Rabbit’s Reviews #457: Habetrot (4* Pretender)

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Our last unit of the summer is an odd duck. Pretender Habetrot is fully and unapologetically a CQ unit. Her role is, in some respects, quite simple: she taunts enemies for a turn, and then she does a lot of damage to a single target. She’s pretty self-sufficient in that she can do that core trick regardless of party and regardless of fight, but her damage is highly variable depending on both the team she’s with and the enemies she’s fighting.
Habetrot has very high theoretical steroids, plus several niches, some of which can be layered, so she can output a lot of damage. In the right fight, Habetrot’s ability to negate a turn of damage and then retaliate in kind might be really valuable. She has a couple of big problems, though, most notably that the cases in which Habetrot is relevant are pretty narrow, which makes it hard to know exactly how often she’ll be valuable. Even setting aside the usual complaints about CQ units—farming is most of the game, hard fights usually have lots of different solutions, and so on—Habetrot especially is very particular, to a degree that makes her hard to fully capitalize on. She also suffers from the fact that so much of her stuff is one-turn-only, which further narrows her usefulness. She’s also not very likely to stick around to a second buff cycle, and if she does, that likely means you would have had more success bringing someone with more sustained value.
Habetrot is an odd Servant in that I don’t personally think she’s very good overall—but she might be a silver bullet in the right fight, and she’s also an alright ST DPS specifically for very short battles. If you invest in her and remember her and make a point to bring her for the specific hard fights where her stuff is relevant, she might be valuable, but most players probably don’t need the specific things she brings, so she ends up being mostly a novelty.
Habetrot (Pretender)
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Habetrot has low attack and high HP for an SR Pretender, which doesn’t help her damage output but makes sense given her positioning as a tank. Her internals are decent, with a solid Arts card and unremarkable Quick card NP gain. Her star gen is also okay for a Servant with only two Quick cards, and she’s helped in both cases by her Riding passive, which functionally increases star gen and NP gain on Habetrot’s Quicks.
For Habetrot’s other passives, we get Item Construction E-, which might as well not exist—it’s a massive and convincing 1% buff to debuff success rate on a Servant without any especially important debuffs. We also get Fae Eyes E-, providing a very low 3% crit chance resistance buff. While this isn’t a high value, it’s better than Item Construction, in part because enemy crit chance is additive, so a 3% crit chance resistance buff actually negates somewhere between a third and a tenth of unbuffed crits depending on the enemy you’re fighting.
Habetrot’s last passive, Guardian Fairy, needs a bit of explanation. It provides a 10% buff to defense and nullifies defensive class disadvantage specifically for the Servant to Habetrot’s right (which narratively is the Servant “behind” her). The defense buff is solid but not huge, while nullifying defensive class disadvantage is a bit more interesting. In most cases, a Servant with defensive class disadvantage also has offensive class disadvatage and thus is a bad fit for a fight, but this can be very helpful to Berserkers, Foreigners, and supports in general. This will have the most impact if Habetrot is negating the inherent squishiness of a Berserker, protecting an ally from an enemy Berserker, or protecting a Foreigner from another Foreigner. You can also use it (with good positioning) to, for example, protect a support Caster while fighting an enemy Rider. When laying out teams that use Habetrot, it’s important to consider this skill and to make sure Habetrot is located wherever this skill will be most useful. Even if you don’t need the defensive class disadvantage nullification, Habetrot should never be placed in the third team slot, since you can at least make use of the 10% defense buff as long as there’s a Servant to Habetrot’s right.
Mana Loading is solid for Habetrot, as, with Mana Loading, Habetrot can guarantee herself a turn-2 NP if she gets hit three times on turn 1. Anti-Berserker attack up is also solid, especially since Habetrot can be handy for protecting Servants against enemy Berserkers. The other three appends are all more or less the usual level of decent—Skill Reload gives a bit more flexibility in Koyan teams and can help Habetrot get to a second buff cycle, crit damage up is solid on a Buster Servant who otherwise has no crit damage buffs, and Extra attack up is a marginal bonus and probably the least useful of the appends.
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Habetrot is a welfare, so she’s essentially free to ascend. Her skill mats are also pretty friendly, as she takes no gems (being a Pretender) and her mats come mostly from older chapters.
Habetrot’s skillset brings a mix of pretty good, albeit rather odd, effects. Recommended skill order is 1>3>2.
