Vector vs Uzi
(Update: note that these tests were run before the release of the new equipment pieces. Uzi's buffed SPEQ helps close the gap in base FP, and chips make that a smaller percent difference. ROF tiles are much less useful for ARs, so ultimately Uzi's advantage is significantly larger now than what's described below. At the same time, keep in mind PP-19 mod has been released and it does pretty well.)
Offensive SMGs tend to come in three varieties: direct-fire (SR-3MP, X95), molotov (Vector, Skorpion), and hand grenade (PP-19, STEN). Direct-fire offtanks are on the situational side - SMG accuracy can be a hindrance, they do worse against large groups, and lose DPS if they lose links. Molotovs tend to be recommended over hand grenades - they have similar damage multipliers, but the extra damage over time from a molotov is often preferred over the extra area from a hand grenade (2.5 vs 1.5 units).
Within the molotov class, Vector was long considered the best. As the only 5★ molotov SMG, she has the highest skill multiplier - her molotov does 7x damage on impact at SL10. Her damage stat is also good: 30 at level 100, compared to 33 (PPS-43), 28 (Z-62), 26 (PP-19, STEN), 25 (KLIN), and 24 (Skorpion, Micro Uzi pre-mod). Finally, her tiles are strong, giving 25% ROF to the AR behind her.
At some point, though, Uzi's mod arrived. Previously an instant core only memorable for her absurd sideways tiles, Uzi got a massive skill upgrade and a tile adjustment that let her better fit into normal formations. Her initial impact remains weaker than Vector - with full equipment/affection Uzi has 53 FP/a 6.5x multiplier vs Vector's 55 FP/7x multiplier. If there are enough enemies to burn, though, Uzi can do much better with her new Burning Chain skill.
Incendiary Grenade will deal an extra 0.8x damage every 1.5 seconds to burning enemies. The burning effect will spread around burning enemies to create new burning ground within a radius of 1 yards until the Incendiary Grenade effect expires. Enemy groups on fire will also burn other enemies within an extremely small area.
Some sort of objective comparison/evaluation of these skills is nearly impossible considering all the factors going on in each battle, so I'll focus on some field tests and what trends we can observe from them. A few extras are included at the end that aren't very relevant but may be interesting to think about.
Testing#
Round 1
Team 1: a standard direct-fire ARSMG, with C-MS as the tank. For the enemies, I've picked some of the harder GSG/Division enemies (CE between 45 and 73k, if that means anything) and the classic Core 8 Brute/Strikers except at day. Because of ROF frame thresholds, AN-94 ultimately gets a 20% net DPS increase from Vector's tiles here, about the same as what Uzi offers. Differences in performance should then only really come more from skill differences.
Overall, a good look for Vector. Interestingly, she has a lead even against the largest mob here (the 60 Shooters).
Round 2
Next, let's do some night battles with an incredibly unique echelon: AS Val, Python, AR-15, UMP45, and Uzi/Vector.
AR-15 doesn't need the ROF, so we'll put Uzi/Vector in front of AS Val. 76 base * 1.25 = 95 ROF (15 frames), a 26.6% DPS increase. Especially considering that Uzi's accuracy is pointless on AS Val, Vector's tiles are much better here. One option would be to pair Uzi's tiles with AR-15 and Vector's with Val, but that starts adding even more variables and complexity.
Even without Uzi's tiles, AS Val deals ~1200 damage/shot with her skill up here. A few SF here have 500-800 HP/link, so adding FP doesn't help her performance as much against those enemies.
Despite Uzi's tiles being substantially less useful, she looks to be the better option in most battles here. Airstrike's skill was used to weaken the Jaegers in the Dragoon/Jaeger group (taken from 10-3N) so UMP45 could last through the battle.
Using Vector over Uzi may have led to less total damage taken against the 10-4N Dragoon/Guard group, although it's a bit too close to call.
Round 3
For the final test, I'm using a ROF/multihit ARSMG: G11, Angelica, K2, A.Vector, and Uzi/Vector. Vector's ROF tile takes G11 to the ROF cap, but there's very little loss and it still works out to a 25% DPS increase. Enemies are a mix from Theater and chapter 13.
While neither option was able to avoid the Cyclops grenades in the first group, Uzi was sometimes able to burn one or two while the ARs were locked on the Orthrus. Vector's grenade did little to them. The damage taken with each option was otherwise fairly close, but Uzi seems to have done a bit better overall.
Extra
One point of curiosity I had was if there was any sort of overall correlation between the enemy group size and performance. If so, it would be nice to be able to make a recommendation like "use Uzi if more than 40 enemy links, Vector otherwise." Below are a set of charts comparing the three statistics against the total enemy link count (combined from the previous three sets of experiments):
Individual data points are overlaid with some jitter applied to help show where the lines come from.
This does show some overall performance trends (Uzi consistently clears faster and does more damage, but the damage taken is close throughout) but does not reveal any obvious thresholds. While unfortunate, I wasn't expecting too much as each fight will have its own unique mechanics, timings, and enemy placements. Perhaps most importantly, rather than the total link count you'd have to look at how many links were alive when the grenade was thrown/how many it hit.
Conclusion#
One very approximate way of summarizing would be to count the total number of cases where Uzi did better by some metric, Vector did better, or they were about equal. That would indicate around a 44:14:42% split for Uzi:Vector:equal. Narrowing it down to looking at just damage taken, it evens up to a 25:25:50% split. Even in some cases where Uzi dealt a bit more damage or cleared faster, it wasn't always enough to actually save much health.
