Girls Frontline ARSMG Teambuilding

ARSMG Teambuilding

This guide is written under the assumption that you already know the basics of the game, as there will be some min-maxing, common terminologies, nicknames as well as in-game mechanics that I won’t be explaining. If you happen to come across this doc as a newbie, consider checking out this Beginner’s Guide. For comments, concerns, questions, suggestions, etc., contact OmegaHymenBuster#7753 in the official discord or GFC discord.

This doc is last updated November 25th 2019.

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Table of Contents

1. Basic information
2. Position 4 support
3. Position 1 and 7 damage dealers
4. Position 8 and 5 tanks
5. Night ARSMG
6. Overcap
7. Optimizing RoF buff: How to read the RoF chart
8. Buff synergy

1. Basic information
   
   For the sake of clarity, the positions on the formation grid are referred as numbers on a computer numpad.
   
   
   

1. Position 4 support
   
   The most common supports for ARSMG are the following: Ribeyrolles, M4A1 or a HG. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages. Ribeyrolles and HG are purely supportive. They provide tile and skill buffs unlike M4A1 who is a damage dealer herself.
   
   HGs provide a good mix of skill buff and tile buff. Different HGs can aid the team in different ways, covering the team’s weakness or amplifying their strength. Since they are not damage dealers themselves, they can also tank for your ARs whenever necessary, using their mobility to reach the frontline quickly. They can also help out your SMGs by buffing them, tanking some damage for them in order to save health, or giving them time to pop crucial defensive skills. The most commonly used HG in ARSMG is Grizzly, but other HGs are also viable.
   
   Ribeyrolles is similar to a HG in many ways. Her skill is capable of buffing others, and her ICD is the same as HGs’ ICD, providing a good burst of damage when proc’d. The difference is that her skill is much more powerful compared to HGs, providing 5★ HG’s worth of buff to not only 1, but 3 stats. As a trade-off, she can only buffs those who situate on her tiles at the time she’s using her skill, and the duration is only 5s instead of 8s. As a result, positioning is key in using Ribeyrolles, as she cannot simply wander away from the other two ARs. She is stuck at position 4 in order to buff the ARs, leaving no room for the frontline to retreat/kite back when necessary, as well as making it much harder to run her against bosses with AOE attacks due to her positioning restriction.
   
   M4A1 is a combination of both support and damage dealer. She holds one of the better tile buffs in the game, as well as some respectable damage potential as a self-buffer. In turn, she has no team buff like HGs or Ribeyrolles. A team with M4A1 trades the burst damage potential of Ribey/HG for a more sustained damage, suitable for both short and long battles. Their pre-6s damage is higher than that of a burst team, and they maintain their constant high damage with their low skill cd, great uptime and the fact that there are 3 ARs constantly dishing out damage. Similar to Ribey, M4A1 takes over position 4, leaving no room for frontlines to retreat or swap. However, she is not as restrictive as Ribey and her tile-dependent skill, as M4A1 can be treated as an independent AR, dodging AOE attacks whenever necessary without setting the team back.
   
   
   
   TLDR:
   – HGs give both strong tile and skill buff to the whole team. They are mobile and can even tank when necessary (K5 being the exception whose skill depends on her current position similar to Ribeyrolles, but it’s flexible enough). There’s a large selection of HGs to choose from as well.
   – Ribeyrolles has a much stronger skill buff than HGs, making her an ideal option for burst damage. However she takes away moving space at her position. Other two ARs must remain on her tiles to receive her skill buff.
   – M4A1 provides only tile buff. Instead, she has a self-buff to make up for the lack of supportive skill buff, turning her into the 3rd damage dealer in the team.
   
   

1. Position 1 and 7 damage dealers
   
   An ARSMG team of course would use ARs as their damage dealers. There are several types of ARs: burst ARs (long (6s) cd, short duration, strong multiplier), sustained ARs (short (2s or 4s) cd, long duration, weak to medium multiplier), nade ARs, as well as the outliers such as the support AR Ribeyrolles.
   
   For the damage dealers, it is usually a good practice to pair burst with burst, or sustained with sustained, but not nade with nade. Multiple naders have severe diminished returns. Of course it is not necessary to always follow the rules, as many teams may include Zas (a nader) as the partner. Do note though, that two ARs with large difference in playstyle (RFB and Type 97) can be very difficult to build around due to their different needs.
   
