Rabbit’s Reviews #406: Abigail Williams (Santa) (4* Pretender)

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This year’s Santa Servant is Abigail Williams for some reason. She’s a free support unit, which is theoretically cool. Unfortunately for Abby, she draws comparisons to pre-buff Miyu, which is… not flattering. The idea behind her kit seems to be that she can buff the whole party while also critting decently well herself—and she does have Van Gogh compatibility—but she only has one Buster card, which limits her ability to deal good crit damage, and her kit overall is quite restrained relative to superficially similar Arts crit units like Sherlock or Lanling. In her best case, she’s sort of like a budget Lady Avalon, bringing overcharge, party charge, and healing to Castoria stall teams. If you don’t have Castoria natively and have no better stall supports—no Reines, no Tamamo, no Merlin, no Himiko, no Lady Avalon, et cetera—you might find her useful in those instances. Otherwise, even other free Servants like Xu Fu are generally better.
Abigail Williams (Santa)
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Abby has a defensive stat spread, which is reasonable for a support, though her low attack hurts her crit damage potential a bit. Her NP gain is not particularly good—her Arts card NP gain is a bit below average relative to her deck, and her Quick is actively bad. Her deck is also quite bad for star gen, though she at least has decent hit-counts and thus can make use of the star gen buff within her own kit.
Abby’s passives are pretty ordinary. She has Magic Resistance for occasionally avoiding debuffs, Territory Creation for a minor buff to her most important cards, Entity for some extra star gen and Van Gogh compatibility, and a unique passive that slightly boosts her Arts card star gen. All reasonable things, and all useful to Abby, but none of them especially exciting.
Since Abby is a welfare, it’s relatively easy to unlock all of her appends. Anti-Berserker damage is decent, since Abby deals double damage to them by default. Extra crit damage fits nicely with Abby’s innate tools, and Mana Loading makes it easier for Abby to access her NP (which is where most of her party support is located)… but none of these appends are game-changing, in part because Abby isn’t a Servant you’re likely to bring to fights where small bonuses will make a difference.
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Abby only needs special mats from her own event for ascension, as is typical of welfares. She’s also a pretender, so her skills require no gems, instead asking for a smattering of different incidental mats. She’ll be pretty easy to skill up… though she’s still probably not worth the investment.
Abby’s skillset is not particularly strong, but as a mildly interesting note all three skills contribute to star gen in some capacity. Recommended skill order is 3>1>2.
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Dance is probably the most disappointing part of Abby’s kit. If this skill was targetable, she’d be fine—still not amazing, but at least worth considering as a free option in some cases. Instead, it’s a selfish Arts buff on a Servant without a damaging NP, which is… not very useful. The skill also gives Abby a 50% crit buff and stars per turn, which leans into her apparent identity as an Arts crit Servant with party support. She’s broadly similar in concept to Lanling, who also pairs party support with the ability to deal decent damage (in theory), but Abby has a trio of disadvantages in this role. For one, she only has one Buster card, and even with a couple of Arts buffs, Buster cards would still be superior for crits. The second issue is that Lanling (and also Sherlock, who can operate similarly) provides almost all of his buffs to the entire party, which lets him function as a pure support who also happens to be able to crit decently. The third—and most significant—issue is that FGO has long, long since passed the point where this kind of suboptimal team is realistically feasible for high-end comment. I used to run Lanling/Sherlock/QSH for story fights, and a similar team involving Abby might be workable for some content, but as we’ve gotten stronger supports and stronger damage-dealers, most serious content has been balanced around running optimized teams, which makes this sort of alternative strategy harder to execute. A sub-optimal version of an already sub-optimal approach is just bad. …All this is to say, this skill really needed to be partywide, or at least targetable, in order to matter.
