Fate/Grand Order: the class chart, and the Berserker exception

Fate/Grand Order's class chart is usually drawn as a wheel, which is a good picture and a bad reference. The underlying data is a plain matrix of attack multipliers — attacker down the side, defender across the top — and reading it as a matrix makes two things obvious that the wheel obscures.

The table

The first thing the matrix shows: there are two triangles, not one

The top-left block is the knight triangle — Saber beats Lancer, Lancer beats Archer, Archer beats Saber. The middle block is the cavalry triangle — Rider beats Caster, Caster beats Assassin, Assassin beats Rider.

And the two blocks are entirely neutral to one another. Every knight-versus-cavalry cell reads 100%. A Saber against a Rider is a plain fight, with no advantage in either direction.

Half of the chart is empty. The class you bring only matters against the three classes in its own triangle — and against Berserkers.

This is worth internalising because it changes what "wrong class" costs. Bringing a Caster to a Saber node is not a mistake; it is neutral. Bringing a Lancer to a Saber node is a real mistake, because you are attacking into a 50% wall.

The second thing: Berserker is not on the chart, it is a trade

Berserker deals 150% to everything and takes 200% from everything. It has no advantage and no disadvantage in the ordinary sense; it has a fixed exchange rate.

Look down the Berserker column and every class above it deals 200%. Look along the Berserker row and it deals 150% to all of them. So a Berserker attacking a Saber does 150%, and that Saber attacking back does 200%.

That asymmetry — you hit for 1.5×, you get hit for 2× — is the entire design of the class. It is a damage class that is losing the exchange on paper and wins anyway, because in most of the game you kill the enemy before the exchange completes. Which is precisely why Berserkers stop being safe in fights that last, and why an enemy Berserker is the single most efficient thing you will ever face.

The practical corollary

Against a Berserker enemy, every class in your box is equally advantaged (200%). So the class-advantage question disappears entirely and the choice collapses to raw damage output and survivability. This is the one node type where you should ignore the chart and bring your strongest servant, not your best-typed one.

How the roster distributes across the classes

The seven core classes are supplied remarkably evenly — 46 to 59, a spread of thirteen servants across the whole chart. That is deliberate: an uneven supply would make one triangle corner structurally harder to fill.

The interesting number is the last row. One hundred and one servants — roughly a fifth of the roster — sit in classes that are not on this table at all. The Extra classes run their own relations, and the seven-class chart simply does not describe them. If you are looking at an Avenger or a Foreigner, this page is not your reference.

What the chart does not decide

Class advantage is a flat multiplier on damage. It sits alongside — not above — attribute affinity, Noble Phantasm cards, buff stacking and the specific traits an enemy carries. A 200% class advantage is large, but a servant with the right trait bonuses and a well-built damage stack will routinely out-damage a class-advantaged one that has neither.

The right way to use the table is as an elimination tool: it tells you which servants are attacking into a 50% wall, and those should come out of the lineup before you compare anything else.