Stop Recommending Hans

Mobile Friendly PDF Link (Download link):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-It8GetTxQgW8SvDt2gQtLpEaCx22LBqm
xm9j2V9qm0/export?format=pdf

If you’re reading this, this means that you’ve decided to defend Hans! This topic gets brought up
enough that I felt the need to write a Google Docs about it.

Additional reading/ideology can be found here: Servant Starter List & Efficiency Guide

If you have any comments or complains, feel free to message supermarth64#8626 on Discord.

Version History
V1.3: 1/31/2022. Fixed up some small errors.
V1.2: Post-CCC rerun. Version History created, added section on if you’ve already
invested in Hans.
V1.1: Post-Hans S3 strengthening, pre-CCC rerun. Elaborated on opportunity cost
examples, mobile friendly DL link.
V1.0: Pre-Hans S3 strengthening. Initial version of the guide.
Ideology
This guide will have some guidelines that are repeated several times so this section is here to
have them all in one section.

1) This guide is written from a efficiency standpoint

This point basically encompasses the following points. If you want to level your
favorite servants and use them, that’s fine! Just don’t say Hans is efficient and a
good servant to raise for newer players.

2) Most of the game is about farming

You spend a large portion of your game farming. When you’re doing an event,
the vast majority of your AP is spent running event nodes in order to get event
currency. This is especially so in ladder-based events (events where you get
points and thus have to climb a point ladder). Event story takes a negligible
amount of time and challenge quests are clear once to get the reward. New story
chapters only happen every few months and can be cleared on 3 days’ worth of
natural AP regeneration. The time spent in between is spent farming whatever
mats you need, whether that be embers, QP, or running free quests for mats.

3) NPing is the most efficient way to do content

The most efficient way to clear content in this game is to get NP gauge and use
your NP to clear waves. The reason for this is because it bypasses facecard
(non-NP) RNG. Facecard RNG can lead to several additional turns to clear a
node.

With that in mind, two types of servants stand out:

- DPS servants that have batteries. Priority goes to AOE servants because
most farming nodes in the game are 3/3/X nodes. (This changes at 90+
nodes but those don’t exist on NA yet).
- Support servants that give another servant on-demand NP gauge.

4) Crits are unreliable

Everyone loves seeing big fat crits! You get more NP gauge, more crit stars,
more damage! What’s not to like about them?
Well, the issue is crits are inherently unreliable. First, they rely on facecards, and
the issue with facecards is covered above. Secondly, they’re reliant on star
generation. You need a large amount of star generation to reliably crit, so
something like a single 2030 or Hans’s S3 won’t be good enough. Crits are also
dependent on servant’s starweight. Finally, crit star distribution is subject to
 additional RNG. This link has some clarification on how crit star distribution works
(notice how Waver can essentially double his crit star weight due to sheer RNG!)

5) Opportunity cost
Opportunity cost is the concept that when you spend resources in one area,
those resources could have been allocated towards something else. The
opportunity cost of whaling on a gacha game could mean that you don’t have
food for the next week or month. The opportunity cost for raising Hans means
that another servant could have used those mats and resources. Furthermore,
since Hans is not a servant that functions well on low skill levels, you really need
skill levels on him (ideally 9/10/10). That’s a lot of materials!

For reference, here are other some other low rarity servants that share material
costs with Hans that you’re paying the opportunity cost:
Statues/gems: Paracelsus, Shakespeare, Mozart
Forbidden Pages: Caesar, Paracelsus, Shakespeare, Mozart
Infinity Gears: Bedivere, Romulus, Ushiwakamaru, Paracelsus, Mozart
Homunculus Babies: Arash, Paracelsus, Shakespeare, Spartacus
Meteoric Horseshoes: Caesar, Billy the Kid, Hector, Medusa, Ushiwakamaru,
Alexander, Lu Bu, Darius
Void Dust: Bedivere, Robin Hood, Euryale, Kid Gil, Billy the Kid, Arash, Proto
Cu, Romulus, Medusa, Paracelsus, Shakespeare, Lu Bu

6) Story-locked events
The existence of story-locked events (especially those with welfares) means that
new players have to play through the story to get to those events. Furthermore,
all challenge quests are locked behind Solomon and challenge quests provide
crystallized lores, a limited item that servants need to get a skill to level 10.
Prioritizing story is important for accessibility in the game.

