Team Building 101: Burst and Weapon Types

Many thanks to allenwfc, Bubba, Misuzu, CCCP victim, Deliagwath, laif, Rayel, TheBoyAlex, and other helpful friends from the #Research-Dungeon thread in the NIKKE Community discord who helped make this guide possible with their valuable testing and research.

Introduction

This guide will walk you through the basics of team-building in Nikke. With this guide you can make your own teams, meta or non-meta, that work well for your account.

Burst Basics

The most important mechanic of Nikke combat is burst. Units are categorized into three burst types: burst 1 (B1), burst 2 (B2), and burst 3 (B3).

Every time a unit lands a hit, they generate burst gauge. It is important to note that this is per hit, so AoE hits can generate more burst gauge per round. (Some units generate more burst gauge than others; refer to the burst gauge generation section below or the in-depth burst gauge generation article for more information.)

When the burst gauge meter fills to full, your burst 1 character will start the burst chain and use her burst. One character each will burst in order from burst 1 -> burst 2 -> burst 3. In auto mode, units on the left will take priority when there are two or more of the same burst type. After burst 3 is used, your whole team enters full burst mode.

In full burst mode, all AI will follow their aim to where you are aiming manually. (Or all aim at the same target in auto.) Many characters also have skills that trigger when entering full burst mode, so your damage output is much higher during full burst. Full burst lasts for 10 seconds, and the burst meter is reset after it ends to start the cycle again.

Since our goal is to maximize the powerful full burst time, we want to be able to burst chain as often as possible. We must bring at least one of each burst type to fulfill the chain. Though some burst 1 and burst 2 units’ bursts have a 20 second cooldown, all burst 3 units have a 40 second cooldown. This means in order to full burst every 20 seconds, we need at least two burst 3 units.

With one burst 1, one burst 2, and two burst 3 being the requirement for any good team, this leaves a fifth slot open for a “sub” role unit. Sub is what I call a character that does not normally need to burst to be useful for the team. They either have a powerful burst with a long cooldown (Poli, Noise, etc), strong utility burst that should only be used at certain times in manual play (Rapunzel, Noah, etc), or strong skills that make them useful even without their burst (Privaty, Helm, etc). Putting a good sub in your fifth slot is key to building an optimal team.

Weapons

Next to burst types, weapon types are the second most important aspect to consider when building your team. There are many reasons to this: range, area of effect damage (AoE) vs single target damage (ST), burst gauge generation (energy support), and rate of fire (RoF). These concepts will be explained below.

There are six weapon types in Nikke:

Weapon Type	Effective Range	Area of Effect	Single Target	Burst Generation	Rate of Fire
Shotgun (SG)	Close Range	Poor (Spread)	Good	Very Good if Near	Low
Submachine Gun (SMG)	Close-Mid Range	None	Good	Poor	High
Assault Rifle (AR)	Mid Range	None	Very Good	Average	Average
Machine Gun (MG)	Mid-Far Range	None	Good	Poor	Very High
Sniper Rifle (SR)	Far Range	Some Good (Pierce)	Good	Good	Low
Rocket Launcher (RL)	Not Affected by Range	Very Good	Poor	Very Good if AoE	Low

Range

It is important to bring the right weapons for the range of enemies you are fighting. Some enemies are closer, some are further away. This is plain to see and easy to understand, but explained somewhat misleadingly in-game. Below are the exact effective range values for each weapon type:

Range	Weapon	Effective Range
Close Range	Shotgun	0 ~ 25
Close-Mid Range	Submachine Gun	15 ~ 35
Mid Range	Assault Rifle	25 ~ 45
Mid-Far Range	Machine Gun	35 ~ 55
Far Range	Sniper Rifle	45 ~ 100

Weapons receive a range bonus when damaging enemies within their effective range, and are granted additional damage. When targeting an enemy within range for this bonus, the crosshair will appear blue. Rocket launchers do not gain any range bonus.

There is also a range penalty which reduces damage and hit rate when targeting enemies outside of weapon range. Hit rate is just like accuracy: reduced hit rate increases the chance your hits will miss. Snipers and rocket launchers are not affected by hit rate, and so ignore this penalty. Range penalty is worsened the further away enemies are from weapon range.

You can check the range of enemies in-game by looking at the effective range before starting battle. This information is also shown in battlefield info.

Area of Effect (AoE) & Single Target (ST)

Enemies can come as waves of many weaker raptures, or as a single strong rapture. Often, you must deal with both in a given battle. While it is obvious that rocket launchers have AoE damage, there are less obvious mechanics that influence AoE or allow for multiple enemies to be dealt with.

Weapon	Mechanic	Explanation	Units
Rocket Launcher	Explosion	Attack will explode, dealing AoE damage near its target.	ALL Rocket Launchers
Rocket Launcher	Explosion Increase	Explosion radius increases, extending the range of the AoE explosion.	Laplace, Vesti, Belorta
Sniper & Certain Units	Pierce	Shots pierce the target, dealing damage to enemies behind it.	Harran, Alice, Maxwell, Snow White, Laplace, Neve
Shotgun	Spread	Pellets have spread, dealing damage in a small area.	ALL shotguns
Machine Gun	High Rate of Fire	With high rate of fire, multiple enemies can be killed 1 by 1 quickly.	ALL machine guns
Certain Units	AoE Burst	Some characters’ bursts deal high AoE damage, killing an entire wave of enemies instantly.	Scarlet, Harran, Epinel, etc

Burst Gauge Generation

Different weapon types generate more energy per hit. It is important to bring enough burst energy generation for good burst uptime. This holds especially true when bringing Liter, Dolla, and/or Volume.

There are some special units with abnormal burst energy generation. Please refer to the full Burst Gauge Generation article for detailed information on this subject.

Weapon Type	Burst Gauge Generation	Units
Rocket Launcher (Clip Reload)	Very high energy generation	Anis, Centi
Shotgun (Clip Reload)	High energy generation	Drake, Sugar, Maiden, Pepper, Neon
Sniper Rifle	Good energy generation	Sniper Rifles (some anomalies)
Rocket Launcher (Full Reload)	Some energy generation	All other Rocket Launchers (some anomalies)
Shotgun (Full Reload)	Some energy generation	All other Shotguns
Assault Rifle	Some energy generation	Assault Rifles (some anomalies)
Submachine Gun	Poor energy generation	All Submachine Guns (some anomalies)
Machine Gun	Poor energy generation	All Machine Guns

Up next, we will go over roles and synergies in Team Building 102.