[F/GO] Berserker-class Comparison: Heracles vs Sakata Kintoki

I’ve been looking through Kyte’s extracted game data over the last few days and doing some theorycrafting and one of the topics I’ve been playing around with is the question of “How does Heracles (4-star) compare to Sakata Kintoki (5-star) as Berserkers?” And so, here’s the comparative analysis:

**===Stats===**

lvl 80 Heracles ([Wikia](http://fategrandorder.wikia.com/wiki/Heracles) / [Profile](http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/6110-Fate-Grand-Order-Gameplay-Profiles/page3?p=2034253#post2034253)):

* Max atk: 10655 atk
* Max HP: 10327 HP
* Bravery A+: +10.5% -> +31% atk for 3 turns
* Mind’s Eye (False) B: Dodge status for 1 turn, +18% -> +36% crit dmg for 3 turns
* Battle Continuation A: Guts status for 5 turns, +1000 -> +2500 HP heal on revive
* Mad Enhancement B: +8% Buster
* Divinity A: +200 dmg
* Nine Lives NP: 600% -> 1000% damage, 10% -> 30% defence down

lvl 90 Sakata Kintoki ([Wikia](http://fategrandorder.wikia.com/wiki/Sakata_Kintoki) / [Profile](http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/6110-Fate-Grand-Order-Gameplay-Profiles/page3?p=2034270#post2034270)):

* Max atk: 12712 atk
* Max HP: 12150 HP
* Monstrous Strength C: +10% -> +30% atk for 1 turn
* Animal Dialog C: +20% -> +50% NP gauge
* Innate Fitness C: +50-> +100% debuff resist for 3 turns, +1000 -> +2500 HP heal for 3 turns
* Mad Enhancement E: +2% Buster
* Divinity D: +125 dmg
* Golden Spark NP: 700% -> 1100% damage, 50% -> 100% stun chance

Common bonuses:

* Atk up cards: +0 -> +990 atk
* HP up cards: +0 -> +990 HP
* Limited/Over Zero CE: +500 -> +2000 atk, +25% -> +30% Buster
* Master atk buff: +?% -> +?% for 1 turn

**===Buster power===**

Note: See [here](http://blogs.nrvnqsr.com/entry.php/3309-How-is-damage-calculated) for the damage formula.

Min Buster, i.e. lvl 1 CE, no status up, lvl 1 skill

* Heracles = (10655 + 500) * (100% + 10.5% + 8% + 25% – defMod) = 16007 pre-defence
* Kintoki = (12712 + 500) * (100% + 10% + 2% + 25% – defMod) = 18100 pre-defence
* Ignoring the flat damage increase from Divinity, this gives Kintoki roughly a 13% damage advantage over Heracles.

Max Buster, i.e. lvl 100 CE, full status up, lvl 10 skill

* Heracles = (10655 + 990 + 2000) * (100% + 31% + 8% + 30% – defMod) = 23060 pre-defence
* Kintoki = (12712 + 990 + 2000) * (100% + 30% + 2% + 30% – defMod)= 25437 pre-defence
* Ignoring the flat damage increase from Divinity, this gives Kintoki roughly a 10% damage advantage over Heracles.

So in terms of raw Buster power, Kintoki (obviously) wins with a ~10% damage advantage. Which mostly comes from his higher lvl 90 cap but is reduced slightly due to his lower rank Madness Enhancement. Heracle’s higher Divinity rank is nice, but the 200 vs 125 flat damage bonus is negligible at max level when you are hitting for 10,000+ dmg each Buster attack. That said, this is for a single Buster attack that does not crit. Kintoki’s Monstrous Strength C only buffs him for 1 turn, whereas Heracles’ Bravery A+ buffs him for 3 turns. Meaning that Kintoki 10% damage advantage is lost over multiple turns of Heracles’ +31%. In addition, if Heracles uses his Mind’s Eye self-buff, his crits over 3 turns will hit much harder, also putting his multi-turn damage output higher than Kintoki. That said both Heracles and Kintoki have a low crit weight of 9 and 10 respectively, so getting crits are highly unlikely.

Overall, both Berserkers will hit more or less equally hard. Kintoki has a slightly higher base damage advantage, but that is lost if fights last under 5 rounds due to Heracles’ Bravery A+ self-buff.

**===Noble Phantasm===**

Both Heracles and Kintoki have single-target Buster Noble Phantasms that start off at 600% and scale up to 1000%. Kintoki, however, can rank-up his NP (most likely due to an Interlude), which would raise his base up +100%. Combined with his slightly higher base atk value, this puts Kintoki clearly higher in terms of raw damage.

In terms of the secondary effect, the two NPs serve different purposes. Heracles’ NP reduces the enemy’s defence by 10% (or 20% if at the end of a 3-NP-chain) for 3 turns. This is pretty significant since against high-HP bosses, the next few rounds means increased overall party damage. Kintoki’s NP has a 50% chance (or 75% if at the end of a 3-NP-chain) of stunning the target. I’m not sure how stun chance works, but if its like death/debuff chances, it will likely miss against bosses. If it does hit though, you are comparing one turn of no damage to your units vs three turns of increased damage to the boss. Up to your party strategy I suppose, but I would prefer the increased damage.

