Marie Antoinette (Alter)

“If you want to play with me, your birthday will be stained with blood!”

Marie Antoinette is such a lovely character, always smiling, aiming to be an idol and… summoning a guillotine to attack?! Our purehearted girl has turned from a weak rider with ponies into a devastating AoE Arts Avenger capable of smashing enemies with her noble phantasm. With powerful curses, super-effective damage, and loopability, she’s not someone you want to mess with!

Marie is a highly Noble Phantasm oriented Servant dedicated for looping. She starts with a powerful NP regeneration skill, Bloodstained Necklace B+, which not only gives her a decent charge but further fills out more of her gauge each turn after. Add that with her passive Self Restoration (Magical Energy) B+ and she can passively generate about 24% gauge each turn by simply existing. She also gains a decent bit of survivability, using My Love Is Eternal EX for a multi-hit invincibility to avoid the guillotine coming both for her and Mia Luna Tearmoon! But her true strength comes from her curses. Guillotine Ricanante B is a surprisingly large curse-on-demand skill, giving up to 5000 curse damage. But to top it off, it raises Marie’s damage against cursed targets, which she has no problem doing with her Noble Phantasm Vae Victus B+. And if that doesn’t top the cake (which she replaced bread with), her Noble Phantasm will double that already large curse damage and stack even more on top of it! She is truly the CERN of French Queens!

Marie’s Noble Phantasm power is exceptional, but she just isn’t an all-arounder. Namely, she has no real Critical strength except for a small passive in Oblivion Correction C. Masters will need to rely on her curse damage far more than they would like if they can’t kill with a Noble Phantasm. She also suffers from her Avenger typing, which doesn’t have many natural effective enemies. Her Guillotine Ricanante skill also lacks a bit of synergy due to it both being the Arts up skill needed for looping and the massive curse skill to clean up late waves.

Marie is a great Servant to use in looping single core situations if one has access to a Caster Altria or alternatives. She’d be great in farming, especially 3-3-x waves. So make like the French in the 1700s and kill that Queen! Or alternatively… summon her.

NP Regen

It is hard to argue against a 24% per turn passive regen. With a Black Grail, double Castoria, and something like the Tropical Summer Mystic Code she has enough to loop easily against 3/3/x neutral or better enemies. With an Oberon to swap in she can cut a few enemy requirements.

Survivability

Marie’s 3-turn 3-hit Invincibility is the perfect way to avoid the guillotine. On a low 6-turn cooldown she can tank a lot of damage. Not to mention she takes neutral damage against most common classes so she likely won’t struggle with matchups.

Curses

Most Curses in the game are only trivial damage, but Marie’s second skill gives a respectable 5,000 Curse damage. Double that with her Noble Phantasm’s effect and enemies could be looking at massive Curse damage each turn. To make matters even better, she gains curse bonus damage for three turns, and her Noble Phantasm curses an enemy before dealing damage, so this is a guaranteed damage up skill.

Critical Hits

As an Avenger with 1.1x base damage, it would be quite nice if Marie could also dish out massive Critical Hits. But she has no particular crit skill, and her typical supports do not offer much in the way of Critical support either. She will be reliant on her Noble Phantasm to clean up.

Avenger Typing

Outside of Moon Cancers (weak), Rulers (strong), and Berserkers (both), Marie is neutral to every enemy. This can be a good thing for survivability, but many times stronger options with class advantage exist.

Paired Skills

Typically the largest health enemies occur in the final wave of a fight. It’d be great to use Marie to unleash her Noble Phantasm and then if a small amount remains, curse damage cleans it up. Sadly, her Arts up skill which would be used on turn 1 also applies the large 5000 damage curse, meaning she cannot apply it to the last wave and be able to loop effectively.

Marie’s skills involve cursing an enemy, filling up her NP gauge, and cursing them some more. Usually Masters looking to loop will pop all skills on the first turn, but if looking for extra curse damage they may want to hold off on Guillotine Ricanante until the final wave at the cost of looping ease. Typical skill order is 1 > 2 > 3.

• Bloodstained Necklace B+ gives Marie her primary charge, pushing out 30% immediately and then 20% per turn following. While its third effect, 10% charge extra taking hits, is nice, it generally isn’t used much because she kills everyone before they can hit her. Definitely level this first to get as much charge as possible early, and to max to not get stuck with the 98% charge curse.

• Guillotine Ricanante B is Marie’s curse skill. Not only does it curse all enemies, but gives her a nice 30% damage boost against them. Since her Noble Phantasm curses before damage, not only will this 30% damage the wave it is applied, but all following up to 3 turns. However, this also gives Marie her Arts steroid, so Masters trying to optimize wave 3 damage may find they have to choose between early Arts damage and NP regeneration or Curse memes in the final wave. This should be leveled second but could probably be left at level 9 if needed.

• My Love Is Eternal EX gives Marie survivability. With 3 hits of invincibility on a short cooldown, it is hard to hit her. In addition, she gets a small heal from it, and it does help her enemies with a guts status to keep her moving. This can be leveled last and to whatever level necessary as levels only improve guts/heal HP.

Marie is an Arts damage dealer, and Arts damage dealers need cards to boost damage. Noble Phantasm Damage Up cards are a clear winner here, as she can still loop with them. Barring that, Overcharge cards can be quite effective as her Noble Phantasm’s overcharge effect is more NP Damage. Starting NP Gauge / Mixed starting gauge/damage cards can also be effective.

The Black Grail / Inverted Rain of Mud: When it comes to damage, there is no contest against a Noble Phantasm Damage CE. She can loop with it, so a Master should use it. RMR should only be used if one does not possess a Black Grail, as it is a strict 20% less damage for the second and third waves.

Duke of Flame / Treasure of the Caribbean / One Who Wishes for Salvation: NP Damage is still king, and getting it via Overcharge is spicy. And 2-stage Overcharge skill is effectively a 20% 1-time NP Damage boost, and The One Who Desires Salvation grants it every turn.

Kaleidoscope / Winter Crystal / Golden Sumo: Boulder Tournament / Ocean Flier / Dragon’s Meridian / The Imaginary Element: While not recommended, if one wants easier looping they can look at starting NP gauge CEs to get a head start on the gauge refills. These can also help if the waves are not standard 3/3/x form.