Rabbit’s Reviews #439: Hebi Nyobo (4* Assassin)

Hebi Nyobo has relatively low attack and relatively high health, which is completely fine for a support—especially one who can (in theory) remove herself from the field when necessary. Her Arts card NP gain is totally standard for her deck, and her Quick card NP gain is weak, which is a little unfortunate if you want Hebi Nyobo to access her NP (which is the condition for the aforementioned ability to remove herself from the field). Her star gen is similarly unremarkable, due to having a non-damaging NP and only a single Quick card.

All four of Hebi Nyobo’s passives are unique. She starts with a Presence Concealment variant that gives a small crit damage buff in addition to the usual star gen buff. Both of these are decent, but neither matters much given her supportive lean. She also gets a passive that provides a small Buster buff and a persistent damage cut. The Buster buff doesn’t really matter, as Hebi Nyobo isn’t here to deal damage, but permanent damage cut effects are nice for survivability. Taste of Home increases Hebi Nyobo’s NP gain—something she does need and benefits from—and Motherly Consideration gives Magic Resistance levels of debuff resistance to everyone except Hebi Nyobo, a neat trick that can stack with other Servants’ innate Magic Resistance to give them a solid chance of avoiding most normal debuffs.

In almost all cases, none of Hebi Nyobo’s appends have any impact at all. Mana Loading might occasionally be helpful if you already have a lot of party charge flying around and 20% more charge would let you squeeze in a Hebi NP, and Skill Reload could be nice for faster cycling in CQs, but those are both edge-cases. Of the two, I’d prioritize Skill Reload, in part because there’s one specific support setup where Hebi Nyobo particularly benefits from having it… but honestly you can safely ignore all of these, which is yet another way in which Hebi Nyobo is surprisingly cheap and accessible.

Hebi Nyobo’s mat asks are pretty manageable. Assuming you don’t care about her appends, she doesn’t need any bronze mats, and the silver mats she does need don’t tend to be in especially short supply.

Hebi Nyobo has a highly focused and highly effective support skillset. Recommended skill order is 3>2>1.

Hebi Nyobo’s NP is… somewhat odd. It’s broadly similar to Miss Crane’s, giving NP charge and NP damage to the first ally other than Hebi Nyobo, and removing Hebi Nyobo from the field. It runs into the exact same issues Crane’s does—if you use the NP before an ally’s NP, the NP charge is wasted, while if you use it after, the NP damage buff doesn’t apply to the damaging NP. Furthermore, you can’t make use of the NP charge effect in most farming contexts, as Hebi Nyobo won’t NP if your DPS clears a wave. There may be some multicore setups where you theoretically could make use of this—for example, if you need two Servants to NP to clear a wave anyway, the first can NP, followed by Hebi Nyobo, followed by the second—but usually the NP charge effect on this NP is CQ-only.

Furthermore, Hebi Nyobo usually wants to use her NP charge skills on allies, which means she won’t have access to this NP in farming contexts unless your DPS and other supports have a ton of party charge to throw around. Even in CQs, it can be tricky for Hebi Nyobo to get access to this NP, and on its own a 10% NP damage buff might not be worth losing out on a crit from your DPS.

What makes this NP worth talking about—and the biggest way it stands out from Crane’s—is that the NP charge effect is a whopping 100%. If you can slot this NP in with the correct timing, it’s a free NP for whoever you point it at.

Looping is accessible enough at this point that optimized teams don’t really have a lot of need for this, actually, especially if it means you have to toss batteries to Hebi Nyobo that would otherwise go to your DPS. Even so, there are setups where you can leverage this to interesting effect, and outside of optimal teams this can be very powerful indeed. If you aren’t running meta supports—if, say, you’re a new player who happened to get a Hebi Nyobo spook—having a Servant whose NP provides a whole 100% charge is a massive benefit. This probably doesn’t describe many players in this day and age, but it’s still an objectively powerful effect, even if most players at this point won’t get that much use out of it.

