Asuka Analysis and Theorycraft - Should you Pull? | Nikke: Goddess of Victory (2024)

Note: This was made first day of release of Asuka. Inaccuracies will be fixed after more testing.

Overview

• Extremely strong DPS potential via insane self-buffs, with her attack buff being permanent due to her burst being able to proc it.
• Provides a consistent strong buff to teammates despite being a DPS. this buff is locked to fire coded Nikkes, fortunately Nikkes that are fire coded are relevant to the current meta (Alice, Modernia, Herself)
• Gains Permanent Pierce on teams with cooldown reductions. Pierce being one of the strongest buffs in Nikke
• Simply a much better Scarlet
• MUST pull (Almost power creeping already)

Basic Information

Basic Attack Information

Assault Rifles generally suck due to their low basic ATK multipliers (13.65%) and low accuracy. This leads to no core hits, which is a major damage multiplier (2x+) which varies depending on weapon type/Nikke.

Asuka’s Normal Attack modifiers a decent chunk higher than normal (18.76%), second highest only to Scarlet.

However, that doesn’t mean Asuka deals less damage than Scarlet at all, quite the opposite. This is due to her amazing self-buffs that will be explained below.

Skills

Skill 1 – Competitiveness

Activates at the start of the battle. Affects self.
Damage dealt to Shield ▲ 601.01% continuously
(It only affects the damage dealt to the shield, not to the Rapture itself)
Activates when recovery takes effect. Affects self.
ATK ▲ 96.98% for 25 sec.

Starting off with an extremely strong buff. Damage dealt to shields isn’t prevalent in content as of now, with the only notable raptures that have shield are Mat H variants, Union Raid Bosses and presumably next Solo raid. Although very Niche, a 6x damage buff towards any shield Raptures in the future is certainly a plus to have in her loaded kit.

Her Attack buff has permanent uptime as it can be constantly be refreshed via Asuka’s burst skill. Activates when recovery takes effect accounts for life steal once per burst. Which means that the duration will not refresh beyond the first shot. Fortunately the duration for her ATK ▲ buff lasts long enough where this won’t be an issue when running a cooldown Nikke in the team.

Skill 2 – Assault Tactics

Activates when entering Full Burst. Affects self when in Shield status.
Damage as strong element ▲ 30.02% for 10 sec.
Activates when entering Full Burst. Affects all Fire Code allies.
Damage dealt when attacking core ▲ 60.07% for 10 sec.

Skill 2 also has amazing team buffs that are proc’d every full burst.

Her damage against strong element buff shouldn’t be an issue to proc as there are increasing amounts of Nikkes that can provide shields to the entire team (Tia, Crown, Rei Ayanami) and all listed units can work well with her

Asuka’s Core damage buff is also half of what Naga can provide, which is already insane for a DPS Unit with full uptime. Asuka’s buff nets to around a 20%~ Total DPS increase when hitting core

What is Damage as Strong Element and Core damage? (Newbies)

Damage against strong element applies when, you guessed it, using a Nikke that a Rapture is weak to. This can be found while looking at the enemy stats when clicking on battlefield info. This buff is Multiplicative (Additive with Overload gear however).

Core damage occurs when the player hits the core of an enemy, which is usually in the center of the body of raptures accompanied with red lights. Auto aim in the settings should lock on into these Cores.

The damage bracket for Core damage is:

1 (base damage) x (1 + 0.5 (Full burst) + 0.3 (Range bonus) + 1~ (Core damage) + 0.5 (Base Crit Damage))

A lot of factors in the bracket, but Asuka has a high enough buff for it to net 20%~ Total DPS boost

Burst – Piercing Bullets

Affects self.
Gain Pierce for 25 sec.
Attack damage ▲ 150.04% for 10 sec.
Recovers 3.16% of attack damage as HP over 10 sec.
Hit Rate ▲ 101.37% for 10 sec.

Gains full uptime Pierce ✨, almost a requirement to be a broken character in Nikke, and Asuka has it. Pierce Basically multiplies damage if there is multiple parts to take advantage of due to bullets hitting more than once per shot.

Asuka gives herself Attack damage ▲, not to be confused with skill 1’s ATK up ▲. These two buffs are different and are multiplicative of each other. This buff is what makes Crown, Tia, and Summer Rosanna great. BUT Asuka can grant herself a whooping 150% compared to the usual 30-50%.

Her HP recovery leech should be able to sustain her as long as the Rapture’s Attacks aren’t overwhelmingly powerful and if cover is played around with. This may allow Asuka to be ran into teams with no healers in content with Highest ATK targeting (Solo Raid)

NOT ONLY THAT, Asuka gains an amazing accuracy buff, which should guarantee core hits! Asuka’s Higher than normal ATK modifier% and Insane accuracy buff fixes the fundamental issues of what makes assault rifle classes bad, THEN buffs herself to an insane degree.