   The rule of thumb for pairing the damage dealers with the support is simple: Burst ARs prefer Ribeyrolles > HGs > M4A1, and sustained ARs prefer M4A1 > HGs > Ribeyrolles. Nade ARs follow a different rule depending on the role they fulfill. For short cd nade Zas, they are not reliant on the skill buff, thus can be paired with any of the three, while long cd nade that needs the extra damage such as FAL prefers the skill buff from Ribey/HGs to make the most out of their niche.
   
   

Here are some commonly used ARs and their roles:

– G11: Burst AR, best friend with Ribeyrolles. Due to how well she performs, she can pair with M4A1 just fine, but her best performance is still with Ribeyrolles. Her tile buff is a nice 30% FP to SMG, thus ideally be placed at position 7 and paired with an off tank SMG. She will overcap RoF if paired with both Ribeyrolles and Vector, consider switching out Vector for PPS-43 or Ribeyrolles for a FP HG in such case.


A G11 setup example, the last AR spot is flexible.

– AR15: Sustained AR, pairs well with M4A1 or FP HG. Her tile buff is negligible and her high RoF makes it easy to overcap, so she tends to stay in position 1. She becomes a force to be reckoned with once MOD’d.

– M4A1: Assuming MOD 2+, M4A1 becomes a DPS herself. In fact it would be a waste to run her as a support at this point (she is still perfectly viable though). Rather than being used in ARSMG, M4A1 MOD 2 is used in a more specialised comp including Double Jupiter (M4A1 + IWS + SAA MOD + Calico + Mk23), and other variations fitting for heavy lifting (M4A1 + M200, M4A1 + Grape).

– AK12: Despite the long initial cooldown, AK12 is a sustained AR, although her burst damage is strong as well. You can consider her to be a burst AR on a ⅝ uptime, or a continuously powerful sustained AR. High DPS, very independent, being able to buff both SMGs from position 1 as well as boosting all 4 stats with her skill (to the point of getting close to capping RoF and crit). Can be paired with M4A1 (but please don’t put all your good dolls in one team), or FP HG.

– AN94: Same as AK12, AN94 is more of a sustained AR than a burst AR. Powerful passive suitable of taking out low health trash mobs where she gets to constantly switch target and bypassing their dummy link protection with double shot. Skill is a scaled down version of G11, but her ⅝ uptime makes her more valuable than just being a burst AR. Unlike AK12, AN94 is rather needy, befitting an AR who sits in position 7, so be sure to give her both RoF and FP buffs (and crit if possible). Can be paired with M4A1 or FP HG.

– G36: Sustained AR, has rather under average DPS before MOD, no preferred pairing. She synergizes well with off-tanks due to her tile buffs and should be placed in position 7. With MOD 2, G36 starts to shine, being able to self-buff both FP and RoF, while buffing those standing on her tiles with evasion, making her a very strong pick.

– G41: Sustained AR. A very standard FP AR overall, has no preferred pairing. She can fill in for just about any team. Negligible tile buff, so she tends to stay in position 1.

– Type 95/97: Sustained ARs, pair well with M4A1. Try not to pair either of them with Ribeyrolles due to their weak burst damage. Type 97 also has very high RoF, thus prone to overcap.

– K2: Essentially Type sisters except way better, K2 excels at early DPS and thus pair well with M4A1. Due to how her skill works, you can pretend she has a skill that pops at the start of the battle and go on cooldown at 8s, or whenever she stays too long in overheat. On paper, she would have similar DPS as Type sisters, but due to her triple shot, she is much more effective at bypassing dummy protection (G11 is quite strong partly because of triple shot). As a drawback, she is not as effective against high health enemies, and especially crippled against armors.

– TAR-21/ART-556: Burst ARs, pair well with Ribeyrolles. Scaled down version of G11 essentially. Negligible tile buffs.

– AUG: Rather bursty but her ICD is only 4s and her duration is longer than other burst ARs. Can be paired with any depending on whether you want to burst something down or not. Can buff all doll types but her buff is lackluster, thus she is treated as a damage dealer rather than a support. She sets her RoF to 150 with skill so any RoF buff is wasted. Due to her targeting, she is best used against few or single targets.

