Clay guide & review

There's a reason that a Rewind - a scandalous cheering group couldn't recruit anyone but Clay. We expect Clay to be substandard but damn!

Can you give a brief summary about this unit?

She is hot. She is sexy. But she is bad. It's balanced, as everything should be. To begin, her buffs are barely impactful, and her Burst Skill having a 40s CD just exacerbates things. The buff True Damage mimics the buff Attack Damage (i.e. from Crown or Tia) but is only applied to true damage. However, the only true damage dealers we have right now are Clay herself, FrimaTr, and LaplaceTr. Wrong Nikke, wrong timing.

Should I pull this unit?

No. Summer is at Bay and don't let the sin of Lust get the best of you.

Don't Miss

Although this kit's named Don't Miss, you can safely miss her lol. Currently, we have a trend that whenever a Nikke is bad, Shift Up will slap "▲ Damage to Projectile", and guess who has it? That's right! Clay.

Her S1 will give True Damage buff to all allies herself, LaplaceTr, and FrimaTr during any Full Burst. This sounds nice on paper, but due to her being SMG, she will take at least 6s to give 2 stacks of S1, and the last stack will end at exactly 10th second (mostly won't happen due to reload, as well as targeting and cover animation).

To make her S1 give 3 stacks consistently, you will need either Reload Buff (Resilience or from other allies) or Max Ammo OL. She doesn't need much. Even a 50% Max Ammo increase is doable.

Wake Up!

Yes, that's right, Commander, wake up! She's not worth your hard-earned gems. Jokes aside, her S2 is actually interesting, because she gives Debuff Immunity every time you enter B1 stage (15s interval with CDR). Debuff Immunity is quite niché, but when it is needed, it can really shine, especially in Raids. Debuff Immunity has been covered within our Ade's guide, you can revisit if you want to know more about this mechanic.

Ade review

The second part of her skill is, whenever Clay has 1 or more stacks of S1, she will immediately grant allies ATK buff. This starts 3s after Full Burst and lasts until FB ends (for a total of 7s FB + leftover).

Also, S2 will reapply Debuff Immunity (max 1 stack) if you use Re-Enter B1 Nikke like Tia, XRupee or B.Alice.

Go! Go! Victory!

This is actually the most interesting part of her kit, until we see that 40s CD. Dead on arrival for sure.

Her burst value is roughly 25% of FrimaTr's Burst Skill. And being Supporter SMG means, even with Pierce, she deals no damage, not to mention weaker buffs like True Damage conversion. She would be have disrupted the meta if her Burst Skill had converted all allies' damage into True Damage, hence enabling FrimaTr's buff.

Campaign (LD) - C | Campaign (HD) - D

It's almost impossible to use Clay in campaign due to the lack of True Damage dealers. Her other buffs, which are ▲ATK and Debuff Immunity, are kinda lackluster too.

Boss (Solo) - B | Boss (Adds) - B

Against bosses, she may have her place when you rely on True Damage DPS like LaplaceTr, or when the boss has a very nasty debuff like Sunbather (-60% ATK debuff). Otherwise, she's just another Ade.

PVP - C

Bringing SMG to PvP is always a bad idea unless you know exactly what you are doing. And let's be honest, her buff is never worth the risk of bring SMG to PVP fight. But, hey, you can use the Debuff Immunity to block Blanc's Burst, I suppose, but you need to be faster, and she is the opposite of that.

Gear Investments

Overload Guide Announcement

We have published our very own Overload (OL) Guide on our website, featuring up-to-date recommendations with priority (PvE/PvP) and order of acquisition. We also included a reroll guide for you who wish for better lines but are puzzled as to whether you should lock your existing lines. Now, you can know what is mathematically more economical: locking a line & rerolling, or just rerolling all 3 lines! Everything is backed up with maths, and we assure you, this is the most complete and reliable Overload (OL) Guide. It might be the wordiest (we are sorry for that), but in our perspective, it's better to elaborate everything in detail than oversummarize stuff!

While we unfortunately took an unreasonably long time to finalize the guide, we are humans, and humans make mistakes. We would love to hear your feedback. Should you spot any mistakes, let us know, and we'll fix them immediately.

Links to the guides:

OL Gear - Intro

OL Gear - Recommendations

OL Gear - Rerolling

As discussed above, Clay needs an average roll of Max Ammo OL on her to give 3 stacks of S1 consistently. Otherwise, she needs nothing else because her scaling on OL is poor, and she herself is not worth CP padding.

• Essential: -
• Ideal: 1-2× Max Ammo
• Passable: -

Skill Investments

• Skill 1: 1~4
• Low scaling, low impact, low investment.
• Skill 2: 1~4
• Just like above.
• Burst Skill: 1~4
• We feel like a broken repeater here, but it's the same.

Suggested Progression Path

 

PVE Investment

PVP Investment

Priority

Clay

PVE investment

1/1/1 → 4/4/4

PVP investment

1/1/1 → 4/4/4

Priority

-

Cube Investments

Depends. Without Max Ammo OL, Resilience is better than Bastion because that will enable her to land 180 shots within 10s during Full Burst (for 3 stacks of S1), but there is barely any leeway. Bastion would only work if she never reloads during Full Burst at all, which requires Max Ammo and preemptive reloading.

Team #1: The True Damage Team

Burst 1

Burst 2

Burst 3

Burst 2

Burst 3

B3

This team is built around LaplaceTr and FrimaTr for obvious reasons stated above. Frima is actually a decent healer, so you won't have to worry much about healing here. Even then, if you have Rem, Rem is just better. Period. Exile Clay.

This character isn't good in PVP, so there are no PVP team compositions available. Just don't use her.