Architect (Protocol Assimilation)

Level 100 5★ -> Level 100 5★ Maximum Potential

Rank Up Cost

Unlike G&K Dolls, Ringleaders provide their Buffs to any unit in the Echelon that is tagged appropriately, making positioning less important. Instead, they operate via a series of 'Tags'. 

Team Building Notes

Architect’s Tile buffs are fine-ish, if somewhat underwhelming. Coalition units rarely struggle with Accuracy, and also rarely rely on Evasion tanking, but Evasion will offer at least some buff to survivability. The Mechanical unit buff for Damage and Accuracy is more valuable, as the majority of the best Coalition units are Mechanical, and Manticores will always appreciate the ability to hit harder, and maybe dodge a few extra hits. Other Mechanical units appreciate one buff or the other, so they shouldn’t be ignored completely.

Arriving on her own terms, and to the fanfare of the crowd, especially Mars, Architect finds herself in an awkward position as a Ringleader. While she does have some strengths, such as the ability to deal Pierce Damage when fielded as a HOC (Skill 2, Battlefield Spirit), and the ability to deal many small hits of Damage very quickly, a comparatively lower base Damage and some awkward caveats cut into her general viability quite a bit.

As a Combat unit, Architect comes with innate multi-hit on her auto-attacks, dealing 4 hits of up to 0.25x Damage per attack, with an additional attack (Skill 3, Explosion) every 6 attacks that deals up to 0.8x explosive Damage in a radius of 1. Do not be fooled by the explosive damage tag on the extra grenade every six attacks. While it does hit all links within the target area it does not ignore Armor, which cuts into her potential Damage once again. Thus, Architect will struggle mightily against medium to heavily armored units, as Armor will cut into the Damage of every attack. For some context, Architect will deal roughly 200 Damage per hit. An enemy with 100 Armor is therefore reducing her damage per volley by 400 points, and an enemy with 200 Armor has completely nullified Architect. This does not render her unusable, but it does mean players should be aware of what they are asking Architect to fight. 

Her active Skill 1, Carnival Activation, targets the highest HP enemy, dealing up to 4x Damage to that enemy before exploding and dealing up to 1.2x additional Damage in a radius of 4. While Architect’s base Damage isn’t fantastic, this hits all links in the radius, which improves on the output quite a bit. Therefore the unit targeted by the initial shot will take two hits of Damage. As with all Skills that target Highest HP, targeting can potentially be an issue, but can be overcome with a bit of careful management. Note, however, that there are some weird extras to this Skill: for instance, those who have played Arctic Warfare will remember that Architect has an invulnerability period longer than her Skill itself, while she taunts you. This animation has remained in her player version, and means that Architect can take a bit longer than is ideal to get back to what you want her to do, namely showing off that damned smile doing Damage. Further, as is with her standard attack, do not be fooled by the ‘Explosive Damage’ tag on this Skill either. It also does not ignore Armor, although it does deal link based Damage.

Architect’s Skill 4, Penetration, is a passive that increases the Explosive Damage of all units in her Echelon by up to 20%. It is a nice touch, but not a passive you will build a team around. Units that benefit include Manticores, Jaguars, and potentially Architect herself. 

Architect as a HOC:

• 2 Range
• Does Piercing Damage
• Slow RoF 
• Slightly improved AoE over ATWs and Destroyer
• Is worse than Destroyer for SF Dragging

While she is quite similar to her midget-er counterpart, Architect differs from Destroyer in one key way: She can deal Piercing Damage. Not a lot of Peirce Damage, but enough to make her useful in certain situations Destroyer and other HOC Ringleaders are not, such as ranking maps with limited HOC slots. Still, for the reasons listed below you will almost always choose to use a standard HOC over Architect.

Her RoF is painfully slow compared to traditional HOCs, with ATW such as BGM-71 firing almost twice as fast, and Grenade Launchers almost four times faster. Architect only deals one tick of Lethality Damage and one hit of Peirce Damage per shot. Her base Damage is split half between Pierce Damage and half Lethality Damage. At Level 100, that means roughly 400 of Pierce Damage per attack, or slightly more than AGS, and but barely a third as much as AT4 or SMAW, and BGM eclipses her completely. This is enough Peirce that she can hold her ground against weaker force shields such as Gunners or Rodelaros, but will struggle against highly shielded Doppelsoldners or Uhlans.