Hoshiguma

“Anyone who wants to hurt my friends must answer to this shield.”

And answer they will. Armed with a triangular shield adorned with the motif of her Oni heritage, Hoshiguma is a powerful, offensively-oriented Defender who can reflect damage or deal AoE damage.

Hoshiguma’s kit embodies her ferocity, granting her the offensive capabilities to literally grind her enemies down. Hoshiguma's first Talent, Tactical Armor, grants her a chance to resist both physical and arts damage. Her first Skill, Warpath, provides a standard Defense and Attack buff. Her second skill, Thorns, is a passive Skill that grants her a slight Defense buff and deals a portion of her Attack in physical damage to all enemies that attack her. In particular, this Skill fills a niche when dealing with invisible ranged enemies at a distance, as these enemies cannot normally be attacked by other Operators without first being blocked, or by having a rare detection Skill/Talent. Hoshiguma’s third Skill, Saw of Strength, turns her into a literal grinder, allowing her to attack all enemies in front of her while simultaneously granting large buffs to her Attack and Defense. This Skill allows Hoshiguma to quickly deal with large groups of enemies, significantly decreasing the burden on your defensive line.

Hoshiguma is a very straightforward Defender Operator, but this is also her greatest weakness. She excels at being an effective tank that also deals good damage, but does not provide much unique support or utility outside of her second Talent, Special Operation, which grants a slight Defense buff to all other Defenders. Despite having a niche use for dealing with invisible ranged enemies, Hoshiguma does not fill many other irreplaceable roles.

Despite her honest Skill-set, Hoshiguma is an excellent choice for a standard Defender. Her fierce skills will protect the defensive line and open up the way to begin the counter-offensive.

• 3rd Skill - Saw of Strength - Along with having a terrifying name, looking like a meat-grinder of death, and inspiring some hilarious Dorito spinning memes, Hoshi’s S3 gives her a decent ATK and DEF boost and allows her to hit all enemies within her range with each attack.  Despite how it may look, the skill does not create a constant “grinding” damage effect, but is still based on a single attack per her Attack Interval (only that it hits all enemies in her range). The Skill can provide some nice increased damage in multiple-low-defense-enemies situations, but it doesn’t provide a significant survivability increase over her Skill 1 and doesn’t do much in high enemy-Defense or single target situations. 

• Talent 2 - Special Operation Strategy - An ok percentage Defense buff to all Defenders. Welcome but not game changing.

• Talent 1 upgrade - Tactical Armor - A fairly significant increase to her ability to avoid both Physical and Arts damage.  You can’t kill her if you can’t hit her!

Note: Talent 1 gives chance to resist True damage as well.

Skill	Mastery	Story	Advanced	Roguelike
	S2M3	A-	B	A
	S3M3	C+	B	C

Nian and Hoshiguma are two of the most rewritten units in this guide, which reflects how the role of Protectors has changed over the years. What was once a fringe option that didn’t matter because it was better to just DPS down the enemy is steadily becoming a more and more important role. There are a lot of reasons for this, which are mostly beyond the scope of this guide at this point, but the bottom line is that the best bulk Defenders are worth considering when you reach the midpoint of your career, where you begin to consider support options over DPS options.

For Hoshiguma, her S2 tends to be the preferred skill for its simplicity and uptime. While the total DEF increase over Mastery is only 10%, which would be considered paltry on most skills, the 100% uptime effect gives that otherwise modest increase quite a bit of map-long value. It easily justifies the cost despite “low” gains.

Her S3 occupies a notable place in the history of this guide. It has long been the main suggestion here since this guide favors burst skills. However, that’s always been at odds with her S2 which is unique in the game for its raw simplicity. Hoshiguma’s S3 is still worth Mastery since its peak performance is so much higher than S2, however these days, Nian’s S2 is favored when that raw bulk ceiling really matters. But Nian is an old Limited that not everyone has, so lacking her, Hoshiguma’s S3 is a very reasonable consideration still.

Note that the Roguelike grade is specific to IS#4, where blocking is especially valuable. In the older Roguelike iterations, Protectors are much less valuable.