My bad, I misremembered. In that case, I think a slightly deeper analysis is in order:
Fate:
Let's assume that the magical energy Saber expends skirmishing with Lancer, Assassin and Rider in the first few days is negligible compared to the amount she recovers from eating and sleeping. She uses Excalibur once against Rider and is reduced to the point of nearly disappearing. Then she and Shirou have sex, and she is restored to fighting strength, but is unable to produce an Excalibur strong enough to kill Berserker even once. Then after a few days of eating, sleeping, and not fighting, she is able to recover enough magical energy to use Excalibur once against Gil, and is not reduced to the point of nearly disappearing, implying the total amount of magical energy she had amassed at that point was greater than the amount she had when she defeated Rider (ie. magical energy from sex + magical energy recovered from resting > magical energy expended fighting Berserker). Then she skirmishes with Lancer at the church and gives Shirou some of her magical energy to speed up Avalon's healing, neither of which place her on the verge of disappearing like before. Then she and Shirou have sex again and she recovers the residual magical energy from Avalon, at which point she has enough magical energy to use Excalibur three times against Gil (although it's worth noting that the third use required her to remove her armor for extra magical energy, and left her "so weak she could not even raise her head"). Then Shirou commands her to "fulfill her role" and she uses Excalibur one last time to destroy the Grail before disappearing (given Shirou's final Command Spell disappears, I'm assuming he used it to give her additional magical energy for the final Excalibur).
UBW:
We don't really need to look at early UBW because Saber never uses Excalibur; what's relevant is that when she's released from Caster's control, she has virtually no magical energy (she can't even materialize her armor, if I recall correctly). At this point, she makes a contract with Rin and gets a large amount of magical energy back, enough for her to easily match Archer. After this, she doesn't really fight again until the final night; however, we don't really see her eating or sleeping much either, so it's unclear how much time she would have to recover. Then she tells Rin in the strategy meeting that she only has enough magical energy to use Excalibur twice, which is one fewer use than she displayed against Gil at the end of Fate. In the end, Rin gives Shirou the magical energy for UBW, and Saber only uses Excalibur once on the Grail, and then disappears.
...So the main takeaway from this, I guess, is that "all of Rin's magical energy" is one Excalibur less than "the magical energy Saber got from sex with Shirou, plus the magical energy she recovered from Avalon". In which case, either Avalon gave her back a lot of residual magical energy (more than was required for it to heal her during the Gil fight), or sex with Shirou is a really good source of magical energy.
Only Medusa Lily has that NP, Gorgon has the Mystic Eyes as a skill like Rider Medusa. And they are still the same as Medusa's skill anyway, which wouldn't work against A-Rank MGI, so I have no idea why Merlin couldn't protect himself. Maybe her goddess status in Babylonia increased her eyes' power somewhat?
Another thing is that it was never used so we have no idea how it works. Like, does it de-activate God Hand before or after the big magic attack? What if you counter it with Excalibur and thus aren't reached by the blast, do you still get debuffs? What if you dodge?
Spoiler:
Maybe she still had her divinity? Unless this is the localization's fault.
About Quetz: on top of already having her divinity halved, she wasted a lot of mana to burn the mud with her first np before attacking Tiamat. The story also skips from when she activates her NP to her defeat and we don't see what happened in between, so maybe Tiamat used her shields like in the anime.
I will note by the way in UBW saber actually doesn’t use all her magical energy. Either she hangs around, or in the scene where she fades she actually thinks about how she could stay if she concentrated even without the grail but decided not to because she isn’t needed
She's using Pandemonium Cetus, which allows for a full transformation into the monster gorgon. Gorgon became a composite divinity after eating her sisters. She's always a goddess, but no different than the ones summoned by Chaldea. Babylonia had an actual goddess saint graph beforehand.
Quetzalcoatl's PdS didn't just attack the mud, it attacked the entire area. Your party needs to hide behind Mashu's shield just to survive. Tiamat wasn't harmed by that either. And we actually do see what happened. After Quetz launches herself, we see a cutscene/visual SFX of her ramming into Tiamat. Nothing of shields were ever mentioned or shown. The anime flipped that script.About Quetz: on top of already having her divinity halved, she wasted a lot of mana to burn the mud with her first np before attacking Tiamat. The story also skips from when she activates her NP to her defeat and we don't see what happened in between, so maybe Tiamat used her shields like in the anime.
Uh, I always thought her being "composite divinity" was because of Tiamat's authorities. Nevermind then.
Now I'm back to being confused. Either Quetz lost way more power than I thought along with her divinity, or Tiamat's horns are fragile compared to her body and only Gorgon was smart enough to target them.
Another weird thing is how she apparently was wounded by the fall into the underworld since Romani notes how these wounds are healing when she power ups. The fall did more damage than actual goddesses lol.
Well, we have the bad ending versus Berserker where she uses it but fails to deal fatal damage because she doesn't have enough magical energy. So there are definitely "lesser Excaliblasts" and "greater Excaliblasts" (which, of course, relates to Excalibur's nature as a "sword which amplifies"—more magical energy in, more damage out). The real question, I guess, is whether she can choose to perform "lesser Excaliblasts" simply by putting less magical energy in, or whether they're an involuntary fail state which only occurs when she tries to use Excalibur and doesn't have enough magical energy left.
Well it is an amplifier of energy. Put energy in get beam out.
If you put energy in it that's not the level of a full beam it's probably like A, or A+, or just a slash like against Gil.
We actually know she can consciously reduce output. In hollow ataraxia when threatened by avenger and bazett she lowered the output of Excalibur so as to not vaporize the church.
bazett ended up killing her with fragerach anyway, but yeah, she can finagle the flow of mana as she needs to.
Tiamat's horns are easier to damage from the looks of it, but that still wouldn't explain away every inconsistency. The anime handled the scene more sensibly, in my opinion.
We know from FGO that the pluses are what come with having her seals unlocked. And Saber wouldn't hold back on Excalibur because she needed it to fend off Ea. After what happened the first time they clashed, I doubt she'd take chances.
ah yes fgo gameplay stuff, a total confirmation on things.
Again is it really that hard to figure out when we explicitly know what Excalibur does?
I think the 300% thing was alluding to "++" meaning "momentarily triple in output" (from CM3), not to FGO gameplay mechanics.
Interludes =/= Gameplay.
There's nothing worth figuring it out here. The notion that Saber can determine how much energy goes into Excalibur works fine, I believe it. But there is no reason for her to hold back on it between either Fate or UBW given her back is against the wall in the former.Again is it really that hard to figure out when we explicitly know what Excalibur does?
I mean in the fate route she's desperately doing everything she can to survive in a way. Noble Phantasms cost a lot, but she's also someone that pumps out a lot of energy with her dragon core. If she were to say have a full tank it's not surprising that she can shoot out two, and then she basically spends everything left for something that isn't a beam for a final slash.
Actually going off what's saidIt was fueled solely by her armor anyway.Blue clothes run in.
There is no armor on Saber.
She has released the armor protecting her, put the magical energy gained into her sword, and
Then the blast to destroy the grail if you're gonna talk about that is fueled by a command seal.
So that's two basically really.
how strong would you say that Saber Kojirou is? didn't he have a rather good showing against Dantes?