Savage Pounce (Support Ability)

• Healing specs increased
• New passive: while not on cooldown, passively heal all nearby allies every second

Unyielding Rise (Ultimate Ability)

• U-Energy cost reduced to 40, but will consume all U-Energy on cast
• Healing is increased based on the amount of U-Energy consumed
• Icebound Claws will last longer based on the amount of U-Energy consumed, from 10 seconds (same as current) to 20 seconds when 100 U-Energy is consumed
• When the attacks from this ability hit a breakable part, it will also contribute to charging Icebound Claws
• When the ultimate ability is cast, heal allies for 75% of the charged amount of any Icebound Claws that existed before the casting the ultimate (same effect as the second ultimate ability neuronic)

It's an objective improvement, but it might be too little too late. Still having an U-Energy cost, even if it is reduced, could still prevent this from being meaningfully useful as a buffing ability and keep it as an emergency heal.

Other Eatchel Changes

• Manifestation 2 now reduces the cooldown of Unyielding Rise to 30 seconds
• Improvements to the pull range of Territorial Patrol (standard ability), and to the parts breaking power and U-Energy recovery rate of enhanced followup shots

Lux Squad

• Winter Fleece stacks are now consumed when using any ability (vs on-heal currently), with its effects persisting for two seconds

This is probably to avoid potential abuse with Eatchel's new support ability passive, but it does kill its usability with Chenxing - The Observer.

Blitzing Fangs

• Decay rate of stored healing changed from 500/s to decaying over 20 seconds

This doesn't change anything if you max out the stored healing, but it means you can keep the buff for the same duration even if you didn't, boosting its lower-end performance.

We'll also have to see how her new passive heal too interacts with the 20 second second decay period.

March 26 Maintenance Details

Outfits

• Adjustments to Fenny - Coronet's Sugar Queen and Lyfe - Wild Hunt's Street Code outfits. See here for more details.
• All associated resources for Fenny's outfit (profile icon, profile cover, splash art) will be updated to the new version.
• Note that you may be able to purchase Fenny's outfit again even if you already own it. Please don't do this for obvious reasons.

Defense Line Zero

• Electric traps no longer stun you or teammates
• Improvements to UI

Bugfixes

• Fixed shots firing off-center to the left when Fenny's Sweet Decree weapon skin is equipped
• Added unique buffs for Eatchel - The Cub in Paradoxical Labyrinth
• Fixed abnormal trigger conditions for some of Eatchel's random base events
• Fixed abnormal behaviour with Eatchel's model when using the Indoor Climbing Frame in her room
• Fixed Eatchel - The Cub abnormally clearing enhanced shots from her standard ability when casting her ultimate ability
• Fixed enhanced shots from Eatchel - The Cub's standard ability not being affected by standard ability damage boosts
• Fixed Eatchel - The Cub's ultimate ability not triggering effects that activate on heal
• Fixed Eatchel - The Cub's ultimate ability targeting invulnerable enemies
• Fixed bullets loaded with Yao - Winter Solstice's standard ability while her ultimate is active not interrupting the enemy special abilities
• Fixed main story level 12B-4 not progressing normally under certain circumstances
• Fixed voice anomalies in main level 12B-5
• Fixed occurrences of enemies staying out of bounds and being untargetable in Gigalink
• Fixed instances where the interaction prompts of interactive devices in Paradoxical Labyrinth may not display
• Fixed Ancasia - [Redacted]'s Deiwos passive not activating in Paradoxical Labyrinth
• Fixed instances where some Paradox Labyrinth levels cannot progress (likely the bug where enemies don't spawn)
• Fixed map objectives floating in the air in some levels of Paradoxical Labyrinth
• Typo fixes
• Various model fixes for Fenny - Coronet (Sugar Queen), Eatchel - The Cub, Lyfe - Wild Hunt (Street Code), as well as other graphical fixes

Source (2)

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone News: March 26 Maintenance and Eatchel Buffs appeared first on DotGG.

A gigantic Titan born within Duchess Orlova, first witnessed at Suzdal Launch Base.

Lament of Yehrus (nicknamed “Disco Ymir” due to its appearance) or just Yehrus for short, is a large stationary boss that debuted in chapter 12, part 2 of the main story. It may look imposing, but its gameplay actually turns out to be quite simple.

Back to Neural Simulation overview

Behaviour and Attacks

Yehrus has two phases, but largely share the same move set.

Basic Attacks

Dark Vortex

Yehrus summons two cubes that slam into the ground and explode into smaller bullets. The cubes don’t seem to actually target you and the bullets don’t do a lot of damage, so this ends up being a freebie attack that you don’t have to worry about.

Ice Tears

Yehrus casts four targeted attacks that stagger on hit. These can be avoided with a well-timed dodge. At higher difficulty levels the number of attacks is supposedly increased to six, but this doesn’t seem to actually happen.

Sniping Squall

Yehrus targets your current location, then repeatedly bombards it with staggering ground-targeted attacks. These attacks come out quite quickly, so it’s recommended to avoid being caught by them in the first place. At higher difficulty levels, Yehrus will target you twice.

Summon Gurah

Yehrus summons groups of Gurahs (the ball-shaped titans) to attack you. This can be in two forms.

Three Gurahs are summoned. Two launch a cluster of bullets, while the third fires a laser that staggers on hit. After they leave, the attack is repeated but from the opposite side of the arena.

A row of Gurahs are summoned with each firing a laser in front of it that staggers on hit. At higher difficulty levels, the Gurahs will fire three times.

Pillars

Once Yehrus reaches 75% HP, it will become invulnerable and summon several pillars after a delay. These pillars have parts HP, and all need to be broken before the fight can continue. Once all pillars are broken, Yehrus will enter a break state for a period of time before resuming combat. Make sure to target the glowing “crown” while it’s downed for optimal damage. This portion of the fight actually turns out to take the longest for most players, so being able to quickly break all the pillars is important to getting good times.

As a general rule, starting from one side then sweeping to the other is preferred as this prevents you from having to waste time doubling back. Half of the pillars are on the ground, while half are on elevated platforms. Since the pillars on the platforms don’t allow you to break them if you aren’t on the same platform as them (thanks Seasun), it is recommended to not have to return to ground level once you jump up to a platform via a jump pad. Below is an example of optimised pillar break pathing.

The pillars always spawn in the same location, so you can pre-aim at the location where one will spawn.

Starting on the bottom left makes this easy as you can target this root.

Phase 2

Yehrus retains the same move set as in phase 1, but with some changes:

• Sniping Squall releases two extra targeted bombardments
• Dark Vortex summons one additional cube

As well, Yehrus gains a new attack.

Crashing Star

Yehrus slams a star into the arena, causing a global stagger and releasing a swarm of bullets. At higher difficulty levels, this will also create an expanding zone on the ground level that deals damage over time if stood on.

Strategy

Some of Yehrus’ attacks can be pretty scary and annoying to deal with. However, Yehrus is also… really squishy. It quite possibly has the least effective health of all Neural Sim bosses, and its extremely large weak spot (its head or the glowing crown in phase 2) makes bursting it down before it can even do any of its particularly annoying attacks not just viable, but the reality for most players. When you also consider the very generous period of time where Yehrus is downed after the pillar phase, it ends up being quite a trivial fight, with phase 2 often not even taking place due to how fast you can shred through the remainder of its health bar. Sometimes the best defence is a good offence, and this is certainly one of those cases.

So with Yehrus effectively being a disco ball punching bag, optimising your raw damage output and efficiently breaking pillars will be the top priority for almost all players as defensive utility will not be needed. Yehrus has two targetable parts in phase one, and three in phase two. These provide extra targets for Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud to scan which makes her a great choice here, but any strong DPS will do well enough. As well, make sure you have a proper pillar breaking setup; they have parts HP so it might be worth checking the overview on parts breaking in the general Neural Sim guide.

Pillar Skip

With the pillar phase taking up half or more of the runtime of fast Yehrus clears, being able to skip it would be a massive time save. As it turns out, it’s possible, but requires certain specific conditions to be met, and a lot of luck.

If you push Yehrus past its 75% HP trigger while it’s frozen, there’s a small chance that it’ll perform Crashing Star once it unfreezes (presumably because some part of the game thinks you’re already in phase 2). If this happens, the pillar phase never happens, and you can directly proceed to phase 2. A highly invested Katya turns out to be really good at the setup for this due to her ability to freeze Yehrus on her own. However, the odds of this are extremely low, on top of requiring said freeze setup. I wasn’t able to get it to happen at all, and a personal friend of mine and fellow speedrunner (whose example run is shown below) reported only two successful skips in an entire hour of attempts.

Attempt this at the risk of your sanity.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Lament of Yehrus Guide appeared first on DotGG.

Officer in charge of the Coyote Mech Force. Nicknamed "The Bison" due to his foul temper and in-your-face fighting style.

Joseph The Bison, or Joe for short, is the featured boss of chapter 3. He has two phases with very different attacks in each, keeping players on their toes.

Back to Neural Simulation overview

Attacks and Behaviours

Phase 1

In phase 1, Joseph attacks you from range with his cannon.

During phase 1, Joseph will jump sideways occasionally.

This is not to be confused with his forward dash.

Charged Shot

Joseph charges up a shot that does damage and staggers on hit. It can be relatively easily sidestepped. At higher difficulty levels, Joe will use this attack after his sideways jumps.

Missile Volley

Joseph launches three volleys of small missiles. These can be trivially sidestepped, but also don’t do that much damage anyways, so you can ignore them if you really want.

Buster Shot

Joseph deploys a line of electric fences, then fires a large missile at your location, dealing huge damage and knocking you back on hit.

At higher difficulty levels, the fence is instead deployed in a circle around you. This makes things quite a bit more difficult, as you can no longer just walk out of the range of the missile.

The electric fences themselves have some interesting properties. They deal damage and stagger you if you walk into them, and (more frustratingly) their hitbox extends above their visual model. Also, Katya can dodge through them for some reason.

This can make shooting back difficult, as you might end up hitting the fence instead.

Casual players: It’s possible to time a dodge right as the missile lands and avoid taking any damage. If that doesn’t work, you can also just break the fence and escape the circle.
Speedrunners: This attack sucks. It’s not really because of the attack itself, but because the fences make hitting Joe really annoying. If you’re bringing CC supports, you ideally should be bursting him down fast enough that he never gets to use this attack. If not, you can (should) dodge out of the ring of fences before they land if you react fast enough to the sound cue or his attack animation. In either case, resetting until you get a run where he doesn’t use this attack is a viable option as well, though he really likes using this attack so your mileage may vary.

Downs

When Joseph reaches 80% HP, he will enter a down state where you can freely attack him.

When he reaches 60% HP or lower, he will enter an invulnerable state, taking off some of his armour and moving to phase 2 of the fight.

Phase 2

Joe ditches his cannon and moves in to get personal with a more melee attack set.

Dive Bomb

Joseph flies into the air and dives back down to the ground after a delay. Being hit by the landing will knock you back. This attack has two variants that he can cast. At higher difficulty levels, both variants will deploy a ring of explosives around Joseph once he finishes his dive.

Joseph can deploy electric fences around you before performing the dive. At low levels, there will be a gap in the fence for you to casually walk out from.

However, at higher difficulty levels, the fences will instead form an enclosure around you. This makes this attack quite frustrating to deal with, especially considering that the fences have a chance to not be destroyed when Joseph lands.

Casual players: You can deal with this the same way that you can deal with the fences in phase 1.
Speedrunners: Reset. This attack might as well be a run killer as it makes it very difficult to even attack him back while he prepares to dive down. Aiming high enough to target him will often result in your view being blocked by a fence, and this is true even with sniper rifle operatives, as the scoped-in view is not a true first-person perspective.

In the other variant of this attack, no fences are deployed.

This variant is a massive freebie, as Joseph will always overshoot and land behind you, letting you attack him with no risk the entire time as long as you don’t move backwards into the landing zone.

Rocket Slash

Joseph deploys two lines of fences on either side of you, then dashes forward to slash with the claws on his arm, staggering on hit. You can literally just walk out of this attack due to the delay between when the attack begins and when Joseph actually dashes forward.

This attack can also be cast without the fences, in which case it can require a dodge to avoid being hit.

Rocket Fist

Joseph runs into range, then dashes forward to punch you, staggering on hit. This attack is very similar to the fence-less version of Rocket Slash, but requires Joseph to get within a certain distance of you first, which you can exploit as a DPS window.

Triple Strike

Joseph runs into range, then does three melee hits, with the third being a ground area of effect that staggers. Like Rocket Fist, Joseph has to be within a certain range of you to perform this attack, and will do all three attacks even if one misses.

Wrist Shot

Joseph fires a stream of bullets from his wrist-mounted guns. You can dodge them by just sidestepping, and they don’t do enough damage to make eating a few shots a major issue. A freebie.

Down

When Joseph reaches 30% HP, he’ll enter another down state like in phase 1.

Strategy

Despite his appearance, Joseph actually has quite a large head hitbox that extends above the visual model. It roughly extends to the height of the horns on his helmet and the space between.

It is highly recommended to abuse this extra hitbox space to avoid hitting his shoulders or anything else blocking the visual head area.

Joseph’s main difficulty comes from his Buster Shot and fenced Dive Bomb, due to the electric fences that are deployed in those attacks. If you can handle those attacks (or are willing to reset until you get a run where he doesn’t use those attacks), you’ll find that the rest of his attacks don’t pose that much of a threat.

Being an armoured boss, Joseph might be trouble for pistol or SMG-based DPS choices due to ricochet issues. While otherwise pretty flexible for DPS options, he really is food for Yao - Winter Solstice. Especially when paired with Mauxir - Shadow Ka and Tess - The Magician, Yao can burst down Joe before he even gets a chance to properly fight back. This is further compounded by the ability to skip phases of the fight:

Down Skipping

When Joseph enters a down, he cannot perform any actions. This includes transitioning to phase 2! What that means is that if you can deal enough damage, you can skip the entirety of phase 2 by killing Joseph during his first down. This does require a very high-damage setup, though, so don’t expect to pull this off if your teams are lacking.

This still has uses even for less-invested setups. You might be able to skip the rest of phase 1, letting you avoid having to deal with any more Buster Shots for the rest of the fight. Furthermore, if you can drop him to 30% HP, Joe will immediately transition to phase 2 - then down again, letting you finish him off for free.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Joseph The Bison Guide appeared first on DotGG.

Using templates from pre-existing all-terrain vehicles, this experimental heavy mech has been modified to include weaponry.

The Ni-Type Mech (commonly shortened to “Ni-Mech” and referred to as the “spider tank” or just as “the mech”) is one of the very first bosses that players will encounter, being the boss of the first main story chapter. It provides a unique minigame where players will want to break the legs of the mech in order to gain access to its vulnerable weak spot.

Back to Neural Simulation overview

Behaviour and Attacks

Ni-Mech innately has 50% damage reduction when not shooting parts or its weak spots. It has seven parts that can be targeted and attacked:

• Main body
• Cannon, to the left of the main body
• Missile launcher, to the right of the main body
• Legs (four of them)

Breaking the armour covering the “knees” of a leg will expose a weak spot that can then be destroyed.

When this happens, Ni-Mech will enter a downed state, exposing a weak spot on the back of the main body that can then be attacked. This will also instantly deal 12.5% of Ni-Mech’s health.

Machine Gun

Ni-Mech fires the two machine guns on its main body. At higher difficulty levels, the damage becomes Electric (not that it makes any difference currently) and deals more damage.

Casual players: The tracking of the machine guns is relatively slow, letting you easily dodge it by just sidestepping.
Speedrunners: You can probably just tank this, though it might be worth resetting the run if you get this attack anyways, as Ni-Mech tends to move around while using this attack, making its legs much more difficult to shoot.

Charged Bombardment

Ni-Mech charges its cannon then fires it. This shot deals large amounts of damage and knocks you back on hit. At higher difficulty levels, Ni-Mech will fire three shots instead of one and shots that hit will leave behind a zone that deals damage over time if you’re standing in it. Destroying the cannon will disable this attack.

Casual players: This is by far the scariest attack that Ni-Mech can do, so don’t be afraid to take some time from attacking its legs to dodge. Keeping your distance will also make it easier to sidestep.
Speedrunners: Reset if you get this. Even ignoring the fact that you can’t tank this without incurring a massive time loss from being knocked back, the hitbox of the cannon will often block the leg you’re trying to attack. Overall, it's just not worth dealing with unless you finish prepping all the legs you need (more on this later) before it can fire.

