Dorothy: SerendipityInformation and Guide

Can you give a brief summary about this unit?

Dorothy is a fantastic Shotgun unit that can fire piercing pellets, dealing damage to multiple enemies and parts at once. Her uniqueness also allows her to hit hidden cores, evident on Kraken and Blacksmith. While her damage ratios are low, her self buffs are immense and compensate for them. Attack Speed, Hit Rate, ATK DMG, Pierce DMG—everything she needs to deal damage in any kind of situation, whether it be Campaign, Bossing, or PvP. That doesn't mean she excels at all those, however.

In Campaign, Dorothy: Serendipity can be used as a standalone Water unit. One of Dorothy's advantages over other shotguns is that she is not inherently reliant on Tove (although Tove is undoubtedly a good pair for her). That means you can pair Dorothy with, let's say, Siren, and she would be totally usable. With that said, Dorothy is a quite good Campaign unit thanks to her piercing capabilities and lots of self ATK buffs, but she has one flaw—to get those piercing shots, she needs to land 80 pellets. The problem is landing those 80 pellets can be challenging in an expansive environment, especially if the enemies are out of reach. Terrain doesn't count!

Now, we enter Doropity’s arena: Bossing. Dorothy stands out as one of the best bossing units in the game. It’s not just that her base damage is unmatched against Water-weak, but it’s also her incredible flexibility when it comes to team comps. She works with virtually any type of support! Whether it’s pierce buffers like Grave, SG buffers like Tove, ammo buffers like Noir, damage-taken buffers like Siren or Blanc, or general buffers like Liter, Doropity works with them all. This versatility makes her a top-tier pick for all kinds of bossing content and one of the highest-priority units to build. Her damage may not be the best at everything, but it’s at the very least decent for everything. You can slot her into almost any filler team, and she’ll still dominate, even in neutral element conditions. Especially with Tove’s brand new treasure, the SG team will remain a high value option for tackling neutral element bosses, allowing Doropity to continue impressing in neutral matchups for the foreseeable future.

In PvP, Dorothy is no more than a single-target damage dealer hitting the enemy's frontline (attacking) or backline (defending). Her burst generation is average, and when bursting, her damage expression is similar to Alice in Burst. Unlike Alice, Doro can do off-burst and still deal notable amounts of damage. That's thanks to her weapon being naturally powerful and having buffs that unconditionally trigger on Full Burst. Unfortunately, Dorothy as a Water unit means she is vulnerable to Electric units, which infest Arena. While this is a disadvantage, it can be used to your advantage — such as using her as a bait for Rosanna. Another thing to note is that, as an SG, Dorothy feeds Jackal and is extremely vulnerable to Scarlet’s S2.

Should I get this unit?

Dorothy is a great addition to everyone's shotgun rosters, even if you don't have a Shotgun team built yet She is still a flexible and appreciable DPS. She can be plugged into your Siren + Crown team, for example. Simply an amazing Water DPS.

Having Doropity will 100% help you rank higher in Solo and Union Raids (esp. Water-weak) and potentially reach a higher milestone against Harvester AI, or even clear certain bosses in Campaign more easily. Beginners without proper DPS units can also use her to journey through Campaign with more ease, until better options come along.

With that said, our verdict is YES. Get her. Doro is a seasonal 1% unit, the rarest in this game. Like with the other 1%, and as DoroPITY’s name suggests, mileage her immediately if possible! Avoid using gems, even with the rebate program, because the chance is too low.

Do I need dupes? With how ShiftUp is releasing multiple 1% units and double banners in 2025, it is harder to justify obtaining dupes, especially if you are a F2P. Our verdict here would be no for F2P players. This is because, while Dorothy is a strong unit and also reinforces the current SG team, ending up not having gems/Mileage for future units just because you MLB-ed Doro isn't really the ideal thing to do.

However, Dorothy still scales phenomenally on dupes—thanks to her having a lot of self ATK buffs. If you are a spender, you can consider MLB to attain Bond Level 40. Competitive players should look to C7 Dorothy.

Should I mileage her? Yes. In fact, you shouldn't use gems to pull 1% units. Immediately exchange for her once you have 200 Golden Mileage.

