Clay Analysis and Theorycraft – Should You Pull?

The Non-Meta Cheer Leader

Note: This was made first day of release of Clay. A more detailed analysis and guide will be published once testing has been done after her release.


Basic Information

  • Skill 1: Don’t Miss!
  • Skill 2: Wake Up!
  • Burst: Go! Go! Victory
  • Cooldown: 40s
  • Rarity: SSR
  • Burst: II
  • Weapon: SMG
  • Class: Submachine Gun
  • Element: Electric
  • Manufacturer: Tetra
  • Squad: Rewind
  • Weapon Name: You Can Do it!

Skills

Skill 1: Don’t Miss!

Activates after landing 60 normal attack(s) during Full Burst Time. Affects all allies.
Victorious Battle Cry: True Damage ▲ 6.45%, stacks up to 3 time(s) and lasts for 6 sec.
When attacking an enemy projectile. damage to that projectile ▲ 45.05% for 6 sec.

This skill provides a unique buff that can be absolutely used by NOBODY except Laplace as of now. True damage are basically attacks that ignore def. Which usually equates to a 30%~ ATK buff (Varies on Content) in PvE content that has Sync’d levels and doesn’t have combat power penalties.

True damage ▲ basically multiplies damage dealt by skills/attacks that have the true damage attribute. Which is only currently found in Laplace’s burst skill (With the exception of Frima and Exia Treasure Skills)

Not only that, every full burst will realistically start at 0 stacks because of how short the stacks last, as it is NOT long enough to persist between full bursts (Actually dumb). If full burst expires before getting a stack in, the left over bullets needed to gain a stack will be carried over.

Laplace Buster (Laplace Burst)

Affects the same enemy unit(s) when Hero Vision is fully stacked. Deals 11.9% of final ATK as true damage.

Even if you find a way to have full stacks with clay along side Laplace’s burst, it only applies to the tick damage after initial burst. for a total of 97~ hits (193 hits with treasure). The initial big hit at the start of the burst should not be buffed by this skill.

The expected formula would be:

11.9% (base value) x 97 (total hits) x 1.31 True Damage ▲ (Total True damage buffs from Clay) = 1,522.63% ATK (Excluding Full burst Multiplier, Core Hits, Etc etc)

While it does looks like it’s a substantial boost, this only applies to her burst, which is only a margin of total damage she does in a full boss run/stage.

In other words, the buff sucks even when considering the current cast (literally just Laplace) that is able to take advantage of this buff

Skill 2 – Wake up!

Activates when entering Burst stage I. Affects all allies
Immune to 1 debuff(s) for 10 sec.
Only activates when in Victorious Battle Cry status. Affects all allies
ATK ▲ 20.07% of caster’s ATK continuously.

A pretty niche skill. There’s only a few bosses/raptures in the game that can inflict debuffs, and most of them are avoidable (Crystal Chamber, Doktor, and Elite Campaign Rapture Debuffers). But can definitely be a option if the Commander doesn’t have other answers to these raptures.

Her ATK buff activates if there’s at least one stack of her skill 1. The uptime is rather inconsistent due to being able to drop stacks multiple times in a round.

Her Immunity to Debuff also applies to Privaty’s debuff, or other sources of debuffs Nikke’s self inflict (Does not include HP drain). This includes Privaty’s Half mag debuff, Anis: Sparkling Summer’s Mag reduction, A2’s Burst.

HOWEVER the buffs will still apply (Except for A2). Which means that the team can benefit from Privaty’s Reload buff without the mag reduction, which is pretty nifty for beginner Commanders who have only have long reload DPS’s and very incomplete boxes

Burst – GO! GO! Victory!

Affects all allies.
True Damage ▲ 12.56% for 10 sec.
Affects self.
Normal attacks deal true damage for 10 sec.

