Meta teams (Story)

This guide is dedicated for modes that uses Stage Penalty system (or deficit). Currently, the Deficit system is applied in Campaign, Event, Tribe Tower, Lost Sector. You can learn more about stage penalty here:

This guide is served for new players, so they can understand the cards in their hand, and prepare for later stages of the game. If you are a veteran, chances are you have already known what is best for you.

Now if you just roll a (bunch) of character(s), and you want to know whether you can form a good hand of 5 Nikkes, follow me down the rabbit’s hole. The deeper it is, the less teams will be available to push through, mind you!

If you are new players, chances are you won’t have all of these characters to fill in your roster, even at low deficit. Just remember those rules:

• If you don’t have any Burst I listed below, use
  
  N102
• If you don’t have any Burst II listed below, use
  
  Anis
• If you need another Burst III to form at least 2 Burst III team, use
  
  Rapi

To understand the terms: Burst I, Burst II, Burst III, we highly recommend you to take a look at this Team Building Guide first:

This is the “easy mode”, and mostly only new players, whale or veteran can enjoy. All of your Nikke will have stat reduction which ranges from 0 ~ 25% based on the deficit. Most, if not all teams work in this deficit. As long as you can put a proper team with at least 1 Burst I, 1 Burst II and one Burst III, you are good to go. Because there are too many teams that can be used here, let's dig further.

This is when it starts getting a little bit hot, but if you have the right setup, sometimes even ONE character, you can still push through them easily.

1. One-Nikke-army

These teams only require 1 CORE Nikke, and you can fill the 4 rest slots with your strongest characters in the tier list. The structure will be X - X - Core Nikke - X - X, for example:

Modernia

If you can run your device (phone/PC) at 60 FPS consistently, Modernia is one of the best Story pushers for you. At this level of penalty, you can pretty much use any B1, B2 and Modernia carries everything with her sheer power alone.

Red Hood

Same as Modernia, Red Hood is also one-Nikke-army on her own. The best part? She doesn’t even require 60 FPS. Throw whatever B1/B2 in this team and you are good at this level of penalty.

Scarlet: Black Shadow

SBS is one of the best screen wipers + single target DPS in the game at a low level of penalty like this. Best part? She can hit a target and everyone else on the screen just dies. Completely automatically, perfect!

Scarlet

Used to be the top carry in Nikke until Modernia, Red Hood shadow powered her. Don’t worry, she is still one of the best carry for you through Campaign, and you may want to use her whenever you have a spare slot - which will be described at the bottom of this guide.

Harran

One of the good old carry. Harran can pierce and kill a lot of enemies at the same time. By doing so, she also self buffs herself more ATK, hence further enhancing her power to killing enemies. And she has a nice screen wiping too!

Warning: Do not invest heavily in Harran. Stop at maximum 5/5/5 unless you don’t plan on playing Nikke seriously but casually.

2. Tia + Naga

The famous school girls of Missilis, known for their absurd “power” (whatever meaning you want). They are so strong that you can use any DPS with them and it still works wonderfully. Problem with them is, you need another Burst I here: Tia - Burst I - Naga - Burst III - Burst III.

Example team:

3. Blanc + Noir

If Missilis has their duo, so does Tetra! In fact, Bunnies are the first duo introduced in Nikke. They heal more than Tia-Naga but provide less offensive potential. You may need to swap around these 2 duo a lot later on, so if you have both pairs, raise them four!

Example team:

If you are a new player, you can still play Nikke automatically till around chapter 7 with this much deficit. Once you pass that point, you will find yourself losing A LOT by playing auto at this level of penalty (35 ~ 47% stat reduction).

At this point, you won’t be able to use the “one-Nikke-army” teams anymore but need to draft proper ones. We will go through each of them.

1. Auto team

At this level, this team brings a lot to the table, and unless it’s a very nasty stage where a lot of oneshot mobs are spawned, you can use this team to play automatically. It’s balanced and well-rounded with heal, offensive, buffs.

