CAWS

Overview

CAWS the penguin-looking, riot shield toting t-doll is here. She has some pretty low HP for a SG. Despite her below average tanking stat spread, CAWS can still perform the main role of armor tanking as a SG. There are usually better options than CAWS available for players looking for an armor tank. To make use of her skill, she requires some setup and specific conditions to perform well as a DPS SG.

If commanders are stretched thin for SG tank options or want to bother setting up those highly specific conditions, then CAWS is a decent investment, but a terrible one otherwise.

Strengths

High Armor

23 armor is respectably high for a SG as the second highest value.

Good Tiles

CAWS’s tiles have a good coverage of 2 tiles of the backline from position 6  and they provide good buffs of 18% damage and 12% accuracy for MGs

Weaknesses

Low Base HP

1235 HP is extremely low for a SG, especially for a 5 star.

Weak Skill Damage and Range

CAWS’s skill deals very little damage, has a misleadingly small range, and actually can hinder her dps.

Long Initial Cooldown

Without external skills to provide her an HP shield, CAWS’s skill has an initial cooldown of 8 to 12.5 seconds. Most fights do not drag on this long.

Full Analysis

CAWS’s active skill will give herself a 40 HP shield. Since armor reduction applies before hp shields, SGs do well with HP shields. However, unlike for other significant HP shield SGs like SAT8 and DP-12, it has an initial cooldown of 8 seconds so it will not help her in most fights, since everything is usually dead by then.

For her passive, when CAWS gets an HP shield from anywhere, including herself, she will stop attacking and start charging stacks. Once her HP shield runs out or she hits 3 stacks she will remove any stacks and discharge sure hit AOE attacks in front of her based on the total number of stacks she had.

 She has a high base armor of 23, a very low hp of 1235 and a decent tile layout, giving her an average performance as an armor tank.

CAWS’s applications as a DPS SG are questionable, but it is possible to use her. Before we talk about her applications, here is an explanation of her skill’s numerous downsides.

Without an external HP shield source her full charge will come out after 12.5 seconds. On top of this, when charging she will spend up to 4.5 seconds not firing, and with a base rate of fire of 35 she will lose about 6 auto attacks in that time. During this she will not be able to knockback enemies to lower incoming damage, and activating her passive early instead of charging requires her to take enough damage to lose the HP shield.

CAWS’s skill is deceptively flawed, making her worse than it already seems.

• Even at 5 links, only the mainframe will fire her skillshot
• Her AOE shape is in a cone in front of her rather than covering the x-axis
• Rather than firing at once with all the same range, CAWS fires up to three distinct attacks with a small delay and increasing ranges. The first stack will cover from 0 to 3 units, the second stack: 0 to 5 units, and the third stack: 0 to 8 units
• CAWS cannot charge while moving
• The damage cannot link splash, ignore armor, or stack with slugs

Because only the mainframe will be firing the skillshot and the attack will not link splash or ignore armor, CAWS’s skill does very little damage to specific targets. After all, only one gun is being fired instead of five. So technically it is only a 1.1x multiplier for a 5-link doll. And she is affected heavily by link protection, so there is a limit to how much damage she can do to them each shot. Additionally, they will have to be standing within 3 units to CAWS to eat the full 16.5x damage. The cone shaped blast and differing ranges means that targets behind and directly above/below CAWS might not be hit at all, and longer range enemies CAWS will only be hit by a third of her skill damage, or even be too far to hit. It is likely that, for many enemy compositions, CAWS’s passive will lower her dps.

An application for making CAWS dps viable is fighting massive crowds of close-range enemies like ELIDS, where she can hit every enemy at once with her AOE. They also should be unable to deplete her shields. If they do more damage than she replenishes HP shields, CAWS will likely fire only 1 or even 0 shots each time; however, if she can out-regenerate the enemy swarm, then she can out-DPS the likes of Saiga-12 and Elphelt in the DPS SG department.

To make the most out of her skill, CAWS can be paired with an early HP shielder like LWMMG Mod or GSh-18 Mod. They are able to provide CAWS with a constant and early source of HP shields, which will have her constantly firing her skill every 4.5 seconds. Unless facing enemies that attack two targets like Judge, it is generally not recommended to run 2 SGs, so SGs that can grant allies HP shields like S.A.T.8, and M500 Mod usually are not good to pair with CAWS.

Her heavy reliance on specific setups/enemies and low reward means that, while it sounds interesting, makes CAWS an uncommon pick for the already rather niche role of DPS SG. She can perform acceptably well as a tank, since pretty much all SGs can, but overall she is a bad investment.

Team Options

LWMMG

Gr Mk23

Contender

GSh-18

M1918 Mod

M1895 CB

Early HP Shielders

LWMMG Mod

GSh-18 Mod

A doll that provides an HP shield early in the fight will have CAWS charging her skill from the start of the battle.

First Volley MGs

M1918 Mod

M1895 CB

MGSG teams are usually involved in fights where you want to end them in the first clip, so you usually run first volley MGs.

Damage/Crit Buffing Tile HGs

Contender

Mk23

MGSG teams do the best with damage and crit, and they're the only stats that CAWS’s skill scales with.

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