M1911

M1911 Mod benefits a great deal from her neural upgrade stat wise. Her Damage increases to 29, Evasion to 78, and her Rate of Fire improves to 78, allowing her to fire one frame sooner. As a nice bonus the boost in RoF comes at MOD I allowing M1911 Mod to immediately benefit from it. A small boost in Evasion helps improve her durability in the Offtank position, and the extra Damage is valuable for maximizing the damage dealt by her MOD II Skill.

Alongside her jump in Rarity, M1911 Mod’s Smoke Grenade improves, now matching UMP45’s. A 40% debuff to enemy ROF and 50% debuff to movement speed provides valuable utility, and represents a noticeable jump from her pre-upgrade Skill.

The star of the show for M1911 Mod is her secondary Skill, Desperate Sharpshooter. After throwing her Smoke Grenade, M1911 Mod’s next seven attacks will deal 200% Damage and target the farthest enemy, and move closer with each shot. Should there be less than 7 enemies available, any extra shots will be fired at the final target. An example of this in action is given below.

Thanks to the 1 second Initial Cooldown of Smoke Grenade, Desperate Sharpshooter is essentially a free bit of Burst DPS in general use that comes as soon as 3 seconds into the battle, allowing her to soften up the first few targets prior to the main DPS of an echelon activating their skills. This shines in 5HG echelons, where M1911 Mod can be a compelling DPS option due to the rapid activation of her skill and relatively potent Damage output. Her unique Equipment, the XM261 ACP, further improves upon this, giving an extra 2 damage over standard Hollow Point ammo. This provides a noticeable improvement to M1911 Mod’s DPS in a 5HG echelon, and so is a worthwhile investment for those wishing to use her in this role.

M1911’s tiles also received an upgrade, now providing a potent 24% RoF and 60% Accuracy to the tiles directly adjacent to her. The RoF Buff makes M1911 Mod a solid choice for a wide variety of Dolls, given the direct relationship between the Rate of Fire and DPS. Accuracy is a somewhat less valuable buff, but it will soon be needed given the increasing Evasion of enemies in upcoming content. The positioning of her tiles is somewhat unfortunate, limiting M1911 to either position 4 or 8, and only able to buff one backline DPS in the latter case.

M1911’s neural upgrade offers her new and interesting usage options, while improving upon her existing niche. As a defensive support, M1911 Mod excels due to her unique situation as the only Smoke Grenade HG user, while Desperate Sharpshooter’s added DPS is always a welcome addition to any echelon, especially so in a 5HG team.

In an AR formation, M1911 is likely occupy position 4 to provide her Tile Buffs to both DPS ARs, and avoid compromising any other team synergy. However, should a situation arise where position 8 is not occupied by a more important Offtank, M1911 can occupy this position and buff only one DPS while providing her Smoke Grenade utility, but Commanders choosing to do this should carefully consider the benefits of doing so when compared to the loss of a more traditional Offtank. Also, Commanders should avoid pairing M1911 and UMP45, Ingram, or PP-19-01 due to their redundant Skill.

In an RF echelon, M1911 Mod’s positioning should be chosen based upon what is least likely to compromise the Tiles and Buffs of the other HGs. As her damage output is a nice bonus but not required, buffing M1911 is secondary to ensuring that the RFs are adequately supported.

5HG formations are best used as budget farming teams, and if using M1911 as the primary DPS for such an echelon, her placement in position 4 allows for the greatest buff stacking potential.

M1911 may be placed in other positions in echelons not relying on her early burst damage, possibly resulting in an example team as seen below:

5HG teams are highly flexible and Commanders are encouraged to experiment to find what works best for them, although the final result should be one that balances DPS and survivability to minimize damage taken after each fight.