MMM - Industrial Illusions Induce Impressive Imagery of Italian Inciters in Indigenous Interurban (Fate/Strange Fake Collab 1)

With a BAAAQ card deck, Prelati surprisingly fits the mould of a typical Caster, contrary to appearances, with 0.4% base NP gain and 4-hit Arts cards that also hits the conventional pitfalls of multi-hit Arts cards, their base Arts gain coming out to 1.728, very much average.

As always, those high hitcounts come at a cost, and Prelati’s other cards have pretty abysmal NP gain in return for very little benefit, with their Extra card and Quick especially having notably worse NP gain than average. While their abundance of Arts cards makes this weakness not so bad, it is still a drawback to make note of.

In return, those high hitcounts on every card type mean Prelati has great star generation no matter the chain, though their Arts cards won’t be too good at it without star generation buffs. With the Caster class’s star weight Prelati is unlikely to be able to convert those critical stars for their own benefit, but anybody critting is better than nobody critting, y’know?

Skill 1

First for Prelati’s skill lineup is unsurprisingly one founded in their primary skill - Illusion (Fantastical). Much like the Merlin skill this is a variant of, Prelati provides the team with a 1-turn Invincible buff, while simultaneously slapping the enemy with a 30% Critical Rate Down debuff for 3 turns.

Where this skill diverges from Merlin’s original, unupgraded skill is that it also afflicts Terror for 3 turns, the Mental Debuff which has a 40% chance each enemy turn to apply Stun for 1 turn then expire, and gives you the option to swap Prelati’s spirit origin. In other words, you get to switch between Francesca and Francois each time you use it.

As you will immediately see with the next skills, Prelati’s kit shifts depending on how specifically Prelati has trans’d their gender, so it’s an important choice to make, though you can also choose which mode Prelati starts in, so you don’t necessarily have to pop this skill to get the skill benefits you want, similar to how Ptolemaios works.

Regardless of the swapping gimmick, this is an absurdly powerful defensive tool. Team Invincible is a defensive perk at a premium, and Prelati gets it at a very reasonable 8-turn base cooldown, but also with the added Terror debuff, which is likely to also protect the team from enemy turns later on. In terms of bang for buck, this single skill is probably one of the best defensive buttons in the game.

Skill 2

Next up is Disciple of the Soul, a very straightforward skill despite having variance based on Prelati’s form. Regardless of which spirit origin you’re using, this skill provides a solid 30% Arts Up buff to themselves for 3 turns, boosting Prelati’s main card type, but this is also the mandatory gauge charger for an SSR Servant.

In Francois' form, this skill provides a 30% gauge charge to the whole team, while in Francesca form it’s an 80% gauge charge to herself. In terms of bang for your buck the Francois form gauge charge is slightly better, but the Francesca form gauge charge offering an immediate NP regardless of CE choice with level 10 Mana Loading is also very powerful. Which form you use this skill in is going to be almost wholly dependent on your team lineup and CE choice, but both options are powerful tools at your disposal, albeit at a long 9-turn base cooldown.

Skill 3

Last on the skill lineup is Protection of Absurdity. Much like the shielding internet anonymity provides by simultaneously being serious or satirical depending on the audience response, Prelati can shift between being an ally of truth and law, or chaos and disorder on the flip of a dime.

In Francois form, this skill provides a 30% Anti-Lawful alignment Effective Damage buff to the team for 3 turns, as well as a 30% Arts Up buff for the same duration. Whereas in Francesca form, this skill provides the same effective damage buff but against Chaotic alignment, and the secondary buff is 30% NP Strength Up for 3 turns, instead.

It goes without saying that you should only use the side of this skill that gives an applicable Effective Damage buff against your opposition, and thanks to Prelati’s first skill’s ability to change form, you can use the Gauge charger version you wanted, then swap form if applicable to get the correct Effective Damage buff. The difference between an Arts Up and NP Strength Up buff is pretty negligible for Prelati themselves - one boosts regular card damage and NP gain as well as NP damage, but the other will stack multiplicatively with other buffs in Prelati’s kit, resulting in higher NP damage.

As is typical for moderate team buff skills, this thing has an 8-turn base cooldown.

