Girls Frontline RFHG Teambuilding

RFHG 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 January 9th 2020.

Table of Contents

1. Basic information
2. Corpse whipping
3. Same buff RFs
4. Different buff RFs
5. Comparisons
6. Standard comp Grizz Calico Welrod
7. Crit based comp 5-7 Px4
8. The RFs
9. The HGs

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

1. Corpse whipping
   
   Corpse whipping is when two dolls shoot one target at the same interval, but the target dies to the first shot which wastes the second shot completely. Corpse whipping happens in every composition, not just RFHG alone. This section is made specifically for a couple of reasons, but the main reason is that corpse whipping is a lot more detrimental to RFHG teams than to other compositions. ARSMG deals low damage in large quantity, so corpse whip does not affect the overall DPS of the team as much, while MGSG has no way to control how their high damage is spread amongst the targets. They make up for this through their extremely high rate of fire which helps offset this weakness. RFHG on the other hand deals high damage infrequently. A single bullet wasted to corpse whip costs the overall DPS of the team dearly. However, since RFHG does not have fixed rate of fire, it is possible to reduce the likelihood of corpse whipping.
   
   In order to reduce the chance of corpse whipping, the RFs must fire at different intervals. This can be done by having different RoF, either by running different RF types (post-skill), or by giving one RF more RoF buff than the other from tiles (pre-skill). A good RFHG satisfies both conditions.
   
   Of course that does not mean there is not a good RFHG that corpse whips. Depending on the purpose of the team or the composition of the enemies, they can simply focus on not corpse whipping pre-skill or post-skill. Some examples include WA + SVD + Grizz + Calico + Welrod team. This team has always been dominant in EN since launch, despite running the same type of RFs as its damage dealers. The reason this team does well is because corpse whipping only occurs post-skill, where WA overcaps her RoF, letting SVD catches up to her. There is a gap between WA and SVD pre-skill due to difference in tile buffs and base RoF which means less corpse whipping occurs. The team is used for mostly mobbing where battles end early. When battles do drag out, it’s usually against high health enemies. Shooting at around the same interval does not hurt their overall effective DPS given that they are not really shooting corpses anymore. There are also other team comps such as 5-7 + Px4, a big game hunting comp with its massive crit damage, which does the opposite: the RFs shoot at similar intervals a lot pre-skill, but after skill activation (assuming the RFs are of different types), they won’t corpse whip as much.
   
   
2. Same buff RFs
   
   
   Built upon the buff synergy between the HGs and the RFs, this comp give both RFs the exact buffs they need: RoF RFs with enough RoF to not overcap before providing them FP, and FP RFs with full on RoF as they already have high FP to begin with. Due to the RFs having the same buff, it is not uncommon for them to shoot at similar intervals which unfortunately results in corpse whipping. To combat this, the comp tends to have Welrod or similar HG providing an additional RoF buff to only one RF, desyncing them. Do keep in mind though that giving the additional RoF buff to the slower RF may end up doing the opposite. Each RF has different base RoF, and if the slower RF with the extra buff has just enough RoF to reach the same frame as the faster RF, they will corpse whip.
   
   
3. Different buff RFs
   
   On the other hand, a RFHG with different buff RFs aim to minimize corpse whipping by naturally desyncing their RoF through their own self-buffs. On top of that, this comp is adaptable to many scenario: the RoF RF can swiftly take out the cannon fodders while the FP RF does heavy damage to high healthy key targets. The comp naturally builds around the RoF RF, giving just enough RoF to not overcap and the rest into FP, leaving FP RF with much lower RoF upon skill activation. This is its weakness, as the FP RF is slow and more prone to overkill (dealing too much damage to a low health target).
   
   
4. Comparisons
   
   Once developed, both comps have very similar performance to each other. Pre-skill performance is based on the base stats of the RFs rather than what type of buff they have, and there is no stats spread archetype between self-buff RFs. Both FP and RoF RFs have similar stats spread that there would be little to no difference between them when their self-buff is not taken into account. Post-skill performance tends to only matter against enemies that can counter one type over the other, such as Hydra with its high enough armor to take minimal damage against RoF RFs. In this case it is more of an error in using the tool for the wrong purpose rather than the fault of the tool itself.
   
   The differences are more apparent when the team is not fully developed, when the dolls are not fully skilled and the equips are not enhanced, calibrated or gold. Same buff FP RFHG depends heavily on the skill level and the quality of the HGs, as they don’t have RoF self-buff, and will suffer from low RoF at this stage. Same buff RoF RFHG thrives at this stage since they are more independent than their FP counterparts. However, they suffer the hardest when they finally hit the wall that is Hydra, Gundam and the like: their equips, specifically AP ammo may not be enhanced and calibrated to contribute to penetrating the high armor of these enemies, and the FP HG on their team may not be sufficiently skilled either. Mixed comp falls right in between. They are neither the strongest at the early stage, nor the weakest when hit with a roadblock. They are simply adaptable.
   