Kit Analysis

Skill 1: The First Pierce SG Since Neve Back in 2022

Upon landing 80 pellets, Dorothy gains 3 enhanced basic attacks, each with 1 pellet but the same damage multiplier (201.5%). These enhanced basic attacks are near laser-accurate and can hit targets at any range, including cores. Since they are also piercing, they can also hit multiple enemies and parts/hitboxes at once. New Blacksmith and Kraken are two example bosses that feature aligned hitboxes. It also means they benefit from Pierce DMG▲ (which, if combined with Doro's built-in ATK DMG, results in a total of 2.27× default damage increase). Additionally, every 160 pellets, her Pierce Range is increased for the following 3 shots.

💡Leona's Interaction

Doro's regular shots constitute 10 pellets each. This means she takes 8 separate shots to get 3 enhanced shots. The formula is thus 8 + 3 = 11. During her Burst Skill, this is increased to 15 pellets, changing the ratio to 6 + 3 = 9. If Leona's buff is also present at the same time, it becomes 4 + 3 = 7. If we assume each enhanced basic attack to be 2.27× stronger (diluted by ATK DMG▲ category buffs but difference is exaggerated with Pierce DMG▲), then the relative total damage dealt by 10, 15, and 20 pellets for 11 shots is: 14.81, 15.66, and 16.97, which isn't much.

What does this mean? This means pellet increaser(s) like Leona counterintuitively doesn't provide a damage boost as extreme as, for example, Tove. Leona isn't a bad support, still, as the damage boost is still noticeable + damage distance can result in dramatic improvements if it allows the boss to be in SG's Damage Distance (0.3×) range. Leona also becomes more effective if the boss is far away/has a tiny core because Doro would want her laser-accurate beams more in that case.

Note that obtaining enhanced basic attacks does not restore ammo.

Skill 2 - Buff-et!

A very, very simple and straightforward skill. Straight up, she gives herself a significant Pierce DMG▲buff that lasts permanently unless dispelled. For Doro, this only affects her enhanced pierce attacks (S1).

Alongside that, whenever she is in Full Burst, she provides herself with a huge ATK▲ buff and Hit Rate▲ buff! These:

• Increase her damage significantly in Full Burst, allowing her to hit further enemies and smaller targets like cores, which means…

• You must increase the time your team is in Full Burst to maximize her damage, which you can do with…

• Full Burst extenders or CDR (usually one of them but can rarely be both).

Besides that, because this skill has an unconditional trigger, it will trigger regardless of whether Doro is the one bursting. This allows Doro to benefit from its buffs in any Full Burst rotation, including when she is in off-burst.

Burst Skill - Hits Harder, Damages Better, Shoots Faster, Gets Stronger

Simply daft. Dorothy’s Burst Skill provides insane ATK Speed▲ and monstrous ATK▲, accelerating her attack pace and massively boosting her potential damage. The Pellet buff also helps her stack up for S1 faster. Since Doro will have a lot of ATK buffs during her Burst, it may get saturated, but that also means she can handle high DEF enemies or negate stat penalty to a greater extent. That said, ATK buffs will become less impactful (but not unimportant) for her; she benefits relatively more from other buffs such as Elemental DMG▲ or Damage Taken▲.

Do note that the effectiveness of Attack Speed increase is dependent on the total max ammo Doro has because reloading = not shooting = attack speed not applied = notable loss of damage. You want to avoid reloading at all during Full Burst, unless Doro has a high amount of Reload Speed (we mean, VERY high). We did our math for this and came to the conclusion that she needs a minimum of 3× Max Ammo OL in most common teams and with any kind of support.

💡Ammo Calculation

Doro gives herself 65% ATK SPD, so her oversimplified attack interval during Burst will be 0.667/shot ÷ 1.65 = 0.404/shot, which amounts to 2.475 shots/s. Adding Tove into the equation changes this into 0.667 ÷ (1.65+0.4224) = 0.321/shot, which amounts to 3.10 shots/s. If you calculate the math for each team—factoring in Tove, Drake, and Noir buffs too—you will obtain that 3× Max Ammo + Bastion 7 (effect: multiply by 1.4285×) match these required ammo counts closest. For the smoothest cycles, you want Doro to shoot for how long each of your team’s cycles lasts subtracted by reload time (for example, on Tove’s team, it will be around 56-57 shots). This ensures Doro only reloads once in each rotation.

There is one easy way to maximize Doro’s uptime during Burst, and that is to finish reloading right immediately when Full Burst begins (if you pair her with units who give Max Ammo▲ that trigger on Full Burst) or before (if your Ammo buffers give ammo refill instead of the regular Max Ammo▲). If you have enough ammo and do this properly, Doro will never reload in any Full Burst at all!

