The gameplay style of the NieR team is a little different than most, and each character's skills and weapons are absolutely loaded with extra effects — even without counting their Rank passives. This team can do a lot with very little, and the more you invest, the more you get out of them.
Why is A2's Signature Weapon so important?
What makes A2 so good?
- She functions as the main DPS of the NieR team in spite of being a Tank, which makes her extremely durable
- Her Blue Orb skill is a somewhat ranged gravity-type attack that pulls enemies into its center from quite a long range
- At SSS-Rank, her Blue Orb not only sucks enemies in, it also stuns them for a few seconds
- All of the NieR characters can sprint at any time continuously for no cost, just like in NieR: Automata
- A2 also has a glide that lasts a few seconds which pulls groups of enemies in behind her
Her Signature Move lets her enter Berserk Mode
- Berserk Mode is similar to Kamui: Tenebrion's Dark Form in that it lasts even when A2 switches with another character
- This grants her Super Armor, which prevents her from being stunned
- Berserk Mode consumes her Shield, but the Shield can be restored either through her glide or through the use of 3-Ping attacks
- Because of how easy it is to maintain this Shield, A2 should have few issues with survivability
- In Berserk Mode, each 3-Ping also causes POD to fire off missles which inflict 20% defense down on enemies; with the full NieR team, this effect is doubled to 40%, even at S-Rank
- At SSS-Rank, the base defense down inflicted by POD is 40%, and with the full NieR team, this is doubled to 80%
- The last 20% defense down needed to achieve a full 100% can be gained from Catherine
- At SS-Rank, POD will shoot missiles every 4 seconds, even when A2 is off-field, as long as she went into Berserk Mode before you swap characters
- In other words, at SSS-Rank, you can achieve 100% uptime on a 100% defense down debuff
Why is 9S significant?
- When 9S activates his Core Passive, he reduces the character switching cooldown by 1 second, up to a total of 4 seconds
- He does not need to generate Orbs by attacking; he gets them over time
What does an average battle using the NieR team look like?
- You will be constantly swapping between characters
- Lead with A2
- Have A2 enter Berserk Mode as soon as possible
- Switch to 2B and use all of her Orbs
- Switch to 9S and reduce the cooldown of character swapping with his Core Passive
- Switch back into A2, who will still be in Berserk Mode if she was in it when swapped out
- Repeat