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Should I level up Anne Bonny & Mary Read (Rider)?

Hi everyone,

I just managed to pull Anne Bonny & Mary Read (Rider) from the gacha today! I would just like to ask if you guys have any suggestions if this servant is worth investing in as according to the rankings, they're only Tier 4? And what team builds can synergize with them?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: Thanks to everyone for their advice! I'll be holding onto A&M for now until there is a hard caster content :)

Asked by Syd1235 years 7 months ago

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Answers

They are fairly average as far as stats go, and all their skills are crit-centric, so they will work best as the DPS in a crit team. Their generation stats aren't too amazing, even with their increase crit star gen skill up, so you'll want a crit star generator for them as at least one of the supports.

Their main gimmick is their NP, which increases in damage as they lose health. When their health is full, there is no extra damage and their NP hits about as hard as any other quick ST NP. When their health is close to 0 (ie, around 1 or so), at NP1 it will hit for twice it's normal damage.

Overall, they are very average except for their burst potential, which unfortunately comes with the burden of having to deliberately lower your own health which isn't ideal for harder, more drawn-out content. Level them if you want, especially if you don't have any other gold riders, but they aren't really a big priority in terms of their gameplay value.

Anne and Mary are one of the best crit mongers of the game, they're only real downside being that its all one turn. Star generators like Cursed Arm and Kotarou work well or servants that increase crit damage like Hans and Waver (who are good no matter what but I digress).

Their NP is a little weird in that it's only really good when Anne/Mary are at low health. Healers may be beneficial if that's a route you want to capitalize on.

Their NP isn't only good when they are at low health. It hits just as hard as a normal quick oriented NP when they are at 100% health. The low health thing is just *bonus* damage. It's not like there is some type of penalty for using it with full health.

I made the same question a while ago, and I'm convinced that it's not worth it. Anne/Mary are servants that are hard to effectively use, and as mentioned in other comments, they can only shine for one turn and that's it. With some effort they can work and do some outstanding damage, but it'd require an entire team built around them, and if the battle doesn't end that turn then it could mean trouble for you.

If you're in need of Riders, all the 3 star ones (except Boudica) are pretty good options until you can summon a better Rider, such as Ozymandias for example. I don't know what other options you have for Riders, but I particularly do not regret leveling my Medusa.

Alternatively, you can wait until next year for the re-run of the Onigashima event, where they'll give away a free 4 star Rider; which happens to be one of the best in the 4 star tier (Sakata Kintoki).

TL/DR: Anne/Mary aren't worth it, and whether or not you should level them up is up to you. If you like them as waifus or decide to give them a try, then by all means do so. But keep in mind there are better options even for f2p players.

It doesn't really require some type of special effort to do nice damage with A&M, nor some type or abnormally built team or anything like that... You basically build the team exactly like you would with any other crit-based damage dealer (Waver/Hans + Damage Dealer + star generator/other support). You generate 20-25 stars, pop all your steroids, then you crit things really hard... Nothing particularly outlandish or difficult to do.

It's true that A&M can't do anything too special once their skills are on cooldown... But neither can any of the 3* Riders. A&M has 2k more base attack than the 3* riders, so even when her skills are on cooldown, she's still going to out damage them. They all have pretty bad star generation and NP generation, the same deck, and neither Ushi nor Medusa has any skills that really stand out. Other than Surfer Mordred and Kintoki, there really aren't any better non-SSR riders than Anne & Mary, so I don't see why it wouldn't be worth it to build them. I certainly wouldn't like try to save up quartz and roll for A&M or anything like that, but if I already had them, and I had no better riders, I think it would be pretty inane to not build them.

Anne and Mary are a bit underrated, in my opinion. They can do a 100% crit damage steroid + a 30% attack steroid, for some extremely monstrous crit damage. If she is paired with a Waver and/or a Hans, she could very well erase a caster boss in a single turn. The downside is that it only lasts for 1 turn. However, I don't think that that's a big enough drawback to warrant them being so far down on the tier list. After all, Rama has the exact same gimmick (and he's even a bit worse at it), yet he is considered tier 2 for whatever reason. And I don't know what these other guys are talking about, as far as it being hard to use properly or something. With her being a rider + having a star absorption buff, you don't even need a ton of stars to make it work. Once you pop her absorption buff, she will get most of the stars for that turn, so 20-30 is plenty.

As far as the low health NP damage thing goes, I think that people get too hung up on it. A&M's NP hits just as hard as any other quick based NP, even when they have 100% health, so it's not like there is some type of demerit for using their NP when they aren't hurt. It's foolish to think that you've gotta try to base their playstyle around getting really hurt and then firing a NP. Just use their NP when it's available, and don't worry about the HP bonus thing.

