Everyone loves anime with complex stories and emotionally compelling character dynamics. However, sometimes, you just want to watch a bunch of extremely strong characters fight it out in a battle royale. Fate/Stay Night is a story about the fifth Holy Grail War, a competition in which mages summon heroic spirits to get a chance at winning the Holy Grail, a relic said to be able to grant any wish.
In the narrative of the story, a number of factors and circumstances play into one’s strengths, making winning the Grail a lot more difficult than simply being strong. However, in a battle of pure power with no outside interference, who’s the strongest Fate/Stay Night Servant?
9Hassan Of The Cursed Hand
True Assassin
Assassins are usually the weakest servants in any Holy Grail War (except for the Grand Assassin), and the Fuyuki war which takes place in Fate/Stay Night is no exception. Hassan’s main abilities include an extremely strong invisibility that lets him sneak around uncaught, as well as a number of ways to stealthily assassinate targets.
His Noble Phantasm, the Cursed Hand Zabanya, is extremely strong, being able to rupture his target’s heart directly. However, even despite a strong Noble Phantasm, Hassan of the Cursed Hand will almost always lose when engaged in combat with any other servant on this list.
8Sasaki Kojirou
Fake Assassin
While not a true servant participating in the war, the Fake Assassin was strong enough to hold his own and even overwhelm absurdly strong servants like Saber. He was summoned by Medea, the Caster, and ordered to guard the shrine where she and her master were residing. His sword skills rival those of Saber, though he doesn’t pack the same amount of power.
His Noble Phantasm, while a simple one, is extremely deadly. The Tsubame Gaeshi, also called Reverse Swallow Strike or Swallow Reversal, was created to cut down a swallow in the most efficient way possible. This resulted in a technique that harbors on true magic, breaking apart space and time to simultaneously perform three separate slashes, each one being impossible to block.
7Medea
Caster
Medea’s list of skills and command over magic technically make her one of the strongest servants in the Holy Grail War. However, in actual combat, her abilities aren’t enough for her to hold her own against other servants, making her opt instead for a support role.
Caster can perform extremely powerful spells, both offensive and defensive. She can create barriers, buff allies, debuff enemies, or do all at the same time. Her Noble Phantasm, Rule Breaker, is a ceremonial dagger that can cast Second Magic. Medea can use Rule Breaker to either summon her own servants or steal the servants belonging to others if she manages to stab them with it.
6Medusa
Rider
In the original Fate/Stay Night anime, most people would put Medusa as the weakest. However, that was due to Shinji being an incompetent master. We got to see a glimmer of her true potential in the Heaven’s Feel movies, where she was able to overwhelm Saber Alter with her base skills alone.
On top of being extremely agile, quick, and dextrous, Medusa also has a number of Noble Phantasms that make her a superb servant. She can summon Pegasus to fly at Mach speeds. She can then use Bellerophon while riding Pegasus to charge into an enemy, pulverizing them completely. Medusa also has Mystic Eyes of Petrification, an extremely strong ability that turns anyone who looks at her into stone.
5Cu Chulainn
Lancer
Cu Culain, Ireland’s Child of Light, is one of the most versatile servants in the Fuyuki Grail War. He has everything you’d want a servant in charge of protecting your very life to have. He’s an extremely strong combatant, both for short and long-range. He also has access to a wide array of skills, including various runes that let him perform magic.
Most servants require a large amount of mana each time they use their Noble Phantasm. However, Cu Chulainn is one of the few servants that can use his multiple times without needing any extra Mana.
Lancer has two Noble Phantasms. Of these, Gae Bolg is a spear that reverses causality. In simple words, it lets Cu immediately strike the heart of whoever he’s fighting with. He can do so from any distance, and the attack is supposed to be completely impossible to block or dodge, though Saber did manage to avoid a fatal blow with it.
He also has a skill called Battle Continuation which lets him continue to exist for a hefty amount of time even after being dealt a fatal blow, ensuring he disposes of whoever killed him.
4EMIYA
Archer
EMIYA is a Counter Guardian working to fight calamities that face humanity despite his own grievances about doing so. His general stats are extremely weak, but he makes up for it with his versatile kit. He’s an Archer working best at long range, but can hold his own in close-ranged combat. He’s extremely smart as well, being able to make plans for battle on the go.
EMIYA’s Noble Phantasm is called Unlimited Blade Works. The ability works similarly to Gilgamesh’s Gate of Babylon, allowing EMIYA to conjure an infinite supply of weapons, including Noble Phantasms belonging to other Heroic Spirits. He can create Saber’s Excalibur, Medea’s Rulebreaker, as well as a number of other useful weapons. However, unlike Gate of Babylon, the copies created are weaker than the original.
3Heracles
Berserker
Heracles, or Hercules, is the fifth Holy Grail War’s Berserker. Based on the Greek legend of Hercules, he’s the strongest servant in terms of sheer strength. He also has the Mad Enhancement buff, making his raw power even stronger.
Unlike most other servants, he has no complicated abilities that let him cheat out opponents stronger than him. Heracles is simply an extremely durable tank that can dish out tremendous amounts of damage while negating any attacks done on himself.
Certain attacks such as a direct hit from an Excalibur can take multiple lives at once from Heracles’s God Hand.
Heracles can completely nullify any attack performed by a weapon below a certain rank. Furthermore, his skin is hard enough to block most projectiles. If you manage to somehow score a hit on him, he also regenerates himself passively.
In the case of death, his Noble Phantasm, God Hand, resurrects him up to 12 times. Moreover, he becomes completely immune to any attack that he previously died to. If not for Gilgamesh and Saber, no other servant could even come close to putting a scratch on him.
2Artoria Pendragon
Saber
The Saber class tends to be the strongest out of all that can normally be summoned into a Holy Grail War. Among the various servants that can be summoned into the Saber class, Artoria Pendragon, Fate’s version of King Arthur, is the strongest.
Saber is just an extremely well-rounded combatant, checking everything that makes a good fighter. She’s extremely strong both defensively and offensively without sacrificing any speed or agility. She’s smart, well-versed in the rules of combat and war, and has a very charismatic personality. She’s also completely immune to weaker magic, and nullifies a large part of stronger spells as well.
Saber’s main Noble Phantasm is Excalibur, a sword with an attack that so strong it can destroy the Holy Grail itself, with the condition that she has to use both her hands to do so.
1Gilgamesh
What makes Gilgamesh so strong is that his Noble Phantasm, Gate of Babylon, counters pretty much everything. He has access to every single Noble Phantasm used by the other servants, and he can use thousands of them at the same time.
Gilgamesh’s treasury is said to be the blueprint for every weapon created in the past, present, and future. Since a replica cannot be better than the original, this means that the Noble Phantasms Gilgamesh creates are better and stronger than their owner’s counterparts.
If all else fails, Gilgamesh can always pull out EA, a weapon so strong that it can instantly destroy reality itself. Gilgamesh’s biggest flaw is his personality and ego, but when the King of Heroes is serious, no servant can even hope to match him.
