Yee-haw! Time to ride! Riders are a bit of a weird bunch. Much like how Archers is composed of people who use almost anything else besides a bow, Riders are defined by them riding something. Be them horses, ships, chariots, surfboards, dinosaurs, men, dragons, transforming horse mecha…if it could be ridden, there’s a Rider!
And this list covers the Top 10 Riders in Fate Grand Order, of the USA version and of April 2024. This article was written during the early days of the Traum chapter, so any new Riders added in won’t be included for being too new. Let’s get this rodeo started with:
10. Sakamoto Ryouma (Rider)
Detective, Gun-Runner, Counter-Force Agent, etc.
Came for free, easy to upgrade
Decent Support Skills
Excellent Noble Phantasm
Had to put this guy on this list. His Lancer version is high-tier, so his lower-ranked version is still great. While he can only be obtained through an event, there will be an update that will add in the ability to get Event Servants. You should get him if you can, he fits really well into most parties.
All of his skills affect the entire party. Attack Buff, a small amount of NP along with Debuff Resistance, and then you have an Arts Card Buff and some Critical Stars to boot. Couple with some generally short cooldowns on his skills, and you get someone that can serve as a good support unit. They’re small buffs, mind you, but every little bit helps.
His Noble Phantasm is good, seeing how he’s a Servant that you could get him to NP5 quickly. It’s single-target Arts, but has a great chance to decrease the enemy’s Charge. And a latter update will make that decrease guaranteed to happen, along with generating some Critical Stars.
Critical Stars that he can use. Riders attract more stars to themselves, so he can use them to get his Noble Phantasm out more often or help with his low damage. He will get much better thanks to that buff, and he’s already good. Give him a go if you see him in your friend’s list!
9. Ushiwakamaru
Who’s the best girl? You are!
Low cost and very affordable
Excellent team support
Good damage for her rank
When you first begin FGO, you’ll get a free Rank Four Servant. They’re all good, but regardless if you snag a Rider for free, you should get Ushiwakamaru. She’s a really great unit for early game, and if you like, you can take her to late game with some grails.
And if you don’t like her outfit, get some Rare Prisms over to the Costume Shop.She’s got a real awesome costume.
For an early-game Rank 3 (The highest you can summon from the Friend Point Pool), she’s got an amazing kit. Party-wide NP Gain buff, that also gives Ushi a Quick Card buff. Party-wide Attack buff, while also giving Ushi a Critical Damage buff AND some Critical Stars to back you up. And then the third skill gives her an Evade and makes her generate more Critical Stars!
And her Noble Phantasm is pretty great. High Quick Single-Target Damage with increased generation of Critical Stars? She can serve as a good damage and Critical Star generation in the early-game. While you do need to do her Strengthenings and Interludes to get all of the good benefits, you will get a fantastic and low-cost unit. Use her well! And give her some headpats, from me.
8. Quetzalcoatl
Can you see why people put up with the gacha?
Good team support
Great damage
High burst damage.
Let’s get this right out of the gate. If you have developed an immediate crush on her…welcome to the club. She is amazing, ain’t she?
*ahem* Back to business.
She’s got a powerful and well-rounded kit. Her first skill, once upgraded, gives everyone an Attack buff and some Critical Stars to use. Pretty decent, and that’s her weakest skill. Her second skill is one of her best ones; it can grant one ally Guts and a good Buster buff. Can be used on herself, or to grant one ally some killing and staying power. And it can be used on her too, to help with her own Noble Phantasm.
Her third skill is the best one: it draws Critical Stars to Quetz while improving her Critical Damage and giving her a good amount of NP to work with! And it all leads up to her Noble Phantasm, a single-target Buster that seals the victim’s own Noble Phantasm and burns them too. This gives her some high damage potential and can protect the party.
Quetz can work well with a Rider-supported team, or with a Buster-orientated team. She’s amazing to work with! I love using her. But I ended up giving my Grails to someone else. Not the next guy, the guy after the next guy.
7. Achilles
As a reminder, this man is a war criminal.
Can clear out waves quickly
Great survivability
Critical Potential
This is the first and only Servant on this list that I don’t have. Never had much interest in Carrot-Top. Have used him plenty though. He’s really good!
All of his skills are pretty great! The first one grants a buff of his Quick Cards and Critical Damage. Good. Second gives Invincibility and Defense, and the third is tied to the second by Drawing Fire to himself while boosting how fast he builds NP and even gives him a good amount of NP to boot! And seeing how taking damage builds NP and he can make himself either Invincibile or reduce the damage he takes…
This all leads to his Noble Phantasm. It does AOE Quick Damage, after getting a Quick Card boost. And an update later this year will make it do more damage, boost Critical Damage, while also inflicting a Confusion; a small chance to seal enemies skills for a turn. Pair him up with Skadis and he’ll be able to loop quite easily!
