Talk:Interlude Campaign 4/@comment-112.210.239.118-20171207192247/@comment-29893250-20171208195140

People rag on Artoria prime because she is bad. She lacks real spammability, doesn't charge too quickly on her own, has low attack power (Her NP has an interlude but her actual attacks are weak for a 5* saber and her lower attack power balances her damage back down in a bad way), her skills are on the weak side even moreso now than in the beginning, and there is literally no job that she excels at above everyone else. Most servants have something that they excel in well. I struggle to think of which team compositions I'd ever use her over Altera who his higher stats, damage output, and survivability in exchange for Artoria's NP refund... except that Altera can drag stars to herself and get that much extra gauge anyway. So she outdoes Artoria in basically everything. Then there's Mordred who loses out slightly in total damage to Artoria in the lacking of charisma but in exchange has a niche against the ever growing saberface population, self charging, self cleansing, and a semi decent survival skill. Self charging and cleansing among 5* were unique to her for a long time, though Musashi has the latter now. So Mordred has places where she's the best and where she's not, she's probably about even with Artoria at worst. Saber alter has a comparable damage output at 4 star, a little weaker overall but with the massive cost difference. It is often something people tend to solve with a couple grails because she's actually good. Proto Arthur is pretty bad too as his niche isn't amazing and he's not so strong outside of it but basically everyone else in similar job class to Artoria outstrips her in almost any situation that isn't specifically crafted for her such as her getting a drop or damage boost. Even if they're not actually meant to do her job, they do it better than her unless your idea of Artoria's job is to be a bad charisma stick. Then on top of that, they have their own jobs that they excel in, unlike her.

It isn't that Artoria is bad in the sense of "She's totally unusable. Would field Brock over her" in the way that Orion often suffers under the tyranny that is Euryale. It is that Artoria doesn't actually have any solid role to call her own that you wouldn't quickly replace her in. Note that I was only citing sabers so we're talking specifically about against lancer enemies. If you start matching her up against neutral enemies, how often would you end up using her over your NP5 welfares or some 4 star you have that suits whatever kind of team you're trying to build? Never for gameplay reasons. This makes her bad in the sense of being homeless and ever increasingly homeless as you gain more servants. Arts team with no Merlin? I'll pick the DPS that's got 3 arts cards to help me cycle. Buster team? She's got no business there. Arts team with Merlin? Obviously there's better and as soon as I get or have any other buster AOE saber, all Artoria is good for is bond quartz because they will replace her in a gameplay sense. That's at best. Not having a home makes even raising her (barring waifu reasons) leave a bad taste in your mouth because she probably is already outclassed and if she's not, there's a pretty decent chance she will be soon.

To give you a rough idea of how easily Artoria prime can be outclassed, Lily, one of the weakest 4 stars in the game, does a little less than her NP damage with her charisma up and a bit more when it is not. Numerically, it comes out about even. Lily also increases party NP gen instead of that charisma. EVEN LILY is an entirely reasonable replacement for her in a more arts cycling type team. That's just downright embarrassing.