Rabbit’s Reviews #387: Hassan of the Shining Star (4* Assassin)

Rabbit's Reviews Hassan of the Shining Star

Introduction

Hassan is a straightforward Servant: he’s a conventional Arts looper with a common class-advantage context and a broad niche. Against Man-attribute Riders, Hassan can reach 90++ damage thresholds with relatively reasonable levels of investment: NP2 and level 100, or NP3 and level 80, assuming a maxed-out Black Grail. This is really unusual for an SR Servant—especially a spookable one—and while there are better Servants at the SSR level, it’s hard to complain about this kind of value.

Servant Data

Assassin

QQQAB (Assassin)

Quick Card

Arts Card

Buster Card

6

4

2

5

6

Attribute	Human
Alignment	Lawful Evil

Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4

Max HP 11,055

HP Rank

Max ATK 9,049

ATK Rank

Base Atk	1,508	Base HP	1,768
Max Atk	9,049	Max HP	11,055
Grail Atk		Grail HP

Traits

Card Hits	6	4	2	5	6
Per Hit	0.27%	0.27%	0.27%	0.27%	0.27%

	NP per Hit (%)	0.27%
NP when Attacked (%)	4%

	Star Absorption	102
Star Generation per Hit	25.6%

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x4 Assassin Piece
3	150,000	x10 Assassin Piece x12 Void's Dust
4	500,000	x4 Assassin Monument x24 Evil Bone x10 Deadly Poisonous Needle
Max	1,500,000	x10 Assassin Monument x20 Deadly Poisonous Needle x4 Fragment of a Twinkling Star

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x4 Gem of Assassin
2 → 3	200,000	x10 Gem of Assassin
3 → 4	600,000	x4 Magic Gem of Assassin
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Magic Gem of Assassin x12 Evil Bone
5 → 6	2,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Assassin x24 Evil Bone
6 → 7	2,500,000	x10 Secret Gem of Assassin x8 Void's Dust
7 → 8	5,000,000	x16 Void's Dust x5 Ghost Lantern
8 → 9	6,000,000	x15 Ghost Lantern x20 Flower of the End
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x4 Gem of Assassin
2 → 3	200000	x10 Gem of Assassin
3 → 4	600000	x4 Magic Gem of Assassin
4 → 5	800000	x10 Magic Gem of Assassin x10 Deadly Poisonous Needle
5 → 6	2000000	x4 Secret Gem of Assassin x20 Deadly Poisonous Needle
6 → 7	2500000	x10 Secret Gem of Assassin x2 Fragment of a Twinkling Star
7 → 8	5000000	x4 Fragment of a Twinkling Star x14 Obsidian Knife
8 → 9	6000000	x45 Obsidian Knife x20 Ether Light Collector
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Quick/Arts Up

Martial Arts of the Dark Night A

Increase own Quick Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (3 turns).
Increase own ATK by 20% if on a [Darkness] battlefield (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Quick +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
Arts +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Martial Arts is mostly a typical card-type buff, boosting Hassan’s Quick and Arts cards by 30% for 3 turns. Normally, dual-type buffs are kind of irrelevant, since all we really care about is boosting the NP type. Hassan, though, has three Quick cards, so getting a bit of a boost to them as well is nice, especially for CQs. The skill also gives a 20% attack buff while on Darkness fields. I’m not sure as-yet how broadly this applies, but it’s not a huge deal either way—this little bit of niche damage doesn’t meaningfully impact whether Hassan can hit damage thresholds, although it does mean he potentially hits all three buff brackets within his own kit. In exchange for being a dual-type buff with a small niche attacked, this skill has a 6-turn cooldown, instead of the 5-turn cooldown skills of this type sometimes get. Personally, I don’t think it really earns the slightly longer cooldown, but that’s nit-picking.