There are a few replacements for

Red Hood and

Modernia here:

• 
  Scarlet has a good wipe, decent DPS on her own, and Blanc will heal her back even if she keeps lowering herself with her passive.
• 
  Scarlet: Black Shadow is a great choice, but when the penalty starts breathing on her neck, her clearing power is not as impressive as at lower penalty.

Liter can also be replaced if you don’t have her, of course:

• 
  Pepper is a decent healer with high offensive power. She doesn’t reduce cooldown, but she heals a lot with her burst.
• 
  Volume also provides Cooldown Reduction (CDR) just like Liter, except her other buffs feel pale compared to Liter.
• 
  Dorothy brings both CDR and offensive power on her own. Definitely a good alternative even if Noir holds her back a bit. Note that Dorothy is a Pilgrim so it’s not easy to roll her.
• 
  N102 is your go-to when you don’t have any of the above Nikke, go N102.

2. School girl team

This team is less comfy than Bunnies team above, but they can deal way more damage. By using this team, you may want to turn off “Auto Burst” and control burst time yourself, because these Nikkes have very impactful bursts that need to be used at proper time to make the most out of them.

Same as with the previous team,

Red Hood ,

Modernia and

Liter can be replaced by the same characters as listed there.

3. Old “God team”

They used to be the most braindead team in Nikke until Blanc-Noir were released. This team has wipe, strong DPS, CDR, a shield that blocks most instant death attacks once in a while, and a nice passive heal from

Rapunzel that doesn’t even require her bursting. Rapunzel can even come in clutch with her revival burst, saving your run from a disaster. Heavily out-classed by the Bunnies team, but if your Bunnies are not completely, you can go this route.

4. Manual play with lots of clicking

This is the traditional team pushing story. They have semi wipe with

Privaty (mostly, just stun), boss killing with

Alice (requires extremely high investment but she’s worth), and damage buffers with

Maxwell +

Liter +

Privaty . Problem is, they require you to “aim” manually, and it’s not a good experience aiming those small flying Raptures from afar. Highly NOT recommended, just putting them here as a tribute to the past.

5. Crown Team

Crown has creeped up the Meta. She performs exceptionally well and can buff the team tremendously well. Due to the possibilty of running Rapunzel, she can also perform very well in Auto Gameplay, Helping us to progress more swiftly in our campaign missions. Just be sure to put her in Position 1 (left most), otherwise Rapunzel may have a hard time giving her heals to activate Crown's skill 2.

This is where most auto players have to stop. Enemies feel so tanky, enemies hit so hard, if you don’t cover and learn more advanced techniques, you are done for. Only a few teams can make their way to this deep, and they are:

1. Bunnies team

It all depends on the absolute number of Combat Power requirements. On low requirements like below 100k, you can still replace

Liter with a Good B1, but after that, Liter is very essential for the team unless you can somewhat lower the deficit.

For

Red Hood and

Modernia , they are also set in stone. You only swap

Scarlet /

Scarlet: Black Shadow in certain stages where you need to wipe enemies very fast.

Red Hood can be replaced with

Alice . At this point, you need to work on

Alice (10/4/10). She is not as versatile as

Red Hood but she is still one of the best DPSs on fully invested.

2. School girl team

Same as above with more offensive power. School girls team is pretty much meta in all Story stages later on, with a few exceptions on the high healing demand stages, like against Bronchus. This team has a high risk variation, which will be mentioned later on.

3. Old “God team”

This team is still viable at this range, but it feels pretty challenging compared to the previous level of penalty. This team is set in stone, you may replace

Scarlet and

Modernia with:

But it’s all situational. You want to keep the original roster most of the time.

4. Alice Maxwell team

At this point, you will feel suffocated with this team. They tolerate no mistake because you can’t even wipe anything with

Privaty . You only have a small window to use

Alice to shoot everything down, or they chew you alive. Most of the try hard veterans will have to retry a lot here for a good run.

