Kilo Arena Review

Time to talk a bit more in-depth about Kilo! Turns out, after learning some… Interesting information, she has quite a bit more potential than anticipated, so the free welfare unit may actually be very good for PvP this time around.

Skills Overview

First, a quick overview on her abilities:

– Kilo’s S1 gives her a shield upon entering battle, and refreshes said shield upon using her Burst Skill.
– Her S2 heals her cover after a certain number of attacks, and increases the shield’s max HP every time she Bursts, up to 3 times.
– Her Burst deals damage to all enemies equal to 5% of Kilo’s HP if she has her shield up, or increases her max HP if her shield is down.

The skills are fairly straightforward, if she has her shield up she has a seriously potent nuke, otherwise she’s useless.

The Shields “Quirk”

Given she’s an MG, she would get destroyed by Scarlet, since she’d make Scarlet hit her with a lot of S2s, breaking her shield in the process and making Kilo useless… Is what I would’ve said in the Early Thoughts, and what I’d say now, if it wasn’t because that’s actually not what happens. In reality, there’s been a “quirk” regarding shields in Arena for a while, where they are basically ignored if you use certain sources of damage, mainly the ones that don’t have travel time and are instant, like Scarlet’s Burst. As it turns out, within the chaotic jungle that PvP can be, Scarlet’s S2 also seems to skip shields completely, at least against Kilo. This means that Scarlet can’t break Kilo’s shield, which also means that Scarlet isn’t really a counter to Kilo, which in turn means pretty much nothing can stop Kilo from using her nuke burst if you teambuild properly.

Role and Place in the Meta

I want to make something clear with this: I personally don’t think this is an intended mechanic of shields, and think this could get patched in the future, making Kilo less viable. However, given that we currently exist in the reality where this is a thing, I’ll talk about her utility and viability with this interaction.

On her own, Kilo is a pretty serious nuke that has some of the same benefits as 2B, mainly being that she doesn’t compete with supports with the other nukers. Other nukers want Atk buffs, while Kilo and 2B scale their damage with HP, so you can use Nikkes such as Noise or Mast to buff their nuke’s damage. Her Burst also hits really hard on her own, so just Noise is enough for a lot of one-shots, which is fantastic for Attack teams.

On top of this, due to her interaction with shields, she can be run in Defense as a good 3rd team unit, although don’t expect her to be unstoppable: just like with any 1-hit nuke, she gets countered by the likes of Noah and Bay, and an enemy Noise makes nuking harder for her.

Sample Team Comps

The most basic pairing in these comps is Kilo + Noise. Noise helps against enemy nukes and increases your own Kilo’s Burst damage. After that, you can just run batteries to get the team to 3RL and play around with 1 flex slot (you could also run Kilo Noise + 3 clip SGs). I would discourage running Kilo alongside Jackal, since she could share damage to Kilo, which may break her shield and render her useless.

If you want the strongest nuke Kilo can offer for Attack, your best bet is gonna be Kilo Noise + your pick of Blanc, Crown or Mast, depending on investment and your other Attack teams. Fill with batteries to get to 3RL.

Closing thoughts

Overall, Kilo has turned out to be a really good unit that can even be run on Defence, although that may change in the future if it turns out to be a bug, or if something else breaks in Arena. For the time being, Kilo is a unit worth the attention of PvP enthusiasts, which is a welcome surprise for a free unit.