Fate/Grand Order: Assassin Tier List

Players often wonder which characters are stronger in gacha games. Particularly when it comes to high rarity rolls that can be extremely hard to chase. Grand Order has a bit of an interesting relationship with this as we don’t have nearly the power creep problem other games tend to have. It does exist. It’s just not in the same magnitude. So where other games make tier listing a necessity so you don’t invest in a character that just can’t do content, here it helps you understand who’s weaker, though most characters are still viable. It’s a question of how hard you want to work or how efficient you want your clears to be, not whether you can at all.

The best Assassins in Fate/Grand Order are Jack the Ripper, Semiramis, Cleopatra, and First Hassan (King Hassan).

Let’s face the elephant in the room; Assassin is a largely uninspiring class with a few standouts. Many of its characters have real trouble keeping up in any sort of damage race as Assassin’s class abilities and base stats were clearly meant to be the designated star producer. This role ended up being largely obsoleted by skills, Noble Phantasms, and Craft Essences on other characters, leaving Assassins handicapped for no real benefit unless they were good anyway and the star production was merely a secondary benefit. This wasn’t frequently the case for a long portion of the game’s lifetime.

Assassin Tier List Methodology

A lot of tier lists cause arguments because their authors don’t make clear what does and doesn’t influence a placement decision. Here, we’ll cover the broad decision making principles for the list. This helps you to understand what was and wasn’t under consideration when placing characters and avoids troubled understanding when different people want lists that focus on power in a vacuum, others consider teams and whether there is a use for the character, etc.

It’s not really feasible to make a list that ranks the way everyone would like, and many lists try to strike a balance between multiple concerns without explaining which things they weighted more heavily. Here is a list of key points for this list:

Assumption of Good Play: Many lists dock characters points for being harder to use. Here, we’re going to assume you know what you’re doing when using a character. A player can learn to count cards or align/desynch their skills effectively, a character’s placement should be based on their usefulness not how well they do when used suboptimally.
No Points for Splashability: It’s a common question whether a character should be considered better because they fit into a greater number of teams. This doesn’t really help understand a character’s quality on its own, and while self-sufficiency is valuable, the ability to fit into numerous mediocre teams isn’t really all that relevant. Characters will still be ranked accordingly if they virtually require a particular expensive setup but as almost every character in the game can be used in a viable composition with a bronze character and a friend support selection, this usually isn’t the case.
Usefulness over Raw Strength: Some characters are very good at things you just won’t really ever need. Tanks are a good example in GO. Several characters try, and theoretically succeed, at being strong tanks but the game doesn’t really support tanking as an archetype because most threatening encounters feature AoE damage. Because of this, it makes more sense to grade characters on how useful they are rather than how strong they are in a vacuum.
Niche Evaluation: Some tier lists like to severely over or under evaluate niche characters by either only considering them with the niche on with the assumption you’ll never use them otherwise or merely evaluating the niche ability as if it were not on a niche, and then deducting a bit to make up for it. Here, we’ll spend time evaluating how useful a niche is rather than applying a blanket solution. Not every specialist is created equal.
Farming vs. Challenge Quests: It’s impossible to avoid that far more time is spent farming in GO, but CQs are still important. Generally, most CQs favor Crit/Single-target characters, while farming is an NP game, but the opposite has been true in the past. Many tier lists cap characters at a certain tier if they cannot do both effectively and this inflates the position of mediocre characters who do two things okay over those who do one thing well. A character will only receive better placement here if they’re exceptional in both categories.
Granularity: GO just isn’t the sort of game where large portions of the characters are unusable. Many GO tier lists try to tier like other games creating gridlock at the top because by the standards of other games where any character who can participate in hard content is a high B or low A, almost every character in GO qualifies. Here, a C is still a viable character, just one who doesn’t bring much to the table you can’t get better elsewhere.
NP5 for Welfares and Friend Point Characters: While it’s sensible to rate gacha characters as if their NP level is low, free characters are rapidly going to stack up for consistent players and most will have access to them at NP5. Three-star characters who are not part of the friend point gacha will be considered without NP5 like any other gacha character.

Assassin S-Tier

No Assassins manage to make it to this level, which can best be defined as ‘so good they can heavily change the viability of several other characters.’

