Rabbit’s Reviews #412: Dante Alighieri (5* Pretender)

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 Dante is quite good, but for everything in his kit, he’s not really anything more than a good AoE generalist. His damage is quite high, he’s got great loop specs, and he’s got some neat CQ utility, but his class keeps him from being capable of 90++ farming in most cases and his utility isn’t so interesting as to make him a particular standout. He’s in a very similar position to Kirei—a really strong base, trapped in a class that keeps him from leveraging it fully. If you happen to pull Dante, he’ll be a great pick for CQs with mixed knight-class enemies, but especially if you already have a good AoE generalist, Dante won’t do much for you.
Dante Alighieri
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Dante has the lowest attack of the SSR pretenders, and low-average attack relative to SSRs as a whole, which isn’t a great place for a DPS to start. He’s also not good at active star gen, due to his deck and his hit-counts. His Arts Card NP gain is pretty good to compensate, though. For passives, all he has are Independent Action—which won’t do much since Dante isn’t really a crit-focused Servant—and Territory Creation, which provides a small boost to Dante’s damage and effective NP gain.
Mana Loading is Dante’s most important append, as it increases his loop flexibility. Aside from that, anti-Ruler attack up is slightly interesting, as Pretenders are neutral to Rulers and it gives Dante another class he can hit decently. None of the other appends matter much.
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As a Pretender, Dante doesn’t need any gems, instead asking for a range of different mats. While he does take some late-FGO mats, Dante shouldn’t be too hard to max out for any well-established player.
Dante’s skillset has a lot of text, but for all the effects it has it’s actually pretty straightforward in practice, in most cases. Recommended skill order is 3>2>1.
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Three Worlds is a tricolor buff. It caps out at 20%, which isn’t all that impressive, but any level of Arts buff is nice, so I can’t complain too much. This also provides a small guts, which is decent for survival and also synergizes with Dante’s third skill.
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Cantos is Dante’s central flavor skill. Dante gets to choose between Heaven and Hell and set the battlefield accordingly. If he picks Heaven, the whole party gets an Arts and Crit Damage buff, as well as some healing per turn. If he picks Hell, the party gets a Buster buff and an NP damage buff, and Dante himself gets 10% charge per turn. The field types also trigger a power mod effect on Dante’s NP, functionally granting extra damage against Sky enemies if Heaven is selected and Earth enemies if Hell is selected. Hell will almost always be better, unless you need the anti-Sky damage, as 30% NP damage up increases Dante’s damage output more than 20% Arts up does, and a flat 10% charge per turn meaningfully improves Dante’s loop specs. Basically, take Heaven if you’re fighting Sky enemies and Hell otherwise. Whichever you pick, this skill also grants a burst of critical stars, but Dante doesn’t otherwise have any crit tools, so it won’t have much of an impact in practice.
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Seven Sins is, first and foremost, a 50% battery. While this skill has a complex and unique gimmick to it, in most cases—even in CQs—you’ll use this for the battery and let the rest of the skill do its thing passively. The gimmick to this skill is that it gives Dante seven stacks of a special debuff-resistance-down effect, making him extremely susceptible to debuffs. While he has these, his attacks—including his NP—remove buffs from enemies, one at a time. If Dante successfully removes a buff (or if his guts triggers), he also removes a sin from himself and grants himself 10% attack up. This isn’t a controllable form of ramp, and it will never matter in farming, but in CQs this can help keep enemies under control and can marginally scale Dante’s damage. It also applies to Dante’s NP, so if Dante NPs against three enemies who all have buffs, he’ll remove a buff from each one, remove three sins, and get 30% attack up. Again, there’s no good way to play around this, so you’re best-off treating this as a generic battery that may occasionally give some other benefits also.
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Aside from the fact that power mod is a worse form of niche than Supereffective Damage, Dante’s NP is about as good as it could be. It has pre-damage ramp in the form of NP damage up, which substantially increases Dante’s turn-over-turn damage and gives him great Oberon synergy. It also drains the enemies’ NP gauges, helping to keep enemies from NP-ing while Dante is looping, and it inflicts a bit of curse for flavor.
Dante refunds about 20% per enemy in a double Castoria setup. Since choosing Hell gives him 10% charge per turn, he can loop anything in a Castoria/Castoria/Oberon team, provided he has Mana Loading and deals enough damage. Unfortunately, in order to hit 90++ damage thresholds, he needs to be completely maxed out, he needs to be hitting one of his favored classes and a niche target, and he needs a Castoria NP. For anything shy of that, he’ll fall short of dealing a million damage. Other Servants can hit those thresholds more easily or more universally, so there’s not much reason to bother taking Dante to 90++-capable levels unless you really want to use him specifically. On the bright side, though, he should be good for anything lower than that level.
In CQs, the same setup should work just fine, assuming you can kill quickly. Alternatively, the usual Arts stall setups—Castoria with Lady Avalon, Tamamo, or Reines—should work fine. In Hell mode, Dante also provides decent steroids for Buster allies, so you can pair him with a Buster DPS for decent (albeit not optimal) results. At the lower end, too, any of the usual budget Arts supports (like Xu Fu, for instance) will do fine.
Dante generally wants to kill quickly, and his loop specs are great, so The Black Grail is pretty much always his best CE. If you don’t have it, whatever your best damaging CE is will be your best bet.
Dante doesn’t need anything in particular that CCs can provide. Given that he’s very susceptible to debuffs, debuff-removal CCs aren’t a bad pick. You can also give him star gen CCs to try to help him crit on occasion, or crit damage CCs so his occasional crits deal more damage, but neither of these will be very impactful.
Dante is a good Servant, and if you plan to use him regularly, grails aren’t a bad idea. That said, it takes a ton of investment for him to hit 90++ damage thresholds, so I wouldn’t grail him for that specific reason—give Dante grails if you want him to be more reliable for CQs, not to make him a better farmer.
Dante is good! He has a strong baseline kit and some nifty unique mechanics. He doesn’t really stand out much relative to other strong AoE Arts units, and he’s probably not someone to pull specifically for gameplay reasons, but if you like him or luck into him, he can do well for you. Not a bad place to be.