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1-3* Tier List Change Log

Tier List Change Log for July 2, 2018

Date of discussion: June 18-25, 2018

The silver roster is growing at a steady pace. With the current way that the 1-3* tier list is set up, the lower rarity Servants are starting to be obscured in this sea of silver. Seeing as how many of the bronze Servants have excellent utility and should not be neglected, we might start separating the bronze from the silver in a separate tier list.

This tier list revision also takes into account the upcoming Servant Strengthening part 4, and even looks ahead at part 5.  

Lastly, not all Servants will be mentioned here. Their tier placement either isn’t contentious among the panel or nothing really changed.

While we still intend to write a larger interpretation of our tier list, here is a short overview of what we actually look at when ranking our servants:

  • Servant niche

  • Competition within niche

  • Challenge Quest performance

  • Servant value for farming

  • Sustained damage and burst damage performance

  • Statistics (attack/HP/generation, etc.)

  • Support capability and utility

Tier 1 Changes

Mash: 1 → 1

Post-Camelot, Mash becomes the great defensive demi-servant she was always meant to be. Her first skill gains a pseudo-evade damage cut, while her NP gets an increase in effectiveness and provides a fantastic damage buff. She’s still not “competing” with anyone since she retains 0 cost, but gains better stats, NP and skills. Even as a 0 cost CE-carrier she’s superb, and once Camelot passes she legitimately becomes an incredible clutch defensive support without any real investment or planning needed.

Hans Christian Andersen: 1 → 1

Hans remains a powerful support, even if he doesn’t get as many buffs as other supports on the list in the long run. His lower HP total may begin to show cracks starting in Camelot, where enemy damage values start crawling up, but that can be compensated for with CE’s and ally support. Even with the low HP, the fact that he’s a support Servant with a low cost is enough for people to run him even as a “disposable” frontliner. Besides, the low ATK doesn’t affect him as much as other more damage-oriented Servants.

Tier 2 Changes

Gaius Julius Caesar: 3 → 2

Caesar tends to be consistently underrated. He’s the best 3 star Saber until Bedivere becomes available, and still provides more offensive utility than Bedivere with a powerful ST NP to boot. He’ll most likely be a F2P Player’s go-to Saber until they get a better Saber and in terms of offense he’s often still more powerful than some 4* Sabers.

Arash: 3 → 2

Arash will have access to both his strengthening and his NP interlude, becoming the truly fearsome farming monster he was always meant to be. His ability to clear waves and then bring in a different Servant is amazing, and he can save a lot of team cost to enable fast clears with expensive starting gauge NPs.

David: 3 → 2

David’s team-wide dodge provides excellent value for a low star servant. The dodge by itself wins boss fights and can even be swapped in with Order Change during clutch situations. Great for situations in which the team supports one powerful Servant. Also comes with decent damage of his own, with 3 arts cards, Charisma and surprising staying power. However, he is too reliant on the utility of his dodge to be placed any higher.

Euryale: 4 → 2

Male bosses are much more common now and even for regulars Sabers, Euryale can pull her weight. Her added utility with her charm and NP drain can aid with Arts stall, and her NP gain is pretty solid for a release attack set servant. She was fit for tier 3 even before her strengthening.

Robin Hood: 2 → 2

Robin Hood can be used in place of his higher-rarity counterparts and still provide excellent results. Not as specialized as Euryale is, but worth levelling for better general performance. Becomes even stronger with his strengthening.

Cu Chulainn: 2 → 2

Cu Chulainn (Prototype): 3 → 2

The placement of everyone’s favorite dog was the subject of the most discussion during the entire tier list discussion. The Original Cu Chulainn loses a lot of power in the future when it comes to offense, and Camelot is a good starting point to make this evident, where fast-charging NPs outscale his ability to survive. Future content is only going to make this worse with the introduction of break bars where his reliance on his NP5 won’t cut it anymore. For the cost of his survivability, he has nearly nothing to offer to the team except consistent durability, a self-debuff removal and defense down with pretty weak stargen and NP gain.