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Guardian Divine Beast is a strong survival tool, pairing a taunt with a guts. This almost certainly guarantees Habetrot (and the rest of your team) survives the turn where it’s used, as long as you aren’t dealing with any AoE attacks or NPs. There are better taunt tanks out there, but that doesn’t mean Habetrot’s defensive utility isn’t useful. In addition to that, this skill causes Habetrot to generate 30% NP charge every time she’s attacked. The amount of charge Habetrot gets from this skill varies depending on the number of incoming attacks, which means you typically want enemies to be attacking repeatedly and not using any skills—and Habetrot herself can make that more likely. The biggest limiting factor on this skill’s NP charge is actually Habetrot’s own health, as Habetrot’s guts triggering functionally ends the turn and prevents further swings against Habetrot. Also, this skill gives a small burst of stars, which is relevant to Habetrot’s third skill—but I’ll address exactly how in that skill’s breakdown. Overall, this is a strong skill, though the fact that it’s mostly one-turn-only does weaken it.
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Yanamun Reversal brings a mix of mostly unrelated stuff. As with Guardian Divine Beast, it provides stars, which is again relevant to Habetrot’s third skill. It inflicts skill seal to the whole enemy team, which functionally forces enemies to use all their turns attacking instead of using skills—which in turn synergizes with Habetrot’s first skill, as every attack against Habetrot translates to 30% extra NP gauge. The skill also inflicts a small debuff resistance debuff, which (assuming it lands) makes the Skill Seal slightly more likely to land in turn. Aside from that, this skill provides a modest Max HP buff to the party, which also functions as a de facto NP damage buff for Habetrot due to the effect of her third skill, and it makes the party immune to poison, curse, and burn for three turns—a niche piece of utility, but potentially a nice one for certain fights. Lastly, this skill gives Habetrot a 30% 3-turn power mod against Undead and Demonic enemies. These are both small and somewhat rare niches, power mod is an iffy form of niche, and these are low values for power mod to have… but it doesn’t hurt the skill to have this here.
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Decisive Battle starts off with a standard 30% 3-turn buff to Habetrot’s Quick and Buster cards, which is solid even if unremarkable. The more interesting effects, though, follow that. This skill gives 5% attack up for every 10 stars you have (capping out at 50% with 99 stars), and 10% NP damage up for every Max HP buff on Habetrot (capping out at 50% as well). This skill alone can theoretically provide a 30/50/50 buff spread—huge overall steroids spread across all three brackets—but this comes with two major asterisks: first, the attack and NP damage buffs only last a single turn, which would be more annoying if the buffs weren’t so significant, and second, Habetrot has limited ability to facilitate this skill’s buff scaling. Habetrot does have the ability to generate 30 flat stars, but that’s only enough for 15% attack up on its own, and, more importantly, Habetrot wants to use both of the star gen skills at the same time, and without outside NP charge, Habetrot is likely using those skills the turn before she NPs, which means she won’t always be using this skill on the same turn as she gets her burst of stars. Habetrot does have an in-kit max HP buff, but only one, and max HP buffs are somewhat rare, so you’ll almost never get more than 10-20% NP damage up off this skill. This is an odd skill in that it’s theoretically really really powerful, but in practical terms it’s a generic card-type buff that slightly boosts damage beyond that on the turn it’s used. This doesn’t make it a bad skill by any means—even with just the baseline Buster buff it would be fine—but it’s a bit disappointing once you start looking at what this skill actually provides in practice relative to what it might provide in theory.
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Habetrot’s NP is quite focused. It’s an ST Buster NP with a supereffective niche and two pre-cast damage buffs. Super Giant is a very narrow niche, but it’ll be nice when it’s relevant, and the damage buffs are both solid. The NP’s overcharge effect is a modest Buster buff that ramps, and the other effect gives 10% NP damage up for one turn per enemy on the field. This is a little odd given Habetrot’s ST focus—it means her damage will be lower in cases where you’re bringing her to help with a single high-HP enemy, and higher if there are many targets on the field, each of which is likely to have lower health in general. The structure of Habetrot’s kit, and especially this NP, makes it seem like she’s mostly intended to provide a bit of protection and deal with a single dangerous enemy (or break a single bar) in what is otherwise an AoE fight. At any rate, this is a pretty good NP for a welfare to have—it’s hard to argue with getting not one but two pre-cast damage buffs, on top of a supereffective niche, even if a narrow one.
Habetrot’s “standard” use case is as a short-term tank who can retaliate with big damage after protecting the team for a turn. You either start with Habetrot on the field or plug her in when you need her defenses and use her first two skills, and then on the subsequent turn you use her third skill and rely on her NP do deal a bunch of damage. She then dies to incidental damage at some point, making way for another Servant.
Her usefulness for this purpose will very much depend on the fight and the team you’re running. In a team that’s flush with stars and that has ways of getting max HP buffs onto the party, Habetrot will be especially valuable. A team with Lady Avalon, for example, can make especially good use of Habetrot. Similarly, Habetrot will be more valuable in AoE fights, or in fights against Super Giant enemies with the Demonic or Undead traits, or against Berserkers. She seems particularly tailored to counter Cernunnos, between hitting multiple of Cernunnos’s traits, blocking curse effects, and preventing Berserker class advantage for an ally—though Cern is a single-target fight, and his cards hit in AoE, both of which are less ideal for Habetrot.
