Jeanne d'Arc (Alter Santa Lily)

Decent Farmer, Easily Available

Alter Santa Lily’s NP damage is sufficient for most farming applications. She is also a welfare Servant, so most masters will have her at NP5. To further bolster her damage output, she also has a 55% self Buster buff, and a subtle 1.05x damage multiplier due to her Lancer class. Combined with the small attack buff that occurs on her NP after damage is applied, her NPBB chains do a good chunk of damage.

Self NP Charge

Given that Alter Santa Lily can provide herself with 20% NP gauge on demand, she can NP right off the bat with a Kaleidoscope or with a little support from Servants with NP charging skills. As a result, she can function either as a farmer, or as a backline offensive Servant who can fire off her NP as soon as she enters the battle.

Survival Options

Although tied to her Buster buff and a 1200 HP demerit, Santa Lily can render herself invincible for a turn. In most cases, surviving an NP turn is well worth the demerit. Furthermore, she can provide an up to 3000 HP heal on a target with a 5-turn cooldown at max level. The heal additionally grants a flat 30% boost to star generation on the target, which can support the party’s critical damage performance as well. This can be used to either offset her Buster buff demerit or heal any party members that require aid. Between the healing and the Invulnerability, Santa Lily should have no problem staying alive during most quests.

Inconsistent NP Generation

Oftentimes, Jeanne Alter Santa Lily will only have the opportunity to fire her NP once. Her NP gain and card hit counts are mediocre at best. Masters should preferably run her with either a craft essence that provides some starting NP gauge for her, or party members that can give her NP charge.

Lack of Sustained Damage

Her NP damage alone isn’t quite up to par for some of the more challenging quests. Her Saint’s Gift skill takes some of her kit’s focus off of damage, instead providing some survival support. She also has no ability to further enhance her damage for more than a single turn, so her damage outside of her NP turn is often underwhelming. As a result, she is mediocre as far as sustained damage output (although sufficient for farming), and mediocre as a survival support. For difficult quests, more specialized options are often preferred.

NP’s Additional Effects are Situational

Jeanne’s NP overcharge grants the party an attack and healing received buff, and an enemy debuff resistance debuff that lasts only one turn (the NP turn). Although Jeanne benefits from the buff for NP Extra chains, the party cannot take advantage of the attack buff unless they are also attacking on the same turn, which sacrifices Extra chain potential. For both the [healing received buff] and [debuff resistance debuff], it is currently only possible to take advantage of it by chaining a second NP that has a corresponding effect on the same turn, or by having an HP regen effect already active. This can sometimes result in a trade-off between opting to do an NP-brave chain with Alter Santa Lily, versus using the other effects to your advantage and chaining NPs instead. Thankfully, the feature of her NP is the damage rather than its effects, and this is not so much a weakness as it is a quirk of her NP.

Saint’s Gift C: This skill is worth investing in to increase the amount of healing it provides, as well as reducing the cooldown of the skill. Sadly, the critical star generation buff does not scale with additional levels. Although this skill is not central to her role, the strength of the heal when maxed makes it worthwhile.

Self-Transformation A: Leveling this skill does not change how much NP charge it provides, and instead boosts the debuff resistance bonus. As a result, you might only end up leveling this skill for the cooldown reduction.

Ephemeral Dream EX: Similar to Jeanne d’Arc Alter’s skill variant, this is a sizeable self Buster buff with a noticeable increase in Buster bonus per level. Given that AoE damage is her primary role, this skill is both essential and worth leveling first.

OVERALL: Jeanne d’Arc (Alter Santa Lily) is the most logical of Santa Clauses, and her goal is to bury her opponents in presents as quickly as possible with her NP. Starting NP Gauge / NP Damage Up / Damage Up / Buster Up Craft Essences work well with her.

• Kaleidoscope: Even if not max limit broken, having Kaleidoscope on allows her to use her NP immediately when combined with her Self-Transformation skill. If you are running her to farm or as a backline out-of-gate NP Servant, this CE works wonders on her.

• Golden Sumo: Boulder Tournament / Holy Night Dinner / Halloween Princess: Alter Santa Lily already has a self Buster buff, so these Craft Essences provide an Attack or NP damage bonus that stacks multiplicatively. In addition, these Craft Essences give a bit of starting NP, which helps her along towards filling her NP gauge.

• Black Grail: The raw NP damage bonus on this CE (80% with MLB) is the largest boost to damage on Alter Santa Lily’s NP. Make sure to bring some NP charge support Servants to help her along the way to getting her NP out. The healing effect on Saint’s Gift also helps to counteract the negative effects of Black Grail.