Guide:Strategies

This article covers community suggested gameplay tips and formation layouts to optimize combat efficiency.

• This article should not be taken as a definitive guide, any tips or layouts here are merely suggestions
  Feel free to use your own strategies and/or go with what suits your playstyle the most!

Formation Layout & Composition

1. The most frequent team archetype used is a combination of 3 DPS (MG/AR/RF) and at least 1 Tank (SMG or SG). Due to the flexibility of HGs to serve both as off-tanks and as support for other DPS, it may often be preferable to use HG depending on the difficulty of the stage due to their lower resource cost.

2. MGs deal all their damage up front, but will then have to reload for at least 4 seconds. As a result, they tend to be outclassed by AR and RF in longer fights. Consider this carefully when building your team, as their consumption is much higher in comparison.

3. Be aware of the effects of buff tiles. SMGs and ARs complement each other, MGs and SGs complement each other, and RFs reduce the skill charge time of HGs. HG buffs can affect all guns.

4. Different gun types benefit more from certain stats. ARs tend to favor crit chance and damage over attack speed. RFs favor RoF and damage, MGs benefit greatly from accuracy and damage, and SGs require the greatest amount of accuracy to be effective. Keep these general guidelines in mind when equipping your team and choosing your buffs.

5. Typically your tanks will receive much less damage if they avoid the front row. This is because the time it takes for the enemies to move into firing position will be longer, and your own squad won't need to move forward to fire at enemies. It is often better to sacrifice tile buffs rather than losing valuable DPS time repositioning your team at the beginning of each round of combat.

6. Due to their naturally high evasion and the fact that no single instance of damage is capable of destroying more than 1 T-doll, High level HGs can be used as resource-friendly secondary tanks.

• Taking the above points into consideration, the formation pictured with the HG in the middle is very recommended if you're not feeling lazy and can swap the positions of the SMG and the HG at the start of every battle.

• Otherwise if you are lazy, leave the HG at top.

7. For player Tdolls, damage received does not carry over to other dummies. (If an x2 girl has 400 total HP and she takes two 150dmg shots, she'd be left with one dummy at 200 HP.)

Because of this, prioritize evasion over HP against bosses, since no Tdoll in the game can take more than 2 150dmg shots per dummy.

8. One of the highest DPS compositions is 3RF 2HG. This can be used to farm most content because enemies will often be mowed down before being able to land a single shot.

Mobs to take caution over when using this formation are Dragoons (mounted enemies). In addition to having high movement speed, they also deal high damage per shot and have high accuracy as well.

9. A safe, jack-of-all-trades, master of none composition would be 2SMG 3AR or 2SMG 2AR 1HG. As demonstrated here by the Anti-Rain squad, each unit has a role to play in near-perfect tandem. The same concept is demonstrated by Squad 404, and other 'canonical' team. Using other girls with similar skills, other fully-functioning AR SMG teams could be formed. Their only weaknesses would be armored enemies and 'RF/Shield' combinations.

In-Combat

Kiting

All enemies have a noticeable delay between when they first get into position, and when they take their first shots. The length of the attack animation differs between different types of enemies; RFs and Nemeums have the most noticeable delay. This used to be exploitable by putting your tank in the front line, and right before they take their first shot, moving your tank back to the 2nd line and immediately back to the front line. As of the Arctic Warfare event update, however, enemies no longer have to restart their attack animation and are able to attack as soon as another unit is in their attack range.

While it is no longer possible to force enemies to restart their attack animation via kiting, it is still possible (and very advantageous) to use the Retreat option on an individual T-doll to force an enemy to move forward, thus forcing them to move forward while still being subject to your attacks. In the Episode 5 Night missions, it is not possible to kite the Nemeums backwards because they begin combat in range of your whole team.

As of Patch 1.115, a bug still exists where retreated T-dolls still count as "active" for the purposes of target acquisition for certain enemies. Notably, Architect has a chance to shoot her RPG special attack at an off-screen T-doll.

Animation Canceling

All bosses except for Destroyer, the EP.5 boss, have some sort of special attack that could formerly be canceled by kiting them. As of the Arctic Warfare event update, this no longer works unless you retreat a girl while the special attack is being used.

Blocking 2 columns with one tank

By constantly moving a T-doll between 2 blocks in a row, 2 enemy columns can be prevented from advancing (especially the shield units and the mechanized ones since they can only be stop by blocking their exact column). However, that certain T-doll will be rendered unable to shoot/use skill and moving another T-doll is obviously impossible. After the enemies start shooting at that T-dolls, stop moving her won't cause enemy units to advance as long as they keep shooting.