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Gager (Protocol Assimilation)


Stats

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

HP 1025→1025 Evasion 176→192
Damage 690→722 Rate of Fire 136→148
Accuracy 155→175 Armor 0
Critical Rate 20% Critical Damage 150%
Armor Pen 15 Move Speed 15

Tile and Formation Buff

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'. 

Unit Type All
Effects Base Max Analysis
Damage 10% 15%
Unit Type T-Doll
Effects Base Max Analysis
Accuracy 6% 10%
Crit Rate 6% 10%
Unit Type Melee
Effects Base Max Analysis
Evasion 6% 10%
Armor 6% 10%

Team Building Notes

Gager is another unfortunate victim of MICA asking the question ‘what is something cool we can do’ without also asking the question ‘what value does this have to players?’. She starts strong with her Tile Buffs giving Damage to everyone, and buff Doll type Units for Critical Hit Rate, and then falls off, restricting her Armor Buff to Melees only. 

Gager has a niche, that being the one of only two Armor debuffers in the entire game (the other being De Lisle), the problem is that her niche is all but useless in GFL as it currently stands, due to the strenght of other Coalition Units as well as the traits of GFL enemies. If you are only interested in the meta Ringleaders, she’s an easy skip.

That is enough beating up my favorite SF, let’s try and be fair now shall we? And hopefully not write to much of an essay.

Skills

Lunar Return
ICD: 6 Seconds
Level 10 Effect Perform two charges at the 3 enemy units with the highest HP. The first charge does 1.5x guaranteed damage that ignores armor but cannot score critical hits, as well as inflicting 1 stacks of Weight on the enemy. The second charge deals 3.2x guaranteed damage that ignores armor but cannot score critical hits, then detonates all stacks of Weight on every enemy unit in a 2-unit radius around the target. Every 1 stacks of Weight inflicts 2 instances of guaranteed 0.4x explosive damage that ignores shields and armor, but cannot score critical hits. Peak Value Analysis 4: Increase guaranteed damage from first charge from 1.5x to 2x, increase second charge damage from 3.2x to 4x and increase stack of Weight instance of explosive damage from 0.4x to 0.5x. (Cooldown: 12 seconds)
Overall Calibration
ICD: 3 seconds
Level 10 Effect Passive: Each of Gager's regular attacks does 2 instances of 0.6x damage, with a 30% chance of applying 1 stacks of Weight to the target.

Active: Gager increases her rate of fire to maximum and reduces her evasion and accuracy by 30% and 10% respectively for 3 seconds. During this time, she prioritizes enemies which have not been attacked yet, and all damage she inflicts for the duration applies stacks of Weight. (Cooldown: 8 seconds)

Weight
Passive
Level 5 Effect Every stack of Weight reduces the target's move speed by 10%, damage by 10% and armor by 50%, lasting for 5 seconds. The maximum stack size of Weight is 3.
Trial by Combat
IC: 3 seconds
Level 5 Effect 3 seconds after the start of battle, increase the damage of all friendly units by 20% as long as the number of friendly units on the battlefield does not exceed the number of enemy units on the battlefield.
Skill Animation

Analysis

Strangely enough, Gager has the same Damage stat as Alchemist, of all Ringleaders, where said stat is fine for Alchemist, who is a tank first and DPS second, but not for Gager, who wants to do Damage along with passing around her debuffs, thus this serves to undercut her abilities from the start. She also lacks the defensive tools to Tank, and has a high enough Accuracy that it mostly becomes irrelevant, making Damage the only major concern. She is another multi-hit Ringleader, dealing two hits of 0.6x Damage per attack cycle. This would have the weakness of being overly impacted by Armor, (hold that thought), and the usual benefits of counting as two hits for things where that matters. 

Now, let's talk about Gager’s skill which centres her debuff kit, ‘Weight’.

You can't just go talking about her Weight like that!

speechless

Her Skill, Weight, reduces enemy Move Speed, Damage and Armor for 5 seconds, and can stack up to 3 times. In theory, this is an incredibly potent debuff, as at max level Gager can strip a 200 Armor enemy down 25 or less (299 Armor to under 40), which effectively removes Armor as a consideration. Couple this with a Damage debuff and Move Speed Debuff, and in theory Gager can facilitate the elimination of heavily Armoured foes in short order while reducing their impact on friendly units. This has a 30% chance of being inflicted with every basic attack, going up to 100% during her S2, and is also applied by her active skill. While not a great chance, the guaranteed applications are enough that Gager can spread Weight around. 

That is the theory. 

