Rabbit’s Reviews #442: Jacques de Molay (5* Saber)

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For White Day this year, we get Jacques de Molay, migrating over from Arcade. Molay is a decent if unremarkable AoE Buster Saber. He’s very good for CQs and alright for farming, with his most notable weaknesses being that he’s reliant on debuffs and that he only has a 30% battery and thus can’t loop CE-less even with the new plugsuit. He draws obvious comparisons to Lord Logres, who’s still fairly new. Relative to Logres, Molay is much more straightforward, in that he’s a lot less complicated to use… but in exchange, his performance ceiling is a whole lot lower. In a world with lots of excellent AoE options, he doesn’t really stand out, but at the very least he’s not bad.
Jacques de Molay (Saber)
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Molay has fairly average stats for an SSR Saber, which means he has decent but not exceptional attack and HP. His NP gain is also essentially average for his deck, and as a single-Quick Servant he’s not particularly good at active star gen. His only passives are Magic Resistance and Riding, neither of which matter much.
As a 30% charger, Mana Loading is Molay’s most important append. Skill Reload is helpful as well for maximizing turn-two damage. As a Buster Servant with no in-kit crit buffs at all, the crit damage append is also decent. The other two don’t really matter.
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Molay needs relatively old mats, which should make him fairly easy to raise. He does ask for a decent number of medals and proofs, which could be annoying as both are sometimes in short supply, but overall his mat asks are pretty reasonable.
Molay’s skillset is a straightforward mix of farming basics and CQ utility. Recommended skill order is 2>1>3.
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Vow is a Charisma variant with a bunch of partywide defensive utility tacked on. 20% attack up isn’t a lot on its own, but since Molay has buffs in all three brackets, on top of a controllable Supereffective modifier, the fact that his individual buffs have low values is actually fine. The defenses are handy for CQs—20% defense up and passive healing won’t protect the party from deadly attacks, but they will help with warding off chip damage, and they’re great for Castoria stall specifically. Debuff immunity, meanwhile, is always a nice consistency buff, even if it’s one-time-only. For farming, this is functionally just a small attack buff, but pairing that with consistency tools for CQs is pretty decent.
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Almsgiving is Molay’s battery. It’s a 30% selfish charge, which is the bare minimum for Koyan compatibility but doesn’t enable CE-less looping. In exchange, it also gives 10% charge per turn to the whole party. This is very nice for CQs and potentially valuable for multicore farming, but for single-core setups, Molay would be better off with a generic 50% battery. Aside from that, the skill also provides partywide NP damage up—good for Molay and again solid for multicore teams—and it drains all enemies’ NP gauges, which might buy a turn of survival in some cases.
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Guardian is essentially two skills in one. It provides a bog-standard selfish 30% Arts and Buster buff, boosting Molay’s NP damage and also functionally helping with active NP gain in CQs. It also provides a bunch of targeted defensive utility: a guts, a hefty 3-time damage cut, and three whole turns of buff removal resistance. The damage cut is enough to mostly negate non-crits, especially with class advantage factored in, and the guts can let an ally survive an NP, but the real prize here is the buff removal resistance. Three turns of buff removal resistance is enough to ensure any Servant (which can be Molay himself) is firing on all cylinders for a full buff cycle. You won’t always need this, but when you do it’s great to have. It’s a bit disappointing that the offensive half of this skill isn’t also targetable, as if it were Molay would be a truly excellent buff removal resistance support, but even as-is this is pretty handy to have around for hard fights.
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Molay’s NP is the centerpiece of his kit. It gives Molay a pre-cast buff that causes all of Molay’s attacks (including this NP) to inflict burn, and then the NP deals 10% extra Supereffective damage for each stack of burn on the enemy (up to 10 stacks in total). The burn-on-attack buff itself also stacks, meaning Molay can inflict multiple burn stacks at once. In farming contexts, this is functionally Molay’s ramp: he inflicts one extra burn stack each time he NPs, so his Supereffective modifier scales from 10% to 30%. This is a pretty neat form of ramp, considering it multiplies with everything, though it’s held back a bit by the fact that Molay has no other form of niche damage. In CQs, though, Molay can easily max out his burn damage, since burn persists across turns (assuming enemies don’t swap out) and Molay can land extra stacks via his cards. Overall, this makes Molay pretty good for farming, loop specs aside, and very strong in CQs.
Outside of that, the NP is pretty unremarkable. It has pre-cast NP damage up, which is decent, but the values are low and it doesn’t ramp. It also inflicts burn on Molay himself, as a small and mostly irrelevant demerit.
Molay is an extremely straightforward Buster looper. He wants a Koyan/Koyan/Oberon team, a 50% charge CE, and Mana Loading. On turn 1, he uses his own battery. On turn 2, you use both Koyan batteries, and on turn 3, you use Molay’s own battery again, plus Oberon’s batteries. Because Molay gets 10% charge per turn, you can technically get away with using a non-Oberon 50% charger if you also use the new plugsuit for its 10% NP charge, but the damage loss there is severe, so it’s only worth doing if you don’t have Oberon. Due to the way the skills are laid-out, there’s no way to avoid using Oberon without the extra charge from the new plugsuit, as Molay must save the second use of his battery for turn 3, and the active charge and passive charge are tied to the same skill.
Molay also has some multicore potential, due to his party buffs and party charge, but neither of those effects is particularly large, so he probably won’t be relevant to multicore farming except in very specific cases.
For CQs, Molay brings healing, which makes him a natural partner for Castoria. Himiko/Castoria or Flora/Castoria team, for example, would be pretty solid with Molay. Merlin/Castoria, meanwhile, is a little less reliable but has higher overall damage potential.
You can also use Molay for his supportive value in CQs where buff removal specifically is an issue. Molay brings 20% attack up, 20% NP damage up, 10% charge per turn, and a bunch of defenses for an ally, while also protecting them from buff removal, making him a potentially valuable utility pick if you need to deal with buff removal spam.
For farming, Molay will always need a 50% charge CE. Standby options like Aerial Drive or First Day of Filming are as good as always. For CQs, you might be able to get away with The Black Grail, with NP gain from cards in play, and if you can that’s your best damage option.
As a Buster Servant with no in-kit crit buffs, crit damage CCs are a natural option. Burn CCs can also be nice, as they let Molay scale his Supereffective damage faster—though because of how his kit works, he doesn’t need them to rig his NP damage, unlike some similar Servants.
Molay is a solid Servant, but he’s not especially remarkable. If you use him a lot, grails will definitely help, but he’s not a Servant who’s an inherently exceptional grail target.
Molay is pretty good. He’s got a ton of defensive CQ utility, solid damage, a controllable Supereffective modifier, and baseline Buster looping capabilities. He’s not a standout, though, and we have enough Servants who are standouts that it’s hard to recommend him. Also, thanks to the new plugsuit, the difference between a 30% battery and a 50% battery on a Buster Servant is much wider than before, which makes Molay’s kit look a little dated. He’s definitely not bad, but I at least wouldn’t pull for him for gameplay reasons.