5. Crown Team

Crown is obviously still effective. If there is any team on full auto that can still work at this point, it is this one! A special mention to Scarlet: Black Shadow can be made to this point, since she will perform extremely well at low deficits.

Everything kills you. You take forever to kill enemies. Yes, welcome to the malicious level of penalty!

1. Bunnies team

This is the last stop for the Bunnies team. They are good, don’t get me wrong. But their limit starts showing at this point.

Blanc can only debuff enemies on screen at the moment she bursts, but enemies will eventually spawn after that and all require you to answer them very quickly or that run ends in a retry. Also even with the debuff, you still take forever to kill Elite Raptures.

2. School girl team

Surprisingly, this is where you start relying heavily on

Tia and

Naga instead. Their offensive capabilities allow you to “cheese” through a lot of stages by killing enemies before they can kill you.

3. Alice Maxwell team

It takes a sheer will, dedicated effort, brilliant strategy and LOTS OF luck to even use this team here. Only the best players may find success with this old fashioned team, and even then, they have their way with either Bunnies team or School girls team.

Just watch in awe. DO NOT ATTEMPT

4. Manual Heavy, Infinite Ammo Crown Team

With Privaty and Alice, this team shifts from the common Auto friendly pattern to the manual extensive Alice. If you can manage to shoot 3.5 - 4 shots/s, this comp can perform at very high levels with ease, otherwise you can still perform well if you use Modernia over Alice. All the usual B3 choices like Scarlet, Scarlet:Black Shadow, A2, Emilia still work well till this point. The lower your deficit, the better Scarlet:Black Shadow will perform comparative to others. If you don't want to run the Infinite Ammo Crown team, you can always revert back to using Naga/Rapunzel in the 5th spot to test out your limits.

At 35% deficit, you start questioning yourself, why do you keep doing this? What’s the reward for torturing yourself like this? If you still want to push, then there’s technically only 1 team left to use. It has a lot of variations so be sure to stick around for all of them.

1. The School Girls team - God Comp #1

Key Point to Note:

• RedHood is showcased as a solo Burst 1 unit here! A detailed explanation for how to play with RedHood as Solo Burst 1 will be given in the next section!
• Options for what B3s to use are given in the next section as well!
• D: Killer Wife is usually used when you can’t tolerate 4s cooldown between first and second full burst, which mostly ends your run immediately after Chapter 23.

To push at this level, not only do you have to fully invest in these Nikkes, but also you have to rely on good Overload rolls, especially Elemental advantage.

And of course, your own SKILLS! This is where you can brag among all other commanders how good you are, because you are pushing under a penalty that feels impossible. This Team is the best replacement (yes, replacement) for the Crown Team, and outperforms it (sometimes) depending on the stage design, but 99% of the time

Crown will be better!

Red Hood as B1 is more meta than

Liter (more info in next section). However,

Liter is used when it feels it is necessary that more than 2-3 Bursts are needed to beat a stage, which is common on Base Defence and Defence (the one with a wall on the right side) type stages, or it feels necessary to get the 3rd Burst faster.

Example gameplay (with Liter):

Example gameplay (with Red Hood B1):

2. The King’s Team - God Comp #2

Key Point to Note:

• Red Hood is shown as a Solo Burst 1 Unit! More info below.
• B3 and FLEX choices are given below.
• D: Killer Wife is usually used when you can’t tolerate 4s cooldown between first and second full burst, which mostly ends your run immediately after Chapter 23.

Crown is the new King of B2s, and she will carry you through thick and thin. This God Comp is better than the old God Comp of

Tia and

Naga , simply because of Crown! She allows our DPS to get a variety of high value, usually undiluted buffs, along with shields to all her allies, as well as a special taunt that is one of the most clutch things that you can survive with if used properly. Not only that, but Crown allows for extreme flexibility in team building, as she is not bound to any fixed Nikke, like how Tia is bound to Naga. The Flex Spot is an extremely competitive spot, which can be used by a multitude of support or DPS Nikkes. The most used Nikke in Flex is Naga, but more information can be found further below on this topic!

