Fate/Grand Order Berserker 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 Berserkers in Fate/Grand Order are Cu Chulainn, Frankenstein, Minamoto no Raikou, and Hijikata Toshizou.

Berserker comes across largely average. Their top end is usually defined by characters with largely defensive kits that aim to avoid the glaring survivability weakness faced by Berserkers in their general usage. Perhaps surprisingly, another strong subset uses supporting abilities paired with their naturally non-conflicting base stats to be the very best off-supports available in the game. None of them quite reach Caster levels in that role, but overall the Berserker roster is comprised of a lot of good to great characters but very few that are exceptional.

Berserker 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.

Berserker S-Tier

No Berserkers 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.’

Berserker A-Tier

Cu Chulainn – A

Cu has fallen out of favor a bit, but he’s still frequently an extremely strong option for Challenge Quests. With solid skill timing and NP conservation he can be nearly unkillable between his evasion, guts, and piles of defense. He can get pretty hard punished by enemies with buff removal, though, and depending on your support options he may only do okay damage as he’s only got his NP buff as far as doing damage is concerned. It’s worth noting that despite topping the list here, he and the other Berserkers are a pretty low A in a general sense.

Frankenstein – A

Forget everything you’ve ever heard about Raikou’s farming quality. Here’s the long and short of it; neither she or Fran has an NP battery so both require Kaleidoscope to really shine and are probably only NPing once. Frankenstein does 1.5 as much damage as Raikou on neutral and manages a 10% lead even when Raikou hits one of her niches. Raikou can pull out on top when multiple members of a wave hit both of her niches, but that’s unlikely as at the time of this writing there are three targets in the entire game who check both boxes simultaneously in NA, and even in JP there are eight, five of whom only appear during events.

Fran also has the capability to use her NP multiple times, including the vaunted loop, with the correct supports. With absolutely optimal circumstances the perceived queen of Berserker farming (that is to say, several 50% targeted charges to brute force charge her the way you can anyone) can NP twice. With cheaper setups involving a welfare, Fran can do so three times for higher damage; she’s just a far better farmer.

Minamoto no Raikou – A

Now, she may not be the farming wunderkind that people seem to think she is, but Raikou is still great and among the best options in the class in a general sense. However, not because she farms well, in fact, Raikou’s at her best killing bosses. Her NP has seven hits and comes with a built-in 100% star generation buff, guaranteeing 21 stars minimum from it. This can be used to great effect during wave 2 to set up for crit spikes on wave 3.

When handling progression, this is an extremely common enemy composition, and it shows up sometimes when event farming too, though not nearly as often as boss plus two trash enemy final waves that are better suited to other farmers. Her crit weight and niche damage both last three turns and the two single sides of her niche are decently common even if there are extremely few targets who trigger both. Simply put, just being a Berserker who can crit is hugely powerful.

Hijikata Toshizou – A-

A lot of tier lists are very low on Hijikata because he’s fairly one-sided and has almost no farming game, and indeed, if you’re looking for someone to farm with, Hijikata won’t do that. What he will do, though, is deliver eye-watering damage, and do so consistently. Critting on a Berserker is not generally easy, so it falls for the most part to those who have some way to manipulate star weight like Hijikata and Raikou. The difference is that Hijikata’s crits are of a whole different magnitude if you lean into his unique mechanic.

For many players, that’s going to be a bit too much of an ask, and managing his health proves too difficult, which can make him perhaps the character who benefits the most from some assumptions used for this list. If one plays Hijikata badly, or with poor support, he’s terrible. Play him well and manage to lock in a low HP value and he blows away any competition in the damage race.

Mysterious Heroine X (Alter) – A-

A far cry from the abysmal performance of her original iteration, MHX Alter is actually extremely potent. She’s got an extremely solid NP on its own merits that beats Archer damage against Sabers, if only slightly and a strong, workable skill set besides. Her first skill is a bit weak, but the next two are great, including one of the best charisma skills in the game as it can either blank an ally’s star weight to make way for MHX, or pair MHX’s naturally low weight with the turn from invisible hand to basically give a third teammate every star they could want; with reasonable star production it does both.

All the damage benefits outside of the starweight manipulation are three-turn, too, which makes MHX resilient to break gauges. She can be the star of the show or a support, and you can decide this moment-to-moment in response to what’s going on in a fight. Not really worthwhile while farming, though.

Check out these other classes and their Tier List!

Berserker B-Tier

Heracles – B+

Herc is a starting player superstar, but he sort of inevitably hits the bench after a certain point. He’s just not quite as resilient as Cu Alter and they inhabit the same general space as survivable Berserkers. His primary use case is just using his bond CE to cheese certain bosses with stacks of guts. This works on a decent number of enemies because of the way solo guts works but it’s usually not necessary, so it’s a bit of a strange situation.

Ultimately, Herc’s still got good damage and can survive a decent amount of punishment, so he’s quite good, but falls short of the greats after the stage of the game where he can be used as a crutch.

