Rabbit’s Reviews #429: Nemo / Noah (5* Rider)

22whiterabbit22
 Noah is now solidly the best AoE Rider in the game. He is functionally the Rider equivalent of Tezcatlipoca, offering a similar mix of partywide buffs and party charge that makes him a fantastic multi-core damage-dealer. He also has excellent loop specs and very high damage, making him a good CQ Servant and a strong single-core farmer. The most notable thing about Noah, though, it’s that he’s clearly and perfectly tailored to work with Archer Tiamat—in fact, he’s the only Arts Servant outside of Tez who would rather use Tiamat than Castoria for single-core farming, and in some cases he actually prefers double Tiamat to the Tiamat/Castoria team Tez wants.
Outside of that, though, Noah isn’t breaking any new ground. He’s “just” an excellent Arts DPS, and we have plenty of those. If you need a strong Rider, or you want an Arts Servant to run Tiamat with, Noah fills both of those roles, but if you have a deep bench of strong damage-dealers already, you don’t have much need for him.
Nemo / Noah
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Noah is towards the offensive end of the SSR Rider spectrum, with high-ish attack and low-ish HP relative to his class. This also puts him at high-mid attack relative to SSRs as a whole. Overall this is a solid place for a DPS to be, even if Noah would still benefit from more attack. His internals are not good, though—Noah is a triple-Arts Servant with an Arts NP, so he’s quite bad at active star gen, and his NP gain on cards is quite low for his deck (though his NP refund is very high and he has a lot of batteries to compensate).
One thing to note, though, is that while a triple-Arts deck is often a weak starting point for a DPS, that’s not true for Noah: in a Tiamat team, Noah’s Arts cards will be his strongest tools, which means having more Arts cards in the pool is solidly a benefit.
Noah’s passives are pretty unremarkable. Magic Resistance is occasionally helpful, Riding slightly strengthens one of Noah’s less-important cards, Independent Action is a marginal crit damage buff, and Divinity is mostly there for the trait affinities.
Mana Loading is the only append Noah really needs, and it does help him loop in situations where he wouldn’t otherwise be able to. Skill Reload is okay for reaching a second buff cycle in CQs, but the benefit is marginal. Noah will often be at the crit cap in Tiamat teams, so the crit damage buff is mostly useless, while the Extra attack buff is extremely marginal and anti-Alter-Ego damage is uniquely bad on a Servant in a class Alter-Egos innately counter.
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Noah doesn’t ask for any mats in unusually high quantities, but he does need Ordeal Call 4 mats, which means he might be difficult to max out for players who haven’t caught up on story. If you’re up-to-date, though, investing in Noah should be straightforward.
Noah’s skillset mostly offers a combination of generically powerful DPS tools. This isn’t a knock against him, though—all three skills are great. Recommended skill order is 2>1>3.
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Voyager of Salvation is one of the best partywide buff skills in the game, giving 20% attack and 20% NP damage to the entire party for 3 turns. It also boosts overcharge by 1, meaning this is functionally even more of a buff to any Servant with overcharge-based ramp, including Noah himself. Even if these were the only effects on the skill, and even if they were selfish, this would be a great skill. Being partywide makes Noah a fantastic Servant for multicore farming, able to meaningfully increase his allies’ damage without sacrificing damage output himself. The buffs are even card-type-agnostic, increasing Noah’s flexibility. On top of that, the skill gives another 20% attack up to Animal allies, making Noah even better at multicore if your other DPS is an Animal. This also has implications for single-core Tiamat farming—since Archer Tiamat is an Animal, Noah gives her 40% attack up, which substantially increases your minimum card stretch. The skill also removes debuffs and restores HP each turn for Animal allies, which can be a decent consistency boost in CQs and is probably most relevant to enhancing the stability of Tiamat teams. Overall, this is among the best damage-boosting skills in the entire game.
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Protection of the Faith is, first and foremost, a 50% battery that splashes 20% to allies. The party charge increases by 10% (to 30%) for Animal allies, which again plays into Noah being a great DPS for multicore teams involving an Animal DPS. It also means that Noah, like Tez, can get access to three support NPs when farming with Tiamat teams (though he doesn’t always want to—more on that later). All of that is great and it’s a core part of why Noah works. For non-farming situations, the skill also gives Noah enough debuff resistance to avoid almost all non-guaranteed debuffs, restores his health, and gives him additional healing every turn, all of which go a long way towards ensuring his consistency. This is especially true in Tiamat teams, where you’re more likely to take incidental damage relative to more standard Castoria stall setups.