Campaign

Hard to tell where she’ll lie in the campaign meta, but expect her to be more than usable. Asuka’s Pierce and self buffs makes her an extremely competent DPS when targeting elite/boss Raptures. She’s expected to benefit from manual play a quite a bit if the Commander can switch between targets quickly.

Asuka can also pair extremely well with the top tier Meta campaign clearers as well due to her core damage increase and self increased elemental damage

Meta Fire Element Campaign Clearers

this makes element based teams a bit more impactful and a good step forward when it comes to specialized teams for campaign

However, the main issue with Asuka in campaign is that she does not have any form of burst gen. This can easily be fixed by slotting Red Hood, Alice,Centi,Nihilister or Anis in the team for burst battery generation.

Campaign Burst Generation Batteries

Burst generators are needed for smooth full burst rotations in story, it is almost mandatory in high CP deficit clears.

Modernia Core Team (Fire Team)

Bread and butter team, extremely strong against fire weak content. Use Modernia burst to clear the mob waves, then choose Alice or Asuka burst against the boss wave.

Hyper-carry Modernia (Red Hood B1 Variant)

Buffing Modernia’s burst by an extreme amount via core and attack buffs while Asuka takes care of the boss wave.

Burst rotation:

• Red hood -> Crown -> Modernia
• Red Hood -> Crown -> Asuka
• Save last Rapture before boss wave (Rapture/Wave Stalling)
• Wait for Cooldown for all burst skills, then destroy last Rapture
• Red hood -> Crown -> Asuka

Arena

Unfortunately, This is Asuka’s only “weak spot”. She provides no burst gen, screen wipes or AoE capabilities. She might be able to dish out enough DPS to take down stall teams, but that’s about it.

Special Interception | Solo Raid | Union Raid

Special Interception

with the addition of new special interception bosses, expect this area to be expanded and new guides to be written for them (in modern format). However, with the current cast, she is expected to do exceedingly well in all of them. Especially against Alteisein (Train) because of her piercing abilities and element advantage.

Union Raid

There are some Bosses in Union raid that have tanky shields. Asuka can definitely punch through them to provide guilds faster clears in Union raid. She’s also expected to be in the top 3 teams for Union raid for a long time purely for her damage, her team buffs just solidifies the spot.

Solo Raid

Easy spot in team 1-3. Her DPS and buffing abilities great. She’s also able to buff our first rate-up pilgrim, Modernia’s core damage in boss battles without gimping the team via her burst now! This is great for Modernia’s flexibility do this comfortably (1-2-2 Burst teams). Asuka’s Strength varies drastically depending on content as known for all pierce Nikke’s, but expect her to at least deal substantially more damage than Scarlet even without parts.

Bunny Team (Element Neutral)

Asuka is expected to be the most efficient team when paired with the bunny duo overall when factoring 5 teams + damage overall. This is due to her already extremely high ATK ▲ and Attack damage ▲, which Crown and Tia gives. This leads to us taking advantage of another damage multiplier, damage taken up ▲ which Blanc gives. This allows Crown to more effectively buff other teams while providing Modernia DPS buffs, this is even more prominent against fire weak bosses.

Using crown instead would still be better than bunny team depending on how raised Asuka is and overloaded gear rolls, but not by too much.

Theoretical Rei Team (Fire Weak)

It’s hard to gauge how much better/worse this team would be in fire weak content as Asuka can be easily overloaded with elemental weakness rolls, as she has not much else to roll for (ATK, Max Ammo). Rei might also not provide enough survivability as she only procs a 13% shield every other full burst, which means Novel or Summer Rosanna is out of the table. Asuka herself can buff herself better than what Rei can provide by at least three-fold. Rei also lacks in DPS when comparing to Modernia.

But at least they get to be together.

Note: Flex needs to be a healer/defensive supporter

Closing Thoughts / Should you pull?

Absolutely. Asuka does very well in PvE content, being able to keep up with the big hitters such as Modernia, Alice, Red Hood, Scarlet: Black Shadow and etc while being able to buff other teammates. Her kit comes with no real downsides (No HP drain, Health requirements, etc) and she’s easy to fit in any team as all the buffs she needs are built in on her own kit (ATK, ATK damage up, Core damage up, etc).

The only “downsides” on her is that she’s a bit more skill book reliant than other characters, but almost every top tier DPS shares this. Asuka also needs max ammo, but doesn’t heavily suffer if the player has no overloaded gear/max ammo rolls on her yet.

Asuka is a versatile and powerful character that easily makes her our first must pull collab character.

Expected Skill Priority

Expected Ratings

Rather rough estimations of ratings for Asuka