Watch in awe as this guy breezes through stages at more than 39% deficit with Crown! (With D:KW):

RedHood as Solo Burst 1

When you use

Red Hood as burst 1 only, you have an insanely high amount of attack buffs over 10s, and you can even do it twice before she goes on cooldown. It allows you to bring 2 DPS, which will a lot of times be

Modernia + Nikke that matches the “Weak Element” of the Stage. Ideally, the B3 choices depend on the stage, and aren’t as easy as - this stage is Wind Weak, so I will pick

Scarlet: Black Shadow

At this deficit, you want to study the stage step by step and see what best helps you progress from one wave to the other wave, and what the next wave requires. At times, you might need to i-frame to dodge Remnant Raptures, or hold your burst while your

Modernia kills off Raptures outside of Burst.

How to Use RedHood B1? / How to control Burst Rotations?

In a 2-Burst Win, you shouldn’t feel much different from using your usual teams. You might need to be more patient between your 2 bursts, and may need to kill raptures outside of Burst. In this, you use the first burst to clear waves, and the 2nd burst to focus the stage boss and kill it fast. A 2-burst may be used when the player wants the same Nikke to burst 2 times, while the other Nikkes provide support damage.

In a 3-Burst Clear, you use the first 2 Bursts for wave clearing, and then the 3rd burst to rush down and kill the boss. You should easily be able to do 2 bursts without any major hindrance. But after that, if you want to burst a 3rd time, you’ll face the trouble of

Red Hood cooldown. This is something most people should be unfamiliar with if they’ve been using

Liter or other B1-CDR units as B1. To overcome this barrier is a skill and game understanding barrier in Nikke to most people. To reach your 3rd burst, you will have to save one rapture from a wave by killing all enemies but one, and then covering all your Nikkes.

Ideally, this should be a harmless rapture like a healer, buffer or elite that doesn’t do high damage, so that you can wait out 30 seconds after full burst ends, to have your burst ready again. Now we can uncover our Nikkes and kill the one rapture we left alive, and when the boss drops, we burst again and focus on the boss! You can make use of

Tia Burst or

Crown Skill 2 between 2nd and 3rd bursts, i.e. while

Red Hood is on cooldown to boost your team’s damage if needed.

Point to note

Make sure that your

Red Hood does not have super high ATK on her overload gear! Otherwise she might steal

Naga skill 2 from your main DPS (if you are running Crown+Naga) when they need that extra 40% core hit bonus! If your

Red Hood happens to have too many ATK rolls, you might need to use specific Nikkes that boost their own ATK during burst so that they are able to benefit from

Naga Core Hit buffs to the fullest! Just make sure that she doesn’t steal that core bonus from our beloved

Modernia ! If your

Red Hood as B1 seems to steal

Naga ’s core hit buffs, use

Liter or

D: Killer Wife over her! Example of Red Hood Solo B1

Example of 3 Burst Stage Clear

Example of how to use Crown’s Taunt effectively:

Flex Options for Crown’s Team

Naga

The highlight pair for

Crown ! Naga leaves her sister to join the kingdom! The synergy is very simple, and insanely effective. Naga can heal Crown and activate Crown’s skill 2, which leads to more damage buffs for the team. In return, Crown can provide a shield to Naga which activates Naga’s Skill 1, which results in even more damage buffs for the team! In fact, the buffs are so insane that Naga and Crown currently provide the highest offensive support when paired together! Hence, there is simply no question about it that Crown and Naga will be seen quite often in Campaign lowest clear logs!

While Naga may not be the best choice for every stage, she is definitely the choice that can provide the highest buffs to your DPS! Naga also provides healing and cover healing both, something which would be missing if we use other units over her.

Other Flex Choices

Maxwell : is mostly used for her ATK Buffs, but her high damage nuke can also take care of elites, or can even be used to nuke the boss.

