Rabbit's Reviews #275: Saito Hajime (4* Saber)

Introduction

Guda5 introduces a new limited SR Arts Saber in Saito Hajime. Hajime’s one of those odd Servants who’s super strong in absolute terms but whose value is limited due to his direct free competition. He has great steroids for an ST Servant, his damage has the potential to snowball, he has access to powerful crits, and, most importantly, he’s an Arts Servant with stellar NP refund, all of which should make him an appealing pull. Unfortunately for Hajime, Saber Hokusai exists and is automatically NP5. Hajime is so similar to Hokusai that even though he has a few unique advantages he’s not really worth bringing over her (outside favoritism reasons) unless he’s NP4 or NP5. That said, Saber Hokusai is one of the strongest ST Servants in the game, so “marginally worse than Hokusai” isn’t a bad place to land, and if you like Hajime enough to want to use him despite him not being the optimal pick (or if you missed Hokusai) he’ll do quite well for you.

Servant Data

Saber

QAABB (Saber)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

4

2

4

7

Attribute	Human
Alignment	Lawful Balanced

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

April Fool's
Hajime-chan Glasses

Max HP 11,873

HP Rank

Max ATK 9,425

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,570	Base HP	1,899
Max Atk	9,425	Max HP	11,873
Grail Atk	11,412	Grail HP	14,396

Traits

Card Hits	4	2	2	4	7
Per Hit	0.76%	0.76%	0.76%	0.76%	0.76%

	NP per Hit (%)	0.76%
NP when Attacked (%)	3%

	Star Absorption	102
Star Generation per Hit	10.0%

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x4 Saber Piece
3	150,000	x10 Saber Piece x18 Proof of Hero
4	500,000	x4 Saber Monument x24 Evil Bone x12 Mystic Spinal Fluid
Max	1,500,000	x10 Saber Monument x24 Mystic Spinal Fluid x4 Mysterious Divine Wine

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x4 Gem of Saber
2 → 3	200,000	x10 Gem of Saber
3 → 4	600,000	x4 Magic Gem of Saber
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Magic Gem of Saber x12 Evil Bone
5 → 6	2,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Saber x24 Evil Bone
6 → 7	2,500,000	x10 Secret Gem of Saber x12 Proof of Hero
7 → 8	5,000,000	x24 Proof of Hero x15 Stake of Wailing Night
8 → 9	6,000,000	x45 Stake of Wailing Night x20 Ancient Bell
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Arts/Buster Up

Freely Drawn Sword B

Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Increase own Buster Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Gain Critical Stars.

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Arts +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Buster +	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%	15%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Stars +	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	20
CD	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	6	6	5

Draw is a basic hybrid card amp that also comes with a star burst. The Arts buff helps Hajime’s NP damage and NP gain, the Buster buff makes for more powerful crits, and the stars keep Hajime low-maintenance. Simple, clean, and strong.

Evade

Mind's Eye (True) B

Apply Evade to self (1 turn).
Increase own DEF (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Defense +	9%	9.9%	10.8%	11.7%	12.6%	13.5%	14.4%	15.3%	16.2%	18%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Mind’s Eye is a generic skill, pairing a one-turn dodge with a small, sustained defense buff. This is probably the least-useful of Hajime’s skills, especially since he’ll usually be killing things so quickly he doesn’t even need the survival. That said, this can be nice to help him through high-damage fights, and it doesn’t force a survivability-damage trade, so there’s not much to complain about here.

Dmg Up

Invincible Sword A

Increase own ATK (3 times, 3 turns).
Increase own Critical Strength (3 times, 3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
ATK +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
Crit Dmg +	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%	90%	100%
CD	7	7	7	7	7	6	6	6	6	5

Hajime’s third skill is a hit-based attack buff and a hit-based crit buff. 30% attack up on a 3-hit duration is typically not great—you’re effectively losing 20% attack relative to a standard mana burst in exchange for a bit of flexibility—but Hajime gets away with his for a few reasons. The simplest defense for this attack buff is that Hajime has nearly top-end ST steroids as-is—especially at the SR level—and anything more would push him to truly silly levels of ampage. Additionally, the crit buff is excellent. Hit-based crit buffs are better than single-turn buffs as they’re less likely to be wasted, and this one caps out at a whopping 100%. Hajime has damage modifiers in all three brackets, so even with relatively modest attack and Buster buffs, his crits will hurt. Don’t let that 30% number fool you—this is a really powerful skill.

Noble Phantasm

Formless -

Deal damage to a single enemy.
Decrease Critical Rate for a single enemy by 20% (3 turns).

<Overcharge>

Decrease Arts Resist for a single enemy (3 turns). [Activates First]

Show Info/Video

Formless

Mugyo

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	-	Anti-Personnel Mystic Sword	7

Effect	Deal damage to a single enemy. Decrease Critical Rate for a single enemy by 20% (3 turns).

Level	1	2	3	4	5
Damage +	900%	1200%	1350%	1425%	1500%
Crit Damage -	20%	20%	20%	20%	20%

Overcharge Effect	Decrease Arts Resist for a single enemy (3 turns). [Activates First]

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Arts Res -	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%

And then we come to Hajime’s NP. The NP inflicts Arts resist down on overcharge, which both provides Hajime with a guaranteed steroid any time he NPs and allows his damage and refund to snowball. Post-damage, the NP inflicts crit chance down, which keeps enemy damage under control if Hajime needs to play longer. Nice as those effects are, though, the biggest draw for this NP is the silly refund it gets. With 7 hits and a base 0.76% NP gain, Hajime’s NP refunds roughly 60% with just double Castoria. Tamamo, Paracelsus, and overkill can push this even further. Unfortunately, even with Paracelsus, he can’t hit 100% on NP alone without overkill or an MLB Sign of Smiling Face—and you’ll generally want to bring Tamamo if you can anyway since her damage is so much higher—so he still needs a genning card to loop and isn’t really any more consistent in practice than Hokusai is.

That said, if you run Castoria/Castoria/Waver (or Reines) Hajime’s refund is good enough to plug in the third support to cover for a turn without any genning cards, which is an advantage most ST Arts Servants don’t have. Similarly, in Chen Gong setups you can use Waver and Reines together (in a team of Castoria/Hajime/Chen Gong/Waver/Reines/Castoria) to guarantee Hajime three NPs without him needing any cards at all. This is the other advantage to Hajime’s attack buff being hit-based rather than one-turn: if Hajime doesn’t use any cards on turns 1 and 2, he gets his full burst steroids all three turns, and his Arts resist debuff snowballs all the while. This is an expensive, min-maxed setup. It’s probably overkill for basically anything you’d want Hajime for, and it necessarily means you’re not really leveraging Hajime’s crit potential, but it’s something fairly unique to the structure of Hajime’s kit, and if you’re looking for reasons to bring Hajime over Hokusai and you have the pieces, it’s worth trying.

Usage Tips

Grail Potential

Conclusion

Hajime is really really good. His kit works together nicely and he’s a powerful point Servant in both high-end and low-to-mid-range Arts teams (for different reasons). He has relatively easy NP recursion, and he can crit hard in a pinch. That said, if you have Saber Hokusai, there’s basically no reason to pull for him. If you have him, like him, and want to use him, he’ll do great work for you, but if you don’t have any particular investment in the character and you already have Hokusai this one’s an easy skip.

Rabbit's Arbitrary Ratings

Overall: 9/10
Single-Target DPS: 9/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: 3/10
Defensive Utility: 3/10
Farming Usefulness: 2/10
Aku Soku Zan: 10/10