Ibaraki Douji – B

Not much to say here, Ibaraki has a mix of good damage benefits with some defensives to keep her alive. She’s pretty stock standard, but standard isn’t bad so much as, well, standard. She can strip enemy buffs with her NP, but only after its hit, which isn’t the sequencing one would normally prefer.

Florence Nightingale – B

Nightingale is the start of the odd-on-the-surface Berserker Support archetype, and for a long time she was actually among the best options for supports in general. She was the original source of targeted 50% buster up, but was largely obsoleted by Merlin since he offers a wider variety of benefits where Nightingale is largely just healing and buster up. She can still be quite good, and even do a bit of damage in a pinch, just don’t expect a Merlin or Waver performance out of her.

Lancelot – B

In truth, Lancelot is both too low and too high here at B. He’s the single best example of a character that wildly changes in quality depending on the other characters you have available. If you have the Skadi looping setups for him he’s among the best options to pair with her (This requires a Skadi, Waver, and Kaleidoscope or certain MLB event CEs of your own) and a rock-solid A in general who can farm tons of content. If you don’t he’s the worst of the crit berserkers by a wide margin.

He’s placed here as a hedge between those positions because though we assume you’re building strong teams, Lancelot’s best non-loop teams are just not up to his competition, and the loop team is crazy expensive to the point of inaccessibility.

Vlad III – B

Vlad after his buffs is just the picture of great without being quite exceptional. Legend of Dracula helps him mitigate Berserker fragility and he NPs insanely frequently when properly supported thanks to the mammoth hitcount on Kazikli Bey and Bloodsucker’s battery. He also can crit decently often just thanks to high star production. Berserker star weight hardly matters if you just have 30-40+ stars.

Penthesilea – B-

Penny dishes out reasonable hurt, or insane levels if you happen to be a Greek Male, a fairly small niche. A lot of other Berserkers fall into two categories compared to her, though; one set just hits much harder with buffs of around her size or quite a bit larger, the other features similar damage output to her but has meaningful defensive buffs to make them less reliant on supports to stay alive. If you happen to have a Greek Male as a target she’s through the roof, and a 20% per turn NP charge isn’t too shabby either, so she’s still decidedly above average.

Oda Nobunaga (Summer) – B-

Well, it’s hard to argue with Garden of Avalon as a skill, but those cooldowns really sting, save for the final skill which is a nice low cooldown utility skill (Unless the battlefield happens to be on fire in which case it’s nuts). Nobu’s got a strong niche as an off-support character who helps feed another damage dealer while she crushes priority targets, and if you happen to hit a fire node or the enemy is divine, she goes way up.

Atalanta Alter – B-

Atalanta can have some real trouble trying to handle three gauge bosses, but she can pretty reasonably NP and brave or quick chain followed by a turn of crits to get two turns of decent damage. She’s a bit clunky to say the least, but if you can provide significant star production she can do solid damage on several turns running. She borders on slipping into the very high C’s because she’s pretty locked into a particular skill order to deliver the maximum hurt and the cards might not line up with that order.

I’m loath to call a character ‘RNG reliant’ when you can count cards, but many of the others who receive this complaint can flex around their skill usage a lot more easily.

Berserker C-Tier

Sakata Kintoki – C+

There was a time when Kintoki was considered perhaps the best damage dealer in the game, he was considered this because his burst was huge and worked on anyone, though. Now that break gauges haunt single-target characters he just doesn’t line up. Doing insane damage once just leaves you floundering on the follow-up gauges. Kintoki does at least have a chance to stun and can try to maneuver to NP multiple times in a row for okay damage when his buffs are down. Overall he was probably the biggest loser with the release of Break Gauges.

Beowulf – C+

Beowulf is a one-turn wonder, and those are generally not the greatest. As that character type goes, though, Beowulf is one of the better examples. If, for some reason, you’re in the market for a character who does crazy burst for one turn, you could do worse than Beowulf. Just don’t expect much out of him on following turns.

Tamamo Cat – C

Tamamo Cat is fairly survivable and features a reasonably powerful AoE Noble Phantasm, but she doesn’t do much that’s inspiring. Refiring her NP is pretty difficult, and she doesn’t significantly outpace cheaper options that can NP once, which makes things fairly awkward for her. Hardcore survivability isn’t great while farming, but her damage leaves a lot to be desired in challenge quests and she’s basically locked to her third skill or support benefits to actually use her NP in Challenges. She tries to do a little too much at once and ends up being pretty okay at all of it rather than good at anything.

Spartacus – C

Spartacus is one of the low-rarity characters who definitely bears mentioning. He’s not astounding, but if you’re in need of budget farming help, he does okay. He’s certainly no Arash, but you can make him work on a decent amount of nodes with extremely cheap requirements, and that can be just the trick if you’re lacking better options.

Chacha – C

Chacha is essentially a worse, Golden Spartacus. Can’t recommend her at all since the alternative is just as free as she is, but the difference is pretty small overall, so it probably comes down to which you like better as a character. Chacha also has less strengthenings you need to do so she’s a little less work, but that’s marginal.