However, for starting players Cu is an impressive crutch to lean on and one of most popular Servants for new players. His kit is more aligned than his Proto variant for one goal and one goal only: survival. The addition of a guts to his kit in comparison to his Proto version can make or break his survival before Protection from Arrows comes off cooldown again during challenging content. His closest alternatives in the role of last man standing are a bond 10 Heracles and Cu Alter. If you’re still muddling through the content, then he remains an amazing choice. Marking him down for his low damage output seems at odds with his role in a team.

For Cu’s ability to tide people over, his early-game strength and his reliability, he remains a valuable choice for new players, while more advanced players will most likely have the tools and knowledge to build better teams with other Lancers. His tier placement will be revisited in the future.

For Cu Chulainn (Prototype) we can be fairly brief. With his Protection from Arrows he has borrowed the best survivability from his original counterpart while (after strengthening) he has access to both a critical damage steroid, a star absorption and an anti-beast niche. For general farming and for being a 3* offensive Lancer, Proto Cu Chulainn performs better than his original and is a good recommendation for any Master looking to upgrade the offense of their Cu Chulainn.

Georgios: 3 → 2

Georgios does little damage, but for challenging content he’s invaluable with his 3 turn taunt opening up many alternative strategies for all struggling Masters. The only drawback of his kit can be his high star weight, but that can be managed through various means. Excellent Servant for master who rely on their Friend’s grailed Servants.

Ushiwakamaru: 3 → 2

The addition of Ushi’s dodge and also her interlude puts her damage and durability up by good margin. She’s as good an ST damage bot as Robin is, though Robin still reaches higher damage peaks. A worthy addition to any low star endgame teams.

Medea: 2 → 2

Buff-removal and NP spam in return for lower damage per NP is good enough for Medea to be at 2, especially considering the lack of damage-dealing Casters currently in the game.

Fuuma Kotarou: → 2

Fuuma takes over the baton from Cursed Arm as a low cost star generator, with additional debuff utility and a targetable dodge. However, he can be a little situational and this panel might revisit his placement in the future.

Tier 3 Changes

Fergus mac Roich: 4 → 3

Fergus is like a mini-Gawain, but has better survivability than Gawain, with an Evasion and the potential of up to 45% in defense buffs. He has pretty good attack and a triple Buster loadout to help out with offense, but will have problems charging his NP twice in a fight.

Kig Gilgamesh: 4 → 3

There’re not many AoE 3 star Archers and he has two of Gilgamesh’s skills already. Instead of extra damage he packs a pretty hefty 50% NP damage down debuff, which tends to be overlooked. Chained with Nightingale, they can pretty much gimp an enemy NP to 0% damage. It’s a shame that his competition among the Archers is so fierce. After all, he still has issues with his own damage output with access to only his Charisma.

Leonidas: 3 → 3

The upcoming period could be considered a turning point in hitcount inflation, with bosses like Tristan and Ozymandias struggling to not use cards which let Leonidas take a tasty 3 hit, 24% NP gauge boost to the face. Adding on to that, the Buster crit meta is starting to become a full-force thing, and Leonidas remains an excellent support for these teams. With a taunt tied to his NP, Leonidas is capable of eternally taunting without external support.

However, Leonidas’s taunt only lasts a single turn and he needs to generate that NP quickly to cast it again. During the hardest challenge quests he is also at risk of dying quickly regardless of his status as a tank. Using Leonidas does require more work put into team creation and execution, but does his job extremely well when you hit his niche just right.

Edward Teach: 3 → 3

Blackbeard’s beginning to age a bit, with his NP damage no longer being too spectacular, and his clutch defensive durability not holding up versus increased enemy damage. However, he has access to a guts that has no turn limit on a 5 turn cooldown, some excellent support skills in Voyager of the Storm and his strengthening skill that heals for 2000 + 2000 extra on females topped of with a nice Buster NP that synergizes well with the increasing Buster meta. In practice he often functions as a mini-Iskander.

Alexander: 4 → 3

One of the few Quick supports available, Alexander is a budget Atalante with his strengthening. He’s a strong quick support with two forms of three turn buffs, in addition to possible charm utility. Also got an NP interlude unlike Medusa.