Synergy

Aside from powerful supports such as Crown, Doropity synergizes with these units (non-exhaustive):

• Pierce Damage Providers: Grave, Mari (if enemy has accessible core)

• Damage Taken: Siren, Blanc, XLudmilla

• Ammo Increaser: Tove, DrakeTr, Noir, Grave

• Full Burst Extender: BSoda

• ATK Buffer: Tove, DrakeTr

• ATK SPD Up: Tove

• Elemental Buffers: SElegg, XGuillo, SMary

• Pellet Increaser/Damage Distance Expander: Leona

• Burst Gen: HelmTr

• Core Damage: Naga

Usage Analysis and Tier List

Campaign (LD): S | Campaign (HD): S

While not extraordinary, Doropity can still keep up with the current meta campaigners in some form thanks to her piercing capabilities and lots of self ATK buffs (which help negate stat penalty). She may not be the best since she lacks burst gen and especially suffers from range issues (to stack up her pellet count fast), but given the right situations and environment, she can do a fine job, especially if the stage is Water-weak. She has a playstyle similar to Alice, with a strong upswing in damage upon using Burst Skill. Remember, the more pellets she lands, the faster she gets her piercing shots. Note that hitting terrain doesn't count.

Read our brief summary at the beginning of the guide for some extra detail.

Bossing - SS

Doro dishes a lot of damage, has pierce capabilities, scales further with the existence of dupes (because all her damage can core-hit), works with multiple supports, is dependent on teammates yet is self-sufficient, and has little competition in her own element (and even has good neutral element presence, possibly used in SG teams).

However, after contemplating for a long time, we determined that she falls just short of the SSS tier due to her performance outside her own element. This is majorly because her damage can be too variable depending on team comps as well as environment, meaning that she would look extremely strong on bosses that favour her but can fall off and even be benched against bosses that do not favour her. Overall, she can be considered ~70% of RapiRH on most bosses with core, which is really good damage, and she will close the gap if there is pierce, or if the boss is within her damage bonus range, etc. Dorothy is roughly in the same boat as Alice, where she needs pierce-able spots to compete in the same bracket as other top tier B3 (Cinderella, Rapi, Mihara). The one edge Alice currently has over Dorothy though is the fact that Alice can also buff allies like SBS as well.

Her performance in SR (and UR) will largely be dependent on whether the boss is Water-weak and has high core uptime/parts pierce support (the next Kraken SR may have just that), as well as how effective other SGs are on that boss. Despite that, we have to mention that recently Water bosses in Raids tend to feature more cores than other elements. This is likely because they want to encourage the use of existing Water units, which rely a lot on cores.

Doro has two playstyles: as a regular DPS (paired with Siren, Crown, Grave, other non-SG supports) or as a "shotgun" DPS (with Tove, etc). As a regular DPS, Doro isn't buffed like SGs but rather like regular units. She feasts on buffs provided by universal supports to deal damage, which are usually more powerful for non-raid content. One example is for Harvester AI. The drawback of this plan is that the same supports will likely be contested by other DPS as well. If you are sure that funneling Doro leads to overall higher multi-team damage in Raids, then you may use her like a regular DPS.

As a "shotgun" DPS, Dorothy utilizes Tove's broken buffs to take herself to Andromeda and beyond. Tove is her best partner after all. Who else can provide insane ATK, Ammo, and ATK SPD buffs? She needs all of them. Not only that, Tove's buff (Treasure version) lasts 15 seconds, and together with the permanent ATK SPD with no RNG, it makes for some insane empowerment. Add BSoda, Blanc, and Noir as cherries on top—Damage Taken, Full Burst extension, and Ammo—or perhaps Drake if you'd like, or Tia-Naga over the bunny duo if you want to take advantage of core hits. The benefit of using this team compared to the regular team setups is that you can save the ‘better’ general supports for other DPS, who definitely need them more since most of the time their alternate teams lead to a huge loss in damage dealt.

Tip: You can mix-and-match both playstyles together (i.e. run Crown+Tove+Doro, either with CDR or not). In general, outside SR/UR where multiple teams may be required, regular Crown comps are likely better—this is because Tove is a slot pressure for anyone but Doro.

