Marisa

The general gimmick of this build is to spam Blue Flame as much as possible during the enemy phase. Within the get-go of a battle, Infantry Pulse will activate and Marisa will be able to retaliate with a +35 true damage special thanks to Steady Breath's special cooldown reduction and Wao Dao's +10 to special. With Wrath active the damage will be boosted to +45 with an additional bonus from whatever Marisa would have dealt. With her high HP and decent defense, Marisa is generally safe when being used to bait out physical duelist.

Due to her low natural attack, Marisa's fatal counters with this build are enemies that incorporate Guard, Firesweep, and Wary Fighter.

If Marisa is partnered with B!Lucina with the new refine, the flexibility of the A slot for Marisa can be switched around freely to fit your needs. It should be mentioned that Steady Stance 4 increases the potential of the build, as a lot of units will fail to even fatally wound Marisa. Despite this, skills like DC or any Brazen variants can work well.

For the choice of C Slot, if you have another Infantry Pulse unit, Panic Ploy works very well with her high HP stat. The only units that will ignore it will more than likely be armors. As for the seal choice, it can easily be replaced with anything.

If the +3 to Speed isn't important to you from the refinement to her weapon, then it would be better to opt for Defense to make her bulkier. You can also give her DC and Distant Defense for her Seal if you opt for a +3 to Resistance, but she will be much more squishier as a unit.

Hi! I hope that you love Marisa as much as I do and I hope you find this build usefull. Well now going to the point. Marisa is (in my opinion) one of the best red saber units in the game. Her HP, Attack, Speed, and defense are extremely good, and even her resitnace allows her to tank some magic damage. This build is for both enemy and ally phase. Why is that? Her speed allows her to basically use glimmer pretty much every fight, when attacking or being attacked. Her high HP allows her to abuse of any of the HP boost type skills, (Earth boost, fire boost etc), so this allows her to have pretty much attack +6 in every fight she gets in. Then we add quick riposte, this allows her to attck twice to any poor guy who dares to challenge her. Her HP and defence are so high that it will take a lot of hits for her Hp to drop bellow 70%, and since glimmer has a good 2 attack cooldown, she will receive one attack and being able to use glimmer, her wo dao will also add a +10 in the damage, so pretty much everyone who try to face her will die or lose a lot of HP (Her father must be proud of her). Infantry pulse is self explanatory, -1 charge to every infantry allies. For her seal I recomend close defense, this will make her even more tanky, so when you are facing a any red or green dragon or any color normal unit, she will be able to tank the damage, deal some damage in return and even survive the trade. I have her WO Dao + speed casue I think she can use some more to double some guys, but I could also recomend defense or damage, any of the three options are great. Swap depends on your team, normally I use it so she can trade with one of my mages to a safe position so Marisa tanks in the next turn. I personally recomdend to give her Fire Blessing. Why? Because of legendary Hector. His C skill Ostia's pulse give -1 special cooldown to allies. Marisa with her C skill will fo the same. This means that it will be a -2 special cooldown to any ally in the map. If your mage has a similar tome with those effects or quickened pulse, you can reduce something like eather or glacies o dragonic aura all the way to no cooldown or to just 1. Hector also gives bonus HP and attack in the fire season, so it helps Marisa to keep a high HP and damage.

Reasons to use Marisa? She's a great character (both stat wise and character design), she's a freebie saber that you can summon with grails, she is a mobile tank damage dealer, that can also support with her C skill and swap. (And she's waifu)

Reasons why not to use Marisa (or cons): None, shes just amazing (:v). Many blue mages can double her or one shot her. If you don't have a healer in your team and take her to tempest or chain challenges she will not be able to use her a, b, and c skills and die to the second or third blue mage you find. For this build to work you need to keep her HP above 70% always, else she will only be able to tank a little bit before she dies.

This is an alternate build for Marisa that I don't really use but I still created it casue it was fun to see in action. If you want to see the one I really recomend look see my profile and find the other Marisa Guide. This build is for enemy phase strats.