The other way this NP differentiates itself from Crane’s is that it has to be used twice, rather than just once, for it to remove Hebi Nyobo from the field. This means Hebi Nyobo can’t easily be used as a sacrifice support, even if you give her Kaleidoscope. Self-sacrifice effects are usually a functional power increase for supports, but the fact that this will usually only be relevant to longer fights means it typically functions as a proper demerit—it’s only likely to come up in cases where you would have preferred for Hebi Nyobo to stick around longer. A severe demerit like this is probably justified given the theoretical power of 100% charge—and this can still be used to your advantage in specific setups—but unlike Crane, Hebi Nyobo is not balanced around the idea of being an “extra” support in your lineup.

The only effect on this NP that scales with NP level is the max HP buff it provides to its target. Max HP up is typically a superior form of healing—it enables temporarily healing beyond a Servant’s usual HP maximum, but, as it’s a buff, it can also be negated by buff block and similar effects. This scales from 2000 HP at NP1 to a very impressive 10000 HP at NP5. An NP5 Hebi Nyobo will functionally fully heal whoever she targets—or, if they’re already at full health, provide them with a serious HP buffer for three turns—but because she doesn’t have easy access to this NP and can only do it twice, the impact of this is somewhat limited. The healing does nothing in farming contexts, of course, and for fastplay CQs it’s also unlikely to matter. For mid-length fights—which are, probably not coincidentally, the types of fights where Hebi Nyobo is most likely to NP twice—a two-time full heal for your DPS could actually matter a lot… but NP levels for Hebi Nyobo only really matter for a very small subset of her use cases, so you don’t need to worry about intentionally getting her past NP1. She’s the type of Servant for whom NP levels are welcome, should she choose to spook, but you don’t need to pursue them, which is lovely for a support.

At a high level, Hebi Nyobo is a support you choose when you need better loopage and can afford to sacrifice damage to get it. She works in both Buster and Arts teams, replacing a Castoria or a Koyan. In some cases, you can even run double Hebi Nyobo, forgoing Castoria and Koyan entirely. This sometimes an unnecessary damage loss—a single Hebi Nyobo is often enough to enable a loop where it wasn’t possible before, and even if you don’t have your own Castoria or Koyan, you can grab one off support—but it is notable that this is a viable farming option, and double Hebi is sometimes superior to running her with one of the older meta supports.

For Arts teams, a Hebi/Hebi/Oberon team enables pretty much any AoE Arts Servant with a 50% battery to loop any node. All they need is Mana Loading and at least 10% refund against a single enemy with all buffs in play. You hit this with around 1.6% base NP gain on NP and 50% in in-kit Arts buffs from your DPS, which is more or less the baseline for an AoE Arts SSR these days. You can of course offset these things in multiple directions—higher base NP gain means you need fewer Arts buffs, high Arts buffs means you need less innate NP gain, an in-kit NP gain buff can offset both of these, and flat post-NP charge (like Tez and Noah have) obviates the need for refund entirely.

For this setup, on turn 1, you use the DPS’s 50% battery, plus one Hebi 30% battery, plus Mana Loading, to reach 100% NP gauge. You then use both Hebis’ first two skills, plus any remaining DPS skills. The DPS refunds a minimum of 10% and gets 40% charge from both Hebis’ passive NP gain skills. On turn 2, you use the other Hebi’s 30% battery, and you plug one of them out for Oberon, using his 20% battery to bring you back to 100%. You NP again, your DPS refunds 10%, and they get another 40% from the Hebis’ passive NP gain. Oberon uses his 50% battery (along with End of the Dream) to secure the loop.

If your DPS refunds at least 20% with one Hebi and one Castoria (and has Mana Loading and a 50% battery), you can also loop 1/1/x nodes CE-less using the new plugsuit. The aforementioned generic benchmark DPS, with 1.6% base refund and 50% in-kit Arts up, refunds about 14% in this team, so this approach will be limited to Servants with above-average loop specs and/or overkill—which, in fairness, is within reach of many of the better Arts damage-dealers. You actually only need 20% refund on one of the two turns—10% is sufficient for the other turn—so you only need the overkill (or an extra enemy) on one of the first two waves, which is pretty manageable in most cases.

