Rabbit’s Reviews #444: Hippolyta (4* Rider)

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In contrast to the unique mix of functionality that is Prelati, Hippolyta is extremely straightforward: she’s a generically good single-target Buster Crit Rider. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with her, and she even stands out a bit from her direct competition by virtue of having pretty good star gen and three Buster cards to work with, but for the most part she fills the same role as the many other single-target Buster Riders we have and she’s about as good at it as they are. Given that she’s free, that’s a very nice place for her to land, but it also means she’s not especially unique or exciting.
Hippolyta
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Hippolyta has a somewhat defense-leaning stat spread, with relatively low attack and relatively high health for an SR Rider. This isn’t a great starting point for a damage-dealer. Her internals also aren’t great, with weak active star gen due to her deck and hit-counts, middling Arts card NP gain relative to her deck, and fairly bad Quick card NP gain. Her passives are also unremarkable, with Riding, which provides a minor boost to her least important card, Magic Resistance, which is decent but unreliable, and Divinity, which is just there for the trait.
Because Hippolyta is a 30% charger, Mana Loading is her most important append, meaningfully facilitating her loop compatibility with Koyanskaya. Skill Reload is also nice for letting Hippolyta stack her skills more quickly, and the crit damage append is also fairly useful, as Hippolyta has easy crit access and pretty low in-kit crit buffs. Anti-Avenger damage is situationally valuable—handy if you don’t have a good Moon Cancer for Avenger-killing, but irrelevant when fighting anything else. The Extra Attack buff isn’t terrible—Hippolyta should be Brave Chaining whenever possible, and thus her Extra card is likely to see use—but the impact of the append is small enough that it won’t matter much in most cases. Since Hippolyta is a welfare, it’s pretty easy to unlock all her appends, especially if you aren’t planning to take her to 120, so even though most of these appends are of mixed value, you might as well unlock them all.
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Since Hippolyta is a welfare, all you need to do to ascend her is complete her event. Her skill mats are pretty manageable, too—she mostly asks for older mats in reasonable quantities. You might not need to invest in her if you already have a preferred ST Buster Rider, but if you do want to raise her, it should be pretty easy to do so.
As is typical for welfare Servants, Hippolyta’s skillset is extremely straightforward, bringing the baseline tools Hippolyta needs to be solid and not much else. Recommended skill order is 3>1>2.
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Therme’s Brilliance is a fairly old-school Charisma variant, pairing a standard partywide 3-turn attack buff with a conditional partywide crit buff. “Female” is a broad niche. It applies to Hippolyta herself, which is all that really matters in most cases, and it also applies to Koyan, which can give you a tiny bit of extra damage on turns where you don’t have Hippolyta cards available. On the other hand, the crit damage buff caps out at 30%, which is pretty unimpressive, especially for an effect that isn’t universal. In exchange for being otherwise merely fine, this skill comes with a neat defensive tool: a two-hit dodge for Hippolyta herself, plus the same effect for any child allies. Hit-based dodges are always great, and even if Hippolyta doesn’t have any applicable allies, this is nice to have defensively. Hippolyta’s favored teams don’t usually include child Servants, but if you’re trying to run a budget team, you can pair Hippolyta with, say, Bunyan and Hans, and suddenly this turns into a highly potent partywide defensive tool. This isn’t likely to often be relevant, but it’s still a neat trick.
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War God’s Sash is a selfish 3-turn Buster buff that caps out at 20%. This is lower than is typical for buffs of this type (and the same is true of Hippolyta’s third skill), but because Hippolyta has a 20% buff in all three main buff brackets, this isn’t as disappointing as it seems. There are some Servants who get buffs in all three brackets and still get full buff values out of the deal, but a 20/20/20 buff spread is perfectly serviceable, especially on a welfare. In addition to the Buster buff, this skill lets Hippolyta generate 5 stars each time she uses her Buster cards—effectively turning them into Quicks, at least in terms of star gen—and it gives an immediate burst of critical stars. When you factor in Hippolyta’s third skill and her preferred supports, she should basically always be critting, which is very nice on a triple-Buster Servant.