Modernia : Not using her Burst? Slot her in as a Single target DPS! Cannot go wrong with using Modernia! When Modernia is not bursting, her focus target DPS is actually higher than when she is bursting! So she will help you focus down any high HP raptures you are struggling against!

Privaty :

Crown pushes her value up by a lot. Due to team-wide reload buffs, paired with Crown she can virtually allow us to run an Infinite Ammo team, something that

Alice can benefit from extremely. She can also be used as main B3 for her unique Stun mechanic, while she also buffs ally ATK.

Rapunzel /

Mary: Bay Goddess /

Marciana : Replacements for

Naga . They are more defensive/casual choices but are still viable choices. Provide healing to the team. Can also activate and increase uptime of

Crown Skill 2. Overall lower offensiveness than using other units, so think of it as a more casual approach to the game. Remember to place Crown in Position 1! The reason being that when all units are full HP, the leftmost nikke is healed, which can help Crown increase her Skill 2 uptime.

Scarlet /

Anis: Sparkling Summer : A weaker version of what we try to achieve with using

Modernia in FLEX spot, will be possibly stronger on their own element. We are simply using them as extra DPS

Crown vs Tia - Showdown for Naga!

We did indeed mention that Crown is better than Tia, but we would like to explain some reasoning behind it as well, so that players have an idea on when to use whom:

Because Crown provides individual shields for all Nikkes, and also provides Attack Damage, exactly like Tia (and they even have taunt too), Crown competes Tia for a spot in campaign. Let’s take a look at Crown.

• S1 gives roughly 43% ATK to your DPS, which lasts forever
• S1 gives 44.35% reload time to everyone, which lasts forever too
• S2 gives 20.99% Attack Damage with 50% uptime roughly
• S2 also taunts 5s every 15s.
• Burst gives small shields to everyone, which also grants 36.24% Attack Damage that lasts forever.

What does Tia have?

• S1 gives 32.11% Attack Damage that lasts 66% of the match
• S2 taunts every 5 hits, so it’s kinda on-demand
• Burst gives everyone a small shield, and a big shield on self.

Assumes all skills are at level 10.

As you can see, Crown gives WAY TOO MUCH Offensive buffs here. And because she gives individual shields, she also triggers Naga S1. 90% of the time, there’s no place for Tia in campaign at all.

However, there might be a stage where you want to use Tia due to her on-demand taunt buff, which might be a case in stages with suicide raptures. A major scenario where Tia is better than Crown is when you need damage while RedHood Burst 1 is on cooldown (which is the downtime between 2nd and 3rd Burst while using RedHood as solo B1 unit). Crown requires progression from Burst 1 stage to provide shields and activate Naga’s Skill 1, while Tia has no such restriction! So even though Crown provides overall higher buffs with Naga, she cannot buff the team as much as Tia during this period. So keep in mind if you require DPS during this downtime, Tia will be your best bet.

Notice how the player uses Tia’s burst to boost damage during no Full Burst:

Overall, as you can see, while Tia still has her say in some stages, BUT Crown should still remain the best choice of support over Tia. You can never go wrong with Crown, so if you’re confused who to use, use Crown! Remember, we are in Hell! Being on the offensive is the best defensive strategy! Kill them before they kill you, there’s no other way!

3. B3 choices for both God Comps

Modernia

Naga is a core hit buffer, and

Modernia benefits the most from Core Hit Buffs, be it out of Burst or in Burst. Hence, when using

Modernia , it is probably ideal to make use of

Naga to improve her damage. Since she is a Machine Gun, she can hit the core of enemies with pin-point accuracy. When using RH as B1, not only is her Burst getting

Red Hood ATK buff for 10s compared to

Liter 5s, her constant AoE during Burst targets the cores of all raptures it auto-locks on, hence benefitting from

Naga to its fullest!

When the boss drops, you will often notice that players do not burst with

Modernia , and use the other Nikke’s Burst. This is because Modernia will provide the absolute best support damage to finish off a boss! This does not mean that Modernia will have a permanent spot as B3, but you will definitely see her being used 90% of the time!