Her burst is mostly useless for now unless pairing her with Laplace, and even then, it’s not good at all. At least Clay can deal slightly more normal ATK damage via self true damage application


Campaign

Clay holds no place in general campaign usage. Despite being able to negate an instance of debuff, it’s barely worth slotting her as Clay forces a 1-2-2 formation because of a 40s burst cooldown.

Because of her kit nature, it’s possible that her ATK buff won’t even have half uptime due to weapon accuracy.


PvP

SMG, No buffs until full burst mode, buffs are Mediocre, no burst generation

Enough said.


Special Interception | Solo Raid | Union Raid

A Competitor to Ade when it comes to boss content that are able to debuff your team. Clay is also able to negate Privaty’s mag debuff, which can be useful with Commanders that have very incomplete Nikke rosters

Privaty, Clay Beginner Cope (Special Interception)

Liter,Clay,Supporter,Attacker,Privaty

Since Clay can consistently negate Privaty’s mag debuff, Beginners who have DPS’s that have long reload times such as Scarlet, Modernia, and etc can be used. Not exactly Ideal, but it has some synergy.

Solo Raid | Union Raid

Nothing much to say here. Clay will be mostly used in last teams just to negate any debuffs bosses will throw. Clay will force a 1-2-2 Rotation. Since Burst I CDR’s are in demand for the much better teams, Burst I slot will most likely be a healer, and the paired Burst II will be a CDR.


Should you pull?

No.

Wishlist if Waifu (Still not recommended)

They seem to be setting up a new true damage meta in the future. But even then, her base kit is pretty horrid. Frima with her treasure offers much better buffs if there is to be a future true damage meta.


Expected Ratings

Rough estimations of ratings for Clay.

CategoryRating
OverallC
StoryC
BossesC
ArenaD

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Valkkin
Valkkin

Valkkin has been an avid gamer ever since birth. Writing nerdy and light-hearted guides while despising math. Support his work on Ko-fi!

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17 Comments

  1. Hi, good day!

    Sorry for may bad english.

    I like the effect of True Damage for characters who come in the future. Sadly Clay has very low buffs and her first ability is a meme.

    This may sound absurd, but if we remove Clay for a future character with better skills and Buffs, could she be paired with Frima and Laprace? Since Frima is Burst 1 with 20 seconds of Cooldown.

    Thank you very much for the analysis!

  2. Are you 100% sure you’re not misunderstanding the skill description?
    How I understood it, is that Clay gives true damage to her teammates, meaning, if you have Scarlet for example, now she’s given 12,56% true damage on top of her normal damage.

    I feel like it’d be a MASSIVE oversight to have a character that would literally buff only a single character in the entire game, and just their burst.
    So, what are the chances that they made this oversight, or that the skill actually gives true damage for everybody, and doesn’t just buff sources of existing true damage?

    • Pretty positive as her buffs are formulated the same way as DKW’s Pierce buffs are formulated.

      There is another characters that can benefit from her true Damage buffs currently in addition to Laplace who deals True damage with her burst: Frima (with her Favorite Item). She deals true damage with her normal attacks for 10s after firing 6 Full Charge shots.

    • Actually, I would expect this kind of oversight from the devs, considering how they released Trony and Elegg. You would think Trony would gain increased damage from distributed damage buffs, but it actually only increases the damage cap she can stack. Also even though there was only 3(not counting Trony) nikkes with distributed damage(one of them is limited), Elegg got released as a distributed damage buffer, and she isn’t even that good at it.

      And these are only what I remember of weird designs in the game, and it hasn’t been that much since I started this game. Sadly, some characters are just created weak in this game.

    • This was what I was excited for, is another multiplier of atk dmg through true damage. I also understood it as she gives allies true damage.

  3. It looks like it will take some time before Bay becomes usable. it looks like for her to be remotely close to viable you need to get both Laplace’s and Frima’s Favorite items

  4. so is this why clay isnt on the tier list? due to her kit? or did yall forget to add her to the tierlist

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