Everything you need to know about Px4 Storm
The Basics#
Px4 Storm is a 5* HG added to the production pool on September 3, 2019 (for EN). She's available from the 30x4 pool at a decent rate, but 130/130/130/30 is also fine if you want other handguns as well. Her tiles cover the whole team from 8 in a typical F-formation, offering 24% damage and 60% accuracy. Her skill, Hunter's Bargain, is a bit different than most buffers: she gives a 50% critical damage boost but takes away 20% crit rate to dolls on her tiles.
DPS impact#
50% more critical damage is a massive boost, especially in RFHG formations where almost all of your attacks are crits. But how much does the 20% critical rate debuff hurt?
Against an unarmored enemy, Px4 Storm's skill is always a net DPS increase. This is even true for MGs without crit scopes: 225% crit damage 4% of the time is slightly better than 150% crit damage 5% of the time (only slightly, however - any straight FP buff would be better in that case). It gets better at higher crit rates:
This chart shows the average DPS increase from Px4 Storm's skill, as a function of your pre-skill crit rate & crit damage. Warmer colors indicate a larger DPS increase, up to 150% at the brightest yellow. Crit rate/crit damage combinations to the right of a contour line will do better with Px4 Storm's skill than with a normal HG buff of that magnitude (e.g. 1.25 for Grizzly's 25% buff).
Her skill is better than a typical 25% FP buff on rifles for any realistic level of crit damage. Adding a 20% crit rate tile makes it about equal to Mk23's 35% night skill, and going further (with stuff like Five-Seven or PPK) make it far better than any other regular HG buff.
An album of these charts for all skill levels can be viewed here, along with the line charts previously shown here.
Her maximum potential buff is achieved with a pre-debuff crit rate of 125% (because 0.8*1.25=1.0), but she outperforms typical FP skills even at much lower rates. A SL10/5* Fire Command skill gives +25% damage, which Px4 starts to match around an AR's typical 68% crit rate. Especially when considering her tiles, Px4 Storm will easily outperform something like a K5 also on 8 even without external critrate support in RFHG echelons.
To get the full 50% damage boost, Five-Seven stands out as an excellent pair: her tiles and skill will keep rifles at 100% crit rate throughout, while also providing some very useful ROF buffs. Px4 Storm can also make good use of all the extra crit rate produced by a Strawberry/Python echelon.
Most skillshots cannot crit, so Px4 is not useful for buffing those. Notable exceptions: TAC-50, M200, and Rico (though her first shot comes much faster than Px4's ICD will cover).
Armor#
The critical damage multiplier is calculated based on damage dealt after armor is applied. This means crit damage is less efficient against high-armor targets. Before you drop Px4 from your anti-armor teams, however, there are two other critical factors in play:
- Even the most armored enemies only have a little bit more armor than what gold AP ammo covers (180+15 base). (And rifles do enough damage that armor in general isn't a big deal.)
- 50% crit damage, reduced a little, is generally much better than the 25% FP typical buff skills give.
For one example of how Px4's crit damage falls off with armor:
Different rifle/fairy/crit rate levels will change the exact threshold, but many will put it even further out - the displayed configuration has no crit rate buffs, few FP buffs, and a low-rarity fairy on Lee. With 5* fairies/some crit rate buffs, I would expect Px4 to have an advantage until ~350-400 enemy armor. Thankfully, we haven't seen anything even close to that so far.
Accuracy#
Accuracy is an often-underrated stat, and Px4's tiles contain a lot of it. There are enough factors (additive tile bonuses for one) to make any sweeping statements inaccurate, but here's one arbitrary comparison:
Even with a rifle's very high base daytime accuracy, Px4's tiles don't take long to catch up to something like Mk23's straight 36% FP tiles. P22's excellent 30% FP/50% accuracy tiles still hold an advantage, even for particularly evasive enemies at day, but Px4 can more plausibly take a lead at night:
Not accounted for in these charts: Px4 will always hit both rifles. Something like Mk23, SAA, or K5 on 2/8 will only hit a single rifle and give much less value through their tiles. Overall, I'd rather have 30% FP/50% accuracy, but 24/60 is still much nicer than straight FP in many cases.
To be clear, these charts compare the DPS of an oathed WA2000 without any other dolls in the echelon. Expect similar values in similar configurations, but these are not absolute thresholds.
There are some other benefits to accuracy, especially when it comes to its interaction with link protection. I may talk about that more later in a separate write-up.
Utility#
Px4 is incredible from a buffing/DPS perspective. Despite this, she doesn't see massive usage in high-end content and rankings. Why? Mostly because people, especially top rankers, tend to have lots of P22 dupes. In real battle conditions, DPS isn't the only metric to go by. P22 has a strong FP buff for the backline (usually not as good as Px4's, but still strong), marginally stronger tiles in most situations, will usually give full coverage from her tiles, can be kited more easily, and has two very powerful utility components to her skill by being able to buff evasion and grant shields. Those evasion buffs and shields can more than make up for minor DPS losses.