If you need a tank for a Rider-focused party, he’s built for it. You need someone to clear out waves for you, he’s built for it. Or rather, this guy is better for clearing out waves…and he’s the one I gave Grails towards.
6. Taigong Wang
He is trustworthy, it’s just that he has that mischievous smile.
Strong Support
Can use Noble Phantasm more often
Excellent against Demonic and Divine
I love this guy’s design so much, that I did something I haven’t really done before when I got him..let alone two of him in the same draw. I spent all of my QP to get Taigong to Max Skills. That’s 160 million QP to spend. Was it worth it?
…yes, I’m putting him on this list for a reason. I almost put him at Number 10, but I stopped and looked around the list. What should be the top reason as to why someone should be higher on the list than others? Simple: this is the part where we get to people that can build their NP and use their Noble Phantasms. And this guy can do that really well!
His first skill is fantastic. A combination of party-wide Quick, Attack, and NP Damage buffs. Already amazing. His third skill gives him 30% NP, and then gives 20% to the party. That's 50% to him!
Taigong’s big thing is that he’s ideal for fighting Divine and Demonic enemies. There are a lot of Divinity in FGO in terms of Servants, and there are some Servants considered Demonic. There are some that are both too! His second skill boosts damage to them while sealing their skills. His Noble Phantasm adds more Divine damage while hitting all enemies and lowering their resistance to Quick cards.
I’ve always put Support members higher on these lists, given that they can work in more parties. And he’s amazing when I use him. While some would put him lower than Achilles (And mostly because Achilles has defenses) I put him higher because I feel like he gives more to the party as all of Achilles’ skills are self-focused.
5. Francis Drake
That’s got to be the best pirate I’ve ever seen.
Spammable Noble Phantasm
Can generate a great amount of Critical Stars
Can pierce defenses
Being the first Rank 5 Rider in the game, Francis came out with a powerful kit that only needed two buffs, one of which just a small damage buff to her Noble Phantasm. She’s really simple to use and can spam her Noble Phantasm even more often than Taigong. I’ll still use my Taigong, but still. She is better. I just don’t use her.
Every part of her just screams: “Use her Noble Phantasm!” She can increase her NP Gain with her second skill, along with boosting her Buster Cards and Ignoring Defense. Her first skill makes her do even more damage with her normal attacks and her Noble Phantasm. And then her third skill gives her a huge boost to her NP, Ignores Invincibility, and a small amount of Critical Stars.
Drake’s Noble Phantasm is really simple. Buster, AOE, and grants a huge load of Critical Stars. In fact, she generates a good amount of Stars from her Quick cards! Which helps her build up her NP even faster. Having two Arts Cards means that she can potentially loop her Noble Phantasm!
She is better than Taigong because he’s mostly meant to be fighting against those with the right traits. Drake can just charge in and deal with anything shy of Alter-Egos and Assassins. Pair her up with someone that can keep her alive or make her Noble Phantasm even better, and she’s going to blow the competition out of the water…literally and metaphorically!
4. Ozymandias
I can hear him complaining that I didn’t put him higher on the list.
Deals high damage
Can build NP quickly
Noble Phantasm is amazing
The legendary king of Egypt himself, and he’s a Rider…of pyramids? It’s weird, but he’s effectively a Caster in Rider form…kinda like Taigong Wang. Still, that worked for Taigong, and it works even better for Ozy as a Rider.
His best skill is his third; which grants the entire party a small but useful 20% NP while also granting the rare and situational Buff Chance Success Rate. Long-winded, yes. But it does work well with his second skill, which restores HP to him while having a good chance of granting him an Attack and Defense buff. That becomes a guaranteed buff when you max out the third skill.
Ozy’s first skill used to just be an Attack buff, but it got an upgrade to be bigger, buff Critical Damage, and a weird one. If you’re a stage considered ‘Sunny’, it will add Critical Star Regeneration. Weird and hard to work with, but an update that came a few months later helped that by buffing his already great Noble Phantasm.
It's a single-target Buster that decreases Defense and seals the Noble Phantasm of the enemy. The upgrade upped the damage, gives Ozy a single turn cooldown on his skills, and changes the field to Sunny, allowing him to synergize with his first skill. Given that he has generally fast cooldowns, this allows him to really do a lot more damage and use that third skill more often.