Like the majority of their skill kit, Prelati’s NP also diverges based on their spirit origin form. Both NP’s are Arts, but the first we’ll cover, Grand Illusion, is a support NP, so let’s get into that.

Grand Illusion is a massive grab-bag of debuffs that get plastered on the whole enemy one-by-one. Starting with a 30% Debuff Resistance Down debuff for 3 turns, practically ensuring the other debuffs will land past passive Debuff Resistance, this NP then slaps every enemy with Confusion, a 1k damage Curse, 20% Buff Success Rate Down, 30% (Scaling to 50% with NP level) NP Damage Resistance Down, and 20% (Scaling to 40% with Overcharge) Arts Resistance Down, all for 3 turns.

Breaking those debuffs down, Confusion is similar to Terror, providing a 30% chance each enemy turn for them to be hit with a Skill Seal debuff, before expiring, but more importantly, Confusion is a Mental Debuff, which will matter for Francesca’s NP. Curse, as you all know, is basically window dressing not worth anything, Buff Success Rate down is an incredibly rare tool to see in player hands, but I expect many important buffs that bosses will get from gauge break mechanics and so on will either be “500% application rate” or simply guaranteed no matter what, so it won’t actually be relevant often.

The most important components to this NP are the ones that have scaling with NP Level and Overcharge, those two debuffs providing a significant bonus to the team’s NP damage and refund, if said NP’s are Arts. It’s a very potent damage steroid for Prelati’s allies, or Prelati themselves, should you swap forms after applying it.

Speaking of which, let’s look at Cholós Tis Theás Tis Toléras, the Francesca version NP. This is an Arts AOE NP, so I’ll be delving into NP refund and looping for it, but the effects are much simpler than the prior one - Francesca immediately deals her damage, with an Effective Damage modifier that provides +50% (up to +100% with Overcharge) damage if hitting enemies with Mental Debuffs. That’s why Prelati applying Terror and Confusion in-kit is incredibly useful, to turn on this damage bonus. Following the damage, she slaps a 20% NP Damage Resistance Down debuff for 3 turns on the enemy, then cleanses all Debuffs from the ally team, and gives them a 1-time, 3-turn Debuff Immunity and Buff Removal Resistance buff to boot. The offensive potency of this NP is great, given it comes with a ramping damage boost if you’re hitting the same target, as well as an in-build effective damage modifier you can access easily, providing an all-important multiplicative damage boost most Servants can’t access.

So how do those perks translate into looping potential? Let’s look at Francesca’s baseline damage and refund first - with just her own buffs active, Francesca’s first NP should be dishing out a very potent 29k damage neutral, netting the effective damage bonus from mental debuffs. Without that bonus she dishes out a far more pathetic 20k damage neutral, which is admittedly more expected for a Caster’s damage output. She should also get roughly 25% NP gauge refund from her NP, a pretty fantastic amount before getting other Servants’ buffs in the mix.

Let’s plant Francesca into a typical farming composition, then. I’ll be skipping straight to using Black Grail, since her 80% gauge charge essentially ensures she should use a CE with no starting NP gauge. With double Castoria backing her, Francesca gets more than enough NP refund to perform a 3-turn loop, and her damage output ends up being 61k neutral on wave 1, 74k neutral on wave 2, and about 156k neutral on wave 3 with that sweet effective damage multiplier in play.

Those who have a handle on how FGO’s metagame plays out probably already know this, but focusing on debuffs for your damage boosts is pretty bad for farming purposes, so it’s no surprise that, even with Black Grail, Francesca’s damage output is pretty poor on the first two waves. She excels when she’s facing down an unchanging roster of foes that she can continually slap debuffs on to lock them down and maintain her strongest damage boost, which doesn’t usually consist of farming content, lest you count Grand Duels.

With a BBBAQ card deck, Hippolyta joins the ranks of the Buster Gorillas, and in turn she has a base NP gain of 0.57%. Paired with her 4-hit Arts card, it comes out to a 2.28 base Arts gain, roughly the average for a single-Arts card Servant. That has the drawback of her Quick card being pretty awful for NP gain, as well as a mediocre Extra card. Simply put, Hippolyta won’t be getting much NP gauge from her cards, period.