Alice

High Value Unit with one major drawback: Intense Manual Usage. If you can get over that drawback, and can manage 3.5 to 4 shots per second with Alice, Crown with her reload speed makes her creep up as the best choice alongside

Modernia !

Her high DPS output Burst can be used for Boss Killing, as well as taking care of mob waves that are clumped together since she has pierce. One problem Alice has is that she needs a lot of Ammo OL gear, which can be circumvented thanks to

Crown , especially when used with Resilience Cube +

Privaty ! This provides infinite ammo to her due to insane reload speed buffs, allowing her to shoot non stop during Burst. When Burst ends, she is at full ammo, so she can spam her shots to get to the next Full Burst in no time! Alice is now a freak of nature since the addition of Crown reduces her OL dependency severely. Using

Privaty or

Maxwell over

Naga is definitely a viable choice when used with Crown.

Other B3 Choices

• 
  Red Hood : Not using her as a B1? Use her as the main B3! The absolute best choice B3 when not using her as B1, even above Modernia! Red Hood is simply the best when it comes to either handling mobs or focusing on one single target. Use her. Always!
• 
  Scarlet : AoE wipe is a unique utility, the quality of which no other Nikke can match. Additionally, she has amazing DPS output, notably outside of Burst due to her constant self ATK Buff.
• 
  Scarlet: Black Shadow works well as a support screen-wipe, but her main focus will be to focus on nuking the stage boss “target”, after someone clears the mobs for her. The lower your penalty, the better she will perform for you. This does not mean, however, that she is incapable of wiping waves. If the waves come in numbers, but they drop slow enough and in smaller groups, SBS can perform majestically well.
• 
  Maxwell is mostly used for her Buffs, but her high damage nuke can also take care of elites, or can even be used to nuke the boss.

Situational Use B3's

• 
  Snow White is used to either nuke the boss instantly when it drops, or used to nuke a group of high HP elites that would otherwise do too much damage in a small amount of time.
• 
  Anis: Sparkling Summer : Super strong on her own element, still usable on other elements. When the boss drops, Anis will allow us to completely focus on the boss as her Skill 2 takes care of those pesky raptures that try to kill us when we’re trying to rush down the boss! Synergy with
  
  Privaty as well
• 
  A2 /
  
  Emilia : Don’t have
  
  Modernia or
  
  Scarlet ? These 2 are your best bet for clearing waves. Constant wave clearing ability is not to be underestimated. Both of them are unique units that will also have buffs outside of Full Burst, and will be able to hit each rapture with their full strength, clearing the screen due to their huge splash radius. Emilia is a better version of A2. The reason is simply because Emilia doesn’t need to Burst to provide her Wave Clearing ability, and her buffs aren’t lost when she goes below a certain HP threshold. Furthermore, Emilia does not reduce her HP like A2, giving her more edge, if having a ×1.59 multiplier on every shot she makes wasn’t enough. Additionally, Emilia can be spammed with to gain burst gen, while A2 can prove difficult to Manually use.
• 
  Ludmilla: Winter Owner : Super strong on her own element! Being an MG, can constantly hit the core of raptures, allowing her to enjoy Naga’s core benefits to the fullest.
• 
  Red Hood : While we promote using her as a B1, she may also be used as a Burst 3! But in very specific situations. Even if you’re using her as a B1, you can use her as B3! This confirms the limit of your Bursts in the stage to 2. The use of this depends on the stage. You will sometimes find this useful in iron weak stages. Due to the nature of this suggestion, the following video reference should help understand how it works:

Elemental Based Choices

Against Iron weak stage:

Against Fire weak stage:

Against Electric weak stage:

Against Water weak stage:

Against Wind weak stage::

Anything beyond 45% is currently thought to be impossible, and at 50%, all of your stats are reduced by 99%, preventing you from going further. Congratulations, you have reached the bottom pit of hell! Give yourself a pat on the back, you deserve it.