AK-12/Strategy

AK-12

Strategy

Story

Quotes

Live2D

AK-12 commentaries.

Individual Performance

Skill

Snow Wolf's Gaze is AK-12's unique skill, upon activation AK-12's damage, rate of fire, accuracy and critical hit rate are all increased by a maximum of 35%, as oppose to the usual single/dual stats increase skill on other AR T-Dolls. 35% increase in damage, rate of fire and accuracy parameters isn't considered high, for many other dolls with active skills of a higher multiplier. But AK-12's burst of increase in all four damage related attributes is what makes her unique, her own damage output is boosted by a great magnitude when this skill is active, all without hitting either the crit rate cap nor the rate of fire cap, it can be viewed as her having gains in combat performance while leaving tiny margins for improvements.

The skill itself takes 6 seconds to activate, lasts for 5 seconds and the reactivation delay is 8 seconds. This means AK-12 will benefit from the skill effect for 5 seconds and only has to wait 3 seconds for it to be available again. In terms of total skill empowered uptime this skill is the same as the typical 10s duration 16s total cooldown style skills, 62.5% of total uptime. But AK-12 activate her skill later than most other AR dolls, with 6s initial cooldown.

Stats

For an AR unit, all of AK-12's attributes (except HP) are rated above average, combined with her S rank growth rate, she boasts a very formidable stats at max level when compared to all the other AR type dolls, her stats are considered remarkable even when compared only to 5* rarity AR dolls. Comparison graph listed below, green indicates AK-12, red indicates AR average, while orange indicates average stats from 5* rarity AR dolls only (excluding dolls that reached 5* rarity through Neural Upgrades).

Combat Performance

At max skill level, AK-12 is capable of reaching 92%(27% without telescopic) crit rate, 105 cyclic rate of fire on skill activation. The 35% damage increase may not seen significant when compared to other AR units but the crit rate and rate of fire boost alone is enough to boost AK-12's damage output by a large margin. The effectiveness and the short cooldown of her skill, combined with her high innate attribute, AK-12's damage output at late game places her among the top ARs in terms of damage output in the game.

Anti armour performance:

Being able to increase own damage means AK-12 has an extra advantage when fighting enemies with armour values, compared to AR dolls who cannot. Since the story event Deep Dive, the event bosses are starting to appear with armour values, bosses such as Gaia from Deep Dive, Executioner EX from Singularity and Obelisk/Polarday from Continuum Turbulence. The values might be low but the total hit values will be reduced if the doll's damage attribute is not high enough. Luckily AK-12 doesn't have that problem, so she is a nice candidate to pick when choosing an echelon to fight those the long duration armoured boss battles.

Formation

Tile Bonus

AK-12 features a very large front row buff tile, she provides offensive orientated buffs, increases damage and rate of fire attributes suitable for offensive type SMG units, but will contribute nothing to the survivability of evasion based SMG dolls.

Tiles

Affects Submachine guns

Increases damage by 25%

Increases rate of fire by 15%

High magnitude

AK-12's tile bonuses are considered high for how many tile it effects, she is able to provide 25% damage and 15% rate of fire for up to 3 SMG units.

T-Doll ^AR G36G36  has a similar tile bonus to AK-12, capable of providing 30% damage and 10% rate of fire, to an extend it is more desirable than AK-12's due to the fact that SMGs have high rate of fire by default. But however G36 can only provide such bonus to a maximum of two SMGs, the smaller tile also mean G36 is less flexible in terms of placement when compared to AK-12.

Flexible placement

AK-12 is often placed in position 1 within an echelon, so the entire front row benefits from her bonus tiles. However similar to G36's case, despite the tile coverage is large, having more than one DPS type SMG in one echelon will have reduce the squadron's overall survivability, so realistically AK-12's boost only really applies to one frontal SMG unit, since the main tank benefits little from damage and rate of fire.

For players who enjoys running more than one DPS SMG in the echelon AK-12 is great news to them, a full frontal coverage tile of damage and rate of fire bonus boosting up to three DPS SMG units is pretty much everything they could ask for.

For standard ARSMG echelons AK-12 can actually be placed directly behind the DPS SMG doll for the sake of better protection and to receive their tile bonus, since she can boost the tile directly in front of her. Even if not all the tiles are being used, a large coverage tile contributes to the idea of flexible placement, meaning AK-12 is more compatible with ARSMG echelons since she can be placed easily.

