PiperBuild and Guide

Piper Wheel is an A-Rank Physical Anomaly Agent who specializes in dealing a lot of Anomaly damage quickly in short burst windows by using her EX Special spin attacks. This is the core part of her gameplay and it explains a lot of her synergies and use cases.

It might sound a little simple to only reduce Piper to an Anomaly Agent who spins to deal damage, but frankly that much is enough for her to perform. Pretty much all she ever wants to do is spin around, apply Physical Anomaly on enemies, and deal massive amounts of Assault and Disorder damage. She has a few tools to do this so we’ll explain them one by one.

First of all, let’s discuss her Basic Attacks and her Assists. For the most part, all of them will go unused (Assists may be used in some rare situations but they do nothing in particular compared to other Agents, just the run-of-the-mill burst of damage on Quick Assists and high Daze output on Defensive Assists). Overall, you can ignore these abilities and focus on her Dodge, Special and her Ultimate/Chain, the more interesting parts of her kit.

Her Ultimate and Chain attacks function as simple bursts of Anomaly application and damage – overall they’re pretty good to use if you can make use of them. It should be noted Piper’s Anomaly application on her Ultimate is pretty big, so make sure not to waste any of it in case your Assault anomaly is on cooldown (remember Anomalies of the same element have a 3 second-long internal cooldown which, especially on Piper and depending on the enemy you’re facing, can lead you to waste some Anomaly application).

Her Special is the more interesting part of her kit. Piper is one of the rare Agents in the game who actually want to make use of their regular Special (Piper’s Basic Attacks are often not favourable due to being slow and not applying as much Anomaly). What Piper’s Special does, without enough Energy available to use her EX Special, is it makes her enter a “Tire Spin” state. In this state, she can spin for a short duration.

It has a total of 3 stages, which look like a slow wind-up during the first, a proper spin during the second, and finally the third is reached once charged for about 3 seconds, after which she automatically follows up with a special attack called “One Trillion Tons” which deals a good chunk of extra damage and Anomaly. Stage 1 lasts about a second, which can be skipped after using Basic 3 (unused), a Dash Attack or a Dodge Counter. Generally speaking, using a Dash Attack or a Dodge Counter to access Stage 2 of Tire Spin leads to improved damage. It’s possible to quickly cancel the lag that Piper has at the end of One Trillion Tons with a Dodge, after which it is possible to follow up with a Dash Attack into a Tire Spin stage 2 and 3. This is her primary means of dealing damage and applying Anomaly when Piper doesn’t have Energy available. It is also possible to switch out of One Trillion Tons and swap cancel the animation if your other party members need to take the spotlight.

However, when Piper does have enough Energy available, she gets to use her EX Special instead. Upon reaching Tire Spin Stage 3 as normal, she can perform “Engine Spin” for an extra 3 seconds, during which she deals greatly increased DMG and applies Anomaly extremely quickly, one of the fastest Anomaly applications in the game. When Piper has completed her Spin duration or her Energy drops to 20, she automatically follows up with an enhanced version of One Trillion Tons called “Really Heavy”. The Anomaly application on this skill is similarly really high, and it’s recommended to switch out of it as this will in most cases conclude her rotation, after which you’ll need to set up your other characters once again.

During both Spin states, Piper’s DMG Taken is reduced by 40% and her Anti Interrupt level is increased. This means she will very rarely get interrupted by enemy attacks and can keep spinning even though she’s getting hit. Managing HP with Piper can be a challenge, since during her EX Special it’s strongly recommended to perform it all the way through and it’s difficult to stay out of range of enemy attacks. Mindscape 2 does help with this, but only to a small extent since you’ll need to stay close to hit enemies with your Spins no matter what.

Additionally, thanks to Piper’s Core Passive, she will gain a stack of “Power” for every enemy hit by an instance of damage of her EX Special or Ultimate. At a maximum of 20 stacks, they each increase her Physical Anomaly Buildup Rate by 4% for a total of 80% (at max level). This is a good chunk of the reason why her Anomaly application is so high. On top of this however, thanks to her Additional Ability she also gives the whole squad (including herself) 18% increased damage as long as she’s at 20 stacks of Power. Each stack lasts 12 seconds, so the buff can last into other character rotations if they have big damaging abilities. The uptime is further guaranteed by her Mindscapes 1 and 6. Mindscape 4 also indirectly helps with EX Special uptime.

So overall, Piper’s gameplay limits itself to the following simple steps:

• Watch out for Anomaly cooldowns and use your abilities accordingly to quickly fill Anomaly bars: Special, EX Special, Ultimate.

• Chain Attacks are good to execute when possible (although Piper’s teams rarely tend to stun enemies well).

• Spin to Win (make sure to dodge some enemy attacks and keep a close eye on your HP though).

Other than that, it’s mostly a matter of ensuring your supports are used properly. Piper really enjoys having a Sub-DPS Anomaly applicator like Burnice or Vivian so keep a close eye on their uptimes but beyond that, have fun spinning!

Piper’s position in the meta has a long history of people being unaware of her potential. However, Piper is without a doubt the best A-rank DPS currently and gets close to Jane in terms of physical Anomaly potential. Piper also works with less field time than Jane and buffs the whole party’s damage by a small amount, so she’s more open to diverse kinds of teammates. Her damage is especially good with Mindscapes so she’s definitely a character you can consider building the more Mindscapes you have of her.

In conclusion, Piper is a pretty simple spin-to-win type DPS who actually deals remarkable damage for an A-rank Agent. In spite of her simplistic gameplay, her damage pays off and while her optimal team options may require certain limited teammates, thanks to her ease of use and ease of obtention, she’s definitely a potent damage dealer you can consider building to help you with clearing all kinds of endgame contents in Zenless Zone Zero.