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Augite of Zohar is Noah’s only selfish skill, giving 30% Arts up for 3 turns by default, plus another 20% if there’s an Animal on the field. 50% Arts up for 3 turns on one skill is great, and since Tiamat is an Animal, Noah gets this for “free” in any Tiamat team. Even without the bonus Arts buff, Noah has great steroids: a 20/20/30 buff spread plus NP damage ramp. With the Arts buff, Noah’s steroids are just silly. On top of that, though, this skill gives 50% crit damage up, plus 25% per Animal on the field—which means 100% minimum in a double Tiamat team, putting Noah solidly over the crit cap with two Tiamat NPs. This skill also causes Noah’s Arts cards to drop 6 stars each, increasing his crit consistency and offsetting his terrible active star gen, and it gives a very nice two-hit invuln. Between the defense from this skill, the healing from Noah’s second skill, and all the NP charge Noah provides to supports for their defensive NPs, Noah is extremely tanky, and he’s very unlikely to go down early in a fight.
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Noah’s Ark is straightforwardly strong, providing everything you really want out of a DPS NP except for a broadly-applicable Supereffective niche. This NP does have niche damage, but it comes in the form of power mod against Giant and Super Giant enemies. Power Mod is the inferior form of niche due to stacking additively with NP damage buffs, and both of those niches are quite small—though if you’re fighting Summer BB, Typhon, Super Bunyan, or Olga, you do get to apply both at once, which is solid.
Fortunately, Noah can get away with having a weak niche due to the strength of his kit outside of that. This NP has a three-turn pre-cast NP damage buff, which is usually the best form of ramp. The actual buff values on the ramp are a bit low, but Noah has such easy access to overcharge in Tiamat teams that the average buff he gets per NP will typically come out to around 20% anyway. The NP also provides 10% party charge (which also applies to Noah himself and thus makes it easier for him to loop), along with a further 10% for Animal allies (which is most notable for enabling easy access to Tiamat NPs). The combination of ramp and party NP charge makes this a fantastic NP for all the same reasons Tez’s NP is great. No complaints here.
Noah’s ideal farming team depends heavily on what you’re facing. He can of course run in a traditional double-Castoria setup. This isn’t usually optimal for damage—Noah is pretty much perfectly optimized for Tiamat so he loses a lot from not taking her—but it does let Noah loop literally anything. You approach this in the usual way, using both Castoria 30% batteries, one Castoria 20% battery, and Mana Loading on turn 1, using Noah’s 50% battery and the remaining Castoria 20% battery (plus both Castoria NPs) on turn 2, and plugging in Oberon on turn 3. Noah deals about 560k damage on turn 3 in this setup assuming level 90, NP2, MLB Black Grail, and maxed Class Score—which is to say, a level 90 NP2 Noah can easily counterclass any Caster node under ideal circumstances, and he has some wiggle room if you don’t have maxed-out Black Grail or maxed Rider Class Score.
In any 2/1/x or better node, though, Noah’s best setup for NP damage specifically is Tiamat/Castoria, which works essentially the same as Tez’s equivalent team (albeit with better loop specs). On turn 1, you use all three Tiamat skills, Noah’s first and third skills, and all three Castoria skills, after which you use Tiamat’s NP, followed by Noah’s.  Noah refunds about 20% per enemy, so with two enemies, Noah’s Ark’s charge, and Tiamat’s passive charge, Noah gets to 60%, at which point he can use his battery to let Castoria and himself NP. On turn 3, Noah should have at least 40% gauge, and Tiamat should have 90%: 10% twice from her own passive charge, 20% twice from Noah’s Ark, and 30% from Noah’s battery. You plug Castoria out for Oberon, and Oberon’s batteries let you use Tiamat’s NP again, followed by Noah’s. This has much higher damage than the above setup: 680k under the same conditions, assuming NP1 supports. If Noah and the supports are all NP5, an ungrailed Noah can clear a million damage against neutral targets, which is crazy! This does still require MLB Black Grail, and it does also require support NPs, and high-NP supports are a fairly big ask… but it’s still notable that Noah can do this, and it also means a heavily-invested Noah can 6CE farm most Caster nodes.