Such is often going to be the case with Habetrot—she has so many different things she wants to be true about a fight that you’ll probably never encounter that one perfect fight where Habetrot’s the best option available. You will, however, find situations where some of Habetrot’s features are useful, so the question is how many you need before she’s worth bringing. At the end of the day, taunts are always useful, and if you really only need one turn of taunting, Habetrot can be a good option due to her high damage on the turn following. If you have the team cost available to give Habetrot a Kaleidoscope, she can even get two NPs off, further increasing her ability to speed up a team.
Habetrot can also be used as a more standard ST Buster DPS in a pinch, especially if she has skill reload. In a typical Koyan/Koyan/Oberon team, you can use both Koyans’ star burst skills, then all of Habetrot’s skills, to get a bunch of buffs out of Habetrot’s third skill. You then use all remaining Koyan skills (including both batteries), and Habetrot NPs for big damage. She probably takes three attacks, getting 90% total NP charge, which is enough to let her NP again if she got any of her cards on turn 1. On turn 2, Habetrot can re-use all of her skills. Getting hit just once is enough to give Habetrot 30% charge—which is good, as that first hit may very well proc Habetrot’s guts at this point—so then on turn 3 Oberon can plug in and secure the loop. On turn 3, you don’t get the one-turn buffs from Habetrot’s third skill, but you do get End of the Dream, which keeps Habetrot’s damage up. In this team, Habetrot has high damage all three turns, and you have pretty high confidence your team will last until Habetrot’s done dealing damage, which can make this a solid approach for single-target fights.
All of Habetrot’s weirdness is alleviated by the fact that she’s automatically NP5 and also free. If this was a Servant you had to actively invest quartz into just to have on-hand for the rare case where you maybe would want her, she would, I think, look pretty bad—but the fact that she’s free makes her an interesting tool you can pull out when she happens to be relevant, at relatively little opportunity cost. She is, in some ways, an ideal welfare—not in the sense that she’s the best possible welfare, but in that this is a kit that would only work on a free Servant. I wouldn’t say she’s great, per se, but if you make a point of using her in the places where she’ll shine, she will shine.
Habetrot has a bunch of meaningful CE options. If you’re using her as a primary DPS, the Black Grail is of course her best option—but even if she’s being used as a tank, if you have a second Black Grail or your primary DPS doesn’t want it, it can still be a good pick. Not only does it amplify Habetrot’s NP damage, but its demerit also means she’s less likely to stick around significantly past her usefulness. Aside from that, you might consider giving her a CE that provides an immediate burst of stars, both for short-term supportive value and for synergy with Habetrot’s third skill. Alternatively, you can give Habetrot a CE that provides defensive buffs, like Shroud of Magdalene, to make her a more stable tank, or you can give her something that provides other forms of team support, such as Ideal Holy King.
One other thing to note is that Ideal Holy King provides a max HP buff to the entire party—which means, if you want to truly maximize Habetrot’s damage, you can give your other teammates, including the ones in the back line, Ideal Holy King. Five copies of that CE (or four plus Habetrot’s second skill, or three if you stack that skill) can let you get all possible NP damage buffs on Habetrot’s second skill. Is this practical? Not necessarily—but especially if you’re running Habetrot as your primary DPS in a hard fight, this is one way to push her damage higher than it would otherwise be.
Habetrot is a Buster Servant who should have decent crit access and who has no crit damage buffs in her crit, so crit damage CCs are the obvious choice here. Alternatively, you can give Habetrot defensive or healing CCs to boost her long-term survival.
Habetrot is an interesting Servant, and having both higher attack and higher health will make her better at what she’s doing. That said, the cases in which you’ll want to bring Habetrot are pretty rare. Grails will definitely make Habetrot better at what she does, and if you choose to bring her, you’ll be glad she has the extra stats—but it’s hard to advocate spending a limited resource like grails on a Servant who you usually won’t want to use, and who’s probably strong enough when she is relevant anyway.
Habetrot has a lot of potential, and in fights where she works well—cases where you want her taunt and her damage, cases where her niches are relevant, cases where your team provides the buffs she needs, cases where you can burst down a single-target fight using her as a DPS—she’ll work very well. The question is just how common those cases are—and whether her benefits in those cases are worth going to the trouble of investing in her and reworking a team around her.
I suspect for most players the answer will be that she’s too particular to be worth bothering with. She definitely has a lot of potential, and her ceiling is too high for her to be outright bad, but I don’t think there will be many, if any, fights where Habetrot takes an otherwise-very-difficult fight and makes it much easier. She’s fun to consider how to use, and as a free Servant she’s a neat tool to be able to slot in on occasion, but I don’t think she’ll increase the power of most people’s boxes.