Rabbit’s Reviews #422: Passionlip (5* Saber)

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Passionlip is a very good single-target Buster unit for challenge quests, with a tightly designed kit that combines a few nifty new tricks with some conventionally strong tools. She doesn’t have anything that makes her a must-pull for players with developed boxes, but if you like her enough to pull for her or if you’re lacking a good ST Saber option, she’ll be both quite strong and fun to use. Not much more you can ask for out of a CQ unit.
Passionlip (Saber)
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Lip has a moderately offense-leaning stat spread, with high-but-not-outstanding attack and middling health. This isn’t a bad start, as higher attack is always good for a DPS, but Lip actually benefits more than most Servants from having extra health, so having a decent health pool instead of being fully attack-slanted works well for her. Her NP gain is a little on the low side for a triple-Buster Servant, but she’ll mostly make up the difference with batteries and defensive NP gain. She’s also not bad at star gen for a Servant with a single Quick card, as her hit-counts are solid overall.
Lip has a ton of passives. Magic Resistance and Core of the Goddess combine to let Lip stave off about a third of incoming debuffs, which is pretty handy. Presence concealment and Gymnast Ballet together help a little bit with star gen, while Independent Action and Gymnast Ballet slightly increase Lip’s crit damage.
For appends, Skill Reload is necessary for buff-stacking and reliable looping if you’re trying for optimal fast clears, and it’s still nice if you’re playing slower. The crit damage append is also nice for Lip given that she’s a triple-Buster Servant with no inbuilt crit buffs outside of her passive. Mana Loading won’t matter in most cases but could be helpful if you want to run Lip alongside 30% chargers like Merlin and Olga, while the Extra buff has marginal impact and anti-Alter-Ego attack up is mostly useless.
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Lip’s mat asks are pretty reasonable. She needs 24 of OC3’s cubes per skill, which could be a hassle, but she doesn’t ask for a ton of bronze mats and most things she wants have been around for long enough to be plentiful.
Lip has a very good skillset that splits the difference between unique mechanics and classic power. Recommended skill order is 2>3>1.
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Breast Pouch is a very strong defensive skill. Its most notable effect is something entirely new: damage absorption, which negates all incoming damage and converts it to healing instead. At the time of writing this is bar none the best defensive effect in the entire game, as it’s functionally an unpierceable invulnerability buff that’s also liable to heal Lip back to full health. If this effect remains exclusive to Lip, it may very well never be directly countered. Even if this does start to be more common, though, and even if we later get a “pierce damage absorption” effect, this will still be fantastic. In most cases this amounts to two or more turns of added survival, not only blocking an NP or a set of deadly crits, but also restoring Lip’s health such that she can then survive the next turn’s attacks. ...And this is important, because this skill is also a three-turn taunt. Long-duration taunts are a fantastic form of defensive utility and can be critical for fights that involve frequent ST NPs or high-damage crits. Lip can easily buy two or three turns of survival for your team in a high-damage environment, and that alone would make her worth bringing as a supplementary damage-dealer in some cases, even without the rest of her kit. On top of that, Lip gains 10% attack up every time she gets attacked, and since she’s taunting, she will get attacked. Lip’s NP doesn’t come with any ramp, but in most fights this effect will serve that purpose, helping her later-turn damage keep pace with other ST units. To round this skill out, Breast Pouch also provides a small NP charge for the party, further cementing Lip’s value as a secondary DPS in fights where you need to deal with very high single-target damage.
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Trash & Crush is another good skill, offering a bunch of useful things in one place. It starts off as a 50% battery—always welcome—and it also provides the usual 3-turn 30% Buster buff. On top of that, it lets Lip ignore defense, which helps her consistency, and it causes her next attack after using the skill to have a 70% chance to inflict stun. 70% isn’t totally consistent, and there’s some slight antisynergy between the stun and Lip’s first skill—you generally want enemies to be attacking Lip, especially while her damage drain is up—but if you can afford to stagger your skill use or if you’re not worried about maximizing survivability, this is a great tool. Between Breast Pouch and Trash & Crush, Lip does a remarkably good job of keeping enemies locked down and the party alive.