...But that’s still not the highest we can push Noah’s damage. For any 3/1/x or better node, Noah can run double Tiamat. On turn 1, you use all three skills from Tiamat 1, skills 1 and 3 from Tiamat 2, and skills 2 and 3 from Noah, after which Tiamat 1 and Noah NP. Noah refunds about 12.5% per enemy before overcharge, so against three enemies he clears 40% with even the one guaranteed hit. He gets 30% total from the Tiamat passive batteries and his NP, and then Tiamat 2 can use her battery to bring him to 100%. Noah uses his first skill (which we saved till turn 2 to avoid wasting overcharge) and then you use Tiamat 2’s NP followed by Noah’s. On turn 3 you plug Oberon in to secure the loop. This does about 520k damage off Noah’s NP under the same conditions as above (NP2 Noah, NP1 supports, no grails, MLB BG, Class Score).
That is, of course, less damage… but then you also get card stretch.
To help lay this out, here’s how much damage each possible non-Oberon card will do in this setup, assuming all Servants are level 90 with silver Fous, and both Tiamats are NP1:
Second Noah Quick: 143k
Second Noah Arts: 224k
Second Noah Buster: 201k
Second Tiamat Quick: 105k
Second Tiamat Arts: 132k
Second Tiamat Buster: 99k
Third Noah Quick: 167k
Third Noah Arts: 260k
Third Noah Buster: 235k
Third Tiamat Quick: 123k
Third Tiamat Arts: 154k
Third Tiamat Buster: 115k
In the best possible case, where you draw two Noah Arts cards on turn 3, you get a whopping 484k in extra potential damage—and, again, that’s without grails or support NP levels. That said, the most important thing for farming is consistency, and there’s no guarantee you’ll draw Noah’s cards. The more relevant number here is the worst case, which isn’t as simple as just taking both Tiamat Busters (although that’s a fine heuristic for damage if you need to run the numbers quickly).
To figure out our actual worst-case, let’s start by noting that Noah’s cards are always the best option, not matter what they are. Even Noah’s worst card—his Quick—is better than Tiamat’s best card—her Arts—assuming they are in the same place in the turn. As such, our worst possible draw must be one where we draw no Noah cards. Of Tiamat’s cards, the Arts cards are the best option available, and it is possible to not draw them, so we’ll assume that happens as well. This is only possible if we draw 3 cards from one Tiamat and 2 from the other (as if we get four cards from one Tiamat, that Tiamat must have an Arts card available). Because we’ve already said we aren’t drawing any Arts cards, the Tiamat with three cards has to have drawn two Quicks and a Buster. Because we can choose which Tiamat to plug out for Oberon, we can plug out the Tiamat that drew two cards (either two Quicks, or a Quick and a Buster) and use the three-card-Tiamat’s cards. This means the worst possible case in a double Tiamat team where you plug a Tiamat out turn 3 is that you have to use two Tiamat Quicks—which, in this context, is an extra 228k damage at neutral.
You can also potentially slot in a third Tiamat NP in place of a card on turn 3, which nets you about an extra 100k in total between Noah’s NP and a Tiamat Quick (with less impact if you use a Noah Buster, and more impact if Tiamat or Noah have higher NP levels, or you have Arts cards available). There may be cases where this is slightly better damage-wise than using the cards available to you, but there will also definitely be cases where it’s worse, as it locks you into swapping out one specific Tiamat, which means you can get forced into using a Tiamat Buster (or, worse, Oberon cards), which will usually be a damage loss relative to not using the third Tiamat NP.
With card stretch factored in and in the same conditions as the other teams, an NP2 ungrailed Noah functionally does a minimum of 748k at neutral—with the caveat that there must be three enemies in the first wave, and some of that damage is single-target only, and that this assumes the worst possible RNG. I cannot emphasize enough how silly this is—many damage-dealers struggle to reach 500k under these conditions, while Noah far exceeds it. In fact, because of this card stretch, an NP1 Noah should be able to clear most 90++ Caster nodes that have three enemies in the first wave. There are lots of ways to increase your functional damage output here, too—Tiamat grails, Tiamat NP levels, Noah grails, Noah NP levels, Archer class score, and so on—which means reaching neutral 90++ damage levels is entirely feasible even without the usual level 120 NP5 limitations. 6CE farming will also sometimes be possible with this setup (though generally only with class advantage).
