Assassins don’t get that much love in the Fate series. They’re often shafted by other characters and usually not living up to their title. In FGO, they can be considered to be one of the lower-tier Servants groups out there.

But there are some that stand out as being amazing units. These are the Top Ten Assassins in Fate: Grand Order, at least of April 2024 in the USA version. A combination of personal opinion and professional insight will be present here, so let’s get started with the 10th Best Assassin:

10. Okada Izo 

Man-Slaying Blade Genius 

• High Burst damage
• Excellent Boss Slayer
• Capable of Powerful Arts Crits

It would be remiss of me to not mention this popular boy. In FGO, you can use Holy Grails to break the level cap of any character. Turn a Rank One into a Rank Five if you’re willing to spend that many Holy Grails on that character. The old saying regarding this is: “Grail who you love.” And this man became the most Grailed Servant in 2018 of the Japanese version. He might not be the best Assassin, and he’s Limited to boot, but he does deserve to have a place here.

One of his downsides is that most of his skills last only one turn. But what he can get done in one turn is nothing short of amazing. His third skill draws Critical Stars to his Cards, his second skill gives him a buff to Critical Damage while granting him an Evade, and his first skill? His claim to fame. 

It grants him an additional Critical Damage and the main thing he’s known for: a buff to deal more damage to those considered Humanoid. Humanoid is the thing that all Servants have save for a very specific handful. With his insane Critical Damage and focus on Arts, he can kill and fill his NP up quickly.

His Noble Phantasm might just do only damage, and while he lacks any buffs to improve that damage, the Overcharge effect does help him with his cards by allowing him to generate even more Critical Stars. While he’s not capable of looping, he can output some insane damage.

A later update will come this year that further improves his Noble Phantasm. It will increase the damage dealt and deal more damage against those with the Human Attribute. There are a ton of Servants that have that, so if you can get him, he will serve well as a budget damage dealer.

9. Gray

Gravekeeper and Host of the Once and Future King

• Ideal for farming
• Good damage
• Powerful Noble Phantasm

Event Servants didn’t start out that good. The first one was a Rank 4 with the stats of a Rank 3, and eventually she ended up in the Friend Point pool. From that point on, the Servants given out during Events (Referred to as Welfare) got a lot better.

Gray was released during an event that gained notoriety for having a raid boss that would drop a treasure hoard of materials. And she ended up being a very good Farming unit, even if she was built for fighting a specific type of unit that no Servant qualifies for. She did get an upgrade for Noble Phantasm that does help her a bit more.

All of her skills are for self-use, and she only has Invincibility to keep her alive. But with access to an Attack, Buster, and Quick buffs, Gray can do so much damage. Her Noble Phantasm can do even more; after upgrading it: it will Ignore Invincibility, decrease Buster and Quick Resistances, restore a small amount of NP to her, and hits all enemies!

While she can only be obtained during the Event, and that event and its repeat have gone, a later update will allow you to get Event Servants from another source. She does fall behind compared to other Servants in my opinion, but she does have high damage for a class with generally low damage. If you like her in the Lord El Melloi Case Files, then you might get more mileage out of her than I did.

8. Kiichi Hogen

Tengu Teacher

• Capable of looping her Noble Phantasm
• Good team support
• Can remove Defense buffs after NP

The first Summer event had a Quick Servant that had a Quick AOE, but she wasn’t that great. Low damage and having a scattered skill-set. The arrival of Kiichi Hogen quickly replaced that Servant in that category. 

Her Noble Phantasm grants Kiichi a Quick buff before it even starts. And with her third skill giving her an Attack buff and increased NP Gain for the party, so she can potentially loop her Noble Phantasm, even more so with proper Support.

Her other skills are amazing too. First skill buffs her Quick cards while also giving her that unique Evade that can negate two attacks over the next three turns. And the second skill grants one teammate (That can be her) a decent amount of NP as well as drawing Critical Stars to their cards. 

Kiichi might suffer from some low damage, but she makes for a fantastic farming unit with some potential to work in some challenges. Plus, she doesn’t suffer from the same problem that Gray has. Combined with double Skadi, Kiichi can murder waves easily!

7. Shuten-Douji

Strongest Child of Yamata no Orochi 

• Good Team Support
• Powerful Noble Phantasm 
• Debuff Master

The ASMR Oni. Shuten was a bit of a surprise for me. I was going for Ibaraki and I ended up getting her instead. Good thing too, I needed an AOE Assassin, as she was released years prior to Kiichi. And while she might be Limited, she does possess greater stats compared to Kiichi and has greater survival. 

Shuten Douji’s big thing is that her Noble Phantasm has so many effects. How many with the upgraded version? Lowers Debuff Resistance, Defense, Attack NP Damage, and Critical Rate for starters. It also seals Skills, inflicts Poison, and inflicts Toxic. Toxic doubles the damage dealt by Poison too. And that’s for all enemies too.

