Zombie Team
It’s slow, it’s hobbling, it’s incredibly boring to play – it’s the Zombie teams. This team archetype exists for one reason – there’s no penalty for taking a large number of turns to complete a quest. In fact, for some quests which end on a certain turn, it’s more effective to just stall out the turns instead of aiming for killing the enemy.
In principle, if your servants don’t die in FGO, you can’t lose, and as such you will eventually win. This team seeks to forgo all forms of offensive might to reach this win condition. Yes, it’s slow, yes it sucks and is unfun, but it is consistent.
Strengths
- The best team composition in terms of sheer durability, it’s very difficult to fail a quest using this kind of team.
- Not reliant on possessing a powerful DPS servant to succeed, this team composition can function using some free servants and a good support servant.
- With the right servants on the team, it becomes possible to also deal reasonably high damage while using a ‘zombie’ strategy.
Weaknesses
- In most scenarios, the damage output of this team composition is pitiful, even if an offensive NP is added to the mix.
- Makes quests take absolutely forever, which in turn wastes your own time.
- Is honestly less fun and engaging than other team compositions, and can even be a bad idea with certain events (such as Rashomon).
Battle Strategy
Your single goal with this team archetype is to live. Anything else is optional. Utilize heals when the team can benefit from their full capacity, activate dodges and invulnerability when a powerful NP is about to strike, and keep defensive buffs up for as long as possible. Compared to other team archetypes, skill timing isn’t much of a necessary skill provided you know the full capabilities of each skill. After all, this team composition relies more on Noble Phantasms for the hard defensive options, instead of skills.
If using any offensive servants on this team archetype, conserve their NP gauge and offensive skills until you reach the most difficult enemy of the quest and, you guessed it, blow them up as quickly as possible. Just because we don’t care about speed doesn’t mean we can’t do things faster, right?
While running Arts boost or NP gain CE’s work well in this comp, generally defensive CE’s are a better option. Maid in Halloween, Moonlit Goddess’s Bath and Iron-Willed Training all raise your team’s survival traits in some way, while Guts CE’s like Nightless Rose are also worth considering. In general, however, your CE picks depend on the way the zombie team is formed, and which members are a part of that formation.
Key Members
Hans makes a showing once more, this time appealing more to his defensive aspects in his kit. Merchen Meine Liebens is a relatively consistent and powerful heal NP, providing 3k hp to the entire team at base overcharge, while also having a reasonable chance to apply a powerful defensive buff. As a result, he’s exceptionally good at keeping the team alive, while having enough tools to keep his heals going for quite some time.
Jeanne is the dictionary definition of a defensive support, with zero offensive capabilities, a support NP which cripples her from acting and stall-oriented skills. However, for a very long time in FGO she’ll remain the only servant capable of applying a team Invulnerability buff, practically guaranteeing survival for a turn. Furthermore, her NP’s defensive buff and HP regen also aids in keeping the team alive. The cherry on top of this tanky deal is Jeanne’s unparalleled HP stat, which combined with Ruler class advantage makes her nigh-immortal for most quests. Jeanne is essentially the face of this team archetype.
As mentioned earlier, there are some offensive servants who can function effectively in the zombie team composition, and Orion is one of them. With strong personal defensive skills and a stall-oriented NP, Orion is very apt at keeping the enemy’s damage low while also outputting some respectable damage on the side. While she offers less actual team support than other members, her own excellent defensive skills allow her to lessen the burden on her teammates. It helps further that Orion is an Arts-oriented servant, and Zombie teams by nature tend to be Arts-oriented due to the presence of their key members.
Mash, in the current game’s state, sucks quite a bit. Her skills’ numbers are quite underwhelming, as his her NP, while she’s lacking in both base stats and generation stats. As the cherry on the cake, her level is capped based on story progression, so Mash can’t even attain level 70 until Camelot, which is due about 9 months away from now. However, everyone has her and can invest in her, so it’s worth noting that Mash does get much stronger, and when she does she is a perfect fit for this team archetype, with immense defence and damage cut buffs, as well as the ideal class for stalling out difficult fights. It means little now, but keep her on your radar.