– MDR: Sustained AR with self-buff, an outlier as a shield AR otherwise. She pairs with M4A1 so the team may have at least 2 proper damage dealers when her self-buff isn’t used. DPS is slightly higher than G41 with self-buff. Strong tile buff for off tanks, position 7 is a no brainer. Has a rather special kit that requires some thinking and kiting to make the best use of, but can be very helpful. If you do use the shield portion of the skill, try and get it to hit both off tank and main tank if it’s safe to do so. The easiest way to do this is by swapping the main tank and off tank at 3s mark.
8-4e full run with MDR.

– Zas: Nade AR, but unlike other nade ARs, she is very much viable and thus is included in many teams. Similar to G41, she has no preferred pairing and can fill in for any team if you need the nade. Negligible tile buff, she tends to stay in position 1.

– RFB: Another outlier, her skill changes her targeting to furthest, making her the preferred choice to combat dangerous backliners (Jaegers). Skill has 6s ICD, but is not exactly a burst skill since the scaling is weaker than other burst ARs. Regardless she still prefers Ribeyrolles simply because of their same ICD and the fact that she makes use of Ribey’s skill buff excellently. VERY hungry for RoF buff, but don’t gimp your team by adding too many that the other AR ends up overcapping. Negligible tile buff, she stays at 1 but 7 is also viable if you run double main tanks and have no need for offensive tile buff from ARs.

– 64 Shiki: Also another outlier, she is a support in disguise, an antithesis to AUG (who is a DPS in disguise) you could say. Her self-buff is adaptive similar to Zas, but it’s not amazing due to long initial cooldown, low duration and the inability to control what skill she pops (unless you only run her for bossing which you should). If you run her for mobbing, her base RoF is low, making her ineffective, and her skill can cap her RoF, potentially overcapping her if you already have a RoF buff on her. Overall just don’t rely too much on her for mobbing. For bossing, low RoF high FP along with the big FP self-buff means she can actually deal decent damage due to no overkill. What makes her an outlier is the 55% FP buff to allies sitting on her tile. Even the strongest HG’s skill buff only gives out 35%. During boss battles, if given the opportunity, you can definitely move the other ARs onto her tiles and watch the magic happen. It’s preferred to pair her with M4A1 for this purpose (M4A1 being both a support and a damage dealer). Just be mindful that the setup is difficult and does not always work especially if the boss throws a lot of AoE at you, forcing you to move around. Btw, you can tile abuse if you can time the swap well for massive damage output on the other ARs.
A demonstration of Howa’s setup (credit to Cleista#7481).

1. Position 8 and 5 tanks
   
   
   Just as there are different types of ARs, there are also different types of SMGs as the picture suggests. The options are relatively flexible: you pick for buff synergy unless there’s a specific role you want your SMGs to fulfill. The most common pairing would be main tank + off tank (mobbing), double main tank, and main tank + HG (bossing).
   

– UMP45: Practically unmatched tile buff. Tanking capacity is only average, but the buff she gives let your ARs take out threats faster. Smoke is very useful for short battles if it actually hits the group. Against very fast targets like dragoons, or close spawning enemies that start shooting before her smoke can even land may prove troublesome. Long fights are not her strong suit, as smoke has a very long CD and short uptime.

– RO: A very useful skill, both for general use and for bossing thanks to its low ICD. Effective HP is quite high during skill duration with her damage debuff. Since it’s a debuff, the other SMG benefits from it as well. Uptime is not high for bossing, but it’s enough that she can rotate with another SMG. Mediocre tile buff, if used in double main tank, she should be placed at 8 and let the other SMG give the tile buff instead.

– CMS: Infinite uptime, perma-evasion self-buff and decent tile buff. Effective HP isn’t so high that she can replace the specialist evasion tank though. Can also be ran as off tank with her damage stance, but it’s not as good as her evasion stance.