Missile Strike

Ni-Mech launches a barrage of missiles that each create an area-of-effect that deals damage over time. At higher difficulty levels, the area that each missile creates becomes larger. Destroying the missile launcher will disable this attack.

Casual players: The pattern in which the missiles land is in multiple lines that extend outward from your position, so you can look down to find multiple wedges where the missiles will not hurt you and avoid them that way.
Speedrunners: This is the ideal opener attack and the only move you ever want Ni-Mech to do, really. The damage really isn’t relevant, and Ni-Mech stays still the entire time which makes shooting its legs easy.

Jump

Ni-Mech jumps, dealing damage and knocking you back if you’re too close to its landing point. At higher difficulty levels, it will also launch a wave of bullets once it lands. For both casual players and speedrunners alike, you will want Ni-Mech to jump over and past you, as this will place it closer to you once it lands and allow you to stay in effective combat distance.

Leg Stomp

Ni-Mech charges up a leg stomp that deals damage and knocks you back on hit. It doesn’t do this move unless you stay very close to it for a while, so give it some personal space if you don’t want to deal with this. However, speedrunners that are interested in keeping Ni-Mech locked in this animation will be disappointed to know that the time needed to get it to perform this attack is longer than the time it would probably take to attack the legs normally.

Strategy

Because Ni-Mech normally has a large amount of damage reduction, the ideal method of dealing with it is to break its legs and get it to expose its weak spot. This also has the added benefit of Ni-Mech being unable to perform any attacks, allowing you to focus on dealing damage. Since there’s no cooldown on how quickly it can be downed again after a previous downed state ends, it is ideal to first break all the leg armour coverings ahead of time so that the already-exposed leg weak spots can be destroyed as soon as Ni-Mech recovers from a downed state, effectively stunlocking it for the remainder of the fight. This practice is known as “prepping” legs. Because Ni-Mech will be downed for the majority of the fight, it's not worth breaking the cannon or missile launcher unless you're struggling to prep legs quickly.

Or if you have enough damage, you can just use Mauxir - Shadow Ka and completely bypass the damage reduction to kill it in one support skill cast. That also works.

Because of how the optimal gameplay strategy plays out, Ni-Mech times generally end up grouped together based on how many legs are needed for a kill, with some variation depending on how long it takes a player to finish prepping the required number of legs. Runs are often categorised as being an x-leg run, with x representing the number of legs needed (0.5 is added if an additional leg break is needed, but breaking the leg deals enough damage to kill). Thus, the two main ways of improving times is to prep legs faster as well as killing in fewer legs.

Prepping legs is largely just a matter of bringing a properly levelled operative, not being knocked back, and quickly firing accurate shots. See here in the Neural Simulation overview for a primer on parts breaking strategies. As mentioned earlier, the optimal attack for Ni-Mech to perform is Missile Barrage due to its relatively low threat and the fact that it keeps Ni-Mech in one spot. It is especially recommended to reset runs until you get Missile Barrage as Ni-Mech’s first attack because of this.

Being able to kill with fewer leg breaks can be much more difficult, but also comes with much greater time saves. A 2.5 leg run will almost always be slower than a 2 leg run, which will in turn almost always be slower than a 1 leg run. Methods of improving your damage will vary depending on your setup and account state, so it is unfortunately not possible to provide personalised recommendations here. If you’re unsure of your damage output, it’s advisable to do a test run where you prep all four legs to determine how many leg breaks will be needed for you to kill it. Then, you can do a proper run where you only break as many legs as needed.

Team Building

Because the DPS window for Ni-Mech is one where you get to deal damage with no retaliation, any operative with strong damage will do here. Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud gets a special mention here due to being able to mark all seven of Ni-Mech’s parts for a large amount of extra damage.

You will also almost definitely want some form of parts breaker unless you have a very high-level setup that can kill in one cast of Mauxir - Shadow Ka’s support skill. Some DPS operatives can also additionally handle this role, like Katya after Manifest 2 and Yao - Winter Solstice with parts break boosting weapon attachments and follow-up shots from Tess - The Magician’s ultimate ability. But for most people, a team composition will consist of a main DPS, a parts breaker (if the main DPS does not double as this), and a support. It’s worth noting that even if you can’t 100-0 Ni-Mech in a single Shadow Ka support skill, she might still be useful to skip having to prep an additional leg.

Control effect supports don’t have as much value here as they would on other bosses due to Ni-Mech being downed for most of the fight if all goes well. While being vulnerable to Paralyze, it is NOT recommended here due to it preventing you from breaking parts while the paralyse is in effect. It’s unclear whether this is intended or a bug. Slow effects can make prepping legs easier, but loses value once that phase of the fight ends due to Ni-Mech being immune while downed, and applying it in between leg breaks will slow down the speed at which the main body rotates to expose its weak spot again, negating much of its usefulness.

Bugs

The defence penetration that Marian - Swift’s Deiwos passive provides does not take effect on Ni-Mech’s leg weak spots. This seems to only happen in Neural Sim, and Ni-Mechs in other game modes do not suffer from this bug.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Ni-Type Mech Guide appeared first on DotGG.

An intimidating machine developed by the Military. Hard carbide plating covers its exterior, which houses electromagnetic cannon technology within.

Njall, commonly referred to as just “the cube,” is a Titan boss introduced in chapter 12, part 1 of the main story. It’s a relatively uninteractive boss that mostly boils down to a DPS check, but there still are a few quirks worth keeping in mind.

Behaviour and Attacks

There are two important things to keep in mind with Njall. One is that it spawns with a large shield that makes up the vast majority of its effective health pool. It doesn’t have a lot of substance once you deplete its shield, and you’ll find its actual health bar depletes much faster.

The other thing, and Njall’s main gimmick, is that it has a white shell covering it. While this shell is up, Njall has no accessible weakspots. Additionally it gains a 50% damage reduction in this state. However, Njall will blow off its shell after its first one or two attacks, then again roughly every minute after, though applying Control effects may cause this timing to desync.

While in this state, Njall reveals its black inner core, the entirety of which is a weak spot. It will also launch bullets up in an arc, as well as deploying bullets in a cross that rotates around it. At higher difficulty levels, you will also be sucked in towards Njall. Despite the danger, this is your best window of opportunity to deal effective damage to Njall, and it should be taken advantage of.

When you break Njall’s shield, it will also shed its shell, interrupting any attack it is casting at the time.

Njall can also teleport, gaining invulnerability while it is doing so. It’s not exactly known what triggers this, but not being too far from Njall seems to prevent it from teleporting pretty consistently.

Laser Cannon

Njall charges up and fires a laser beam at you, dealing damage and staggering if hit. Njall fortunately has a pretty clear indicator of when to dodge.

When the inner diamond lights up blue, that’s your cue to dodge.

Delayed Barrage

Njall deploys several missiles that fly towards you after a delay (hence the name). While this is happening, Njall will also perform a Laser Cannon attack. At higher difficulty levels, more missiles will be deployed. The missiles can be relatively trivially sidestepped or dodged, and the Laser Cannon attack can be dodged in the same way as the normal attack.

Quakeburst Wave

Njall rises up into the air and does a ground pound, doing a small amount of damage and staggering you if hit. At higher difficulty levels, Njall will do this three times in a row every time it does this attack. 

Casual players: When you dodge this, time it for when Njall is going to finish the ground pound animation; the visual wave that expands out is kind of a lie.
Speedrunners: If you have support skills to use, you can time them to dodge the stagger… or you could just use Katya and ignore the stagger while you’re in your skill. Yeah, this boss kinda favours her.

Kaleidoscope Barrage

Njall lowers itself and continuously spawns waves of bullets that expand outward. At higher difficulty levels, being hit by this attack will spawn an additional wave.

Casual players: If you keep your distance from Njall, the bullets will spread out more by the time they reach you, making them easier to dodge.
Speedrunners: You and I both know that the damage from this attack is more than worth the DPS window that you get from not bothering to dodge. Just tank it if you can’t sidestep.

Roaring Blast Shot

Njall fires multiple waves of bullets into the air before calling back a wave to return to it. Njall can perform other attacks once it launches the bullets into the air.

Casual players: Be careful not to let your guard down once the bullets land, there’s still a second part to this attack that’ll be coming up behind you!
Speedrunners: This attack usually doesn’t do that much damage, but sometimes it’ll nuke your health bar for no reason. Njall doesn’t do this attack all that much anyways, so you can just reset if it somehow screws your run over.

Mortar Strike

Njall targets your current location on the ground and fires a ground-targeted attack that deals damage and staggers if hit. These attacks take a bit of time to actually hit, so you can casually walk out of the area of effect, even while hip firing. This attack has a similar windup animation to Roaring Blast Shot, but you can tell the difference because of the different behaviour of the floating antennae above Njall.

Strategy

Njall is straightforward to the point of being boring. A lot of bosses can be boiled down to “shoot them while dodging their attacks,” but Njall takes this to another level by either not having any weak points, or being all weak points, largely removing the requirement to aim. You can try to save your burst for when it sheds its shell, but there’s not a lot of innate strategy otherwise.

Team Building

For most DPS operatives, Njall’s attacks are pretty trivial to manage, and your biggest issue becomes dealing enough damage to kill it quickly. To that end, the overwhelming bias towards shield HP makes ballistic damage operatives the ideal pick here. Of course, it would be irresponsible not to address the favoured operative here, Katya. While she might not be the fastest overall (In a vacuum, a properly built Yao - Winter Solstice team could probably outburst her), She comes with many distinct advantages that other operatives don’t get here. However, this also means that using her as a DPS will have some additional considerations.

Being able to immune all of Njall’s staggers and knockbacks (by having your standard skill active) means that Katya always has a DPS window, but just because you can doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. Some attacks do still need to be dodged (Laser Cannon, Delayed Missiles, and Mortar Strike), while others can mostly be shrugged off. And you need to dodge every now and then to maintain the damage buff you get from it, anyways. Additionally, while you might not be able to move with your standard skill active, Njall can still suck you in with its attacks. Keep that in mind and be ready to dodge backwards when needed to maintain your personal space. Katya can also apply Freeze on her own, which can be useful for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, this can also interfere with the timing of support skill rotations if they include a Control effect applier, as you’ll have to either wait for the CC lockout to end or cast your support skill while Njall is still immune, wasting the Control effect portion of the support skill.

As far as supports go, one in particular stands out, that being Mauxir - Shadow Ka. Her support ability summons a dummy linked to the target enemy that can be attacked to transfer any damage dealt to it to the linked enemy. Importantly, this damage transfer ignores any damage reduction effects that the enemy might have. Thus, you can use Mauxir to bypass Njall’s damage reduction, which makes her a mandatory inclusion in any well-scoring team. There really isn’t anyone that remotely comes close to the value that Mauxir brings here; the difference is night and day. If you don’t have her, this is just another reason to pick her up the next time she’s on rerun.

Slowing Njall can also make your life easier, though the two main sources of Slow both have their own quirks. Acacia - Redacted cannot apply Slow to Njall unless it has its outer shell blown off, though this does at least still let you extend the time that its weak spot is exposed. On the other hand, Cherno can technically slow Njall at any time, but has to wait for Njall to be relatively low to the ground as it often hovers too high out of reach.

And of course, it wouldn’t be any fun if there weren’t any bugs. For those looking to take advantage of Wild Hunt in a supportive role due to her ability to apply Freeze and utilise the damage-over-time aspect to apply the second part of Amarna Squad’s buffs or refresh the duration of Twilight Squad, make sure that her middle-right neuronic is not active. With that neuronic active, the DoT will not work for those purposes.

Why? I sure as hell don’t know. Just make sure to leave the middle-right neuronic unspecced (reset your neuronics if you have to) to avoid missing out on half of the value that Wild Hunt support can provide.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Njall Guide appeared first on DotGG.

A dramatic robot that is loaded with a “Party Queen” system. Things can get heated quickly against this battle-ready robot equipped with various kinds of ammunition.

Teumessian is a mechanical boss who first appeared in the Verdurous Holiday event. It has a casual and laid-back attitude with an almost cartoonish demeanour, but also has some rather annoying attacks and behaviours. It’s technically based on a fox, but I call it a rat because verbal abuse always helps make you feel better about annoying boss fights.

Behaviour and Attacks

Despite its looks, Teumessian can be quite mobile, rolling into a ball to rapidly reposition.

Star Missiles

Teumessian has a special “star” missile which will frequently appear in its move set. It has some special properties compared to normal projectiles.

When hitting the player, it will deal damage and stagger. It also has parts HP and thus can be destroyed in mid-air. This also means that it can bodyblock shots intended for Teumessian. At higher difficulty levels, the star missile will also spawn an expanding ring of normal projectiles if it expires without hitting the player or being destroyed.

Basic Attacks

Teumessian does not have phases, using the same abilities throughout the fight.

Body Slam

Teumessian performs a body slam followed by a twirl that ends with a ground pound. At higher difficulty levels, the ground pound will also spawn a ring of projectiles. Being hit with the body slam or the ground pound will knock back the player, but being hit by the spin will not. This move is very telegraphed, as Teumessian has to be close to you to do this attack, which means sometimes it will just run normally to you to be in range.

Casual players: While Teumessian is spinning, you can outrun it with sprinting. Use this to get out of range of the final ground pound to make sure you don’t get hit!
Speedrunners: Take advantage of Teumessian’s attempts to get in range for this attack to lay down damage. Once the initial body slam animation begins, you can start putting as much distance between you and Teumessian as you need to ensure you don’t get hit by the final ground pound, then continue DPSing safely, as Teumessian will be downed for some time after the ground pound. If you don’t get out of range, you might find this ability to be very annoying to deal with.

Windmill Charge

Teumessian charges towards you before falling over. Being hit by the charge will stagger you. The charge can be sidestepped relatively easily, letting you take advantage of the down period after to deal damage. Be careful not to be hit by the star missiles that are spawned when Teumessian falls over though, as they have mild homing capabilities at higher difficulty levels.

Ground Pound

Teumessian does a roll similar to its non-attack roll that instead ends in a ground pound. At higher difficulty levels, the ground pound will also spawn a ring of projectiles. This move is quite telegraphed as long as you know to expect it.

Star Shot

Teumessian fires projectiles at you in the pattern of a star, with a star missile in the middle. This too can be easily sidestepped.

Balloon

Teumessian suspends itself from a balloon, occasionally firing star missiles at you along with arcs of normal projectiles. After a period of time, Teumessian will exit the state, winding up in the air for a moment before diving towards and past you, knocking you up if hit. This dive releases star missiles and extra projectiles at higher difficulty levels. The balloon state can be ended early by destroying the balloon that it is hanging from, but this is generally not recommended as it’s the easiest DPS window that you get, with Teumessian staying still and only occasionally attacking you with slow projectiles. Just remember that star missiles have their own hitbox and try not to waste shots on them when you mean to attack Teumessian instead (strafing side to side can help you aim around them).

You used to be able to shoot Teumessian while it was winding up its dive to interrupt it, but apparently you can’t anymore. I don’t know if it’s a bug or a deliberate change, but I’ve bug reported it anyway so hopefully it gets fixed soon if it is actually a bug.

HP Triggers

Bubble Party

At 70% HP, Teumessian interrupts any move it is currently performing to fall over, giving you a DPS window. Once it gets up, it dash-rolls towards the centre of the arena, turning invulnerable while it spawns several props with parts HP. The ones at the centre of the map will constantly fire bubbles which deal damage on hit but do not stagger, and more are spawned at higher difficulty levels. Needless to say, this move is incredibly annoying as the spawns add extra projectiles that can hurt you and generally clutter up your screen with a lot of distracting visual noise. Also, the bubbles have their own health bars and can similarly bodyblock shots like star missiles.

Luckily for you, this move is very easy to cancel. When this trigger activates, Teumessian will always interrupt any move it is currently performing to fall over, clueing you in to what’s coming next. Once it gets up and prepares to curl into a ball to speed towards the middle of the map, apply a Paralyze effect and the move will be cancelled.

Best of all, you can reliably do this with the very first operative you ever get, Lyfe - Wednesday.

Present Box

At around 20% HP, Teumessian will once again dash-roll towards the middle of the arena, summoning a present box that unfolds to reveal an… acorn? Well whatever it is, it explodes shortly after, doing huge damage and knocking you back. You can similarly cancel this like with Bubble Party, but it’s less obvious when it’ll happen as it’s not quite as clearly telegraphed. It seems that you have to let Teumessian stay at such a low HP level for quite a bit of time before it’ll actually do this move (as opposed to the 70% trigger, which always happens unless cancelled), so the best recommendation turns out to be “kill it faster.”

