Five-Seven and Stechkin
Rifles have dominated the meta for some two years, so hopefully you're familiar with how RFHGs work at this point. They get high damage, low ROF, backline targeting, AP, and overall kill things quite well.
There are plenty of solid position 4 buffers - aside from the titular dolls, we notably have Python, Grizzly, SAA, Clear, and K5. But all those are largely FP-focused, ignoring Clear's tiles. If you want to shoot fast, options past Five-Seven and Stechkin get really questionable.
So, is one of these better than the other? Are there good reasons to use Five-Seven over Stechkin? Stechkin over Five-Seven? Let's investigate.
The Situation#
| Attribute | Stechkin mod | Five-Seven |
|---|---|---|
| Tiles | 16% FP/24% ROF | 30% ROF/20% Crit Rate |
| Tile shape | 1,2,7,8 from 4 | 1,2,7,8 from 4 |
| Skill | 25% ROF/4% FP (with SPEQ) | 20% ROF/20% Crit Rate |
| Extra effects | 50% EVA debuff to enemies <30% HP | - |
How much that evasion debuff helps is rather arguable - many enemies below 30% HP don't need anywhere near all 5 shots from a rifle to land for them to die. We'll set that aside for now.
Calculations#
ROF frames are a bit too variable to generalize, so let's assume that an X% ROF buff results in an X% DPS buff. Feel free to calculate whether or not either one of them gets your specific team combination to a better frame independently. Other tiles are also ignored - them being additive can slightly change relative numbers, but it's not a big deal.
Your crit damage seems like an obvious variable - the more crit damage, the more you'd like Five-Seven. Let's plot both of them and see how this works out.
Grizzly (without SPEQ) included to have a reference with typical buffers, even if she's all FP. While the crit rate looks to be a solid bonus over such dolls, Stechkin has an even bigger lead both in- and out-of-skill. Five-Seven's relative standing improves slightly as your crit damage increases, but not by enough to close that gap.
There's also the classic Px4/Five-Seven combo:
The pre-skill lines are the exact same, but Five-Seven's active becomes much more valuable when Px4's skill is applied. Now, with skills up, Five-Seven is always preferable.
When para debuffed, you can also get more use of Five-Seven's crit rate:
But it's not as big of a deal as when you're using Px4.
Testing#
It seems reasonable to prefer Stechkin over Five-Seven, and Five-Seven over typical (FP) buffers in most cases. To get a better sense of how much these decisions really matter, let's run a few tests. Up for consideration:
- Stechkin (high-spec: mod3, oathed, SL10/10, Night SPEQ)
- Stechkin (med-spec: mod1, SL10, Night SPEQ)
- Five-Seven
- Grizzly (no SPEQ)
Grizzly makes for a decent baseline buffer reference, and allows a comparison between FP/ROF buffs.
Soft targets
The Scouts/SWAP Prowlers are quite weak (360-960 HP/link), but testing against the 5277 HP/link zombies shows a similar pattern also in line with our expectations: Stechkin mod > Five-Seven > Grizzly. Stechkin's mod skill/oath stats don't appear to have a major effect.
Armored targets
Results are a little odd - against the first group with regular Nemeums, Five-Seven/Stechkin performed almost identically. Swapping for Grizzly seemed slower, but took less damage.
In the second, Five-Seven/Grizzly lagged behind by time. But looking at damage received, all options were similar except for Grizzly, who was much worse.
Px4 Storm
Stechkin's pre-skill advantage makes this less convincing than you'd think, but I would still ultimately recommend using Five-Seven over Stechkin when you want to use Px4 Storm. Five-Seven appears to have a slight edge, and is used most efficiently here. At the very least, staying at 100% crit rate is nice for consistency.
About that EVA debuff...#
A full investigation of Stechkin's modskill would better fit on its own page, but I don't believe it adds any particular value here. Let's talk about why, briefly.
For reference, here's an archer below 30% HP. I ended up having to record this fight and go back frame-by-frame to actually capture an image, as it died almost immediately after. Specifically: it received this damage at 11.37s, was brought down to just a sliver at 11.67s, and died at 11.83s. These guys are pretty beefy, too - the ones pictured had 1831 HP/link.
