MMM - Neglible Navyman Nailing the Nautical Know-how Navigatives Near Neverending Nag, I mean, No, Ah....

With a BAAAQ card deck and an abysmal base NP gain of 0.38%, Noah’s 4-hit Arts cards provide a below-average 1.52 base Arts gain, passable on a Servant with an Arts-heavy deck, but at one hell of a cost. Noah’s Quick and Buster cards at least have 5 hits, but even with that their NP gauge generation is mediocre at best, and the NP gauge generation from his Extra card is absolutely abysmal.

As always, this curse of high hitcount Arts cards at least means Noah has some well-rounded star generation, in spite of his lack of Quick cards. Brave chains from him will provide a respectable amount of critical stars, though he’s far from exceptional at producing them.

Skill 1

First for Noah’s skill lineup is Voyager of Salvation. If you helmed the boat that saved all remaining life on Earth, you’d probably want a skill named this, too.

As you might expect, this skill is Voyager of the Storm-coded, providing a solid 20% Attack Up and NP Strength Up buff to the team for 3 turns, a significant supportive steroid, as well as a 100% 1-time Overcharge boost for 3 turns. These perks alone are great for Noah’s own offensive output and his team’s, as well as upping the supportive effects of his allies’ NP’s.

But it doesn’t stop there, as Noah also provides an additional package of buffs for Servant allies who, well, fit in his Ark. Yes, furri- I mean, animal-like Servants. The three traits of Wild Beast, Demonic Beast, and Kemono have some level of overlap, but can basically be defined as “They’re literally beasts or part-beast in some way”, “They’re a mythical animal in some way, like a youkai or beast-like fairy”, and “They have animal accessories on. Even if it’s a Skin.” Hence why you can even have Scathach in her bunny-girl outfit nets these buffs despite not being an animal of any sort. That said, the original text of this skill and every piece of his kit that mentions these traits does say “Except some”, rather helpfully, so it’s possible Scathach and her bunny ears will be on fraud watch.

As for the benefits themselves, they’re pretty good, providing a further 20% Attack Up and 2000 HP Regen for the same duration, as well as Debuff Removal for those with the relevant traits. While Noah himself doesn’t net these perks, they’re powerful team support, regardless, and a surprising amount of Servants can benefit from Noah’s additional benefits, such as all variants of Tiamat, Koyanskaya, and Miss Crane, forming a solid if unconventional pool of supports who can reap the benefits.

So overall, it’s a very strong skill. The 8-turn base cooldown is also reasonable for its power, especially if you’re reaping its full effectiveness with some fluffy allies.

Skill 2

Next is Protection of the Faith. Noah possesses this series staple since Extra Vlad at EX rank, and as a result the power of this thing is…pretty nuts.

On use, this skill provides Noah with an overwhelming sum of benefits - 100% Debuff Resistance Up and 1000 HP Regen each turn for 3 turns, as well as an instant 2000 HP healing, and best of all, a 50% gauge charge. The gauge charging part is admittedly inevitable on an SSR, but Noah goes a step further, providing his teammates with 20% gauge charge too, increasing to 30% if they have his targeted Traits.

Team gauge charge support on more offensive Servants seems to be becoming a new trend, and Noah is no different, this skill simultaneously filling his gauge charge needs, improving his team support capabilities further, and improving his resilience greatly, with that chunk of healing and near-immunity to Debuffs he manages to snag. It’s just a great skill.

The most surprising part of all is that this skill, in spite of its power and the usual trend for potent team gauge charge, only has an 8-turn base cooldown, a practically speedy recovery time for its strength.

Skill 3

Last for Noah’s skills is Augite of Zohar, the gemstone on his 3rd Ascension necklace that is meant to signify that he’s directly of Adam’s lineage. A pretty swanky gemstone to have if you ask me, better than a birthstone. The Birth of Man-stone, if you would.

In comparison to his other skills, this is surprisingly selfish, providing Noah with a solid 30% Arts Up buff and a 2-time Invincible buff for 3 turns, as well as an effect that produces 6 Critical Stars every time he uses an Arts card for the same duration. Forget what I said earlier about his stargen being limited by his card deck, this skill will basically drown his team in critical stars from an Arts Brave chain.

And that’s not even the end of it. If you’ve got Noah paired with one of his supported Traits, he gains an additional 20% to his Arts UP buff, totalling 50%, and he also gets a 50% Critical Damage Up buff for 3 turns, that is improved by a further 25% for each ally with his supported Traits, meaning an effective maximum of +100%. If you’ve got Noah rolling with the full beastly support lineup, he’s getting one heck of an offensive boost, while also providing a wide range of supportive perks to those allies to boot.

When you break it down this skill’s rather straightforward, but the offensive boost and defensive fallback that Noah gets from it is fantastic, and much like his other skills it comes at a relatively brief 8-turn base cooldown.

I know this is gonna be a shocker, but Noah’s NP is Noah’s Ark. Crazy, right?

The crazier thing will be breaking down this thing’s looping potential in its entirety. As an Arts AOE NP Noah gets the full perks of Arts card refund, so I’ll be getting into that after we break down this NP’s effects.

Before dealing damage, Noah slaps a trio of buffs on himself - 50% Anti-Giant Effective damage for 1 turn, 50% Anti-Supergiant Effective damage for 1 turn, and 10% NP Strength Up (scaling with Overcharge) for 3 turns. As a reminder, Giant is pretty much every humanoid creature, Servant or no, that’s bigger than I dunno, a car, while Supergiant covers everything about as big as a house or larger. Both categories broadly cover Nasu’s Giantess fetish, so there’s a good number of ladies Noah can put the smackdown on, but in general Supergiant foes are fairly common midbosses in farming nodes, so it’ll come up often.

More important is the NP Strength buff, providing a pre-NP steroid that ramps up as you use his NP in succession, with even Overcharge furthering the offensive boost. Noah puts that damage to use, doing regular AOE damage numbers, then finally charging the whole team’s gauge by 10%, and a further 10% for his supported Trait allies.

It’s a NP that strictly focuses on damage and NP spam for both Noah himself and his allies, but that’s far from a bad thing. Speaking of which, let’s look at Noah’s damage output and refund.

With Noah’s own buffs active, his NP will produce a very solid 22% refund as a baseline, effectively 32% from his NP’s self-charge. His neutral damage output starts out at 25k, with his Overcharge boost providing a neat minor improvement to his NP’s pre-damage steroid. It’s not incredibly high, but far from awful either.

Taking those numbers and planting them into a typical 50% gauge setup with double Castoria, we get a different story. In such a setup, his wave 1 damage output starts at 68k neutral, rising to 83k on wave 2, and finishing with 111k damage on wave 3. Easily enough to farm class advantage nodes, and his refund is high enough that he can even get full 100% gauge refunds versus Casters.

Naturally, that spectacular refund means he can use Black Grail, too. Without even running a battlesuit swap, he can do 81k damage neutral wave 1, 100k on wave 2, and 147k damage neutral on wave 3. While that might seem a little on the lower end for Black Grail farming, bear in mind that’s taking advantage of the convenience of not having a battlesuit swap support. If you run Oberon in the backlines, Noah’s damage immediately starts at 108k on wave 1 and ends on a colossal 240k neutral on wave 3. And that’s ignoring the room to maybe use Tiamat Archer over one Castoria to net bonus damage from Noah’s own skills and the higher overall offensive power.

If nothing else, I can say he’s not lacking in farming power.