Her star generation is similarly in a rough spot. The Rider class’s poor base star generation doesn’t help much with her 4-hit Buster cards, so there’s not much room for her to really compensate for her NP gain with the Rider class’s star weight.

Skill 1

First up for Hippolyta’s skills is Therme’s Brilliance, a good ‘ol fashioned Charisma clone. This skill provides the standard 20% Attack Up buff to the team for 3 turns, as well as a 30% Critical Strength Up buff for Female allies, and a 2-time, 3-turn Evasion buff to Child allies. In other words, she really wants to be paired with the entire Prisma Ilya cast while in FGO.

But naturally, Hippolyta also benefits from this skill herself, netting the Critical Damage boost herself, and she also gets the same Evasion buff herself despite not being a child. A child at heart, perhaps? At any rate, this skill doubles up as an offensive team buff for well over half the cast, as well as a decent defensive tool to protect Hippolyta and her prospective allies, which is well worth the heftier 8-turn base cooldown this skill comes packed with.

Skill 2

Next is War God’s Sash. Following the theme of the prior skill, this is your typical Buster booster skill, providing a 20% boost to her primary card type for 3 turns. On top of that, this skill is also a compact super-star bomb for Hippolyta, providing 20 stars on use, then a further 5 stars each time she uses a Buster card for 3 turns.

While that does conveniently solve her star generation issue, ultimately all this skill does is provide a modest boost to her primary card type. Such underwhelming skills aren’t uncommon for welfare Servants, but boy is there little to discuss when it’s so…plain. The 8-turn base cooldown is aligned with her prior skill at least, which is a neat convenience.

Skill 3

Lastly we have Apostle of the Moon Goddess, the final factor to Hippolyta’s kit and the federally-mandated NP gauge charger. This skill provides Hippolyta with a 30% gauge charge on use, as well as a combo of 20% NP Strength Up and 20 Critical Stars each turn for a 3 turn duration.

Well, I can say for sure Hippolyta won’t have any star generation issues now. It might still be tied to her skill cooldowns, but boy that’s a lot of critical stars at her disposal, and more importantly this skill competes the triad of NP steroid buffs within her own kit, meaning her NP is hitting at maximal multiplicative potential without any outside influence. And of course, the NP gauge charge is great for many purposes, flexible CE / Support setups, farming loops, you know the deal.

Same as her other skills, this one also comes at a base 8-turn cooldown, so she has a pretty fluid skill rotation on the whole.

Sealing the deal for this kit is Hippolyta’s NP, Húbrin Anatropón Erinyes. As a single-target Buster NP, this thing is going to be focused fully on slamming down tough targets, so let’s get into the effects.

Before dealing damage, Hippolyta applies Ignore Defence to herself for 1 turn, allowing all her attacks including this NP itself to hit past enemy Defence buffs for the chain. A minute benefit, but Defence Pierce does come up fairly often in higher difficulty content. Following that is the damage against your chosen enemy, a standard damage ratio (including the free Welfare NP5, don’t forget it), with a +50% (Scaling with Overcharge to 100%) Effective Damage multiplier against Chaotic alignment foes.

This is arguably the best alignment trait to target in the game, as while Good alignment is more common among Servants, we don’t fight Good-aligned Servants as often as enemies, and NPC’s don’t usually have Good for an alignment. Meanwhile, a LOT of boss NPC’s have Chaotic alignment, and it’s also the second-most common Alignment trait in general, and often present in enemy Servants. Being able to hit for Effective Damage often is a great thing to have, especially when you have the high damage output of a welfare NP backing you.

But that’s not all! After dishing out the damage, Hippolyta provides a combo of 30% Critical Damage Up and 30% Critical Resistance to the ally team for 3 turns, bolstering her Critical damage output notably and improving the team’s durability. With multiple NP’s in a row, you can set up some pretty devastating Buster Crits on top of the already-solid NP damage output.

Speaking of which, let’s look at those damage numbers. With just her own buffs active, her NP is dealing an impressive 52.3k damage neutral, only about 10k below the damage output of Jalter with her upgrades, impressive given the base stat gap between the two. With her effective damage boost, she’s dealing 78k neutral, easily surpassing what most Servants can do without a similar Effective Damage boost.