MMM - Angry Avengers Attend Adachi Academy, Avoiding the Allure of Adversity, I Aspire? (Ordeal Call 2 Gacha 1)

Eh, I’ll take it.

On reflection it’s funny how with them parodying the original Marie’s voice lines, we find out how sparse the writing was for some release Servants compared to now. It feels like some Servants whip out their thesis when doing the summoning line, while even Marie Alter is just like “Hah, I hate everyone” and she’s done.

With that said, she is officially my Big Tiddy Goth GF and nobody else’s. I lay claim to her, okay? That’s how this works.

As always, the Avenger class is like a shot of pure heroin in good-stats form straight into my veins. With the class’s superb attack stat and high attack modifier, it’s basically impossible to mess up their base statline, and Marie Alter is no different. Packing the 3rd highest Attack stat of any Avenger tied with Taira-no-Kagekiyo, and a dead middle-of-the-road HP stat that ties with Taira and Dantes both, Marie has a strong offensive profile for an Avenger paired with not-the-worst HP imaginable. She’s still frail relative to everything that isn’t a Berserker, but that’s just the Avenger life, baby.

So far as passives go Marie is very typical for an Avenger. She gets the bonus defensive NP gain from Avenger, the extra crit damage from Oblivion Correction, and the free NP gauge each turn from Self-Restoration, with very average ranks in all of them. These alone are incredibly good passives, but I would always like to see one little unique passive snuck in to make things interesting, but that’s my writer's brain complaining.

With Dantes setting the standard for Avengers having very mid NP generation, Marie Alter naturally walks in and…sort of follows the trend? Her base NP gain of 0.4% looks awful on first glance, but paired with her 4-hit Arts cards it at least results in a very average 1.6 Base Arts gain.
Certainly, that’s not a good NP gain to work with, but it’s not insultingly bad, either. The only issue is all her other cards suck because of her low base NP gain. Her Quicks are pretty poor, and her Extra is fundamentally kind of a joke, in spite of all of them having relatively high hitcounts. But the Arts cards are by far the most important, and she at least doesn’t drop the ball there, given her BAAQQ card set and Arts-focused kit.

On the stargen side of things Marie paints a far better picture. Her high hitcounts across the board means she drops a good amount of stars with any chain combination, though she’s not exactly in a prime position to capitalise with the Avenger class’s poor star weight. But hey, it’s something.

So how is Marie Alter overall? On the one hand, she’s born and moulded by Hot Topic, with the attitude to match:

But conversely, she can tend to lose her head if things get tough, and boy is that a chop off the ol’ block:

As I always like to say, it’s hard to mess up an Avenger in FGO. The way the class skills and offensive stats pan out, so long as an Avenger aims to deal damage and isn’t intentionally handicapped in their kit, they’ll probably be superb.

Marie is no different here. While her skills don’t possess any game-warping good effects, the general offensive potency of her class in combination with her NP refund capability and well-rounded skill pool mean she’s a very good AOE Servant overall. Her farming capability is about as you would want from an Arts Avenger, capable of low-effort farming where damage output isn’t a high benchmark, as well as universal farming with the assistance of Black Grail, while still not being very demanding for the setup.

Where Marie’s kit really begins to shine is difficult content, however. Her high NP spam capabilities that only grow stronger when she’s taking hits enables her to continually spam NP gauge drain and stack up Curse damage, which will contribute significantly to her damage output in drawn out fights - a typical 3 turn cycle for Marie will do roughly 75k damage in Curse DoT’s so long as none of her debuffs are resisted, and that will certainly contribute to quicker kills. Throw in her powerful defensive skill on top of all that and she has the freedom to run more aggressive supports, with the team’s defensive emergency button already accounted for.

While Marie Alter was a hail mary surprise addition, it’s no surprise to me that she’s a superb Avenger in both farming content and anything else the game may throw at you, and should be on your radar if you have any need for a powerful Arts Avenger. Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation.

With a new Hassan name to the roster, the one thing on my mind is this…does the Great Founder stop them from going out for assassinations in their ugly-ass coat and modern streetwear fit and instead tell them to (literally) slay while dressed like a Prince of Persia-themed stripper?

Just asking.