He can work well when it comes down to challenges. Can heal himself and help himself and the party dish out some real good damage. Praise the sun!
3. Sataka Kintoki (Rider)
Got better hair too!
High NP Gain
Stupid high damage on his Noble Phantasm
Critical Machine
Our Golden Boy really gets on a lot of Top Ten Lists, huh? Well, I mentioned his Rider version before, and he’s notorious. He was an Event Servant as well, and he ended up being seen as the best one out of that bunch, and one of the best Servants in the game. While he has been outpaced by other Servants…
…it’s still Sataka Kintoki. He’s still insane.
Quick Servants didn’t really get much love early on, but he was able to shine thanks to his first skill giving him not only a Quick Card buff but also increased how many Critical Stars he generates with attacks. And because Quick Cards already drop the most stars and Critical Hits make them generate EVEN MORE, he can do some insane burst damage.
Kintoki even retains his best skill from his Berserker form; his giant NP gain skill. Not that he really needs that much, seeing how Quick cards can generate some NP on their own, and he can Critical Hits do build more NP. He also keeps his HP Recovery and Attack Debuff Resistance, but that’s small potatoes.
And his Noble Phantasm. Good lord, his Noble Phantasm. Single-Target Quick with a Quick buff before the attack kicks in? And an insanely high buff at that. With the proper set-up, he can do a stupid high amount of damage, do some Critical hits, and then build up his NP again. He’s practically unstoppable!
Now say it with me: “Golden Ride! Good night.”
2. Sima Yi/Lady Reines
Not pictured: her devil tail and horns.
Excellent Support
Can disable Class Disadvantage
Amazing Noble Phantasm
If you know your Three Kingdoms lore, you might know that Sima Yi was the rival of Zhunge Liang. And so, with Waver having Zhunge Liang inside of him and being a really amazing support character, the same goes for his adopted sister. And she can be considered to be better than him in many different ways.
Like her brother, she can boost NP for the party. Reines’ first skill is the same as Waver’s second; boosts NP by a small amount while granting a good Defense buff. Her second does give more while taking something from her; she gives 20% NP to one ally while debuffing her Attack to grant that Ally an Attack buff. The third skill didn’t originally build NP, but a buff added in it along with Invincibility and resistance to Debuffs, but only to one person.
Her big claim to fame comes from her Noble Phantasm. Which also got upgraded. Now it decreases the enemy’s defense and Critical Hit Chance, removes Reines’ own debuffs, buffing the party’s NP Gain and NP Overcharge, and adding in a special ability. Removing Class Disadvantage from being attacked.
In FGO, classes deal double damage and take half from those they’re strong against, and vice versa when going against their weak against. While for the most part you shouldn’t bring the wrong classes to a fight, there are times where you realistically will have to gamble and use Servants that are great but will die quickly.
Reines fits into those parties. She’s pretty much designed to fight in challenge quests because of this. She’s absolutely amazing, but there is something better than her at being a Rider…
1. Leonardo da Vinci (Rider)
Wanted: For Price-Jacking and Repeated Vehicular Genocide.
Arts AOE Noble Phantasm
Can build and help the party build NP
Sturdy
So, time to explain. Yes, this is the famous Italian genius Leonardo da Vinci. Yes, she looks like a little girl version of the Mona Lisa. To explain: it’s Leonardo’s mind into a mecha body. He used to have an adult body, but a certain priest destroyed that.
FGO is weird. I will be saying that in every article I make about the game. And I $%^@ing love it.
Familiar to other lists, a big reason as to why she’s top class is because of her ability to loop her Arts Noble Phantasm. And help others use theirs more often. Her Noble Phantasm not only does Arts AOE damage, but it also gives the entire party a good amount of NP. Plus, with the Overcharge effect grants her a buff to Arts Cards before the attack, she gets a big refund on her own Noble Phantasm and can loop if you also play her Arts Cards after her NP card.
And she’s got ways of building it up fast. Her first skill gives her HP and NP Regen, along with Debuff Immunity. That NP Regen goes as high as 20%, meaning that she can build 60% over three turns. And if you need a little extra, her third skill gives the entire party a small amount of NP while also boosting NP Damage and Overcharge. Her third just gives a single-attack Evade along with some Critical Damage, which can help her.
As mentioned back when I talked about Chen Gong, this was a character released during the 4th Anniversary, when they also released a bunch of free Servants as well. This version of Leonardo was released at the same time, and while she did get ‘overlooked’ by the freebies, she’s still amazing. One of the best wave-clearers in the game with capability of fighting bosses, she’s the best Rider for a good reason.
