. As such, NP Damage Up CEs are best to boost her raw damage, while Starting NP Gauge, NP Gauge per turn and Supportive CEs are best if Elisabeth is to be used without using her basic command cards.

• Black Grail/Heaven’s Feel: Given Elisabeth’s survival tools, Black Grail adds the most damage to her kit and can be fielded safely. Any other high NP damage CEs such as Angel's Song are decent substitutes.

• Golden Sumo/Halloween Princess: These are the hybrid farming CEs of choice. Both stack nicely with Mana Burst.

• Kaleidoscope/Prisma Cosmos/Dragon’s Meridian: Starting NP gauge CEs are ideal for fast farming set-ups. For extended fights where Elisabeth needs to use her NP a lot, Prisma Cosmos is ideal.

• Fragment of 2030/ His Rightful Place: If Elisabeth is to be used as a hybrid star support, these 2 CEs provide Elisabeth with exactly what she needs, providing either more stars or some Starting NP Gauge.