Hoshiguma

“Anyone who wants to hurt my friends must answer to this shield.”

And answer they will. Armed with a triangular shield adorned with the motif of her Oni heritage, Hoshiguma is a powerful, offensively-oriented Defender who can reflect damage or deal AoE damage.

Hoshiguma’s kit embodies her ferocity, granting her the offensive capabilities to literally grind her enemies down. Hoshiguma's first Talent, Tactical Armor, grants her a chance to resist both physical and arts damage. Her first Skill, Warpath, provides a standard Defense and Attack buff. Her second skill, Thorns, is a passive Skill that grants her a slight Defense buff and deals a portion of her Attack in physical damage to all enemies that attack her. In particular, this Skill fills a niche when dealing with invisible ranged enemies at a distance, as these enemies cannot normally be attacked by other Operators without first being blocked, or by having a rare detection Skill/Talent. Hoshiguma’s third Skill, Saw of Strength, turns her into a literal grinder, allowing her to attack all enemies in front of her while simultaneously granting large buffs to her Attack and Defense. This Skill allows Hoshiguma to quickly deal with large groups of enemies, significantly decreasing the burden on your defensive line.

Hoshiguma is a very straightforward Defender Operator, but this is also her greatest weakness. She excels at being an effective tank that also deals good damage, but does not provide much unique support or utility outside of her second Talent, Special Operation, which grants a slight Defense buff to all other Defenders. Despite having a niche use for dealing with invisible ranged enemies, Hoshiguma does not fill many other irreplaceable roles.

Despite her honest Skill-set, Hoshiguma is an excellent choice for a standard Defender. Her fierce skills will protect the defensive line and open up the way to begin the counter-offensive.

• 3rd Skill - Saw of Strength - Along with having a terrifying name, looking like a meat-grinder of death, and inspiring some hilarious Dorito spinning memes, Hoshi’s S3 gives her a decent ATK and DEF boost and allows her to hit all enemies within her range with each attack.  Despite how it may look, the skill does not create a constant “grinding” damage effect, but is still based on a single attack per her Attack Interval (only that it hits all enemies in her range). The Skill can provide some nice increased damage in multiple-low-defense-enemies situations, but it doesn’t provide a significant survivability increase over her Skill 1 and doesn’t do much in high enemy-Defense or single target situations. 

• Talent 2 - Special Operation Strategy - An ok percentage Defense buff to all Defenders. Welcome but not game changing.

• Talent 1 upgrade - Tactical Armor - A fairly significant increase to her ability to avoid both Physical and Arts damage.  You can’t kill her if you can’t hit her!

Note: Talent 1 gives chance to resist True damage as well.

Skill	Mastery	Story	Advanced	Roguelike
	S3M3	C	C+	None

Hoshiguma does her job sufficiently at SL7, especially if you're a story-centric player. Mastery on her is rarely the deciding factor. Worse, she gets power crept in high-end content by Mudrock who has become the go to defensive defender (even despite being quite different). If you do master a skill, S3 is the one to go with as it greatly raises her peak performance. S2 is a fine skill that many people favor for its simplicity, however the gains on it are painfully low for what 6★ Mastery costs (it's significantly more sanity efficient to just give her more levels for the same stat gains) and it is rarely the choice in high end situations.

Pure defensive blockers don't have much value in the Roguelike, so extra investment for her isn't suggested for that mode.