Hanyang at Day
Hanyang Type 88 (known as Type88 in-game) used to be an incredibly mediocre night rifle, with a self FP-buff skill that activated 8 seconds in. As is typical for night skills, the actual multiplier was pretty good at night (90%) but lacking at day (30%). The duration was slightly better than most rifles (6 seconds vs the typical 5 seconds), but overall, she was core fodder only really notable for her abnormal rarity for a craftable 3* and rather lewd free live2d skin.
That is, until she got her neural upgrade.
Her main skill got some nice improvements (ICD down to 6 seconds, improved multipliers) with an odd movement speed boost thrown in. The real gamechanger comes from her skill 2, where on skill activation, she starts launching missiles, throwing grenades, and her attacks gain piercing. As more and more deathstacks show up, her piercing and AoE capabilities become nothing short of incredible.
One point of interest here is that her skill 2 is not at all dependent on the time of day. Her skill 1 damage multiplier will be worse, but this means she's not stuck to fighting at night. Hanyang's value at night is unquestionable due to her excellent multipliers and AoE potential, but it gets a little harder to evaluate at day when other rifles have much stronger selfbuff skills.
Anyways, I don't intend to talk too much about her applications at super high levels as those get very specific. It is still worth mentioning her spectacular performance in the recent Polarized Light daytime ranking map Labyrinthine Defense, as a core component of a RFHG team used to kill the 300k CE deathstacks (one such encounter pictured above) - the lower day multiplier was clearly nothing compared to the value of her pierce against these enemies. I'm more interested in examining her "general use" performance in some common day battles - for example, if you're trying to clear a recent chapter or event story and need a rifle team, is she worth bringing at day over the usual options?
Test Results#
To keep these results more focused and manageable than some earlier attempts, I'll only compare Hanyang's performance with 2 alternative rifles: M14 mod and Rico. They are both strong general use/selfbuffing rifles. Rico conveniently share's Hanyang's 37 base ROF. All three are oathed, which puts Rico at a relative disadvantage as she misses out on the mod3 affection bonus. Tile differences (particularly with Rico) may also influence results. Each battle is done at day, naturally.
Team setup #1: Calico mod, Stechkin mod, P22, Lee Enfield (+SPEQ), rifle of choice. A 5* Shield fairy (Damage I) was used in all cases.
In the Cyclops and Strelet/Gunner fights, Hanyang competes well with M14 and Rico. Her echelon takes a little more damage versus the Gunners (where she also falls behind Lee Enfield in damage dealt), but the numbers are otherwise quite close. The Orthrus/Cyclops from PL ranking, however, have an odd result. The echelon with Hanyang clears much faster (mean time 24.33 s, while M14 does it in 30.43 s and Rico 28.84 s on average) but takes significantly more damage.
This disparity seems to come from a specific combination of mechanics, made worse with the AFK method I use to collect this data:
This targeting is easily correctable with some manual intervention. You could kite a HG in front of Hanyang, stopping her from switching to melee mode. More lazily, you could swap P22 for Px4 Storm or another HG on 8. If your rifles are shooting tough Orthrus shields and there's still enemies in the back, you can wiggle them so they retarget and take out the main threat. Manual skill timing (especially with dolls like Carcano M91/38) can also snipe the Orthrus precisely when they lower their shields.
Kiting with only Hanyang's team to correct this interaction would be unfair to the rest of the dolls and introduce even more variables. I'll leave that result as it is with a big asterisk - in-battle controls can be extremely important, especially as the number of enemy and doll mechanics increase.
Team setup #2: Clear, Five-Seven, Px4 Storm, Lee Enfield (+SPEQ), rifle of choice. A 5* Parachute (Fervor) fairy was used for the Isomer Hydras, and a Prototype fairy for the rest with some irrelevant MG/SG talent.
All rifles tested were sufficient for the Hydras taken from Isomer ranking, although they had a big advantage due to the lack of enemy HOC support. Hanyang's damage lagged behind the selfbuffers here. Against the larger Zombie and Nightmare groups, Hanyang's piercing showed much more promise with significantly faster clear times, reduced damage taken, and much higher percent damage contributions.
