K2/Strategy

K2

Strategy

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K2 is a relatively different AR T-Doll due to the uniqueness of her skill and how much impact it has on her game performance.

Individual Performance

Skill

K2 toggled based ability is unique, she is the first AR doll able to register 3 separate damage as one attack.

The Fever mode (burst firing) of K2 meant she shoots three bullets each deals up to 52% of her actual damage, effective from the beginning of the combat session. The skill's passive effect is the gaining of heat stacks, which will result in loss of accuracy and damage after obtaining 15 stacks of heat (1 burst gains one heat stack), up to 20 stacks maximum. Fever mode damages are calculated by separate shots, the three shots have a very negligible delay in between them, this means if the target dies before the burst can finish, the remaining shots from the burst goes directly to another target (only works on enemy units directly behind or close to the current target, tested on April 2018).

Toggling the ability will make K2 fire in Note mode (single shots), her damage is returned to normal but her evasion and movement speed is reduced. Additional effects includes reducing the heat stack by 1 per shot and dealing additional damage when shooting the same enemy, 5% damage is added when attacking the same target this effect stacks up to 10 times.

Stats

K2's accuracy and rate of fire rating scores above the average level, while her damage falls short, fairly high in terms of HP though. Graph below visualizes K2's stats against other units, green: K2, red: average of all AR dolls, orange: average from 5* rarity ARs only.

Combat Performance

Due to the nature of her skill and how much impact it has on K2's performance, she is rated fairly high amongst AR T-Dolls in terms of damage output.

Fever Mode:

The Fever mode skill is effective as soon as K2 enters the combat, most AR dolls would have at least 4 to 6 seconds of initial skill cooldown, where as K2 does not, this means she is dealing up to 156% of her actual damage at the beginning of the round while all the other AR dolls are still waiting for their skills, K2's initial damage output is much higher than those of the other AR T-Dolls.

K2's skill penalty manifests on the 16th shot, she will lose 2% damage and accuracy every stack for up to 5 stacks, the 20th shot onward made by K2 she will be penalized and suffer a 10% debuff to accuracy and damage.

Note Mode:

Switching the skill enables Note mode enables the single hit damage, on top of cooling the heat stacks by 1 per shot, K2 also gains up to 5% additional damage for every successful shot landed on the same enemy, which stacks up to a total of 50% additional. After 9 successive hit on the same target, K2 would be constantly dealing 162% of her damage on the same target with no penalties (except for 40% reduced evasion and movement speed). This bonus is wiped and restarted anew when her active target dies.

Against armored units:

Players should consider avoiding engaging armored enemy units with K2. K2's Fever mode may be doing 156% of the actual damage in a burst, but it is split into three hits, the the individual burst shots is likely too low to penetrate the enemies' armor threshold, by late game stage K2's Fever mode shots are almost obsolete against high armored units and bosses.

If conflicts against armored units cannot be avoided, it is advised to switch K2 in Note mode as soon as available and keep her in it, so she resumes her normal volley damage value and has greater chance at penetrating the enemy armor threshold. However even doing this does not improve K2's combat performance against armored enemies, because of how long K2's initial skill cooldown is, she has to wait 8 seconds for the skill to become available for toggle, 8 seconds is plenty sufficient for enemies to approach the player's echelon.

Other:

Both Fever and Note mode shares the same rate of fire despite playing a different animation, assume the combat involves no walking time and K2's skill is set to auto activation, with her default 78 rate of fire K2 will be able to unleash 10 (10.4) shots before the skill is activated, and 7-8 (7.8) shots in Note mode to cool off the heat stacks. After the initial sequence it would be 7-8 shots of Fever and Note respectively.

Formation

Tile Bonus

K2 can provide damage and accuracy bonus suitable for offensive type SMG units.

Tiles

Affects Submachine guns

Increases damage by 25%

Increases accuracy by 50%

High magnitude

K2 provides a very desirable 25% damage and 50% accuracy tile bonus that benefits pretty much every DPS type SMG. SMG units have much lower accuracy rating when compared to other units, without appropriate optics and bonuses, they can miss a lot of shots they fire, boosting accuracy for SMGs is just as important as boosting damage.

Inflexible placement

Though the bonus is strong, but due the diagonal tile placement, it means K2 herself can only be placed on tile 4 in a standard echelon, since off-tank SMGs are typically placed on tile 8 and 2 instead of 5. DPS SMG dolls such as ^SMG SR-3MPSR-3MP  and ^SMG X95X95  will be able to benefit from K2's tiles while providing bonuses back to K2. SMG dolls such as ^SMG Honey BadgerHoney Badger  and ^SMG VectorVector  will not be able to provide tile bonus back.

Having more than one DPS type SMG in one echelon will have reduce the chance of the squadron's survival, so realistically the tile boost only really applies to one frontal SMG unit, since the main tank benefits little from damage and rate of fire. Even for players who enjoys running more than one DPS SMG in the echelon, they may still find it troublesome to fully utilize K2's tiles due to it's awkward positioning.

Players may find it difficult to make compatible formations for K2.

Compatibility

There are two ways of boosting K2, prioritize damage or rate of fire, or somewhere in between the two stats depending on players' desires/situation.

Boost Damage

Boosting the damage attribute will maximize damage every burst/shot made by K2, capitalize upon her natural 156%/150% damage output and increases her volley damage exponentially. Additional damage also partially negates K2's damage penalty after the 15th burst, with sufficient damage and accuracy bonus given to K2, player may even choose to neglect the use of Note firing mode and have K2 stay in Fever mode permanently. The boosted Note mode damage may also be useful against armored enemy units should K2 encounter them.

However ignoring rate of fire bonus will lead to her rate of fire being too slow to cool down heat stacks, low rate of fire also result ineffective target switches and loss of overall DPS when dealing with large amount of enemies.

Examples of SMG units who provides damage attribute on their formation tiles are ^SMG UMP45UMP45 , ^SMG Type 79Type 79  and ^SMG C-MSC-MS 

Boost Rate of Fire

K2 can receive up to 54%(53.8%) of rate of fire bonus before reaching her 120 per minute cyclic cap. Boosting rate of fire will allow K2 to unleash her 15 initial shots faster and cool off heat stacks faster, faster rate of fire also allows faster target switches when dealing with large enemy swarms.

Though K2's damage by default isn't spectacular, rapidly unleashing burst fires will only result in getting the damage penalty faster if K2's skill is not handled. Low damage value will also further increase her disadvantage against armored units should they appear.

Example of SMG units who provides rate of fire attribute on their formation tiles are ^SMG UMP9UMP9 , ^SMG RO635RO635  and ^SMG MP7MP7 

Equipment

Slot 1

VFL 6-24x56	Telescopic Sights are standard equipment by late stage of the game for both AR and RF dolls, as it provides the most effective damage output bonus.
PEQ-16A	It is advised to equip night optics for night sorties, if one wishes to hit high evasion units effectively.

Slot 2

APCR High-Velocity Ammo

Most AR dolls can only High Velocity ammo in their slot 2, incidentally a fully upgraded 5* HV ammo provides +20 damage attribute, which meant slot 2 equipment have the highest impact on an AR doll's damage dealing performance.

Slot 3

IOP X4 Exoskeleton

One can neglect the upgrade of exo-skeletons on AR dolls, since evasion rating does not contribute to their damage output performance and they are not expected to soak damage for the team.