Rabbit’s Reviews #415: Lilith (5* Berserker)

Lilith has high attack and low health relative to SSR Berserkers as a whole, which is a strong starting point for a damage-dealer. She’s also a Quick unit with high hit-counts, so she’s very good at active star gen. Her NP gain, meanwhile, is pretty much exactly average for her deck—she’s not amazing at generating NP gauge on her own, but with Quick buffs in play she should be able to loop without issue.

Lilith has Madness Enhancement EX, which only applies to one of her cards but will help increase her Buster crit damage when she does happen to use her single Buster card. Divinity is mostly just there for the trait, while Hatred gives a small power mod effect against Living Human enemies—not a huge group, but nice when it’s there.

None of Lilith’s appends have a particularly large impact on her functionality. Crit damage up is probably the most useful, as Lilith will reliably be critting, but small crit damage buffs have a negligible impact on Skadi teams in general. Mana Loading and Skill Reload don’t do much because of how Quick teams operate, Extra Attack damage is nice but very marginal, and anti-Ruler crit resistance might as well not exist.

Lilith’s Mat asks aren’t too bad. The most difficult thing she needs is the new OC4 silver mat, but silver mats tend to be pretty common once we get a few events past a new story chapter launch.

Lilith’s skillset is very standard, but on an ST Berserker it’s also quite strong. Recommended skill order is 3>2>1.

Lilith’s NP has a ton of effects, but it’s mostly just your typical damage source. The NP starts off with a 30% power mod against Lawful and Good enemies (applying separately, so you get both buffs against Lawful Good). Power mod is inferior to supereffective damage, but given that Lilith doesn’t already have NP damage buffs in her kit, it’s a bit less of an issue here than in some other cases. Lawful and Good are both fairly broad niches, and Lilith gets a lot of extra damage against enemies with both. The NP also inflicts the Chaotic and Evil traits, but these traits are additive—Lilith doesn’t remove Good (and therefore her niche) by applying Evil. This is always how trait buffs work in FGO, but it’s fortunate for Lilith specifically that this is true. Lilith doesn’t otherwise interface with Chaotic or Evil traits, so these effects are just flavor outside of some very specific dual-core setups.

This NP also has ramp, although it comes in the form of a post-damage defense debuff. This isn’t ideal, but it’s better than nothing, and it does meaningfully scale Lilith’s damage when she’s using her NP on the same target multiple turns running. This NP also applies a small poison and curse effect for a tiny bit of extra damage.

Most importantly, though, this NP’s overcharge effect is a supereffective damage bonus against charmed enemies. Assuming the enemy isn’t immune to mental debuffs, this effectively means Lilith can massively spike her damage for a single turn.

As a whole, this is a really strong NP. It doesn’t do anything meaningful aside from damage, but it’s great at damage.

Lilith is a typical ST Quick DPS, and she’ll work best in a triple-Skadi team. Doubling up on Ruler Skadi will maximize her NP damage, while taking two Caster Skadis may be more effective for card damage, as Lilith has two Quick cards and only a single Buster. She notably doesn’t benefit much from Oberon due to her lack of in-kit NP damage buffs—Oberon effectively only offers 30% NP damage up, or 60% on his End of the Dream turn. Even someone like Reines, who brings 40% attack up and 30% defense down, will bring more value than Oberon would in many cases.

Lilith won’t do as well in slower or lower-end teams due to her lack of defensive utility. You can run a standard Castoria/Skadi team to try to stall, but this team will be pretty fragile even by Quick stall standards. If you’re looking for alternative supports for Lilith, I would prioritize supports who bring NP charge in order to help Lilith get rolling.

Lilith has easy loopage if you supply her with NP charge supports, and she wants to end fights as quickly as possible. With this in mind, The Black Grail is going to be her best CE choice in most cases. If you can’t run The Black Grail, bring whichever CE will increase your damage most—Heaven’s Feel, Imaginary Around, etc.

There’s not much CCs can offer that Lilith needs. Extra crit damage is never bad, though it won’t do much for Lilith. Given her lack of star weight buffs, Lilith does need to flood the field with stars in order to crit, so star gen CCs might be a good pick—the added consistency may result in more damage output in the long term than slightly increased crit damage would.

Berserkers make great use of grails and Lilith is really strong. Taking her to level 100 is a great idea, if you happen to have her. Levels beyond 100 are a harder sell—she’ll do truly absurd damage if you completely max her out, but that level of investment will typically be overkill. It would definitely be fun to have a level 120 Lilith, but from a gameplay efficiency standpoint your resources are likely better spent elsewhere.

Lilith is a really really strong ST Servant—arguably the strongest in the game. She’s not a great pick for longer fights and her actual damage output is pretty variable, dependent on enemy traits, debuff immunity, and fight structure, but if all you need is to deal a ton of damage to a single target, you can’t do better.

The value of damage versus flexibility versus survival has always been an open question in FGO. Damage often, but not always, wins out, and by the logic that killing fast is the easiest way to kill reliably, Lilith is a great Servant. Personally, I prefer ST Servants who are more useful for things other than pure damage—who have strong stall tools, or who can slot into multiple different teams, or who have ways of countering certain annoying gimmicks—and for that reason I don’t find Lilith to be all that exciting of a Servant… but it’s absolutely true that enough damage can overcome almost any other disadvantage, and Lilith definitely brings enough damage.