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Princess Order is a fun skill that has completely different effects depending on whether it’s used on Lip herself or on an ally. Both effects are quite good, and which you use will depend on whether Lip is serving as your primary DPS or as a tank. Used on an ally, this skill provides a huge star weight buff, a bunch of stars, and a persistent 100% crit damage buff, making an ally very likely to crit and ensuring their crits will hit hard. It also grants defensive class advantage against main class Servants, substantially increasing the target’s survivability on turns when Lip is not taunting and the enemy isn’t stunned. This is a great skill to use if you’re expecting Lip to die or if you’re funneling buffs to a Servant with class advantage—you can use this the turn before Lip dies to give your main DPS additional damage and survival for the next few turns, hopefully letting them close out the fight while another Servant (like Mash or George) takes over Lip’s tank role. If Lip uses this skill on herself, on the other hand, it gives her an NP damage buff, passive NP charge, guts, debuff immunity, and instant-kill resistance. With the guts and the damage absorption together, Lip can reliably survive for all three turns of her taunt, even in very high damage contexts. The passive NP charge helps offset Lip’s weak innate NP gain, too—between the defensive NP gain from taunting, Lip’s batteries, and some outside support, Lip should be able to loop pretty easily. Debuff immunity and instant-kill resistance help Lip avoid non-damage ways to shut her down, too, making her pretty much unstoppable. The self-target version of Princess Order will likely be better in most cases—which honestly feels appropriate for Lip—but both variations of this skill are good and it’s cool that Lip can choose between them.
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Parvati Grancia is the least impressive part of Lip’s kit, and it’s still pretty solid. Before damage, it removes buffs from an enemy, which is always nice for consistency and has indirect survival benefits. It comes with a small pre-cast Buster buff, too—10% before overcharge is rather weak, especially considering it doesn’t last more than a turn, but it’s still better than nothing. The NP deals Supereffective damage against Super Giant enemies, which is a small niche but also better than nothing, and the NP comes with an instant-kill chance for flavor. This isn’t a particularly notable NP, but it serves its purpose as a damage source, and the various secondary effects will occasionally be helpful.
As a DPS, Lip can run in the standard Buster looping teams—double Koyan and Oberon for 3-turn clears, or double Koyan and any of the Waver/Merlin/Reines/etc crew for slightly longer fights. There’s not much out of the ordinary to note here other than that Lip will probably need some protection if you want her to survive longer than three turns, as she’ll be soaking up a lot of damage on turns 2 and 3.
Lip’s innate bulk and utility makes her well-suited to longer fights, though. She doesn’t play particularly well with classic Castoria stall teams, as her own defensive tools compete slightly with Castoria’s. Instead, she’ll be better off with older styles of Buster stall, using Merlin and another support. Mash is a great partner here, as her defense buffs help reduce damage to Lip. A team of Merlin/Lip/SSR Mash has a ton of survival, lots of party batteries, multiple strong sources of damage, and a range of options for controlling enemy attacks.
Lip also works well as a tank, in which case her job is to soak up hits and give her third skill’s crit buff to an allied DPS. These teams are pretty flexible, but the general idea is that you pair Lip with a damage-dealer and one or two supports (depending on whether you’re using plugsuit). This strategy will be most effective for short fights where incoming single-target damage is a major threat, like LB3’s QSH fight. Lip keeps the party alive by absorbing damage and can throw out an NP of her own for solid damage while your main DPS provides the bulk of your damage. For fights where you want Lip as a tank, you probably want one or two more taunt-focused Servants ready to swap in when Lip dies as well, with George and Mash being great picks for this.
As with most damage-dealers, Lip will generally want The Black Grail for the damage it provides. It’s worth noting, though, that Lip’s guts leaves her with 1 HP, meaning Black Grail’s damage tick will kill her on the turn after the guts procs. As such, if you’re using Lip as a tank, you might prefer to give her a CE without a demerit. Heaven’s Feel works for this, or you can give her something defensive, like Shroud of Magdalene, to hopefully keep her alive longer.
Lip is a Buster DPS with limited in-kit crit buffs, so crit damage CCs are a natural pick. You can also give her star gen CCs to help improve her natural star generation, which can help Lip herself to crit if she’s your main DPS and can further facilitate her value as a crit support.
Lip is a strong Servant who will be plenty good for her intended purposes at level 90. That said, high levels will only help her—additional attack makes her a better DPS, and additional health makes her a better tank. Especially with how plentiful grails are these days, it’s pretty easy to recommend taking her to 100, though higher levels are probably still too pricey to recommend unless you specifically love Lip.
Lip has a very well-designed kit that lets her function as a fun and flavorful DPS or tank as the need arises. She’s very good in both roles and she’ll be an excellent choice for many hard fights. That said, there are usually plenty of viable strategies for any given fight, and Lip is unlikely to enable anything that wouldn’t be possible with another Servant, so her actual value to players with established accounts is likely low… but that’s not a knock against Lip so much as a product of the fact that FGO is more than ten years old now. If you have Lip, she will absolutely be useful and may in fact be the best option you have for a wide range of fights. She’s unique, strong, and fun to use. Great addition to the game.