There are enough battle and echelon-specific circumstances that you'll still want to think about the situation, but Uzi overall appears to be quite strong in a range of battles. Her slightly lower initial damage does not seem to be a mark against her, as the improved damage-over-time almost always makes up for it. Overall, I would recommend just using Uzi. If you need another grenade thrower, PP-19's mod is worth considering. There's no particular enemy count threshold here - Uzi does better than Vector against a wide range of group sizes.
Other considerations#
- Molotovs in general are quite poor against low link counts. These aren't the only offtank options out there.
- If both are oathed, Uzi gets an extra point of FP due to the mod3 affection cap increase (Vector: 55>56 FP while equipped, Uzi: 53>55).
- Uzi's previously worthless mod SPEQ has been upgraded to be slightly better than an EOT. These tests were ran before that.
- Mod XP/core/data costs and the commander level requirement make Uzi's mod less accessible to new players, and more expensive in general. She has about zero utility pre-mod.
- Vector is harder to get from production - about 0.660% from 400/400/91/30 compared to Uzi being given for free at lv50/x3 from the IOP Career quests.
- Vector is significantly better than Uzi at 13-4 dragging. You may wish to set aside single-link SL10 copies for maximum savings.
- Uzi is significantly better than Vector at 12-4E dragging.
- Depending on your tastes, Vector has some nice costumes (1, 2)
- With an eternal disclaimer on how future content may be different, there has been little use for multiple ARSMG echelons since the ~Deep Dive-Singularity era. Raising Uzi/Vector/KLIN/PP-19 all at the same time is probably overkill.
Extra: Tiles#
(Update: as of 2021-December-14, a number of new equipment pieces including the #2 Processor chip for ARs/SMGs have released. These chips make ROF tiles nearly useless on most ARs, putting Vector at a major disadvantage here. The following commentary assumes Vector's tiles don't significantly overcap the AR behind her, which is only really the case for particularly slow ARs like RFB, EM-2, 64 Shiki (<5 enemy groups), and possibly Type95. Because of this, I would now recommend Uzi over Vector in virtually all circumstances.)
Uzi gives 18% FP, 15% ACC to the doll behind her while Vector gives 25% ROF. For typical AR accuracies and standard enemy evasions, a 15% accuracy buff will usually be a 2-3% DPS increase making Vector's tiles slightly better on paper (very roughly, giving ~5% more DPS to the doll behind her). Some complicating factors:
- Frame breakpoints are a big deal. While 25% ROF is on average a ~25% DPS increase, the exact value can fluctuate significantly depending on the base stat. See this page for some examples of how that plays into the Aim/Assault talents.
- Damage is better for grenades and armor (but ARs are bad against armor in general); ROF is better for large groups and Orthrus shields.
- Tiles are additive, so stacking many tiles of the same type is slightly less efficient. This shouldn't be a significant concern.
- Some ARs can buff themselves up to or near the ROF cap. Further ROF will have much less value on those dolls.
Here's two examples showing the relative DPS advantage from Vector's tiles by base ROF, assuming no other tiles/skills are in play:
Points above the middle mean Vector's tile gives more average DPS; points below mean Uzi's tile gives more average DPS.
So, Vector looks a good bit better in terms of tiles.
Keep in mind that 25% ROF will be nearly worthless on dolls that selfbuff their ROF (e.g. ST AR-15, Angelica/AUG, AK-12)
and will become is much less useful once now that we have the #2 chip is introduced.
The accuracy value used is for an oathed AN-94 (who already has one of the highest AR base accuracies), so most ARs will prefer Uzi slightly more if they don't have other acc buffs.
If you're curious, here's how a straight 25% ROF vs 25% FP comparison looks:
This is all super minor stuff. The only relevant point of caution, 99% of the time, is if Vector's tiles would cause substantial ROF overcap. Otherwise, think of them as fairly similar with a possible edge in favor of Vector.
Extra: Survivability#
Your molotov offtank selection probably shouldn't depend on their exact average survivability, especially considering how close they are and how much RNG is involved. Any random SMG will have decent health & evasion, and your maintank should be taking most of the hits. Vector and Uzi have similar stats overall: with full gear, Uzi has 885 HP/108 EVA compared to Vector's 925 HP/95 EVA. Setting aside link protection, if enemy accuracy is a factor, this usually works out to a slight edge in Uzi's favor:
Against surehit attacks or enemies with extreme accuracy (~200+, will vary based on tiles/fairies) Vector's higher HP will be better. For link protection thresholds: per link, Uzi has 177 HP and Vector 185. Vector will have a better chance of tanking 2 hits per link against enemies within ~15% of that range (~150-210 FP). There is a slim range of FP that gives Vector a chance of tanking two hits and would always take a link off Uzi, but that's getting way too deep in the details. This probably isn't a significant concern overall. For reference, a few high-FP enemies:
| Enemy | Location | FP |
|---|---|---|
| Dreamer | 8-4N | 185 |
| 7-6 | 200 | |
| 7-4E, 8-6 | 240 | |
| 8-4E | 240 | |
| 7-4N | 245 | |
| Destroyer | 8-6, 8-4E | 300 |
| Cerynitis | AP version | ~60 |
| No-AP version | 120-142 | |
| Agent | Singularity ranking | 45 |
| M16 | Singularity ranking | 95 |
| Isomer EX | 85 | |
| Manticore | Isomer deathstack | 149 |
| Theater 5/6 Advanced 8 | 115 |
High-damage bosses tend to be a bit above that range and almost all normal enemies are much below it.