SVCh

By BigStupidJellyfish | 2022-July-23

Sugary Response ICD 5s/CD 8s

Passive: When changing attack targets, increase self damage by 10% for 5 seconds, stacking up to 4 times.

Active: Within 5 seconds of skill activation, each Dummy's attack deals a fixed 150-point damage that ignores enemy evasion, armor, and HP shields. This effect is ~~multiplied~~ doubled against targets with multiple Dummy-Links.

A few notes on how this works:

As SVCh has 5 links, her active deals 5 instances of 150 damage (versus 1 link) or 300 (versus 2+ links).
It is affected by damage amplification, but not by FP/crit buffs.
While it ignores HP shields, it is affected by the Orthrus skill that reduces incoming damage to 1.
It is not able to bypass force shields. You still need HOCs.
Her passive skill is multiplicative.
Ignoring armor really doesn't matter.

Some other references for the above are compiled here. Incidentally, that's also my motivation for writing this - the only existing analysis I've seen relies heavily on Hycdes damage numbers, and that program completely fails to implement her skill properly. Hopefully we can correct that today.

DPS calculations^#

Setting aside her passive for now as that gets a little tricky, there's an obvious question on her active component: how much of a DPS boost does it provide? It's a fixed 150/300x5 damage, which will be more or less valuable depending on how much damage her attacks would normally do. Typical selfbuffers boost their ROF or FP by 75%, so we'd like her to get near or above that threshold. A few general ideas we can note:

Adding more FP and crit buffs will make the fixed damage less significant
It will scale with ROF normally
Higher enemy evasion will make it more useful; higher accuracy will make it less useful

Let's pick a few common accuracy/crit buff levels and chart the DPS increase as a function of enemy evasion/total FP buffs. The top chart in each image assumes a multi-linked target, the bottom is for a single-linked target.

For a few reference values:

A 5-star Damage II Para provides a 56.4% FP buff.
A single FP HG provides 30% FP from tiles, 62.5% total FP with their skill active.
Using two, (e.g., Grizzly & P22) provides a 60% FP buff from tiles, or 150% with their skills active.
Add the above para to that for a 291% FP buff.
A max-stack Fervor Combo goes up to a 163% FP buff on its own, not to mention its insane 306% acc buff.
SVCh's passive gives up to a 46.41% FP buff.

With proper fairies, most reasonable RFHGs are looking at a 150%+ net FP buff with skills up.

In the above case, with a good amount of acc/crit, SVCh's active only competes with typical 4/5-star selfbuffers given a 50% or less net FP buff from other sources. More typically, it'd be comparable to a 2-star selfbuffer or worse. Single targets naturally make her worse off, and she's always short of a standard skill.

Variations:

With no crit aura/acc tiles. Now, SVCh fares better and her active's equivalent multiplier is respectable up to around a 150% net FP buff against non-bosses/solo enemies.
At night. Even with acc/crit damage buffs in place, the surehit component is huge. SVCh's active could broadly be considered on par with most selfbuffers, with a significant advantage if the enemy has more than 20 evasion or so.
Para debuffed. The damage/crit rate/accuracy penalties make her active significantly more influential, and it should be at least a 75% DPS buff. When combined with her passive, this should make her preferable over standard generalist rifles. However, teams fighting under para debuff tend to be extremely specialized, so you may not be looking for a generalist either way.

Note that against 0-EVA enemies (the very bottom of each of these charts), SVCh loses a fair bit of ground as she no longer has surehit working in her favor.

Passive^#

SVCh gains damage when she changes attack targets, including her first shot. How much this helps will obviously vary by encounter.