In this setup, on turn 1, you use all Hebi skills and all Castoria skills, along with any DPS buffs that aren’t tied to their battery. The DPS refunds 10% or 20%, and gains 20% passive charge from Hebi. If the DPS will refund 20% on wave 2, you swap Hebi for Oberon and use his 20% battery; otherwise, you use the Mystic Code’s 10% battery. You then use your DPS’s 50% battery to enable the loop. On turn 3, your DPS refunds 10% or 20% and gains another 20% from Hebi. If you refunded 20% (and thus have 40% charge), you use the Mystic Code battery; otherwise, you use Oberon’s 20% battery. Then, you use Oberon’s 50% battery and End of the Dream to secure the loop.

Whether this is better or worse than the double Hebi team depends on the specifics of your DPS and the following conditions:

• If your DPS refunds at least 20% on wave 2, and thus you can use the new plugsuit’s battery and attack buff on turn 3…

◦ If the new plugsuit and the second plugsuit are about the same level (or the new plugsuit is higher level), this team always outdamages the double Hebi team.

◦ If Castoria is able to NP (which requires 50% charge total spread between Mana Loading on Castoria and party charge from the DPS), the Castoria/Hebi team always outdamages the double Hebi team.

◦ If Castoria cannot NP and the second plugsuit is significantly higher level than the new plugsuit (which will likely be true for a while after Hebi’s release), the double Hebi team deals more damage (as the extra 20% NP damage from the second plugsuit plus the extra 10% attack from Hebi outweighs the extra 20% Arts from Castoria).

• If your DPS does not refund at least 20% on wave 2, and thus you have to use the new plugsuit’s battery and attack buff on turn 2…

◦ If Castoria is able to NP (which requires 50% charge total spread between Mana Loading on Castoria and party charge from the DPS) and is at least NP2, the Castoria/Hebi team always outdamages the double Hebi team.

◦ If Castoria cannot NP, the double Hebi team deals more damage.

Essentially, conventional single-core Arts farming now has three main options: double Castoria, Castoria/Hebi, and double Hebi. Double Castoria always deals the most damage, but it has the least flexible loop specs—if it does work, it’s the best option. Castoria/Hebi has middle-of-the-road loop specs, deals slightly less damage than double Castoria, and sometimes outdamages double Hebi. Double Hebi has the most flexible loop specs, deals slightly less damage than double Castoria, and sometimes outdamages Castoria/Hebi.

Every DPS is different, of course, and there are some weird edge cases who behave differently. Saber Shiki, for example, benefits meaningfully from Hebi—while she still can’t loop 1/1/x nodes (due to not having a 50% battery), she can loop 1/2/x or 2/1/x with the new plugsuit and either double Hebi or Hebi/Castoria. Because she needs the new plugsuit either way, however, she always prefers Hebi/Castoria to double Hebi no matter what else is true about the team and the node.

Also, none of this factors in double Tiamat, which is usually less effective for Arts teams but which occasionally is worth considering, especially for Servants with tons of AoE charge like Tez and Noah. Ultimately, once you have a general understanding for how Hebi works, I’d recommend taking a look at your favored Arts Servants and figuring out what their specific best compositions are. Unless your DPS of choice has uniquely bad loop specs, double Castoria will almost always be the best option for 3/3/x nodes, but if they didn’t already have perfect loopage, there’s probably a set of node compositions for which replacing one or two Castorias with Hebi results in a stronger overall farming setup. Because this is different for every Servant, I can’t realistically break down every Arts DPS in this one review, but hopefully these guidelines provide you with the tools to start working out how best to use Hebi to support your favorites

At the end of the day, Hebi operates as something of a crutch for Arts teams. You don’t want to bring her unless you have to—unless you can’t loop without her—but if you do need her, she lets Servants loop where they couldn’t before and brings enough damage buffs to be generally sufficient for most things. In general, she doesn’t raise the ceiling for Servants who were already great, and she doesn’t help Servants who were already good in nodes that already favored them… but she expands the range of viability for Servants who were previously situational, and she can take Servants who were otherwise average-to-bad and make them workable. If you only ever run extremely optimized, absolutely top-end setups, you’ll probably never reach for Hebi… but if you want more flexibility to farm with your favorites, even if they aren’t the strongest Servants out there, Hebi is right there for you. To me, at least, that’s extremely valuable.