Medusa: 4 → 3

Medusa has gotten better farming capabilities with Blood Fort Andromeda and excels at farming the QP Doors in particular. She remains the most selfish of the three star rider trio however. Being one of the very few friend summon Servants with access to an NP gauge boost makes her immensely valuable for any players but her performance for extended fights is still disappointing compared to her competition. Tier positioning might be reconsidered in the future.

William Shakespeare: 4 → 3

Shakespeare has access to his targetable NP Gauge charge now, which boosts his utility greatly and turns Kaleidoscopes into possible (Waver-less) out-of-gate NPs. King’s Men can also be used with Buster AOE NPs to generate a lot of stars with its stargen buff. Finally, his Buster buff was already very powerful before the strengthening as well and his future NP strengthening will further boost his performance.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: 4 → 3

With access to his third skill, Mozart can create 50 stars with the press of a button. Guaranteed critical hits on a turn of choice is amazing, plus his utility as an Arts support with his party Arts Performance Up skill make him a strong choice on any Arts team. Mozart’s synergy with the Order Change skill of the Chaldea Combat Uniform is not to be underestimated.

Henry Jekyll: 3 → 3

Jekyll and Hyde were the subject of a fair bit of discussion as to whether the investment to make use of him in combat is worth the effort. As Hyde, he is durable, has very high critical damage, a ridiculously reliable stun and amazingly high regular card damage. When Demonic Buddhavista gets added, he only gets more reliable, so much so that it feels wrong putting him lower than T3 when he has such a high damage output and a “second wind” on NP backing him.

On the other hand, the wind-up period and the lack of any damaging NP does compensate a bit for that incredible skillset and damage once changed. For any practical application during farming nodes, the benefits of that sustained damage might not come to fruition early enough. A servant that might be considered a “win-more’ type Servant, where he performs best when you are already winning anyway.

For his powerful potential though, he remains tier 3.

Hassan of the Cursed Arm: 2 → 3

While Cursed Arm has good stargen and survivability, as an (ultimately) offensive Servant, his lower ATK stat puts him at a disadvantage. Compared with Servants like Georgios and Robin who can actually be integral parts of endgame content teams - competing with their higher-rarity counterparts - the same cannot be said for Hassan.

Sadly, Fuuma comes in and does his job but almost practically better, except for self-survival. For newer players he’s decently worth investing if you don’t have the other assassins, but he does drop relative to people like Fuuma.

Sasaki Kojiro: 3 → 3

Sasaki Kojirou’s star generation remains pretty good, and once he gets his skill strengthening his nature as a star machine with ‘okay’ damage on the side remains solid. Remains tier 3 for now, but may be revisited on the next panel.

Eric Bloodaxe: 3 → 3

Often forgotten, but Eric remains valuable for his great farming potential and a good investment for Masters who want to cut down on the time it takes to do their daily farm.

Kiyohime: 4 → 3

At NP5, with her new skill and with Fous, she can consistently clear waves of hands and other low/medium HP nodes. With her NP gain she also has an easier time getting her NP charged. Finally, a debuff removal is always a pretty good thing to have overall.

Lu Bu Fengxian: 3 → 3

Lu Bu’s damage output is really damn high, and his amazing base atk just furthers that. However, compared to other ST damage dealers like Ushi and Robin in tier 2 he lacks any massive survival skills and thus may be harder to keep alive for less reward. Bringing him to a high level boss necessitates a taunt as a stray crit or hit will kill him. Another concern with Lu Bu is that his cannon basically hits once, compared to other Servants like Robin who can be sustained in Arts compositions. However, given his cost/performance, he’s fantastic whenever you need a tactical berserker to deal with multiclassing before hitting the big boss. In the future, his critical niche will have great synergy with the Buster critical meta.

Spartacus: 5 → 3

With Fous and his Buster Strengthening, he’s like a weaker universal Arash. He’s also one of the only accessible Berserkers with an NP Gauge boost. This makes him good for farming hands on Lancer/Assassin days with great potential for 3 turn clears of standard farming nodes. Still, he won’t have his NP upgrade for a while and he could really use it. Once his NP upgrade arrives he might be a good candidate for tier 2.

