Rabbit's Reviews #329: Zhang Jiao (3* Caster)

Now this is a nice one. Zhang Jiao is our first non-limited silver in nearly three years, but fortunately he brings plenty of good stuff. At his core, Zhang Jiao is a budget support. We have a fair number of these already, and Zhang Jiao doesn’t exactly have a higher overall power budget than the others do, but the combination of things he brings is pretty unique, and that uniqueness goes beyond the obvious gimmicks. Zhang Jiao is an AoE Quick Caster—something that didn’t exist this year—and he’s our first support with the ability to set field types. Even setting aside those shiny bits, though, he also brings debuff removal in conjunction with actual damage buffs, which is neat considering the closest non-welfare FP-pool Servant to that until now was Jason, who’s capped at 20% attack up for non-Argonauts and who only removes a single debuff. Zhang Jiao, by contrast, gets card-type buffs, a nifty crit tool, and easy access to his own NP. He’s not a gold-tier support, sure, but as a free Servant he brings a ton of really nice things.

He also helps Nemo a ton, which makes me personally happy. So there’s that.

Zhang Jiao has pretty average stats for a 3* Caster… which is to say, his attack is very low. Assuming you’re using him as a support, this isn’t a bad thing, really, since you don’t care about his damage, but if you want to try to use him as a Quick DPS, his stats—or really, his class—hold him back. His internals are okay—his Arts cards are a bit above average for his deck, and his Quicks are decent, though his NP refund is pretty low. Zhang Jiao is also an AoE Quick Servant with decent hit-counts, so he’s solid at active star gen. For passives, he has Territory Creation for slightly better Arts cards (and, by extension, effective NP gain) and Item Construction to make his NP debuffs more likely to land. Mana Loading is the best append, as always—Zhang Jiao really wants easy NP access, whether he’s supporting or looping, and Mana Loading plus Zhang Jiao’s third skill gets him most of the way to a free NP—but the other two appends are mostly pointless. Zhang Jiao’s Extra will do trivial damage even with buffs, and he won’t ever do decent damage in general unless he’s hitting with class advantage, so anti-Caster attack up is not helpful. That said, Zhang Jiao is a free Servant, so odds are you’ll end up with enough coins for all three appends eventually if you care to level them.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	30,000	x4 Caster Piece
3	100,000	x8 Caster Piece x5 Forbidden Page
4	300,000	x4 Caster Monument x20 Fool's Chain x2 Lamp of Evil-Sealing
Max	900,000	x8 Caster Monument x4 Lamp of Evil-Sealing x4 Heart of the Foreign God

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	50,000	x4 Gem of Caster
2 → 3	100,000	x8 Gem of Caster
3 → 4	300,000	x4 Magic Gem of Caster
4 → 5	400,000	x8 Magic Gem of Caster x10 Fool's Chain
5 → 6	1,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Caster x20 Fool's Chain
6 → 7	1,250,000	x8 Secret Gem of Caster x4 Forbidden Page
7 → 8	2,500,000	x7 Forbidden Page x4 Soundless Bell
8 → 9	3,000,000	x12 Soundless Bell x48 Ashes of Forgetfulness
9 → 10	5,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	50000	x4 Gem of Caster
2 → 3	100000	x8 Gem of Caster
3 → 4	300000	x4 Magic Gem of Caster
4 → 5	400000	x8 Magic Gem of Caster x10 Evil Bone
5 → 6	1000000	x4 Secret Gem of Caster x20 Evil Bone
6 → 7	1250000	x8 Secret Gem of Caster x2 Scarab of Wisdom
7 → 8	2500000	x3 Scarab of Wisdom x12 Mystic Spinal Fluid
8 → 9	3000000	x36 Mystic Spinal Fluid x7 Flaming Oni Lantern Plant
9 → 10	5000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Zhang Jiao’s mats are impressively bad for a 3*. He needs 48 of one of the new Traum mats per skill, which is bad enough, but he also needs a fair number of bells (often in short-supply in my experience) and enough chains to be annoying. He’s worth it, though, if only to have him handy for when you need him.

Zhang Jiao’s skillset may not be the strongest in an objective sense, but it’s very cohesive and very nice for a low-rarity unit. No complaints. Recommended skill order is 3>1>2.