...And that’s just single-core farming. As I mentioned earlier in the review, Noah is perfectly tailored to multicore setups, packing substantial card-type-agnostic partywide damage buffs and lots of party charge. He’s best at this when supporting Animals, but even for non-Animals, a 20/20 buff spread and a bunch of NP charge is better than what most Servants have to offer. It also helps that Noah’s preferred support is Tiamat, who also provides a ton of partywide value. As with all multicore farming, the specific shape of the team needs to be responsive to the node you’re trying to farm, but a team involving Tiamat, Noah, an ST DPS, and a plug support will likely be a great way to approach many tricky nodes you can’t or don’t want to single-core farm.
Noah is less remarkable as a CQ unit, not in that he isn’t good—he’s still excellent—but in that his usage is more standard. You essentially have two options for optimal Noah play: Tiamat mid-range stall, and Castoria hard stall. These work as they always do. 
For the Tiamat setup, you run double Tiamat, use Tiamat NPs whenever possible for sustain and crit damage buffs, and rely on Noah’s NP and cards for huge damage output during your buff windows. Noah is perhaps the best point Servant for this type of team due to the combination of his strong intrinsic kit, all the help he provides the Tiamats in keeping their NPs up, and the healing he brings for incidental sustain. He also makes your Tiamats’ cards hit harder, which is a nice bonus. A Tiamat/Tiamat/Noah team will be great for fights that you expect to clear in two-to-three buff cycles—you should easily be able to survive that long, and your damage in your burst windows will be very high.
On the other hand, Noah is also a great point Servant specifically for Castoria/Lady Avalon teams. You do run into the usual slight awkwardness of wanting to use Noah’s NP to boost Castoria’s overcharge and losing out on some party charge utility because of that… but assuming you’re doing the usual thing of timing NP chains every three turns to maximize Castoria’s defenses, you can alternate using Noah’s and Lady Avalon’s overcharge-boosting skills to give yourself four hits of partywide Solemn Defense every NP cycle, giving the team a lot of sustainability while still hitting reasonably hard.
Because of how self-sufficient Noah is, he’ll also work just fine in any of your usual lower-end setups. His one notable drawback outside of optimized teams is that his active NP gain is on the low side, so Servants who can offer him batteries are good partners—Xu Fu, SSR Mash, and Waver all work particularly well.
Also, if you don’t have Noah’s preferred supports but do have a good spread of gold Servants otherwise, you can take a look at Animal Servants you do have who can offer buffs to Noah. Servants like Tamamo, Summer Ibuki, and Summer Crane won’t belong in Noah’s absolute top-end setups, but they do have good general synergy with his kit and can be strong partners for atypical setups.
Assuming you aren’t running a farming CE, The Black Grail is Noah’s best CE pick—he has easy NP recursion and tons of self-healing, so the CE massively increases his damage with virtually no downsides.
If Noah cares about critting, he’s probably running in a double Tiamat team, and if he’s running in a double Tiamat team he’s hitting the crit cap, so crit damage CCs effectively do nothing for him. With an eye towards CQ performance, healing and other defense-oriented CCs can be nice as a little bit of a stability and consistency buff, and NP gain CCs can also help to offset Noah’s relatively weak card-based NP gain.
Noah is one of the best AoE damage-dealers in the game. Especially if you have him at NP2 or higher, I’d strongly recommend grailing him for the increased damage potential and heightened survival in hard fights.
Noah is unique in that his kit is completely and totally tailored to synergize with Tiamat’s: he brings party buffs, party charge, overcharge-based ramp, and even selfish niche buffs that trigger when Tiamat is present. Without Tiamat, Noah would be roughly on-par with Tezcatlipoca—which, to be clear, would still be really good! With Tiamat, Noah is uniquely fantastic, a perfect use-case for the shiny new support. He’s a very powerful single-core farmer, one of the best multi-core farmers in the game, and an excellent pick for nearly any hard fight. There are truly no downsides here.
...All that said, Noah doesn’t do anything other than being a top-tier DPS. If your farming needs are already met and you aren’t worried about CQs and the like, Noah isn’t going to bring anything new for you. Noah absolutely stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the best AoE Servants in the game, but this late in FGO’s life cycle, there probably aren’t that many players who particularly need that. He’ll be a phenomenal addition to your roster if you do happen to pull for him, and if you get a couple NP levels he stands a very real chance of being the best AoE DPS you have available… but if your needs are already met, he won’t do anything new for you.