Evade

Combat Acceleration (Shadow) A+

Apply Evade to self (2 times, 3 turns).
Apply buff to self (3 turns): Increase own Critical Strength by 10% (3 turns) when attacking with Quick Cards.
Increase own Critical Star Drop Rate (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Star Rate +	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%	90%	100%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Combat Acceleration is a pretty cool skill. It’s a two-hit dodge, which is always nice for survivability. It also gives a 100% star gen buff, meaning every time Hassan hits, he’ll generate at least one star. Arts Servants tend to have a lot of trouble getting access to crits, and thanks to this skill, Hassan should be able to crit fairly reliably. In fact, since he doesn’t have any in-kit star weight buffs, he can help his supports crit as well. Crit access can be nice for fast clears, as it gives a bit of extra damage stretch, as well as for stall setups, as it increases effective NP gain. This isn’t hugely impactful, but crit access is always a good thing. Finally, the skill gives a small (10%) crit buff any time Hassan uses a Quick card. 10% is not a lot, but Arts teams don’t have a lot of crit buffs at base, so it’s a little more impactful proportionally than it would be on a Quick or Buster Servant. That said, Hassan has an Arts NP and a triple-Quick deck. Quick cards don’t deal much damage unless they’re benefitting from huge buff values, and even if Hassan gets to stack this skill’s crit buff a bunch, most of his cards are still going to be pretty weak. His skillset implies that Hassan wants to be a crit-centric Servant, but in almost all cases, most of his damage is going to come from his NP, making his crit tools somewhat questionable.

Crit Dmg

Black Blade C+

Increase own Critical Strength (3 turns).
Apply buff to self (3 turns): Increase own NP Gauge by 10% when attacking with Quick Cards.
Increase own NP Gain (3 turns).

Show Info

Lvl	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Crit Damage +	30%	32%	34%	36%	38%	40%	42%	44%	46%	50%
NP Gain +	20%	21%	22%	23%	24%	25%	26%	27%	28%	30%
CD	8	8	8	8	8	7	7	7	7	6

Black Blade offers a 50% crit damage buff for 3 turns. This is a little more useful than the 10%-per-Quick buff on the prior skill, but it’s still not enough to make Hassan’s cards a useful damage source. The skill also provides an extra 10% NP charge each time Hassan uses a Quick card. This partially offsets Hassan’s weak card-based NP gain, and there’s a pretty clear gameplay intent here: Hassan is an Arts Servant, but he relies on his Quicks instead of his Arts cards, and his skillset props those up to make up for the lack of buffs from supports. It’s not a terrible proposition, but the values on these skills would need to be higher for it to work well. Fortunately, this skill also provides a 30% NP gain buff, which is generically useful even if the other tools aren’t, so it’s not a total loss.

Noble Phantasm

Zabaniya (Shining Star) C+

Increase own NP Strength by 20% (3 turns) [Activates first].
Deal damage to all enemies.
Deal 150% supereffective damage to [Human Attribute] enemies.
Deal 1,000 damage to self [Demerit].

<Overcharge>

Increase own Quick Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first].
Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first].

Show Info/Video

Zabaniya (Shining Star)

Mind Blank Skeleton

	Rank	Classification	Hit-Count
	C+	Anti-Personnel/Anti-Army	6

Effect	Increase own NP Strength by 20% (3 turns) [Activates first]. Deal damage to all enemies. Deal 150% supereffective damage to [Human Attribute] enemies. Deal 1,000 damage to self [Demerit].

Level	1	2	3	4	5
NP Damage +	20%	20%	20%	20%	20%
Damage +	450%	600%	675%	712.5%	750%
Supereffective ATK +	150%	150%	150%	150%	150%
HP -	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000

Overcharge Effect	Increase own Quick Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first]. Increase own Arts Card effectiveness (1 turn) [Activates first].

Charge	100%	200%	300%	400%	500%
Quick +	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%
Arts +	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%

Zabaniya is a truly excellent NP. It’s an AoE Arts NP with several bonus effects that boost damage. It even gets ramp! AoE SSR Servants don’t always get to ramp—just look at Avenger Marie—and SRs almost never do. NP damage is just about the best form of ramp, too, as Oberon doubles it on turn 3 when farming. This is a large part of why Hassan can reach 90++ levels of damage in some situations.