Explanation: This build is made to basically stall and be a tank that can't be killed easily. Close defence and Earth boost will allow her to tank anything that dares to attack her. She sacrifices some speed and damage in this build to have a solid 38 defense +12 of close defense and earth boost. Yes, that's right, 50 of defense when attacked. Quick riposte will allow her again to strike twice, procting Noontime pretty much every time, her base attack is still high and with the +10 damage of Wo Dao, she will be able to recover some or a lot of HP per battle. They will need a good blue mage unit to kill her.

Preferred IV: ...
Weapon: Cake Cutter+ (+Atk)
Assist: Swap / Reposition / Rally Up Atk +
Special: Aether / Sol / Noontime
Passive A: Flashing Blade 4
Passive B: Chill Spd 3 / Null-Follow up 3
Passive C: Infantry Pulse 3 / Panic Ploy 3
Sacred Seal: Panic Ploy 3 / Phantom Spd 3

+/-... oh right, there is no bane or boon for Grail heroes. Well that makes this easy.

Cake Cutter + (+Atk): As of this writing, Marisa still lacks any actual preferred weapon so the options are to go with either her default Wo Dao or rely on inheritables. Like always, I chose to buck the trend here and start out trying to make her a bit more unique from the usual builds. The better version of Siegbert's Dark Greatsword lets Marisa have a built in Swift Sparrow and +5 HP. Which is great because Marisa loves getting as much HP as possible. You can refine it however you like, but I think she needs all the attack she can get so I would prefer Atk. But I can see the argument for Spd.

Assist: Swap or Reposition. Or a rally skill for people hunting for Arena Points. I don't care and neither do you. Fill in with what you like.

Special: Aether could be swapped out for Sol or Noontime, but I like having an ability that helps Marisa's low-ish attack dish out damage AND keep her HP up.

A slot: Flashing Blade 4 lets Marisa charge Aether quicker and guarentees her at least 5 damage (10 if no wary fighter shenanigans). This also meshes well with Cake Cutter as the extra speed from the Swift Sparrow effect will help assure
Marisa is faster while also giving her more Atk.

B slot: Chill Spd 3 is important because while Marisa is fast, she is not the fastest so this will let her knock down folks like Mia, Mareeta, or Karla. If you are feeling confident in providing Marisa with enough speed, then you should switch this with Null-Follow up so as to make maximum use of Flashing Blade 4.

C slot: Infantry Pulse 3 is the only default ability left on her. It is amazing for infantry teams and mixed emblems. If you plan to not have any other infantry units on the team, you can switch this out with Panic Ploy 3.

Seal: Panic Ploy 3 is perfect because few units can check Marisa's HP. If you opt to go with Panic Ploy in the C slot, then go with something like Phantom Spd 3 so you can have a Null Follow-up to be ready for folks with Wary Fighter or Great Flame.

Merged Lvl is 40+6
[Summoner Support (SS) & +5 In dragonflowers]

A Skill: Distant Counter (DC)
B Skill: Special Spiral
C Skill: Even Atk Wave
Seal: Distant Def 3

This build attempts to make Marisa into a duelist that simply cannot die. With her mixed bulk of 96/87, she is extremely hard to OHKO. However, Marisa's main point of weakness is in her Attack; which sits at a measly 50 (even with SS, dragonflowers, and a +6 merge). Due to this, she has a lot of trouble finishing off the enemy, which can limit her usefulness in many situations. However, this set focuses more on sustaining throughout fights, pushing her niche as a defensive swordman to the limit.

Weapon - Wo Dao (+Spd):
A refined Wo Dao pushes Marisa's base stats of HP of 51 & Spd of 41 up to 56 and 44 respectively. The +10 damage on special also allows her to be able to stay healthy more reliably with Sol. Remember that with Wo Dao you are relying on your special trigger to be your win condition and main focus of healing.

In other sets, Slaying Edge, Armorsmasher, or even Safeguard/Barrier Blade are also usable. This weapons also come with different skill sets, which I will jump into later.

Support Skill - Draw Back:
This is mostly up to personal preference. When using Marisa, understand that she (like other lower tier units) excels in certain matchups with other units, while being abysmal in everything else. Draw back gives Marisa the added benefit of helping her ranged allies, while also staying in the back until the need to fight arises. Reposition or Swap are also useful, really your own choice what to use here.