One other thing worth pointing out is that Kintoki’s Animal Dialog C skill charges his NP%, with an initial 20% straight from the get-go. Meaning with a lvl 1 Kaleidoscope, Kintoki can immediately fire off his NP. With a lvl 100 Kaleidoscope and lvl 10 Animal Dialog, he’ll start the fight off 150% NP, making it relatively feasible to overcharge to 200%. Note that overcharging only increases the stun chance, not damage, so it’s not really worth the overcharge. Alternatively, that the NP charge would help build NP for a second NP attack, but that’s highly unlikely to happen given Kintoki’s a Berserker-class (aka won’t survive long battles) and he, like Heracles, has a QABBB pattern (so getting Arts cards are rare for him).

Personally, I feel both Noble Phantasms are more or less of equal footing, with only a potential slight difference depending on your battle strategy.

**===Survivability===**

Being a 5-star and having higher stat caps, Kintoki comes with 1823 more HP. Unfortunately, as a Berserker class that takes 2x damage from everything, that small amount is meaningless (at best, it may negate a single enemy attack). Kintoki’s Innate Fitness C self-heal is pretty nice, helping restore small amounts of HP, but definitely not faster than he’d take damage.

Heracles, on the other hand, fulfills his God Hand mythos with Mind’s Eye (False) B and Battle Continuation A (the Fate/stay night version of God Hand would of course be way too OP if Delightworks implemented canonically). Like Cu Lancer, Heracles does not die even when he is killed, thanks to the 5-turn-lasting Battle Continuation A (on revive, Heracles comes back with the same amount of HP that Kintoki’s Inate Fitness C self-heal gives – 1000-2500). And if you can predict a strong attack from your enemy (e.g. an enemy Servant/boss’s NP), you can completely negate all of that with Mind’s Eye (False) B.

As a Berserker class, damage avoid is significantly better than HP recover, putting Heracles’ survivability much higher than Kintoki’s. And the longer a Berserker lives, the more turns they have to deal damage.

**===Cost===**

Practically speaking, the cost of raising a Servant is an important factor. Kintoki is a 5-star card, whereas Heracles is only a 4-star. This makes a HUGE difference in cost. Straight from the get-go, 5-stars have a party slot cost of 16, whereas 4-stars only need 12. That 4 point difference can decide whether or not you have the points available to equip another CE or even add another waifu to your party.

In addition to party points cost, there’s the QP cost of EXP/status up card feeding. 5-star cards cost more EXP than 4-star cards (need to look up the actual ratio, but it’s significant), so you’ll find yourself grinding QP dailies a lot, lot more. In addition, most of Kintoki’s Buster damage advantage comes straight from having a higher level cap than Heracles (both Berserkers have almost the same stats at lvl 80), so leveling Kintoki to max will definitely require a lot, lot more EXP cards and QP (the EXP requirement and QP feeding cost increases each level too).

Another important cost is the time/AP needed for farming ascension items. Here, Kintoki wins, as his ascensions require farming Yggdrassil Seeds (easy), Octuplet Twin Crystals (medium), and Heart of a Foreign God (hard), wherea Heracles requires Octuplet Twin Crystals (medium), Talon of Chaos (medium), Heart of a Foreign God (hard), and Dragon’s Reverse Scale (hard). Since Heart of a Foreign God and Dragon’s Reverse Scale only drop from 40 AP daily bosses, Heracles requires significantly more farming for ascending.

Farming ascension items, QP, and EXP cards just takes time, but upgrading Noble Phantasms take money (Saint Quartz). Being only a 4-star, there is a significantly, significantly higher probability that you will get another Heracles or two or three before you get another Kintoki. While rolling for more Gilgamesh’s, I ended up getting about 10 Lancelots (4-star) before I got my second Gilgamesh, and that costed a crap ton of real life money. Unless you are very lucky with your rolls, you are very likely to get 5 Heracles by the time you get 2 Kintokis (3% vs 1% are the official percent changes of rolling a 4-star servant vs a 5-star servant).

Despite Heracles being a pain to ascend, his overall cost of raising as a Servant is SIGNIFICANTLY less than that of Kintoki’s. For me personally, just that 4 party points difference matters significantly as with the current party cost of 98 at Master level 100, I cannot otherwise complete my party (Gilgamesh, Arturia, Heracles, Jeanne, Mashu, and 3 Kaleidoscopes – if I were to replace Heracles with Kintoki, I would go over the party cost).

**===Conclusion===**

Although Kintoki seems like a better Berserker choice at first glance (ohhh, 5-star, shiny Goldie, must be good!), he is only marginally better than Heracles damage-wise, but with far less survivability (a dead Berserker does no damage) and a far greater cost of raising. Of course, he’s not yet released as of the moment, but if he were, I would probably stick with my Heracles.

Plus, Heracles has better lines in-game. ▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!!!

~Keripo