But most importantly, what are your other options? If you missed out on Kintoki Rider and Surfer Mo, then there aren't really any better non-SSR Riders that are even available to you. So even though A&M isn't the best in the world, she might be the best rider that you're going to get for a long time. Anyone that tries to tell you to build a 3* rider instead is simply wrong. Medusa is poop. Ushi is *okay*, but her base attack is 2k lower than A&M, so she just can't bust out enough firepower to compete with A&M unless you want to Grail her, and she's simply not worth grailing.

TLDR: Unless you're already sitting on a Ridertoki, or you plan on actively trying to roll for Ozy sometime soon, then go for it! Don't worry about the tier list or a bunch of naysayers who haven't even used this servant before.

Not that I really want to dissuade OP from using A&M if they want to, but in terms of how she compares to lower and similar rarity servants, I'd say Ushi is mostly better. I won't contest you on Medusa though, she's fine as a farmer but not for boss-killing; she and A&M don't have the same role.

That said, imo Ushi can very easily outperform A&M depending on the team comp. Bear in mind that Ushi, as a three star, will eventually get to NP5 even if you only roll the friend point gacha, and at NP5 hers is just about the highest-damage ST NP for a rider aside from Kintoki, assuming NP 1-2 for all other golds, and I wouldn't doubt that OP will eventually have her at a higher NP level than A&M at the least. Ushi also has slightly higher NP gain, as well as a party-wide NP gain up. On that note, she just does far more for the team than A&M ever would, and all her skills are universally good. Her dodge gives her better survivability than A&M, and Charisma and tengu strategy are just good, general party-wide buffs that all teams can benefit from, all this as opposed to A&M's very selfish skillset.

The only thing A&M can do better than Ushi is burst damage really. Her crit skillset is all one turn, and her NP at NP1 will only outperform NP4-5 Ushi when her health is low, which, as I mentioned in an earlier post is not really an ideal situation to be in for a main DPS. A&M are fine, but imo Ushi will be better in most situations. Her base attack doesn't really come into play too much in the grand scheme of things, as long as the weaker servant can compensate with a better kit. It's partially why a servant like Herc outperforms some 5 star berserkers despite his inferior stats.

Whether OP uses A&M or some other ST rider really depends on playstyle imo.

Ushi's NP5 does about 46K damage (self buffed), and A&M with 100% health and NP1 does about 38k, so Ushi's does hit harder. However, it's hard to say that Ushi really has an advantage when it comes to NP, for two reasons.

The first reason, is because that's only when A&M is at 100% health. It's not like A&M needs to be at *low* health to hit harder. Once A&M is at 83% health, her NP will be just as strong as Ushi's. 83% is really not all that low, so it's probably a pretty common scenario that her NP will hit at least as hard as Ushi's. And if she gets even lower than that, her NP will hit even harder than Ushi's (and it can get waaaay harder). If A&M is significantly hurt, then her NP can hit a caster harder than any other servant can. Frankly, it's probably rare that A&M will actually be at 100% health when she fires her NP. It seems like, in a common scenario, A&M's NP will be hitting at least as hard as Ushi's (or at least close enough that the difference is negligible), yet it has the potential to be so much higher, so it's hard to really say that Ushi is a clear winner here.

The second reason, is because that's only when A&M is NP1. We're talking about a scenario where Ushi is completely capped and has no more room to grow, whereas you could always pull another A&M at some point, in which case A&M's NP will leave Ushi's in the dust even at 100% health. So yeah, if we assume that Ushi is at her very best (NP5), and we assume that A&M is at their very worst (NP1 and 100% health), then Ushi does have a bit of an advantage in terms of NP damage. But if we assume average conditions, they're probably pretty comparable. And if we assume best conditions for both servants, A&M's NP is vastly superior.

Ushi's base NP gain is technically better than A&M, but we're talking a fraction of a percent. It's such a small amount that it doesn't even matter. Like, Ushi literally shouldn't even gain an extra 1% of NP on a brave chain, compared to A&M, so it's not even worth mentioning as an advantage.

As far as the kits go, it's also hard to call Ushi a clear winner. Charisma is un-selfish, but does that really even matter? How often is it actually useful for a rider to give her teammates an attack buff? A Rider's star weight is so high that you're probably going to be running her as your main damage dealer, so it's rarely going to really matter whether or not the other party members have an attack buff. And even with charisma up, Ushi herself will still hit weaker than a completely unbuffed A&M.

The NP gain buff can be nice, but it can also be useless, depending on the team that you're running. The evade can be very nice, but since Ushi has 2k less health than A&M, she needs it more. Whether or not a kind of minor party-wide NP gain increase and an evade buff is better than A&M's massive crits is debatable and very situational, but in most scenarios, I'd probably rather have A&M's crits.