Strategy

Teumessian isn’t a particularly complex fight, but its attacks can be very distracting which can then lead to silly mistakes. Keeping presence of mind here is especially important given Teumessian’s tendencies to get in your face or otherwise be obnoxious.

As for where to shoot the rat, the ideal target is its ears. Its head will work too as a weak spot, but I find that it can be a bit inconsistent. For this reason, you want to keep Teumessian at a medium range, far enough away to have time to react to its attacks, but also close enough that you can run around it when it flops over to be able to hit its ears which would otherwise be obscured by its fat body. Similarly, you want to avoid being right at the edge of the arena, as it can make Teumessian charge towards you and flop over at that spot, making its ears clip into the wall where you can’t attack it.

Team Building

Teumessian doesn’t inherently favour any one operative, so any of the usual top DPS picks will do just fine here. Less-optimal Hush setups might find it a bit tricky dealing with the 70% trigger though.

Support picks are similarly flexible, though you will always want some source of Paralyze if not just to cancel Bubble Party. Lyfe - Wednesday is the simplest and most accessible option, but you can also use Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud (support skill) and Fenny - Coronet, who actually can apply Paralyze with her ultimate ability, though it would be difficult to generate enough U-Energy to use it in such a short timespan. Tess - The Magician can also apply Paralyze with her support skill, even if paired with a non-Electric DPS as the damage from her ultimate will proc it. The timing for this can be tricky though, and requires you to be able to output enough DPS to have her ultimate still active by the time you hit the HP trigger.

Casual players will get decent use out of Siris here, as Teumessian has quite a few projectile spam attacks. Meanwhile, high end speedrunners can also opt to just double down on damage supports if they feel that they can burst down the rat during its 70% HP down, before it begins its bubble-filled performance.

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An unknown Titan that first appeared at the 2060 Mingdeng Ritual. Resembling a beast, this Titan can release bursts of Frost Energy when in the Frostwind state.

Fiend is a set of Titan bosses with variants in different elements. This guide covers the Frost-element variant, commonly referred to as “Ice Fiend.” Compared to its Thermal-element sibling, Ice Fiend is much less in-your-face, but has its own special attacks that can be just as frustrating to deal with.

Oh, and it’s insanely bugged. More on that later.

Behaviour and Attacks

Ice Fiend technically has three “phases,” but they all play the same so there’s no need to distinguish between them.

Basic Attacks

In combat, Ice Fiend can jump around to reposition itself.

At higher difficulty levels, this will also spawn four missiles that do not stagger.

It has an alternate version of this attack that lands more forcefully, knocking you back if caught in its area of effect. As well, it summons a falling icicle that will stagger on hit. After it falls, it leaves an icy zone that will do damage over time when standing on it.

Tracking Barrage/Icehammer Barrage

Ice Fiend summons the same icicles from its jump attack to continuously drop on you. Once it finishes the initial cast of the ability, it can continue on to perform other attacks. At higher difficulties, the duration at which these icicles fall is increased by 25% and its specs are enhanced. However, if Ice Fiend reaches an HP trigger (more on this later), the attack will end early.

Casual players: You’ll get plenty of advance warning before an icicle falls, so make sure you get out of the circle before that happens! Try to conserve as much stamina as you can, only sprinting or dodging if absolutely necessary.
Speedrunners: Ideally, you’ll push Ice Fiend to an HP trigger or kill it outright before too many icicles get to drop. You can dodge around for a bit while you do this, but if you’re really struggling, resetting to get a run where it doesn’t do this move shouldn't be too painful as it doesn’t seem to be a super frequent attack.

Minefield

Ice Fiend launches a field of mines that do damage on contact but do not stagger. After a period of time, these mines detonate, once again dealing damage but still not staggering.

Casual players: If you can dodge backwards, that’s usually the fastest way to get out of the minefield. You can also time your dodges to avoid the initial and follow-up damage.
Speedrunners: These don’t do that much damage and they don’t stagger, so just tank it and keep attacking. Of course, if you can get out of the minefield without sacrificing DPS, it doesn’t hurt. Literally.

Missile Volley

Ice Fiend summons a large volley of missiles that don’t stagger, but can deal a huge amount of damage if they all hit - enough to take out a fully-levelled operative from full health! Fortunately, dodging the brunt of the damage is as simple as a quick sidestep as long as you’re paying attention.

Darting Icicles

Ice Fiend summons two lines of ice spikes that converge towards you. Being hit deals damage and staggers. At higher difficulties, two more lines of spikes will be summoned, making it quite a bit more difficult to dodge.

Keeping your distance will usually desync the lines, making them easier to dodge, though you may still need to dodge twice to evade everything.

Swipe

Fiend swipes twice with its front paws, then jumps forward, dealing damage and knocking you back if hit. For whatever reason, it’ll do this attack even if you’re out of range of the initial two swipes, so this actually ends up being a free DPS window more often than not.

HP Triggers

At 70% and 40% HP, Fiend will turn invulnerable and summon four pillars. These pillars must be destroyed in order for Fiend to exit its invulnerable state.

These pillars can be damaged and destroyed as soon as they begin to be summoned, including while they’re still in the ground (attacking that early without a clear visual indicator can be risky, so cheat the timing at your own risk). If the pillars are not destroyed fast enough, then a large map-wide explosion will occur, dealing huge damage and knocking you back. You get a lot of time to destroy the pillars though, so this probably will never happen unless you’re doing it on purpose.

These HP triggers can’t be cancelled or skipped, so the best you can do is to get it over with as quickly as possible.

Strategy

Compared to Fire Fiend, Ice Fiend seems to respect your personal space a lot more, which is great. Also like Fire Fiend, it has a large number of flakes sticking out of it. These all count as weak spots (in addition to its head), and are additional targets for Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud to attach slips to as well as for Haru - Absconditus’ abilities. Thus, these two operatives are the preferred choice of DPS for obvious reasons and what the bulk of this section will be focused on. Additionally, both of these operatives can also quickly deal with pillar spawns, with Chenxing being able to attach slips or use her ultimate to quickly shred through the pillars, and Haru being able one-shot them with her ultimate casts if buffed up enough.

It’s also worth noting that these flakes can fall off after taking enough damage. This shouldn’t be an issue with Chenxing as the scanning area is pretty generous, but with Haru you should keep this in mind and target areas where the flakes haven’t been taken out.

There are still some other things to keep in mind, because:

Ice Fiend is a Buggy Mess

Seasun. Why. How do you break Fiend more and more every time you run it? I swear I’m going to have to go back to these guides every time one of the Fiends goes on rotation so I can update the list of bugs to be aware of.

Re: Resistance Reduction

For whatever reason, resistance shred effects like from Acacia - Kaguya’s support skill only apply to Fiend’s head weak spot and not any of the flakes. This doesn’t really change how you play it, I just wanted you to know so you could be as annoyed as I am about it.

Re: Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud

Chenxing’s slips will not work if you just cast them randomly. This is a bug that’s existed since at least December 2023, but has not been fixed.

To ensure your slips work, make sure you get  two marks on Fiend’s head (there’s a flake up there you can mark) like so:

Also sometimes when you apply Slow to Fiend then use your standard skill, the slips won’t activate until after the Slow ends.

I genuinely have no idea how or why this happens and it frustrates me greatly. Seasun, please fix.

Re: dacted

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist making that awful joke.)

Acacia - Redacted is generally the preferred method of applying Slow to Ice Fiend (it’s the only control effect it’s not immune to) due to being ranged. However, this now comes with a major caveat in that if you don’t target the right hitbox, the Slow just doesn’t apply. This is a bug that was newly discovered after the v1.6 “Skyward Blaze” update.

At the start of the battle you can pretty consistently get a freebie by just walking forward a bit and aiming dead centre:

But after that, things get a bit more difficult. So first things first, turn on “Skill Lock Tips” under Gameplay in the settings menu, as this will make visible a set of brackets that shows which enemy or hitbox you’re currently targeting.

Now comes the fun part. When casting Redacted’s support skill, you want to target Ice Fiend’s head hitbox. No, the other head hitbox. See below:

For ease of targeting, I suggest aiming a little above its head, off to one side just to make sure that you don’t end up accidentally targeting the smaller head hitbox.

After you do all this, say a little prayer to whatever higher power you believe in, because even then Redacted will just… miss sometimes. Seasun, why?

Team Building

Most DPS picks will do fine enough here, but Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud and Haru - Absconditus stand out as overperformers due to the reasons listed earlier. Sniper operatives like Marian - Swift and Yao - Winter Solstice may find it difficult to effectively clear pillars, however. Though in Yao’s case, she turns out to be able to brute force through it and not really care too much given enough investment. Fritia - Hush can also find it awkward dealing with two forced breaks from lasering Fiend to death.

An important note to keep in mind if you choose to use Haru is that she performs much better here when using Star Ocean as opposed to 16-Psyche. This is not because I'm bitter and want to get what value I can out of my 50/50 losses, but because the large number of targets that Haru hits with her abilities will all trigger Star Ocean’s bleed effect, dealing quite a bit of damage despite 16-Psyche dealing more on the initial hit. A pleasant side effect of this is that the bleed damage is not counted as being dealt to any flakes hit, but directly to Fiend, which means that you get to attack flakes for longer before they fall off.

(Yes, that's probably another bug, but I’m not reporting this one since it’s beneficial to you, the player.)

As far as supports go, you really only have two options for applying Control effects to Ice Fiend. Since it’s a Titan, it’s supposed to be vulnerable to Freeze, but I guess being the ice variant of Fiend negates that. Sure, okay. As a result, Fiend is only vulnerable to Slow. If you don’t like playing target practice with Redacted, Cherno will also work fine. Casual players may want to consider a healer if they struggle to avoid some of Ice Fiend’s attacks, particularly Icehammer Barrage. It can be a legitimately difficult attack to handle if you’re forced to deal with its full duration, and a slower clear is better than no clear at all.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Fiend – Frostwind Guide appeared first on DotGG.

View the main Skyward Blaze event details here.

Rewards

• Northwind Voucher (event shop currency)
• Profile badge
• Digicash
• Silverbucks

Game Mode Details

During the battle, enemies will spawn from three different locations. Keep this in mind to make sure you have proper coverage of each area to prevent enemies from slipping through.

When an enemy reaches the defense area, the "infrastructure value" will be reduced. When it reaches zero, the battle will end in failure.

There will be multiple Titagen portals around the map through which players can teleport around to collect resources and reach combat areas.

Players can collect different materials (Snowsalt Crystals, Aether Stones, and Spark Dust) in the resource collection area, which can be used to research upgrades for the base's fortifications. When players successfully collect materials, the corresponding upgrade tree will be automatically upgraded, bringing various beneficial effects to all teammates. You can also collect machine gun ammunition, to load into machine gun turrets (duh). Split up the work with your teammates and collect as many resources as possible!

Players can view the status of base upgrades at various consoles around the map, which will help you plan out future actions.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Defense Line Zero Event Game Mode Details appeared first on DotGG.

The debut weapon of Souinco Industries' series of high-end products. Its bold structure and expensive materials give it performance that towers above that of previous products. Though still collecting market feedback, Souinco Industries has high hopes for it.

Details are subject to change.

Weapon type: Shotgun
Element: Kinetic
Magazine size: 7
Rate of fire: 60

Weapon Skills

• Increase healing effects and Ultimate ability damage
• When the equipped operative (not auxiliary units) produces a healing effect, the amount healed will be stored, up to a limit and decaying over time. All allies gain additional attack based on the amount stored.

Featured Logistics Set: Lux Squad

2-Piece Effect

Increases healing effects.

3-Piece Effect

The equipped operative gains stacks of [Winter Fleece] per second, with each stack increasing healing effects. All stacks are consumed when the equipped operative (not auxiliary units) produce a healing effect. While the equipped operative's Ultimate ability is being used, the healing increase is treated as if the operative has maximum stacks of [Winter Fleece].

Logistics Officer Profiles

Vitalina

Born in northern Yehrus, she later moved to the southern seaside area. She personally has a strong interest in the northern snowfields. After being employed by Yggdrasil, she applied many times to participate in snowfield explorations and surveying work. These days, her goal is to invite adjutants into the wild.

Gloria

She once ran a clinic in Varizin City, Yehrus Region. Her treatment methods were unique and produced amazing results, so she was known as the "Strange Doctor". Until The Descent happened, she had made up her mind to save more people.

Ivanika

Graduated from Ulster University of Technology with honors and later passed the exam to enter Yggdrasil. She is usually taciturn and often alone, but her work efficiency is high and she is widely praised. She has made great achievements in the field of large machinery, especially in the field of integrated systems.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone New Weapon and Logistics Set Details appeared first on DotGG.

Weapon: Shotgun
Element: Kinetic
Role: Healer

Birthday: November 29
Height: 155cm

Standard Ability: Territory Patrol

Eatchel dashes a short distance and uses [Predatory Wind] to pull in all nearby enemies, dealing Kinetic damage. After damaging enemies with this ability, heal for a certain amount. As well, Eatchel's next two shots gain [Forest Wind], dealing piercing Kinetic damage to enemies hit. This has a maximum number of enemies it can hit.

Neuronic 1: [Forest Wind] shots no longer consume ammo.
Neuronic 2: The maximum number of enemies that [Forest Wind] shots can hit is increased.

Support Ability: Fierce Bite

Eatchel pounces on the targeted enemy, knocking them back and dealing Kinetic damage. Once leaving the field, heal all nearby allies for a certain amount.

Neuronic 1: Fierce Bite will also stun the target.
Neuronic 2: Increases Fierce Bite's healing effect.

Ultimate Ability: Dawn That Tears Away Hunger and Cold

(Yes, the ability name is about that long in Chinese, too. This is the most sensible translation I could come up with.)

Eatchel transforms into a fusion state and carries out a rapid series of attacks, dealing Kinetic damage, knocking up enemies hit, and healing all team members. Damage dealt is also partially stored as charges for her [Pawprints]
Passive: After using her ultimate, Eatchel gains a certain number of empty [Pawprints] that can be charged by her ultimate ability. [Pawprints] slowly decay over time, with the most-charged [Pawprint] decaying first. When an active ally's HP is below a certain percentage of their maximum HP, [Pawprints] will be consumed to heal the ally. As well, [Pawprints] provide a teamwide attack boost based on the total charge. This attack boost is affected by Eatchel's healing bonus stat.

Neuronic 1: After attacking, if the amount of fully charged [Pawprints] is less than 2, receive an additional charging buff until 2 [Pawprints] are fully charged.
Neuronic 2: Each [Pawprint] that fully decays will release a certain proportion of its charged energy as healing.

Deiwos Passive: Deep Blessings

Increases Eatchel's healing bonus stat, with an additional increase based on her Alignment Index.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Eatchel Gustav Ability Preview appeared first on DotGG.

Inspired by the three-headed dog in myths, Cerberus is mounted with a core system known as the “Ripper” to provide it with a variety of forms and flexible attack methods.

Cerberus is a mechanical boss who first appears as the chapter 8 boss. It strings together attacks with little time in between, making it a challenging fight for the unprepared.

Behaviour and Attacks

Cerberus has two “stances” that it can be in, each with its own unique attacks. Cerberus can transition between the two states at any time it is in combat.

Upright Stance

The first stance where it is upright on two legs is the stance that it always begins combat in. This is the easier of the two stances, so it is preferred that Cerberus stay like this.

The first attack Cerberus can make in this stance has it fire a stream of bullets at you. The bullets move fast, but they do not stagger.

Cerberus can also send out pillars that move outward, dealing damage and staggering you if hit.

Finally Cerberus can send out two types of missile barrages. One sends out a large quantity of smaller missiles. These do not stagger.

The other sends out a smaller amount of larger missiles. These will stagger you on hit.

While Cerberus will fire more projectiles at higher difficulty levels, all of these attacks are very easy to dodge, and can simply be sidestepped for the most part, even while ADS’d.

Attack Stance

I couldn’t think of a word to describe Cerberus being on all four legs and this is the more annoying of the two stances anyways so I’m calling it this.

When Cerberus enters the attack stance, it will make a large leap towards you into the air before coming back down, knocking you back if you’re too close. You can apply Control effects to Cerberus right after it lands, but not during the windup or while it is in the air.

