Saint Martha (Santa)

“I’m Martha. Wait no, Santa Martha, right? My specialties include cooking, sewing, and…eh? Battle? What’s that? Ummm, anyway, nice to meet you! Let’s have fun celebrating Christmas, Master!”

This is the youthful incarnation of Martha, before she was granted sainthood, back when she was a simple village girl. Martha was given the honor of being the Santa Welfare for the FGO Christmas 2023 event, and her idea of what a proper Santa Claus should be boils down to preparing the best Christmas feast imaginable. In gameplay, Santa Martha is a Caster with a supportive Quick NP, complete with a stock of hearty offensive buffs to bolster the party members with.

All of Martha Santa’s skills provide some form of support to the party. Martha’s Homecooking provides an above-average attack buff to an ally, a 20% NP gauge charger, and a max HP boost for 3 turns. She provides a hint of utility as well with Sisterly Fussiness, which inflicts a defensive debuff on all enemies of the current wave, while also inflicting NP Seal on them. Her final skill, Santa Claus’ Invitation, enables an ally to deal critical hits by providing one ally with a huge boost to their Star Gather Rate, along with a few Stars. Additionally, she charges her own NP Gauge by up to 30% with her final skill. Between all of her skills alone, she has very respectable offensive buff potential, making her a great option to slot in for buff stacking purposes.

Martha Santa’s Noble Phantasm, Happy Merry Christmas, is strictly supportive and deals no damage. Her NP further buffs all allies’ ATK, drops a larger set of Critical Stars, heals all allies, and also applies the Jacob’s Limbs trifecta (borrowed from Martha Ruler’s third skill) of trait-based bonus damage against Divine, Undead, and Demon enemies for three turns. The only effect that scales with NP level is the trait-based bonus damage, and with relatively little scaling, so Masters will not gain much additional benefit from getting her to NP5 vs just leaving her at NP1. However, this also means the bulk of benefit from her NP is available to Masters even with just one copy of her.

Overall, Martha’s Santa form is very much a worthwhile Servant to keep handy in the back pocket for Masters in need of an additional offensive boost to their damage dealer of choice. She is among one of the highest damage boosts available for a single wave (assuming her defense debuff doesn’t miss) among easy-access Servants. Even if she won’t be making mincemeat out of the Master’s enemies by herself, she can still cook up a generous course of buffs to ensure any allies can easily do so in her stead.

Welfare Status

Santa Martha is relatively easily obtainable during the Christmas 2023 lottery event, so Masters can grab a copy of her for free. However, it should be noted that her event lasts a slightly shorter time than most events, being only about a week long.

High Offensive Buff Values

Her targetable 3-turn ATK buff has a value of up to 30%, while her AoE DEF debuff reaches up to 20%. From skills alone, she can give a total of 50% effective ATK bonus to an ally for 1 enemy wave. If including her NP, which grants a further 20% ATK buff, she can reach 70%. Given that many supports, even of higher rarity, don’t reach this level, she makes for a great offensive support option to keep in mind when looking for a Servant to slot in to give a big boost to the damage dealer.

Quick NP Card

Having a Quick supportive NP makes the primary intended use case for her NP to be forming Quick chains with other cards if possible, which although is helpful to improving chances of a critical hit the next turn, still has the demerit of needing to wait until the next turn to fully benefit from its effects, and also the fact that Critical Stars are irrelevant if using an NP instead.

Little Benefit from NP Levels

One of the main pros of being a Welfare Servant is often ease of access to NP5. Santa Martha’s NP doesn’t benefit very much from additional NP levels, however, with the only effect that changes being the Special ATK buff (vs Divine, Undead, or Demon). The values also don’t change that much with level, starting at 30% at NP1, and reaching 50% at NP5. Since the bonus effect is niche and the value gained isn’t all that huge, Masters can arguably safely leave her at NP1 for gameplay purposes and still reap essentially all the relevant benefits of her kit, if unable to get all copies of her from her event.

If using Martha Santa as an offensive buff support, essentially all of her skills are worth leveling for the sake of increasing the raw power provided from her skills. If lacking materials, prioritizing her first 2 skills make the largest difference in practice.

• Martha’s Homecooking EX – Her primary damage buff, this should be the first skill that is focused on for improving her supportive capabilities. Levels in this improve both the ATK and Max HP buff values, and maxing this is ideal to the most value from the skill.
• Sisterly Fussiness B – This is an AoE enemy debuff skill, which inflicts both NP Seal and DEF down on all enemies. The DEF debuff is the only effect that scales with level, although leveling this is still helpful since it effectively increases the damage dealt on the targets. However, this has slightly less applicability than the first skill since it applies to only 1 wave, and also can miss if enemies have any debuff resistance or debuff immunity, so this should be prioritized second.
• Santa Claus’ Invitation – This skill is Martha’s own self-targeted NP charger that also boosts Star Gather for an ally and gives a fixed 10 Crit Stars. Although this can go up to 30% charge with levels, in practice, access to her NP as a support doesn’t change that significantly with a 20% or a 30% NP charge skill. The only other effect that changes with level is the Star Gather buff, which is already quite high at level 1. Leaving this skill at level 6 is enough to allow her to NP with either an MLB Imaginary Element or Kaleidoscope. Since this skill does not provide a raw offensive boost directly, it can be left for last.

As a support Servant, Santa Martha’s CE choices are relatively flexible. She can hold Bond Up or Event Bonus CEs. Since she can provide a targetable Star Gather boost, Stars Per Turn CEs can help increase the pool of stars the party has to work with. She can also hold Taunt CEs so that enemies will target her when her stock of buffs are on cooldown. If desiring a quick NP for an additional offensive boost, Starting NP Gauge CEs are also fine. 

• Flexible Craft Essence (Bond/Event): Since she won’t be doing the damage in the party, she can hold these bonus CEs without too much impact to performance.
• Kaleidoscope / The Imaginary Element: Since Santa Martha has her own NP charger, she can NP right off the bat with a non-MLB Kaleidoscope. She can also do an immediate NP if she has her third skill at least at Level 6, and with an MLB The Imaginary Element equipped.
• A Fragment of 2030: The go-to for Critical Stars each turn, this helps supplement Santa Martha’s own star bomb effects from her third skill and her NP. 
• GUDAGUDA Poster Girl / Halloween Arrangement / Grand New Year: Once Martha has exhausted her kitchen supply of buffs, she essentially is a bit of deadweight until her cooldowns recover. Taunt CEs are effective choices for her, since it can effectively act as a delayed order change to more quickly bring in backline Servants.