A big downside for Shuten is her lack of NP Gain. Doesn’t have enough hits on her regular attacks to generate more. Good thing her Guts skill can be upgraded to include a good amount of NP to her. Coupled with her second skill giving her a combination of an Attack and a NP Damage buff, once she does get around to shooting off her Noble Phantasm, she’s going to make it really hurt.

Her first skill gives her the best form of Charm: the one that works on any Gender Servant. It also decreases Defense too, further improving what she can do with her Noble Phantasm. With proper support, she can go really nuts.

But there is someone who’s more readily available to do her job and can do it a bit better…

6. Wu Zetian/Assassin of the Nightless City

Divine Torturing Empress of Zhou

• Powerful Single-Target Noble Phantasm
• Can provide some useful team Support
• Good burst damage

Yes, that is the legendary Wu Zetian, Empresses of China. Yes, she is designed by the same person who does the designs for the Disgaea series. No, she doesn’t have any other Ascension forms. You’ll keep her on the first one if you’re sane. 

Assassins in FGO actually have a low Damage multiplier. That does hold back the last few Servants I’ve talked about from being all that much better. Wu Zetian can fix that, after you pick her up AND do her Interludes and Strengthening to improve her skills and Noble Phantasm. 

Her first skill goes from just decreasing one enemy’s Defense to also Nullifying one future buff they receive while also inflicting Burn to add in some extra damage. Her second skill originally recovered HP while having a chance of giving her an Attack and Defense buff, and it now grants all allies a small amount of NP and a Critical Damage buff. The third skill remains as it originally came out, with the party-wide Attack buff and a buff to Quick cards to all other Servants save for herself.

Wu Zetian’s Noble Phantasm, after improving it, will do a great amount of damage to one target while also removing all buffs, inflicting Poison, and also buffing Wu Zetian’s own Critical Damage. While she lacks the damage of Ghost, the looping of Kiichi and the debuffs featured within Shuten’s, Wu Zetian is higher up on this list for a good reason. 

She’s up here because she’s not Limited nor tied to an event. You can summon her at any time, and that makes her good for everyone. Plus, doing her Interludes and Strengthenings gives you Saint Quartz, so that’s a bonus. 

5. Ryougi Shiki (Assassin)

Mystic Eyes, Capable of Killing Anything

• Amazing Single-Target Noble Phantasm
• Good Critical Star Generation
• Good Arts Critical Damage

Eh, an Event Servant being higher than the character that I just praised for being commonly available? Well, Wu has a lot going for her, but Shiki here was seen as one of the best Welfare Servants. Makes total sense, seeing how she’s one of Type-Moon’s Big Three Heroines.

Being an Arts-focused Servant does give her a lot going for Shiki. Her biggest weakness is her lack of durability: already having one of the lower HP pools is bad on its own, but coupled with her third skill draining HP off her in exchange for a good amount of NP, she can die pretty quickly without help. 

But hey! On-demand Evade while also granting higher Critical Damage can greatly help her out, and it’s getting buffed within a year’s time to give her a ton of Critical Stars. And her big thing is that of her first skill; Arts Card buff, Ignore Invincibility, and decrease Instant Death Resist to one enemy.

Now, instant death is not that big of a deal, as a lot of Servants tend to resist it. But her skill debuffs it to an almost guarantee. And her Noble Phantasm has a high chance to kill instantly that also ignores Defense buffs, with an upgrade available that will make it do more damage AND decrease Defense! 

She is amazing, and only outpaced by AOE Servants and those that can loop their Noble Phantasms more often. While sadly her event and repeat have long since gone, there will come a way to get her. If you’re hurting for a good Assassin, get her when that comes around!

4. Jack the Ripper

Terror of Whitechapel

• Best Critical Star Generator 
• Can damage the most common gender
• Great ST Damage

Critical Stars can do so much. Critical Hits don’t just deal more damage, they also generate more NP and even more Critical Stars. And you’re looking at the No.1 Critical Star generator. WHO ONLY HAS ONE ASCENSION FORM, AND NO OTHERS. 

(What I’m saying is, keep her in First Ascension if you don’t want weird stares out in public.)

She generates so many Critical Stars with her Quick cards. She can easily generate enough Critical Stars to guarantee Critical Hits for all cards on the next turn. And if you generate more than 50, you keep the excess stars for the following turns! 

Jack does bring in some support skills as well. She can heal one person for a decent amount while being on a short cooldown. Her second skill strips enemies of their buffs and lowers their Critical Chance. And further keeping her alive is her first skill granting an Evade and a Quick card buff.

Her Noble Phantasm does provide a very useful buff. It boosts damage done to Female characters. There are FAR more ladies than that of guys, so she gets a real good advantage in most situations. Plus, the damage buff lasts for one turn, so select her Noble Phantasm card first and then her other cards; she’ll murder anything or make things go by much quicker.