Tier 4 Changes

Cu Chulainn (Caster): 4 → 4

Caster Cu is interesting as he’s somewhere in between Original Cu and Prototype Cu, but with a different class. He has miserable NP damage, in addition to being story-locked, but he’s kind of like a budget Nursery Rhyme post-strengthening. Similar to Rhyme, he has a crit buff, NP battery, and really strong survival. If he had just had a bit more attack or an NP interlude...

Jing Ke: 4 → 4

Jing Ke’s 3rd skill (Quick + Crit damage up 1 turn) really helps her, although since it lasts 1 turn it will often be used on her NP turn. That means you’re using the buff on the turn she ends up generating stars - rather than the turn in which she absorbs them to deal critical damage. This limits her potential a bit. Her future NP strengthening might be grounds for reconsidering her tier placement.

Tier 5 Changes

Angra Mainyu: 5 → 5

His unique kit and Avenger class offers him some utility. His NP seems worthless, but has value in certain challenge quests with high defense mobs.

Gilles de Rais: 5 → 5

An NP that does no damage, a massive Buster boost, but an inability to do a BBB chain, Military Tactics that he can’t make use of himself: the recipe is there for disaster. Yet, with all his buffs active Gilles can still do good damage, which keeps him out of tier 6.

Mephistopheles: 5 → 5

Mephistopheles is similar to COOOL (Gilles, Caster), but with more useful skills. However, his damage is still lacking, and rather serves some kind of odd utility caster for when buff prevention is necessary.

Paracelsus: 5 → 5

If only Paracelsus wasn’t gimped with a crappy NP multiplier, he’d be almost an AoE Medea. Paracelsus can provide rare team utility plus his instant NP charge makes it possible for him to farm some weak Assassin/Berserker enemies, but he’s going to need more buffs. Paracelsus also has high skill cooldowns, which hurts his potential even more.

Mata Hari: 4 → 5

Mata Hari can charm a lot, but AOE charm isn’t in high demand and you can use people like Euryale to Charm high-priority opponents more consistently so long as they’re male. Keeping Mata Hari alive is also difficult and she’s not that useful outside of her skills and NP. Unfortunately she runs the usual QQQAB Assassin deck to supplement a Star Generation role, which kind of gets in the way of her role of charm-locking opponents.

Phantom of the Opera: 5 → 5

Phantom is like Mephistopheles but with a QQQ deck. He has poor generation stats, and his niche is limited to charming females in conjunction with his NP (which will be hard to get up).

Caligula: 5 → 5

Caligula actually has really high potential damage - his attack outpaces some 3 stars, and his total potential buffs reach 70% Attack and 50% Buster up. The only problem is that he has practically no NP, which makes him similar to Stheno as a stat-stick. However, his quality of doing damage while being so fragile isn’t unique enough to truly outperform his competition in the Berserker class.

Tier 6 Changes

Boudica: 5 → 6

Boudica, even after the strengthening she got back in February, struggles in what roles she fills. She can offer a little bit of Arts support with her Strengthening, but Mozart does this with better values at lower party Cost (albeit for 1 turn). Her first skill is strictly for Roman enemies, which are very rare. She does have a Guts ability, which gives her some survivability. Her NP is similar to Mash’s by being a party Defense buff, but without the rest of Mash’s kit, she does not function well as a defensive support either. In essence her kit does not synergize, and she does not do any one thing very well. After her 2nd Strengthening she can run a decent stall team especially with Mash. For now, she remains hard to use.

Geronimo: 5 → 6

Geronimo’s NP is the best part about him, with some really nice additional effects. Sadly, his skills are card buffs of all three kinds which don’t synergize well, with the Arts buff being the most useful. Geronimo will receive an NP upgrade in the future which will be grounds to reconsider his positioning.

Gilles de Rais (Caster): 5 → 6

With NP damage that is among the lowest in the game (at NP5 and he’s story-locked), and very weak skills, GIlles de Rais is very difficult to extract a lot of value out of. He does have access to his weaker version of MHX’s stun skill, but even with his additional debuff chance skill, it remains weak.