The other element of this NP that contributes to reaching 90++ damage thresholds is its supereffective niche against Man enemies. Man is a broad niche, and there are plenty of Man-attribute Riders for Hassan to whack. The only drawback here is that all Buster units effectively have anti-Man niche damage, thanks to Koyanskaya, which makes targeting Man a relatively less valuable niche.

The NP also gives a one-turn Arts and Quick buff. The Arts buff leaves Hassan with quite high NP steroids even before ramp, and it also helps with Hassan’s NP refund. The Quick buff is less impactful, but given Hassan’s apparent focus on using Quick cards, it can occasionally be helpful for card stretch.

This NP does have a small demerit—it deals damage to Hassan each time he uses it—but it’s more than powerful enough to justify that.

Usage Tips

In a double Castoria setup, Hassan refunds 20-25% per enemy depending on overkill and the like. With Mana Loading and Oberon, and against a neutral NP gain class (like Sabers), Hassan can farm 3/2/x nodes. He refunds a bit over 20% per enemy on the first turn, saving one of the Castorias’ 20% charges for the next turn. Hassan then refunds 60%, meaning you can use the remaining Castoria charge, and then you can plug a Castoria out for Oberon to use his 20% charge to bring Hassan to 100% gauge. With the extra NP gain buff from Castoria, Hassan refunds 25% per enemy, meaning he refunds 50% against two enemies, which is enough for Oberon’s 50% battery to secure the loop.

Usually, though, if Hassan is farming, he’ll be farming Riders, which give an extra 1.1x modifier to NP gain. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough to let Hassan loop any additional enemy formations, so it doesn’t make much of a difference in practice.

In CQ contexts, Hassan operates in much the same way as when farming. The self-damage demerit on his NP means he’s not really optimized for stall—Hassan needs to kill quickly, or his teams are likely to fall apart (unless you have someone like Lady Avalon who can comfortably outheal the demerit). Castoria setups are your best bet for this, as always, with Oberon (for charge) or Tamamo or Lady Avalon (for damage) as a plug support. Yui Shousetsu is also a decent third pick, as Hassan’s Quick buff means he benefits from the attack buff on her NP.

On the flip-side, Hassan’s weak internals and dependence on supports mean he’s not a great pick for players with less-developed boxes. He can barely manage CE-less looping with optimal supports, so in weaker teams, he struggles to shine. If you’re determined to use him without his ideal supports, the usual budget options are your best bet: in particular, Xu Fu, Paracelsus, Mozart, and Mash.

Assuming you can loop consistently, the Black Grail is Hassan’s best option for damage output. Otherwise, starting charge CEs can be useful—something like Painting Summer should be sufficient for Hassan to loop in basically all cases, assuming he’s properly supported.

Given how much Hassan seems to want to lean on his Quick cards for damage, CCs that increase crit damage can be a good choice for those cards—or for his Arts and Buster, in fact, which will hit substantially harder than his Quicks, in exchange for not triggering Hassan’s on-attack buffs.

Grail Potential

Conclusion

Hassan has really good damage for an AoE SR. In exchange, he has an awkward deck, weak internals, inflexible loop specs, and essentially no utility. Being specialized for one thing means Hassan is useful in some cases, where a generalist SR will pretty much never be worth using over an SSR, so this is a good thing on the whole. At the end of the day, though, he’s still a 4* unit—he’s great if you lack specific answers to Man Riders, but if you have a higher-rarity alternative (especially Tez), Hassan won’t do much for you.

Rabbit's Arbitrary Ratings

Overall: 8/10
Single-Target DPS: 3/10
AoE DPS: 9/10
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: 2/10
Defensive Utility: N/A
Farming Usefulness: 10/10
Style: 10/10