How to Build a Buster Team

So you’ve seen both the Quick and Arts squads and they’re not your style. You’re all about brute forcing your way through enemies and bursting them down in no time. Well you’ve come to the right place.

The Buster card is the most powerful card in a servant’s arsenal, featuring a 150% damage multiplier. However in exchange for this, Buster cards have no inherent NP gen as well as having a star gen that is pretty much near rock bottom. When you select 3 Buster cards in a row you activate a Buster chain, which adds 20% of a servant’s attack added as damage. This can lead to huge amounts of damage against any foes. However, this is just scratching the surface of the potential of Buster teams. While Buster damage is indeed extremely strong, it’s true ability shows when it’s able to crit hard and consistently against foes, ensuring that quick work is made of them. This leads us to what makes a good Buster team.

The buster meta is pretty strongly defined as every player of the game knows. This guide will teach you the general idea of how the team might work, but as always, there is no one way to make a Buster team. Any servant can be included or taken out purely by preference or performance, the choice is up to you.

The star genner’s role is fairly simple and has been explained before. The main aim is to produce a large amount of stars in order to boost the consistency of crits landed by the team to keep damage output as high as possible. Quick chaining on their own is an incredibly powerful asset, but having a high hitcount can also help with genning stars. Their main job is to stay alive, generate stars and then feed them to your attackers. Units like Jack, Meltlilith,Okita and so on fit well into this role, having a high hitcount on all their attacks while also carrying a nice amount of quick cards in their deck.

The support’s role is to keep the team alive and well, making sure that the core servants in the team are still able to push out crazy high numbers without worrying about whether they’ll even make it to the next turn. In a Buster team, the support will usually have attack buffs, crit buffs, Buster buffs and so on. This further increases the damage output of the team. Servants like Merlin, Waver, Hans and nightingale all are excellent examples, each having their own method of boosting survivability while also increasing the team’s damage output.

This role is extremely defined, demanding a high amount of Buster cards in the deck while also carrying many attack buffs, a high star weight and a high attack stat in general. Units like Ozymandias, Jeanne Alter, Gilgamesh, both Minamotos, Heracles and so on. Most of them have ways to attract stars to them or have a high base star weight in general, ensuring that they can crit consistently. Their main job is to focus down bosses and bring them down easily with either their NPs or a Buster chain.

So now that you’ve got all this, what servants can fit these roles, and who can synergize well?

Small disclaimer here that this squad is not the end all be all to Buster teams. People who have all the servants they can want can use much more powerful squads, as seen by the meta-defining Merlin and Waver teams. This guide’s aim is to help you understand the fundamentals of how the team works.

Jalter is the premier Buster servant, boasting a buster chainable deck with her NP, and a skillset that is dedicated to demolishing bosses with no problem. With a star-weight buff, a crit damage buff, a buster card boost, and a charisma style attack buff, she has no problem slaying bosses. Her avenger class is also extremely potent, dealing neutral damage to all classes except Rulers, Berzerkers and Moon Cancer classes. The avenger class also has a higher than normal class damage modifier, allowing for more damage. Jalter’s passives all ready her for battle, giving her an increase to her critical damage while also increasing NP gauge every turn. She also has a nice buff which gives more NP when damaged.

Jack the ripper is the standard stargen servant, providing stars left and right, allowing all servants to crit with relative ease. While she can be replaced with any adequate star genner, she is one of the best in the role. Her card deck has a total of 4 Quick cards when including her NP, allowing her to quick chain relatively easily, making it no problem for the team to hit around 50 crit stars on average.

Merlin is the meta-defining servant of the game, being one of the most powerful support servants, while also being the definition of a Buster support servant. His skillset is one of the most powerful, boasting Buster, crit, HP and attack buffs. On top of that, he has a team invincibility buff which gives a stargen buff to the team while also debuffing the enemy with crit chance down. His attack buff also provides a 20% boost to the entire team’s NP gauge, readying them to NP again. His NP provides Heal over time, NP gauge over time and crit stars every turn. This boosts team survivability and ensures that NPs and Crits are not hard to come by. His passive skills are also incredibly helpful, generating NP every turn for himself while also giving him higher Arts card performance.

Nightingale is another extremely powerful Buster support servant, featuring a boost to Buster cards on any ally in the team, a potent heal that has a relatively short cooldown. With her berzerker class she can manage to hold her own against enemies if push comes to shove. Her NP is also an extremely powerful support move, healing the team for a large chunk of their HP. She also clears any debuffs while also dropping the enemy team’s NP damage to improve their survivability.

Cu alter is one of the most powerful Buster servants, second only to Jalter. His skillset focuses more on survivability instead of damage output. He has a two hit dodge skill which also boosts defense, a skill to drop the enemy team’s attack and crit chance, and a guts skill to bring him back from death. His noble phantasm is a single target Buster card which can buster chain with the rest of this deck. This NP boosts his attack and defense for one turn to increase his tankiness while also pushing out more damage against foes. His berzerker class also gives him super effective damage against all enemies except shielder class servants, which you will not be facing any time soon in the future. I hope. While this means he takes more damage, with his survivability skills, he will be sticking around to push out ridiculous amounts of damage.

The top Buster squads field 2 Merlins with Jalter for obvious reasons. But if you’re using these kinds of squads you probably don’t need to read this guide.

So you’re raring to go field your team like a boss and wreck enemies. Not so fast champ. You need to be careful of which cards you use, what chains you make, what skills to use, when to use them and so on. We’ll use the sample team from beforehand to show you some examples.

Here I made use of Jack to generate crit stars for the rest of the team. This will be necessary within squads that do not carry CEs like 2030. For full support squads, 2030 is an absolute must to ensure that your servants crit consistently or risk losing on damage output. A Quick chain would have been preferable in this case, but anything around 30 stars is usually sufficient.

This should be the optimal situation for damage. Merlin’s buff is applied to Jalter, giving her a buff to her Critical and Buster damage while also increasing her HP buff which is lacking. Both attack buffs have been used, on top of her skill Self-Modification EX which gives her an increased star-weight and bonus crit damage.

Jalter’s damage potential really shows when she is able to Buster chain with herself. Though this requires her NP to be up, it allows her to ensure a kill on almost any boss in the game. Her crit damage can hit the hundreds of thousands in the best of situations. Despite it being all Buster cards, Jalter also has a respectable hitcount, meaning a surprising amount of stars will be generated despite it being all Buster cards.

That’s pretty much it. Mix and match servants as you wish, and if you follow the general advice given on this guide, things shouldn’t go too wrong. There will be many various other methods of boosting your team’s performance. If you’re loaded with cash, you can go with the Merlin, Waver and Jalter team, or if you’re on a budget, maybe choose another Buster servant you like. In the end, it’s all up to personal preference.

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