Hassan of the Serenity

"Everything, everything, everything as you would will it. I will offer all of myself to you. This body, this heart, all of it…"

The Hassan-i-Sabbah that personifies the infamous Poison Girl hailing from India’s Ancient Age, Serenity employs a variety of methods to debilitate the Master’s foes. Her Arts-focused deck and skills fit well into her image as a saboteur, giving her a unique way to control an enemy’s actions while slowly draining them.

Where most Servants focus more on improving their own damage dealing potential, Serenity focuses on hampering an enemy’s ability to fight effectively. Her NP, Zabaniya, and her Morph (Infiltration), give Serenity multiple ways to stop an enemy from using their own NP thanks to her access to NP Seal and NP Drain. Meanwhile, Serenity has a very small niche in Poison damage to drain her enemy’s HP with, especially after Skill Upgrade adds both Poison and Toxic effects to Thow (Dagger). Lastly, Serenity can generate a decent sum of stars despite her Arts focus as Throw (Dagger) is a potent instant Critical Star generator once it’s leveled, especially given its low cooldown.

Unfortunately, most of the utility potential that Serenity has is not very useful in day-to-day scenarios, and she can be rather unreliable in challenging content as she cannot guarantee the debuffs on her NP land even before factoring in enemy Magic Resistance. DoT effects like Poison are also not very damaging compared to damage steroids in the hands of a Master, even with the improvement that Toxic provides. In general, Serenity’s direct damage potential is lacking, as she does not have a single direct damage boosting buff in her kit, though her NP does have an improved modifier thanks to her NP Upgrade.

In closing, Serenity can work well in Arts-focused teams, providing utility options that synergize with the common Arts supports. This lets her perform especially well in stalling-oriented setups, but outside of stalling she lacks the oomph that would let her succeed in burst damage situations.

NP Seals are powerful debuffs that in practice are a variation of the more standard NP Drain. NP Seals both prevent an enemy from using their NP and stops the normal end-of-turn NP charging every enemy has. Depending on the enemy, Masters thus should not wait for an enemy to have a full NP bar before applying NP Seal.

In that sense, NP Seals are an upgraded version of NP Drains as Masters can still be surprised by enemy NP battery skills after they drain an NP bar. In addition, NP Seals can be applied to full effect even when an enemy has an empty NP bar.

But there is one major drawback to NP Seals: They can be resisted. NP Drains bypass normal resistances, and at 100% success chance, will always “stick” to the target.

Decent Star Generation

Throw (Dagger) can provide a decent number of Critical Stars for its cooldown, and this number gets increased after Serenity’s skill Rank Up. In addition, her active Critical Star Generation is above-average for most Assassins despite her Arts-orientation thanks to the high hit counts and base Star Generation on all her cards.

Moderate Stalling Potential

It’s rare enough to find NP Seal or Skill Seal on a Servant, and Serenity has both. While the base application rate of these Seals are low, they will land reliably while Serenity is under the effects of a leveled Dance of Silence. Furthermore, her NP Drain chance from Morph (Infiltration) is a guaranteed success starting at level 1, unlike many NP Drain skills. With 2 potential ways to stall an enemy NP, Serenity can find a home in most Arts stalling compositions.

Poison Niche

With access to 2 poison effects, and Toxin (which doubles poison damage) on her Skill Upgraded Poisoned Blade, Serenity deals a bit of extra damage over time in stalling compositions. While extremely situational, this niche can find some use during boss fights that feature extreme defensive protections.

Poor Damage Potential

Serenity has quite a few flaws regarding her damage potential: a low Attack stat, Assassin class modifier, a deck that’s not designed for damage, and a lack of damage buffs. While she can indirectly rely on critical hits and she has an NP Upgrade, neither provide enough of a damage boost to make her a competitive DPS option.

Weak Niche

The debuff-heavy kit found in Serenity’s NP and skills has very few cases where it can shine at its utmost. Her NP’s Instant Kill is extremely unlikely to trigger even with the bonus provided by Dance of Silence since it will generally be used against enemies with very low Death Rates. Meanwhile, her poison aspect adds too little damage even after her Skill Upgrade compared to straight damage (de)buffs except against extremely high defense enemies.

Subpar NP Gain

Serenity’s NP generation being on the weaker side for a QQAAB deck not only reduces her overall damage impact, but also her stalling potential. She generally can’t recharge her NP within a 3-turn period, which is problematic as she has to rely on her Dance of Silence to actually make sure her NP Seal lands. With Morph (Infiltration)’s having a 9 turn cooldown at base as well, Serenity’s stalling is heavily frontloaded

Serenity is in an odd spot where her most important skills, Throw (Dagger) and Dance of Silence, ought to be raised to 10 not just because the reduced cooldown is nice but because those skills are greatly reduced in effectiveness at low levels, to the point that using them at low levels has very little impact on what a Master wants Serenity to do. Conversely, her least important skill to level, Morph (Infiltration), gains very little from additional levels as even the cooldown reduction isn’t very impactful with a base cooldown of 9 turns.

• Morph (Infiltration) C has strong effects as its NP Drain is already guaranteed, but it scales poorly with levels, only increasing the Critical Rate Down applied to an enemy by +10% from level 1 to 10. This skill is best saved to be leveled after Serenity’s other skills, unless Masters want to use her in stalling compositions, and only worth leveling for the cooldown reduction breakpoints at levels 6 and 10.

• Throw (Dagger) C scales decently in terms of the Critical Stars it instantly generates, and the potential 4 turn CD is helpful for regularly preparing for crit burst turns. After its Rank Up to Poisoned Blade C++, it can be used to capitalize more on Poison damage. Generally, Serenity’s most impactful skill to raise to 10, and ought to be done first.

• Dance of Silence B also scales well with levels, though not as well as Throw (Dagger) does. Reducing its downtime and debuff application chance is essential for landing the NP Seal and Skill Seal of Serenity’s NP. It’s fine to raise this skill to 6 along with Throw (Dagger), but level 10 can generally wait until Throw (Dagger) C is maxed first.

While a CE that improves Debuff Success Rate would seem to be a great choice for Serenity, the main problem is that there are very few CEs that provide this sort of buff in any form, let alone to a significant enough degree that equipping for the CE is worth doing in the first place. As such, Serenity is better off using CEs with effects that are universally nice to have: Starting NP Gauge of 50% or more, any sort of long-term damage buff, or Passive Critical Stars/turn.

• Kaleidoscope / Imaginary Element: Being able to quickly NP means being able to apply the useful NP Seal and Skill Seal debuffs quickly as well, which can be useful in certain Challenging Quests that rely on scripted skill usage.

• Golden Sumo / Holy Night Supper / Dive to Blue: These CEs are a nice balance of quickly using her NP and a decent damage buff to make Zabaniya (Serenity) hit for more than a trifling amount of damage.

• Burning Tale of Love / Record Holder: Either of these CEs provide a large enough Debuff Success Rate to warrant being equipped in the first place. Burning Tale of Love has the added bonus of having a strong passive Anti-Male Special Attack bonus.

• A Fragment of 2030 / Chocolatier: Either these CEs complement Serenity’s innate ability to provide Critical Stars in an Arts Setup.

• Formalcraft / Kaleid Sapphire / Projection: The Arts Up provided by these CEs helps Serenity’s NP damage and NP generation from her Arts cards.