Table of Contents
Welcome to our new Nikke PvP guide series – PvP Focus! Here, we hope to deliver PvP focused content and news for any new Nikkes released that may have proper PvP use. Keep in mind that a lot of common PvP terms/slang will be used in this guide, which can be clarified in this guide:
Let’s dive straight right into Cinderella’s abilities, then.
TLDR
Cinderella is best described as a DPS unit with a gimmicky Nuke, similar to S.Sakura, but she has some extra good and bad gimmicks as well since she is a Defender unit and has a decoy. One thing to note is that while RLs are famous for having good Burst Generation, Cinderella is an exception to this since she has one of the lowest burst generation in the game…
Step-by-step Analysis
Burst generation: Usually, players are told that Rocket Launchers are good units to use for Burst Gen in PvP. However, today that is not the case. Cinderella holds the title for the Rocket Launcher with the absolute worst Burst Generation in the game.
Source: Kosmiu’s Burst Generation Calculator –
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11KWYeyvef91A-vfFuqglJJ8-OhR90TcKFVpJ6Ny_5h4/edit?gid=1990278246#gid=1990278246
As you can see, her Burst Gen is lower than even Machine Guns! The reason for this is due to the weird way of how her basic attacks shoot out and are designed. Firstly, similar to Scarlet: Black Shadow, she can only hit 1 unit since her projectile splash radius is very small. This gets worse since usually, hitting one unit should mean that she should get at least 3 hits: 2 on the Nikke (direct damage + additional damage tick from S1), and 1 on the Nikke’s cover. However, this is not always the case. Her basic attack sometimes hits ONLY the Nikke, giving 2 hits in total. Even more bizarre is that they sometimes ONLY hit the cover, giving only 1 hit! This means that Cinderella can possibly have even lower Burst Gen than what is listed, since the average hits taken per shot in the above Calculator are 2 per hit.
Reference for Cinderella’s Burst Generation
Cinderella’s projectile clearly only hit Noah’s cover on her 3rd shot.
DPS output
We can judge DPS output in 3 parts: Before Full Burst, Start of Full Burst and during the 10s of Full Burst. Before Full Burst, she is incapable of dealing proper damage since she is hitting not only one unit, but is also just a normal Defender RL without any buffs. Cinderella’s main damage comes through her Burst, which has a nuke. Her nuke attacks sequentially 10 times.
Each of the 5 opponent units get hit 2 times each, the value of which is buffed by her Skill 1’s HP -> ATK conversion. With one buffer, she should be able to kill all of the opponent team (currently she doesn’t even need a buffer due to the ongoing charge bug). The sequential part of her nuke can be considered as a better version compared to other nukes (like Ein’s constant AoE bombardment) and a worse version to some nukes (like Scarlet’s AoE nuke) in other ways. It is better in the sense that it cannot be taunted by say, a Biscuited Nero. Ein’s constant Nuke with Near Feathers can be taunted and stopped without the need for an AoE block like Noah or Noise. Nero & Biscuit or Moran & Biscuit are enough to invalidate her whole burst’s damage output, eventually leading to a loss. Cinderella’s burst hits sequentially, which means at best only 2 damage instances out of 10 will be blocked, allowing her to still deal damage to the remaining 4 units and win the round.
However, her nuke has one major weaknesses which is that it isn’t instantaneous. It takes a short duration for all the hits and damage to go through. Arena is a game mode where every second, every frame counts, and Cinderella falls to this untold rule as enemy Noahs and enemy Blancs can take full advantage of this short delay in her nuke. Units like Scarlet or Rei Ayanami are able to instantly nuke the opponent team, and hence are able to win 2RL vs 3RL match-ups most of the time.
This delay means that 2RL Cinderella nuke team will lose to a 3RL Noah or 3RL Blanc team in almost every match up. We say almost because sometimes Cinderella will be able to kill an important unit before Noah or Blanc activate their skills, and end up winning the round. The following videos shows such an instances happening:
Synergies and Weaknesses
Before synergies, let’s focus on some key weaknesses. Firstly, it’s her very low Burst Gen due to her basic attacks. The way her projectile bullets work is not a bug, instead we think it’s somewhat of an intended design since her base Burst Gen is also extremely low.