With that in mind, let’s go over what usually happens when someone recommends leveling
Hans and the various counterarguments behind those:

Scenario
Disclaimer: This scenario is essentially paraphrased, I’m not going to be posting actual chat logs
as to not call anyone out specifically.

Alice: Hi there, I’m a new player, here are the servants I have, does anyone have any
recommendations on who to raise?
Bob: You should raise Arash and Spartacus, they’re really good because they’re strong
and have batteries!
 Carl: You should also raise Hans because of XYZ reasons (to be refuted below)

Common reasons to raise Hans (and addressing

them)
1) He has an aoe crit buff!
Covered in section 4.

2) His NP is really good! It can give attack, defense, star generation,

and HP regen!
There’s a few issues preceding this:
- Hans actually has to get to his NP first. With his battery being 75%, he
can’t reliably NP without either starting NP gauge from a CE or
facecarding for NP. The first one may not be possible if you’re using event
bonus CEs on him or if you’re using other CEs such as 2030. The second
one goes against the ideology mentioned in section 3 where you want to
minimize facecarding in order to clear efficiently.
- Hans’s NP is RNG in terms of which buffs it gives. Part of the strength in
NPing is it’s reliability. If you know what buffs a servant has, you can
directly calculate how much damage their NP will do. Using a servant that
inherently has RNG in which buffs adds inconsistency. As an example,
the odds of hitting all 9 buffs (3 RNG buffs on 3 servants) is only 13.4%. If
you don’t care for the star gen portion (you really shouldn’t, a 20%
increase means a 5 hit attack will generate 1 more star), that number only
goes up to 26.2%.

3) His S3 gives a servant both stargen and targeted np generation

every turn!
The crit star generation is covered in section 4. As for the targeted NP generation
part, there’s a few issues behind it:
- If you’re doing efficient farming, it means that you clear a 3 wave node in
3 turns. If you use Hans’s S3 on turn 1, you’ll have generated 20% battery
by wave 3. Guess what other FP servant also has a 20% battery?
Shakespeare! The fact that his battery is on-demand also means that you
can use it whenever you want. Additionally, Shakespeare can provide the
team with a strong Buster buff to help clear the wave.
- Furthermore, the preceding comment is assuming you lore Hans’s 3rd
skill. This is a very high opportunity cost for newer players as their
number of lores is limited primarily by events and is recommended mainly
to give it to servants like Arash, Spartacus, and Paracelsus first (as well
 as any strong SR/SSR servants with a battery that they may have). If you
don’t lore his S3, his level 9 only generates 18% by wave 3 which is not a
relevant threshold.

4) Hans is really good in story fights/challenge quests!

This one will be addressed in a few ways:
- The vast majority of the content is soloable. Everything up until Shimosa
(which is an account check) or Lostbelt 2 (which generally involves a
leveled ST saber and ST archer) is soloable. You can refer to Hong’s
story playlist for a commonly linked solo playlist. Additionally, any fights
that aren’t in the playlist can commonly be found on Youtube or Bilibili if
you look up the Japanese/Chinese node names (use this guide for help to
find those or feel free to ask around).
- While Hans may be able to help out a DPS servant by giving them buffs,
leveling Hans presents an opportunity cost that you could’ve used to help
another farming unit. Borrowing a friend’s servant and soloing requires
less resources from the player’s side because it’s the minimum threshold
required for a player to clear the fight.
- Another question to ask is that would bringing Hans even cause the friend
DPS to do more damage? Soloing with a friend servant guarantees brave
chains, and brave chaining with a friend Cu Alter or Hercules would
oftentimes end up with greater damage. This is compounded with the fact
that berserkers have very low starweight and thus can’t even reliably get
the stars that Hans’s S3 provides, which means they can’t even take
advantage of one of Hans’s main strengths.
- In contrast with the vast majority of the game, think about how often you
run story fights or challenge quests in comparison to regular farming. A
95% threshold is a safe number, hitting upwards of 99% depending on
how you play. Do you really want to spend resources investing in a unit
that only helps with a small portion of the game?

