A2 Early Thoughts

Intro

Note: This was made before the release of A2, and a early Analysis will follow soon after proper testing.

Note 9/8: Skip to ending thoughts for small update.

A2 got some asset improvements in Nikke.. Alongside an SS tier Midriff, our fellow sword user Scarlet in shambles; How does she hold up against the unending raptures though? Let’s see!

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Basic Info

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Note: Assume all skills is level 10

Skill 1: Output Increased

Activates when using Burst Skill. Affects self.
Charge Damage ▲ 110.44% for 15 sec
Explosion Radius ▲ 100.74% for 15 sec.

A skill that looks weak at first glance, however. This is LITTERALLY almost a 50% Final dmg multiplier on her normal attacks as the great thing with the Charge damage buff is that it doesn’t really get diluted with the normal meta buffs such as ATK% , Damage taken Debuff, Parts taken, etc etc, it also comes with a pretty insane AoE radius buff. This means parts will be immensely easier to hit parts on multi part bosses. She might be even able to hit all 8 parts of Mother whale with the AoE buff, easily making her the best in slot unit for that boss in that case scenario.

Another note is that her Normal attack modifiers are slightly higher compared to other RL units. For comparison: A2 vs Laplace.

Has around a 7.2%~ Normal ATK increase than Laplace, who has the second highest modifier. Other RL units clock in at 61.3%

Skill 2:

Activates when hitting a target with Full Charge. Affects the target.
Deals 30.1% of final ATK as additional damage.
Activates when hitting a target with Full Charge. Affects self.
Damage to Parts ▲ 40.88% for 3 sec.
Affects self.

A Basically permanent Damage to Part multiplier, which synergizes extremely well with her skill 1. Now that the easier part is said, let’s look into the additional damage on full charge, with more maths ✨

Mini Math Section

If we get her base normal attack modifier (67.65%) and multiply that with her full charge damage (250% base + 110% from skill 1) We would get

67.65% x 3.6 = 243%~ of ATK dmg.

If we assume (Targets) Include Parts, this is a 12.3% total additional DPS from her skill 2, not including Part damage yet. Which is a pretty nice bonus.

Burst Generation

But wait, there’s more! If we assume A2’s skill two works like Nihilister’s Skill 1, in where she hits twice in one shot, while also generating twice as much burst energy, this means that A2 would be a beast in generating Burst energy in Campaign and Bosses with parts.

See video Below for reference

■ Activates when hits 2 or more enemies concurrently. Affects all enemies hit.
Deals 50.33% of final ATK as additional damage.

Nihilister Skill 1

Nihilister is show to be hitting at around 8-10 entities (environmental damage/objects included) at MOST, however her burst gen per shot/entity hit is only 2.8%. this means she would’ve generated 28% Burst energy at most, but it is shown to generate around half the full burst bar in one shot, this is thanks to her skill 1 as it counts it as a separate “hit” that also generates burst energy. Similar mechanics should also be present for A2

Nihilister

Burst: Mode B

Affects self.
Mode B:
Own HP decreases every second while ATK and Charge Speed increase.
If own HP dips below 40%, Mode B is deactivated
Effect 1:Current HP ▼ 3.99% every I sec.
Effect 2:ATK ▲ 15.19%
Effect 3:Charge Speed ▲ 35.88%.

An interesting burst. If following the wording, her burst effects should last forever until her HP dips below 40%, which means you can have her burst and leave her as a sub-dps. But due to her skill 1 requiring her to burst, it is recommended for her to burst anyways when possible.

Despite the weak ATK buff, it is always welcomed. But the interesting effect is charge speed. 36% Charge speed is pretty significant and can always scale better with more Overloaded rolls on charge speed. However, it seems like Nikke devs are implementing anti macro/spam clicking mechanics to A2. They made the animations for A2 in where it is impossible to spam click her when testing her in Nikkepedia. This may affect her firing speed the higher her charge speed, or in general despite only full charging.

Since she is already implemented in the game, I doubt this will be changed. Will test this out when she is available to be used in all game modes.

The burst is strong purely because of the charge speed buff. When considering her skill 1 and skill 2, she’d definitely be able to dish out insane amount of damage when fighting bosses with parts.

Note: As A2 burst is current HP drain, instead of total. Healing her above 40% should be manageable with a healer. Blanc Should be able to heal her indefinitely where this shouldn’t be an issue.

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Campaign

I think A2 will be a strong campaign unit. If her skill 2 and burst generation works the way I think she does, she can replace fill Centi’s slot so another b2 can be used. Although there isn’t much B2 buffers that are strong in campaign, good contenders are Rupee (Team Atk buff), Viper (Atk buff on boss appearance), and ofc fixes Blanc + Noir energy burst gen problems.

Slot in One DPS of your choice, then helm for healing if not using Bunny team. The big limiting factor for A2 is she needs a healer so she can output a good amount of her DPS (via Burst). However, this is not mandatory as another B3 core DPS unit (ex. Modernia) Should be able to output more ST damage if that is needed more.

Liter,Blanc,A2,Scarlet,Noir

or

Liter,Rupee,A2,Scarlet,Helm

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Arena

Very hard to predict her role in Arena, her explosion radius and Burst generation (skill 2) would certainly make her a very strong contender in arena. She at least would be a strong burst generator which can enable more fast bursting teams.

Expected to be Meta in this category.

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Special Interception | Union Raid | Solo Raid

Definitely an extremely strong unit against bosses with multiple parts in all modes. She should be able to rival/slightly below Scarlet DPS with 1 part on screen (when excluding attack animation jank), let alone if there’s more.

In Special intercept, all bosses there pretty much has parts, She’d be strong in all bosses, no problems fitting her into a team (Just needs a healer).

In Union raid, she’d be more situational as not all bosses have parts. But she would EASILY find a team if the boss shows weakness and has 1 part. This assumes the part doesn’t get destroyed instantly as in more cases than not, Union raid parts have extremely low HP compared to their total health.

Solo Raid has the same reasoning as Union raid, but parts tend to be much Tankier or they regenerate often, which means she’d most likely see a lot of use there.

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Ending Thoughts

Stronk, Midriff, Booty. The holy trinity. She seems like a very solid unit that looks strong in all areas of content. However do wait for proper testing to confirm some important mechanics mentioned!

Glory to mankind.

Update 9/8: Firing delay/jank is worse than expected, and massively affects her DPS. Will explain in future analysis. Don’t use this article as a guideline to pull, unless waifu reasons.