Huyan Zhuo

“By my hands, Huyan Zhuo, you shall have a peaceful death ─── Haah!!”

Huyan Zhuo is one of the famed 108 Destiny Stars from the Water Margin - one of China’s greatest literary classics. Contrary to his appearance in the novel as a seasoned imperial general, Fate Huyan Zhou is a beautiful girl with amazing charms. In combat, Huyan Zhou fits her legend of having a powerful armored cavalry squad by being an AoE Quick Damage Dealer with some solid anti-gimmick for challenge quests.

Huyan Zhuo’s skills are quite straightforward with no particularly unique gimmick. Her first skill - Double Bian A, referring to her moniker and weapon, is a dual-card type booster for her two main card types - Buster and Quick - for 3 turns. Furthermore, it also grants her a 3 turns of an on-hit effect when she attacks with the corresponding card types. When she uses Quick cards, she gains a 3 turn stackable Critical Star Generation Rate buff, while attacking with Buster cards will grant a 3 turn stackable Critical Damage buff instead. Prestige Star of Heaven A is a moderate 3 turn Attack buff, 3 turn Invincibility Ignore and a 1 turn Critical Star Gathering buff. Sensitive Mentality EX is her primary utility skill, giving her a 2 time Evade over 3 turns, a small NP Gauge Charge and a Buff Removal Resistance Skill. Huyan Zhuo’s Noble Phantasm - Empusa Chain Tempest - is a reference to her famed chained armored cavalry squad that she utilizes before joining the Liangshan. It is an AoE Quick Noble Phantasm that deals super effective damage against [Evil] alignment enemies, with a small chance to stun them, and has a 1-turn Quick card effectiveness buff to herself that activates before dealing damage.

Huyan Zhuo is overall a rather run-of-the-mill Servant gameplay wise. AoE Quick DPS are a dime a dozen, so to stay on top of the food chain a Servant in this niche has to bring something unique or completely outstanding looping performance to justify their place over alternative options.

To start off, Huyan Zhuo’s looping specs are frankly average. Her base NP refund is not stellar, which when combined with only a 30% NP Gauge from her skill makes it quite awkward for her when farming nodes without the standard 3+ enemies layout, and her damage is also quite mediocre due to her being in Assassin class and lacking powerful self-buffs. While she can also work as a Critical Damage Dealer, Huyan does not have the best Critical Damage buffs either, and her Critical Star Gathering Rate buff is only 1 turn, meaning she relies a lot on actually generating enough Critical Stars to offset the RNG of Star distribution.

https://grandorder.gamepress.gg/postshttps://grandorder.gamepress.gg/postsHuyan Zhuo is not without merits however. She has some interesting tools in her kit that work well in challenge quests and counter gimmicks, and her farming performance is adequate when fighting enemies where she has class advantage. They might not be enough to make her stand out in the ever increasing pool of AoE Quick loopers. Even so, her visual design is slick and stylish, and she fills the role of an AoE Assassin sufficiently if Masters are in need of one.

Decent Looping Performance Against Riders

While Huyan is not a powerful omni-farmer due to her overall weaker looping specs compared to other AoE Quick farmers, she can still do very well against any traditional Rider farming nodes thanks to the combination of her Quick card buff, NP Gauge charger and AoE Quick Noble Phantasm. She will hit hard when her anti-trait bonus on her Noble Phantasm comes up but unfortunately, Evil is not a particularly common trait to hit, especially in the farming context.

Respectable Sustained Critical Damage

Huyan Zhuo has good components of a Critical Damage Dealer. She has good Critical Star Generation and strong ramping Critical Damage boost. In a setting where one can chain her Buster / Quick cards she can deal respectable Critical Damage over the course of the fight.

Good Amount of Utility for Challenge Quests

There are a lot of small but nice effects in Huyan Zhuo’s kit that are quite relevant in difficult battles. Evade, Buff Removal Resistance, AoE Stun, and Invulnerability Pierce are all very useful and will come up more often than not when used in challenge quests.

Struggles To Stand Out Against Competitors

There are numerous AoE Quick Damage Dealers in the game as of right now and unfortunately for Huyan Zhuo, she does not offer any outstanding perks compared to her direct competitors, be it Damage, the ability to loop in harder farming nodes, or challenge quest performance. A good example would be Sen no Rikyu - an AoE Quick Damage Dealer released directly before her with practically better performance in every single aspect.

Huyan Zhuo’s main usage is as an AoE farmer, so the NP Gauge charger in her 3rd skill should be the priority. Both her 1st and 2nd skill work as damage boosting skill, but her first skill offers more offensive power in general.

• Double Bian A – All the effects scale with level and this skill helps both her NP and face cards damage so it is a no-brainer to level it.
• Prestige Star of Heaven A – This skill is the weakest of her three skills but still worth raising for the Attack% buff scaling.
• Sensitive Mentality EX – Since Huyan Zhuo’s refund isn’t exactly stellar, the extra NP Gauge charger from leveling this skill is crucial to her performance.

Starting NP Gauge is the most important stat for Huyan Zhuo for farming when picking Craft Essence. Afterward, extra help with NP refund is highly appreciative, which means Quick Card Effectiveness, NP Damage, Attack and NP Generation Rate are all good stats to improve her performance, with NP Damage boosting her damage the most due the lack of the same buff in her skillset, while Quick card effectiveness would bolster most of her aspects.

Critical Damage is a viable stat to look for to improve her Single Target Damage. It is worth noting that Huyan Zhuo can capitalize on Craft Essence that boost both Quick and Buster Card Effectiveness due to her card deck, especially when playing as a Critical Damage Dealer.

• Traces of Christmas / Imaginary Number Attribute / Cherry Icicle / One Summer / Golden Sumo: Easy to get and max limit break Craft Essences (either through event or from the standard summoning pool) with Starting NP Gauge and good secondary stats for her general usage.
• The Black Grail / Heaven’s Feel: Huyan Zhuo will need a specific and often expensive team to facilitate these Craft Essences, but they offer the strongest firepower boost to her, especially considering she has no built in NP Damage boost in her kits (i.e with Plugsuit and NP charging supports in the backline like Oberon / Reines).
• Fist of Hail / Midsummer Moment / Dangerous Beast / The Dantes Files: The Case of the True Mastermind / Princess's Pilgrimage: Huyan Zhuo can function as a pretty effective Critical Damage Dealer, so these Craft Essences are decent options for her.