In practice, Armor is not often an impediment to a Coalition Echelon, as heavily Armored enemies tend to be clusters of enemies such as Aegis or an upcoming enemy in Poincaré Recurrence that believes in having more Armor, and these enemies are swiftly put to death Manticore’s and their explosive volleys, which ignore Armor completely. Likewise if using a Jaeger as your backline unit, their Skill ignores Armor, although this is hardly as powerful as a Manticore. While traditional Doll Echelons would enjoy this benefit much more, as reducing enemy Armor so far would allow ARs to DPS down otherwise impossible enemies the game doesn’t allow for this, leaving that as the realm of Soulmuse’s wild fantasies. 

Lunar Return, Gager’s Active Skill, is a multi-step process, so let’s break it down one step at a time:

  •  All parts of this attack are sure-hit, and ignore armor, but cannot crit
  • The first tick of damage targets the three highest HP enemies, dealing up to 1.5x Damage and applying a stack of weight to each enemy
  • The second charge deals at least double the Damage of the first, targeting the same highest HP enemies, and then all enemies currently debuffed with Weight explode, dealing Damage per stack of Weight that also ignores HP shields
  • This does not remove any stacks of Weight from the affected enemies. 

Now, all of this sounds good on paper, but in practice is hamstrung by the first major caveat ‘Highest HP targeting and only 3 enemies for the first charges. 

Limiting the biggest chunk of Damage to only three enemies with the highest HP is a mixed result, as Gager can take large chunks off the bigger and more threatening enemies, but she does nothing about any large groups of trash enemies designed to soak Damage. In theory, these can be dealt with via her explosions, but due to the usual positioning of large enemies, and their AI these explosions are not likely to hit weaker enemies and finish them off, making them less valuable in practice. However, the spike of Damage, if the target enemy has multiple stacks of Weight, is considerable. With three stacks of Weight Gager could do up to 6k Damage to her 3 charge targets, although you are not likely to have 3 stacks of Weight on any given target so this number will be lower in general use. 

Overall Calibration governs Gager’s basic attacks, is honestly a bit of a nothing Skill. Its active component seems to have three parts, raising Gager’s RoF, debuffing her Accuracy and Evasion, and ensuring every attack applies Weight while changing targets to enemies that have not been attacked, with a relatively short uptime. In practice, this Skill simply ensures that Gager applies Weight to everything in her range, as the Accuracy and Evasion debuffs are not a major issue, and Gager’s RoF is already maxed, and thus, cannot be adjusted upwards. 

Finally, Trial by Combat is a solid buff, with the small caveat that it vanishes if the number of enemies on the field is less than the number of units in Gager’s Echelon. In practice, this doesn’t impact much, as by that point enemies are likely weakened and will be finished off very quickly, or friendly units can be retreated to keep the buff active.

Gager be like: "I shall now use my Skill:   "

Skill Priority

Lunar Return
ICD: 6 Seconds

High-Medium Priority

The scaling on Lunar Return is reasonably good, and any boosts to the Damage output are appreciated.

Overall Calibration
ICD: 3 seconds

Low Priority

Only think this changes is that it reduces the strength of the debuff on Gager, and can thus be skipped.
Weight
Passive

Medium-Low Priority

While the improvements to Weight are substantial, the limited value of weight undercuts the value of this Skill.
Trial by Wombat Combat
ICD: 3 seconds

Medium-Low Priority

While the buff is nice, the scaling isn’t that large. The returns on investment are not fantastic but a 20% Damage buff is still quite potent.

Peak Value Analysis

Potential Level Effect
1 Tile Buff Improved (All units values increased from 9-15% and T-Doll and Melee units values increased from 6-10%)
2 Rate of Fire +12, Evasion +16
3 Damage +32, Accuracy +20
4 Skill 1 Improved, see Skill description.

Rank Up Costs

Level Petri Dish Rarity
70 300 ★★★★
90 450 ★★★★★
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About the Author(s)

aka Soulmuse basically everywhere. Discord: soulmuse#8741.

Guide writer for Girls Frontline. KSG and G3 Propagandist. Writes the occasional fanfic.  

Feel free to send guide suggestions and feedback via DM on Discord or Reddit. You can also find me in the GFL section of the community discord. Also on twitter

Just your average EN mengxin looking to help the GFL community and spread the love for kawaii, hard worker LWMMG.

AUG is love, AUG is life.

Fielded 2 Neko23 on Isomer ranking.
Fielded 2 AN-94 on Shattered Connexion ranking.
Fielded 2 LWMMG MOD on Polarized Light ranking.
Fielded 2 Mosin-Nagants on Dual Randomness ranking.

Head of Roadmaps, Shilling Panel and Waifu Wars Panel. Frequently Soul's workslave.

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