If Doro is properly invested (check Investments), she will 100% be the best Water DPS for SR, UR, and generic bossing content like Harvester AI, even if the boss doesn't have core. I mean, we would be disappointed if a seasonal 1% unit is terrible. Thankfully, she isn't. And S.Elegg is only gonna make things better.

PVP - A

Doro falls slightly in PvP due to her weapon being a natural feeder as well as her damage being restricted to a single predictable target. She resembles Sugar the most—good auto-attack damage which can be enhanced further via Burst Skill (optional; her off-burst is quite good already). However, if you choose to use her Burst Skill, she will turn into Alice, dealing huge damage to whoever she is targeting every 0.4s. In a similar fashion, she is also countered by defensive units that would also counter Alice, such as Defender + Biscuit, Makima, well-placed Indomitability, and to some extent Moran/Nero stalls.

Another weakness is that she is a Water unit, and Electric is the most prevalent element in PvP. This is a curse and a blessing. It is a curse because she is potentially fragile and won't have Element DMG boost against most units in PvP (Elemental is significant for rushing down targets in PvP). However, it is also a blessing because it is easier to sacrifice her for Rosanna (to trigger burst energy fill + snipe, killing units like Scarlet before they can do anything). Still, since we recommend Doll SR 15 to boost her PvE performance, which gives Damage Taken▼, she may still have a hard time dying anyways.

Investments

Gear Investments

Doro is an OL-greedy unit, similar to Alice, albeit to a lesser extent. Doro wants:

• A minimum of 3× Max Ammo + Bastion Lv. 7 – in order to keep shooting throughout her 15s Burst period (both in Tove team and regular team). A fourth ammo is not necessary but can come handy in situations where you want to use Pierce/Destruction cube.

• 4× ELE – to increase her effectiveness and "carrying" potential against Water-weak enemies. More cost-effective than ATK because her ATK is already diluted.

• 4× ATK – because there is nothing else better. Improves her damage against all elements, and since Doro is expected to be used in Neutral Raids too (in SG team), ATK is a good acquisition.

Doro can also scale with other lines, although they are less influential. For example, Hit Rate is useful for mobbing as it allows Doro to hit more pellets and activate S1 more often, but for bossing, the benefit is limited. Similarly, Crit Lines provide only a meager damage boost, and they are only worth getting alongside other Crit Buffs (Crit Rate is only useful with Crit DMG buffs, for example).

• Essential: 3× Max Ammo

• Ideal: 4× ELE, 4× ATK, 1× Max Ammo

• Passable: Hit Rate, Crit Rate, Crit DMG

• Priority: Meta

Skill Investments

Doro scales with all skills—they all provide noteworthy damage boost. Maxing all of them is advisable. Burst Skill has a pellet breakpoint at Level 4 and 7, making level 7 a must get.

• Skill 1: 7-10

  • Increases pierce shot accuracy.

  • Increases pierce shot's ATK DMG.

  • Less important than the other two skills.

• Skill 2: 10

  • Huge ATK and Hit Rate boost.

  • Improves pierce shots' damage through Pierce DMG buff.

  • Very important.

• Burst Skill: 7-10

  • Level 7 is minimum for +5 pellets.

  • Increases ATK SPD and ATK buff.

  • Very important.

Cube Investments

Bastion Lv. 7+ is a mandatory cube, although in some cases you can make a compromise and use Pierce/Destruction if the end damage is higher. However, this will impact her uptime and rotation, potentially requiring you to get an extra Max Ammo line to compensate. Note that Destruction cube has no use in PvP.

In high reload speed comps, Resilience can be a decent alternative to Bastion. Zero downtime is better than high uptime anyways. However, the threshold for high reload speed here is much higher than for other units due to Doro's damage spike during her Burst, during which you want to avoid reloading at all. That said, if your Resilience cube is Lv. 15 and Bastion is Lv. 7, Resilience's extra Elemental DMG will provide more impact than extra 2-3 shots.

Doll Investments

Must SR 15 for two main reasons: strong Elemental/Water DPS (in regular and SG comps alike) and high Neutral presence (especially in SG team), as well as high affinity with basic attack damage.

To reiterate, Doro's only source of damage is basic attack. SG Doll purely increases its multiplier. Besides that, Doro has a lot of self ATK buffs, increasing the perceptible stat gain from equipment, including cube and Doll levels, and dupes. With those in mind, you ought to SR 15 Doro (start with R 0 → 15, replace with SR 5, then upgrade to SR 15).