Alma Analysis
This is part of a series covering the VA-11 Hall-A dolls. You can go back to the overview here.
Introduction#
Love and Dreams ICD 8s/CD 18s
Summon two drones that each deal 40% damage per hit for 4 seconds.
Favorite Drink: when buffed by a Brandtini, drones last 1 second longer.
Her SPEQ replaces an ammo box, giving 6 FP and 6 ammo (vs the standard 0 FP/5 ammo).
Love and Dreams#
Alma's skill is an effective 80% FP boost, with multihit on the side. If anyone comments about armor reducing this, I'll lose my mind.
Her skill is quite simple, so we can keep this short. Let's dump her into a damage simulator alongside some other MGs and see what happens.
In fights that last exactly two magazines, Alma performs reasonably well when compared with old options.
If combat drags on, though, she fails to scale as well as dolls like Negev and Lewis. She fits about in the middle between old first-volley MGs and long-term MGs.
Notably absent from this chart is Kord and some of the infinite-magazine MGs. Kord's piercing is clearly absurd, and stuff like M1895 CB and RPK-203 powercreep the very concept of second-volley MGs.
Historical Uses#
- Alma was part of an ancient CE stack echelon. The armor CE nerf in 2020 killed that, and new echelons have come and gone to replace that.
Conclusion#
Alma was once considered decent for her excellent armor tiles and workable second-volley DPS. We've gotten a lot of new MGs since then, and they pretty much all do what Alma does, but better.
Lewis has broader armor tiles and superior DPS from the second magazine up, Kord is Kord, RPK-203/RPK-16/M1895 CB allow near infinite shooting, RPK-16/ZB-26/QJY-88 have particularly flexible armor tiles, and so on.
I do not recommend raising Alma.
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