PVP Burst Energy Generation

This guide has been created by awesome21snake. If you have any feedback about the guide, catch him on our Discord!

Before going anywhere near charts, numbers and calculations, I will try to explain all the terminologies that people use when talking about Burst Gen. I would like to thank this epic NGA pvp guide for their burst gen calculation ideas, Nikke.gg for their basic definitions, along with the amazing PvP specialists in our maid team of Nikke Community Server: cleancascade, Scy_v4x, KosMiu, who helped to perfect PvP burst gen calculation; and zixk98 for helping with the new PvP charts.

Burst energy gauge/bar

The burst gauge is what needs to be filled in order to get to full burst. Burst energy is used to fill the burst gauge. The following flowchart shows the stages the burst gauge goes through:

Empty Burst gauge

Burst gauge after Nikkes hit shots on opponents - generating burst energy

Burst gauge when it becomes full (B1, B2 and then B3 stage)

Full Burst stage which slowly drains

When the burst gauge meter fills to full, your burst 1 character will start the burst chain and use her burst. One character each will burst in order from burst 1 -> burst 2 -> burst 3. In auto mode, which is the mode in pvp, units on the left (i.e. units who are in positions prior to the other units from left to right) will take priority when there are two or more of the same burst type.

In the case above, Liter would burst first since she was in position 2 while Jackal was in position 4. Similarly, Scarlet would burst instead of Noir because Scarlet is in position 1 while Noir is in Position 5. Note: There is a delay between appearance and activation of each Burst Stage.

With this, we can now move on to what burst energy is and how it works for different Nikkes in pvp.

Burst energy generation/Burst gen/Burst energy

Every time a Nikke lands a hit, they generate burst energy. It is important to note that this is per hit, so RL hits can generate more burst gen naturally since they hit more than one opponent in normal situations. Each unit has a specific burst gen per hit value. Some units generate more burst energy than others, even if they are of the same weapon type. Exact values will be discussed later.

Note: Extra hits (Modernia s2) and counter attacks (Scarlet s2 or Jackal s1) count as hits, and generate the same burst gen value as the Nikke’s base burst gen value.

Different weapon types generate more energy per hit. It is important to bring enough burst energy generation since faster bursts have an easier time winning in PvP.

Weapon Type	Burst Gauge Generation	Units
Rocket Launcher (Clip RL)	Very high energy generation
Shotgun (Clip SG)	High energy generation
Rocket Launcher (Mag RL)	Good energy generation	All other Rocket Launchers (some anomalies like Pascal or A2 who generate High burst gen)
Shotgun (Mag SG)	Some energy generation	All other Shotguns
Sniper Rifle	Low energy generation	Sniper Rifles (some anomalies like Nihilister or Harran who can generate High Burst Gen)
Assault Rifle	Very Low energy generation	Assault Rifles (some anomalies e.g. Scarlet who generates Good burst gen)
Submachine Gun	Poor energy generation	All Submachine Guns (some anomalies e.g. Ludmilla who generates Low burst gen)
Machine Gun	Poor energy generation	All Machine Guns (some anomalies e.g. Modernia who generates Low Burst gen)

How Burst gen for units is calculated for different weapon types

This has been explained before in The Basics

• RL hitting P1/P5 can cause AOE damage to 4 targets which are P1+P2+P1 cover+P2 cover, so the burst gen of that particular RL is 4× her normal burst gen value; RL hitting P2/P3/P4 can cause AOE damage to 6 targets. Therefore, it is 6× the normal burst gen of the Nikke.
• RL and SR can enter cover between shots and can dodge incoming projectiles of opponent RLs. We call this phenomenon "Rocket whiffing" or “i-framing”. If this event occurs, the fire focus party will lose tremendous amounts of burst gen, and this can be the deciding factor of a win or a loss in 95% of matchups.
• Some Nikkes have skills that can give extra burst gen, such as Scarlet’s skill 2, Jackal’s skill 1, Harran’s skill 1, Modernia’s skill 1. The charging amount that is triggered once is the basic energy, Scarlet: 0.45, Jackal: 3.55, Modernia: 0.05, Harran: 2.9.
• Nihilister, A2, and Pascal are special Nikkes in their weapon types:
• Nihilister has higher burst gen than other SRs due to her skills. Second shot onwards, Nihilister gets pierce, damages cover and Nikke and that counts as hitting 2 enemies, and then she deals extra damage to both cover and Nikke due to her skill 2, hitting 4 times every shot.
• A2 is a slower shooting RL than other RLs. She shoots 2 bullets for every 3 bullets normal RLs shoot. However due to her base splash radius being higher than other RLs, she hits P1+P2+P3+cover of all 3, making her burst gen 6× the normal burst gen per shot.
• Pascal is an automatic RL. His base burst gen value is lower than other RLs but she shoots faster than them. Pascal shoots 6 bullets for every 3 bullets normal RLs shoot. However, he wastes one of his bullets by hitting the ground due to an ongoing bug. Thanks to Keripo for publicising this!
• Dual-wielders like Noah, Soline, Crow and Quency shoot only from one gun in PvP, and thus their burst gen is halved.