Though it may sound confusing, Nero is a very strong pick for an offensive servant in this team archetype. Nero possesses two strong heals on a short cooldown, as well as a powerful defence buff from Imperial Privilege. Furthering that, when she receives her skill strengthening she gets one of the best guts buffs in the game, providing her with 3 revivals when she reaches 0 HP in one buff. This skill is great for any zombie team, but also makes her a powerful clutch servant when all else fails due to the nature of the Guts buff cancelling out the enemy term when it triggers solo. Then, for the icing on the cake, Nero has some good NP damage output and NP gain, in comparison to most BBAAQ servants.
Once again, the fox Caster steals a spot. For zombie teams, Tamamo fulfils a role which no other can offer – her skill cooldown reduction and NP gauge-filling NP, doubled up with her healing abilities. Her entire kit functions incredibly well for supporting offensive Arts servants, but it can conversely be used defensively to ensure the team remains healthy and has their defensive skills and NP’s available when needed. In that sense, Tamamo is very versatile on the whole.
Arriving in Okeanos, Medea Lily is the premier healer of the entire game, with two powerful AOE heals packed into her kit, as well as an immense targetable buff to increase healing for a turn and a NP charge skill, letting her put her abilities to use immediately. Though she possesses no actual defensive buffs to the team outside of a hefty debuff resistance increase on her NP, Medea Lily’s healing output is unrivalled, making her the premier option for when your aim is simply to survive.
As a welfare servant, Irisviel has quite the head start compared to other servants for recommendation. However, despite her healing abilities being inferior to Medea Lily, she’s on this list for her unique ability to give the entire team a Guts buff, allowing them to survive any kind of AOE NP for a turn, even if invulnerability pierce or defence pierce are in play. Furthering that, she also has a personal invulnerability skill to help her own survival, making her an excellent clutch unit to aid a zombie team. Her main weakness, however, is her awful NP gain, making it difficult to get her NP up in the first place without CE support.
A Buster-based Berserker? For zombie teams? It’s actually not as insane as it seems. Despite his Berserker class and low base HP, Cu Alter is exceptionally tanky, possessing two defence buffs in his kit, a powerful AOE attack debuff and a Guts skill, all of which come together to make him durable. In the context of a team which is throwing out healing, invulnerability, defence buffs and skill cooldown reduction frequently, Cu Alter essentially becomes immortal. Did I mention he still has his immensely high attack stat and powerful NP to throw around? Though Cu Alter is more dependent on the presence of strong support units to function in a zombie team than others, his returns in doing so are excellent, and he aids in the team’s survivability with his powerful atk debuff, too.
Future Stars
Kiara is the most recent servant that I’ll be recommending on this list, and the CCC event in particular may be quite a while off for NA. However, Kiara is an absolutely superb servant for this team archetype, and for various reasons. Primarily, however, she covers a huge range of enemy types with class advantage, is one of the tankiest servants in the game just from her base stats, has an excellent stall-oriented skill set which benefits greatly from the presence of Tamamo, and can increase the heals she receives from her own team greatly, as well as the heal from her NP. Compared to the other offensive options listed, Kiara synergizes far greater with the zombie team’s modus operandi, and it shows in her performance, frequently being used for difficult challenge quests in JP with the archetype’s typical team compositions.
Although not particularly spectacular upon release, [Caster of the Nightless City] receives an Interlude for her Third Skill (ETA: 4/2020) giving her an on-demand party-wide Guts that lasts two turns, with a six turn cooldown at max level. Against enemies with the King trait, the Guts skill also essentially halves the attack of the enemy for a turn. She boasts the highest HP pool out of all Caster-class Servants, and can also drain the enemy's NP gauge, charm male enemies, and grant herself up to a 40% defense buff, providing great utility to any stall team. With Tamamo on the team or the Atlas Academy Uniform supplying skill cooldown reduction, she potentially can get her Third skill off multiple times in an encounter, helping to ensure the survival of her teammates.