Px4 Storm's unique tile layout and strong formation buffs is a significant advantage over many other frontline handguns, though this diminishes as more dolls release (Webley, most recently) that also give good coverage from positions 2/8 or allow the rifles to sit together (like Desert Eagle, HS2000, and C-93).
In typical RFHG formations with rifles on 1/7, Px4 Storm will virtually always be significantly better any non-P22/Webley handgun options (K5/SAA/Mk23 for example) in position 2/8. She is still very likely to beat out K5 and Mk23 in cases where the rifles are on 4/7 or 1/4 and get full tile coverage either way.
As one very arbitrary example, even with low-tier equipment, no fairy, and partial skill levels:
She did see use in Polarized Light esports to kill some deathstacks with EMP alongside Five-Seven, Webley, IWS, and R93. Doll bans and other rules led to unconventional teams, but it is an interesting application. On the other hand, due to unusual formation requirements for certain deathstacks, P22 saw no notable use on deathstack teams with Grizzly/Stechkin being deployed instead - their skills always would affect the whole team, and their tiles were more flexible.
Minor points#
- Her skill only buffs dolls on her tiles, relative to her current position. If you kite her up front and let her skill trigger there, it'll be wasted.
- HG stats don't matter, so I haven't commented on them. There are approximately zero situations where your HG choice depends on their base stats.
-
It is possible to double-dip on her skill by having a doll standing between two tiles on activation. This usually isn't relevant, and (I believe) is not permitted in GFC speedrun competitions where it would most matter.Fixed as of the 2.08 client update. GFC speedruns are dead anyways. - Handgun tiles are, in a sense, better than handgun skills. Typical HG tiles give a 30% DPS increase with 100% uptime. Typical HG skills give a 25% DPS increase ~2/3rds of the time with some initial cooldown. Having both good tiles and skills is obviously best, but I want to stress that putting stuff like K5/SAA/Mk23 on position 8, when your rifles are on 1/7, instead of Px4 Storm is largely silly. Her skill is generally equal-or-better and her tiles are massively stronger.
SPEQ#
A suppressor SPEQ was introduced for Px4 Storm in the Christmas event One Coin Short. At maximum calibration/enhancement, it provides +20% crit rate and +25 evasion, compared to +20%/+10 on a normal gold suppressor. When paired with a T-Exo, this puts Px4's evasion at 157, or a ~10% upgrade over a T-Exo+Suppressor (142 EVA).
In other words, this gives Px4 no more than a 10% increase in EHP, and will more realistically boost her survivability by ~5%. It's technically an upgrade but a rather uninteresting one and there is likely a long line of equipment pieces more worth enhancing than this.
Conclusion#
Is Px4 Storm the end-all be-all of handguns? Not particularly. She is a very powerful buffer that is strong in many more situations than it may first appear. The limited number of position 2/8 handguns make her even more attractive. There is virtually no problem using her against even the highest-armor opponents, as long as you have armor piercing. You do not need some super-specialized team or setup to use her in - she generally does very well as a damage buffer.
It's still a good idea to bring some crit rate buffers when possible (Five-Seven is a popular pick).
Kiting with Px4 Storm is not particularly hard - all she needs is to stop back at position 8 for a moment when her skill activates.
Teambuilding#
As a potent (critical) damage buffer, Px4 Storm will work best in RFHG echelons. Few buffers have good tiles on position 8, so there is little competition for her space.
Px4 has no particularly special interactions with any fairy. Command is the best accessible statstick, Beach is Beach, Taunt/Twin can soak up damage, and Warrior gives some ROF.
Speaking of fairies, I should also briefly comment on the Critical II talent. A rifle with 88% crit rate, 100 FP, Px4 Storm tiles & skill, and a 5* Damage II command does (0.7*194*3.57)+(0.3*194)=543 average damage per shot. Switching to a Critical II talent, the rifle would deal (1.0*169*3.57)=603 damage per shot. A slight advantage, but this immediately disappears with any crit rate tiles and makes the fairy far worse in standard RFHG echelons (see the region right of 88%: -5% at best) without Px4 Storm.
For a fairly mild example with crit rate tiles, adding 20% crit rate (as can be gotten from Desert Eagle, Python, Nagant revolver, and Contender; Five-Seven/PPK offer even more) changes the comparison to (0.84*194*3.57)+(0.16*194)=612 damage per shot with Damage II, already higher than the 603 damage/shot with Crit II. So: don't roll Crit II on your fairies for Px4 Storm. It isn't worth it.
Optimized teambuilding depends on enough factors that there's no way to list out a few specific "best" teams. Purely to give some starting ideas, here are a few not-entirely-awful echelons that use Px4 Storm:
More like this
K31, XM3, and such
DPS at low rarities