– Dorothy: Another CMS essentially, with the perma-evasion self-buff and the toggle skill. She is more evasive thanks to the stronger self-buff, but has lower HP than her counterpart. Tile coverage is weaker than CMS’s but can buff RFs with it (sadly, this is not a RFHG teambuilding guide so I won’t go into that). To make up for that, she can support (or gimp) the other dolls on the same column (usually another SMG). The 40% evasion debuff to her teammate is drastic when Dorothy is on defense mode, so take great care and draw the aggro away from her partner. On the other hand, on her offense mode, she gives her teammate a whooping 80% evasion buff (that’s a Welrod debuff with no ICD right there). It is possible to stack the 2nd SMG’s evasion sky high with this ability, making her useful in a double main tank setup. Careful though, Dorothy does not give buff when she is moving, so stop frequently to reapply the buff before continue kiting.

– UMP9/Type 79: Flashbang is situational (Black/Red Beans) and does not work on bosses. It’s nice to have at least one flashbang around when the situation calls. Due to their long ICD, expect to take chip damage in regular battles if you do use them.

– Thompson/G36c: Their skill makes them invincible for a short duration, but comes with a very long ICD. Stats spread is lopsided to HP along with the long ICD makes them very vulnerable in regular battles. The low uptime of their skill makes them poor tanks for bosses as well, but they can be used to rotate with Taunt fairy and another SMG. Best used for cheesing Red Beans or tanking Jupiter with the assistance of Taunt fairy.

– MP7/Suomi: Evasion tank specialists. Weak against general mobs and short battles due to their long ICD (and lopsided stats spread in the case of Suomi). When their skills do pop though, they have great effective HP and skill uptime. Best used against long battles and bosses where evasion is still useful, aka don’t try and tank bosses that spam undodgeable AOE attacks.

– P90: Force shield/evasion hybrid specialist, P90 can either tank with the evasion self-buff she has, or let the holograms tank for her. Each hologram has 3 HP and 999 armor for 3s, at 5x dummy link, they can tank at least 15 shots, or more due to corpse whipping from the enemies, effectively buying her team up to 3s worth of time (like a force shield SMG with 6s ICD and 3s duration). Synergy very well with shield as the holograms can be shielded. Also synergy well with Taunt fairy by letting the holograms tank for the dummy, buying even more time without putting herself at risk.

– Vector/PPS-43: Nade off tanks, great against mobs in general. Molotov is better used for melting small group of mobs, while hand nade is used for bypassing tanks to nuke the squishies at the back with its larger radius. Most effective when paired with FP buffing AR.

– SR-3MP: A unique off tank whose DPS can easily surpass even ARs under the right circumstances. Requires good gears and AR’s buffs to get the most out of her. She relies on dummy links and normal firing so good protection from main tank and/or Taunt fairy is mandatory. Normally the effort to buff and protect her isn’t worth fielding her in place of nade off tanks, but that’s only when nades are still effective. Some spawns are not friendly to nade SMGs, so naturally SR-3MP would be more effective.

– Honey Badger: Despite being an off tank, Badger is used more for her tiles than her DPS. Having tiles capable of hitting both DPS ARs at the back from the safety of position 8 makes her a decent option when nade SMGs are not needed.

– HG: Supplementary support for the team. Their tile buff is much stronger than the average SMG and they provide very useful skill buff/debuff. Skill can either be a powerful team-wide buff (Mk23), shield to reduce scratch damage (Sei) or debuff to complement the SMG main tank (Welrod). Ideally place at 5 before swapping with the main tank at 8.

– Double HG: This will turn the team into a glass cannon version of ARSMG, aka ARHG. Excellent offensive capability as a trade-off to much weaker defense. Useful to overpower enemies in order to take no damage, or to situationally tank certain bosses such as Gaia and Dreamer, whose attacks deal so much damage that SMG tanks are not more effective than HG tanks.

1. Night ARSMG
   
   Aimed to deal with night maps, both against armors and non-armors. Night ARSMG plays around the massive power of the night specialists such as Groza and 9A-91. Being a night team, the team always include at least one HG for node vision.
   
   A couple of things to note when making night ARSMG:
   – Night ARSMG specializes in dealing with BOTH armors and non-armors. If the map is filled with armors, just use RFHG. If the map is filled with non-armors, your regular ARSMG with a HG included will also work just fine.
   – Even though the ARs must bruteforce through armors, you don’t have to stack all FP, especially if your ARs are night specialists themselves with massive FP self-buff already. This is a common mistake that many people new and old make when building night ARSMG. Neglecting RoF means you’re very sluggish especially against close-spawning enemies or speedy non-armors. Remember, more RoF means more shots during their skill’s duration.
   – Crit rate is ineffective at night unless you’re running AR15 or SOPMOD. All ARs must run PEQ over VFL, greatly reduces the effectiveness of anything related to crit.
   