5) The existence of better supports (Waver, Merlin, etc.) doesn’t make

Hans a bad servant, he’s still a good budget pick for newer players.
The problem with this logic is for a newer player, you lack resources. There’s
many more higher priority servants that a newer player would want to raise, such
as Arash and Spartacus. Hans also isn’t even the highest priority caster for a new
player: Paracelsus, Shakespeare, and Mozart are all higher priority than him.
Leveling Hans first thus presents a high opportunity cost in comparison to
leveling other servants.

Sure, once you have the higher priority farming units leveled, then you can level
Hans. But in the vast majority of scenarios the players asking for help have few
 units actually leveled. It’s a matter of prioritization at that point so recommending
Hans outright when they should be leveling other units instead is misleading.

6) Hans is a support so he’s good like Waver/Merlin.

A statement like this is generalizing and doesn’t actually provide any evidence. I
could say Gil is good because he’s a DPS but I’m not going to bring him to lancer
nodes. You need to provide actual usage on why he’s good and how using Hans
would increase reliability/consistency. Just saying “he’s a solid servant and can fit
in any team” isn’t a good argument.

7) I used Hans and cleared X fight/node so he works for me.

FGO is not a hard game. There are plenty of party compositions that will enable
you to clear a node. A servant working in a fight doesn’t necessarily mean that
it’s a good idea to recommend it for the fight.

An example is the use case that Asterios can solo the Lostbelt 1 Anastasia fight.
Another one is that Medusa can solo Consort Yu in Lostbelt 3. Notice how both of
these are not widely recommended and are moreso proof of concepts. You can
do it with these servants but just because it works doesn’t mean that it’s
recommended.

Another example is in Gilfest 2020 on NA, the Leonidas CQ is theoretically

soloable with a super Nero or Shiki Saber. However, the RNG requirements are
so high that they’re not widely recommended.

With all those in mind, it’s not a good idea to explicitly recommend Hans because
of your previous experience in some fights. The flexibility in team compositions
means that you can clear it with a wide range of servants.

8) I like using my own units.

Cool, good for you. Just because you like using your own units doesn’t
necessarily mean that other people will be as accepting. Some people just want
to get through the game’s content. Others are on a shorter schedule and have to
clear X content by Y date because of story-locked events. If the individual has
any limitations or preferences, they’ll tell us. Otherwise, we’ll just recommend the
least resource-intensive path (generally soloing), which excludes leveling Hans.

9) Other reasons
Feel free to let me know so I can add it onto this list.
But I’ve already invested in Hans!
This document is mostly written from the stance of “players without a roster already leveled”. If
you’ve invested in Hans, you’ve already paid the entry cost and are thus free to use him. An
example is if all you have leveled are single target lancers and you’re up against an archer
node, it’s still more efficient than trying to jam Arash + Spartacus. We’re not going to stop people
from using servants that they like or have already invested in, it just may or may not be more
effective than using a different party composition.

If you still want to use Hans, his best CEs are either:
1) stargen CEs like 2030 so you actually have a respectable amount of stargen per turn
to crit semi-reliably
2) a starting NP gauge CE so he can NP on demand. Demonic Bodhisattva is ideal
because it provides him with starting NP gauge and OC+2 stages effect.

Disclaimer
Once again, most of this document is written from an “efficiency” viewpoint. If you want to use
Hans because you like him, feel free! However, try not to let your biases influence your
recommendations.

Furthermore, I do acknowledge that farming is not everything in this game. There are some
good servants to raise that are outside of primarily farming, such as Euryale, Caesar, and
Bedivere (mainly because of their relevance in Lostbelt 2). Hans is just lower priority than those
types of servants (addressed in the starters guide at the beginning).

Closing Remarks
Hopefully this document has caused you to reconsider your opinions on Hans. Honestly I just
got tired typing out the same counterarguments over and over so I’ll just make a nice doc and
link it instead.