A2Information and Guide

Introduction

A limited unit with tremendous AoE damage, A2 can constantly wreak havoc on clustered targets. Whether these are Nikkes that she fights in the Arena or raptures in the warzone, she simply pays no heed. However, her specialty is part-breaking. She also serves as a great option for campaign pushing due to her magnificent explosion range. Geared with a unique kit which raises her output in exchange for HP loss, she is the perfect depiction of “with great power comes great responsibility”. Namely, you need to keep her healthy at all times. Can you?

Kit Analysis

A2 is a Rocket Launcher wielder with a high explosion range by default, 1.5x larger than most RLs in game. She also has a slightly higher base attack multiplier and naturally provides more burst generation thanks to her S2, increased charge speed, and bonus range. However, she is actually by far one of the slowest RL units when it comes to attack speed due to forced animation. In layman's terms, in addition to the usual charging time, she takes an extra 0.8s per swing without Mode B and 0.4s per swing with Mode B active. This animation cannot be shortened with charge speed. This highly discourages uncharged attacks (or fast-tapping), but fortunately her kit revolves around fully charged attacks to deal maximum damage.

That aside, she possesses a unique burst skill that activates Mode B, which continually devours her HP in exchange for a slight ATK and Charge Speed boost as long as her HP stays above 40%. This prompts her to avoid hits as much as possible (one hit, and your buff is gone) and be adequately healed to achieve maximum uptime from this buff. The recovery needed will depend on A2's MAX HP, as higher HP results in more HP loss per second overall as well as a higher threshold. In other words, although higher MAX HP means she can survive brutal hits, at the same time it will also be harder to keep her healthy. Taunters can help redirect attacks away from her, but this is unnecessary for Solo Raids (more on that below).

Mode B is permanently active if A2's HP is always above 40%, but her S1 is not. This means you still need to burst with her regardless of whether Mode B is active.

A similar drawback also applies to ATK. Naturally, she has high damage multipliers but few ATK buffs, which allows her output to scale rapidly with attack OL and buffs from support units. However, higher ATK also means she might become the primary target of Solo Raid bosses, whose attacks will in turn deactivate her Mode B and decrease her total damage. In fact, her Mode B is also equivalent to having an almost permanent ATK buff, so pay attention to that too. To compensate this, you can always pair her with taunters or, in Solo Raids, consistently-high-ATK units such as Guilty, Modernia, Scarlet, or 2B. Any other units with higher base stats and more ATK rolls than her also work.

Remember, more is good but excessive is bad! The game starts from building optimal teams that can take advantage of each character's strengths and counterbalance their weaknesses.

Performance Analysis

A2 sees a lot of potential use in campaign and bossing, especially the ones with more than two parts. In campaign, her increased explosion range can cover nearly the entire map, allowing her to clean all raptures at once, like a sandstorm! It will also sometimes bypass certain types of shield. In bossing, she is able to conveniently hit multiple parts, even if they are distant from one another. One well-targeted rocket will damage them altogether, multiplying the damage by the number of parts affected on top of the Part Damage and Additional Damage (only once per enemy regardless of the number of parts) buffs provided by S2. That being said, her damage on bosses without parts is just grim.

Some testing shows that against bosses with 2 or more parts, a highly invested A2 has the potential to outdamage Alice and even Modernia. This might not apply to everyone, but her damage seems to be promising!

When it comes to PvP, she might not be the best, but if you do not own other units, you are always free to use her. Without Mode B, she is capable of hitting the target plus two adjacent Nikkes at once. With Mode B, she is capable of hitting every enemy unit at the same time (starting at S1 level 7). However, her damage is on the low side, so do not hold too much expectation. Her damage is also gradual (hence, she will likely die to units that have tons of gradual healing or units with instant or nearly instant damage like Scarlet or SAnis). Moreover, since the Additional Damage instance of S2 does not trigger on covers, her burst generation is similar to that of a normal RL (like Laplace or Noise) but instead works at timings of 1.5 RL, 3 RL, and so on.

If you want the equation, A2 hits 3 Nikkes * 2 ticks each plus 3 covers, resulting in 9 * 1.3% = 11.7% burst generation per hit.

Skill investment

Start at 5/5/5. Upgrade skills as needed for tiny boosts of damage. The damage increase from S1, S2, and Burst are independent of each other, so they stack multiplicatively. To conserve materials, it may be wiser to upgrade Burst only when your healers cannot keep up. Save your manuals for other units such as 2B and future units (anniversary imminent).

Team Composition

She is decent against bosses with parts, in which case she should enter one of your best teams. Against bosses with no parts, you can consider putting her in one of your worst teams instead. The support buffs that she mainly wants are ATK, Charge Speed, Charge Damage, and Part Damage. CRIT buffs are also acceptable (but NOT Mast). Max Ammo is relevant only if you do not have any Max Ammo OL.

Here are two requirements when building A2's team:

• You need at least one healer for A2, which can be in B1, B2, or B3 positions.

• in Solo Raids, A2 should be paired with a taunter if damage cannot be evaded, or she must not have the highest ATK at any time. The last two Solo Raid bosses prioritize hitting units with the highest ATK (so they are technically taunters without taunting skills). Some units have an ATK stat that fluctuates, such as Alice. This can be hard to work with. Remember, OL lines can change how a unit functions! For example, if your Alice has 2 ATK lines, and your A2 has zero, then Alice will be targeted all the time.