P7

Overview

Although toting a Skill and tiles that initially seem excellent, while P7 is solid at buffing the defensive capabilities of an Echelon, it is actually her defensive buffs that make her mediocre.

P7 not only provides Evasion buffs for the tanks in an Echelon, but also offers a rare RoF buff for damage dealers. Her Skill buffs Evasion even more, providing up to a 60% addition boost in EVA. Despite these qualities, one downside to P7’s solid buffs is her tile arrangement. As she does not buff units in front or behind her, she cannot buff the Main tank while buffing both damage dealers, and she cannot buff the Offtank and a damage dealer while buffing the Main tank. In addition, her mediocre stats make it hard for her to be used as a Main tank, limiting her utility compared to some of her contemporaries.

The most important thing to note about P7, however, is that while she’s not bad performance-wise, compared to other HGs she falls behind. She’s not the worst choice for a buffer, but she’s also far from being the best choice in her class.

Strengths

Good Tile Buffs

P7 provides both the rare RoF buff and Evasion buff in her Formation tiles, allowing her to buff both tanks and damage dealers.

Defensive Skill

P7 provides a 60% Evasion boost with her Skill, granting even more Evasion to tanks.

Weaknesses

Awkward Tile Orientation

P7’s buff tiles are arranged in such a way that if she is placed between the two damage dealers, she cannot buff the Main tank. If she is placed such that she can buff the Main tank, she cannot buff one damage dealer, nor can she buff the Offtank.

Good In Theory, Not In Practice

Although her Skill and tiles are effective  on paper, as she does not provide many offensive buffs, she falls behind other T-Dolls that do.

Full Analysis

Although P7 provides solid buffs for any Echelon, her limitations cause her performance to fall off when compared to other HGs. Additionally, her limited utility in filling various roles does holder her back from being particularly versatile.

P7’s main gimmick is the hefty Evasion buffs she offers. Her buff tiles provide boosts to both Evasion and RoF, allowing her to evenly support both tanks and damage dealers. Her Skill provides a 60% Evasion buff, allowing her to buff tanks even further. These buffs when used in conjunction with one another boost survivability and damage simultaneously, which is a bit of a rarity.

The obvious downsides to using P7, though, are her buff tile orientation and her stats. P7’s awkward tile placements prevent her buffs from being used to their full potential -- although her tiles provide buffs that can benefit both damage dealers and tanks, if P7 can only buff either the damage dealers or the tank depending on her position in the Echelon. While a potential solution to this problem is using the C formation, this layout prevents the main tank from distributing buffs to all damage dealers and therefore is not recommended. Although placing P7 as a Main tank would allow her tiles to be used to full effect as she has mediocre tanking stats it is not advisable to do this either.

There is a less obvious downside to using P7 and this is the fact that she buffs Evasion. While P7 on her own is a solid Evasion buffer, she falls behind other HGs precisely because of this quality Tier 2 enemies -- which appear in Chapter 6 and onwards -- have lower HP but much higher Damage and Accuracy, so later in the game it’s simply more effective to use an offensive buffer. This is because KOing the enemy faster is simultaneously offensive and defensive, as the faster the enemy is KO’d, the less chances they have to deal damage.

Another mechanic of note is that out of the three types of Defensive buffs -- those being Damage down, Accuracy down, Evasion up -- Evasion up is the least effective. Evasion buffs actually have less impact on the enemy’s hit rate compared to Accuracy debuffs due to the way hit rate is calculated, and Damage down has a bigger impact on the flow of battle than the meager hit rate reduction Evasion up provides. Because of this, P7’s spot would be better filled by a HG with a more useful Skill.

In summary, while P7 is a solid Evasion buffer, she is generally not as useful as a fair amount of more utility-focused HGs. As not many T-Dolls can effectively fill the slot between two damage dealers, however, she can still be used in some Echelons to good effect.

Team Options

Makarov

SVD

WA2000

Grizzly

Welrod MKII

HGs with tanking capability

As P7 cannot tank well and provides large Evasion buffs, using HGs that can either tank due to their stats or provide additional tanking buffs are good pairings for P7. Some examples are Welrod and Makarov.

HGs with Offense-oriented buffs

As P7’s RoF tile buff of 20% is lacking compared to other RoF tile buffs, it is recommended to use HGs that buff offensive stats in order to make up for what P7 cannot provide.

RFs

As all RFs appreciate RoF buffs, most RFs can be placed in an Echelon alongside P7. Some examples are WA2000 and SVD.

Recommended Formations