With the size of the SR Assassin pool, Hassan of the Shining Star unsurprisingly has a lot of competition to stack up against. With the 8th best Attack stat of his class and rarity paired with the 9th best HP stat, this Hassan is very average on both ends, but from the fact I’ve said “best” rather than “worst”, you can infer that more Assassins are worse off than him than better. Regardless he’s saddled with reasonable offence while not losing out too much on bulk, but the Assassin class as a whole does put a damper on his offensive capabilities with its 0.9x attack modifier regardless.

On the passive side of things, he naturally has Presence Concealment, providing a boost to his already-high base stargern as an Assassin, as well as…Oblivion Correction? I’m not gonna question why an Assassin has an Avenger class skill, but it certainly is appropriate for the Avenger Ordeal Call chapter. The critical damage boost provided by that passive is also very nice, as almost all Assassins come with a shower of critical stars in their wake, which this Hassan can take advantage of easily.

Sorry Kiritsugu, this Chaldea’s only big enough for one SR Assassin with dogshit base NP gain, and you’ve come up short. With a base NP gain sitting at an abysmal 0.27%, the 4-hit Arts card in his BAQQQ card deck comes out to a base Arts gain of 1.08. That’s already literally half of what you would normally expect from a Servant with one Arts card at their disposal, but the hits don’t stop coming - even with six hit Quick cards, Hassan of the Shining Star’s NP gain with them remains awful, being comparable to the good old original Artoria’s Quick card in NP gain.

This is the kind of thing I mean when I say getting saddled with a low base NP gain is abysmal. If you manage to arrange his cards into the best possible chain for a BQA Mighty Brave chain, the NP gauge he gets barely hits 15%. By comparison, King Hassan gets roughly that much from one use of his Arts card. No wonder he’s the great founder.

The point being, he’s really going to struggle to produce NP gauge with his regular cards. Even crits would bring his NP gain to normal instead of anything spectacular, since he’s essentially operating at half the NP gain of a normal Servant.

On the bright side, though, his Stargen is bar none the best in the game. Without any kind of support, from his own kit or otherwise, his 6-hit Quicks provide an automatic 50 stars in a Quick Brave chain if you form one, and just dishing one of those cards out will drop a significant sum of stars to supplement the next turn. While that is nice to have, it’s almost overkill considering other Servants with 5-hit Quicks can manage about the same thing.

So how is Hassan of the Shining Star overall? Well on the one hand he’s down with the kids, hip and involved with the latest street fashion, with a sparking demeanour to match:

But he’s also committed the most Haram of sins, in the midst of Ramadan of all times, bringing great shame upon the honoured founder:

With everything taken into account, the strange thing I’m forced to say about Hassan of the Shining Star is…you should probably treat him as a NP spam Arts Servant and just ignore the heavy Quick focus in other parts of his kit.

The greatest strength he has is undoubtedly his high NP damage potential with its ramping offensive buffs, and solid effective damage boosts at its disposal. Add in the fact that with his +100% Star Generation buff, even his Arts NP will spew out stars like no other, and he can sustain an offensive presence even if he doesn’t touch a Quick card (though he probably will). This is further exemplified by his solid performance as a farmer, tackling Assassin class advantage with ease and even being able to hit some impressive damage numbers if you invest into a Black Grail setup with him.
I just think he’ll be kind of too awkward to use to his full potential in difficult content, especially when Servants with AOE NP’s but critical damage focus can feel a little spread thin when tackling singular bosses already. If you can treat a hard fight like a farming node and just press the flashy blue button as often as possible he’ll probably do great, but even then he’s on something of a timer, with the 1k self-damage from his NP not being easily ignored in drawn-out fights, and a 2-hit Evasion buff hardly helping sustain himself past that.

Make no mistake, he’s well worth the drawbacks for that AOE NP spam alone, it’s just a shame he’s saddled with flaws that end up reducing him to that alone, instead of being a more diverse performer that can fulfil multiple roles while not sacrificing anything. Being torn so painfully between two card types will do that to you, I guess. Regardless, he’s a good Arts farmer Assassin with room for some potent performances in the game’s tougher content, should you be willing to tackle his drawbacks. Rath™ Seal of Approval.