Assassin A-Tier

Jack the Ripper – A+

If there was an argument for any Assassin being an S, it’s easily Jack, but I don’t quite think she reaches those heights. To start, her damage is very consistent and higher than it might seem with her lack of any long-term buffing in her kit. She sports high NP and star generation and this makes it pretty uncommon that Jack isn’t either critting or using her NP. That’s a significant boon to damage that can’t really be put aside. She does almost everything, except she very infrequently farms (Dragons are a fairly common second wave miniboss, though, and she shreds those). Jack is excellent and was for a very long time considered the only particularly good assassin.

Semiramis – A

This feels a bit wrong, but Semiramis is certainly a strong option. It’s more that she’s hardly an assassin. She’s abysmal at producing stars thanks to her arts-focused deck, she features the Caster class passives more prominently than the Assassin ones, and she’s a debuff themed support first and foremost. Semiramis is basically a Caster with a skull icon pasted on, so if you’re looking for someone to do Assassin things like bash Riders, create crit stars, and pick out priority targets, she’s just not it.

Cleopatra – A

Cleopatra is often forgotten because of her lack of presence in story or events and her limited status alongside few headlining banner appearances. Which is a shame because she’s very good, and between her NP Regen skill and still respectable NP damage over multiple turns she’s the gold standard for AoE assassins. Her numbers aren’t astronomical by most class’s standards, but they’re quite capable for Assassin, and most characters with a strong capability to NP in quick succession have lower damage on each use to compensate. She’s even pretty reasonable in star production thanks to skills and high hit counts despite only having two quick cards.

“First Hassan” (King Hassan) – A-

King Hassan is an interesting character; he’s the very picture of average design for other classes. He’s cut from the basic, safe cloth that early servants are known for; Mana Burst, Attack Boost, Defensive, add utility to one skill. You can see this pattern on tons of early servants and for most of them, it makes them merely good.

Hassan is a little different because his class is by and large so low-powered that such bog-standard tools make him pretty impressive. He’s particularly suited to soloing like many guts characters thanks to the quirky way guts works when alone, though that’s not an efficient strategy so much as a way to show off, so he only received a bump for that because it makes him a good anchor. The Instant Death stuff is all mostly cute, though. Instant Death has infinitesimally low chances of success except for a handful of gimmick encounters.

Check out these other classes and their Tier List!

Assassin B-Tier

Ryougi Shiki – B+

Shiki is fairly simple, but she’s good within her bounds. You’re gonna need to provide for her critting for her damage to feel good on non-NP turns, though. She does among the upper end of NP damage for Assassins even before factoring her free NP5, which isn’t frequently true for welfares. There’s not a lot more to say than that, much of Shiki’s non-straightforward power is locked up in impressively low-value Instant Death. Shiki is another case study in what Assassins can be when they aren’t saddled with lackluster kits.

EMIYA (Assassin) – B

Essentially a slightly worse Shiki, almost skill for skill they do very similar things but EMIYA trades an NP battery for the admittedly somewhat unique Scapegoat skill. Chronos Rose has undeniably better secondary effects than Shiki’s NP, and Scapegoat is an interesting trick, but it’s not a good look to be comparable to a welfare who gets to be NP5 for free. Still, he crits a tiny bit harder and occasionally the utility on a few of his skills will make up for more frequent and better NPs out of Shiki

Shuten Douji – B

Shuten is a bit like Semiramis in that she’s not especially great at the things that Assassin’s base stats and class passives suggest they’re meant to do, but she is at least quite good at leveraging her class advantage, and she’s got crippling debuffs to point at enemies. Her NP hits decently hard, though she’s not as good at refiring it as you might expect from an ostensibly arts-focused character. This can make her a bit swingy as she notably lacks Arts Performance, so certain CEs can really put a spring in her step. She’s downright rude in long quests that suit her between all of her NP debuffs and a gender-free charm. Overall, though, pretty mediocre.

Mochizuki Chiyome – B-

Chiyome does pretty mediocre damage, but she can charge her NP decently well with her battery and solid stats, and that means she can lock out skills at crucial times. This makes her pretty valuable in challenge quests where that’s relevant, and strong utility with reasonable damage is a winning formula.

