AK-47 with 74M
AK-74M is expected to release next month as a craftable doll, and she has quite the interesting skill:
Katyusha ICD 0s/CD 0s
T-Dolls in the echelon carrying an [AK] are enhanced;
- AK74M: With every [AK] T-Doll in the echelon, increase self damage and rate of fire by 5% (additively).
- [AK-47]: "Strike Focus" damage and accuracy buffs are swapped.
- [AK-74U]: "Purge Reaction" is buffed to a passive.
- [AK-12]: "Eye of the White Mastiff" grants an additional 35% critical hit damage while it is active.
- [AK-15]: Attacks will always trigger her "Anger" effect.
- [AK-Alfa]: Has perfect accuracy when targeting enemy units in front of her.
She provides unique passive buffs to all the AK-style dolls listed, and has 20% FP/crit rate tiles letting her act like a budget M4A1.
There's a whole lot to consider there, so for now let's just look at her interaction with AK-47. After all, AW+ has finally been announced for Q3 per Q&A - maybe AK-47's scope SPEQ and this is enough to be worth considering.
Strike Focus ICD 5s/CD 8s
Increase damage by 35% and accuracy by 100% for 5 seconds.
This skill is the main reason why AK-47 has never been recommended, with poor DPS stats as the nail in the coffin. A 35% multiplier is simply terrible even by 3-star standards, and the accuracy buff mostly just brings her accuracy back to normal levels.
But switching that to a 100% FP multiplier, plus 44% crit damage from her best scope, has a shot at being worth something.
DPS calculations#
AK-47's scope favors crit builds, which are generally better for ARSMGs anyways. Let's look at the in- and out-of-skill DPS of her and a few other options, assuming a Parachute fairy without talent.
| Configuration | Basic DPS | In-skill DPS |
|---|---|---|
| AK-47 (VFL+Chip) | 1050.1 | 1656.6 |
| AK-47 (SPEQ+Chip) | 1395.9 | 2202.1 |
| AK-47 (AK-74M, VFL+Chip) | 1314.0 | 2840.5 |
| AK-47 (AK-74M, SPEQ+Chip) | 1812.0 | 3916.9 |
| G41 (VFL+SPEQ) | 1476.3 | 2583.4 |
| G41 (AUG, VFL+SPEQ) | 1709.6 | 2991.9 |
| G41 (M4A1, VFL+SPEQ) | 2014.1 | 3524.6 |
AK-47's SPEQ alone is clearly not enough to make her useful. However, pairing that with AK-74M appears to bring her DPS to a similar range as G41 (+M4A1 & SPEQ), one of the better "boring" direct-fire DPS ARs.
We have a lead, but we're a bit short of a full argument. Let's go deeper.
Damage over time#
AK-74M's tiles aren't too far off from M4's, so let's suppose our third AR doesn't care either way. First, we'll chart the relative cumulative damage over time from G41 & AK-74M with support, and then add the support AR DPS to see how much it affects things (M4A1 is pretty good on her own!).
Lining up with the DPS table above, we see AK-47 start out with marginally lower DPS. She gains ground once her skill activates 5 seconds in, but it takes until her second skill activation to really catch up. From ~17 seconds onwards, ignoring one minor dip, AK-47 is about tied with G41.
However, the support AR's damage is concerning. We expect G41 & AK-47 to outperform M4/74M as they're getting fairly substantial tiles, but AK-74M is really far down. She has her own permanent 15-20% FP & ROF buff, but that's a far cry from M4A1's 75% selfbuff (and crazy mod3 SPEQ).
Now, the same chart but adding G41 & M4's numbers as well as 47 & 74M's (plus another AK to keep things fair):
AK-74M's DPS drags down the team, and G41+M4A1 have better performance almost across the board. The buffs to AK-12 and AK-Alfa's skills don't seem to be enough to cover the difference. Note that AK-15, especially with her eventual mod, gets a bit trickier to evaluate.
Conclusion#
It looks like AK-47 can deal a surprising amount of damage when you have everything set up right. However, if your third AR isn't getting amazing value out of AK-74M, it seems to still be a net negative for echelon DPS compared to standard options. And even those "standard options" pale in comparison to the very top meta ARs (e.g., G11/416 mods), though those are a bit harder to plot on a graph like this. Ultimately, AK-47 goes from a complete failure to a reasonable third-string option.
This only sort of works at day, and AK-47's tiles aren't helpful in any proper echelon (not that those are a major consideration either way). It looks better than SUB-2000-based echelons, at least - those waste an entire echelon's worth of data for absolutely no performance return.
Extra: More Charts#
(Added 2022-06-07) To address a few other angles I didn't originally cover, let's do a little more plotting.
First, some individual relative damage-over-time charting. Key points:
- While AK-12 has an advantage with a chip early on, she prefers to drop it in longer battles (or even sooner if you have ROF tiles).
- G41, standing in for a generic selfbuffer, is also shown with HG support. Her personal DPS is quite good, passing G41+M4 soon after Grizzly's skill activates, but keep in mind that Grizzly contributes essentially no damage.
- Lines with G41+Ribeyrolles or on her own aren't shown here for space reasons, but are assembled below.
Looks like we can approximately construct an ordering of:
- G11 & 416 & friends
- M4A1+2 DPS ARs
- AK-74M+2 AKs, or 2 DPS ARs+Ribeyrolles
- 2 DPS ARs + 1 FP buffing HG, or 3 DPS ARs (keeping in mind that these theoretical calcs tend to inflate HG performance)
Of course, each situation may call for different things. Anything with a grenadier will do much better against a swarm, Orthrus favor ROF/multihit/upfront damage, high armor favors big FP buffs, and so on. Ribeyrolles will lose some ground when used with chipped ARs, particularly if your tanks have ROF tiles due to the ROF cap.
Notes#
- Field testing, as always, will be helpful once these toys actually arrive on EN. Theoretical calculations only get you so far.
- AK-74M has 73 base ROF, or 98 with a chip. A 19%+ ROF buff is sufficient to cap her, so there's very little reason to go for a 5-AK echelon (and less of a reason to go for a 4-AK echelon if she's getting ROF tiles).
- As you may have noticed from the table earlier, AK-47's SPEQ is a necessary part to keep her somewhat competitive. This will not work at night.
- AK-12, AK-15 (pre-mod), and AK-Alfa all experience somewhat similar boosts in strength to each other. There's no particular killer combination here that gives extraordinary DPS numbers.
- While concerns over low accuracy are often unfounded, AK-47's accuracy is actually bad - 37 at lv100, with 100 affection. Her out-of-skill DPS will suffer more than her competitors if your enemies have somewhat more evasion than the usual, particularly if you're not running dolls/fairies that give accuracy. At the same time, the above charts factored in 15 enemy EVA and absolutely no external accuracy buffs. In "standard" conditions she'll perform as described.
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