Suppose you were using an echelon of WA2000/some RF/Stechkin/Grizzly/P22/Beach fairy - a standard ROF-based RFHG. WA2000 would deal in the range of ~640 damage per bullet, or ~1480 on a crit, which would be most of the time. The Centaurus has at most 2746 HP remaining, so just 2/5 bullets from a single attack would usually suffice to kill it (with a little extra scratch from HGs/HOCs to help with link protection). Reducing its evasion technically makes that a little more probable, but hitting 2/5 bullets isn't hard to begin with.
Point is - low-HP targets are relatively easy for rifles to kill. Reducing their evasion won't do much.
(Worth keeping in mind that it makes damage simulator numbers with Stechken even less reliable than they'd normally be, as they have no way of determining when enemies would be at low HP in addition to the ideas mentioned above.)
Conclusion#
Should you prefer Stechkin over Five-Seven? In most cases, yeah. Is Five-Seven bad? Not at all. Her tiles are significantly stronger than most pos-4 options, and ROF is almost always preferred over FP in RFHGs.
Keep in mind that ROF is not helpful for MGs, and using either of these in an ARSMG is a dreadful idea for several reasons. Everything here is to be interpreted in the context of RFHG/RFSMG/RFSG formations.
Minor notes#
While I was working on this, Grizzly's login SPEQ came out and thus is not included in the lines or tests. It boosts her net in-skill line up to ~75%, though direct comparisons between her and Five-Seven/Stechkin remain questionable due to their different roles. Think more of it as representing a "30% buff tile+25% buff skill" doll.
Despite the thumbnail, you certainly shouldn't avoid pairing Stechkin with crit damage dolls/fairies. She'll do just as well in an echelon with Para/Command/Beach/Taunt. Artillery is not a particularly great DPS fairy for RFHGs.
Five-Seven would gain some more ground if using non-maxed VFLs. But if that's the case, you probably aren't doing enough fairy crafts.
Extra: M4 Exodia#
M4's SPEQ adjustment helps her shoot a lot faster, so you might wonder if it's possible to overcap on ROF in exodia-style formations. Not exactly related to these two dolls specifically, but here's a table of popular HG combinations with M4 and the resulting ROF. Pre-skill ROF is not counted as it's (a) obviously far over cap with anything more than a single ROF tile, and (b) irrelevant for this type of comp.
| Doll 1 | Doll 2 | Doll 3 | Doll 4 | Total tiles | Skills | Final ROF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webley | Calico | (FP HG) | Stechkin | 1.76 | 1.28*1.25*1.22 | 103 (101+2, 14f) |
| Five-Seven | 1.82 | 1.28*1.20*1.22 | 102 (101+1, 14f) | |||
| Grizzly (SPEQ) | Stechkin | 1.76 | 1.28*1.25*1.22*1.08 | 111 (108+3, 13f) | ||
| Five-Seven | 1.82 | 1.28*1.20*1.22*1.08 | 110 (108+2, 13f) | |||
| UMP9 | Stechkin | 1.91 | 1.28*1.25*1.22 | 111 (108+3, 13f) | ||
| Five-Seven | 1.97 | 1.28*1.20*1.22 | 110 (108+2, 13f) | |||
| El Clear | Stechkin | 2.06 | 1.28*1.25*1.22 | 120 (116+4, 12f) | ||
| Five-Seven | 2.12 | 1.28*1.20*1.22 | 119 (116+3, 12f) | |||
| LTLX/other | FP HG/other | Stechkin | 1.44 | 1.25*1.22 | 65 (63+2, 23f) | |
| Five-Seven | 1.50 | 1.20*1.22 | 65 (63+2, 23f) |
When stacking lots of ROF tiles, Stechkin having more of a skill emphasis means her total ROF buff is marginally higher. However, it does not appear to actually result in faster shooting in any of these common formations.
M4 is less affected by crit buffs so Stechkin is generally the way to go regardless.
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