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Apostle of the Moon Goddess is a 20%, 3-turn NP damage buff. The same deal as skill 2 applies here: the value is low, but because of Hippolyta’s overall buff spread, it’s probably fine. This also comes with a 30% battery, which is more or less table stakes for being a functional Buster unit in this day and age. On top of that, this skill lets Hippolyta generate 20 stars per turn passively for 3 turns, shoring up her crit rate for the duration of her buff window. This isn’t a particularly exciting skill, but it’s entirely serviceable, and all three effects here are useful.
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Hippolyta’s NP is quite good—about as nice as you can expect from a standard ST NP that doesn’t have ramp. The NP deals supereffective damage against Chaotic enemies, which is a broad niche. Supereffective damage on an ST NP is always great, and since Hippolyta should always be NP5, she’ll do excellent damage against any Chaotic enemy, and especially Chaotic Casters and Berserkers.
Beyond that, the NP lets Hippolyta ignore defense for the whole turn. This doesn’t let her get past dodges and invulns, but being able to negate standard defense buffs is slightly less common, and this can be a reason for players with well-developed boxes to occasionally pull Hippolyta out. Post-damage, the NP gives a 30% crit damage buff to the whole team—not a huge buff, but nice for Hippolyta’s overall damage output especially since it does ramp—and it boosts the whole party’s crit chance resistance as well. A single use of this NP protects the party from most crits, and if Hippolyta loops, she starts to reach the point where she can reliably negate crits even from enemies with crit chance buffs.
Hippolyta slots cleanly into conventional burst-oriented Buster teams. A Koyan/Koyan/Oberon setup lets Hippolyta reliably loop and deal a ton of damage to a single target over the course of three turns. With a 50% charge CE, Hippolyta’s loop is completely guaranteed, but since Hippolyta is an ST Servant and thus likely to be used in CQs specifically, you can probably use something like the Black Grail for extra damage and rely on cards to make up the missing charge.
Hippolyta’s easy access to crits also makes her a nice Servant for more old-school Buster crit teams—the kinds of teams that use Merlin and/or Himiko to amplify card damage. There’s not a lot of complexity here—you just funnel buffs to Hippolyta and try to use Buster Brave chains whenever possible. Merlin/Hippolyta/Paladin Mash is a particularly nice team, since Merlin/Mash is a good shell in general and Hippolyta’s crit buffs can amplify Mash’s cards as well. This team has the added advantage of only requiring native access to free Servants, since you can snag Merlin off your friend list.
Speaking of off-meta teams, Hans specifically is a natural partner for Hippolyta, boosting her crit damage and facilitating her NP gain while receiving her dodge in turn. Bunyan isn’t quite as good of a support but can be used in a similar way. Avenger Chloe is a great support who also has the child trait (although since she plugs herself out she benefits less from Hippolyta’s defenses), and Summer Abby also has some synergy here, as a child Servant who can significantly boost damage against a single target.
Assuming you’re running a conventional Koyan/Koyan/Oberon team and are willing to risk needing to reset if you get really unlucky with your card draws, The Black Grail is Hippolyta’s best damage-boosting CE. Otherwise, look for a 50% charge CE that also boosts Buster and/or Crit damage—Aerial Drive is a great example.
Hippolyta has extremely easy crit access, and especially before she starts ramping the buffs form her NP, she doesn’t have a ton of in-kit crit damage boosts. This makes crit damage CCs a great pick for her, especially on her Buster cards.
Hippolyta is a solid Servant, but she’s largely unremarkable overall, and her low-ish attack stat means she gains slightly less from extra levels than a more offense-oriented DPS would. That said, taking her to level 90 is pretty cheap, and if you find herself using her often, a pair of grails is a small price to pay for an extra 10% or so damage in all contexts.
Hippolyta is super straightforward, but there’s also nothing wrong with her. She’s a baseline good ST Buster unit with a couple of small things (her deck, her defense-piercing NP) that set her apart from her direct competition. For players without a favored ST Buster Rider, Hippolyta is a really good option. For anyone else, Hippolyta is strong enough that she won’t feel bad if you specifically want to use her, and her particular blend of functionality means you might occasionally reach for her to handle a specific fight. In my view, this is pretty much exactly what you want out of a welfare: strong enough to be genuinely helpful to less established players and just unique enough to have a use case or two for established players, without overshadowing the premium options.