While that's a true statement, it's also not very informative. I'll record a few battles, painstakingly count her triggers in each, and estimate some "average buff" numbers. To avoid false alarms I'll use HGs that don't buff FP and fairies without a damage talent/skill (so "FP UP" is only displayed from her passive).

id	Contents	Duration	Triggers	Avg passive buff
20075	Scarecrow x1 Executioner x1 Hunter x1 Destroyer x1 Destroyer x1 Alchemist x1	12.87s	5	21%
336334	Gladiator x2 Gunner x15	10.30s	5	25%
336609	Minotaurus x3 Cerynitis x15	18.07s	6	19%
2691	Strelet x20 Doppelsöldner x4	13.37s	6	23%
317972	Strelet x14 Uhlan x2	27.23s	9	17%

Videos are available for reference on this playlist. Bosses weren't tested here as, assuming they don't have adds you'd retarget SVCh to, they give you nothing but the one stack at battle start and thus make her passive largely irrelevant.

This is a pretty approximate method, so don't take this as set in stone. Feel free to run your own tests. But it looks reasonable to call it a 20%-ish average FP buff in non-boss battles - even in fights with a few high-HP enemies like the Minotaurus.

We can use these numbers to modify our acceptable threshold in the previous section - for example, assuming a 20% average boost from her passive, a 1.75/1.2=1.46=46% effective selfbuff from her active would make her about equivalent to a standard buffer, plus bonus value when her skill's on cooldown. Alignment with other buffs, target order, overkill, and similar factors make these numbers all rather approximate.

Testing^#

That's a lot of numbers, and they make SVCh look viable enough. However, there's enough weirdness going on that we really have to run some combat tests.

Strelets & Gunners

QLZ was used at night to make the fight more manageable - Gunners have a lot of evasion.

Compared to Lee, Liu did a bit better at day but worse at night - as expected, considering how her clones scale worse with reduced accuracy. SVCh performed similarly to Lee either way. And far above any of those is a proper piercing rifle. Type88 easily doubled their damage output, regardless of the time of day.

SWAP SF

Sand Dancer fairy used at day; Combo+QLZ+M2 at night.

Lee clearly wasn't fantastic, with slower clear times and more damage taken. NTW and SVCh looked quite close at both day and night - and given their relative cost, I'd have to hand this one to SVCh.

Zombie repost

SVCh also made it into one round of testing with VSK earlier. Let's pull it back up for reference:

She looks slightly worse than VSK at day, but slightly better at night. R93 had an advantage either way.

Conclusion^#

The ultimate problem I have with SVCh is this - her skill implies a specialization in a few different areas. However, there are basically always better options in each of those.

SVCh is not a Patroller-killing specialist, because M200/M4A1/NTW/Desert Eagle do it better.
SVCh is not an anti-swarm/mob specialist, because Type88/4 Shiki/416/Sopmod/Liu/Stella do it better.
SVCh is not a great "DPS" specialist like R93 or Pink/Python comps, because she scales less well with several common buff types, does worse against bosses, and makes the most of her passive against weak enemies.
SVCh is not an anti-Orthrus or force shield specialist, because her skill simply doesn't work that way.

This leaves SVCh as a "general use" rifle with a potentially handy kit that gets less value from FP and crit buffs. She has decent final performance and works as a selfbuffer, but doesn't bring anything all that unique to the table. I would recommend her the most for non-boss night battles (with evasion), where her effective selfbuff is better than most rifles. She favors ROF-buffing HGs more than usual, and as such should generally be paired with a FP buffer to avoid overcapping.

Notes^#

SVCh does a bit better early on when your equipment/fairies are lacking. However, that is more a reason to improve your equipment/fairies than invest in a random unit that sort of benefits from your poor situation.
SVCh not scaling as well does not mean you should avoid FP buffers entirely. Think back to General Liu, and also note the ROF cap and the fact that only Webley even approaches being a strong off-side ROF buffer.
Rifle tiles are not very important, so I haven't mentioned them.

Example Echelons^#

Standard disclaimer: teams should be built as needed according to the circumstances of specific maps and enemies. Do not blindly copy-and-paste teams. With that in mind, here are some not-entirely-awful ideas to illustrate where SVCh can be used.