Zhang Jiao is most in his element as a support. You run him alongside a unit of your choice, throw an extra 30% charge his way (hi Castoria), have him use his skills, and let him NP. He can die at that point, if you’re not running someone who needs field buffs. If you are, though, he may need to stick around a while. Adapt the strategy as necessary for the team.

Generally speaking, even for Servants with field buffs, Zhang Jiao is relegated fully to budget support territory. It takes a lot of specific synergy for Zhang Jiao to be better than a proper meta support. The only Servant who really fully leverages all of this is Nemo, who has massive buffs tied to Waterside field, on top of being an Arts Rider for maximum synergy. Even without an NP and a proper CE, Zhang Jiao brings slightly more buff value than Tamamo when you factor in Nemo’s Waterside buffs, and with his bond CE and his NP Zhang Jiao outdoes her by a fair margin. This doesn’t really make Nemo good, but it does bring him up to more standard Arts DPS performance. I’ll take it.

While Zhang Jiao is mostly a support, he is still an AoE Quick unit with solid, ramping steroids and a 50% battery. DPS Zhang Jiao is fighting against his stats, his class, and his NP typing, but he honestly doesn’t have a bad chassis, and a new Quick support and/or an NP interlude could make him pretty solid. For now, though, a DPS Zhang Jiao needs all the damage he can get, so give him a pair of Skadis, the best damage CE you have, and a good third support like Reines or Oberon, and let him whack some Assassins.

Assuming you’re running Zhang Jiao as a support, you have a few CE options. If you have a Castoria anywhere in your team and Mana Loading maxed, Zhang Jiao’s bond CE is actually going to be his best CE pick in many cases, especially if you’re bringing him for his field buffs. The bond CE guarantees his field buffs land, getting access to all of his NP debuffs (in addition to whichever field buffs your DPS of choice needs), and it also increases the party’s NP damage, bringing him up to a very respectable 50% in total partywide NP-applicable damage buffs. If you don’t have the batteries available or you don’t have his bond CE yet, you can run a 50% charge CE (His Rightful Place would be my pick, for the extra stars, though something like Traces of Christmas would also be fine) for easy NP access, or you can run 2030 for easier crits with Zhang Jiao’s second skill. DPS Zhang Jiao, meanwhile, wants the Black Grail. Yes, there are other decent CEs, but as a 3* Caster Zhang Jiao really needs as much damage as he can possible get, and you can’t do better for damage than the Black Grail.

Zhang Jiao benefits most from CCs that enhance his support abilities. CCs that remove specific buff types are generally nice and supplement his innate debuff removal utility. CCs that provide party NP damage buffs are also solid, increasing his already-good party steroids.

Casters don’t benefit much from grails, and neither do supports. There is a small case to be made for grails for Zhang Jiao specifically—you need him to stick around for his field buffs to last, so the extra health is arguably a positive, and more attack slightly offsets his low base damage if you want to DPS with him for some reason—but generally speaking if you’re grailing him it’s for the novelty.

I don’t know that I’d bring Zhang Jiao for normal use cases. Even if I wanted a budget support, I’d probably bring someone like Hans or Barti for their lower cost and slightly more generic usefulness. On the other end of the spectrum, Zhang Jiao doesn’t outdo meta supports unless… well, unless your DPS’s name is Nemo. That said, 40-50% steroids (depending on whether you have the bond CE) is pretty solid for a budget support, and you get some utility and a burst of crit damage on top of that. Could be worse.

Zhang Jiao is also an AoE Quick Caster, which is extremely rare. The likelihood that you need an AoE Assassin killer who is specifically Quick is nearly zero, but Zhang Jiao is free and actually outdoes Daikokuten’s damage under certain circumstances, so that’s enough to make him my recommendation if you really want this particular NP type. No reason to invest in Daikokuten when Zhang Jiao is right there. …Not that there was much reason anyway, but still, Zhang Jiao does most of the same things while also being free and a support.

All-in all, though, it’s been way too long since we’ve had a non-limited silver, and Zhang Jiao doesn’t disappoint. Solid addition.

Overall: 8/10
Single-Target DPS: 4/10
AoE DPS: 6/10
Survivability: 2/10
Offensive Utility: 8/10
Defensive Utility: 3/10
Farming Usefulness: 5/10
Trusting No One, Not Even Himself: 10/10