Hilda (Genealogy)

Weapon: Fiery Bolganone

Assist: Positional Assist

Special: Glimmer / Iceberg 

Passive A: Atk/Res Solo (3 or 4) / Atk/Res Ideal (3 or 4) / Atk/Res Push 4/ Mirror Impact / Sturdy Impact / Death Blow 4

Passive B: Lull Atk/Res / Special Spiral / Lull Spd/Res / Sabotage Spd / Other Sabotage skills

Passive C: Rouse Atk/Res / Joint Drive Atk / Time's Pulse

Sacred Seal: Atk/Res Solo / Death Blow / Mirror Strike / Quickened Pulse

• Though most builds on Hilda are similar in nature, this one revolves around dealing massive single-hit damage in player phase while maintaining her fairly fantastic enemy phase capabilities if desired. 
• At minimum, Hilda's base kit is already quite self-circulating in nature: Fiery Bolganone and Rouse Atk/Res's stat boosts and penalties feed the effects of Atk/Res Ideal 3 and Fiety Bolganone's own 【Dominance】damage stack as-is. Anything else on the kit is merely an sidegrade, small upgrade, or filling in empty slots. 
• Glimmer works perfectly with the damage stacking, one-shotter nature of Fiery Bolganone and this build. Except a few select targets and conditions, its additional damage will be certainly short (-charged at 2 CD) and sweet. If you're not taken to Glimmer's damage-reliance, however, Iceberg is a safer, slightly longer-CD option that scales off of Hilda's high Res instead. 
• To improve on Hilda's damage dealing talents, her B slot comes down to two main options:
  • Lull Atk/Res is a nice little package of added damage and bulk, cancelling out any existing Atk/Res bonuses on the enemy while further lowering these stats by -3. Alternatively, if you're grabbing Atk/Res Ideal 4 from Ashera (the only native user of it at this time of writing), you might well should grab Lull Spd/Res and possibly run with that. The Spd debuff is not really synergistic with any part of the build whatsoever, but the Lull Res part of the skill still does perfectly in maximizing Hilda's natural damage which is largely the goal of the build. 
  • Special Spiral cuts down the cooldown of Hilda's chosen Special by -2 after every successful trigger. Specifically, it instantly charges Glimmer, giving Hilda a nice helping of burst damage whether she's initiating or awaiting combat. It's also pretty decent with Iceberg's 3 CD, though Hilda will either have to settle for triggering it every other combat or baiting an attack to charge it fully and consistently.
  • Running a Sabotage skill here is also a fair choice as it gives Hilda a way to inflict penalties on additional enemies, debuff additional stats so her weapon's【Dominance】effect gains more power, or both.
• While Hilda's default Atk/Res Ideal 3 is a fairly easy keeper due to its easy conditions and decent stat reward, she has a few A-slot upgrades worth thinking about. 
  • You can, of course, upgrade Ideal to its 4th variant, bolstering Hilda's Atk/Res gains to +7, and even further to +9 if she enters combat at full HP with some sort of buff on herself. As a tip, running ally support or using Atk/Res Rouse properly will at least guarantee Ideal carries out its pretty good boost minimum. 
  • Atk/Res Solo requires no other conditions other than simply being at least a space from allies — which matches up with one of Fiery Bolganone's conditions in the first place. Like Ideal, it's a great dual-phase boost except it encourages you to upkeep Fiery Bolganone's positioning requirements. 
  • While Atk/Res Push 4 requires Hilda to maintain herself above 25% HP, careful matchmaking or having some HP restoration skills from allies (such as using healer units or Eir) should still make it a solid stat boost.
  • Mirror Impact and Sturdy Impact encourage a more player phase-oriented fighting style as their offensive boosts apply only when initiating. The Impact skills fortunately makes themselves worth the tradeoff by denying the enemy a follow-up hit while greatly boosting a chosen defensive stat. Sturdy Impact in particular, combined with the Atk debuffs from Fiery Bolganone, gives Hilda better shots at resisting one of her weaknesses: physical hits. 
  • Finally, unless you can spare Death Blow 4 for a simple, initiation-only +8 to Hilda's Atk, it's not worth swapping Ideal 3 with Death Blow 3 as you lose out on dual phase performance and additional Res bulk.
• What has been said for Hilda's A-slots should doubly apply to her Sacred Seal as well: an ideally player phase-friendly Atk augment. Atk/Res Solo, Mirror Strike, and Death Blow are easy recommendations here. 
  • For Special Spiral builds in particular, running Quickened Pulse along with Time's Pulse allows Glimmer to be instantly ready to fire and cycle charge at Turn 1. Of course, either or both can be substituted with an outsourced Pulse skill from other allies, like Infantry Pulse.
• Nothing else is typically better for Hilda than her default Atk/Res Rouse, which 1) self-suffiently adds much-needed buffs on her without help from other allies, 2) encourages her to keep up Fiery Bolganone's Solo condition, and 3) also self-feeds Atk/Res Ideal if she's running that. Nearby enemy debuffs are also provided by Fiery Bolganone, making most Menace and Smoke skills largely redundant. 
  • For the sake of optimization, though, you can run Joint Drive Atk to bolster her one shot hits even further while getting Atk/Res buffs from some other ally. 
  • Time's Pulse, as discussed shortly above, makes Hilda more self-sufficient in Special charging as well.