I believe we now should have a decent understanding of what Burst energy is, and how it is different for each Nikke. I think it’s time to understand how we define the speeds in which teams burst in PvP Arena.

Since the burst gen of different Nikkes varies a lot, weapons that can generate a large amount of burst gen are often used as measurement units to calculate the burst gen of a particular team. These weapons are Rocket launchers and Clip shotguns.

Note: Reaching Full Burst Gauge means reaching the B1 stage, not reaching full burst.

• A high-speed team generally refers to a team that can reach full burst gauge when the third shot of "1s charge time RL" is hit, abbreviated as: “3RL team”.
• A very high-speed team generally refers to a team that can have a full burst gauge with 2 shots of "1s charge time RL". The team that can reach full burst when the second shot hits, are referred to as: “2 RL team”.
• Teams that can get to a full burst gauge when Clip SGs shoot 5 times are referred to as: “5SG or 2.5RL team”.
• The term 2.5RL is used since they burst between 2RL and 3RL teams.

Note: 2 shots of 1s charge time RL does not mean 2 seconds. Due to delays in RL travel time and RLs going into cover for a few frames, it is actually ~2.5 seconds. Additional Note: 2RL does not mean that there are 2 Rocket Launchers in the team. If you think that, please read this page again!!

Now similarly, a 4RL team will be a team that gets a full burst gauge in 4 RL shots. And a 3.5RL team will be a team that can get a full burst gauge between 3 and 4RL shots. A 3.5RL team will also be called the 7SG team (i.e. a team that reaches full burst gauge in 7 SG shots).

Note: Teams that are slower than 4RL are not recommended for use, since they take too long to give any positive output.

The following is a ranking of the speeds,

Additional information: 2RL≈4SG, 3RL ≈ 6SG shots, 4RL ≈ 8SG shots.

I believe everyone should know now how the speeds of teams are named, which teams are fast and which teams are slow.

With the following Burst Gen Value Charts, a team's Burst Speed can be accurately calculated. The following table does not take into account:

• Rocket whiffing/i-framing
• Charge Speed
• Quantum Relic Cube
• Situations where RL only hits 1 or 3 opponents, and
• the situation where cover disappears.

It assumes the following:

• Scarlet has enough ammo to constantly shoot during the time duration.
• Pascal has enough ammo to constantly shoot during the time duration.
• Anis: Sparkling Summer has a resilience cube and no extra ammo through OL gear or Harmony Cubes.

Note: Due to this, teams with no Max Ammo Overload gear stat on Scarlet, non-Wingman cube or no Max ammo Overload gear stat on Pascal, or non-reload cube Anis:SS may have lower burst than what you calculate using this chart.

Jackal, Scarlet, and Harran have a “+” sign in front of her burst gen value, since they produce extra burst gen due to their skills. Additional Burst gen of Scarlet and Harran is RNG based, while Jackal’s is definitive under certain conditions which will be explained later. Hence, Jackal’s extra burst gen is of high value and the reason why “Jackal feed charts” exist.

Select 5 Nikkes. If the sum of the corresponding values is greater than 100, then this team will have Burst Speed equal to what is mentioned in the title of the Burst Gen Value Chart.

TLDR: If sum of values of 5 Nikkes in team > 100, Speed of team = Speed mentioned in Chart title.

Lvl 1, Lvl 3, Lvl 7 Quantum Cubes have the following set of values respectively: 2.33%, 3.5%, 4.66%. Randomly putting this cube is useless, but using it to increase a burst Gen Tier is possible. (e.g if your Burst Gen Speed in a Tier has a Value of 99.8, using a lvl3 cube on Laplace will make the Value 100.2, and hence it will upgrade Burst Gen Speed Tier).

Any Nikke with this cube equipped will have her burst gen increased by x% (value of Quantum Cube), according to the burst gen of the Nikke in the Value Charts for the respective speeds.

Examples:

• Laplace Burst Gen in 3RL speed: 17.4; in 4RL: 23.2
• After lvl3 cube is equipped, Laplace Burst Gen in 3RL speed = 17.4 × 102.33% = 17.8
• After lvl7 cube is equipped, Laplace Burst Gen in 4RL speed = 23.2 × 104.66% = 24.2

Lightning fast burst speed Value Chart

For a team that fully charges when 2 RL shots hit, around 2.5 seconds to fill gauge.

Very Fast Burst Speed Value Chart

For teams that fully charge when 5 SG shots hit (2.5RL).