In this stance Cerberus can perform additional jumps towards you, after which it will follow up with a sweeping laser attack. There are two variants of this jump that it can make, with one including an extra swipe from its front leg during the jump that appears at higher difficulty levels. Being hit by any part of either attack will knock you back.

Casual players: Try to keep your distance from Cerberus to have time to react if it jumps on  you. Also, make sure to dodge in the opposite direction that the laser is moving to ensure that you don’t get hit.
Speedrunners: Having to dodge at least once to avoid the laser kinda makes this an instant reset if Cerb pulls this on you. And that’s not including the chance of Cerb jumping right on top of you, trapping you under its torso, which is definitely a run killer.

Cerberus can also send out a large amount of orbs in one of two patterns. These do not stagger.

Casual players: You can dodge the line attack with one well-timed dodge. As for the other one, try your best to weave in and out, as the pattern is predictable. Try to stay farther away to have more time to anticipate the motions of the orbs.
Speedrunners: Facetank it, this is the one attack Cerb does in attack stance that doesn’t stagger you. Just make sure you don’t eat too many and die.

Attack of the Clones

Once you reduce Cerberus to around 70% HP, it will leave the map. While it is gone, you are tasked with surviving ten attacks from clone versions of Cerberus. Once you do so, Cerberus will return to the map and resume combat. If you intend to apply a Control effect to it once it returns, wait for it to stand back upright, as Cerberus has a brief period where it is immune to Control effects after returning to the map.

The clones can randomly perform one of three attacks:

• A fan of small orbs that deal damage but do not stagger
• A single large orb that deals damage and staggers
• A melee headbutt, sometimes with a followup swipe from the clone’s front leg as an extra treat

Each clone will disappear once it finishes its attack.

Casual players: Be aware of your surroundings! Clones will usually spawn at the parts of the map that you aren’t looking at, so make sure to look around and make sure you aren’t about to get attacked from the back. Once you survive ten attacks, make sure you aren’t in the centre of the map as Cerberus will drop down there, dealing damage and knocking you back.
Speedrunners: The faster you get through this, the faster you can get back to disassembling Cerberus. Thus, you want to make the clones attack as fast as possible. There’s not a lot you can do for the ranged attacks (they attack fast enough, and are the preferred spawns), but you can run up to the melee clones to make them attack earlier. You don’t really have to dodge all the attacks, but make sure not to take too much damage. As well, try to end up on the right side of the map relative to your perspective at the start of combat, as Cerberus lands facing that way which will allow you to attack its head.

After the clone minigame, Cerberus will be much more likely to enter attack stance. Additionally, Cerberus can also summon clones when transitioning from attack to upright stance, and also sometimes just because it feels like it.

These clones can perform any of Cerberus’ upright stance attacks.

While in upright stance after the clone phase, Cerberus can leave the map, with its presence being replaced by a glowing circle. If you break the circle before the timer at the top of the screen finishes counting, Cerberus will instantly take a large amount of damage and flop back onto the map in a downed state for a few seconds.

Casual players: Be careful of the clones that spawn at higher difficulty levels during this period, as they can kill or CC you, neither of which are particularly desirable. The circle counts as a part, so make sure your operatives are levelled as much as possible to destroy it quickly.
Speedrunners: Reset. Unless you’re running a shotgun main DPS (it's not worth it to bring a shotgun operative just for this scenario), the time needed to break the circle isn’t worth losing that time where you could be attacking Cerberus directly instead. Even with the HP loss on breaking the circle and the down state that it enters afterward, it’s still a net DPS loss (at least from my experience).

Strategy

Cerberus is thematically a very cool fight, but is very annoying to speedrun because of its attack stance. In attack stance, Cerberus uses attacks that are much more annoying to evade, and is almost permanently immune to Control effects, making it difficult to find effective DPS windows. If you’re willing to reset for a run where Cerberus stays in upright stance the entire time, you’ll likely find it to be your fastest run. However, this can take countless attempts if you succeed at all. Otherwise, there are not many optimizations possible beyond doing damage effectively.

Team Building

Being the nuisance that it is, Cerberus becomes a lot less of a headache when it isn’t allowed to attack. Bringing some source of Control will greatly help. Being vulnerable to Paralyzes and Slows means that Lyfe - Wednesday can be a useful support pick if Acacia -  Redacted is out of service or otherwise occupied for the week. Even if Cerberus enters attack stance where landing a Control effect becomes much more difficult, you will usually get one or two uses to delay the stance transition.

While most strong DPS operatives will be able to do just fine against Cerberus, three stand out in particular. Yao - Winter Solstice can charge up her ultimate by shooting clones spawned during the clone phase, and quickly burst down Cerberus afterward with the help of Mauxir - Shadow Ka. As well, Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud also finds three parts on Cerberus that she can lock onto, enhancing her DPS output. Finally, the mobility of Marian - Swift and ability to lock onto Cerberus’ weak spot means that she can dance around Cerberus and deal effective damage even while it’s in attack stance.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Cerberus Guide appeared first on DotGG.

Exarch of the Adventists, controller of Beauvoir System. High-ranking personnel who is in charge of all internal affairs in Containment Zone Aleph.

Sartre is a human boss who first appears as the chapter 7 boss. He plays similarly to Beauvoir-13, but has his own unique features.

Behaviour and Attacks

Sartre has three phases, separated by an invulnerability state between each. He also begins combat with a shield.

During combat, Sartre will teleport around the arena, leaving behind floating mines.

Phase 1

This phase lasts until his shield is broken. Sartre has access to several basic attacks:

These are the least threatening attacks that Sartre can make, with all three being very easy to dodge. They can be easily sidestepped or avoided with a dodge.

Sartre will also summon minions that can replicate one of these two attacks. At higher difficulty levels, Sartre summons two instead. These attacks are similarly quite easy to dodge.

Sartre can also cast Penetrating Light, which summons a field of blue lasers. These blue lasers deal a small amount of damage, but do not stagger. After a delay, larger white lasers will fire where the blue lasers were, dealing damage and knocking back operatives. At higher difficulties, all white lasers will fire at once.

Casual players: The delay between the two lasers is long enough to safely get out of the range of the attack. Not very threatening.
Speedrunners: As this attack forces you to reposition or time a dodge at the right moment to avoid being knocked back, it may be difficult to do so while still maintaining DPS. Don’t be afraid to reset a run if you mess up. As well, make sure not to take evasive action until the initial blue laser fires, as Sartre will continue to adjust his aim until that point.

Sartre’s last move available in phase 1 is Theater Stairs, which summons rings of bullets that expand out from him. These bullets do not stagger. At higher difficulties, Sartre fires seven rings instead of five, and each ring will move faster.

Casual players: Very easy to dodge, just run out of the range of the rings.
Speedrunners: You can probably just facetank these to DPS more as long as you don’t get hit too much.

Once Sartre’s shield is depleted, he will enter an invulnerable state and teleport out of the map, leaving behind multiple minions that will each target an area on the ground to fire a laser at. Being hit by the laser will stagger you. After this attack, he will teleport back into the map and transition to phase 2.

Casual players: pay attention to the marked areas on the ground, and be ready to dodge. If you time it right, you can avoid every laser with a single dodge.
Speedrunners: See the section on skipping mechanics in the Strategy section.

Phase 2

Once in phase 2, Sartre will still use the attacks from phase 1, but also has a new move. Sartre can now cast Rotating Curtain, which fires arcs of bullets outward. These bullets do not stagger. Sartre seems to always cast this attack right after phase 2 begins.

Casual players: Don’t be afraid to hide behind the terrain pillars and peek out to still do damage while avoiding the bullets.
Speedrunners: The bullets don’t do a lot of damage, so just facetank them and enjoy your free DPS window on a stationary Sartre. Also, see the section on skipping mechanics in the Advanced Strategies section.

Once Sartre reaches 50% HP, he will once again teleport out of the map and summon minions. This time, they will charge up an attack that affects the majority of the map, dealing large damage and knocking you back. After this attack, he will teleport back into the map and transition to phase 3.

Casual players: The attack doesn’t affect the edges of the map, so just run out of its range and enjoy a breather where you can reload and heal up if needed.
Speedrunners: See the section on skipping mechanics in the Strategy section.

Phase 3

Like with phase 2, Sartre keeps his existing roster of attacks while also bringing three new ones.

After transitioning to phase 3, Sartre locks your active operative in place for a period of time, preventing them from moving. After a delay, he summons and swings a large laser downwards, dealing huge damage and knocking you back.

hile you can swap to one of your supports to have them tank the attack, you can also dodge right as the laser swings downward to escape mostly unscathed.

The timing window for this is more lenient than you think! Of course, please remember to keep attacking Sartre while you wait for your chance to do this.

Sartre also gains an attack that’s like Rotating Curtain in phase 2, but much more chaotically arranged.

The same advice about Rotating Curtain applies here.

The final new attack summons a large tube of bullets that fire towards you. Fortunately, they move slowly enough that you can casually sidestep them.

Strategy

Sartre on the whole is one of the easier Neural Sim bosses, and is really a floating pinata for you to beat down once you learn his attack patterns. Thus, there isn’t a lot of advanced strategy, mostly boiling down to “shoot him really hard and really fast.” That being said, there are a few things you can do to speed up your clear.

During the invulnerability states between phases, Sartre actually has a brief window where he can be stunned. If you stun him during this period, he will no longer teleport out of the map, allowing you to continue attacking him in that time. The go-to operative to use for this is Haru - Absconditus due to having an easily accessible stun on her support skill.

By timing the activation to when Sartre points his hand in the air, you can reliably land the stun and knock him out of the air, where you can then keep dishing out punishment.

Speaking of which, it seems that Rotating Curtain can be cancelled early if you deal enough damage. It’s not super useful for speedrunners as you typically just facetank or sidestep the bullets anyways, but it’s good to keep in mind.

Team Building

As Sartre starts combat with a shield, a gun damage DPS operative will likely be your best bet due to ballistic damage doing bonus damage to shields. All the top ballistic damage DPS operatives will do well here, but Sartre’s easy accessible weak spot (his head) and lack of other mechanics for operatives to take advantage of means that Yao - Winter Solstice can have an absolute field day, chunking down Sartre to skip one or even both later phases when combined with an invuln cancel.

As for supports, Sartre doesn’t demand anything specific, so you can run all buffers or offensive utility and do just fine. Keep in mind that he is only vulnerable to Slow and stuns, so Acacia - Redacted gets extra value here. Casual players can also utilise Siris - The Goldfish here to great effect, as her support skill can block many of Sartre’s attacks for those who struggle to dodge them. Finally, Haru - Absconditus can also be used to cancel invuln phases as previously noted. This can shave precious seconds off your clear time, even while considering her lack of utility elsewhere in the battle.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Jean Surion Sartre Guide appeared first on DotGG.

Conspiracies are intertwined, darkness hides the truth,
but faith and light will never stop here.
The hero steps into the depths of the snowfield to burn,
and his ambitions will be burned. Everything brewed was burned to ashes.

The snowfields were reborn, and the light of day returned.

Event starts on March 7, 2024 and ends on April 18, 2024. An account level of 20 or higher is needed to participate.

Names and other details are subject to final changes and EN localization.

New Content

New SSR Operative: Eatchel Gustav

Granddaughter of the founder of the former Yehrus Federation. As external parties took advantage of her valuable identity, she was deprived of a normal upbringing and education. The blue horns on her head are a result of experimental Titagen infusions. Deep down, she yearns for a place of safety, and a life of freedom.

Eatchel will be a shotgun operative. She will be available in the "Azure Flames, Silver Hair" limited operative banner from March 7 to April 4. You can view her ability preview here.

Eatchel Outfit: Overdue Radiance

Will be available in the paid shop from March 7 to April 4.

Fenny - Coronet Outfit: Sugar Queen

Will be available in the paid shop from March 7 to April 18.

Lyfe - Wild Hunt Outfit: Street Code

Will be available from the premium battlepass.

Acacia - Kaguya Outfit (Rerun): Allure of Lotus

Will be available in the paid shop from March 28 to April 18.

New SSR Weapon: Blitzing Fangs

It will be available in the "Winter Forest of Youth" weapon banner from March 7 to April 4. You can learn more about it here.

New Weapon Skin: Sweet Decree (Coronet)

Will be available in the paid shop from March 7 to April 18.

New Weapon Skin: No Overtime (Yao)

Will be permanently available from the "Choice Products" shop after March 7, using Bright-Star Tickets from daily logins with the monthly digicash pass.

New Logistics Set: Lux Squad

You can learn more about this set's effects here.

Eatchel Added to Dorms

In addition, Eatchel will receive the Smart Blackboard interactive furniture and Acacia will receive the Daimaou Game Console. Both will most likely have a temporary 20% discount.

Gacha Banners

"Cyan Flames of Silver" Limited Operative Banner

"Alpha of the Arctic" Limited Weapon Banner

"Tracing Origins" Limited Operative Banner Rerun

"Fusion of Unreality" Limited Weapon Banner Rerun

"Kaguya's Game" Limited Operative Banner Rerun

"Noctilucent Horizon" Limited Weapon Banner Rerun

Gameplay Content

Main Story Chapter 12 (Part 2)

New Boss: Lament of Yehrus

New Area: Suzdal Launch Base

Karma's End

Brave Squad-style solo/co-op boss fight. A new difficulty level will be released every day starting from March 11, and ending on March 15 with the co-op difficulty.

Defense Line Zero

Collect materials to strengthen base defense, and collect ammunition to control the machine gun tower. Team up with other players to fend off enemy attacks. You can learn more about this game mode here.

Tide of Titanium

Wave defense.

Future Unshackled

A "Strike Battlefront" type event, accumulate points for rewards. Similar to Icefield Outposts and Shrouded City Sweep from previous events.

Hero Games

Co-op boss rush.

Login Events

"Into the Fire" Login Event

Log in for seven days to get ten limited operative banner tickets.

Additional Memory Chips

Log in to receive 4 Memory Chip bundles every day. Each bundle grants 3 Memory Chips for use in Personal Files.

Event Rewards

• Limited operative banner tickets
• Digicash
• SSR weapon attachment "Guardian Evil" (scope)
• "Astrolabe Badge" dorm trophy
• SR weapon "Rock Python"
• SSR logistics set: Lux Squad
• Carbon Atomic Plate (SSR weapon uncap mat)
• Quantum Cell (SSR Neuronic mat)
• Revision Application
• Opal Voucher (dorm currency)

Standard Commissions

March 8 - March 15

Accept and complete daily "commissions" to earn rewards.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Skyward Blaze Event Details appeared first on DotGG.

Basic Overview

The Neural Simulation menu can be found in the Dispatch section of the main mission menu.

Once in the menu, you’ll see the following UI elements:

1. The two bosses on rotation in the current Neural Sim period, click on the boss you want to fight to switch to them
2. Time left in the current Neural Sim period. Neural Sim periods always end at the same time on the daily reset of each new in-game week. After a Neural Sim period ends, this timer will instead count down the time until the next Neural Sim period opens. Neural Sim periods always begin at 2:00AM UTC on Tuesday (convert to your time zone)
3. Boss description. The bottom of the boss description will list which Control effects it’s vulnerable to (though you can also find a full table of which bosses are vulnerable to which Control effects further down on this page).
4. The current difficulty level of the selected boss. Difficulty levels start at one and reach a maximum of five, and are independent of the difficulty level of the other boss. Once you go up a difficulty level for a boss, you can not go down difficulty levels for that boss in the current period (not that there’s any reason to).
5. Evaluation attempts remaining. Clearing the first four difficulty levels of a boss requires an evaluation attempt to be consumed. You will have a limited number of evaluation attempts for the first day of the Neural Sim period only; you will have enough to clear the first four difficulty levels for both bosses from the second day onward. Attempting difficulty level five for a boss does not require evaluation attempts.
6. The lineup of characters and equipment that has produced the highest-scoring run for that boss.

Clicking on the lineup will bring up a menu with more details. Keep in mind what you have used on a certain boss is very important, as everything used (operatives, weapons, and logistics pieces) can no longer be used on the other boss during the same Neural Sim period unless another run with a different lineup is confirmed for the first boss.

This run does not have to score higher than the existing one.

If you have not fought the boss yet, the lineup will be blank, obviously.

7. Buttons to proceed towards fighting the boss or performing a Quick Evaluation. Quick Evaluation will automatically clear a boss that is at one of the first four difficulty levels and grant you the associated score. Quick Evaluation cannot be used on Difficulty V bosses.
8. The Neural Sim rewards menu. Here you can view and collect rewards for completing Neural Sim clears, as well as view your placement on the ranking leaderboard along with the rewards for each ranking bracket.

