FGO 5th Anniversary - Tier List Change Log

Tier EX

The featured Servant of the fifth anniversary, Altria (Caster), is a premiere Arts Support Servant with excellent Offensive and Defensive supportive capabilities. Her skills can provide a single target with up to 50% NP Gauge, and the remaining members with 30% NP Gauge, enabling quick access to Noble Phantasms for the party. Her skills also provide a 50% Arts and Invincibility buff to one target, and an ATK + NP Gain buff to all allies. Her NP is the first to have the effect of granting a special type of Invincibility that cannot be pierced by Ignore Invincibility effects, with the number of hits scaling with overcharge. Additionally, her NP will clear debuffs from all allies and provide a three turn ATK boost that scales quite well with NP level. Her introduction to the roster creatly enhances the ease by which Arts-based team compositions loop NPs, while also enhancing their damage output significantly. Additionally, given the strong values on her NP Charge, ATK, and NP Gain buffs, and the wide applicability of her defensive support, she fits quite well in compositions outside of Arts damage dealers as well. Her one weakness is her inability to heal allies, meaning that teams cannot last indefinitely with her without additional healing support. Even so, arguments can be made for her being an echelon above the pre-existing Support Servants, and she settles comfortably in the top tier.


Altria (Caster): x -> EX (Avg Score: 10.07) - [NorseFTX - EX][TrubotheDwarf - EX][WhiteRabbit - EX+][Meliran - EX][Rathilal - EX]


Tier D > D+

Altria Ruler gains more consistency to her Card Shuffle skill from her Rank Up during the Vegas Rerun, allowing the selection of one Servant whose cards should be excluded during the shuffle. In addition, she now provides a small NP Gain buff to all allies, which can help allies fill their NP gauges more quickly. The upgrade greatly improves the usefulness of her gimmick, and although her overall performance is still somewhat lacking, the upgrade was agreed to be worth a tier bump.

Tier B+ > EX-

Waver, look behind you; Reines is coming. With the latest Interlude, Sima Yi (Reines) can finally reach a full 50% charge. Her Volumen Hydrargyrum skill now grants an ally an additional 10-20% NP Gauge, which on top of her 10% NP Gauge from the DEF buff to the party, and her other targeted 20% Gauge from her ATK buff skill, can reach 50% for one ally. Although she still doesn't quite reach Waver's level for NP Gauge (since other party members only receive 10% Gauge from her, instead of Waver's 20%), she provides a slightly more impactful ATK buff and Invincibility compared to Waver. It is worth noting that Reines will also will receive a further upgrade in the future to her NP. It was largely agreed upon that her upgrade was substantial enough to shift her up several tier placements; she will be revisited when her future upgrade arrives.

Tier B > B+

Sherlock Holmes' interlude adds an additional AoE Arts Resist debuff to his first skill, lasting a whole 3 turns. This gives him a small amount of additional support to Arts-oriented party members, also indirectly increasing their Arts Card NP Gain. It should be noted that in most cases, this will only apply to a single wave since it is a debuff rather than a buff to allies, and tends to get more use from larger enemies / challenging quests. The buff is overall a welcome one, and his tier experienced a slight upward shift as a result.

Tier C+ > C+

Kingprotea receives a buff to her Huge Scale skill, enhancing the total Max HP gain from each stack. In addition, every Growth stack now additionally provides a +8% NP Damage Resist stack. Overall, this upgrade improves Kingprotea's ability to tank hits, particularly from NPs (given she does not have a hard defensive skill). However, otherwise her offensive power was not affected, and overall it was agreed that this does not change her placement enough to warrant a tier shift.

Tier A > A

Meltryllis's Sadistic Streak skill now gives her a bonus attack effect, where she can stack multiple Critical Strength buffs with every normal attack for 3 turns. This upgrade improves Meltryllis's potential damage ceiling, particularly with access to Critical Stars (which she should not have trouble obtaining). However, it does depend on her cards being available, and reaching substantially improved performance with her new upgrade requires a bit of setup, and in practice can be difficult to fully take advantage of. Overall, her upgrade is a fun new toy to play around with, although was agreed to not be substantial enough for a tier shift.

Tier C > C+

Suzuka Gozen receives her NP upgrade, boosting its overall damage and providing her with a modest NP Gain buff for 3 turns. The boost to damage is welcome, and her NP Gain buffs help her marginally with charging her NP Gauge (since she has no charge move as a Buster Servant), although unfortunately her NP itself does not provide refund given it is Buster-type. However, the damage boost gives her more consistency for wave clearing; she was given a slight tier bump for her upgrade.

Tier B > A

The OG Saber, Altria(Artoria) Pendragon gets an overhaul to her Mana Burst skill. It now provides an additional 1 turn NP damage buff of 20-30%. Notably, it now provides a new effect of changing all of her own Command Cards to Buster Cards for a turn, which allows Masters to form Buster chains more easily to maximize her damage output. The damage output is quite substantially improved with this upgrade, placing her at the top of AoE Buster Saber damage output across the entire roster, and it was agreed that her tier placement deserves to shift upwards.