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Pas de Deux is… fine? It offsets Abby’s weak NP gain, helps her generate stars with her cards, and protects her a little. It also provides a very small boost to Master Skill effectiveness, which is mildly interesting but in the best case amounts to about 10% more in a given buff bracket on one turn. Yay? If some or all of the effects on this skill were partywide, it might be okay, but as-is it’s mostly just a generic dodge that offsets Abby’s weak internals. This skill would be fine on a DPS with an otherwise-complete skillset, but on an undertuned support it feels like a missed opportunity.
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Holy Night’s Gift is Abby’s best skill, and it’s still just okay. It’s a partywide 20% charge skill, which is about as much as you can reasonably expect from a free Servant in terms of NP charge support. It also gives a burst of stars, which facilitates crits for Abby or your DPS, and it provides a one-time overcharge boost, which is great for Castoria and marginally useful for some other Servants. This skill closes out with some healing (in the form of Max HP up) for Child servants, including Abby herself. If this skill provided some sort of partywide damage buff—ideally to attack or NP damage—Abby might be worth considering in more cases, but alas, it does not.
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Grand Pas de Deux holds the entirety of Abby’s direct party damage support. At NP5, it gives 50% crit damage and 20% Arts up (or 25% with Abby’s third skill in effect). This is weaker than what many other free Servants offer, so you’d only pick Abby over other alternatives if you also want the other things she brings—healing, overcharge, star gen, and personal crit damage. At least the healing on this NP also scales with NP level, and 3000 healing partywide is decent, especially since healing is the one thing Castoria teams are often missing.
Oh, and this NP also provides another 10% boost to Master Skill effectiveness, which matters exactly not at all.
Abby’s many ways of generating stars and her selfish card damage tools imply that she wants to be run in an Arts crit team where everyone provides partywide buffs so everyone gets to crit effectively. In the aforementioned Lanling/Sherlock/QSH team, for example, she probably replaces Lanling, which leaves you with an overall weaker team but does let you use Abby, if you care about that.
She also has Entity, which means she benefits fully from Van Gogh’s buffs. Van Gogh, unfortunately, does not really benefit from Abby’s—a Van Gogh team doesn’t get much value out of 50% extra crit up and a small Arts buff—but if you want Abby specifically to hit hard you can flank her with Van Goghs and do decently. As with the above team, though, this results in an overall worse setup than the more typical VG/VG/Castoria strategy.
Abigail’s most effective use will be in Castoria stall teams, where you mostly ignore Abby’s selfish stuff and use her for her party charge, overcharge, and healing. You can run Abby/Castoria in essentially the same way you run Lady Avalon/Castoria, setting up Abby->DPS->Castoria NP chains every three turns and using Abby’s battery for an extra level of overcharge every other NP. This is yet again worse than basically any other alternative, but it is functional and has the advantage of being pretty cheap. If you have your own Castoria, you can grab a strong DPS off support, and if you don’t have your own Castoria, you can borrow a friend’s. This won’t be relevant to most players with developed boxes, but it’s a role Abby can fill, which is something. 
Given Abby’s weak NP gain, Prisma Cosmos is a solid CE choice for her, especially in Castoria stall teams, as it can help her access her NP more reliably. Aside from that, passive star gen CEs like 2030 play nicely with her crit tools and can help ensure you’re critting consistently, and starting charge CEs can help you get moving faster.
Crit damage CCs are the obvious choice for most Servants with good crit access, though you might also consider CCs that increase Abby’s supportive capabilities via party healing or buff removal.
Supports don’t benefit much from grails and Abby is a bad support. Extra attack would make her a somewhat better crit Servant, but she’s never going to be particularly good in that role, so I wouldn’t bother using the resources here.
Abby is quite weak. Some of her “power budget,” so to speak, is spent on selfish crit tools, and she suffers for her lack of focus. She does have the ability to slot in as a budget support for Castoria stall teams, and she’s not terrible in that role, but she’s really only going to have value for players with extremely underdeveloped accounts. For anyone else, you’re safe to ignore her.