9. The Neural Sim shop, where you can use the rewards obtained to purchase various items. You can also access this shop via the main shop interface from the home menu.

Special Modifiers

Neural Sim battles have unique modifiers that will affect the stats of your operatives. These effects change every week, and include both individual modifiers for each boss, as well as a single modifier for the week that affects both boss battles. Before you fight a Neural Sim boss, it’s important to know what modifiers are in effect for that battle and plan accordingly if necessary.

As well, bosses will gain upgrades to their abilities to make them more difficult or time-consuming to battle. These upgrades are unique to each boss but stay the same between appearances.

As you go up in difficulty level, more modifiers will take effect, and the boss will gain access to more upgrades.

Scoring and Ranking

For the first four difficulty levels of a boss, the score obtained from clearing that difficulty level is a set amount regardless of the time taken to clear. However, Difficulty V works differently. The maximum score possible is 40,000 but with your score decreasing by 100 for every second taken to defeat the boss. For example, killing a boss in exactly 60 seconds will subtract 60×100=6,000 points from 40,000 to produce a score of 34,000. Therefore, achieving victory as quickly as possible is important to obtaining high scores and ranking placements.

Strategy

Neural Sim is a score-based game mode, with higher scores correlating to faster fights. Thus, Neural Sim requires a slightly different mindset compared to general content, which is typically much easier. Since you will be exclusively fighting bosses, there are also other things that should be taken into account.

Control Effects

Bosses in Snowbreak have a period of time (roughly 14 seconds) where they cannot be affected by a Control effect after one is applied.

This lockout period is visually represented by a golden yellow bar underneath the main boss health bar, which depletes over time until disappearing to signify that the lockout period is over. The lockout also does not begin counting down until the Control effect expires.

Furthermore, not all Control effects work on all bosses. Most bosses are only vulnerable to two types of Control effects at most:

Note that every Neural Sim boss can be affected by Slow, which makes operatives who can effectively apply it universally useful.

Team Building

In the current meta, teams consist of one main DPS operative and two supports. This is because it is much more efficient to focus on buffing up a single DPS than it is to spread power between multiple.

DPS

When selecting a DPS operative, it is important to take into account what supports you can pair with them, the boss that is being fought, and any relevant weekly modifiers. For example, you probably shouldn’t bring Yao - Winter Solstice to a boss with Thermal resistance on the weekly modifiers list.

While you can make do with most DPS operatives, there are a few worth mentioning as the top performers:

Yao - Winter Solstice	Yao is one of if not the best operative for many of the bosses you’ll see in Neural Sim, and at least usable in all the others. To extract top performance out of her though, you’ll want to put her with Mauxir - Shadow Ka and Tess - The Magician whenever possible.
Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud	A very strong all-rounder, Chenxing especially excels against bosses with multiple parts that she can lock onto with her standard skill. This makes her particularly effective against Cerberus, Fiend, and her main claim to fame, Hela, who gets ripped to shreds.
Fenny - Coronet	While still a very strong DPS pick, Coronet finds herself sometimes being overshadowed by other operatives and can struggle to keep her gun loaded with ammo given its sequential loading.
Katya - Blue Bolt	Very similar to Chenxing in that she’s a strong generalist DPS. Katya benefits from never having to reload but also can have issues tracking more mobile bosses given that her crossbow projectiles are not hitscan.
Fritia - Hush	A high-investment operative that eventually pays off with some of the fastest Neural Sim clears in the game. Requires Tess to be effective.
Lyfe - Wild Hunt	Hybrid gun/skill damage operative. Like Hush, she also requires heavy investment.
Marian - Swift	Another high-investment operative, Swift can be especially strong against mobile bosses due to her ability to lock onto her target.
Haru - Absconditus	While not useful for most bosses in the game, Haru earns a special mention given her effectiveness against Fiend when equipped with Star Ocean.

Supports

Once you select your DPS, you will ideally pick two supports to bring out their potential and allow your DPS to do as much damage as quickly as possible. Keep operative synergies in mind too!

There are a lot of options available to you, perhaps more than you initially thought. Here’s a quick rundown of the common ones you might consider, though this isn’t an exhaustive list:

Operative	Primary Role	Additional Notes
Tess - The Magician	U-Energy Battery	The vast majority of Tess’ usefulness is in her ability to generate large amounts of U-Energy. It is generally not recommended to use her if this niche is not required, as other supports will most likely provide more value.
Mauxir - Shadow Ka	Offensive Utility	While Mauxir doesn’t directly buff the DPS outside of her passive, she provides a stationary target linked to the targeted enemy’s health which can also come with guaranteed crits to shots made at it.
Lyfe - Wild Hunt	Buffer	When equipped with Alloy Truth and Amarna Squad, Lyfe can become a very strong damage buffer due to her support skill being able to activate both parts of Amarna’s effect. She can also apply Freeze to most Titan bosses.
Acacia - Kaguya	Debuffer/Buffer	Provides universal resistance shred, which will always be useful. Kaguya can also make use of Amarna Squad exceptionally well, allowing her to pull double-duty as a buffer too.
Chenxing - The Observer	Buffer/Healer	While Chenxing’s support skill provides a heal, her primary usefulness comes from the skill damage buffs that come with it.
Acacia - Redacted	Debuffer	The best Slow applier in the game. Acacia also provides starting U-Energy, which can be useful to certain DPS operatives.
Lyfe - Wednesday	Debuffer	Can apply Paralyze.
Fritia - Little Sunshine	Buffer	The aptitude effect from her support skill is especially potent with shotgun operatives. Her Deiwos passive that increases damage dealt to burning enemies has great synergy with Yao - Winter Solstice.
Enya - Big Sis	Buffer	While her time in the spotlight has long since passed, Enya can still find niche use with sniper operatives if all other options are already exhausted.
Cherno - Those Two	Debuffer	The other main Slow applier. Not as universally usable as Redacted, but she can equip Alloy Truth and is good enough against melee bosses to be worth considering.
Yao - Quiet Quitter	Healer	See “A Quick Note on Healers And Other Defensive Supports”
Siris - The Goldfish	Defensive Utility	See “A Quick Note on Healers And Other Defensive Supports”

A Quick Note on Healers And Other Defensive Supports

Neural Sim does not reward you for clearing with extra health. In fact, there is a weekly modifier that may show up which reduces your damage while over half health, so you may find that not taking damage is actually a demerit in some cases. Either way, there’s no reason to worry about taking damage as long as the attack doesn’t stagger or knock back the active operative (time loss) and none of your operatives die.

This means that healers and other defensive supports should only be used if absolutely necessary, and more offensive supports that directly buff your active operative or debuff the enemy are always preferred when possible.

Parts Breakers

For some bosses, it will be necessary to break parts on them to progress the fight. In general, shotgun operatives will be ideal for this due to their innate high parts break rate. There are a few other options, though, each with their own benefits:

Fenny - Lionheart	- Has built-in mobility to enter combat range faster - Support skill can replenish ammo for the main DPS
Fenny - Coronet	- Passive can provide an extra shotgun pellet per shot, allowing for potentially faster parts breaking - Support skill can boost the main DPS’s rate of fire as well as her own for faster parts breaking if swapped in after casting - DO NOT use active skill if parts breaking, it will reduce her parts break rate
Nita - Hands	- Support skill can provide mobility to enter combat range faster
Siris - The Goldfish	- Support skill can provide aptitude effects
Katya - Blue Bolt	- Manifest 2 provides her with extra parts breaking power, potentially allowing her to double as a parts breaker and main DPS
Yao - Winter Solstice	- Standard skill allows her to quickly fire multiple shots with the sniper parts break rate in situations where not many parts need to be broken
Tess - The Magician	- Ultimate ability can provide follow-up shots for additional parts break

When looking to deploy an operative for parts breaking purposes, also remember to equip any weapon attachments that provide parts breaking boosts. It can mean the difference between breaking a part or needing an extra shot.

Logistics Sets

For DPS operatives, they will usually just use the set that they normally use, but supports have a bit more diversity in their options:

Support Weapons

Support weapons generally fall under three categories: attack boosters, resistance shred debuffers, and U-Energy generation boosters. Attack buffers are generally the preferred choice, but the other options may still be useful if that is not an option.

Know Your Enemy

Being familiar with a boss’ attack patterns, phase changes and their HP thresholds, and other quirks they might have is important to being able to defeat them as quickly as possible. Don’t be afraid to rerun a boss to figure out what attacks you have to dodge and which ones you can sidestep or facetank, or to see how long you can spend attacking before you have to dodge an attack.

In the coming weeks, I will be doing my best to produce guides for each Neural Sim boss, going into their various attacks and providing specific strategies that can be used to achieve victory.

Boss Guides

• Cerberus
• Fiend - Frostwind
• Joseph The Bison
• Lament of Yehrus
• Ni-Type Mech
• Njall
• Sartre
• Teumessian

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Neural Simulation Guide appeared first on DotGG.

Notes

• Ratings and reviews reflect my personal opinion on the state of the game - you may disagree!
• Units are assessed at maximum possible strength; any practical reduction in power and corresponding rating decrease at lower character development levels will be noted.
• No ratings are defined within a certain tier, and the relative placement of an operative within a certain tier does not imply anything about this.
• A character being rated low does not mean they are (completely) useless! The main story and many other game modes are easy enough that they can be completed with any appropriately-levelled operative in the game.
  • Despite this, using higher ranked units will make your life much easier even when playing said content, obviously.
• A glossary of terms used is below the tier list; use it as needed.

Tier 0

Extremely strong units with limited or no equal alternatives

Yao - Winter Solstice

Single Target	S
Mobbing	B+
Support	B

Role: DPS

One of the best bossing DPSs in the game. Has insane synergy with Space Cowboy, which allows her to consistently pump out high damage shot after high damage shot by using her active skill, Scorching Sun Awakening. Her ultimate skill, Searing Resurrection, then proceeds to temporarily give her a gun that does even more damage while also passively reducing all damage she takes by 20% while not in her ultimate skill form.

Yao’s spotlight has faded a little bit as other powerhouse DPS operatives have emerged, but she can still hold her own while bringing uniquely unrivalled initial burst damage.
While insanely good even without manifests, manifest 1 sees a massive power spike from being able to reload her special weapon from Searing Resurrection. However, she is however highly dependent on Space Cowboy to reach her full potential and drops to Tier 1 without either that or manifest 1.

Both neuronics for her active skill and ultimate are very strong investments. Her support ability neuronics are less important (but still really good!), as scenarios where you wouldn’t want her as your active operative are far and few between, anyways.

Acacia - Kaguya

Single Target	C
Mobbing	B
Support	S

Roles: support, mobbing

The simplest way to describe Kaguya's kit is that she throws a lot of things, and (most of) the things she throws are good.

Her normal ability throws projectiles (“darts”) that orbit around her, doing damage and reducing enemy move speed. With neuronics, she can have more of these, and they can also freeze enemies and make them take enhanced damage on Kaguya’s next attack. In practice, the wide radius at which the darts orbit makes them awkward to use, and while the freeze is nice (and a decent chunk of damage when you proc the damage amp that comes with it), it’s a lot more trouble than it’s worth.

Her support skill throws another dart that this time orbits a targeted area, dealing damage and more importantly reducing enemy resistances; a very potent debuffing tool. This is where Kaguya earns her keep nowadays, as a universal resist shredder that shows no sign of losing value anytime soon.

The grand finale is her ultimate, which again throws a projectile that lingers at the target area, dealing decent damage to enemies caught in it. When upgraded, it will also suck in enemies, making it very easy to use.

While slightly awkward to use and with some enemies being immune to her crowd control effects, her usefulness as a debuffer makes Kaguya more of a supportive operative, if not a very strong one.

Kaguya’s manifests are best described as “nice-to-haves,” and none of them significantly make or break her. Pine Aurora is the ideal option for getting the most value out of her support skill and is absolutely worth its price tag, especially after its buffs. Prismatic Igniter and Aye Aye Captain are strong alternative weapon picks for getting the most out of her use as a support operative (which you probably will be using her as most of the time). Rotten Orange and Muddy Snow are both strong options for enhancing her active operative power, while there is no downside to using Star Ocean unless your Kaguya is manifest 2 or higher.

Shockingly, the vast majority of her power is not locked behind manifests, but instead neuronics. All of them are good. Get all of them. That being said, prioritise her support skill neuronics and the ultimate neuronic that sucks in enemies. You can probably skip her standard skill if you only use her as a support.

Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud

Single Target	S
Mobbing	A
Support	B-

Role: DPS

While the authenticity of how “ceremonial” her outfit is remains to be seen, there’s no doubt about her ability to pump out damage.

Her basic ability is the bread and butter of her kit, giving her amazing mobbing ability. The chain damage to marked targets is very notably based on the actual damage of the shot that triggers it, allowing Chenxing to still meaningfully benefit from gun damage buffs (to the point where Amano-Iwato is as good or better than Mingyi, the set seemingly designed for her, in this regard).

Chenxing’s support skill is more of the same, though with less power and more restrictions in its usage. However, it can still be used to give operatives with less mobbing power some waveclear potential.

Dominance, her ultimate ability, is… alright, I guess. It’s not a bad ability by any means, but it’s more AoE mobbing on an operative who already has a lot of it. At least it can refresh her mark duration and provide a ballistic damage amp.

Overall, this creates an operative who can shred through hordes of enemies, while also being able to put down strong sustained DPS even against beefier solo targets. Of note is the fact that her marks can be applied to breakable parts, making her ridiculous against multi-part bosses like Hela or either Ni-Mech. What’s really interesting is her synergy with Mauxir, as when the appropriate neuronic is applied, Chenxing can apply Mauxir’s ultimate Aptitude when attacking marked targets, doubling down on her mobbing potential.

As far as manifests go, stage 2 is likely the sweet spot as this is when the duration of your marks increase. She’s perfectly playable without, though. Having an electric assault rifle is vital to being able to use her Deiwos ability, but your options are… not great. Your only real offensive options are her signature weapon, Anti-Evil Ward and the 3* electric AR, as all the other electric ARs in the game are support-oriented. If you picked up Wild Leer during the Mingdeng Ritual event, you’ll be well-served by it, as it’s a decent enough stand-in for Ward. For those that didn’t, it’ll supposedly be available through other means soon, so keep your eyes open for that.

Considering that the main gimmick of Chenxing are her marks and chain damage, maxing both neuronics for it are your top priority. After that, her ultimate neuronics are worth looking into, if not just to help maintain her mark uptime and also increase their effectiveness.

Fenny - Coronet

Single Target	A+
Mobbing	A-
Support	A-

Roles: DPS, support

Coronet is an operative who wants to get in enemies’ faces and plug them with lead, and has the abilities to do it.

Her active skill, Optimal Condition, raises her attack speed by a massive amount, and also boosts her electrical damage with neuronics. Being based on a stack system, Manifest 1 additionally removes the time restriction, giving this ability potentially unlimited uptime. This does come at the cost of reduced ability to break parts, a traditional strength of shotgun units. Furthermore, her ultimate skill, Center Stage, brings AoE crowd control and interrupts enemy skills to buy you breathing room to work with.

Even in scenarios where the shotgun playstyle doesn’t work, Coronet’s support skill grants the active operative a potent boost to their rate of fire, further enhancing her value.

On the whole, Coronet has a very cohesive kit that synergizes well and allows for extremely strong damage potential against enemies while properly supported.

While technically usable even without manifests, Manifest 1 is a major power spike and what really brings her to T0 performance. Manifests 2 and 3 are highly recommended though, as they make Mercy stack upkeep both more forgiving and rewarding. Similarly, Coronet is also not technically dependent on a weapon, but Sunny Payback is a huge quality of life improvement, as it will provide extra pellets for more damage and better stack generation while her active skill is up.

All six neuronics are useful and worth investing in; which and how many you level is dependent on what you want out of Coronet and how much you’re willing to invest.

Mauxir - Shadow Ka

Single Target	C+
Mobbing	B-
Support	S

Role: support

Shadow Ka brings unique support abilities that challenge Kaguya as one of the top supportive operatives in the game, but also finds herself equally lacking in on-field performance. Not that it matters.

Mauxir’s first skill involves her throwing a clone of herself at an enemy, at which point it will blow up and do damage. It’s definitely a skill. The cooldown is long and the damage is just okay. You can hold it down to spin around, but it’s mostly a gimmick. Similarly, her ultimate is also just kinda there. A slow can situationally be useful, but for the most part you won’t really bother.

