Rabbit’s Reviews #375: Theseus (3* Saber)

Introduction

Theseus is our first silver Saber since Bedivere, and only the fifth silver Saber in the game. He’s pretty much exactly where you’d want a silver unit to be: he’s solid but not amazing most of the time, with a particular situation in which he’s truly excellent. He may not be the most exciting Servant, but he’s cool, free, and potentially useful—hard to complain about that.

Servant Data

Saber

QAABB (Saber)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

3

5

4

Attribute	Earth
Alignment	Lawful Good

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

Max HP 10,302

HP Rank

Max ATK 7,105

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,319	Base HP	1,854
Max Atk	7,105	Max HP	10,302
Grail Atk	9,616	Grail HP	13,968

Magic Resistance A

Increase your Debuff Resist by 20%.

Riding B

Increase your Quick Card effectiveness by 8%.

Card Hits	4	3	3	5	4
Per Hit	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%	0.55%

	NP per Hit (%)						0.55%
	NP when Attacked (%)						3%

	Star Absorption	102
	Star Generation per Hit	10.2%

Overview

Material Requirements

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	30,000	x4 Saber Piece
3	100,000	x8 Saber Piece x15 Proof of Hero
4	300,000	x4 Saber Monument x7 Meteor Horseshoe x4 Ball of Rainbow Thread
Max	900,000	x8 Saber Monument x7 Ball of Rainbow Thread x8 Crown of Silvery Light

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	50,000	x4 Gem of Saber
2 → 3	100,000	x8 Gem of Saber
3 → 4	300,000	x4 Magic Gem of Saber
4 → 5	400,000	x8 Magic Gem of Saber x4 Meteor Horseshoe
5 → 6	1,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Saber x7 Meteor Horseshoe
6 → 7	1,250,000	x8 Secret Gem of Saber x10 Proof of Hero
7 → 8	2,500,000	x20 Proof of Hero x4 Ball of Rainbow Thread
8 → 9	3,000,000	x12 Ball of Rainbow Thread x48 Twilight Ritual Sword
9 → 10	5,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	50000	x4 Gem of Saber
2 → 3	100000	x8 Gem of Saber
3 → 4	300000	x4 Magic Gem of Saber
4 → 5	400000	x8 Magic Gem of Saber x3 Phoenix Feather
5 → 6	1000000	x4 Secret Gem of Saber x6 Phoenix Feather
6 → 7	1250000	x8 Secret Gem of Saber x4 Giant's Ring
7 → 8	2500000	x7 Giant's Ring x4 Crown of Silvery Light
8 → 9	3000000	x12 Crown of Silvery Light x10 Fruit of Eternity
9 → 10	5000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Servant Skills

Theseus’s skillset is fairly simple, but it’s entirely coherent and works together well for his role as an Arts crit Servant. Recommended skill order is 1>3>2.

Arts Up

Ariadne's Prayer C

Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Increase own NP Gauge.
Apply to self: Gain Critical Stars each turn (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Arts +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
NP +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Stars per turn +	5	6	6	7	7	8	8	9	9	10
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Ariadne’s Prayer is a standard 3-turn card type buff paired with a small battery and passive star gen. A larger battery would be nice, and this skill could be on a shorter cooldown, but aside from that there’s nothing really to complain about here. Arts up is good, battery is good, star gen is good. Use this whenever it’s available.

Arts Star Gather Rate Up

Intuition (Labyrinth) B++

Increase own Arts Card Star Gather Rate (3 turns).
Increase own Arts Card Critical Strength (3 turns).
Gain Critical Stars.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Star Gather (Arts) +	300%	320%	340%	360%	380%	400%	420%	440%	460%	500%
Crit Damage (Arts) +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
Stars +	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	15
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Instinct is Theseus’s primary Arts crit tool, drawing stars to his Arts cards and boosting their crit damage. Buster crits tend to deal more damage in the abstract, but that’s not as true in Castoria teams, and facilitating Arts crits is great for NP gain… so this is quite useful on the whole. It’s also worth noting that this and skill 3 collectively give 30 stars, which is also exactly as many as Theseus gets off skill 1 combined with his NP. It’s nice that Theseus gets stars on turn 1 and on subsequent turns—most crit servants get one or the other.