A good comparison example being ^AR K2K2 's tile shape, despite having the high magnitude 25% damage and 50% accuracy bonus, K2 is not able to buff the tile directly in front of her, which restricts her potential placement within an echelon.

Compatibility

As briefly mentioned in the skills and stats section regarding margins of improvements on AK-12's combat stats, at max level and equipped with a fully upgraded telescopic sight, AK-12 arrives at 92% crit rate and 105 cyclic rate of fire in active combat sessions. The way Girls Frontline calculates doll combat attributes allows both of these to be pushed to the limited with just tile buffs. Compatibility of AK-12 with the SMGs can be difficult players cannot focus the type of bonuses, but alternatively it can be viewed as AK-12's performance has potential to be improved in every way, and she benefits the most from a mixed bonus echelon.

Of which brings about the subject of JS 9 and SR-3MP

^SMG JS 9JS 9  and ^SMG SR-3MPSR-3MP  are immaculate fit with AK-12, both can push both AK-12's rate of fire and crit rate to the limit with just their own tiles, capping out 2 out of the 4 damage related attribute on AK-12 in one go. While JS 9 has perfect tile shape compatibilities, SR-3MP benefits greatly from AK-12's own offensive oriented tile bonuses, it is worth considering pairing one of the two aforementioned SMG dolls together with AK-12. (Pairing with SR-3MP may result in AK-12 being moved to slot 4.)

But overall the primarily tile bonus AK-12 should be receiving is damage.

Both rate of fire and crit rate are easy to top off on AK-12, no more than one rate of fire and crit rate bonus should be given to AK-12 for the sake of not wasting. By boosting her damage AK-12 can perform better in combat as there isn't a cap to actual damage attribute on a doll.

Examples of SMG dolls with primarily damage boosting tiles such as ^SMG P90P90 , ^SMG C-MSC-MS  and ^SMG AK-74UAK-74U .

Examples of dolls with both damage and crit rate bonus on their tile are ^SMG UMP45UMP45 , ^HG ContenderContender , ^HG PythonPython  and ^SMG Honey BadgerHoney Badger .

Other dolls who can provide damage attributes on their tiles worth noting are ^AR AUGAUG  and ^AR RibeyrollesRibeyrolles .

Further notes on Ribeyrolles compatibilities

It is worth mentioning that AK-12's 6 second initial skill cooldown syncs very well with Ribeyrolles's supportive skill, which is also of a 6 second initial. If auto skill activation is enabled, every odd number casts of AK-12's skill will be synced with Ribeyrolles' skill cast. Ribeyrolles provides a very hefty rate of fire bonus to anyone standing on her tiles at the time of skill activation, pushing AK-12 to the 120 RoF cap right away. Though the downside to Ribeyrolles' skill is that dolls are locked in place, moving out of her bonus tile will resulting in not receiving the RoF boost at the time of activation. Another problem with having Ribeyrolles as part of the echelon is that RoF bonuses from SMG tiles may go to waste. It is debatable that AN-94 benefits from Ribeyrolles more than AK-12 does.

Ribeyrolles' interesting tile shape allows AK-12 to benefit from both the increasing damage tile buff, and the RoF skill boost while standing in slot 1.

Equipment

Slot 1

VFL 6-24x56	With a fully upgraded telescopic sight equipped AK-12 is able to reach 92% crit rate on her own, equipping a telescopic sight will boost AK-12's damage output far greater than other optic types.
PEQ-16A	Even high innate accuracy and additional bonuses will not help during night sorties when all player unit's accuracy are reduced by 90%, AK-12 cannot effectively deal with high mobility enemies without a night combat optic.

Slot 2

APCR High-Velocity Ammo

Mandatory equipment for all ARs. Increasing damage will not only allow AK-12 to kill enemy units faster, but can also help her overcome enemy armor units.

Slot 3

IOP X4 Exoskeleton

Basic equipment for ARs. As ARs are not meant to be taking direct fire, it is best to reserve your best exoskeletons for dedicated tank classes like SMGs or high-evasion support classes like HGs. However if one plans to put AK-12 in the middle row where she might be more exposed to enemy fire, it is advised to take an X-type exoskeleton as it can drastically improve survivability without penalizing her offensive capabilities.