Dorothy: Serendipity Early Analysis – Should You Pull?

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Overview

• Strongest Shotgun DPS of Today.
• PvE Raid Oriented Unit (5th team meta before Favorite Item changes).
• The only relevant pierce-Water DPS.
• Comparable to Ludmilla: Winter Owner even outside of Tove teams.
• Upcoming Tove and Poli Favorite Items may solidify Dorothy: Serendipity’s place in the meta.
• Ammo Hungry: Requires ammo lines and bastion cube levels to function properly, or a team with reload buffs.

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Should You Pull?

Yes, Dorothy: Serendipity is well positioned to be a staple water DPS. She is viable outside of Tove and Leona teams, making her a crucial addition to any account.

In addition, she is a limited unit, which will make her difficult to acquire later on.

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For Newbies/Incomplete Teams

Dorothy: Serendipity is a bossing focused Nikke. While viable in campaign, you likely have or will soon find better options for pushing deep into campaign. That being said, Dorothy is well positioned to be a staple inclusion in future raid content and is on-paper the strongest shotgun DPS to date.

Players who are missing Ludmilla: Winter Owner should definitely consider pulling Dorothy: Serendipity, as she can act a side-grade to the former even outside of Tove teams. She is perfectly serviceable with Crown-MMast-Helm teams, which help alleviate her ammo issues. Being a limited unit also means that she won’t be attainable for a long time after her banner ends, which can hurt your roster later down the line.

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Basic Information

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Normal Attack Information

Ammo Capacity: 9
Reload Time: 1.50s
Affects target(s).
Deals 201.5% of ATK as damage.
Deals 200% damage when attacking core.

Dorothy: Serendipity’s weapon is, unfortunately, the most disappointing part about her kit.

Her normal attack multiplier starts on the low side relative to most shotgun DPS, having the same values as supporters like Leona and below even Noir. In comparison, the current meta-shotgun DPS, Soda: Twinkling Bunny, has a normal attack multiplier of 231.6%- nearly ~115% of Dorothy’s normal attack multiplier. This is a big deal since 100% of Dorothy’s damage comes from normal attacks and a low multiplier for her weapon will weaken her buff-to-DPS scaling.

Being a full-reload shotgun, Dorothy’s burst generation is expected to be average at best, similar to Privaty: Unkind Maid and significantly behind clip-reload burst batteries like Soda: Twinkling Bunny and Drake, which hinders her viability in PvP.

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Skill 1: Flash

Activates when hitting the target with 80 pellets. Affects self.
Gains Pierce for 3 round(s).
Hit Rate ▲ 98.18% for 3 round(s).
Attack damage ▲ 72% for 3 round(s).
Pellet count is fixed at 1 for 3 round(s).

Activates when hitting the target with 160 pellets. Affects self.
Expands Pierce range by 200% for 3 round(s).

Dorothy is the second shotgun DPS following Privaty: Unkind Maid to scale her damage based off of the number of pellets landed. At base, an 80-pellet trigger requirement means firing a minimum of 8 shots, afterward Dorothy’s next 3 shots will be fixed to become 1-pellet pierce bullets, and the 98.13% hit rate buff ensures that that they can connect with cores. Switching to 1-pellet also increases the amount of overkill pierce damage Dorothy can do in one shot, especially since they are dealt with a hefty 72% Damage Up buff at Lv10.

As for the expanded pierce effect, while it is a nice-to-have, this effect is generally not a big deal due to how long it takes to proc it.

As the pierce bullets are fixed to only 1 pellet/shot, this means that at a baseline of 10 pellets, ~28% of Dorothy’s bullets will be piercing shots at 10.7 bullets/cycle.

At 15 pellets, ~36% of Dorothy’s bullets will be piercing shots at 8.13 bullets/cycle.

At 20 pellets, ~43.8% of Dorothy’s bullets will be piercing shots at 6.85 bullets/cycle.

However, despite this low uptime, due to the high amount of damage up Dorothy gains when firing pierce shots, around ~2/3 of her damage comes from these shots.

Skill 2: Radiant Wings

Activates when entering battle. Affects self.
Pierce damage ▲ 55.08% continuously.

Activates only during Full Burst. Affects self.
ATK ▲ 75.24% continuously.
Hit Rate ▲ 40.68% continuously.

This is a simple skill that increases Dorothy’s ATK, pierce shot damage (additive with S1 and other sources of [Attack damage]), and hit rate to ensure she can land her pellets more consistently. While this won’t allow Dorothy to land core hits with her normal attacks at range, it will let her comfortably land pellets on wide targets at short-to-medium range, which is her primary use case.

Burst: False Salvation

Affects self.
Attack speed ▲ 65% for 15 sec.
ATK ▲ 88.12% for 15 sec.
Number of pellets ▲ 5 for 15 sec.

Dorothy’s burst effect is very simple, at Lv10 it gives her:

• One of the fattest self-ATK buffs in the game.
• Raises her attack speed from 1.5 bullets/s -> 2.475 bullets/s, or in the case of Tove, 2.13 bullets/s -> 3.11 bullets/s
• Raises her pierce uptime from ~28% -> ~36%, or ~36% -> ~43.8%

While the attack speed buffs are powerful due to being a separate multiplier from pure damage buffs, they also make Dorothy very ammo hungry and reliant on extra ammo lines from her overloads.

With Tove, Dorothy can fire up to 47 bullets within her own burst. This requires a minimum clip size of 32 bullets with Bastion Cube to achieve. Since Tove adds up to 6 bullets to her clip, this would require Dorothy to have 26 bullets from just OLs (or 21 with Noir), which means ~3 ammo lines.