Truly her only downside is her generally low damage, and her own inability to really use her Critical Star Generation to the max benefit. But with her either supporting someone who’s supposed to be a Critical Hit machine or getting Support who can do that for her, Jack will shine. Not bad for the most famous serial killer in human history.

3. Sasaki Kojiro

False Rival of the Legendary Samurai

• Cheap and easy to work with
• High Critical Damage
• On-demand Evade and Debuff Cleanser

…what? A Rank One? That shines greater than the higher ranks? Well, this is due to a little bit of history involving this character and the early days of FGO. This is the legend of the Saviour of France.

FGO’s first major chapter, Orleans, involves fighting against a resurrected and evil Jeanne d’Arc and her army of wyverns. And wyverns were nasty to fight, especially early on when you didn’t have many good choices of Servants. The one dragon-slayer was a guy in a completely different class than the Rider-base wyverns, and there wasn’t even a Rank Five Assassin. Just a Rank Four, and she wasn’t that great. 

So people had to rely on a character that debuted in the original Fate: Stay/Night visual novel, even if he wasn’t that major of a player in that game’s story. And as it turns out, despite his low stats, Sasaki really shined. And continues to do so seeing how he still gets upgrades every so often.

He’s simple and powerful, an easy-to-use combination. His first skill gives him more Critical Damage and an Evade. His second skill clears off debuffs on him, grants some Critical Stars, and grants a unique buff that makes his Quick cards decrease the targeted enemy’s resistance to Quick Cards. And finally, his third skill grants him Sure Hit (Allowing him to bypass Evade) while forcing Critical Stars to go to his cards and dropping even more Critical Stars.

And then comes his Noble Phantasm. This one does a ton of damage, plus boosts his Quick Card performance, and grants him Critical Stars. Given how common he is, it’s easy to max out his Noble Phantasm level and get him to do so much more. And because Quick Cards can generate NP, he can use his Noble Phantasm a lot more often!

…the big downside is his low rank. But with Grails, you can ascend him to higher heights. There used to be this channel on YouTube of someone who had a maxed-out Sasaki and having him beat down some major bosses. With the right set-up and love, Sasaki can outshine all of the prior Assassins.

Save for the top two:

2. Koyanskaya of Light 

Beastly Secretary 

• Best Buster Support 
• High damage support 
• Useful NP

All of the Assassins we have talked about have been focused on dealing damage. This is the first one that’s Support-focused. And she’s one the game’s best. She beat out Merlin as the game’s top Buster Support, and he redefined how people approached the game in the first place!

She grants not just a powerful Buster buff, but can also provide a unique buff that allows for Buster cards to generate NP, when that’s normally not a thing. And that’s not going into her bread-n-butter of her first skill. That can give a 50% NP to one teammate and reduce their cooldowns by two turns in exchange for taking 1,000 HP from all party members. 

Risky, but worth it. And her Noble Phantasm is great. Hits all enemies, lowers their Charge, and increases the party’s NP. There’s really a lot Koyanskaya does, and she doesn’t have to work exclusively in Buster parties. 

And now for the main event:

1. Kama 

God(dess) of Love

• Great durability 
• High damage
• Insanely powerful ST Quick Noble Phantasm

Assassins tend to do low damage and have low survivability, outside of having an Evade. And Kama fixes both of those issues. Real shame I never got her. Oh well. 

Having access to both a personal HP restore and Guts means she can tank a good amount of damage. The same cannot be said for her teammates that she targets with the first skill; as it decreases their Max HP for the remainder of the battle. You cannot remove that, so best make good use of that NP Overcharge that comes with that first skill.

Her Guts skill gives Kama an Attack buff on top of it, but it’s her third skill that really shoots her to the top of the list. A big boost to NP, decreases Charm resistance for all enemies, increases her Critical Damage, and gives her an Advantage over Alter-Egos, which normally does more damage to Assassins and the other classes in the Cavalry group. 

Kama’s Noble Phantasm first buffs her Quick Cards, can Charm the targeted enemy, and it does a high amount of damage. Remember that Overcharge buff? The Overcharge effect of her Noble Phantasm is the Quick card buff! And it lasts for several turns…

And it can be stacked. Buffs in FGO can be stacked as much as you want, and with the proper looping teams, Kama can keep enemies Charm-Locked and deal high amounts of damage with her Quick cards.

Really? The only thing she lacks is the ability to pierce things like Evade and Invincibility, and benefits to a Critical play-style. And that’s easily fixed with CEs and Support Servants. Kama is the best Assassin currently in FGO for good reason…for now. 

If you liked this article, please check out the others I've done: 

• [Top 10] Fate: Grand Order Best 5 Star Servants (Ranked)
• [Top 15] Fate: Grand Order Best Servants
• [Top 10] Fate: Grand Order Best Archers (Ranked)

All images sourced from Fate/Grand Order Wiki (https://fategrandorder.fandom.com/wiki/Fate/Grand_Order_Wikia)