The real reason why most of you will actually care about Mauxir is her support skill, which is great. Casting her skill summons a dummy that attaches itself to the cast target, and also attaches to several other targets. All targets take damage over time, but you can attack the dummy to transfer 110% of damage that it takes to the main target. Aside from being a damage boost, providing a stationary target for you to hit is especially useful against mobile enemies.

It does come with some drawbacks, though. The dummy does not have weak spots, so you’re at the mercy of your operative’s innate crit rate to get critical hits. You can supplement this with the boost from Manifest 1 however, which provides bonus crit rate when attacking the dummy based on what gun class is attacking. It’s an okay boost for pistols, SMGs, and ARs, but with shotguns and snipers, you get a 100% boost which basically means every shot is guaranteed to crit. Shooting the dummy also bypasses any special damage reductions that an enemy might have (like on Ni-Mech), and will also transfer over debuffs that it receives. It’s also an extra part for Ethereal Cloud to attach to. All in all, a very good skill and the star of Mauxir’s kit.

Mauxir’s Deiwos passive allows for operatives to occasionally get a guaranteed crit that will do bonus damage based on her alignment index. It’s a nice bit of extra damage for most gun classes, but not very useful on shotgun operatives, as the bonus damage only applies to one pellet of a shot. It’s as silly on sniper operatives as you might think.

While her active operative performance is nothing to write home about, her ability to make DPS units hurt propels Mauxir to the top of the rankings. She’s not quite as universally useful as Kaguya, but instead trades off versatility for specialisation, leaning more into boosting gun damage ops and providing more value in that regard.

As far as manifests go, all of them are pretty useful aside from manifest 2, which is just an attack decrease on enemies affected by her support skill. However, the higher cost of later manifests means that most players will opt to sit at manifest 1, which is a massive power spike and a must-have in its own right. Mauxir obviously wants her signature weapon Alloy Truth, which is just a really good weapon in its own right. Lacking that, Wave from the Verdurous Holiday event shop is… fine. It’s definitely a downgrade, but it’ll do. Frigatebird is also a good option, and can potentially be better than Wave. If you want to use Mauxir as an active operative… give her 100 Battle Veteran and play her as a gun DPS, I guess.

As most of her usage will be in the support role, both of her support neuronics are an obvious choice for unlocking. Your mileage may vary for the rest, but it might be worth getting them anyway to level up her Deiwos passive.

Katya - Blue Bolt

Single Target	S
Mobbing	A
Support	B-

Role: DPS

Katya makes a stylish entrance, easily finding a spot at the top thanks to great DPS uptime and strong damage potential. She takes abilities from other operatives and puts her own spin on them, passing the plagiarism check and maintaining her own identity.

The main showpiece of Katya’s kit is her standard ability, Death Traverser. On cast, she enters the Guidance III form which is kinda similar to Coronet’s standard skill self-buff if it was like twice as good but also cut off your legs. While in Guidance III state, you lose a chunk of per-shot damage, U-Energy gain, and parts break power in exchange for fixing her rate of fire to 8 shots per second, or 480 RPM. This is more than triple the standard rate of fire for crossbows, but still not quite as fast as ARs and SMGs. For now. More on this later. What you also lose is the ability to move around normally, locking you in place unless you decide to exit Guidance III by recasting the skill or dodging out of it. The latter is preferred, as it’ll reset the cooldown of Death Traverser and even provide a 15% attack boost once the appropriate neuronic is unlocked, letting you quickly reposition and continue dealing damage. You’ll want to be in Guidance III as much as you can while in combat, as it’s your main damage steroid and well worth the tradeoffs. Of course, you do have to spend some time stretching your legs between stints as a turret, as being in Guidance III state shuts off passive S-Energy regeneration and makes every shot cost S-Energy.

Her support skill also resembles that of another operative (Swift this time), as a targeted shot that propels you back and can be used to dispel CC effects. Katya’s version has more of a circular AoE and also freezes enemies hit, but also like Swift’s support skill, it’s just alright.

Finally, we get to her ultimate ability, which has two components to it. Its active part calls down a continuous barrage of arrows that follow an enemy and do continuous damage. It can also freeze enemies if it hits them enough. It’s nothing too flashy or even interesting, but it’s decent enough damage and usually worth bothering to spend the U-Energy on.

The passive component has a very unnecessarily long description in-game and I really don’t want to type all that out, so here’s a simpler explanation. Shoot the enemy, apply stacks. Apply enough stacks, the enemy freezes. It’s really as simple as that. At just two seconds though, it’s not a very long freeze duration which can occasionally be an annoyance when you want to apply a different Control effect that lasts longer, especially with Neural Sim bosses having long Control-immunity lockout periods after one is applied.

Katya’s Deiwos passive is a remix of Ethereal Cloud’s, being a percent chance to apply extra damage when shots hit enemies, with tweaked numbers and an extra damage boost to frozen targets. It’s extra damage, so I can’t really complain about it. Chenxing might have something to say, though.

Now with all of her abilities explained, we still have about a quarter of Katya’s kit left to cover, as the crossbow class also comes with an alternate firing mode. As opposed to standard rapid-fire action, the alt fire shoots more slowly but sends out explosive bolts that detonate on impact. The damage and area of effect are pretty decent, but the RoF penalty limits its usefulness to blowing up packs of enemies. It also can’t hit multiple parts on a single enemy, before you get any funny ideas.

The alt fire also interacts with her abilities. Guidance III sets its RoF to a lower (but still greatly boosted) value, and shots fired in this mode have a doubled chance of activating Katya’s Deiwos passive but do half damage. When the passive activates, it also applies an extra stack for Katya’s ultimate’s passive.

Katya brings strong damage and high uptime to the table, establishing herself as a top DPS choice for a wide variety of roles. The easiest point of reference is Ethereal Cloud, who Katya is about competitive with in single-target damage, but does fall behind against multi-part enemies. Of course, Katya also has unique benefits of her own, being able to occasionally provide CC by herself and never having to reload thanks to whatever magic feeds her crossbow with unlimited ammo.

Manifest 1 is a must-have, as it’s the only way of increasing Katya’s attack speed while in Guidance III. It allows each shot to grant a stacking RoF boost that maxes out at a very non-negligible 25% and brings it up to par with AR fire rates. Aside from that, the rest of her Manifests aren’t super outstanding, though Manifest 3 is a much-appreciated quality of life improvement. Considering there are only three crossbows in the game, you don’t really get a lot of weapon choice. Neptune Nova is obviously ideal, as its built-in S-Energy regen greatly helps with maintaining Guidance III uptime (doing more damage also helps). Failing that, the event-exclusive Alpine Gentian is a free and serviceable stand-in, so there really isn’t any reason to use anything else.

Eli Squad is your obvious logistics set of choice as the non-critting nature of crossbows locks Katya out of an otherwise solid Amano-Iwato pick. It’s also basically a better Mizuho, so I wouldn’t bother with that either. For substats, attack will always be useful. Duking it out for the second substat slot are crit rate, crit damage, and Alignment Index. While crit stats aren’t completely useless due to directly being converted into more damage, a top-level Alignment Index roll will still come out on top. Do the math and see how your values shake out. As for neuronics, you can probably get away with just her standard and ultimate abilities, as bringing Katya along just for a CC dispel sounds like a questionable use of resources.

Tier 0.5

Very strong units lacking one or more specific strengths to make them T0 viable

Lyfe - Wild Hunt

Single Target	A
Mobbing	A
Support	A

Roles: DPS, support

A good operative held back by a bad mediocre gun class.

Her standard skill, Frost Wolves, is the star of Wild Hunt’s kit. It continuously dispenses ice missiles to mow down enemies and freeze the ones it can’t instantly take down. Running on its own ammo system, it can be refilled when shooting targets with a Frost weapon after manifest 1, enabling amazing uptime and surprisingly usable bossing potential.

While still not quite a universal trash cleaner on par with Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud, Wild Hunt brings useful CC to the table with her support and ultimate abilities, which both freeze enemies in a large area of effect.

Of particular note is the DoT that her support ability applies (even if you don’t freeze your target!), which ticks often enough to make Wild Hunt a surprisingly strong support with Amarna. The fact that she can use Alloy Truth, one of if not the strongest support weapon in the game, doesn’t hurt either.

While useful even without manifests, manifest 1 is a major breakpoint in maintaining her skill uptime. Manifest 3 is a luxury, but another very potent upgrade, almost doubling the ammo capacity of her standard skill. Tier 2 without manifest 1. Stardust Memory is preferred, as other SMG options are… lacking. If using her as a support, any of the support SMGs are viable options from top-shelf selections like Alloy Truth to more easily-obtained options like Frigatebird. Use your brain.

Both active skill neuronics are a high priority. Her support neuronics are worth snagging due to reasons listed above, though your mileage may vary for her ultimate.

Marian - Swift (High Investment)

Single Target	A+
Mobbing	A-
Support	B-

Role: DPS

Read Swift’s base review here.

The benefits of letting more Swift into your life are very noticeable and very immediate. Manifest 3 cuts an entire second from Swift's standard skill cooldown, significantly increasing her skill uptime. This allows for much more effective DPS against enemies, which is further supplemented by Manifest 4’s increase to her standard skill damage numbers. Your mileage may vary with Manifest 5 however, as it doesn’t do as much to extend combos as it might seem.

When built, Swift can hang with the best, being competitive or even better than T0 operatives against squishy bosses. But as HP numbers increase, she can start to run out of steam even with the benefit of additional Manifests.

Haru - Absconditus

Single Target	B+
Mobbing	S
Support	B+

Role: mobbing

Haru trades her ponytail for a sword and dons the Absconditus tactical suit. She gains strong mobbing power, but loses some of her DPS uptime against enemies tough enough to survive her initial attacks.

Haru's standard skill is the most important part of her kit, as you'll be spamming it a lot. Working on a charge-based system, each cast does three hits of damage to up to five enemies each, doing pretty decent damage overall. While the ability passively reduces its cooldown when shooting enemies, you'll definitely want to be getting kills to make the most of its neuronic that refunds a skill charge and negates the ability's S-Energy cost for three seconds after a kill. In all, it's enough to make Haru a strong mobbing tool for most applications, but beefier enemies and bosses can definitely lead to a less pleasant experience. 

Her support skill is more of the same, actually doing quite a lot more damage than her standard skill, but on a much longer cooldown. With neuronics, it can also stun enemies hit, which is also nice.

Should you want more power, you still have Haru's ultimate. On cast, it does a large area-of-effect slash on enemies, then transforms into the Body as Blade (BaB) state and gains 50 Victory Points (VP), which are what you use to maintain BaB, costing one VP per second. While in BaB, Haru's standard skill doesn’t cost S-Energy, has its cooldown greatly reduced, and does an additional hit of damage (bringing the total to four per cast). However, each cast costs two VP, limiting how many uses you can get out of it. Additionally, you can recast Haru's ultimate while in BaB to perform an attack similar to the initial ultimate cast, but dealing way more damage. This costs 15 VP, but can also be recast without meeting the VP cost, after which you get kicked out of the Body as Blade state. Neuronics greatly improve the power of the recast, allowing for standard skill casts to potentially grant a free ult recast, and each ult recast refunding VP based on the number of enemies hit.

Of particular note is her Deiwos passive, which executes shieldless enemies below a certain HP threshold scaling with Haru's attack stat. This greatly helps with finishing off enemies and maintaining standard skill charges.

It's clear to see that Haru is heavily biased towards clearing crowds, and she'll happily mob up trash mobs all day. However, when enemy HP values get higher or the target becomes beefy bosses instead, Haru can find it harder to find resets and end up waiting on cooldowns for her skill charges, in which time her gun DPS isn't particularly impressive. With mobbing becoming a less valuable niche, Haru struggles to keep up with gun-based damage carries where it matters, but can still find a place for general use.

Haru's first two manifests offer the most bang for your buck, with the first allowing you to start missions with a free ultimate and the second providing an easily-stackable attack boost. The value proposition becomes much harder beyond that, so stopping at one or two is more than fine. Haru obviously wants her intended best-in-slot, Psyche-16, but does well enough with the free Wild Wasp Stinger from the Fogbound Dream event shop. In particular, the faster-firing semi-automatic pistols are preferred as they'll allow you generate more cooldown reduction faster for better skill uptime. It’s for this reason that Star Ocean ends up being a less preferred option, as despite its synergy with Haru’s abilities, ends up being too clunky to effectively use to maintain skill uptime like a semi-auto pistol can.

All of Haru's neuronics are actually pretty useful in their intended roles, so invest in them based on what you expect to use. For almost all of you, this means prioritising her standard skill, then ultimate skill, then finally her support skill if you find yourself using that often.

Fritia - Hush (High Investment)

Single Target	S
Mobbing	C+
Support	B-

Roles: DPS, laser beam death ray

Read Hush’s base review here.

With her heat ray further juiced up, Hush finally brings a notable amount of damage to burn foes to a crisp. Manifest 3 allows for her to further increase her ultimate duration by regenerating U-Energy while her ultimate is active, and Manifest 4 increases its damage. Manifest 5 is an appreciated easy skip however, as it only provides some damage reduction.

Finally getting a strong support (Tess) to let her fire off her laser in a reasonable timespan, Hush pumps out surprisingly fast Neural Simulation times that rival top DPS operatives. However, her lack of general versatility means that this is as high as her rating can go unless she sees changes to her other abilities.

Tess - The Magician

Single Target	B-
Mobbing	C+
Support	A+

Role: U-Energy support

If you need U-Energy, Tess can supply it. However, the lack of utility beyond that limits her usefulness beyond her specific niche.

Tess’ standard skill tosses a card at an enemy, applying one of a variety pack of effects based on the card’s colour. I could go into them all in more detail, but there really isn’t much point as the damage isn’t meaningful enough to make her viable as an active operative. Which makes sense, since she’s designed as a support.

Her support skill is a damage buff for the active operative. It’s initially only a boost to Electric damage, but one neuronic upgrade gives it universal applicability, which makes you wonder why it wasn’t like that to begin with. It can also apply a Control effect depending on the kind of elemental damage you apply to an enemy, but the duration isn’t very long and bringing the right elements for the effect you want in the first place can be annoying. Also, the animation duration of this ability is painfully long. Why is it like that.

Rather unusual for a support, Tess’ big appeal is actually her ultimate ability. While active, shooting enemies will cause Tess to do follow-up shots that very quickly generate a large amount of U-Energy. It also doesn’t cost any U-Energy to activate, which is a first for the game, and further drills in the point that this is meant as a U-Energy generation tool if it wasn’t obvious already. Make sure to use that U-Energy though, as Tess takes all of it back once her ultimate duration ends. You get a shield and cooldown reduction on her ult for anything not used, but it’s more of a consolation prize than anything else.

Tess ultimately (haha) is a more utility-focused support who primarily enables other operatives to get access to their own ultimates as fast as possible. And while she’s really good at doing that, not a lot of DPS operatives actually benefit that much from the U-Energy battery. It’s certainly nice to have, but most of the time you’d be better off with a dedicated damage support. The two big exceptions are Yao and Hush, both of whom greatly enjoy having faster access to their ultimate abilities and make very good use of it. As a result, Tess has found a place in high-end Neural Simulation setups where her lack of lasting usefulness isn’t important. This also means that once you finish Tess’ initial ability rotation and her ultimate duration ends, she doesn’t provide a whole lot and her usefulness plummets. This makes her relatively inflexible and not really suited to general gameplay. But when paired with a DPS operative who can benefit from her utility and allow fights to end quickly, the value she brings is simply irreplaceable.

Tess’ Manifest priorities are different depending on who you intend to use with her. Gun damage operatives don’t really need more than Manifest 2, while characters like Hush see a useful benefit from Manifest 3. If you want to really ball out and go all the way, Manifest 5 is surprisingly not bad compared to a lot of other Manifest 5s in the game; not having to cast Tess’ support skill to get its damage boost is great because of how long its animation is. 

Being a sniper operative and a support, Tess only really has three weapon options - her signature weapon Eccentric Joker, the event weapon Wasp, and Deep Sea’s Call. I don’t think I have to tell you that her signature weapon is the best in slot here, with Wasp being a surprisingly distant second, not having the damage buff that Joker gets. Deep Sea’s Call technically does work, but it also turns off her first Manifest which kind of goes against the reason why you’d want to use her in the first place.