However, shotgun teams tend to compress much of their damage within the first 10 seconds of their burst, which is when Tove burst and Drake S1 (w/Favorite Item) is active, which only requires a minimum clip size of 22 before reloading (16 with just OLs). This means the first 1-2 ammo lines are much more impactful than the 3rd, with the 1st being more powerful than an ATK line.

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Campaign

Dorothy is expected to be viable in campaign at low deficits, but otherwise not recommended. Her need to land pellets against small targets to activate her pierce effect combined with the range expansion effect taking 160 pellets to activate makes using her very awkward compared to characters like Asuka, who can start piercing just by activating burst.

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Arena

Dorothy is expected to be weak in PvP due to being a full reload shotgun and thus likely having weak burst generation. Her relevant PvP abilities and buffs trigger too slowly to make a difference in Arena, and you have to question why you would use Dorothy over a clip-reload shotgun instead (besides for CP padding.). In the current PvP landscape, there are much better options that can go with.

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Special Interception | Union Raid | Solo Raid

Bossing is Dorothy: Serendipity’s primary niche. While already considered strong enough to substitute with Ludmilla: Winter Owner in the existing meta, the upcoming Tove & Poli Favorite Items are expected to push her even further into meta relevancy. Even if these two updates prove to be terrible, Dorothy will likely remain a staple in water weak solo raids due to overall weakness of the water element compared to its peers.

Tove Teams

Tove teams are fairly straightforward, being composed of Tove + 1-2 supports + Soda: Twinkling Bunny + 1 DPS. Drake (w/Favorite Item+3) is a valid substitute for Soda: Twinkling Bunny if you do not own her.

Tove,Blanc,Dorothy: Serendipity,Soda: Twinkling Bunny,Noir Tia,Tove,Naga,Dorothy: Serendipity,Soda: Twinkling Bunny Tove,Grave,Dorothy: Serendipity,Soda: Twinkling Bunny,Drake Tove,Leona,Dorothy: Serendipity,Soda: Twinkling Bunny,Drake

Contrary to what you may expect, Leona is not Dorothy’s best support, mainly because Leona’s crit buffs are relatively ineffective on Dorothy due to the latter’s lack of built-in crit-steroids. While Leona is still perfectly serviceable, the Blanc and Naga options also splash in often needed healing as well. Naga in particular is more effective with Dorothy due to the latter’s ability to reliably connect with cores when piercing.

Non-Tove Team (Ludmilla Replacement)

These teams are side-grades to the same team with Ludmilla: Winter Owner.

Liter,Crown,Helm,Dorothy: Serendipity,Mast: Romantic Maid Liter,Crown,Helm,Dorothy: Serendipity,Naga

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Strengths

• Great against raids bosses with permanent double hits (e.g. Material H, Blacksmith) or blocked cores (e.g. Ultra, upcoming Kraken raid).
• Can be used in Tove teams outside of Water Weak Solo Raids.
• Can replace Ludmilla: Winter Owner for players who are missing her.
• Viable outside of Tove teams, not married to any particular support.
• Strong at mid-invested overloads due to high self-buffs (e.g. only element, low ATK lines)
• Has great potential with upcoming Tove & Poli Favorite Items.
• Has a cute butt 🍑

Weaknesses

• Needs 1-2 ammo lines.
• One of the weaker 1% banner rate units, compared to banners like Little Mermaid, Rapi, etc. (without accounting for Tove Favorite Item).
• Scales worse with ATK buffs due to oversaturation.
• Optimally played with Tove, which lowers her team DPS ceiling.
• Resource hungry for skills, doll levels, and overload lines.

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Recommended Cubes

bastion cube,resilience cube

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Doll Priority

As Dorothy is a shotgun unit who deals all of her damage via normal attacks, equipping SR+15 doll on Dorothy will raise her damage by 9.46% from the Normal Attack Multiplier increase effect alone, not to mention the raw stats dolls give. If you are interested in Water-Weak Solo/Union Raid content, raising Dorothy: Serendipity’s doll to SR+15 is top priority.

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Expected Skill Priority

Nikke	Budget Skill Investments	Recommended Skill Investments	Skill Priority	Notes	Investment Priority
Dorothy: Serendipity	Skill 1: 7 Skill 2: 7 Burst: 7	Skill 1: 10 Skill 2: 10 Burst: 10	S2 > S1	This is assuming that leveling S1 does not decrease the number of pellets required to trigger her pierce shot; otherwise, the priority is inverted. Upgrading all of Dorothy’s skills will likely lead to a noticeable increase in damage.	Highest

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Overload Gear Priority

Gear Priority / Head > Gloves > Chest > Boots

Line Priority / 1st Ammo > 4x Element > 2nd Ammo = 4x ATK > 3rd Ammo > Crit Rate >~ Crit Damage

Attribute (Sub-Stat)	Priority	Recommended	Notes
Increase Element Damage Dealt	★★★★★	4x	Wanted for Union Raids and Solo Raid content.
Increase Hit Rate	☆☆☆☆☆	0x	—
Increase Max Ammunition Capacity	★★★★☆	2-3x	Ammo is needed to keep Dorothy firing, the first ammo line is absolutely mandatory.
Increase ATK	★★★★★	4x	Simply more damage.
Increase Charge Damage	☆☆☆☆☆	0x	—
Increase Charge Speed	☆☆☆☆☆	0x	—
Increase Critical Rate	☆☆☆☆☆	0-2x	Half as valuable as ATK.
Increase Critical Damage	☆☆☆☆☆	0-2x	A little less valuable than Crit Rate.
Increase DEF	☆☆☆☆☆	0x	—

(Hit Rate is not recommended as it does not improve the use cases Dorothy shines in, although it may be nice to have in some niche situations)