Rabbit’s Reviews #432: Harada Sanosuke (4* Lancer)

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 The welfare for this year’s GudaGuda event is a mostly-straightforward single-target damage-dealer with one key gimmick: he gets a guts every time he NPs. We’ve seen other offensive Servants with selfish defense buffs on their NPs, but never guts and never on a welfare. Aside from that, Harada has solid damage and some crit tools, but nothing else particularly remarkable. He’s not a great pick if what you need is a conventional damage-dealer, but if you can get him to NP consistently he’s a pretty neat anchor.
Harada Sanosuke
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Harada has low attack and high HP for an SR Lancer, fitting with his anchor role. High attack would make him a better conventional damage-dealer, but having higher health may let him survive an extra turn and secure a win when he couldn’t otherwise, so this stat spread is fine. His NP gain is pretty average relative to his deck, and his star gen is better than average due to his two 5-hit Quick cards. His only passive is low-level Magic Resistance, which doesn’t matter all that much.
None of Harada’s appends make a huge difference. Extra crit damage and the Extra Attack buff are both better than usual as Harada is likely to be soloing and critting. Harada is a pretty good anchor for Berserker fights, so anti-Berserker damage is also solid. Mana Loading and skill reload will both situationally make a difference, but only occasionally. Essentially, Harada will benefit from any appends you’re willing to unlock, and they all have advantages, but none of them is clearly more important than any other.
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Harada is a welfare, so all you have to do to ascend him is play his event. His mat asks, though, are kinda nasty by welfare standards, asking for a ton of bronze mats—which is made even rougher by the fact that his skills don’t gain all that much from levels.
Harada’s skillset is fine, but his NP is what makes his kit. Recommended skill order is 3>1>2.
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Red Wolf is a standard Quick and Buster buff, boosting Harada’s NP damage and most of his cards. It also gives stars each turn, helping Harada to crit consistently. This is a good skill that improves Harada’s overall performance, but there’s nothing unusual here.
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Sanosuke Who Failed to Die is a fun skill, giving a chance-based guts that can trigger up to twice. At a 40% success rate, this is not a skill you can rely on, and you’ll almost never actually see it trigger twice—there’s only a 16% chance you’ll successfully trigger this twice in a row, and that also requires Harada getting dropped twice in three turns without the guts from his NP up. This skill will occasionally buy you some extra time when anchoring, if you’re lucky, but it’s not a skill to rely on, and the unusual duration is more for show than for practical benefit. Generally speaking, you’ll want to save this skill until Harada is about to die, where it has a small chance of saving you when Harada can’t access his NP. The cool thing about this is if you get one guts proc, you probably buy at least two turns of survival, as Harada will usually be able to use his NP on the turn after this guts procs. The skill also gives a small battery—helping Harada access his NP—and it gives a burst of stars when Harada’s guts effects proc, which will likely be every turn once Harada is low on HP.
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Unreliable Spear is an attack buff and a crit damage buff, further boosting Harada’s damage output. The skill also gives a burst of stars to help Harada get moving. It’s a good general performance buff, but once again there’s nothing unusual here.
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Harada’s NP has a bunch of nice stuff: pre-cast NP damage, post-cast defense down, and crit chance reduction. Crit chance reduction is great for stability, and the defense debuff is better here than it normally is, as a lot of Harada’s damage will come from his cards, and the defense debuff will strengthen those. The star of this NP is of course the guts effect, making Harada nearly unkillable as long as he can NP consistently. As a Buster Servant, it’s a little hard for him to get there, but with NPQA chains, good CE and MC choices, and high-hit-count enemy attacks, he can sustain himself for quite a while.
While you can use Harada as a standard Buster DPS, with either a double Koyan burst setup or a Merlin or Castoria oriented stall setup, he’s just a “fine but not amazing” pick for those types of teams. Where he really shines is as an anchor, where he can ideally last for several turns while finishing out a fight.
As an anchor, the most important thing is to loop Harada’s NP, and to protect him on turns where you can’t. Harada will use an NPQA chain on every turn he has his NP available, and BQA otherwise—unless you’re within range of finishing a fight, in which case you ideally use an NPBB chain to close things out.
You may not be able to choose your Mystic Code with Harada in mind, but if you can, any Mystic Code that will buy you an extra turn is fantastic, as Harada can reliably NP every two turns, meaning one turn of survival becomes two. The Atlas mystic code is solid for this, with its invuln and its cooldown reduction. The CDR skill can help Harada get access to his skills again more quickly, and if you’re lucky that can buy you extra surival off his chance-based guts. Mystic Codes with guts skills also have nice synergy with Harada’s on-guts bonus—the new Shinsengumi Mystic Code that debuts in Harada’s event is a great pick for him.
If you can afford to not give him starting charge, Harada benefits strongly from any CEs that will increase his NP gain. Prisma Cosmos is the simplest pick for this, but any CE that gives at least 20% NP gain or so will give more functional NP gain in practice while Harada is anchoring. Alternatively, you can give Harada a defense-oriented CE like Volumen—or anything with Guts—to buy you a single extra turn, which may be enough to secure a fight in some cases.
Because Harada is likely to be soloing and is unlikely to flood the field with stars, star weight CEs on the cards you specifically want to be critting with can be a good idea. Placing a star weight CE on Harada’s Arts card is especially smart, as Arts crits are essential to making sure Harada has consistent NP access. Aside from that, crit damage CCs are solid for extra damage push and star gen CCs can also help with crit consistency.
Lancers make pretty good use of grails and Harada is a pretty good Lancer. He’s honestly probably fine even at level 80, but any extra levels you give him will make him better, and the pair of grails it would take to bring him to 90 is a pretty cheap investment. Harada doesn’t have specific breakpoints at which he can do specific things, but there will inevitably be cases where an anchoring Harada at level 90 can clear a fight he would just barely lose at level 80, and so on. Up to you how much that’s worth.
Harada’s a cool and reasonably effective anchor. There are plenty of other anchors, and Harada isn’t notably better than the competition, but he’s totally serviceable and (more importantly) free. If you take the time to raise him, he’ll be a handy tool for certain CQs, and he’s not just a worse version of other SSR tools, as many welfares are. Overall, I’d say this makes him a pretty cool free Servant, and a good addition to the game.