Dmg Up

Arms Mastery Retribution B

Increase own ATK (3 turns).
Decrease ATK for a single enemy (3 turns).
Gain Critical Stars.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
ATK +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
ATK -	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Stars +	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	15
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Arms Mastery Retribution is a 3-turn 30% attack buff that also slightly reduces an enemy’s attack and generates some stars. There’s not a lot to say here, other than that the attack down has some nice synergy with other servants with similar buffs or debuffs—Mash, Waver, and Reines in particular. This isn’t super relevant at the higher end, since Castoria’s hard defenses are more reliable anyway, but it’s there.

Noble Phantasm

Ariadne Apolyto Adis C++

Apply 50% Special ATK [Demonic Beast Servant] to self (1 turn) [Activates first].
Deal damage to a single enemy.
Deal 150% supereffective damage to [Giant] enemies.
Gain 20 Critical Stars.

<Overcharge>

Increase own Critical Strength (3 turns) [Activates first].

Show Info/Video

Ariadne Apolyto Adis

Thus the Thread Leads to the End

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	C++	Anti-Personnel	4

Effect	Apply 50% Special ATK [Demonic Beast Servant] to self (1 turn) [Activates first]. Deal damage to a single enemy. Deal 150% supereffective damage to [Giant] enemies. Gain 20 Critical Stars.

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Special ATK +	50%	50%	50%	50%	50%
Supereffective ATK +	150%	150%	150%	150%	150%
Damage +	900%	1200%	1350%	1425%	1500%
Stars +	20	20	20	20	20

Overcharge Effect	Increase own Critical Strength (3 turns) [Activates first].

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Crit Damage +	50%	62.5%	75%	87.5%	100%

Ariadne Apolyto Adis is a fairly straightforward single-target NP. It doesn’t generate a lot of refund, but it does come with two niches. Demonic Beast Servant isn’t especially broad, but it does cover 21 Servants at the time of writing, which isn’t terrible. Giant, meanwhile, only covers 10 Servants, with Asterios and both versions of Ibuki being the only overlap between the two niches. Giant is the narrower niche, but it’s also the more powerful one, as power mod (which Demonic Beast is) stacks additively with NP damage up, while supereffective damage (which Giant is) stacks multiplicatively with everything. Basically this means Theseus is pretty good against Demonic Beast, great against Giant, and amazing against the Servants who are both—especially the two Berserkers, and especially especially if his third append is maxed out.

Aside from that, the NP gives Theseus a stacking crit damage buff, making his cards a little stronger on each turn subsequent, and it gives a burst of 20 stars. With his first skill factored in, this means Theseus gets 30 stars per turn, assuming he’s looping, even without any active star gen or outside sources of stars. With 2030 on Theseus’s supports, you can basically guarantee every card crits, which is quite nice! If Theseus can loop his NP, his later-turn cards can be deceptively strong for a silver unit.

Usage Tips

Grail Potential

Conclusion

Theseus is not a particularly unique or interesting unit—he does the standard ST Saber things, with some nice Arts crit tools. And he’s free! Saber Hokusai is usually going to be better if you have her (though she’s permanently available now), and there are other strong non-free Servants, like Saito Hajime, as well… but Theseus will do fine if you prefer him or if he’s your only option, and his niche damage gives him a context in which he’s useful regardless. Can’t argue with that.

Rabbit's Arbitrary Ratings

Overall: 8/10
Single-Target DPS: 8/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 2/10
Offensive Utility: 2/10
Defensive Utility: 3/10
Farming Usefulness: 4/10
Secretly Being Oberon: 0/10