Weapon: Fiery Bolganone

Assist: Any Rally+ Skill

Special: Glimmer / Iceberg

Passive A: Atk/Res Ideal / Atk/Res Solo

Passive B: Spd/Def Ruse / Atk/Res Ruse / Other Ruse variations

Passive C: Joint Drive Atk / Distant Guard / Other "Within Two Spaces" skills

Sacred Seal: Atk Feint / Atk/Res Solo / Drive Atk / Other "Within Two Spaces" or Feint skills

• Of course, it's not the queen's job to get her hands dirty with some random rat kid blood, so she can lay in the backlines and constantly yell orders at her army instead. Fortunately for Hilda, her tome and access to certain skills make her a choice candidate for a support hybrid build.
• A combination of a Rally and a Ruse skill allows Hilda to apply penalties manually to foes within any columns and rows of your choice. This spells several added advantages for Hilda's playstyle:
  • Penalties from Ruse can be applied to multiple enemies in an area rather than a single nearest one — something that sometimes is a positioning issue with Fiery Bolganone and Menace-type skills in general. Thus, Hilda can exact her【Dominance】-powered wrath on more than one enemy if you anticipate multiple fights in one sitting. 
  • The ability to empower enemies with stat buffs from Rally and weaken enemies with penalties from Ruse can be often gamechanging; often, all it takes is a larger difference in stats to achieve a follow-up, KO, or attack survival. Additionally, the 【Guard】effect from Ruse delays Special activations on those affected by it, making it easier to approach enemies who threaten with otherwise dangerous Special triggers, such as Fallen Edelgard. Finally, in battles where Hilda has little else to do — perhaps due to Save armors impeding her or no more relevant enemies to attack — Hilda can take a more proactive role as a stat booster and debuffer in the meantime.
  • The lack of Spd/Def Menace in the game is an unfortunate loss; having it would allow Hilda to pile on Spd and Def debuffs onto a nearest enemy in combination with the Atk/Res from Fiery Bolganone, allowing the tome's 【Dominance】effect to stack damage even higher. Of course, running Spd/Def Ruse is a sufficient solution for precisely this, giving Hilda a full spectrum of stat penalties — and thus a larger damage boost —  to potentially apply to enemies. 
    • Besides this, any other type of Ruse will suffice; Atk/Res Ruse, for example, primes Hilda for other enemies in one turn despite being redundant with Fiery's Bolganone's Atk/Res Menace effect.
• The Rally in this build doesn't really matter and mostly depends on which sorts of other units you're currently running on your team. For sake of mention, if you're inheriting Spd/Def Ruse, the only source of that is from Eleonora who also comes with Rally Atk/Spd+. Applied properly, both skills can give Hilda's recipient allies a major Speed and damage advantage.
• As usual, stacking up Hilda's Atk and Res for magical tanking competence is a good idea. For quick recommendations, Atk/Res Ideal is an easy-to-use budget choice, and Atk/Res Solo melds well with the Solo condition of Fiery Bolganone.
• You can heighten this build's supportive aspects by running C and Sacred Seals that help other allies. Given how often this build parks Hilda near teammates after she rallies them, a variety of "within two spaces" skills as well as a Feint Sacred Seal potentially are on the menu.

Weapon: Fiery Bolganone

Assist: Positional Assist

Special: Noontime / Iceberg

Passive A: Mirror Stance 3 / Atk/Res Solo / Atk/Res Ideal 

Passive B: Lull Atk/Res / Quick Riposte / Null C-Disrupt

Passive C: Atk Smoke / Pulse Smoke / Rouse Atk/Res

Sacred Seal: Quick Riposte / Atk/Res Solo / Mystic Boost

• It's easy to forget how magically resilient Hilda gets in the midst of all that【Dominance】damage stacking. Her high Res as well as Fiery Bolganone's high damage and Atk debuffs, however, make her perfectly eligible for the Typical Everyday Red Tome GHB Build: build up Res until magic enemies do practically zilch. Pair with a Near Save armor for total peril.
• As a build centered on longevity, it's worth considering Noontime for short-charged healing, especially if you're anticipated multiple combats in settings like Aether Raids. Running a damaging Special and Mystic Boost in the Sacred Seal is also another way of sustaining Hilda with burst damage on-hand. 
• Atk/Res Solo and Atk/Res Ideal remain very good A-slot choices for added stats in both phases, giving Hilda some initiating zest whenever she has to get in the thick of things. This build's endgame choice, though, is Mirror Stance 3, which tacks on enemy Special delay and potentially allows Hilda to escape swift deaths from deadly Special triggers. 
• In the B slot:
  • Lull Atk/Res also remains a consistently great choice here as it basically pushes stats more in Hilda's favor. 
  • Quick Riposte is a perfectly viable and budgetable choice here, however, and it recommended anywhere on the build in the first place to make up for Hilda's otherwise lacking follow-up potential. 
  • Finally, Null C-Disrupt counteracts units with counterattack cancellation effects, including Dazzling Staff healers, Firesweep weapon units, and so on.
• Previously redundant with the shorter-lived nature of the offensive build, Atk Smoke gains a better use case as a C slot here, as Feiry Bolganone's automatic penalties will target only the nearest foe within four spaces. After combat, Atk Smoke provides a more widespread damage debuff and helps Hilda prepare for multiple fights in one sitting. Similarly, Pulse Smoke provides Special delay which works well versus units and teams with precharged Specials. If nothing else, Rouse Atk/Res is a perfectly good default choice, as it gives Hilda the ability to buff up her own power and magical bulk without ally help. 
• As for Sacred Seal, it should be noted again that having Quick Riposte in any form is greatly helpful, as the added follow-up attack is key in securing one-combat kills. If you have it in Hilda's B slot already, you can instead run Atk/Res Solo for a large boost in magical tanking, or Mystic Boost for after-combat sustain.