...And now we move to Buster setups. Due to the new plugsuit, any Servant with a 50% battery on a 7-turn-or-less cooldown can loop CE-less with Koyan/Koyan/Oberon. Because of this, Buster setups don’t usually need or want Hebi when loop farming. That said, there are a handful of occasions where you might want Hebi instead of one or both Koyans.

Hebi provides very slightly more steroids than Koyan does against non-Man enemies, and a DPS whose skills are on 5-turn cooldowns can still stack them on turn 3 with only a single Koyan, provided they have Skill Reload. As such, if your DPS’s relevant skills are all on 5-turn cooldowns, and the enemies you’re fighting aren’t Man attribute, and you can afford to have lower damage on turn 2, and you aren’t relying on crits, a Hebi/Koyan team deals very slightly more damage than a Koyan/Koyan team. That’s a lot of caveats, but it is there. Takeda Shingen and Ereshkigal, for example, can still re-use their core skills in a Hebi/Koyan team, which means they can loop CE-less and have slightly higher non-Man turn-3 damage output than they would in a more conventional Koyan/Koyan setup.

More interestingly, a Hebi/Hebi/Oberon team allows any Buster Servant with a 50% battery and at least 10% in passive charge to loop CE-less without relying on the new plugsuit. That 10% can come in the form of a skill that gives passive NP charge, or in an on-NP NP charge effect. One turn 1, Mana Loading plus one Hebi 30% battery plus the Servant’s 50% battery gets you to your NP, and you use all the other Hebi skills, holding the other Hebi 30% battery in reserve. On turn 2, you get 10% from the DPS’s passive charge, plus 40% total from the Hebi passive batteries. You use the remaining 30% Hebi battery and then plug a Hebi out for Oberon, who uses his 20% battery to bring you to 100%. On turn 3, you get 10% from the DPS’s passive charge, 40% from Hebi’s passive charge, and you use Oberon’s 50% battery to secure the loop.

The Koyan/Koyan/Oberon BG loop setup requires you to use the new plugsuit’s battery and attack buff on turn 1. The Hebi alternative loses 40% total Buster up (as well as Koyan’s anti-Man buffs), as well as any stackable buffs from your DPS, but it gives you 60% extra attack up from the two Hebis and lets you use plug 2’s damage buff on turn 3—for a wave-3 total of 80% attack up and 40% NP damage up (after Oberon’s doubling) that you wouldn’t get from the Koyan team. This means Servants who benefit from running double Hebi instead of double Koyan are those who have a 50% battery, 10% charge per turn, and less than 80% in Koyan-compatible Steroids. There aren’t many Servants to whom this applies, with the most notable beneficiaries being Koyan (who can’t run the other team at all) and Metatron (who has extremely low in-kit damage buffs).

Koyan specifically actually gets the most mileage out of a Hebi/Waver/Oberon team. In this setup, on turn 1, you start with Mana Loading, use all of Hebi’s skills, plug her out for Oberon, use Oberon’s 20% battery, and use Waver’s 30% battery, bringing Koyan to 100%. Koyan NPs, and Waver’s overcharge buff lets her NP refund 20% charge. She gets an additional 20% charge from Hebi’s passive battery, and then you use Waver’s attack buff (for its 10% battery) and Koyan’s own 50% battery to reach 100%. On turn 3, Koyan refunds 10%, she gets 20% from Hebi, and then you use Oberon’s 50% battery, Waver’s remaining 10% battery, and the 10% battery from the new plugsuit, to secure the loop. Waver provides the same buff spread as Hebi (30/30), but because one of his buffs goes to NP damage, Oberon doubles it for additional impact.

Ruler Artoria, similarly, cannot loop without Hebi, but can loop in a double Hebi setup, without even relying on the new plugsuit. On turn 1, you use all Hebi skills and plug a Hebi out for Oberon. Mana Loading plus both Hebi batteries plus Oberon’s 20% battery brings you to 100%. Ruler Artoria refunds 20% and gains 40% from the passive Hebi batteries, after which she uses her own 40% battery to reach 100% (which, conveniently, also means her delayed attack buff falls on turn 3). On turn 3, Ruler Artoria gets 20% from her NP and 40% from the Hebis again, and Oberon’s 50% battery secures the loop.