   
   Example night team with 2 SMGs.
   
   
   Ribeyrolles pairs excellently with the two ARs, but can make it a bit more restricting to include a HG.
   
   

1. Overcap
   
   “You overcap rof on your AR15!!!” is something you may often find people saying when they’re giving feedback on a team. The concept refers to how certain stats have an upper limit that when exceeded is considered wasted stats. The two most commonly known stats that have a cap are RoF and crit rate.
   As an example, G11 has inherently high RoF, thus at lvl100 she will cap with only 23% RoF buff. By giving her let’s say 40% RoF buff, she is overcapped by 17%. The 17% RoF buff is wasted.
   
   
2. Optimizing RoF buff: How to read the RoF chart
   
   The RoF chart in question.
   While FP is straightforward where each % in FP buff contributes directly to damage, RoF buff has not only an upper cap, but also breakpoints in order to receive any improvement in the actual rate of fire. RoF is an important stats to ARs and RFs, but due to the vast selection of buffers in ARSMG as well as their RoF being naturally closer to cap, it is important to understand how much RoF buff they should get. This will let you make use of the buff as much as possible.
   
   
   
   Let’s make some examples:
   
   – G41 has 77 RoF, sitting at 19 frames. In order to reduce the frames from 19 to 17, she needs 10% RoF buff. RO gives exactly 10% RoF buff, thus the buff is fully used. If however you decide to use UMP9, who gives 12% RoF buff, 2% of the buff is wasted. In this scenario, it is an acceptable amount.

– Groza has 75 RoF, also sitting at 19 frames. Both G41 and Groza would shoot as fast as each other at base, however, the latter requires 12% to reduce the frames from 19 to 17. In this case, RO’s 10% buff only reduces Groza from 19 to 18 frames, wasting 4% RoF (Groza needs 6% buff to go from 19 to 18) in the process. RO obviously did not buff Groza as well as she buffed G41, despite both having the same starting frame of 19 and receiving the same amount of buff.

As you start forming teams with RoF in mind, you will notice that some dolls have very favorable RoF that make teambuilding very easy, such as G11. G11 caps at 23%, which Vector (25%), Ribeyrolles (23% at SL8) and SR-3MP + CMS (18% + 5%) can provide, wasting little to no %RoF.

On the other hand, there are also dolls who sit at awkward RoF, requiring awkward amount of %RoF such as Groza. Groza misses a number of SMG buffs, thus wasting a lot of %RoF. She needs 6% for 18 frames (CMS gives 5%), 12% for 17 frames (RO gives 10%), 19% for 16 frames (SR-3MP gives 18%), and 26% for 15 frames (SL10 Ribey and Vector both give 25%). These dolls make teambuilding harder in term of maximizing RoF buff, so you may want to pay more attention to how much buff and what SMGs you want to deploy with these dolls.

1. Buff synergy
   
   In the past I have seen many people pairing Ribeyrolles with Type 95. The reason was simply because Type 95 needs RoF and Ribeyrolles provide them with her skill. Sounds good enough? No.
   
   Let’s start with some examples using TAR-21, G41 and Type 95. Each has different skills ranging from burst damage (TAR-21) to sustained damage (Type 95).
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Without Ribey’s skill, the damage chart appears like this:
   
   
   Seems perfectly normal. TAR-21 overtakes the other two for a brief moment with her skill, as expected of a burst AR. But if the battle was to end earlier, or later, sustained damage beats burst damage.
   
   Now how about with Ribey’s skill activated?
   
   
   A significant difference from before, and it’s one of the key points in teambuilding with Ribeyrolles. Despite Type 95’s constant high DPS with her skill, her weak skill multiplier synergies poorly with Ribeyrolles, leaving her behind the other two. On the other hand, a proper burst AR like TAR-21 manages to overtake both Type 95 and G41 with such a large margin from her skill that her overall damage dealt was still higher even after nearly 20 seconds.