Assassin C-Tier

Carmilla – C

If you’ve ever wondered, ‘What would Jack the Ripper be like if she was worse in every way?’ The answer is Carmilla. She’s got an NP shifted to Buster, markedly worse star production, terrible hit counts, and a kit that just tries to make up for those flaws. She has a tiny bit of play in a chance to drain enemy NP, and overall ‘Poor man’s Jack’ is still pretty decent, but I wouldn’t aim for her.

Wu Zetian – C

Wu’s merely okay, though she has some decent support play. Torture technique is pretty lackluster, Imperial privilege is good, and Charisma of the Empress is very good. She can do pretty respectable damage when she procs everything on a given target, but afterwards she’s just meh. Only being good against a single target isn’t exactly where one wants to be, especially when she’s not even better against that one target than other Assassins are against multiple.

Mysterious Heroine X – C-

By base she’s probably among the worst characters in the game. Once you begin to pile on her hilarious numbers of strengthenings she starts to get a little more palatable. As it stands she at least NPs really hard and more so against Saberfaces. It’s uncommon to run into someone who is a rider and has the Saberface trait, but she can actually compete with a decent number of Archers against the handful of Saber Saberfaces.

All told there are 2 targets she’s amazing against, another 8 who she’s a so-so replacement for an on-advantage option against and otherwise, she’s okay, with poor face card damage holding her back compared to Shiki and EMIYA. Once she gets her remaining buffs (Yes, there are more) she cures her facecard problem to an extent and is actually fairly good for an assassin and doubles as a mediocre Archer who absolutely explodes Saberfaces but that’s quite a ways out, and still only takes her from ‘competitor for worst SSR in the game’ to ‘Good-not-great with a niche she’s amazing against’.

Yan Qing – C-

Yan Qing pretty much just makes stars and NPs somewhat often. He is very good at making stars and modifying where they go and pretty much nothing else. He avoids D merely because occasionally the cheaper answers to making stars are too squishy to bring places. He does have an upcoming buff that improves him.

Osakabehime – C-

Osakabehime is very, very marginal, but her NP is solid, so she evades being a D ever so slightly. She’s still among the worst SSRs in the game but if you can make her NP consistently she can stack up a pretty decent amount of Quick Performance for the party. Some people would call her literally the worst SSR, and I think it’s not a bad take as the situation that makes her decent isn’t exactly a regular occurrence.

Assassin D-Tier

Nitocris (Summer) – D+

Summer Nito only outpaces Katou for NP damage and it’s about all she does other than try to be a tank, and those aren’t particularly necessary nor is she all that high up the list of tanks. She’s trying to evoke her normal caster self’s style but that trick looks work much better when she can effortlessly NP multiple times, Summer Nito can’t.

Scathach (Summer) – D+

She was a free NP5, which narrowly lifts her out of the gloom of truly abysmal AoE Assassin damage. Other than that she just also does the tiny bit of tanking gimmick, though she’s slightly worse than Nitocris usually because her damage benefits are one-turn-only.

If you happen to have an MLB Kaleidoscope and a maxed Skadi she can loop very specific nodes if she can get enough overkill, if you also have Waver, she can loop more, but is heavily reliant on overkilling enough hits and still doesn’t work against Berserkers. That’s far too rich a situation to consider, but it’s worth mentioning, and would probably make her a C- with Skadi and an MLBScope and a normal C with all that and Waver.

Katou Danzou – D

Katou Danzou’s first skill is pretty reasonable and then it’s all downhill from there. Her NP is an anti-demonic niche AoE, except most demonic enemies aren’t riders, and worse yet? Even against Demonic Riders, an extremely narrow grouping she only hits slightly harder than upper end neutral damage. Other AoE assassins largely do similar damage or outpace her even when the enemies are demons; it’s not a good look. Otherwise, all she does is hand out some defensive skills. Hard pass.

Stheno – D

Stheno is nearly a carbon copy of a three-star except worse. She has some very slight game in gimmicky charmlock comps that can occasionally cheese certain bosses. Problem is, you can build those teams without Stheno, and mostly out of friend point characters at that. She’s probably the very worst SR in the game as virtually everything about her is replaceable by less-rare characters than herself, with 80+% of it covered by Euryale alone.