Lancer Artoria is another notable beneficiary of Buster farming with Hebi, getting a nearly best-of-all-worlds Hebi/Koyan/Oberon setup provided she has Mana Loading and Skill Reload. On turn 1, you use all Hebi skills and all Lartoria skills. Lartoria NPs, gaining 20% charge from her NP and 20% from Hebi’s passive charge. You then plug Hebi out for Oberon and use Koyan’s 50% battery and Oberon’s 20% battery to bring Lartoria to 100%. She NPs again, refunding 20% and gaining 20% from Hebi, at which point you re-use Lartoria’s offensive skills (which will have come off cooldown), use Oberon’s 50% battery, and use the 10% battery from the new plugsuit to secure the loop. Her damage in this setup is extraordinarily high—she does about 700k damage at level 90 and NP2 with an MLB Black Grail, and at level 100 and NP5 with gold Fous she reaches omnifarmer territory. That’s level 100, not 120!

As one final case-study, Hebi partially solves one of my personal complaints about Lord Logres, which was that optimal Lord Logres farming requires pulling another Logres off support. Instead, you can run Hebi/Logres/Oberon/Oberon. This setup notably does not require any append skills on Logres, but it does require both Oberons to have Skill Reload. On turn 1, you use all of Hebi’s skills, then plug her out for the second Oberon. Both Oberons use their 20% batteries, and one of them uses his 50% battery. Lord Logres uses all of her skills, and then she NPs. She gets 20% charge from her NP, 50% charge from her first skill, and 20% charge from Hebi, but then loses 20% charge from Oberon. You use the other Oberon 50% battery, and Logres NPs again, once again leaving her with 70% charge. At this point, both Oberon 20% batteries come off cooldown (thanks to the cooldown reduction from Lord Logres’s third skill, along with Skill Reload), and they use those skills and End of the Dream, at which point Lord Logres NPs. An NP2 Lord Logres with MLB Black Grail deals about 630k in this setup—a little less than Lancer Artoria, and much less than a fully optimized double Logres setup, but without the hassle of needing to find a suitable Lord Logres on your friend list. An Oberon with Skill Reload is also a bit of a particular ask, but somewhat less so than the alternatives, and 630k NP2 neutral damage is still sky-high.

Much like with Arts Servants, Buster Hebi asks you to approach farming setups creatively. This isn’t an exhaustive list of Buster Hebi setups (although it does address the most noteworthy ones), and it obviously doesn’t directly cover any future releases. The important thing—as with Arts farming—is to look at your favorite units and see if Hebi’s unique combination of buffs and charge either enables a loop that wasn’t possible before or results in higher damage output than the team you’ve been using to-date.

The one other thing that’s worth noting about Hebi’s CE-less loop setups is that, while Black Grail is usually required to hit 90++ level damage numbers, a 5CE, black-grail-fueled 90++ team is usually also a team that can 6CE lower-level nodes. One historical disadvantage of Buster Servants is their inability to 6CE farm even relatively easy nodes. Neither Hebi nor the new plugsuit solves this for everyone—30% chargers like Arjuna Alter and Avenger Nobu are showing their age, for instance—but efficient Buster farming of low-level nodes is now available to a much wider range of Servants than it used to be, which is very cool.

There are, of course, other ways Hebi can be used. If her second skill also buffed Quick cards, she’d be a phenomenal Quick support, working in those teams much the same as in Arts teams. She would be more valuable to Quick than to Arts, in fact, on account of Skadi not having split batteries. As it stands, though, her buff value is too low for Quick Servants to want to consider, especially with Tiamat existing—though I wouldn’t rule out there being the odd case where a single Hebi lets a Quick Servant loop with BG and thus is worth bringing despite her lower steroids.

She’s also a solid support for less optimized teams, especially for mid-length CQs where she can find time to NP twice. Each NP will give a full NP gauge to another Servant, and at higher NP levels she provides a significant heal as well. Don’t overlook her as an option, especially if you’re trying to put together a team that you expect to clear a fight in two to three buff cycles.