Extra #1: some older test results using Calico mod, Stechkin mod, P22, M14, and a rifle of choice.
There are quite a few more rifles compared here, but the number of options made it difficult to test against that many different enemies. This echelon also leads to some ROF overcap on R93, which hurts her performance relative to the alternatives. Pure selfbuff RFs did far better against M16, but Hanyang closed this gap against the SWAP and Doppel groups. Mosin did quite well against the SWAP SF from a clear time/damage dealt standpoint, but otherwise she and Kar did not make a compelling case for their use.
Without having footage to re-examine, my guess as to why R93's damage contribution dropped against the SWAP SF is because of her variable ROF potentially leading to some corpse whipping against the fragile Jaegers in the back.
This M16 is off of Goodbye, Dragon Palace in Singularity - it's not her strongest incarnation and comes with her alone. Expect a tougher fight if going against something like her Singularity ranking version.
Conclusion#
Against bosses and other solo enemies at day, Hanyang is rather obviously bad. Her poor multiplier will make her lag behind selfbuffers, and her skill 2 won't make up for that without some crowds present. The increased movement speed could theoretically be worth the tradeoff in some specific case, but overall, she is not a good pick for daytime boss killing. In fights with less enemies (~5 enemy groups), she's not too far off from typical selfbuffers, and may be usable. For larger groups (10+ enemies), Hanyang really starts to take off and will leave most other options in the dust.
At night, Hanyang is competitive with other selfbuffers just by her first skill. She'll work great in any scenario you'd want a typical selfbuffer for, and far surpass them in most situations.
Extra: Night Accuracy#
(Section added 2021-June-12)
Hanyang doesn't have the greatest DPS at night without her skill, and her relatively low accuracy doesn't help much. Even G28 does better.
Due to an improved multiplier, her position improves a little bit once you take into account skills. Importantly: this is against a single target, without considering Hanyang's skill 2. It also doesn't account for her 6/8 uptime compared to the 5/8 of most rifles.
With no ROF buffs to waste, M200 will easily outperform anything once evasion is introduced.
If you add in a few popular handguns with accuracy tiles, Hanyang (without her skill 2) keeps up well against lone targets until around 20 evasion at night.
So what does this mean? It is true that Hanyang doesn't have the greatest single-target DPS at night. Against an evasive boss, she may not be a good pick. However, the drop in performance is small enough that any additional value from her piercing will quickly put her above conventional selfbuffers. Outside of doll limitations, the only major reason I would drop Hanyang from a night RFHG echelon is to replace her with a Grape/M200 team for Patrollers+other Paradeus.
Hanyang's skills are almost always far better than the ~15% accuracy advantage typical selfbuffers have over her.
Other Comments & Limitations#
- After some recent events (PL ranking), some of my handguns are a little low on affection. This is the same between tests and their stats aren't that important anyways, so this should be fine.
- For some general commentary on field tests versus damage simulators, see this page.
- Hanyang is missing 1 FP from levels. Stechkin is SL10/7. Mosin is SL10/7, missing 1 FP + 1 ACC from levels.
- Corpse whipping shouldn't be a significant concern with these configurations. No large, unexpected damage disparities were observed, and the paired rifles always had some frame difference between their shots:
| Echelon | Lee Enfield ROF | Option ROF | Frame difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1/Hanyang or Rico/pre-skill | 62 | 57 | 2 |
| #1/Hanyang or Rico/in-skill | 99 | 92 | 1 |
| #1/M14/pre-skill | 62 | 68 | 2 |
| #1/M14/in-skill | 99 | 109 | 2 |
| #2/Hanyang or Rico/pre-skill | 64 | 59 | 2 |
| #2/Hanyang or Rico/in-skill | 76 | 71 | 2 |
| #2/M14/pre-skill | 64 | 70 | 2 |
| #2/M14/in-skill | 76 | 84 | 2 |
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Fervor versus Damage II
Performance analysis