Medea

“All I know I learned directly from the goddess Hecate herself. My spells are on a plane of existence higher than yours.”

Given a second chance at life, the Witch of Betrayal commands her unparalleled magical abilities in service of Chaldea to prove her loyalty. Wielding her signature Noble Phantasm Rule Breaker, Medea is a utility damage dealer best defined by her ability to remove an enemy’s buffs on demand, making her one of the most useful Servants in gimmick-heavy fights.

While Rule Breaker’s buff removal is by no means a unique effect, Rapid Words of Divine is what truly sets Medea apart from her competitors. At a mere level 4, Rapid Words allows a full charge of her NP gauge with no external help. Additionally, Medea’s NP also refunds some NP gauge on Overcharge. With her triple Arts deck, Territory Creation’s Arts performance up, and Circe’s Teaching’s NP gain buff, she is able to charge back her NP exceedingly fast, even allowing back-to-back NPs in certain situations. While Circe’s Teaching’s targetable NP gain boost is useful for Medea herself, the skill also removes all debuffs on its target, giving Medea valuable cleansing utility for her allies when needed. Finally, Argon Coin rounds out her kit as a low-cooldown heal, adding some extent of long-term sustain to her arsenal.

Despite her considerable magical might, the Princess of Colchis falters in some areas. In exchange for Medea’s extraordinary NP charging prowess, Rule Breaker has a damage modifier considerably below that of other single-target NPs, even after its upgrade. With no damage boosting skills to make up for this, Medea is forced to rely on external support in order to deal meaningful damage. Her second major weakness is her lack of any hard defensive measure, which coupled with her 3 Star HP stat makes it relatively easy for enemies to eliminate her.

Medea is able to spam her NP very reliably, allowing her to perform her buff removal task very well while also dealing a steady rate of decent single-target damage. While Medea’s weaknesses force her to rely on external support in a lot of aspects, she is still a highly valuable utility pick, especially for quests featuring a lot of pesky buffs.

Gameplay Tip

Rule Breaker’s buff removal occurs after its the damage has been dealt. As such, it won’t itself deal damage to enemies with Invincibility/Evasion, but subsequent attacks will. Additionally, if Rule Breaker manages to kill the target, it will also fail to remove any effects activating on death..

On-Demand Buff Removal

Buff removal tools are extremely important in a lot of difficult quests, and as Medea is able to use Rule Breaker on the very first turn, she is easily one of the best, and most accessible, options for this role. As a nifty byproduct, this instant NP property also grants Medea independence from Starting NP Gauge CEs, allowing her to freely use stronger damage boosting CEs as well as event CEs.

Spammable NP

With a triple Arts deck, Territory Creation, and potentially an NP gain buff, Medea sports a rather impressive NP gain. Due to Rule Breaker’s NP charge refund, Medea’s ability to unleash it early also jumpstarts her NP-spamming capability, especially as the instant Arts NP also gives her an easier time in forming NP Arts Brave chains. Under the right setup, she is even able to potentially perform back-to-back NPs, another advantage she has over her competitors.

Targetable NP Gain and Debuff Removal

Circe’s Teaching adds another layer to Medea’s utility, allowing her to remove debuffs from a given ally while also supporting them by boosting their NP generation. Debuff cleansing is especially powerful during difficult content where enemy debuffs can be incredibly debilitating. Masters need to choose carefully whether to use Circe’s Teaching primarily for its cleansing ability or its ability to boost NP generation.

Low Offensive Presence

The combination of a subpar NP multiplier, the Caster-class 0.9x damage modifier, and the lack of any damage steroid severely limits Medea’s damage output despite her NP spam capability. While the aid of damage-boosting CEs and supports generally allows Medea to reach the required damage benchmarks against Assassins, she still takes more time to eliminate enemies compared to her competitors.

No Hard Survivability Skills

While Argon Coin’s heal is on a rather short cooldown, Medea has no way to delay or block incoming attacks. This makes her extremely susceptible to large bursts of damage. In more difficult stages (especially against non-Assassin Opponents), enemy NPs and stray criticals may be able to eliminate Medea before she gets a chance to heal.

Medea is one of the few Servants who don’t need a lot of investment in order to fulfill her main task properly. The only mandatory aspect of her skill leveling is Rapid Words of Divine, which needs to be at least level 4 in order to enable her instant NP. Nevertheless, having all of Medea’s skills maxed makes her performance far smoother, and the cooldown reductions are particularly useful for longer fights.

• Rapid Words of Divine: By far Medea’s most potent skill, leveling Rapid Words of Divine beyond level 4 may seem useless; however, the cooldown reduction is always enticing, and having this skill maxed also helps her get more Overcharge opportunities, which in turn allows for more NP refund. This skill should generally be leveled first.

• Argon Coin: This skill probably has the best level scaling among Medea’s skills, both in terms of effect and cooldown reduction. However, Argon Coin becomes somewhat redundant when Medea is used in Arts-oriented teams, as these generally offer an abundance of healing. Level this skill last, unless Medea is to be used often and outside of Arts teams, in which case it can be leveled second.

• Circe’s Teaching: While Circe’s Teaching scales worse when leveled compared to Medea’s other skills, the increase in NP gain buff increases her potential to perform back-to-back NPs or greatly boost the NP gain of another. This skill should be leveled second, especially if Medea is to be mostly used in difficult quests where access to her debuff cleansing is essential.

Thanks to Medea’s instant NP gimmick, her CE picks are incredibly flexible, and she is generally able to pick the strongest scaling CEs without much drawback. NP Damage Up CEs are by far her best choice due to their higher modifier, although Arts Performance Up is a decent alternative. NP Gain Up also works well in combination with common Arts supports. Other than these CEs, Medea is also an excellent choice to equip event CEs on, as her main task can be performed independent of CE choice.

• The Black Grail / Heaven’s Feel: Giving Medea the highest damage increase overall, NP Damage UP CEs also stack multiplicatively against the commonly used Attack and Arts Performance Up buffs from supports.

• Kaleid Sapphire / Formal Craft / Kill on Sight: While the damage increase granted by Arts Performance Up CEs is lower than that of NP Damage Up CEs, these CEs also increase Medea’s Arts cards’ NP gain, which is ideal considering her triple Arts deck.

• Cute Orangette / Reading on the Holy Night / Witch Under the Moonlight / Faithful Companions: Aside from increasing her overall damage, these CEs provide an additional NP gain boost for Medea, making them decent alternatives to help her perform back-to-back NPs. While NP gain buffs scale worse with Circe’s Teaching, they work well with Arts performance up buffs, which are often brought along by support Servants.

• Hecate’s Staff: As with all Bond CEs, Hecate’s Staff gives her a measly 100 HP and ATK, and it is far inferior compared to other choices in terms of damage boost. However, this CE’s Arts Performance Up buffs also affects Medea’s allies, helping the team rotate their NPs faster.

• Kaleidoscope/Dragon’s Meridian: It is a testament to Kaleidoscope’s ubiquity that even Medea can benefit from it. In this case, Starting NP Gauge CEs are useful if Medea has to use her NP multiple times within the first few turns, slipping in an extra NP before Rapid Words of Divine comes in.