What is bugged, however, is that Cinderella can provide the enemy team burst generation! Almost every time, if Cinderella is slotted in P1, she will get target skipped and, instead of her, the Nikke in P2 and P3 will get focused. This means that the enemy RL units will gain burst generation.
It is also suspected that hitting Cinderella when her decoy is activated gives the enemy RLs extra Burst generation since they are able to hit the decoy + cover + Cinderella herself. Hence, whatever you do, try not to place her in P1 OR P2. This isn’t a hard and fast rule since a lot of teams force nukers to be in P1 because of their burst order, but if u can slot her in P4/5, try to do it.
Another major weakness of hers is the obvious AoE Block Queen: Noah. Noah ruins her day by blocking all her damage output, even if Noah is in a 3RL team and Cindy is in a 2RL team. Cindy can sometimes get lucky, as was shown above. Another unit that can shut down Cinderella is Blanc – again a similar problem where she will be lucky (due to random targeting) if she manages to be fast enough to kill the unit who Blanc was supposed to give her indomitability buff to. Blanc + a DPS that can kill through whatever survivability you have in your team can successfully counter Cinderella in PvP. Popular Nikkes that can do this are: S.Anis, Emilia, Scarlet, Red Hood, Quency: Escape Queen, Scarlet: Black Shadow, Alice or sometimes Ein.
As for synergies, Cinderella can essentially fit into any team as long as she isn’t a big enough detriment to the burst gen. Noah-Biscuit/Noise with Cinderella as Nuker + follow up damage dealer, Blanc with Cinderella as the nuker, Bay as B2 to block incoming nuke and allowing Cinderella to nuke them instead (good for same burst gen matchups vs instant nukes like Scarlet), the possibilities are limitless.
Impact on current meta
On our current Tier List, we believe she safely fits into the SS tier category since her Nuke is super strong and she is able to clean up well using her normal attacks if the opponent team does not have super survivability. Only 2 units properly counter her: Noah and Blanc. Otherwise, Cinderella can absolutely destroy any team that does not use either Noah or Blanc due to her super strong AoE and follow up damage as long as she can burst first, or burst at an equal time against a team which does not have the capability to instantly kill our team. Since Cinderella is a defender, she can also be used to effectively counter Rosanna, who is a B1 nuker who targets attackers.
Overall, she does not shake the meta enough since we have similar Nikkes already: Scarlet, S.Sakura, Ein, Rei Ayanami, and even Kilo. She is not even near to an SSS tier unit for PvP, all of which we believe have a permanent spot in PvP for a long time as it stands. She is more likely to be demoted to S tier in the future since the demand right now is not of DPS, but of more supports.
Team Examples
All teams can be used for attack, and if the player has enough resources for other teams, also for defence. Positioning of each nikke is very important.
2RL Fast Nuke
3RL Nuke
God Comp
Budget Meta Comps
Note: Viper does NOT have Phase 3 treasure
thanks for the pvp guide, keep them coming.
I’ve always been looking for an up to date pvp guide
Since its used right at the start: How do you even read that generation sheet? Wtf is 2 Rocketlauncher, 5 Shotgun (2.5 Rocketlauncher) even supposed to mean? lol
2 RL = team will start bursting when 2 Rocket launcher shots have been fired (Basically 2 seconds since round start)
2.5 RL = 2.5 Rocket Launcher shots (2.5 since round start), usually to achieve a x.5, Clip Shotguns are in the equation or Jackal
3 = 3 Rocket Launcher shots (3 seconds since round start)
And so on. The lower the (RL) the better it is/faster the team bursts.
https://nikke.gg/arena-mechanics/
Should have in-depth details about this
Thanks for the PvP review. Her burst generation is very different than in normal battles. It is major disappointment. Hope ShiftUp fix this.
ShitUp isn’t fixing anything unless the whales riot.