   

1. Standard comp Grizz Calico Welrod
   
   
   
   This is the well-balanced comp that has a good mix of offense, defense and practical RoF spread to minimize corpse whipping. This comp runs 1 FP HG (Grizzly), 1 RoF HG (Calico) and 1 defensive HG (Welrod). The ideal RFs of choice are WA and Lee/Stella, but other self-buff RFs are acceptable. The general idea of this comp is to give one RF more RoF buff than the other, offsetting their RoF in order to reduce corpse whipping. This comp also does well in terms of defense thanks to Welrod and buffed Calico. At max level and +10 equips, Calico would have approximately the same evasion as Welrod with Grizz’s evasion buff.
   
   
   
   
   
   In the past, WA and SVD were paired together in this comp so seeing WA with Lee instead may be odd to some, but there are good reasons to run Lee with WA:
   
   
   • Lee and SVD have essentially the same performance pre-skill due to base stats, thus most of their mobbing potential is similar.
     
     
   • Lee covers the weakness of fighting tanky enemies. With new content coming out, enemies tend to be more diverse, with nodes of trash mobs among nodes with elites, and nodes filled with high priority target being escorted by other trash mobs. Lee tends to overkill versus trash mobs, but her damage is not wasted against the tankier ones, especially when fighting against enemies such as Hydra whose armor is higher than your AP stats.
     
     
   • Having one RoF RF and one FP RF built leads to better adaptability. New contents in the past have come as a surprise for many players, introducing heavily armored enemies that they don’t often see as such as Gundams (Va11 Halla collab). Some of these players run only one RFHG that consists of WA SVD as their RFs, resulting in many issues where they are unable to break through these dangerous foes.

On the other hand, for those who wish to focus purely on mobbing, Stella is a great choice. She can naturally desync her RoF with WA from being a FP self-buffer. On top of that, she shoots two targets at the same time, ensuring that one of her shot is never the same as one that WA is targeting. Even if corpse whips occur, Stella only loses half her damage, as each attack is divided into two shots. Other than that, she retains the same weaknesses as SVD when fighting against heavily armored and high health enemies.

TLDR:
– The standard comp is a balanced, jack-of-all-trade comp with good offense, defense and avoid corpse whipping.

1. Crit based comp 5-7 Px4
   
   
   The bursty comp focusing on massive damage output via RFs’ high crit and crit damage multiplier on top of Px4’s incredibly strong crit damage buff when paired with crit buff of 5-7, effectively giving the team 50% bonus damage. The buff distribution is also better with Px4 being able to buff both RFs from position 8. You can expect 1k+ shots with skill pop, and even more so if you decide to run an additional FP HG instead of Welrod.
   
   Due to EN not having AP change yet, heavily armored Hydra can reduce the damage of this team, but that is hardly a problem due to just how hard-hitting the comp is. The main issue of this comp however, is corpse whipping, especially pre-6s and if you don’t pay attention to the base RoF of the RFs. As a result, if you wish to use this team for mobbing (perhaps in order to get through the mobs first before hitting the elites), do pay attention to base RoF of the RFs. WA G28 pairing may sound fine for a mixed team, but the two having the same 39 RoF ensures lots of corpse whippings.
   
   As an alternative for those without 5-7, run Stechkin PPK Px4 instead.

1. The RFs
   RFs are separated into two categories, the generalists which include FP and RoF RFs, and the specialists.
   
   – WA, SVD, K31, T5000: The RoF RFs, they shoot fast and are ideal for mobbing. While WA and SVD are straight forward, K31 reduces her accuracy for her RoF buff, making her less than ideal when used against evasive enemies, or against non-armors at night. T5000 is the opposite, her RoF buff is weaker, but comes with additional accuracy buff.
   
   – Lee, M14, G28, SRS: The FP RFs, slow but hard-hitting, great against high health or heavily armored targets. SRS is the T5000 of FP RFs, buffing less FP but gaining accuracy. Fortunately, weaker FP buff does not hurt her as much as weaker RoF buff hurts T5000, so the more notable downside for her would be her slightly longer ICD.
   
   – Stella: A FP RF who shares her strengths and weaknesses with RoF RFs instead. By halving her shot into two, she can target two enemies at a time, giving her great mobbing potential. At the same time, due to weaker damage per shot and her lower skill multiplier and longer ICD, her single target DPS does not match with the likes of WA and Lee. Don’t let this discourage you, as she is easily one of the best generalist RFs for the time being.
   