Being released with Hjartagard Squad, Tess is obviously designed to take full advantage of it. For logistics substats, Tess wants as much U-Energy recovery as she can get, as it’ll let her supply even more U-Energy with her ultimate ability. The second one is less important, but some extra Alignment Index can help speed up U-Energy generation just a bit.

Since Tess is a support, you don’t have to bother levelling the neuronics for her standard ability. But since her unconventional design means that both her support and ultimate abilities see use, it’s important to remember to upgrade the neuronics for both of them too.

Tier 1

Viable, but more niche or outclassed by better options

Marian - Queen of Pain

Single Target	A
Mobbing	B
Support	C

Role: DPS

Marian is the quintessential “sniper sniper,” with simple gameplay and competent damage. However, she also rewards good positioning through her passive buff to ADS ballistic damage while not moving.

Smokescreen is a simple get-out-of-jail-free card, but its passive skill component is your primary DPS boost. Scope in, hit harder; it’s as simple as that. The clone left behind by the active component can also be used as a follow-up shot when her ultimate ability is activated once the corresponding neuronic is unlocked.

Her support and ultimate abilities are both quite similar, as single-target nukes. Her ultimate in particular is excellent for mini-bossing due to its low cooldown and energy cost, allowing you to use it on tougher enemies for quick takedowns while also not feeling pressured to save it for an eventual boss fight like you might with Winter Solstice.

Useful even without manifests. Not reliant on a specific weapon, but prefers Mark of Mesmer to further enhance her ADS playstyle.

Prioritise her ult neuronics. After this, the other four are of lesser importance, though upgrading her Smokescreen neuronics will increase the passive bonus from ADSing that's attached to it.

Acacia - Redacted

Single Target	C
Mobbing	B-
Support	A+

Roles: support, mobbing

Acacia is the first operative you roll from the gacha, and useful at all stages of the game. Being able to spam bouncing daggers will trivialise early-game content, though this damage does fall off quite quickly.

Her ultimate can be upgraded to provide a damage boost, while also slowing enemies to allow for other DPS units to more easily aim for weak points and face lower pressure from attacks while doing so.

Surprisingly, the best part of her kit is her support ability’s slow effect. As all enemies are vulnerable to slows (this includes Neural Sim bosses), Acacia’s support skill can always be of use, and is by far the best user of the Navigator Squad logistics set, which adds in an additional damage amp. Bringing Acacia also gives a decent amount of starting U-Energy from her Deiwos ability, allowing for earlier ultimates.

Useful even without manifests. Not reliant on a specific weapon, but prefers Nexus to enhance her skill damage.

Her active skill cooldown reduction neuronic is of high value, as lower cooldown allows you to recharge an extra dagger in the time it takes you to throw the ones already stocked up. Her ultimate ability neuronic that increases operative attack while in her ultimate zone is also recommended.

Yao - Quiet Quitter

Single Target	B
Mobbing	B-
Support	A-

Roles: healer, DPS

Sniper and healer are two conflicting identities for a character, but Yao makes it work just well enough to go home on time.

As an active operative, Yao relies heavily on her standard skill, Five Minute Break, to enhance her DPS. With it active, she becomes a fast-firing DPS with a bottomless magazine that can deal with farther-away enemies in a pinch. Since you get her for free as well, she can do fine enough as your main sniper until you get better options.

Her support skill and ultimate really both do the same thing, and makes Yao the strongest healing operative pound-for-pound. Her support skill thoroughly beats any competition for total healing done, and her ultimate further doubles down on this. Do note that making the most of her healing can restrict your movement a bit, as her support skill’s healing drone isn’t the fastest and her ultimate does leave her napping in a chair.

In Quiet Quitter form, Yao isn’t the most impressive DPS, but she doesn’t have to be, as her healing power is more than enough to make her a valuable pick in squad lineups.

Yao works right out of the box, but her first two manifests massively boost her healing power, and are quite easy to obtain thanks to the new player login campaign. While initially weapon-agnostic, will want a Frost sniper once her neuronics are unlocked to get the most value out of her abilities. Olympus is ideal for raw healing, but Deep Sea’s Call can trade some of it off for an attack boost instead.

As most players will end up using Yao exclusively as a healer, unlocking both support neuronics is a pretty obvious decision. After that, both active skill neuronics are decent DPS increases, while her ultimate neuronics also help with its uptime and add extra utility through CC resistance.

Lyfe - Wednesday

Single Target	B
Mobbing	B
Support	B+

Roles: DPS, support

Wednesday is most simply described as a budget version of her SSR variant, Wild Hunt. Persistent attack drones sound interesting on paper, but ultimately do not do enough meaningful damage, nor do they provide CC like Wild Hunt’s Frost Wolves. While her support and ultimate abilities have strong CC, they are again outshined by her rarer variant, who provides a larger area of effect and deals more damage.

Fundamentally still a decently designed kit with undertuned numbers, in her current state she’s simply stuck always being one tier behind her 5* variant.

Not meaningfully dependent on manifests, but you will get at least manifest 1 on her no matter what, as the game provides many free Wednesday shards through career missions. Not reliant on a specific weapon, but Work-in-Progress is free and really your only good on-element option, so you might as well stick to that. Atrium Frontline and Homecoming both work before Manifest 3, though note that the former is only available through the premium battlepass.

All of Wednesday’s neuronics are meaningful upgrades, though neuronics that refresh drone duration can be hard to effectively use given the lack of a clear indicator on their remaining duration.

Fritia - Little Sunshine

Single Target	C+
Mobbing	B-
Support	A+

Roles: support, mobbing

Fritia comes with a fiery set of skills, but her active operative performance keeps her on the bench, where she’s much more useful.

Neither of Fritia’s active operative skills are particularly noteworthy. Her standard skill is a decent enough crowd knockup, but doesn’t do a lot of damage and comes on a long cooldown compared to its effect. Meanwhile, Her ultimate’s effects activate too slowly to majorly contribute to DPS.

Fortunately, her support ability is great. It gives the active operative bonus Thermal damage on each shot, helping faster-firing operatives get the most out of their bullets. However, her support neuronic that claims to increase final damage to burning targets only affects the bonus damage granted by her support ability, which noticeably makes her much less useful with slower-firing operatives, like Yao. The bonus damage does apply to every pellet fired from shotguns though, which is a large DPS boost to shotgun operatives.

Fritia winds up as an operative that’s decently useful overall, but not enough to make her stand out from the crowd.

Useful even without manifests. Prefers Strawberry Shortcake to gain maximum value out of her support skill.

Both support skill neuronics are very good. If you insist on using her as an active operative, prioritise her active skill neuronic that increases its range, as this will allow you to deal with large groups better.

Fenny - Lionheart

Single Target	B+
Mobbing	B+
Support	B-

Roles: DPS, mobility support

Lionheart is a bit of a one-trick pony, but by god if it isn’t a really good trick. Queen Bee is a deceptively amazing ability that grants mobility and CC while also seeing eventual upgrades that grant her a shield and the ability to reset its cooldown. Quite ironically a great partner to her other variant, Coronet, as a way to deliver her into a crowd of enemies so Coronet can open fire. Queen Bee can very usefully also be cast without a target, providing free mobility to reposition away from a dangerous area. Her support skill is useful CC; though her ultimate is quite disappointing in damage output and too energy-intensive as a CC tool.

Also, as it turns out, Fenny has quite a high raw attack stat for a four star operative. This makes her surprisingly good for simply shooting enemies in the face. Who would have thought?

Useful even without manifests, though manifest 1 makes her quite a lot more fun. Not reliant on a particular weapon, but Tiny Grains has good synergy with her role as an initiator.

Both active skill neuronics are very strong and worth investing in. The rest are less so.

Chenxing - The Observer

Single Target	B-
Mobbing	B
Support	A

Roles: healer, mobbing

Chengxing has an interesting zone control playstyle that unfortunately falls a bit flat, but remains relevant as one of only two proper healers in the game.

Her normal ability, Heavenly Law, drops a turret that attacks enemies and draws aggro. When upgraded through neuronics, these turrets also have a very large range of effect due to their chain lightning. In practice, the turret damage output isn’t all too amazing and the main use you get out of this is from the crowd control from tower zaps and by using them as aggro dummies.

Psychic, her support skill, drops a tower like her standard skill, this time spawning healing pickups. Compared to Yao’s healing, Chengxing’s heals are chunkier in size, but fewer in amount. This leads to lower absolute healing, but allows for more freedom in positioning due to the heal dispenser (which also can attract enemy aggro) yeeting the heal over to your active operative (the range is quite generous and much less restrictive than Yao’s band-aid circle). Unlike Yao’s heal, Chengxing’s support ability also increases the active operative’s skill damage, essentially trading off some healing for potentially a lot more damage. This is where most of Chenxing’s usage comes into play, as her own personal damage isn’t quite up to snuff.

The kit is tied together with Chengxing’s ult, Divine Purification. This drops a larger turret which again repels enemies, and buffs up your existing attack turrets. When upgraded, it does damage on entry but more importantly gives Chengxing chain lightning of her own that ricochets up to five times for quite a bit of damage. Though with her turrets feeling mostly lacklustre, how much value you’ll get out of this may vary.

Neuronics allow for her standard and support abilities to further buff up the active operative’s skill damage by a significant amount, which means her support skill provides an even larger buff, and when used as an active operative means that Chengxing’s turrets output even more damage.

Can use any AR, but Trial’s Eve is an incredibly potent signature weapon that nearly rivals Winter Solstice and Space Cowboy got reworked after CBT and is now much less good as an offensive weapon, though still fine in a support role I guess. All five manifests are meaningful, but she works perfectly fine without.

Prioritise her support ability neuronics, as you’ll probably be using her for her support heals most of the time. Her ultimate neuronic can bring some useful DPS boosts when using her as an active operative, but not by a huge amount. As for her standard skill, the Ultimate Thunder neuronic is good quality of life, but your mileage may vary for the turret healing mechanic on the other neuronic.

Siris - The Goldfish

Single Target	B-
Mobbing	C+
Support	B

Roles: support, sub DPS

The forgetful goldfish packs a punch while also providing strong utility. However, she does come with caveats in either role, limiting her ultimate usefulness.

Her normal ability, Initial Coffin, grants Siris 25% damage reduction, but also allows her to get bonus Kinetic Aptitude on her next attack after dodging. While the numbers on said echos may not seem very high, they apply to every pellet fired by her shotgun, which adds up to a meaningful amount. However, this ability starts its cooldown when the buff expires and not on cast, leaving you with 10 seconds of uptime every 25, which isn’t amazing.

Most good operatives have a “killer feature” that makes them valuable in a team composition. Siris’ is the ability to build a wall, and make the enemies pay for it. Her support skill deploys a barrier that blocks enemy fire while still allowing friendly operatives to shoot back. When upgraded, the wall will additionally provide the 25% damage reduction from Siris’ normal skill to the active operative after the wall expires, though you can’t get the bonus Kinetic Aptitude. While shooting through the barrier will provide said bonus damage, your mileage may vary at a 30% activation rate. Keep in mind though, that the wall is fixed in place which can reduce its usefulness if you’re forced to bail out while dodging area-targeted attacks. In practice, this skill is of dubious usefulness, as enemies threatening enough for this skill to be useful tend to instantly break it, while enemies that can’t are weak enough that the wall isn’t needed at all.

Finally, Siris’ ultimate is another potent self-buff, granting her a massive shield while also granting defence reduction, movement speed, and crowd control resistance. Should you end up not needing all that shielding, 20% of any left over gets converted into a heal for her. Yet, this buff only lasts for ten seconds, which really isn’t enough time to really get value out of the shield and other buffs.

Overall, Siris is a dual-role brawler that tries to do two things and ultimately isn’t amazing at either. All of her skills come with awkward drawbacks and most players may find her “killer feature” to be little more than a gimmick.

Manifest 1 is amazing value, extending the usefulness of her support skill, but whether you want to push past her inconsistently useful manifest 2 is up to you. Any Kinetic shotgun will work on Siris, with luxury options including Tiny Grains for a more offensive role, and Precious Baby for more defensive prowess. For support applications, Lapis Lazuli allows her to also provide an attack boost.

All of her neuronics are quite useful, and Siris can be flexibly specced to reflect what a specific player would want to use her for.

Enya - Big Sis

Single Target	B
Mobbing	B-
Support	B+

Roles: support, DPS

Enya is an operative that attempts to be a versatile multitool, but ultimately spreads herself too thin in the process.

Her active skill throws a cluster of bombs that bounce outward until they hit an enemy, at which point they explode. However, they don’t have enough range to effectively deal with groups of enemies not in close range, yet also spreads out too much to be useful against all but the largest hordes. Tight corridors make the spread much more manageable, but it’s more often than not frustrating to use.

Feathered Serpent, her ultimate ability, provides Enya with an extra boost to her DPS by passively storing charges of bonus damage that get applied on hits, but they don’t recharge fast enough to make a large impact in many scenarios. The ultimate also has an active ability that deals damage to an area while also releasing a large stack of said bonus damage charges, but I’ve found it to be awkward to aim, as it will often aim too close or too far from the enemy you want to hit.

The real star of Enya’s kit is her support ability, which once was enough to make her Winter Solstice’s best friend. Said support skill applies a bomb to an enemy that amps the next shot on that enemy’s damage by up to 30%, which can be a lot when you consider how much damage operatives like Winter Solstice output per shot. Unfortunately, the 15 second cooldown leaves her with limited uptime on this ability, and stronger supports like either Acacia make her value proposition harder to justify.

In the end, Enya works, but it’s hard to give stronger praise than that. All of her abilities come with significant drawbacks that limit her full potential. She really just needs better numbers on her abilities, but until that happens, Enya finds herself being a jack of all trades, master of none.

While all of her manifests provide some benefit or another, none of them meaningfully make a difference to her power. Prismatic Igniter is the obvious choice for support applications, while Lucky Times helps to supplement her DPS should you choose to use her in that role.

All of her neuronics are pretty decent upgrades to her abilities. Choose based on what you want out of her, but you probably want to upgrade her support neuronics first.

Cherno - Those Two

Single Target	C+
Mobbing	C
Support	A

Roles: support, DPS

Cherno tries her best, but doesn’t quite succeed in bringing an alternative playstyle to the game with a powerful summon in tow. She does however find a use when she keeps the monster in its cage.

Her active skill is a reasonably useful area interrupt, though its range is too small to be effective without her neuronic upgrade (and still a bit lacking afterward). It’s not entirely useless, but also not anything to write home about.

Clear Empty Skies, her ultimate ability, attempts to get around the inherent weaknesses of the SMG class… by outsourcing the work to someone else. I wouldn’t blame her. Beloberg actually can output some very strong damage numbers, but the inability to directly control its behaviour and its constant HP drain on Cherno makes it a tricky and sometimes frustrating tool to use, even with the ability to switch out to another operative after summoning Beloberg.

However, her support skill gives Cherno a place for players looking for additional ways to slow enemies. It lets the player zoom around with a ghostly Cherno, applying the Slow effect to all enemies she passes through. This will trigger the damage amp from Navigator Squad, making her a more mobility-focused alternative to Redacted.

While Cherno wants at least a few Manifests to become viable as a DPS operative, all of her supporting power is available right out of the box. For DPS purposes, Arctic Fox can seem like a tempting option, but its low skill uptime makes it difficult to use effectively. Stick to 100 Battle Veteran for a boost to your gun damage. In a supporting role, she has access to strong weapon choices like Alloy Truth and Frigatebird as a means of providing a further damage boost.

All of Cherno’s neuronics provide meaningful upgrades to her abilities. Invest in her neuronics to suit the role you want to play her in.

Marian - Swift

Single Target	B
Mobbing	A-
Support	B-

Role: DPS

An exception among the current sniper roster, Swift is a sniper who does not have to aim.

Her active skill, Cloud Shot, fires a homing shot at an enemy as well as making the next normal shot lock on as well, allowing for constant mobility while maintaining DPS. The lock-on also is very useful when facing more mobile enemies that may be more difficult to otherwise land effective fire on. Aiming at targets marked by Cloud Shot is still desirable when opening your combos, as it will lock your next Cloud Shot cast in turn, creating a self-sustaining series of lock-on attacks.

Swift’s support skill is nothing to write home about, but it’s a crowd control cleanse that also provides some extra mobility.

Similarly not a core component of her kit is Wounded Bird, her ultimate. However, it does enough damage to be worth its energy cost, and also provides ten seconds of extra defence penetration to contribute to DPS after the fact. This adds onto her Deiwos passive, which allows her to ignore a certain amount of enemy defence when attacking weak points. It also increases her gun’s magazine size by one, which is always nice.