A&M's enhanced crit absorption + 100% crit damage + 30% attack makes for a round of massive damage. I'm too lazy to math it out right now, but once you factor in CE's and external steroids, I'll bet that A&M can do more damage in that one round than Ushi can do in three rounds. When you can dish out that kind of damage that fast, you can often eliminate the need for things like evade or party-wide NP gain buffs. And it's not like after that one round, A&M suddenly gets worse than Ushi or something. Even when her skills are on cooldown, she will still continue to hit harder than Ushi. Ushi's stats are just too low.

So, while I will agree that it depends a lot on your comp and playstyle, I'd still lean toward A&M for most situations where I'd want a single target rider. You want a single target rider for unleashing large damage on a caster boss, and A&M can do that better than Ushi can. Ushi has some nice support skills, but a Rider support is rarely something that I'd ever want.

The Heracles/stat thing is very true, but I don't think that it applies to Ushi. Ushi's kit is very vanilla and doesn't really bring anything to the table that warrants such a massive stat deficit. Especially when you consider that a quick oriented Rider tends to be a crit-based damage dealer, so the difference in stats gets amplified even further due to the crit damage (I.e. having 2k less attack winds up being more like 4k less damage when you crit, and that's before crit damage buffs and other steroids are taken into account. The difference grows even more as more steroids come into play, and also when class advantage is taken into account. That 2k difference in attack can become massive).

And please don't get me wrong. I have a level 70 Ushi, and I have an A&M that has been sitting at level 1 for weeks. So I'm not one of those guys who built A&M and is just trying to defend my decision or something like that. I'm just objectively looking at both servants, and I honestly feel that A&M is a more useful ST Rider. I just happened to have already had Ushi built by the time that I drew A&M, and it hasn't really been a priority for me to build up a second ST Rider during all of these back to back events that we've been having. But once I get my hands on some Homunculus Babies next week, I fully intend to build A&M up and bench Ushi.

Good point about her NP. I feel like I never made this clear in my previous posts, so I'll do it now: Anne and Mary's NP, while being gimmicky, is honestly very good. There aren't many servants who have NPs with built-in damage buffs, let alone one that reaches as high as 200% of the original. I feel like some tier lists count that against A&M, when really imo it should be a point in their favour. That said, about A&M having the potential to outshine Ushi when Ushi is capped at NP5, and A&M can increase their NP beyond 1, that's a fair point, but practically speaking, it would be far more likely to have an NP5 Ushi than it would be to have an NP2+ A&M. The good thing is she isn't story-locked, so she can spook you anytime, but unless you are specifically rolling a rider/Okeanos rate-up banner I wouldn't count on that happening, and personally I don't think it'd be practical to factor that into a comparison unless you have every intent of specifically rolling for A&M on their rate-up, but of course that's just my opinion. Also, when I said Ushi had better NP gain, I added that she also has an NP gain up, which was really my main point: considering both of those things, Ushi's is better by a pretty decent margin for 3 out of every 5 turns.

I feel like a lot of what you had to say against Ushi's kit has to do with an approach where Ushi is the only DPS on the team, supported by 2 casters. That's fair, and is it's probably an optimal team for most riders, but not everyone will want to or be able to run a team like that. For any team with an additional DPS in it, Ushi's kit will shine. That said, A&M's buffs are crazy, my only gripe with her two best skills is really that they last only 1 turn. A servant that is exceptional for 1 in 5 turns while being average for the rest is imo not as good as a servant that is above average for most of the time (in Ushi's case 3 out of 5 turns). And personally, I'd say that, unless you can guarantee a steady stream of stars for her, A&M's kit is a lot more situational than Ushi's since A&M herself can't quite generate enough stars to crit consistently, even considering her inherent star weight. And on the point of the stat differences, imo a 2k difference isn't really all that much, especially for HP, but you're right that Ushi's kit is pretty vanilla. It doesn't really let her do anything too amazing, it more just lets her function well in a variety of circumstances, so she unfortunately doesn't really have a niche to let her stand out.

At the end of the day, I think Ushi will fit better into a wider variety of team comps due to her own support potential, as opposed to A&M who will work best with a dedicated star generator. Honestly though, I think in a case as close as this one, it really comes down to personal preference. Some people prefer bursting, and others (ie me) prefer performance that is more consistent, albeit with the trade-off of never quite reaching the level of a burster. It's not like either one of them compared to servants like Kintoki or Ozymandias, where the latter two would very obviously be better.

And yeah, you should totally level her. I have her and Ushi too, both levelled. I actually used Ushi less since I had a random bias against using silvers for the longest time lol. Anne and Mary were actually the first rider I got (other than starting with Martha), and from the story gacha no less! I used them over Martha as my main rider until Kintoki showed up, but after that I got Ozy so I don't really use Ushi or A&M anymore haha

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