   – M91/38 (Purple): Specialist RF geared towards assassinating high-profile targets (Hydra, Manticore, Gundam) due to her 45x multiplier. Despite her skill indicating her weakness against bosses and elites, many elites remove their tags after stopping once (or in some cases, at the start of battle like 10-4e’s Hydra), allowing her to deal full damage against them.

– IWS: Specialist RF who gives herself overwhelming FP buff as a result of reducing her own RoF. Just like the traditional FP RFs, she excels at fighting against high health, heavily armored targets, but to the extreme. This makes her ideal for fighting multiple elites as her damage are not concentrated in one or two shots like Purple, but spread out in multiple shots over the 10 seconds duration of her skill. She was paired with M4A1 MOD in older servers, creating a double Jupiter team, which was used against groups of Gundams in Continuum Turbulence ranking map. With the introduction to new t-dolls previously unavailable to the older servers at the time such as M200, her future is uncertain as these dolls may replace her.

Double Jupiter vs 111k Uhlan.

Double Jupiter vs 51k Gundam.

– M200: Specialist RF who may enter Sniper Mode for the duration of her skill, firing 100% accurate shots that can crit at the cost of fixed aim time. Unlike IWS, she cannot shoot faster with RoF buff due to this fixed aim time, but it does make it easier to work with her kit as she only needs FP and crit. M200 excels at fighting multiple elites, including those with evasion, and is a likely candidate against them in Continuum Turbulence.

– Kar98k: Once the butt of every joke, with the rework of charge shot skills, Kar is now a proper specialist RF. Her skill has very low ICD of 4s, while dishing out quite a decent amount, along with the benefit of being a charge shot (ignoring evasion/armor). Although not as good as Purple due to the lower damage, Kar’s skill has no penalty against any elite unlike Purple, whose skill is penalized against ones that cannot have their elite tags removed. Despite having 4s ICD, her targeting makes her unreliable at fighting regular mobs, as she may target non-threatening meatshields, or half dead targets.

1. The HGs
   And Dorothy, because she can buff RFs and add another flavor to teambuilding. They are mainly divided into FP HGs, RoF HGs and defensive HGs, with certain specialists that may be used.
   
   – Calico, 5-7, Stechkin: The RoF HGs, a staple to the comp. Almost every RFHG has at least one of them.
   
   – Grizz, SAA, Mk23, K5: The FP HGs, they come secondary to the RoF HGs, but nonetheless useful and even essential against certain enemies such as Hydra and Gundam.
   
   – Welrod, Makarov: The defensive HGs, particularly in terms of evasion. Once staple, as of late they are not as important due to dangerous elites that can overpower or even bypass evasion (Hydra and Gundam). Outside of said elites, they are useful against regular mobs.
   
   – Contender: Contrary to popular belief, Contender does not fulfill the role of a typical FP HGs. Her skill is a single-target debuff rather than a team-wide buff. This leads to her underperformance when fighting against multiple targets (mobbing). Instead she is used either against single target such as bossing (albeit rare and mostly against easy bosses as RFHG is not durable nor mobile enough for bossing), or when you require her target redirection.
   
   – Px4: Crit damage buffer, she should always be paired with 5-7, or to an extent, PPK. Functions similarly to a FP HG, but she does not replace one when it comes to brute-forcing armor. As a side note, she should not be paired with Bleeding Jane Jill either as Jill depends on the overcapped crit rate, and Px4 reduces crit rate.
   
   – Jill: Quite literally a tile slut. She has very good tile buff and coverage and the ability to fill one of many roles with her list of drinks. But ultimately, it is rare to be able to take advantage of the second part, as she comes with a 9s ICD (6s CD and 3s mixing). Even with capped CDR on her, she still takes 7.2s to activate her skill when other HGs have already done so at 6s at the latest, not to mention she is immobile while mixing, thus cannot really kite during this crucial time frame (and is quite detrimental even if you use her in long battles). Only used in very specific setup like burst setup, or for hitting very high number (Bleeding Jane and Fringe Weaver).
   
   
   – Dorothy: The one of a kind, the only SMG who can buff RFs. The advantages Dorothy has over HGs is her tank-oriented stats spread and her passive-like defensive skill. Clearly she has an advantage against mobs where flimsy HGs with long cooldown cannot survive. Her disadvantage is her lack of skill buff, and that in many cases Taunt or Airstrike fairy can buy enough time for the team, or outright neutralizing the threats on high pressure nodes.