Special Skill - Sol:
This is the reason to why Marisa has the potential to be so goddam tanky. When fighting offensive units who have the intent to take a chunk out of you, Sol allows you to heal up over their measly Def. The added Wo Dao also layers another 10 guaranteed damage on, allowing for more survivablilty.

Other skills you can go for a Mixed Phase unit are Noontime and Aether. Bonfire works for a defensive set, and Glimmer/Moonbow for offensive duelists.

A Skill - Distant Counter:
DC is a main skill that you need in order to make Marisa into an undying tank of a unit. The ability to counterattack also charges your special, which is the major reason of her tankiness. This also drastically increases her matchup with mages, as she can successfully counterattack and cut through their under-average defensive bulk.

Other skills that can work for other sets are Fury 3 for mixed sets, Fortress Def/Res 3 for hard tank sets, and Life & Death 3 for offensive sets.

B Skill - Special Spiral 3:
This is where things get a little weird . By using this skill you are going to fire out Sols everytime the enemy attacks you, long as they don't have Guard or Special Fighter. After using Sol to attack, the -2 charge comes in, bumping it back up to 1. With this, after the enemies attack, Sol will proc, and rinse and repeat. However, keep in mind that you have no reliable way to proc Sol before Special Spiral kicks in. If you aren't able to proc Sol due to Guard or Special Fighter, you will have a much harder time being able to use Marisa effectively.

In terms of B skills, Marisa has a great amount of versatility due to her above average Speed and bulk. Guard, Vantage, Desperation, Wrath, Renewal, and even Shield Pulse can be equipped for many different kinds of sets, as well as other support options such as Links, Feints, and even the new Fallen Corrin B skill Sudden Panic, which works beautifully with her giant HP pool.

C Skill - Even Atk Wave:
With C skills, much like the B skills, you have a lot of options on what to choose. With her HP pool being so obscenely large, you can build her more in terms of utility, buffer, or even debuffer if need be. However, I like to roll with Atk Wave. Odd or Even doesn't matter, but you can easily grab even atk wave from Fallen Delthea. Both Attack wave skills push her Attack stat up from a sub-par 50 to a more respectable 56, allowing her to trade (and therefore heal) more effectively.

Other alternatives you can run are Panic Ploy, Infantry Pulse, the Tactic skills, and even other Waves.

Seal - Distant Defense 3:
This seal, although is may not look like it, really helps add onto Marisa's bulk during enemy phase. In terms of magic users (excluding dragons), it brings her Res up from a mediocre 26 to a more healthy 32, making her more harder to kill. Against attacking bow users, it also brings her 35 defense up to 41.

In terms of alternatives in seals, there are many choices. A Panic Ploy seal offers more utility, while Flashing Blade gives you reliable Special charge. Other options include Close Def 3, Quick Riposte 3, and Renewal 3.

Other sets and Builds:

Hyper-offensive
-Weapon: Wo Dao (+Spd)
-Support Skill: Reposition
-Special: Glimmer/Moonbow
-A Skill: Life & Death 3
-B Skill: Desperation 3/ Wrath 3
-C Skill: Infantry Pulse 3
-Seal: Flashing Blade 3

Physical Tank
-Weapon: Safeguard (+Def)
-Support Skill: Swap
-Special: Bonfire/Ignis/Aether
-A Skill: Fortress Def/Res 3/Steady Breath
-B Skill: Guard 3
-C Skill: Odd Def Wave 3
-Seal: Close Def 3

Mixed Tank
-Weapon: Barrier Blade (+Def)
-Support Skill: Reposition
-Special: Aether
-A Skill: Fortress Def/Res 3/Distant Counter
-B Skill: Vantage 3
-C Skill: Infantry Pulse 3
-Seal: Renewal 3

Utility
-Weapon: Geishun+
-Support Skill: Reposition
-Special: Moonbow
-A Skill: Fury 3
-B Skill: AttackDef Link 3/Chill Spd 3
-C Skill: Infantry Pulse 3
-Seal: Panic Ploy