Tier D+ > C

Arjuna's second skill, which used to have an excessively long cooldown time of 10-12 turns, now has reduced cooldown of 8-10 turns, giving it much improved uptime. In addition, it now grants 10% NP Gauge per turn for 5 turns, further improving his NP gain over time.

Tier B > B+

Brynhild gains a 20-30% NP Gauge charge for herself on top of her existing enemy debuff skill. NP charges are always welcome, especially on a Buster Servant, and Brynhild will have an easier time accessing her NP on demand with the upgrade.

Tier B+ > B+

Raikou finally gets an NP upgrade, which comes with the standard AoE Buster Damage buff of +100%. It additionally gains a Critical Rate debuff of 20% against all enemies for three turns, which although minor, can help decrease the likelihood of Raikou or her allies falling to an unlucky enemy crit.

Tier B+ > A

Musashi's NP gets an upgrade, which gives it the standard ST Buster damage boost of +200%. Its offensive power gets further boosted by an increase to the NP Damage buff, up from 20-60% up to 30-90% (although it is still 1 turn). It also gains the interesting effect of having 150% supereffective damage to Moon Cancer or Alter Ego class enemies, adding Musashi to the list of rather rare anti-Alter Ego options.

Tier B > A

EMIYA gains the notable first instance of a skill receiving an upgrade twice. The Arts/Buster/Quick up effect increases from 25-40% to 30-50%. Additionally, the buff gives him the ability to change his NP card to his choice of either Arts or Buster, which gives his high hit-count NP an immense boost to its NP Refund (if Arts is selected). This enables him to benefit from the NP Gain bonuses provided by both Arts Card buffs and NP Gain buffs. Do note that the NP card color change only lasts one turn, however. Given his ability to turn his NP into Arts-type coincides with the release of a new premiere Arts Support Servant, his tiering has been updated accordingly.

Tier A > A+

One of the greatest last stand Servants just became better at his job--Heracles's Guts skill gains an upgrade with this batch. Importantly, the skill's Guts now stacks with other Guts (so it will no longer miss when his Bond CE is equipped). Additionally, for the next five turns, he can gain a 20% Buster buff (lasting 5 turns) every time his Guts is activated. With his Bond CE, this is up to 4 Guts stacks, which can reach a substantial +80% Buster performance. This upgrade to an already excellent Servant bolsters both his Last Stand durability and his offensive power when performing his role.

Tier D+ > D+

Nezha gains an NP Upgrade, coming with the standard AoE Buster Damage buff of +100%. The burn damage it inflicts also increases from a flat 300 to a flat 1000 damage per turn. Although the burn effect is minor at best, the NP damage's overall damage buff is highly welcome and improves her ability to clear waves consistently.

Tier E > D

Yu Mei-ren's handy Buff Removal Resist skill gets its duration extended from 1 to 3 turns, which helps increase the leniency of her NP timing relative to her skill usage (since her NP otherwise removes her own buffs). Additionally, the skill now grants her a +20-30% ATK buff for 3 turns, providing a much needed buff to her offensive performance.

Tier B > B

Caster Gilgamesh's NP gets an upgrade, which gives the standard AoE Arts Damage buff of +150%. In addition, the NP now buffs all allies' Critical Damage by 30% for 3 turns, which in combination with the Star Drop buff of his first skill and his NP's high hitcounts, will ensure the critical hits on the next turn after his NP hurt even more. The buff is overall a very solid one, although it was generally thought to be not quite enough to push him up a tier.

Tier B+ > B+

Cu Chulainn, another strong last stand Servant, also gains an upgrade to his Guts skill. For him, his cooldown decreases from 7-9 down to 6-8 turns, increasing its effective uptime. It also provides Cu with additional ATK for 3 turns depending on how low his HP is, ranging from +20% to +50% when at 1 HP. The upgrade is helpful, although in practice, the cooldown improvement can still leave him with at least 1 turn without Guts uptime, which can mean the difference between life and death.

Tier D+ > D+

Darius's upgrade to his Battle Continuation skill improves the skill cooldown by 1 turn, making it so that it potentially only has 1 turn of Guts downtime if not consumed beforehand. Additionally, it adds a flat Buster Card Resist debuff against all enemies by 20%, which lasts three turns, providing some measure of support to Buster damage output against a wave of enemies. However, it was generally agreed that the change does not quite substantial enough for him to shift in tiering.

Tier B > B

David's NP gains the standard ST Buster Damage buff of 200%. In addition, in accordance with his legend, his NP now deals an extra +200% damage (using the supereffective multiplier, which stacks multiplicatively with all other buffs) against Giant-trait enemies. Note that Giant trait is slightly different from Super Giant. The trait is relatively rare, unfortunately, although the general damage boost to his NP is still welcome.

Tier E > E

Phantom's skill upgrade enables his single-target Charm to apply to all enemy types, rather than only opposite sex enemies, which increases its general applicability in battles In addition, more notably, the skill also removes all buffs from the targeted enemy, improving his utility in encounters against enemies that have buffs that are particularly undesirable. However, the boost in utility does not quite improve his relatively poor damage output, so his tier was generally agreed to remain the same.