Tristan

The king does not understand the hearts of men... Nay, maybe it is I who did not understand the king.

A member of King Arthur’s court and the titular character of Tristan and Iseult, Sir Tristan is one of the Knights of the Round, and an archer of unparalleled skill. His somber bearing and seemingly delicate appearance belie a man of great passion, who once rebuked King Arthur himself and stormed out of Camelot. As an ST Quick Archer, Tristan brings to battle a well-rounded overall performance with a wide array of utility and support options.

Tristan’s main source of damage comes in the form of his Quick ST NP Failnaught, which post-Interlude will begin to hit for a decent chunk of damage and Ignore Defense. Thanks to his strong base NP generation and Unblessed Birth, Tristan can unleash his Failnaught fairly often, generating a decent number of stars each time thanks to its good hit count. In addition, Tristan has extensive support capabilities, such as providing an ever-useful 1-hit Evasion for each party member, stripping an enemy of pesky buffs and reducing their critical hit chance, and making an enemy more susceptible to useful debuffs, such as Stun and Defense Down.

Unfortunately with such a focus on supporting the team, Tristan naturally finds his damage outside of his NP to be on the lower side compared to his peers due to his lack of active damage buffs, with only Independent Action providing a small boost in damage to his crits. In addition, his QQAAB deck means most of his Brave Chains will be some combination of Arts and Quick cards, rarely benefiting from the high damage multiplier on Buster cards. Add in the NP Seal demerit on his Unblessed Birth and his lack of strong personal defenses, and Tristan ends up being not particularly well suited to be the main attacker of a team. 

In short, Tristan excels in fights where straightforward smashing is not the best way to handle things, as is often the case in Challenge Quests and Main Story Quests. After all, brute force isn't always an option, with many powerful enemies routinely having multiple HP bars to burn through before the fight is finished.

Party Support

While sources of Defense Up and healing are a common way to raise a Servant’s and/or party’s survivability, not many Servants are capable of providing an on-demand 1-hit Evasion for the party. As such, Tristan is an excellent Servant to bring in to protect against sudden or inevitable AoE NPs.

Enemy Buff Removal

Tristan is one of a small number of Servants capable of removing an enemy’s buffs with either a skill or NP. In Tristan’s case, his buff removal is tied to a skill, which gives him a little more flexibility in use compared to Servants that rely on their NP to clear buffs.

Good NP and Critical Star Generation

Tristan’s QQAAB deck, combined with his high hit counts and decent base NP gain, leads to Tristan being a good active Critical Star generator and NP spammer. Considering Tristan also has Unblessed Birth to jumpstart his NP Gauge, and high base Archer star weight to indirectly boost his generation performance via critical hits, Tristan's NP can be unleashed fairly often. 

Low Damage 

Tristan lacks damage buffs of his own, leaving him entirely reliant on other Servants, Craft Essences and/or Mystic Codes to improve his damage. His QQAAB card deck is also more focused on generation than damage potential.

Personally Fragile

Though Harp of Healing is a nice team-wide defensive buff, it is also Tristan’s main defensive measure. Because it provides only minor healing and prevents damage from only 1 attack, it’s a skill that’s rarely used outside of countering an enemy’s NP in high stakes combat, which means Tristan will be reliant on external defensive options and the critical chance down on Critique to the King, especially against enemies with strong basic attacks.

NP Seal on NP Charge

While Tristan is not alone in having a battery skill with a demerit, Tristan’s demerit on Unblessed Birth is unique in that it inflicts a 1 turn NP Seal on him the turn it’s used. As a result, Masters generally need to wait one turn to use his NP unless one has a method to either remove debuffs or prevent debuffs from applying in the first place.

Tristan has 3 great skills: a strong party-wide defensive skill with Harp of Healing, an NP battery in the form of Unblessed Birth, and rare enemy buff removal as found in Critique to the King. Unblessed Birth is the most important skill for Tristan to level, to the point that he wants to have it maxed for both the improvements in the skill’s scaling NP Charge effect and for the cooldown reduction. Harp of Healing should be leveled next for the cooldown reduction as surviving successive (AoE) NPs often requires as low a cooldown as possible. Finally, Critique to the King is the least important skill to raise, due to its poor scaling and how infrequently one will typically use it in a fight.

• While Harp of Healing C provides a limited amount of healing that scales with skill levels, the amount is small at any level, so this skill will generally be used for the 1-hit Evasion it provides to everybody. Sometimes one will get some use out of its Mental Debuff Cleanse, as this can remove Charm effects from other party members. This skill’s important leveling breakpoints are at level 6 and 10 as they reduce its cooldown; any other skill level is largely unimportant.

• If Harp of Healing is Tristan’s most important defensive skill, Unblessed Birth B is Tristan’s most important offensive skill. While the NP Seal it inflicts on Tristan is a nuisance, it still provides an impressive 50% NP gauge at level 10. As such, this is the most important skill of Tristan’s to raise to 10, and it should be done before raising any other of his skills past 6.

• While Critique to the King B does have an Enemy Critical Chance Down effect that improves with skill level, it scales rather poorly. If one raises this skill, the main benefit is the reduced cooldown, but it is not a skill that one will normally use on cooldown anyway. This is a skill can be leveled last or left at level 4 for a while.

Because Tristan has a potent battery skill, he is one of the few Servants that can equip a stronger non-starting NP Gauge CE and still perform well for any battle length. Ideally he uses a CE that provides Quick Performance Up or applies NP Damage Up. Other effects, such as NP Gain Up or Critical Damage Up, aren’t as valuable for Tristan unless one goes the distance in ensuring Tristan regularly crits, as the improvements provided by CEs aren’t as large compared to what other Servants can provide Tristan with their skills.

• Black Grail / Heaven’s Feel / Angel’s Song: Tristan’s main source of damage comes from his NP, so CEs that greatly boost his NP’s damage are ideal to equip. In addition, these CEs will boost his Attack stat too for a double whammy of effectiveness.

• Imaginary Around / Gandr: The pure Attack and a strong passive Quick Performance Up help improve Tristan’s overall damage capabilities as well as the Critical Star and NP generation on his Quick cards.

• Golden Sumo / Holy Night Supper:These two CEs are staples for any damage dealing Servant thanks to the strong passives that aren’t easily found on other options, especially not ones with starting NP gauge. Golden Sumo in particular will improve every aspect of Tristan’s damage.

• Cute Orangette: This is the only NP Gain Up CE that stands out as it has pure Attack and also includes NP Damage Up.

• Knights of Marines / One Summer: With the addition of either some NP Gauge support, or his own NP battery with some form of Debuff Immunity or Debuff Clearing (from support or a Mystic Code), these two hybrid Quick CEs can allow Tristan to use an NP on the first turn with a small buff to damage if desired.

• A Fragment of 2030 / His Rightful Place: Because Tristan’s deck is lacking in Buster cards, one may opt to focus on Tristan’s ability to function as a support more than a damage dealer, and passive Critical Star generation is a good way to handle this.