...And also, you can use her as a sacrificial support specifically for Buster teams, though the setup to do so is somewhat particular. For this strategy, you want to setup your team specifically in the order Hebi/DPS/Koyan/[Additional support]/Koyan/[Anchor servant]. For the additional support, you don’t actually need any NP charge, so you can bring whoever will offer the most damage output. The Anchor Servant also isn’t critical to this, but when you’re running a team that intends to cycle supports it’s generally a good idea to have a self-sufficient Servant in the backline. Hebi needs to have Kaleidoscope (or an equivalent) equipped, and she also needs the Skill Reload append. This setup also assumes that your DPS has enough self charge (via Mana loading, batteries, or a charge CE) to NP on turn 1 with just the 30% battery from Hebi.

On turn 1, you use all three Hebi skills on your DPS, and you use Koyan 1’s damage buffs (but not her battery) on your DPS as well. You then use your DPS’s NP, followed by Hebi’s. Hebi’s NP fully charges your DPS’s NP gauge. On turn 2, you use Koyan’s battery on Hebi, and then plug Koyan 1 out for Koyan 2 to do the same thing. The second Koyan battery fully refreshes the cooldowns on Hebi’s skills, which she can then re-use on your DPS. Koyan 2 uses her damage buffs on your DPS, and then you use a DPS NP, followed by a Hebi NP again. Hebi dies with the second NP usage, making way for your additional support.

Relative to a conventional double Koyan team, this setup means you don’t get to double-stack your DPS’s skills… but in exchange, you get two uses of Hebi’s NP, two stacks of each of her skills, and completely guaranteed loopage, which is probably a good trade for most Servants. Hebi gives a total of 60% attack up, 60% Buster up, and 30% NP damage up, which is well more than you typically get from double-stacking your DPS’s skills. Even Arjuna Alter, who’s a great CQ partner from Koyan, only gets 30% attack up and 50% power mod from stacking his skills, so he’d rather have those extra Hebi buffs instead.

If you’re using Hebi as a farming support, her CE doesn’t matter—give her whatever drop CE you have handy. For CQs, Kaleid is usually her best option, as it lets her NP right away and pass that extra starting charge to your damage-dealer (or even another support, depending on your strategy).

There’s nothing Hebi particularly needs that CCs can provide. Star gen CCs can be nice for helping allies crit more consistently, and buff removal CCs are always decent consistency options for support Servants, but your CC choices don’t really matter here.

Hebi barely benefits at all from grails. She’s absolutely an SSR-calibur Servant, and I personally may take her to level 90 just to reflect that—but from a gameplay value standpoint, there’s no reason to spend the extra resources on her.

Hebi is a fantastic support who’s absolutely on-par with the SSR meta options. Her buff value is a little lower than the limited SSR supports, but in exchange she brings more NP charge in an overall more flexible configuration than most of her competition. For a number of Servants, Hebi is now part of their optimal farming setup. She raises the performance floor for a lot of Arts Servants, and for a handful of Buster Servants she either enables Black Grail looping where it wasn’t possible before, or makes CE-less looping simpler and/or more effective. She also has some cool and interesting utility aimed at challenge quests.

If FGO’s Servants are constructed according to a power budget—with each effect worth a certain number of “points” and with each Servant rarity being allowed a specific number of those “points”—Hebi is probably technically in-line with a gen pool SR. She doesn’t have that many elements to her kit, especially compared to recent limited SSRs. However, nothing in her kit is wasted—every piece of her kit contributes to her being powerful, effective, and interesting. She’s a great example of how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts when it comes to FGO Servant design. Even if she has fewer tools at her disposal than your typical limited SSR, if all of those tools matter, she still ends up being top-tier, because a Servant with a small number of very useful features is always going to outshine a Servant with a huge number of irrelevant features.

At any rate, it’s crazy that Hebi is a gen pool 4* Servant. I strongly recommend pulling for her, if you can, but even if not, she stands a decent chance of spooking (or being on a free SR ticket, if we get another one of those), and that’s truly excellent. This is a Servant who lifts the power floor, slightly raises the power ceiling in a few specific places, and—more importantly—enables teams and strategies that weren’t possible before. Fantastic Servant. Excellent addition to the game.