Ultimately, Marian finds herself with a very strong burst rotation while she has Cloud Shot charges, but unfortunately one that ends quickly and leaves her with not a lot to do.

Hitting Manifest 2 is the best cost-to-benefit ratio, though later manifests are important to helping extend her burst window and increase its availability. Swift is surprisingly flexible with her weapon selection, but Horn of the Orca is an amazing quality of life improvement as its bullet refunds allow her to extend her damage rotations.

Both neuronics for her active skill and ultimate are useful investments, while her support skills are more niche and situational in value.

With further investment, Swift sees an increase in rating.

Mauxir - Meow

Single Target	B+
Mobbing	B
Support	B+

Roles: support, DPS

Mauxir is an oddball of an operative who subverts traditional gameplay patterns and offers unique tools not found elsewhere.

Maurxir’s quirks start off with her standard skill, a unique soul grab mechanic that allows for Mauxir to bypass traditional SMG weaknesses and effectively deal damage to enemies that SMG operators typically struggle with. It comes with some drawbacks, but can also be kitted out with some fun party tricks like low-health executes and AoE damage given enough manifests.

Her support skill is also quite similar, but can only be hit by skills, which somewhat limits its practical usage. Despite this, its ability to generate extra targets allows skill-based operatives like Absconditus and Kaguya to hit and double dip on damage, making her very useful as a support in the right conditions. The orbs generated by her support skill can also passively spawn without a cooldown when an enemy is affected by a control ability, allowing for very high uptime on support orbs. It’s not unlikely for this skill to only get better over time, as more operatives release with new potential synergies.

Finally, Mauxir’s ultimate ability can do one of two things. On cast, it immediately executes enemies below a certain health threshold based on Mauxir’s current health, though this effect can be difficult to use effectively. If the execute fails, Mauxir instead gains a self-buff that grants bonus damage on shots scaling with her maximum health. This bonus damage can also be granted by skill hits from other operatives in your squad, providing an additional source of damage to operatives who don’t typically find a lot of value in their own ultimates. In particular, it has strong synergy with Chenxing - Ethereal Cloud due to the bonus Aptitude only having a cooldown per target hit which allows for even stronger damage with Chenxing’s marks (which count as skill damage).

With unique abilities and gameplay interactions with other operatives that will only increase as time goes on, Mauxir remains as a valuable asset for those who know how to use her to her full potential.

Mauxir is useful even without manifests, but they mostly provide compelling benefits. Of particular note is Manifest 3, which reduces the defence of orbs based on their missing health. As well, Manifest 5 is NOT recommended and something to be avoided, as its effect causing orbs to detonate can actually cause you to lose DPS. Not reliant on a specific weapon, but Hypchlorous Acid is preferred in more supportive roles to provide a larger boost to her ultimate ability’s bonus damage. It works well for active operative use too, but 100 Battle Veteran can be quite spicy in how it interacts with her orbs.

As a support, you will want the two neuronics in her support and ultimate skills that allow other party members to have access to her party tricks. The rest are all notable quality of life boosts and can be invested in based on your own discretion.

Tier 2

Not amazingly strong, but still viable or niche

Nita - Hands

Single Target	C
Mobbing	B
Support	B-

Roles: support, CC

While initially unimpressive, Nita turns out to bring just enough utility and damage to find herself an occasional spot on team lineups.

Her active ability is a strong close-range CC tool that also allows her to generate a large amount of personal shielding, while her ultimate and support abilities are useful CC tools. Combined with all her manifest and neuronic upgrades, Nita becomes a potent shield tank with high durability. However, such a role is simply not needed in the game’s current state, as enemies simply do not deal enough damage for a main tank to be necessary.

Despite this, her support ability turns out to be quite a useful mobility tool, with the range on the dash matching or exceeding even that of Lionheart, and the followup movement speed buff and shield that can be applied with it are always nice to have.

Does not see any major gameplay strategy changes as she gains manifests, though her first manifest does provide a way to convert her shielding into more damage, as well as knock back enemies which can be useful in cheesing some stages. Not reliant on a specific weapon, but Precious Baby can further increase her survivability, while Tiny Grains can provide some offensive utility and Lapis Lazuli will maximise her value as a support.

All of Nita’s neuronics do provide some use, and you can invest in them as you wish, depending on what you want.

Fritia - Hush

Single Target	B
Mobbing	B-
Support	B

Roles: DPS, laser beam death ray

Hush’s character bio notes that her exoskeleton more or less only got approved because of the heat ray that it comes with, and this translates over to her gameplay disappointingly well.

Her normal ability, Strongest Chain, is an AoE crowd control tool with okay enough damage. However, the cooldown is painfully long and the ability only pulls in four other targets, which is a strange caveat to include.

Her support skill takes a similar support approach like her 4* variant, this time providing a defensive buff that comes with CC immunity when upgraded with neuronics. Unfortunately, it has a drawback of being limited to five hits (though it can linger with halved effectiveness once you unlock the corresponding neuronic), and also only lasting ten seconds. Being restricted in lifespan by both hits and time (neither of which are particularly impressive in duration) limits its overall usefulness, especially in stages with turrets and other rapid-firing enemies.

Perhaps the reason that these two abilities are so strangely limited in effectiveness is to allow for more power budget to be distributed to her ultimate ability, the heat ray. Damage-wise, it can be good. Very good. In fact, it’s the main reason for Hush’s high tier placement. However, using said heat ray roots you in place, which is less than desirable. Being CC’d while using your ultimate also cuts it off early, which is a mild inconvenience. The solution to this problem turns out to be through manifests. Manifest 2 is the most sane stopping point as far as cost-to-benefit goes, as this is where using her ultimate applies her support skill buffs to Fritia herself. This significantly reduces the drawback of being rooted during her ultimate, and if her support skill has the appropriate neuronic, also gives Fritia CC immunity to prevent undesired interruptions. Manifest 1 also removes the limit on her ult duration, allowing it to continue as long as you can feed it energy.

At Manifest 2, Hush is just okay. Her ultimate doesn’t quite have the uptime or damage to make up for her other weakness. Lava Bones is the no-brainer best-in-slot, but if you don’t have it, try to give her a fire AR of some kind. This will unlock one of the free methods of increasing her ult damage via neuronics.

Given that the main gimmick of Hush is her heat ray, you will obviously want to prioritise both of her ult neuronics, with the CC immunity (“Iron Body”) on her support ability being the next most important. The other three neuronics are of less importance.

With further investment, Hush sees an increase in rating.

Tier 3

Maybe someday.

Haru - “The Ace”

Single Target	B-
Mobbing	C-
Support	C+

Roles: DPS, Bossing?

A clunky mix of abilities leaves Haru with a confusing playstyle that reaps questionable rewards. Her active skill, Triple Tap, wants to be charged up to have maximal effectiveness, but its long charge time means you’re giving up non-insignificant gun DPS in exchange for it unless you can’t hit weak points. Vanishing Phantom, her support ability, can be used as an execute ability against low-health targets, and actually is a relative strong point of her kit.

The other relative bright spot in Haru’s kit is her ultimate ability, which applies a knock-up and provides decently strong followup damage via her Sword of Oaths on shots hit. However, the split power budget that adding both a knock-up and a damage buff creates makes this ability one that tries to do two things and is resultantly not great at either; the knock-up does not do damage and the zone is not particularly large, and the Sword of Oaths has too long of a cooldown to majorly contribute to DPS, even with her neuronic upgrade.

Does not see any major gameplay strategy changes as she gains manifests. Prefers Star Ocean, though whether you want to spend resources pulling this may be questionable at best.

If you are dead-set on using Haru, you’ll find that all of her neuronics have some use, and you can invest in them to suit whatever playstyle you manage to come up with for her.

Glossary of Terms

AoE

Short for Area of Effect. Denotes abilities that can also affect nearby enemies that are not the primary target.

Bossing

The act of fighting strong boss-type enemies, or the corresponding role that an operative might have.

See also: mini-bossing, the same concept but applied to less powerful enemies that are still significantly stronger than average mooks.

CC

Short for Crowd Control. Denotes the ability to temporarily disable an enemy’s ability to act, or the corresponding role an operative might have.

DPS

Short for Damage Per Second. Denotes the ability to output consistent damage, or the corresponding role that an operative might have.

Different types of DPS exist:

• Break DPS: Specialised in doing large amounts of burst damage during boss fights where the boss is temporarily downed and vulnerable
• General DPS: all-purpose, good at everything but may not be the best at anything.
• Single Target DPS: large amounts of damage, but in a way that may limit the number of targets that can be quickly and effectively engaged.

Tank

An operative with the role of taking damage for other operatives.

May have sub-specialized roles:

• Off-Tank: Short for Offensive Tank. An operative that is intended to take hits while also dealing back non-insignificant damage as well.
• Main Tank: An operative intended to be heavily focused on taking damage, often at the cost of personal damage output.
• Shield Tank: An operative specialised in mitigating damage taken through the use of shields.

Mobbing

The act of effectively fighting large clusters of enemies, or the corresponding role that an operative might have.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Meta Tier List appeared first on DotGG.

Also, Absconditus is back on rerun, which makes it a good time to check in on her position in the meta and whether she’s worth picking up for the adjutant on a budget looking for a worthwhile investment. Spoiler alert - not really.

(Also check out the main Snowbreak site, it's got loads of other news that doesn't make it over to here!)

Tess-ting the Waters

Tess is a relatively unique type of support operative, given that her main focus is shovelling as much U-Energy into your team as possible. She does provide a damage boost with her support skill, but that really feels more like a token inclusion than anything else. The result is that she’s really good at her role, but it’s one that’s relatively niche in usefulness. Most DPS operatives don’t get major power spikes from their ultimate abilities and would see larger benefits from more traditional support options. However, there are two major exceptions. Outside of her initial burst, Yao has always wanted to get access to her ultimate ability as fast as possible to utilise the massive damage boost it provides. Meanwhile, Hush finds it difficult to even be considered a full operative in many scenarios with how backloaded her damage is. Tess turns out to be the answer to both of these issues, accelerating Yao towards what usually is a lethal power spike and allowing Hush to build up sufficient U-Energy in a more reasonable timeframe.

However, the short duration and long cooldowns of Tess’ abilities do mean that this is a double-edged sword - not being able to get the job done while her abilities are in effect means you’re left with a brick in your party that won’t be useful again for quite a while. Because of this, she really ends up being a Neural Simulation special, where the short-lived nature of her usefulness isn’t a major concern. With that being said, insufficiently developed accounts may still struggle to take advantage of her unique abilities if they lack the damage to quickly end fights. Thus, newer players who missed out on her initial appearance need not despair, as her niche usefulness and relatively demanding prerequisites ultimately (haha) make her a luxury pull for advanced players chasing Neural Sim time saves.

Katya Got Your Tongue?

As the first operative to use a brand new type of weapon, Katya has a lot of expectations resting on her. Fortunately, she mostly lives up to them. Well, she got there eventually. If her initial performance wasn’t enough to impress you (which it should have, since she was already quite good to begin with), it’s nothing that several rounds of buffs can’t fix. What we’re left with in the end is a strong DPS operative with incredibly high uptime and built-in versatility thanks to the dual-mode nature of crossbows. Her moves might look flashy, but at the end of the day she’s just an operative who shoots really fast and really hard (not having to reload also helps). As a result, there really isn’t a lot to say about any interesting quirks she might have, as playing her really is quite straightforward. If it weren’t for the fact that you’re incentivized to dodge every now and then, I’d almost call it boring. There’s no denying her effectiveness however, as she wedges her way into a podium spot alongside Winter Solstice and Ethereal Cloud as the top DPS operatives (with poor Coronet once again getting the short end of the stick).

Obtuse Absconditus

So now that she’s on a rerun, a question many of you may have is if Haru is worth pulling.

The short answer is no. Don’t bother.

The long answer is that Haru still has the same problems that she always did, very quickly losing value as enemy HP numbers go up, which results in her continuing to struggle to be relevant against most Neural Sim bosses. She has a niche against the Fiends, but pouring resources into a character that’s only really good for mobbing (which any good DPS should be able to do) and two Neural Sim bosses isn’t exactly what I’d call a good investment. Meanwhile, more traditional gun damage operatives have continued to get stronger with the addition of Shadow Ka and Amarna Squad.

Sharing a brief banner overlap with Katya, the latest DPS offering, certainly doesn’t help her case either, as she’s a much better-rounded and almost universally stronger alternative. If you really like Haru as a character I guess she’s not entirely useless, but unless something drastically changes about the game, there really isn’t much reason to go for her.

Hjartagard and the Eli-phant in the Room

After the smash hit that was Amarna Squad, some were hopeful that Seasun had pivoted away from making specialised logistics sets in favour of more generic offerings. Well those hopes were promptly squashed as Seasun not only reverted back to niche logistics sets, but seemingly doubled down.

Hjartagard Squad is by no means a bad logistics set, bringing a sizable damage boost to the table. However, it requires the equipped operative to use their ultimate to activate. Being a supportive logistics set, the only real viable option is Tess, who the set released with. Meanwhile, Eli Squad brings an interesting alternative to challenge the reigning king of gun damage, Amano-Iwato. But as if being locked to Frost operatives wasn’t restrictive enough, having active anti-synergy with critical hits means that the only operative other than Katya who would consider using it, Wild Hunt, can’t really use it either.

It’s disappointing to see new logistics sets be so restrictive in their usability, but it seems that this is how it’s going to be, as Seasun appears to have no interest in actively shaking up the logistics meta.

Cubic Insanity

If you’ve been following my social media, you’ll know that I’m not particularly fond of the way that Njall is designed. Being effectively invulnerable for all but a brief time window that occurs once a minute doesn’t exactly make for very interactive gameplay. You can easily find windows to fire back between its attacks, but with as much damage reduction as it has during those periods, why even bother?

Of course, there is one way of getting around it. Shadow Ka’s support skill spawns a dummy that transfers damage dealt to it, but in doing so also happens to ignore any damage reduction effects that the enemy might have. It makes dealing with the cube much less of a hassle, and will be a staple for future Neural Simulation runs when Njall inevitably gets added to it. Of course, Seasun could always give it actual weak spots, but I’d hedge my bets and start making plans to pick up Shadow Ka on her rerun in the next update if I didn’t have her already. Of course, even if Njall gets changed, it’s not like Shadow Ka isn’t a great support anyways.

Parts Party

This isn’t really a meta “update” but more of a PSA. For those who didn’t know, shotguns are the best weapon class in the game for parts breaking. For this reason, bringing a shotgun operative to content where breaking parts is necessary like the Ni-Mechs and Hardened Joseph is generally advised. Any shotgun operative will work, but either Fenny brings some extra value with Lionheart providing gap-closing mobility to save time getting to the enemy and Coronet being able to use her support skill to increase her rate of fire. Just please, bring a proper parts breaker when needed, unless you absolutely know what you’re doing. Your sanity (and Neural Simulation times) will thank you.

Tier List Updates

You can find the full tier list here.

Tess - The Magician rated at T0.5

Tess cements her role as the premier U-Energy support in the game, but it’s one of limited usefulness. However, her strong synergy with Winter Solstice and Hush lets her pull a Tier 0.5 placement out of her hat.

Katya - Blue Bolt rated at T0

With two fire modes (one great, one good enough), endless ammo, and strong numbers to boot, Katya easily slides her way to the top, and looks good doing it too.

Fritia - Hush (High Investment) raised from T1 to T0.5

With Tess providing Hush all the U-Energy she could ever want, she can finally make her death laser fantasies into reality and produce shockingly high Neural Simulation scores. However, her general usability is still not great. This is really the highest that Hush can ever be rated unless changes are made to her non-Ultimate abilities or she suddenly starts instantly vaporising bosses.

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Meta Report – February 9, 2024 appeared first on DotGG.

How to Redeem Codes

Go to the settings menu and navigate to the "Other" submenu.

Here you'll find the option to redeem codes. Input the codes, and your rewards will be sent to your game mailbox.

Redemption codes may expire at any point. Some codes are part of the same redemption campaign and may not allow for multiple code redemptions within the same promotion.

November 2023 Codes

October 2023 Codes

For some reason, only one of the three codes marked with an asterisk (*) can be redeemed, regardless of which one you redeem first.

September 2023 Codes

August 2023 Codes

July 2023 Codes

The post Snowbreak: Containment Zone Codes appeared first on DotGG.